I've been speaking about melee Fighters repeatedly, and the melee capacity of Fighters. For there to be such a thing as a melee Fighter, it stands to reason that there must be a non-melee Fighter option. And in gauging melee ability, you gauge melee ability.It's supposed to be a valid option to build a Fighter for melee and create a melee character. A Fighter is supposed to be able to be competent at melee. The fact that you can make an archery Fighter who might not suck does not change the fact that Fighters are incompetent at melee.
Now, you're moving the goalposts. Before, you were implying that the fighter in general was deficient, particularly against the melee brute fire giant, without taking into account other fighter options based on an overly-strong assumption that the CR system implies they should be an even odds match-up.
A melee-focused fighter may not be able to keep up with the fire giant in a solo fight. But the CR system doesn't imply he can either. You have no idea, based on CR, whether or not that's a match-up that should be expected to net a 50-50 win-loss ratio.
Giants are, in general, super-competent at melee. That's their job as monsters. They're vulnerable elsewhere, particularly in being kind of slow to react, kind of dumb, and not particularly resistant to mind-affecting magic. That helps determine their CR against a party of 4 PCs. Remove those vulnerabilities by cooking up a fight that can't really exploit them, and you're undermining some of the reasons the giant has the CR he has.
I want to focus on this post in light of the debate thats been swirling because I think its spot on.
A Fire giant is not some kind of equal to a fighter - not even close and not at all meant to be. He gets his CR because he can cream any fighter he meets but is in fact extremely vulnerable to the other three basic archtypes. If a wizard battles a magic based monster they won't be the same either - the magic based monster is not just a spell caster but also, in all likely hood has tons of hps, great saves, maybe some inherent magic resistance to go along with the spell casting and generally pretty good melee combat abilities as well. In other words the magic based monster is simply better then the wizard at being a wuizard - at least for the 4-6 rounds that a combat usually takes. Generally if your battling your archetype at the same CR your going to be badly over-matched. It balances out because the other archtypes are generally very good against your archtype.
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I want to focus on this post in light of the debate thats been swirling because I think its spot on.A Fire giant is not some kind of equal to a fighter - not even close and not at all meant to be. He gets his CR because he can cream any fighter he meets but is in fact extremely vulnerable to the other three basic archtypes. If a wizard battles a magic based monster they won't be the...
Yep. That's why I posited a better match for the same fighter is a flesh golem or clay golem. The wizard and rogue have nothing to do, and the fighter and cleric have a chance to shine.
The fire giant, in my experience, is usually a case of the wizard and rogue doing most of the work.
Which is why I am arguing that a mathematical model is flawed, because there are too many factors to consider. In this case, that Viletta is basing his comparison off of two assumptions:
1) A fire giant is meant to challenge a fighter. Nowhere does it say the fire giant should challenge the fighter simply because they both have swords. This fails to account for the 4-PC model.
2) The fighter should be able to beat the fire giant alone. This is factually incorrect and a manipulation of the CR system.
I rest my case.
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Just thought of this in the shower:
CR/Buffet Table Analogy:
Think of CR as a buffet table. A party of 4 has called ahead to the restaurant. Management lays out enough food on the table so that the 4 people can eat everything and be full.
Wizard eats a balanced meal and takes a bit of everything.
Fighter loves hamburgers and fries and eats all of them.
Rogue is a vegetarian and only takes select items.
Cleric is nice and waits for the others before taking whats left.
Now, the party of 4 has taken all the food from the table and everyone is satisfied.
The next day, they make reservations again but Cleric and Wizard don't show up. Seeing this, management hurredly splits the buffet table in two and leaves half for Fighter and Rogue.
Will Fighter and Rogue leave satisfied? The answer is "not likely". Fighter has probably lost his french fries. Rogue has only 1/2 the vegetables and fruits he would have had before. A bunch of food goes to waste or is eaten in frustration and desperation. It's possible they got the ideal table with hamburgers, fries, and vegetables only, but not likely.
If management leaves the whole table, Fighter and Rogue are satisfied, but they have to pay for a bunch of food they did not eat.
That's CR. You cannot assume that what challenges a full party will be equally balanced against less members.
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Indeed. Magic is powerful - and should be.
I disagree.
Player Characters should be powerful, as they are heroes. BBEGs should be powerful, as they are villains.
One particular class should not be powerful while a whole host of other, equally heroic classes suck it past a certain point. That's just poor game design.
A Fire giant is not some kind of equal to a fighter - not even close and not at all meant to be. He gets his CR because he can cream any fighter he meets but is in fact extremely vulnerable to the other three basic archtypes. If a wizard battles a magic based monster they won't be the same either - the magic based monster is not just a spell caster but also, in all likely hood has tons of hps, great saves, maybe some inherent magic resistance to go along with the spell casting and generally pretty good melee combat abilities as well. In other words the magic based monster is simply better then the wizard at being a wuizard - at least for the 4-6 rounds that a combat usually takes. Generally if your battling your archetype at the same CR your going to be badly over-matched. It balances out because the other archtypes are generally very good against your archtype.
Except... that's not true. Full casting monsters, by and large, have no more HD than their CR, casting equal to their CR, and not a lot going for them that they don't pay for harshly.
Going through the CR 10 casting creatures?
Rakshasa. 7HD, negligible melee ability, 7th-level Sorcerer casting, mediocre stats. They get some abilities to make up for it; good DR and SR, constant Detect Thoughts. But they're definitely paying for it in their HD and casting, and they're only casting third-level spells to the Wizard/Sorcerers' fifth.
Guardian Naga. 9th-level Sorcerer casting, 11 HD, good HP, mild melee ability, moderate stats. The lost caster level is a big deal, since they lose 5th-level spells, leaving them as a more well-rounded monster, but that 10th caster level a Sorcerer would get is as valuable as anything the naga gains, with better save DCs. They're still on comparable footing.
Couatl. Again, 9th-level Sorcerer casting, this time with only 9 HD and bad melee ability. At-will invisibility is nice, but they still only have so-so stats, their save DCs are pretty crummy, and a PC full caster can still compare quite easily and cast circles around the lizard.
Then, there are dragons, but dragons don't get much casting and are deliberately under-CR'd.
Then you have things like the nymph; CR 7, 7HD, +1 Con mod, d6 hit die, with 7th-level Druid casting, no Wild Shape, no animal companion, with a couple nice abilities making up the difference, but the Druid can still easily stand next to the nymph as an equal.
A drider gets some nice stealth skills, but takes a level hit to Wizard casting, has bad save DCs, and only has six HD.
Casting monsters generally have casting that's at most equal to their CR, hit die very close to their CR, and at best moderate stats, and when they get substantial extra abilities, hit die, or stats, they pay for it in their casting, oftentimes in a big way, leaving casting PCs easily on par with casting monsters, and capable of meeting them on their own terms. And there are few if any monsters in the MM that are actually a better Wizard/Sorcerer than a Wizard/Sorcerer.
So how is it unreasonable to expect the Fighter to be able to take on the monsters most analogous to herself with a reasonable chance of success? The fire giant, or the gargantuan monstrous scorpion, or the eleven-headed hydra? These are measures of the amount of raw power that a level 10 melee creature is supposed to possess. In other words, the amount of power a melee Fighter is supposed to possess. It's not like the fire giant isn't going after the Fighter's weaknesses. In fact, the fire giant is going after the Fighter's strengths. And the Fighter is going after the Fighter's strengths. They even have the same weaknesses, just the Fighter has them more so than the fire giant.
Yep. That's why I posited a better match for the same fighter is a flesh golem or clay golem. The wizard and rogue have nothing to do, and the fighter and cleric have a chance to shine.
Except the Fighter-versus-clay golem fight is not fair. The clay golem is not able to bring its abilities to bear against the Fighter, making the test meaningless. Conversely, in the fight between a fire giant and a melee Fighter, both sides have the same strengths and weaknesses, brought to bear to their fullest. They can meet each other in even combat on each others' terms. They're ostensibly equally powerful creatures, who function similarly, and thus their levels of power ought to be similar.
And by the way, the Wizard has plenty to do against the golem, and in fact can be the main force in taking it down. If you read their magic immunity ability, it doesn't actually make them immune to magic. It grants them infinite spell resistance. Big difference.
In this case, that Viletta is basing his comparison off of two assumptions:
Her.
A fire giant is meant to challenge a fighter. Nowhere does it say the fire giant should challenge the fighter simply because they both have swords. This fails to account for the 4-PC model.
The level 10 Fighter should possess level 10 power. Period. The Fighter is not a support character, and is equally capable of performing melee with or without others around her. If the Fighter needs the Cleric constantly healing her and the Wizard constantly buffing her or preemptively crippling the enemies in order to do her job, she is incapable of doing her job.
Unless the class's role is support, every class should be able to stand on its own and do its job under its own power. If that job is slaughter, the class should start with the ability to slaughter in a level-appropriate manner on her own, then gain the support of the rest of the group. The 4-PC model does not excuse abject inability to do your job. The fact that the Wizard can carry the weight of two PCs does not excuse the fact that the Fighter can't carry the weight of one.
Four Fighters ought to be a legitimate four-person party. If the four Fighters can't beat four fire giants, you've got a problem.
Further, the fire giant is one test. Not the test. It's just the only one being brought to bear. There are many other tests that could be made. The data from the fire giant test, however, is there and valid.
2) The fighter should be able to beat the fire giant alone. This is factually incorrect and a manipulation of the CR system.
I use the measuring stick the system provides. It's not a manipulation. It's using the tools that are a defined part of the game. If you have a better, objective, accurate tool you wish to propose for defining what level of power a character is supposed to possess, you've yet to present it.
And, it is factually correct within the confines of the rules. A level X character is still a CR X creature, and ought to possess the level of raw power appropriate to a CR X creature, whatever the form.
Except... that's not true. Full casting monsters, by and large, have no more HD than their CR, casting equal to their CR, and not a lot going for them that they don't pay for harshly.
Sure it is - your just looking at the wrong monsters.
A Rakshasa fills an archtype as a mastermind monster - its not a basic combat encounter filler.
A Guardian Naga is the best example you put forward and arguably fits the bill of being a better wizard then the wizard.
When the heck was the last time anyone fought a Couatl? Its a companion to the PCs or its supposed tyo be magical and mysterious and hands out lame riddles based on old riddles everyone already knows the answer to that connect to the main plot in some manner that only made sense to the DM when he wrote the adventure and actually baffles him at this point.
I could go on but you get the point - A dryad is not a monster meant to battle the players.
If you want to find the casting monsters they are usually demons, devils or undead and they rarely have spell levels - they have spell like abilities. Usually 5-8 of them because that is how long they are likely to be in combat for. Pretty much any monster that actually has real spell casting fulfills some kind of other role in the game besides going out there and laying down the magical smack in a kill or be killed fight that lasts 4-6 rounds before either the monster is dead or the party flees. Any monster with 15 spells, or some such, because it is an actual caster is not meant to fulfill a combat role because its picking up CR for abilities it cannot normally use in the 4-6 rounds a combat lasts.
So how is it unreasonable to expect the Fighter to be able to take on the monsters most analogous to herself with a reasonable chance of success?
Because a basic premise of the game is that its a co-operative game. Combined they are significantly more powerful then they are alone. If we design the game so that the Fire Giant is just the equal of the fighter at his CR then the fire giant is going to be an absolute pushover against an actual party that includes characters of each of the different classes.
The CR system deals with, imperfectly its true, the reality at our tables on game night. That reality is not a single fighter all alone but is instead a party of players encompassing some high percentage of the different character archetypes in the game. These different archetypes - together - are more powerful then any of them are as individuals.
The reality on the ground is not whether or not the fighter needs the cleric or needs the rogue but that, at Thursday Nights game, there will be a rogue to flank with and a cleric thats providing healing as well as a mage who is blasting away from behind the ranks. The fire giants job is to challenge this group - not a lone fighters. In fact the very reason it is given a CR rating at all is to challenge this group - not a lone fighters.
You seem keen to prove that the CR system does not work when its applied to a situation it was never meant to apply to and which does not come up at Thursday Nights game in any case.
A Guardian Naga is the best example you put forward and arguably fits the bill of being a better wizard then the wizard.
Except that its casting is stunted, its casting stat is low by caster standards, and all it gains are mild to moderate melee capacity. It is by no stretch even close to being a better Wizard than the Wizard. It may be well-rounded and formidable, but a caster proper's ability to outcast the Guardian Naga by a wide margin is a legitimate counterbalance.
If you want to find the casting monsters they are usually demons, devils or undead and they rarely have spell levels - they have spell like abilities. Usually 5-8 of them because that is how long they are likely to be in combat for. Pretty much any monster that actually has real spell casting fulfills some kind of other role in the game besides going out there and laying down the magical smack in a kill or be killed fight that lasts 4-6 rounds before either the monster is dead or the party flees. Any monster with 15 spells, or some such, because it is an actual caster is not meant to fulfill a combat role because its picking up CR for abilities it cannot normally use in 4-6 rounds a combat lasts.
Spell-likes are far more restrictive than spells, and don't even let creatures begin to compare to casters. They're usually just nifty support abilities, not full-on casting power. They offer no flexibility, often have low save DCs, often aren't even particularly useful. And outsiders don't have the huge amounts of hit points or BAB or saves or hit die that other creatures have; they usually have hit die a little less than their CR.
Meanwhile, the Wizard and Sorcerer have the actual flexibility and options of real casting at their disposal and can serve as casters in the first place, and their superior casting can easily let 'em keep pace with the hybrid demons.
And having real casting does present the monster with real threat, for the simple reason that it provides them with options and flexibility. A monster that can cast either Grease or Color Spray, but not both, is still far more dangerous than a monster that could just cast Color Spray.
Because a basic premise of the game is that its a co-operative game. Combined they are significantly more powerful then they are alone. If we design the game so that the Fire Giant is just the equal of the fighter at his CR then the fire giant is going to be an absolute pushover against an actual party that includes characters of each of the different classes.
And combined, monsters are significantly more powerful than when they're alone. An aboleth with a giant thrall is far more dangerous than an aboleth followed by an independent giant. Monsters get teamwork, too. The fact that it works for PCs, too, is irrelevant.
Teamwork does not excuse incompetence. Just because the Fighter will have backup from the other characters does not excuse the fact that the Fighter lacks level-appropriate power.
And if your standard of difficulty is a legitimate threat, then an encounter at level is supposed to be a pushover. It's not supposed to be a creature that actually stands a decent chance of beating you. It's supposed to stand a chance of inconvenience you and have you waste a few resources. You're supposed to be able to take encounters at level day in and day out, level after level without the PCs having a significant chance of ending up a little smear on the ground every other fight. A fire giant against a level 10 party is supposed to draw a few spells, dish out a spot of damage, then die brutally before his three brothers each do the same one after the other before the day's out and the party goes nappy nap.
I suppose the heart of my point is, if you're going to shoot down my measuring stick, what do you propose to replace it? There needs to be a measuring stick to have any degree of objectivity on the matter.
I can bring up numerous methods to justify my use of it. For example, you can have a fire giant, a CR 10 sneaky monster, a CR 10 clericy monster, and a CR 10 magey monster, for a level 14 encounter that's supposed to stand a 50/50 shot at beating the level 10 party, and now has the benefits of the same team dynamic and mutual support as the party. So, the Fighter has to contribute to her side at least as much as the fire giant, the Rogue as the sneaky monster, and so on.
If you take the Fighter and the fire giant out of that brawl for a duel, the Fighter loses the support of her allies, true, but so does the fire giant. They had to be comparable before. They still have to be comparable in the duel.
It's a fair measure. If you're going to reject it, then replace it.
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I suppose the heart of my point is, if you're going to shoot down my measuring stick, what do you propose to replace it? There needs to be a measuring stick to have any degree of objectivity on the matter.
I can bring up numerous methods to justify my use of it. For example, you can have a fire giant, a CR 10 sneaky monster, a CR 10 clericy monster, and a CR 10 magey monster, for a level 14 encounter that's supposed to stand a 50/50 shot at beating the level 10 party, and now has the benefits of the same team dynamic and mutual support as the party. So, the Fighter has to contribute to her side at least as much as the fire giant, the Rogue as the sneaky monster, and so on.
If you take the Fighter and the fire giant out of that brawl for a duel, the Fighter loses the support of her allies, true, but so does the fire giant. They had to be comparable before. They still have to be comparable in the duel.
It's a fair measure. If you're going to reject it, then replace it.
Actually, what you have suggested is a very reasonable replacement, and exactly what I was advocating - using the CR system as intended.
That is my replacement. There is no reason to compare any class to anything else at a singular level. I already know the fighter and other warriors don't work because at the group level they have nothing to do from mid-levels on up. That's the balance point, and what I meant by mathematical vs experiential balance. Even if the fighter put up big enough numbers to satisfy your conditions, he is still ineffective at high levels because in a group the others have abilities that overwhelm the fighters and the fighter has no way to stop them.
Giving warriors an ability to disrupt spellcasters has little to do with math and everything to do with how the fighter plays.
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Yes it has.
I hate D&D 4E wizards. That is why I am on the pathfinder boards now. Wizards are balanced. You are incredibly weak at low level and incredibly tough at high level. That is the pendilum. Fighters and their subclasses are incredibly potent at low levels and maintain their potency untill the very high levels. Wizards are a joke in 4E. I just ran Keep on the Shadowlands for some friends and not one person expressed interest in the wizard. Out of 5 people, not one wizard or warlock or sorcerer. That would not have happened in any previous edition of D&D.
The idea of balance should be limited to not having classes that duplicate exactly what another class does and do it better. For example, sorcerers should not be able to learn every arcane spell and cast it on the fly. That is destroying game balance. Fighters should not be given the rogues sneak attack as an option without mult-classing, etc. Those are game balancing issues. Fighters being able to pawn spellcasters at low level and then get pawned by them at high level is NOT a game balance issue. That is called choice in the game. The only time that game balance broke down in 3E was epic because it was poorly conceived. Yes, attack rolls and Save DC's got out of hand because 3E never slowed down the good charts nor bumped the poor charts. I feel that they should bump the poor categories. (i.e. figther reflex and will saves & wizard's base attack, reflex and fort saves.) This to me reflects the fact that everyone reaches a certain plateau at epic where increasing your specialty is extremly hard compared to anything else. A great artist may only paint one masterpiece in his lifetime. Olympic athletes may only break a record one time and then struggle their whole life to duplicate that acheivement.
That is destroying game balance. Fighters should not be given the rogues sneak attack as an option without mult-classing, etc. Those are game balancing issues.
Actually, this really doesn't unbalance fighters much at all. One of the official published variants for fighters involved them losing their bonus feats and instead receiving rogue sneak attack progression. They have better attack bonuses and hit points than rogues, certainly, but they miss out on all the other class features rogues receive. That's the mechanical trade-off.
Fighters being able to pawn spellcasters at low level and then get pawned by them at high level is NOT a game balance issue. That is called choice in the game.
No.
Assuming you value certain things, this is objectively poor balance.
Do you value being able to play all classes at all levels and still be assured that no one character will consistently outshine another? Then this is poor balance.
Do you value being able to start your campaign at 7th level or higher and still present all classes as attractive options? Then this is poor balance.
Do you value a class having a clear niche at all levels that it can fill, and not risk being obviated by another class (or classes)? Then this is poor balance.
If you value the first quality, then fighters being so much less powerful than spellcasters at higher levels is a bad thing because the spellcasters will outshine the fighter time after time after time (and ofttimes even when the task in question is something that a fighter ought to assume he would be best at! - see point three).
If you value the second quality, then fighters being strong at low levels and weak at higher levels is a bad thing. If you start a high-level campaign, and if everyone already knows that fighters are terrible at higher levels, what mechanical incentive can there possibly be for playing a fighter? And don't try to counter this with something like "Who cares about mechanical incentives?" If that's your position, you shouldn't have waded into an argument about balance to begin with.
If you value the third quality, then high-level spellcasters being able to do everything high-level fighters can do - but better! - is a bad thing. The fighter might as well stand on the sidelines and cheer, if the spellcasters are able to surmount both challenges designed for spellcasting characters as well as challenges designed for martially-inclined characters. Need to jump a chasm? No need for jump ranks, there's a spell for that! Need to reach the top of a mountain? No need for climb ranks, there's a spell for that! Need to best a monster in melee combat? No need for full BAB progression, there's a spell for that! Need to take out a target at range? No need for a bow and arrows, there are tons of spells for that! Need to bash a lock? Hold open a gate? Cross a roaring river? Carry your pile of loot back to town? No need for a fighter, there are spells for all of these things - and a smart spellcaster will be prepared for all of these.
This isn't merely an issue of game choice. This is an issue of good game design. It is simply bad design to create one set of classes that is mechanically fun to play for half the game and mechanically boring to play for the other half, and a different set of classes that is mechanically boring to play for half the game and mechanically fun to play for the other half. As a game designer, the focus should be on creating characters that are fun to play, period - each with its own viable niche, and versatile but without the ability to outshine other characters at their own niche. That's good design. Creating classes in this manner and then figuring out how to make working together as a team not only fun but crucial to success? That's excellent design.
Now, if what you value is none of these things, then you may not find any issues with balance present. However, that means your attitude is very likely one of "Of course spellcasters should be more powerful; they're magic!" as though that sort of reasoning is appropriate outside the pages of fiction novels. Also, unsurprisingly, it's been pretty widely observed that those who most vocally complain about spellcasters being brought back down to reasonable levels (or martial characters being elevated to reasonable levels, whichever you prefer) tend to play spellcasters.
For a number of great posts on exactly this subject, check out this ENWorld thread. Of particular note is Jack99's post:
I just want to point out that according to 4e players on ENworld who bother to participate in votes, the Wizard is the third most popular class (out of all 16 or however many there are in the PHB1 + PHB2 + FRPG + EPG), despite this nerf.
For such a supposedly unpopular choice, it's pretty popular.
Also, "pawned"? Really?
Blah blah blah, generic rip on 4e, blah blah blah.
Because of the power inbalance very few groups play beyond level 10 or 11. Balance allows hi-level play fun for the people who don't want to play a magic using class.
Power to the swordsman.
This.
Unfortunately this thread has already been transformed into an excuse to rant at 4th Edition.
I especially love how the 4e Wizard got called a "damn worthless class." Opinion or not, it's tough to take that kind of jab seriously.
Yes, in your fantasy world it might be "common sense" (ignoring, for the moment, that we're talking about a make-believe world where magical elves exist) for your magic user to be more powerful than your not-a-magic-user, but D&D is a game. If the game is not fun for some of the players because of an incredible balance discrepancy, the game is not as good as it could be.
Not every bodies experience of DnD are as a game, many people use it as a resultion system for a story. Not everyone wants or needs a system to be balanced.
Narrativists and simulationists don't have the same requirements for DnD that you have.
If one of the themes of the story include that magic is more powerful than other ways of achieving that goal, then you will want a system that reflects that. There are otherways, out side of the system to provide 'Meta-balance', i for one am fine with a wizard blowing up ogres, especially if every spell he casts makes blood flow from his eyes and cause him untold pain, providing i get to engage in a wrestling match with a major villain, before shoulder barge him of the cliff.
In short, you don't have to be of the same power level to shine equally within a game.
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Wizards are balanced. You are incredibly weak at low level and incredibly tough at high level. That is the pendilum. Fighters and their subclasses are incredibly potent at low levels and maintain their potency untill the very high levels.
That's false on every level.
First off, "dynamic balance" is not balance. If the pendulum were the case, and the level 1 Wizard sucked while the level 20 Wizard were god, then at level 1, the game is hideously imbalanced; the Wizard sucks, period, and the fact that the level 20 Wizard would be incredibly powerful does not change the fact that the party is tremendously unbalanced and the Wizard is pretty much dead weight. At level 20, the Wizard is a god, and the fact that the Wizard may have been weak at an earlier point in her career is moot, she's a god now, eclipsing the rest of the party, and the game is hideously imbalanced at this point. This "dynamic balance" fallacy is particularly problematic when it's supposed to be just as viable an option to play a game at levels one to five as fifteen to twenty, where the shifts do not matter in the least.
Second, Wizards do not start out weak. They start out extremely powerful, and go up from there. A level 1 Wizard has a good chance of soloing a CR3 encounter with an ogre by just casting Sleep on it and doing coup de grace with her beheading scythe. Grease the orcs, put the gobs to sleep; level 1 Wizards are potent members of the party from the get go, even though they take a few levels to really get going.
Third, yes, the melee types are strong at low levels. A level 1 Fighter is supposed to be strong at low levels. They're also supposed to be strong at high levels. And medium levels. The sword stuff classes are supposed to be able to sword stuff well from beginning to end.
Wizards are a joke in 4E. I just ran Keep on the Shadowlands for some friends and not one person expressed interest in the wizard. Out of 5 people, not one wizard or warlock or sorcerer. That would not have happened in any previous edition of D&D.
You speak as if that were a bad thing. Like the Wizard ought to have some mystical status putting it head and shoulders above the rest, like no party should ever even think about going without a Wizard.
Fighters being able to pawn spellcasters at low level and then get pawned by them at high level is NOT a game balance issue. That is called choice in the game.
False. That is a major game balance issue (setting aside the fact that the low-level Fighter just gets hit with Sleep and a coup de grace). If Wizards are weak from levels 1 to 6, while Fighters are almighty in the same range, and I'm running a campaign from levels 1 to 6, then the game has failed, completely and utterly, to be even remotely balanced. At every point in the game, the mage is gimped and the beater is God. If Wizards are almighty from levels 15 to 20 and Fighters are worthless in the same range, and I'm running a campaign from levels 15 to 20, the same problem applies. The system fails absolutely.
Balance is about the here and now, at every single individual point from level 1 to 20. That the imbalance shifts does not affect the fact that there's a major imbalance at work.
<Good stuff.>
Thank you. Though mind the "fun trumps all" fallacy, as that one's often thrown around to justify horrible design, and to say, "Well I'm having fun, therefore it must be a well-made and balanced system."
Not every bodies experience of DnD are as a game, many people use it as a resultion system for a story. Not everyone wants or needs a system to be balanced.
I came to D&D from freeform for the very reason that I want a fair conflict resolution system for roleplay. The thing is, to be a fair conflict resolution system, it must first be fair.
The imbalances in the system stifle story types and ruin narratives; if warriors aren't allowed to be any good past the lowest levels, then ultimately you are not allowed to tell stories about mighty warriors past the lowest levels unless you throw the system out the window and either softball the warrior like Hell or flat cheat, in which case, what do you need the system for at all?
A game should come balanced out of the box. Period. If your personal adaptations, that it may suit your needs, ruin that balance? That's fine. But the off-the-shelf game should be balanced, because that's a mark of a well-made game. It should especially be balanced when balance is a selling point for the game and the system, and all character types are supposed to be viable and effective.
Narrativists and simulationists don't have the same requirements for DnD that you have.
It's still a game, and still absolutely subject to analysis as a game.
If one of the themes of the story include that magic is more powerful than other ways of achieving that goal, then you will want a system that reflects that.
Play Ars Magica.
It's a system explicitly designed to reflect magic being the supreme force available to mortals, where mages are the pinnacle of power capable of doing unbelievably massive things while everybody else is a bunch of muggles. That's the advertised premise of the game, and players generally take turns as the mage on the adventure, while the others play mundanes who are competent in fields where the mage is likely to be lacking (namely, anything that doesn't involve magic, most likely). The system does what it's designed to do very well, and it's advertised honestly, as a "magic trumps muggles" system
D&D, on the other hand, is heroic fantasy where all the heroes are supposed to be of heroic caliber throughout the entire game. Not from levels 1 to 7 before curling up and dying, or from levels 15 to 20, before which they suck. Every PC is supposed to have heroic level power in their own fields from level 1 to 20 with a more or less equal contribution to the team's success at every level along the way. The game is designed as and advertised as allowing heroic-caliber warriors, mages, and thieves from beginning to end.
The fact that D&D fails to deliver heroic-caliber warriors in the Fighter at level 20 is a failure to comply with design specifications. The fact that Ars Magica fails to deliver warriors capable of competing with mages at high levels of experience is a part of the designed and advertised nature of the system. Big difference.
Not every bodies experience of DnD are as a game, many people use it as a resultion system for a story. Not everyone wants or needs a system to be balanced.
What? No. Semantics.
D&D is a game. It has players, rules, goals, and mechanics for conflict resolution. It is, without question, a game.
Just because some people use it as a "resolution system for a story" (HINT: Everyone uses it as a "resolution system for a story") doesn't mean they're not also playing the game of D&D.
Narrativists and simulationists don't have the same requirements for DnD that you have.
Let's ignore, for the moment, the terrible pigeonholing that this classification creates.
If I had to place myself into one of those categories, I'm a narrativist DM first, a gamist DM second, and a simulationist DM third. I believe that the story is king, the game should be fun, and that making my world of magical elves as "realistic" as possible is unimportant if it would get in the way of the first two.
But you're right: simulationist DMs don't need what I need, and I don't need what they need. In my experience, however, simulationist DMs occupy a relatively small niche among tabletop gamers. I do not believe that a game as massive and iconic as D&D should cater to them. It does not serve the hobby well, and they would be far better off looking elsewhere for their simulationist kicks.
Of course (and this is only my personal opinion), I believe that DMs who consider the creation of a "realistic" (a ridiculous word that really ought to have no place in this discussion) facsimile of what a make-believe fantasy world might look like are missing the point of D&D.
If one of the themes of the story include that magic is more powerful than other ways of achieving that goal, then you will want a system that reflects that.
And if this is the case, you should design a system that allows all characters to wield this incredible power.
The game Mage was a great example of this. Magic was king, and those capable of wielding it could bend reality to their whim in truly incredible ways. As a result, all players were assumed to have some control over magic - otherwise, it would be difficult and disappointing to try and enjoy the game while all of the other players constantly outshone you.
The above is an example of how you create a balanced game around the paradigm you describe. You cannot use this to excuse poor game balance. "Of course it should be powerful; it's magic!" is not an acceptable justification for making an entire set of encouraged character options obsolete.
There are otherways, out side of the system to provide 'Meta-balance', i for one am fine with a wizard blowing up ogres, especially if every spell he casts makes blood flow from his eyes and cause him untold pain, providing i get to engage in a wrestling match with a major villain, before shoulder barge him of the cliff.
In short, you don't have to be of the same power level to shine equally within a game.
Sure. The problem is that in the game of D&D (and the 3rd Edition system, because presumably that's what we've been discussing), the wizard doesn't bleed from the eyes, doesn't experience untold pain, and the fighter doesn't engage in a wrestling match with the major villain because the wizard does it better, or simply blows the villain away with a spell more powerful than anything the fighter could ever hope to pull off.
Niches are great, and yes, ideally each character would have its chance to shine, but niches mean nothing when you have a class (or classes) that fill all the niches and leave the other classes feeling useless and marginalized.
Yes it has.
I hate D&D 4E wizards. That is why I am on the pathfinder boards now. Wizards are balanced. You are incredibly weak at low level and incredibly tough at high level. That is the pendilum. Fighters and their subclasses are incredibly potent at low levels and maintain their potency untill the very high levels. Wizards are a joke in 4E. I just ran Keep on the Shadowlands for some friends and not one person expressed interest in the wizard. Out of 5 people, not one wizard or warlock or sorcerer. That would not have happened in any previous edition of D&D.
The idea of balance should be limited to not having classes that duplicate exactly what another class does and do it better. For example, sorcerers should not be able to learn every arcane spell and cast it on the fly. That is destroying game balance. Fighters should not be given the rogues sneak attack as an option without mult-classing, etc. Those are game balancing issues. Fighters being able to pawn spellcasters at low level and then get pawned by them at high level is NOT a game balance issue. That is called choice in the game.
My experience in 3.5 was that you did not take a wizard at low level but, when you died at mid or high levels, you came back as a wizard. That avoids the problem with having a glass cannon at low levels while still gaining all the benefits of being the best class at higher levels. No need to make tough choices or work your powerful character up through the ranks.
In any case wizards, in 4E, are much more specialized as a class then in earlier editions. At low levels they are good against many enemies while at higher levels they tend to add terrain control to the mix. Many players tend to gravitate more toward the Invoker as a class as their mix of multi-enemy damage dealer and party buffing is evocative of a mid level wizard in earlier editions.
I want to jump into this one as well.
It's not just wizards that have suffered allthough they have been the ones hammered the most but clerics and druids have undergone some less than stelar power lose in the name of the almighty "balance"
My first example is the turning,now called channelling, it used to be a nice help out to be able to turn undead,demons and devils. Now it's another way to heal and too much of the game focuses on what was once just a minor thing the class had. Druids, the lose of wild shape from it's previous form has made it so underpowered the druid can't possibly recover. The nerfing of the spells such as harm,call lightning,being able to reverse spells without an alignment hit and now going after class features to stop the fighter class from feeling impotent and ineffective is something that keeps getting worse with every new edition.
The fighter class was something you gave to your kid brother so he could join in and learn the mechanics of playing or the girl gamer that wanted to create a cross between red sonja and a pirate queen from the spanish main. I have nothing but respect for the fighter class when people actually like to play fighters. I know several players that are my polar oposite in the fact if I have to play a fighter I wont play, they feel the oposite, if they have to play a spellcaster for any reason they're not going to play.
Instead of the game system celebrating the unique contributions each party member brings to the team more and more emphasise is placed on making each and every class do nothing more than the other one.To sum up with a ridiculous analogy if the fighter class feels bad because the wizard can do AoE damage and he cant then are ALL spellcasters going to be capped at 6th lvl spells because bards feel useless or 4th level spells to stop paladins and rangers from crying foul. Balance can be a good thing however the industy has taken it too far and the flavor that made the game so much fun is being lost.
Actually under 1e, the fighter was the ONLY class that got more than 1 attack per round...THAT was the Fighter's balance.
I agree it sucks that wizards have been nerfed into the stone age...a 20th level could possibly kill a dragon with 1 spell in 1e, as long as the dragon failed it's save. The dragon could also roast the wizard in a hurry.
If you want to bring the Wizard back into line with the old edition, put them on the slow XP track while you increase the die used, fireballs do d8, or even d10. Hit Points have increased immensely. This is one of the reasons encounters last far too long...
I never tried to equate a book, novel, or movie to game mechanics, as you can never win. An ideal games is where everyone enjoys it, but it allows enough variation so you do not become bored.
There are a couple different areas to balance:
1. Ranged versus melee
2. Saves versus magical effects
3. Skills versus brute force
Each class should be a mix of these to play rock, paper, scissors, but no class should excel at everything.
I came to D&D from freeform for the very reason that I want a fair conflict resolution system for roleplay. The thing is, to be a fair conflict resolution system, it must first be fair.
The imbalances in the system stifle story types and ruin narratives; if warriors aren't allowed to be any good past the lowest levels, then ultimately you are not allowed to tell stories about mighty warriors past the lowest levels unless you throw the system out the window and either softball the warrior like Hell or flat cheat, in which case, what do you need the system for at all?
As well as being a roleplayer, I play my fair share of fantasy and historical war games. I also play chess.
Fantasy war games try very hard to be balanced, because they are primarily used to play against an opponent, as a test of tactical skill.
Historical war games however are not like this. They are designed to represent as closely as possible what happens when real troops meet, under the conditions described. It is possible to play out historicial battles, with massively ill matched forces and still have fun. More than this, neither player would claim that this was unfair.
People re-creating a battle from desert storm, do not complain that it is unfair that US forces have massive air superiority? Does this disparity ruin the narrative of the battle?
A game should come balanced out of the box. Period. If your personal adaptations, that it may suit your needs, ruin that balance? That's fine. But the off-the-shelf game should be balanced, because that's a mark of a well-made game. It should especially be balanced when balance is a selling point for the game and the system, and all character types are supposed to be viable and effective.
Why? I understand that you prefer a balanced game, but historical war gamers might well not agree with you, if that means that cavalry no longer functions realisiticily.
You are a gamist, that is fine. You believe that ‘fairness’ is paramount, fine, but why should I when wearing my simulationist hat, be forced to only play games where fighting with a sword is as effective as using a machine gun, or dropping a nuke? Why should wearing my narrativist hat, be forced to play in a setting where magic behaves in a way that does not conform with its narrative role as a wonderous and powerful force that supplants all others?
Saying ‘I prefer balanced games’, without support is fine.
Saying ‘A game should come balanced out of the box. Period.’ Without support, when to achieve that you would have to walk over two other groups enjoyment to achieve it, is not.
Games are built with core assumptions. Those core assumptions trump balance. For instance, a game like Artesia: adventures in the known world (amazing and beautiful game, can’t praise it enough.) does not balance magic systemicially against combat, or skills, because the settings fundimental assumption is that magic is more powerful. It is a simulationist game, designed to model the known world fantasy setting from Mark Smylie’s artesia comics. It achieves this increadably well. If you where to follow your claim that ‘A game should come balanced out of the box.’ You would destroy the game.
I would say that it is among the best made role-playing games I have ever had the pleasure of running. Mechanical balance says almost nothing of the quality of a roleplaying game, especially ones which are designed to represent specific settings.
It's still a game, and still absolutely subject to analysis as a game.I am going to deal with this when I respond to Scott.
Play Ars Magica.
*looks over at his game book shelf.*
Or Mage: the Ascension, Mage: the Sorcerers Crusade, Mage: the Dark Ages, Monte Cook’s world of darkness, Artesia: adventures in the known world, L5R, Call of Cthulhu(especially dreamlands), exalted and unknown armies…
It's a system explicitly designed to reflect magic being the supreme force available to mortals, where mages are the pinnacle of power capable of doing unbelievably massive things while everybody else is a bunch of muggles.
Grogs actually. But I’m sorry, every edition D&D before 4th, along with its fiction, has presented magic as being unimaginably powerful, with it being ‘the supreme force available to mortals, where mages are the pinnacle of power capable of doing unbelievably massive things’
That is the narrative of magic within the vast majority of fantasy. Try to Balance that, and you are damaging the narrative role of magic. Which is Stefan Hill’s initial point.
That's the advertised premise of the game, and players generally take turns as the mage on the adventure, while the others play mundanes who are competent in fields where the mage is likely to be lacking (namely, anything that doesn't involve magic, most likely). The system does what it's designed to do very well, and it's advertised honestly, as a "magic trumps muggles" systemD&D, on the other hand, is heroic fantasy where all the heroes are supposed to be of heroic caliber throughout the entire game. Not from levels 1 to 7 before curling up and dying, or from levels 15 to 20, before which they suck. Every PC is supposed to have heroic level power in their own fields from level 1 to 20 with a more or less equal contribution to the team's success at every level along the way. The game is designed as and advertised as allowing heroic-caliber warriors, mages, and thieves from beginning to end.
The fact that D&D fails to deliver heroic-caliber warriors in the Fighter at level 20 is a failure to comply with design specifications. The fact that Ars Magica fails to deliver warriors capable of competing with mages at high levels of experience is a part of the designed and advertised nature of the system. Big difference.
Yet an Ars Magica Mage needs his custus, and grogs. The same is true in DnD.
Lorn Tzanaka of house house Flambeau, second degree master of evocation, a powerful wizard and Lady Dana elfchild, Oldric the bear, and charles D’Forteas, three of the worlds greatest warriors gathered together to defend the city of Rathan from the army of Aldavin the Mad.
The warriors fight of wave after wave of creatures from the wall, fighting for hours at a time, while the spell casters play a game of cat and mouse, attempting to kill one another and deplete the other forces. Such a story works, because it allows each type of character to shine where it is best suited to shine. If you can't make it work and others can, it might not be down to the games rules.
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As well as being a roleplayer, I play my fair share of fantasy and historical war games. I also play chess.
Fantasy war games try very hard to be balanced, because they are primarily used to play against an opponent, as a test of tactical skill.
Historical war games however are not like this. They are designed to represent as closely as possible what happens when real troops meet, under the conditions described. It is possible to play out historicial battles, with massively ill matched forces and still have fun. More than this, neither player would claim that this was unfair.
People re-creating a battle from desert storm, do not complain that it is unfair that US forces have massive air superiority? Does this disparity ruin the narrative of the battle?
D&D is not chess.
D&D is not a historical war game.
D&D is D&D. D&D is heroic fantasy. It does not operate under the parameters of chess, or of your historical wargames. Within the defined parameters of the game, the warrior is supposed to be of heroic caliber; both the level 20 Fighter and the level 20 Wizard are CR20 creatures, who are supposed to wield comparable power to a Balor. That's D&D under its own magnifying glass. The fact that high-level warriors fail wield the power appropriate to heroic-caliber characters as defined by the system, that they get utterly eclipsed by the mages? That's a failing within the parameters of the game.
Why? I understand that you prefer a balanced game, but historical war gamers might well not agree with you, if that means that cavalry no longer functions realisiticily.
Except balance is an advertised feature of 3.5. Go read the Fighter section of the PHB. It flat states that Fighters are supposed to be able to fight good. In fact, I'll quote you a piece right here: "Of all classes, fighters have the best all-around fighting capabilities (hence the name)." Yet the Cleric and the Druid have vastly superior fighting capabilities, while the Fighter cannot fight in a level-appropriate manner past the earliest levels.
That is an absolute failure to deliver on advertised features of the game. In other words, that is bad. If you want to have an unbalanced game, [u]advertise it as such[/u]. When you advertise balance and fail to deliver, that's a lie and a sign of a failed product.
Games are built with core assumptions. Those core assumptions trump balance.
Except balance is one of the core assumptions of D&D 3.5. You're supposed to have a party consisting of a level 20 Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard, where when played sensibly, everyone is actually useful and of heroic caliber with everyone possessing their own meaningful strengths and weaknesses and with no one being utterly eclipsed across the board by anyone else. That's not an opinion; that's what the system is advertised for. If the Fighter were supposed to start out strong and then become a worthless mook, it would be advertised as such rather than receiving a blanket, "I sword good," marker.
For instance, a game like Artesia: adventures in the known world (amazing and beautiful game, can’t praise it enough.) does not balance magic systemicially against combat, or skills, because the settings fundimental assumption is that magic is more powerful. It is a simulationist game, designed to model the known world fantasy setting from Mark Smylie’s artesia comics. It achieves this increadably well. If you where to follow your claim that ‘A game should come balanced out of the box.’ You would destroy the game.
You can still balance the game. Easily, in fact. If magic is what it takes to be a mover and a shaker in the world, then it should be assumed that the characters wield magic. Then it doesn't matter that magic trumps the mundane; the PCs are magic users anyways. What's more, if the game is advertised as unbalanced, and they explicitly state that magic trumps all, then it's not a lie, but you're drifting closer and closer to RIFTS territory, where you cease to have a game that's any good at all. And you're certainly a lot closer to the problem with the older Star Wars systems, where there were only two ways to get a fair game within the rules; either everybody's a Jedi or no one is, because Jedi were simply that much more powerful than everyone else, with showstopping powers that muggles couldn't touch.
*looks over at his game book shelf.*
Or Mage: the Ascension, Mage: the Sorcerers Crusade, Mage: the Dark Ages, Monte Cook’s world of darkness, Artesia: adventures in the known world, L5R, Call of Cthulhu(especially dreamlands), exalted and unknown armies…
Which to the best of my knowledge are all advertised as being either "magic trumps all" or, in the case of CoC, "you're going to die so fast it doesn't really matter anyways." D&D is not.
Grogs actually.
"Muggles" is a universal catch-all term that applies equally to any game and any setting.
But I’m sorry, every edition D&D before 4th, along with its fiction, has presented magic as being unimaginably powerful, with it being ‘the supreme force available to mortals, where mages are the pinnacle of power capable of doing unbelievably massive things’
That is the narrative of magic within the vast majority of fantasy. Try to Balance that, and you are damaging the narrative role of magic. Which is Stefan Hill’s initial point.
Except... it doesn't. Not within the system. Sure, Elminster is godlike, but he's well into epic level with a laundry list of feats that don't exist.
As the system itself advertises? Wizards are supposed to be powerful and competent adventurers of heroic-caliber power. As the system itself advertises? Fighters are supposed to be powerful and competent adventurers of heroic-caliber power. As the system advertises? Rogues are supposed to be powerful and competent adventurers of heroic-caliber power. And any level X PC is a CR X creature (ignoring the obnoxious ECL/LA rules).
Yet an Ars Magica Mage needs his custus, and grogs. The same is true in DnD.
Which is fine for Ars Magica, but a Bad Thing in D&D, since that's not an advertised feature. The Fighter and Rogue and Paladin are advertised as the Wizard's equals, competent and capable adventurers in their own right, not the mage's mook body guards. What's more, all those restrictions that get placed on mages in Ars Magica that make them rely so much on the muggles? They're not there in D&D at higher levels. They stop relying on the Fighter come high levels. They'd be better off swapping the Fighter out for another mage; the Druid even comes with an extra Fighter for free.
Lorn Tzanaka of house house Flambeau, second degree master of evocation, a powerful wizard and Lady Dana elfchild, Oldric the bear, and charles D’Forteas, three of the worlds greatest warriors gathered together to defend the city of Rathan from the army of Aldavin the Mad.
The warriors fight of wave after wave of creatures from the wall, fighting for hours at a time, while the spell casters play a game of cat and mouse, attempting to kill one another and deplete the other forces. Such a story works, because it allows each type of character to shine where it is best suited to shine. If you can't make it work and others can, it might not be down to the games rules.
Except even then, the warriors fail to shine, and a Cleric or a Druid would do infinitely better against the waves of enemies; the warriors don't shine within the context of the rules, unless you're throwing out the rules or throwing absolutely pathetic enemies at the warriors to cheat your way to making them look good while the party mage takes out the real threat, which is a case where the system is forcing you to make contrived situations to make everyone feel useful in order to compensate for the fact that it's systematically screwing half the players.
The aesthetic you're trying to convey does excuse poor design or lies within the advertising and the source material.
Grogs actually. But I’m sorry, every edition D&D before 4th, along with its fiction, has presented magic as being unimaginably powerful, with it being ‘the supreme force available to mortals, where mages are the pinnacle of power capable of doing unbelievably massive things’
That is the narrative of magic within the vast majority of fantasy. Try to Balance that, and you are damaging the narrative role of magic. Which is Stefan Hill’s initial point.
Ignoring that this premise is entirely incorrect (yes, magic is presented as powerful; the PCs are also presented as powerful; in fact, non-spellcasters are often represented as incredibly powerful in even D&D fiction - a certain drow ranger, for example - in ways that simply are not true once you turn to the game itself), even if this is the way things are, it should have died years ago.
The idea of magic as incredibly, massively powerful in a way that no non-magic creature can compete with should be left at the door when it comes to a game where playing a guy with a sword and some martial training ought to be a viable option.
People re-creating a battle from desert storm, do not complain that it is unfair that US forces have massive air superiority? Does this disparity ruin the narrative of the battle?
Apples and skunks. Having opponents who are more powerful (in terms of CR) or less powerful (likewise) in terms of the PCs is perfecty acceptable, even laudatory when used with discretion. That's what "level" and "CR" are for. However, having one PC of 17th level be manifestly better in all ways than another PC of 17th level means that the term "level" is in itself meaningless, and should be thrown out. Or else assigned different scales: wizards progress from level 1 to level 20 as they gain XP; fighters progress from level A to level Q as they gain XP; rogues progress from level green to level chartreuse as they gain XP.
In your example, how do you re-create the battle if all Iraqi participants are arbitrarily confined to wheelchairs and are unable to operate weapons, but some of them can not only walk and shoot guns, they can turn invisible and pull nuclear weapons out of their shorts and stop all coalition troops with a wave of their hands? It makes no sense.
People re-creating a battle from desert storm, do not complain that it is unfair that US forces have massive air superiority? Does this disparity ruin the narrative of the battle?
Reminds me of a review of the Desert Storm/Desert Shield exapnsion for the wargame Gulf Strike. The reviewer got some one to play with him and that player's time consisted of sticking units into the dead pile for half the game - then they broke up for the evening and the Iraqi player made it clear he'd not be back to play the other half of the game.
I also recall a parody article involving victory conditions for Wargames on the subject. The gist was that if even one Iraqi soldier escaped with even one shoe then the American player was debited a thousand VPs and lost horribly.
Reminds me of a review of the Desert Storm/Desert Shield exapnsion for the wargame Gulf Strike. The reviewer got some one to play with him and that player's time consisted of sticking units into the dead pile for half the game - then they broke up for the evening and the Iraqi player made it clear he'd not be back to play the other half of the game.
People re-creating a battle from desert storm, do not complain that it is unfair that US forces have massive air superiority? Does this disparity ruin the narrative of the battle?
Exactly.
Imagine if you were playing a tabletop boardgame version of golf. You have your Player's Handbook, and there are two classes inside. One is called the Golf Maverick, and the other the Golf Team Player. Imagine Player A comes to the game and likes the idea of a golf team player - someone who works with his teammates to win the tournament that is the focus of the game. He creates his character, only to discover that the game itself doesn't care a whit for his class. The Golf Maverick is the class that actually gets to swing the club and receives all the glory. The Golf Team Player is, in fact, the caddy. His job is to hand the other players their clubs. His game experience is boring, and his spot could easily be taken by any other character in the game - if they were willing to reduce themselves to such a level.
The above example is incredibly fictitious, of course, but it's the same idea: all classes in the core books are presented as viable choices, when in reality there are hidden traps contained within many (particularly the martial classes) that make them categorically inferior to spellcasters past a certain point. A well-designed game will make every class engaging and respectable the whole way through.
Furthermore, I think it's telling that Zombieneighbours isn't arguing that the game is balanced, but rather that balance isn't important to a game. Game design is an evolving science that's been around as an area of serious study for only a few decades. The idea of balance as unimportant is an artifact of a developing field that apparently quite a few people are unwilling to let go of. Balance, however, has already established itself as one of the key components to solid game design. That's the way things are headed, and if your attitude runs counter to this for a game as involved as Dungeons & Dragons, you are quickly going to find yourself with a dwindling population of willing players.
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That is destroying game balance. Fighters should not be given the rogues sneak attack as an option without mult-classing, etc. Those are game balancing issues
Actually, this really doesn't unbalance fighters much at all. One of the official published variants for fighters involved them losing their bonus feats and instead receiving rogue sneak attack progression. They have better attack bonuses and hit points than rogues, certainly, but they miss out on all the other class features rogues receive. That's the mechanical trade-off./QUOTE]
I think you missed my point. Fighters should not have BOTH feats, sneak attack, armor and weapon specialties. That does ruin the aspect of the rogue in my opinion.
Fighters being able to pawn spellcasters at low level and then get pawned by them at high level is NOT a game balance issue. That is called choice in the game.
No.Assuming you value certain things, this is objectively poor balance.
I very much disagree with you there. I only have to point to D&D basic as an example of extreme unbalances that did not ruin the game. I often played magic-users who had to be creative once their cast their single sleep spell for the day and NO my party did not just pack up and head back to town after I used my one and only spell. I had to learn to make the most of my meager resources and use my wits as well as my character abilities in the game.
Do you value being able to play all classes at all levels and still be assured that no one character will consistently outshine another?
Do you value being able to start your campaign at 7th level or higher and still present all classes as attractive options? Then this is poor balance.
All character classes are valuable at all levels unless the DM goes Montey Haul and gives out too many powerful magic items that are inappropriate for the characters based on their level. Every class needs to be useful but NOT every class neeeds to be OPTIMAL at every single level.
Do you value a class having a clear niche at all levels that it can fill, and not risk being obviated by another class (or classes)? Then this is poor balance.
Classes are not overshadowed by each other. The problem is that designers have stretched the meaning of what each class is as tastes have changed. Rogues were not initally designed to be in meele unless it was for a backstab. Because so many DM's used metagame knowledge(Hey that guy is in leather armor, he must be a rogue!), the game had to make up for it by making flanking and tumbling rules.
If you value the first quality, then fighters being so much less powerful than spellcasters at higher levels is a bad thing because the spellcasters will outshine the fighter time after time after time (and ofttimes even when the task in question is something that a fighter ought to assume he would be best at! - see point three).
If you value the second quality, then fighters being strong at low levels and weak at higher levels is a bad thing. If you start a high-level campaign, and if everyone already knows that fighters are terrible at higher levels, what mechanical incentive can there possibly be for playing a fighter? And don't try to counter this with something like "Who cares...
I have nothing against fighters. They are cool. I like the fact that I can roll up a fighter quickly and get to it and not have to keep a ledger like when I play a caster. It is a fresh change of pace. Fighters are not useless in high level against golems, beholders, dragons, demons, devils, mind flayers and other creatures that have either magic immunities, magic resistance or just a ton of hit points. Do I feel as if I should be doing the same damage swinging a sword as a meteor smashing into someone or having all the moisture in my body evaporated? Of course not. That is like arguing that an infantry man with a rifle should do as much damage with his rifle as tank cannon. It just defies logic.
When almost 1/8 of all potential adventures are wizards (we'll assume they split the arcane caster 1/4 in half with the sorcerer), trying to describe them as "rare powerful beings", suddenly loses its charm. Anybody with halfway decent Int can be a wizard, which 1/6 of the population is going to have. They are not strange or unique.
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When almost 1/8 of all potential adventures are wizards (we'll assume they split the arcane caster 1/4 in half with the sorcerer), trying to describe them as "rare powerful beings", suddenly loses its charm. Anybody with halfway decent Int can be a wizard, which 1/6 of the population is going to have. They are not strange or unique.
What if we than say that only 1% of the population is an adventuring class suddenly 1% * 1/8 = 0.125%. So average large city of say 100,000 = 125 Wizards. Advenrures certainly aren't 100% of the population of a World and would not have a high percentage. But what ever number <<100% you take it ends up that magic in the "powerful" sense is rare.
S.
All character classes are valuable at all levels unless the DM goes Montey Haul and gives out too many powerful magic items that are inappropriate for the characters based on their level. Every class needs to be useful but NOT every class neeeds to be OPTIMAL at every single level.
In a party of mid-level humans, a 1HD kobold Commoner is useful by the right of being very small. Even at high levels, a mule is very useful for hauling swag, even if the bag of holding is better. That does not mean that the kobold or the mule is a remotely equally contributing member of the group.
That a Fighter may technically be more valuable than a pocket full of air does not change the fact that at high levels, the Fighter can hardly dent enemies, isn't the one pulling out the moves that win fights, and fails to earn an even share of the loot (or worse, eats up buffs and a double share of the loot in an attempt to look useful through social constructs that propagate the myth that high-level Fighters are viable all while shooting the party in the foot).
I have nothing against fighters. They are cool. I like the fact that I can roll up a fighter quickly and get to it and not have to keep a ledger like when I play a caster. It is a fresh change of pace. Fighters are not useless in high level against golems, beholders, dragons, demons, devils, mind flayers and other creatures that have either magic immunities, magic resistance or just a ton of hit points.
Beholders are not threats, even to casters. Fighters are useless against level-appropriate dragons and the like, because they're so much bigger and tougher and so much more easily done in by spells. Fighters are useless against golems. Fighters are especially useless against monsters with tons of hit points, precisely because they have lots of hit points; those are monsters best rendered irrelevant by a spell. If a Wizard blinds a giant and then kicks back while the Fighter cuts the harmless sod to pieces, the Fighter wasn't being useful; the Wizard's the one who won the fight. Anyone could have killed the giant after that. The Fighter may as well have been a Cleric, who would come with a full salvo of spells and even some save-or-lose spells of her own.
Spell resistance is scarcely a defense against casters; it's frequently easily overcome, and tons of spells ignore it outright. Golems are not immune to magic; they just have infinite spell resistance, which is useless against all those spells that ignore spell resistance.
Do I feel as if I should be doing the same damage swinging a sword as a meteor smashing into someone or having all the moisture in my body evaporated? Of course not. That is like arguing that an infantry man with a rifle should do as much damage with his rifle as tank cannon. It just defies logic.
We're not talking some mook foot soldier here. We're talking about a heroic-caliber warrior. A character who's supposed to be an unstoppable engine of destruction. In fact, an unstoppable engine of destruction decked out in so much magic gear that he glows like a Christmas tree. We're talking Gatts, not guardsman Bob. And if your logic tells you that magic should absolutely reign supreme, play a system that advertises magic reigning supreme rather than one that advertises everyone being able to be a heroic-caliber hero from beginning to end.
And here you're not arguing that the game is balanced, but that the game is supposed to be hideously imbalanced, and that melee is supposed to be utterly screwed. You can't have it both ways. Either the game is balanced, or it isn't.
When almost 1/8 of all potential adventures are wizards (we'll assume they split the arcane caster 1/4 in half with the sorcerer), trying to describe them as "rare powerful beings", suddenly loses its charm. Anybody with halfway decent Int can be a wizard, which 1/6 of the population is going to have. They are not strange or unique.
Oh, there's a lot more to it than that. A lot of folks talk like magic is supposed to be this rare, extreme, almighty force in the cosmos that should trump everything, an uncommon, world-shaking, dangerous gift that is tremendously difficult to master. Yet in D&D, magic is common, cheap, easy, and safe.
Can't have it both ways, folks.
If you go back to Ars Magica, yes, magic is the supreme force available to human kind, but it has some severe restrictions. Play long enough and odds are you will suffer some horrible tragedy in a magical mishap, possibly even killing yourself, you're regularly pushing yourself to exhaustion with your higher-end spells, you're spending months and years on end developing and learning spells. Your natural lifespan is a very harsh limit on how much magical power you can acquire. Magic is dangerous. It is hard. You bend and scrape to learn a few spells.
In D&D, however? For a few hundred gold, a Sunday afternoon, and a cup of tea, you can learn to turn into hundreds, if not thousands of different creatures just by studying Polymorph. And for the same amount of effort and experience it takes for the Fighter to gain a level, the Wizard does to. Magic is not hard. No harder than learning swordplay.
And there are no fumbles, no mishap chances save with a handful of spells, no risk that your fireball will blow up in your face. Magic items just cost you gold, XP, a feat, and time. Most are usable by any ol' schlub without consequence. It's perfectly safe.
Yet some folks go out and claim that this safe and easy power is supposed to stand head and shoulders above the power of the sword, simply because it's magic! Pshaw.
What if we than say that only 1% of the population is an adventuring class suddenly 1% * 1/8 = 0.125%. So average large city of say 100,000 = 125 Wizards. Advenrures certainly aren't 100% of the population of a World and would not have a high percentage. But what ever number <<100% you take it ends up that magic in the "powerful" sense is rare.
And .0125% Fighters, .0125% Rogues, .0125% Barbarians, with an arbitrary number of NPC class Adepts bringing their magic into the mix, and entire naturally magical races like gnomes.
The Wizard still isn't any more special than the Fighter.
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I suspect that a part of the balance problem has to do with the idea "fighters need to be realistic." That is, great warriors like Arthur and Lancelot, Roland, Beowulf, etc, need to be represented in the game as Fighters. And so magicians get to call down meteor swarms, while fighters get to ride horses well and wrestle with Grendel.
The solution, I suspect comes in the form of confusion over level-appropriate characters. Gawain and Njal, Roland and Sigfried are indeed fighters, but they're 6th Level fighters. Cu Chulain and Beowulf, Gilgamesh and Belerophon are all obviously warriors, but they have supernatural abilities. Beowulf recounts how he held his breath underwater for days. Gilgamesh kills the demon Humbaba.
If we want warriors to rival mages at high levels, the warriors are going to need to be capable of clearly-superhuman achievements. I think the Book of Nine Swords got it right.
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And .0125% Fighters, .0125% Rogues, .0125% Barbarians, with an arbitrary number of NPC class Adepts bringing their magic into the mix, and entire naturally magical races like gnomes.
The Wizard still isn't any more special than the Fighter.
My OP was that is what we have lost. Thanks to "point buy" stats, equal experience point level charts, combat casting and host of other improvements (real or imagined) everyone can be throwing spells like they were sweets! I went some 10 odd years and only ever saw 2 people have stats for a Paladin! On one hand the "newer" systems give the DM a much bigger palette thanks for removal of restrictions (level, race etc) to create a world. On the other hand if a DM does make their own world (with it's own restrictions) they are a bad DM for not allowing everything ever printed.
As for NPC classes, the era of "Spellfire" had NPC's for sure but they didn't have class progression tables - just abilities (i.e. Sage). Even by being a 1st level anything you were already mighty compared to the general populus. An entire castle may have a 3rd up to the lofty 5th fighter commanding the soldiers.
Elminister, Raistlin, Blackstaff, Tenser and all the other wielders of powerful magic are from a different era. Their like will not be seen again under the lastest offerings of D&D.
S.
S.
All character classes are valuable at all levels unless the DM goes Montey Haul and gives out too many powerful magic items that are inappropriate for the characters based on their level. Every class needs to be useful but NOT every class neeeds to be OPTIMAL at every single level.
No.
First, the DM handing out magic items like candy is one of the only ways to increase the power of martial characters compared to spellcasters. A spellcaster without a magic weapon or armor still has an entire arsenal of spells at their disposal, but the fighter is out of luck. In this sense, more magic items actually improves balance.
Second, no, not all character classes are valuable at all levels. A fighter at 15th level might as well be a hireling half the time, for all the good he does the party compared to the vast utility and power of a spellcaster.
If all classes were valuable at all levels, you might have a point - being optimal isn't strictly necessary at any point. But being comparatively useless is another matter entirely, and that's the problem that we're addressing here.
Classes are not overshadowed by each other. The problem is that designers have stretched the meaning of what each class is as tastes have changed. Rogues were not initally designed to be in meele unless it was for a backstab. Because so many DM's used metagame knowledge(Hey that guy is in leather armor, he must be a rogue!), the game had to make up for it by making flanking and tumbling rules.
Yes, they are. Without question. If you really don't think the wizard overshadows the fighter, or the cleric overshadows the paladin, or the druid overshadows everyone, I'm not sure there's much point to continuing the discussion. There's a reason the CoDzilla moniker exists.
The rest of that point is completely lost on me. I'm not sure at all what flanking and tumbling rules have to do with classes not overshadowing each other.
I have nothing against fighters. They are cool. I like the fact that I can roll up a fighter quickly and get to it and not have to keep a ledger like when I play a caster. It is a fresh change of pace. Fighters are not useless in high level against golems, beholders, dragons, demons, devils, mind flayers and other creatures that have either magic immunities, magic resistance or just a ton of hit points.
There are plenty of spells that ignore spell resistance, plenty of ways to affect the battlefield to win a fight without directly targeting your opponent, and plenty of ways to magically empower yourself to the point where you no longer care about what resistances or immunities your foe might possess.
Fighters are, compared to a spellcaster at that level, obsolete.
Do I feel as if I should be doing the same damage swinging a sword as a meteor smashing into someone or having all the moisture in my body evaporated? Of course not. That is like arguing that an infantry man with a rifle should do as much damage with his rifle as tank cannon. It just defies logic.
Really? REALLY? That's your argument? It defies logic?
You can envision a make-believe world full of magical elves, dragons, a pantheon of real gods, mythical humans who save the world time after time, and incredible artifacts of mystical power, but when it comes to trying to imagine that a well-trained, veteran martial hero of legend might be able to match a spellcaster in power, your brain is stumped?
Amazing.
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When Talek & Luna wrote:
Do I feel as if I should be doing the same damage swinging a sword as a meteor smashing into someone or having all the moisture in my body evaporated? Of course not. That is like arguing that an infantry man with a rifle should do as much damage with his rifle as tank cannon. It just defies logic.
Really? REALLY? That's your argument? It defies logic?
You can envision a make-believe world full of magical elves, dragons, a pantheon of real gods, mythical humans who save the world time after time, and incredible artifacts of mystical power, but when it comes to trying to imagine that a well-trained, veteran martial hero of legend might be able to match a spellcaster in power, your brain is stumped?Amazing.
Hi, Scott. I'll agree with Talek and Luna on this one. A guy swinging a sword is explicitly not magical. Elves, dragons, gods, and all the rest are designed to be the fantastical elements in the setting. Fighters are not.
Up-thread, you've said that you consider "simulationist" to be the weak sister of the story/game/simulation triad, at least for you, and in your experience for most people. And I can appreciate that.
But my experience is different. If I'm going to play the Firefly RPG, I want the game experience to feel like a Firefly adventure, both in setting and in genre conventions. Likewise with a James Bond RPG. If I were playing Firefly and the genre conventions were to feel like James Bond, I wouldn't be satisfied with the experience, even if it were a nice story and a reasonable game system. "Simulation" is important to me.
And if D&D simulates anything, that ought to be the kind of literature that shows up in the "inspirational reading" Appendices. It ought to include Lieber and Vance and Moorcock.
And in those works, fighters were realistic. They might have been better than any hand-to-hand warriors in history, but only by degree. Fafhrd never does the impossible.
I tie this in to my previous point: D&D does simulate that literature well, at about 6th Level. It simulates different genres at higher levels, where both mages and warriors should be substantially more than human. But the 18th-Level Fighter isn't the class you want to use to simulate that kind of superhero genre.
By the way, your tone is coming across as demeaning. Surely you're not suggesting that Talek & Luna are stupid or lacking in imagination. Stay classy, Scott.
Hi, Scott. I'll agree with Talek and Luna on this one. A guy swinging a sword is explicitly not magical. Elves, dragons, gods, and all the rest are designed to be the fantastical elements in the setting. Fighters are not.
Fighters are not supposed to be fantastical? Who says?
Fighters are supposed to capture the essence of a number of obviously fantastical fictional icons that have been brought up throughout this thread.
Because you believe that the fighter's lack of spellcasting ability means that he has to be confined to the realm of the mundane, you are able to justify the obsolescence of an entire set of what ought to be valid character classes.
This exact attitude is well known in the community, and the sadly appropriate quip when referring to such a rationale is the "Fighters can't have nice things," line. Fighters don't get nice things, because they aren't magical. They are not spellcasters, therefore they don't deserve to be on the same level as spellcasters. Because spellcasters are magical. I know this must seem like completely sound reasoning to you, but to someone who views D&D as a game it's little more than a joke.
Up-thread, you've said that you consider "simulationist" to be the weak sister of the story/game/simulation triad, at least for you, and in your experience for most people. And I can appreciate that.
But my experience is different. If I'm going to play the Firefly RPG, I want the game experience to feel like a Firefly adventure, both in setting and in genre conventions. Likewise with a James Bond RPG. If I were playing Firefly and the genre conventions were to feel like James Bond, I wouldn't be satisfied with the experience, even if it were a nice story and a reasonable game system. "Simulation" is important to me.
And that's great for you. But if you're going to have a Firefly RPG, you're going to want to make all the classes - gungslinger, doctor, pilot, engineer, etc. - worthwhile to play. If you made the pilot the star of the show, capable of doing everything everyone else could do, except better, you would rightly have a lot of ticked off players (and one extremely happy pilot).
Similarly, if you had a James Bond game and designed the game so that the British Spy class was awesome at everything and that every other class just got to focus on a niche, who wouldn't be clamoring for the Spy class?
You can have your simulationist game. That doesn't mean you can't have balance, and it doesn't mean that balance isn't important. If you're playing a game, balance is important. The idea that this is even being challenged is lunacy. Game mechanics exist to provide a way to adjudicate rules conflicts. If balance weren't something desirable, you might as well make every call arbitrary and put them in the hands of the DM. No need for dice - dice are merely a tool to ensure that the parameters of the game's mechanics fall within a carefully designed balance framework, and who needs a balance framework?
And if D&D simulates anything, that ought to be the kind of literature that shows up in the "inspirational reading" Appendices. It ought to include Lieber and Vance and Moorcock.
And in those works, fighters were realistic. They might have been better than any hand-to-hand warriors in history, but only by degree. Fafhrd never does the impossible.
I tie this in to my previous point: D&D does simulate that literature well, at about 6th Level. It simulates different genres at higher levels, where both mages and warriors should be substantially more than human. But the 18th-Level Fighter isn't the class you want to use to simulate that kind of superhero genre.
So why does the 18th-level fighter exist? What good is it? It can't compete with a wizard, or any other spellcaster. It can't function effectively in a team-based game as long as there are spellcasters in the party to pull their own weight and the fighter's weight (which, let's face it, needs to be pulled at higher levels). Indeed, I've witnessed games where the martial characters become more liabilities than anything else, as they find themselves easily manipulated (via Dominate or other such compulsion) by monsters to pose a new threat to the party.
Spellcasters have had it good. They've been the stars of the show for a long time now. They shouldn't have been. I know a number of people who made the switch to 4th Edition only to exclaim "Oh my god, fighters are worth playing." I mean, is that really what you're after in a game? A few totally awesome classes capable of dominating any area of adventuring they care to, and a number of comparatively useless classes that exist for little reason beyond coddling the spellcasters at low levels and then cheering from the sidelines at higher levels?
3e isn't (not-so-)jokingly called Spellcaster Edition for nothing.
By the way, your tone is coming across as demeaning. Surely you're not suggesting that Talek & Luna are stupid or lacking in imagination. Stay classy, Scott.
I do not believe that Talek & Luna have given their position much in the way of critical thought, if any. I have also come to question their observational abilities, as the idea that balance in 3e only breaks down in epic levels is simply wrong. And it certainly doesn't help that they started out by trashing 4e wizards (or used "pawned" to mean something other than "to have deposited as security").
It's tough to come across as eternally patient when the argument you're repeatedly getting in return boils down to "But fighters don't need to be worthwhile!"
Stay classy, Chris.
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So why does the 18th-level fighter exist? What good is it? It can't compete with a wizard, or any other spellcaster. It can't function effectively in a team-based game as long as there are spellcasters in the party to pull their own weight and the fighter's weight (which, let's face it, needs to be pulled at higher levels). Indeed, I've witnessed games where the martial characters become more liabilities than anything else, as they find themselves easily manipulated (via Dominate or other such compulsion) by monsters to pose a new threat to the party.Spellcasters have had it good. They've been the stars of the show for a long time now. They shouldn't have been. I know a number of people who made the switch to 4th Edition only to exclaim "Oh my god, fighters are worth playing." I mean, is that really what you're after in a game? A few totally awesome classes capable of dominating any area of adventuring they care to, and a number of comparatively useless classes that exist for little reason beyond coddling the spellcasters at low levels and then cheering from the sidelines at higher levels?
Well, first of all, I agree with you, Scott. The high-level Fighter doesn't work as well as it ought. One proposed solution is the Warblade, which is competitive with some magic-casting classes (like Sorcerer). It's still petty realistic at the levels where it ought to be, and moves into Beowulf / Cu Chulain / Gilgamesh legendary status at later levels.
Another solution, which works surprisingly well, is to reverse the action efficiency back to AD&D scales. If a 3.5 caster needs to spend a full round to cast her top two levels of spells, and if a warrior can move and strike effectively, the Fighter is suddenly good for a lot more at higher levels. Reducing hit point advancement to a trickle after midlevel is another effective brake on Wizard cockiness. (Pathfinder's decision to increase a Wizard's hit dice to d6's, and allow single-class Wizards to take +1 hp per level as a favored class struck me as exactly the wrong direction to go.)
As a third thought, honestly, if mid- to high-level D&D melee warriors are much weaker than their allies in 3rd Ed, maybe that's all right. Viletta has complained that D&D sells it's fighters as being the go-to class in combat, but, aside from a failure to deliver on that text, what would it hurt if the class were really not viable? Everybody would play Wizards, and Clerics and Druids, and maybe Rogues. If you offered Adepts and Aristocrats as player classes now, only a few people would play them because they're weaker than other classes, but that wouldn't ruin anybody else's fun.
Lastly, and this is a deadly sober, absolutely serious question: what's your proposed fix? I'll admit my pet peeve in all of these discussions: somebody who says "X is broken" or "X is wrong" instead of "X is broken and here's how I think we can make it work." or "X is wrong and here's my proposal for setting it right."
(And to be fair, that's my gut reaction every time somebody brings up something about 4th Edition they don't like, too.)
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A step backwards to 1e AD&D does redress the "balance". Hit = loss of spell and low hp's makes the wizards think twice about standing in front. Fighters (+ subclasses) ended up with the best saving throws at higher levels in the game - making them very tough to spell nuke.
It started in 2e and was taken to the extreme in 3e - but casters went from scary to godlike fighter overshadowing killing machines.
S.
...I want to jump into this one as well.
It's not just wizards that have suffered allthough they have been the ones hammered the most but clerics and druids have undergone some less than stelar power lose in the name of the almighty "balance"
My first example is the turning,now called channelling, it used to be a nice help out to be able to turn undead,demons and devils. Now it's another way to heal and too much of the game focuses on what was once just a minor thing the class had. Druids, the lose of wild shape from it's previous form has made it so underpowered the druid can't possibly recover. The nerfing of the spells such as harm,call lightning,being able to reverse spells without an alignment hit and now going after class features to stop the fighter class from feeling impotent and ineffective is something that keeps getting worse with every new edition.
The fighter class was something you gave to your kid brother so he could join in and learn the mechanics of playing or the girl gamer that wanted to create a cross between red sonja and a pirate queen from the spanish main. I have nothing but respect for the fighter class when people actually like to play fighters. I know several players that are my polar oposite in the fact if I have to play a fighter I wont play, they feel the oposite, if they have to play a spellcaster for any reason they're not going to play.
Instead of the game system celebrating the unique contributions each party member brings to the team more and more emphasise is placed on making each and every class do nothing more than the other one.To sum up with a ridiculous analogy if the fighter class feels bad because the wizard can do AoE damage and he cant then are ALL spellcasters going to be capped at 6th lvl spells because bards feel useless or 4th level spells to stop paladins and rangers from crying foul. Balance can be a good thing however the industy has taken it too far and the flavor that made the game so much fun is being lost.
I'm not so much in favor of changing the spells damage dice but I have made some other changes. For example, all MAJOR spellcasting classes get the item creation feats for free at the apporpriate levels. Pally's and rangers get scrolls and potions and I limit them to the lesser woundrous items. Two I do put the casters on the slow exp track however I GIVE them exp for creating magic items and double or triple the time and cost to make them. A +5 holy vorpal avenger is a major master work of magic and not somethign created lightly. This lets the players have some needed items like wands, scrolls and potions but stops every visit to town or city from becomeing a magic-mart run.
I agree with your earlier statement about the fighter being the only ones with multiple attacks I had forgotten about that and I think I may try to reimplement that in my next game. There will be some moaning and graoning but I believe ity will help redress some balance issues for the melee folks too.
I dont dislike the melle types far from it I simply want the feel of eariler editions that let everyone have their own nich.
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If fighters are meant to be weaker than wizards, then why don't we just make it so they can't advance past level 12 or something?
Also something can be "magical" without being based around spells. Why can't a fighter embued with the power from the fates be able to do things that a typical human wouldn't be able to. I'm sure if I watched a bunch of fantasy movies, I would quickly see "mundane" characters doing things that just are not physically possible. They might look "close" to being possible, but not actually be within the realm of true possibility.
EDIT: Also you have all kinds of crazy things in films that are suppose to be "mundane". John McClane (Die Hard) gets shot several times, runs across broken glass barefooted, beaten to a pulp, and still manages to get up again and again and beat the crap out of the bad guys. Healing surges?
What's your proposed fix?
This won't work for most people, but for my homebrew campaign I've rewritten all the marial classes. Barbarians, for example, get rage powers that actually scale with level (like spells do); their rage stat boosts start at only +2 at 1st level (rather than +4), but scale up to +10 at 20th level. Fighters get "fighter talents" -- the advanced talents at levels 11+ let them do things like considerably expand their threat range, move and full attack, gain SR vs. hostile spells, etc. Fighters also get all good saves.
In addition, I've changed the action economy as suggested upthread. Casting a spell is a full-attack action. Iterative attacks can be traded for limited movement. "Ready an action" can be used for individual attacks, and the triggering condition needs not be specified in advance.
So far in playtesting, I've seen people who would never in a million years have taken a level in a martial class in 3.5 suddenly stop and think, "You know, if I'm going to keep getting into combat, I really need fighter talent X..." Jess Door went from planning Fighter 1/Wizard 6 for her Eldritch Knight variant (optimal in 3.5) to Fighter 4/Wizard 3. Houstonderek used to play rogues as fighters. Now he's actually taking fighter levels in order to, you know, be able to fight well.
This keeps the "traditional" D&D flavor for us, but requires a vast amount of work and even more playtesting. For people with less time and motivation, and less pickiness among players with regards to sources, Chris' recommendation is sound. The much-maligned Tome of Battle is a quick substitute -- if you replace the fighter with the warblade, and the paladin with the crusader, you can still make a viable Cuchulainn-like warrior at higher levels.
My OP was that is what we have lost. Thanks to "point buy" stats, equal experience point level charts, combat casting and host of other improvements (real or imagined) everyone can be throwing spells like they were sweets! I went some 10 odd years and only ever saw 2 people have stats for a Paladin! On one hand the "newer" systems give the DM a much bigger palette thanks for removal of restrictions (level, race etc) to create a world.
So you're complaining that the system doesn't suck nearly as much as it did, actually gives the players some real say in what they want to do with their character, and that many of the old problems were actually fixed?
On the other hand if a DM does make their own world (with it's own restrictions) they are a bad DM for not allowing everything ever printed.
Now, you're opening up a very different can of worms. So, time for a crash course in the can of, "Eleven classes, eleven characters."
A DM can make a world and say, "Wizards are all members of Smartsy Academy, and only Wizards are members of Smartsy Academy, so if you take the Wizard class, your character has to be a member of Smartsy Academy, and if you're a member of Smartsy Academy, you must take the Wizard class," and, "All Barbarians are from Barbaria, and only Barbarians come from Barbaria, so if you take the Barbarian class, you come from Barbaria, and if you come from Barbaria, then you take the Barbarian class," and, "All Sorcerers derive their power from drinking unicorn blood, and drinking unicorn blood only manifests in Sorcerer powers, so if you take the Sorcerer class, you drink unicorn blood, and if you've ever drunk unicorn blood, then you have to take the Sorcerer class," and, "The Knight class has no place in my world therefore you cannot take it."
Sure, those are aspects of the world, but they're irrational and senseless shackles. A class is a sack of abilities with a label on top. The label represents what the designers had in mind when they designed the class, not what the class must be. Not all Clerics are priests. Not all Barbarians are bloodthirsty savages. Not all Bards are wandering minstrels. The designers merely had priests and bloodthirsty savages and wandering minstrels in mind when designing them. You can easily have the Barbarian class representing an undisciplined and passionate soldier, or the Bard representing a heated evangelist/priest.
For a DM to then go and shackle classes to the world, to say, "This class represents this one specific thing and only this one specific thing," is bad design and a slap in the face of the players. It cheapens the game and robs the players of the right to decide what's best for representing their characters. Further, lines like, "No psionics because psionics don't exist in my world," are completely irrational because the mechanics of psionics can represent magic easily, and in fact makes for a better sorcerer than a Sorcerer.
Elminister, Raistlin, Blackstaff, Tenser and all the other wielders of powerful magic are from a different era. Their like will not be seen again under the lastest offerings of D&D.
That's one of the things they explicitly and deliberately fixed in 4e. It was no accident, they were specifically out to end those types, to kill Elminster irrevocably. They realized those mages were a blight and set out to destroy them. Far too many Forgotten Realms games have degenerated to, "Who's the strongest NPC Wizard we can get to fix this for us?"
As a third thought, honestly, if mid- to high-level D&D melee warriors are much weaker than their allies in 3rd Ed, maybe that's all right. Viletta has complained that D&D sells it's fighters as being the go-to class in combat, but, aside from a failure to deliver on that text, what would it hurt if the class were really not viable? Everybody would play Wizards, and Clerics and Druids, and maybe Rogues. If you offered Adepts and Aristocrats as player classes now, only a few people would play them because they're weaker than other classes, but that wouldn't ruin anybody else's fun.
There be some truth in here.
No class is inherently more valuable than any other, regardless of source. The Fighter class is as expendable as the Battle Dancer, a base class which often gets cast aside out of hand, and that most folks here probably didn't even know existed. That the Fighter is a joke as a class unto itself (as opposed to its being a pretty good dip) does not matter so much as long as everyone acknowledges its status as an ineffective class long term, and so long as there are options available to efficiently represent competent character types of the sort Fighter would traditionally represent. Warrior types need to be served, after all.
As for weaker characters not ruining anyone else's fun? That, I disagree with. It can very much ruin everyone else's fun if someone brings in an Aristocrat, plays 'em like a warrior, gets slaughtered every fight, and expects the party to bring 'em back time and time again. Everyone has to bring something meaningful and useful to the table, and everyone has to understand their character's weaknesses. "Something meaningful and useful" could include the Aristocrat's skills, depending on the rest of the group, and there are ways to compensate for the inherent weaknesses of the Aristocrat class, such as a badass warbred mount via Handle Animal, or large numbers of useful minions through Leadership, but still, the player must make their character such that they bring something useful to the equation.
After all, the party members are trusting each other with their lives, and if you ever get to the point where the other party members are asking themselves, "Why are we keeping this guy around, again?" and the only answer is that big, glowing "P" on his forehead, there is a problem.
Lastly, and this is a deadly sober, absolutely serious question: what's your proposed fix? I'll admit my pet peeve in all of these discussions: somebody who says "X is broken" or "X is wrong" instead of "X is broken and here's how I think we can make it work." or "X is wrong and here's my proposal for setting it right."
My quick fix for 3.5? Well, it starts with framing the problem; the overpowered classes and the underpowered classes. "Casters are overpowered" is flat false; on the whole, there are more balanced casting classes than broken (save the extreme cheese that always comes along in every class). Rather, what makes "casters" overpowered has more to do with the infinite casters, the spell slingers who get hundreds and thousands of spells at their fingertips either automatically or at low cost. Cleric, Druid, Wizard, Archivist, Artificer, and Erudite. The Big Five (yes, there are six; Erudite doesn't exist). Meanwhile, the Beguiler, Wu Jen, Warlock, Psion, Warmage, Dread Necromancer, Sorcerer, Favored Soul, Shugenja? These classes are perfectly reasonable.
On the other end of the spectrum, melee being screwed? Tome of Battle fixes that.
So, my fix is simple. Ban the Big Five and make Tome of Battle the standard for melee. The skill types (Rogues, Bards, Scouts) are generally alright as they are. In general? Rev up the tier list, understand why every class is in the tier that it's in, and generally keep things in the tier 2-4 range.
Then, I require competence from characters; you have to have a clear idea of what your character brings to the party, it has to be something meaningful, and you have to be able to actually pull it off. "I have a good Diplomacy score," generally isn't a meaningful contribution. If you want to play the game, you have to actually play the game.
And of course, I beat it into my players' skulls that class is not the definition of who your character is. Just because your character is a swashbuckler does not mean you have to take the Swashbuckler class, or even that the class is appropriate. Banning the Big Five helps there, as your wizard can't take the Wizard class, and you have to decide whether one of over half a dozen spell slinging classes fits your wizard best, and your priest can't default to Cleric.
Special mention goes to the Druid, though, as it actually can be fixed pretty easily. Hit 'em with the spontaneous divine caster variant and the Shapeshifting variant from PHBII, and they're toned down quite nicely. Limited spells known rather than infinite, and their Wild Shape isn't so infinitely diverse anymore.
Another minor change that helps is to allow a full attack after a move action. Limited mobility screws over conventional melee quite a bit (though that change alone isn't enough).
This keeps the "traditional" D&D flavor for us, but requires a vast amount of work and even more playtesting. For people with less time and motivation, and less pickiness among players with regards to sources, Chris' recommendation is sound. The much-maligned Tome of Battle is a quick substitute -- if you replace the fighter with the warblade, and the paladin with the crusader, you can still make a viable Cuchulainn-like warrior at higher levels.
Forget quick fix, Tome of Battle is actually good. And quick fixes with minimal effort are generally best, even if you do have the time, as it's easier to analyze their full impact on the system quickly. Rebuilding a system from scratch isn't much of a fix, and it's especially not one that you can easily pass along to your fellow gamer, or quickly run through with a new player. Culling the stuff that doesn't work while tweaking the stuff that does, however? Far more effective in the absolute sense. With regards to fixing the system, K.I.S.S. applies.
Lastly, and this is a deadly sober, absolutely serious question: what's your proposed fix? I'll admit my pet peeve in all of these discussions: somebody who says "X is broken" or "X is wrong" instead of "X is broken and here's how I think we can make it work." or "X is wrong and here's my proposal for setting it right."
I don't need to propose one. 4e did a fantastic job of making martial characters just as interesting and fun to play at all levels as spellcasters are. Someone else already fixed the problem better than I ever could.
Also, the excellent balance of 4e makes for some blandness, the only real differences between the classes is flavor, and the more you play, the more similar everything seems, trust me, I played it extensively.
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Except that's not a fix of the system your discussing, it's a very different system.In essence, that's cheating on the question of "what is your fix" lol.
I thought Scott had proposed a fix...
..possibly without realizing it.Allowing magic items to flow like an avalanche for the fighter will boost his versatility and strength. There is some merit to this argument, as a "wall of force"-aphile wizard can do little to a fighter with a supply of Rods of Cancellation. I don't think this is the optimal solution, but it could be the easiest solution to not change rules or class abilities.