Balancing Blaster Wizards (Design Philosophy)

[Kane0]

If he wants to just be fireball guy, that is absolutely fine, build fireball guy.

But then that swings back around to the initial question, why does fireball guy deserve to be inherently better than sword guy or arrow guy?

He doesn't. But he does deserve to have a good fireball, at least equal to the sword or gun guy investing the same resources/build options.

The discrepancy might hinge on that definition of 'good' between you and he.

[icefractal]

IMO they can already do that by picking exactly the right spell for the job at hand; for example a fire spell against a flammable target, a poison spell against someone with a low fortitude, a psychic spell against someone with low willpower, an aoe spell against a tightly packed group, etc.

I'm curious about this point - since this is a different system it may truly be the case, but in D&D I've found the "perfect spell for the job" factor not nearly as big as memetic lore presents it.

I mean, don't get me wrong, having the right spell for the job is often important. But in the field of blasting specifically? Outright vulnerabilities are rare. Generally "having the exact right spell" just means it has the full normal effect. So if that normal effect is good, the spell is good, but if it's weak then being 'ideal' isn't usually enough to save it. And in 3.x, the blasting spells are mostly pretty anemic.

So it sounds like either the player just wants to be OP (very possible), or they want to fill a niche your system doesn't currently support - big rare signature spell usage.

That is, the limited use but greater power aspect of non-unlimited spells, but primarily using a limited set of spells rather than maximizing versatility. In 3.x, this would be a Mailman type.

Not that it's imperative that you do support that niche, but I don't think it's impossible to balance either.

[MetroAlien]

There is almost always going to be a spell that is better for the current situation than dealing damage. Whether or not a given wizard knows the right spell or is willing to expend the spell slot...

I'm not sure what you mean by 'better'.
Would using said utility spell win the encounter in fewer turns?
In most games, the shortest path to victory is to deal as much damage as possible.
Unless using these spells allows your wizard to deal at least x2.1 times the normal damage on the next turn, it's not 'better', at least not in the sense of speed.

If your game is different (for example, an encounter can end without dealing damage), then this needs to be communicated clearly to the players.
Does your player know their non-damage spells can win encounters just as well?

Maybe it's a question of flavour/aesthetic.
For example, ending the encounter through incapacitation:
option A:
the wizard uses the black coffin spell from BLEACH.
The enemy suffers existential trauma and surrenders.
It felt f***ing epic to do.
The player is wearing a satisfied grin

option B:
the wizard conjures handcuffs on the enemy's hands.
After failing a few swings of their weapon, the enemy surrenders.
It felt anticlimactic for all sides.
The player felt like they cheated the party out of a fun fight

As I said in the OP, for (the equivalent of) a single feat, a wizard can choose a spell to be able to cast unlimited times.

With this feat, they deal ~ the same damage as a martial character without losing out on any of the above without sacrificing any of the utility or resources of their other spells.

IMO this is a balanced trade off, but my player, on the other hand, thinks I should balance a caster to be significantly better at damage dealing than a martial to balance out the spell slots lost without this feat.

it may be the wording, but it sounds like the wizard needed to expend a resource (a feat) to get to the same level that the fighter was at for free.
The fix could be as simple as offering this feat during character creation as an alternative to the 'regular' build.

If that's already an option, then this is a pure misunderstanding that needs to be communicated better to the player.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'better'.
Would using said utility spell win the encounter in fewer turns?
In most games, the shortest path to victory is to deal as much damage as possible.
Unless using these spells allows your wizard to deal at least x2.1 times the normal damage on the next turn, it's not 'better', at least not in the sense of speed.

If your game is different (for example, an encounter can end without dealing damage), then this needs to be communicated clearly to the players.
Does your player know their non-damage spells can win encounters just as well?

More games need to remember that a combat doesn't end because the other guy is dead, it ends because one side is unwilling or unable to continue fighting. This is something more games should be willing to acknowledge via stuff like stated goals, combat timers, measurement of cost, viable alternatives to the combat system, some version of simplified combat for when the other team is completely out classed, and so on.

Once you start adding these ideas in things start getting interesting. My favourite is Glitch where once conflict times out victory goes to the survivor who paid the most for it, which heavily incentivises acquiring Cost, when then plays into the game's character retirement mechanics. But honestly as RPGs get pushed more and more as a storytelling medium it's a shame to see so many sticking to the same basic ideas regarding combat.

Disabling or mind control powers can sometimes be better than direct damage because they straight up allow you to stop fighting someone. Which at the lower end generally tips the current battle in your favour because that's one less character inflicting Cost on you, and at the higher end just straight up stops the battle altogether. Dominate in Vampire doesn't let you fight better, but can still be more useful than Potence/Vigor in a fight.

[Talakeal]

He doesn't. But he does deserve to have a good fireball, at least equal to the sword or gun guy investing the same resources/build options.

The discrepancy might hinge on that definition of 'good' between you and he.

As it is, he has the exact same accuracy and damage as someone who invested equal resources into using a bow or two handed sword.

But, again circling back to the OP, he feels that he is too fragile for melee and doesn't enjoy accuracy penalties for range / cover / firing into close combat.

I'm curious about this point - since this is a different system it may truly be the case, but in D&D I've found the "perfect spell for the job" factor not nearly as big as memetic lore presents it.

I mean, don't get me wrong, having the right spell for the job is often important. But in the field of blasting specifically? Outright vulnerabilities are rare. Generally "having the exact right spell" just means it has the full normal effect. So if that normal effect is good, the spell is good, but if it's weak then being 'ideal' isn't usually enough to save it. And in 3.x, the blasting spells are mostly pretty anemic.

Right, actual vulnerabilities are not terribly common, but you can also target the weakest defenses as well, which means that while the martial guys are having to roll to hit, you can more or less go straight to rolling for damage.

That is, the limited use but greater power aspect of non-unlimited spells, but primarily using a limited set of spells rather than maximizing versatility. In 3.x, this would be a Mailman type.

Not that it's imperative that you do support that niche, but I don't think it's impossible to balance either.

Oh, if you want to do that, you can do that! A blaster mage can pull of damage numbers that a martial could never dream of if they want to go nova or take a gamble on a hard to pull off spell, they just can't do it reliably all day long.

it may be the wording, but it sounds like the wizard needed to expend a resource (a feat) to get to the same level that the fighter was at for free.
The fix could be as simple as offering this feat during character creation as an alternative to the 'regular' build.

If that's already an option, then this is a pure misunderstanding that needs to be communicated better to the player.

The player already has said feat, which puts him on the same level as a martial character for reliable resource free accuracy and damage.

But, as I said above, he feels he is too squishy for melee, and doesn't like suffering accuracy penalties for rolling to hit at range.

Unless you meant I should give him the feat for free, in which case, I feel that would be unfair to the martials to give someone full martial damage dealing capabilities on top of the existing mage powers.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'better'.
Would using said utility spell win the encounter in fewer turns?
In most games, the shortest path to victory is to deal as much damage as possible.
Unless using these spells allows your wizard to deal at least x2.1 times the normal damage on the next turn, it's not 'better', at least not in the sense of speed.

Well yeah, there are lot's of "save or lose" type spells that kill, incapacitate, banish, or brainwash the enemy outright without needing damage.

There are also plenty of buffs, debuffs, damage over time spells, and summons that will do atleast double the overall damage of a direct damage spell if cast early enough in the fight.

And something like a defensive spell or terrain manipulation can make a fight much easier and less resource intensive to win even if it doesn't directly deal damage or take any enemies out.

[Quertus]

But, again circling back to the OP, he feels that he is too fragile for melee and doesn't enjoy accuracy penalties for range / cover / firing into close combat.


The player already has said feat, which puts him on the same level as a martial character for reliable resource free accuracy and damage.

But, as I said above, he feels he is too squishy for melee, and doesn't like suffering accuracy penalties for rolling to hit at range.

C’mon, Wizard, you’ve spent the feats and stat points to be just as good as a Commoner in this antimagic field, why are you complaining?

I can absolutely see “as good as an archer” not being terribly reassuring to someone who thinks that archers are bad, doubly so if archers don’t suffer the feat tax to get there.

As a broader point, from your descriptions, I doubt I’d enjoy your system’s “penalties to ranged attacks”, either. And that’s the key word: enjoy.

I think one consideration is, what chance of success should a boring standard action have? I think there was a recent thread where the answer seemed to be about a 2-in-3 chance of success was the average answer. If your average Ranged attack (which I’d wager as “fire into melee with cover”) suffers so many penalties that it falls below this rate, then it’s probably not enjoyable to the average player.

I can see unusual actions (trick shot with an arrow to cut a rope, or to disarm someone around a corner seen in a mirror) still producing good feels with lower success rates, but “I shoot the monsters our tanks are holding back” seems like the kind of generic action that wouldn’t feel good to the player who waited for it to come around to their turn, only for the action to have substandard chances of success.

So that’s feel. Balance is another story.

So, you’ve been running this system for a while - what’s the actual, in play, Average DPS for melee, archer, and blaster archetypes, grouped by investment? What is the average in play cost of melee, archer, and blaster archetypes, measured in resources (including HP lost)? What is the average “up time” for melee, archer, and blaster characters?

[Talakeal]

C’mon, Wizard, you’ve spent the feats and stat points to be just as good as a Commoner in this antimagic field, why are you complaining?

I can absolutely see “as good as an archer” not being terribly reassuring to someone who thinks that archers are bad, doubly so if archers don’t suffer the feat tax to get there.

If you feel that the other PCs are bad or no better than a commoner, I can see why you might have an issue. But that's really more of a player attitude issue than one of game balance.

As a broader point, from your descriptions, I doubt I’d enjoy your system’s “penalties to ranged attacks”, either. And that’s the key word: enjoy.

I think one consideration is, what chance of success should a boring standard action have? I think there was a recent thread where the answer seemed to be about a 2-in-3 chance of success was the average answer. If your average Ranged attack (which I’d wager as “fire into melee with cover”) suffers so many penalties that it falls below this rate, then it’s probably not enjoyable to the average player.

I would say that under normal circumstances you will have less than a 2/3 chance of a hit when firing into melee.

The thing is, it should feel bad, because its not a situation you want to be in. Firing into (or out of!) a melee scrum is a terrible idea, just like a melee fighter against an opponent whom they can't reach, a wizard in a null-magic zone, or a rogue in the spotlight. IMO the best thing to do in those situations is either get out of them or fall back on your backup skills. IMO, it is bad for game balance to allow some characters to ignore bad spots, and it hurts verisimilitude (and makes for a bland game) to just waive all restrictions away and let everyone act at full efficiency regardless of circumstances.

So, you’ve been running this system for a while - what’s the actual, in play, Average DPS for melee, archer, and blaster archetypes, grouped by investment? What is the average in play cost of melee, archer, and blaster archetypes, measured in resources (including HP lost)? What is the average “up time” for melee, archer, and blaster characters?

That's quite a big question. Care to narrow it down at all? I can give you answers about specific situations or white room principles, but there are so many possible character builds its impossible to give a succinct answer to a question like that.

[Pauly]

.

I think one consideration is, what chance of success should a boring standard action have? I think there was a recent thread where the answer seemed to be about a 2-in-3 chance of success was the average answer. If your average Ranged attack (which I’d wager as “fire into melee with cover”) suffers so many penalties that it falls below this rate, then it’s probably not enjoyable to the average player.

I can see unusual actions (trick shot with an arrow to cut a rope, or to disarm someone around a corner seen in a mirror) still producing good feels with lower success rates, but “I shoot the monsters our tanks are holding back” seems like the kind of generic action that wouldn’t feel good to the player who waited for it to come around to their turn, only for the action to have substandard chances of success.

So that’s feel. Balance is another story.

Shooting into melee is a trick shot, on par with cutting a rope. It probably is more difficult to actually hit the target you are aiming for than to hit a stationary rope.

Most serious games don’t allow shooting into melee.
Those that do require hits to be randomized amongst combatants.
Some games only allow evil aligned, or their in universe equivalent, to attempt to do it because the evil don’t care if they accidentally hit on of their guys.

The ‘standard’ shot with a roughly 65% chance of success should be to hit an enemy taking cover. It is assumed in melee that combatants are parrying, using shields etc. as in built passive defense. Hitting an opponent standing in clear ground for an archer should be roughly as difficult as a melee fighter hitting someone in their sleep. Many game designers forget this and set archery difficulty too high, although they do compensate by making archery easier in other ways such as rate of fire, not linking damage to the user’s strength and so on.

The fallacy that you can shoot into a melee safely is mainly brought about by 2 factors. The static positioning of figures on the battlemap and the IGO-UGO turn system. Which leads to the unconscious belief that the rest of the world is in perfect stasis while the player takes their turn.

[gbaji]

I will say that I don't see why HP is necessarily a melee resource though; as unless they are very smart of very sneaky, everyone takes damage sometimes.

The point isn't what can cause you to take HP damage. The point is that when you run out (or even get low if you are planning a bit ahead) your ability to fight stops. That is, therefore, the primary resource being expended by characters in a fight.

Of course, if you have fast healing spells/abilites in the game, then those become substituted for HPs and become the actual resource you are tracking (which can push this back into the spells/mana/whatever category). But at the end of the day, the decision to forge forward into a battle is going to be dependent on the ability for the party to survive the damage they are going to take fighting it.

Direct damage spells require a roll to hit and then roll for damage. They are almost exactly as effective as an equally skilled archer attacking with a bow.

Which means that they either need to be as ubuquitous as arrows fired from a bow *or* need to do more damage *or have some other offsetting factor/cost. Probably some combination of the three. If an archer can carry 20 arrows and restock them easily after the battle, and can fire 2-3 times per round and do X damage per hit, then an equal spell needs to be equal in terms of number of uses per combat, number of uses per day, rate of attack, odds of hitting, and damage done per hit. If any of those are adjusted, some other component needs to be adjusted. If rate of fire is slower, then either it needs to be more accurare or do more damage. If cost per use (ie: how many uses per combat and/or uses per day) is different then other factors need to be adjusted. If I can only blast someone 3x/day, that blast better do significantly more damage than an arrrow and be significantly more accurate, or it's not worth using.

On the flip side, if I can use my missile spell at the same firing rate as an archer, but with unlimited ammunition, then maybe the damage should be a little lower.

And again, this also assumes that the archer has other things they can also do in addition to just fire arrows, since presumably the spell caster has other spells as well. I guess the point here is to balance "fast/cheap" versus "slow/big" effects. And yes, this also becomes problematic when we get into the whole "X encounters per day dynamic". If that is too rigidly applied, then the spell caster never "runs out" of spells, and effectively will always have sufficient "big guns" available to use. Which IMHO makes things overpowered.

Then again, I don't use that form of calculation. I will absolutely hit players with encounters (or a required series of encounters) that will stretch their resources, so that they have to really think about when and how to use their bigger "X/day" use abilities and spells. On the flip side, when they are just wandering around, they are unlikely to run into anything close to their "limit" in terms of resources. Trivial encounters are just that: trivial. They're free to blast away as they wish and be pretty safe that they wont run into 5 or 6 more encounters that day while walking through random hills somewhere. Of course, if they're smart, they'll still only use what they "need to win" anyway, cause you never know which day is the day they run into something big...

Disabling or mind control powers can sometimes be better than direct damage because they straight up allow you to stop fighting someone. Which at the lower end generally tips the current battle in your favour because that's one less character inflicting Cost on you, and at the higher end just straight up stops the battle altogether. Dominate in Vampire doesn't let you fight better, but can still be more useful than Potence/Vigor in a fight.

Yeah. I think that many players, especially coming from the "blaster wizard" mentality lose sight of the fact that other spells can often be far far more effective in combat than just blasting someone.


Just ran a combat this weekend where this came up. They were fighting a fairly well armed and skilled squad of soldiers working for an evil ruler that has been a thorn in their side (even though they're currently working to remove the curse on his family that's actually part of why he's such a evil guy in the first place, but whatever). He's got these hit squads he's been training up, and they were being tracked by one of the more elite versions. The squad had some spell support (remote guy using spirits to follow the squad and provide spells), and the leader was *really* tough. And they had a smaller group of sneaky assassin types coordinated to ambush the party while the bigger guys hit from the rear a couple rounds later. Ambush worked well. Several folks got hit with crossbow bolts with some poison on them. Some more got hit with spells and temporarily taken out. Just about when they started to recover a bit from that (and the assassins engaged from the front), the big guys hit from the rear and more or less smashed through them.

It was a pretty big struggle, but the party was slowly turning things around in the battle. The NPC leader was more or less one shotting people though, which was a problem. As it turns out, one of the PCs had one casting of a spell that basically forces the target to mimic their actions. And despite the leader having some higher defense against mental attacks, she managed to overcome him. Now, as it happened the round she affected him was a round in which he only had one target in front of him, and that PCs still wasn't able to hurt the leader anyway. And by the end of the round, the spell support guy dispelled the effect, so it basically just stopped him for a round. What's interesting is that you could have said "wait a few rounds for us to clear out some of the other (tough but manageable) soldiers and whale on him while he's defenseless" (offensive strategy). But, had she done that, he likely would have whacked the one person facing him, torn right through the center of their ranks, and then possibly started whacking on people who were already engaged and just overwhelmed them. So this one round of holding him back, didn't take out the big guy, heck, didn't do a single point of damage to him, but ultimately really turned the tide of the entire battle.

It gave the rest of the party a round to take out a couple of the other bad guys, and reposition folks to have more help out with the main leader guy. So despite him being really skilled and doing silly amounts of damage with his evil weapon, they were able to more or less dogpile on him a couple rounds later. The point is that a well timed spell that merely delays or slows down an opponent can have significant effects on the battle. I've found that a lot of battles tend to go in a pattern of "hold ground first, then take out weaker opponents, then gang up on stronger ones". And often, control type spells are a lot more useful than just blasting folks. Sure. Eventually, you have to do damage to defeat opponents, but it's often more effective as a spell caster to do things that leverage and maximize the damage output of the melee characters in the group than to just do direct damage yourself. Had that same character used a spell action to just try to hit this guy with some damage, it might have hurt him, but not have stopped him, and he'd have waded through their line. By using spells that gave the melee folks an attack/defense ratio advantage, that effect lasts several rounds and becomes more powerful. Disable one person, and the melee who would have had to fight that person is free to attack someone else, which double up on that opponent, which potentially frees up another melee character, who can now go help out someone else, etc, etc. A few rounds later, that minor initial effect has a massive effect on relative damage done versus damage taken each round.

IMO. That's how you more effectively use spell casters. But a lot of people can't get past the "I want to do damage and defeat opponents directly" mentality.

[PhoenixPhyre]

IMO. That's how you more effectively use spell casters. But a lot of people can't get past the "I want to do damage and defeat opponents directly" mentality.

On the flip side, it's almost memetic on these forums that "dealing damage is for peasants (aka martials)". Which also doesn't hold up as a general rule. Being capable of both is where it's really at. And knowing which to use in what circumstance.

Of course, I am coming around to disliking more and more the idea that you should/can balance things effectively at more than a casual level based on "ammunition" (whether that's spell slots/castings, real ammo, limited consumables, etc) across more than one combat at a time. Because that form of balance is super fragile to changes in playstyle, which isn't really well constrained. Something as simple as splitting one "ten turn" encounter into two separate "five turn" encounters can often radically change the balance considerations--a single ability use that lasts 10 turns covers all of the first but only one of the second. So it's sensitive to how many encounters, spaced how far apart, of how long. If all you care about is rough balance (ie U-shaped curves with a wide "acceptable" region), it can work. But once you want tight (v-shaped, with a narrow acceptable region) balance, you find that it's V-shaped in the wrong way--a maximum not a minimum. An unstable equilibrium.

The solutions are to balance around the encounter and use arbitrary durations (ie this lasts until the end of the encounter), with attrition happening at other-than-ability measures (like 4e's restricted Healing Surges), go flat out MMO and assume full resources on every significant fight, or give almost everyone the same (or similar) structure of abilities (aka homogenization).

Allowing people to pick abilities a la carte also throws a wrench in this whole balance thing[1], but that's a separate conversation I think.

[1] most point-buy systems rely heavily on GM whitelisting/oversight to balance things, rather than try to a priori balance the combinatorial explosion of factors that otherwise results.

[Kane0]

As it is, he has the exact same accuracy and damage as someone who invested equal resources into using a bow or two handed sword.

But, again circling back to the OP, he feels that he is too fragile for melee and doesn't enjoy accuracy penalties for range / cover / firing into close combat.

I would suggest giving the ability to expend or sacrifice the utility aspect of casting in order to counteract those penalties, if you haven't already.

[MoiMagnus]

What's the range of those ranged spells?

Usually in a game, ranged attacks are of two kinds:

+ The ones that are used before the melee starts, or in situations where melee is impossible. Those are supposed to have long range but be significantly constrained by covers/etc. Notably, as soon as the enemy is "one movement away" from you or from your allies, it's time to consider changing of attack type.
=> The problem here is that by virtue of being squishy, the wizard might not have any backup plan available. And by "backup plan" I actually mean "main plan", because combats that are entirely won before melee starts are usually the exception and not the rule in D&D.

+ The ones that just glorified reach weapons (with longer reach but no opportunity attack). Those attack don't have long range, and if they technically have long range the gameplay style of the RPG means that combat never starts with character far away from each other. But those attacks should not suffer from cover/etc, because their standard use case will be in a situation where there is a big melee with allies and enemies everywhere.
=> If you don't already have such short range attack spells, you might want to design some.

[Quertus]

Huh. Maybe my own experiences with "firing into melee" (which mostly amount to things like throwing pillows or drinks) are abnormal, and most people, or most situations, result in a lower success rate than I've experienced? Even so, I know I'd feel uncomfortable taking the shot with a gun or bow in most melee situations.

However, that ultimately doesn't really matter, as I wasn't talking about Simulationist concerns, but Gamist ones. Simply put, if this is an action you're likely to take often in the course of your adventures (which it sounds like the current party's composition and tactics makes that a "yes"), it should have a certain rate of success (probably at least about 2-out-of-3), else it will feel bad.

They do it often, they have a low rate of success, it feels bad. That's the simple equation here. It's part of this party's normal standard operating procedures, yet it lacks adequate success, so it feels bad.

The thing is, it should feel bad

Yes, I'm quite confident you believe that. And, with enough data, as a Simulationist, I might agree. But the question for this thread is, is that a good design principle, to make that experience feel bad? Specifically, look at this statement:

its not a situation you want to be in. Firing into (or out of!) a melee scrum is a terrible idea,

and ask yourself, what alternatives do they have? What actions does the system encourage them to take in order to feel good?

(and the answer as far as your players can tell is, summon incorporeal monsters to clear the dungeon for them, then go behind them to pick up the loot. Is there some better answer that your system is trying to guide the archer and blaster archtypes towards? Or does it just say, haha, standard encounters, where your front line actually engages monsters, you should feel bad about yourself?)

And there's certainly some room to debate about what good design principles look like here, and the extent to which it is answerable in a modular state, vs the extent to which the rest of the system plays a role in what good design for this set of features looks like.

Personally, I think that, regardless of what good design principles may look like in the general case, when designing a game that is played primarily or exclusively with groups where some or all members have depression and/or ego issues, maybe erring on the side of "feeling good" might be a good design decision.

But I'm not a licensed psychologist, nor do I play one in an RPG.

[Hrugner]

We've heard a bit about what the player wants, and what they won't do, but what are they actually choosing to do during play?

Since your system is classless, I assume spells are available to all players somewhat. Are there any particular spells that your martial focused characters are taking, or are spells going unused entirely?

Does casting or shooting into an area do anything beneficial on a miss? Melee generally at very least provide a defensive line or hold choke points even if their attacks don't land, so it could make ranged play feel better if their presence on the field still did something even when they fail at their aggressive action. It could be something as simple as turning missed shots into covering or suppressing fire, or leaving the spell effect on the map for the martials to knock targets into, use as cover, or make more specialized use of like channeling into a weapon or bouncing off a shield. Nothing too crazy numbers wise, it's supposed to compete with the innate battlefield control of taking up space not deliberate actions.

[Pauly]

However, that ultimately doesn't really matter, as I wasn't talking about Simulationist concerns, but Gamist ones. Simply put, if this is an action you're likely to take often in the course of your adventures (which it sounds like the current party's composition and tactics makes that a "yes"), it should have a certain rate of success (probably at least about 2-out-of-3), else it will feel bad.

They do it often, they have a low rate of success, it feels bad. That's the simple equation here. It's part of this party's normal standard operating procedures, yet it lacks adequate success, so it feels bad.


Yes, I'm quite confident you believe that. And, with enough data, as a Simulationist, I might agree. But the question for this thread is, is that a good design principle, to make that experience feel bad? Specifically, look at this statement:



and ask yourself, what alternatives do they have? What actions does the system encourage them to take in order to feel good?

Excellent point.
From a simulationist/versimiltude POV the correct answer is firing into a melee is a bad thing, carrying a huge risk of hitting your allies.
From a gamist POV the question of what else of value can you do is important. If all the bad guys are locked up in melee and you suck at melee and you can’t shoot into melee you only have bad choices. In wargames this is solved to some degree by allowing the archers to take objectives or by contributing to morale states, but RPGs generally don’t feature these as common components of a fight.

[Kane0]

Some sort of suppression mechanic is something you could try.

[gbaji]

Excellent point.
From a simulationist/versimiltude POV the correct answer is firing into a melee is a bad thing, carrying a huge risk of hitting your allies.
From a gamist POV the question of what else of value can you do is important. If all the bad guys are locked up in melee and you suck at melee and you can’t shoot into melee you only have bad choices. In wargames this is solved to some degree by allowing the archers to take objectives or by contributing to morale states, but RPGs generally don’t feature these as common components of a fight.

If we're still talking about spells, one way to get around this is to have some spells act like "missiles" and others be "target only". And perhaps have direct damage stuff be more likely to act like missiles and other utility buff/debuff stuff not suffer from the "firing into melee" issue. Which can actually encourage spell casters to use direct damage where it's appropriate (clear line of sight, just like archery, but maybe with more "boom!"), but then do things to help out the melee folks once melee is actually engaged.

Beyond just spell casting discussions, yeah, that's always an issue. It's actually a bit of a trick from a GMing point of view. It's quite often most effective for the PCs to bottleneck the combat, having their best 2 or 3 fighters up front, facing just a similar 2-3 opponents, while the rest of the party hangs back, heals, casts support spells, etc. The problem is that this can be very boring for the PCs that aren't in the front. And if you have a number of fights, and it's always the same folks fighting and the same folks supporting, this can become a big issue. And of course, "firing into melee" rules can make this problematic as well.

As a GM you have to balance the fact that the players obviously should be able to take advantage of terrain where possible with the need as a GM to make sure everyone is having "fun". I can usually manage to finagle some encounters into positions where I can make sure to engage more of the party if it's an issue. Having the NPCs charge into a room after the party is halfway into it works. Hitting the party in a hallway from both the front and back (and foreshadowing this by having them pass multiple side passages along the way). Setting up some sort of defensive position for the NPCs where the party has to come out a bit and be exposed works as well. Lots of ways around this IMO. Basically, anything I can do to "spread out" the fight works, but just not too much.

Obviously, this is less of an issue with small parties. But once you get into parties of 6 or more, this can become a real issue.

[icefractal]

The thing is, it should feel bad, because its not a situation you want to be in. Firing into (or out of!) a melee scrum is a terrible idea, just like a melee fighter against an opponent whom they can't reach, a wizard in a null-magic zone, or a rogue in the spotlight. IMO the best thing to do in those situations is either get out of them or fall back on your backup skills.

So, IME, in D&D -
Null-magic zones are quite rare. If 10% of the encounters were in null-magic ones, most people would think "Wow, that GM really hates casters".

Rogues being "in the spotlight" - what does that mean? Unable to sneak attack? Yeah, people kinda hate that too, avoid it when they can, and if it happens more than ... IDK, 20% of the time? They're going to get irritated. Note how Rogue guides have a lot more about "how to get Sneak Attack as often as possible" than they do about other alternatives. And how PF1 changed Sneak Attack to work against almost all types of foe.

Melee vs flying (or otherwise out of reach) characters? This happens the most of the the three, but still not that often. Not because it couldn't, but because most players will get pissed off if it happens too much and most GMs will avoid using it too much. There's a fair amount of GM advice along the lines of "Just because a dragon could strafe the party and never land for melee, doesn't mean you should run it like that. Give the warriors something they can hit!" And if you look at recommended magic items for melee types, getting a source of flight is high on the list, specifically so they don't have to switch to non-melee.

And now we come to "shooting into melee". It happens more than any of those others. All it takes is "the enemies were all melee, and they engaged our front line", which is IME a pretty common scenario. And what exactly are the archers supposed to do to "get out" of that situation? Heck, if it's a chokepoint they might not even be able to get into melee (and might be a liability if they do, depending on their defense).

Now yes, you could accurately say that if the front line is packed then ranged attacks are good, because even at 30% accuracy they're better than nothing. But most players (IME) don't just want to be "an efficiently performing part of a well-oiled machine", they want to be "a star, doing something impressive, who the camera focuses on" - at least when it's their turn. Being technically effective in a way that's only apparent in post-fight analysis is not a win for them!

Of course, just because other systems are more generous in "you can use your primarily abilities almost all the time", doesn't mean yours has to be. But I'd say that you're swimming upstream a bit in that case, in terms of player taste.

TBH, your system is slightly a paradox to me. In threads like this, and about resource management, it sounds like it's too tightly-tuned / stingy for my tastes. But then in recap threads, the characters often have interesting-sounding abilities that seem a lot better than what most D&D characters get (particularly in the out-of-combat department), so my interest is perked up. Is "more generous out-of-combat than in-combat" an accurate description?

[Talakeal]

He doesn't. But he does deserve to have a good fireball, at least equal to the sword or gun guy investing the same resources/build options.

Out of curiosity, you say "at least" equal.

That's interesting to me, as it implies that it is ok if the fireball guy is better than the archer, but not if the archer is better than the fireball guy. Why is that?

Which means that they either need to be as ubuquitous as arrows fired from a bow *or* need to do more damage *or have some other offsetting factor/cost. Probably some combination of the three. If an archer can carry 20 arrows and restock them easily after the battle, and can fire 2-3 times per round and do X damage per hit, then an equal spell needs to be equal in terms of number of uses per combat, number of uses per day, rate of attack, odds of hitting, and damage done per hit. If any of those are adjusted, some other component needs to be adjusted. If rate of fire is slower, then either it needs to be more accurare or do more damage. If cost per use (ie: how many uses per combat and/or uses per day) is different then other factors need to be adjusted. If I can only blast someone 3x/day, that blast better do significantly more damage than an arrrow and be significantly more accurate, or it's not worth using.

On the flip side, if I can use my missile spell at the same firing rate as an archer, but with unlimited ammunition, then maybe the damage should be a little lower.

And again, this also assumes that the archer has other things they can also do in addition to just fire arrows, since presumably the spell caster has other spells as well. I guess the point here is to balance "fast/cheap" versus "slow/big" effects. And yes, this also becomes problematic when we get into the whole "X encounters per day dynamic". If that is too rigidly applied, then the spell caster never "runs out" of spells, and effectively will always have sufficient "big guns" available to use. Which IMHO makes things overpowered.

Then again, I don't use that form of calculation. I will absolutely hit players with encounters (or a required series of encounters) that will stretch their resources, so that they have to really think about when and how to use their bigger "X/day" use abilities and spells. On the flip side, when they are just wandering around, they are unlikely to run into anything close to their "limit" in terms of resources. Trivial encounters are just that: trivial. They're free to blast away as they wish and be pretty safe that they wont run into 5 or 6 more encounters that day while walking through random hills somewhere. Of course, if they're smart, they'll still only use what they "need to win" anyway, cause you never know which day is the day they run into something big...

Again, this looses sight of the caster's incredible versatility.

With her admittedly limited spell slots, the mage in question can not only fire blasts of energy, she can reroll dice (either proactively or retroactively), conjure objects and minions out of ectolplasm, summon tentacles to grapple foes, curse people with bad luck, change shape, disable all technology, nullify divine powers, confuse foes, rewrite reality, and cause chaotic surges that can rewrite reality with somewhat unpredictable effects. I feel like she doesn't also need to be able to out shoot the marksman or outfight the swordsman, especially when a single feat allows her to do so all day long without worrying about running out of spells or ammunition or being disarmed.

Its like saying that a guy who has +10 with swords, a guy with +10 with bows, and a guy with +10 to fireballs are all equally good as a guy with +10 to bows, +10 to swords, and +10 to fireballs because the latter doesn't have higher numbers.

And again, I am talking about skills, not character classes. Both the mage and the archer should absolutely have other things to do.

I would suggest giving the ability to expend or sacrifice the utility aspect of casting in order to counteract those penalties, if you haven't already.

If you want to just play a supernatural blaster you can do that, but it isn't really a wizard anymore; more Cyclops than Doctor Strange.

At that point though, you are basically spending the same resources and have more or less the same effectiveness as a mundane archer.

There are ways to bypass the firing into melee penalties, but they are a fairly heavy character investment as without them ranged characters are flat out superior to melee characters.

What's the range of those ranged spells?

Usually in a game, ranged attacks are of two kinds:

+ The ones that are used before the melee starts, or in situations where melee is impossible. Those are supposed to have long range but be significantly constrained by covers/etc. Notably, as soon as the enemy is "one movement away" from you or from your allies, it's time to consider changing of attack type.
=> The problem here is that by virtue of being squishy, the wizard might not have any backup plan available. And by "backup plan" I actually mean "main plan", because combats that are entirely won before melee starts are usually the exception and not the rule in D&D.

+ The ones that just glorified reach weapons (with longer reach but no opportunity attack). Those attack don't have long range, and if they technically have long range the gameplay style of the RPG means that combat never starts with character far away from each other. But those attacks should not suffer from cover/etc, because their standard use case will be in a situation where there is a big melee with allies and enemies everywhere.
=> If you don't already have such short range attack spells, you might want to design some.

All spells have a default range equal to the caster's perception score in paces. That's the equivalent of 25-50' in D&D. Shooting attacks (including magic missiles) can fire at longer ranges at a cumulative -2 penalty per, and spells (including magic missiles) can be cast at 10x this range for a cumulative -4 penalty.

Huh. Maybe my own experiences with "firing into melee" (which mostly amount to things like throwing pillows or drinks) are abnormal, and most people, or most situations, result in a lower success rate than I've experienced? Even so, I know I'd feel uncomfortable taking the shot with a gun or bow in most melee situations.

However, that ultimately doesn't really matter, as I wasn't talking about Simulationist concerns, but Gamist ones. Simply put, if this is an action you're likely to take often in the course of your adventures (which it sounds like the current party's composition and tactics makes that a "yes"), it should have a certain rate of success (probably at least about 2-out-of-3), else it will feel bad.

They do it often, they have a low rate of success, it feels bad. That's the simple equation here. It's part of this party's normal standard operating procedures, yet it lacks adequate success, so it feels bad.


Yes, I'm quite confident you believe that. And, with enough data, as a Simulationist, I might agree. But the question for this thread is, is that a good design principle, to make that experience feel bad? Specifically, look at this statement:


and ask yourself, what alternatives do they have? What actions does the system encourage them to take in order to feel good?

(and the answer as far as your players can tell is, summon incorporeal monsters to clear the dungeon for them, then go behind them to pick up the loot. Is there some better answer that your system is trying to guide the archer and blaster archtypes towards? Or does it just say, haha, standard encounters, where your front line actually engages monsters, you should feel bad about yourself?)

And there's certainly some room to debate about what good design principles look like here, and the extent to which it is answerable in a modular state, vs the extent to which the rest of the system plays a role in what good design for this set of features looks like.

Personally, I think that, regardless of what good design principles may look like in the general case, when designing a game that is played primarily or exclusively with groups where some or all members have depression and/or ego issues, maybe erring on the side of "feeling good" might be a good design decision.

But I'm not a licensed psychologist, nor do I play one in an RPG.

One could throw simulation to the wind and ignore penalties, but doesn't that feel bad for the melee characters? The ranged guys can run around the board hitting whomever they like wherever they like whenever they like, while the sword guy is still limited to the guys he can physically reach.


I will admit that they are actually doing surprisingly well for their party composition. They have little to no synergy, and the two big tanky guys backed up by two small shooty guys is an exceptionally poor group composition for a dungeon crawl. And of course you have one player deliberately anti-optimizing trying to make the weakest character she can.

We've heard a bit about what the player wants, and what they won't do, but what are they actually choosing to do during play?

Typically, she does one or more of the following at the start of the fight, depending on how difficulty she judges it to be:

Summon tentacles for area control.
Summon a minion to fight.
Curse an enemy with bad luck and a penalty to rolls.

Then she hides in the back firing magic missiles, and either a: complains that the accuracy penalties for shooting into melee are two high if the front line holds off all the monsters or b: complains that I am picking on her if the monsters get past the front line to attack the back ranks.

Since your system is classless, I assume spells are available to all players somewhat. Are there any particular spells that your martial focused characters are taking, or are spells going unused entirely?

In this party, two of the characters are not spell casters.

The fourth made the typical mistake of trying to replicate a D&D cleric and pulling themselves too thin, so she basically casts one small healing spell a session.

In the last campaign there was a fair amount of gish characters. The primary spells cast were haste, invisibility, dimension door, and vampiric touch. (Or my games' equivalents).

Does casting or shooting into an area do anything beneficial on a miss? Melee generally at very least provide a defensive line or
hold choke points even if their attacks don't land, so it could make ranged play feel better if their presence on the field still did something even when they fail at their aggressive action. It could be something as simple as turning missed shots into covering or suppressing fire, or leaving the spell effect on the map for the martials to knock targets into, use as cover, or make more specialized use of like channeling into a weapon or bouncing off a shield. Nothing too crazy numbers wise, it's supposed to compete with the innate battlefield control of taking up space not deliberate actions.

All of that is possible, but it isn't a default, and it isn't really practical when you are in the back row with the big beefy fighters between you and the monsters.

If we're still talking about spells, one way to get around this is to have some spells act like "missiles" and others be "target only". And perhaps have direct damage stuff be more likely to act like missiles and other utility buff/debuff stuff not suffer from the "firing into melee" issue. Which can actually encourage spell casters to use direct damage where it's appropriate (clear line of sight, just like archery, but maybe with more "boom!"), but then do things to help out the melee folks once melee is actually engaged.

This is indeed how the system is intended to work.

Excellent point.
From a simulationist/versimiltude POV the correct answer is firing into a melee is a bad thing, carrying a huge risk of hitting your allies.
From a gamist POV the question of what else of value can you do is important. If all the bad guys are locked up in melee and you suck at melee and you can’t shoot into melee you only have bad choices. In wargames this is solved to some degree by allowing the archers to take objectives or by contributing to morale states, but RPGs generally don’t feature these as common components of a fight.

Ideally there will be a clear line of fire you can move into and / or an unengaged target to shoot.

If that isn't the case, the simplest answer is do something else; ideally you can do things besides shooting.

But, depending on character builds, you might well still be most effective firing into melee, and there are enough maneuvers, build options, and weapon types / modifications that it is fully possible to contribute by shooting into melee. A guy who is in the back lying prone with a scoped rifle on a bipod will actually have a net accuracy bonus shooting into melee compared to your standard gunslinger firing from the hip.

So, IME, in D&D -
Null-magic zones are quite rare. If 10% of the encounters were in null-magic ones, most people would think "Wow, that GM really hates casters".

Rogues being "in the spotlight" - what does that mean? Unable to sneak attack? Yeah, people kinda hate that too, avoid it when they can, and if it happens more than ... IDK, 20% of the time? They're going to get irritated. Note how Rogue guides have a lot more about "how to get Sneak Attack as often as possible" than they do about other alternatives. And how PF1 changed Sneak Attack to work against almost all types of foe.

Melee vs flying (or otherwise out of reach) characters? This happens the most of the the three, but still not that often. Not because it couldn't, but because most players will get pissed off if it happens too much and most GMs will avoid using it too much. There's a fair amount of GM advice along the lines of "Just because a dragon could strafe the party and never land for melee, doesn't mean you should run it like that. Give the warriors something they can hit!" And if you look at recommended magic items for melee types, getting a source of flight is high on the list, specifically so they don't have to switch to non-melee.

And now we come to "shooting into melee". It happens more than any of those others. All it takes is "the enemies were all melee, and they engaged our front line", which is IME a pretty common scenario. And what exactly are the archers supposed to do to "get out" of that situation? Heck, if it's a chokepoint they might not even be able to get into melee (and might be a liability if they do, depending on their defense).

I agree that it is the most common, but its also the least punishing. The difference between a marksman taking -4 to hit for shooting into melee and a swordsman having to stand around with a thumb up her bum because the dragon refuses to land is huge.

TBH, your system is slightly a paradox to me. In threads like this, and about resource management, it sounds like it's too tightly-tuned / stingy for my tastes. But then in recap threads, the characters often have interesting-sounding abilities that seem a lot better than what most D&D characters get (particularly in the out-of-combat department), so my interest is perked up. Is "more generous out-of-combat than in-combat" an accurate description?

True that.

Of course, that's really more on working out tactics / synergy with your party than it is on the GM / System design.

TBH, your system is slightly a paradox to me. In threads like this, and about resource management, it sounds like it's too tightly-tuned / stingy for my tastes. But then in recap threads, the characters often have interesting-sounding abilities that seem a lot better than what most D&D characters get (particularly in the out-of-combat department), so my interest is perked up. Is "more generous out-of-combat than in-combat" an accurate description?

Players have a lot more freedom and control, and there are a lot more non-magical and / or out of combat abilities than there are in D&D.

As far as tuning and stinginess, its more balanced as a game. D&D tends to run as a railroad with the illusion of difficulty, where you rest when the DM lets you rest. My system is a lot less stingy with resources than an old school "One night of player is one adventuring day" style setup or even the recommended 4-6 encounters per adventuring day, but is a lot less stingy than the 15 MWD / One big encounter style that modern D&D often devolves into.

[gbaji]

Again, this looses sight of the caster's incredible versatility.

With her admittedly limited spell slots...

It's the "limited spell slots" that I was talking about. If the archer can fire arrows every single round, of every single combat, for as many combats as occur in any day, but the spell caster can only do a limited number of spells per day (with an unknown number of encounters per day), that's a balancing point that has to be considered.

This has always been an issue with primary spell casters, going all the way back to 1e D&D. They are overpowered compared to other characters. Right up until they run out of spell slots, and then they are severely underpowered. And yes, this makes balancing them somewhat difficult, since it also includes some sort of "how often does the number of encounters we have to deal with between spell recovery periods exceed the number of useful spell slots the caster has?" calculation.

And yes, if you do run into such situations commonly, the spell caster player will complain bitterly about it. But if you don't, then the rest of the PCs may feel underpowered. There is, unfortunately, not a good answer to this problem, doubly so if you have players who lack sufficient self awareness and balance to understand that this is a necessary part of balance for that kind of character. Some players will expect to blast hard every single round of every combat, and then expect that the days encounters will end when they run out of spell slots, so that they effectively "never run out".

If you have a game system with that sort of balance effect in play (which it sounds like this does, at least to some extent), then you *must* have this effect occur. Even if the player complains, tough cookies. Deal with it. It does also sound like your game system allows for more balanced spell casting and "other" effects, such that PCS should be able to have "some spells" while also having "some non-magic capabilities". If they choose to do so. Which maybe, if they don't like the whole "you are gimped once your main spell slots are consumed" bit, they should consider utilizing.

[Jakinbandw]

One could throw simulation to the wind and ignore penalties, but doesn't that feel bad for the melee characters? The ranged guys can run around the board hitting whomever they like wherever they like whenever they like, while the sword guy is still limited to the guys he can physically reach.

I agree that it is the most common, but its also the least punishing. The difference between a marksman taking -4 to hit for shooting into melee and a swordsman having to stand around with a thumb up her bum because the dragon refuses to land is huge.

A -4 penalty is huge. Ouch. I can see why any ranged character would be frustrated. For my own system, I actually reversed this whole mess to great effect. Unless a character has an opponent in melee with them, then they can completely negate any ranged action targeting them (more complex then this, but it's the basic idea). Suddenly the melee fighter facing the dragon isn't suffering because he can't fly, instead he is safe until the dragon lands and actually engages them in melee combat. Archers now rely on big tanky bois up front to allow their attacks to work, and the entire party suddenly starts to function more as a cohesive unit.

And it even makes sense. You can dodge out of the way of arrows/hide behind a giant shield unless you have someone in your face distracting you.

[Talakeal]

A -4 penalty is huge. Ouch. I can see why any ranged character would be frustrated. For my own system, I actually reversed this whole mess to great effect. Unless a character has an opponent in melee with them, then they can completely negate any ranged action targeting them (more complex then this, but it's the basic idea). Suddenly the melee fighter facing the dragon isn't suffering because he can't fly, instead he is safe until the dragon lands and actually engages them in melee combat. Archers now rely on big tanky bois up front to allow their attacks to work, and the entire party suddenly starts to function more as a cohesive unit.

And it even makes sense. You can dodge out of the way of arrows/hide behind a giant shield unless you have someone in your face distracting you.

That seems odd to me.

Now, I don't know how it actually functions or what the rules / setting are like, but that seems to defeat the whole purpose of ranged attacks.

Likewise, I am getting images of cowboys having a showdown and high noon and neither one of them being able to touch one another, or a dragon strafing a village and the townsfolk just shrugging and going about their business. It also means that a lone ranged character is in really dire straights.

It's the "limited spell slots" that I was talking about. If the archer can fire arrows every single round, of every single combat, for as many combats as occur in any day, but the spell caster can only do a limited number of spells per day (with an unknown number of encounters per day), that's a balancing point that has to be considered.

This has always been an issue with primary spell casters, going all the way back to 1e D&D. They are overpowered compared to other characters. Right up until they run out of spell slots, and then they are severely underpowered. And yes, this makes balancing them somewhat difficult, since it also includes some sort of "how often does the number of encounters we have to deal with between spell recovery periods exceed the number of useful spell slots the caster has?" calculation.

And yes, if you do run into such situations commonly, the spell caster player will complain bitterly about it. But if you don't, then the rest of the PCs may feel underpowered. There is, unfortunately, not a good answer to this problem, doubly so if you have players who lack sufficient self awareness and balance to understand that this is a necessary part of balance for that kind of character. Some players will expect to blast hard every single round of every combat, and then expect that the days encounters will end when they run out of spell slots, so that they effectively "never run out".

If you have a game system with that sort of balance effect in play (which it sounds like this does, at least to some extent), then you *must* have this effect occur. Even if the player complains, tough cookies. Deal with it. It does also sound like your game system allows for more balanced spell casting and "other" effects, such that PCS should be able to have "some spells" while also having "some non-magic capabilities". If they choose to do so. Which maybe, if they don't like the whole "you are gimped once your main spell slots are consumed" bit, they should consider utilizing.

This is all more or less correct.

In my system a caster is a balancing act between power, versatility, and endurance, and you can balance more heavily into one than another, but you aren't ever going to be able to beat a martial character at their own game in all three at once.

[gbaji]

A -4 penalty is huge. Ouch. I can see why any ranged character would be frustrated. For my own system, I actually reversed this whole mess to great effect. Unless a character has an opponent in melee with them, then they can completely negate any ranged action targeting them (more complex then this, but it's the basic idea). Suddenly the melee fighter facing the dragon isn't suffering because he can't fly, instead he is safe until the dragon lands and actually engages them in melee combat. Archers now rely on big tanky bois up front to allow their attacks to work, and the entire party suddenly starts to function more as a cohesive unit.

And it even makes sense. You can dodge out of the way of arrows/hide behind a giant shield unless you have someone in your face distracting you.

Yeah. I'm going to agree with Talakeal here. That would suggest that two lines of archers facing eachother on a battlefield and firing arrows at eachother will never actually hit anyone or ever get injured themeselves? Or yeah, a dragon can't actually breath fire on random people walking down a street?

I get the concept from a very "video gamey" point of view. Melee folks engage, and this alllows the missile folks to target the same targets. And it does allow for a party synergy and "gang up on targets" kind of thing. But that's incredibly non-realistic.

But IMO, if you want to give unengaged folks some means to block arrows, then provide that in the game. And yeah, you can make that not be an action you can take while actively engaged (I actually have something like this in my game). But you really should have some penality for firing into melee. In my game, it's not a minus to hit, but a chance that if you do hit, you may hit the wrong person (more or less a random roll amongst anyone in melee with your target, or in line of sight to the target). I do allow for skill to be applied to "hit the one person I'm aiming for", but you have to be quite skilled to fire into melee and consistently hit the correct target and it will always reduce your chance of getting a better hit (more damage whatever). Basically, you choose to apply some of your "chance to hit" to mitigate the "chance to hit the wrong target".

Obviously, different game systems can handle this in different ways. But while I do agree that bottlenecking and "blocking" ranged folks out of the combat is a problem, just allowing them to fire freely right through their tanks is not a great solution, and giving them actual bonuses to doing so is even worse. And yes, in many cases, it's the players who are choosing these tactics in the first place. If they want to allow their ranged characters to be more involved, then by all means, they can change their tactics to allow for that. Don't change the game rules to allow for them to gain the benefits of blocking out melee opponents while still allowing ranged PCs free reign. IMO, that's usually part of the balance of ranged (I can do damage to you, while you can't do damage to me) attacks in the first place.

[Jakinbandw]

That seems odd to me.

Now, I don't know how it actually functions or what the rules / setting are like, but that seems to defeat the whole purpose of ranged attacks.

Likewise, I am getting images of cowboys having a showdown and high noon and neither one of them being able to touch one another, or a dragon strafing a village and the townsfolk just shrugging and going about their business. It also means that a lone ranged character is in really dire straights.

It really depends what you think the purpose of ranged attacks is. For most players I've seen it's either a thematic choice for their character, or a defense mechanism. Does it still work as a defense mechanism? Only if they are fighting foes much weaker then them, or they have an ally willing to go into melee. Does it work thematically? Absolutely! They aren't punished for their choice, and can even enter into melee if they want without penalty. The only downside is that going ranged minorly lowers their damage potential, but even then, there isn't anything stopping them from having a backup melee weapon.

So in a group they get the same benefit as normal, while solo in a white room, they are very slightly weaker in melee. I don't feel that my system invalidates them at all.

As to your second concern, while I won't go over the rules too much, trust me, dules happen just fine, as does a dragon's ability to toast a town. I'd argue that dragon's in my system are far deadlier to towns and cities in my system than they are in dnd. Basically, all characters have a kill threshold that if an attack rolls higher than, they are defeated, and they can't protect against it. Civilians have an incredibly low threshold, so a dragon can't fail to kill all the villagers within range of their attack. PCs are special and their threshold is infinitely high, though this is easy to undo if the party wants to play something more OSR.

Yeah. I'm going to agree with Talakeal here. That would suggest that two lines of archers facing eachother on a battlefield and firing arrows at eachother will never actually hit anyone or ever get injured themeselves? Or yeah, a dragon can't actually breath fire on random people walking down a street?

As I said above, neither of these things happen for reasons that aren't really too important here.

I get the concept from a very "video gamey" point of view. Melee folks engage, and this alllows the missile folks to target the same targets. And it does allow for a party synergy and "gang up on targets" kind of thing. But that's incredibly non-realistic.

A fighter in 5e can load and fire a crossbow 9 times in 6 seconds while moving 30 feet, opening a door, and possibly even casting a spell. In fantasy games with flying, fire breathing lizards and wish granting rings, I personally feel that trying to appeal to reality is rather silly. To me, it makes perfect sense that an archer can be skilled enough to shoot safely into melee. Especially when they are already superhuman in so many other ways.

But you really should have some penality for firing into melee.

Why? How does it make the game more fun? How does it allow a character that wants to play Robin Hood better? I'm really curious here, because to me, I don't see any good reason for it, other than to make characters waste feats on removing that penalty, at which point it's just a pointless feat tax that everyone hates.

Don't change the game rules to allow for them to gain the benefits of blocking out melee opponents while still allowing ranged PCs free reign. IMO, that's usually part of the balance of ranged (I can do damage to you, while you can't do damage to me) attacks in the first place.

I think you're missing that neatest interaction here. Ranged characters can't block out melee characters unless they have an allied melee character engaged with them. That means that if they are using range against a melee opponent, and that opponent can down the melee character, than that opponent is safe from the ranged characters. This makes it so that there is never a situation where one side of a battle is completely unable to react to their opponents, and only has the option of eating damage. There is always something a character can do to make the situation better for them.

This is important when my RPG system allows for some fairly absurd feats from it's characters. A mid level archer can attack a foe up to a mile away, ignoring all cover. If they are fighting something without super speed, that would normally be an automatic victory (I've seen it before in the OSR game Godbound).

That said, having played with these rules at low levels (equivalent to a level 2-4 5e character) I find I'm having more fun with how battles play out then I did in 5e. And really, I write and play games for fun.

[Quertus]

Out of curiosity, you say "at least" equal.

That's interesting to me, as it implies that it is ok if the fireball guy is better than the archer, but not if the archer is better than the fireball guy. Why is that?




I agree that it is the most common, but its also the least punishing. The difference between a marksman taking -4 to hit for shooting into melee and a swordsman having to stand around with a thumb up her bum because the dragon refuses to land is huge.



One could throw simulation to the wind and ignore penalties, but doesn't that feel bad for the melee characters? The ranged guys can run around the board hitting whomever they like wherever they like whenever they like, while the sword guy is still limited to the guys he can physically reach.


I will admit that they are actually doing surprisingly well for their party composition. They have little to no synergy, and the two big tanky guys backed up by two small shooty guys is an exceptionally poor group composition for a dungeon crawl. And of course you have one player deliberately anti-optimizing trying to make the weakest character she can.

That doesn’t answer the question of what the system wants then to do, and ignores / belittles / need a word how this makes them feel.

Also, comparing yourself to others is a recipe for feeling bad.

Yes, as a game designer, you have to compare character design choices. But since you had to ask about the obvious “The guy with limited spell slots should do at least as well as the archer with (perhaps incorrectly) presumed functionally unlimited ammo”, I reiterate my call for in play DPS stats from the current party.

As far as “won’t that feel bad for melee?”, well, to take a page from your book, and balance Power, versatility, and endurance. In this example, make melee more versatile, able to trip / disarm / feint / debuff more easily than Ranged, giving Ranged attacks penalties to those more versatile suite of options that don’t apply to their male counterparts. Ranged is versatile on targets, melee is versatile on effects. For example.

Different, but equal. And both feel good.

As for the melee combatant who feels bad when the dragon didn’t land… I mean, yeah, they should feel bad. My training says that the Fighter who doesn’t carry a bow or one-shot rocket launcher for just such an occasion, and who doesn’t have a means of flight or even take cover, is an idiot who deserves to feel bad about themselves.

Whereas the archer or blaster who is helping keep things off their tank is doing their job, and should feel good about themselves.

Thus my question of, “why, what does your system want them to do?”.

A -4 penalty is huge. Ouch. I can see why any ranged character would be frustrated. For my own system, I actually reversed this whole mess to great effect. Unless a character has an opponent in melee with them, then they can completely negate any ranged action targeting them (more complex then this, but it's the basic idea). Suddenly the melee fighter facing the dragon isn't suffering because he can't fly, instead he is safe until the dragon lands and actually engages them in melee combat. Archers now rely on big tanky bois up front to allow their attacks to work, and the entire party suddenly starts to function more as a cohesive unit.

And it even makes sense. You can dodge out of the way of arrows/hide behind a giant shield unless you have someone in your face distracting you.

That’s a really cool concept. If I have no reason not to, of course I can take cover and negate ranged attacks. It actually matches my experiences better than giving a penalty to ranged attacks for firing into melee, tbh. Kudos!

Sure, it only makes sense is there’s appropriate cover (including things like tower shields), but I like the “by default, characters are assumed to be competent, and take cover” mentality. That’s a great example of a “feel good” rule.

[MetroAlien]

"magic / martial" is inherently easier to balance than "ranged / melee"
looking at the grossest oversimplification, the "magic / martial" duality exists only in flavour.
Ideally, in the scope of combat, they should be able to achieve similar goals with similar efficiency. It's just up to players' preference.

the "range / melee" duality is weird, because it's so obviously and inescapably one-sided in reality.
Ranged is just better.
Not only does it do more damage than melee IRL, but can actually achieve a similar rate of attack speed.
And it's, well, at range!

Yes, firing into a melee scuffle is risky.
But does your encounter design take into account that archers are trained to hit targets 4~5 times as far away as typical areas of encounter reach in D&D?
Or that good bows had a decent chance to outright pierce armour (thus ignoring enemy armour's AC value)?
Or that one good hit will cripple you for the rest of combat, if not the rest of your life, and that's on the already low chance it wasn't a 1-shot-kill. (admittedly, this also applies to melee)
I never see anyone argue for that particular realism...

Therefore, imho, it's a bit counterproductive to try and insert too much realism into balancing the two.
We're already operating under the unrealistic , but fun, assumption that the orcs didn't stick Boromir full of arrows before he even had a chance to reach them.


That said, I don't necessarily think being unable to shoot into melee is such a debilitating drawback.
Maybe magic has lower range, but more options to hit into melee.
Then it will become the archers' job to take out enemy magic users.
As long as enemy groups have a strong rear line-up, archers will have plenty to do.

Going on a tangent, I always used to think that Runescape had rock-paper-scissors combat:
Fighters are strong against archers, because armour blocks arrows
BUT archers are strong against mages, because mages have no protection from arrows
BUT mages are strong against fighters, because armour doesn't block magic!

[Pauly]

A -4 penalty is huge. Ouch. I can see why any ranged character would be frustrated. For my own system, I actually reversed this whole mess to great effect. Unless a character has an opponent in melee with them, then they can completely negate any ranged action targeting them (more complex then this, but it's the basic idea). Suddenly the melee fighter facing the dragon isn't suffering because he can't fly, instead he is safe until the dragon lands and actually engages them in melee combat. Archers now rely on big tanky bois up front to allow their attacks to work, and the entire party suddenly starts to function more as a cohesive unit.

And it even makes sense. You can dodge out of the way of arrows/hide behind a giant shield unless you have someone in your face distracting you.

I like this approach very much. It does make some assumptions, but I think reasonable assumptions, for the type of skirmishes that fantasy RPGs depict.

Sometimes it is the counter-intuitive or counter-standard expectations approach that gets best results. A simple examp,e is that as characters get more experienced that their defence should level up faster than their offense. This has been shown to ge true in analysis of combat casualties and sports combat such as boxing, HEMA or BJJ. A very simplified version is going from untrained to trained improves your offense. Going from trained to veteran improves your defense. Going from veteran to elite improves both. But Every RPG I’ve ever read says as you gain XP it is primarily your offense that improved.

[Dasick]

"magic / martial" is inherently easier to balance than "ranged / melee"
looking at the grossest oversimplification, the "magic / martial" duality exists only in flavour.
Ideally, in the scope of combat, they should be able to achieve similar goals with similar efficiency. It's just up to players' preference.

I honestly disagree quite hard, but also agree.

I'm very much a "tactical wargame" enjoyer, so for me magic should obviously be different from martial skills. AoE focused, debuffs, summons, etc. Imo if a magical equivalent of a bow or a gun exists it's bad design.

HOWEVER many people into RPGs don't really like the tactical wargaming experience, which might be what OP's issue boils down to. A lot of people playing RPGs just want different flavours of the same thing. How much one wants to cater to one or the other is a matter of design philosophy, which I think HoD is meant to be more tactical in it's approach?

the "range / melee" duality is weird, because it's so obviously and inescapably one-sided in reality.
Ranged is just better.

None of this is true.

Not only does it do more damage than melee IRL, but can actually achieve a similar rate of attack speed.

According to statistics, you're more likely to survive being shot with a pistol than the equivalent amount of knife stab wounds.

Melee damage IRL is absolutely brutal. A single bad (or good I suppose) fist punch can kill a person, and routinely does in drunk/street fights. "Clerics use maces cause they dont draw blood" LMFAO

And it's, well, at range!

Yes, firing into a melee scuffle is risky.
But does your encounter design take into account that archers are trained to hit targets 4~5 times as far away as typical areas of encounter reach in D&D?

The corollary to "dont bring a knife to a gunfight" is "dont bring a gun to a knifefight".

Dungeon crawls are all "knifefight" territory. Which might be the issue here actually.

The last recorded successful melee charge was during Iraq war, ie, this century. British soldiers (highlanders to be specific) did a bit of the ol' bayonet charge. Before that, I think it was Falkalands, where again it was massively successful.

Yeah, guns and bows reach far. This is a moot point. There's a reason why warfare was dominated by melee shock troops and shock cavalry with few exceptions, and up until 19th century, soldiers were trained to use bayonets as much as they shot. Battlefield conditions and tactical maneuvering frequently create situations where its a massive knifefight.

Or that good bows had a decent chance to outright pierce armour (thus ignoring enemy armour's AC value)?

In reconstructor tests, arrows don't penetrate decent quality period armour such as plate or maile when its made to period specifications. Bodkin arrowheads were still used but idk if it was for lower quality armour, or for easier hits on unarmoured parts, or if just getting hit with a pointy thing from a massive warbow is still going to take the wind out of you even if it never penetrates the metal.

Plus you know

Shields.

Or that one good hit will cripple you for the rest of combat, if not the rest of your life, and that's on the already low chance it wasn't a 1-shot-kill. (admittedly, this also applies to melee)
I never see anyone argue for that particular realism...

There's a funny story about the Colt 1911 handgun. The story goes that it was developed with a slightly larger ammo caliber (which according to FBI studies, doesn't actually have any real stopping power and the handgun with smaller caliber with more per weight ammo is better in their opinin) because United States was having a lot of issues with locals in the Phillipines. What they would do is, take a sword, place tourniquets on their limbs, drive themselves into a frenzy and go charge a column of US troops. The guy would be "lethally wounded" within seconds of doing that and poked full of holes. Being lethally wounded isn't the same as being killed dead in your tracks as they show in games and movies though. What a gun/arrow does is it make a hole through which blood leaks out. Which still gives a lethally wounded person a minute or so to lethally wound a dozen or so people.

Therefore, imho, it's a bit counterproductive to try and insert too much realism into balancing the two.
We're already operating under the unrealistic , but fun, assumption that the orcs didn't stick Boromir full of arrows before he even had a chance to reach them.

That movie was just a terrible case of giving plot armour to hero units


Edit:

to go back to OP

I think it seems like there's a couple of core issues here that don't really connect to balance of "blaster wizards" but are part of the system design as a whole

The description makes it seem like it's a brutal, realistic, gritty kind of system.

DnD is not that, DnD is the opposite of that. A lot of things that DnD balances around, for example, dungeon crawls, make no sense if you think of it in realistic terms. Dungeon crawls are staple of RPGs, and yet the idea just falls apart under scrutiny, as many webcomics have pointed out in excruciating detail.

On one hand, your system is leveraging 3.5 rules and mechanics which is good cause it helps people learn the system. On the other hand, it creates expectations about how the game will play, similar to 3.5 DnD. Which, it seems like your system is the opposite of it in design philosophy.

It sounds based on what you say that your party is just incredibly poorly optimized because they expected something similar to DnD, and also they are doing a dungeon crawl which, in realistic terms, a ranged character has no business being in tactically speaking.

I like classless system because of the freedom they offer, but they also create a guiderail for the players to understand their roles in the party and how the game plays. I feel like a lot of the issues you're talking about are a matter of communication, or flipping the narrative. Sort of how for example WoW introduced the XP gain loss mechanic at first, everyone hated it, then they replaced it with "rested" XP gain increase, and everyone loved it, but the numbers were basically the same.

And also dungeon crawls in your system should probably be seriously reworked/reconsidered or removed in principle. Either that, or you need to figure out a way for the melee and ranged characters to have synergy when fighting together in a tactical manner.

Extra edit:

Possible solutions

Two points

When people are engaged in melee they rarely stay engaged for long. They exchange blows and then back out at 'safe-ish' distance because its mentally and physically taxing to stay in engagement for long. So you can create a system where after a round of combat, melee characters have to pass a test to stay fighting, otherwise they move back to just outside the combat range (whoever scores higher can keep pushing the opponent naturally)

Second point is, most shots fired miss. But they still are important because they provide "suppression". Psychologically, being shot at is really scary.
Imo its scarier to be shot at with magic than regular weapons especially if magic is rare. So maybe missed shots or missed/failed spells should require a roll, and "break up" melee frequently cause they cause both combatants to flee reflexively. One can balance the spells being scarier for suppression by making spellcasters scarier to helpful NPCs.

[Talakeal]

A fighter in 5e can load and fire a crossbow 9 times in 6 seconds while moving 30 feet, opening a door, and possibly even casting a spell. In fantasy games with flying, fire breathing lizards and wish granting rings, I personally feel that trying to appeal to reality is rather silly. To me, it makes perfect sense that an archer can be skilled enough to shoot safely into melee. Especially when they are already superhuman in so many other ways.

1: This is a classic example of the "but dragons" fallacy. I only bring it up because a few months ago we had a thread where people were claiming to have never seen it used in this manner.
2: I think it is more realistic and mathematically elegant to simply have a highly skilled guy have a higher accuracy modifier rather than ignoring penalties.
3: My system isn't D&D, and it assumes PCs are human rather than the quasi superheroes you get in modern D&D.

As far as “won’t that feel bad for melee?”, well, to take a page from your book, and balance Power, versatility, and endurance. In this example, make melee more versatile, able to trip / disarm / feint / debuff more easily than Ranged, giving Ranged attacks penalties to those more versatile suite of options that don’t apply to their male counterparts. Ranged is versatile on targets, melee is versatile on effects. For example.

Different, but equal. And both feel good.

Sure, you could go this way. But IMO it feels less realistic and more forced.

Also, I doubt ranged characters would feel good, I can guarantee they would be complaining about lack of ranged maneuvers.

Yes, as a game designer, you have to compare character design choices. But since you had to ask about the obvious “The guy with limited spell slots should do at least as well as the archer with (perhaps incorrectly) presumed functionally unlimited ammo”, I reiterate my call for in play DPS stats from the current party.

In the current party the caster has more ammo than the marksman.

I can try and get you stats, although I need to wrangle down character sheets, this group is pretty weird about not letting me see them. But it really depends on what they are attacking and in what circumstances. And none of them are really built for damage, they are all more or less troll characters and I imagine a single character in a more optimized party could out damage the lot of them.

Why? How does it make the game more fun? How does it allow a character that wants to play Robin Hood better? I'm really curious here, because to me, I don't see any good reason for it, other than to make characters waste feats on removing that penalty, at which point it's just a pointless feat tax that everyone hates.

Ranged weapons can shoot at anyone from anywhere. Melee weapons are limited to people right next to you.

Barring some other factor, ranged is just better, which makes the melee characters feel bad.

Thus, everyone will be playing ranged characters, which is less fun because it is more homogenous and tactical position becomes an afterthought.\

As for the melee combatant who feels bad when the dragon didn’t land… I mean, yeah, they should feel bad. My training says that the Fighter who doesn’t carry a bow or one-shot rocket launcher for just such an occasion, and who doesn’t have a means of flight or even take cover, is an idiot who deserves to feel bad about themselves.

Why the double standard?

Why is the melee guy expected to have a backup ranged weapon, but the marksman not expected to have a backup melee weapon?

That’s a really cool concept. If I have no reason not to, of course I can take cover and negate ranged attacks. It actually matches my experiences better than giving a penalty to ranged attacks for firing into melee, tbh. Kudos!

Sure, it only makes sense is there’s appropriate cover (including things like tower shields), but I like the “by default, characters are assumed to be competent, and take cover” mentality. That’s a great example of a “feel good” rule.

You really think archers being wholly helpless without a melee guy to help them and then being limited to targeting what that melee guy is fighting feels good?

That's way more punitive and limiting than any of the accuracy penalties in my system.

Whereas the archer or blaster who is helping keep things off their tank is doing their job, and should feel good about themselves.

Very curious about what you actually mean by this, as that is directly opposite of my experiance.

Thus my question of, “why, what does your system want them to do?”.

Deal front loaded damage before the sides have clinched.

Move to a position with clear line of fire and then target enemy archers / casters / leaders / artillery / support.

If those don't exist, join in the melee, preferably with a spear, sawed off gun, or a bayonet.

If you don't have a melee weapon, are too delicate for melee, or are so good with your shooting that you are still better with accuracy penalties than you would be switching to a melee weapon:

If you have a bow and are outdoors, switch to a reckless stance, aim, and volley over your allies heads.
If you have a grenade and are indoors, switch to a reckless stance, aim, and volley over your allies heads.
If you have a rifle, aim, use a scope, deploy a bipod if you have one and go prone, switch to a reckless stance, and fire into the melee.
If you have a pistol, aim, switch to a reckless stance, and then strafe the combat, preferably with a martial technique.

If you are a caster, stop blasting and either buff your allies or debuff your opponents, or switch to a blasting spell which doesn't roll to hit.

[Dasick]

I can try and get you stats, although I need to wrangle down character sheets, this group is pretty weird about not letting me see them. But it really depends on what they are attacking and in what circumstances. And none of them are really built for damage, they are all more or less troll characters and I imagine a single character in a more optimized party could out damage the lot of them.

Seems kinda moot to be talking about balance when their characters are so far from being optimized

The real question is *why* they're so poorly optimized.

If they're just troll characters to troll you or goof around, it's one thing. You can't expect a system to be "balanced" if people deliberately make poor choices.

If they're troll characters because they didnt know how to build better, it's a different issue

Deal front loaded damage before the sides have clinched.

Move to a position with clear line of fire and then target enemy archers / casters / leaders / artillery / support.

If those don't exist, join in the melee, preferably with a spear, sawed off gun, or a bayonet.

If you don't have a melee weapon, are too delicate for melee, or are so good with your shooting that you are still better with accuracy penalties than you would be switching to a melee weapon:

If you have a bow and are outdoors, switch to a reckless stance, aim, and volley over your allies heads.
If you have a grenade and are indoors, switch to a reckless stance, aim, and volley over your allies heads.
If you have a rifle, aim, use a scope, deploy a bipod if you have one and go prone, switch to a reckless stance, and fire into the melee.
If you have a pistol, aim, switch to a reckless stance, and then strafe the combat, preferably with a martial technique.

If you are a caster, stop blasting and either buff your allies or debuff your opponents, or switch to a blasting spell which doesn't roll to hit.

Historically speaking, that's what archers/skirmishers were supposed to do in field engagements more or less. Added goal of disrupting enemy formations and maneuvering.

It also seems like in your system, characters are meant to have both melee and ranged skills (and keeping a few grenades as well). Sort of how Vermintide / Darktide works if you played those. It might make sense to incentivize that somehow, or make it clearer, or even to buff unskilled use of these weapons in certain tactical situations (for example, the squishy wizard getting really good rolls with 0 skill investment if she is flanking an opponent one of the fighters is already engaging in, or buffing a purely defensive posture to a point where she can hold off an enemy meleer rushing her while the fighters peel - and vice versa, blasting someone in the face with a sawed off shotgun should be a cakewalk for pretty much everyone )