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I hope the above doesn't come off as overly critical. You obviously gave thoughtful consideration to how to address the problem.
. No, this really was off the cuff, with no analysis except the calculations of spell level x spell slots for wizards.
My suggestions would change the paradigms of casters and martials for sure. But that's the point, isn't it? Because right now the paradigms are pretty screwed up. Given the relative scarcity of spell power, spells would have to be changed. I think increasing durations is one way to make them Worthwhile without upping the power level -like you can make a monster more relevant by adding HP without making him a party killer or a cakewalk.
::shrug::
These suggestions only do part of the job, they leave almost untouched all the systemic problems in a d20 system based on increasing modifiers rather than increasing die size or increasing number of dice to indicate greater skill at a task. But I felt addressing any of those issues directly would be getting too far off topic.
personally im a believer in thr mountain cleave law: if you can destroy cities with a single word, then i can cleave mountains with my sword.
I've been working on a feat system geared towards martials. Mostly Fighters/Rogues who have little to no real 'abilities' beyond more feats.
By Abilities, I mean look at every single class out there. They mostly have tons of abilities that could be replaced out for different archetypes. Rogues have 2 kinds of archetypes though, ones that replace Trapfinding/Trap sense, and ones that replace Uncanny Dodge/Improved Uncanny dodge.
After level 8, rogues have no class features other than the capstone, only 'feats' disguised as rogue talents. Though admittedly some are fairly nice in the advance department. However those are given away to other classes. The only thing that is even the rogues anymore is the master strike ability, and that is kinda weak.
Fighter is 10 feats, 4 weapon trainings 4 armor trainings and mastery with each. Then a very weak resistance to a very specific effect. Might as well have Pickle Resistance for that one.
A lot of things have to go right when you cast a spell. If they don't, you can find yourself in a bad situation.
Casters don't always beat the enemy's defenses. Sometimes, the game-changing spell fizzles, or does less than you needed. Yeah, they've got other spells, but for the rest of this round, that's all.
It's a fair point. Save-or-lose spells are only awesome so long as your opponent doesn't make the save.
That said, most casters who know the system inside and out will have options for bypassing most of the defenses against magic: targeting weak saves, SR: No spells, and such.
in another thread I posted a build that forces 2 DC 44 Will saves for Feeblemind in a round, beating SR 38 with a Roll of 1. Alternativelly, it could target a DC35 (roll twice get lower) against the weak save, or cast a DC 32 spell that stuns you 1d4+1 rounds if you fail, or 1 if you make the save, which you could cast repeateadly, making single target combats moot. As a backup weapon, she have 240 average fireball, all that ehile flying invisible and immune to true seeing/see invisibility, with 50+AC.
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Changing the casting times of magic has a major impact on them.
If all Summons were full-round actions and couldn't be shortened, a conjuror would have to pray he doesn't get hit for an entire round or lose his spell.
Evocations, abjurations and illusions could be the only spells that go off with a standard action - battle magic. Transmutation and necromantic attack spells would require at least a full attack action -powerful wizardry. Divinations, summonings and non-combat effects would take a full attack or longer to get off.
I really feel the casting time of spells is under-emphasized as a means of balance.
==Aelryinth
That's a good point and it's also true that concentration checks have become far too easy.
To the point that "combat casting" isn't worth bothering with. Not that I recommend there be a "feat tax" for casting, but getting hit while casting needs to become something to worry about again.
(wise squishies stay behind meatshields anyhow, but, still...)
Full round magic also make spell-combos harder. Quickened Enervation + Feeblemind or cloud kill + Quickened Resiliant sphere or acid fog+Earth to mud are examples of "oh, I won initiarive. Let's bypass this encounter"
Casting times were what kept casters in 1E in control. It was dangerous trying to get a spell off in melee.
Also, another thing: In 1E, you could grab control of a summoner's monsters with a successful dispel check! Imagine the surpise on the conjurors face when the NPC grabs ahold of his Monster Summon VIII and sends it back at him. There is a reason in lore that you always had protection against the monsters you called on...
And the old paradigm of dispel magic working against every spell in its area was also a balance check...magic was always easier to unmake then make. The only reason it changed is because rolling against 'all those spells slows down the game'.
The original Dispel Magic was 50% success, -2% per level below, +5% per level above. Dispel was MEANT to succeed frequently. Oh, and no level cap on the dispel, meaning you only had to spend low level slots for full effect.
==Aelryinth
@ Jess,
"Martials-protect-casters" is very good design, IMHO, because it reinforces team play and interlocking roles. I tried to incorporate some of that into Kirthfinder, but I'd like to see it developed a lot more.
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I prefer 'Martials-resist-casters', which makes them great bodyguards as a side effect...and also great caster slayers.
==Aelryinth
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I don't see how nerfing casters helps martials.
If anything it hurts them, by preventing casters from wanting to waste their actions on buffing.
You don't need a solution to find a problem.
If you've got the expertise to find a real problem, then you've got the expertise to provide an analysis and propose corrections.
Anyone can say "this sucks." A 12-year-old stoner with an IQ of 60 can look at the schematics for the Mir space station and say "this is stupid." It's safe to ignore him, especially when it's clear he didn't bother to read most of it. It's when the same kid says, "this won't work because you crossed lines D and QXZ and that will make the Frozbarr overheat in this valve," then you need to listen to him. Carefully.
Spells like plane shift definitely shoul be take more time than a standar action.
A melee touch spell that allows a save?
Why wouldn't that be a standard action?
You don't need a solution to find a problem.If you've got the expertise to find a real problem, then you've got the expertise to provide an analysis and propose corrections.
Anyone can say "this sucks." A 12-year-old stoner with an IQ of 60 can look at the schematics for the Mir space station and say "this is stupid." It's safe to ignore him, especially when it's clear he didn't bother to read most of it. It's when the same kid says, "this won't work because you crossed lines D and QXZ and that will make the Frozbarr overheat in this valve," then you need to listen to him. Carefully.
False. That is not true. I do not need to offer a counter solution to justify you being wrong about this.
Also both of those examples, the person did not a offer a solution.
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Because it's a transport spell, and a lethal one (send them to the negative energy plane).
Dim Door is specifically made for use in combat. But Teleport and Plane Shift should definitely be full-round casting times, at least! I'm of the opinion if you can't Teleport someone against their will, you certainly shouldn't be able to Plane Shift them, unless they can make a save to be thrown back before they die...
==Aelryinth
Spells like plane shift definitely shoul be take more time than a standar action.A melee touch spell that allows a save? Why wouldn't that be a standard action?
A 5th level spell that can be used to "exile enemy to Hell" or equally to "get the whole party instantaneously out of danger."
Plane shift is, IMHO, the best (read: most powerful) spell in the entire game for its level.As a cleric spell in particular, it's OUTRAGEOUSLY under-leveled -- it's like if slay living actually still killed on a save, but could also be used to transport the entire party out of harm's way.
False. That is not true. I do not need to offer a counter solution to justify you being wrong about this.
You saying "false" doesn't convince anyone that anything is false. You need to provide reasons, which again you fail to do. In the words of Jeff Lebowski, "That's just, like, your opinion, man."
Also both of those examples, the person did not a offer a solution.
Person B provided the reason things wouldn't work, and a path to improving them. If that's not full solution, it's the next best thing.
Slay living allow you to loot tge corpse. That's a big deal
False. That is not true. I do not need to offer a counter solution to justify you being wrong about this.You saying "false" doesn't convince anyone that anything is false. You need to provide reasons, which again you fail to do. In the words of Jeff Lebowski, "That's just, like, your opinion, man."
Also both of those examples, the person did not a offer a solution.Person B provided the reason things wouldn't work, and a path to improving them. If that's not full solution, it's the next best thing.
Person B offered no path to improving them. He pointed out detailed problems.
Your guy's bar for OP is ridiculously low. I would have to run all monk, rogue, fighter parties before I felt the same way you guys do about casters.
Person B offered no path to improving them. He pointed out detailed problems.
And if you don't see how that helps to arrive at a solution, there's no point in talking, is there?
Are you honestly claiming that "X doesn't work because Y" is equal in value to "Heh, lame, heh"?
Your guy's bar for OP is ridiculously low.
Maybe it's your math skills -- I've tried to point out that, for positive integer values of A and B, A+B > A. You can claim that's "false," but...
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Spells like plane shift definitely shoul be take more time than a standar action.A melee touch spell that allows a save? Why wouldn't that be a standard action?A 5th level spell that can be used to "exile enemy to Hell" or equally to "get the whole party instantaneously out of danger."
Plane shift is, IMHO, the best (read: most powerful) spell in the entire game for its level.
As a cleric spell in particular, it's OUTRAGEOUSLY under-leveled -- it's like if slay living actually still killed on a save, but could also be used to transport the entire party out of harm's way.
It probably would be a bit more reasonable if Plane Shift only worked for your party and there was a different, (possibly higher-level) spell for forcibly sending enemies to another plane where they would almost certainly die.
Person B offered no path to improving them. He pointed out detailed problems.And if you don't see how that helps to arrive at a solution, there's no point in talking, is there?
Are you honestly claiming that "X doesn't work because Y" is equal in value to "Heh, lame, heh"?
You must have zero self awareness. You said that a person needs to offer a solution before their criticisms are valid. I said that is not true. You then agree with me and call me wrong.
I think the Vancian paradigm has to go if casters are going to be in line with martials. Casters need to be unreliable, but people aren't satisfied to play unreliable casters with limited slots.
If casters were skill check limited instead of slot limited they would average the same amount of magic per round for one encounter or a dozen. The daily resource attrition paradigm for encounter design has pretty much proven a flop.
Suppose that casting a spell requires a number of move actions equal to its spell level and a caster level check with a DC of the 10 plus the caster level plus 5 per move action of casting time reduction.
Spells cast at full casting time work all the time at int 28. Make it a skill check but never a class skill and casting is reliable at int 22 below level 10 with skill focus. But only first and second level spells can be cast inside of a combat round. Third level spells rushed in a full round action would have an extra 25% fail rate beyond what is normal and every higher level would be worse, but the increases could be recovered by casting at a reduced caster level within the limits of a spells minimum caster level. Or if you trust your friends you could take your time.
Go play 4e then. Some of us like pathfinder and don't want to ruin it to accommodate people who play un-optimized martials.
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And we'd run all caster parties and really out-perform you.
1E casters were MUCH less dominant then they are now. Seeing caster dominance was actually a HUGE change in playstyle from 1 to 2E.
I mean, seriously, they considered giving fighters all those feats because they felt it might make him too strong. They totally ignored how many fighter-only things they gave away.
No Fighter-only Str limits.
No Fighter-only con bonus limits.
Bonuses at lower stat levels meant all classes could enjoy Str, Dex and Con bonuses that once took high stats to gain. Small gain, big rewards for point buy.
No more weapon profs. You get all martials, all simple, etc. You no longer have to pick a weapon carefully.
Dex limits on armor. WTH? That ONLY punishes heavy armor wearers! Like the mage and the rogue cared.
Reduced speed in heavy armor. In 1E, magic armor let you move at full speed, and was half weight. Even Mithral doesn't give you that, now.
Buffed BAB for all classes...except the melee classes, who already had full BAB. Thanks for nothing.
Gave every class multiple attacks.
Torched Fighter saves.
Gave all monsters Con bonuses to massively raise hp and make harder to kill.
Gave all monsters str bonuses to hit and damage to massive raise damage output.
Everyone got all hit dice at all levels, massively raising Hit Points.
Only fighter-only feats were weapon spec.
The cost of magic weapons is twice that of magic armor.
Making magic items easy meant casters now got tons more magic gear then gear-reliant melees, because the melees couldn't make their own, and the mages could.
Melee could no longer move and attack at full power.
Casters got:
Faster spells. Can't be interrupted in casting unless you are next to them or have a ready action.
Can move and cast without a problem.
Dispel Magic less effective against them.
Unlimited Con bonuses meant no HP suckage.
Spells got more effective at higher levels, because saves went DOWN relatively, not UP.
BAB improved for no reason.
Multiple attacks, because, hey, we're cool.
More spells for all classes from bonus attributes. Hey, where's the bonus feats for melee for a high Str?
Concentration checks to cast in combat were easy.
Prevalence of point-buy made them the most SAD classes and easiest to build.
And that's just the OBVIOUS stuff. Melees took it on the chin and casters stepped on a pillar in 3.5. There's a long ways to go to balance the scales again.
==Aelryinth
Many of us playing pathfinder started with 3.5. I haven't played editions before that and do not care if those editions can justify a power seep.
I don't see how nerfing casters helps Martials.
If anything it hurts them, by preventing casters from wanting to waste their actions on buffing.
I don't always agree with Marthkus, but here he says something that reflects my concerns with respect to dramatically limiting the number of spells a caster can cast in a day, for example. The first spells to be ditched off a caster's lists will be occasionally useful spells that everyone in the party likes to have available when they're needed (The cry goes out in response, I can hear it's echoes now: "but you can scroll them!" - some people's universal response to anything, which goes in the gravel pile; "Vain to send the purblind and blind to the shore of a Pactolus never so golden: these find only gravel; the seer and finder alone picks up gold grains there." - why not just do away with spell slots alltogether and scroll everything? no? Ok then - the "universal scroll it, scroll it all recommendation" is off to the gravel pile).
Maybe the allotment of spells could be reduced, moderately. Some spells could have casting times increased - modestly.
I think most spells aren't broken, though. I don't think casters have to be changed radically. Just modestly.
I do think martials need a boost, and in those respects I tend to agree with the direction Kirth is aiming towards (if not all the details). (Also I wouldn't want PF Bards changed to resemble KF Bards, for example, but that's a digression).
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Vancian magic is a good system. There are other systems that could be fun, but you do not need to get rid of Vancian to introduce those other systems.
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Subtle changes like spellcasting times can really take the wind out of powerful spells. If you keep getting interrupted trying to put in the combat-altering summon spells you love, you'll probably start switching to the faster and surer illusions, evocs and protective effects.
If Dispel returns to effectiveness, you become more reliant on gear and much less trusting of buffs, which eliminates a lot of gold-leverage casters have.
Letting melees move and full attack moves their damage potential way beyond any summoned creature. Simply make that an effect of class levels and using weapons. Natural hit dice doesn't grant the effect.
Remove multiple attacks from classes that don't need them. Multiple attacks was always the shtick of the melee classes. They and the rogues are probably the only classes that should have them. Let the rest blow feats on the Vital Strike tree, or take Melee levels. Multiple attacks are as precious as spellcasting, and should be valued the same. Handing them out willy-nilly is one of the key things devaluing the combat classes.
take a page from MMO's, and don't let spellcasters have the hit points that melees get. Fighters, who have no magic, should have the highest hit points (1 E barbs couldn't even USE magic gear until 8+!). Classes with spellcasting should never get a bonus higher then +5 on Con, spellcasters should never get above +2 or +3. Restrict their hit points, and their game play changes accordingly. More focus on protective effects means less overwhelming offensive dominance.
The paradigm against saves has to be watched carefully. If massive boosting of DC's for spells is possible, massive boosting of saves against them should also be possible. And creatures and PC's who don't cast should be the most resistant to magic of them all.
==Aelryinth
Subtle changes like spellcasting times can really take the wind out of powerful spells. If you keep getting interrupted trying to put in the combat-altering summon spells you love, you'll probably start switching to the faster and surer illusions, evocs and protective effects.
I tend to agree with this. Especially as someone who adventured during the era where casting spells involved "segments" (and thus affected initiative order. . .which thus affected how often you might get interrupted in the same round. But were a bother to track, and thus were dispensed with for ease-of-play. Especially since a lot of people stopped bothering to track them anyhow, because: annoying).
But the changes, IMO, should be as you said - subtle. Not dramatic.
On the one hand we have people who dismiss the whole problem (not you), and say it's "not found in their games," and on the other hand people who see the problem, but seem to be advocating changes that are more radical than are probably necessary. The game's magic system doesn't need to be ripped out & completely redesigned (unless, of course, one just prefers a different type of magic. But that's an aesthetic taste, rather than anything having to do with rebalancing the classes or the game as a whole, IMO).
The problem does exist but it is fixable, IMO, within the existing framework assumptions of the game, within the existing game engine. But now I'm repeating myself so I'll stop here. :p
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4E got rid of Vancian magic. ^_^
Many of us playing pathfinder started with 3.5. I haven't played editions before that and do not care if those editions can justify a power seep.
many of us did, and the martial disparity was waaaaay lower.
@Aelryinth you fforgot to mention everybody had pounce, making "on the move" melee much more powerful
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I don't think Vancian casting has to be removed. I think it has to be modified.
The dirty secret is, the mathematical system is inherently unstable.
You don't want a static system. Static systems are boring. When I had to choose my non-major technical elective in the engineering college my junior year, I had two choice: Statics or Thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is interesting. It's relevant to Computer Science and Engineering, even if it's outside my field of study, because the most common limit on computing power in a system is head dissipation. Statics is the study of physical force on static systems (We have a bridge. Given the information of the weight of each truss in this formation, give us the force exerted on truss 1 at point A.) Statics is BORING. But it was my junior year, and my other classes were already going to be ever so interesting, so I opted to take Statics. Boring is great for a stupid non-major class requirement. Not so much for a gaming system.
You want dynamic. But not just dynamic....you want some stability - some predictability. You want the correct balance of unpredictability that can be influenced through player skill / luck, and predictability so the system makes sense to the players.
d20 in D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder have multiple systems and pieces that interact to make the game wobble and topple over from a game of chance influenced by skill to a near binary "You can't win/You can't lose" scenario by high level. Subsystems diverge in power level as the game progresses, and what starts out feeling coherent eventually falls into peaks and valleys of relevance that players can only meld into a coherent game via DM fiat and/or gentlemen's agreements.
I would argue that any class with half or full casting follows an exponential power curve.
Using the spell level format from earlier, some "raw spellcasting power" calculations for differing classes:
Half Casting classes (bard, magus, inquisitor):
1 2 3 5 8 10 13 18 22 26 33 39 44 53 61 67 78 88 99 105
Full Casting Prepared (wizard, druid, cleric (not including domain)):
1 2 4 7 10 15 20 27 34 43 52 63 74 87 100 115 130 147 163 180
Full Casting Spontaneous (sorcerer, oracle):
3 4 5 12 14 25 30 45 52 71 80 103 114 141 154 185 200 235 252 270
These numbers above are hardly the end all and be all of "power", of course. Spontaneous casters should totally dominate, just looking at the numbers, but the lower versatility in their spell list lowers their relative power to be comparable to full prepared caster power. Also this kind of calculation sort of assumes that a 3rd level spell is three times better than a 1st level spell, and 1/3 as effective as a 9th level spell. For some spells, this may be true. In general, I think third level spells are a big jump in power over 2nd level, and I don't think a typical 3rd level spell is 1/3 as powerful as 9th level spell. But overall, you get the idea. Not only does the power of the these types of characters increase as they level, but they increase exponentially. They increase faster as the character levels.
compare this to mundanes. do you think the feat a fighter takes a 20th level, even the final capstone feat at the end of a long chain of feats, compares to the power level of the two additional 9th level spells a sorcerer can throw down at 20th? How about the additional 6th level spell a half caster gets? I personally feel that most mundane type characters level on a more logarithmic scale, but there's no easy way make a rough and tumble analysis across the board.
These are subsystem imbalances. that's ignoring the core mechanic's instability.
the game models increasing expertise in an ability by adding modifier bonuses (and penalties) to a d20 roll. the d20 represents the inherent randomness in the game world. It is static. Modifiers, as characters level, grow. Areas where a character is supremely proficient may have a modifier of about 35ish on the high end (Fighters BAB 20+ 5-8 str + 5 weapon + feats; Spellcraft 3 class skill + 20 ranks + 6 skill focus + 6 int), and around 0 on the low end.
Since the inherent randomness in the system is only a range of 20, a spread of 20 or more in modifiers turns this game from "you have a greater or lesser chance, based on skill" to a "You can or cannot, based on skill." This is an embedded, inherent weakness in high level play in the current d20 system. It cannot be fixed without HUGE systemic changes.
There are multiple solutions that can be adopted. My preferred solution is doing what you can to limit modifiers to any skill to no more than about a total of 15. Instead, I would rather indicate increased skill by increasing the number of die rolled, and taking the best result. To me this models things as "As you increase in skill, you more often use that skill perfectly".
rolling 5d20, a character would get a natural 20 approximately 22.5% of the time. If modifiers are limited, the raw recruit can sometimes get a lucky hit, but the 20th level fighter who rolls 5d20 would be rolling critical threats almost 1/4 of the time, though his attack bonus wouldn't necessarily be much higher.
Unfortunately, this is a really fundamental shift in the basic game systems. Pathfinder stuck with 3.5 mechanics for very good business reasons, and they're hesitant to do a system rewrite for even more very good business reasons. But while I think there are things that can be done to improve gameplay within the existing system, it's inherently going to still have the same issues due to an unstable foundation.
I find these conversations very interesting, but in the end I feel that unless you sort of do something like Kirth is doing, it's mostly just navel gazing. :) Add in the fact that Pathfinder devs have consistently said that they don't see the inherent imbalances (whether that's because they can't change it for their very good business reasons or because they really don't see it), and it's even more hopeless.
Ah well. Theory crafting is tons of fun anyway. :D
I apologize for typos. My cat feels very strongly that the keyboard is interfering with her ability to cuddle with me, and it's a little awkward to type at the moment.
I love how every martial thread turns into a thread about how to change everything in the game, but martials.
Seriously? Lay off the casters guys. They are not OP. If you really hate more than half the rules and more than half of the classes, maybe you should just go play a different game.
It also do not help that the most of the most evastating spell target Will and at the same time will is the weak point of a lot of monsters.
Yes casters weaken targets. Martials kill them. It's a good dichotomy.
My cat feels very strongly that the keyboard is interfering with her ability to cuddle with me, and it's a little awkward to type at the moment.
Arguecat and Factcat both agree that cats should be deferred to in all matters.
It Are a Fact.
I love how every martial thread turns into a thread about how to change everything in the game, but martials.
Seriously? Lay off the casters guys. They are not OP.
Well, they do have some problems that need fixing.
But I do agree with you that this thread should be the Martial fixit thread.
There are some caster threads floating around here, where caster-related things can be discussed. And all the focus on what to do (or not) about spellcasting has totally brought a stop to discussion about Martials in the Martials thread.