I'm running a game now mostly comprised of new players. During character creation I tried to gently nudge them away from pure melee, but all but one ended up going that route. Now they are starting to catch on to the fact that the casters they are battling can do things with a thought that they can't hope to compete with.
I described it to them as an X shape, where melee starts strong and gets weaker, and casters start weak and become godly. The truth is no melee character, or even hybrid can destroy a city with a single spell whereas a Cleric/Druid/Wizard has multiple options for how to do so...and a Druid still *might* out-melee the fighters!
However, I'd say the issue is not class balance, but *adventure* balance. Look at all great stories where there is a power disparity, not only fantasy stories like the Lord of the Rings, but things like the Avengers, Justice League, and even Star Trek. Sure Superman or Gandalf save the day more often than not, Black Widow, Pippin, and Sulu all have their chances to shine.
So if one character is a skill monkey, it's up to the DM to give them chances to shine. Toss in some monsters with 100% magic resistance, or drop in a super mob the CODzilla has to solo while the rest of the group battles 10,000 orcs.
As long as everyone has a chance to shine, and gets to feel like a badass in their own way, then you are doing it right.
For classes like Fighter, to be good requires massive Specialization. You pick a fighting style and then every feat choice has to augment that style. Step outside that style, particularly at high levels and you die.
Getting that level of specialization means knowing every single feat and how they stack with each other.
It also means that the fighter who tries to be an "all around good fighter" ends up being half-assed.
That's the trap really, on the surface the fighter looks like a really simple class, when in reality it's more complex than the spellcasters.
The Fighter Archetypes benefit the class a fair bit because each of them narrows your focus to a fighting style and helps to guide the Feat choices down that road.
Then of course you have "The Talented Fighter" from Super-Genius Games. It's a nice little supplement that takes all the Fighter abilities from every archetype and puts them in a Pot, adds a few more and lets you pick one every level.
but even there the Key becomes a Narrow Focus. The more specialized you make your fighter the better he is in that one area.
Attempting to balance out the classes after the initial book is published frequently turns into power creep. It is much easier to increase the power of a weak class with new material than it is to curtail the power of a strong class with the same. But, then, some other writer will see that class X got awesome thing and class Y didn't, and will write something equally awesome for class Y. Thus destroying the original idea of buffing X relative to Y, and instead resulting merely in power creep across the board.
I think that this is pretty much what happened with 3.5.
I think that it is quite possible to rebalance certain classes after publication - we've basically already seen barbarians, for example, get a strong, relatively focused series of boosts in the post-Core Pathfinder books - but one would have to be alert to this trend.
I always wondered why the Ranger got combat style feats that allowed him to ignore Requirements, when the Fighter did not. If anyone should be ignoring requirements it's the Fighter!
As for Rogues, their Talents need to be heavily buffed up. Most of the Rogue talents are so plain _bad_ and not even close to emulating a feat when they should be far, far better than a feat. How about Sneak Attacks that inflict status effects?
As for Rogues, their Talents need to be heavily buffed up. Most of the Rogue talents are so plain _bad_ and not even close to emulating a feat when they should be far, far better than a feat. How about Sneak Attacks that inflict status effects?
You can already inflict conditions with sneak attack, they just don't stack with eachother and many of them are just awful.
I know what you mean about rogue talents though. I have no idea how This is an advanced talent. I have no idea why its a talent at all, but its an advanced talent.
I didn't count Bleeding Attack because it's usually irrelevant. The only 'good one' is the one that prevents AoO for one round when you Sneak Attack.
Trap Spotter should have been 'built into' the Trap Sense class ability.
One of the characters I played recently in PF was considered one of the most "flavorful" characters in our group in a while. He was a fighter. I rarely rely on class abilities to provide my character's "flavor". It can help, but I always try to make my characters memorable because of what they do in game, not according to the arbitrary limitations or abilities introduced by a class system I don't like anyway.While I agree with this I also find that having the mechanics back you up helps. It's very very hard to pull off cool things when the rules don't support what you do. You either rely on gm fiat or mercy.
I find this to mostly depend on what a person thinks qualifies as "cool". My fighter did plenty of "cool things" in game with no "GM fiat" necessary. Just some good solid player imagination.
But I suspect those things might not qualify as "cool" enough to meet some people's standards. They worked fine for me though.
I find this to mostly depend on what a person thinks qualifies as "cool". My fighter did plenty of "cool things" in game with no "GM fiat" necessary. Just some good solid player imagination.
But I suspect those things might not qualify as "cool" enough to meet some people's standards. They worked fine for me though.
Well for me at least being able to to strike a wall of force in jsut the right way to disrupt and destroy it would be pretty cool.
Unfortunately it's not something that fighters can do.
Really a lot of the things that one would want to try aren't really covered in the rules and it's left to the gm to determine those things.
Imagination is great, but it can only take you so far in a mechanical system. That's why you have at least a dozen variants of stunt system that encourage cinematic gameplay. Which is where I tend to find the fun stuff.
On the another note can you cut it out with the quotation marks? They give off a bad vibe.
Here is a balance issue to perhaps sway things back in favor of the melee a bit. I admit I do full casters and half casters exclusively, but I have seen many casters drop in one hit, many times before they act. I have never seen this happen to a melee character without some spell that could incapacitate them first.
When I play PFS, I always hope that we have at least one strong melee in the party. While depending on the character I am playing, I can throw down control or damage, it is very much needed to have someone that can hold the line to keep baddies off of me.
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I'm running a game now mostly comprised of new players. During character creation I tried to gently nudge them away from pure melee, but all but one ended up going that route. Now they are starting to catch on to the fact that the casters they are battling can do things with a thought that they can't hope to compete with.
I described it to them as an X shape, where melee starts strong and gets weaker, and casters start weak and become godly. The truth is no melee character, or even hybrid can destroy a city with a single spell whereas a Cleric/Druid/Wizard has multiple options for how to do so...and a Druid still *might* out-melee the fighters!
However, I'd say the issue is not class balance, but *adventure* balance. Look at all great stories where there is a power disparity, not only fantasy stories like the Lord of the Rings, but things like the Avengers, Justice League, and even Star Trek. Sure Superman or Gandalf save the day more often than not, Black Widow, Pippin, and Sulu all have their chances to shine.
So if one character is a skill monkey, it's up to the DM to give them chances to shine. Toss in some monsters with 100% magic resistance, or drop in a super mob the CODzilla has to solo while the rest of the group battles 10,000 orcs.
As long as everyone has a chance to shine, and gets to feel like a badass in their own way, then you are doing it right.
Pretty much my vision on this issue also.
Honestly , people are sayingthe devs did not try to balance things out? Cause i think they did , and even now look at the results lols, balancing things is hard , and in the end , it is a never ending job , that simple.
If you buff a class , the player becomes happy , if you nerf one , the player becomes unhappy. it is simple.
By the time you got this balanced , chances are there will be no more spell caster players listening to play the class anyway.
On the another note can you cut it out with the quotation marks? They give off a bad vibe.
I use them for a reason, and they work for that reason Tark. Can't say I find myself concerned about your "vibes".
Also, you confirmed what I suspected about what qualifies as "cool" for you. And that seems to mean "powerful". So don't play fighters then.
I'm running a game now mostly comprised of new players. During character creation I tried to gently nudge them away from pure melee, but all but one ended up going that route. Now they are starting to catch on to the fact that the casters they are battling can do things with a thought that they can't hope to compete with.
If everyone in your party went pure melee then its entirely possible that's the kind of game they want to play. There's nothing in the rules that say that there have to be spell casting NPCs.
I use them for a reason, and they work for that reason Tark. Can't say I find myself concerned about your "vibes".Also, you confirmed what I suspected about what qualifies as "cool" for you. And that seems to mean "powerful". So don't play fighters then
Tark has been beating this "Wizards rule--fighters drool" drum elsewhere as well. You point out the things fighters do well and those things miraculously do not matter because "Wizard can bend the rules of reality".
You point out story driven ways that fighters can shine and its "GM Fiat".
You point out the devastating amounts of damage they can put out and "HP Damage doesn't matter because Wizards can SoD and wall spells".
Its an impossible argument against an irrational opponent. For his view-- no Wizards and Fighters can never be balanced.
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I use them for a reason, and they work for that reason Tark. Can't say I find myself concerned about your "vibes".Also, you confirmed what I suspected about what qualifies as "cool" for you. And that seems to mean "powerful". So don't play fighters then.
Your "sarcasm" aside "powerful" is pretty relative in a "fantasy world" where a similar class can do the very thing I described by being "very angry" at "it". Whereas this class can only hit things "slightly better" with occasional forays into other ideas.
That I desire mechanics so that I can enjoy classes for their "flavor" rather than feel stifled by "mechanical limitations" is no call for your "sarcasm".
For the record I don't play fighters generally because I've found I can get all my concepts working very well playing a different martial class. Power is unimportant as much as getting mechanics to fit the ideal. I like havign my cake and eating it too. But, I'd also like for a semblance of relative equality. I would like the fighter to find a unique niche of its own.
You keep using the word "sarcasm" but I don't think it means what you think it means. Putting quotes around something doesn't make it sarcasm. Sarcasm would have been for me to say something like "Oh sure Tark, you aren't interested in power at all. Noooo... imagination is good enough for YOU"
See? That's how sarcasm works. I try to avoid sarcasm in my snarks because it's snark on easy mode.
What you appear to be saying is that fighters are not "cool" because they can't do supernatural things.
Now, I will admit that supernatural things can be cool. But they can also be hackneyed, trite and/or predictable. The fighter I played had maxed out UMD so he could even do some magical things when necessary. In fact his UMD use was one of his more cool options.
And that's why I avoid using them. Because tone translates poorly. But I digress.
UMD is nice, but I think that's merely a bandaid to a problem.
I think it's pointed out here that a wizard with his staff could beat to death most commoners by the time hes level 10 with his staff, no spells necessary his bab and hp are so high he simply can't be harmed. We'll not get into fighters (who at this point can beat down castle gates) but it does point something out worth considering.
At some point you are already supernatural whether you acknowledge it or not. The difference is while most classes gain some form of ability that acknowledges this transition from human to superhuman others are left in the dust wondering at what point their ranger friend became a living shadow and their druid friend became nigh immortal.
For me the kind of game you describe works well at low to mid levels where there's room for true cleverness rather than clever spellcasting. There's still room for it later, but it's generally only available when the spellcasters can't stand up to the plate, or just as often another more specialized class.
It's great that you can take such a class and make fun things happen with it. But it's not a shared experience and doesn't reflect good game design in my opinion.
Ever seen tome of battle: Book of the nine swords? Its a book for 3.5 near the end of its life, had a class called the Warblade. That was his MO, being the badass normal with the ability to ignore DR/hardness, blindsight at moments, and a variety of other things.No - because everything I've heard about ToB made it sound like Exalted/Wuxia "swordsmanship-as-magic" rather than "superhuman strength/skill with weapons/toughness/endurance".
I think Exalted Melee stuff is cool, but it doesn't fit the same mental box to me as a D&D(pre4e)/PF Fighter. I can totally see a class like that... but not replacing the Fighter (as in 4e).
If that's not an accurate description of ToB, then it sounds interesting.
It is not that way no. I actually happen to have the exalted core book on me and the ToB. Very different things. Exaulted just in a ballpark of its own I swear. That's actually a very common misconception too.
Warblades in particular never actually get anything truly amazing. They get something like Mountain Hammer, where you smash someone's face in and do extra damage and ignore Dr and hardness. They can enter a stance to leave themselves open and lower their AC and do more damage, or gain blindsense, or full attack with any weapon while grappled, or to get a 10 foot bonus to any leap they make. No ability given to warblades is anything but extraordinary.
Swordsages are closer to the wuxia idea because they learn to teleport, float on air, create a noose out of shadow, and as at 15th level they can actually blow someone's heart up. They tend to get supernatural abilities out of two of their schools.
I think what happens is that someone skims the book and thinks everyone can do anything, but really each class gets its own gig, and warblades are the mundanes. They are closer to the idea of martials who do cool things without being supernatural and while only being extraordinary, or at least I think.
Path of War is being made by Dreamscarred Press and appears to be a pathfinderish version of the ToB, but I'm not actually a big fan of the guys making it or their decisions.
It's great that you can take such a class and make fun things happen with it. But it's not a shared experience and doesn't reflect good game design in my opinion.
Which takes us back full circle to the point I made to begin with.
Paizo is not designing, producing, marketing and distributing a game for you Tark.
I am not defending Pathfinder. I have no desire whatsoever to try to convince you that it is good, bad or indifferent. I am merely pointing out that Pathfinder is a product that is designed, implemented, marketed and distributed by a corporation whose primary objective is to make a profit.
When WotC went to great lengths to satisfy people who complained about the very things you are complaining about they lost their dominant position in the RPG industry. At the same time Paizo decided that they could keep the existing "badly designed" game in production and did so by creating Pathfinder as an extension of D&D 3.5. The market voted with their feet, moving their money from WotC to Paizo.
I repeat myself. You want balance. You think it's a design imperative. Paizo wants dollars, and right now game balance is not the way to get dollars.
I play Pathfinder because it's the game my gaming friends are willing to play. I never said it was perfect. I said it was dominant. And that matters. If you think Paizo's leadership is going to say "Hey, that thing WotC did when they decided balance was all that important, we should totally do that too!" you have a real confusion about how business and marketing work.
So keep on banging that drum. Maybe in a few years Paizo will get as sick of hearing that drum as WotC did and will make their own effort to create a "balanced" game. I wouldn't count on it, and if they do try, I wish them luck, but I suspect that in the end the reality will be accepted that the majority of fantasy RPG players actually like the idea that magic is, well, MAGICAL, and that those characters that manipulate the awesome powers of the universe are simply so qualitatively different than people swinging pointy sticks, that attempting to "balance" the two is a fool's errand.
Which is what I think it is.
There are balanced games out there. Look at Shadowrun-- wizards and high technology and there was basically nothing a wizard could do that the right amount of cash couldn't buy for you. And you could get that cash if you chose to-- this just isn't that game.
Arthur C Clarke famously said that a sufficiently highly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So yeah, in a world with technology and magic you can balance the two.
But that's not what most people seem to want to play when they play a "fantasy" RPG. They want "sword and sorcery". Which is a different game.
Elosandi, creating new classes does not achieve "balance" It creates an entirely different phenomenon which is known as "bloat."
Bloat is what killed 3.5. Obsessive pursuit of balance is what killed 4e. It may be the nature of the pasttime that it is impossible to avoid "bloat" since that is a large part of most successful game companies' marketing plans. But they CAN avoid obsessive pursuit of ""balance."
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When WotC went to great lengths to satisfy people who complained about the very things you are complaining about they lost their dominant position in the RPG industry.
Actually this isn't necessarily true. Under 4e WoTC did incredibly well and expanded the game and its fanbase by a very wide margin. The game itself is solid and arguably better than if not at least equal to what we have now. It's mechanics are clean, easy to understand, and very well suited for introducing new audiences to the concept of tabletop rpgs. I say this from the perspective of someone with a professional interest in the industry. Not just a player and gm.
Their actual losses in the industry have more to do with their marketing and business missteps rather than their product. Part of 3rd ed. and I think a massive portion of pathfinder's appeal was the the rules were more or less "free" you can pick them up and even use the material in your own product. This opened the door for good adn bad.
Given this history, and fielding the complaints about the massive 3pp bloat WoTC (or more likely Hasbro) implemented a much more draconian measurement for their OGL on 4th ed. Which greatly limited the amount of people that could feasibly support it. Worse were many of the legal clauses that allowed Hasbro to crush smaller companies at will with the mere threat of a lawsuit (win or lose the license required you to pay their legal fees).
Now, they have an SRD available. But, you still have to get the books. So while the product itself makes getting newer players easier it discourages them by having them pay money for the basic rules. This is okay for third party companies but not for spreading your game among the actual customers. Something paizo does not do nor need to.
A further misstep came when they cracked down on piracy with the most slash and burn of methods by pulling all their products from pdf outlets. While this is great for brick and mortar stores it pissed on the pdf outlets seeking out that business as well as any player who otherwise has no access to those books. Given I know a lot of players in the armed services who operate overseas likely thousands of miles from the nearest brick and mortar shop I can see where this might become a problem for their overall business model. And of course, because people are cheeky, many of the other publishers were offering discounts on their product. Heck White Wolf gave out free exalted PDF's. This is after their promotion where you traded in your old 3.5 book for a fresh new exalted book.
Ultimately Paizo's success comes from simply doing the opposite. They keep the artwork, story, and adventures to themselves, but give the rules and mechanics out freely. In essence paizo is not selling you a rules set as much as a set of adventures which ahs worked amazingly for them ever since the Dungeon/Dragon days. And given that every week their top selling product is usually the latest in line of their most recent adventure path this strategy obviously works for them now. It also helps that their books are beautiful, their artwork fantastic and in general they are simply nice to have. That they tend to be cheap in pdf form is even better. Meanwhile I saw a paperback book as thick as a pamphlet on dragonborn for 4th ed that cost about 15 bucks cover price. Given this difference of strategies it's no wonder paizo was pulling so much of the market towards them. They moved witha strategy that has allowed certain videogame developers (like Valve, and many independent game designers who contribute to the humble indie bundle) to profit and succeed in a land of AAA titles made by gigantic goliaths like EA who are happy to shove DRM in your face as hard as possible and despise the notion of a used games store.
So, no, it's not perfect. But balance is not why 4th ed. failed and Paizo succeeded. The product in this is largely blameless. It's simple business strategy.
Elosandi, the problem with "bloat" is not that it provides more options. Well not ONLY that it provides more options. The main problem with bloat is that it creates a completely unmanageable set of rules that inevitably create unintended synergies which provide a game that is totally unbalanced. Some options are totally useless, others are wildly overpowered.
Do you think WotC intended to create pun-pun? No, pun-pun was the result of crazy synergies they did not intend when people combined all the bloated options in ways the designers never even THOUGHT about, much less intended.
Champion bloat all you want. My money right now is on bloat as the thing that eventually kills off PF. They are going right down the same path that 3.5 did. A tad slower maybe, but they'll get there.
Oh, and each of us can assert whatever we like about why 4e failed and PF succeeded. The only thing that matters is what Paizo believes, based on their own market research.
I'm pretty confident that they are more on my side of the thing than yours though.
Oh and it doesn't help that the company itself has a habit of snubbing other games. The whole "let's have a 4th ed. only event on free rpg day" debacle is fresh in my mind.
The warriors have a significant edge over the spellcasters levels 1-4.I cast color spray on Dr. Deths post. Make a DC 15 will save. If you or everyone else in the cone fails they go down for the count.
Sure. Which you can do what, 2 or three times a day? And, you have to do it 15 feet from the foe, with no tank between you, which means if he makes his save, you're a dead wizard.
I know what you mean about rogue talents though. I have no idea how This is an advanced talent. I have no idea why its a talent at all, but its an advanced talent.
In the right campaign one with lots of politics and not much combat, that's a FABULOUS talent. And you know, in the combat heavy games- you just pick another talent.
In the right campaign one with lots of politics and not much combat, that's a FABULOUS talent. And you know, in the combat heavy games- you just pick another talent.
I know what you mean about rogue talents though. I have no idea how This is an advanced talent. I have no idea why its a talent at all, but its an advanced talent.
Where do you sit when it's something in between?
I'm pretty confident that they are more on my side of the thing than yours though.Based on the material they've published, I'd assert the opposite.
Even you've admitted that they're going down the same path as 3.5 did, which is what I claimed right from the beginning.
Not necessarily. Developers have openly admitted in person that balance is a secondary concern.
However I don't believe it's for more money as A. Dragon asserts. Rather it's because all it takes is five minutes on these forums to find out that many individuals ahve drastically different ideas on what "balanced" is. Obviously me and AD disagree, Nathanael has a rather different take from nearly everyone, SKR frankly does not like pwoer gamers, while a few others think the rules work just fine up until "level X".
With this massive difference of opinion they have concluded it's best not to bother going too far our of their way for it since it all turns out to be relative in the end. I think they believe it better to jsut make sure that things "function" and do not destroy games with incredible ease. To this end they are constantly releasing errata and clarifications. So yes they are trying to balance things. But mostly reactively. Occasionally proactively.
I know what you mean about rogue talents though. I have no idea how This is an advanced talent. I have no idea why its a talent at all, but its an advanced talent.In the right campaign one with lots of politics and not much combat, that's a FABULOUS talent. And you know, in the combat heavy games- you just pick another talent.
Umm... you can already spread rumors without the talent you know. Its a pretty god awful talent because it gives you the ability to do something you can already do. Or how about just hire a few people to do it if your in the politics game. Delegation is a politician's friend. Lots of ways to handle it, but taking an advance rogue talent is a terrible waste.
Actually this isn't necessarily true. Under 4e WoTC did incredibly well and expanded the game and its fanbase by a very wide margin. The game itself is solid and arguably better than if not at least equal to what we have now. It's mechanics are clean, easy to understand, and very well suited for introducing new audiences to the concept of tabletop rpgs. I say this from the perspective of someone with a professional interest in the industry. Not just a player and gm.
When WotC went to great lengths to satisfy people who complained about the very things you are complaining about they lost their dominant position in the RPG industry.
I actually like 4E, I just have trouble getting people I know to play it because of the marketing misteps. I actually think it would benefit of few of my groups better than playing 3E or PF.
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No, you can't balance a game system where some classes are based on the concept of people acting within real-world physics swinging pointy sticks, and other classes are based on the concept of people grabbing the raw cosmic powers of the universe and unleashing them by wiggling their fingers.
Nonsense. I know any number of systems that do exactly that. Heroquest. Fate Core. Call of Cthulhu. Jaws of the Six Serpents. Smallville. Warhammer FRPG. Mutants and Masterminds. Fagte Core. Feng Shui. Hell, even D20 Modern and True20 were a hell of a lot more balanced than Pathfinder, so please don't confuse the bad design decisions embedded in 3rd edition D&D with some sort of universal game principle.
There are few things in gaming that annoy me more then the idea that just because magic users "grab the raw cosmic power of the universe" (or manipulate reality, or whatever the trendy term is this week), they are inherently more powerful or flexible than people who choose to focus their talents on non-magical skills. I mean really, compare Batman and Zatanna- one "grabs the raw cosmic blah blah blah", but who would you really consider more competent and dangerous?
The main thing though, for spellcasters and fighters to be balanced, extensive reworking of the feats and magic system would have to be done. Blue Rose and D20 Modern almost got there, so we know it can be done within a D&D system. The main problem will be the spellcaster supremacy fans, who will whine about their favorite classes being nerfed, and martials becoming "too anime" when they demonstrate abilities real-world people have exhibited. And since Pathfinder was deliberately based around "spellcasters rule, martials drool" I wouldn't hold my breath anticipating ay changes.
even D20 Modern and True20
Funny thing is this is sort of a decent direction to take it. If you broke down the classes into just "weapons guy", "magic guy", and "specialist guy".
And simply printed options for those you can have a surprising amount of control on the overall power level of the game.
even D20 Modern and True20Funny thing is this is sort of a decent direction to take it. If you broke down the classes into just "weapons guy", "magic guy", and "specialist guy".
And simply printed options for those you can have a surprising amount of control on the overall power level of the game.
Yeah, I totally see PF-- the game which has added base classes in several of its big full sized books and plans to add 10 more in one book next years stripping them all down to 3 or 4 (Swords, Skills, Arcanes, Divines if you will). . .
Yeah, I totally see PF-- the game which has added base classes in several of its big full sized books and plans to add 10 more in one book next years stripping them all down to 3 or 4 (Swords, Skills, Arcanes, Divines if you will). . .even D20 Modern and True20Funny thing is this is sort of a decent direction to take it. If you broke down the classes into just "weapons guy", "magic guy", and "specialist guy".
And simply printed options for those you can have a surprising amount of control on the overall power level of the game.
In an edition transition anything can happen.
They already did this in part with a lot of consolidation in how skills and many features work.
There's a financial incentive here too. Less wasted print on tables since you won't have to make a new one with each table. Heck you might not even need a table for any class at all depending on how you designed the game.
The idea is to make the base as generic as possible and build from there.
No, you can't balance a game system where some classes are based on the concept of people acting within real-world physics swinging pointy sticks, and other classes are based on the concept of people grabbing the raw cosmic powers of the universe and unleashing them by wiggling their fingers.Nonsense. I know any number of systems that do exactly that. Heroquest. Fate Core. Call of Cthulhu. Jaws of the Six Serpents. Smallville. Warhammer FRPG. Mutants and Masterminds. Fagte Core. Feng Shui. Hell, even D20 Modern and True20 were a hell of a lot more balanced than Pathfinder, so please don't confuse the bad design decisions embedded in 3rd edition D&D with some sort of universal game principle.
Of all the d20 magic systems I've seen the one I like best comes out of the True20 line. Their True Sorcery book created a very flexible skill based magic system. A wizard could do damn near anything with it but there were plenty of risks involved and the more powerful the spell you wanted to do the longer you had to take to cast it.
It felt a lot closer to the sort of magic you find in fiction
Feat Chains don't harm fighters if fighters automatically get the benefit of the feat chains as they level. It makes their feats auto-scale, and in doing so, become the equivalent of real class abilities.
'Versatile feat selection' would do a great deal for the fighter. Imagine a fighter who could pick two feats every time he selected a feat, and swap either out at the beginning of the day, kind of like a domain spell. Or who could pick a feat that would start forming a 'feat pool' based on his Intelligence, that he could swap in and out at the beginning of the day, instead.
He'd never have more feats active at one time then any other fighter, but he'd have better feats for specific situations.
Too, feats should be based on the fighter's other class abilities. Weapon and Armor Training, and Bravery, are all perfectly usable to help scale the bonuses that many feats provide. Feats need to simply reference fighter abilities, like, oh, rage and lay on hand and metmagic and channel feats do, and you can scale them very, very well.
But, no. The fighter just has to be content with the plain jane feats anyone else gets, equal to 1/2 a class ability, and watch the barbarian and paladin take feats that auto scale with level.
Yeah, that's just perfect.
==Aelryinth
Again, as written, the fighter is barely a class. More like barebones.
Look, this is the age old D&D debate.
The fact is that casters are terrible from levels 1-5 or so. They are in line for 5-10, then more powerful from 11 on.
Well, except they're not really terrible even in the early levels. Oh sure back in 2nd ed. you may have blown your one sleep spell adn after that it was melee staff time.
But now even if you manage to blow all your first level spells chances are you're shooting a crossbow only slightly worse than the groups rogue, bard, or possibly fighter. Then of course you have other abilities to fall back on such as cantrips (Daze is very good in these levels) or class powers (Luck domain ftw).
But to get on to a greater point this X shape of balance is as you say "old". Why should a player be punished for making a choice they liked early in the game?
If you said "because it's a challenge" that's a problem since you cannot assume in design that a player will think your option is meant to be hard mode unless you explicitly point that out.
If you said "because that's how its always been done" you're being silly since doing something wrong for 40 years doesn't suddenly make it right.
If you said "because I like it like that" that is probably the best response since fun is the ultiamte goal. But then we'd have to ask what about this do you like? Which may lead us back to the above answers.
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In order to 'balance' the game, you actually have to first decide what balance actually means. There is this vague Idea of being able to contribute equally, but it kind of makes me think of 'seperate but equal' segragation. Martial character are supposed to be 'equal' but they have to be kept separate from magical characters because people dont want the fighter to be 'anime like' and be able to do crazy martial things.
So you have magic users (characters who cast spells or have supernatural abilities or both) and martials, who have sharp, heavy, or pointy bits of metal to work with.
Martial or mundane characters are limited to acting within a situation. Magic users dont just act in a situation, they can CHANGE the situation. They have narrative power. For instance, you are fighting a band of goblins on a bridge with a few brute goblins and archers on the other side of the bridge. The fighter rogue and monk, can fight their way past the goblins on the bridge, try to jump or doge over them. Or shoot directly at the archers. They are acting in the situation. The wizard can cast fly, or the cleric can cast air walk, or the druid can turn into a bird. Suddenly the situation is different. The wizard could still help fight through the goblins on the bridge, or hurl magic at the archers. Or he could fly under the cliff and have a sandwich. He isnt limited to the situation presented.
The same applies to non-combat situations. A rogue could bluff or diplomacize his way past the palace guards, or sneak past them. The bard can cast charm or dominate person and make the guards his best friend and have them escort him to the kings chambers. Again the rogue is acting within the situation, the bard, is changing it.
There was a time when rogues and fighters had narrative power too. They got armies. Not as a part of the story, but as an actual part of leveling up. The fighter got an army, the rogue a theives guild. This gave them narrative power. But (and possibly not incorrectly so), this was taken out of the game, and sort of put in a much maligned feat called leadership that no one ever stops arguing over. DM's understandably whated the movement of armies and theives guilds to be part of their story, and not just something fighters and rogues got. But we left magic users with their narrative power. Because, you know magic.
I think if you either find a way to give narrative power to non-casters, or to remove (without just gutting the class) narrative power from magic users, you'd come to a game that is much more 'balanced'. Theres a 3rd party product by super genius games that presented an alternate form of magic called the Riven Mage, in which there are only a handful of basic spells that you can put more or less energy into. And I'm working on a set of rules to make that workable as the primary magic system for a campaign. Because I dont think gutting the magic system is the answer either, it actually needs a re-design. Because casters in the vancian system depend on their 'high impact' game changing spells to contribute, due to their restricted resources over the course of the day. If you take out those spells without changing around the class, I dont think it would remain fun to play the classes as is.
Feat Chains don't harm fighters if fighters automatically get the benefit of the feat chains as they level. It makes their feats auto-scale, and in doing so, become the equivalent of real class abilities.
'Versatile feat selection' would do a great deal for the fighter. Imagine a fighter who could pick two feats every time he selected a feat, and swap either out at the beginning of the day, kind of like a domain spell. Or who could pick a feat that would start forming a 'feat pool' based on his Intelligence, that he could swap in and out at the beginning of the day, instead.
He'd never have more feats active at one time then any other fighter, but he'd have better feats for specific situations.
Too, feats should be based on the fighter's other class abilities. Weapon and Armor Training, and Bravery, are all perfectly usable to help scale the bonuses that many feats provide. Feats need to simply reference fighter abilities, like, oh, rage and lay on hand and metmagic and channel feats do, and you can scale them very, very well.
But, no. The fighter just has to be content with the plain jane feats anyone else gets, equal to 1/2 a class ability, and watch the barbarian and paladin take feats that auto scale with level.
Yeah, that's just perfect.
==Aelryinth
I think the trick to fighter only feats is that many people resent them. And in part I agree. Why is it that the fourth level fighter can specialize in his greatsword, than decide not to any more at certain levels. But Korag the Bloodpurger whose been using a greataxe for twenty levels still can't take it?
Ultimately I think fighter only feats as written just feel like class options. And as options they are lack luster.
Instead I think a better idea might be the elimination of "fighter only" feats. Instead allow many combat feats to be selected early, and other to scale or have some special ability only active if it's taken by a fighter. Asn an example:
Weapon Specialization
Prerequisites: BAB +4, Weapon Focus with selected weapon, proficiency with selected weapon.
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus on all damage rolls you make using the selected weapon.
Speical: A fighter who selects this feat may instead select a fighter weapon group. You gain a +2 bonus on all damage rolls you make using any weapon from the selected group.
First, no one is being punished. Since the days I played AD&D everyone knew the name of the game. Martials dominate early, Casters dominate in end game. The idea that a 1st level wizard is even remotely comparable in value to a 1st level fighter is a joke. A fighter is in combat, can take a hit or two, and actually drops enemies. The wizard blows his color sprays and then hides effectively.
Well brad just because you've been doing it forever doesn't make it right. Only that you've been doing it for a very long time.
It's an old notion of balance that doesn't function well anymore. In fact it's one that's discarded by nearly every game outside this genre almost immediately. Heck even games in genre have gone to great lengths to address it. It's irritating given that even in all the books people like to reference such a disparity didn't exist, or, was used as a narrative device to build tension or drama (Conan the very much unmagical versus the dark and terrible sorcerer or serpent priest or whatever).
You're basically telling me, as long as someone is suck all the time, it's balance. My question is, why? Why is this acceptable? Because you've been at it for longer than most of the guys I see in game shops have lived?
Honestly my "fix" would be stealing a bunch of stuff from Legend.
Everyone can get access to some of the stuff you need at higher levels.
Growing wings is a feat. That might sound amazing and overpowered, but really it's just accepting that at a certain level, you need to fly. Some classes learn to fly on their own or can cast a spell for it. Anyone can fly for a few rounds if they make some impressive athletics or acrobatics checks. The system provides the tools everyone is expected to have, without expecting your martial to develop a potion addiction.
Though there are some things I would change with Legend too, if we had this topic on their message board.