Bave's page

You got it Bave,I see what your talking about as well...there is a jump around 9th also.
That's also my pet theory about why organized play just happens to wrap up around 12th level.
At least it was last I checked.

Well, I suppose that might be why or maybe that the game dramatically slows down around 11th-ish level because of the time involved in the adjudication of all the spells, effects, and special abilities of everyone/thing involved.

Teleport isn't "Wonky" ,I think the greater 'without error' verisions can be a bit excessive,but that's a matter of taste.
Limited wish is when things start to get "Wonky" for me.
Raise dead has it's limitations,but the greater versions like true resurrect totally trivialize death.
There's nothing wrong with 'Fly' either.It's...

Ok, so your beef is with 7th level spells, or 13th level wizards? That's where the game breaks down for you? This has been my point all along. The power curve doesn't start to break until 9th level (with 5th level spells) and then 13th level is where it starts to shift more dramatically. The vast, vast majority of campaigns don't even get there.

The fact that a "Good GM" is needed, in order to correct the many 'on the fly' wonky imbalances that are created by the players simply using the powers they were allowed to have,just goes to show the amount of improvement the system still has left in it.

It's far from "Idiot proof".
*folded hands* ... I guess the system itself is not yet fully understood.
I have over 65 house rules to correct the things that I feel are off...and that's just me.Even if half my opinions turn out be be objectively wrong,that still leaves a lot of questionable issues.
A "Normal" GM should be able to have his PCs do everything on their sheets without breaking the scenario.
If I as a player have teleportation,using it to get to distant objectives is a "no brainer". It should be the first idea that comes to mind.Asking the player not to do so is just ridiculous.
Might as well ask them to stop attacking so much,so that the bad guys can get a few licks in and make the story better.
Or better yet,take a dive this fight,so your comeback will be more heroic!
The above is good natured sarcasm..I know it doesn't always translate well on the inter-tubes :)

The number one thing that people here complaining about are the things like Fly and Teleportation. These are now suddenly "wonnky"? These have been around since the first interations of RPGs. A good DM/publisher is going to understand these things and take them into account in an adventure. I can't even guess how many campaigns I have run. I have never been bent over backwards by those spells.

If you want to get rid of magic that breaks the game start with Raise Dead.

It looks like a huge number of people play with really bad DMs and players that are real dbags. I have never seen a player intentionally ruin an AP by circumventing something via teleport, etc.

I think you are missing the point many people are saying. I dont have a problem with what magic can do, so long as non-magic can do equally cool stuff. It has nothing to do with unrestricted magical power being a problem.

The original game put tight restrictions and strong limits on what casters can do, but it also meant that often casters were not actually getting to participate in the game. They had their one or two spells that had to be saved, and the rest of the time they were a commoner with a crossbow. Thats not a fun time in my opinion.

Over the editions, we've come to the point where these restrictions are mostly gone. But we didnt adjust for the scale of the impact of those spells (other then damage spells). I dont mind this. I mind that non-magical characters dont get to have the same affect.

I am not upset when a casting player takes some narrative control in my game. I just want things to be equal.

There are two ways to do this. One is to provide non-magical abilities that give such power, the other is to rewrite magic from the ground up.

The whole 'well if you just dont let caster's spells work the way they expect its not a problem' is bs. If a wizard gets the scry spell, he should have a reasonable chance to use scry in the adventure. If he never gets to use it in a meaningful way because everyone knows they should line their homes with lead, you as a dm are being a jerk. You are explicately countering choices made by your players.

Whether its 'logical' or not in the game world is besides...

Every single one of these threads misses the most vital point, that is time. Time is what equals a lot of this out.

For the majority of most campaigns wizards are a liability. They are inferior to the daily adventure compared to a fighter or a cleric. When do wizards/sorcerors really come into power? Probably when they get 5th level spells so 9th/10th level. By that I mean when they can expected to be meaningfully useful through a full day of combat encounters and not the one per day tailored encounter these posts seem to assume.

Prior to that the game is largely driven by the martials and clerics, almost every damned time. The arcane casters are carried to 5th level where they chuck out a Color Spray or or two every now and then and pray. Then they get to 5th where their largest contribution is in the form of Haste. Meanwhile the martials get to dominate combat and the rogues/rangers tend to have a better and more useful mix of skills.

So, tell me. Why in the world do we spend so much time debating the balance of the game when it only occurs a tiny proportion of the time?

Guys, it's easy.

If you think casters and magic is entirely overpowered, it's a simple fix. Just remove magical classes all together.

The simple reality is that at high level magic is going to surpass martial, that has always been true and likely always will be.

Odds of a Ranger beating a caster's initiative: Low.
Odds of them being taken out by a Swift Action Save or Die at 10+: High.
Odds of them being taken out by a standard action Save or Die at 10-: High.

Huh? Neither of those even look like full round actions... weird. It's like casters can subdue opponents with less action use then martials. Odd that.

Sure sure, I am sure you are about to compare the initiative of that Divination specialist, with improved init, the greensting scorpion, and walks around all day with moment of prescience, right? How about the average wizard with the dex of 14 against the ranger with the dex of 18 or 20?

Again, you are talking about level 11+ wizards who are just waiting for this encounter. Your arguments every time on these are so myopic. You clearly have a hard on for casters, that's fine, when you run a game just have everyone play fighters and be done with it.

DPR is not the only measure of character ability. A halfway-smart caster can completely short-circuit a LOT of plots in a way that no mundane character ever could.

Murder plot? "Speak with dead" (And possibly Raise Dead, if anyone cares enough.)
Someone's poisoned, and we need the anti-"Neutralize Poison" oh, never mind.
You must cross the Desert of Woe and reach the Forbidden Temple of - "Teleport" DAMMIT, STOP IGNORING ALL MY ADVENTURES!

DPR may not be the only measure of ability, but it is generally when it comes to "power".

I can't remember ever seeing someone get upset because of the gamebreaking power of Speak With Dead, Neutralize Poison, Create Food/Water etc. Teleport is a big deal, but it is also a 5th level spell, has capacity limitations, and destination limitations.

Compare that to the....

Ranger wins initiative, declares quarry, favored enemy, clustered shot and proceeds to pump a demon full of arrows at d8+15-20 per shot which largely ignore DR and averages a crit a round.

People have survived falls from miles in the air in real life.

Just throwing that out there.

As for the whole Caster Supremacy Argument, there are ways a fantasy RPG can rein in the spellcasters - the problem is that D&D 3.X used NONE of them except finite spell slots. D&D-style magic is, for the most part, fast, convenient, cheap, and safe. Heck, at least in AD&D, some spells could backfire badly. (Haste aged you, Polymorph could kill you, Teleport had a small risk of teleporting into solid rock...) So we're stuck with wizards with no limitations, and non-casters with no useful abilities because REEEEEAAAALISM.

So, if we actually want the snivelling peasants martial classes to stay relevant after level whatever, we have two unpalatable options:

1: Beat spellcasters with the nerfbat until they scream for mercy, then beat them some more.
2: Give up in the futile and wrongheaded pursuit of 'realism', and give martial classes the sort of abilities seen in Exalted, some of the whackier myths, or at least a high-budget kung-fu movie.

Ah yes, because those Paladins and Archers really seem to be struggling. I have seen more dragons and demons get one rounded by archers than I have by casters.... true story.

All of these "casters have unending power" theories rely incredibly on a GM who is going to just let casters do whatever they want. I have never seen Blood Money actually used in a game. I have never seen people make such silly, obscure, and ludicrous combinations in an attempt to obviously game the system.

It isn't that the folks I play with don't know about it, or can't do the math, it is quite simply that they can't come up with anything resembling a defense of clearly unintended results.

Sure, Blood Money is a written spell. But it is just as invalid as the wizard who trys to summon a wall of iron, fabricate it into 1000 masterwork longswords and profit. Do you need a rule to shut down obviously stupid and unintended consequences?

Sure, you can Magic Jar yourself into a melee monster. Still involves saves, spell resistance, range, duration, and that little detail of leaving your body an awesome target. Forgot those drawbacks, eh?

The ultimate failing of these comparisons is the simple fact that it assumes that the caster always has the right build/spells/equipment in order to pull them off, in every encounter all the time, while still being able to do the other stuff they need to do. That's the limiting factor kids. The archers can shoot all day, the fighters can swing all day, the wizard cannot cast spells endlessly, let alone a specific spell.

I have never in my life, until this thread, seen someone try to spin that a 1st level wizard is overpowered. If you were going to play a campaign where the entire campaign never advanced passed 4th level, let me know how many wizards you think there would be.

Sorry, but I check my arguments for holes.

It's very unlikely that enemies will not fail their save, because if you are focused on it you should easily have at least a DC 16 Color Spray. If you are extremely focused (say Heavens Oracle) you will have a Persistent Color Spray. Most monster in the range of CR 1-3 are lucky to have even +1 to Will Save. Therefore, the odds of the monster failing the will save are higher then the Fighter/RAnger hitting them.

Also the difference between HP of a Fighter and a Wizard at level 1 is probably only 2-4 points. And their AC is...

1) I can't remember anyone admitting their argument is riddled with holes, so of course you can't see them.

2) You are assuming that someone builds a caster around a 1st level spell? Going to throw a feat into Spell Focus just for that first level feat into an otherwise sub-optimal school for it, by and large?

3) Then, your theory is that you are going to deal with someone who is taking one of the most powerful and twinkie routes of all time, Heavens Oracle, to make it work more?

Seems like you are making a lot of assumptions for that build that is only expected to play one game... ever... with that character and only use one spell. Sure, it works for your example to a degree but isn't particularly realistic.

Further, your build is going to run around with 4-5 of these a day, assuming nothing else is memorized and optimized in that direction and foresaking everything else. After those 4-5 rounds, you are largely a commoner with a worse ac and lower hitpoints.

Now, to your math. Assume you have a more realistic 15 DC on your Color Spray. Assume your enemy is a +1 will save. Easy peasy, 70% fail rate. So sure, odds are you will beat that enemy. However, in order to make good use of a color spray you have to be targetting multiple targets, usually 3 seems to be the ideal minimum. Even if you are targetting two, odds are you are going to have one pass. With three you are almost certainly going to have one pass, and a decent chance of two passing. Your 12-13AC having wizard is going to now have to deal with those bad guys who are a bit miffed to say the least.

Conclusion, your assessment is crazy. You act as though your first level wizard is going to have an 18-20 in INT as well as a 14-16 in Dex and Con, or devote all their resources to color spray and it never targetting more than one monster who never succeeds the save. All it takes is one made saving through and your 6-8HP having wizard is dead.

That 1st level barbarian orc with the great axe? What are his odds of killing you with one swing... pretty good as well.

Casters are only weaker then Martials "in normal games" if you define "normal games" as "games where the average system mastery is below average". At level 1, a Two-handed Fighter using Power Attack can kill one guy. A caster using color spray can end an entire encounter. Also at low levels, will saves tend to be very low for enemy groups, making the casters success more likely then the odds that a Fighter hits. Casters do have...

Ok, just to poke some holes...

That first level wizard/sorc casting Color Spray is within 15' of the enemy and can only do that 1-3 times per day give or take. So you are talking about a single spell expending an enormous portion of resources for the day.

Also, in order to be effective you need a cluster of enemies in a small area, which you are now standing effectively right now to and in front of your group. Thus, if the enemies fail their save, which if you are targeting a cluster, some are likely to do, you have a good chance of immediate death.

This is one of the problems. People talking about caster power talk as though a caster has nigh unlimited spells, always has the proper spell available, and is able to survive long enough to deploy it and escape. That is a hell of a lot of assumptions.

Meanwhile, in your above example the fighter/ranger is killing one or two enemies a round pretty much every round with a fraction of the risk.

Out of curiosity, by the time you get done throwing the nerf bat at all this stuff, what's the point of playing a caster?

First, you really just nerfed their combat spells for the most part when the bulk of their real "campaign power" comes from out of combat spells, most of which are higher level.

Second, casters are already far from what they were in 3.5 in a much more negative way, btw.

Third, martials are dramatically more powerful than they were in 3.5, to the point of largely being more powerful than casters for longer.

Seriously, consider fighters and paladins in particular. Build a fighter archer, a monk archer, or a paladin anything and then let's talk. I have seen all three of those dominate games far more than any caster ever, ever has.

Sure, a caster at 17th level is going to be extremely powerful, even relative to those classes. However from levels 1-5 or so the casters are dead weight. From 6-10 they are carrying their own weight. From 11-13 they are pulling their weight in combat and more than their weight out of combat. From 14+ they are net contributors.

Want to know what the best group in the world looks like? Probably 2-3 (archers) fighters, a cleric with the travel domain, and a bard. They will *murder* anything that you put in their path.

Dale McCoy Jr wrote:

Magic missile is another example. In pathfinder you automatically get additional missiles as you increase in level. In 5e, if you cast it as a 1st level spell from a 1st level wizard or a 20th level wizard, you deal the same amount of damage. However, you have the option of using a higher level spell slot to get additional missiles.

Blasting spells are a lot stronger in 5th edition than they are in 3rd or Pathfinder. Your example of magic missile, in a level 1 slot, deals 3d4+3 force damage. You get 3 missiles total at level 1 that deal 1d4+1 force damage each, and can designate 1-3 targets. If you use a 2nd level slot, that's 4 missiles. You gain +1 missile per spell level of the slot you cast it with. 9th level slot used? That's 11 total missiles for 11d4+11 total damage.

Burning hands does 3d6 fire damage to everything in a 15 foot cone (Dexterity save for 1/2 damage). That's a possible 18 damage at level 1 if you roll really well, which can down even the barbarian. Each slot used above 1st gets an extra 1d6 damage added to it.

It looks like spellcasters will probably be more blasty in 5th edition, instead of controlly, as most control spells require concentration. And those blasty spells are rather damaging, even in 1st level spell slots, including the at-will cantrips. Ray of frost, which deals 1d3 in Pathfinder, deals 1d8 at 1st, and bumps to 2d8 at 5th, 3d8 at 11th, and 4d8 at 17th level.

That's a gigantic nerf. A 9th level slot to do an average of 40pts of damage? Think about that for a moment. A 17th level wizard dropping one of his most powerful spell slots to do 40 points of damage. Like I said, 5th is going to be nothing but martials and a healer doing the same thing over and over in every combat until WOTC needs to make enough money by generating splat books to re-complicate it all.

Dumb down? Interesting verbiage, but some people do want the rules simplified, so YMMV.

A buddy of mine told me about a session he played over the weekend. Fights were generally very fast paced. The advantage/disadvantage system coupled with flater math made each turn go faster. I think he said the group was 7th level. I love PF, but to be frank, I dont think any system has ever had longer, more drug out combats than 3.X.

Can you expand on why you think combats would take longer in 5th?

The problem is with simplified you get undesirable side effects. The simpler a game system is the less variability you have in it. I could easily make a simple game with the rules on a 3x5 card, one class, one race, one mechanic. Great, but it's boring.

The problem I saw in 5th ED was that the damage was toned down heavily, the healing increased dramatically which leads to grinding battles.

That said spells scaling with level does sound like a pretty strong change.

The entire premise of 5th Ed seems to be to dumb it down, make combat take longer, and continue to bend the curve towards martials away from casters.

Who wants to play a game where there isn't any variable dynamics any more? Sure, it's easier, but then you lose so much of the flexibility and variability.

I also never really understood the idea that martials are so underpowered in PFS. Sure, if you have a GM who is completely ignoring the rules of magic/spells and making it very easy it can be otherwise it really isn't there. Certainly not compared to the fact that I have been in a ton of games where fighters around 12th level are running around with AC's in the 40's pretty regularly with saves that are all near impossible to fail all the while the archers are dealing insane amounts of damage every single round pretty much.

Look, it is pretty simple.

If you know there is going to be a Paladin in the group, understand that if you make a shady-ish character you are heading down conflict rod to one degree or another. If you have outwardly visible signs of "transgressions" expect it to get worst.

Sure, you can argue that someone shouldn't play a Paladin, the same way someone could argue that the Warlock doesn't have to projecting "BAD" either.

I find it amusing when a player says that it is another characters fault for playing a class (Paladin) that is required to be Paragon-Good when they make a character whose entire foundation is shady at best.

Nevermind everyone else in the group is on one page and you are not.

Pretty clear who the douche in this one is.

Conscience Cat says that murdering your teammates pets is not the correct way of level advancement.

but no seriously, that's bound to create problems and is a player issue and not a character issue.

Tongue in cheek.

When you decide to take an evil familiar in a group with a paladin and a LG cleric, you decide to start that player conflict imo. If I was the DM I wouldn't intervene in PvP action on this one, it's just stupid. Sure, the paladin doesn't have to do anything about it, he just loses his powers. No way as a DM would I let a paladin walk around in a group with a freaking demon.

Just to clarify, a demon is pretty much the embodiment of chaotic evil, everything a paladin hates and is sworn to destroy.

Is there something unclear about that?

Doesn't matter. What you DO matters, not how you look, not who you hang out with.

Besides, he can just stand in front of Mr. Paladin and say 'Scan me', and he won't ping. Argument over.

Incorrect, from SRD...

"Associates: While she may adventure with good or neutral allies, a paladin avoids working with evil characters or with anyone who consistently offends her moral code. Under exceptional circumstances, a paladin can ally with evil associates, but only to defeat what she believes to be a greater evil. A paladin should seek an atonement spell periodically during such an unusual alliance, and should end the alliance immediately should she feel it is doing more harm than good. A paladin may accept only henchmen, followers, or cohorts who are lawful good."

I would take hanging out with someone who is walking around with a Demon pet as "consistent offends her moral code". Furthermore, even if you are going to be real liberal with that, then the OP can't complain when one morning after breakfast the Paladin roles out a "SMITE EVIL" on the familiar and every such critter that follows it.

Good xp source.

I would point out one nice detail...

The OP has an evil familiar. The paladin at a very minimum has a problem with that due to the "Association with Evil" clause. Nevermind the dogmatic principles related to walking around with someone chatting up a demon or devil.

Sorry, seems like you are giving off the evil stink even if you aren't evil. As a good analogy, consider walking around with Osama Bin Laden in Manhattan in 2002. Are you evil? No, you just have a strange choice in friends... right? What's the end result?

The cleric, druid, and wizard are the most powerful classes in the game, and a big part of that is their ability to change their ability set on a daily basis.

Plus, prep-casting just isn't how I envision magic working. If you know a spell, you KNOW a spell. You don't forget it, and you can't learn a new set overnight.

Wow, talk about a table I would leave....

Man only martial can deal damage, casters surely can't blast for massive amount of damage to multiple people and definitely not twice in a turn. I mean there's no way there would be a way to cast two spells in one turn and still move or items and feats that let you get metamagic for free...

Heh. When was the last time a "blaster caster" was a real threat in a game? How many things have energy resistances on top of crazy saves and spell resistances? Nevermind silly volume of hitpoints.

Take a level 15 encounter. Against a CR17 dragon. Who is going to do more in that battle? The wizard or the Ranger or Paladin archer? That dragon will be lucky to live two rounds of archery barrages.

*yawn*

Martials are soooo underpowered since all they can do is obscene amounts of damage, right? Want to talk about archers? Or power attacking crit builds?

I have seen more Pathfinder archers annihilate bosses than casters.

Quote:

I mean, For example, are the classes that contribute the less in combat the ones that have more things to do out of combat (and vise versa)? .

The only two classes balanced that way are the rogue and the fighter. All others are good at both, more or less.

I agree.

Rogues and Bards are social animals that excel out of initiative. However, I think you also need to look at how it plays out throughout the levels. A fighter is absolutely dominant in combat for the first 5-6 levels whereas the casters are generally not very good at anything for most of that time.

My biggest concern is the fact that a PC is digging a 10' deep trench in a ballpark 20' diameter. Which means you have a bit more than 60 linear feet of trench, call it 2' wide and 10' deep, a mere 1200 cubic feet of earth. Roughly 45 yards of hard, wet soil? That is two big dump trucks full of dirt.

You are doing this by hand, with medieval tools, and expecting to be able to get any rest? Holy crap. That is two days of digging, nothing else, digging and you would be exhausted.

I will explain this out a bit more. I was hoping to avoid releasing a little information due to the thoughts of a lot of D&Ders in general, however I am now convinced that I need to explain fully in order for people to not get confused further.

At my college campus, there are a LOT of people who want to play D&D/Pathfinders. Last semester we had a campaign which has approx. 12 characters playing at once. Due to so many people, the DC of the monsters had to be outrageous and battles took forever to the point that people would stop paying attention to the combat. Some of the DM level players had an idea.

This semester, two DMs stepped up to try something out. There would be two DMs playing in this single campaign. Each DM would be in control of about 6 people and the groups would act against and with each other through the campaign. One of the DMs was the one who homebrewed the "Zombie". He uses the term "Salarona". This DM is not really worried about PvP and does not care if players OP themselves on stupid things like this. He also trusts the judgement of the problem player due to the player's knowledge of the game being near DM status himself. The other DM is the one who is a bit upset with...

Ok, this sheds some more light on the situation.

First, you seems to have known that you were heading into a PvP scenario at some point. You precipitated that by striking first, right or wrong, justified or not, that started it. Now you are in a full blown PvP scenario, which seems to be the spirit of the campaign lol.

So, why the shock and surprise? You antagonized a character and now they want revenge, that is accurate roleplaying. Think about it historically. What happened in history when a semi-lawless area (old world) a conflict erupted? Violence, every time.

It seems to me the entire party is messed up.

The OP states it all began when he attacked the aggressor's friend after "irritating him with illegal actions". Goes on to talk about how the attack was "justified" etc. Sounds like someone wanted a reason to attack someone else, the DM let him sandbox it, and now the OP is crying that the other character is now also "justified" in attacking him.

The problem isn't the DM, it is the players.

Adamantine Dragon wrote:

I do think its pretty silly and not helping though.

Actually, its not about flavor text. Its about the mechanics of full attacking. It is your option. It is sometimes your only option. Smite and rage on their own just augment your attacking. You hit things. You don't overcome, you just hit. You don't gain mobility, you hit. Get it? Its the fact you have that sole option and few others that hurts. I can describe my attacks in a number of ways but the number of solutions I carry to a problem is quiet small.

How many options you have does have an impact on balance. It is a potential strength, by which we measure capability. Just being able to full attack is great, killinating things is cool, but darn near everyone does it. With few exceptions, overcoming obstacles and challenges and being tactical isn't something that's built into your class as a martial.

It sounds like you have a fundamental problem with the nature of these sort of games. Classes have different abilities and strengths. Some of them are more subtle, more gradual, or more combat oriented. However, if you want your warrior to have more options in combat other than "hurt things" then I am not sure what to tell you. That's what martials do in most roleplaying games. If you want them to be able to have magic and martial abilities you are in the wrong genre and should be in more of a manga time scenario.

For the record, a martial can do a variety of things as well.... disarm, trip, grapple, sunder, etc etc etc.

Bave wrote:

Martials may not have a ton of options, but the option to beat the bloody piss out of your enemy is a damned good one.

Too bad everyone can full attack and nearly every martial does it the same way. There's only a slight difference between the way they play sometimes. You smite and full attack. You rage and full attack. You equip a weapon you have mastery with and full attack.

Unrelated to the above, I was thinking back to when I played WoW and how my warrior was completely mundane but had dozens of options and took down colossal beast regularly. I mean, my rotation was always the same, but at least my cooldowns and mobility abilities were cool and I had a few things to shrug off pain and conditions. I feel bad because I thought about WoW and compared it to dnd though...

Ok, so the dispute isn't about balance now, it is about flavour text? The fact is that when you say "Five foot, full attack, cluster shot, many shot, deadly aim, all at XYZ" is every bit as effective as anything else in the game. It may be repetitive and boring, but it isn't ineffective.

It is a qualitative difference. No one is disputing that. But that doesn't mean the game is balanced or that it can't be balanced at all.

Options are the most valuable resource a character can have. Real options, mind you. Adding complexity is not the same as creating more options.

Casters' options are too many and often too good as well. Sometimes they are also boring and/or annoying (SoD spells, for example).

But more importantly... Martials' options are few and often very limited. When even moving 10ft is not a real option because full attacks are that important, then something is wrong.

Yea, woe is me that the only martial options are to either stand and let a volley of arrows (8 or so) fly at a single enemy, with a single DR against it, from across the battlefield, with nary a chance of a miss except perhaps on the last two attacks. Basically insta-gibbing anything that dares become a target for the archer? Terrible options, right? Do you have any idea how many very difficult encounters with a single heavy boss get one rounded by a 10-15th archer build?

Or would you like to talk about the charging barbarian with the vital strike and a falchion that is whacking people for 100+ a clip.

Martials may not have a ton of options, but the option to beat the bloody piss out of your enemy is a damned good one.

DeathQuaker wrote:

Most caster/martial disparity that I've seen has been largely the construction of theorycrafters -- who have a bad habit of describing a caster being in an ideal situation and then a martial in a non-ideal situation.

Anecdotally, my experience was exactly the opposite. Based on "theorycraft," I saw no disparity whatsoever, but in running a Savage Tide game, it started becoming clear by part 7 that the barbarian wasn't really relevant in the big picture, despite extensive efforts to give him extra stuff to do. By part 9 he was essentially a non-participant, and the bard was largely able to participate (I have to admit in hindsight) by virtue of being a spotlight hog rather than a mover and a shaker. The wizard and cleric were like, "What's the problem? We're still a team, we're still doing great!" and it was only by talking with the barbarian and bard players and watching play carefully that I eventually was forced to admit that, yes, there's a disparity in practice, and yes, at a certain point we needed to face up to it.

Ok, at 9th level you are starting to get an inversion. However, did the wizard or cleric complain that prior to that they were largely luggage?

That is the point. I have played almost every class in the game, the most death and destruction every reigned to BBEGs? Paladin Archer. We played ROTRL and Karzoug basically died in a round when archers got a clear line of sight.

I am not saying that martial characters cant do important things. They can. But longevity, and survivability is a function of optimization. Wizards can do things to make them able to go longer, such as use scrolls and wands. They can make themselves more survivable. And martial character, can be made to last shorter periods. Cavaliers for instance run out of challenges. But longevity is meaningless if the other 3 members of the party have per day abilities. Trying to Balance narrative power vs longevity is a crumy way to go about it.

A wizard relying on consumables in order to maintain functionality is a short lived proposal at best. Not only is it a far cry from their "functional power" it is also finite in terms of resources. A wizard without spells is a commoner. A fighter or cavalier without dailies is stil 90% of a fighter or cavalier.

I am the first one to agree that when a group has a caster get to 9th or 11th it changes the dynamic. That is the first time the group, as a whole, can materially and instantly change the direction of a narrative or encounter arc, primarily through teleport/scry etc etc. However I am not sure what solution there is for that considering the fact that you can't really give a fighter the ability to teleport, or scry, or raise dead. They are still the best at what they do, and compared to 3.5 they are far better at it relatively.

You are missing the point. This isnt about balancing chance of success. This isnt about having x resources available. Its about potential, and what you are capable of. When a wizard, or a druid is succeeding, they are most likely changing the nature of the situation. If a fighter is succeeding, he is acting within the situation. Numbers dont matter here. This is a conceptual thing, which you are choosing to ignore in favor of arguments of probability. All of which can be manipulated with optimization on both sized (casters and martials). I am purely talking about the very concept of what martial character are able to do and what magical characters are able to do.

I get what you are trying to say, but you are negating the fact that while the fighter has less, theoretical, options his options are just as valid. In combat, quite often simply killing the enemy is generally the best and only possibility. A martial excels at this.

Again, I am not talking about numbers. The fighter, is acting within the situation. He is fighting the monsters in the situation as presented. How successful he is or isnt in fighting those monsters is irrelevant to my point. He is limited to fighting those monsters. The magical character is often (not always but often) NOT limited to just fighting those monsters. He can change the situation. Whether he has to save the spell slot or class ability use for something else, again is irrelavent to my argument. This isnt about the numbers, its about the concept....

You are still comparing apples and oranges. You completely ignore the fact that the caster *might* be able to change the narration, depending on his particular situation, spell availability, and a thousand other things. The martial can change the situations through a variety of methods as well (albeit mostly violent).

You talk about the wizard sneaking past the guard with invisibility (+20 to stealth, about on par with a rogue honestly, at mid level). In the meantime the rest of that solution requires a wizard who is entirely geared for defeating that one series of obstacles, has the perfect set of spells for it, is already medium to high level, and is willing to expend a large amount of resources on it while every opponent failing every check and save.

That's a lot of assumptions.

Again, I see your point, that a caster can change the entire basis of the scenario. He can simply teleport the group from danger, he can do a lot of things. However as valuable as those things are, the martials do many viable things as well although they tend to be more linear, but they can also do them with a higher chance of survival and all day long.

Petty Alchemy wrote:

Some classes learn to fly on their own or can cast a spell for it.

Most actually have the means or options to get flight in-class. Cavaliers, fighters, and rogues are the only ones I can think of that have no means to get airborne either in class or with an archetype. Granted I may be wrong on this.

How many times have you actually seen a wizard cast Fly, or a cleric/druid cast AirWalk etc in combat? It's rare.

When I have played a wizard I don't think I have ever memorized fly, that is a Haste slot, which allows the party to simple storm across that bridge instantly in your previous example.

A haste barbarian with 40' of movement suddenly goes to 70' of movement. Assuming a relatively straight line means he is going to run 210' easily, or even as a basic double move 140'. That is a real big bridge.

You play a campaign from 1-20, is it alright that half the party has to be relegated to essentially baggage the others lob around depending on what level you actually are? Is it enjoyable that the wizard has to play for months to finally overshadow the fighter who then has to continue playing despite being entirely unable to do anything on the level the wizard is, just so he can enjoy his phenomenal cosmic power he had to slog through a million goblins for?

I think that simplifies things. I don't think any character is "baggage" at any level, it is simply that their contribution will be greater or less than their proportional size of the party.

I will also say that a large portion of this was made better in PF. The fact is martials are now far more active in higher level games than they were before. Their ability to material impact BBEG type monsters is dramatically greater than before.

How often does a Wizard drop a dragon in a round or two? Pretty rare, about 2-5% of the time using a juiced save or die. A well put together archer? Gets pretty damned ugly for that dragon.

Well brad just because you've been doing it forever doesn't make it right. Only that you've been doing it for a very long time.

It's an old notion of balance that doesn't function well anymore. In fact it's one that's discarded by nearly every game outside this genre almost immediately. Heck even games in genre have gone to great lengths to address it. It's irritating given that even in all the books people like to reference such a disparity didn't exist, or, was used as a narrative device to build tension or drama (Conan the very much unmagical versus the dark and terrible sorcerer or serpent priest or whatever).

You're basically telling me, as long as someone is suck all the time, it's balance. My question is, why? Why is this acceptable? Because you've been at it for longer than most of the guys I see in game shops have lived?

You know what was really well balanced, to a tee? D&D 4E. You know who still plays it? Almost no one. I have seen people play a powerful character so poorly it didn't matter, I have seen people play terrible character incredibly well. If your games are run in such a fashion where mechanics supercede everything else then I do feel sorry for your experiences. Roleplaying games are not meant to be video games that have a linear set of problem solutions.

The best wizard in the game is never going to be as good at social interaction as a Bard, or a Rogue, or a Paladin. You cannot cast your way out of all the problems and situations a decent DM should be presenting you with.

The fact is that you have the notion that everyone should be equal all the time. Rather than look at the individual components I tend to focus on group effectiveness.

I have seen the most powerful character in a given game be just about every possible class (probably never a rogue though honestly). What I can say is that the best player is not the guy who makes the best character, but rather the guy who makes the best character for the group.

Here is an example I can give you on that just to show my point. I have played a bard maybe twice in my life, not well either time. In one campaign we had a guy play a bard, the whole group was dwarves and he was the dwarven bard. He had a bigger impact on the narration, mechanics, and general trend of that game moreso than anyone else. Why? Because he *never* did anything directly, but he always helped everyone else do stuff. In short, he was a weak character because he did nothing. He was also the most powerful character because he helped the group do things they never could have without him.

Well, except they're not really terrible even in the early levels. Oh sure back in 2nd ed. you may have blown your one sleep spell adn after that it was melee staff time.

But now even if you manage to blow all your first level spells chances are you're shooting a crossbow only slightly worse than the groups rogue, bard, or possibly fighter. Then of course you have other abilities to fall back on such as cantrips (Daze is very good in these levels) or class powers (Luck domain ftw).

But to get on to a greater point this X shape of balance is as you say "old". Why should a player be punished for making a choice they liked early in the game?

If you said "because it's a challenge" that's a problem since you cannot assume in design that a player will think your option is meant to be hard mode unless you explicitly point that out.

If you said "because that's how its always been done" you're being silly since doing something wrong for 40 years doesn't suddenly make it right.

If you said "because I like it like that" that is probably the best response since fun is the ultiamte goal. But then we'd have to ask what about this do you like? Which may lead us back to the above answers.

First, no one is being punished. Since the days I played AD&D everyone knew the name of the game. Martials dominate early, Casters dominate in end game. The idea that a 1st level wizard is even remotely comparable in value to a 1st level fighter is a joke. A fighter is in combat, can take a hit or two, and actually drops enemies. The wizard blows his color sprays and then hides effectively.

Count up the first five levels of every campaign. See who drops the most enemies (either killed or marginalized). I will be you $20 that it is going to be 10:1 in favor of the martials. From 5th-10th it drops to 4 or 5 to 1.

So you have magic users (characters who cast spells or have supernatural abilities or both) and martials, who have sharp, heavy, or pointy bits of metal to work with.

Martial or mundane characters are limited to acting within a situation. Magic users dont just act in a situation, they can CHANGE the situation.

This is where the argument fails. You are under the assumption that the caster has the appropriate spell, has it memorized, has it available, and if applicable save/spell resistance fails. Those are a whole lot of ifs. Whereas the martials can do their options, albeit from a more limited pool, non stop and do it in a more survivable fashion.

They have narrative power. For instance, you are fighting a band of goblins on a bridge with a few brute goblins and archers on the other side of the bridge. The fighter rogue and monk, can fight their way past the goblins on the bridge, try to jump or doge over them. Or shoot directly at the archers. They are acting in the situation. The wizard can cast fly, or the cleric can cast air walk, or the druid can turn into a bird. Suddenly the situation is different. The wizard could still help fight through the goblins on the bridge, or hurl magic at the archers. Or he could fly under the cliff and have a sandwich. He isnt limited to the situation presented.

Or the fighter/archer, or ranger/archer can kill two-three of those bad guys a round a piece. Making the situation cease to exist after the first round. Again, making the assumption that a wizard or a cleric is just itching to use a 3rd-6th level spell slot for this situation? Moreover, the martials can relatively easily gain access to items which allow them nearly the same degree of mobility.

The same applies to non-combat situations. A rogue could bluff or diplomacize his way past the palace guards, or sneak past them. The bard can cast charm or dominate person and make the guards his best friend and have them escort him to the kings chambers. Again the rogue is acting within the situation, the bard, is changing it.

Apples and oranges. You are comparing a non-combat situation to a combat one. A bard who casts dominate has just initiated an offensive action going into combat. A more apt comparison would be that the rogue backstabs and just kills him :)

There was a time when rogues and fighters had narrative power too. They got armies. Not as a part of the story, but as an actual part of leveling up. The fighter got an army, the rogue a theives guild. This gave them narrative power. But (and possibly not incorrectly so), this was...

I don't think there is anything stopping that anymore either. I have just spent so much time in games where the casters basically cower behind the martials for the first 5 levels, then they basically revert to buffing the martials quite often.

Now, I play with an experienced group no doubt, and I have watched Inquisitors, Rangers, Paladins, and Fighters just maul everything that comes within 300' almost instantly. The best examples is archers. I have never seen damage delivered like a pathfinder archer can.

Ok, here is the deal. The spell is poorly worded and quite vague. All that aside there is one thing you are missing.

The spell says you create a creature with half the hit dice and corresponding abilities. the question then becomes how do you determine what half of a spell like ability etc is?

I think the answer becomes more common sense than anything else. Another point is that you also need a piece of the creature to be copied, which is a major difficulty, to say the least.

My last point is this. This is a spell that requires both the player and the dm to use their heads. If you try to abuse it, you can. if you want to be really cool with it, you can. If you try to get cheesy, you will suffer under a brutal dm, or ruin the game.

So, sure, maybe your wish-machine works. Best case for you, right? Congrats, game is over. You just gamed the system, ruined the party, pissed off the dm, etc.

We are putting together a pathfinder group and looking for one last player. Anticipating playing 1x week, weekday, so if you are interested please drop me an email at:

bradgbender@gmail.com

thanks!

Just south of Nashville looking for a player or two for a new game starting up.

Shoot me an email if you are interested...

bradgbender@gmail.com