Do people really want every class to be balanced?

[The_Pope]

Seriously. Topics about balancing classes seem to be the most popular thing on this wing of the forum. So, I'm really wondering. Do you all honestly want perfectly balanced classes to the most minute possible detail? I know I don't. D&D has never had balanced classes from the get-go, and its worked fine. Sure, your 20th level fighter wont be as powerful as your 20th wizard. If that really really bothers you, you want to know how you fix it? Do you really want to know?

Don't play a fighter.

No, don't rewrite the whole class. No, don't rewrite the wizard. No, don't try to customize everything so it evens out.

Don't play a fighter.

[Scrubbed]

Don't play a fighter.

Its as simple as that. [Scrubbed] Play a wizard, or something to that extent, and feel good about it. People actually do enjoy playing the "underpowered fighter", [Scrubbed]

It even makes sense that a fighter shouldn't be more powerful than a wizard. You have a single man that can rip apart the heavens with magical energy versus a guy that can swing a sword very well. Now tell me how the hell you are going to make those two people equal.

Where would the fun be, if every wizard, monk, bard, druid and fighter were exactly as effective as each other in combat? That's practically along the lines of combining all the classes into one big super class and making eleven slight variations of it because people want to be the same, but not the same, at the exact same time. Wow, look at me, I'm a 10th level Blah.

And before you start criticizing me about taking the best classes for myself and forgetting the weaker ones for the dumber players, or something along those lines, my favorite class, and the one I play most often, is the bard.
They aren't powerful in the smallest sense of the word. All the base classes could drop kick a bard up his arse into next Wednesday.

But you know, if you all really want to make all the classes the same, go ahead. Post your three hundred threads about how to make "class #A as powerful as class #B," or how to make "class #B less powerful and more balanced." It just seems kinda pointless to me, what with everyone going around in circle after circle after circle. After circle. But whatever. Perhaps I'm just a cynical jerk, but I kinda don't see the point of bashing your heads in with a club because D&D classes don't balance out.

Edit: And for people thinking I'm being rude, I'm not trying to be. I just speak sarcastically, and that usually warps itself when typed. I mean for most of this to be read with humor in mind. Read it like, if you were watching something on Askaninja.com, or something. Eventhough that guy is thirty times funnier than I could ever hope to be.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff of Moddingham: Wait...so you started a threat to tell people to stop their whiny excuses and to shut up? I'm having a hard time not locking this as a trolling thread. That said, I'll scrub the offending portions and admonish anyone who would like to respond to treat this a genuine request for information.

[Rama_Lei]

Well, I view as an obvious, "everyone wants to be useful" sort of thing. And no one is saying that the wizard should be the same as a bard which should be the same as a cleric and so on. We just want to make so every class can contribute to the game.

[Mauril Everleaf]

I think you misunderstand "balanced". Balanced doesn't mean "one big super class and making eleven slight variations", it means "has the ability to contribute at all levels." Fighters and Wizards and Clerics are not balanced under the current system. This is one area that I think 1ed did better than the later editions. Balance in classes was fairly common. A 1st level fighter was slightly more powerful than a firt level wizard (then called magic-user) by 6th level or so they were pretty much on par with each other, power-wise, and at 20th level (if you ever got there) the wizard was only slightly more powerful than the melee class. Clerics could not outshine a fighter in melee, but had the compensation of spells. Thieves mostly stayed out of melee (except for some backstabbing, which was only good when invisible or unnoticed) but were effective with bows and were vital to pick locks and find/remove traps. Your class had its own set of skills which were pretty much exclusive to your class. Also experience points were harder to come by and fighters needed less to level up than wizards, and the gap grew as you leveled up.
So, yes, I do want balance. Balance = options. Unbalanced = forced to play something to be effective. I want options because I want to play a roleplaying game, not crunch some numbers and tweak and optimize my "character" to make a solopwnmobile.

[LotharBot]

I sent this via PM, but now that hte thread is reopened, I'll let everyone see it:

I don't want every class to be equally capable at every task. But I do want every class to be interesting to play, for the whole game. I want to go from level 1 to 20 with the same party and not have any of my players/characters feel useless for the last 5 levels (or the first 5, for that matter.) That means I don't want there to be too wide of a gap between the overall effectiveness of heavy magic users and heavy axe users. One can be more powerful than the other, but neither should feel like "I shoulda just stayed home".

That's why there's a lot of interest in adding capabilities to melee types late-game -- they reach a point where they might get to do 30 damage in a battle and then the wizard does 90 damage to everyone and the cleric does 200 damage to the BBEG. And, unlike bards or rogues (with diplomacy or disable device or whatever), they typically don't have anything they can contribute other than damage.

It's nice when your players can all contribute something. That's really what "balance" is all about.

[sktarq]

The major reason why I'd want to have the various classes balenced is not veracity but ease of play, munkining, and fun. If by the end of the characters use the wizard is solving all the problems and the fighter is doing little besides occassionally blocking an advancing monster till the wizard can take care of it. Why is my player with the fighter going to return to the game each week.
I assume that my players (I know I do when being a PC) like to be useful to the party and in part they show up to get the same kind of acomplishment kick they get from a videogame. They are generally more willing to take marginal victories, the occanional loss, and such as a way to add variety and character to the game. (why they are not playing said videogames).
Now This generally doesn't mean that the classes have to be exactly balenced at every level. And I think most people are fine with the overall balence with the current core classes. Those who do try and "fix" the balence are generally a minoritywho I can only guess you have been over exposed too....I haven't heard much complaining since 3.5 came out (before then yeah lots which may have been what kicked this off so much).

Finnally while having a group of 6 wizards was extreamly fun once it would quickly get old if it occured all the time.

[Fax Celestis]

There are two main contributing factors to imbalance in character classes: the first (and harshest) is that fighter-style feats do not scale, while spells do. The second is that the standard rate-of-exchange for spells is a standard action, while a melee attack is also a standard action.

Scaling fighter-style feats by scale and increasing the standard time for spells to a full-round action would pretty much solve the balance issue. Fighter's feats wouldn't blow, and spells wouldn't be godly.

[Fat Daddy]

What Mauril and LotharBot said. I don't expect (or want) all the classes to be the same. I do want all the classes to be able to 'shine' on occasion and contribute in a meaningful way in most situations.
Many times it is the responsibility of the DM to create situations where each PC gets a turn in the spotlight. Oft times however, it would be a little easier on the DM if the classes were a little better balanced or rather, more comparable in power level.
In the end, as long as everyone can contribute in a meaningful way and all players are having fun, it's all good.

[Rama_Lei]

There are two main contributing factors to imbalance in character classes: the first (and harshest) is that fighter-style feats do not scale, while spells do. The second is that the standard rate-of-exchange for spells is a standard action, while a melee attack is also a standard action.

Scaling fighter-style feats by scale and increasing the standard time for spells to a full-round action would pretty much solve the balance issue. Fighter's feats wouldn't blow, and spells wouldn't be godly.

Exactly. You can swing a sword in six seconds. You shouldn't be able to rend reality asunder in the same time.

[Khantalas]

Exactly. You can swing a sword in six seconds. You shouldn't be able to rend reality asunder in the same time.

I siggied that. Hope you don't mind.

[Bears With Lasers]

But I want to play a high-level fighter without feeling irrelevant to the combats that happen. Who are you to tell me not to do so?

[Saph]

There's no easy way to balance the classes, because of the difference between potential power and actual power.

A simple class like a fighter has less variation in power. Even a very badly played fighter will be OK in a melee, as a hit point sponge if nothing else. A badly played wizard is utterly useless and will go down in a single hit. On the other hand, a well-played fighter is outshone by a well-played wizard due to the incredible variety of options a wizard has.

So to make a really well-played wizard as powerful as a really well-played fighter, you would have to nerf most spells to such extremes that wizard players have to think hard just to be even moderately effective. And by doing that you'd make the average wizard underpowered, so the classes would STILL be unbalanced, but this time the other way around.

Honestly, I think the easiest solution is just to live with things as they are. Most players don't have a major problem with casters being overpowered, as shown by the number of people willing to say 'casters aren't that good in my game' or 'what we find really overpowered is (insert non-spellcasting class here)'. So it's obvious that class balance issues don't necessarily HAVE to be a problem.

In short, I'm with The Pope. If you think a class is underpowered, just don't play it.

- Saph

[greenknight]

But you know, if you all really want to make all the classes the same, go ahead.

I think that's a pretty good example of the flaw in your argument. You're confusing balanced with the same as. You're correct, if you really want to play a class that's the same as a Wizard, then you should play a Wizard.

The goal of Balance is not to make all classes the same, but to make all classes equally useful during the course of an adventure or campaign. In any given scenario, a particular character class might be more useful than others, but that should be reversed in other scenarios. For example, the Wizard is nearly useless in a magic dead area (or an area protected by an antimagic field). In those same areas, a Fighter can excel. It's also the DM's responsibility to ensure there are situations where the skills of each character in the party can come to the fore, so if one or two characters seem to be hogging the limelight, then maybe it's the DM at fault, although smart players and rules imbalances can also be the cause of that problem.

Personally, I'm all in favor of well balanced characters, and I think the 3e style rules offer the best opportunity to do that thanks to the multiclassing rules, feat/skill system and prestige classes. But there are still imbalances within those rules, and they should be addressed.

[The_Pope]

But I want to play a high-level fighter without feeling irrelevant to the combats that happen. Who are you to tell me not to do so?

Then like, take a prestige class. What I've been getting at is I don't understand why everyone wants to change the class. A fighter shouldn't become some super-powered god of force. He's good with his weapons. If you want to go past that, go with a multi-class or a prestige class.

[Bears With Lasers]

Then like, take a prestige class. What I've been getting at is I don't understand why everyone wants to change the class. A fighter shouldn't become some super-powered god of force. He's good with his weapons. If you want to go past that, go with a multi-class or a prestige class.

What prestige class should I take that won't force me into a fairly specific flavor (i.e. Mounted Lance Guy) and will make me able to contribute at a high level? How will this prestige class fix the problems I have as a fighter?

[JaronK]

The problem, as others have said, is very straightforward: you want to play the kind of character you want to play, and still contribute. Right now, if someone says "we're playing a level 10 core only campaign" and one person's a druid, and you want to play a melee, you can't keep up even doing what you do best. The druid can do everything you can do, but better. It shouldn't be like that. You should be able to play a melee bruiser and shine doing something (for example, I dunno, killing things). You shouldn't have the druid walking around being a full caster and then saying "oh, I think I'll be a better fighter than the fighter" and then Wildshape into a Dire Ape and kill everything in sight.

JaronK

[LotharBot]

Not everyone wants to overly complicate their games by making their new players have to learn about prestige classes on top of just trying to "get" the basic game mechanics.

I have a group of 6. 3 of my players are brand new. I want my players to be able to play the whole way through our campaign (1-20) without having anybody feel obsolete, and without having to push anybody into taking some obscure prestige class just because the game doesn't give melee types level-appropriate abilities at levels 16-20.

Fighters/Barbarians don't need to be super-powered gods of force, they don't need to have magical abilities, they just need to be able to hit stuff with their swords/axes/whatever effectively even at high levels. I don't think we need the sort of complicated fixes a lot of people have proposed, with pages and pages of new abilities (and I sure don't want to hand my new players that much material to absorb.) All we really need is a few feats to top off some of the fighter feat chains, and a few abilities to top off the barbarian list, that give appropriate abilities at level 16+.

Even something as simple as the "pounce" feat (can full-attack after charging) would make high-level fighters much more viable. A combat-mobility feat (can move with an enemy during their turn, such that you can full attack them next turn) would help too. Any number of small boosts like that, available only at high levels, would make those sorts of characters still feel useful late-game.

[The_Pope]

What prestige class should I take that won't force me into a fairly specific flavor (i.e. Mounted Lance Guy) and will make me able to contribute at a high level? How will this prestige class fix the problems I have as a fighter?

You could pull a lot of things. Start as a fighter, have a high enough Wisdom, and take one to three levels of monk. Maybe take a few levels of Paladin to improve your saving throws, then branch into the Dervish class. Now you're an unarmored fighter with some good saving throws that can act as a flurry of moving blades, and can perform some dances at the local tavern. You could take the variant from the Complete Mage that allows multiclass fighters to cast in light armor and get him up to a 5th level Wizard so he can cast fly. Now your fighter wont be hampered by flying opponents.

If you want to break away from the fighter, how about an Ur-Priest? Some of the requirements might be hard to pull off without say, taking a level in a class that grants the spellcraft skill. But if you can pull that off, you're a fighter and a full spellcaster.

Cross-class Hide and Move Silently skills, and go for an Avenging Executioner, and then go Assassin. Now you're stealth oriented with the combat skills of a fighter and can death attack something if your damage is doing you no good.

But you know, its all up to how you want your character to act.

[The_Pope]

Fighters/Barbarians don't need to be super-powered gods of force, they don't need to have magical abilities, they just need to be able to hit stuff with their swords/axes/whatever effectively even at high levels. I don't think we need the sort of complicated fixes a lot of people have proposed, with pages and pages of new abilities (and I sure don't want to hand my new players that much material to absorb.) All we really need is a few feats to top off some of the fighter feat chains, and a few abilities to top off the barbarian list, that give appropriate abilities at level 16+.

You're right, the feats make the fighter. Currently, in a game I'm playing, we have a fighter with a rather high dexterity, a spiked chain, Combat Reflexes and Improved Trip. He makes continuous trip attempts whenever he can, which knocks down just about anything that isn't flying or incorporeal. He barely gets hit in combat ever due to this tactic, and overall is one of the most useful members of the party.

[Solaris]

There are two main contributing factors to imbalance in character classes: the first (and harshest) is that fighter-style feats do not scale, while spells do. The second is that the standard rate-of-exchange for spells is a standard action, while a melee attack is also a standard action.

Scaling fighter-style feats by scale and increasing the standard time for spells to a full-round action would pretty much solve the balance issue. Fighter's feats wouldn't blow, and spells wouldn't be godly.

Agreed. Emphatically. I was rather startled to see that spells no longer took rounds to cast in Third. Making it a full-round action (or longer!) to cast the more impressive spells and scaling fighters would go a long way towards making them all work. My suggestion is for someone with more time than I to go through and do that tweaking.

[ZekeArgo]

You could pull a lot of things. Start as a fighter, have a high enough Wisdom, and take one to three levels of monk. Maybe take a few levels of Paladin to improve your saving throws, then branch into the Dervish class. Now you're an unarmored fighter with some good saving throws that can act as a flurry of moving blades, and can perform some dances at the local tavern. You could take the variant from the Complete Mage that allows multiclass fighters to cast in light armor and get him up to a 5th level Wizard so he can cast fly. Now your fighter wont be hampered by flying opponents.

You are kidding me right? Nevermind that the first example pidgeonholes you into an alignment and playstyle, it is also so horribly gimped and MAD dependant I'm not even going to comment on it other than say "no"

As for your second example... so the only way for a fighter to compete with a wizard is to become one? Somehow that doesn't seem to be a workable argument. And how exactly are you going to act as a "fighter" if you've just screwed yourself out of +3 BaB?

If you want to break away from the fighter, how about an Ur-Priest? Some of the requirements might be hard to pull off without say, taking a level in a class that grants the spellcraft skill. But if you can pull that off, you're a fighter and a full spellcaster.

Once more, to be a better fighter you need to become a caster?

Cross-class Hide and Move Silently skills, and go for an Avenging Executioner, and then go Assassin. Now you're stealth oriented with the combat skills of a fighter and can death attack something if your damage is doing you no good.

And now to be a better fighter you need to be a backstabbing rogue?

But you know, its all up to how you want your character to act.

Yes, it is up to me to decide how my character acts. However, I should be able to play the concept of "guy who swings a sword for reasons X, Y, and Z" and not be completly overshadowed by "guy who can stop time" and "guy who can swing a scimitar for reasons X, Y, and Z *and* can cast divine spells *and* has a big companion".

I truly don't know any other way to break it down. The fighter cannot shine at the task he should be the best at, and thats even before spells make dealing damage pointless.

[ZekeArgo]

You're right, the feats make the fighter. Currently, in a game I'm playing, we have a fighter with a rather high dexterity, a spiked chain, Combat Reflexes and Improved Trip. He makes continuous trip attempts whenever he can, which knocks down just about anything that isn't flying or incorporeal. He barely gets hit in combat ever due to this tactic, and overall is one of the most useful members of the party.

At doing one thing... vs opponents that can actually be knocked down. And when an opposing wizard decides that "Hey, you know web is a pretty damn useful spell" or any of the other myriad ways he could stop the trite, overused chain-tripping fighter what can he do exactly?. Or what if the wizard just flies, or turns invisible, or dimension doors far enough away to make the "tactic" useless?

[LotharBot]

What level is that fighter? Do you think he'll still be that effective at, say, level 18?

Here's the key thing: how can my new players make melee characters that can contribute all game long if they don't particularly want to use spiked chain cheese? Do they really have to go fighter-monk-paladin-buyAnotherBook-Dervish? It seems like it'd be much easier to just come up with a few feats that require, say, BAB+15, and give combat abilities that actually make sense for Grokk the Half-Orc Barbarian or Uther the Dwarvish Fighter to be able to do at that stage of development. They don't need to be able to cast disintegrate or anything like that, but it'd be nice if they could at least full-attack something once in a while.

[Misat]

Yes, the chain fighters are always an exception. Why are we talking about fighters and wizards though? Fighters can be amazing, if you want to power game, or they can just be completely fun, if you want to you know...have fun. Wizards are...well they're wizards and just learn that they should all be killed before they hit level 6 to prevent them from ever becoming a threat. So if you hate wizards being overpowered; on your next campaign go for a jaunt and begin slaughtering all wizardfolk. It'll allow you to vent a little bit.
Like I was saying though, bards just get hurt. Barbarians may be good, but I've always seen them as far too limited. Like The Pope said though he still plays a bard. I once saw the party bard convice, using Diplomacy and some low level telepathy spell, the Ogre (bard rolled a 20 and ogre rolled a 1 admittedly) that he needed to kill the other monsters before they snuck up on him. The party bard also successfully kept the rest of the party up with some nice perform checks accompanied by real life stories. The next morning they were all fatigued and the wizard couldn't get a spell off, but the party had fun doing it to themselves.
What I'm saying is that DnD is made, atleast in my eyes, as an alternative to hack n slash video games. If you want to bend rules until they break and get fixed *cough* 3.5 *cough* then by all means go for it, and see just how fast you can get the other players to hate you for doing all the damage and leaving them scraps.
It's a game people. Play it to have fun, and if someone is making it cease to be fun...well smack them out of character and tell them to stop powergaming a roleplaying adventure. Alternatively powergaming can be an art, and if the rest of the party is up for a competition just powergame to your little munchin hearts' content.
For me I'm out because this felt good to get out finally. Balance doesn't matter in a game where, oh what is that? THE RULES CAN BE CHANGED AT ANY TIME JUST BY TALKING TO THE GROUP YOU'RE WITH AND COMING TO A COMPRIMISE. Do what the homebrew section does best and tweak the little things as they come up. Don't do a revamp, just make it so everyone is happy.

[The_Pope]

You are kidding me right? Nevermind that the first example pidgeonholes you into an alignment and playstyle, it is also so horribly gimped and MAD dependant I'm not even going to comment on it other than say "no"

As for your second example... so the only way for a fighter to compete with a wizard is to become one? Somehow that doesn't seem to be a workable argument. And how exactly are you going to act as a "fighter" if you've just screwed yourself out of +3 BaB?



Once more, to be a better fighter you need to become a caster?



And now to be a better fighter you need to be a backstabbing rogue?

Did I say that? No, I didn't. I gave a few different examples on things you could do as a Fighter. I didn't say they were amazing ideas that are better than any Fighter. The fact is, all the prestige classes for Fighters lock them in a specific role. If you want to have a fighter-like character that is not locked into a specific role, you're going to need to branch out into other areas. Otherwise you're going to be the guy swinging the sword for 20 levels. And that should be the case for a straight fighter. Because a fighter doing anything else but fighting is no longer a fighter. Is it crappy? Maybe. Is it realistic? Yes.

[TSGames]

I do mostly agree with the original post. D&D is a high magic setting; the warriors even use magic weapons created by wizards to improve their combat abilities, the wizard can teleport you into space, summon demons, 'splode your house with a few gestures. From a flavor standpoint, in D&D it would be very difficult to make any melee class(all of which ultimately rely on wizards or whatever to enchant their weapons) as powerful as the magic users.

I'm not saying you just shouldn't play or fix the class or that you should PrC ad nauseam, you can do whatever you want, I don't care. However, without altering the default setting of D&D and the flavor substantially, it's extremely difficult to make a caster unable to do what a fighter can except better.

[ZekeArgo]

Did I say that? No, I didn't. I gave a few different examples on things you could do as a Fighter. I didn't say they were amazing ideas that are better than any Fighter. The fact is, all the prestige classes for Fighters lock them in a specific role. If you want to have a fighter-like character that is not locked into a specific role, you're going to need to branch out into other areas. Otherwise you're going to be the guy swinging the sword for 20 levels. And that should be the case for a straight fighter. Because a fighter doing anything else but fighting is no longer a fighter. Is it crappy? Usually. Is it realistic? Yes.

Wow, first of all you continue to prove my point: in your opinion the only way for a fighter to be a better fighter is not to be a fighter. You can't say "well these are options if you want to be an effective fighter" because at that point YOUR NO LONGER A FIGHTER.

Second of all, "is it realistic" is your defense? Yet another catgirl dies huh? So those of us who enjoy heroic fantasy and having characters with the ability to perform "unrealistic" abilities are just out of luck if we want to play a non-caster? *That* is the problem at the moment. A fighter past level 2 is not only redundant when paired with other classes, but is completly outstripped. Whereas you can play a Wizard, Cleric or Druid from 1-20 and *always* have some way that you can contribute.

[the_tick_rules]

i'm offically announcing my retirement from posting on these fighter hating pages effective as of this post.

[The_Pope]

i'm offically announcing my retirement from posting on these fighter hating pages effective as of this post.

I think I'll join you in that announcement. I actually like the fighter, despite what everyone says. Wasn't my intention for one of these to form, but wow, lookie.

[LotharBot]

you can play a Wizard, Cleric or Druid from 1-20 and *always* have some way that you can contribute.

Not to mention a Sorcerer, Rogue, Bard, Ranger, or Paladin. You can make a lot of these more effective by taking a level or two in a different class or taking a prestige class, but all of them can be played 1-20 as is and be worth something at every level.

Fighters and Barbarians just simply lose effectiveness, starting about level 14-15. Even if you use a total cheese build, that only buys you a couple more levels of relevance. At the end of the game, the pure-melee classes need something more to be able to contribute. Not by becoming a non-melee class, either... but by making it worthwhile to swing their (magically-enchanted) swords all the way at level 20.

EDIT: P.S. I love fighters. That's why I want to make them actually work at high levels... preferably before my favorite fighter actually gets to those levels. He's approaching 15 right now; I'd like him to remain interesting at 16-20.