Do martial characters really need better things?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

1,451 to 1,500 of 1,592 << first < prev | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | next > last >>
Community Manager

Removed some posts and their responses.
I am reopening this thread, but please keep in mind that people do play the game differently, and what works for one group doesn't work for another. Please be civil to each other.


I didnt even quote anyone? All I said was that DPR calculations already take PA into consideration and that against DR you cant bypass PA adds to DPR.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Insain Dragoon wrote:

If he checked via a DPR calculator then that already is taken into account.

In addition having power attack, even if you rarely use it, is something I assume Ashiel does. Since all that DPR means squat if the enemy has DR you cant bypass.

Oh definitely. I'm so much of the opinion that Power Attack is borderline "must have" (not absolute but borderline) that I've baked it into the combat mechanics of the system I'm working on right now.

It's one of those things that is great to have and you should use it when you should use it, but that's different than always using it even when you don't, y'know?

Silver Crusade

kyrt-ryder wrote:
Envall wrote:
the game hardly exists at lvl 1.

Can you please explain this comment for me Envall? What exactly do you mean by that?

As a note, although it defies standard expectations you can totally pick a level and run an entire campaign at that level without regard for EXP. I've done it many times with excellent results, you just need buyin from your players so they don't feel cheated.

I think they mean that barely any of the gameplay takes place at level 1. Yeah, you can decide just not to allow progression and play a strictly 1 level game, and that could be really fun, but in standard play level 1 goes by super fast.

It's always kinda bugged me how quickly environmental dangers become obsolete, poison no longer matters, disease becomes a non-issue, and long distances are completely negated.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

mmph! All my DPR calcs, gone! What did I do?

==Aelryinth

Paizo Employee Design Manager

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Azraiel wrote:
kyrt-ryder wrote:

Steve: I'll jump in, hit his central neck with a clothesline, bounce off the ropes and drive my knee into him while he's still down and finish him with a Stone Cold Stunner.

Ally: Or I could summon a horde of angels.

How did I miss this reference?!

I would give you more than one +1 if I could, kyrt-ryder.

That may be the best martial/caster disparity video ever. Thank you for linking that in.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I'm surprised you've never seen it before, Sslarn. It's been around quite some time!

==Aelryinth

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I'm pretty sure it's been linked in this thread more than once. It's a lovely illustration of the issue.

Silver Crusade

After close to 1500 posts, has anyone come up with some workable solutions to factor into their games? I have seen a great deal of brainstorming over this and I'm curious as to whether some of you have gotten together and hammered anything out.


kyrt-ryder wrote:
Envall wrote:
the game hardly exists at lvl 1.

Can you please explain this comment for me Envall? What exactly do you mean by that?

As a note, although it defies standard expectations you can totally pick a level and run an entire campaign at that level without regard for EXP. I've done it many times with excellent results, you just need buyin from your players so they don't feel cheated.

It means that a wizard with 18 str is basically as good a hitter as a fighter. the fighter being 1 to hit better. That HP, to hit bonuses, AC, saves, DC's and such are more die roll than anything else. An orc with a greataxe crit kills ANYONE in 1 hit. Full HP to dead. Most people call it "swingy" in that a good dice roll or a poor one means life or death more than any choice you've made.


The best we've been able to say is

Use Third Party Classes, Paladins, and Bloodragers.

Or somehow convince Paizo to allow Mark Seifter to write an entire book the quality of Masquerade Reveler.


Norgrim Malgus wrote:
After close to 1500 posts, has anyone come up with some workable solutions to factor into their games? I have seen a great deal of brainstorming over this and I'm curious as to whether some of you have gotten together and hammered anything out.

I resolved it by mashing all the martial classes together into a single generic class with access to anything any/all of them [including Monk and Barbarian] could conceivably do and more.

Players design their character's own theme for themselves [with GM assistance] and receive one 'Class Power' every level. All class powers scale in some way, though not all of them scale at the same rate, and all are roughly level appropriate when first acquired.

I could scratch up levels 1-17 or so of Thor if there were interest.

Silver Crusade

kyrt-ryder wrote:
Norgrim Malgus wrote:
After close to 1500 posts, has anyone come up with some workable solutions to factor into their games? I have seen a great deal of brainstorming over this and I'm curious as to whether some of you have gotten together and hammered anything out.

I resolved it by mashing all the martial classes together into a single generic class with access to anything any/all of them [including Monk and Barbarian] could conceivably do and more.

Players design their character's own theme for themselves [with GM assistance] and receive one 'Class Power' every level. All class powers scale in some way, though not all of them scale at the same rate, and all are roughly level appropriate when first acquired.

I could scratch up levels 1-17 or so of Thor if there were interest.

Yep, scaling abilities has been an option mentioned more than once in the thread and it is a solid path to take to get martials where folks need them to be, or at least closer.


Norgrim Malgus wrote:
After close to 1500 posts, has anyone come up with some workable solutions to factor into their games? I have seen a great deal of brainstorming over this and I'm curious as to whether some of you have gotten together and hammered anything out.

The answer is to make feats relevant for combat and skills. If you have ten feats to reach parity with at least four times as many spells then one feat needs to stay as powerful as a spell in its field.

Basically, on demand strength is not really weaker in the late game than always on strength, and the game is balanced around that false premise.

Edit: ninja'd


kyrt-ryder wrote:
Envall wrote:
the game hardly exists at lvl 1.

Can you please explain this comment for me Envall? What exactly do you mean by that?

As a note, although it defies standard expectations you can totally pick a level and run an entire campaign at that level without regard for EXP. I've done it many times with excellent results, you just need buyin from your players so they don't feel cheated.

Sorry, took me a long time to respond.

Many classes, many situations require very careful control from the GM to keep them fun at lvl 1. Most of the time, you have 1-2 actual combat encounters at most and rest of the time is spent in character interaction and other narrative. This is not bad, this is merely how all GMs have evolved to deal with the fact that players can't do anything at lvl 1.

Classes miss crucial base abilities that define them, even basic goals have too much weight on the d20 roll, things like these. Also lvl 1 is boring. Which is probably the biggest problem. Lack of options is boring, or rather, lack of good options is boring. Sometimes, even getting out of lvl 1 does not help, you don't get more good options and you do the same thing constantly. Probably why this thread exists, yeah?

Silver Crusade

Not that this would solve everyone's problems, but has anyone toyed with the idea of creating a list of legendary abilities that open up at say level 9, as an example, having their use governed by the Combat Maneuver system and then establish a feat or 2 that allows martials to 'defeat' an opponents CMD not unlike spell penetration for casters?


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Norgrim Malgus wrote:
kyrt-ryder wrote:
Norgrim Malgus wrote:
After close to 1500 posts, has anyone come up with some workable solutions to factor into their games? I have seen a great deal of brainstorming over this and I'm curious as to whether some of you have gotten together and hammered anything out.

I resolved it by mashing all the martial classes together into a single generic class with access to anything any/all of them [including Monk and Barbarian] could conceivably do and more.

Players design their character's own theme for themselves [with GM assistance] and receive one 'Class Power' every level. All class powers scale in some way, though not all of them scale at the same rate, and all are roughly level appropriate when first acquired.

I could scratch up levels 1-17 or so of Thor if there were interest.

Yep, scaling abilities has been an option mentioned more than once in the thread and it is a solid path to take to get martials where folks need them to be, or at least closer.

Since the build hasn't been requested I'm just going to lay him out by tiers instead.

Levels 1-4: Hammer Warrior, carries a Warhammer, a few throwing Hammers and a Lucerne Hammer.

Levels 5-8: Hammer Hero, as above but acquires Mjolnir, a mystical hammer carved entirely from Oak which can shift between Lucerne Hammer and Warhammer form, alters its weight as needed [including prohibiting wielding by others, light weight for parries and great weight for blocks and strikes] and returns instantly after a throw. Furthermore it is during this tier that Thor cultivates his connection to the Oak Trees in faintly druid-like ways.

Levels 9-12: Lightning Legend, as above but Thor's connection to the Oak Tree reaches through the heavens, immersing himself in the power of Lightning [with very minor magnetism]

Levels 13-16: Thunder Demigod, as above but Thor's connection Lightning expands to Thunder, granting him explosive sound based power and tricks. Any worshiper of sufficient dedication [takes a class that grants divine casting] can cast spells of up to 4th level and can take wood, lightning or thunder type domains.

Level 17: Becomes a god of Lightning, Thunder and Oak. Any divine casting worshipers can cast spells of any level.

Now granted, Thor is an example of a very mystical/supernatural martial, but he does not cast spells. I'd be happy to take on an example of one a bit less supernaturally oriented if someone suggested it. [Bear in mind the concept must be viable at all levels.]

Silver Crusade

You made me grin with nostalgia brother; my first character in 2nd ED was a Fighter who eventually acquired the Hammer of Thunderbolts, Girdle of Giant Strength and Gauntlets of Ogre Power. As far as I was concerned, my character was Thor ;)


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I suspect that probably worked quite well in 2E where Fighters were badass.

In 3.P you have to go more over the top :P


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I already have my own solutions that I'm still working to consolidate into one document. It includes a few third party things that become standard in my games and some additional feats, including scaling feats that reduces the length of some of the combat feat chains.

Additionally I'm working on a concept that grants minor magic effects as feats. They are somewhere between at-will and action economy costs. If you aren't opposed to martials getting a few magic tricks to combat magic then it will turn out good.

Silver Crusade

Yep, exactly :) Once that Hammer went the artifact route, it pretty much crushed my dreams of re-doing him in 3.x, but I'm over it now, my therapist says I've moved past that issue ;)

Silver Crusade

Malwing wrote:

I already have my own solutions that I'm still working to consolidate into one document. It includes a few third party things that become standard in my games and some additional feats, including scaling feats that reduces the length of some of the combat feat chains.

Additionally I'm working on a concept that grants minor magic effects as feats. They are somewhere between at-will and action economy costs. If you aren't opposed to martials getting a few magic tricks to combat magic then it will turn out good.

Nope, I love ideas that help increase options. When in Rome..as they say.


Norgrim Malgus wrote:
Malwing wrote:

I already have my own solutions that I'm still working to consolidate into one document. It includes a few third party things that become standard in my games and some additional feats, including scaling feats that reduces the length of some of the combat feat chains.

Additionally I'm working on a concept that grants minor magic effects as feats. They are somewhere between at-will and action economy costs. If you aren't opposed to martials getting a few magic tricks to combat magic then it will turn out good.

Nope, I love ideas that help increase options. When in Rome..as they say.

Let me know what you think if you have an opinion on them. The document is commentable. Its still a work in progress with some things up in the air in terms of design but I think by the time I'm finished It'll be good enough to make into a .pdf and print it out for the table.

Dark Archive

Maybe we could have some sort of "pick x" number of skills for your class kill thing, I don't know...........banana.


Envall wrote:
kyrt-ryder wrote:
Envall wrote:
the game hardly exists at lvl 1.

Can you please explain this comment for me Envall? What exactly do you mean by that?

As a note, although it defies standard expectations you can totally pick a level and run an entire campaign at that level without regard for EXP. I've done it many times with excellent results, you just need buyin from your players so they don't feel cheated.

Sorry, took me a long time to respond.

Many classes, many situations require very careful control from the GM to keep them fun at lvl 1. Most of the time, you have 1-2 actual combat encounters at most and rest of the time is spent in character interaction and other narrative. This is not bad, this is merely how all GMs have evolved to deal with the fact that players can't do anything at lvl 1.

Classes miss crucial base abilities that define them, even basic goals have too much weight on the d20 roll, things like these. Also lvl 1 is boring. Which is probably the biggest problem. Lack of options is boring, or rather, lack of good options is boring. Sometimes, even getting out of lvl 1 does not help, you don't get more good options and you do the same thing constantly. Probably why this thread exists, yeah?

Yeah, just gonna agree with everything here. I've never enjoyed playing at level 1 because it just feels like too much of the game is missing. Your characters can't do most of the iconic things their classes are supposed to be able to do, especially since Paizo's class design is increasingly bumping core class features back to level 3+ to discourage dipping.

Also, as other folks have pointed out, a lot of the system and combat math can be real swingy at level 1. Nobody has enough HP to take more than a single good hit, stat modifiers are more important than class, etc.

One of the few things I really liked about 4E was that the game worked a lot better at level 1, thanks to much higher starting HP.

Silver Crusade

Malwing wrote:
Norgrim Malgus wrote:
Malwing wrote:

I already have my own solutions that I'm still working to consolidate into one document. It includes a few third party things that become standard in my games and some additional feats, including scaling feats that reduces the length of some of the combat feat chains.

Additionally I'm working on a concept that grants minor magic effects as feats. They are somewhere between at-will and action economy costs. If you aren't opposed to martials getting a few magic tricks to combat magic then it will turn out good.

Nope, I love ideas that help increase options. When in Rome..as they say.
Let me know what you think if you have an opinion on them. The document is commentable. Its still a work in progress with some things up in the air in terms of design but I think by the time I'm finished It'll be good enough to make into a .pdf and print it out for the table.

I left a comment on the site, but it looks good to me. I dig the flavor and nothing I saw felt way out in left field. Continue building themed Sigils that synergize with each other, I always loved that concept :)


Norgrim Malgus wrote:
Malwing wrote:
Norgrim Malgus wrote:
Malwing wrote:

I already have my own solutions that I'm still working to consolidate into one document. It includes a few third party things that become standard in my games and some additional feats, including scaling feats that reduces the length of some of the combat feat chains.

Additionally I'm working on a concept that grants minor magic effects as feats. They are somewhere between at-will and action economy costs. If you aren't opposed to martials getting a few magic tricks to combat magic then it will turn out good.

Nope, I love ideas that help increase options. When in Rome..as they say.
Let me know what you think if you have an opinion on them. The document is commentable. Its still a work in progress with some things up in the air in terms of design but I think by the time I'm finished It'll be good enough to make into a .pdf and print it out for the table.
I left a comment on the site, but it looks good to me. I dig the flavor and nothing I saw felt way out in left field. Continue building themed Sigils that synergize with each other, I always loved that concept :)

I made a response to your comment. Its part of a series of house rules to give martials or anyone else with enough feats to take them not so helpless.

Coming up with effects is hard.

Silver Crusade

Malwing wrote:
Norgrim Malgus wrote:
Malwing wrote:
Norgrim Malgus wrote:
Malwing wrote:

I already have my own solutions that I'm still working to consolidate into one document. It includes a few third party things that become standard in my games and some additional feats, including scaling feats that reduces the length of some of the combat feat chains.

Additionally I'm working on a concept that grants minor magic effects as feats. They are somewhere between at-will and action economy costs. If you aren't opposed to martials getting a few magic tricks to combat magic then it will turn out good.

Nope, I love ideas that help increase options. When in Rome..as they say.
Let me know what you think if you have an opinion on them. The document is commentable. Its still a work in progress with some things up in the air in terms of design but I think by the time I'm finished It'll be good enough to make into a .pdf and print it out for the table.
I left a comment on the site, but it looks good to me. I dig the flavor and nothing I saw felt way out in left field. Continue building themed Sigils that synergize with each other, I always loved that concept :)

I made a response to your comment. Its part of a series of house rules to give martials or anyone else with enough feats to take them not so helpless.

Coming up with effects is hard.

I can appreciate the difficulty, I spent a great deal of time coming up with new spells for a Necromancer I wanted to put to paper and balance is like walking a tightrope at times.

Edit: I posted a follow up response to your comment.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

11 people marked this as a favorite.

There's an incredible amount of pushback just giving the fighter a damage bonus at level 1!

The ONLY FIGHTING CLASS NOT TO GET ONE! "Oh, it creates a dippable class."

Argh.

"But they get so many feats, they can spend some on defenses."

--No, they can't. They have to spend non-class feats on Defenses...like any OTHER class. Fighters have no options for magical defenses, very little for movement, and none for skill choices in their class movement choices. COMBAT FEATS DON'T HELP WITH THAT STUFF.

"Fighters having the skill points of a ranger is not right."

Wait, what? rangers, with druidic spellcasting, animal companions, class powers AND better bonus feats then rangers, should have MORE skill points then fighters? A spellcasting class better at non-magical skills then an entirely non-magical class?
Why?!? TELL ME WHY!?!

"FIghters having access to anti-magical stuff is wrong."
WHY?! It's the oldest trope in the book! You have magic, I cut through magic!

"All this talk of super strength, speed, skills and stuff is too animeish."
WHAT?!? Do you not read Western mythology? Do you like high level martials being irrelevant? Just-just...ARGH!

"Nerfing spellcasters back into a more balanced role isn't right. Bring martials up to par. Just...don't give them any fantastic abilities when you do so. The fact that is impossible you can just ignore."
(*&)*(&(&!!!!

That's what we're agreed on.

==Aelryinth


Aelryinth wrote:

There's an incredible amount of pushback just giving the fighter a damage bonus at level 1!

The ONLY FIGHTING CLASS NOT TO GET ONE! "Oh, it creates a dippable class."

Argh.

"But they get so many feats, they can spend some on defenses."

--No, they can't. They have to spend non-class feats on Defenses...like any OTHER class. Fighters have no options for magical defenses, very little for movement, and none for skill choices in their class movement choices. COMBAT FEATS DON'T HELP WITH THAT STUFF.

"Fighters having the skill points of a ranger is not right."

Wait, what? rangers, with druidic spellcasting, animal companions, class powers AND better bonus feats then rangers, should have MORE skill points then fighters?
Why?!? TELL ME WHY!?!

"FIghters having access to anti-magical stuff is wrong."
WHY?! It's the oldest trope in the book! You have magic, I cut through magic!

"All this talk of super strength, speed, skills and stuff is too animeish."
WHAT?!? Do you not read Western mythology? Do you like high level martials being irrelevant? Just-just...ARGH!

"Nerfing spellcasters back into a more balanced role isn't right. Bring martials up to par. Just...don't give them any fantastic abilities when you do so. The fact that is impossible you can just ignore."
(*&)*(&(&!!!!

That's what we're agreed on.

==Aelryinth

Completely agree. For example; Feats like Iron Will. That gives you +2 which puts you up to +8 to +13(against fear effects) before Wis at the most. But that's okay, you have a ton of feats. Just take Greater Iron Will... Oh no, that just lets you re-roll it. Once a day. Before you know the results. Well so much for that.

There's always some excuse not to give fighters something.

Liberty's Edge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

That's one design choice for 3E I never understood. Giving fighters some of the worst saves. This is the class more than most who takes the brunt of all kinds of damage. By virtue of being s frontline class. That and a lack of perception as a class skill. Again being in the front. First perso next to a Rogue to walk into a trap.

Seconded on all of Aerylinth point. Though he forgot one point. The " your supposed to be s meat shield. Stop complaining and do not else but swing your weapon." That I sometimes hear.


I'm wondering if it would help to allow feats required for other feats to stack in one feat slot(only allowing it in progression, but allowing all feats to count for prerequisites as normal) as a "fighter/martial only" perk

or perhaps give weapon proficiency an ac boost in addition to the normal attack bonuses


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Sometimes I can't help but wonder if the sidelining of martial characters was a deliberate design goal of 3.0, with or without Ivory Tower Game Design.


kyrt-ryder wrote:
Sometimes I can't help but wonder if the sidelining of martial characters was a deliberate design goal of 3.0, with or without Ivory Tower Game Design.

I still don't think it was. I think it was a massive miscalculation. I think the changes in hp and damage, while leaving caster damage alone, were actually supposed to boost the martials, relatively speaking.

Blasting was mostly what AD&D casters did, since there were less buffs and saves tended to be easier to make. Blasts mostly did at least half damage, so they got relied on.
A lot of the other changes seemed more intended to regularize the rules and to increase options, but many of them wound up boosting casters. Saves are better structured in 3.x, but that results in it being harder to get better at all 3 saves than it is for casters to boost save DCs, for example.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Dunno. Doesn't matter tho, it exists now. The real goal is to adjust things so that the game runs properly for a given value of properly.

While I agree with most of what Aelryinth said above, I think the problem becomes that some focus on the extremes that have been suggested. Many are quite positive when you say "give martials better things" but become less so when people use examples that might go beyond their personal tastes; then it starts a war about what is too far.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
memorax wrote:

That's one design choice for 3E I never understood. Giving fighters some of the worst saves. This is the class more than most who takes the brunt of all kinds of damage. By virtue of being s frontline class. That and a lack of perception as a class skill. Again being in the front. First person next to a Rogue to walk into a trap.

Seconded on all of Aerylinth point. Though he forgot one point. The " your supposed to be s meat shield. Stop complaining and do not else but swing your weapon." That I sometimes hear.

Probably, the design brainstorming went something like this:

"We have 3 main character types: Fighters; Rogues; and Casters. So shouldn't their saving throws reflect this split in focus? Fighters - FORTITUDE; Rogues - REFLEX; Casters - WILL. This will also help make each class rely on the others to cover their weak spot."

So they "balanced" the system by saying: Each of these has 2 good saves and 1 weak save. It's the same way they "balance" the races compared to your average human: some are stronger in certain Attributes and weaker in others.

It's theory, and it sounds good at first glance. But in actual practice, you run into the issues we're bringing forward. "You can't give a Fighter all good saves! That would be unbalanced!"


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Otherwhere wrote:
It's theory, and it sounds good at first glance. But in actual practice, you run into the issues we're bringing forward. "You can't give a Fighter all good saves! That would be unbalanced!"

Of course it would be unbalanced, all good saves alone is only the first counter-weight of many required to fix this :P

But yes, you often get detractors with either limited system understanding or strong stylistic/aesthetic preferences speaking their side quite loudly.


Otherwhere wrote:
memorax wrote:

That's one design choice for 3E I never understood. Giving fighters some of the worst saves. This is the class more than most who takes the brunt of all kinds of damage. By virtue of being s frontline class. That and a lack of perception as a class skill. Again being in the front. First person next to a Rogue to walk into a trap.

Seconded on all of Aerylinth point. Though he forgot one point. The " your supposed to be s meat shield. Stop complaining and do not else but swing your weapon." That I sometimes hear.

Probably, the design brainstorming went something like this:

"We have 3 main character types: Fighters; Rogues; and Casters. So shouldn't their saving throws reflect this split in focus? Fighters - FORTITUDE; Rogues - REFLEX; Casters - WILL. This will also help makes each class rely on the others to cover their weak spot."

So they "balanced" the system by saying: Each of these has 2 good saves and 1 weak save. It's the same way they "balance" the races compared to your average human: some are stronger in certain Attributes and weaker in others.

It's theory, and it sounds good at first glance. But in actual practice, you run into the issues we're bringing forward. "You can't give a Fighter all good saves! That would be unbalanced!"

But what about two? I can live with Fighters getting good reflex saves even though its not as good as will, but on top of everything that it lacks the fighter only has one good save.

At some point a lot of the balancing acts that I see in the Core Rulebook (most things past Core have something going for it at their base) as well as 3.5 I keep feeling like something got lost in translation and some things are just arbitrary. Biggest example being skills. Rogues get a lot of skills because they're the reflex save dexy class and that means skill. Wizard gets, a lot of skills because he needs a lot of Int and to account for that gets all knowledges as a class skill because he's so smart. Fighter gets; Diddly Squat! I would think that he'd fall into +4 or something for being between hyper skilled guy and the not skilled but gets skills anyway because he's smart. What happened there? And then there's the 3.5 Fighter which is terrible beyond reason. What the heck happened there? By virtue of being a full spellcaster the wizard gets something new each level, lots of skills and on top of that bonus feats. Fighters get just bonus feats only more. I guess Full BAB and d10 hd and proficiencies and 5 feats are the same value as full arcane casting and a familiar.


The existence of the Rogue and Fighter as independent classes with distinct niches to protect from one another is a pretty big thorn in the foot of those character types.

Granted simple gestalt still has a long way to go to be a valid class, but it's getting close to on par with an Unchained Barbarian. [In a tactician sort of way juxtaposed to the Barb's smashermancy.]


For those interested I decided to give an experiment a shot regarding this subject and 3pp.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

10 people marked this as a favorite.

Addendum II:

"All good saves for classes with no magical ability is TOO STRONG."

Why? Because they might have, no they don't, magical class abilities on top of the good saves?!? Better then paladin saves or superstition?

"Giving fighters healing abilities is magical."
Making them the only martial class with NO healing abilities. YAY!

"They can invest in UMD and CLWands like everyone else."
With their copious skill points and high Charisma making this a nice low level option that synergizes with class skills, right?
Oh, wait, UMD has nothing to do with the Fighter CLASS. It's just what ANYBODY could do. Especially if they have tons of skill points to spend.
ARGH!

"Hey, being able to move full speed in heavy armor is an awesome ability!"
That all dwarves get at level 1, and all classes get as soon as they can afford mithral.

"That d10 for hit points ROCKS."
Uh, what? It means he gets on avg 2 hp per level more then the mage, who can invest in a Con booster for half price or less, ending up with more HP then the Fighter. THAT d10 for HP?

"Bravery is...is...okay, Bravery is crap."
THANK YOU.
"But we'll just replace it with something equally crappy. And call it bad class design if we replace it with something decent."
ARGH!

"Okay, MAYBE Fighters shouldn't need high ability scores to qualify for their class bonus feats..."
Y'THINK?
"But getting feats as fast as a Ranger? No, no, we can't do that!"
ARGH! WHY DOES A BADGER-KISSING SPELLCASTING TREERUNNER GET BETTER COMBAT FEATS FASTER THEN A FIGHTER AND NOT NEED PRE-REQS?!?!
"Cause, uh, well, Rangers are magical! They deserve it!"
ARGH! AND ON TOP OF THEIR GETTING MORE SKILL POINTS?!?
"Well, sure. They need them, you know! Gotta be sneaky and perceptive and train animals and know woodland lore. It's required! Fighters don't need to know any of that stuff!"
)(*&%*%&^)&!!!

"Moving and attacking is way too strong, but moving and full spellcasting is just perfect."
(*&)*(&!!!

"Being able to cut through spells is unreal."
UGH? Wait, being able to cut spells is unreal, but casting spells is-?!?

"Giving Fighters followers is overpowered."
(cough) but casters getting hordes of minions and magic-using creatures for waving their hands and classes getting free animal companions and familiars better then any merc you could hire is perfectly fine?!?

"Fighters don't need to lead armies or provide bonuses to fellow warriors. That's the job of bards."
So, Fighters are there to be the targets of buff spells, but can't help out their friends and allies in mass combat? IN other words, soldiers are meant to suck in mass combat, and the term 'general' and 'warlord' and 'battlefield commander' is only supposed to apply to BARDS? And priests and wizards and druids and oracles and -
"Uh...they can take teamwork feats."
ARGH!

===Aelryinth


kyrt-ryder wrote:

The existence of the Rogue and Fighter as independent classes with distinct niches to protect from one another is a pretty big thorn in the foot of those character types.

Granted simple gestalt still has a long way to go to be a valid class, but it's getting close to on par with an Unchained Barbarian. [In a tactician sort of way juxtaposed to the Barb's smashermancy.]

I don't mind class interdependance but in 3.5 it wasn't even close to being even. If it was, Wizards would get as many skills as the fighter, and no bonus feats, Fighter would get some minor ability at levels 4, 8, 10, 14, 16, and 20, Rogue would get something in it's dead levels. As it stands Wizard is the only one that got something new each level in 3.5.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
TarkXT wrote:
For those interested I decided to give an experiment a shot regarding this subject and 3pp.

We should all just jump into another thread called 'Caster/Martial Disparity: What are you gonna do about it?' Were we share how we solve it in our games and give tips on how to do it in others. Seriously, most threads like this just reiterate what the problem is and why and, as Aelryinth pointed out, argue counter points about why it doesn't suck. But we can celebrate being proactive but displaying that we're actually doing something about it.

1,451 to 1,500 of 1,592 << first < prev | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / General Discussion / Do martial characters really need better things? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.