Flamewarrior's page

In the Spell List Index, in the list for Cleric/Oracle 3, the link beneath magic circle against good goes to -chaos instead, and -law is missing.

Since I don't seem to be able to edit the previous post again: the cleric has anti-incorporeal shell and persistent vigor listed as level 3 in the SLI, but 4 both on the description and the ACG spell list. Wreath of blades is level 4 for witches in the SLI, but 5 in the description and the UC spell list. Symbol of fear is listed on the SLI for witches both on levels 5 and 6.

Animal purpose training is listed, for inquisitors, as level 1 in its description and level 0 in the Spell List Index; on the latter, the shaman is listed as having animal messenger both at levels 2 and 3.

Recently posted elsewhere.

Fantasy Pre-Columbian Caribbean

Who made that, and does it manage to not suck?

137ben: yes, I meant "rules"; fluff being closed is unexceptional, and I couldn't care less (though maybe Porphyra deserves a look - one wonders whether ducks are central to the setting, or just purple). Thanks for the information on Kobold Press - I didn't think they could do that.

Links to investigative mind fail, because the file is currently named "investigateMind.html".

Flamewarrior wrote:

BTW, if I join your Patreon at US$5,00, do I get (and get billed for) *all* your releases, or just the ones that contain new base classes and/or cost at least US$5,00?

In the past people have been charged $5 for a package including one release with a base class, plus other non-class-containing releases that came out about the same time thrown in for free. You will never be charged more than you would be if you bought the products normally.

See e.g. IG's preview of March backer rewards.

... that was a good deal. Guess I'll sign on. Thanks!

BTW, if I join your Patreon at US$5,00, do I get (and get billed for) *all* your releases, or just the ones that contain new base classes and/or cost at least US$5,00?

I did notice that a number of people don't want third-party products; the below is for whoever else might have similar class interests.

Inventor/engineer: vanguard, gadgeteer, tinker.
Shapeshifter: warden, shapeshifter.
Wildling: savage.
Vivifier and shadowcaster: antipodist specialized in light or darkness.
Defender/protector: warder.
Psychic warrior, manifesters of psionic armor/weapons: psychic warrior, soulknife and aegis.
Primalist: Masquerade Reeveler.
Telepath: besides mesmerist and psychic, psion, tactician, and vitalist, and zealot (martial telepath!).
Lucky: I guess luckbringer?
Pact magic (2 links; it appears that the authors are preparing a compilation plus extra material).
Rage caster: the wilder can be clearly rage-based, but uses psionics.
Alternate paladin.

(No, I'm not affiliated to any of the authors.)

Also not all 3pp provide equal support to the new classes, or open them up to OGL.

Who's publishing closed content?

The last time there was such an error - exactly the same, with regards to Advanced Class Guide classes - it was pointed out and then fixed. Which is things working correctly.

Flamewarrior wrote:

May we have an ETA for filling the spell lists of the Occult classes?

???

The PRD has had them filled in for some time now.

Nope, those classes still only have spells from OA.

May we have an ETA for filling the spell lists of the Occult classes?

At the Spell List Index, the OA classes only have OA spells listed.

Thanks.

IIRC the spell index also improved considerably. That said, the filter by school lacks universal. Is there a projection for the next update?

The lists at http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/indices/spelllists.html are very incomplete (best examples I found: bloodrager, shaman).

Rectifying myself: bloodrager and shaman, being the sole ACG classes with private spell lists, are the only ones currently only having ACG spells listed at http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/indices/spelllists.html .

The lists at http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/indices/spelllists.html are very incomplete (best examples I found: bloodrager, shaman).

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences

Part of the point is that if your partners are a cleric, a druid, and a (original) summoner, you aren't actually dominating anything. The opposition? Increasing it is easy. And it'd be great if the same could be done with classes that aren't those or highly similar to those.

A lot of comments assume that something revolutionary like a large pile of Paizo books (or a third-party one) has to happen to cause a power imbalance. Try just having this for a spellbook instead:

* color spray, enlarge person, silent image, ventriloquism;
* glitterdust, invisibility, summon swarm, whispering wind;
* dispel magic, fireball, fly, ray of exhaustion;
* arcane eye, black tentacles, greater invisibility, stone shape;
* fabricate, major creation, teleport, wall of force;
* contingency, greater dispel magic, programmed image, true seeing;
* greater teleport, finger of death, project image, spell turning;
* discern location, power word: stun, protection from spells, trap the soul.

And this class is highly entertaining, and someone who wants to play that shouldn't be assumed to want to be better than the other players - many would like the other players to have for *their* concepts classes as good as that.

[OP]

If you're open to solving this by making everyone as good as the dragon, PM (or better, e-mail, if it's visible) me. (Your allowance wasn't foolish; classes with more abilities are more interesting, that dragon's reasonably balanced, and, as you said, you can always expand the opposition - we just need to make sure everyone can handle it.)

Christopher Lee was Christopher Lee's second greatest role. The first was Muhammad Ali Jinnah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE_1ofnBFos

Third parties ahead.

For starters, for the many ideas that are basically "base class version of a PrC", Purple Duck Games has been doing a good bit of precisely that.

For a full-BAB (limited-forms, able to grow in size) shapeshifter and an (suuportive, much tighter-designed than the 3.5) artificer, see Adventurer's Addendum I.

For gadgeteers (with or without robots), besides the Path of Iron one, Interjection Games made not just a gadgeteer but a tinker (Shouldn't it be "tinkerer"?) base class as well. It also has an animist, which may be a full-BAB shapeshifter too, 2 truenaming classes (I believe they appear both in Ultimate Truenaming and the larger, more recent Strange Magic), and a herbalist.

For an armor-based soulknife counterpart, check Dreamscarred Press' aegis (Psionics Expanded or the larger Ultimate Psionics).

Depending on what one wants out of "tanking"/"super-bodyguarding"/"marshalling", DSP's Path of War's warder and warlord (read: Pathfinder implementations of crusader and warblade, grosso modo, if the originals don't suffice) may be of use. The tactician (Psionics Expanded/Ultimate Psionics) has the guidance element down pat, but is a full manifester instead of a full-BAB class.

It appears to me that Drop Dead Studios' Spheres of Power has a full-BAB class able to grow in size, which may or may not be the shifter.

Those are necromancer/healer archetypes.

This appears to be a Dex-SAD melee combatant.

(No, I'm not affiliated to any of those companies; I don't even own many of those classes, just pointing they exist.)

P.S.: "In a moment of foreshadowing, Amalric exclaims how 'I have seen kings who wore their harness less regally than you' upon seeing Conan in full plate armor." - and this is not an isolated incident.

memorax wrote:

Mind you out of all the variants I think PF is the most played IMO. Followed by 3.5. I have rarely seen any other variants played.

More people also listen to Justin Beiber than to Dream Theater.

Doesn't mean that Beiber is a better musician than the guys in Dream Theater, just like that doesn't mean that Pathfinder is a better 3.x variant than, say, Trailblazer.

And more people listen to Dream Theater than to Ego Fall or Tengger Cavalry, which is also a downright travesty.

Flamewarrior wrote:

But, more importantly, it's ridiculous that you'd be wasting time with ad hominem comments when you claim to be soliciting discussion and to have accepted the D&D paradigm.

Woah! Easy there, FW, no one is baiting. I was trying to edit my earlier statement, in response to the information you yourself provided in refutation of what was intended as a rather offhand remark. There was no "ad hominem attack," nor "baiting" of any kind, nor was I intending simply to waste your time; rather, I was letting you know that I had received your obviously superior information. Let me also clarify that the mere fact that I personally choose not to participate in lawyering contests when I play doesn't in any way take away from anyone who does, if that's what set you off.

If "accepting the D&D paradigm" somehow requires me to spend all my time searching for loopholes in the rules in order to make an absurd character, I'd prefer to play something else, is all. I don't think it does, though. As you point out, and as I agreed, we can all play.

Yeah, no baiting, of course. But worry not: I can still keep on topic.

Whether you chose to take part in lawyering contests doesn't matter for what I meant with "D&D paradigm"; the paradigm I refer to is the one where, by the books themselves, all characters are supposed to be good at combat, and able to slay untold numbers of lower-level opponents; that is what I was calling the paradigm, and it's written in the books.

What that means is that people wanting the comparison between fighter and rogue to be tasteful should spend their time in ideas that make both classes be equally good in combat in different ways (which involves either not taking the damage outta the rogue, or give it something different but of equal combat value, and then giving something else to the fighter), and not offending anyone else's players.

Also, there's the important point that, yes, powering up fighters to the level of wizards will add power to the standard party. But, have in mind that a 4-spellcaster party is already either a balanced party (because those guys go 50/50 on monsters when not swimming on cheese) or an overpowered one (because the spellcasters swim on cheese). So, cut the cheese off the spellcasters (i.e. the tricks that allow them to go better than 50/50, and, obviously, the infinite power loops posted by the "lawyer" who wanted them closed, if you'll recall), then balance fighters to them ("them" includes rogues too; for starters, they are perfectly able to swim in spellcasting cheese), and you should have a party that still behaves towards monsters as predicted on the DMG. The advantage you get is that then a party of other compositions will also behave as expected.

So it involves both power creep and powerdowns in the appropriate places.

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Stereofm wrote:

I don't have all of your problems guys.

You're a lucky man. Obviously you don't game with the types of players that Frank had the thankless task of designing for.

OK, FW, let me rephrase, then: "Obviously, Stereofm, you and I choose not to game with the kinds of people who are interested only in stretching the rules like rubber bands to see how 'super' a character can get."

Thanks for the baiting. Shall we start a flame war too (a.k.a. "Do you know who I am?", in the case of my name)? Don't think I couldn't go all Trollman on your backside ... but I'll just say "we are only interested in having all concepts we might want to play equally well-represented, and we know this isn't the current situation".

But, more importantly, it's ridiculous that you'd be wasting time with ad hominem comments when you claim to be soliciting discussion and to have accepted the D&D paradigm.

Flamewarrior wrote:

Pardon the off-topic - Gersen's comment was alredy replied to to my satisfaction; just saying Cortés' conquistadores were massively outnumbered by native allies (enemies of the Aztec) in the important battles, and the Spartans, while they did make a difference in the war's course (AFAIK), fought mostly slaves (big adavantage - the enemy's low morale) in a terrain amply favorable, and still ended up losing - because numbers matter much more than in D&D ... (the important part for me was to dispel the "small elite army" myth about the conquistadores - they weren't even an army).

Of course, but that's exactly the scenario that we're talking about here. The up-poster was arguing that fighters shouldn't be able to cleave their way through lots of inferior foes, which is fine for his table. But it does happen when you have force multipliers like guns, horses, armor, foes with poor training and morale, terrain, and surprise. Winning when outnumbered 6 to 1 while suffering few casualties at Cholula would fit the bill.

I said that was an off-topic comment; I wasn't saying anything concerning D&D, I was attacking the pernicious myth people have in the real world that the conquistadores and Spartans were some kind of superhuman.

As to what I'd say about D&D, it has been already said by other people (which's why I hadn't said anything on-topic at the time): D&D has number of premises that together require high-level characters to be able to take on untold numbers of low-level opponents.

To be clear: I apologized for the off-topicness of the previous post, but that was because I consider it important for people to know how the real-world conflicts really worked. That post had nothing to do with D&D, however unfortunate some of you may consider that.

Stereofm wrote:

I don't have all of your problems guys.

You're a lucky man. Obviously you don't game with the types of players that Frank had the thankless task of designing for.

Frank didn't have to design for anyone (his D&D work, unlike his Shadowrun work, isn't professional), and, IIRC, the D&D work arose from the numerous problems he and K noticed when writing an optimization handbook - so I suspect the initial test players were themselves, not some kind of pest they despise (unlike you do). And all evidence implies that said design, while being exhausting at times, wasn't ever thankless ...

Heh. I'll combine BOTH solutions. I'm just going to rule that the rock of the dungeons is unusually high in galena (lead ore). It'll block scrying, but won't provide untold wealth unless the characters have Knowledge (geology) to identify it, Profession (mining engineer) to assay it, have a horde of miners to mine it, and have Profession (metallurgist) skill to know how to extract the lead.

Or the cleric rips off a huge section of the wall (protected by either Knowledge (engineering) to do it right, or just force effects and similar), and the wizard casts fabricate. Hence a money-based economy not working for PC use at mid-high levels.

Have you forgotten the sweetness of the imbalance of the classes of 2nd ed, have you never read fairytales that say about the bad bad witch or sorceror?

Problem is: there was a time when classes were supposed to be imbalanced, as you well say; but at that time, XP tables were different for each class. Now they're all equal, because all classes are supposed to be equal (I mean equal in usefulness, not exactly the same as people have been misconstruing the argument) themselves.

"i don't think a sword can fight magic." and I think it should not, because it adds flavor to the game.

It adds one kind of flavor, where warriors are useless suckers (because, remember, you can't even claim warriors are better out of combat, so if they're supposed to be worse even in combat, there's no reason for even having them); you could, on the other hand, add the flavor (with plenty of recognition from real-world myth) that warriors are perfectly able to kill people even with the favor of the gods.

A fighter is only mortal (a pc at least, unless the dms are now no longer the supreme being above the gods but the player's minions)...and mortals DO die when a dragon steps on them or when they fall from the castle in the skies or when 384.180 goblins attack them (20 is always a hit, so the chances are the fighter gets hit by 19.209 shortspears or arrows and dies not of blood loss but is being crushed by the weight).

People die, stuff breaks, what's the problem?

Well, so I suppose spellcaster players do make the GM their minions to obtain their "immortality", then? You seem, my problem isn't with whether people are supposed to be realistic or fantastic, strong or weak - it's the fact that the players at the same table are being held to 2 different standards, while fairness only allows 1.

And by the way, some creatures are famous because they are rumored to be unbeatable, they are the epitome of evil and they have lived for millenia and then you want a little happy-go-lucky fighter to come and ride the ancient dragon leading him from his horns?! Can anyone even think about it and not fall on the floor laughing? Is this your conception of an epic fight? Just the same though, a dragon should die if he is hit by ballistas and other warmachines WITHOUT damage reduction. Make the game realistic and interesting not a mathematical problem, use your logic!

D&D isn't realistic, you can't even start to argue that. Logic certainly applies, but if you apply logic to the D&D multiverse (where people are allowed, for example, to have ability scores in the 30s range) and to the real world (where people hardly have 1 ability at 20), you'll certainly come to different conclusions, so the argument doesn't work. Also, what's the problem with warriors wrestling huge immortal (in the sense of "doesn't die from age") beasts to death? They certainly have been said to be able to do so through millenia of myth ...

And GET OVER IT, wizards can use magick and clerics are the gods' favorite children and they can save themselves from some dangerous situations that the fighters cannot.

BUT fighters also play a part in the game and they can save themselves more often than the spellcasters. How many times did just the fighter survive and get the party for resurection? Do they not have brains? Can you not roleplay without imba pcs? Have you ever tried to play a commoner with 60 abil pts, whom the need pushes to fight for his life or land or love and he becomes a real epic character because he chose his fate and fate did not choose his class (oooh, i'm a sun elf, we 're so smart, we're all wizards...). Do you ever think that anyone should ever go to hell and fight a powerful devil and not only survive but also get to say "that all you got?" and then be able to go home to tell about it? This steals all the meaning of hell!

People have been saying the use limits on spellcasting balance it, and others have been saying it doesn't: I happen to be on the latter group, for reasons you might see discussed on other threads, and even this one. But, to your question: yes, I can roleplay a PC imbalanced with regards to the other party members, but D&D has a term for that called "being lower level" - all characters of the same level should be equally desirable (thus, equally useful); if that makes you want to GM games where fighters are level 1-10 and spellcasters are 11-20, and they're supposed to be on the same party, so be it; it's not my table.

Fighters have HP,AC,THAC0,Feats,some more feats, specialization, mastery, they should be able to defeat any mortal in combat 20th lvl and you want more?

Have you ever considered why?

If you take your PHB (or Pathfinder alpha :D), and make a level 20 cleric or wizard, it won't be any more immortal than a level 20 fighter. So the fact that the fighter's weaker's only a balance flaw, nothing conceptual or intentional.

If really have something important to say email me at darkill5@hotmail.com , I have been a dm and player since 1998 in vampire the masquerade, mage the ascension, alternity (better system than the d20,try it), m.e.r.p.g. ,call of Cthuhlu, AD&D, D&D and Exalted (wich ruled by the way and it sucks that they stoped it)

so your help would be appreciated. Don't spam me pls...

This is a message board - that means we're supposed to discuss whatever anyone says right here. Also, putting your e-mail here may leave you vulnerable to spambots even if none of us members thinks about spamming.

He does have options. They are called magic items. Everyone gets them, but the fighter depends on them more than others to be effective at high levels. They can let him fly, dispel walls of force, etc. What he needs are feats or other class abilities that are on par with some higher level spells. You seem to think that every class besides the cleric, rogue, druid, and wizard are useless after 3rd level, but I think you are being blinded by your loathing of other classes. People do play, and effectively contribute to the party with fighters from low to high levels. It can and does happen. I have seen a fighter that was very effective from 1st to 18th level where the campaign ended.

By saying they need spell-mimicking effects, you've effectively admitted there's a problem, and simply letting fighters (or some other class) deal spell-equivalent effects (Which can perfectly be flavored as non-magical - blindness and bestow curse, anyone?) was indeed a suggested fix, with lots of potential. Also, yeah, a fighter character has access to a pool of options called "wealth by level", but that's the exact same access other classes have (thus, in no way something that compensates for the class' particular shortcomings); worse, by your own admission, fighter are more dependant on them - to be precise, one of the things that happens' that they need items to make up for lack of mobility, weak saves, penetrating DR and catching up with massive monster ACs and attack rolls (that when they aren't targetting the saves which are also weak), that an actually smaller amount of their wealth really's left over for what could be called purchasing extra options. And you know what? I could see a fix where their equipment actually's worth more than others' as also a workable thing: namely, fighters were able to craft the items they need, and possibly something such as "the fighter's a legend now, and any weapon held by them turns magical" - if you find that paradoxical flavor, forget LotR and go for real-world myth; don't even take me as disliking LotR as a book, but if real myth gives us keys to fixing problems, let's use them!

This seems actually addressed in pathfinder, a 13 level fighter would be CR 11, not 13 by Pathfinder rules.

Irrelevant for the original purpose; if you put level 13 fighter and wizard separately against CR 11 enemies, there's still a difference in effectiveness.

And, even if CR's meant only for 4-person parties, it's still important to make sure that all party members do equal shares of the work, and the easier way to do so's to make them individually equal at monster killing.

One man against many is a fairly standard trope of myth, though. It shows up in real world history too, with Cortes against the Aztecs and the Spartans at Thermopylae.

Pardon the off-topic - Gersen's comment was alredy replied to to my satisfaction; just saying Cortés' conquistadores were massively outnumbered by native allies (enemies of the Aztec) in the important battles, and the Spartans, while they did make a difference in the war's course (AFAIK), fought mostly slaves (big adavantage - the enemy's low morale) in a terrain amply favorable, and still ended up losing - because numbers matter much more than in D&D ... (the important part for me was to dispel the "small elite army" myth about the conquistadores - they weren't even an army).

Try just emphasizing "might" and "some" in Jason's last sentence.

That's a possible answer, but there are others. And yes, I'd like to hear a designer's intent explained in context to know what to expect and what input to give.

It has been said (and, it seems, confirmed by Mr. Bulmahn) elsewhere that:

Far too many people assume that backward compatibility means backward competitiveness (as you have done here). Likewise, people believe the last point about making the sorcerer 1-20 useful without a PrC assumes the use of non-OGL (eg existing, proprietary and therefore offlimits) PrC's as a basis for comparison. What we can expect is that the new sorcerer will seem viable when compared to the Loremaster and Archmage, (the two SRD-supported arcane PrC's available under OGL) and any Pathfinder PrC's yet to be created since only these PrC's can appear in an official PRPG game.

Backward compatibility has never promised that Splatbook X would fit directly within Pathfinder and indeed James Jacobs has clearly stated in the past that use of such splatbook classes is outside the expectations of the module writers and thus requires additional DM work to integrate splatbook-based PCs in the Pathfinder world (most notably by the DM raising the power level of the foes faced). In short, Pathfinder says that will not invalidate your splatbook investment, but they have no plans of making Pathfinder exceed or even meet the (sometimes silly) bar set by the splatbooks.

While I quite agree that said bar is silly at some times, could the following be explained?

DESIGNER NOTES: RACE AND CLASS POWER

These rules increase the power of the base races and classes to some extent. This was done for a number of reasons, the most important of which was to balance them with the current level of power in the game. Over the years, a number of other races and classes have been released that are a bit more powerful than the base options. Since we do not want the core races to be suboptimal choices, and we cannot change the other material, adding to the base choices seemed like the best option. We think that you will find these changes are not all that intrusive, and might even allow you to play with some of the other races and classes on an even scale.

(Emphasis mine) - "over the years" means 3.x noncore material, by definition. And "even scale" implies backwards competitiveness. So what gives?

Lich-Loved wrote:

Keldarth wrote:

Is the beguiler better overall than a sorcerer? Most surely, but that's one of the goals of Pathfinder, to even the field for the core classes and put them at the same level of the power-creeped splatbook classes.

I strongly disagree. This has never been a design goal of PRPG.

The design goals I have seen include:

To be backwards compatible with 3.5 (expressed as limited conversion required)

To allow Paizo to continue to tell the stories they have been telling in the Pathfinder world (essentially avoid the world breakage 4e would represent)

To provide a rulebook in book form to encourage play in their world (the idea being that the Pathfinder world needs a rulebook on shelves since stores won't stock modules for outdated rules)

To fix some of the problems with 3.5 that players have complained the most about

To enhance the classes in such a way that taking a "core class" from 1-20 is a viable option without needing to take a PrC

Far too many people assume that backward compatibility means backward competitiveness (as you have done here). Likewise, people believe the last point about making the sorcerer 1-20 useful without a PrC assumes the use of non-OGL (eg existing, proprietary and therefore offlimits) PrC's as a basis for comparison. What we can expect is that the new sorcerer will seem viable when compared to the Loremaster and Archmage, (the two SRD-supported arcane PrC's available under OGL) and any Pathfinder PrC's yet to be created since only these PrC's can appear in an official PRPG game.

Backward compatibility has never promised that Splatbook X would fit directly within Pathfinder and indeed James Jacobs has clearly stated in the past that use of such splatbook classes is outside the expectations of the module writers and thus requires additional DM work to integrate splatbook-based PCs in the Pathfinder world (most notably by the DM raising the power level of the foes faced). In short, Pathfinder says that will not invalidate your splatbook...

Well said Lich Loved. That pretty much sums up my philosophy on the topic exactly.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

Then could you explain:

DESIGNER NOTES: RACE AND CLASS POWER

These rules increase the power of the base races and classes
to some extent. This was done for a number of reasons,
the most important of which was to balance them with
the current level of power in the game. Over the years, a
number of other races and classes have been released that
are a bit more powerful than the base options. Since we
do not want the core races to be suboptimal choices, and
we cannot change the other material, adding to the base
choices seemed like the best option. We think that you will
find these changes are not all that intrusive, and might
even allow you to play with some of the other races and
classes on an even scale.

(emphasis mine)

I suppose "over the years" definitely can't reference the archmage and definitely can reference the beguiler, so ...

(I'll get back to the other issue later, Lich-Loved.)

Lich-Loved: I apologize. I was making a long post full of quotes and lost it because I had to keep 2 windows open (because the reply function seems to dislike long text), and reloaded the wrong one. Due to this and other shortcomings of this forum software (as this was far from the first time something I wrote got eaten somehow, I believe it's already been nicknamed "Postmonster"), I'm not sure I'll even post here again. If you were interested in my thoughts said anywhere else, I'd still supply them ...

So you don't think they are underpowered at low levels and you don't subscribe to the 15-minute adventuring day issue?

I think the cleric is. The wizard has actual good spells right from level 1 (and a crossbow's good enough as a backup if and when they run out), and the druid gains a fighter as a class feature.

I am not saying that class imbalances don't exist at various times and levels, but then again, neither were you. You previously said that the classes were badly designed because they didn't accomplish what they were supposed to in game. (...) I speak to class imbalances in another post above this one, so review that post for class imbalance discussions. The short version of that post is: where does it say the classes were designed balanced relative to one another? Wasn't it instead a design goal to have a group, working together in a synergistic fashion over 20 levels, overcome the challenges they faced?

In any situation where you allow people to choose what they like best out of a pool, you are totally supposed to make the choices equally good. Of course, exactly equal's impossible, but you are supposed to get as near it as possible, and it certainly's possible to go farther than what's done at the moment (note, I mean with regards to interclass balance, not necessarily other stuff). Therefore, they are expected to be balanced, and didn't accomplish it. No contradiction, no sudden change.

(1) D&D is not a dueling game of player vs player. It is a cooperative game where the weaknesses of one class are made up for by the strengths of another. This is a general rule of thumb and may not hold true for all possible combinations or player counts (An all-rogues group for example, would be hard pressed to run AoW, even if they are a "well-designed class").

It should be true, certainly. The problem's when some classes don't have weaknesses and others cover no weaknesses of others (to give the easy examples, beguiler and soulknife; to get into the argued territory, that there's no situation where a sorcerer's preferable to a wizard). Also, I doubt this AoW's really untraversable by 4 rogues ...

(2) The overall goal for character design was to provide a variety of character archtypes, that when played together, created 4-person groups with a reasonable chance of success and mimicked tropes found in fantasy literature over the last 30 or so years. Previously we debated the success of this goal. You felt the character design was a failure 90% of the time, I disagreed. But anyway...

First, it's hilarious how the game continuously fails to catch up with millenia of myth (a.k.a. warriors that are any good, among others). Anyway, do I really need to tell you anything about the vast number of completely thematic groups that fail at life? All-warrior parties were straight unfeasible before ToB (and well, the 4th "warrior" would be ... a rogue), a number of thematic parties such as, say, the 4 Miniatures Handbook classes (or hell, swap one of the divines for a scout, keeping the military feel while having a varied party) sucks hard, and so on. Finally, pick the "iconic" cleric/fighter/rogue/wizard party: the fighter, at least, is swappable by a number of classes that do its own job along with other stuff; that must be a problem of some sort.

Because of (3) and (1) the game probably cannot be balanced in such a way that:

# the players themselves are balanced against one another in one-on-one combat or in other cases.
# the number of players in a group does not radically change the group's effectiveness (eg adding one player to a 4 man group adds only 25% more power to the group)
# the types of players in a group does not radically change the group's effectiveness (eg adding a second wizard has the same effect as adding second fighter)

Respectively: yes, you can (by making each class be a situationally better choice in about the same percentage of situations), at least to a better extent than currently; fine; yes, the number of all possible combinations' intractable enough that you won't be able to fine-tune them all, but I'm fairly sure you can make the sucker classes actually good at something and the winners bad enough at some stuff that they might need the others.

Not everyone likes these aspects of 3.5 and wants to see "sameness of effect" across all character classes. I concede it makes the game more unpredictable and at times may allow one class (fighter at low level, wizards at high for example) to have more of the spotlight. But saying it is broken is hardly a conclusion I would draw. It can only be broken if the goal was sameness, and again, I have not seen or heard of this ever being a goal of 3.5 design.

Despite the design flaws present in both, I dare say the binder and warblade, for a quick example, are rather well-balanced in the sense of "being desirable equal shares of the time" despite not having any sameness at all AFAICT.

Now we don't know which way it is, really. Perhaps Cook, Tweet and Williams (and their playtest teams) monumentally failed at game design or perhaps not and it is just your perception they did. However, Occam's Razor points us in the direction we should look to resolve this discrepancy. This task is left as an exercise for the reader.

I wouldn't say the 3.0 team failed so badly because they were inventing much of the thing in the first place. But the 3.5 team failed miserably by not fixing even near enough and introducing new problems (shapechange giving supernatural abilities for example). What happens is: the core preparing spellcasters are vastly better than anything else except the artificer (which's vastly better than them if played to near-full* RAW extent), the rogue, sorcerer, psionic classes (divine mind and soulknife excepted), binder, incarnate, totemist and UMD classes have lots of versatility when well-built and played (and suck when not), martial adepts are pretty good in combat but not very useful for other stuff (yeah, I know their skill lists are pretty decent, but being really useful tends to take special abilities), "mixed" classes such as bard and ranger are lacking in combat despite being interesting out of it (even then, not as good as the best classes), old full-BAB classes such as barbarian, fighter and paladin might contribute "well" (by which I mean "deal high damage and soak some", nothing more complex than that) only when the enemy plays on their terms, some full-BAB classes (such as CW samurai and swashbuckler) are fighters with their feats swapped for stuff worse than the good noncore feats (such as, you know, the ones in the very CW from which both mentioned classes came), and the monk and soulknife have class features for "having weapons" and not much else (pretty much only diamond soul and knife to the soul, respectively). If that doesn't show imbalance between classes, I don't know what would. And the issue's that it's not being fixed here either.

*: by "near-full" I mean not doing the truly insane stuff like candle of invocation wish loops. An artificer, even not doing that, can have items with any spell, 2 levels before the proper spellcasters would; and, thanks to the XP gravy train, they can keep themselves 1 level behind (and still get spell access 1 level earlier), piling continuously more items while not falling behind on level any further.

So you got the Warmage, the Dread Necromancer, the Beguiler, and so on.

Now those classes are not OGL, but they are also awesome, and with the exception of the Beguiler they are fairly balanced at most levels.

Warmage's balanced at most levels since when? You mean really gratuitous use of sudden/rod metamagic makes them good, or something else?

Sort of. I mean some of the stuff, like the locked door, I honestly don't care about. A locked door isn't a challenge, it's just a few minutes out of the rogue's day to pick it. It's just not the sort of thing that should be included as a solo obstacle because in a real game, it's not. Traps fall into this category too. It's not like you've got an individual pit trap for each character that only they can try to bypass. Nope, you just have the rogue do it.

Also in a group a paladin tends to be more of a tank than a damage dealer. So your actual offensive potential probably isn't as important, because your primarily going to be soaking damage.

Spiriting away on your mount and leaving your casters to die probably isn't the greatest idea at level 5, and probably not something you'd be doing in a group environment.

Sorry, but you miss the point. The reason for the noncombat challenges's to evaluate better the more resourceful classes, given that they're by definition most contributive to the party. To be precise: you could have a party where everyone can contribute in out-of-combat stuff, or not - but one party's clearly better than the other. And the spellcasters don't really need non-spellcasters to protect them at least from level 11 on, if not from 5 on, so your argument might hold at best in this particular level.

Obviously we have very different definitions of what constitutes a clear problem, and what is literally ruinously stupid.

So, I'll expose my definitions to scrutiny: "clear problem" = "something already pointed as working incorrectly", "literally ruinously stupid" ... well, in that case not a definition, but a sub-instance: "to refuse to fix a clear problem".

What's your position on "The Shadow Over the Sun" and "The Difference Engine?"

My position's that they exist, break a game if used at all, have been pointed in no unclear terms, and can be fixed rather easily - if that doesn't amount to "they should be fixed as soon as designers get around to the relevant game mechanics", almost nothing will. And if that somehow isn't enough to convince you, check next section.

Big problems? A lot of your 3.5 games come crashing down when the evil PC cleric infected himself with lycanthropy in order to quickly advance to 11th level so that he could build an army of shadow butterflies to blot out the sun?

I don't know. I do know that each one of the infinite loops is a symptom of broken stuff that might arise by accident on a table, would feel totally stupid, and also that can be intentionally exploited in ways only more low-key than infinite power, but still contrary to original designer intent.

Mummy - DC thirty-six? I could swear I read "sixteen" more than once when I ran for the bright blade and runic knight.

"A tough door and a stout lock is actually beyond him unless he has room to charge it." - well, I guess he would have room and maneuverability for charging if just the corridor was wide enough to bring the hipogriff. Shouldn't that count for something?

"It doesn't really feel like he has much staying power over the entire day of adventuring. Seriously he uses "all" of his healing and "all" of his smites pretty much every time he dips into them at all." - what'd be wrong with "if he had a party, he'd burn through resources at a slower pace"?

-Well I'm not seeing any mention of terrain, so I figure you're assuming that the battle takes place on an open plain instead of a dungeon. In most games, that's just not true. So a monster could pretty much just hide around a corner and wait for you to close, preventing charging.

-Basilisk battle: a blinded mount probably won't take to the air. Not to mention it will likely claw the blindfold off its face, since it doesn't know any better. It's a mount, not a familiar. I mean, it's hard enough to teach animals basic tricks like attack, or fetch. Teaching one the arts of blindfolded combat. Not likely unless your handle animal is epic.
-Mummy Fight: the mount would not know enough to dance around while the fighter recovered. I mean... come on. The thing just isn't that smart.

Funny how, should what you say hold true, the paladin would be even more useless than the already-problematic class shown by Frank. So the evaluation might have downgraded from "needing some fixing to make it actually value all of his class abilities" to "really useless".

Confronting real threats isn't faster than mass slaughter. In fact, the current rules make mass slaughter be the ideal way to get extra power, to then mass-slaughter what an adventure supposed to be "real threats". Of course, I don't condone it - it's called, you know, a problem, and could be solved now.

Moreover, certainly one can't hope that any revision will fix everything, but the idea of bashing someone who comes with clear problem definitions while it's still in time to solve every single one of them's literally ruinously stupid.

Gersen: the interrupt fighter's already done: check here.

Lich-Loved: could you please show me what are the high-level threats that spellcasters can't handle (as in, "need non-spellcasters")?

"Better ask Paizo to give the fighter an extra 20 HP/level, immunity to mind-affecting spells, bonus damage on attacks, evasion, mettle, damage reduction, spell resistance, a bonus to saves, and the ability to self-rez." - if they also got the ability to channel attacks to themselves, they might well be as good as current spellcasters, indeed. Of course, a more reasonable solution's a good deal of spellcaster nerfing.

To me - this is where the GM comes in. Your fighter can have a good story hook like a critical connection to an important NPC or some organization.

While technically true, that's actually the same thing as balancing combat by giving artifacts to weak characters (which is, I must admit, a method that sometimes works quite well for a game, despite not working at all for the game): it involves the guys wrote the rules in the first place doing a crap job and a GM spot-fixing it, with a solution with a definite expiration date (end of the campaign). I suppose a new game can sidestep that right now and fix problems at their roots.

@K: OK, a fighter character can have what to do in peacetime, but we know any other character's still preferrable. That's not really balanced, and preferentially should be fixed. Of course, I'll fully agree with any argument that it shouldn't be a priority.

Viktor_Von_Doom wrote:

crosswiredmind wrote:

Gotham Gamemaster wrote:

Majuba wrote:

K wrote:

"Must all balance be combat balance?"

Yes. Next question?

Agreed.

Thirded.

Fourthed.

Fifthed.

Sixthed.

Combat requires far more balance than the other aspects of the game.

And I dare say you're all wrong - it always seemed one of the most insulting things about the fighter was its uselessness out of combat, more than its relative suckiness in it. To be precise, both in and out of combat, all classes should be equally useful read: "preferrable", not "able to help carrying stuff" or anything else a commoner could do about as well).

No plausibility if you want to avoid infinite off-combat healing - people will just get 2 guys able to cast them. And if you don't wanna avoid it, there wasn't a problem to solve in the first place.

Frank, may I ask: a) how long you took to run all combats; b) how many setup time you gave characters with perception advantages; c) whether you played monsters by the book or with their really optimal tactics? There was some other stuff I don't recall now ...

- Bigode.

That'd nerf the rogue and damage compatibility. OTOH, I think the issue of it not working against targets in the dark (not necessarily total darkness, just "a bit dark") because they have concealment still stays.

My first double post (in this forum or any other)!!!! Damn.