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Just to jump in on the whole "earlier editions didn't mandate magical items," they sure as hell did.
Hey look, your fighter doesn't have a magical weapon and is fighting something that cannot be harmed without one. It is literally invincible unless you have a magic weapon.
There were quite a few monsters like that.
What earlier editions did do was assume that magic items wouldn't be spread out - that fighters would have most of them. That's why so many magic items are built for fighters.
I guess you missed the two times I specifically pointed out that the magic weapons were necessary for exactly the reason you stated.
That's cool. Whatever.
My point still stands, it was a completely different game, and the "Christmas Tree" effect wasn't necessary.
Houston - sorry if I missed it. My foul.
Also, the biggest problem in D&D as a whole is still the martial/magical divide. I said it on like page one (or two or three or whatever), I'm sayin' it now.
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Houston - sorry if I missed it. My foul.
Also, the biggest problem in D&D as a whole is still the martial/magical divide. I said it on like page one (or two or three or whatever), I'm sayin' it now.
I agree, it just wasn't as big a divide in the old game. I blame the change of the action economy and the casing defensively thing for a lot of it. And hit point inflation, and reliance on stats, and, well, quite a few things that changed from 1e to 2.5 to 3.x.
Customization and whatnot are 3x strengths, but they changed the undercarriage (action economy) too much in favor of casters.
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you never played 1e. And 2e was a different game, especially after all of the splats came out. A cloak of protection was nice, but you didn't really need it. The only thing anyone actually needed were weapons capable of overcoming the "+x needed to hit" stuff.
FWIW, I did play 1e, and I really disagree with you.
I think you could concievably run a 1E game in which magic items weren't that crucial, but the game out of the box really did not feel like it to me. A few things (e.g. girdle of giant strength for fighters) were just so overpowering relative to not having them, to a degree that I don't think even exists in core 3.X.
I will say that it was a lot more standard in the 1E era to write (for example) traps that would just flat out kill you no matter what your stats or items or saves were if you did the "wrong" thing -- but that, to me, doesn't equate to "magic was less important" so much as "magic was important, but some things that we would probably now call unfair or unfun didn't care about the magic."
Indeed. Most of the monsters in the manual would be invincible in a low fantasy setting.
And this is even more true for 2E, where you could drop a mountain on a minor demon or undead, and unless it was a magical mountain +1, it did jack, than for 3.X. Assertions that it is somehow easier to run low-magic game there are are false.
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And this is even more true for 2E, where you could drop a mountain on a minor demon or undead, and unless it was a magical mountain +1, it did jack, than for 3.X. Assertions that it is somehow easier to run low-magic game there are are false.
Unless your definition of low-magic involves no such encounters, or the intent that PCs can only run from such encounters.
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you never played 1e.
I started gaming seriously with 2e, yes.
And 2e was a different game, especially after all of the splats came out. A cloak of protection was nice, but you didn't really need it.
When the game had as many, if not more SoLs and SoDs (on monsters too), and without a cloak of protection they dropped you more than 50% of the time within the range of levels where I've seen games actually played? No, you really, really needed it. And the only way I see 1e could have been seriously different is the assumption that players would actually be able to reach high levels.
And, remember, the nastiest spells in 1e didn't allow a save. Of course, it was much easier (until projected image came into play) to disrupt spell casting, so saves came up even less frequently in 1e than later editions.
Again, maybe in 1E. In 2E your low-level spells were considerably faster than swords people wanted to use. And by the time you got high-level spells, you probably had at least Stoneskin always up, so disrupting you was actually really hard.
And more importantly, the casters weren't even the biggest part of the problem. Alot of stuff in MMs destroyed PCs on a failed save.
My point still stands, it was a completely different game, and the "Christmas Tree" effect wasn't necessary.
Just as an aside, I pulled out a character sheet from the last 1st edition campaign I played (in the 1980s, yes. I keep my characters, yes.)
He was an Unearthed Arcana Wood Elf Multi-class character, Fighter 11/Assassin 13 when he died permanently. (I don't recall if that was within the legal range for Wood Elves, or if my DM just hand-waved the maximum levels for demi-humans.)
His magic items were:
Shortsword +1, +4 vs Reptiles
Shortsword +1
Dagger +4
Plate Mail +1
Boots of Elvenkind
He had the following items 'marked out' which means I'd failed a save against something fairly recently, and those items had been destroyed:
Ring of Protection +2
Cloak of Elvenkind
That was it. A Character with something along the lines of 1,700,000 XP that I'd played for four years, and that was his gear. And I never felt like I was under-geared, or being punished, or that other characters had 'better stuff' than me.
Or that such encounters be plot devices, where the party knows what they may need to fight, and can quest for ingredients to ointments of magic weapon or whatever for when the big fight arrives.
I prefer this, myself.
Whenever people ask me if they can have this or that magic item or want to create something, I try to make up with some kind of quest that is, possibly, more interesting than the ordinary MMO fetch quest, or ask for something different than the trite and typical 20 bear asses.
Just as an aside, I pulled out a character sheet from the last 1st edition campaign I played (in the 1980s, yes. I keep my characters, yes.)
He was an Unearthed Arcana Wood Elf Multi-class character, Fighter 11/Assassin 13 when he died permanently. (I don't recall if that was within the legal range for Wood Elves, or if my DM just hand-waved the maximum levels for demi-humans.)
His magic items were:
Shortsword +1, +4 vs Reptiles
Shortsword +1
Dagger +4
Plate Mail +1
Boots of ElvenkindHe had the following items 'marked out' which means I'd failed a save against something fairly recently, and those items had been destroyed:
Ring of Protection +2
Cloak of ElvenkindThat was it. A Character with something along the lines of 1,700,000 XP that I'd played for four years, and that was his gear. And I never felt like I was under-geared, or being punished, or that other characters had 'better stuff' than me.
This.
I wish we could go back there, where magic items were great and fun and in no way "required", except when you had to quest for them because otherwise, the Evil Demon Lord of Kszba'bbsadhk would conquer the kingdom, his unholy skin able to turn sword, arrow and spear aside with no harm to his body. Or, at least, that's how I read "you need a +1 or better weapon to hurt this monster".
As much as I like 4e and the way it streamlined rules and made the arms race a game anyone can play, at any level, it still has "mandatory" magical equipment, albeit yeah, three mandatory items are better than a christmas tree.
Don't get me wrong, I know people have tried to fix this problem with various houserules, some of which quite encyclopedic, but I just wish there was a simpler fix rather than "turn magic items into inherent bonuses" which kind of takes away the magic from magic items.
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Don't get me wrong, I know people have tried to fix this problem with various houserules, some of which quite encyclopedic, but I just wish there was a simpler fix rather than "turn magic items into inherent bonuses" which kind of takes away the magic from magic items.
The solution is to have vertical bonuses based on level while horizontal bonuses come from magic items. Meaning, when you pick up a magic sword, the bonus it has is based on what level you are. A 1st level commoner gets a +1, but a 15th level fighter gets a +5. Meanwhile, both of them can use it to turn beavers into gold, because that's a new ability, not an increase to one you already have.
Houston - sorry if I missed it. My foul.
Also, the biggest problem in D&D as a whole is still the martial/magical divide. I said it on like page one (or two or three or whatever), I'm sayin' it now.
I agree, it just wasn't as big a divide in the old game. I blame the change of the action economy and the casing defensively thing for a lot of it. And hit point inflation, and reliance on stats, and, well, quite a few things that changed from 1e to 2.5 to 3.x.
Customization and whatnot are 3x strengths, but they changed the undercarriage (action economy) too much in favor of casters.
Eh, I'm actually going to have to disagree.
I'm stating that the biggest problem in pathfinder is frankly a problem even in earlier editions - that the divide was ever there in the first place.
When you create a mundane/magic divide amongst classes, you are creating a protagonist/non-character divide. Or a PC/NPC divide, if you want.
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Houston - sorry if I missed it. My foul.
Also, the biggest problem in D&D as a whole is still the martial/magical divide. I said it on like page one (or two or three or whatever), I'm sayin' it now.
I agree, it just wasn't as big a divide in the old game. I blame the change of the action economy and the casing defensively thing for a lot of it. And hit point inflation, and reliance on stats, and, well, quite a few things that changed from 1e to 2.5 to 3.x.
Customization and whatnot are 3x strengths, but they changed the undercarriage (action economy) too much in favor of casters.
Eh, I'm actually going to have to disagree.
I'm stating that the biggest problem in pathfinder is frankly a problem even in earlier editions - that the divide was ever there in the first place.
When you create a mundane/magic divide amongst classes, you are creating a protagonist/non-character divide. Or a PC/NPC divide, if you want.
The divide in 1e was less of an issue, frankly. The game wasn't designed to go past level 12 or so, really, and spell casting was so hard in melee (Gygax's words) it wasn't even funny, to the point where he wrote (and I paraphrase) "If you try to cast in melee you're an idiot".
Magic was designed to be powerful and earth shattering in 1e. It was also designed to be very difficult and dangerous. That was a feature in 1e. And not one that bothered me.
When they changed the action economy (you couldn't move and cast in the same round if a spell had a somatic component in 1e), and they introduced concentration checks and casting defensively, they made casting far too easy. And they changed a pretty nice class feature fighters had: the best saves in the game.
I could go into the other differences, but action economy and the saves issue (the best spells attack will, which always screws the fighter) are the two glaring offenders in my eyes.
We didn't see a problem back in the day, really. The biggest beef with the fighter was they were boring, not that they couldn't keep up with the wizard.
See, you're talking all about - and only about - combat.
My problem ranges far, far beyond that.
At the end of the campaign, regardless of combat, the wizard has distinctively far more narrative power then the fighter does.
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See, you're talking all about - and only about - combat.
My problem ranges far, far beyond that.
At the end of the campaign, regardless of combat, the wizard has distinctively far more narrative power then the fighter does.
I'm talking about 1e. There were no real rules for out of combat stuff. All the classes were on equal footing there. So, I have no idea what issues you would have with out of combat situations in 1e. And "narrative power" is in the hands of the player in 1e. Your character sheet has nothing to make one or another class have more "narrative power" (whatever that means).
In 3x/Pf, you can blame the wizard's main stat for that. Wizards are always going to be skill point rich, with their bonuses from INT. Giving fighters only 2sp a level, then making dumping intelligence so attractive for fighters is a design flaw that needs to be addressed.
How are you using "narrative power"?
The ability to change the world, to reshape it in you image. The ability to be in one place one moment, and be on the opposite side of the planet ten minutes later. Basically, he's talking about magic. Noncasters have some narrative power if they're charming enough to gather a following and build nations or whatnot (which Fighters apparently were given some form of automatically in older editions) but nothing even close to the scale of narrative power that magic provides, especially wizard/sorcerer magic, although Druidic and Clergical magic still far outdoes noncasters.See, you're talking all about - and only about - combat.
My problem ranges far, far beyond that.
At the end of the campaign, regardless of combat, the wizard has distinctively far more narrative power then the fighter does.
I'm talking about 1e. There were no real rules for out of combat stuff. All the classes were on equal footing there. So, I have no idea what issues you would have with out of combat situations in 1e. And "narrative power" is in the hands of the player in 1e. Your character sheet has nothing to make one or another class have more "narrative power" (whatever that means).
In 3x/Pf, you can blame the wizard's main stat for that. Wizards are always going to be skill point rich, with their bonuses from INT. Giving fighters only 2sp a level, then making dumping intelligence so attractive for fighters is a design flaw that needs to be addressed.
How are you using "narrative power"?
One interesting thing that has come up in our RL campaign is our party wizard getting access to spells like teleport and scry, which are the start of the whole wizard-world shaping thing. However, there are other NPC wizards, some of them very dastardly out there, and all of his high level slots are being used for things like non-detection and mage's private sanctum, etc, just so we can rest without being scry n' fried.
This whole situation has been termed wizard-chess. So even though a lone high level wizard has world bending power, there are other high level wizards who also has world bending powers, and most likely a different agenda. If you end up using your high level slots to do something grand, you lose them for your own defense.
Does this put fighters in a narrative space equal to a wizard? no. But the wizard is not alone in his narrative space, able to F with the world at will, or at least without dire consequences.
Worst thing about pathfinder?
It would have to be these forums, or rather some of the users on them.
Dont get me wrong, its a really good board, a lot of good comes from it. I am just so sick of all the threads made by people complaining about rogues or how pure melee and magic classes are not balanced.
I get the feeling some of these people wont be happy until all classes have full BAB, d10 hp and all the normal class bonuses. Cant these guys get asked to kindly go play 4th Edition or WoW?
They are just taking the fun away from the other players...
Okay that is my rant done for now. I will simply try ignoring the kind of threads about these things.
I get the feeling some of these people wont be happy until all classes have full BAB, d10 hp and all the normal class bonuses. Cant these guys get asked to kindly go play 4th Edition or WoW?That was uncalled for and not at all helpful to the discussion.
+1.
IMHO, balanced in a bad way looks like 4E; it's an amazingly balanced game, but at the cost of the things I like about D&D.
Balanced in a good way looks more like Starcraft: each option (race) plays fairly different from the others, but even in very high level tournament play one isn't clearly the smart choice and one isn't clearly the trap choice.
I think we're all adult enough to understand that you can say something like "X could balance better in Pathfinder if Y was changed" without some kind of histrionic slippery slope turning that into "I want PF to be just like 4E and WoW."