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And clerics will heal faster than Paladins and Paladins faster than Druids. It's all a matter of degrees.Incidentally fighters do regenerate - it's called healing and they get it after a nights rest.Once per day, at a rate of their HP per level. You have to sit on your ass for several days to go from 0 HP to full HP without magic.
What exactly is your argument here? Are you seriously comparing healing magic to natural healing?
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Really? 80% of players play closer to the floor than the ceiling? What does that even mean? Why is "Makes a mechanically optimized character" a "higher" level of play than "Makes an interesting character"?
It HAS to mean mechanical, because there is no floor or ceiling for "interesting." Number of pages of backstory doesn't cut it. Compare:
Is Player 1's character more interesting? On paper I say no, because he's a ripoff of a bunch of tired old cliches that are far better off in the dustbin than on the gaming table. "Dog" at least gives us a lot of room for surprises. Is Player 1 a "better" role-player? Maybe he always talks in the first person using an Ian McKellen imitation and has Gledalff issue impressive-sounding pronouncements. Great! But maybe all his dialogue turns out to be ripped off from LotR movies -- and maybe Gledalff ends up with no personality of his own. Maybe Dog's player talks in the third person, but ends up showing that Dog is an interesting and unique individual with real nuances of character. None of these things are quantifiable, and really can't even be ranked in terms of a "floor" or "ceiling."
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I'd like to think Mark and Ssalarn meant that statistic in a context that hasn't been fully laid out.
The specific context (and I thought I mentioned this at some point), was in regards to the wildly different opinions we were hearing regarding the Kineticist and to a lesser degree, a few other classes.
The Kineticist is often seen as a weak class on the forums, but I've met a lot of people at PFS who think it's OP. Why? Because Kineticist is a high floor, low ceiling class. It's very forgiving and doesn't cause option paralysis like a slot based caster can lead to, and it doles out the basic tools you need when you need them, like defense boosts, flight, and other utilities. When you're playing near the mechanical optimization floor, these seem like really powerful boons, but the Kineticist's optimization ceiling, both for damage and utility, comes in way under a class like the Sorcerer. On the forums, most discussions revolve around class performance much closer to the individual ceilings, so things like the Kineticist and Caster/Martial Disparity seem greatly exaggerated compared to some, perhaps even most, people's play experiences.The discussion about most people playing nearer the floor has nothing to do with how much RP is good or bad, or anything of the sort. It's strictly in regards to mechanical optimization and the appearance/existence of balance. Wizards often appear weak or at least balanced in a lot of games, because people don't know how to play near the class' ceiling. That takes a huge degree of system mastery, both in build and execution. You could copy/paste Anzyr's "god wizard" from one of his posts and still get trounced by a Fighter if you don't know how to fully leverage that tool kit. Similarly, GMs who think the scariest thing about a pit fiend are its claws may not realize just how much more difficult the encounters they're using could be, and this can also create different impressions.
I don't think its exclusive either/or, and you didn't say that. But I don't think the people pointing out objective areas where magic, Su abilities, pools, every even-level abilities are all necessarily bias'd towards just the mechanics of the game. But if you have a GM who's more inclined to make you roll something, even if you've "roled" it well, then you need the mechanics on your side too. its both and, not either or IMO.
Very much this. Pathfinder is a Roleplaying Game. That means that both roleplay and game mechanics play a hand in resolving the story. Without rules, it's just magical story time with your friends. Without roleplay, it's just the world's most complicated board game.
You know what my least favorite thing at a table is? Someone who shows up with a 7 Int, 6 Cha Barbarian who has invested exactly nothing in social skills and thinks that because they took an acting class at the community college they can "roleplay" their way through things their character isn't equipped for. When I'm GMing, I shut that down fast. "Okay Steve, that was a great speech and we know what Urch meant to say, now go ahead and roll me a Diplomacy check so I can tell you what Urch actually just said to the Countess."
Let me tell you a story about one of my experiences in a game-
One of my first gaming groups included several boisterous guys and one quiet little wallflower of a girl. She decided to play a Bard, because she thought that maybe playing a social character would help her learn how to be more social. For 5 sessions, she never got a chance, because one particularly loud fellow playing basically the exact barbarian I described above (though it wasn't actually Steve and Urch, they're great) was jumping in to every social situation with these witty speeches and cunning barbs. The GM regularly allowed him to close out such encounters without a single roll, and often rewarded him for "good roleplay". I was pretty incensed, but that GM ended up moving away, and I decided to GM for the very first time. After I let the barbarian bungle a few social encounters by allowing him to give his speeches and then "interpreting" then via skill check, I slowly started directing them toward the Bard. At first she was mostly rolling dice, and I'd have to coax a few words out of her to describe what she was doing, but soon she was out of her shell and managing to combine great roleplay with a character who was actually built to support the things she wanted to do. I had finally got my group to understand that roleplay and rollplay are the twin pillars on which the game is built, and they need to support and inform each other.
And clerics will heal faster than Paladins and Paladins faster than Druids. It's all a matter of degrees.Incidentally fighters do regenerate - it's called healing and they get it after a nights rest.Once per day, at a rate of their HP per level. You have to sit on your ass for several days to go from 0 HP to full HP without magic.What exactly is your argument here? Are you seriously comparing healing magic to natural healing?
No.
But I do think that the C/MD argument (or now the magic/no magic argument that some people seem to think it has become) tries to deal with absolutes and I don't think there are many absolutes in this argument. Certainly not as many as is being suggested.
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I should point out that my 1.5-year-old daughter finds nursery rhymes to be incredibly interesting. I obviously don't agree. Then again, I find reading Icelandic Sagas to her to be incredibly interesting, but she has come to violently disagree with my assessment.
The thing is, I don't get to tell her she's "wrong."
"Fun" isn't monolithic. What's "creative" and "fun" for you might leave the rest of the table irritable and annoyed.
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Heck, I don't even know why we need any kind of comparison at all - if I had fun at the table, that is a win for me. My fun honestly doesn't depend on me being top dog at the table, and the idea that it's important for me to be "better" than anyone else is nonsense. I make interesting characters to me. I take care of my own fun at the table, and do my best to make sure I don't get in the way of anyone else's fun. To my way of thinking that makes me the "best" player, not least because my "best" doesn't necessarily disallow anyone else from being their "best" too. Besides, don't kid yourself, measuring mechanical effectiveness is no more an objective measure of "fun" than counting pages of backstory (which, to be clear, I never advocated). Are you really going to tell me that doing 80 dmg on average per round is "more fun" than doing 60?
This is one of the most disingenuous arguments I have seen. I have seen literally no one argue Martial/Caster disparity or game mastery as a function of damage dealt (and certainly not in this thread). It's about ability to contribute to a wide range of scenarios. The Angel Summoner is great at dealing with armed terrorists with hostages. The BMX Bandit is not. Both those characters are interesting, but in that scenario only one of them is relevant.
Now being less relevant does not inherently make character less interesting, but it does make them less mechanically capable. Mechanical capability is a fact that can be determined... so why not determine it? Of course, it would be best if you advanced an argument against an issue that the Martial/Caster disparity side has raised rather then beating up a strawman.
I don't think he's saying that. Rather that an assumption that mechanical aptitude is essential to be a good player is toxic. Not that the ability itself is.
I may be speaking out of turn though.
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Why do we have to quantify ANYTHING is my point.
Because it's a game, with rules to tell you how things in the game work. I don't invite my friends over for Monopoly and then lay out a carboard shipping box covered in cheese squares and ask who's going to make up the first rule.
I'm saying that you are starting with a specific set of assumptions about what it means to have fun that are actively toxic to what I think of as good play, simply because you can't measure "fun" accurately enough to suit you.
I don't think anyone's doing anything of the sort, and it kind of feels like you're soapboxing about a completely unrelated issue to the one being discussed.
Heck, I don't even know why we need any kind of comparison at all - if I had fun at the table, that is a win for me. My fun honestly doesn't depend on me being top dog at the table, and the idea that it's important for me to be "better" than anyone else is nonsense.
I know that when I play a fantasy roleplaying game, I want to be a hero (or a villain, or you know, whatever), and generally that implies a certain level of competence. If my Rogue is supposed to be an expert lockpicker and pickpocket, but I have to keep looking to the Wizard to magically unlock things for me, or I keep discovering that his weasel familiar has already stolen the thing I was planning to steal, and then stuck it in my pocket without me noticing so I wouldn't feel bad, that's going to negatively affect my fun.
I make interesting characters to me.
My hope would be that that's true of everyone here.
I take care of my own fun at the table, and do my best to make sure I don't get in the way of anyone else's fun.
Sounds like a good policy.
To my way of thinking that makes me the "best" player, not least because my "best" doesn't necessarily disallow anyone else from being their "best" too.
I try to avoid thinking in terms of who is the best player. Sometimes it's hard not to think of a particular character as the best character, and I find that's usually a result of good roleplay backed by a mechanically sound character sheet. Weirdly, it's usually an NPC who ends up getting the "best character award", but I put a lot into my NPCs.
Besides, don't kid yourself, measuring mechanical effectiveness is no more an objective measure of "fun" than counting pages of backstory (which, to be clear, I never advocated). Are you really going to tell me that doing 80 dmg on average per round is "more fun" than doing 60?
If it enforces my character concept and increases my immersion, I've usually had more "fun" (except in Way of the Wicked- we got a little too deep into those characters and it was a bit too real for a session). If I'm playing Nashal'baraat, Scourge of Battlefields, I'd like to know my character successfully scourged a few battlefields, and that he did it because I brought my concept to life, not because a lenient GM pandered to my conceit. If I'm playing Llewellyn Silvertongue, master diplomat, I'd like it if my character had the tools to succeed more often than he failed in social encounters.
"Fun" isn't something you can objectively measure, but in my experience, it's easier for more people to have it when you have a relatively level playing field and everyone is getting a chance to effectively participate and meaningfully contribute.
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I don't think he's saying that. Rather that an assumption that mechanical aptitude is essential to be a good player is toxic. Not that the ability itself is.
May be speaking out of turn though.
Ok, but that claim is equally non-existent. No one has argued that mechanical aptitude is required to be a good player. What is being argued is that certain classes are mechanically lacking ways to contribute to large sections of the game. So... why does he not try attacking the actual position. (I presume because it's unassailable by logic.)
Lol, i think it has been assailed and overcome ; ) but only in the square foot that sits on my shoulders.
I think there was an intimation early on that most players are unskilled and that "unskilled" meant mechanically unskilled and didn't take into account creativity or team play etc etc. In that regard he is responding to a point that was made earlier but I'm not sure it is something any of us really disagree on.
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Lol, i think it has been assailed and overcome ; ) but only in the square foot that sits on my shoulders.
I think there was an intimation early on that most players are unskilled and that "unskilled" meant mechanically unskilled and didn't take into account creativity or team play etc etc. In that regard he is responding to a point that was made earlier but I'm not sure it is something any of us really disagree on.
Most players *are* mechanically unskilled. That contributes to their inability to see the Caster/Martial Disparity because they are not aware of how high the ceiling for full casters goes. Again though... this says nothing about how good or bad they are as players.
I would imagine mechanical skill like most things follows a bell curve of skill on the x axis and quantity of players on the y axis.
If however the cmd can only be identified by the most mechanically skilled players (not necessarily the best players as you have said) can it truly be considered a significant problem in the game?
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I would imagine mechanical skill like most things follows a bell curve of skill on the x axis and quantity of players on the y axis.
If however the cmd can only be identified by the most mechanically skilled players (not necessarily the best players as you have said) can it truly be considered a significant problem in the game?
Yes, because it is a pitfall that players can fall into at even the lowest level of system mastery. All it takes is one player realizing "Hey... there's a Summon Monster for that!" And being unaware of the pitfall makes those pitfalls *more* dangerous, because you are not able to actually avoid it.
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That was the DMs justification for trying to stop his character doing it. Which surely we can all agree stinks?
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If however the cmd can only be identified by the most mechanically skilled players (not necessarily the best players as you have said) can it truly be considered a significant problem in the game?
If it's not identified, but still ruins the game -- which is exactly what happened in a Savage Tide game I was in, BTW -- then, yes, it can still be a significant problem.
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That was the DMs justification for trying to stop his character doing it. Which surely we can all agree stinks?
Sure. What I've done at my table -- which as far as I know is unique -- is draft up a house rule to cover it after the session, disseminate the proposed rule, and have a discussion and vote at the beginning of the next session, with me abstaining except in the case of a tie.
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Okay, I see where you're coming from, so a problem is identified but not the cause (the disparity) well that makes sense and greater skill mastery allows you to identify the real cause.
I must say I thought the summary Fergie posted about three pages back was the most useful thing I have seen for a long time.
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I would imagine mechanical skill like most things follows a bell curve of skill on the x axis and quantity of players on the y axis.
If however the cmd can only be identified by the most mechanically skilled players (not necessarily the best players as you have said) can it truly be considered a significant problem in the game?
The issue is that Martial/Caster can occur accidentally or unintentionally. For example, when the Summoner came out, it was causing all kinds of issues, because you had a full caster equivalent with a super pet who could very easily be made to do existing classes jobs better than they could. It was a highly pre-optimized class, and 90% of the complaints about it could be boiled down to "it was making everyone else look bad".
Then there's our friend, the internet. The game store I play at, like most game stores, has a lot of Magic players. These guys are generally good at understanding rules language, and assembling a deck can be a lot like building a wizard. These guys and gals have also been taught by their card gaming hobby how to research decks and builds. Much like a good M:tG deck, a good spellcaster is versatile and able to handle a wide array of situations. I've had some M:tG players join the table, use a pregen for the night, and then come back for the next session with a character that positively wrecks encounters and kind of steps on everybody's toes. These players aren't doing anything wrong, but now I'm in a sticky situation. I don't want to discourage them from playing, but it's hard to explain "gentlemen's agreements" without sounding like you're lecturing someone. I don't like running the risk of accidentally chasing off new players, but I also have to address the situation if it impacts other people's enjoyment of the game (which has happened on several occasions).
Martial/Caster disparity exists, and it only grows as an issue as the hobby gains new players who are very familiar with using internet guides and markedly less familiar with the archaic structures often referred to as gentlemen's agreements the "old-timers" like myself have traditionally used to rein in the outer edges of the game.
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I played D&D 3.0 and 3.5 through its entirety...No one told me about how unbalanced classes were... I noticed it by playing the game since I was 10 years old. By the time I was 13 I already couldn't ignore C/MD (although I didn't know of its fancy name).
I noticed my Rangers's bonus feats and tracking abilities were completely redundant to the Wizard's summon and divination spells...
I noticed my Druid being as good or better than my friend's Fighter at quite literally everything.
I noticed a lot of other similar scenarios... More and more often. And when I finally decided to search the internet about D&D, I found out I wasn't the only one.
The point is: C/MD can still ruin games, even if you don't know about it. Even if you're a noob in a group of noobs where no one is trying to overshadow anyone.
C/MD is a very real problem... And it grows worse and worse the more you explore the rules.
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Martial/Caster disparity exists, and it only grows as an issue as the hobby gains new players who are very familiar with using internet guides and markedly less familiar with the archaic structures often referred to as gentlemen's agreements the "old-timers" like myself have traditionally used to rein in the outer edges of the game.
To follow up on this, I've often pointed out the benefits to the hobby as a whole if all those "gentleman's agreements" were hard-written into the rules, rather than being left as an arcane, invisible "cheat code" that's needed to actually play without eventually falling into a booby-trap that ruins the game. With enough experience or luck, people will figure them out -- or ones enough like them to do the job -- but it's an incredible barrier to entry, finding out that the rules posted on the PRD are incomplete or even unworkable without a second set of unwritten rules as well.
Tabletop games seem to be a dwindling hobby. I'd like to make them easier to pick up, by making the rules and game play as smooth and as transparent as possible. Sitting around and congratulating ourselves that we know the "right" way to play -- or, worse, condescendingly telling people that insights we learned through years of effort are "just common sense" (I've seen that a LOT!) -- turns off new players and will eventually ensure that a dwindling hobby dies.
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I'm afraid (or pleased, not sure yet) to say that fifth edition d&d does seem to have picked up quite a few of these and successfully hard coded them in. Not least of all being bonus actions, concentration, and spells in scalable slots. As well as streamlining the game for new players to pick up.
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5th Edition does a lot of things right... But in many cases, it threw the baby out with the dirty water.
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I've started a new thread to discuss as I find the idea intriguing
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Really? Then what, precisely, do you think is meant by things like '80% of players are closer to the skill floor than the ceiling'?Ok, but that claim is equally non-existent. No one has argued that mechanical aptitude is required to be a good player. What is being argued is that certain classes are mechanically lacking ways to contribute to large sections of the game. So... why does he not try attacking the actual position. (I presume because it's unassailable by logic.)I don't think he's saying that. Rather that an assumption that mechanical aptitude is essential to be a good player is toxic. Not that the ability itself is.
May be speaking out of turn though.
Can't speak for Anzyr, but I'm pretty sure it means that 80% or so of the people who play this game build characters whose mechanical proficiency is closer to the lower limits of what the game accommodates than the highest. Given that I'm the one who said it, that's probably an accurate interpretation.
Or discussions of what benchmarks we need to have to "rank" characters?
He literally said
What is being argued is that certain classes are mechanically lacking ways to contribute to large sections of the game.
I'm struggling to see what's hard to understand here. We're discussing how some classes in the game are designed with innate deficiencies compared to others. Relevant to that, is the fact that the optimization floor and ceiling of the game are very far apart, and most people play closer to the bottom of the mechanical optimization curve than the top. Because the ceilings are very far apart but the floors start out pretty close to each other, this means that many people may not see or experience Martial/Caster disparity issues to the same degree as others. Savvy?
Also, you seem to have a really hard time separating "player" from "character". You are aware that you are not Drahlia Moonriver, Priestess of the Six Glades, right? Because people are talking about rules interactions and the prevalence of system mastery, and you seem to think someone's insulting you personally.
Let me be clear- you are the only person in this entire thread who has cast judgement on someone else or tried to dictate how they should play their games. You did that, not anyone else. We're talking math and game design, you're talking feelings and unrelated anecdotes, looking for a reason to be offended. No one is judging you or trying to tell you how to play, but the fact that you barged in doing exactly that to everyone else while casting accusations is a little intense and unnecessary.
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Really? Then what, precisely, do you think is meant by things like '80% of players are closer to the skill floor than the ceiling'? Or discussions of what benchmarks we need to have to "rank" characters?
.... It's talking about the mechanical skill of the individual player... For example, my group is primarily people right next to the floor, except for me and my brother who are in the middle.
This has no affect on who is the best player in the group, it happens to be one of the guys next to the floor because of his roleplaying, intuition and his characters ability to support the group. But simply being good player does not mean he is skilled.
Skill is not what people use to measure whether someone is a good player, skill is used to measure other things.
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Boy, look at all these statistical analyses. Good job, all. We've really collected a wealth of information here.
Added to the Index.
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but having anti-magical options is 'not fun', because shutting down spellcasters is badwrongfun, but shutting down martials is just business as usual...we call it 'crowd control'.
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but having anti-magical options is 'not fun', because shutting down spellcasters is badwrongfun, but shutting down martials is just business as usual...we call it 'crowd control'.
The only actually effective "anti-magic" option is GM fiat. Antimagic field is a joke and I'm convinced most people who suggest it are either 1. deeply misinformed about how it works, or 2. actually just using fiat.
Unless you meant Spell Resistance, which is even more of a joke. I could explain why, but I would prefer you provide the answer yourself.
And the difference is Crowd Control affects everyone not just martials and is not the result of GM fiat. Casters just have more ways of interacting with crowd control effects, which again is symptomatic of the underlying problem in caster/martial disparity. Namely, caster have a wealth of options for a variety of situations, while martials have an extremely limited number of options for very few situations.
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What I'm trying to get you (and others) to see is that even if one class is objectively more powerful than another in a mechanical sense (and I'm fine with stipulating that - believe it or not, I understand the math, but I think the more compelling argument is actually the meta-narrative power that comes with spell casting vs "mundane" skills), when you label the disparity a "problem", you are making a value judgment about what is important in the game, and what having the "right" kind of fun means. What I'm specifically objecting to, though is not that you're making that judgment, or that you prefer to play that way. I'm instead objecting to the fact that the assumptions underlying the quant-focused view of the game have gone unchallenged for so long that most people can't even see that the are assumptions anymore. I'm objecting to the fact that when people tell you the Caster/Martial disparity "doesn't exist", or "isn't a problem", you dismiss them as either essentially not skilled/smart enough to see the problem, or else they are simply crazy, failed novelists, etc, instead of considering the very real possibility that they have a point, and that maybe "being roughly mechanically balanced with a full caster" isn't an important criteria for fun for everyone. And finally I'm objecting to the fact that as much as you want to say "Look if you don't like it, play the way you want!", I am finding it increasingly difficult to do that, because of the understandable (but not inevitable) the spread of the dogma of focusing on rules expertise, optimizing, and quantitative balance as the measures of "good play".
So you find not being able to contribute to a large number of situations effectively fun? Well... that's fine I guess. But the rest of us find being effective in a large variety of situations fun and want to see the caster/martial disparity fixed for that reason. You can always chose to make a character that can solve a limited number of problems if you find that fun, and fixing the disparity to grant more balanced options does not negate that.
Sorry but your argument is essentially that having balanced options (which is what the caster/martial disparity crowd is arguing for) and that people becoming informed about that lack of balance and trying to fix it is badwrongfun. The position putting down other playstyles is the one you have adopted.
I'm perfectly happy if you want to play a character that is only good at one thing. Just don't complain when you can only contribute to that one thing, while my character does everything else. You have your fun. I'll have mine. Everyone wins.
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This is more or less a versatility problem in the end isn't it? What is the core issue of C/MD? One class gets to do one thing - physical combat - relatively well. The other class gets to do a lot of things - whatever is enabled by casting - rather well (which scales up to a level 11 wizard creating tank warfare as a balance to a fighter's 3rd iterative, which I thought was funny).
Overall, classes seem to be focused on a theme. The problem is that the fighter's & other martials' theme as a class is one solution to a problem. Everyone else's focus is on a particular flavor of solving a problem. Magic is magic. Skills are skills. Even a barbarian with its rage powers gains flight, which is more useful beyond just "can attack flying enemies." You can use it to cross large gaps, effectively "climb" a large wall (or you could also with things like raging climber were it not so specific so as to be worth taking), etc. It's usable in a lot of situations, including in combat where you need to hit something that's flying. Which is also why spells are powerful because, while they may do something rather specific, they can be applied to a plethora of situations.
So that's the core issue isn't it? Some classes were designed as versatile, and others not. That skills are relatively limited in their effects means that the most versatile classes are casters or those with supernatural abilities, and the least are those with no versatile features (fighter) & few skillpoints to even pretend to be useful out of their one focus. The Brawler gets credit because of martial flexibility which lets the class, in combat at least, be versatile.
What I'm trying to get you (and others) to see is that even if one class is objectively more powerful than another in a mechanical sense (and I'm fine with stipulating that - believe it or not, I understand the math, but I think the more compelling argument is actually the meta-narrative power that comes with spell casting vs "mundane" skills), when you label the disparity a "problem", you are making a value judgment about what is important in the game, and what having the "right" kind of fun means.
That's not quite it. What it comes down to is that for people who are not concerned with the balance between classes, whether or not the C/MD exists doesn't matter. For the people who are concerned with inter-class balance, its existence is a problem. Fixing this balance discrepancy wouldn't hurt those who weren't concerned with it in the first place, but it'd make those who it does affect a lot happier with the game.