Mistah Green's page

This thread is about the differences between fixed XP systems and relative ones, specifically PF vs 3.5.

There are many problems with fixed XP systems, problems that do not exist in relative XP systems.

Here they are in short:

"Boil an antbed, gain one level."

Misleading impressions of what is and is not a threat in terms of quality.

Misleading impressions of what is and is not a threat in terms of quantity.

And now to elaborate on these points.

"Boil an antbed, gain one level." - Most of you have probably seen this card. But facetious remarks aside, this is exactly the sort of behavior it encourages - slaying large numbers of non threatening enemies instead of picking on something your own size. While in most games taking on large numbers of anything more dangerous than the illustrious insects would be a poor decision, this is D&D. The game in which 10th level parties of 4 can defeat an army, all in a day's work. It's not even a thing.

Misleading impressions of what is and is not a threat in terms of quality - 3.5 made it very clear that lower level enemies just weren't that dangerous to you, reflected by reduced XP. If they were 8 or more levels lower, you got 0 because you were assumed to be able to defeat an infinite number of level - 8 creatures without breaking a sweat. PF in no way changed what you were capable of but they did forget to tell you that. Just take a look around and see all the people spamming the party with meaningless mook fights as if they were making a convincing point about anything. It just leads to confusion and bad data.

Misleading impressions of what is and is not a threat in terms of quantity - There is some obvious overlap here as encounters have an Inverse Law of Ninjitsu thing going on but it still deserves its own section. 3.5 also made it very clear if you had to use more than a dozen enemies to make an encounter that those enemies were not really a threat and were just filler. PF, with its fixed XP does not. So they still aren't a threat at all, the game just acts as if they are. Which in turn leads to more confusion and bad data.

Like most design elements, this affects everything its connected to. From new classes to feats to mechanics, with bad foundations comes bad data. This problem would go away if fixed XP were ditched, replaced with the relative XP system and it was made clear what is and is not a level appropriate encounter. It would also make the forums a lot less headache inducing.

Many people have banded around all manner of theories as to what is, and is not wrong with the Magus. Some of these people are dead on, while others are completely missing the point.

I propose that while some have accurately described flaws with the Magus, no one has really gotten to the root of the problem.

So here it is.

The Magus is in the wrong game.

That's the root of the problem.

All of the design decisions it is based around, from attacking with a one handed weapon to casting direct damage spells with little in the way of CC or buffs are all things that could work, and that work great in other games but work poorly in D&D, causing anyone who does them to also perform poorly.

Were these paradigms shifted to actions that do work in D&D, the class would become much better. The only other alternative is to drastically change D&D itself by changing one handed weapons and evocation spells drastically. This would require several orders of magnitude more work though.

The conditions in which a Magus would work without changing its current function only superficially resemble D&D at all.

It would take one handed weapons, particularly rapier class weapons being so powerful that not only are they no brainer choices vs two handed weapons overall, they actually manage to beat two handed weapons at their own game by having a higher damage output. It would also take encountering large numbers of enemies, in multiple groups where you can take out most/all of a group with one Fireball or similar, and have to kill them that quickly to avoid your party being overwhelmed by an incredibly high number of very powerful enemy attacks.

This is obviously nothing like 3.5. It isn't even that similar to 2nd edition and earlier which sort of does this but is not nearly this extreme.

In such a setting, the guy who can use a one handed weapon and cast direct damage spells at the same time is a living god as direct damage spells are the only things that get you through high level fights, and high single target damage + Sleep is the only thing that gets you through low level fights.

But D&D is not The Dark Spire.

So the only practical way to fix it is to focus on what does work in D&D. Two handed weapons, save or lose spells. Less direct damage, more buffing action.