So.... A common thread is that warriors are under powered and casters are over powered.
I'm not sure how i feel about this.
Personally i dont quite see the issue (on the other hand i recently expressed a gripe about paladins which most dont agree with so maybe i am just all around in the minority)
Any way. I want to try something. Please dont respond to any other posts ONlY answer this question.
IF A GREAT IMBALANCE EXISTS, IN YOUR OPINION HOW CAN THE CASTER AND WARRIOR SIDES OF THE GAME BE BALANCED OUT?
Please only answer that question and dont argue with some one else's opinion. I know this is a touchy subject and am not looking for a flame war.
I know it will be hard but please try. Post as much as you like as thoughts come to mind but at the end of every post please copy this line into the bottom of your post.
i respectfully ask that you do not respond to my post either positively or negatively and only give your answer to the OP question.
IF A GREAT IMBALANCE EXISTS, IN YOUR OPINION HOW CAN THE CASTER AND WARRIOR SIDES OF THE GAME BE BALANCED OUT?
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Don't.
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Y'know guys, we can at least repay the OP's earnestness here. He's not trollin', he's not pickin' fights or bein' condescending.
The imbalance between casters and martials is hotly debated in Pathfinder. It was mostly considered a known issue in 3.5, and the question of how the Pathfinder community in general failed to inherit the knowledge/agree is a pretty complicated one. With that in mind:
- Damage is not the problem. Mundanes deal damage fine. This doesn't need boosting.
- Narrative Power. There are far too many situations in which a mundane character has nothing to do. What is the party fighter doing during an alliance negotiation? How about a murder investigation? The royal ball? To solve traps? Puzzles? Mundanes too often have no meaningful features outside of combat, and within combat they rely almost exclusively on damage as their method of contributing.
Casters, meanwhile, are brimming with the power to casually reshape the campaign setting to their will. From the ability to invalidate social encounters (charm) to self-building their own fortresses (move earth) to much, much more, spellcasters have the power to make a lasting impact not just on the direct story but on the fundamental assumptions of the campaign setting.
- The solution is going to hurt. Honestly what needs to happen is to see mundanes rise in general versatility, with the skill system being revamped and feats being shredded and redone from the ground up. Mundanes need something to help them fill the tropes - like Fearless Leader or Noble Duelist - that they're trying to fill and can't. Spellcasters, in the meanwhile, need a sharper focus and a decrease in their ability to casually change the campaign setting.
i respectfully ask that you do not respond to my post either positively or negatively and only give your answer to the OP question.
IF A GREAT IMBALANCE EXISTS, IN YOUR OPINION HOW CAN THE CASTER AND WARRIOR SIDES OF THE GAME BE BALANCED OUT?
Asking people to not discuss makes the thread pointless, sadly.
But for what it's worth, I agree with Prince of Knives.
Though I'm not for an all out straight nerf of casters (or at least not an uncompensated nerf). Giving them some goodies like making Evocation better, giving them new blast options, and FUN stuff to make up for the reduced amount of ludicrous utility is good.
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There are several paths:
1: Let martials do magical things. Some things are expected of everyone at a certain point, like flight. Let's give it to them.
2: Make casters far more specialized. They jump across all schools of magic without a care.
3: Make casting take longer, or make attacking quicker. A martial needs to slow down at 6 to take advantage of his scaling (full attack), while a caster doesn't take any longer to cast his more powerful spells. He actually gets quicker because he gains the ability to Quicken spells.
I most certainly do not expect flight of everyone at a certain point. Especially archers. Who needs flight when you can take down a lesser jabberwock from a few hundred feet?
If your archer can't fly, he's completely ruined by Fickle Winds. I expect flight by lvl9-11. Sylphs and Aasimar can pick it up, I think race restrictions should be dropped. I'd be totally fine with feats giving you magic-tier powers.
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Like Prince of Knives stated, it would require something of a complete teardown of the game to really achieve, but here are 6 ideas from how to start looking at the percieved problems.
1. The game isn't just combat.
Understand that if your goal is have your players experience a story, or for you to tell one as a group, then that will often require for there to be large periods where the party interacts with the world outside of combat. Even if a martial character is good in combat, they often face challenges interacting here. They sometimes have one or two niches (some can be a face, others can scout), but giving these classes some way to contribute is important. It's certainly true that there are people who don't want to be bothered with out of combat interactions, and that's completely fine. However, I'd rather have that be a choice for all players, than a situation where a player's character's class prevents them from contributing.
Perhaps though, you see where a class like the Paladin sits outside of combat, and you think that's the appropriate level of interaction. Honestly alignment problems notwithstanding (and they are a serious problem), they are a pretty well-rounded class in Pathfinder. In that case, you need to take a serious look at martial classes' shortcomings in combat because...
2. Combat is more than simply dealing large amounts of damage per round
The best way to highlight this is with your typical dragon scenario. Your Barbarian has his greatsword in hand and... the dragon never lands because the dragon isn't going to give up his advantage. If it's something like a Red Dragon he'll probably dive into some lava pools or create a giant wall of smoke to block off the vision of the fighter. Maybe it's a black dragon and he'll just create a wall of force between himself and the martial character and the casters so that the dragon can deal with the casters separately.
Very few, if any, martial classes have a combination of abilities to be maneuverable and still pack a punch without a punishing feat investment. Martial characters need greater ways to simply say "no" to enemies, buff their teammates, easily and quickly maneuver around the battlefield. While giving characters more extraordinary powers like this seems absurd, it's important to not be held back by...
3. Guy at the gym fallacy.
This is important not so much for understanding balance, but the type of perspective probably needed to create a balanced game. Basically: Don't hold your martial characters to the standard of a UFC Fighter or Sports Athletes. Level 1 Orcs can break Olympic weight lifting records, so don't hold the monk and fighter to a level of realism when wizards and other powerful casters break the rules all the time.
4. Wizards aren't balanced, either.
This is probably the least talked about, but equally important part of the problem. Teleportation type spells can break any story if you're not careful. If you have a story or scenario built around a time limit, large travel distances, a secure mundane location, ambushes, or many other scenarios, teleportation can simply render them moot. Divination spells have the potential to destroy any mystery story you cook up.
You can decide to build complex magic system, or have a world where everyone is prepared for wizards, and there is lots of magic. That's fine but it introduces another problem: You'll have created a world that only the casters can properly interact with because...
5. Magic doesn't swing both ways.
Quickly think up all the ways a wizard could deal with a wall of force blocking his path? I'll give you a while because I'm sure the list is pretty big. Now how many ways does a martial class have to deal with it? There are one or two, sure, but in general the martial character probably doesn't even have a way to interact with magic in the first place without resorting to using a magic item. Casters can interact with magic and mundane problems. Mundanes can only interact with mundane problems. Unless they have magic items, but...
6. Martials aren't even the best at using magic items
This last section will be short and sweet. Martial classes require magic items to function. They help make up for the lack of powerful magic provided by their class. Except that they're worse at using them than a wizard. A +5 sword is as valuable to a wizard as it is a martial, but the Wizard has an easier time making magic items on the cheap so they can afford more of them, or to get better items sooner than WPL would expect.
i respectfully ask that you do not respond to my post either positively or negatively and only give your answer to the OP question.
IF A GREAT IMBALANCE EXISTS, IN YOUR OPINION HOW CAN THE CASTER AND WARRIOR SIDES OF THE GAME BE BALANCED OUT?
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I don't entirely understand what the issue is with this "imbalance." I think the issue is too much concern with rules and not enough attention to story. When we look at fantasy genre stories outside of rpgs, the wizard character is usually a mentor, supporting role, or villain, the main character is just some dude with a pointy stick who just doesn't quit. So why does the caster dominate pathfinder balance debates? The archetype wizard is the advisor, not the king. So why's it the opposite in pf?
When I play other rpgs, non-combat interaction is about actually talking to each other, but somehow pathfinder seems to always come down to what you roll on the dice or what powers are written on your sheet. I'd say its just the players, except I've played pathfinder and L5r with the exact same group, and it's a very different game. I can't quite put my finger on what this stems from.
Aw c'mon, why ban the Pages of Spell Knowledge? Pearls of Power are more spells per day, but Sorcerers having a few more spells known is always nice to have. Doesn't change their overall power any.
I'll throw in my idea:
Combine rogue and fighter. Immediately, both of these become much more versatile: skills to do stuff out of combat; good combat skills so the rogue is effective. Make rogue talents and fighter bonus feats be the same sort of thing, one per level. Don't get too hung up on sneak attack either, it could just as easily be a way of enhancing criticals rather than the current system. (eg double strength 'improved critical'; or increase the multiplier).
Wizards (and all spellcasters): restrict the schools, or restrict by 'theme' (eg fire wizard) so they can't even use spell effects from any school excpet their own chosen specialism.
Or leave it all alone. I like most of the game fine as it is.
I don't find much an imbalance at all in general. Now if you mean fighter or rogue compared to Cleric or Wizard. Sure there is a Balance issue there but not change that to Ranger, Paladin, or Barbarian and those balance issues aren't really an issue.
It's just as tough to design an encounter at higher level for group of with full casters as it for group with out them. This where I find Balance comes into play in encounter design and I don't find an issue here just a difference.
Its never really been an issue for us...
In our games the martials tend to dominate levels 1-4, parity is pretty much reached with each team member having defined roles through levels 5-12 and in levels 13-16 full casters tend to dominate. Rarely if ever do we see play at levels 17+ so for us, its about as balanced as you can get.
Having said that, we tend to play with a 'team' concept... offensive linemen don't get pissy because the QB got to score a TD. They played their role and contributed to the team's success and they share in the spoils of that victory. Having a powerful character join the party is like having an all-star player join the team, its better for everyone - except maybe the prima donna at the end of the bench who's only concern is his personal glory, even if its to the detriment of the group or the story that everyone is working together to tell.
Fortunately, prima donnas like that don't last long with us.
IF A GREAT IMBALANCE EXISTS, IN YOUR OPINION HOW CAN THE CASTER AND WARRIOR SIDES OF THE GAME BE BALANCED OUT?
As far as homebrew goes this is the best I got.
Ultimate campaign also has retraining rules to increase the health you rolled on the hit-die at level up. So while the casters are making items and learning spells, you can have the others slowly gain HP.
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Finger wiggling is like carying around a pocket full of nukes. The reason to hold back is the same reason we don't fire them willy nilly all over IRL. The story balance to being a wizard is that you aren't the only one, nor the best. If you literally start wrecking the world, you'll piss a bunch of people off, who will put a stop to you. In fact, you've probably played a game where the villain was that guy.
You don't fly your little eagles over mordor because then they'd have a flock of freaking Nazgul riding those fell beasts. Don't expect to be able to escalate the game and not have the enemy respond in kind.
Pf gives GM's complete leeway to tailor the game to their players. If I'm running a game where the heroes are all powerful wizards, it will be a very different story than a game about a band of soldiers. Now I definitely understand that GM's have problems when they try to force a prewritten adventure path onto characters who are not designed for that story, but, well duh. That's like making the heroes of saving private Ryan into terminator super soldiers and then complaining that they ruined the story.
And what wiggs said there^^ it's a team game. A band needs back-up singers to, not just the lead guy. When the lead guys got a terrible superiority complex, the band falls apart.