Considering that everyone on the Fifteen-Minute Adventuring Day thread seems to want super-fast recharge times, I thought this deserved a new thread.
We all know that the Wand of Cure Light Wounds provides the healing that people want so that they can do more than a few battles a day.
So why stop there? Make all wands and other charged items cheaper, and make them rechargable at no cost by someone with the right item creation feat(which Clerics, Wizards, and other spellcasters will get for free).
That way, the Wizard or Cleric can save spells for when they need them like BBEG fights, and can cast from Wands for small encounters like the guards outside the BBEG's house.
I find it easier just to make more encounters. If I plan for there to be roughly 3-4 encounters for the party, there will be 3-4 encounters. When the party decides to rest will simply determine whether or not the last few encounters will be attacking them while they sleep.
I find it easier just to make more encounters. If I plan for there to be roughly 3-4 encounters for the party, there will be 3-4 encounters. When the party decides to rest will simply determine whether or not the last few encounters will be attacking them while they sleep.
That doesn't work. They'll just leave and come back, or put themselves in a rope trick or other unassailable place.
Anyone with extend spell can use a rope trick to rest and prepare spells whenever they want starting at level 5. Any plans which involve attempting to harass PCs in their sleep are just doomed from the start.
-Frank
I am all for killing characters with lots of little viscous gnome swarms when their 18th level mage must retire after a fifteen minute work day.
Gnome that are aligned with fey magic who can infiltrate rope trick/extra dimensional spaces at will and deal stabbity stabbity humiliation damage multple times per round.
Resource management is a part of the game. I hope that it stays that way.
Considering that everyone on the Fifteen-Minute Adventuring Day thread seems to want super-fast recharge times, I thought this deserved a new thread.
We all know that the Wand of Cure Light Wounds provides the healing that people want so that they can do more than a few battles a day.
So why stop there? Make all wands and other charged items cheaper, and make them rechargable at no cost by someone with the right item creation feat(which Clerics, Wizards, and other spellcasters will get for free).
That way, the Wizard or Cleric can save spells for when they need them like BBEG fights, and can cast from Wands for small encounters like the guards outside the BBEG's house.
Only you don't have to save spells, because you haven't fixed the problem.
There's still nothing stopping you from just resting after every fight and nuking the hell out of everything.
Spellcasters are supposed to conserve spells, and the fact that they can just haphazardly go in, blow all their spells and then rest to recover from the mistake is a big balance problem. Casters can't be allowed to just give the finger to resource depletion, because resource depletion is their primary balancing mechanic. This isn't 4th edition, where everyone has daily, encounter and at-will powers. This is 3rd, where some classes are based on daily abilities, others are based off encounter and others are based off at will.
Considering that fighting characters can fight all day with Wands of Cure Light Wounds, I don't see a difference. The SRD classes run off of spell slots or HPs. Fix both, and you can go all day.
Resource depletion will still happen. If you have a few wands, thats only a few spells you can cast. Situational spells like illusions, buffing spells, and utility spells will still get depleted.
On a final note, I seriously couldn't think of a class that had substantial per day abilities. The druid's Wildshape is hours long and he always takes Natural spell, so that only looks like per day unless you actually play one. Little per day abilities like a Paladin's smite gets exhausted in single encounters, so I can't think of anyone who might be slighted if we got rid of resource depletion.
Are you talking about the Factotum? He can UMD a wand as well as anyone else.
Spellcasting. That's the ultimate per day class ability.
Right. But if you're actually using the encounter guidelines that the system assumes you are using, you have to be doing really ineffective things to run out of spells, past about level 5. If that.
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A 15 minute adventuring day is a problem of adventure design. Static dungeons only encourage the PC's to leave and come back when rested. If a group does that the intelligent denizens of a Dungeon Complex need to address this. Either they reinforce the already "cleared" sections or the become proactive and find out where the attackers came from and counterstrike.
Nothing gets PC's a bad reputation more than pissing off the Goblinoids of the Caves of Chaos and heading back to the Keep only to find that the hobgoblins and bugbear bosses of the Caves come out after them and raid the village, burn some fields, or steal some livestock and kill some farmers/merchants/experts.
PC's use a Rope Trick to rest in the dungeon? Good, sound tactic that should serve them well for at least a little while. Eventually however the bad guys should try to track them down in the dungeon. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!
A Monstrous ranger or even simple guard animals with scent can be used to Track PC's. When the trail just disappears into thin air even the crudest of humanoids will assume magic is at work. Enter the shaman/cleric/mage of the tribe. A Spellcraft check in combination with a Detect Magic can solve a lot of problems as can simple divinations like Augury. Setting up a discreet watch on the area a group of PC's disappeared from should be an easy enough matter as could a well placed Alarm spell.
Yeh, what Voss said.
Also....
Considering that fighting characters can fight all day with Wands of Cure Light Wounds, I don't see a difference. The SRD classes run off of spell slots or HPs. Fix both, and you can go all day.
The difference is quite simply that spells are better than swords. Swords are already based on the fact that you can swing them all day long, and thus are weak. Weak like the warlock's eldritch blast. Nobody cares if you can eldritch blast all day long. But infinite high level wizard spells are going to matter.
I'm sorry, but have you met the Rogue?
At no point is swinging a sword something which is weak. Maybe for a Fighter it is, but for the real characters it is not.
And swinging a sword doesn't happen all day. It stops when you run out of magical healing. Tell a fighter who has lost 60 of his 70 HPs that he has an ability that lasts all day and he will laugh you off the batttlemat.
Since we already have mountains of healing through masses of Cure Light Wounds Wands, we might as well let people get Fireball Wands as well, and cut the "adventurer tax" that both represent under the old system.
And finally, why do you always say "infinite"? Being able to recharge something between adventures is not infinite. You still have to do resource management. The upshot is that you won't have to rest just to be able to do something useful.
And we might finally see a mage in DnD who uses a wand.
Man, I swear most of you people are playing in a completely foreign version of 3.5 than I am. And I thought my group abused the rules fairly badly. But some of you folks pull out the most amazingly complex, obscure, ridiculous rules combinations to make your points. The thing is, if you have a decent DM, he's not going to allow the game breaking stuff. He's going to try to balance the play.
For example, last night we were adventuring in the Savage Tide campaign in that dungeon with all of the bar-l-gura. Our wizard doesn't have rope trick because he's not a cheese monger. We were worried the apes would teleport in on us and attack us in our sleep, so we just kept going. Nearly all died in the final encounter. It kinda sucked, actually, because my cleric was at 7 hp and had no spells left for the last 15 rounds or so of combat and he couldn't do squat, but, hey, lookee here, the barbarian and swashbuckler just kept on going and eventually killed the enemies. So, yeah, melee classes can be useful and clerics can be useless.
It just takes a DM with a bit of balls to put the players in their place when they pull out the ridiculous BS powers and combos.
Man, I swear most of you people are playing in a completely foreign version of 3.5 than I am. And I thought my group abused the rules fairly badly. But some of you folks pull out the most amazingly complex, obscure, ridiculous rules combinations to make your points. The thing is, if you have a decent DM, he's not going to allow the game breaking stuff. He's going to try to balance the play.
For example, last night we were adventuring in the Savage Tide campaign in that dungeon with all of the bar-l-gura. Our wizard doesn't have rope trick because he's not a cheese monger. We were worried the apes would teleport in on us and attack us in our sleep, so we just kept going. Nearly all died in the final encounter. It kinda sucked, actually, because my cleric was at 7 hp and had no spells left for the last 15 rounds or so of combat and he couldn't do squat, but, hey, lookee here, the barbarian and swashbuckler just kept on going and eventually killed the enemies. So, yeah, melee classes can be useful and clerics can be useless.
It just takes a DM with a bit of balls to put the players in their place when they pull out the ridiculous BS powers and combos.
To be fair, your wizard could just suck.
There are lots of spells that don't even need a combo, and are so good you can use them up to 20th level. Rope trick is one. Glitterdust is another. Polymoph is a third.
And let me guess....your cleric uses all his spells for healing, right? And no one thought to buy or make healing potions or wands?
If you choose to not pick the good spells at your levels, didn't plan out necessary healing, wasted spell slots, and generally weren't thinking ahead, then its no surprise that your fighting characters are good.
If your Wizard was any good he'd have just turned your cleric into a troll for the huge attacks and regen., and used his lower level slots for useful things. Heck, illusions can blind and force enemies to waste attacks, so you can prevent lots of damage if you try with only 1st level spell.
"Balancing play" is not going to make a bad class good. It just means that someone has to play beneath their ability.
I already have a solution: You can only get back your spells and abilities once per day, resting in a dungeon might not be a good idea, and time is usually against you.
Those who don't lern to conserve their resources weren't cut out to be adventurers, and will instead be cut down to be monster grub. Life's no pony ranch.
Anyone with extend spell can use a rope trick to rest and prepare spells whenever they want starting at level 5. Any plans which involve attempting to harass PCs in their sleep are just doomed from the start.
-Frank
PC1 "Slept well?"
PC2 "Oh yes! I'm well rested"PC1 "So have I, this rope magic rocks"
PC2 "It's good, isn't it. There's nothing they can do."
PC3 "Uh, guys?"
PC2 "What"
PC3 "Uhm... the floor in the room below us seems to have grown poisonous spikes over night, and I see a lot of goblins with wicked grins on their faces."
PC1 "Damn! You said that this spell was a big secret!"
PC2 "Well, it's in the standard curriculum in the Academae, but surely only we wizards know..."
PC1 "STANDARD CURRICULUM? Those goblins obviously had to do with mid-level adventurers before. Many times. They're not that dumb! They learn occasionally. And when it comes to cruelty, they're freaking geniuses with an elephant's memory!"
PC2 "Curse you Darvin and your evolution!"
PC3 "Is this room supposed to flicker? Cause it does. We've been in here 10 hours now, how long is it going to last?"
PC2 "10 hours, wh... oh, no!"
If something's such a good trick and was invented millenia ago, don't expect that no one knows of it or knows how to counter it.
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If your Wizard was any good he'd have just turned your cleric into a troll for the huge attacks and regen., and used his lower level slots for useful things.
What regeneration would that be?
Would that be the type of regeneration that the spell description specifically states polymorphed creatures don't gain?
If your group have been pulling stunts like that, then how can you possibly believe the PCs need any extra power?
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If something's such a good trick and was invented millenia ago, don't expect that no one knows of it or knows how to counter it.
You may wish to add that to THIS thread...
If your Wizard was any good he'd have just turned your cleric into a troll for the huge attacks and regen., and used his lower level slots for useful things.What regeneration would that be?
Would that be the type of regeneration that the spell description specifically states polymorphed creatures don't gain?
If your group have been pulling stunts like that, then how can you possibly believe the PCs need any extra power?
I forgot that they changed it in 3.5. Its been a long time since I used it.
Our wizard doesn't have rope trick because he's not a cheese monger.
Could you explain how using basic spells in the core rulebook is mongering cheese?
Yes, there are cheesy things that you can do with this game. A lot of those should be fixed.
But actually expending resources so your party can have its basic abilities back is not one of those things.
Anyone with extend spell can use a rope trick to rest and prepare spells whenever they want starting at level 5. Any plans which involve attempting to harass PCs in their sleep are just doomed from the start.
-Frank
PC1 "Slept well?"
PC2 "Oh yes! I'm well rested"
PC1 "So have I, this rope magic rocks"
PC2 "It's good, isn't it. There's nothing they can do."
PC3 "Uh, guys?"
PC2 "What"
PC3 "Uhm... the floor in the room below us seems to have grown poisonous spikes over night, and I see a lot of goblins with wicked grins on their faces."
PC1 "Damn! You said that this spell was a big secret!"
PC2 "Well, it's in the standard curriculum in the Academae, but surely only we wizards know..."
PC1 "STANDARD CURRICULUM? Those goblins obviously had to do with mid-level adventurers before. Many times. They're not that dumb! They learn occasionally. And when it comes to cruelty, they're freaking geniuses with an elephant's memory!"
PC2 "Curse you Darvin and your evolution!"
PC3 "Is this room supposed to flicker? Cause it does. We've been in here 10 hours now, how long is it going to last?"
PC2 "10 hours, wh... oh, no!"If something's such a good trick and was invented millenia ago, don't expect that no one knows of it or knows how to counter it.
Yeh, super-golbins who can see and are looking for invisible rope tricks....and parties who don't keep watches....and can't hear goblins setting up traps 10 to 30 feet away. Brilliant.
I have to admit that, in my playing experience, the "15 minute adventuring day" really only comes up with low level wizards (who run out of spells quickly and can't afford a bunch of scrolls) and clerics (who run out of healing and can't afford a healing wand). So I'm happy with the Pathfinder RPG adding a weak "at will" power for wizards and some extra low-level healing for clerics (which they have done). Problem solved, as far as I'm concerned.
Does anyone really have a party who will rest after every two battles? In my games there's usually some kind of time pressure that prevents this. And if there isn't any time pressure at stake, what's the problem with taking things slow?
Is this really a big problem in some campaigns?
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Does anyone really have a party who will rest after every two battles? In my games there's usually some kind of time pressure that prevents this. And if there isn't any time pressure at stake, what's the problem with taking things slow?
Is this really a big problem in some campaigns?
Part of it is player-problem. With a game of D&D, you have limited resources, be it spells, daily abilities, hit points, potions, or the like.
Some players are very clever, and conserve their resources until they are needed, others burn through their resources immediately. I have a couple of players in my group that have used their big guns on the first enocunter, and are underpowered for the rest of the adventure -- and they don't see themselves doing it.
In my age-shrouded memory, players used to be more cognizant of their limited resources, and huddle in fear, reluctant to use a potion or their last spell, because their camp might be attacked at night by something insidious and far above the party's 'Challenge Rating' (gotta love the ramdom encounter wilderness tables from the AD&D DMG).
Part of it is player-problem. With a game of D&D, you have limited resources, be it spells, daily abilities, hit points, potions, or the like.
Some players are very clever, and conserve their resources until they are needed, others burn through their resources immediately. I have a couple of players in my group that have used their big guns on the first encounter, and are underpowered for the rest of the adventure -- and they don't see themselves doing it.
I've seen that happen before, but that wasn't quite my question. I was wondering if there are any groups out there that fight one encounter, then rest, then another encounter, then rest, etc.
It sounds like your players keep plugging away even though they're low on spells; I don't find that's particularly troublesome unless you have lots of BBEGs that are designed to use 80% of a freshly-rested party's resources.
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Yeh, super-golbins who can see and are looking for invisible rope tricks....and parties who don't keep watches....and can't hear goblins setting up traps 10 to 30 feet away. Brilliant.Super-goblins with Track and detect magic? Super-goblins that can escape the notice of the dude who's on watch while looking through a 5-foot square window 10 feet off the ground facing downwards? How super do the goblins have to be to have one adept and a couple experts? There are more ways to trap this party than can easily be recounted. The best method comes when the monsters are able to cast dispel magic.
Just to add in here, rope trick gives you a window that you can see through, but I'm pretty sure sound doesn't travel through to the extra-dimensional space, so no, the PCs CAN'T hear the goblins.
I've seen the "15-minutes-day" problem in game, incidentally brought on by our resident power-gamer. Played a psion, would enter into every fight guns blazing, churning out power after power, augmented to the hilt, of course. After 30 minutes in the dungeon, he'd start whining about needing rest, and when the other party members didn't comply, he started whining how he couldn't contribute (nevermind that he's a fan of stealing other people's spotlight withis his power mongering)
The DM changed the rules so you could only regain your power once per day, and that was that.
I found that with a little forethought, the resources will last through the average adventuring day. I have no desire to change the game so everyone can cast his most powerful spells all day without thinking. That's 4e's job.
Yeh, super-golbins who can see and are looking for invisible rope tricks
It doesn't take super-goblins. All it taks is a low to mid-level spellcaster (wizard, sorcerer, cleric, bard, adept) to deal with inivsibility (which isn't such a rare occurance, so they will know about it) and a little suspicion because the guys who just killed off half the tribe are nowhere to be found and no one saw them leaving.
Goblins are weak and nasty. They're not stupid or dumb. Their brains work as well as a human's.
....and parties who don't keep watches
Why keep watches. They think they're completely secure and hidden. Smugness comes for the fall onto poisoned spikes.
....and can't hear goblins setting up traps 10 to 30 feet away. Brilliant.
Why should they? Unless they pay attention all night, they won't necessarily hear them. Goblins are more agile than humans. Their favoured class is rogue.
And while the obvious spikey floor tactic might be a bit obvious, other tactics aren't. As soon as the spellcaster detects the rope trick and identifies it for what it is, the rest of the tribe will gather around beyond the adventurers' field of vision (maybe around a corner) and wait for them to come out.
One important thing to remember is that those enemies in RPGs aren't the same as enemies in Baldur's Gate or Diablo, who will wait for you to get near enough, won't follow you up some stairs, and will fall for the same trick over and over again. They think, they learn, they adapt. And the party most likely isn't the first adventuring party ever...
I've seen that happen before, but that wasn't quite my question. I was wondering if there are any groups out there that fight one encounter, then rest, then another encounter, then rest, etc.
It sounds like your players keep plugging away even though they're low on spells; I don't find that's particularly troublesome unless you have lots of BBEGs that are designed to use 80% of a freshly-rested party's resources.
I've always encouraged my players to stockpile extra resources so they don't run out of options. Wizards have Scribe Scroll for a reason: They need to keep a few items stashed away for those times when their spells start running low.
Resource management is not that hard to learn: My ten-year old daughter's wizard manages to have enough spells to contribute in every encounter. When she was low-level, she crafted scrolls to bolster her abilities. It only costs 12.5 gold to craft a 1st level scroll, so unless you go crazy, it's easily affordable.
I've seen the "15-minutes-day" problem in game, incidentally brought on by our resident power-gamer. Played a psion, would enter into every fight guns blazing, churning out power after power, augmented to the hilt, of course. After 30 minutes in the dungeon, he'd start whining about needing rest, and when the other party members didn't comply, he started whining how he couldn't contribute (nevermind that he's a fan of stealing other people's spotlight withis his power mongering)
The DM changed the rules so you could only regain your power once per day, and that was that.
I found that with a little forethought, the resources will last through the average adventuring day. I have no desire to change the game so everyone can cast his most powerful spells all day without thinking. That's 4e's job.
Yeh, super-golbins who can see and are looking for invisible rope tricksIt doesn't take super-goblins. All it taks is a low to mid-level spellcaster (wizard, sorcerer, cleric, bard, adept) to deal with inivsibility (which isn't such a rare occurance, so they will know about it) and a little suspicion because the guys who just killed off half the tribe are nowhere to be found and no one saw them leaving.
Goblins are weak and nasty. They're not stupid or dumb. Their brains work as well as a human's.
....and parties who don't keep watchesWhy keep watches. They think they're completely secure and hidden. Smugness comes for the fall onto poisoned spikes.
....and can't hear goblins setting up traps 10 to 30 feet away. Brilliant.
Why should they? Unless they pay attention all night, they won't necessarily hear them. Goblins are more agile than humans. Their favoured class is rogue.
Ok, you win. I admit, any situation where the players are dumb and don't have take watches and or awake familiars and don't cast alarm and don't have the sense to put the rope trick where line of sight obscures it and it can't be detected, and they wait until the last possible minute to exit the rope trick and don't have area of effect spells that mop up crowds and traps like fireball and they don't have dimension doors and the players aren't crack archers and they can't fly and they can't just take the damage of small fall onto BS improvised traps and still slaughter the rest of the gobbos after a full rest, or even run........ anaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnd goblins who are crack adventurers, then the golbins win.
Happy now?
Can you derail someone else's thread? Please?
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The new domain powers, specialization powers, and free 0 levels spells has completely changed the dynamic of game play. Clerics and Wizards have a lot more spells and options and I'm finding at my table the 15 minute day has disappeared.
I suggest playing with the current Alpha rules before trying to fix something that doesn't really exist anymore, we go 45 minutes to an hour now. ;)
The new domain powers, specialization powers, and free 0 levels spells has completely changed the dynamic of game play. Clerics and Wizards have a lot more spells and options and I'm finding at my table the 15 minute day has disappeared.
I suggest playing with the current Alpha rules before trying to fix something that doesn't really exist anymore, we go 45 minutes to an hour now. ;)
I'm waiting for the Sorcerer.
Something about this argument has bothered me on every page it has revealed it's ugly head. Now I know what it is.
First, Wizards and fighters aren't really "meant" to be balanced out against each other are they? I mean their roles in the party are as different as night and day. The fighters soak up as much damage as they can - THAT's their job. Wizards blow stuff up, secondarily they carry utility and buffing spells as well. Sure, in the first 5-7 levels fighters are the primary damage dealers as well, but with third level spells, wizards trump swords ALL day EVERY day.
Fighters have a replenishable resource: HP - it is addressed by potions, wands, and direct magical effects (heal spells)
Wizards have a limited reserve of spells that have the potential, if used properly, of dealing cubic assloads of damage. Dragon ran an article about this once, it had an optimally equipped fighter 10 and an optimally equipped Wizard 10, and compared damage dealt over 10 rounds of combat. I fail to recall the specific numbers, but the wizards damage potential out classed the tank by close to a factor of 10.
So are they TOO powerful? Sounds like they should be toned down to me. Make it a minute day, so everyone can shine ;) Alas, their d4 hit die, terrible BaB progression and utter lack of a fortitude save leaves glaring and easily exploitable holes in the hard candy shell.
Same with fighter, 4th level arcane spell: Confusion. I have TPKed more tank heavy parties with this one! The fighters low will and reflex saves, poor skills, and single mided devotion to "get close/whack with sword" or other similar variation leave gaping holes in their perfection as well.
With great power comes great resposibility. Wands, potions, and scrolls are the solution to the 15 minute adventuring day. It really IS that simple. If players are too lazy or uneducated to equip their toons with low cost gear, they deserve to die in their bedrolls. Assuming the bad guys are dumb and will ALLOW the party to rest back up and come again tomorrow is poor DMing.
Example: Age of worms, TFOE, Party cleared vecna's wing. They retreated and returned to a WC (their base of operations) and rested. The bad Hextor and erythnul worshippers jumped them that night. Catching the Paladin and fighter in their skivvies, and the wizard with only half a spell list. It was a slaughter.
I see nothing broken here. I saw a wizard dumping ALL of his daily spells on a relatively easy battle. The overconfident fools tried to exploit the rules and were schooled as to why common sense should always prevail. Wizard is 5th level and has never scribed a scroll. I offered a wand of missiles at a decent price, and he scoffed at it's usefulness. Player mistake, not broken rules.
I do not wish to argue, I just wonder if this is one of the thorny issues that riled the anti-4E crowd up. Personally, I loathe at will/per day/per encounter abilities. It doesn't feel right to me. Yet a large number of people feel it will soon supplant sliced bread as the niftiest thing around.
As a DM, sometimes the only way to make players remember who's boss, is to chase them broke, nekkid, and powerless through an old mine, in front of a pack of hungry kobolds.
Something about this argument has bothered me on every page it has revealed it's ugly head. Now I know what it is.
First, Wizards and fighters aren't really "meant" to be balanced out against each other are they?
I agree. If I wanted wizards and fighters to be balanced so that either one can do 3d6+5 damage at will and 5d6+10 damage 1/day, I'd play 4th edition.**
The only time I've seen legitimate grumbling is at 1st-2nd level, where characters tend to run out of spells pretty quickly and they're not rich enough to invest*** in a lot of scrolls/wands yet.
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** Not that I have any problems with 4th edition D&D -- it has its merits, IMO.
*** Frank Trollman and K should ignore this sentence lest they suffer a case of "the vapours" at the thought of buying a magic item. :)
Something about this argument has bothered me on every page it has revealed it's ugly head. Now I know what it is.
First, Wizards and fighters aren't really "meant" to be balanced out against each other are they? I mean their roles in the party are as different as night and day. The fighters soak up as much damage as they can - THAT's their job. Wizards blow stuff up, secondarily they carry utility and buffing spells as well. Sure, in the first 5-7 levels fighters are the primary damage dealers as well, but with third level spells, wizards trump swords ALL day EVERY day.
Wizards are actually better at soaking damage too....at 3rd level and above. The tactical control mage is legend, but even as a meatshield they can self-buff to have better HPs and AC.
Bascially, only magic makes fighters better. Magic items or spells....take your pick.
Im sorry to be going off on a tangent but the chief sin of 3rd edition was the "Tanking" of the warrior classes. in second ed fighters could definitely dish out more solo damage than any wizard ( wizard had this nifty ability to affect AREAS ) and wizards LOST their spell AUTOMATICALLY when hit, and you know what? people loved to play the wizard. having 1d4 hitpoints means next to nothing when you have a 18 Con and the fighter has a 13 CON, Second Ed had rules to make sure this glaring mistake wasn't made.
I am on board with Pathfinder because I don't want to see D and D get any more MMORPGed. Read a book, do you read alot of fantasy stories that have the brave swordsman throwing his body in the way of damage so that a wizard or thief can keep nuking their enemy to death? The whole mechanics happen to be ludicrous.
Fighters: can kill things reliably and efficiently, best with one on one, survivable through just being tough (weaknesses: relies on hitpoints too much, unable to get away easily, unable to break laws of reality)
Wizards: able to break laws of reality, better with area damage, survivable through not being front line and can cast spells to get out of situations (feather fall down pits, invisibility away from losing combat, teleport home for tea) (weaknesses or should be weaknesses: weak one on one (at least for direct damage output, effect spells are fine) weak hitpoints AND poor close quarter effectiveness. per day abilities
personally i am tired of the disparage in power at high levels, high level fighters should fear facing a powerful wizard at a range, but if they can close to melee it should be the Wizard that is trembling...not just taking a five foot step back
Im sorry to be going off on a tangent but the chief sin of 3rd edition was the "Tanking" of the warrior classes. in second ed fighters could definitely dish out more solo damage than any wizard ( wizard had this nifty ability to affect AREAS ) and wizards LOST their spell AUTOMATICALLY when hit, and you know what? people loved to play the wizard. having 1d4 hitpoints means next to nothing when you have a 18 Con and the fighter has a 13 CON, Second Ed had rules to make sure this glaring mistake wasn't made.
I agree. You could give the Fighter +5 damage per Fighter level on every attack, and he'd still be subpar compared to a Wizard.
You're exagerrating, of course. +5 per fighter level per attack. +40 damage per attack for an 8th level fighter.
Wizards are overpowered if you have a DM that lets them get overpowered and doesn't go after them and actually lets them sit in the back and blast things.
Something about this argument has bothered me on every page it has revealed it's ugly head. Now I know what it is.
First, Wizards and fighters aren't really "meant" to be balanced out against each other are they? I mean their roles in the party are as different as night and day. The fighters soak up as much damage as they can - THAT's their job. Wizards blow stuff up, secondarily they carry utility and buffing spells as well. Sure, in the first 5-7 levels fighters are the primary damage dealers as well, but with third level spells, wizards trump swords ALL day EVERY day.
Thats true. You can, in fact, relegate the fighter and other melee classes to the ghetto of NPC classes and force players to only play real classes.
It doesn't matter that warrior concepts are, in general, the actual heroes in myth, legend and literature and that people actually do want to play them. In D&D its easier just to accept that they're ineffective mobile shields for the real players and move on.
Or... we can try to balance them so that more people can have fun with the game.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16
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Resting might be a PC's choice but everything that happens when they rest is the DM's realm. You get Spells 1/d no matter how much rest you've had. If you blow them 2 hours into the adventuring day then you're SOL you've got 22 hours to wait till you can prep again.
At heart a Player has to recognize that the game requires a bit of resource management and he shouldn't blow his wad right off the bat. That's just something you learn as you play and a DM needs to control the pace of the game to support and encourage that. We're all here to play a game and intentionally throwing a wrench in the game is being a jack-hole.
Speaking from personal experience, finding reasons why the players can't rest when they want to will just piss them off. "Sure, you can go rest, but then all the monsters will set new traps for you and stuff" means "Enjoy clearing the entire dungeon without any downtime". The system doesn't work well when the party goes back to sleep every hour, but the solution is to make the system work so that the party doesn't need to do that, not to find reasons why the party can't go back to sleep.
There's also an issue of pacing. If you don't have time to recover your spells, then you don't have time for anything else; that sort of constant, on-going tension may seem like a good idea at first, but people simply can't handle that kind of high-tension material for any extended period of time. The reason the Half-Life games have puzzles isn't to lengthen the gameplay, it's to give the player a chance to catch their breath and have a stretch of game where they can take their time with a puzzle, no pressure, nobody shooting at them, no time limit or impending doom. The same principle applies to D&D; horrible impending doom creates a really tense atmosphere, and it's fantastic, but if there's always an impending doom it's emotionally tiring and not very fun, in addition to being hard to balance.
You get Spells 1/d no matter how much rest you've had. If you blow them 2 hours into the adventuring day then you're SOL you've got 22 hours to wait till you can prep again.
Not at all. Clerics get their spells every 24 hours, yes, but arcane spellcasters simply need eight consecutive hours of rest, with no limitations on how long it's been since they last rested and prepared spells.
In other words: Don't discourage the tactic, prevent the tactic, or at the very least, inconvenience it alot.Something as simple as turning a day's rest into a weeks rest could do that. Want to pull back and rest? Ok, that's a week and that gives the enemy ample time to get reinforcements, set up new traps, or do pretty much anything else they may need to do.
I'm unclear on what you're trying to say here. By "could do that", do you mean that it could solve the problem, or discourage the tactic? One of these makes a lot more sense than the other, but people say all kinds of crazy things on the internet, so that isn't necessarily a useful barometer.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16
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Not at all. Clerics get their spells every 24 hours, yes, but arcane spellcasters simply need eight consecutive hours of rest, with no limitations on how long it's been since they last rested and prepared spells.You get Spells 1/d no matter how much rest you've had. If you blow them 2 hours into the adventuring day then you're SOL you've got 22 hours to wait till you can prep again.
Let's look closely at what you linked to shall we???
A wizard’s level limits the number of spells she can prepare and cast. Her high Intelligence score might allow her to prepare a few extra spells. She can prepare the same spell more than once, but each preparation counts as one spell toward her daily limit. To prepare a spell the wizard must have an Intelligence score of at least 10 + the spell’s level...
Rest
To prepare her daily spells, a wizard must first sleep for 8 hours...When she prepares spells for the coming day, all the spells she has cast within the last 8 hours count against her daily limit.
I think that's quite enough references to DAILY which last I checked means once a day. A day being roughly 24 hours. They wouldn't call it daily limit if they meant a wizard could prepare spells at least twice in 24 hours.
They refer to it as "daily" because they expected that you wouldn't have to do it more than once per day. The fifteen minute adventuring day wasn't something that was anticipated, much like the failings of the ECL and CR systems.
Moreover, it's safe to assume that if wizards could only receive those spells once per day, they'd spell it out, by merit of the fact that they did spell it out for the cleric. The reason why the cleric can only do it once per day is because clerics receive their spells while meditating and praying during a very specific time slot, and this time slot only comes once per day. If you were playing in a setting with two suns, and thus two sunrises and sunsets, I think there'd be a strong argument to make that the cleric could prepare spells twice in any 24-hour period.
You're exagerrating, of course. +5 per fighter level per attack. +40 damage per attack for an 8th level fighter.
Not at all. Give the 8th level Fighter +40 damage per attack. Set him up against a Stone Giant or a behir. There's a good chance he won't win.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16
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No they called it daily because they meant daily. A Cleric gets to regain spells without resting and their drawback is it must happen at a certain time of day. A wizard must rest for 8 hours but can choose to prepare his spells any time within a day... but all casters only get one boatload of spells per day.
Yeh, super-golbins who can see and are looking for invisible rope tricks....and parties who don't keep watches....and can't hear goblins setting up traps 10 to 30 feet away. Brilliant.
Yes, it is. What, players can think up clever tricks but monsters can't? Rope trick is so commonly used that only the most unsophisticated monsters wouldn't hear of it. Say some adventurers break into a goblin-infested dungeon and kill all the goblins in the three rooms nearest the door to the outside -- but by the time the other goblins find out, they've disappeared.
Maybe the adventurers left. Maybe they are still present, but are invisible or using other illusions to hide. Maybe they used rope trick and are healing and snoozing somewhere right over the goblins' heads. In any event, the goblins go on high alert.
Now, almost everybody that can cast spells can cast detect magic, which will detect the presence of a rope trick or invisibility spell and most other magical ways a party could use magic to hide, so the chief orders the tribe's shaman, cleric, adept, wizard, or whatever, backed by a contingent of the best warriors, to scour the complex room by room for the presence of unknown spells, starting with the three rooms where the goblins were slaughtered. Hey, presto! There's an unaccounted-for spell in the room third from the main entrance, and three rounds of concentration reveals that its a transmutation spell ten feet off the ground in the center of the room. Hey, what could that be?
Now, assuming the adventurers were prudent enough to actually leave someone on guard duty, they see the goblin spellcaster and his patrol of bodyguards and realize the jig is up. They can bust out immediately and fight through the goblin contingent prior to their own spellcasters having rested and restocked. Or they can wait until the ENTIRE TRIBE congregates outside the room, sets up a vat of acid directly under the window, chucks a bag of holding through it, casts transdimensional cloudkill into the room and barricades the door out of it, and/or just fetches a ladder.
