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.
Right. Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness and then getting mad about the darkness and then running around in the dark.
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Spellcasters get +1 SL every level.
Spellcasters get more spells/day every level.
Spellcasters get access to NEW SPELLS every 2-3 levels.
Spellcasters get to use a bunch of magic items without needing UMD.
Spellcasters get to make magic items very easily.
Spellcasters get to identify spells and magical effects without needing to pay skill points.
Prepared spellcasters can CUSTOMIZE THEIR LOAD-OUT against a foe. That is horrendously powerful.
Prepared casters can totally change their role from blaster to controller to summoner to charmer to diplomancer to forger to scout to traveler to melee tank to buffer to (maybe) healer with one day (or less) of rest.
Spon casters can pick their spells to do most or all that more or less at will as they rise in levels.
Casters determine the length of the adventure. When your casters are empty, the wise party is done. It doesn't matter how much oomph your martials have left. This automatically make martials second string.
Casters tend to have Single Ability dependency.
(&&()& Casters getting something new every level. What do you think spells ARE?
==Aelryinth
Addendum II
Well summarized, Aelryinth! You captured my frustrations with the PF system and martials in this!
Unless it's someone with a Frenzied Berserker and Supreme Power Attack who can play Rocket Tag with the best of them.
==Aelryinth
Right. Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness and then getting mad about the darkness and then running around in the dark.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.
Pretty much. I'd do it myself but I'm cooking dinner. The missus wanted some thing elaborate tonight. Somebody start one up for me.
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.
Using Unchained revised action economy and automatic bonus progression has made martials far more palatable in our most recent games.
It doesn't close the gap but I don't feel like a masochist when playing a twf rogue.
End result is people actually playing martials again.
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Class interdependence CAN be a great idea for a game if it's done in a way that everybody gets to play all the time. Shadowrun is notorious for getting this wrong, and 3E is notorious for making it one-way to the point that past a certain level a group is better off having no martials at all.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.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.]
Shadowrun unfortunately chose the route of mimicking the real world.
It's real hard to contribute meaningfully in a VR dive if you ain't a decker. Guess what? That SEAL is going to be standing around while the hacker does his thing in real life, too.
Ditto vehicular combat. You have awesome drivers/pilots, and you have people who ride along with them. SEALS don't help helicopter transport pilots or Blackhawk tank-smashers do their jobs.
Stick a driver, hacker or pilot in the middle of a SEAL fireteam, and he's there mainly to drag a wounded SEAL to safety, not fight. He's IN THE WAY.
That's real life, and yeah, that can be no fun for a game.
So what 3.5 did is make everyone good at combat/killing, and then the give everyone but the martials the ability to contribute elsewhere. SOmetimes multiple elsewheres. Which made your SEAL totally unnecessary.
Bah.
==Aelryinth
Ah, Shadowrun. Shadowrun is problematic on a lot of levels. Mundanes (samurai, etc) are also fairly limited on how much crap they can stuff into their body while those with magical ability -- well, the sky is the limit on how powerful they can really become. Same story, different game. I spent many a year working on that problem before saving my sanity and running away. :)
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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.Using Unchained revised action economy and automatic bonus progression has made martials far more palatable in our most recent games.
It doesn't close the gap but I don't feel like a masochist when playing a twf rogue.
End result is people actually playing martials again.
I don't have the Unchained book, but from what I have seen mentioned on the subject, people seem reasonably satisfied with what it offers. I may pick it up so I can familiarize myself with it.
You're still a masochist, just a more effective one :PAfter 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.Using Unchained revised action economy and automatic bonus progression has made martials far more palatable in our most recent games.
It doesn't close the gap but I don't feel like a masochist when playing a twf rogue.
*rubs two d20s suggestively* punish me!
In all seriousness. Being able to take a full move action and attack 4 times is very nice. I also like the idea that you can stab someone 4 times in the surprise round for 44d6+100 (if your first attack hits the rest are only more likely to hit)
I don't have the Unchained book, but from what I have seen mentioned on the subject, people seem reasonably satisfied with what it offers. I may pick it up so I can familiarize myself with it.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.Using Unchained revised action economy and automatic bonus progression has made martials far more palatable in our most recent games.
It doesn't close the gap but I don't feel like a masochist when playing a twf rogue.
End result is people actually playing martials again.
The rules I mentioned are on the pfsrd under "Unchained" above the alternative campaign rules section.
I don't have the Unchained book, but from what I have seen mentioned on the subject, people seem reasonably satisfied with what it offers. I may pick it up so I can familiarize myself with it.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.Using Unchained revised action economy and automatic bonus progression has made martials far more palatable in our most recent games.
It doesn't close the gap but I don't feel like a masochist when playing a twf rogue.
End result is people actually playing martials again.
Its on d20pfsrd.com.
There are three house rules I needed to make before I found it fully functional.
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IF you want to address the 'problem' with martials, you MUST MUST MUST do ALL of the following.
All of them. Not SOME of them.
1) Make 100% sure they are the best in martial combat.
No ifs, ands or buts. If some Gated creature, Summoned baddie, or buffed AComp is better then having a true martial around, then ALL of those options need nerfing. If Combat Cleric, Wildshaper Druid and Melee Mage can replace the Martial, NERF THEM.
2) Anti-magic resistance. This is so common sense I don't even see WHY people protest about it. The ability to cleave/counter/dispel/neutralize/withstand/overcome/resist/shatter/complete ly freaking shut down some ()&)*& caster is part and parcel of the martial legend.
Fine, so your GD caster can kill an army. I can Kill YOU.
Combined, the Martial has to be able to do his GD job, and do it better then ANYTHING a caster can come up with. If he can't do his freaking job, then start over. The only thing that should stop a Martial is an army or another Martial. Any Caster getting in his way should be sushi. If the Casters don't like it, stop waving your hands, put on a sword and armor and suck it up.
3) Leadership.
Bake it into the GD class. If you choose NOT to use it, so be it. Call it a sidekick, student, cohort, buddy, blood companion, oathsworn, whatever.
Call them guilds, followers, troops, MOAR STUDENTS, whatever. Make them part of the class.
If the casters can wave their hands and get 100% loyal (and even more disposable) minions, give them to martials, and let the campaign decide if the martials need to take advantage of that class option, JUST LIKE CASTERS. IF not, then DON"T USE THEM. But give them the OPTION!
4) And then make martials able to freaking LEAD IN WAR. GD (*&)*(& Bards. I want someone up there who knows how to fight and command, not GD sing!
5) MOVEMENT OPTIONS. As they get higher level, I want better/stronger/faster. 'Jump Good' should be an absolute freaking MINIMUM. At higher levels, walking on air or flight is going to be a MUST just to have a BALANCED GAME. The only way it's not is going to be giving away the ability to TAKE AWAY FLYING (which is another whole kind of awesome) and/or Dimensional Movement (even more awesome!).
6) I WANT SUPERHUMAN. I do. Seriously. Nope, no questions. I want badass with lots and lots of bad. If that wizard can turn into a freaking dragon, I want to be able to beat that freaking dragon into the GD ground. He AIN"T STRONGER THEN I CAN BE. There ain't no way. I BEAT DRAGONS INTO THE GD GROUND FOR A LIVING. He waves his freaking hands and mutters fancy words. F HIM!
7) I want out of combat ability to influence the campaign. That could be political ranks, wealth, titles, leadership, renown that other classes just don't get, but accumulates to mine as naturally as Teleporting does to a Wizard. I should walk into a town and that GD bard next to me should be green with envy with the huzzahs that go up, and that wizard should be lost in the shuffle and ignored completely. If I want something done, people should be LEAPING to get it done for me. Let the GD caster wave his hands and do it himself, or get some Summoned minion to do it for him.
8) If you're a caster, you lose combat savvy and you lose skills.
If you are a FUll Caster, you lose a LOT of combat savvy and almost all skills. You are a Full GD Caster, and that means your precious brainpower is chock full of hand waving and tongue gnashing and your knees are going bad from prayer sessions and Rituals and ceremonies and you don't have bloody TIME nor inclination to be good at mundane SKILLS. You don't practice Jumping when you can GD fly. You don't practice Survival when you can Endure Elements/Resist COld and Create Food and Water. You don't Diplomance when you can Suggest and Charm.
9) MAKE DEFENSES AGAINST MAGIC COMMON.
GD, what IS it with campaign worlds and anti-magic whining shells? They should be STANDARD ISSUE, because that's what non-Casters would want! Who gives a PU*P*U if it shuts down Casters! THAT"S WHY WE WANT THEM! No fly zones, no summon zones, no teleport zones, no charm zones - they should be all over the GD place, as should cheap personal protection. BECAUSE THAT"S HOW YOU MAKE NON-CASTERS FEEL SAFE. WAAAAAA, YOU SHUT DOWN MY ABILITY TO ENSLAVE ANYONE I WANT TO WITH A WORD, OR BLOW UP PARLIAMENT WIHT A STANDARD ACTION! WAAAAA!
10) RECOVERY IS A THING.
Martials should not need to rely on a caster to Recover. That's freaking suicide. It's stupid, it makes no sense, and no GD person in their right mind is going to NOT have accelerated recovery options (read: healing and getting rid of 'conditions') if they have any GD sense at all.
IF you cannot bake recovery options into a martial class, START GD OVER.
Either EVERYONE relies on the cleric for healing, or he's just a convenient source for some extra potent helpings he can spread around to others. But if a martial can't recover from injuries of all kinds pretty much on his own, then EVERYONE better be going to see the doctor...and there better be cheap magic items for the Martials to use to heal and recover, because beyond arms and armor, there is NOTHING more important that renders them impotent and useless.
NOTHING.
11) If it takes too much money/time/magic items for a full martial party to succeed at an adventure vs a full caster party, start bloody over until you get it right.
==Aelryinth
I only just now realized that in the Unchained action economy you can use the first TWF feat on a charge. Interesting.
But yeah, the only thing that kinda sucks about the Unchained action economy is the loss of the swift action for free during a full attack but I house ruled that you can expend your reaction for a swift and things have gotten along fine. Sure, that way you can't Full Attack->Swift Action->AoO but most of the time it's not relevant, Combat Reflexes still exists and has doubled in value, and there's an added simplicity in Reaction existing in the first place because you don't change your initiative order by using readied actions. Plus you can Attack twice and ready an action to attack or step to follow casters. Step up and readied attacks practically locks them down.
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Very well said Aelryinth. I'd like to nominate you to start the 'lets make martials good' thread and suggest you include that post in it [spoilered if necessary for space reasons.]
EDIT: I must note my personal disagreement with the antimagic clause though. I agree there should be a great deal in the world that interferes with particular magics [like how Kirth's ruled that a certain depth of solid earth prohibits teleportation in his game] but flat antimagic zones go a little too far IMO.
Dimensional movement is freaking terrifying in RL concept.
You have no doors that cannot be bypassed, walls are ineffective, armies can march and attack instantly from anywhere, attacks can strike out of nowhere to anywhere, anytime.
Nobody in their right mind wants someone else to be able to use a movement mode they can't control. This is especially true in areas with concentrations of military/political power, or people's homes. The idea that a thief can just blink into your house past your locks and walk off with everything is just Dumb. Every thief would take the option. Nobody with sense would allow it.
Likewise, shutting down ALL MAGIC in areas is the only way to be safe. You cannot have the Commander in Chief subject to ANY FORM of magical attack. The whole White House would be under an A-M shell. Ditto Congress. Portable Shells would spring up anytime world leaders visited. There are too many attack spells from ALL schools of magic, you have to shut them ALL down to be safe.
And the fact is, once you have a Perm shell in place...it's there FOREVER. It doesn't cost anything to maintain. Just pay for it once, and it's there for millennia.
Which means defenses will naturally stack up over time and proliferate like mad as the money is spent. They don't naturally go away, and by their nature are harder to get rid of then most spells. If you use Ritual Rules to boost the Caster levels, getting rid of Permanent defenses like that is nigh impossible, because cooperating on dispels is far more likely to be interfered with and take longer then cooperating on raising defenses.
In short, if you are perfectly okay with a Caster flying above a party, sending down spells while protected by fickle winds and Summoning minions atop them while cackling at the futility of your sword and arrow users being unable to harm him, then when those casters walk into the throne room facing twenty orc berserkers and the whole is under an anti-magic shell, they shouldn't be GD complaining that the shoe is on the other foot...because that is exactly what I would do were I that GD orc chief.
I could totally see a high level Rogue or Fighter living their life inside a personal anti-magic shell and barely realizing it is present. But damn, wouldn't every Caster they come in contact with be terrified of them?
And that's how it SHOULD BE.
===Aelryinth
I have to admit that I'm intrigued with the iterative attacks portion of Unchained. In practice, how is it?
Great. It seems weird for level one chars to make 3 attacks but the extras just miss.
You can also attack move attack. Haste is a free simple attack action but if you were planning on making atleast one attack then haste is a bonus action.
For example a magus could enhance her blade, use hasted assault, move into range and make an attack. Next turn she can use arcane accuracy, Spellcombat, then two hand the last two attacks. (Four attacks total depending on what spell you used). I used magus as the example because people may think swift action heavy classes get screwed, but being able to do more than one a round is a huge boon.
Very well said Aelryinth. I'd like to nominate you to start the 'lets make martials good' thread and suggest you include that post in it [spoilered if necessary for space reasons.]
EDIT: I must note my personal disagreement with the antimagic clause though. I agree there should be a great deal in the world that interferes with particular magics [like how Kirth's ruled that a certain depth of solid earth prohibits teleportation in his game] but flat antimagic zones go a little too far IMO.
Dimensional movement is freaking terrifying in RL concept.
You have no doors that cannot be bypassed, walls are ineffective, armies can march and attack instantly from anywhere, attacks can strike out of nowhere to anywhere, anytime.
Nobody in their right mind wants someone else to be able to use a movement mode they can't control. This is especially true in areas with concentrations of military/political power, or people's homes. The idea that a thief can just blink into your house past your locks and walk off with everything is just Dumb. Every thief would take the option. Nobody with sense would allow it.Likewise, shutting down ALL MAGIC in areas is the only way to be safe. You cannot have the Commander in Chief subject to ANY FORM of magical attack. The whole White House would be under an A-M shell. Ditto Congress. Portable Shells would spring up anytime world leaders visited. There are too many attack spells from ALL schools of magic, you have to shut them ALL down to be safe.
And the fact is, once you have a Perm shell in place...it's there FOREVER. It doesn't cost anything to maintain. Just pay for it once, and it's there for millennia.
Which means defenses will naturally stack up over time and proliferate like mad as the money is spent. They don't naturally go away, and by their nature are harder to get rid of then most spells. If you use Ritual Rules to boost the Caster levels, getting rid of Permanent defenses like that is nigh impossible, because cooperating on...
I disagree that the answer is to give casters martial problems.
It seems better to just not let spells make casters immune to martials.
For example, in 5e fickle winds is not a spell. But windwall is. You cannot benefit from both fly and windwall at the same time because they both require a non-action concentration that you can only give to one spell at a time. Even if you could a siege engine manned by level ones could blast you out of the sky.
With bounded accuracy, leading an army actually means something.
With bounded accuracy, leading an army actually means something.Yeah, and leveling no longer means much of anything... unless you're a caster gaining access to more and higher level spells.
Yeah martials get real abilities in 5e not random +1s. In that sense leveling means a whole lot more for martials in 5e. If you play a champion fighter without feats, you suffer from just numbers syndrome provided that you ignore improvised actions that you are just better at than other classes.
5e is still a two tier game consisting of Fullcasters and others. But picture a game in PF where everyone is tier 2 or 3 and you can see why I've only talked about playing PF because I DM 5e not PF.
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7) I want out of combat ability to influence the campaign. That could be political ranks, wealth, titles, leadership, renown that other classes just don't get, but accumulates to mine as naturally as Teleporting does to a Wizard. I should walk into a town and that GD bard next to me should be green with envy with the huzzahs that go up, and that wizard should be lost in the shuffle and ignored completely. If I want something done, people should be LEAPING to get it done for me. Let the GD caster wave his hands and do it himself, or get some Summoned minion to do it for him.
This reminds me of a book I read a long time ago. The main character was a wizard in a new land completely unfamiliar to him (it was someone from our time teleported into a fantasy land and given the ability to cast magic). As he was traveling, he acquired friends and companions. One was a knight. The wizard and the knight were addressing a crowd of common people right before a battle and the wizard laid down a solid plan that would fortify defenses, set up a solid offense, and save everyone.
No one listened.
The knight repeated the same exact message and the crowd immediately moved with purpose and started working on the tasks assigned.
The wizard turned to the knight and asked, "You just said the same thing I did. Why did they not listen to me?"
The Knight, slightly confused as if it were obvious, responded, "Because you're not a knight."
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I think the 3E think grossly misjudged how powerful feats are IMO. Sure the fighter may get more. Yet unlike spells they don't scale with levelling. That + 1 to AC from Didge while useful at low levels really does not mean much at later levels. Compared to what some magic spells can do feats really don't come close in power IMO. They saw the disparity but chose to do nothing about it. It's like how the penalized Demi-humans in 2E. Punish players for taking something other than human. While giving humans both the single best yet boring class feature in the game. PF could have done much more with Fighters while maintaining backwards compabilty. Except again the devs choose to once again ignore it.
I think the 3E think grossly misjudged how powerful feats are IMO. Sure the fighter may get more. Yet unlike spells they don't scale with levelling. That + 1 to AC from Didge while useful at low levels really does not mean much at later levels. Compared to what some magic spells can do feats really don't come close in power IMO. They saw the disparity but chose to do nothing about it. It's like how the penalized Demi-humans in 2E. Punish players for taking something other than human. While giving humans both the single best yet boring class feature in the game. PF could have done much more with Fighters while maintaining backwards compabilty. Except again the devs choose to once again ignore it.
They also grossly over-value abilities that "can do it all day every day." You know, abilities like swinging a sword. You have 14,400 rounds per day, and can swing your sword every single one of those rounds if you want. While you can only cast a couple of handfuls of spells in a single day. Isn't swinging a sword so much more powerful?
For all day abilities to count for much they need to be like 80+% as useful as the limited stuff. Do you have the right spell on hand? Your at 100%. don't? You're at 70%. this is basically what it's like. Oh I don't have Web, but I have grease, and that'll be close enough. While the fighter is chilling at 50%, since his 50 is half the 100 but lots more than the 0 that mages with no spells are at. But mages are never "out of spells" since why go into the dungeon if you're already weak?
But if a martial was 80% all the time, sure other guys could Nova or Have the perfect answer, but your answer is quite good all the time. if you fight pixies or dragons or dungeon or animals or etc. they should have options that are like 80% good against ALL of them. That is a good level for all day abilities. Sure that wizard that has "slay wyrm" spell memorized is awesome against that dragon, but that'll do nothing against the Wyvern that was mistaken for a dragon.
Like, Your energy resist (that you need to chose the type of when you prepare it) spell gives 3 people 20 resist of one element? I can have 1 person under a "permanent" effect for 15 of all. You can be invisible for minutes? I can time my fast movements with their blinks. You can fly? I can jump over tall buildings in a single leap. You can charm person? I have a guy that this guy probably owes a favor to. I can hit you to cause you to need to make a caster level check of DC 10+1/3 level + my Stat of choice to not lose your spell for 1 round, And if you do something that would normally need a check you just add the 1/3 level + (stat or 1/2 stat) to the DC. I'm so good a blacksmith I get a my ranks of blacksmith as a bonus to my sunder attempts. Tie spellcasting to stats, you need X ranks of knowledge Y to cast spells of level X in school Z like K. Local is evocation. K religion is curative spells. Martials having a Blur like effect that is like SR for spells. "you have 5% chance of negating any spells you want that are targeting you or include you"
Thanks. That I'm at least considering, but I was hoping not to be completely blindsided by something else.I'm talking about Decking, I've yet to play it myself but I've had to endure a few serious rants from separate friends about that aspect of the game.As a complete aside, with Shadowrun are you talking about decking? Or are there more fundamental problems?
I love the setting, but haven't had the chance to actually play it much or in years and was toying with the idea of running a game
I had a brief foray into the latest edition of Shadowrun. I love the setting as well, but I think it makes for better fiction and video games than it ever could a tabletop. The biggest thing that my group ran into is that the game very necessarily splits the party. You've got a mage in the astral realm, a decker in the midst of VR, and then a few people in meatspace -- some possibly guarding the bodies of the mage and decker, and others potentially going deeper into the building you're infiltrating.
Due to how the setting works, I really don't see a way around it. But it's the equivalent of having an adventure where some of your party is on the material plane, some of it is on the astral plane, and some if it is in some random demiplane all at the same time. Yes, the things they're doing indirectly contribute to each other's success, but there's no actual intra-party interaction. It gets super boring having to rotate between each group, rather than actually working together as you would in a Pathfinder adventure, and we had a hard time keeping people focused through parts that they could not meaningfully affect.
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.Using Unchained revised action economy and automatic bonus progression has made martials far more palatable in our most recent games.
It doesn't close the gap but I don't feel like a masochist when playing a twf rogue.
End result is people actually playing martials again.
For all the disparity I see with this system, I'm not sure I agree that playing a TWF rogue is masochistic. I have a UC-Rogue 7/ Stalker 3/ Shadow Dancer 1 that completely obliterates most enemies in 1 turn. With each short sword attack dealing 1d6+15 and setting myself up with full-attacks and Sneak Attack/Deadly Strike (+5d6) I actually think I deal too much and should focus my resources into other areas
End result is people actually playing martials again.
Do people not play martial characters at your table?
I've come to accept that they're a weaker option, but in threads like this previously I'd formed the impression that people still see them at the table.
End result is people actually playing martials again.Do people not play martial characters at your table?
I've come to accept that they're a weaker option, but in threads like this previously I'd formed the impression that people still see them at the table.
Generic PF with no tweaks Unchained or otherwise? No one plays a martial with less than 6/9 casting. The other group I played with had one hold out playing a swashbuckler, but they play 5e now.
Design Manager
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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.
A major belief during the development of 3rd edition was that the Fighter was essentially the be-all-end-all of the game, and physical stats were more valuable than mental stats. That's why you had half-orcs with a slew of penalties because of that +2 to STR; nothing is better in the game than being able to hit things harder (or so went the thought process). Seriously, it was an over-arching belief amongst the designers that martials had been allowed to run rampant in earlier editions of the game while casters lagged behind with the vague promise of one day being powerful themselves, assuming they lived that long.
So, obviously, that meant that there needed to be better restraints put on the "overpowered" Fighter, including things like 2 bad saves to give him some weaknesses, and poor skill points to make him reliant on casters and Rogues for non-combat issues.
Then you had other design goals creep in - the kind of narrative power that had previously been given to martials, things like armies, castles, monasteries, squires, etc. needed to be divorced from classes, so someone's mechanics weren't telling the GM what was happening in his world. Obviously this doesn't apply to spellcasters, because being able to create extradimensional mansions and even demi-planes isn't changing the GM's world, it's just adding pieces to it that don't directly interact with other pieces of the game (until they do). So now, they had nerfed down the Fighter, the sun around which all other martials would orbit, both in direct power and in narrative power, but spellcasting's narrative power remained unchanged, and their "direct" power got a small boost, accompanied by the Fighter's loss of the incredible defenses that had been his mainstay previously.
So, you had the Fighter taking hits on two fronts, both his combat/defensive capability, and his narrative capability, while the casters retained essentially all of their old tools, plus some fun new ones. Because of the new design directions squeezing from both ends, the Fighter (and by association, all other martials, since martials are all balanced against the Fighter in some way) wasn't just "reined in" he was actually stomped into the ground.
But here's the thing - not everybody plays "smart". In some groups, and this demographic will generally include the vast majority of new players, the players are perfectly happy to be put on rails and roll the dice whenever the GM tells them to. When they build a character, they don't look at the mechanics from all angles and find spells that allow them to assault enemies on multiple fronts or remove their opponent's ability to threaten as efficiently as possible, regardless of how much actual damage is dealt, instead they build to a theme, and those themes are almost always going to inform their mechanical choices in a very subpar way. "I want to be a fire mage, like Chandra Nalaar" sounds cool, and arguably is cool, but when you spend all of your spells on various ways to deal fire damage, you're going to be a pretty mediocre mage (and "mediocre" is actually being fairly generous).
You know what else new or casual players don't do? They don't dig into systems that seem complicated to them, like crafting, and they probably only have a cursory familiarity with what the skills actually do, relying on the name of the skill to inform them as to how it might be used. New/inexperienced GMs will often do the same thing, allowing someone to heal an ally with the Heal skill, because sure why not, and other little things like that. They'll instinctively develop house rules for systems that seem too complicated, or which are legitimately unclear or poorly written, like mounted combat. All of these little things that new players do will often mask the issues, or even more than that, they'll actually allow characters a really high degree of power that is way, way beyond what the mechanics actually give. Very few of them will have the understanding of the math behind the system to recognize things like the fact that while a Rogue's 10d6 Sneak Attack looks impressive, it's functionally no better (and potentially quite worse) than what a Fighter is getting just from Power Attack and his STR bonus to damage, let alone understand any of the more nuanced or complicated subsystems. There's very little incentive to "get better" at the game anyways, when you have things that actually work better the less you try to follow rules (like mounted combat, which tends to only work the way it's probably supposed to when you ignore a few rules and make up a few more). Add to this GMs who make arbitrary rulings so that the story goes however they "feel" it should go and who spot nerf or buff any number of mechanics with no understanding of the framework behind them, and you've got a pretty good idea of what the actual average table looks like.
Because of all these little things that happen very commonly, you have a very common misconception that the martial classes aren't only competitive with the casters, they're "way better" because they can deal "so much" damage. Because of this, this grouping of people tends to get real nervous whenever they see martial characters getting new toys, like the Unchained Rogue's DEX to damage, and they tend to speak up about it. And here's the thing - the designers don't balance this game to what Ssalarn, Aelryinth, kyrt-rider, Kirth Gersen, or any of these other experienced players with a knowledge of the math behind the system are experiencing, they design it towards the lowest common denominator, that group that doesn't even realize how many houserules they use, that average table I mentioned above. They do this, because the designers work for business people, and business people know the same thing that politicians have always known - if 5% of your population is smart enough to see the positives and negatives of your plan and at least half of that group is still on board, you're better off ignoring the rest and focusing on keeping the 95% who don't understand it happy, even if that means making objectively bad decisions. If you're a company like Paizo, and you've inherited a player base who were largely happy with the status quo, at least enough so that they're consistently buying books and introducing people to your product, your goal isn't "keep making the game better" it's "we've got a god thing here, don't f#!# it up, and don't rock the boat".
If you want daring, edgy mechanics, or major changes to existing dynamics, you can't and shouldn't look to Paizo. There's no incentive for them to provide those things, and they intentionally groom and support their 3pp community to provide them instead. It's only when those daring and edgy projects have been proven successful on a small scale that you'll see someone like Paizo decide to adopt some or all of those ideas. It's like how whenever a new MMORPG comes out with a cool new idea or mechanic, Blizzard waits for the hype to die down and then cannibalizes it and adds it to WoW. They're not going to take big risks with their golden egg-laying goose, but they will do what they can to keep the eggs coming. So if you have an idea to address problems you see in the game, write it up and pitch it to a publisher. That's what I did. Or, if it's something that may not be a good fit for a publisher, throw it up in the homebrew threads. If your ideas are good, people will start using them and talking about them, and maybe they'll influence the direction the game takes in the future. If nothing else, it has a better chance of changing things then another "Casters are OP!" "Nuh-uh!" thread.
Generic PF with no tweaks Unchained or otherwise? No one plays a martial with less than 6/9 casting. The other group I played with had one hold out playing a swashbuckler, but they play 5e now.End result is people actually playing martials again.Do people not play martial characters at your table?
I've come to accept that they're a weaker option, but in threads like this previously I'd formed the impression that people still see them at the table.
Cheers. We're currently playing 5E too, but our PF games always had at least one rogue or fighter (and often one of each).
As I said, it was just an impression I got that people still play them - even those who think they're subpar.
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Design Manager
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Generic PF with no tweaks Unchained or otherwise? No one plays a martial with less than 6/9 casting. The other group I played with had one hold out playing a swashbuckler, but they play 5e now.End result is people actually playing martials again.Do people not play martial characters at your table?
I've come to accept that they're a weaker option, but in threads like this previously I'd formed the impression that people still see them at the table.
Cheers. We're currently playing 5E too, but our PF games always had at least one rogue or fighter (and often one of each).
As I said, it was just an impression I got that people still play them - even those who think they're subpar.
Back before I started running my own organized play groups with 3pp materials, I would play in PFS, and I generally played Fighters, Rogues, or Sorcerers. One reason for that was that I didn't want to worry about table variation screwing with my fun time, so I'd pick real simple stuff and trust in the fact that PFS scenarios cater to casual play to keep my character from getting sidelined. Another reason was that I'm better at building characters than most people who play the game. That's not conceit, I expect the same is true of most of the people in this thread, and probably a healthy chunk of these forums in general. 9 out of 10 times, a Fighter I build is going to be able to outperform whatever the other members of the group are bringing to the table, because player system mastery will almost always trump class strength as a relevant factor. Playing a Fighter actually means that I've restrained myself a bit and it will be harder for me to accidentally sideline or show up someone else's character.
There's also the fact that I'm lazy, and I can whip out a Thunder and Fang Shoanti warrior in like 15 minutes and then not have to think at all once I sit down at the table. Sure, I'd like it if my hero got a bit more heroic, but I don't think I ever made it past 7th level in a PFS game anyway, so I never really played in the real problem levels of the game while participating in that setting.
That rule actually carries over to most play groups for me - if I know I'm probably not going to see 8th level or higher, there's a reasonable chance I'll play a Fighter or Rogue (though I'll still probably grab an archetype or two that shores up some of the bigger issues). If we're starting at a higher level, or the plan is to run an AP start to finish, I'm going with something a bit more well-rounded.
So the only realistic solutions are homebrew, 3pp and other games. No change from what I've been doing lately.
Most of my local games have been 5e and I'll be taking a serious look at Five Moons when it is released.
Right. Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness and then getting mad about the darkness and then running around in the dark.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.
If its not done when I wake up ima do it.
Already started one. I guess I woke up first. Would have last night but elaborate dinner and other things.
Find it over here in the General Discussion boards.
Chose general discussion because it could end up as advice, third party, and house rule while general discussion covers all the bases.
Also to differentiate it from general martial/caster threads I wanted to emphasize being proactive. I can understand the term 'armchair GMing' because one thing I do see is statements without numbers or ideas without executions or just all around no progress and I think that's why these kinds of threads pop up forever. We can go off about the problem but its a pretty malleable game and we have the ability to do things about problems we see, share solutions and pick up printed, playtested and reviewed ideas.
