Comparing classes in single combat makes little sense to me. D&D is a team game, and the strengths of some classes depend on this. A rogue, for example, can use his sneak attack when paired with a fighter.
Using fully rested character for each fight and only checking who wins instead of how much resources were used up screws up the comparison. A wizard that uses up all his spells is SUPPOSED to win a fight that a lone fighter couldn't handle. The expendable resources (spells, potions, scrolls) are the ace up the party's sleeve, meant to help them when planning or luck fail and defeat is imminent. It's a last resort, though - the equivalent of an extra life, a smartbomb, a savegame. You cannot play a whole game just with this single ace, but have to rely on you other cards, too.
The idea behind comparing single classes is that it's actually capable of showing what a single class can do. There are an immense number of variables in a party of four, and keeping track of it all is borderline intractable. Then there's the fact that the party as a whole functions identically when balanced or when half is underpowered and the other half's overpowered, thus not actually showing us a real problem when there actually is one.
Now, it is true that some classes are team-oriented, such as the bard. Just lower their level by two, and then have them do the fights as a pair to see what happens.
In retrospect, maybe I should consider the martial classes 'team' classes, in the same ranks of the bard. I should experiment with fighter duos and see what happens.
It's alright for a wizard to have aces up his sleeve, but not the fighter? That sounds like a tactical deficiency to me. Having sole reliance on one or two ace's in a day can cause trouble, but when you have a party of four you result in four to eight aces; which can most certainly carry you through most days.
It's alright for a wizard to have aces up his sleeve, but not the fighter?
IMHO it's perfectly fine, as the fighter carries the "normal" hand, while the wizard's powers are only called upon in times of dire need.
Compare it to two miners, one with a pick, one with explosives. Comparing the power of explosives to the power of the pick is pointless - you need both to build a mine.
Or an army with nuclear weapons and infantry. Of course the nuclear weapons are more powerful compared on a one-on-one basis. But we've experienced that nuclear weapons didn't make infantry obsolete, as you still need a way to deal with problems that don't justify the use of a nuke.
What's much more threatening to the fighter-vs-wizard-balance IMHO are the at-will damage dealing powers of some wizard schools. THAT's something that can make the fighter/rogue obsolete, if it proves too powerful, as it takes away the problem of strictly limited resources.
The wizard has always been great at defense, as long as he could use his spells (Stoneskin, Levitate/Fly/Overland Flight, Improved Invisibility) etc. But he often lacked long-lasting offensive capabilities to really make use of that. It's fine to be immune to melee grunts for a day. But when the only thing you can do to them after the first fight is fire at them with a crossbow... you wish yourself a good, strong fighter buddy.
Being able to do even just 5-20 points of damage each round for free changes that.
The 'only called upon in times of dire need' only means anything when the wizard is limited in practice, as opposed to theory. In most of my tests, it only takes two spells to handle an encounter. As adventurers are expected to only be in four encounters a day, this means that eight spells are generally sufficient.
A high level wizard most certainly has eight spells/actions to cast in a fight each day, and thus is blasting throughout the adventuring day. If the wizard actually tries, he can have undead minions and bound outsiders walking with him to handle the flak if there are many more encounters in the day (or if they attack when he's vulnerable).
You speak of the fighter as if they do not have limited resources. They do, hit points, and they lose when they run out of those.
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I've read a few of these battle playtests and i must agree with Evil_Wizards on the favouritism towards wizards a high level single combat presents. while I also agree managing a party would also prove cumbersome I have thought of an alternative.
If you put the character in a series of 4 encounters of slowly increasing CRs (by 1 or 2) you can test the characters staying power version simply unleashing all of his big bang effects on one encounter.
To do this you still need to mimic the effects of other characters between fights. for this you grant the test character 1 of the 3 following effects, once one has been used you cant use that one again.
1. You receive the benefit of a healing spell equivalent of a cleric of your level. In addition you gain the benefit of 3 healing spells of a cleric half your level (or the benefit of a cure spell such as remove curse, neutralise poison, or remove disease) for the next encounter and the benefit of a one divine enhancement spell (bless, magic weapon, bark skin, etc.). these healing spells are cast as a free action
2. You receive the benefit of an ally for the duration of the next encounter. this ally is a fighter equal to half your character level and will engage one opponent at a time. once an opponent is defeated the ally moves to the next nearest. Enemies will generally ignore this ally in favor of you as a target. If enemies cannot attack you they will attack your ally as well as using area attacks to affect you both. The ally will die normally but can be healed by you and affected by your spells.
3. You receive the benefit of an arcane spirit. This invisible ally is a sorcerer equal to half you character level and will throw spells at your opponents. Opponents cannot harm this arcane spirit (targeting you exclusively) and it remains by your side for the duration of the encounter. It cannot attack unless utilizing a spell.
Each encounter should present a variety of challenges and result in a diverse set of goals not merely just killing the bad guy. They should all involve combat in some way however.
Ideally the result should see all classes dying in the last encounter, if by some miracle a character survives all 4 encounters then its fair to say that character is too powerful, however if a character dies in the first encounter the class is too weak. the second encounter is what I expect most classes to fall in with the more powerful classes surviving into the 3rd.
Thoughts?
The wizard does come off more powerful because of the front-loaded design, and I took said results into consideration in my assessment. Just look at the high-level rogue playtest results someone else did back during Alpha Release 1...
To that goal, let's consider a 15th level Halfling Rogue. As per standard rules, he is allowed a formiddable 200,000 gp worth of swag. He gets 4 basic Rogue Talents, 3 Advanced Talents, 8 Feats, 15 + Int Skills, 3 Ability bumbs, +8d6 Sneak attack per hit, Evasion, Improved Uncanny Dodge, Trap Sense +5, and all the Halfling Perks.
That's a lot to consider. But before I even get that far into it I noticed something right off: Halfling Rogues kick ass. I mean sure, we've got the basics covered for high level equipment (+6 Gloves of Dexterity, +5 Cloak of Resistance, Ring of Spell Storing, Mithril Breastplate of Speed, Trackless Boots), but there's more than enough to get a decent schtick on the side. In this case we have a Heward's Handy Haversack, a Ring of Blink and a tremendous pile of flasks of acid, alchemist fire, and alchemist frost. With 8 feats on the table it is child's play to get all the cool basic Rogue throwing feats (Improved Intit, Quick Draw, PBS, Rapid Shot, Precise Shot), and there's still stuff left over for some crazy hook up skill feats or Pathfinder specials like Agile Maneuvers.
The long and the short of it is that our boy throws 5 flasks a turn with attack bonuses of +21/+21/+21/+16/+11, and targets enemies flat footed touch AC unless they both see invisible and touch ethereal. Each attack does 9d6+1 of acid, cold, or fire, and causes lingering damage until removed by one of a series of ways (so among other things it counts against Concentration checks, shutting down Spell-like abilities dead for most creatures).
The Rogue Talents are interesting here, as they strictly add to his sneak attack in the form of a bonus 8 damage/turn against any opponent who has been sneak attacked by him, 2 points of strength damage per successful sneak attack, and maybe even a targeted dispel magic for every attack (although I have no idea if this is actually any good, since it doesn't say whether the level cap of 10 applies to this ability that can only be taken after 10th level). I mean technically Rogue Advanced Talents still come with the ability to select any bonus feat (I'm fond of selecting Perfect Multiweapon Fighting or Permanent Emanation: Antimagic Field), but we seriously don't have to go there since that's almost certainly going to be ironed out in rewrites at some point.
On to the battlefield:
Marut: this fight is short, brutal, and insanely one sided. Our Rogue here has a Stealth check of +32. The Marut has a Perception bonus of +16. The Rogue gets the drop on him all three times I ran this. With an Initiative bonus of +12 vs. the Marut's +1, the Marut lost Initiative every time. So our Rogue got a Surprise round and a full attack before the Marut even got an action. Each bottle of Alchemist Frost deals 9d6 of Sneak Attack Energy Goodness that bypasses our Marut's formidable DR and Spell Resistance, and hits on a natural 2. Even with some bad rolls on the second run through the Marut never even got a turn.
Hullathoin This is a much weirder encounter, because there's so much crap on the table. Of course, the vast majority of it has no chance of spotting our Rogue before he goes into combat berserk mode, so he basically gets to get to sneak attack range of the big baddy right off. The big boy is an offensive powerhouse, but it only has 104 hit points and an Initiative modifier of -1. Seriously it never got a turn, it drops in 3 or four attacks, and our Rogue friend here is virtually guaranteed 6. What's more difficult is the ensuing melee with minions. The Vampire Spawn and Skeletons only hit on a natural 20 followed by a 50% miss chance, so they didn't accomplish anything at all in one of the run-throughs and very little the rest of the time. The storm of Bloodfiend Locusts is a much bigger problem. Our Rogue hero can't sneak attack them, so it takes forever to actually kill them. Hyped up on speed, the Rogue is faster than the swarm, so he can mostly avoid fighting them, which leaves him dancing around throwing explosives into the faces of vampire spawn. It's ugly and grueling, but he still won all three fights (walked out with more than a few negative levels in two though).
Nightmare Beast: The hedge maze is actually more of a difficulty than the Nightmare Beast. Our Rogue exploded from mind attack before getting to the middle in one run through and slaughtered the enemy in the other two. First loss, but he's still ahead on points.
Windghost in the Sky: Interestingly, if the Rogue gets the Windghost down to his level he smacks it into oblivion, if he has to drink a potion to fly up to the Windghost it went very badly. 3rd run through was kind of a tie as neither side made that tactical mistake. That was an even match I guess.
Yakfolk Cleric + Dao: Interesting note: if the Rogue starts by killing some Dao, it's over virtually instantaneously. The Cleric can wall of force off the Rogue with a granted limited wish and then it just gets bad. A subsequent limited wish fills the whole area up with deadly poison gas and it's over. Going after that Cleric first shuts down the entire Wish engine because there are no more Mortals to give them to. The Dao still do pretty well because they can wall off areas with actual stone and the Rogue has to blink through which is occasionally painful and always cuts his atttacks own to 1/round. It's actually an encounter that the Rogue does poorly in no matter what. 2/3 attempts the main villain died, but the Rogue eventually lost every time.
Drow Priestess + Ghouls: The evil chick died on the first round every time. The Ghouls explode 1 per attack, but there are a lot of them. Interestingly, on one go-through our hero actually got hit on a natural 20, the blink miss chance was made, and he rolled the 1 on a paralysis check. That seems like a fluke to me, but technically he did lose 1 time out of 3.
Warparty of Cloud Giants: This is 4 Cloud Giants. Combat begins with the Rogue killing a Cloud Giant. The first time I did this one, the Giants stayed in close and the Rogue continued to kill a Cloud giant every round or two. The whole fight was over in six rounds of actual combat. The second and third time I did this I noted that the Giants are much faster than our hero and can keep things out of sneak attack range once they see their friend going down. It may seem out of character for giants to run around going "whoop whoop whoop" like Looney Tunes characters after combat is initiated by a Halfling, but they are supposed to be master tacticians, so I'm kind of OK with it. Anyway, long ranged combat goes poorly for our Rogue, and the attempt to do it ended in defeat. Last go through our Rogue killed a dude, then things went to range, then he hid and that was that. Victory-ish?
Mature Adult White Dragon This is actually weird because White Dragons have "ridiculous senses" and automatically bypass the need for Perception tests out to 60 feet. Meaning that our Rogue and Dragon roll initiative normally well outside of Sneak Attack range. Nevertheless, our Rogue friend always wins this test, and can move up and throw a Fire Flask, which hurts like crap (in one case doing 57 damage and lighting the dragon on fire in one attack). If the Dragon closes it's basically all over right away, Dragon boy doesn't kill the Halfling on his turn and then the Halfling just eviscerates the Dragon in one more turn of explosions. Going to range is a lot more frustrating. The Halfling has Evasion and makes the Breath weapon save on a 2+, so he plinks it away with a +1 bow until the Dragon dies or gives up. The Rogue won every time, but it was kind of ugly looking for about one round in the melee version.
With regards to solo tests...
Specific numbers driven tests are fairly useless as 99% of the time the player isn't going to be alone. He can rely on the buffs and cures from his friends, or for his friends to take out the things he's weak against.
This test done in the OP, IS in fact somewhat useful, as it basically gives a thumbnail description of "what the class can do".
This is important, because now we know what situations the Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin and Rogue are going to have trouble pulling their weight in. If they are constantly in need of items to be useful in the group, or if they are constantly facing creatures that are tough for them to contribute against, then the class overall feels weaker than the others.
No one likes a spotlight hog, but then it's not always the problem of the classes that are useful. Sometimes it's the classes that can't contribute that need fixing and boosting up.
If anything, these tests have proven to me that we need something "extra" for the mostly melee oriented classes to do. Rogue and Rangers get a lot of additional uses (skill points and stuff for outside of combat), but the Fighter and Barbarian, and somewhat the Paladin as well, are severely lacking in something other than "beat down the things they are good against".
If they had something to do that wasn't tied to hitting their opponents, inside or outside of combat, it would be nice. I have no idea what this could be though.
This is important, because now we know what situations the Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin and Rogue are going to have trouble pulling their weight in.
That's right, the fighter/barbarian/paladin are going to have trouble pulling their weight in pretty much EVERY fight, after level 5.
Solo tests are not useless. They form a foundation for the entire EL/CR system on which players are expected to perform. Sheer logic dictates that two individuals of the same level of power (which is indicated by CR) have a 50/50 chance of beating the other. They also magnify both their strengths and weaknesses, and if you have more of one than the other, this is highlighted in a solo test.
I suggest you do not try to bring up the "but a fighter can't beat swarms", because we've already covered this. Once you get into specific dueling pairs, their strengths and weaknesses are going to match up in varying ways. However, this does NOT invalidate the concept. Because a 50% success rate, on average, is the same thing and still allows for variation.
Once you have someone that can handle an encounter on their own, then having four of equal power means they support each other, cover each others weaknesses, and turn a coin-flip fight into a certain win (which is what EL=APL is supposed to be against a party of four).
This play-test is virtually worthless. I say "virtually" because I am sure there are a few people out there who play solo campaigns. And I am sure at least a fraction of those solo campaigns involve only one character (as opposed to one player with multiple characters, which I think is a far more common definition of a solo campaign).
Match the four iconic classes (wizard, rogue, fighter, cleric) against some high-level challenges and then swap out each of the iconic classes with a similar one (like paladin for fighter) and compare them; then give us a report. That is the way the game is intended to be played 95% of the time.
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Hi.
First of all, I wanted to thank DeadlyUematsu (the original poster), as well as Virgil and all the other folks who are playtesting various characters at various levels.
You folks are doing more work than I am with all of this, and I really appreciate your take the time to do so, and then post your experiences.
There are lots of reasons to playtest rules. One is balance. Another is, for lack of a better term, "funkiness". If a 13th Level Barbarian suddenly started acting very differently than she had up until that time, if her best tactics in a fight suddenly shifted to something "out of character," that would be worth noting.
So, am I all that concerned about how individual 1-1 fights stack up? Not unduly. Earlier in this thread, I noted that you want to look at Encounter Levels, not Challenge Ratings, In another thread, I advanced the suggestion that balance is in the realm of the DM, and what tools she chooses to use, rather than the Designer, who's trying to come up with a good toolbox.
But on the other hand, I think this playtesting is telling us useful things.
(By the way: precision damage from throwing flasks of oil? Seriously? I can't imagine allowing that, unless, perhaps, the rogue in question took a feat in throwing flasks of oil as an exotic "weapon".)
Overall Opinions So Far: Fighters, barbarians, paladins, and rogues are still really gear-dependent. I don't like this.
YES!! This is my main concern with D&D, this "You are what you carry" philosophy, characters have loads and loads of magical stuff (this is more a 3/3.5 thing, since past editions were a lot less). I'd like to see my fighter be good for his abilities, not because he carries a +4 Flaming Dancing Vorpal Longsword of Haste... Paizo already did a great job pumping up the classes so they're less dependable on magic stuff, really, (at least for me), Pathfinder classes did as well as D&D classes with a lot less magical gear.. although I think the classes abilities are too "magical" in nature, I'd like them to be more "natural" abilities, like the Fighter's Armor Training, it's giving him a boost on his defensive abilities without being because of something "supernatural"., it's because of his.. well.. training.
I recommend giving non-spellcasters the spell-like abilities they need at high levels (FLIGHT) automatically while not really improving or nerfing spellcasters (since most of thier potency came from preparing the right spells).
Ok.. according to my last paragraph, no need to say I completely disagree with this. Giving non-spellcasters more spell-like abilities is something that would displease me a lot. The fact that rogues are getting to cast spells is already a enormous bug for me; it's actually the worst class ability flaw I can think of.
but.. it's impossible to please everyone, I just hope they find a middle term that won't displease both sides too much. Nothing "Forgotten Realms" or "Harry Potter" magical wonder, but also not too "physical" like Iron Heroes.
I think this playtest does reveal something important that can be applied to actual play. The Fighter and perhaps certain other classes are very dependent on gear or perhaps buffs from his allies, while other classes can stand on they're own capabilities. At first glance this may seem fair, the Fighter can just have his Wizard buddy cast Fly or Haste on him. But the thing is the number of actions available in a combat is limited. Why would a Wizard waste time casting Fly or Haste when he can instead cast Fireball or Deep Slumber or other spells and take out the enemy himself? It does seem that the Fighter is a better off, but if he were better able to handle the enemy normally the Wizard might actually think casting a buff spell on the Fighter is a better option.
Go to your DMG (3.5 edition) & read pages 36 through 40 (emphasis on 39). Read it once, twice, then thrice.
A two-man party counts as a party of four with APL-2. A party of eight counts as a party of four with APL+2 for encounter design (and a very large table at Roy Rogers). How do you not notice this? It's following the numbers for EL, wholesale! A Level 5 character is a CR 5 monster.
Do you realize that trying to playtest with four characters at once makes the entire thing long-winded and unclear? What on earth is 20% resource loss? You can easily have one player underpowered while another is overpowered, but you won't be able to tell the difference by the success rate of the party because they combine to the same total as two balanced players.
Because of how the EL system works, the party could easily consist of four overpowered characters, but still go through encounters like before. This is because they can be OP by almost half again over a balanced party (and thus just shy of APL+1), and we can't really tell the difference between the two. The same thing applies if the party is collectively 15% below par. When you have that large of a range of error from balance, just by using a party of four, it's an incredible amount to seperate out imbalance for any single variable.
This is why you want to use a solo test. Because the CR/EL system says it works, and it also does work from personal experience. Because you aren't inundated with three other players' numbers that would drown out your specific contribution.
And as it stands, I can safely say that at high levels, this 'iconic' party can substitute their fighter for a player with levels in warrior, for all the contribution he brings to the table. Or even better, drop the fighter slot altogether, and have the rogue or cleric take Leadership and have the cohort cleric do the fighter's job just as well (and possibly better, depending).
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A two-man party counts as a party of four with APL-2. A party of eight counts as a party of four with APL+2 for encounter design (and a very large table at Roy Rogers). How do you not notice this? It's following the numbers for EL, wholesale! A Level 5 character is a CR 5 monster.
Virgil, even the Wizards' game designers have said that the "Level X character is a CR-X monster" is a stretch. (And you'll notice that ECL often doesn't match CR.)
Would you consider a combat bewtween two 2nd-Level Sorcerers (spells: Hold Portal and Detect Undead; Disguise Self and Enlarge Person) versus a 1st-Level Druid and a 1st-Level Ranger to be a fair fight? Acording to the pages you cite, the Sorcerers should win, draining about half their resources.
People have pointed out that a well-rounded party of four can effectively fight four Trolls where a single character would have trouble with a single Troll. They aren't talking out of their backsides; this is years of experience talking.
In response, you point to the DMG and say, "but that's not the way it's supposed to work."
Well, I shrug, that's the way it does work. Others have suggested why (the strength of a party depends on its composition, and a one-character party is unbalanced and therefore weaker than simple scaling would admit.) I'm at a loss for how to explain this better or more clearly. My apologies for my failure.
If they had either sleep or color spray, then maybe. When a class is highly limited in spells known, then they need to make a good portion dedicated towards combat. Giving them useless spells (and you only take enlarge person when you have a brute with you, and even then you're much better off using a scroll) is tantamount to making that 1st level ranger dual-wield scimitars and the druid memorize hide from animals and pass without trace (at which point, I very well could believe it to be a tough fight for the sorcerers with both being like this).
As for the rogue. Where are you getting this 'half a dozen splatbook' appearence anyway? The rogue used above in the playtest was entirely core.
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If they had either sleep or color spray, then maybe. When a class is highly limited in spells known, then they need to make a good portion dedicated towards combat.
Virgil, that's my point. I apologize again for being so unclear.
When the DMG claims that a "2nd-Level Chracter equals CR 2 monster" it does not allow for variations in class abilities. It claims that a single sorcerer (min-maxed or not) is as good as a lone fighter is as good as a cleric on her own.
That's not the way the game really works.
Why would a Wizard waste time casting Fly or Haste when he can instead cast Fireball or Deep Slumber or other spells and take out the enemy himself?
Because he is not an egotist trying to prove his l33tn3ss, but a skilled and experienced team player who knows that casting Fly or Haste on the Fighter will be the better tactical choice.
The Wizard won't win the fight with a single Fireball - it'll need several other damage spells, using up valuable resources. If instead, he enables the Fighter to reach the target by casting Fly, or buffs the whole party with Haste, he'll unsure victory by using up just a single spell.
Fighters being dependant is a problem under two circumstances:
- The players are inexperienced / slow to learn tatcics.
- The players are essentially solo players. The Wizard tries to do everything himself, the Fighter doesn't like to accept help.
Both are somewhat common. Everybody starts as a beginner, and among the gamer = mostly male population, you're bound to have a lot of these guys unwilling or unable to ask for directions, cope with defeat or accept themselves as a mortal, thus fallible creature instead of the ub0r-cool movie character.
But both aren't good standards to tailor an RPG to.
*shrug* My bad on forgetting that those notes included alchemist's frost. However, using alchemist's fire or acid flasks remain wholly core, and I don't know of anything that's immune or terribly resistant to both fire and acid. It's just handy, and not tactically overwhelming/influencing like random noncore feats (which weren't even taken anyway).