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4 posts. Alias of TRS.


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For some reason, LogicNinja, the boards here won't let me quote your whole message (or just the last part of it).

Actually, the meleer in question was a dervish, but good guesses ;-) My friend's spiked-chain-wielding barbarian / fighter / exotic weapon master had similar experiences, though, with much less reliance on non-Core material - she just needed a bit more party support to get her full attacks to work (she did more damage per hit due to rage and less MAD).

Perhaps one issue is that meleers aren't the classes I naturally turn to when building a character, so I'm not sure what the people who *do* play melee classes by preference are actually looking for. I tend to default to arcane casters (I had fun playing my dervish, but I still like my sorcs and wizards more).

When I decided to play a melee character, I accepted that I wasn't going to be conjuring up wind and fog, summoning creatures to do my bidding, or throwing lightning around. My expectation was basically that I would get to kick butt in melee combat, developing into a falchion-wielding whirlwind of destruction. That expectation was largely fulfilled (except when fighting swarms - I'm not a fan of 3.5 swarm rules). There were times when bad and/or embarrassing things happened, but it's not like my casters haven't had similar "let us never speak of this again" moments, they're part of the game. What do you expect when you play a melee class? (not a rhetorical question, I'm curious)

You said, "If you had fun doing "clean-up" and taking out enemies the DM provides so you can kill stuff in melee, that's good, but it doesn't really address the capability differences."

Presumably the DM (or mod author in RPGA games, which is actually where most of my play experience lies) provides *all* the monsters so the party has something to kill... it's not like I was only killing blind/slowed/stunned enemies (it's better to take out the still-active ones first), or letting the casters take out the major threats while I cleaned up the mooks. Combats don't consist of "the wizard acts until he decides he's cast enough spells, and then everyone else gets to go" (at least before Timestop ;-) ). The casters in my games usually did help out with long-duration buffs and fly spells etc when needed, just because my dervish was effective enough that allowing him to close with the enemies was a worthwhile use of a combat action.

I'm not really sure, from your posts, where you think the "capability difference" lies. If you're just saying that with a few full casters you can tie bad guys in enough knots that you don't really *need* a capable meleer to take out encounters - then sure, I'll agree with that (I've played in parties of four wizards and two sorcerers, and had a blast), although you do need a plan for AMFs. That's a totally different statement to "casters overpower melee classes", though. If you're saying that casters have a lot more options/versatility than melee classes, I agree with that too (and I don't think ToB closes that gap), but this is again a far cry from the claim that meleers automatically get overshadowed by casters.

Agreed on Devastating Blow - I was wondering if anyone else had the same reaction to that. I don't really mind PC fighters having access to it, except for the likely rate of scythe-fighters in Pathfinder as a consequence, but imagining this on an NPC or monster... ow. Yes, it's not that much worse than Spirited Charge or pounce, but those are (usually) much easier to block than normal movement.


LogicNinja wrote:


Yes, the Sorcerer casts spontaneously. Yes, this is an advantage. No, it's not more of an advantage than the Wizard knowing tons of spells, being able to cast 1/day spells like Overland Flight and Phantom Steed (which the Sorc can't waste a spell slot on), etc.

Just saying, my L15 sorcerer has known Phantom Steed since L11 - when you're a sorc, it's not a once/day spell, it's an "everyone in the party gets a horse with 240ft fly speed" spell. When everyone has a Steed, it totally trivializes most outdoor encounters - even flying opponents get left in the dust (dragons are the one big exception, and there you usually have a maneuverability advantage).

I have a friend with a L15 Living Greyhawk sorcerer with both Overland Flight and Phantom Steed. My sorc doesn't have Overland Flight, but Phantom Steed works well enough for everything but dungeon-crawls, and in dungeon-crawls I can usually keep Mass Fly running most of the time.

I can post my 3.5 sorcerer's L15 spell list if you like, but I guess we're primarily discussing Pathfinder here? In either edition, you can certainly point me to nice spells my sorcerer isn't able to cast (I have a long list of spells that would've been fun but didn't quite make the final cut at each level), but your wizard also can't reproduce what my sorcerer does by virtue of spontaneous casting (unless they guess correctly in advance *exactly* how many castings of each spell they will want that day, and with which metamagics applied).


LogicNinja wrote:


5th: Overland Flight, Cloudkill, Baleful Polymorph, Baleful Polymorph.
-Scrolls scribed: a couple of Walls of Stone, one Overland Flight.
4th: Fear or Confusion, Fear or Confusion, Black Tentacles, Solid Fog, Greater Invisibility
-Scrolls scribed: a couple of Solid Fogs; a bunch of Greater Invisibility.
3rd: Empowered Ray of Enfeeblement, Empowered Ray of Enfeeblement, Ray of Exhaustion, Haste, Slow, Suggestion, Stinking Cloud.
-Scrolls scribed: bunch of Hastes.
2nd: Rope Trick, Mirror Image, Mirror Image, Web, Glitterdust, Minor Image, See Invisibility
-Alternatively, Alter Self for natural armor.
1st: Ray of Enfeeblement, Ray of Enfeeblement, Grease, Grease, True Strike, Enlarge Person, Enlarge Person.

Sadness, these boards ate my long, carefully thought out post.

Second try: heh, I've played this character - at least the BC/debuff part of it. I'm not a fan of single-target save-or-lose spells, but then I play in a campaign where the monsters tend to be advanced/templated/class-levelled and equipped with magic items (leading to higher saves), and combat ELs are usually 2-4 above the party's level. I'd prep more mobility spells (teleport / d-door / fly) in place of the single-target save-or-lose spells on LogicNinja's list (I'm also not a fan of standard-action short-duration defensive spells like mirror image and greater invis - imo GI is best as a rogue-buff), but the principles are basically the same: you don't *need* to actually kill the monsters, that's what the rest of your party is for. This sort of spell list is generally quite effective at L10, although it's weak against incorporeals (especially spring-attacking ones), and you sometimes need to be rather careful about placing your battlefield control to not inconvenience the party.

I've played a melee character from L1 to L16 in the abovementioned campaign, alongside a number of grey elf wizards built on pretty much these principles. He *liked* adventuring with casters, and didn't really ever feel overshadowed by them: he had his job (doing massive amounts of damage) and they had theirs (see above). Yes, in some combats Radiant Assault would go off and everything would be clustered and bomb their Will saves and we'd move on... and in some combats, he went first and none of the bad guys survived his first turn (he cracked 200 damage / round at L11 iirc, and did over 1000 in one round at L15). So long as different people get to show off in different fights, it's fine.

I find most people who argue that casters beat melee characters in the *damage* department are underestimating the impact of full attack + two-handed power attack + all the ways to boost attack bonus, at least in 3.5. I'm not sure yet how the Pathfinder changes to PA affect that, not having playtested it, but I don't think they'll substantially change the overall picture. The broader statement that casters are more "powerful" seems hard to quantify: it's certainly true that they're (much) more versatile, but that doesn't seem to translate directly into power level. (That said, I do think the 3.5 Core Fighter class is a bit bland due to lack of interesting feats in Core: I'd probably allow ToB in any 3.5 home campaign I ran. It'll be interesting to see how the Pathfinder Fighter works out.)


I haven't playtested the new Pathfinder sorcerer. I have played several sorcerers in 3.5 over the past four years though (mostly in Living Greyhawk, so starting at L1 and playing through to L15), and not much seems to have changed.

I was a bit disappointed with the new Pathfinder sorc. My sorcerers tend to focus a lot on metamagic: being able to spontaneously add an array of metamagics to your spells has the effect of massively expanding your spells-known list (as an example, at L12 my first sorcerer only had one L6 known spell, but she had about ten different good options for "spells to cast that take up L6 slots"). The tactical versatility inherent in spontaneous casting + metamagic is most of the reason I play sorcerers over wizards. (For what it's worth, my experience of well-played well-built sorcerers with a focus on metamagic has been that they are just as effective as well-played well-built wizards, at least in the Living Greyhawk environment and up to L15 - so I tend to think giving faster spell progression would overpower the class.)

As I understand it, part of the motivation for upgrading the Core classes in Pathfinder was to bring them into line with more recent expansion book material, and to encourage people to stick with Core classes rather than taking PrCs. Looking at the bloodlines, I see a bunch of feats that seem to have very little flavor connection to the class or the bloodline, and abilities that are vastly outshadowed by both PrC abilities and the wizard powers in the same book. Looking at metamagic (my particular area of interest), the arcane bloodline is the only one that gets any metamagic-related boosts at all, and they are (a) much weaker than the L8 Metamagic Mastery ability of the Universal school and (b) entirely replaced by the Rapid Metamagic feat from Complete Mage. In each bloodline I can see at most one feat that any of my sorcerers would be interested in - as a result, the bonus feats look to me like a nice L1 freebie that provides no incentive to continue in the class. Putting the first feat at L1 also seems to encourage dipping into the class for a bonus feat, and that seems a little silly to me ("I needed an extra feat with my fighter build, but I didn't want to take another two levels of fighter, so instead I dipped sorcerer to get Power Attack"). Some of the feat choices also seem poorly thought out, such as Quicken Spell with no way to apply metamagic quickly, and Skill Focus (Knowledge (Religion)) when Knowledge (Religion) is not a class skill.

What I'd like to see changed (apart from the cantrips which you already fixed):
- Change the bonus feats to L5/10/15/20 (or something similar) instead of 1/7/13/19, to discourage one-level dips.
- Expand the bonus feat lists so that it's easy to think of four feats on the list that your sorcerer would like to take without being a multiclass fighter. My ideal would be allowing Eschew Materials and all metamagic feats as options for all bloodlines (maybe also Spell Penetration and/or Spell Focus), plus bloodline-specific feats, but just a better range of metamagic feats in at least the arcane bloodline would make me happier. If you add Skill Focus (X) to a bloodline's feat choices then you might want to think about giving that bloodline X as a class skill.
- Change the bloodline abilities so they actually help with casting. School Power and New Arcana are nice. Something like the Metamagic Mastery wizard ability would be nice. Extra spells known would be nice (and would still be nice even if they're significantly lower-level than the highest-level spells you can cast).
- Make a Core feat that lets sorcerers apply metamagic without increasing casting time, like Rapid Metamagic from CM.

If you're going to keep the sorcerer as a primary arcane spontaneous caster, then I'll be very happy, but in that case giving them claws, minor energy resistances and flight don't seem like very useful abilities (since they're not going to use the claws and can get Resist Energy and Mass Fly / Overland Flight). If you want to turn them into a warrior-mage class then... well, personally, I'll be less happy, but if you're going to go that route you should probably improve their BAB and HD and give them an ability to cast in armor.

Regarding the bonded item option in the arcane bloodline - probably just the ability to enchant it for half price is good enough, but if you wanted to give sorcerers something to offset the wizard's ability to spontaneously cast a spell using their bonded item, you could allow them to pick one spell (of a level they could cast but not on their usual spells-known list) that they could use the bonded object to cast once/day (kind of like a mini-runestaff of that spell) - they could change it every time they gained a new tier of spells.

(And one mostly unrelated comment: the dragon on the front cover looks *amazing*, but the sorcerer looks kind of wooden. Is that likely to be the final cover?)