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  1. - Top - End - #31
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Making a character suffer for the audacity of casting a spell is one way to balance spellcasters, but that doesn't make it a good way. A PC should not be punished for doing what it's supposed to be doing. Punished is to mean the character is worse off for doing a Thing - closer to death (loss of hit points), suffer a minus number to defenses, lose the ability to do stuff (lose turns player does nothing, character goes insane) - than if he hadn't bothered to do the Thing in the first place. If something is so powerful you can't stand the player doing it so must make the character suffer then don't allow the ability at all and do something else.
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Pex View Post
    Making a character suffer for the audacity of casting a spell is one way to balance spellcasters, but that doesn't make it a good way. A PC should not be punished for doing what it's supposed to be doing. Punished is to mean the character is worse off for doing a Thing - closer to death (loss of hit points), suffer a minus number to defenses, lose the ability to do stuff (lose turns player does nothing, character goes insane) - than if he hadn't bothered to do the Thing in the first place. If something is so powerful you can't stand the player doing it so must make the character suffer then don't allow the ability at all and do something else.
    Precisely! I don't understand the common idea that "oh, mages are broken but also persecuted IC because they're broken, so it balances out!" somehow works. Either the player is clever enough to leverage their magic into being broken and unnoticed anyway, or you're just punishing someone who just wanted to play a mage, and usually the latter happens to people who tend to use the least broken magic (commonly combat/damage spells) anyway.

    Either way, you have to be antagonistic to a player because they picked a mage, and you have to put extra effort into holding them back, all of which could've been avoided if magic was simply not as good.
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Pex View Post
    Making a character suffer for the audacity of casting a spell is one way to balance spellcasters, but that doesn't make it a good way. A PC should not be punished for doing what it's supposed to be doing. Punished is to mean the character is worse off for doing a Thing - closer to death (loss of hit points), suffer a minus number to defenses, lose the ability to do stuff (lose turns player does nothing, character goes insane) - than if he hadn't bothered to do the Thing in the first place. If something is so powerful you can't stand the player doing it so must make the character suffer then don't allow the ability at all and do something else.
    Note: This is exactly Why the Caster/Martial Disparity exists.

    I'm sure if we did a poll nearly everyone would be just fine with "punishing" a martial character endless every round for even daring to do what they are "supposed" to be doing. And everyone would have the same answer/deference: Martial's Suck!

    But even suggest anything ever might happen to the special spellcaster is unthinkable.

    This is what needs to be fixed.

  4. - Top - End - #34
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    You could just play game that does a hard correct of this issue. Two revisions of D&D 5e that I like are:
    • Low Fantasy Gaming - (casting is dark and dangerous)
    • Middle Earth Adventures 5e - (no PC caster classes)

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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Zarrgon View Post
    Note: This is exactly Why the Caster/Martial Disparity exists.

    I'm sure if we did a poll nearly everyone would be just fine with "punishing" a martial character endless every round for even daring to do what they are "supposed" to be doing. And everyone would have the same answer/deference: Martial's Suck!

    But even suggest anything ever might happen to the special spellcaster is unthinkable.

    This is what needs to be fixed.
    Yes, people should be less willing to punish martials for doing what they're supposed to be doing.

  6. - Top - End - #36
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Besides 3e D&D, what other systems particularly suffer from caster / martial imbalance?
    I haven't even played D&D 3e enough to see it first hand. There were a couple of moments where it became an issue in D&D 5e (not in a game breaking way) and I have heard about problems in Pathfinder, Shadow Run and World of Darkness games. So apparently it is only the largest games?

    A survey would be good but perhaps hard to put together. For instance most systems where magic is symmetric with other skills are fine, but that is almost trivially true anyways so is that great example of balance?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pex View Post
    Making a character suffer for the audacity of casting a spell is one way to balance spellcasters, but that doesn't make it a good way.
    I agree that punishing people for playing their character is a problem, but at the same time that isn't to say there should never be a cost or risk to it. Defining the exact difference between them is tricky but there cases where if you claimed punishment I would disagree.

    A very extreme example would be something like people complaining that the tank is running out of HP after taking hits for the rest of the party. Sure you could define tanks who completely negate attacks, but the classic tank that just takes less damage and can take more isn't being punished for filling that role even if they do need a healer eventually. And I could take a step back and talk about fail-forward systems which I have heard actual complains about but more generally the point is I think costs and risks can be used properly.

  7. - Top - End - #37
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Pex View Post
    Making a character suffer for the audacity of casting a spell is one way to balance spellcasters, but that doesn't make it a good way. A PC should not be punished for doing what it's supposed to be doing. Punished is to mean the character is worse off for doing a Thing - closer to death (loss of hit points), suffer a minus number to defenses, lose the ability to do stuff (lose turns player does nothing, character goes insane) - than if he hadn't bothered to do the Thing in the first place. If something is so powerful you can't stand the player doing it so must make the character suffer then don't allow the ability at all and do something else.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ignimortis View Post
    Precisely! I don't understand the common idea that "oh, mages are broken but also persecuted IC because they're broken, so it balances out!" somehow works. Either the player is clever enough to leverage their magic into being broken and unnoticed anyway, or you're just punishing someone who just wanted to play a mage, and usually the latter happens to people who tend to use the least broken magic (commonly combat/damage spells) anyway.

    Either way, you have to be antagonistic to a player because they picked a mage, and you have to put extra effort into holding them back, all of which could've been avoided if magic was simply not as good.
    D&D certainly had been moving away from the ethos of 'magic is extremely powerful, but wildly inconvenient, readily disrupt-able, and you will be a sitting duck glass cannon who has nothing to do but throw oil 90% of the time except when unleashing said extreme power' for quite some time. Commensurate increasing of martial capability (/reducing the awesomeness of magic) to offset the loosing of these consequences has been something of a slower process.

    To the general question of whether getting power along with consequences is a game mechanic that works... boy, sometimes it does, but not often.

    GURPS or Hero System, for example, use the general method of 'this power costs points to have access to, and expends some kind of endurance score (and having a higher endurance pool also costs points). If you spend the points to get it, you will have less points to spend on other generally desirable qualities like defense, and perhaps you want to take distrusted:wizard as a penalty for bonus points to spend.' It works... about was well as the rest of the system(s)*. If I was required to point to a model where it works best, I think this would be it.
    *And let's be clear, for all the good intentions of the point buy model, both have serious issues with balancing characters. They are easy to game and there are always simply-best-build-options, regardless of the constraints your GM puts up.

    A kind of more-stark model of what D&D used to do (and still partially has) is Symbaroum. In it, learning magic causes permanent 'corruption.' Casting magic causes temporary corruption. If your permanent plus temporary corruption exceed a certain limit, you shine like a beacon to beings of corruption (who will come and attack you), and various clergy/inquisitors (who may come and attack/arrest you, as a threat to society*). If your permanent plus temporary corruption exceed a certain higher limit, your character becomes an NPC murder beast.
    *At least in this case, they are right. You are a threat to those around you. Unlike something like D&D where there is no mechanical reason why being a spellcaster would actually make you a bad guy.
    How did it work? Well, for the most part, it doesn't. What it means is that you just never use magic if there is a possibility of exceeding a threshold. There are various 'Abilities' (the primary build mechanic of the game) you can take that reduce (and more importantly, de-randomize) the amount of corruption you accrue (because of course the first thing you do when you make a consequence-based system is to chip away at it*). So in stead of a spell costing 1d4 temporary corruption, it will cost 1 corruption. So if you know you are 1 corruption away from the inquisitors coming and bashing heads, you just don't cast. They may as well have just made it a X-per-day mechanic and been done with it, because there's no suspense to a line you know you aren't going to cross. Despite really enjoying the flavor of the world they built (and the art!), the game system for this one pretty much is my definition of failed (, frustrating, and punitive) consequence-based limiter.
    *Oh, and the Player's Option expansion came out, and lo and behold-an ability which doubles your corruption limits.

    In between are systems like Shadowrun, where being a mage means not getting to take part in the fun cyberware collection part of the game, but the powers you get are pretty sweet as well (I think being a caster is actually usually the best strongest answer here. I don't think we ever got much past character creation with this one) or Call of Cthulhu, where learning magic is dangerous to your psyche, but so is everything else you do as a PC.

    Overall, I don't want to discount power-for-consequence as a build mechanic, as not even looking at the option walls off a huge amount of design space, yet I don't know of many good implementations, and am generally glad that D&D is moving away from the model (although they really should figure out how to keep martials and casters at some kind of parity in high level play).

    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
    I haven't even played D&D 3e enough to see it first hand. There were a couple of moments where it became an issue in D&D 5e (not in a game breaking way) and I have heard about problems in Pathfinder, Shadow Run and World of Darkness games. So apparently it is only the largest games?

    A survey would be good but perhaps hard to put together. For instance most systems where magic is symmetric with other skills are fine, but that is almost trivially true anyways so is that great example of balance?
    It is rather specific to the situation where:
    1. some player characters are expected to get magic, while others do not (in games where everyone is a mage, like Invisible Suns, the answer to the question 'but what about non-magic users?' is effectively, 'sucks to be them, but you aren't playing as one.'
    2. there is an expectation of balance (combined with the above one, Ars Magica has you play both wizard and nonwizard characters, and the wizards are going to be more powerful, but it is okay because no one is only playing nonwizards).
    3. wizards actually can do more (lots of Fate or PbtA games are such that 'magic' doesn't actually solve more problems.)
    Last edited by Willie the Duck; 2020-05-14 at 09:39 AM.

  8. - Top - End - #38
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Zarrgon View Post
    Note: This is exactly Why the Caster/Martial Disparity exists.

    I'm sure if we did a poll nearly everyone would be just fine with "punishing" a martial character endless every round for even daring to do what they are "supposed" to be doing. And everyone would have the same answer/deference: Martial's Suck!

    But even suggest anything ever might happen to the special spellcaster is unthinkable.

    This is what needs to be fixed.
    You seem to be conflating a common understanding with a supposed common opinion on the matter.

    Mechanically it is understood that the fighter in an absence of a +1 sword fails to play the game against a Shadow. There simply isn’t a debate to be had, this is an observable fact where the fighter cannot affect the Shadow.

    Observing these and other martial shortcomings we can declare that certain iconic martials are at a horrible disadvantage for interacting with certain aspects of the game. We can objectively declare that martials suck as presented in the rules. Note that we are still treading wholly upon the RAW of the system and its merits, not an ounce of opinion enters into it yet.

    Stepping beyond the rules to the actual handling of the game I personally am not 100% satisfied with the capabilities of the basic concepts like fighter or ranger. I understand that the GM needs to tailor content to avoid pushing some martials to irrelevancy at certain points along the road (avoiding the topic of magic marts being necessary and how deviations from this standard assumption unfairly penalize martials in the common case of 3.5).

    The system tells us what sort of works we are playing in. It tells us that martials are such and such. Change the rules or change the system if it doesn’t serve your purpose, but don’t let it be said that people hate martials just for pointing out the system is doing few favors for the fighter within the realm of its standard assumptions.
    If all rules are suggestions what happens when I pass the save?

  9. - Top - End - #39
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    As several posters have hit on, the issue in balancing is usually not one of pure combat math. If it were, many a successful MMORPG could point the way - a series of constraint ordered problems involving damage output, alpha, time in crowd control, resource limitation, and damage absorption or recovery. Usually over a comparatively narrow band of numbers relative to each other. World and social interaction are non-issues by fiat of the code. And if that is what TTRPGs were, why, we could let everyone eat their cake and call it balanced.

    The issue is that TTRPGs are NOT MMORPGs. In a TTRPG, magic represents, almost unfailingly, a force that is capable of being deadly in combat, extraordinary at manipulating the world, brilliant at replacing entire skill sets, and fueled by player imagination (and usually a good and thorough ignorance of physics). And if it wasn't that, it wouldn't be magic as envisioned in virtually all TTRPGs- the slightly colored bolts that are basically a crossbow would be very disappointing in terms of thematics and expectations of what magic can do. Indeed, a player interested in that game might decide to just play an MMORPG.

    Which means that at some level, you have to acknowledge that casters are going to be handed great power by the nature of the matter. Maybe its X better than martials, maybe its 100 X better, but it is almost always without fail better. Balance derives from imposing limits on that power; even uplifting the martials always leaves them at the earlier "well, he can't FLY - but maybe he can jump really high?" which is still objectively worse than being able to fly for all practical purposes (barring, of course, creating special extraordinary "ha, look if I set the conditions exactly right and the players go exactly according to plan, a martial might have a chance to be equal here" situations).

    That limiting isn't "punishing them for daring to play their character", its saying "you were given an objectively better set of tools to use, no, that's not free".

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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    There’s possibly a great deal of intermingling the definition of martial and mundane that goes on. Heracles is most definitively martial but I doubt many will make the claim that a demigod is mundane. Conversely a grand orator capable of mobilizing loyal legions, himself a cripple far from a stunning combat specimen, is firmly within the bounds of the mundane.

    The system drives the overarching patterns and some popular instances tell us that martial does not explicitly come with magic, for general purposes appearing mundane. If the system says you need magic to fly and presents martials as mundane it follows that martials need external help to fly. If the threshold for flight is simply being Exceptional and martials are more widely permitted to be Exceptional, breaking rules of standard physics in manners comparable to how magic users can, no they won’t always need external help to fly.

    It’s fine to have NPC classes like 3.5e fighter. It sets the wrong expectations if they aren’t highlighted as such by the developers.
    If all rules are suggestions what happens when I pass the save?

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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
    Step 0: Decide if you want to balance casters and martials at all. If that isn't what you want then you don't have to. Just make sure that it is clear that they are not supposed to be balanced to avoid any badly placed expectations. The remaining points all assume that the answer to this question is yes, you do want them to be balanced.

    Balance Concepts: So the first step is to make sure the image of the caster and the martial in your head are balanced. If they are not everything else is only a patch on top of a broken core. One refrain I hear a lot is "How can you balance a reality warper or and a guy who swings a stick." The answer is you change one of them. You either scale the caster down or scale the martial up. Or if they scale individually (such as D&D's 20 level range) make sure they have hit the same scaling points. Again this is all conceptual work; if your caster can create pocket dimensions then the martial might have to be able to smash the wall between worlds.

    Those are the two biggest steps, and the two that I see just entirely missed, ignored, or even rejected in attempts to fix this issue.
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by KineticDiplomat View Post
    Which means that at some level, you have to acknowledge that casters are going to be handed great power by the nature of the matter. Maybe its X better than martials, maybe its 100 X better, but it is almost always without fail better. Balance derives from imposing limits on that power; even uplifting the martials always leaves them at the earlier "well, he can't FLY - but maybe he can jump really high?" which is still objectively worse than being able to fly for all practical purposes (barring, of course, creating special extraordinary "ha, look if I set the conditions exactly right and the players go exactly according to plan, a martial might have a chance to be equal here" situations).

    That limiting isn't "punishing them for daring to play their character", its saying "you were given an objectively better set of tools to use, no, that's not free".
    If you're giving someone great mechanical power, trying to limit the use of that power by mostly narrative devices is usually a failure, because not every GM is capable of using those devices to the necessary extent. Shadowrun is a prime example of this - to properly balance mages in Shadowrun in this way, you'd have to put special magehunting teams into the game, and randomly drop surveillance and checks and general mistrust and fear from the populace onto the mage.

    It would be far easier to balance mages mechanically, make them less capable of taking augmentations (the current penalties are not harsh enough and need to be substantially higher for Awakened), remove or severely limit cancerous spells such as Mob Mind and Turn to Goo, and make spirit summoning both harder and less rewarding. This way, you're still letting people play a mage, but a mage doesn't break the game mechanically unless they try so hard they probably pass out right after, and doesn't have to invoke as much a counter-response from the setting. Meanwhile, non-mages keep doing their stuff very well, and since the mage cannot overtake them in these endeavors, everyone's happy.
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    So it sounds like you could balance mages in a theoretical version of Shadowrun just by making the opportunity cost actually meaningful, do I read you right?

    That was my impression of the game bitd (1e or 2e, can't remember) -- sure all those fancy spells sounded fun, but man alive was it fun to go over all the cybernetics and stuff and would you really give up having built in cybereyes and netjacks and subdermal armor for it?

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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Willie the Duck View Post
    So it sounds like you could balance mages in a theoretical version of Shadowrun just by making the opportunity cost actually meaningful, do I read you right?

    That was my impression of the game bitd (1e or 2e, can't remember) -- sure all those fancy spells sounded fun, but man alive was it fun to go over all the cybernetics and stuff and would you really give up having built in cybereyes and netjacks and subdermal armor for it?
    Somewhat ironic but I remember setting guidelines placed various popular chrome and vatjob parts as being more detectable than a mage who is just existing and quite illegal to boot (or cybergun in the foot if that’s your style). Though in shadowrun if you’re not breaking a few laws something is clearly wrong. Even optimal play of some of the newer editions has you boosting Americars all day.
    If all rules are suggestions what happens when I pass the save?

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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Willie the Duck View Post
    So it sounds like you could balance mages in a theoretical version of Shadowrun just by making the opportunity cost actually meaningful, do I read you right?

    That was my impression of the game bitd (1e or 2e, can't remember) -- sure all those fancy spells sounded fun, but man alive was it fun to go over all the cybernetics and stuff and would you really give up having built in cybereyes and netjacks and subdermal armor for it?
    Yes, you probably could. If early SR had mages gamble a lot when using magic, but getting powerful results in return, then modern SR is just "magic is better than non-magic, for everything", and doesn't really incur opportunity costs you can't handle if you know the game. There are some spells that are too good, spirits are outright broken, and, well...

    Basically, over time, magic got less and less costly to pick up and use (2e and 5e are incomparable in that regard - the former required priority A and A only, the latter lets you have magic with a C), while cybernetics pretty much stayed the same or got worse - as in, subdermal armor is now +1 dice to soak damage, but still costs 0.5 essence (1/12th of the total), and is absolutely a poor choice now.

    Meanwhile, mages can pick up a few choice augments (up to 1 Essence's worth) very easily, by paying a fee of about 45 karma (so maybe 7-8 sessions of play, less if your GM isn't following the dumb suggestions for awards which don't let anyone non-magic progress meaningfully) to not lose any of their magic capabilities.

    Quote Originally Posted by Xervous View Post
    Somewhat ironic but I remember setting guidelines placed various popular chrome and vatjob parts as being more detectable than a mage who is just existing and quite illegal to boot (or cybergun in the foot if that’s your style). Though in shadowrun if you’re not breaking a few laws something is clearly wrong. Even optimal play of some of the newer editions has you boosting Americars all day.
    The introduction of portable cyberware scanners ruined the verisimilitude immensely. Mages can still only be detected by mages (when they're not actively casting), but any rent-a-cop can scan you and go "holy crap" at your military-grade enhancements, then tell you to stop and raise your hands.
    Last edited by Ignimortis; 2020-05-14 at 01:55 PM.
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Zarrgon View Post
    Note: This is exactly Why the Caster/Martial Disparity exists.

    I'm sure if we did a poll nearly everyone would be just fine with "punishing" a martial character endless every round for even daring to do what they are "supposed" to be doing. And everyone would have the same answer/deference: Martial's Suck!

    But even suggest anything ever might happen to the special spellcaster is unthinkable.

    This is what needs to be fixed.
    This goes for martials too. In 5E, Berzerker Barbarians suffer exhaustion for their rage power. Beastmaster Rangers get a cool pet, but the pet is useless. In Pathfinder, if you take the feat Cleave for an extra attack you suffer a -2 AC. If you Charge in 3E or Pathfinder you suffer -2 AC. I don't want any PC to be worse off for doing what it's supposed to be doing.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post

    A very extreme example would be something like people complaining that the tank is running out of HP after taking hits for the rest of the party. Sure you could define tanks who completely negate attacks, but the classic tank that just takes less damage and can take more isn't being punished for filling that role even if they do need a healer eventually. And I could take a step back and talk about fail-forward systems which I have heard actual complains about but more generally the point is I think costs and risks can be used properly.
    That's not punishment. That's the NPC doing something against the PC. The punishment is in regards to the PC using his own class ability, like the aforementioned 5E Berserker Barbarian suffering exhaustion for raging.
    Last edited by Pex; 2020-05-14 at 02:14 PM.
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Xervous View Post
    Observing these and other martial shortcomings we can declare that certain iconic martials are at a horrible disadvantage for interacting with certain aspects of the game. We can objectively declare that martials suck as presented in the rules. Note that we are still treading wholly upon the RAW of the system and its merits, not an ounce of opinion enters into it yet.
    Now note D&D is also full things that certain iconic casters are at a horrible disadvantage for interacting with certain aspects of the game.

    And now note my big point: Most people will flat out refuse to even think about using the aspects of the game that disadvantage spellcasters.

    Quote Originally Posted by Pex View Post
    This goes for martials too. In 5E, Berzerker Barbarians suffer exhaustion for their rage power. Beastmaster Rangers get a cool pet, but the pet is useless. In Pathfinder, if you take the feat Cleave for an extra attack you suffer a -2 AC. If you Charge in 3E or Pathfinder you suffer -2 AC. I don't want any PC to be worse off for doing what it's supposed to be doing.
    I think you missed something? D&D is overloaded with negative things that effect the martial characters and, as you said "punishes them for just doing what the character is made to do."

    Ok....so where are the negative caster effects? Does spellcasting ever exhaust any spellcaster? Does any spellcaster have a useless pet? Is there any casting action that gives the caster a -2 to AC?

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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Zarrgon View Post
    I think you missed something? D&D is overloaded with negative things that effect the martial characters and, as you said "punishes them for just doing what the character is made to do."

    Ok....so where are the negative caster effects? Does spellcasting ever exhaust any spellcaster? Does any spellcaster have a useless pet? Is there any casting action that gives the caster a -2 to AC?
    That's exactly the point. Casters have few to none negatives, while martials have a lot, within the RAW.
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Zarrgon View Post

    I think you missed something? D&D is overloaded with negative things that effect the martial characters and, as you said "punishes them for just doing what the character is made to do."

    Ok....so where are the negative caster effects? Does spellcasting ever exhaust any spellcaster? Does any spellcaster have a useless pet? Is there any casting action that gives the caster a -2 to AC?
    I'm not arguing the merits of D&D. This thread is game system neutral. My point is it's a bad idea to punish any character, spellcaster or warrior, for doing what it's supposed to be doing. It's since been changed, but I remember playing an edition of Sega Star Wars where you had to lose hit points to use Force powers. Even the DM agreed how dumb it was and gave me max hit points just so I can play a Jedi.

    Resource pool management is fine. Limited knowledge of abilities is fine. Prerequisites of knowing abilities to learn more powerful abilities is fine. Bringing a character closer to death is not. Neither is making the game unfun to play because NPCs hate you.
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    Quote Originally Posted by JNAProductions View Post
    That's exactly the point. Casters have few to none negatives, while martials have a lot, within the RAW.
    I tried to implement something like caster negatives in a recent game.

    I'll try to simplify it so it's a bit more system agnostic, but I effectively added a rule that said that if a full caster (like a Wizard) tried to cast one of their biggest spells, the effect would be delayed until the start of their next turn (when they can then cast another spell). In this system (5e), taking damage while concentrating on a spell could come with a risk of losing the spell.

    This opened up opportunities for interruption, created dependency on martial characters for protection, and allowed the spell effects to be telegraphed instead of instantaneous. Since these rules also applied to enemies, it'd spice up my boss fights to have more player options to deal with them.

    But it got a lot of backlash. Once of my players refused to play a caster under these rules and instead rolled a martial, several heated discussions continued until we removed it before it ever became relevant (as it didn't impact casters until they had at least two tiers of spells to cast).




    Seems even if you wanted to change how casters worked, the players who play those casters would take it as a direct attack, and those that don't wouldn't see it as helping them at all.
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Willie the Duck View Post
    GURPS or Hero System, for example, use the general method of 'this power costs points to have access to, and expends some kind of endurance score (and having a higher endurance pool also costs points). If you spend the points to get it, you will have less points to spend on other generally desirable qualities like defense, and perhaps you want to take distrusted:wizard as a penalty for bonus points to spend.' It works... about was well as the rest of the system(s)*. If I was required to point to a model where it works best, I think this would be it.
    *And let's be clear, for all the good intentions of the point buy model, both have serious issues with balancing characters. They are easy to game and there are always simply-best-build-options, regardless of the constraints your GM puts up.
    And as someone who has spent a lot of time working with point-based systems (playing, GMing, analytics), there are times when I read posts about balancing "casters" and "martials" and they come across as saying "dammit I insist that we find a way to balance a 150 point character and a 400 point character". There's simply no willingness to give on any axis.

    As an aside, much of that * problem is, IMO, caused by gamers who don't understand that HERO or GURPS are toolkits requiring further work, not out-of-the-box rulesets in which anything not expressly forbidden is encouraged. They're expecting something that tells them what they can and can't do, not a kit that gives them ways to do things that they have to separately decide if they want characters in this campaign to be able to do.


    Quote Originally Posted by Willie the Duck View Post
    It is rather specific to the situation where:
    1. some player characters are expected to get magic, while others do not (in games where everyone is a mage, like Invisible Suns, the answer to the question 'but what about non-magic users?' is effectively, 'sucks to be them, but you aren't playing as one.'
    2. there is an expectation of balance (combined with the above one, Ars Magica has you play both wizard and nonwizard characters, and the wizards are going to be more powerful, but it is okay because no one is only playing nonwizards).
    3. wizards actually can do more (lots of Fate or PbtA games are such that 'magic' doesn't actually solve more problems.)
    Yeap, the first two are things that can "give" in order to solve the conundrum. The third, depending on the system, can be one where the balance is moved from the purely mechanical impact of the character, to the narrative impact of the character.

    If I were turning the setting for something I'm writing ("shadow and soul" as shorthand for the setting) into a game setting and system, I would never try to set the system up to balance the wildly disparate "power" levels, and I would make it utterly clear to the gamers that there's no intent to balance them. You've got the typical power scale with veteran soldiers and swords for hire, itinerate priests and hedge wizards and dabblers, rogues and such, who might have a little utility magic and basic healing and such, and those sorts of characters would be completely ingrained in the everyday life and culture and relationships and power structures of the world. Then there's an entirely different "hidden world" / international subculture of elder masters, mystics, true magi, seekers, avatars, god-touched agents of the temples and churches, Zath troubleshooters and meddlers, etc. Against one of those characters, you'd need a whole team of "normal adventurers" and an airtight plan with multiple contigencies.
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Two things I've noticed seem to be missing in here: source fiction emulation and rate of activity vs. effect.

    WHFRP, for all the hate it's casting mechanism gets, is fairly faithful the the fiction it tries to emulate. Casting is strong & dangerous, npcs are suspicous and hateful because of the danger it represents. That's how the WH fiction goes and what the system wants to emulate. I don't think you can say its 'bad' unless it fails in that goal. You can certainly dislike it, or argue if it 'balances' with not casting for a particular definition of balance, or people (mis)using the system a particular way. But its not bad unless it failed the design goal of emulating the fiction, as long as emulating the fiction was the goal.

    Now D&D dosen't have an original fiction any more, so it should have a working definition of what balance means. I don't think it does but thankfully that's not my problem. These days ShadowRun probably falls into this category too, but I haven't played that since middle-early 3e.

    The other thing is rate vs. effect and our assumptions on that. Pex mentioned that casters shouldn't br penalized for doing what they are supposed to do. But I think that there was an implicit assumption that casters should be using magic very often, if not for absolutely everything. If you go with that assumption then you're assuming that casters cast as often as warriors attack and skill monkeys use skills. Which, for what I think of as balance, means that the caster's magic can only be allowed to be as effective as the warrior's attacks and the skill monkey's skills. D&D 4 & 5 do sort of that with basic attacks, the fighter can have three 1d8 bow attacks when the wizard has one 3d8 magic zap. They don't do it with skills though, casting jump doesn't just subtsitute int for str and add proficency. AD&D was different, a first level magic user had a spell. One. But it would nearly always work and you could charm (real charm magic, not some 'it fails to hate you instantly' effect) an ogre for a day or more, or put an entire room into a deep sleep.

    Those are vastly different assumptions of how often a caster uses magic and how effective or powerful it should be. Is one better than the other? That's a persinal judgement call made with personal preference bias. Is one more balanced than the other? How are defining balance? Is one easier to balance than the other? That probaby depends on how extreme you go. Go with having everything always at will and you can just make magic the same effects as attacks, skills, etc., but with a different description. That's balanced, right? At the opposite extreme quantify what one other person can do in one encounter and let the caster do one spell that has the same level of effect, and then they can't do anything else. The extremes are relatively easy to balance, I just don't know if anyone wants to play that way.

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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Pex View Post
    I'm not arguing the merits of D&D. This thread is game system neutral. My point is it's a bad idea to punish any character, spellcaster or warrior, for doing what it's supposed to be doing.
    The issue here is "punish" as I think that is over used as a blanket word to say nothing negative can ever effect casters. Plenty of RPGs have negative magic effects for spellcasters, as the idea goes back to legends and fairy tales worldwide. Spellcasters pay a cost for the power they get. And games that don't have that, for example any D&D starting at 3E have the caster/martial disparity.

    Plenty of games don't have caster/martial disparity. A lot do the easy way: magic does very little effects. Some just do the twist of making combat less important. And the ones that are left, do negative magical effects.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ignimortis View Post
    Yes, you probably could. If early SR had mages gamble a lot when using magic, but getting powerful results in return, then modern SR is just "magic is better than non-magic, for everything", and doesn't really incur opportunity costs you can't handle if you know the game. There are some spells that are too good, spirits are outright broken, and, well...

    Basically, over time, magic got less and less costly to pick up and use (2e and 5e are incomparable in that regard - the former required priority A and A only, the latter lets you have magic with a C), while cybernetics pretty much stayed the same or got worse - as in, subdermal armor is now +1 dice to soak damage, but still costs 0.5 essence (1/12th of the total), and is absolutely a poor choice now.
    This is what happens when people complain constraints and limitations on magic (which can be quite severe due to its power) are unfun and punishing casters, and they are removed without correspondingly reducing the power of magic.

    Although that's somewhat surprising in a sci-fi technological RPG. It's quite easy to have technology outstrip and surpass magic if you want it to.

    And I'm sorry to hear modern SR went down the same path as D&D. Hopefully they'll get around to the "rebalancing" process that 4e and 5e D&D went through.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Willie the Duck View Post
    A kind of more-stark model of what D&D used to do (and still partially has) is Symbaroum.
    [...]
    Overall, I don't want to discount power-for-consequence as a build mechanic, as not even looking at the option walls off a huge amount of design space, yet I don't know of many good implementations,
    I think the consequences have to be smaller to be more meaningful. Small enough that you can afford to face them during the campaign. If the cost is so high that it effectively kills the character or worse than people will just never risk it or choose that consequence.

    Consider the caster exploding in Warhammer, the table-top war game as opposed to the role-playing game. In the war game you just lost a special unit attachment (or solo, I think they can be either), which had a punch of special abilities attached to it and for a single model probably cost you a lot of army points. In the role-playing game you just lost a player character which had personal relations and subplots attached to them and mechanically is the entirety of one player's contribution to the game. These two things are not equivalent.

    So I think you need a risk system more like the war game model if you want people to engage with it. And make sure that it can be gamed in a thematically appropriate way because I doubt anyone is ever going to be able to keep it from being gamed at all.

    Quote Originally Posted by Pex View Post
    That's not punishment. That's the NPC doing something against the PC. The punishment is in regards to the PC using his own class ability, like the aforementioned 5E Berserker Barbarian suffering exhaustion for raging.
    I feel I should clarify that it wasn't supposed to be. It was an example of something so far down the punishment-cost axis that although you could theoretically stick either in "The [HERE] for preventing your allies from getting attacked is your character is attacked." I don't think anyone would argue it comes across as a punishment. But then again outside of these sorts of discussions who would phrase it like that?

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Two things I've noticed seem to be missing in here: source fiction emulation and rate of activity vs. effect.
    Man you make me want to go back to my homebrew system with this. I was quite proud of the primary caster archetype in it as it drew from some... different kinds of stories so they had a different focus that meant you could build a viable caster who could cast spells. Quertus would hate it because it wouldn't feel Magical and most people seem to agree with him because that is how most casters seem to be going these days. I'm sure we could dig deep to figure out why, there are probably shallow reasons like not wanting to wait and some deep ones like how Bond's gadgets don't work nearly is well if you don't know what is going to happen.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    This is what happens when people complain constraints and limitations on magic (which can be quite severe due to its power) are unfun and punishing casters, and they are removed without correspondingly reducing the power of magic.

    Although that's somewhat surprising in a sci-fi technological RPG. It's quite easy to have technology outstrip and surpass magic if you want it to.

    And I'm sorry to hear modern SR went down the same path as D&D. Hopefully they'll get around to the "rebalancing" process that 4e and 5e D&D went through.
    Precisely. It's the same thing as D&D - you let people use magic easier, but don't make it any weaker. That's bound to cause problems by default.

    A rebalance is quite unlikely, as 6e seems to demonstrate. 5e and 6e both went significantly further than the previous edition (so 5e is worse than 4e and 6e is worse than 5e) to buff mages and nerf mundanes who aren't deckers (deckers seem to get a pass, maybe because 4e didn't have them) in various ways, and at this point it's no secret that the line main developer, Jason Hardy, likes magic and dislikes mundanes, especially things that they had an edge in, as in soak tanking.
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
    Consider the caster exploding in Warhammer, the table-top war game as opposed to the role-playing game. In the war game you just lost a special unit attachment (or solo, I think they can be either), which had a punch of special abilities attached to it and for a single model probably cost you a lot of army points. In the role-playing game you just lost a player character which had personal relations and subplots attached to them and mechanically is the entirety of one player's contribution to the game. These two things are not equivalent.
    Keep in mind that Warhammer has two things to mitigate this, fate points and 'undercasting'. Fate points are of course a 'survive the foo' currency thay, given the intended lethality of WH, are semi-required to have long term character advancement. The concept of undercasting relies on WH using a skill based magic system. You accept higher chances of not casting, or taking many more rounds to succesfully cast, in exchange for a lower or zero chance of horrible messy death.

    Mind, I'm not up on the last couple WHFRP versions and they tweak/change the system pretty much every time but the concepts remain. Plus I know people who are gleefully willing to risk everything for a bigger fireball and D&D wildmages aren't random enough for them.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ignimortis View Post
    Precisely. It's the same thing as D&D - you let people use magic easier, but don't make it any weaker. That's bound to cause problems by default.

    A rebalance is quite unlikely, as 6e seems to demonstrate. 5e and 6e both went significantly further than the previous edition (so 5e is worse than 4e and 6e is worse than 5e) to buff mages and nerf mundanes who aren't deckers (deckers seem to get a pass, maybe because 4e didn't have them) in various ways, and at this point it's no secret that the line main developer, Jason Hardy, likes magic and dislikes mundanes, especially things that they had an edge in, as in soak tanking.
    Ouch. It really is going the same route as D&D. My suspicion that the vocal minorities with some sort of a grudge filled wish denial fantasy against brawny folk (in contrast to brainy ones they identify with regardless of actual personal intellect), and a chief creator (or more others) who has the exact same ideals complying and turning the tides of game rules development into a twisted form of immoral nerd fantasy, is further augmented...

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    Quote Originally Posted by Zarrgon View Post
    The issue here is "punish" as I think that is over used as a blanket word to say nothing negative can ever effect casters. Plenty of RPGs have negative magic effects for spellcasters, as the idea goes back to legends and fairy tales worldwide. Spellcasters pay a cost for the power they get. And games that don't have that, for example any D&D starting at 3E have the caster/martial disparity.

    Plenty of games don't have caster/martial disparity. A lot do the easy way: magic does very little effects. Some just do the twist of making combat less important. And the ones that are left, do negative magical effects.
    What's the degree of negative? You're right, I don't want spellcasters to suffer for casting a spell. I also don't want warriors to suffer for making an attack or using whatever other feature they have. I don't like 5E berserker barbarians suffering exhaustion for using their rage ability. That's why I will never play one. I don't want anyone to suffer for doing whatever it is their character is supposed to do. For any game system that uses that mechanic as a balance feature, I won't like it and won't want to play. If you absolutely hate a PC casting a spell, get rid of the spell. If you hate PCs casting any spells, that's your taste and don't play games where PCs get to cast spells. That doesn't mean the game should get rid of spellcasters or make them suffer for being one.
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    Default Re: My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

    Spoiler: SR6e aside
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    Having gotten close enough to SR6e to notice the background count stirring up a storm of toxic spirits the system is on a lesser note biased, but the overall design is just BAD.

    Edge becomes an easy come easy go resource generated by the most nonsensical mechanics and is spent in twos and fours to get modest boosts to rolls. As good as my memory is I am still distrusting myself on remembering the basics in spite of the 20 page debates I read over just how asinine the system is. Edge generates off having better equipment in an opposer check. The ganger swings at my milspec concealed body armor and I gain edge. I can then turn around and spend that edge on stealth vs a hobo across the street as I drag the ganger’s corpse into a nearby dumpster.

    What kind of chiphead dreams these things up?


    Part of the problem with various ways systems can try to limit casters lies in the nature of casting. The more varied, far reaching and versatile effects magic can produce in a system the harder it is to limit if your method is not limiting the aforementioned characteristics. Unfun drawbacks like a 1% chance to TPK every time you cast a spell, or a 50/50 on your head exploding impose no barrier on what magic can do up until the drawback rears up and disrupts play. These sorts of drawbacks just lead to the aforementioned “don’t play mages”. Conditionals often raise the bar for what optimizations of build or tactics are necessary to run away with magic but may not successfully address all problems. Raising the player skill bar to ward off disruptively OP spellslingers has a rainbow of outcomes. The deep end is the former “don’t play mages”, kiddie pool end does nothing. Deeper waters see a filtering effect by which players and builds that make the cut go runaway as they were doing before. And so on for various points along the spectrum.

    If it’s a problem for mages to do X in your system don’t let them do X. Granted some cases of “don’t play mages” lend themselves wonderfully to painting the setting, but that’s only saying “don’t play mages because they’re in the GMs toolbox exclusively as plot tools”.

    So long as magic users can produce even isolated extremes of performance beyond what non MU can muster you have the potential for discord. How frequently and how high those spikes are become a matter of taste that guide players to different systems or leave them wallowing in their own ineffective misery.
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