Something I wanted to ask here; does anyone think that anyone above T3 is needed in an AP? Like any of them, or are there certain ones that require that level of narrative power more than others?
To shorthand, T3 is effectively 6th level casters/sphere casters as far as I have been lead to believe/TOB or POW martials/other things of that caliber.
I really feel like keeping all players at T5-T3 would help solve a lot, since from what I've seen, higher than that almost feels like NPC levels of needed narrative control. As I've said before, Paizo hits it out of the park on T3 design, so much so that I think full casters are almost superfluous to the system.
I've been thinking of doing something for a while of making a 6th level caster version of wizard and cleric, although witch and oracle probably need it more due to them having a more interesting narrative niche.
Really a 6th level caster wizard could be interesting, maybe continuing to give them higher level slots, but not learn any spells of those levels, so they're just metamagic fillers.
Overall, if we cut arcanist/cleric/druid/oracle/sorcerer/witch/wizard and replaces them with their 6th level caster counterparts, the game and the level of play would seriously increase. Really it seems what spheres and POW were aiming for, a solid inclusion at the T3 level that would help balance the game. I believe 9th level casting isn't needed in this system, maybe lower a few spell levels to make sure we're still getting some of the more important thematic spells, but everything else? It's just too much to have in the hands of players.
The trouble with the tier system and referencing it as a path towards a solution is the fact that people would have to acknowledge that anyone is T1 or T6. Provided you can get them to bother reading and understanding it.
Design Manager
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Something I wanted to ask here; does anyone think that anyone above T3 is needed in an AP? Like any of them, or are there certain ones that require that level of narrative power more than others?
To shorthand, T3 is effectively 6th level casters/sphere casters as far as I have been lead to believe/TOB or POW martials/other things of that caliber.
I really feel like keeping all players at T5-T3 would help solve a lot, since from what I've seen, higher than that almost feels like NPC levels of needed narrative control. As I've said before, Paizo hits it out of the park on T3 design, so much so that I think full casters are almost superfluous to the system.
I've been thinking of doing something for a while of making a 6th level caster version of wizard and cleric, although witch and oracle probably need it more due to them having a more interesting narrative niche.
Really a 6th level caster wizard could be interesting, maybe continuing to give them higher level slots, but not learn any spells of those levels, so they're just metamagic fillers.
Overall, if we cut arcanist/cleric/druid/oracle/sorcerer/witch/wizard and replaces them with their 6th level caster counterparts, the game and the level of play would seriously increase. Really it seems what spheres and POW were aiming for, a solid inclusion at the T3 level that would help balance the game. I believe 9th level casting isn't needed in this system, maybe lower a few spell levels to make sure we're still getting some of the more important thematic spells, but everything else? It's just too much to have in the hands of players.
I have yet to see an AP that actually requires a character to be above Tier 3 in capability, and I know that most of the 3pp I've worked for generally see that as kind of an ideal balance point for new classes and mechanics.
You could say fairly accurately that my fixes to address m/cd in my home game have basically involved dragging all character archetypes up or down towards Tier 3.
5. Communicating with the dead. Ouija board, ghosts.
So houserules (ghosts is not a thing players can do, either there is one or there exist).
Raising dead. Go to church. Interestingly, in a campaign that's immersive, I'd think gods would be pretty selective in who they raised with their power. Fluff wise, the God is allowing his/her power to reach into the realm of Pharasma and pluck a soul from the waiting line, possibly upsetting Pharasma. The God would want to make sure the person was worth it from his/her perspective. Again, this points to my idea of setting trumping rules every time.
Again, that's a mage fixing the problem not the martial character.
7. Any one can communicate with their God. It's called prayer. However, only very high level clerics can force their God to answer them. This is an invalid situation since arcane casters can't do this either.
a) There is no sign prayer actually does anything. So.... you prayer and .... nothing happens.
b) Arcane casters can, for godsake my current wizard can do that.8. You've already answered this in terms of Narrative power. Use a tarrow, or throw the bones etc. interestingly, Golarion killed the God of prophecy, yet it still allows divination magic to work. That's either a clue to what happened, or something they're not pushing in order not to upset whole groups of players and story lines.
Using those forms of divination actually requires the player doing certain things, specifically being a psychic caster and having the right skill ranks.
9. Flying is easy to get at high level for everyone. There's so much gear and mounts that let this happen that it really...
Oh yay... Mounts... useless in combat unless your in a class based around having a companion. Yes you can buy a hippogriff (I think the costs are in Ultimate Equipment), but it doesn't scale with your level so it'll probably die in one attack.
I think not having a full-divine caster with condition removal spells might be the only real issue. Some of them can be duplicated through other classes, but you could also just lower the level and give them to Inquisitors/Paladins/Warpriests early.
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I think not having a full-divine caster with condition removal spells might be the only real issue. Some of them can be duplicated through other classes, but you could also just lower the level and give them to Inquisitors/Paladins/Warpriests early.
I started a thread talking about it, but as you've said, it'd only take lowering some spells down a bit and there's no problem since condition removal spells are rarely disruptive unless you're using a condition as a story point.
From what I've seen (and designed), T3 is the ideal tier of play. I think rather than just saying T3 though, talking about eliminating full casters would be the more inclusive way to talk about it, since aside from certain archetypes and the summoner, all T2+ tend to be full casters.
Can't just eliminate full casters, you need to cut the tier fives at least. Anything that monosyllabic is not worthy of page space.
Easy to use I can get behind; one trick, not so much.
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Again MiloV3, read some of the APs.
Carrion Crown gives a Ouija board in the first module.
Wraith of Righteous has a god talking to you in it.
And flying anywhere has never been an issue that wasn't easily overcome in any AP I've run nor read.
As I said, the very company making the game happily uses the campaign setting itself to provide solutions outside of wiggle fingers and go.
Also, everything you guys are suggesting as a fix is a house rule. Note where this thread is in the message boards.
Also note, this whole c/md issue has been called a narrative issue and this thread asks for ways to help DMs mitigate that.
You are trying from a class perspective. I am trying from a Narrative perspective.
Your tone is pretty aggressive. Maybe read the APs a bit more before attacking my stuff so viciously please. When the very company who wrote the rules is providing numerous narratives that show how this stuff is mitigated, you can't claim them as unacceptable house rules. After all, if Paizo publishes it, it actually exists in Golarion already.
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'Oh no! A wall! One of my incredibly large number of crippling weaknesses!'
:P
My old nemesis...stairs.
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1. Realize that with most of the basic martial classes the level of utility they bring (fighters and Cavs in particular) falls off compared to casters and they feel unexciting because of it. A 5th level Wizard can warp time, fly, and eject fire from his hand. A fighter of the same level can power attack and use his favored weapon slightly better. Their mechanics as they stand are something that doesn't evolve in complexity alongside the casters at either the same rate or same value. To be say, a fencer who wields a rapier and main gouche with his nimble hands, masterfully deflecting blows with his expertise while disarming and skewering his foes he's likely up there by the 10+ level and that's all he can do. And this isn't even like a total mastery of the style, that's about the level he might be able to attempt all those things without dying miserably DURING his first attack, that's the problem. That's not even talking about things like how feat dependent all these classes are (they basically act as their spells) and yet they are often starved out of them and forced to hyper focus to get anywhere towards the skills they want.
2. Let monks use Wis for atk and dmg rolls on top of Str. Literally, just write it in as an addition to their abilities when they get a ki pool. Let them burn ki to move and full attack, let them full atk after abundant step for extra ki.
3. Use world building to limit and defeat magic. If you've got spells that seem like something that would cause trouble in a township (like charm personing guards) make them illegal in towns for those not in the employ of the crown/senate/shogunate/whatever to use them. The vast utility of magic outmatches most weapons and feats that's for certain so towns putting limits on its use and sale is obvious.
There's a few easy ones, I also have other options but I don't want to post them yet. Building some stuff up for a book.
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Ashiel: you give absolutely no examples to support your assertion that magic is 100% needed.I'll give you lots of them when I get back from work. Heading out now.
A fighter archer is also doing 2-3 X more damage than an elf wizard due to feats and strength.Not at low levels he isn't. At this level the only thing that matters is buffs and ability scores.
Things you cannot effectively do without magic.
1. De-petrify someone turned to stone (medusa, flesh to stone, gorgon, etc).
2. Raise someone from the dead.
3. Question the witness who is also an animal. EDIT: Or is also dead.
4. Fly. EDIT: Or swim. Or burrow.
5. Breathe underwater (without being an aquatic race).
6. Bypass DR/alignment with reasonable effort.
7. Effectively deal with a succubus (seriously, a party of fighters and rogues are just ****ed by this monster, no pun intended).
8. Deal with energy damage effectively.
9. Deal energy damage effectively.
10. Identify magic items.
11. See invisible foes.
12. Plane hope.
13. Planet hope.
14. Kill anything with regeneration/alignment.
15. Cure Mummy Rot.
16. Remove a curse.
17. Become un-blind.
18. Become un-deaf.
19. Recover from energy drain.
20. Recover from ability drain.
21. Recover from being baleful polymorphed.
22. Avoid divinations.
23. Counter monsters using SLAs like deeper darkness.
24. Dispel harmful effects (the only exception being a high level barbarian with Spell Sunder).
25. Deal with swarms effectively (possible exception being a couple of obscure magic items).
26. Kill the tarrasque (a core cleric or wizard can solo the damn thing AND kill it permanently).
27. Heal or immunize against poisons (the Heal skill actively sucks at this).
28. Effectively ward against ambushes while resting (contrary to popular belief, even most "nonmagical" characters need to rest in order to recover things like Rage, Challenges, Ki, etc).
29. Adventure in areas of extreme climates (without magic, you will probably die in a red dragon's volcanic lair from the heat dangers alone).
30. Fight a dragon. Not a baby dragon. A real dragon. Like a wyrm.
As to the thing about casters being incompetent archers are low levels, I'd like to point out a few things.
1. The BAB difference at low levels is minor. Ability scores are more important.
2. A wizard that desires to do the archery thing is still going to be a competent wizard if he does anything other than tank Int harshly, so ability scores in this case aren't much different.
3. A wizard has access to things like magic weapon which not only grants +1 hit/damage but also allows them to pierce DR/magic (which is a thing at low levels) and hit incorporeal creatures (because shadows are also a thing at low levels).
4. At this level, even if the wizard doesn't buff at all, he's still a wizard with a ranged attack, a minion who provides additional Perception checks and scouting power, and spells. Did I mention spells? I don't think I mentioned spells.
5. After the baby levels where the wizard hits 3rd level, the wizard can stifle counter-archery with protection from arrows (hour/level), shoot at invisible creatures with see invisibility, mix spectral hand and shocking grasp or scorching ray in with ranged attack routines, or turn invisible to stymie foes who are trying to get to him while he relocates to a more tactical position (possibly with the assistance of things like spiderclimb.
And here's the really funny thing...the wizard can choose to be a weird wizard and do the bow thing on a lark. But at the end of the day he's still a wizard. Even if he begins with a mere 13 Int and goes Str/Dex/Con prime at 1st level, he will still be a wizard later in his life and he will still cast 9th level spells, he will still bind outsiders, he will still be able to turn greater invisible, he will still be able to create a clone of the tarrasque, he will still be able to possess the body of a solar, he will still be able to take his ball and go home to his own private demiplane.
The only thing he loses out on for playing pseudo-martial for a little while is a couple points on his save DCs.
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Adding insult to injury, the cheap magic consumables also cannot be made by anyone other than a spellcaster. Wands, potions, and scrolls require the spell to available and are an exception to the ability to ignore the requirements (yeah it sucks, it wasn't like this when PF was published, it was errata'd), which means you have to have a caster to fake it without getting a really expensive wondrous item or something.
Personal spells cannot be made into potions and such either. This means no shield buffs for monks, no see invisibility for anyone, etc.
Noncasters cannot effectively make magic items. This is a myth spread by people who don't actually know how Master Craftsman works and how bad it is. Master Craftsman is a horrible feat. It is a dead feat when you get it and you can't actually use it until 7th level at the earliest (the level casting martials like Rangers and Paladins can start pumping out items without it). Worse, you cannot make many items with it because the types of items you can make are limited to a specific craft skill. The applicable craft skills are listed in the Magic Item Creation rules.
This means you have to choose things like Craft Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing, Alchemy, etc. So if you take Master Craftsman (Weaponsmithing) you can now pick up item creation feats like Craft Magical Arms & Armor but you can't ever actually make good use of it (only weapons, no armors, sorry guys). If you try to take Craft Wondrous Item, the selection of items you'll be able to make is minuscule compared to the types of items you actually want from it.
Mastercraftsman sucks and has always sucked. The only way to effectively make magic items is to be a caster.
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Continuing on this train of thought, not having a caster will foil you in other ways as well. Having to try to fake it and make up for not having a caster means buying more expensive magic items and more of them. You can't settle for having a greater magic weapon spell cast on a couple weapons of your choice, you now NEED to have a golfbag of super expensive weapons (as opposed to having a golfbag of cheap masterwork weapons of various materials).
You will have to find more expensive and overpriced ways of attaining energy resistances so you aren't destroyed by encounters that have lots of energy damage chipping away at you. Similarly you will need to find painfully expensive ways to attain staple buffs like freedom of movement and death ward at higher levels. These are not cheap.
Your expenses can become so stifling that you can't really afford to purchase things for emergencies or specific encounters. Worse yet, if you're actually following the rules, you're limited to low and mid-tier weaponry if your method of obtaining it is to buy it. If you go the Master Craftsman route, you're spending several feats and skill points to make a few items cheaper and you'll need the rest of your muggle party to also take the feat to try and cover your bases and you'll still be worse off than if you had casters in the party doing it.
If something bad happens, you have to hoof it back on foot to beg or bribe a spellcaster. This happened to a friend of mine who caught Mummy Rot a few days out from the nearest town large enough to have a caster who could cure it. It didn't end well.
A low magic party can function with some good thinking and preparation.
A no magic party is ****ed unless large swaths of the game are ignored.
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Adding insult to injury, the cheap magic consumables also cannot be made by anyone other than a spellcaster. Wands, potions, and scrolls require the spell to available and are an exception to the ability to ignore the requirements (yeah it sucks, it wasn't like this when PF was published, it was errata'd), which means you have to have a caster to fake it without getting a really expensive wondrous item or something.
Personal spells cannot be made into potions and such either. This means no shield buffs for monks, no see invisibility for anyone, etc.
Noncasters cannot effectively make magic items. This is a myth spread by people who don't actually know how Master Craftsman works and how bad it is. Master Craftsman is a horrible feat. It is a dead feat when you get it and you can't actually use it until 7th level at the earliest (the level casting martials like Rangers and Paladins can start pumping out items without it). Worse, you cannot make many items with it because the types of items you can make are limited to a specific craft skill. The applicable craft skills are listed in the Magic Item Creation rules.
This means you have to choose things like Craft Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing, Alchemy, etc. So if you take Master Craftsman (Weaponsmithing) you can now pick up item creation feats like Craft Magical Arms & Armor but you can't ever actually make good use of it (only weapons, no armors, sorry guys). If you try to take Craft Wondrous Item, the selection of items you'll be able to make is minuscule compared to the types of items you actually want from it.
Mastercraftsman sucks and has always sucked. The only way to effectively make magic items is to be a caster.
It's not often I find you wrong on a rules quote Ashiel, but your master crafting one seems to be.
It doesn't matter what profession or crafting skill you take, any of them now count as your ranks in spell casting in terms of craft magic arms and armour or craft wonderous items. At least that's what it says in the master craftsman feat on prd.
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Choose one Craft or Profession skill in which you possess at least 5 ranks. You receive a +2 bonus on your chosen Craft or Profession skill. Ranks in your chosen skill count as your caster level for the purposes of qualifying for the Craft Magic Arms and Armor and Craft Wondrous Item feats. You can create magic items using these feats, substituting your ranks in the chosen skill for your total caster level. You must use the chosen skill for the check to create the item. The DC to create the item still increases for any necessary spell requirements (see the magic item creation rules in Magic Items). You cannot use this feat to create any spell-trigger or spell-activation item.
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And you can't take it more than once.
You've all forgotten the thing that makes Martials so much better then caster! Simple thing called sleep. if you can't rest, you can't get spells back.
That only works for arcane casters.
It really stops working once the wizard has the "i cast summon hotel" spells.
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Ahhhh, that's my mistake. Thanks guys. I needed to read the crafting magic items section to in order to find the crafting skill.
Soo, this means that a caster crafting these items also needs the skill as well?
So arcane casters wanting to make magical armour or weapons need to have craft weapons, or craft bows etc to make it happen. So it's no more of an advantage for them than it is for a martial. Interesting. Although, they can technically have multiple,craft skills learned that the one feat lets them use.
Edit - nope, casters only need spell craft it seems.
Hmmm, that is a glaringly large over site it seems.
So where does the profession come in?
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Nope, because casters can specifically use Spellcraft for everything OR the associated craft skill. Whichever they happen to prefer.
We're not kidding guys.
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As an aside, is there anything stopping a martial putting ranks into spell craft? Does this count as a craft skill? Why not choose Profession spell crafter, then you can use it for any creation item? The profession skill only outlines common professions, not all professions.
Because the reverse is not true for martials.
Master craftsman is quite specific. A fighter with 20 ranks in Spellcraft still cannot use it to craft items. Only the relevant Craft/Profession skill chosen for the feat.
There is a big reason why my face invades my desk's personal space when Master Craftsman is brought up in these threads. On the plus side, my face and my desk have spent so much time with each other at this point that I think they're shopping for rings.
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Oh, and because "Profession (magic item crafter)" is an obvious attempt at bypassing the specified limitations of the feat, kind of like trying to pick up "Craft (Adventuring Equipment)" would be and would require a GM to both allow it and allow you to ignore the fact it tells you specifically which skills are used for making which items.
In other words it falls into a house rule that the GM did because he was a merciful god that took pity on your poor martial butt, changed the rules for you, so that you were less oppressed by the way the game actually is.
Just to run through your List Ashiel. I have spoliered as quite long.
2. Raise someone from the dead (alteady on the list)
3. Question the witness who is also an animal. (There are quite a few races that can do this most common being gnomes and sylvan creatures - but rare enough to go on the list)
4. Fly. EDIT: Or swim. Or burrow. (Already on the list)
5. Breathe underwater (without being an aquatic race). (You made the point - plus there are diving bells, alchemical solutions etc. For burrow use a shovel/pick. Swimming... seriouisly?)
6. Bypass DR/alignment with reasonable effort. (Magic weapons do this fine)
7. Effectively deal with a succubus (seriously, a party of fighters and rogues are just ****ed by this monster, no pun intended). (Circumstantial, there are lots of ways to protect against mental interference)
8. Deal with energy damage effectively. (There are racial abilities and simple permanent items that grant energy resistance)
9. Deal energy damage effectively. (Again this one can be accomplished with racial abilities and or feats/class abilities)
10. Identify magic items. (Knowledge Arcana/Bardic knowledge?)
11. See invisible foes. (High Perception)
12. Plane hope.
13. Planet hope. (Same thing really - already on the list)
14. Kill anything with regeneration/alignment. (Alchemist fire?, magic weapon)
15. Cure Mummy Rot.
16. Remove a curse.
17. Become un-blind.
18. Become un-deaf. (Already on list - all of these)
19. Recover from energy drain. (Happens anyway after 24 hours, but I presume you mean permanent negative levels)
20. Recover from ability drain. (Permanent damage yes)
21. Recover from being baleful polymorph (curse already on the list).
22. Avoid divinations. (You get a will save)
23. Counter monsters using SLAs like deeper darkness. (Blind fighting)
24. Dispel harmful effects (the only exception being a high level barbarian with Spell Sunder). (You get saving throws against most of these. Are there any that you don't get a save/opportunity to avoid, other than Maze say)
25. Deal with swarms effectively (possible exception being a couple of obscure magic items). (Flaming weapon, alchemists fire)
26. Kill the tarrasque (a core cleric or wizard can solo the damn thing AND kill it permanently). (All ready on the list)
27. Heal or immunize against poisons (the Heal skill actively sucks at this). (Heal skill, alchemical items)
28. Effectively ward against ambushes while resting (contrary to popular belief, even most "nonmagical" characters need to rest in order to recover things like Rage, Challenges, Ki, etc). (Perception, rotating watches, been like that since time immemorial]
29. Adventure in areas of extreme climates (without magic, you will probably die in a red dragon's volcanic lair from the heat dangers alone). (Already under energy resistance above)
30. Fight a dragon. Not a baby dragon. A real dragon. Like a wyrm (I disagree)
There definitely some good ones on here. I'm adding them to the list now. Others that already have means of achieving I will leave off for now. We're not saying they arent easier with a spell - i.e. see invisible foes - but they are doable and beatable by martials of sufficient level.
I think it is ironic that overcoming spells forms like BP, deeper darkness is on there - The DM gets to choose specifically those spells/challenges. Why select baleful polymorph (almost never on NPC casters in AP's) if the party didnt have a way out - though in fairness this applies to a lot of things on the list.
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Oh, and because "Profession (magic item crafter)" is an obvious attempt at bypassing the specified limitations of the feat, kind of like trying to pick up "Craft (Adventuring Equipment)" would be and would require a GM to both allow it and allow you to ignore the fact it tells you specifically which skills are used for making which items.
In other words it falls into a house rule that the GM did because he was a merciful god that took pity on your poor martial butt, changed the rules for you, so that you were less oppressed by the way the game actually is.
This thread is in the house rule section, sooooooo........
OK this is what we have so far. Added quite a few of Ashiel's suggestions.
1. Curing permanent or lethal Magical curses/diseases - mummy rot, stone to flesh, feeblemind, baleful polymorph etc.
2. Binding invulnerable enemies such as the tarrasque into sleep or imprisonment.
3. Teleporting to other planes of existence.
4. Reaching places otherwise unreachable except by magic - cysts underground
5. Communicating with the dead, animals or stones
6. Raising the dead
7. Communicating with your God (rather than God communicating with you)
8. Divining the future. (Possible but requires DM fiat, pre-existing prophecy, tarot etc)
9. Flight(possible with flying mount but rare)
10. Detecting a magical emanations and therefore identifying magic items through spellcraft (possible with some racial abilities e.g. Drow)
11. Creating your own plane of existence
12. Deal large amounts of energy damage (small damage through race/feats/class abilities)
13. Remove permanent ability damage and permanent negative levels.
14. Practically kill high CR swarms (lower can be achieved with alchemist fire etc)
A non-wuxia solution is to give martials non-combat abilities that are useful and reflect the nature of the class. Give them class specific uses for skills, like a Fighter can learn specific information about a NPC or monster using Sense Motive, again, with a focus on non-combat situations. Have these abilities provide useful opportunities or benefits to other characters. This has the benefit of not requiring the martial to have all means of utilizing the information/benefit from their skill and encouraging players to work together to solve situations.
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6. Bypass DR/alignment with reasonable effort. (Magic weapons do this fine)
No they don't. You cannot purchase +3 equivalent weapons reliably according to the core rules. The only aligned weapons in core are holy, axiomatic, anarchic, and unholy, each of which is a +2 equivalent that has to go on a +1 weapon making it a +3.
So not only can you not reliably buy them, it puts the price tag on having a weapon that can bypass DR/alignment at 18,000+ gp. So, no, you cannot do so with reasonable effort.
7. Effectively deal with a succubus (seriously, a party of fighters and rogues are just ****ed by this monster, no pun intended). (Circumstantial, there are lots of ways to protect against mental interference)
And yet it's not mental interference that they have to watch out for. I mean sure, they can try to avoid becoming her mind slave with their bad defenses which aren't derived from their classes, but that does nothing to stop the fact that the succubus wrecks them all over the place.
Succubi can be where they want when they want. Succubi can also become ethereal and stay ethereal for as long as they darn well please, allowing her to stalk a nonmagical party at her leisure and there's nothing that they can do to detect or deter her. If they rest, she can pot shot them with things like vampiric touch. Out of combat she can ruin them in every non-combat way you can imagine, turning NPCs against them, misleading them through disguises, or mind-**** characters that are important to the PCs.
And there's not a darn thing they can do about it unless the succubus just decides to give them a try and punching her in the jaw.
8. Deal with energy damage effectively. (There are racial abilities and simple permanent items that grant energy resistance)
Racial abilities have diddly to do with martials. Having a pit fiend with fighter levels won't make fighters any better. Permanent magic items are damn expensive and often out of reach for PCs due to costs.
9. Deal energy damage effectively. (Again this one can be accomplished with racial abilities and or feats/class abilities)
Yeah because my red dragon rogue is really good at dealing energy damage so martials yeah, of course.
10. Identify magic items. (Knowledge Arcana/Bardic knowledge?)
Neither of which IDs magic items. Read the skills.
11. See invisible foes. (High Perception)
High perception doesn't let you see invisible foes. It lets you become aware they are there. They still get 100% of the benefits of being invisible including perfect concealment and treating you as their punching bag. Likewise your answer of "high perception" is a joke since just to get on the same footing you'd need your Perception +20 additional miscellaneous bonuses +1 for every 10 ft. between you and them.
If you're going to try to argue at least give a real argument.
12. Plane hope.
13. Planet hope. (Same thing really - already on the list)
Not the same thing. Planets and planes are different and your ways of getting to each are different. Muggles have neither.
14. Kill anything with regeneration/alignment. (Alchemist fire?, magic weapon)
Alchemist fire is not aligned. Magic weapons covered above.
19. Recover from energy drain. (Happens anyway after 24 hours, but I presume you mean permanent negative levels)
Energy drain is permanent, yes.
20. Recover from ability drain. (Permanent damage yes)
Ability drain is permanent, yes.
21. Recover from being baleful polymorph (curse already on the list).
Just tossing out common things that you come across in D&D/Pathfinder.
22. Avoid divinations. (You get a will save)
Yeah and? Not all divinations that can foil you will (arcane eye for example). Further things that do allow saves like Scrying can be repeated. Scrying allows a try every 24 hours and you can try vs each member of your party. If a bad guy had his pet succubus spy on you while carrying a dominate effect on her, and has her steal a possession of yours, take a sample of your blood after a combat that you moved on from, and then bring it back, and has a picture of you, your saving throw is being made at -16. Good luck with that.
23. Counter monsters using SLAs like deeper darkness. (Blind fighting)
Have you ever actually fought monsters like this? Blind Fight is step 1. You will die if your answer is Blind Fight.
24. Dispel harmful effects (the only exception being a high level barbarian with Spell Sunder). (You get saving throws against most of these. Are there any that you don't get a save/opportunity to avoid, other than Maze say)
Saving throws are not immunity. Repeatedly throwing effects (especially at-will effects) will break you. Likewise, saving throws do diddly for removing enemy buffs. Hope you enjoy things like fireshield and thorn body. Or harmful effects that fall in the realm of AoE crowd control like wall of thorns (seriously, screw martials).
25. Deal with swarms effectively (possible exception being a couple of obscure magic items). (Flaming weapon, alchemists fire)
Flaming weapons do not harm swarms unless they are comprised of fairly large creatures by swarm standards. You are lying if you say that alchemist fire is an effective way of fighting most swarms. You will die fighting an army ant swarm, a centipede swarm, a wasp swarm, etc. 1d6 (average 3.5) fire damage and +1 splash damage is not going to cut it.
27. Heal or immunize against poisons (the Heal skill actively sucks at this). (Heal skill, alchemical items)
And no, heal does not stop a poison. If you waste actions on it it gives a bonus. Alchemical items likewise do nothing to stop or remove poisons or to treat the damage or harm they do.
30. Fight a dragon. Not a baby dragon. A real dragon. Like a wyrm (I disagree)
And you would be wrong.
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Or harmful effects that fall in the realm of AoE crowd control like wall of thorns (seriously, screw martials).
I've actually ranted about how ridiculously unfair Wall of Thorns is before. Let me copy that pasta.
Wall of Thorns is so obnoxiously strong.
It has no save or SR and every option the spell lists for being stuck in it is coupled with a horrible drawback.
Magical fire can work, after 10 minutes.
You can slash through with a machete at one square per hour.
If you have good strength, you can power through with full-round actions and still take the damage.
If you do manage to move at this snail's pace, don't worry, it still sucks. The thorn bush itself is almost 100 cubic feet and last for an hour and a half. The Druid might have cast it from anywhere within ~200 feet of you, and his whole party had time to set up an ambush for you.
This is not counting the possibility that the druid turned into a Behemoth Hippopotamus and came in after you because he's immune to it from Woodland Stride.
It's only balanced by being on the spell list of a 9th-level caster who can turn into an elemental.
ohwaitthat'snotbalancedatall
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Yeah and? Not all divinations that can foil you will (arcane eye for example). Further things that do allow saves like Scrying can be repeated. Scrying allows a try every 24 hours and you can try vs each member of your party. If a bad guy had his pet succubus spy on you while carrying a dominate effect on her, and has her steal a possession of yours, take a sample of your blood after a combat that you moved on from, and then bring it back, and has a picture of you, your saving throw is being made at -16. Good luck with that.
This is also another big one.
Magic doesn't just let you do things, it gives you options for doing things. There are virtually a million and one different ways that a little clever thinking and basic uses of your spells to solve problems.
In the above example, the generic wizard who wants to pirate PC-CableTV just conjures up a succubus, casts dominate monster on her so he can see through her senses and become familiar with the party while she's spying on them. The party can't do anything about the succubus so it's effortless for the succubus to collect data and/or samples from the party. She can even go charm some commoner, orc, or randomly woodland stooge to distract the party while she steal's someone's spoon from their camp stewpot, collect some blood, or collect a urine sample from where the rogue was pissing in the woods.
Congratulations, the wizard now has free-cable.
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Ashiel: Calling people a liar, insisting you know what will happen to their characters and saying "get a real argument" is totally unecessary.
I'm not arguing Ashiel, I am asking for clarification, and you taking a highly confrontational tone on what has been a generally positive thread is quite unhelpful. This is a list of challenges that martials cannot overcome, not a list of things it is harder for them to try.
For the purposes of solving a challenge, PCs don't need to be able to see creatures to locate and then deal with them. If the fighter knows where the player is then they can attack them, granted with the miss chance. Again this is about what is impossible, not what is challenging
Magic weapons are common items in the game. By higher levels +3 weapons are common among character, generally given as loot but also purchased and even if they were not martials can craft them. That said, fighters can still damage outsiders or creatures with DR, it just takes longer. Magic items are an expected and reasonable part of the game that martials can craft themselves if they were in a wilderness or had a really stingy DM.
We are talking about easily accessible PC races i.e. advanced Race guide, not Pit Fiends or other homebrew PC races. If martials have access to those powers then they are very much relevent. Again this is a list of things that martials cannot do.
Energy drain is not permanent, you make a Fortitude after 24 hours and if failed you gain permanent negative levels as I said above. A heal check and an anti-toxin gives a player a +8 bonus to poison saves. Even if failed, the character can still survive given sufficient stats or hp.
Someone else getting to use divinations does not stop your character driving the narrative. You seem to have had several unpleasant run ins with succubus.
That being said. I agree with you that creatures moving to other planes e.g. ethereal is something a player cannot stop so I will add that. I had already acknowledged, identifying items, baleful polymorph, higher level swarms, and dealing large amounts of energy damage as being things you need a spell for.
1. Curing permanent or lethal Magical curses/diseases - mummy rot, stone to flesh, feeblemind, baleful polymorph etc.
2. Binding invulnerable enemies such as the tarrasque into sleep or imprisonment.
3. Teleporting to other planes of existence and preventing other creatures teleporting/plane shifting
4. Reaching places otherwise unreachable except by magic - cysts underground
5. Communicating with the dead, animals or stones
6. Raising the dead
7. Communicating with your God (rather than God communicating with you)
8. Divining the future. (Possible but requires DM fiat, pre-existing prophecy, tarot etc)
9. Flight(possible with flying mount but rare)
10. Detecting a magical emanations and therefore identifying magic items through spellcraft (possible with some racial abilities e.g. Drow)
11. Creating your own plane of existence
12. Deal large amounts of energy damage (small damage through race/feats/class abilities)
13. Remove permanent ability damage and permanent negative levels.
14. Practically kill high CR swarms (lower can be achieved with alchemist fire etc)
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... Where did he call you a liar? I've gone back over his posts several times and even did a search on this page and the entire thread. You're the only one who has used the word in a non-mechanical sense.
What I did see was where you made some errors and were given the mechanical correction. I also saw some disagreements over interpretation and judgment of abilities. But I did not see him calling you a liar.
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"You are lying if you say that alchemist fire is an effective way of fighting most swarms."
"Likewise your answer of "high perception" is a joke"
"And you would be wrong."
"If you're going to try to argue at least give a real argument."
This hectoring, confrotational tone is totally unnecessary. I was asking for clarification and had already acknowledged several of his points.
There are a group of people on here who say there is no disparity, it is all down to the way you play. There are another group who think the disparity is so large that you are "100% screwed" playing a non-caster. Both sides are as vehement as the other. This thread was an attempt to take the heat out of the argument and find a middle way, but maybe that isnt possible.
"You are lying if you say that alchemist fire is an effective way of fighting most swarms."
Ah. I somehow missed - twice - where he said that you're lying if you claim that alchemists fire is an effective way to defeat most swarms.
Are you claiming that alchemists fire is an effective way to defeat most swarms?
Low level ones as i said in my post yes.
Weather you agree or not with what the person thinks, saying they are lying is uncalled for.
Anyway - back to the topic.
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Things you cannot effectively do without magic.
Thanks for this list Ashiel! It's great for someone who wants to look at ways to enhance the game to fill holes where non-spellcasters fall flat against level appropriate things.
Here's what I could come up with:
™ - Indicates it still touches on magic in some way (uses magic item, or emulates a magical effect), however it is readily accessible by a non-spellcaster, typically by skill use.
™ Expanded (non-spellcasting) Crafting (alch/wondr: curative/counter effects)
Expand Heal skill (short time dead) or ™ with ritual/material cost (long time dead)
Expand Linguistics skill (™ plus ritual for the dead)
Flying mount, expand Swim skill, or burrowing pet
Expand Swim skill (™ plus material cost for longlasting effect)
™ Expand Use Magic Device skill (to infuse an alignment into an existing magical weapon)
Change conditions (including control) to a gradient "affliction" effect, worsening/impoving over application and time, lessening the "instant out" effect.
™ Expanded (non-spellcasting) Crafting (alch/wondr: defensive effects)
™ Expanded (non-spellcasting) Crafting (alch/wondr: splash items)
Expanded Spellcraft skill: combine with Perception to recognize signs of specific magical effects.
Expanded Perception skill: gain extra-sensory abilities (blindsense/sight, tremorsense, etc).
Campaign specific: Proliferation of "small/temporary portals" based more on "theme" than actual geographical or map placement, and require specific ritual to access. Expanded Knowledge skill.
I'm ok with something this rare and uniquely necessary to be in the providence of magical casters, or a specific magical portal/device.
It's not likely to need to hop around planets like you would one town to the next. If the campaign calls for it, then time to make your Spelljammer anyways, dagnabit.
Expand Knowledge skill to more reliably indicate weakness, and then use #6 or #9 to apply it.
™ Expand Heal skill with ritual/material cost.
Alter curses to have built-in counters that can be discovered by researching/knowledge skill (or straight up guessing). *Just like in most depictions of curses I've EVER encountered in any media.
Expand Heal skill.
Expand Heal skill.
Expand Heal skill.
Expand Heal skill.
Change conditions (including polymorphed) to a gradient "affliction" effect, worsening/impoving over application and time, lessening the "instant out" effect.
Expand Bluff and Stealth skills.
Expand obvious counter skills (Perception vs Deeper Darkness).
Expanded Spellcraft skill: combine with Perception to find and interact with magical effects to allow disrupting them.
™ Use items from #9 to have effective weapons against them.
Once again, such a rare thing that I don't mind "needs a specific spell or device that emulates the spell to kill".
Honestly, how often are you going to run into the Tarrasque?
Other unique creatures would be addressed individually (perhaps a mundane solution has a thematically appropriate option).
Expand Heal skill.
Expand Perception and Acrobatics skills (to have ability to be aware of the ambush, and instantly kip up from sleeping position). Build in "less sleep requirement" into Constitution (or Fortitude Save?) mechanic (down to 2 hours). * Helps push people away from needing the ring of sustenance that is so prevalent right now.
Build in "reduce environment effects" into Constitution (or Fortitude Save?) mechanic (right up to immunity at high levels).
Several things: crafting items to cause conditions that remove a wyrm's advantages (think extreme tanglefoot bags), or improve defenses (see #8); improve feats so that they scale with level, allowing multi-skilled switch hitters to be the norm; various other things already listed (I'm thinking #4, #5, #11, #7-16-21, various Heal skill expansions, #24, & #29).
.
And to tie all this back to the original post discussion: I don't really feel that the suggested changes I put up here alter Pathfinder in any significant way that it wouldn't feel like Pathfinder anymore.
It's taking mostly existing things (such as alchemical items, and existing skills and abilities) and just giving non-spellcasting classes the option to do more with them.
The worst offenders might be "making Constitution do crazy stuff" like "no need sleep" or "function fine in extreme temperatures".
Considering these are things that real people can already do in real life (allegedly; although Wim Hof was actually tested in his ability).. I hope this isn't too big a departure.
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"You are lying if you say that alchemist fire is an effective way of fighting most swarms."Ah. I somehow missed - twice - where he said that you're lying if you claim that alchemists fire is an effective way to defeat most swarms.
Are you claiming that alchemists fire is an effective way to defeat most swarms?
This is the second time ive seen people who aren't admin come in here and tell people to back off. Both times it appears to be one sided.
Jiggy confronted me about it, yet when I've been heckled aggressively nothing is said.
Now book rat is in here doing the same thing to sword.
Ashiels tone was condescending in the reply posts. He used terminology that attacked the integrity of another person.
There's a claim about a Paizo Defense Force in these threads. It seems there's also a Goon Squad who all band together to prevent alternate views being posed.
So, for those leaping into this passive aggressive group, unless you're contributing ideas for house ruling the game in order mitigate the supposed martial caster disparity, I would suggest you keep silent when it comes to other posters requesting a more friendly posting style.
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This is not complicated. While in a different post he might have qualified the answer as being specific to CR 1 swarms, in the post I was responding to no such qualified was made.
It is either gross ignorance or dishonesty to suggest that elemental weapons or alchemist fire is an answer to the majority of swarms. So, uh, take your pick I guess. This is binary. There is no third option because it's factually untrue, so either you make this statement because you don't know or because you are being deceptive.
They aren't even effective against a minority of swarms. By the swarm rules you cannot even effectively harm a swarm with an alchemist fire because you cannot target the swarm directly with it, only deal the weapon's splash damage +50% (and +50% of 1 point of splash damage is rounded down to 0).
Each answer I got was steadily creating more alone time between my face and my desk (I wonder what the children will look like) because they weren't actually answers.
Let me break this down again.
Invisibility: Claiming that a high Perception modifier is the answer is just silly. The modifiers from invisibility are so crazy huge that you cannot be expected to keep up with it without some sort of magic. Even if you have Alertness, some imaginary ability that adds +1/2 your level to Perception checks, and Skill Focus (Perception) and are with level, only then would you even be at the same effective modifier to Perception as invisibility is to Stealth and it's still only half the modifier of the invisible creature when they are still. The creature is still entitled to new Stealth checks each round and tey still get a +1/10 ft. between you and them. You are still flat footed against them, they still get bonuses to hit you, and you still cannot attack them effectively. When you are dealing with an enemy that is in any way dangerous to you already and you add this, you are very likely going to die.
Perception is not an argument and it never was an argument for anyone who actually looks at the rules on it.
Darkness SLAs: If you read the rules, Blind Fight is a feat that only helps to not get completely merced by being blinded (you aren't flat-footed in melee, you don't suffer the movement penalties for being unable to see, you effectively halve miss-%) but it does nothing to help against any ranged attacks made against you, nor spells, or anything other than a melee attack. A darkfolk or similar creature will ruin even someone with blind fight unless they can somehow deal with the deeper darkness.
The most effective way to deal with the deeper darkness is in fact a spellcaster using a heightened [light] subtype spell (I'm fond of continual flame myself) and non-casters do not have an option to do this.
Magic Weapons: Again, by the core rules, your odds of finding aligned weapons for sale is close to nil. The argument that "oh but you'll get them anyway" is not an argument it's a suggestion that the GM will have mercy on the fighters and explicitly give them to them, because the claim is not supported by the rules at all.
Again, an alignment-ability weapon is a +3 equivalent which costs 18,300+ gp. It is 16th+ level before NPCs have that much cash to spend on all of their weaponry combined, not just one weapon, so the claim that you'll just loot it off of your foes is invalid. I also qualified the statement with reasonable effort. Dice-gods is not reasonable effort and it comes too late otherwise.
The Dragon: No. It just isn't possible to fight a real dragon without a magical party. If you do not have magic characters in your party the dragon's multitude of buffs, powerful supernatural abilities, and offensive spells, mixed with their cunning, movement capabilities, and physical prowess is more or less unstoppable.
An ancient red dragon (not even a wyrm) has 7th level spellcasting ability on top of some really beefy naked statistics. Unless the dragon is klutzing his way through the fight, the party without casters is going to die. Period. They are going to end up ambushed by a very buffed, greater invisible, minion controlling, battlefield altering, angry dragon.
In Summary
If you are going to ask for things that martials cannot do because you intend to add not-magic to martials to do magic, then don't argue that those things are possible already by citing rules proving that it isn't.
If you are offended because I said "you are a liar if", either you need to prove you're not lying, reevaluate your beliefs on the matter, or you need to stop spreading misinformation.
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Oh and again, racial abilities are not answers to martial questions. They are features (often minor ones because energy resistance 5 is cute at low levels and mostly useless later) that any class including casters has access to in theory and you cannot change your race on demand (unless you are a spellcaster).
If someone makes this argument it becomes make-out time with my desk again. It's missing the forests for the tiki-torches.
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It appears in recent posts that we've moved a bit from giving more narrative control and/or more to do than just hit things into removing the need for spell casters at all. I cannot say I'd be any more for that than I would the current state of affairs where spell casters don't need martials.
I'm not sure the answer to all of this is to give martials the exact same abilities or the ability to solve every problem without the other. The game was designed to be somewhat cooperative.
It appears in recent posts that we've moved a bit from giving more narrative control and/or more to do than just hit things into removing the need for spell casters at all. I cannot say I'd be any more for that than I would the current state of affairs where spell casters don't need martials.
I'm not sure the answer to all of this is to give martials the exact same abilities or the ability to solve every problem without the other. The game was designed to be somewhat cooperative.
I agree and naturally we can't forget the middle ground characters as well.
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Oh and again, racial abilities are not answers to martial questions. They are features (often minor ones because energy resistance 5 is cute at low levels and mostly useless later) that any class including casters has access to in theory and you cannot change your race on demand (unless you are a spellcaster).
If someone makes this argument it becomes make-out time with my desk again. It's missing the forests for the tiki-torches.
So then Ashiel, since this is the home brew area, and you feel everyone else's responses aren't good enough to fix "your" game, please propose the fixes to these conundrums of apparent disparity.
By sharing your ideas, you're no longer insulting others ideas, but instead enlightening us on what you think is best for "your" game, you will be contributing in a far better way than now.
Who knows, maybe you'll even save your desk from further damage.