Man, Marthkus just wears you down with his combination of being wrong and persistent. But you've been a trooper for hanging around as long as you have. Personally I don't know how to respond to a statement like "34 spell slots IS LIMITED SPELL SLOTS" beyond just shaking my head and moving on.The fighter has more than 34 attacks in one day.
So? How many does it take to win a fight? I just don't understand why you don't understand that mid to high level characters have more resources then they can reasonably expend in one day.
I'm honestly convinced that you've never actually played a game with a mid to high level caster. Or heck, even a barbarian or other class with "limited" resources.
Aside from routinely in most of my campaigns that I play in. Not to mentioned I DM'd a campaign from 1-36. So don't tell me I don't know what higher level play looks like. Our party Warlock ended up being the most effective caster. Especially once we hit epics.
I'm convinced you have never played a game where the GM doesn't just bend over for the casting classes and lets the party rest every 5 minutes.
I regularly end game days with resources unused.
That's the whole point of playing conservatively. Chances are that once you run out of resources its TPK. Thankfully martial characters are there to help the party stretch out their resources.
You know unless your martial character is a blaster wizard.
Does he need all 34+ attacks in one day? Mine don't.Mine do. And I don't have to conserve them for combat. I don't need to waste a spell to kick down a door.
The fact that your fighter needs 34 attacks to win a fight tells me a lot about your fighter builds. Maybe switch to another class? There are some pretty great caster builds on this one! Guaranteed not to need 34 attacks to win an encounter!
The fact that your fighter needs 34 attacks to win a fight tells me a lot about your fighter builds. Maybe switch to another class? There are some pretty great caster builds on this one! Guaranteed not to need 34 attacks to win an encounter!Does he need all 34+ attacks in one day? Mine don't.Mine do. And I don't have to conserve them for combat. I don't need to waste a spell to kick down a door.
I said per day not fight. But don't read words when it suits you.
If a warlcok was your best caster then your other caster players really must have been incompetent.
Did I mention we reached level 36? Those epic feats.
Ahahahahahaha, Epic Spellcasting is pretty much hands down the most broken and exploitable thing ever printed in 3.5. It's more powerful than every epic feat, feat, non-epic spells, power, and ability in the game COMBINED. If you think epic feats are even remotely comparable to epic casting, than your viewpoint is skewed that it speaks for itself.
Which everyone gets....
The warlocks had their own feats, which were pretty much better than everyone else's.
Which everyone gets....The warlocks had their own feats, which were pretty much better than everyone else's.
If you want to know a bad argument that no one with any level of system of mastery should take seriously... this speaks for itself.
Fighters don't stretch party resources, they drain them.
while the ranger and paladin can use cure wands as a class feature with 1 level. and get a handful of free buffs per day
the fighter, to use scrolls and wands, requires significant investment to pull it off. a feature new to pathfinder thank's to PFs skill system
3.5, fighters had to blow double cost for half benefit in UMD, and 3.0, they couldn't even purchase ranks.
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You still haven't answered the question I've made SEVERAL times. How many encounters per day does your GM use on average?
Well, in 24 hours, one could conceivably have 14,400 one-round combat encounters, during none of which his fighter takes any damage, obviously. I'd say after the two-thousandth fight, the advantage may well accrue to his untouchable fighter. We'll assume an infinitely long 5' corridor, down which an infinite procession of kobolds is proceeding....
Fighters don't stretch party resources, they drain them.
while the ranger and paladin can use cure wands as a class feature with 1 level. and get a handful of free buffs per day
the fighter, to use scrolls and wands, requires significant investment to pull it off. a feature new to pathfinder thank's to PFs skill system
3.5, fighters had to blow double cost for half benefit in UMD, and 3.0, they couldn't even purchase ranks.
The pathfinder fighter gets UMD as a consequence of getting a good perception score. It cost 1 skill point per level and 5/6 of a feat to auto succeed wand checks by level 10.
Barely an investment at all. For the fighter.
Fighters don't stretch party resources, they drain them.
while the ranger and paladin can use cure wands as a class feature with 1 level. and get a handful of free buffs per day
the fighter, to use scrolls and wands, requires significant investment to pull it off. a feature new to pathfinder thank's to PFs skill system
3.5, fighters had to blow double cost for half benefit in UMD, and 3.0, they couldn't even purchase ranks.
The pathfinder fighter gets UMD as a consequence of getting a good perception score. It cost 1 skill point per level and 5/6 of a feat to auto succeed wand checks by level 10.
Barely an investment at all. For the fighter.
but where are you getting the skill points to afford both?
that eats up your 2 per level, and one of your 2 traits, maybe a feat too
the feat isn't a big deal, but you invested half your akill points over 10 levels
Human with 10 int.
Focus study.
Assume no traits
Grab additional traits. One for perception, one for UMD
Focus study gives 3 skill focus feats.
You have 1 skill left to choose and it gets skill focus at level 16. Personally I choose survival. Some would rather have intimidate and maybe throw in another feat to make that better.
Regardless each skill gets skill focus for 1/3 of a feat. You get perception and UMD as class skills for 1/2 a feat each. Getting UMD cost 5/6 of a feat and 1 skill point per level that wasn't going to go anywhere particularly useful anyways.
Look at the fighter skill list. Yes I am going out of my way not to throw skill points into most of those skills. meh-vile.
I regularly end game days with resources unused.
Same here. Even at high levels.
When I challenge a party I don't try to make them run out of resources, I try to challenge the best resources they have.
Not sure I completely accept the premise here, but for the sake of participation, I'll play.
First it's not as clear as crossing a line where the casters suddenly overshadow the martials. There's more than one line being crossed here.
Around level 5 most casters cross a line where they become able to dominate at least a single encounter per day. But the martial characters still are more effective overall throughout the day, and a poorly played caster might blow their limited spells such that they don't have them when they need them.
Around level 9 or so casters are able to dominate most, if not all, encounters the party has. However, at this level usually the most effective way to do that is with buffs, enhancements and healing that allow the martial characters to still shine.
Around level 13 casters can pretty much become the whole game.
I tend to prefer playing somewhere between level 5 and level 13, and that's not coincidental.
Great post AD.
I agree with everything but to me the flip is probably a bit earlier, but it’s hard to say since as you put it: There's more than one line being crossed here.To me the flip happens at level 9/10, but it isn’t that bad at those levels. Casters can do a lot of crazy stuff even earlier, when they get their 3rd level spells (like fly, stinking cloud, fireball, slow and haste, etc.) but it’s when they get 4th level spells (Charm Monster, Arcane Eye, some of the wall spells, Enervation, Dimension Door, Black Tentacles, Invisibility, Greater) that they really start feeling powerful in most encounters and they got enough cash to have some back up scrolls.
To me the game starts breaking down round level 9/10 with 5th level spells. It is not only a matter of casters getting buffs and healing spells, casters get game breaking spells like Plane Shift, Teleport, the wall spells, powerful summons, etc. Also the difference between a good save and a bad save really start hurting around level 10.
Funny enough that never bothered me that much. Could be that I like playing hybride classes such as the Bard and Paladin.
It isn’t until level 11 that it becomes obvious that you’re playing an epic game and that the melee characters fall behind. When you get that third attack and by then you possibly have a pair of boots that can haste you are really falling behind when you can’t full attack. At the same time full casters get 6th level spells (Find the Path, Wind Walk, Dispel Magic, Greater, Heal, SM6, Programmed Image, Contingency, etc).
Also the mundane classes are really hurting earlier than level 11. There is a real difference between a level 11 ranger and a level 11 fighter or between an level 11 rogue vs a level 11 Paladin.
So to me: Flip starts at level 8. Things gets crazy at level 9/10 but is still playable and fun. At level 11 the difference between a full melee attack and a “I move + I hit you with my stick once” is obvious and casters getting their 6th level spells pretty much alters the game all together. This is the level I would say changes the game. 11 or posibly even at level 10.
By level 13 the flip is an undisputed truth.
Yet, I do enjoy playing the game at level 13 :-)
Human with 10 int.
Focus study.
Assume no traits
Grab additional traits. One for perception, one for UMD
Focus study gives 3 skill focus feats.
You have 1 skill left to choose and it gets skill focus at level 16. Personally I choose survival. Some would rather have intimidate and maybe throw in another feat to make that better.
Regardless each skill gets skill focus for 1/3 of a feat. You get perception and UMD as class skills for 1/2 a feat each. Getting UMD cost 5/6 of a feat and 1 skill point per level that wasn't going to go anywhere particularly useful anyways.
Look at the fighter skill list. Yes I am going out of my way not to throw skill points into most of those skills. meh-vile.
for a generic perception trait, you would have to homebrew one, because all the ones that grant it are either race exclusive, or pathfinder society exclusive. there is one in the pathfinder society guide to organized play, but it requires you to be a member of a specific lodge for something so generic.
I'd say it starts around levels 9-11 where the difference between a Good Saving Throw and a Bad one starts to really matter and the casters can optimise their spellcasting to suit their opponents.
To many martial characters, AC stands alone as the main buffer against their attacks becoming effective and Fortitude perhaps if you're clever enough to have means other than direct damaging to deal with your enemies.
There are many ways to increase one's AC. So for a martial character whose kit grinds down to landing their attacks, the difficulty curve of staying effective in combat stays more or less linear.
On the other hand, casters are blessed with different options. Say, you meet an enemy whose Con and thus Fort is so high you wouldn't want to waste your Disintegrate on it. What your average caster can do then is to use something that targets its Will. So to them, the same difficulty curve actually starts reaching its plateau because the means of buffing one's saving throws are significantly less than AC. And even when it does succeed on buffing their Saving Throws up the wazoo, casters can choose to sidestep the challenge by either retreating (teleport!) or blasting with spells that lower their ability to resist.
Martial characters don't have this luxury however. Worse, their ability to stay effective starts to get challenged by EVEN MORE resistances such as DR!
Oh but spellcasters need to deal with SR too, one might say. But the difference is that SR is hit-or-miss; even if you can't penetrate their SR for 3 rounds straight, a good ol' Confusion that does will clearly turn the tide of combat in your favour.
Damage Reduction though, is a flat value that applies to every single attack your martial character makes- who rely on making Full Attack actions for their much-relied upon dps. So unless you're a Pally fighting an evil monster, there are only so many options available from a very restricted list that you can overcome this issue.
Even if you manage to land a hit and deal more damage than the DR, it won't necessarily turn the tide of combat in your favour. Until you have done so some 20-odd times again.
So therein lies the inherent problem that creates the spellcaster-martial power disparity. Martial characters get too few options to deal with too many resistances while Spellcasters are overburdened with options to deal with limited number of resistances.
If all spellcasters really relied upon their direct-damaging spells to win combat, then they would be relatively well-balanced because there will be Energy Resistance/Immunities to consider and martial characters will beat blasters in terms of dps at any point of the game. Since that is NOT the case, the situation worsens with each level gained.
That was why ToB back in 3.5 was so well-received as a splatbook. It gave the martial characters finally an option to have many different options in combat (like ways to pull off combat manoeuvres that did not suck) and incresase their combat diversity with level.
So how do we address this issue without having the party fighter refusing to protect the wizzy because 'the game is balanced by casters being squishier than fighters'. That is NOT the way to improve the game and will only result in both parties being unhappy.
Hence I propose the idea that addressing the issue in its fundament should be done by giving Martial characters more options, NOT nerfing casters into the ground.
TL;DR fighters (martial characters in general) don't scale well into lategame because things like AC and DR (and their ability to overcome them) scale linearly throughout the game. On the other hand spellcasters scale much better because if plan A ('target Fortitude') didn't work, they have many more options ('pick the spell that doesn't need to pen SR', 'use Ice instead of Fire') and the challenge curve for them actually plateau off lategame because of that.
As such, allowing the fighters to have more flexible options will give a more favourable outcome than nerfing the casters because the latter will just result in both parties being bitter with each other.
Nerfing the wizzy because the fighter is jelly is like the party fighter refusing to protect the wizard because the game is 'balanced by spellcasters being squishier than the fighters'. No. They are meant to work as a team and the game should evolve around that.
p.s. weapon enchantments that force reflex saves for more damage? force will saves? More manageable combat manoeuvres and not-so-monstrous CMD on the monsters?
I personally feel that the combat manoeuvres in general are balanced toward low-level games where each and every move counts. Lategame where a single sword strike won't necessarily create a killing blow, it should become EASIER to do it (like not generating AoO) than harder that it is now.
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I believe that martials can remain fun all the way to 20th level, but I realize that that is in large part due to casters not intentionally making it not fun by stepping on their toes, which they are fully capable of doing.
Increasing the options of martial classes is definitely something that needs to be looked at, but I don't want them to become just another limited resource class. Especially since there has been a trend to give the classes so much of the "limited" resource that it is not really limited at all. I mean, what's the point of keeping track of rounds of rage at all if you never run out? It is just pointless paperwork.
That said, there are definitely some options for casters that need to be removed. And I'm not just talking about the obviously broken things that have apparently unintended consequences like Paragon Surge or Blood Money. Dazing Spell is just too good and add an effect to spells that really shouldn't have it. Spell Perfection and Magical Lineage allows for epic level spells, as do metamagic rods. Putting a hard cap to prevent spell casters from modifying their spell level above the highest level they are able to cast would go a long way to curb the most outrageous builds.
Finally, I would really love to hear what Paizo thinks about the current caster/martial balance. Is it working as designed? If it works for the most common play styles, should you really try to fix it so that those that actively try to break the game can't?
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I regularly end game days with resources unused.Same here. Even at high levels.
When I challenge a party I don't try to make them run out of resources, I try to challenge the best resources they have.
If you're forcing fewer than 14 encounters a day and/or not providing infinite free healing for fighters, you're obviously a Bad GM(TM)!
I don't see how the argument that casters need to rest 2/8 hours to reprepare spells can be handwaived away while the fighters needing 5 minutes (at the very highest levels) to heal up after unusually rough encounters is an issue worth taking seriously.
I've mainly been seeing the pro-martial crowd tooting the "you run out of class features!" horn, and it's the pro-caster crowd that responds with "is infinite HP a fighter class feature"? Fighters can't really heal themselves with any of their class features aside from UMD/wands, which costs a lot of money over time. Even if you say that they'll be healed by the party casters, then a fighter is still limited by spell slots (just not his own).
I think part of the issue may be that, at only 750 gp per wand of CLW, you're still blowing through something like 5,000 - 10,000 gp per day at the rate of encounters it takes to exhaust spellcasters. That makes a serious coke habit look cheap. Which means, after a few adventures, you can say goodbye to that nice magic sword and armor, because you'll have to hock them for more wands.
EDIT: Ninjad by MB.
You don't spend HP.
If casters are as God-like as everyone says, then no one is trying to hit the fighter anyways.
I actually played in a 3.5 game that went to 20th level. The DM believed in the "hit point damage is worthless" and threw a lot of "Save or Die" and other condition type spells. Our casters were of course used to this and already had a counters up like Death Ward, or would dispel the Baleful Polymorph or whatever. The martials had magic items like Scarab of Protection and such.
Meanwhile our martials (all of whom had a method of flying on their own at this level, btw) managed to close or make ranged attacks or whatever else and eventually killed the BBEG with hit point damage. We left the final epic fight with the main boss completely unharmed.
It was kinda anti-climactic honestly.
Party consisted of:
Universalist Wizard (battlefield control, buff and evocation)
Favored Soul (battlefield control, summoning and healing)
Scout (longbow archer)
Fighter/Tempest (two-weapon melee)
Barbarian/Bard/Dragon Disciple (greatsword melee)
It would be nice to define some level we're talking about. Because if the fighter is taking like 3000-7000 damage PER DAY, then I think it's a very unusual campaign.
Also, when people say "but what about if the caster don't have the correct spell prepared?" the answer is usually "scrolls!" and a single scroll can often cost more than three hundred hit point.
Note that a single scroll of say, Teleport, costs as much as 750 hit points of healing.
Also, note that I'm not Marthkus. I'm not saying casters suxx because they can only take on 16 encounters per day. I think fair should be fair though.
Plus wands of infernal healing heal 500 hp, making 1 hp worth 1.5 gold
I feel like when discussing this, with casters we go all "hey it's not explicitly prohibited so it's fine" and there are no issues with that so we can assume they do it and oh we can ignore this issue because time and money hardly matters at high levels etc etc, but when talking about martials we are like looking with a microscope to debunk any strength they might have.
I do think martials, and especially F/R/M, needs a buff. Probably quite a big buff. But I don't think we should put on some hyperbole where casters always have the right spell because scrolls are cheap! and fighters can't keep at full health because wands are expensive!
Wizards get Scribe Scroll. For them, scrolls ARE cheap-- a hell of a lot cheaper than wands are for UMD builds. 350 gp for a teleport is a pretty nice deal. Takes less than a day to scribe that, too.
But a scroll of teleport isn't really necessary, since you can leave spell slots unprepared and take 15 minutes to memorize it if you need to travel someplace. Wizards have ridiculous out-of-combat utility because they don't have to prepare all of their spell slots in advance, and can often have "just the right spell", as you put it. They just need 15 minutes-- and that goes down to 1 minute if they take Fast Learner. With this, I find that the need for scrolls is pretty limited a lot of the time.
In-combat, this is more limited, of course. But if they take a bonded object as their Arcane Bond, they can have "just the right spell" even in combat once/day. Twice if they take Improved Arcane Bond. The "schroedinger's wizard" criticisms are often well-founded, but the fact is that a wizard can have the right spell prepared more often than not if that's what their build is going for.
350 gp is still about 130-280 hit points. And honestly, that is quite a lot.
Wands are expensive when you want to use them offensively or have decent-level buffs like Haste on them. A wand of infernal healing or even CLW is dirt cheap for it's healing; at the level where they'd go through a whole wand in a single day, it's small enough that it practically won't even dent their wealth.
And if we assume the fighter will take more damage than the wizard because she puts herself up there, why shouldn't we assume the wizard in return crafts happy sticks for her?
And I mean, while some here argue that martials needing five to fifteen minutes to heal up, wizards can always have the right spell either because they spend 15 minutes filling in an empty slot (if they have one - again, it would be good with some statement of even what level we're talking about. 9th? 19th? That makes a hell of a difference over whether it seems likely to have an open 5th level spell slot and whether you need to heal 3000 hit points in a day.
But that's what I'm saying kinda. I'm not saying wizards can't usually have any spell - usually they can. But I'm saying if we assume (as we should) 15 minutes for the wizard to fill in empty slots and 3+ hours to recharge their slots, then we shouldn't nit-pick on the fighter not having 5-15 minutes to heal up.
When it comes to the fighter people really nitpick. "Oh, we can't assume the fighter is using wands of evil spells, because that's evil". "The wizard? Oh, of course it'd summon it'll summon an Osyluth, that's just another trick in it's bag!". And yeah, we can talk about doing it many times per day vs just once in a while but we could also talk about 1st level vs 7th level spells, and how everything is up to the DM, so again it gets down to arbitrarily deciding to undermine the things the fighter has going for it while at the same time allowing the wizard anything not explicitly prohibited.
Is there any full caster in PF that doesn't get any special abilities in addition to their spells?
You only discuss spells but those other abilities can help a lot to stretch your spells over many encounters.
Depending on the class they can be enough for some fights.
Wizard/Sorc: Depends on the school or bloodline but some are nice.
Witch: Hexes alone can get you though a day.
Cleric: Some domains are better, some worse but they help and channel energy helps save spells when healing
Oracle: got some rather strong options depending on the mystery
Summoner: Eidolon and Summon SLAs keep you in the fight long.
Druid: AC + wildshape say you're not useless without spells.
Most of those are limited, too. But when you add them to the spells it really takes some fights to run out.
Sure, some are not as good or don't remain viable after the low levels but if you are concerned with running out of things to do there are some strong choices for each of the above classes.
Wands are expensive when you want to use them offensively or have decent-level buffs like Haste on them.
Some CL1 wands can change a fight with just a couple of charges spent. For example a wand of ill-omen used on a BBEG can have a big impact. For a price of 10 hp healed with infernal healing.
Some CL1 wands can change a fight with just a couple of charges spent. For example a wand of ill-omen used on a BBEG can have a big impact. For a price of 10 hp healed with infernal healing.
Wands are expensive when you want to use them offensively or have decent-level buffs like Haste on them.
And those are equally useful for martials as for casters, so doesn't really give much to either side. Only witches have it on their list. I'm not saying there aren't useful wands though.
I think it's fair to assume that:
- Casters that have at least a faint idea of what they're going up against from level 10+ will usually have a spell that if not optimal is at least useful, either from spells prepared at morning, during a pause, or from a scroll, without it totalling up to a meaningful part of their WBL. At lower levels this is also true to some extent of course.
- Martials from level 5+ will usually have full hit points when entering a fight, either from long-term resting, not getting meaningfully hurt, or healing during a pause, without it totalling up to a meaningful part of their WBL.
I think Ilja has raised some excellent points. To take WBL out of the equation (or at least keep it balanced in the discussion), we'd need to compare # scrolls/day x gp each, vs. # hp healed/day x gp each. As longer days (more combats) accrue, both costs would increase -- but do they increase evenly together, or disproportionately? Also, setting a baseline for how much more martials need for big six, vs. casters, would be good.
But that still dodges one point of contention. One side is more or less claiming that 35 spell slots/day are useless because "you don't know what you'll need." The other is claiming that 35/day is overkill because (a) many spells are pretty much almost always useful; (b) divination means you'll often know what you need; (c) leaving slots open works even if divination fails; and (d) bonded item adds another free any spell you want. A lot of this comes down to adventure design -- one side will claim all adventures take place in divination-proof areas on a magic timer that runs down for filling open slots but not for using charge after charge of a wand (or standing around waiting for fast healing 1 to work). Others will assume adventures where the party can hang out in a safe room at will to do all this stuff. I'd recommend we look at Paizo APs as a baseline, so that individual DM preferences don't unduly sway things one way or the other (and if the response is, "But... the DM has to fix it on the spot!", then I'd suggest there is NO reasonable baseline to be established on that side, since it's all a rules-less Story Hour anyway).
Finally, Re: alignment shenanigans, let's assume for the sake of argument a good party that shies away from any spells with the [evil] descriptor. This eliminates infernal healing, but also armies of undead.
I don't think anyone except Marthkus is claiming anything near to "35 spell slots per day are useless", and even ze won't go as far as that.
And while I can understand the point of staying away from spells with the [evil] tag, there's still the case that in many, many, many caster discussions and guides where [evil] spells are recommended or brought forth as examples of the power of casters - including Planar Binding for efreeti, Summon Monster for various demons etc.
I think it's a reasonable basis to not include those spells but it's noteworthy that requests for such limitations do not usually appear in threads discussing the strength of casters. That's not directed at you Kirth, you're not in every thread, I just mean to point out further evidence that we as a community use different standards when valuing martials and casters.
35 spell slots support the martial characters very well. Allows them to do all the real work for the party without the casters having to blow slots for damage.
Reading the Core rules, I see an awful lot of spells that do stuff way beyond just "support martial characters."
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I regularly end game days with resources unused.Do you want to always rely on that being the case? If you misjudge some encounters, you can end up tossing Acid Splash at the BBEG.
I always have. And usually it's because I was saving those resources for when they were really needed, and then they weren't.
I always have. And usually it's because I was saving those resources for when they were really needed, and then they weren't.I regularly end game days with resources unused.Do you want to always rely on that being the case? If you misjudge some encounters, you can end up tossing Acid Splash at the BBEG.
This is exactly why I don't care if you have 35 spells prepared.
Being limited is still being limited. You are going to play conservatively when you know your resources are not bottomless.
This is why a blast wizard can never be the party martial.
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Martial characters are limited. They can at most make 14400 full attacks per day.
Yes but they don't need to sleep 8 hours before they can make another attack.
To quote someone: "Being limited is still being limited."