Providing balance for melee-types and spellcasters in a homebrew setting

[cfalcon]

Basically, if your players want this sort of game, you honestly have it.

In my games, there are some truly challenging monsters with a lot of extra health. These tend to reward the guys that can punch all day.

I don't suggest any of these wildly dramatic nerfs proposed in this thread. You can take a stock game and make it work. Seriously, I know like three players who can even play a damned wizard right, balancing the entire game around them just asinine.

[kyrt-ryder]

cfalcon wrote:

Basically, if your players want this sort of game, you honestly have it.

In my games, there are some truly challenging monsters with a lot of extra health. These tend to reward the guys that can punch all day.

I don't suggest any of these wildly dramatic nerfs proposed in this thread. You can take a stock game and make it work. Seriously, I know like three players who can even play a damned wizard right, balancing the entire game around them just asinine.

Um... sorry cfalcon, but that really isn't how it works. Lots more health on the monsters HINDERS the guys that can punch all day. They have to punch it MORE in order to bring it down, while the caster simply bypasses the HP and shuts it down, then proceeds to coup de grace it to death.

[Andrew Christian]

BYC wrote:

What if a party of all fighters fought only against fliers that go beyond the range of bows?

Or if fighters only went up against giants all the time, eating AoOs and getting grabbed and not being able to do anything.

I can do this too. In fact, I didn't even start it.

I'm not the one saying that spell casters are irrelevant. They are a very important and integral part of a party.

You guys are saying that melee guys are irrelevant.

Turning the argument around isn't really answering the question.

[Andrew Christian]

Trainwreck wrote:

Remember that I started this discussion with the intention of running a campaign from 1st level all the way up past 20th without leaving the melee classes on the sidelines feeling unneccessary. Like I said, I like the image of a heroic melee-oriented character or two playing an important role in the campaign. I'm just trying to figure out what sort of adjustments to make to allow that to happen.

I appreciate all the good suggestions and ideas that people have been bringing up to provide better balance.

Let's try to avoid the arguments (isn't that what the melee vs wizard thread is for?), and focus this thread more on practical tweaks to the game that will bring about my goal of a balanced campaign. Thanks.

And I'm thinking the only reason you need to do any tweaking at all, is if you have a disparity in how your players optimize their characters.

[kyrt-ryder]

I think one big problem here, is that these 'sticky feats' that enable a melee combatant to somewhat control the battle field are just that, feats.

If this sort of thing was made more part of the core combat mechanics (like the combat maneuvers) and made reasonably viable (rather than needing to burn feats just to be able to use them without getting b%@*~slapped by the monsters) then I think it would solve 'some' of these problems.

(Another problem, is that the melee guys are supposed to have significantly more HP than the squishies, but that just generally isn't the case. It's typically a difference of 20-40% at best, which doesn't really make much of a difference in the long run, AND burns up more healing resources because healing gives flat values and doesn't care what a character's HP total is.)

[BYC]

Andrew Christian wrote:

BYC wrote:

What if a party of all fighters fought only against fliers that go beyond the range of bows?

Or if fighters only went up against giants all the time, eating AoOs and getting grabbed and not being able to do anything.

I can do this too. In fact, I didn't even start it.

I'm not the one saying that spell casters are irrelevant. They are a very important and integral part of a party.

You guys are saying that melee guys are irrelevant.

Turning the argument around isn't really answering the question.

Then you should read what I've written. I've written that casters are better than non-casters. I'm not the type to go all-casters will resolve all problems. I completely believe that more casters is a better party than less casters though. Especially when cleric and druid are full casters that get rock solid fighting options as well.

[EWHM]

To some extent, you've got to decide what you as a GM want. If you assume a party size of 5, do you want to set your incentives such that a typical party is 3 noncasters, a divine caster and an arcane caster (this is my preference)? Or are you ok with your players gravitating towards 3 or 4 casters out of 5 PCs? My experience is that beyond level 6 or 7, I have to put my thumb on the scales to keep the party's noncasters feeling like equal contributors as opposed to 'junior partners' or worse. Since pretty much all of my players play a pretty broad mix of classes, I can't attribute it to the skill of the players either. And it's not as much in combat honestly where the junior partnerization happens as it is outside combat. The utility of flight, teleportation, scrying, and divination spells is just the tip of the iceberg. Your various wall spells, fabricate, transmute rock to mud, disintegrate, and move earth also have profound implications. This is to say nothing of your charm and illusion spells, which are far more GM-dependent in their scope.

[Fract]

kyrt-ryder wrote:

I think one big problem here, is that these 'sticky feats' that enable a melee combatant to somewhat control the battle field are just that, feats.

If this sort of thing was made more part of the core combat mechanics (like the combat maneuvers) and made reasonably viable (rather than needing to burn feats just to be able to use them without getting b~!@#slapped by the monsters) then I think it would solve 'some' of these problems.

This actually sounds like a really solid suggestion, and I may steal it for my own game.

Moving toward the OP's goal, which feats do folks think would be the most reasonable to convert into Combat Maneuvers?
Which ones would be more appropriate as Character Traits (assuming the DM is allowing said addition from the APG)?