Can we build the math from the ground up? (And does Vancian help or hurt that?)

[NigelWalmsley]

because RPG combat is fairly easily reducible to math.

An RPG is math. At least, the product you're paying for is. Imagination and roleplaying are certainly things that matter, and you could make a reasonable argument that they are more important to people's enjoyment than the math, but the product you are actually getting when you buy D&D or Shadowrun or whatever is a bunch of math. Plus sometimes some world-building, but that's never been D&D's strong suit.

4E Skill Challenges were a mess.

Skill Challenges are actually fairly easy to fix. You just have them last a fixed number of "rounds", rather than until a certain number of failures are reached. Moreover, I don't see how a thing that is literally just an exercise in iterative probability could possibly not be math enough to be effectively balanced mathematically.

For most players, the game is fundamentally about killing monsters and taking their loot. Diversions like learning about the monsters and manipulating NPCs to help you get better gear or information for killing monsters (most social encounters) and getting to the monsters (traveling, stealthing, trapmonkeying) are immersion-building appetizers, not as important as the main course.

Sure, I buy that. But that's not really an argument that we need to do any particular thing with the non-combat parts of the game so much as an argument that it doesn't matter what we do with the non-combat parts of the game.

[johnbragg]

An RPG is math. At least, the product you're paying for is. Imagination and roleplaying are certainly things that matter, and you could make a reasonable argument that they are more important to people's enjoyment than the math, but the product you are actually getting when you buy D&D or Shadowrun or whatever is a bunch of math.

Yes. The difference between an LARP and kids running around saying "bang bang I got you" "no you missed" is the math. The combat math has been developed, refined, redesigned, tested, etc over 40 years.

The noncombat math for simple DC checks was pretty much developed for 3E. It was an early release product, with problems that various patches (e6) tried to patch, 5E either fixed or kludged over, depending on your taste.

Skill Challenges are actually fairly easy to fix. You just have them last a fixed number of "rounds", rather than until a certain number of failures are reached. Moreover, I don't see how a thing that is literally just an exercise in iterative probability could possibly not be math enough to be effectively balanced mathematically.

4E was all about mathematical balance. And 4E tried a bunch of different Skill Challenge systems, and I don't know that any of them won widespread support.

I don't know how 4E Skill Challenges worked, aside from the idea that "everybody rolls". One big question is--exactly how does the math correspond to the fiction? The party is stealthing down the corridor, what exactly does it look and sound like when Sir Clanky passes the stealth check?

(It helps a lot of you start with a magic-soaked universe, and treat stealth as not being *noticed* instead of not being seen. The guard maybe SAW Sir Clanky, but immediately forgot because Clanky was under the rogue's Masquerade of Insignificance)

Sure, I buy that. But that's not really an argument that we need to do any particular thing with the non-combat parts of the game so much as an argument that it doesn't matter what we do with the non-combat parts of the game.

That takes it a little bit too far. Combat is the core of the game, but the noncombat has to be good enough to support the parts of the game between combats.

The way you phrase it, Toyota doesn't have to worry about whether the AC works, or whether there's enough trunk space in the car, as long as the engine is okay. That's not how it works.

EDIT: Going back to my main course / appetizer analogy, you probably wouldn't go back to a restaurant that had crappy appetizers or no appetizers, even if the main course was pretty good.

[Pex]

Frankly, I'm somewhat convinced the game simply shouldn't be giving out multiple attacks, as a general rule. Resolving iterative and secondary attacks is generally more trouble than it's worth.

Preference, not definitive. There is aesthetic fun value in attacking more than once by the physical action of rolling and the emotional concept of if you miss the first attack you get another chance and coolness of if you hit you get to hit again. There is also the sense of increasing power as you level where you start with one attack but then get more at higher levels. Getting something new or more has more impact than increasing numbers, though increasing numbers is of value. Resolving the multiple attacks is about the game math and mechanics. 3E giving you penalties to hit and can't have any if you move more than 5 feet make it less fun/more tedious than 5E's way of never having a penalty and you can move however much you want.

[Vahnavoi]

I don't get it. 5e is, IMO, already about 12 levels too long for the amount of progression provided. You can certainly cram a zero to god progression into 20 levels. That might actually make individual levels feel significant again.

Well lets get to the bottom of why you "don't get it". Answer the following questions:

1) in games you've played, how often do your characters level up in real time? Ie., how many game hours between levels?

2) in games you've played, how often do your characters level up in game time? Ie., how many ingame days, weeks or years per level?

3) in games you've played, what is the most common operative unit of time? Ie., is it the ingame round (6 seconds), turn (10 minutes), day etc.? How much real time passes for unit of operative game time?

4) how do you conceptualize your characters? To give three examples:

a) do you start with a high concept, like "jolly alcoholic blind swordsman", and then try to find the mechanics that fit?

b) do you procedurally generate your characters, giving the system a random seed (ability score rolls) and then let it spit out the details?

c) mechanics first, where you put together a statblock that's competitive and interesting for you to play as a player, and then play as basically yourself or let the concept come to you later?

d) do you let your GM script your characters for you and then play what you're given?

5) rank your interest in following areas of the game on a scale from 1 ("I heavily dislike this" ) through 3 ("I can take it or leave it") to 5 ("I greatly like this" ) : exploration of the game setting (finding new people and places), tactical level challenges (round-by-round combat), strategic and logistical level challenges (planning travel routes, managing supplies by day, week or month, domain management etc.), interaction with NPCs (dialogue and drama), interaction with environment (building things within the game etc.), creation and enjoyment of narrative (following a "story" or "plot" ).

[Quertus]

Huh. Right. Playground seems to limit the number of posts you can quote at once. Senility willing, I'll have to go back and get the rest in another post.

What I'd do is depressingly simple: I'd make characters (casters, but everyone else too) specialise.

Bam. You make a 'Destruction' mage, you get the big badaboom aoe spells - but you don't get anything else. You pick a 'Demonologist' mage, you get all the fancy summons - but you don't get anything else.

If you play a 'Berserker' you get a great big 2-hander and possibly the highest damage in the game - but you get nothing else. Pick a 'Knight' you get sword-and-board, and the ability to tank forever - but you don't get anything else.

The problem is versatility. The solution is specialisation.

I find it really hard to sell, "the Fighter can't play the game, therefore nobody else should be able to play the game, either".

When the mind mage, crit-fishing assassin, and raging barbarian are all sidelined because, oh look, incorporeal undead, that's not a fun game.

Granted, ShadowRun seems to run off "you cannot participate here" logic, so it's doable… I just consider "everyone gets to participate" to be a better paradigm, especially for D&D.

So, perhaps my initial question should have been, is it possible to arrange class abilities such that a) characters of the same level all get to participate in (most) level-appropriate challenges (which includes "and no one class solos a large number of these", because otherwise the other classes wouldn't really be participating, now would they) in roughly equal amounts; b) while maintaining distinct classes?

Oh, and obviously 2-dimensional characters would be boring. So maybe the 'Berserker' has his 2-hander, and some sort of nice gimmick in combat (in my games, Rage can break Charm and Hold effects, and so on), and then on top he gets a nice pallette of out-of-combat abilities. Maybe out-of-combat abilities are free-for-all, so any character can be charming, or diplomatic, or a juggler, or a musician.

I do like the idea of separating in combat and out of combat abilities. In combat, he's a raging Barbarian who crushes foes with his mighty golf cart of weaponry; out of combat, he casts utility spells. In combat, he wins people over to his side with his charming smile; out of combat, he's a Sage who knows something about everything. In combat, he reads minds to give tactical advantages to the group; out of combat, he's a trap-disarming Scout with unfailing stamina.

Wut? Let me google up the meme of the car with the engine on fire.
"Well that's your problem right there."

If the player really just wants to play a blaster-caster, then that's a corner case I can handle. Use a half-caster gish chassis, like a weapon-based warlock or a Durkon cleric, let them cast "Bigass Anime Sword" on their weapon and go smashing doodz. The math works out the same, except for some action economy effects.

That… doesn't match anyone I've ever talked to about's concept of a Pyromancer / other combat damage spellslinger.

And "5 people buff the Fighter 1st turn" should obviously be superior to "the Pyromancer buffs himself for 5 turns" in terms of how many swings one gets to make with those buffs. So balancing a self-buffing character is non-trivial (outside "day spells", that is).

But you want to strongly advise a player against building a character that, mechanically, can only do damage.

Tell that to the Fighter players.

Meh. I've met plenty of players who wanted their sheet to only contain "deals damage" buttons. As I've brought up in other threads, this is why it's important to have usable options at the "everyman", "equipment", "story", "campaign", "world", etc levels.

Hmmm… that probably didn't make sense. Let me try again. … actually, it's a big topic, and I don't see how to make it relevant to the topic beyond saying that Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, could have been replaced with a bag of flour for his net contribution for ~10 levels. And, importantly, that bag of flour exists at a different layer than "class features".

Point being, *if* that's a valid archetype for the game / system / world, then it should be a possible archetype / class / whatever.

But, back to your 1st paragraph… if the Fighter's contribution is "hit stuff", and the Pyromancer's contribution is "burn stuff", it is not unreasonable for them to redirect to be equals. It is unreasonable to expect the Pyromancer to be worse at dealing damage *unless* you give him something else.

However, when I created this thread, I was going on the premise that such characters were… undesirable. "Linear warriors" and all that. But, sure, I'm willing to include such characters, so long as they come equipped with warning labels of "you don't get too play the game if you take this class - choose at your own risk", and *everyone else* actually gets to play the game.

Take into account *how* they're contributing though. If Wally the Wizard casts Flaming Sword on Fred the Fighter's sword, and Fred does 15 damage and kills the bugbear, Wally's player feels like some of that damage is his. Which is good table play, in my opinion.

It can get dysfunctional. I really want to design the RPG where the optimal choices are for the muggles to spend their turns buffing the Wizards (shouting words of encouragement or "look out!", devising tactics, etc), spend their XP buffing the party, etc. Oh, and give the Wizard the better chassis, and at-will spells.

I think that, unless the game is seriously crimped to only-combat scenarios, it's almost inevitable that spellcasters will contribute more than non-spellcasters. Fred and Wally killed the orc, but they have to run to escape from the ogre. That's a situation that having some magic is a huge help--cast Create Pit or an illusion or mass Expeditious Retreat.

If the Fighter has "smash ground", "pull trick" and "carry party" buttons, who needs Wally?

It isn't hard to give the Fighter level-appropriate buttons to push.

"How do you balance the fact that casters are more useful out of combat than martials?" By having martials really shine in combat, personally.

Shine? Hmmm… I suppose I'm not opposed to that. If the adventure is just one big combat slog, though, then the combat classes are clearly unbalanced. Hmmm… "don't get to play the game" and "OP" from the same class, depending on the adventure? Bug, or feature?

Still, not what I had initially intended to focus on.

I'm not sure that's a fun way to balance. It would sound samey if everyone can do everything just in a different way. I could be wrong if the mechanics are significantly different. It's easier to see the point in high magic. The fighter doesn't need to be able to teleport just because the wizard can, no punching a hole in the multiverse. What he needs is to get something as awesome for him as the wizard likes teleporting when the wizard gets it, and the wizard cannot do that awesome thing too. What that awesome thing is is the conundrum, but I'm sure just bigger combat damage numbers is not it.

Hmmm… this is potentially the issue with my idea - "contribution" is ready in combat, but it's probably more difficult to have "contribution" for "get from 'A' to 'B' (quickly)" (and every other scenario) baked into (most) every class.

The issue is precisely in not having high-level skill applications that would be worthwhile. As in, a bad equivalent of Fly is a DC120 (IIRC) Balance check. One of those is a 3rd level spell. The other requires hyper-optimization towards to be achievable even at level 20. That is because the game didn't think there should be a reasonable point where skills should be able to replicate magic at-will. That is a good design consideration. Personally, I think it's perfectly fine for skills to get at-will "magic" effects a few levels later. At-will Flight or something closely resembling it (jumps 50 feet high, standing on air until your next turn, etc.) at level 9 shouldn't break the game, you've had Flight for 4 levels now and for 2 levels it hasn't been in the highest spell slot anyway.

You know, I kinda like this. Wizards get, say, 1 of their highest level spells per day, several from the next level, and can use all the lower level spells at will. And follow this with the rest of the classes: anything two "tiers" below your level should be able to be trivialized at will.

[Ignimortis]

This is true, but I absolutely cannot understand how this is a problem with spells. Non-spells simply don't solve these problems at all. It's not that there's some pretty good strategic mobility option for Fighters that Teleport crowds out, it's that Fighters (and Warblades) get absolutely nothing. In this particular area, I cannot comprehend any workable solution that starts anywhere other than unprecedentedly large buffs to martials.

Yes, that is true. My issue is that not every class should even have a Teleport analogue. It should be easy enough to get a Teleport-user in the party, but not every single character should be able to access Teleport or something similar functionally from any class. Conversely, other abilities should be at least barred from some other classes. Perhaps a theoretical Warblade should be able to cut a hole in reality at higher levels, and have it function like Teleport. But in exchange, by picking Warblade, they forgo access to some other abilities - like summoning creatures or healing or invisibility/stealth-focused powers. And that should be true for any class - you have a reasonable amount of stuff you can do (some very well, some passably), and a reasonable amount of stuff you can't do at all. Then your teammates can pick up the slack by using their own talents.

So what? Size, as they say, matters not. How much of a level advantage would you need to pick a Dread Necromancer or a Beguiler over a Wizard? Two, maybe three at the high end. Having a thousand spells isn't ten times as good as having a hundred spells. Especially when you prepare spells and spend resources to learn them.

Having a thousand spells is a significant advantage, if you can pick any of them to learn. You can outright select the best things that you know would be useful. A Beguiler or a Dread Necromancer still has weak spots, even in their spell list. A Wizard can select enough spells from a spell list that contains enough powerful tools to confront most situations in the game at their best. Also, despite the "spending resources" claim, Wizards would still spend less gold to double their amount of spells known than any other arcane caster without Rainbow Servant cheese. It's just that Cleric and Druid have every single spell on their list that makes the Wizard's way of learning imperfect.

So can the Incarnate. So can the Binder. In fact, those classes can switch their abilities more easily than the Wizard can. So if this kind of flexibility is a problem, why aren't those classes busted? They're both substantially worse than the Sorcerer, and the Incarnate is in the bottom half of classes overall.

As I've noted before - because it's not just about being able to switch things up easily. It's also about power and variance of things that are being switched, and spells tend to be more powerful than vestiges or essentia investments. If Binder had an lot of vestiges that would provide effects on par with similar-level Wizard casting, Binders would be much more broken. As we already know, access to a single vestige that allows for summoning some creatures with their own abilities kicks Binder up a notch, because their arsenal expands majorly with powerful abilities.

Not necessarily. My solution is to go back to the challenges. You have to stop looking at it in terms of competing with Teleport. You have to start looking at it in terms of challenges. What problems should characters be able to solve? What problems should parties be able to solve? You won't get anywhere by looking at the Wizard and blindly modifying it. You can intuit the direction things should move, to a degree, but to make real progress you have to understand what kinds of challenges people are going to be facing, and what kinds of resources they should spend to overcome them.

This is how the game works in combat right now. A Wizard, a Warblade, a Rogue, and a Cleric are all able to make meaningful but distinct contributions to overcoming challenges like "a Fire Giant" or "a squard of Bearded Devils" or "two Gorgons". Those contributions will be larger or smaller in each of those encounters, but they will all always have something to do. That paradigm works. Why can't the rest of the game work like that?

Because combat is a very complicated series of checks compared to out-of-combat challenges. Most things that arise out of combat are basically binary - "can we do that? if yes, then do that", because they tend to get resolved with one (maybe two or three) skill rolls or some judicious spell application. One turn of combat involves more rolls than a whole social session will, even if you rely on skills and spells heavily there. Also, that's because combat has the most rules by far devoted to it, both in 3e and 5e - outside of spells, I suppose, or even over that.

And I'm not sure that the paradigm actually works, because three of the four classes you listed aren't specifically geared towards combat, and one (Warblade) of them is, but it's far from certain that the Warblade's contribution to combat will (at least almost) always be the greatest, despite the character being explicitly built as a combatant. And if you increase Warblade's contribution to combat as to make it definitely greatest, then two outcomes are possible - the Warblade or analogous class is necessary to succeed in combat, or combat's too easy with a Warblade around because the monsters are balanced to be beatable without a Warblade.

Well lets get to the bottom of why you "don't get it". Answer the following questions:

1) in games you've played, how often do your characters level up in real time? Ie., how many game hours between levels?

2) in games you've played, how often do your characters level up in game time? Ie., how many ingame days, weeks or years per level?

3) in games you've played, what is the most common operative unit of time? Ie., is it the ingame round (6 seconds), turn (10 minutes), day etc.? How much real time passes for unit of operative game time?

4) how do you conceptualize your characters? To give three examples:

a) do you start with a high concept, like "jolly alcoholic blind swordsman", and then try to find the mechanics that fit?

b) do you procedurally generate your characters, giving the system a random seed (ability score rolls) and then let it spit out the details?

c) mechanics first, where you put together a statblock that's competitive and interesting for you to play as a player, and then play as basically yourself or let the concept come to you later?

d) do you let your GM script your characters for you and then play what you're given?

5) rank your interest in following areas of the game on a scale from 1 ("I heavily dislike this" ) through 3 ("I can take it or leave it") to 5 ("I greatly like this" ) : exploration of the game setting (finding new people and places), tactical level challenges (round-by-round combat), strategic and logistical level challenges (planning travel routes, managing supplies by day, week or month, domain management etc.), interaction with NPCs (dialogue and drama), interaction with environment (building things within the game etc.), creation and enjoyment of narrative (following a "story" or "plot" ).

1) Depends on the DM, but mostly it's anywhere from once per week or two (especially at lower levels) to once per month. So on average, I'd say it's 3 weeks?
2) Also depends on the DM and the campaign. Sometimes it's been months or even years, with downtime and such, sometimes it's 1 to 7 in a few weeks.
3) I'm not sure. Rounds get tracked more often, I suppose? Days and such are only sometimes important, in downtime or timed plot sessions.
4) A mix of A and C. I start with a concept and then try to make that character mechanically interesting for me, as well as being able to contribute.
5) Exploration of the setting - 3
Tactical challenges - 5
Strategic challenges - 2, 1 for domain management in particular
Interaction with NPCs - 4
Interaction with the environment - 3.5, if that means finding your way around on a tactical level (like looking for clues and such), not sure how building anything isn't a strategic challenge
Narrative - 5

[Vahnavoi]

1) Depends on the DM, but mostly it's anywhere from once per week or two (especially at lower levels) to once per month. So on average, I'd say it's 3 weeks?

There's a reason why I specified game hours as unit for the first question. Be honest, you aren't playing 504 hours at every level - or if you are, it explains the difference in opinion, because your games are absolutely glacial in pace and you are spending too much time on playing them.

So, please clarify: three weeks means what? Three weekly session of about 4 hours, for a total of 12 hours?

[Ignimortis]

There's a reason why I specified game hours as unit for the first question. Be honest, you aren't playing 504 hours at every level - or if you are, it explains the difference in opinion, because your games are absolutely glacial in pace and you are spending too much time on playing them.

So, please clarify: three weeks means what? Three weekly session of about 4 hours, for a total of 12 hours?

Three weekly sessions of about 5-6 hours, I'd say. So about 15-20 hours per level on average.

[Satinavian]

I find it really hard to sell, "the Fighter can't play the game, therefore nobody else should be able to play the game, either".

When the mind mage, crit-fishing assassin, and raging barbarian are all sidelined because, oh look, incorporeal undead, that's not a fun game.

Granted, ShadowRun seems to run off "you cannot participate here" logic, so it's doableÂ… I just consider "everyone gets to participate" to be a better paradigm, especially for D&D.

So, perhaps my initial question should have been, is it possible to arrange class abilities such that a) characters of the same level all get to participate in (most) level-appropriate challenges (which includes "and no one class solos a large number of these", because otherwise the other classes wouldn't really be participating, now would they) in roughly equal amounts; b) while maintaining distinct classes?

It is easy to build hybrids in Shadowrun. No problem to put social skills on your street samurai or make your physical adept a streetdoc, even making your mage a decker is only 0.1 essence the most. And everyone can use to learn a weapon or be sneaky. I have never played in a SR group where everyone only can do one thing, just the opposite, a normal shadowrunner can do 2-3 things competently which leads to a wide array of potential group tactics.

But it costs. Karma, equippment, essence. If you go full versatility, you get to be jack of all trades, master of none. You can be good at several things, but not at all of them and even to be mediocre somewhere does cost.


And that is how a good balanced RPG should handle things. No character should be able to contribute everywhere. Otherwise you have to make every character being able to do everything which makes character differences fluff at best. Everytime your party gets a new PC, it should be better at doing some things but worse at doing other things than when another character was added.


So yes, the universalist wizard has to go. It doesn't necessarily mean that wizards only can do one thing. You can device a system, where a caster specialized in blasting of lv 10 could do blasting like lv 10, summoning like lv 8, knowledge skills like lv 6 most regular schools like and many regular nonmagic skills lv 4, magic he is bad at and some regular skills he is bad at like lv2. Of course you would have to make sure, that blasting is not super inferior to summoning. Or divination. Or anything he could take instead.

I do like the idea of separating in combat and out of combat abilities. In combat, he's a raging Barbarian who crushes foes with his mighty golf cart of weaponry; out of combat, he casts utility spells. In combat, he wins people over to his side with his charming smile; out of combat, he's a Sage who knows something about everything. In combat, he reads minds to give tactical advantages to the group; out of combat, he's a trap-disarming Scout with unfailing stamina.

The current D&D is still basically a tactical skirmish game. ut-of-combat abilities have horrible rules. If you want to change that, tear the current system completely down and build it anew.

[vasilidor]

ever consider the possibility that classes may be the problem? I have not read whole thread at this point, i just think that having character classes may be apart of the problem. what if we instead had it so that every character had skill levels, combat levels and magic levels as seperate things on their character sheet?

[Kyutaru]

The current D&D is still basically a tactical skirmish game. ut-of-combat abilities have horrible rules. If you want to change that, tear the current system completely down and build it anew.

It may just be the current D&D that is the problem then. With so much munchkin play in 3e and so much balance obsession in 5e, it has colored the modern player perspective to truly think D&D is a tactical skirmish game.

I think of "spin the wheel and see what you get" character generation and "balance isn't even a consideration" as emblematic of old school D&D. I feel like that's what D&D was all about once.

We once had meat grinders to run assorted characters through and focused on the fiction and crazy adventure stories it generated. D&D was the first Meme Generator and it did it just by being open to roleplay, interpretation, exploration, and creativity. It didn't even have ability checks in the sense we do now, not with exact mechanics for what they would do. A jump check was just the DM calling for a strength test if he felt like it and it varied across tables because everyone played it differently, they customized D&D for them and their table. It's become more uniform in experience at the expense of the imagination because there's a specific way you're expected to play when the rules are clear on a subject and RAW arguments result in players getting upset if you don't adhere to them. When there was no RAW, no basis in the rules restricting your decisions, you were free to do anything and go anywhere with them. It made for a better experience and less of these balance concerns because each class had a unique role that could not be replicated by the others. Modern D&D has tons of class overlap in abilities as well as feats and customization options that let you add on perks to cover natural weaknesses that were intended for balance. It creates the illusion of balance when there are still countless character builds that will never work while some are distinctly better than others. It worked better when the game told you straight up that balance is never a consideration and your DM decided how easy or how brutal the game would be.

[Mechalich]

ever consider the possibility that classes may be the problem? I have not read whole thread at this point, i just think that having character classes may be apart of the problem. what if we instead had it so that every character had skill levels, combat levels and magic levels as seperate things on their character sheet?

Classes vs. classless is mostly a matter of moving the balance problems around. Ultimately balance issues are mostly related to specific abilities, or ability combinations, that turn out to be extremely overpowered or underpowered. Classes are simply a framework that inherently provides a character concept with a set of abilities grouped together.

In some ways classless games can actually be even more unbalanced than class-based ones, because they are vulnerable to the 'one-true build' scenario where some ability combo turns out to be just flat out better than any other as a consequence of some design issue like grouping too many traits on one specific stat or something or providing better items based around one ability compared to all others. In oWoD VtM, for example, there were three principle 'combat disciplines,' Celerity, Fortitude, and Potence, but Celerity was flatly better than the others and if you wanted to be a combat monster you focused on that one and ignored the other two (and for this reason the artsy Toreador were actually better fighters than several supposedly 'combat oriented' clans).

[Kyutaru]

In some ways classless games can actually be even more unbalanced than class-based ones, because they are vulnerable to the 'one-true build' scenario where some ability combo turns out to be just flat out better than any other as a consequence of some design issue like grouping too many traits on one specific stat or something or providing better items based around one ability compared to all others.

Class-based games fall into the same trap as D&D even shows. There are hordes of Warlocks who take Paladin for the synergy. It reaches a point where there is no longer a Warlock class, there is the Walladin. What rises is archetypes instead of classes, as though the classes themselves were just incomplete building blocks similar to classless systems, a reconfigured set of abilities bundled into a choice package. Slightly complex character building with groups of abilities that refer to themselves as classes is still effectively the character generation of a classless system with a distinct lie about its nature. I could rename all the D&D classes into ability trees like something out of Elder Scrolls Skyrim/Oblivion and it wouldn't change their function, only their flavor. Choose a few abilities from the Occult tree and a few perks from the Holy tree and you have yourself your Walladin. The more cross-class or classless options exist in character generation and growth the less of a class-based game it becomes.

[johnbragg]

Wut? Let me google up the meme of the car with the engine on fire.
"Well that's your problem right there."

If the player really just wants to play a blaster-caster, then that's a corner case I can handle. Use a half-caster gish chassis, like a weapon-based warlock or a Durkon cleric, let them cast "Bigass Anime Sword" on their weapon and go smashing doodz. The math works out the same, except for some action economy effects.

That… doesn't match anyone I've ever talked to about's concept of a Pyromancer / other combat damage spellslinger.

Well, what I described was how a Warlock or baby-CoDzilla gets build. If the player is committed to a full-caster blaster-caster and not an eldritch-blast / eldritch-glaive warlock then they're going to be doing less than the other party members.

At 1st level, where my math is easiest to describe:
Blaster-caster does d6 damage plus a rider effect (Dual save mechanic).
Sword Guy does d8 or d10 or d12 damage, plus strength bonus.
Buffy The Buffbot's buffs are designed to boost sword guy--Bless boosts attack bonus not save DC, Elemental Weapon boosts weapon damage, Least Haste basically trades Buffy's action for an extra action by Sword Guy or Blaster-Caster.

And you know, if Perry the Pyromaniac's player is focused on doing damage, and is okay with being out-damaged by Sword Guy and REALLY out-damaged by Buffy-Boosted Sword Guy, then I guess that's fine.

Then when you get to fireball level, Perry is casting Fireball for 6d6 save for half, which clears away some mooks and hits everything in the fireball. Meanwhile Buffy is casting True Haste on the entire party for the rest of the fight. And Sword Guy is getting two attacks a round, three with Haste.

But you want to strongly advise a player against building a character that, mechanically, can only do damage.

Tell that to the Fighter players.

Meh. I've met plenty of players who wanted their sheet to only contain "deals damage" buttons. As I've brought up in other threads, this is why it's important to have usable options at the "everyman", "equipment", "story", "campaign", "world", etc levels.

This is true. But it's a lot easier to use a paragraph or a page in the Players' Handbook to nudge casters in the direction of doing interesting things besides "reduce target's HP." Heck, just a suggestion in the class text that a starting character with 4 spells take one combat cantrip, one non-combat cantrip, one first-level combat spell and one non-combat first-level spell. (And have low-level spells like Create Pit and Lesser Wall of Fire and Least Haste that have pretty obvious uses).

And "5 people buff the Fighter 1st turn" should obviously be superior to "the Pyromancer buffs himself for 5 turns" in terms of how many swings one gets to make with those buffs. So balancing a self-buffing character is non-trivial (outside "day spells", that is).

True. But I tend to believe that 3rd edition forum overdid the reliance on JaronK's Tier system and fetishized "Tier 3", and WOTC did the same think over-balancing 4th edition. If the Core 3rd edition classes had topped out at tier 2 and bottomed out at tier 4, we'd never have spent so much time arguing about balance.

Sword Guy should just be better than Pyromancer at "doing lots of HP damage". Pyromancer is definitely better at "setting things on fire." But it's in the nature of a fantasy adventure RPG that "doing lots of HP damage" is useful in many more situations than "setting things on fire."

The full-caster insisting on only being a Pyromancer is like Sword Guy's player insisting that he or she use a dagger at all times. That's a roleplaying choice that sacrifices effectiveness in the adventure.

(I solve most of this by having thematic casters get some access to the "greatest hits" spell list. Half of their spells known have to be thematic, the other half can be the optimum choices)

But, back to your 1st paragraph… if the Fighter's contribution is "hit stuff", and the Pyromancer's contribution is "burn stuff", it is not unreasonable for them to redirect to be equals. It is unreasonable to expect the Pyromancer to be worse at dealing damage *unless* you give him something else.

Well, if he's a full caster in my work-in-progress system, he can use half his Spells Known on "something else." So a starting spell list something like Fire Bolt(0), Lesser Wall of Fire(1), Cure Wounds(1), Least Haste(0), and Signature Spell benefits TBD for Fire Bolt.

It can get dysfunctional. I really want to design the RPG where the optimal choices are for the muggles to spend their turns buffing the Wizards (shouting words of encouragement or "look out!", devising tactics, etc), spend their XP buffing the party, etc. Oh, and give the Wizard the better chassis, and at-will spells.

That could work in a two-player-plus DM game, where one player has a Caster and the other player has something like http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2016/0...ss-extras.html, and plays a mob of goons.

You know, I kinda like this. Wizards get, say, 1 of their highest level spells per day, several from the next level, and can use all the lower level spells at will. And follow this with the rest of the classes: anything two "tiers" below your level should be able to be trivialized at will.

I'm fiddling with an Exhaustion mechanic, where you can only cast a given spell once per fight. (Or, in the fiction, until you take a minute to breathe deeply, center your chi, reset your mantras, etc etc). With that in place, a LOT of spells can become at-will.

[Vahnavoi]

Three weekly sessions of about 5-6 hours, I'd say. So about 15-20 hours per level on average.

Okay. So lets dig into this:

The way you describe your playing style, the progression curve for your characters would resemble a sharp staircase: after three sessions, your characters spike in power, then flatline for a while, then spike again.

If you try to squeeze in every source of inspiration into twenty levels, with Samwise Gamgi in one end and Galactus at the other (f. ex.) , the steps of that staircase will approximate a logarithmic scale (there just isn't room otherwise). In practice, this would mean that every three sessions, your character suddenly acquires a set of new abilities that largely or completely obsolete their former ones. (This was already a problem in 3e with some full casters.) Characters two or more levels apart shouldn't fit on the same tactical battle mat, because their abilities are of completely different scale. High concept play would be an exercise in frustration, because most concepts can only exist in a tiny range of levels before either being left behind or becoming unrecognizable. (Also already a problem in 3e.)

You could replace this jumpy progression with a linear or lesser exponential curve going from 1 to 100, leveling up each session. The guy at the end of the line would still be recognizably a god compared to the one at the start, but in the interim characters as far as 10 or 20 levels apart might still fit on the same battlefield. Keep in mind that this is what most video games that let you kill gods (like Shin Megami Tensei) actually do; even if the Big Bad Guy is narratively omnipotent, they are never mechanically orders of magnitude stronger than the next guy in line. Filling a hundred levels with tactically meaningful options is hard, but more doable than you'd think. Consider the wacky way (f. ex.) Cleric spells work in d20: every three levels BLAM, you suddenly have 10 to 20 new options to consider. You could easily break that up to a string of 5 to 10 levels where you choose between two mutually exclusive spells.

[Kyutaru]

Characters two or more levels apart shouldn't fit on the same tactical battle mat, because their abilities are of completely different scale.

I can agree with this...

You could replace this jumpy progression with a linear or lesser exponential curve going from 1 to 100, leveling up each session.

...but not with this.

Adding more levels serves only to provide more numbers going up with little actual impact like the plateaus give. If the issue is that as you mentioned your powers become obsolete then the solution is to ensure the players spend more time at each level. This does mean no level ups in the mean time, no power increases providing arbitrarily small increases to HP or dmg, but it serves to make each level up that much more meaningful. Only having 20 levels for the breadth of power D&D has (or the old school 1-9 format) ensures that each level actually means something significant in terms of power gain. I see no point in having insignificant levels and one of the improvements 5E made was to get rid of the insignificant level ups 3rd edition had where the only things that were gained were some numbers.

It would be better to let players struggle and master each level before moving on to the next. Video games like DOOM or Half-Life or Dishonored have levels of a different kind, stages that must be cleared before progressing, and these can sometimes be enormous and time-consuming to clear. Pacman on the other hand has very short levels that you can blitz through in minutes, going through many of them before reaching the end of the session. I would argue that the former lends to a better roleplaying experience as immersion, world-building, and character growth all take time and should be enjoyed at a leisurely pace. When players advance through meaningless stages too quickly the rush from the accomplishment quickly fades due to its insignificance.

Getting a level should be meaningful and that comes with a substantial power gain that renders earlier threats less threatening. When your enemy is lvl 3 and your party just hit lvl 4, you should feel like these guys have gotten easier. That is very hard to do with gradual increases. Players hardly even notice the power gap between their level 49 characters and a level 52 enemy unless the math (and thereby choices) is very tightly controlled and restricted. MMOs can get away with it because they have your loot and talent selections and power availability on a short leash. But D&D does not and item progression is mostly up to DM discretion or random luck or gameable wealth guidelines so the difference between power levels can be quite small on such a large 1 to 100 scale.

That said, I like how Dungeons & Dragons Online handles levels. There are effectively 100 levels but every 5 mini-levels makes up 1 big level, giving it that 1-20 D&D feel. The level ups in between, I'll call them minor levels, serve to provide gradual HP/mana increases and unlock trait points to be spent on slightly customizing your character thematically. The major level ups meanwhile handle essentially the same as normal.

[Ignimortis]

Okay. So lets dig into this:

The way you describe your playing style, the progression curve for your characters would resemble a sharp staircase: after three sessions, your characters spike in power, then flatline for a while, then spike again.

If you try to squeeze in every source of inspiration into twenty levels, with Samwise Gamgi in one end and Galactus at the other (f. ex.) , the steps of that staircase will approximate a logarithmic scale (there just isn't room otherwise). In practice, this would mean that every three sessions, your character suddenly acquires a set of new abilities that largely or completely obsolete their former ones. (This was already a problem in 3e with some full casters.) Characters two or more levels apart shouldn't fit on the same tactical battle mat, because their abilities are of completely different scale. High concept play would be an exercise in frustration, because most concepts can only exist in a tiny range of levels before either being left behind or becoming unrecognizable. (Also already a problem in 3e.)

You could replace this jumpy progression with a linear or lesser exponential curve going from 1 to 100, leveling up each session. The guy at the end of the line would still be recognizably a god compared to the one at the start, but in the interim characters as far as 10 or 20 levels apart might still fit on the same battlefield. Keep in mind that this is what most video games that let you kill gods (like Shin Megami Tensei) actually do; even if the Big Bad Guy is narratively omnipotent, they are never mechanically orders of magnitude stronger than the next guy in line. Filling a hundred levels with tactically meaningful options is hard, but more doable than you'd think. Consider the wacky way (f. ex.) Cleric spells work in d20: every three levels BLAM, you suddenly have 10 to 20 new options to consider. You could easily break that up to a string of 5 to 10 levels where you choose between two mutually exclusive spells.

Galactus is certainly not a level 20 character or CR20 threat. That's what epic levels are for, same as SMT-type things with killing gods and stuff. IIRC, 3e's higher reaches of Epic (like levels 40+) were technically about godslaying, though the mechanics were also pretty wonky and JRPG-ish in that you still did that through raw damage and healing and all the level 5 combat mechanics.

And if you propose a curve of 100 levels, you need to fill every single one with abilities that are at least kind of interesting and level appropriate. Video games get around this by making a lot of "empty" levels where you just gain some stats, but giving them out like candy. You get 99 levels in a typical JRPG, and even if abilities are tied to levels there (many don't even do that), you get maybe 15-20 across all of them. As it stands in D&D 5e, they couldn't even do that for 20 levels, which is why I say it's actually about 8-9 levels long. Let's take a look at the class considered to be one of the best 5e designs, the Paladin.

Levels 1 to 7 are perfectly fine, you get a lot of new significant stuff every level - level 2 is especially loaded with goodies, level 3 gives you two good features, level 4 is meh but at least it's powerful, level 5 doubles your damage and gives you 2nd level spells, level 6 doubles your good saves and triples your poor saves, and you can even share that. Level 7 is a surprisingly powerful Sacred Oath feature.

And then it falls off a cliff. Yeah, you get an ASI. Then 3rd level spells. Then an immunity to fear. Then another damage boost. Another ASI, another spell level, Dispel Magic (touch range, 9 levels later than primary casters), a rather subpar Sacred Oath feature (always-on first level spell? AoO on attack instead of movement? I thought that was level 15, not level 5), another ASI, another spell level, a numerical improvement to your level 6 feature that makes it easy to use, another ASI, and a capstone that is pretty cool - but not for level 20, dammit.

Almost all you get between level 7 and 20 are numerical improvements to things you already do. The exception is spells, which keep advancing in usefulness. Everything else is subpar and wouldn't look out of place as a level 7-9 ability.

And that's one of the best designs. Poor Fighter 20 is literally the same Fighter he was 15 levels ago, just with better numbers. Not even significantly better numbers, since quantity is a quality of its' own. No, just slightly better numbers. You could feasibly compress any 5e non-fullcaster class into 8-10 levels, and have the current Paladin 20 abilities on a Paladin 10, who would still have to get 10 more levels to actually be able to take on a CR20 ancient dragon.

[Vahnavoi]

Galactus is certainly not a level 20 character or CR20 threat. That's what epic levels are for, same as SMT-type things with killing gods and stuff. IIRC, 3e's higher reaches of Epic (like levels 40+) were technically about godslaying, though the mechanics were also pretty wonky and JRPG-ish in that you still did that through raw damage and healing and all the level 5 combat mechanics.

Yes, epic levels, AKA levels beyond 20. I believe I did say that no sane rules design, including prior versions of D&D, try to cram all its fictional inspirations into 20 levels.

Calling D&D's epic rules "JRPGish" is stupid. It's a matter of historical fact that JRPGs copied all that insanity from D&D; people were playing D&D at stupidly high levels, with stupidly inflated numbers, back when Gygax was still running the show and desperately trying to tell them that this wasn't what his game was for.

---

Adding more levels serves only to provide more numbers going up with little actual impact like the plateaus give. If the issue is that as you mentioned your powers become obsolete then the solution is to ensure the players spend more time at each level. This does mean no level ups in the mean time, no power increases providing arbitrarily small increases to HP or dmg, but it serves to make each level up that much more meaningful.

There's a reasoning for plateaus, but this is not it. A better reasoning for plateaus is that in a complex game, each new move that becomes available increases the games movespace in a combinational manner. Since the increase can be exponential or at least non-linear, this supports spending more and more time at each level because it takes more and more playtime to exhaust the pool of possible tactics. This in turn would suggest an exponential XP curve, similar to how old D&D did it.

Only having 20 levels for the breadth of power D&D has (or the old school 1-9 format) ensures that each level actually means something significant in terms of power gain. I see no point in having insignificant levels and one of the improvements 5E made was to get rid of the insignificant level ups 3rd edition had where the only things that were gained were some numbers.

Pretty much no version of D&D has been limited to 20 levels and even Basic eventually went all the way to level 36. Historically, it was more common for level caps to be all over the place, depending on exact class, race, etc..

The point behind level caps or hitting diminishing returns was to signal that the character's journey was largely over - Gygax's & co's preferences were more for sword & sorcery than superhero stories, and they outright said this at points. So there's an argument for capping playable levels at 20 or below, but that argument is mutually exclusive with the idea of trying to include everything and the kitchen sink in that range.

---

To both: you seem to have missed what I was going at with the 3e Cleric example: D&D has already had enough abilities to fill a hundred levels, it just likes to throw them at you in huge lumps after few levels of quiet. Neither of you have convinced me that this is a better solution than partitioning them into smaller, more frequently acquired packages. Remember the baseline given by IgnisMortis, each level is still meant to be played for a full five hour session. Spreading abilities across more levels like this is not synonymous to "dead levels" where "only numbers go up" .

[Kyutaru]

D&D has already had enough abilities to fill a hundred levels, it just likes to throw them at you in huge lumps after few levels of quiet. Neither of you have convinced me that this is a better solution than partitioning them into smaller, more frequently acquired packages.

The best, and only, answer I have for that is what I mentioned before about diminishing challenges. When you gain a level up and fight a lower level monster the level increase is noticeable. JRPGs do this through exponential gains based on a formula. You might have 5 attack at lvl 1, 30 attack at lvl 10, 250 attack at lvl 20, and 1100 attack at lvl 30, all the way up to 9999 attack at the high levels. They calculate it out such that numbers are going up and monsters in the area you're grinding have gotten easier but monsters in the next area have not and retain a similar challenge level. To keep increases from being imperceptively small (like going from 2000 attack to 2003 attack) and thus irrelevant to the challenge, RPG developers frequently have to give you a certain percentage increase in power over the previous level. The more levels you have and the higher you go up in them the bigger the impact this percentage increase has until what started as single digit combat numbers ends up with four or five digits.

Keeping D&D at 20 keeps the bounded range of values small while also giving noticeable power differences. You can keep the ranges small if you spread out the bonuses across 100 levels but then you gain far too little at each level up, the process becomes more frequent with chart referencing which slows down tabletop games (a problem that video games don't have), and it starts to feel like a grind to players because they're no longer reaching significant meaningful plateaus that they can be proud of achieving like "I'm lvl 9 now! Hello 5th level spells and new feat!". All they see is the 100-runged ladder that they slowly creep up with mild excitement for going up another rung and the only number that ultimately matters is 100.

[Pex]

There is a combat thing that's fair for every class to do - have a decent melee and range attack. It's unfun not to be able to do anything in a combat no matter how balanced it is in the overall game construction concept. However, it doesn't have to be exactly both melee and range attacks for everyone. It's fine if a class can't do melee well but is great at getting out of melee so he can focus on range attacks, say being able to avoid opportunity attacks others must suffer. Likewise a class that can't do range attacks should be able to get into melee quickly, such as at least he can jump high enough to attack a flying creature which allows him to jump onto high things when not in combat too.

[NigelWalmsley]

The vast majority of games already don't get to 20th level. The Epic rules are a joke and always have been. In 3e, characters already go from being personally threatened by housecats to being some of the most powerful in the whole fantasy genre in 20 levels. There is simply no credible reason you need more than 20 levels for D&D.

Yes, that is true. My issue is that not every class should even have a Teleport analogue. It should be easy enough to get a Teleport-user in the party, but not every single character should be able to access Teleport or something similar functionally from any class.

Why not? If some characters don't have strategic movement abilities, that means that whenever there's a strategic movement challenge, those players don't get to do anything. I still don't see how we make the game better by intentionally creating situations where players can't contribute. Those are the worst parts of the game, and that dynamic makes the abilities players do have less meaningful. Right now, the largest obstacle to meaningful non-combat challenges isn't that the Wizard is better at them than the Rogue, it's that those challenges existing excludes the Fighter, and that sucks for him.

Moreover, you have to consider the math of these things. Suppose you've got ten kinds of non-combat challenges, and you want to make sure that it's easy to get someone who can deal with each of them. That means, as an absolute minimum, every class needs options for three of those. That's already more than the overwhelming majority of classes can handle. But let's say you do that. That leaves you with a roughly 25% chance that the party won't have any particular ability. That's really not acceptable. It's like having fully a quarter of combat encounters be ones the PCs don't expect to win. To get that number down under 5%, everyone needs to have 6 different abilities. To get it under 1%, everyone needs to have seven. And those numbers actually look a lot like the Wizard.

Having a thousand spells is a significant advantage, if you can pick any of them to learn.

Is having a thousand feats a significant advantage? It doesn't matter how many options you choose from, or even how many options you have. What matters is if the options you have can solve the problems you need them to. And in this respect, versatility is far less important than power.

A Beguiler or a Dread Necromancer still has weak spots, even in their spell list.

They have abilities they don't have. But so does the Wizard! Every class has abilities they don't have. But that's not the relevant consideration. What matters is how effective they are at solving problems. Again, how much of a level advantage would you need to pick a Beguiler or a Dread Necromancer over a Wizard? It's not very large. That should reveal something about how much that flexibility truly matters.

Because combat is a very complicated series of checks compared to out-of-combat challenges. Most things that arise out of combat are basically binary - "can we do that? if yes, then do that", because they tend to get resolved with one (maybe two or three) skill rolls or some judicious spell application.

That's why the game needs more robust non-combat rules. But even in the current paradigm, it's not correct to say that these things are purely binary. Consider a 3rd level party faced with a locked door. The Wizard could cast Knock, the Rogue could use Open Lock, and the Warblade could smash it with Mountain Hammer. Can you really say that there's a single one of those abilities that is universally optimal for all situations involving a locked door?

No character should be able to contribute everywhere.

Except that's totally how fights work. Even in Shadowrun, someone with no particular skills can pick up a gun and shot people in a way that is at least relevant.

It may just be the current D&D that is the problem then. With so much munchkin play in 3e and so much balance obsession in 5e, it has colored the modern player perspective to truly think D&D is a tactical skirmish game.

This is your daily reminder that that is literally what D&D is. D&D is the result of a decades-long process of adding things to a skirmish combat game.

[Ignimortis]

To both: you seem to have missed what I was going at with the 3e Cleric example: D&D has already had enough abilities to fill a hundred levels, it just likes to throw them at you in huge lumps after few levels of quiet. Neither of you have convinced me that this is a better solution than partitioning them into smaller, more frequently acquired packages. Remember the baseline given by IgnisMortis, each level is still meant to be played for a full five hour session. Spreading abilities across more levels like this is not synonymous to "dead levels" where "only numbers go up" .

My other point that I have expressed throughout this thread is that no single class needs as many abilities as a cleric has spells. Moreover, a third of all spells in the game could be categorized as "upgrades" that could just exist as part of one ability/spell and get automatically improved as levels go on. You don't keep Fire I around when you have Fire III - unless, and here we hit the thread topic on the head, you're using Vancian systems where you have to keep Fire I to make use of those low-level slots that would otherwise be almost completely useless. A simple mana-based system would obviate a lot of need for lower-level abilities at higher levels.

Why not? If some characters don't have strategic movement abilities, that means that whenever there's a strategic movement challenge, those players don't get to do anything. I still don't see how we make the game better by intentionally creating situations where players can't contribute. Those are the worst parts of the game, and that dynamic makes the abilities players do have less meaningful. Right now, the largest obstacle to meaningful non-combat challenges isn't that the Wizard is better at them than the Rogue, it's that those challenges existing excludes the Fighter, and that sucks for him.

Moreover, you have to consider the math of these things. Suppose you've got ten kinds of non-combat challenges, and you want to make sure that it's easy to get someone who can deal with each of them. That means, as an absolute minimum, every class needs options for three of those. That's already more than the overwhelming majority of classes can handle. But let's say you do that. That leaves you with a roughly 25% chance that the party won't have any particular ability. That's really not acceptable. It's like having fully a quarter of combat encounters be ones the PCs don't expect to win. To get that number down under 5%, everyone needs to have 6 different abilities. To get it under 1%, everyone needs to have seven. And those numbers actually look a lot like the Wizard.

You're looking at it in absolute terms, not the typical team distribution. If some ability is very common among big brawny bruiser types, and another is very common among INT-based arcanist types, and yet another is shared between skill-user types, then it's far more probable that a typical party lineup will be able to have solutions to all problems even if each party member can contribute to 4 or 5 out of 10 only.

Is having a thousand feats a significant advantage? It doesn't matter how many options you choose from, or even how many options you have. What matters is if the options you have can solve the problems you need them to. And in this respect, versatility is far less important than power.

And yet power is what spells have and feats, relatively, don't. And they have versatility for certain classes as well. Like I said, the problem is manifold.

They have abilities they don't have. But so does the Wizard! Every class has abilities they don't have. But that's not the relevant consideration. What matters is how effective they are at solving problems. Again, how much of a level advantage would you need to pick a Beguiler or a Dread Necromancer over a Wizard? It's not very large. That should reveal something about how much that flexibility truly matters.

That depends on what I want to do. If I actually want to be able to powerfully contribute to everything and anything that happens at the table, I'd stop picking wizard only at the point where the difference in levels would mean I don't have level-appropriate abilities, which is something like 4 or 5 levels behind.

That's why the game needs more robust non-combat rules. But even in the current paradigm, it's not correct to say that these things are purely binary. Consider a 3rd level party faced with a locked door. The Wizard could cast Knock, the Rogue could use Open Lock, and the Warblade could smash it with Mountain Hammer. Can you really say that there's a single one of those abilities that is universally optimal for all situations involving a locked door?

There is a clear ladder of effectiveness of those abilities. You only refrain from using Knock if you think that you'd need that spellslot/prepared spell for something more important later. Otherwise, it's superior to both Mountain Hammer and Open Lock, in exchange for being a limited resource. And then it's more of an equal choice between Open Lock (takes more time, stealthy) and Mountain Hammer (one standard action, loud).

Except that's totally how fights work. Even in Shadowrun, someone with no particular skills can pick up a gun and shoot people in a way that is at least relevant.

If putting a -1 to defense onto someone with barely a chance of hitting (because with no particular skills, the best you're gonna hit is a non-full defense ganger) is relevant, then yes. But it's a very miniscule contribution, akin to a Wizard plinking away with a Light Crossbow at level 14.

[NigelWalmsley]

You're looking at it in absolute terms, not the typical team distribution. If some ability is very common among big brawny bruiser types, and another is very common among INT-based arcanist types, and yet another is shared between skill-user types, then it's far more probable that a typical party lineup will be able to have solutions to all problems even if each party member can contribute to 4 or 5 out of 10 only.

Sure, you could set things up so that there are "Fighter-type problems" and "Wizard-type problems" and "Rogue-type problems" and "Cleric-type problems". But then you can't write a Beguiler, who fights like a Wizard, but solves Rogue problems. And then you guarantee a total overlap in utility between the Ranger and the Barbarian. Having that kind of enforced role requirement isn't good for the game. It leads to "who's going to have to play the Cleric", which in turn lead to Clerics getting all the crazy crap they do in 3e.

And yet power is what spells have and feats, relatively, don't. And they have versatility for certain classes as well. Like I said, the problem is manifold.

Exactly. The ability to pick any feat you want each day is worth less than one average spell per spell level. Versatility is actually a very tiny part of the difference between Wizards and Fighters. If you have someone who is drawing from the same powers in a less versatile way (like a Dread Necromancer), they can compete fairly effectively with the Wizard. If you have someone who gets to repick their abilities from a worse pool (like a Totemist), they're much worse than the Wizard.

To put it in numeric terms, take a look at this thread. It has the Wizard at 1.1, the Sorcerer (who is like a Wizard, but less versatile) at a 1.8, and the Incarnate (who is like a Wizard, but less powerful) at a 3.57. The gap between Wizard and Incarnate is three times as large as the gap between Wizard and Sorcerer. Versatility is simply not a very large component of why the Wizard is on the top of the heap. You don't need to nerf versatility into the ground. You need to buff the power of underperforming classes.

That depends on what I want to do. If I actually want to be able to powerfully contribute to everything and anything that happens at the table, I'd stop picking wizard only at the point where the difference in levels would mean I don't have level-appropriate abilities, which is something like 4 or 5 levels behind.

You stop having level-appropriate abilities at 3 levels behind. That's the point where the fixed-list caster is always a level ahead of you. Even at a two-level handicap, you've reversed the way spontaneous and prepared casting match up. You're just not getting enough out of your better list to cover that gap, especially because the fixed list casters can expand their lists too.

There is a clear ladder of effectiveness of those abilities. You only refrain from using Knock if you think that you'd need that spellslot/prepared spell for something more important later. Otherwise, it's superior to both Mountain Hammer and Open Lock, in exchange for being a limited resource. And then it's more of an equal choice between Open Lock (takes more time, stealthy) and Mountain Hammer (one standard action, loud).

It seems like you're basically dismissing the notion that managing spell slots is a relevant concern out of hand. But there are many situations where the spell slot constraint might be relevant. In a typical dungeon delve, you very likely won't even bother preparing Knock to begin with, as an extra Web, Cloud of Bewilderment, or Glitterdust is far more valuable. Even if you do have Knock, it only opens a single door. Which makes it useless for such challenges as "a hallway with doors on both ends" or "a door that will be re-locked before you exit", both of which are things that you can find in the average apartment building or college dorm.

[Ignimortis]

Sure, you could set things up so that there are "Fighter-type problems" and "Wizard-type problems" and "Rogue-type problems" and "Cleric-type problems". But then you can't write a Beguiler, who fights like a Wizard, but solves Rogue problems. And then you guarantee a total overlap in utility between the Ranger and the Barbarian. Having that kind of enforced role requirement isn't good for the game. It leads to "who's going to have to play the Cleric", which in turn lead to Clerics getting all the crazy crap they do in 3e.

You can't keep proper class identity if everyone can do anything with slightly different stipulations. So yes, there will have to be some enforced role requirement, but it might not be as strict as you think. Just let people pick some sort of feat/talent/specialization that isn't hard-locked into the class. This way, the players can adjust for mostly anything - except for having a party full of one class. Every single class can get some sort of access to other one's tricks - it just should require forfeiting something of their own.

So a Beguiler is 50% wizard, 50% rogue - and thus cannot have everything a wizard has and everything a rogue has. Instead, they get to pick some stuff. Barbarians can have their unique talents that aren't necessarily shared with Rangers - while they're theoretically kind of similar in their theme of "wilderness survivor man", they play to very different stereotypes, Barbarian being very Fighter-y and Ranger being more Rogue-like. You could even adopt Pathfinder's archetype system and shove most of those classes into Fighter or Rogue as feature-heavy archetypes that use the same basic progression, but most of their class features are entirely different.

Exactly. The ability to pick any feat you want each day is worth less than one average spell per spell level. Versatility is actually a very tiny part of the difference between Wizards and Fighters. If you have someone who is drawing from the same powers in a less versatile way (like a Dread Necromancer), they can compete fairly effectively with the Wizard. If you have someone who gets to repick their abilities from a worse pool (like a Totemist), they're much worse than the Wizard.

To put it in numeric terms, take a look at this thread. It has the Wizard at 1.1, the Sorcerer (who is like a Wizard, but less versatile) at a 1.8, and the Incarnate (who is like a Wizard, but less powerful) at a 3.57. The gap between Wizard and Incarnate is three times as large as the gap between Wizard and Sorcerer. Versatility is simply not a very large component of why the Wizard is on the top of the heap. You don't need to nerf versatility into the ground. You need to buff the power of underperforming classes.

Yes, but the question is, to what extent? My opinion that is Tier 1 and Tier 2 aren't really all that good for the game. Frankly, if skill use was expanded upon and improved, most Tier 3 classes would be very comfortable to play in a balanced party (they already are pretty good, but their off-spec performance is wildly different between, say, Bard and Crusader). Tier 3 can do their job well, can do a few side things passably well, but they can't do everything.

And the solution for Wizard is either nerfing their versatility or their power. And nerfing Wizard's power means nerfing spells, because that's all a Wizard can do. Certainly, if Wizard's spells were about as powerful as Incarnate's Essentia investments, they'd probably not be a problem. Even if Wizard's spells were about as powerful as martial maneuvers, they'd probably not be a problem. But the question is - how do you nerf more abstract effects? Fireball is easy to control. Bull's Strength or Magic Weapon are easy to control. Web and Grease and Stinking Cloud are somewhat harder, but doable, I suppose. But what about, say, Water Breathing? Air Walk? Teleport? Plane Shift? Even Fly or Spider Climb? Those are either good enough to always be worth having in the spellbook (not necessarily prepared), just in case, or too bad to even bother with. Your solution is to give everyone access to the same-grade effects, which I dislike for aforementioned issues with class identity and perfect versatility.

You stop having level-appropriate abilities at 3 levels behind. That's the point where the fixed-list caster is always a level ahead of you. Even at a two-level handicap, you've reversed the way spontaneous and prepared casting match up. You're just not getting enough out of your better list to cover that gap, especially because the fixed list casters can expand their lists too.

Sure, if your benchmark for "level-appropriate abilities" is "current full caster top level spells/spell slots". Except a lot of spellcasting stuff doesn't age as quickly. Fly is still relevant at level 9, unless you want to blow your top slot on Overland Flight. Dimension Door is still relevant at level 10 or 11. Even Fireball keeps pace until level 10, if you have problems you want to apply Fireballs to. So unless that changes, I don't think that simply being a spell level behind a Beguiler is going to keep the Wizard from being very useful anyway. Two spell levels, yes, I can see that becoming a problem in some cases. Three spell levels, definitely, you're gonna lose a lot of power. Note that I'm not talking being a Wizard 5 in a party of level 10s - I'm talking about Wizard 10 who has a stunted spell progression, so you're not super weak chassis-wise.

It seems like you're basically dismissing the notion that managing spell slots is a relevant concern out of hand. But there are many situations where the spell slot constraint might be relevant. In a typical dungeon delve, you very likely won't even bother preparing Knock to begin with, as an extra Web, Cloud of Bewilderment, or Glitterdust is far more valuable. Even if you do have Knock, it only opens a single door. Which makes it useless for such challenges as "a hallway with doors on both ends" or "a door that will be re-locked before you exit", both of which are things that you can find in the average apartment building or college dorm.

Knock disallows self-locking doors to relock automatically, as per text. Yes, managing spell slots is a relevant concern, but there comes a point where Knock is a commodity, either through a wand or through 2nd level spells not being that hot by now. Should locks stop being relevant obstacles by level 6 or 7, because Knock opens every single lock in existence, even if it's somehow DC100?

A bit of a side note - designing D&D around dungeon delving should be a thing of the past. Dungeon delving is a smaller part of the game these days, not the thing players do 90% of the time (and D&D at this point tries to advertise itself as a generic fantasy adventuring game anyway, despite 5e being rather poor about anything that isn't dungeon delving). Sure, people try to define a lot of things as dungeon delving, but they actually aren't, if you can, for example, stop doing it and get out in five minutes. Unless your dungeon is designed for a full day (or more) of exploration and combat and all that, it's not a dungeon to delve. It's just an enclosed space, like a noble's house where you might have a fight or two, and search for clues, but leaving it takes like a minute of brisk walking.

[NigelWalmsley]

You can't keep proper class identity if everyone can do anything with slightly different stipulations.

Again, Wizards can't "do anything". They can do a lot of things, but it is a finite number. Moreover, other people having similar abilities doesn't reduce class identity. It is very easy to tell the difference between a Dread Necromancer's zombie minions, a Druid's animal companion, and a Beguiler's charmed minions. You could also fairly easily imagine how a Summoner's summoned minions, a Warlord's troops, and a Shaman's spirit guides are different from each of them as well.

So a Beguiler is 50% wizard, 50% rogue - and thus cannot have everything a wizard has and everything a rogue has.

And this is different from the relationship between the Wizard and the Beguiler now how? The Wizard isn't simply a strictly better Beguiler, nor the Beguiler a strictly worse Wizard. You could make a reasonable case the Beguiler is worse, but it's by a fairly small margin, and often unnoticeable in actual play.

Barbarians can have their unique talents that aren't necessarily shared with Rangers - while they're theoretically kind of similar in their theme of "wilderness survivor man", they play to very different stereotypes, Barbarian being very Fighter-y and Ranger being more Rogue-like. You could even adopt Pathfinder's archetype system and shove most of those classes into Fighter or Rogue as feature-heavy archetypes that use the same basic progression, but most of their class features are entirely different.

Sure, customization within a class is a noble goal. And you'll note that the Wizard has that. With the various specialist ACFs and bonuses out there, probably a great deal more of it than most other classes. A Necromancer who picks all the Necromancer ACFs has a bunch of abilities an Evoker who picks all the Evoker ACFs does not.

My opinion that is Tier 1 and Tier 2 aren't really all that good for the game.

My opinion is that that's not a very meaningful opinion. "Tier 1 and Tier 2" just mean "the best 1/3 of the classes that exist". Anything else you read into that is a discussion of the properties of those classes, and I think it's very difficult to make the case that all those properties are bad. Some of them certainly are. The Sorcerer doesn't have class features. The Cleric and Druid have far too much flexibility in their spell access. But some of them are good. They're the only classes with access to the vast majority of utility effects. Maybe you can argue that the Wizard has too many of them, but if you think Teleport or Fabricate should be in the game at all, that is implicitly an endorsement of the T1 and T2 classes as a valuable part of the game.

And the solution for Wizard is either nerfing their versatility or their power.

If you think the Sorcerer is also a problem, how can there possibly be a solution in nerfing the Wizard's versatility? The Sorcerer has almost the minimum possible level of versatility you could have with the Wizard spell list.

And if you're going to nerf their power, isn't that exactly isomorphic to increasing everyone else's?

But what about, say, Water Breathing? Air Walk? Teleport? Plane Shift? Even Fly or Spider Climb? Those are either good enough to always be worth having in the spellbook (not necessarily prepared), just in case, or too bad to even bother with.

Except they aren't. It's not worth putting Water Breathing in your spellbook as a Wizard, because the Cleric gets it for free. Similarly with Plane Shift, except the Cleric gets it at a lower level. All you need to do to curb the impact of the Wizard's utility options is open up the utility playbooks of the other classes. If Rogues could Teleport with the same ease that they can open locks, no Wizard (who had a Rogue in their party) would ever bother learning the spell.

Sure, if your benchmark for "level-appropriate abilities" is "current full caster top level spells/spell slots".

I mean, if we're talking about two spellcasters, what else could it possibly be?

Fly is still relevant at level 9, unless you want to blow your top slot on Overland Flight.

You absolutely want to do that, because Fly doesn't have the duration to reliably last through an adventuring day.

Even Fireball keeps pace until level 10, if you have problems you want to apply Fireballs to.

Actually it doesn't. Monster HP grows super-linearly. So a CR 5 bruiser (Troll) has 63 HP where a CR 10 one (Fire Giant, which we will pretend for simplicity is not immune to fire) has 142 HP. So your Fireball has fallen proportionately behind. If we look at the kind of monsters you might encounter in groups, the CR 2 Bugbear has 16 HP to the CR 7 Hill Giant's 102 HP.

Knock disallows self-locking doors to relock automatically, as per text.

It doesn't stop someone from coming along and locking the door. Also, if we're going to talk about the limitations in the text, we should also point out that there are some kinds of things it simply doesn't open, like barred gates. One might imagine that such things would be more common in a world where Knock existed.

Should locks stop being relevant obstacles by level 6 or 7, because Knock opens every single lock in existence, even if it's somehow DC100?

Should locks never stop being relevant obstacles? That seems like the more pressing question, because once you accept that, the rest is haggling.

[Pex]

My other point that I have expressed throughout this thread is that no single class needs as many abilities as a cleric has spells. Moreover, a third of all spells in the game could be categorized as "upgrades" that could just exist as part of one ability/spell and get automatically improved as levels go on. You don't keep Fire I around when you have Fire III - unless, and here we hit the thread topic on the head, you're using Vancian systems where you have to keep Fire I to make use of those low-level slots that would otherwise be almost completely useless. A simple mana-based system would obviate a lot of need for lower-level abilities at higher levels.

Yes and no. You can keep the spell slot system and still only need one spell using the already existing 5E paradigm of increasing power based on spell slot used. You don't need Fire Bolt and Burning Hands and Scorching Ray and Fireball and Meteor Swarm. You can just have one spell Fire Attack that does all those things depending on the spell slot used. Keep the names for aesthetic purposes in the description of Fire Attack since it is more fun to say I cast Fireball than I cast Fire Attack using a 3rd level spell slot.

Using a mana point system is a preference based on overall power level you want to allow. In the spell slot system you can cast 4 first level Burning Hands and 3 Fireballs a day but only that way. In a mana system you can cast maybe 6 Fireballs and no Burning Hands one day and 1 Fireball and 7 Burning Hands the next day. In a strict mana system you have to allocate your mana each day before you adventure and it's fixed for that day. In a loose mana system you can spend however much mana you want (accepted there's a limit on how much at once, such as 3E Psionics you can never spend more than your level) at the moment you want to use it.

Either way works. It depends on how flexible you will allow the act of casting to be already given there is a limit on how much magic you know. I personally don't like the strict mana system, but I'm fine with spell slots or loose mana.

[NigelWalmsley]

Also, it's worth pointing out that there actually aren't all that many spells that are "X, but higher level". Sure, there's the occasional Greater Orb of Fire, Dominate Person, or Summon Monster VI but that isn't the norm. Even within the limited scope of something like Fire Magic, the spells you get are fairly different. Burning Hands, Scorching Ray, Fireball, and Wall of Fire are the first four Fire spells a Wizard gets access to, and they all do different things. 5e's notion of upcasting is an elegant solution for some things, you can't really compress spell lists all that much that way.

[Cluedrew]

Again, Wizards can't "do anything". They can do a lot of things, but it is a finite number. Moreover, other people having similar abilities doesn't reduce class identity. It is very easy to tell the difference between a Dread Necromancer's zombie minions, a Druid's animal companion, and a Beguiler's charmed minions. You could also fairly easily imagine how a Summoner's summoned minions, a Warlord's troops, and a Shaman's spirit guides are different from each of them as well.

What is something wizards can't do that can still be done in D&D? Obviously allowing for grouping of these thematically different but mechanically similar abilities. So casting "Resist X" and being tough enough to take X in the face being equivalent at this level of detail. Yes there are a lot of sometimes important details in there but let us start with this.

[johnbragg]

Also, it's worth pointing out that there actually aren't all that many spells that are "X, but higher level". Sure, there's the occasional Greater Orb of Fire, Dominate Person, or Summon Monster VI but that isn't the norm. Even within the limited scope of something like Fire Magic, the spells you get are fairly different. Burning Hands, Scorching Ray, Fireball, and Wall of Fire are the first four Fire spells a Wizard gets access to, and they all do different things. 5e's notion of upcasting is an elegant solution for some things, you can't really compress spell lists all that much that way.

If you're starting from the D&D spell list as the backbone, that's true.

If you're starting from the ground up, and then testing legacy spells against a designed system, that wouldn't be true. Decide what damage a cantrip, 1st level, 2nd level, 3rd level attack spell should do, for single-targets, for AoEs. (I'm not going higher than that for daily spells in my system. It's either just bigger numbers on a treadmill, or effects that obsolete martials.)

Then you can decide--do we keep, say, Burning Hands? Do we want a 1st level minion-clearing AoE spell? Is the damage in the right range, and if not, can we dial the numbers up or down to get it there? Is it the sort of "spike damage, once per day" spell that worked in early editions where Magic-User's spells per day were severely limited, but not if low-level casters have more spell slots/points/etc? How did we scale the cantrip and 1st level single-target-damage spells, and can we scale "1st level AoE" the same way?

One of the things I've come to like about designing around E6 is you can develop spells around a manageable number of spell levels.

[johnbragg]

What is something wizards can't do that can still be done in D&D?

Healing magic (at least without major 3X shenanigans).

Obviously allowing for grouping of these thematically different but mechanically similar abilities. So casting "Resist X" and being tough enough to take X in the face being equivalent at this level of detail. Yes there are a lot of sometimes important details in there but let us start with this.

I think the thing to do is set up a paradigm where "buff-spell alone << expert ability << buffed ability". Which would nerf (or nuke) a lot of low-level skill-obsoleting spells--looking at you, jump and spider climb.