Someone mentioned that the XP needed to level used to be a balancing factor in old D&D. I never really looked at it that way before, but they have a point. Instead of having a party where everyone is pretty much the same level, you'd have Rogue significantly higher level, followed by your Fighter, with the Wizard coming in last. It used to drive me nuts to need 2-3x the experience of other party members to gain a level, and felt like I was falling further and further behind. But, while I was really fragile as a magic-user (and needed those fighters!), my spells did make up for it.
Not that anyone wants to go back to that system of unequal leveling. But what was implemented in its place?
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EXP balancing in the end balances nothing. The great problem is that Paizo is too damn conservative about martials.
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Someone mentioned that the XP needed to level used to be a balancing factor in old D&D. I never really looked at it that way before, but they have a point. Instead of having a party where everyone is pretty much the same level, you'd have Rogue significantly higher level, followed by your Fighter, with the Wizard coming in last. It used to drive me nuts to need 2-3x the experience of other party members to gain a level, and felt like I was falling further and further behind. But, while I was really fragile as a magic-user (and needed those fighters!), my spells did make up for it.
Not that anyone wants to go back to that system of unequal leveling. But what was implemented in its place?
Well 5e has somewhat of a similar situation where some classes get stat bonuses faster than others. Its a little more complicated than that considering that stat bonuses and feats are intermingled but one thing I had been mentally working out was the possibility of mixing the level progression and the automatic bonus progression and having it synch with BAB. For example;
Full BAB would get a feat at first level and every odd level, 3/4 BAB would get it 1st level, and then 4th, 7th, 10th, 12th, 15th, 18th, and 20th level. 1/2 BAB would get feats at 1st, 6th, 10th, 14th, and 18th. A similar situation would occur when it came to stat bonuses, weapon and armor attunements, and resistance bonuses. My only problem is that Full BAB aren't equally weak and it doesn't help Rogues none.
One thing that I noticed was that 5e's community has less of a problem with fighters and their power level despite to me the situation is exactly the same. Barring straight up gaining spells from an archetype, and despite spells being weaker, Fighters are all around boring classes that still don't have access to encounter ending abilities. About the only difference is that they have more exclusive abilities but the fact remains that if a problem doesn't need killing (I'm currently playing a fighter in 5e) I've got nothing but roleplaying to back me up. So why aren't there many figher power level complaints in 5e?
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...but the fact remains that if a problem doesn't need killing (I'm currently playing a fighter in 5e) I've got nothing but roleplaying to back me up. So why aren't there many figher power level complaints in 5e?
I'd guess a lot of that has to do with skills.
In 5E, there's very little difference in how many skills the different classes get, so the fighter isn't facing a deficit.
Also, skills are more open-ended and less codified, so it's easier to come up with a clever idea of what you want to do and then just roll a single relevant check (as opposed to needing to sort through a page or two of rules to see if there are any forbidden elements to your plan, then figure out how many actions you'll be using, make a check for every single action, with only one needing to go low for you to fail).
Relatedly, bounded accuracy means that if you want to try something, you have a reasonable chance of succeeding, instead of there being a chart telling you that the most comparable task has a DC of 35, so if you're not UberSkillMan you just auto-fail.
And finally, there are far fewer spells that completely obsolete skills in 5E than in Pathfinder. Thus, using skills is actually a thing people do.
TLDR: Overall, 5E is set up such that the primary way of mechanically engaging the world/setting/campaign outside of combat is through the use of skills rather than spells, and everybody has enough skills to make a difference.
So why aren't there many figher power level complaints in 5e?
Because the system is a less of a mess that 3.x is.
TLDR: Overall, 5E is set up such that the primary way of mechanically engaging the world/setting/campaign outside of combat is through the use of skills rather than spells, and everybody has enough skills to make a difference.
Even at that point I haven't been feeling the difference between fighters. Partially because my Pathfinder fighters allways have 14 INT, and partially because I've had bonus skill use books for a few years now but even before that it was the same feel I get from 5e fighter. Virtually useless unless I need to make death happen. I've got proficiency with Athletics and Intimidate from my class and that's it. Athletics has been okay I guess but most obstacles wind up being magicked away. Intimidate has been... I'm not even 100% sure what it even does. There's this weird thing where there's a lot of abilities in my feats that should call for an intimidate check but instead use some Str-based DC and while its nice because my Str is much higher than my Cha it makes my Intimidate check about as useful as Pathfinder's intimidate check. I guess I could get three more with a feat but those are way more valuable than they were before. Last session we leveled and I took a feat making my dex save jump from 6 to 9, added and added +1 to AC and initiative.
Bottomline I have good and bad feelings about 5e, mostly good, but seriously the 5e Fighter is still as boring as Pathfinder's Fighter and because of the vagueness of the skills requires more DM fiat to be useful.
(side note: My fighters always have 14 INT not because of combat manuevers but because i like to make my own alchemical items. Those are way more handy than people give credit for.)
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I've got proficiency with Athletics and Intimidate from my class and that's it.
You should have a pair of skill proficiencies from your background as well, not to mention most backgrounds having some interesting little special ability that interacts with the world in a noncombat fashion. Did you forget to take a background?
Also, what about the skills you're not proficient in? There's no such thing as "trained only" in 5E. Combine that with bounded accuracy and you've got a reasonable shot at ANY narrative interaction you might want to attempt; all proficiency does is give your chances a little bump.
the vagueness of the skills requires more DM fiat to be useful.
Can you elaborate on this a bit?
I feel like more 3.pf players need to play Dungeon World for a few sessions and then go to 5e. 5e doesn't play anything like Pathfinder by design.
I also can't think of a single encounter ending spell, especially on the level of 3.pf era spellcasting. I think Contagion is the only one for a single target depending on your DMs reading of the text.
Sleep is still a spell. One thing that had been happening is that we sneak, cast sleep and murder quickly. (teamwork!)
Off topic but, everyone recommends Dungeon World whenever alternatives to PF come up so I got it to play with a group nearby. And I feel like I'm the only one on the planet that hates it.
So lets round that down and give fighters 2 bonus feats a level and playtest it.
That's actually pretty much been playtested. I highly recommend Monte Cook's Collected Book of Experimental Might. It recommended giving everyone a feat a level, and fighters a bonus feat a level. So level 20 fighters had 40 feats.
He then added some super feats that required a lot of pre-reqs. But that's doable when you are rolling in feats.
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I always find it strange when people talk about skills in Pathfinder filling in these gaps. Do they even play past 5th level? Seriously, after a certain point, skills are mostly eclipsed by spells.
I could be good at jumping, and climbing, or we could levitate or fly.
I could be good at stealth, or we could just be invisible.
I could be good at survival, or I can create food and water or locate person for tracking.
I could be good at knowledges, or I we can commune with a planar ally that knows way more than any mortal. (Ok, knowledge skills are probably the ones with the most continuing use.)
The higher the level you get, the less relevant skills are. Unless you have a build that relies on some specific skill trick.
My current game I'm level 12. I think maybe one time in the entire campaign (which started at 1) where my skills were crucial to an adventure.
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I always find it strange when people talk about skills in Pathfinder filling in these gaps. Do they even play past 5th level? Seriously, after a certain point, skills are mostly eclipsed by spells.
That's exactly why this thread came about. If you're not a caster, you basically end up standing around until there's something to hit. You become less and less relevant as you level up.
There are exceptions, yes. But in general, martials do need better things just to keep up.
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Skills aren't completely eclipsed by spells. Some, such as the knowledge skills and UMD, are great alongside magic. They can also be boosted by low level spells that ramp up modifiers. Even Stealth is best when it is used alongside magic. A high Stealth mod looks wimpy compared to invisibility+decent dex, but a high Stealth+Blend+Invisibility+Fly kicks ***. Same for perception. Sure, echolocation beats a good perception, but what is better is having both.
Of course, casters are the characters who are by far the most likely to get both if they feel like it, so it's still a loss for martials.
It does bring up the question" should magic be better than skills, or just easier?
It would take a complete rework of the spells to adjust them down so that they don't necessarily outshine skill use by people who have a large degree of skill mastery. But as a design philosophy, might not be a bad place to start.
"Yeah - I could jump that, but my Jump spell guarantees me a success. Nothing flashy, but it gets the job done!"
Sleep is still a spell. One thing that had been happening is that we sneak, cast sleep and murder quickly. (teamwork!)
Off topic but, everyone recommends Dungeon World whenever alternatives to PF come up so I got it to play with a group nearby. And I feel like I'm the only one on the planet that hates it.
How is sleep knocking everything out? It's HP limited and goes weakest to strongest... It's the same as it always is - good for low levels and that's bout it.
If you hate DW, then it makes sense you would hate 5e skills or the DW GM wasn't doing it right. It goes either way pretty easily.
I don't exactly hate the skills in 5e, but its a far cry from what I needed out of skills to be more useful. It does not knock everything out but big bass are so easy to kill now its easier to remove nooks from the action economy and assassinate. The biggest creature in the room. Sort of same with pathfinder. Get mage from point a to point , mage does a thing, murder anything still standing. Someone else is in standby to target anyone casting to interrupt them.
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It does bring up the question" should magic be better than skills, or just easier?
It would take a complete rework of the spells to adjust them down so that they don't necessarily outshine skill use by people who have a large degree of skill mastery. But as a design philosophy, might not be a bad place to start.
"Yeah - I could jump that, but my Jump spell guarantees me a success. Nothing flashy, but it gets the job done!"
Reworking all spells is too much work AND wouldn't really help the martials shine. A character with 20 ranks in Acrobatics and +15 from ability score & class skill still couldn't jump to the top of a two story building on a natural 20. A tenth level character with max Acrobatics ranks, a +10 from other mods, and an appropriate CL jump spell can do so more than half the time without a problem, though. If jump is all about jumping awesomely, it should put you somewhat briefly on the level of those whose skill and power far exceeds your own and let you do the amazing things they can. That way, everyone wins.
Reworking all spells is too much work AND wouldn't really help the martials shine. A character with 20 ranks in Acrobatics and +15 from ability score & class skill still couldn't jump to the top of a two story building on a natural 20. A tenth level character with max Acrobatics ranks, a +10 from other mods, and an appropriate CL jump spell can do so more than half the time without a problem, though. If jump is all about jumping awesomely, it should put you somewhat briefly on the level of those whose skill and power far exceeds your own and let you do the amazing things they can. That way, everyone wins.It does bring up the question" should magic be better than skills, or just easier?
It would take a complete rework of the spells to adjust them down so that they don't necessarily outshine skill use by people who have a large degree of skill mastery. But as a design philosophy, might not be a bad place to start.
"Yeah - I could jump that, but my Jump spell guarantees me a success. Nothing flashy, but it gets the job done!"
Reworking magic to be better isn't that much work when third party is involved. (Spheres of Power)
But you are right that skills don't go superhuman. Fortunately dealing with skills is much easier than dealing with the mountain of spells. Just identify the spells that mimic and outshine skills and give that to skills, which can be implemented in all kinds of ways. Feats/skill unlocks favors classes with a lot of feats or talents that could gain such a feat. Overlay it over martials. Give them to specific classes as class features. Tie it to Stamina.
I think for me the biggest problem is identifying martials and granting things to them in a way that does not give an edge to casters because new martials could come out and third party martials exist and even with just first party martials they don't have a clear connection for what defines them as being weak. By that I mean, granting better feats helps Paladins and Barbarians but both of those classes are feat starved so would potentially get hurt by such a method. Monk and Rogue are generally considered martials but they don't have the BAB to support a BAB-based solution. Paladins and Rangers are considered martials but they need WAY less help than say, the Fighter.
Personally, because that's what I'm working on, I would propose something mixing stamina and skill unlocks that let you use stamina to make spell-like skill effects.
I'm gonna have to get a copy of SoP. I haven't yet because: my current group has pretty much fallen away; and if they don't, they want to stick with Pathfinder.
I can't get them to go 5e either, even though it seems more balanced than PF.
I'm opening up martial combat feats into more of a tier system, the way magic has spell levels. An arcane caster of the appropriate level has access to a whole slew of spells, so a martial character has a whole slew of combat options. Doesn't really address the ultimate "magic vs mundane" thing, but it helps.
I'm gonna have to get a copy of SoP. I haven't yet because: my current group has pretty much fallen away; and if they don't, they want to stick with Pathfinder.
I can't get them to go 5e either, even though it seems more balanced than PF.
I'm opening up martial combat feats into more of a tier system, the way magic has spell levels. An arcane caster of the appropriate level has access to a whole slew of spells, so a martial character has a whole slew of combat options. Doesn't really address the ultimate "magic vs mundane" thing, but it helps.
I will play on a game that only uses Path of War and Spheres of Power classes. That will be fun!
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I don't exactly hate the skills in 5e, but its a far cry from what I needed out of skills to be more useful. It does not knock everything out but big bass are so easy to kill now its easier to remove nooks from the action economy and assassinate. The biggest creature in the room. Sort of same with pathfinder. Get mage from point a to point , mage does a thing, murder anything still standing. Someone else is in standby to target anyone casting to interrupt them.
Well, the actual skill system of 5E is this:
"I want to do X with skill Y". Haggle over advantage or disadvantage. Roll dice and tell GM your result. GM decides what happens.That's it. That's the entirety of the 5E skill system, obfuscated by pages and pages describing the skill system Mearls wanted to write, but never got around to, because he's a hack and a fraud.
Someone mentioned that the XP needed to level used to be a balancing factor in old D&D. I never really looked at it that way before, but they have a point. Instead of having a party where everyone is pretty much the same level, you'd have Rogue significantly higher level, followed by your Fighter, with the Wizard coming in last. It used to drive me nuts to need 2-3x the experience of other party members to gain a level, and felt like I was falling further and further behind. But, while I was really fragile as a magic-user (and needed those fighters!), my spells did make up for it.
Not that anyone wants to go back to that system of unequal leveling. But what was implemented in its place?
Not really.
Fighter 50k: 6th level (bottom)
Wizard 50k: 6th level (middle)
Fighter 200k: 8th level (nearly 9th)
Wizard 200k: 9th level (nearly 10th)
Fighter 500k: 10th (just made it)
Wizard 500K: 11th level
Fighter 750k: 11th level (just made it)
Wizard 750k: 12th level (just made it)
Fighter 1.5mil: 14th (just made it)
Wizard 1.5 mil: 14th level (just made it.)
After this the fighter finally is ahead of the wizard in level for XP per level.
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To correct some stuff, why not skill based magics that have pre-requisites?
Because it's magic, you don't have to explain s!%#. Now if you are a martial you need 4 feats and 3 maxed skills to do 1/10th of that. :p
I'm gonna have to get a copy of SoP. I haven't yet because: my current group has pretty much fallen away; and if they don't, they want to stick with Pathfinder.
I can't get them to go 5e either, even though it seems more balanced than PF.
I'm opening up martial combat feats into more of a tier system, the way magic has spell levels. An arcane caster of the appropriate level has access to a whole slew of spells, so a martial character has a whole slew of combat options. Doesn't really address the ultimate "magic vs mundane" thing, but it helps.
Dude, I don't know of anyone notices but most of the time I type using terms like 'I feel' and 'I think', being careful not to present opinion or anecdotal evidence as fact or speaking for other people. But this I will state as a fact; Spheres is not only better than spellcasting but it is better for the game. You can still do cool things and be a powerful caster without breaking the game AND actually do a wider variety of things than what spells give you. You are hindered in that you cannot know all the spells that obsolete skills at once but you can be more spectacular and define your spellcasting more. In fact its so much more balanced that I'm a little afraid of presenting it in the same campaigns as Path of War because Path of War has martials balanced towards normal casters. If you want to stop wasting your time with splatbooks of spells hoping to make the caster that you want to make or being a slave to the same cookie cutting spell lists, and if you want your casters to actually progress linearly like martials and have to rely on skills outside their magical realm like everyone else then GET SPHERES OF POWER. If you have any problems with casters or how magic works in Pathfinder this book rewrites them for you and lets you get your game back in control.
When people describe first edition, it always sounds like an exercise in masochism to me.
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I don't exactly hate the skills in 5e, but its a far cry from what I needed out of skills to be more useful. It does not knock everything out but big bass are so easy to kill now its easier to remove nooks from the action economy and assassinate. The biggest creature in the room. Sort of same with pathfinder. Get mage from point a to point , mage does a thing, murder anything still standing. Someone else is in standby to target anyone casting to interrupt them.
Well, the actual skill system of 5E is this:
"I want to do X with skill Y". Haggle over advantage or disadvantage. Roll dice and tell GM your result. GM decides what happens.That's it. That's the entirety of the 5E skill system, obfuscated by pages and pages describing the skill system Mearls wanted to write, but never got around to, because he's a hack and a fraud.
I like the new skill system. Beautiful its simplicity.
Are you proficient? Yes = add proficiency bonus (Determined by level, somewhere between +2 and +6).
Do you have advantage or disadvantage? A = roll twice takes higher results. D = roll twice take lower result. Neither = roll once.
Then add your stat modifier.
Then roleplay what happens.
All skills can be used by all classes and characters. There are no "untrained = can't use."
And your "pages and pages of obfuscation" is a grand total of 5 pages covering the skills section. Pathfinder has 25 pages dedicated to explaining skills, and you have to track your skill bonus separately for each skill, with each skill having different modifiers, sub-rules, and more.
The considerably smaller amount of details may be good or bad depending on what you're looking for out of a game. Sometimes I like the detail presented in PF, sometimes I want something much simpler (especially so my dyslexic wife can better understand it). It isn't inherently bad just because it is simpler.
When people describe first edition, it always sounds like an exercise in masochism to me.The key thing to remember about 1e is that no-one actually played by the rules, even the people who wrote it.
In part this was due to the way in which the game came out with several different versions of the rules floating about, loads of content in dragon, Judges Guild etc. Part of it was that the 1e DMG is quite possibly the worst book to explain how to run an RPG ever written. It is dense, turgid, filled with purple prose and was apparently organised by throwing sections at a dartboard and using that to pick chapter numbers.
No, the problem is far too many people did play the rules as written, because we didn't know any better. There may have been lots of supplemental things, but all I had when I started was PHB, DMG, and a compilation of B Modules to go in search of adventure.
(Note, it wasn't until years later that I realized the B modules were designed for a different game system.)
Well, we had not learned all the habits and attitudes that are prevalent these days. I wouldn't say things were better or worse, but they were different and new.
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The king of 1e rapid xp advance is the druid. IT was picking up 12th level at the same time other classes were 8th! Of course, it only went to 14, and afterwards, at 500k per level, advanced slower then ANY other class.
Rogues were kings of advancing to HIGH level. I think a f/20 was about equal to a Theif 23 or 24.
As for combat...remember 1e had LOW AC and HP compared to 3.5. We're used to scaling AC on monsters in 3E+. Well, the biggest toughest dragon you ran into had...AC 21. You don't NEED huge combat bonuses to fight monsters when the numbers are like that. Once a fighter hit 7th and got weapon spec 2 at/rd, he was a freaking martial god. He could reliably kill a hill giant using his greatsword every single round, and one shot ogres. You didn't have something like Power Attack being level dependent determining your damage output, and AC 16 ("4") was basically an auto-hit by then (+7 for level, +3 for gauntlets, +2 for sword, +3 for double weapon spec = +15....don't roll a 1, you hit EVERY time).
Conversely, monsters did a LOT less damage, and fighters had twice as many HP as thieves and mages at the top end, so they could actually stand there and take it.
Same with thieves. Get a good magic weapon, and they could hold their own remarkably well. Plus, things let bows letting you get 2 shots/rd even at low levels off a high dex character worked out just fine.
Yeah, skills were a problem for thieves at low levels, but if you had a good dex, by Name level they were basically 'auto-pass', espec if you were playing a halfling. When 2e let you pour points into a skill, you could basically make 2 skills 'auto-pass' every 4 levels or so (95%) by just maxing out that skill allocation. And when you were the ONLY class that could do all sorts of stuff like that (you know, like cough, spellcasters), you were still valuable, even if you weren't the best in a stand up fight.
==Aelryinth
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You could definitely do something with uneven level advancement, you just have to make sure that with same xp = same power level.
1E didn't exactly have that, but there was so much martial favoritism baked into the system, the spellcaster advantages were never really on display so much. In other words, spellcasters had many disadvantages to overcome to show their power, and without blatant help from plotlines, were nowhere near as dangerous as many 1E stories about Elminster made them out to me.
Seriously, just shoot a magic arrow at the spellcaster every round and poise the 2nd one for the next round. All they can do is run around a corner and out of line of sight and the fight if he wants to get a spell off! Spellcasters were INCREDIBLY easy to shut down without fighters running interference.
Of course, if they got spells off, the world could change. That was the trade-off. They were just so limited, and martials under such a lower ceiling, that it didn't really matter.
==Aelryinth