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Thread: Why 3.5?
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2022-01-04, 11:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
I can't speak for 3.5's side of the fence, but Pathfinder has plenty of ways to nab pretty much any class skill one desires through Alternate Racial Traits and Traits without sacrificing away Class power. For exemple, you can whip up a Half-Elf and snipe Diplomacy, Perception and Sense Motive super easily (Fey Thoughts plus any one of Princess or Extremely Fashionable).
I will also add that the spotlight hogging in social or skill challenges is better adressed as a player issue than a mechanics one. I played with an Half-Ogre Barbarian player who dominated any conversation that ever came up in the campaign because that was that player's style to take charge and be the party's face regardless of whatever he was actually playing. The whole group's door bashing style also consistently nullified the Rogue. No feelings were hurt because the Diplomacy invested Sorcerer and the Stealth invested Rogue were content blasting and backstabbing respectively. That campaign had the Sorcerer, Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Rogue and Barbarian all operating at similar levels of effectiveness (by virtue of often tripping over each other, but still). Any grievance would have been 100% on style and tactics, but in the end everyone had fun for a year.
Now I expect the argument that "yeah but an unoptimized or dysfunctional party is not representative of blablabla" but when the games I played allhad merry bands of misfits that were varying degrees of dysfunctional hoboshad martials and casters having fun at the table, I wonder if those balance woes actual manifestations at real tables ain't more related to unicorns and spherical cows that we'd like to admit.
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2022-01-04, 01:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Awesome Avatar by Derjuin
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The Necromantic Codex: A collection of necromancy classes, items and monsters.
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2022-01-04, 01:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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2022-01-04, 02:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Intimidate works about as well as most charm spells. Fighter and barbarian often mean you don't have to prep fly or spider climb or whatever to avoid a mundane obstacle (or you cast fly and maybe enlarge on said martial and they carry the whole party for one spell). Plus they can just smash an obstacle instead of something like knock or disintegrate with 2gp items like crowbars.
I've done the all arcane party. It works better at L16 than at L1. I've been the only martial in a group of divine casters at tiers 4, 6 12 and 14. My character got all the best buffs that could be cast on others because they just worked better on me.
It's a team game. A martial is usually a better chasse for buffs, or to conserve party resources to overcome easier challenges. A martial after the baby levels (where low attack mods and usually only 1 attack make their offensive efforts vulnerable to the whim of the d20) is also the single most reliable way to eliminate an enemy before it can act again, assuming it is in position to act.
System mastery in a group can deeply influence how useful each party member is, and that can warp views of how useful martials are. Whether I'm playing support, primary caster arcane in more "batman" style, a more martial divine caster or a pure or nearly pure martial, I look at party dynamics first before the first encounter. Is the druid somebody who took a "pet" class and doesn't know how to do anything but order her wolf to attack, even at L12? Is the cleric a jerkass who spends 3 rounds buffing before deigning to participate, by which time the fight is over? Is the wizard somebody who confidently has spells prepared or slows everything up dithering, before chosing a spell selection that most sorcerers run by a 10 year old could easily outdo? Did the martial forget to buy strength, without an ability that substitutes another attribute for strength? (monks and archers are especially prone to this sin, but I've seen AC-oriented "tanks" that also fail this way).
With the casters, I try to learn what they see their role as, and after the first fight I know whether they can fill that role. With the martials, I try to learn what conditions they need to be effective. Then I adjust my own play to make the party function better. Even if it is something like "ok, that's a low AC barbarian who always charges alone into danger. Maybe my martial who is built better for that needs to try to get in front of him and go first..."
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2022-01-04, 06:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
A Sorcerer that picks only spells off the Beguiler list is a low-op T2, and they are strictly worse than a Beguiler. The list expansion shows up at low levels of optimization, because some of it is very easy (though a lot of the easy stuff applies as much to a Sorcerer), but it's not necessary to hit the T2 power level. And while their list is not bad, it does have limits, and more than that, the core of their offensive spells is responsible for a lot of their power. For all that people will bring up protection from evil in any discussion about charm and dominate spells, those effects are overwhelmingly powerful in the vast majority of campaigns. That's why people go to such efforts to combat them.
That's just ... not true. The Beguiler gets a couple of Abjuration and Divination spells, but most of those schools are still up for grabs (though admittedly, they include relatively few splashy options you could hang a character on). They also don't get Transmutation, which has enough in it to cover a "Transmute X to Y" grab bag, a shapechanger, and a buff-bot. The Beguiler gets a much larger pile of off-theme goodies than either of the other fixed-list casters (though the fact that the Dread Necromancer is still T2 despite that rather moots the proximate point), but the pile they don't get is larger still by an impressive margin.
Many of your arguments are bad, but this one is particularly egregious. Being able to fill a role while splitting your focus is a good thing. It means the party gets that role filled, and also gets whatever stuff you have left over. A 10th level Cleric has 27 spells, two domain powers, and a pool of turning attempts to his name. If he spends anything less than all of those to fill the frontline combatant role in place of a Fighter, his party is coming out ahead. In fact, even if he spends all of those resources on frontline fighting during adventuring days, he provides downtime utility the Fighter cannot.
If a wizard would rather spend a polymorph on themselves instead of a fighter that has more natural toughness and BAB, it is going to be worse than just using polymorph on the fighter.
It also only really holds at pretty low levels. By mid levels, the existence of minions, Wild Shape, Persistent Spell, and various ways of stretching out your spell slots mean that casters can build to be just as effective as martials over an extended adventuring day. While still being dramatically more powerful when allowed to nova. I would much rather have a Cleric Archer with a wall of undead minions from animate dead than a Fighter or even a Warblade.
The contention seems to be that if you focus on non-mechanical aspects of the game, and arbitrarily declare that the non-mechanical traits the Fighter happens to have are the ones that cause you to win, the Fighter is good. It's one of those arguments that's true, but about as relevant as the price of tea in China. Certainly we can imagine the militia captain being impressed by the martial skill of the gruff Fighter and ignoring the effete Wizard. But we can also imagine the militia captain liking the Wizard because he remembers his squad's support mage saving him when he was in the army and ignoring a Fighter who is a prancing duelist. Which prevails is a question of mechanics.
I suspect that comes from the same error of analysis as Darg was making. A Fighter has a nicer chassis than any caster, but they don't come with any buffs of their own. And unlike the expendable minions casters can produce by droves from fairly early on (e.g. animal companion at 1st, animate dead at 5th for the Cleric), it matters if he dies. I am suspicious that an overall analysis of the value proposition of spending a party slot for one meat shield you need to keep alive versus having passive class features produce several you can let (re-)die coming down in favor of the martial.
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2022-01-04, 07:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
I'd expect they'd already have Haste running from the previous fight, it lasts long enough.
Ah thanks, I would have had to google it. And yes, the not-so-secret flipside of that example is that the game has players using both types of characters, though if you had a group with both people that always wanted to be the power and some that always wanted to be the sidekick, you could probably juggle control of each character to let them do that anyway. Naturally, a game with deliberately asymmetrical characters ought to default to players switching roles, which this does.
This is why I hate the Beguiler as an example, particularly compared to the Warmage- it's from PHB2, the book where you can see the designers splitting in both directions, and written years later. The Warmage was designed with a specific shtick, and not given anything outside that on purpose because that's the whole point. The Beguiler was pretty clearly designed to be useful even when their shtick doesn't work (and their shtick of mind control and illusions was already massively broad). Two different design philosophies, apples and oranges.
The Dread Necro is. . . actually written earlier, huh. With a narrower spell list (in number, IIRC) that nonetheless incorporates a wide range of effects (save or lose, no-save, summoning, less efficient damage, even a BFC, and of course permanent minions) as long as they're sufficiently necromancy/undead themed, as well as Dispel Magic.
That's what I get for not including a bunch of qualifiers. It's 5e in the sense that 5e looks kinda like 3.x on the surface, and one of the major things to notice is that there's no save or die and almost everything ties back into damage (an effective system but not what I want). I am perfectly aware of all the other things you list that 5e lacks, which are also reasons I dislike it, but that response was about Powerful Magic and save-or-die/don't even bother rolling spells in particular.Last edited by Fizban; 2022-01-04 at 07:29 PM.
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A collection of over 200 pages of individually small bans, tweaks, brews, and rule changes, usable piecemeal or nearly altogether, and even some convenient lists. Everything I've done that I'd call done enough to use in one place (plus a number of things I'm working on that aren't quite done, of course).
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2022-01-04, 09:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
It isn't an error, it is a disagreement in what the result means.
I see D&D as a team game. I've done "solo challenge" stuff for fun, but the very nature of saving throws and action economy means that the game is not built for that, it is built for a team of 4-6 and as such, somebody who is an ideal chasse to receive buffs can be a major contributor.
It matters because sometimes you get an enemy with defenses that are just too high, where spells are ineffectual and AC is sky high (or sometimes something with so much offense you can't let it get an action and it MUST go down before it counterattacks). If the beatsticks are relying on buffs to perform at the same level as an unbuffed fighter, the party might lose. If the party responds by supercharging its already EL-appropriate-with-just-gear beatsticks the encounter is often is a matter of just positioning said buffed beatstick to succeed, instead of needing something like, I dunno, truestrike+multishot every other round to do any damage at all.
I'm reminded of one encounter where the BBEG was tied up with just enough battlefield control to prevent it from escaping via tree-stride...it got into the tree but didn't have enough actions left to shift to a new tree and was still in there when we all had our actions. "Does anybody know how many hitpoints a tree has?" (there is actually a rule, I think it is 150) "Can anybody kill that tree in one round" (fighter with adamantine axe...."probably..if I don't roll poorly").
Everybody else spent an action to either give the fighter more offense or to transport him in position to full attack (slightly more complicated than usual due to our own battlefield control...I think one action was dismissing or dispelling something). The BBEG died by the "if the tree is chopped down while you are in it you die" rule. Something like that has always been there for that spell or similar spells in various editions but it took me about 30 years of playing D&D to see it matter.Last edited by Seward; 2022-01-04 at 09:33 PM.
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2022-01-04, 09:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
There's not really a time when the shtick of "mind control" doesn't work, because even when you're fighting something you can't mind control, you have all your previously mind-controlled stuff to boss around. haste and the like are a QoL feature, not really a power increase.
The Dread Necro is. . . actually written earlier, huh. With a narrower spell list (in number, IIRC) that nonetheless incorporates a wide range of effects (save or lose, no-save, summoning, less efficient damage, even a BFC, and of course permanent minions) as long as they're sufficiently necromancy/undead themed, as well as Dispel Magic.
And I never said I didn't. The point is that the tradeoff is not "the Wizard casts buffs on themselves" versus "the Wizard casts buffs on the Fighter", but "we have a Fighter as a beatstick" versus "we have a Cleric as a beatstick".
somebody who is an ideal chasse to receive buffs can be a major contributor.
If the beatsticks are relying on buffs to perform at the same level as an unbuffed fighter, the party might lose.
instead of needing something like, I dunno, truestrike+multishot every other round to do any damage at all.
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2022-01-04, 09:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
There’s a reason people say that Wizard/Wizard/Cleric/Druid works better than most parties you know. Or something on those lines, I honestly don’t remember the specifics.
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2022-01-04, 10:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
I will say, in the interest of fairness, that the all caster party does require a certain amount of effort to ensure all roles are filled, particularly at low levels. There's not really a niche you can't fill with a caster, but if you say to four people "build a caster", there's a decent chance you get something like Wizard/Sorcerer/Beguiler/Archivist, and that party is going to feel their lack of a frontline combatant for the first few levels.
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2022-01-04, 10:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
to put it very simply, it's because SO MUCH was published under the system during the time it was active (counting OGL and D20 license materials) that if you need SOMETHING, somebody has written up rules sets and options for it. I'm an avid collector of splatbooks across editions, and my collection of 3rd edition material isn't even close to complete, despite the fact that I've been at if for over 15 years. and you better believe I've been using it.
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2022-01-05, 04:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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2022-01-05, 10:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
d20pfsrd does the same thing only better. Of course without the d20srd, there would be no Pathfinder, so there is that.
I agree though, the existence of the SRD pretty much ensures there will be some d20 stuff in perpetuity, long after it starts getting players that weren't born when 3.5 was really active.
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2022-01-05, 11:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
The other reason I haven't moved on from 3.P - there's still a bunch of classes and builds I haven't gotten to try yet. (I still haven't played a Divine Hunter for example.)
Both citations are about tactics altering encounter difficulty. No amount of complaining will change that.
But if your PCs are optimized, there's nothing wrong with throwing a harder-than-expected encounter at them. Indeed, you should be doing that more often in such a case.
I don't buy the "much better" argument here. Generally when magic is emulating something a non-mage can do, there are factors like components, dispellability, limited uses/duration, and above all else opportunity cost to consider before determining which approach is "better." And if none of those things ever matter, I'd be more inclined to blame the GM's encounter design leaving tools on the table than the magic system as a whole.
This is not to say caster/martial balance can't be improved. In fact, I think 5e did exactly that, and I think some of the lessons from that system can be brought back to 3.P as well.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2022-01-05, 11:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Didn’t 5e largely do that by having all 20 levels be more or less the first 7 or so of 3.5e?
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2022-01-05, 11:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
DMM isn't a core feat. It is not something inherent to the class itself. Nor can clerics always rely on it being there. The assumption it's there is wrong because it isn't always there. Imagine a world where DMM wasn't a given for every scenario (reality) and you can see that the cleric would be spending spell slots and actions to perform at the same level a fighter can.
"Swarm of undead minions".... so every cleric is evil?
Wizard gish, sure. The problem being that PRCs are never a given and should never be assumed to exist when talking about individual base classes.
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2022-01-05, 11:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
The first citation is "if monsters have gear that is the equivalent of an expensive magical item, the fight is more difficult". The second is "if monsters have a tactical advantage their abilities give them no way to secure, the fight is more difficult". Neither of them says "if monsters use their abilities intelligently, EL goes up" because that isn't true. In fact, the opposite is true. If a Balor has no personal or operational reason not to use teleport harassment to defeat the PCs, and nevertheless does not use it, the EL for that encounter should be less than 20.
Basically. 5e is the part of 3e that already worked well, over more levels. This is not really an advantage, as it doesn't do any additional stuff, you just have to wait longer to do the same stuff.
So what? We didn't say "core only". If you want to say "the Fighter is good in a core only game" (and then subsequently "the Fighter is good if you ban or nerf planar binding"), you can say that, but it's a much less compelling argument.
"Swarm of undead minions".... so every cleric is evil?
Wizard gish, sure. The problem being that PRCs are never a given and should never be assumed to exist when talking about individual base classes.Last edited by RandomPeasant; 2022-01-05 at 11:43 AM.
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2022-01-05, 11:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
If you feel like it I'm interested in details! Any idea we can crib to make a better 3.PF is a welcome idea,
since Paizo abandoned mesince there's no new content being made.
I already mentioned I'm a big fan of democratrizing martial feat chains. Stuff like giving martials more toys to play with (like giving extra features to Rangers based on their favored enemies). Or democratizing a lot of the utility magic through rituals anyone can attempt. I tend to hoard any link to these ideas I can get my hands on.
(Except nerfing core casters, for preference reasons as already stated )
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2022-01-05, 12:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
If you're looking for stuff to improve your 3.PF experience, but don't want to nerf core casters, I strongly recommend looking at the various stuff under the Tome umbrella. It's written with the goal of balancing 3e with as few nerfs as possible, and while it was written with 3.5 in mind, most of it is as compatible with PF as any 3e material is.
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2022-01-05, 12:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Nor is persistent spell. The only campaign I played in that allowed DMM banned Nightsticks and Persistent spell. You would see a bit of DMM quicken, and martial clerics using normal quickened divine favor+divine power for a single round buff sequence but many, many encounters they didn't go down that road (as the martials were doing fine already and they had other options to provide instead that didn't involve wasting their first combat action).
Most divine casters who switch-hit as melees reliably either weren't full casters (dipped into martial classes, so were divine gishes, basically) or it was just that - switch hitting to pretend to be a martial when the party lacked any, or when the party martials were playing up (underleveled for encounter) or just badly designed or played. (tables had a different set of players each time you gamed).
Those that were divine gishes would sometimes pretend to be a divine caster for a party that lacked any. My own pouncekitty spent much of RHOD providing druidic support for overland travel, but would switch her spells back to her usual mix when assaulting hard targets and play as pure light infantry (didn't have natural spell yet, fought wildshaped)
Um...I quoted YOU agreeing that a fighter had a better chasse for buffs. I figured you understood the dynamic and it didn't need to be spelled out.
A typical fighter will have a higher strength investment both in statbumps and items than a typical full caster
A typical fighter will have full bab 24x7, not relying on several feats, a spell and possibly items to achieve that (as with a DMM persistent cleric).
Full BAB means you hit more often, you sometimes get more attacks and you qualify for martial feats faster
A typical fighter will have FAR more martial feats than a full caster, much sooner
to pick a basic example.
Attributes
He gives no crap about anything but strength, dex, con, so he's likely to have a decent str mod on his bow. If he wants more str and dex, he can drop con to 10 and still have similar hitpoints/fort save to a cleric of same level, especially once he's able to buy amulet of health when the cleric is putting same item slot into periapt of wisdom. The cleric-archer will have less strength until he can pull off divine metamagic persistent divine power, and by that time the fighter will have a belt+4 or dropping 16k on his bow. Under no circumstance with the cleric be able to match the fighter in dex assuming same point buy.
A fighter archer of any race will have point blank, precise and rapid shot by level 2.
A cleric, bard or wizard archer of any race but human won't get that together till level 6. By which time the fighter also has weapon focus, weapon spec and, if we're sticking to core, probably quickdraw so he can go from not expecting a fight to a full attack (with 3 attacks, not the mere 2 of the caster class).
By level 12, again only with the core feat list, the fighter will have 3 iterative attacks, improved precise shot, +2 to hit and +4 damage from weapon spec feats and STILL have more feats to play with than the L12 cleric, who at minimum blew 2 feats on persistent spell and divine metamagic, which means, he's still creeping along with just point blank, precise, rapid as his entire archery feat mix, although divine power helps on the hitting things front and iterative attacks, and maybe his str bow is a bit higher, although by L12 a +6 belt of str on the fighter if he really cares enough to spend his cash that way isn't entirely unlikely. The fighter will have it before L16, as it'll be cheaper than another bow enhancement.
The cleric MIGHT make up the weapon spec loss with GMW on his bow, but of course any party with an arcane or divine caster at L12 unwilling to GMW the superior Fighter's bow is being idiotic. Fighter is a better chasse for the GMW buff. Or Inspire Courage. Or Righteous Wrath of the Faithful. Or Prayer or Recitation or any other buff of that sort. More likely the cleric will invest in another persistent or quickened Divine Favor to close the gap, but that won't stack with Recitation or Prayer so...not as good a chasse for buffs.
Going noncore, the fighter has plenty of feats to keep going. Ranged Weapon Mastery, Woodland Archer, Weapon Supremacy, blah blah. The cleric archer will never catch up as a chasse.
I can do the same thing for a bunch of other martials built with single class or multiclass. Hell even a monk with greater flurry can usually be a better buff chasse than a full caster.
I do grant the gish and divine gish approaches to martials can be very, very strong and many can keep it up all day (certainly the wildshape mixes can without DMM shenanigans). But they do tend to relly on self-buffs that won't stack with other buffs. A buffed-to-the-gills straight martial can generally outperform them.Last edited by Seward; 2022-01-05 at 12:34 PM.
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2022-01-05, 12:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
I still think you're drastically underestimating the capabilities of a serious Cleric beatstick, especially since they're still full casters on top of that. Also it's hard to outdamage a seriously optimized martial, but the thing is that martials don't really have much to do outside of damage in combat.
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2022-01-05, 12:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
People keep saying that. While they can't normally teleport the party or commune with a deity they an generally fill a skill-based role pretty well. One of those roles is "crane". Drink a potion of enlarge and fly and they can move the whole party (although of course it is much cheaper if the party arcane caster pops those spells on him instead, with scrolls if they didn't prep or have those as spells known). In lower levels they do the same with climb, swim, jump and rope perhaps.
A number of martials do quite well at scouting, can manage high spot/listen/hide/move silent and can receive the same invis/silence spells as the casters but also defeat true seeing by just hiding in the fog or a dragon's sharp ears when he stumbles into the antimagic trap the dragon set up to defeat magical intrusion.
There is no face role a martial can't do in theory (plenty of fullbab classes have interesting face skills) although they can't mind control, most parties don't use that any more than they would intimidation if they care about long term consequences. Martials can get good enough at intimidation to get most of the benefits of mind reading when interrogating prisoners.
Ditto trapfinding/intrusion, although the approach may not resemble a rogue. My monk used to just go into rooms and touch everything, then start slicing open anything locked with his adamantine kama. He was immune to poison and disease, had hitpoints etc to survive a rare saving throw failure (and improved evasion), was strong enough to simply bend bars or shove open stuck doors or lift a heavy sarcaphogus lid off etc. All with zero resources spent barring occasional healing or perhaps resurgence on a non-hp trap, and usually wholeness of body handled that. Sometimes a comical amount of traps went off - one thieves guild we were searching had things like the Privy trapped. The only real issue with that approach was the rare trap designed to destroy loot.
Or you know. You can just roleplay. My wife played a spaced out barbarian-dwarf-stonelord who just liked to talk to rocks and wanted to turn into stone. (this was a "last day of convention" character designed to be played when tired and silly). She did plenty in noncombat encounters that entertained the table. Sometimes she was even useful (she could craft stone, and stonelord gives stuff helpful with that). Her "rage" was her actually getting focused. That was when it was time to run.Last edited by Seward; 2022-01-05 at 12:54 PM.
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2022-01-05, 12:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
I still don't see ANYTHING that a caster can't do as well. And not all martials are high-Str types.
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2022-01-05, 01:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Not anything a caster can't do. I agree with that. I've played full caster divine and arcane that had to fill in for physical combat and did fine, although resource expenditure was unduly high.
As well? My cleric archer vs fighter archer example will have the fighter outperforming the cleric with same WBL from 1-20 in attack mod and damage, full stop, and the gap will increase as party buffs are layered on. Archers are a pure DPS class, their only metric that matters is damage/round and, in later levels, generally only missing on a natural 1 (and some will have reroll feats or items)
Good enough? Perhaps. Well designed martials tend to overkill EL appropriate encounters whenever they can manage a full attack.
A martial gish (divine or arcane) might keep up with that fighter, depending on situation and exact build. If you can manage to lose only 1 bab by L12 and have a feat free for improved precise shot, it helps a lot and there are ways to do that and if you don't blow as many feats as DMM cleric has to, you might fit in ranged weapon mastery on schedule etc. Such characters can be very close in usual 24x7 role, but the gap opens up a bit when party buffs are layered on for tough fights. Not much, but a bit. Might not matter in most play.
Where I used to play, you would advertise your role when forming parties and introducing yourself.
Tank was somebody who needed no support vs melee threats and often had good saves but usually only had middling damage output (hopefully not useless damage output, but not everybody designs well)
Heavy infantry could dish out and take melee damage but couldn't fight an entire room by themselves forever like a tank might be able to.
Light infantry tended to be mobile and dish out melee damage but needed protection if the victim survived to counterattack.
Archers did ranged damage, reliably, usually physical damage, although some ray-casters qualify.
Artillery did ranged area damage best, but usually had some single target options too.
Divine Casters and Arcane Casters were full casters of their type who did combat with spells primarily.
Medic/Support was what it says on the tin, although some were more medics than support, some the reverse. Your typical healing cleric or buff-oriented bard falls in this category.
Rogue was a catchall for skillmonkeys who needed help in combat to achieve damage potential. Most weren't actually rogues, many had some schtick other than sneak attack and were either great or useless in combat depending on whether they got that support from the party.
This way expectations were set properly, no matter how you went about it. If you filled your role well, you were well designed. It was an exercise for the players to turn a mostly light-infantry party into an effective engine of destruction. If the party had a gap, yes, the casters were usually tapped to fill holes although sometimes skill-oriented characters with consumables could manage instead.
One thing I learned is almost any party can work. The all offense guys, well 6 of them will obliterate most encounters, although bad luck can result in somebody surviving to wreck a party member. The all defense/buff party struggles more, combats last a lot longer, but they tend to pull through, healing or undoing enough enemy actions until their buffs come online or they whittle opposition down. When you got a rare all-stealth/ambush party, or one that could fake it, it was often a fun change off pace, as was the party with unusually good overall social skills in most city adventures, or something like a festival or ball setting.Last edited by Seward; 2022-01-05 at 01:39 PM.
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2022-01-05, 01:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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2022-01-05, 01:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
You'll have to explain where you think I said that, because that's not something I agree with. The Fighter has a marginally stronger base-level chassis, but that is more than swamped by the buffs a Cleric or Druid provide for themselves.
A typical fighter will have a higher strength investment both in statbumps and items than a typical full caster
A typical fighter will have full bab 24x7, not relying on several feats, a spell and possibly items to achieve that (as with a DMM persistent cleric).
If he wants more str and dex, he can drop con to 10 and still have similar hitpoints/fort save to a cleric of same level
The cleric-archer will have less strength until he can pull off divine metamagic persistent divine power
A cleric, bard or wizard archer of any race but human won't get that together till level 6. By which time the fighter also has weapon focus, weapon spec and, if we're sticking to core, probably quickdraw so he can go from not expecting a fight to a full attack (with 3 attacks, not the mere 2 of the caster class).
The cleric MIGHT make up the weapon spec loss with GMW on his bow, but of course any party with an arcane or divine caster at L12 unwilling to GMW the superior Fighter's bow is being idiotic.
The argument seems to be that a "serious Cleric beatstick" counts as "shenanigans"*, but the optimized Fighter is fine. Which is not an unreasonable argument to make in certain contexts (most tables carefully avoid intraparty imbalances), but it's not really relevant to the question of "is a Cleric better than a Fighter", because that question has to be answered without thumbs on the scale.
*: Which would be fair if we were talking about the absolute top end of Cleric Archer builds, where you're doing things like Persisting arcane spellsurge, giant size, and sadism on top of all your baseline buffs. But what we're talking about here is the standard divine power, righteous might, divine favor package that is a long way from broken, just better than a Fighter.
And a Beguiler can do all those things while providing a net surplus of spell slots to the party rather than a net deficit. Martial characters have skills on their lists, but so does an Expert.
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2022-01-05, 01:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
Nitpick: I don't think Persisting an Arcane Spellsurge helps Clerics at all, unless there's some UltracheeseTM that lets you treat Cleric spells as arcane.
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2022-01-05, 01:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
I LITERALLY quoted you saying this which started this current derail of this conversation.
If you think the game is so badly balanced why do you play it? That's supposed to be the question.
I say that I have played and seen played literally hundreds of martials of all different types, and a similar number of full casters. (Living Greyhawk for a half dozen years played in many regions gives you a much broader view of what works in this game than any single home campaign. Pathfinder Society for another half dozen years only reinforced that).
The campaign ranges were 1-16 for 3.5 and 1-12 for Pathfinder (ok a little 13-15 content too). I was both GM and player. I was a playtester, involved in the games played before conventions to train all the judges there in how to run the game, even an author once who had to scale a single adventure to EL2 4 6 8 10 12 and 14.
Martials NEVER had any trouble contributing to the party. Full casters who tried to be martials were almost always outperformed unless the team dynamic was completely dysfunctional or unless the party had no real martial capability outside the full caster. Prepared casters frequently made bad choices of which spells to prep, and parties routinely had to deal with things like being ambushed on the road, in campsites, in inns, and those enemies often had intel on them. Some days had a lot of encounters, others you could nova everything, but you rarely knew what sort of day it might be.
I play this game still if given the opportunity because it really does support a lot of stuff, and while there are all kinds of weird edge condition imbalances, most of the time it delivers a good experience for all players in a party, where nobody feels useless and everybody gets a chance to shine.
It is a tabletop RPG. To get a good outcome, it is on the players and GM to help the game system out a little to ensure folks have fun, no game system does that for free. This one errs on the side of "a zillion options, some of which objectively suck, some of which are too powerful for the cost and some of which the GM has to consider if the game is expected to pass level 10 or so". It's also D&D, so power level goes from peasant to god with the same set of characters if you play long enough, most RPGs don't allow that level of growth.
Beyond the gameplay, which is fine for a game of its type, there is a character creation minigame that doesn't require other players, but does require a referee or ground rules, and which about half the threads on this forum are about. That's entertaining in its own way.
That's why I play it. I never found 3.0/3.5/pathfinder to actually be dominated by the prepared caster tier 1 classes in game, and I have never found the despised tier 4 classes to actually be unfun to play. Perhaps the problem might be in the person who thinks a class sucks or is amazing, rather than in the actual game.
Actually the Iron Chef challenges are making me re-evaluate even tier 5 type stuff. I kinda like the Peregrin Runner character I wrote up last time, and the new one I created for the latest challenge, and found a lot of the (150+?) threads on other marginal PRCs fascinating. I could see forming a campaign around some of them.Last edited by Seward; 2022-01-05 at 01:40 PM.
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2022-01-05, 01:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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2022-01-05, 02:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why 3.5?
More than that, the fighter doesn't actually have enough really good core feats to make his class features worth it. A core cleric can take every fighter feat that is really worth having, and still have an army of skeletons and all the other stuff. That's why people talk about horizon tripper as the height of core martial optimization. And that's not even talking about the degree to which non core gear helps fighters solve basic melee issues which clerics can nope with a spell. Yeah, the non core cleric gets DMM, but the non core fighter gets basic functionality and can use his level 20 bonus feat on something better than "oh well, I guess I'll take weapon focus on my backup bow". If you tell me I have to play a fighter and give me choice of whether the group is core or not, I'll ALWAYS IMMEDIATELY take non-core so at least I can make a real trip or charge build.
Last edited by Gnaeus; 2022-01-05 at 02:30 PM.