|
Not wanting to muddy the waters in any of the other engrossing threads on martial/caster disparity. OR the rogue threads I was wondering about Ad&D mechanisms for balance in the form of separate XP tracks.
Obviously there was more than that (fighters got strongholds and kingdoms for instance) but rogues progressed much more rapidly than wizards (2 for 1 almost?) and so on.
I'm just curious if that metric has been thought of by the community to any serious degree. It seems to me the rest of the system could be left mostly intact (minus some feat tree trimming just on general principal) but could XP by class provide a relatively simple means of re-establishing class equity (rather than balance because obviously if some progress faster than others the system is acknowledging imbalance).
Anyone have thoughts on this?
The first major implication I imagine would be assigning XP values to encounters, as the current guidelines assume equal progression for all classes. Take the rogue/wizard distinction you mention at 2:1 ratio. At a certain point the rogue is 10th level and the wizard 5th level for an APL of 7. In turn an APL+1 encounter will result in either enemies that are almost too trivial for the rogue to overcome (because you used a lot of mooks, let's say) but are on part for the wizard, or will result in an appropriate encounter for the rogue (because you went with fewer tougher opponents) but who are much harder to affect for the wizard due to inappropriately high saving throws and resistances.
While the APL system is intended to overcome that sort of disparity, the expectation is not that levels will diverge over time but rather that they would tend to converge. Of course old school didn't have such guidelines but likewise balancing points like weapon damage figures, saving throw values, etc. were tuned based on that level progression.
The more I think about it, the more it seems like there a number of systems in the game that would start to be affected by that kind of separation such that I think you'd end up with something far removed from PF as we have it now.
|
|
Yah interesting, I had though of the "inputs" but not the "outputs", that said if the progression wasn't so dramatic I wonder if the outcome would be so bad...
If the argument is that a 5th level caster ≠ a 5th level fighter does the APL have enough elasticity to support a group that is level 8, 7, 6, 5, {Rogue, Fighter, Cleric, Wizard for example} with an encounter at CR 8 or whatever where the observed ≠ is roughly accounted for.
Dice damage, to hits, and so on are all claimed to be behind the casters in ability to produce, monsters would be powerful to challenge a total party but then casters might not obligatorily rule the game? The arguments I see say that casters often can punch "above their weight" so if the outcome of this method drags casters into harder fights...is that so bad?
Should it be bad that a rogue can shank a bunch of guys (that the wizard could easily blow away himself at level 5?) Right now we don't see that equity but it seems that is what people are fighting for. Again I would offer that the progression could be tweaked so that maybe the "easiest" classes are only on average 1,2 or so on levels ahead but I'm thinking fiddling with that forumla is a lot easier than reviewing every mechanic for the martial classes and fiddling with them...
But maybe I am not considering the implications on the XP/Challenge side properly.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'd sort of rather keep the term "level" as a meaningful one, and work in the other direction -- to make sure that a 12th level rogue is as useful to a party, in and out of combat, as a 12th level wizard. Otherwise the whole level/CR thing goes out the window, and we'd be better off playing 1e (or a retro-clone like Osric) to begin with.
Focusing on things like restoring movement (fighters half-move and full attack, but wizards stand still while casting) and eliminating concentration checks (if you lose initiative and get hit, you lose the spell) would restore combat parity to some degree.
Far more importantly, free armies for fighters (and none for wizards), and restoring the assumption that 9th-10th is "name level" and everyone retires as a wealthy landowner after that, would restore a lot of out-of-combat narrative equality.
How would multiclassing work?
How would multiclassing work?
Considering that it already doesn't work -- and Paizo has gone out of their way to make sure anyone who wants to try is punished for their presumption -- I'd say that's sort of a moot point until some other things get fixed!
But, seriously, 1e multiclassing worked way better than its "dual classing," but 3.0 decided to keep the latter and eliminate the former.
How would multiclassing work?
In an overcomplicated and easily exploitable manner.
How would multiclassing work?Considering that it already doesn't work -- and Paizo has gone out of their way to make sure anyone who wants to try is punished for their presumption -- I'd say that's sort of a moot point until some other things get fixed!
But, seriously, 1e multiclassing worked way better than its "dual classing," but 3.0 decided to keep the latter and eliminate the former.
I could not disagree more. 3e Multiclassing was much better.
And, BTW, the whole name level retirement thing was BS. If my character retires, it's because I say he does, not 'cause the rules do. Rules should not tell you how to RP your character.
3e Multiclassing was much better.
Before the books even went to the printer, the designers realized it didn't work -- like, at all. That's why they immediately added PrCs like Eldritch Knight as band-aids. By 3.5, they found out that those didn't work, and added more of them like Abjurant Champion -- to try and shore up a failing paradigm that should have worked out of the box, without PrCs at all.
This is why Paizo gave up on multiclassing altogether, and is now churning out hybrid classes to fill the void.
Rules should not tell you how to RP your character.
Tell that to the people who claim that a 7 Int character means the player is not allowed to talk at the table -- there are a lot of them on these boards!
Given that the CRB has slow, medium and fast advancement tracks, it might be fairly easy to assign each class one of the three, but PF has even less variability built into experience gain than 3E did, so you'd really want to keep an eye on the level disparity issues that Kirth mentioned.
Also (Kirth, buddy, from now on I'm just going to follow you around pointing out things you've said, okay?) given the number of OSR systems out there, if you're into that sort of play experience, you might as well use one of them. That wasn't a dig, I'm into that sort of play experience.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'd sort of rather keep the term "level" as a meaningful one, and work in the other direction -- to make sure that a 12th level rogue is as useful to a party, in and out of combat, as a 12th level wizard. Otherwise the whole level/CR thing goes out the window, and we'd be better off playing 1e (or a retro-clone like Osric) to begin with.
Focusing on things like restoring movement (fighters half-move and full attack, but wizards stand still while casting) and eliminating concentration checks (if you lose initiative and get hit, you lose the spell) would restore combat parity to some degree.
Far more importantly, free armies for fighters (and none for wizards), and restoring the assumption that 9th-10th is "name level" and everyone retires as a wealthy landowner after that, would restore a lot of out-of-combat narrative equality.
I was wondering if you would end up in this thread, I have been reading your stuff with some interest.
I certainly agree with the notion that level needs to be meaningful and ultimately your points here and elsewhere probably indicate a "better" way to account for such issues than what I am musing about.
I don't want to go back to OSR, I had my problems with some of that stuff and ultimately I like the modular build and mechanics of the 3/3.5/PF "engine" but I wonder if "level" being important is part of the issue. Levels and class still have value even if they are relative, what changes are merely the benchmarks for each person to achieve that level.
Maybe 12th level fighter don't "hang out" with 12th level wizards. 16th level fighters do. I recognize that CR is an issue here but I guess I was thinking that tweaking some concepts (expand PA, reduce feat chains, reverse or allow certain things to work certain ways like VS on a move, etc) that seem much more like trimming the system rather than an overhaul, and then untethering the expectation that all parties comprise the same class or learn at the same rate might be the final "piece". It would seem that between CR and APL there would be to make things elastic enough to capture a good system for providing challenge.
For me the unlinking level also manages (in my mind) to help reduce wizard narrative bloat. There are less wizards because it is harder to be one. Wizards don't rule everything becausestanding armies of skilled warriors with legendary fighters are more prolific. That is one thing that was "implied" by 2ed xp scaling that makes a lot of sense to me. But I understand if I am alone in that feeling.
No, you're definitely not at all alone, PD, and I totally understand where you're coming from. In fact, I believe I argued in favor of something similar, not so long ago. But I read the Táin Bó Cúalinge this fall (in a fit of solidarity with my 1/4 Irish heritage, and doubtless fueled by whiskey) and it had a profound impact on what I think high-level martial characters should be like.
In short, I now agree with people when they say Boromir should be like 4th level, PF-style. Because Cúchulainn (at age 17, no less) in the Táin can do stuff that is TOTALLY AWESOME, and that is also way, way beyond what a fighter in D&D/PF can actually pull off.
Now, the esteemed Evil Lincoln has a point when he says that "mythic tiers" should be able to accommodate martial characters like that, without changing the basic game, but I'm forced to disagree that that's a good solution. Because, if you look at what high-level non-mythic wizards and clerics in core D&D/PF can do, it's WAY beyond anything that pops up in mythology or literature anywhere, barring Jack Vance's stories about Rhialto the Marvellous & Co. (which are more a tongue-in-cheek satire of the genre than a straight telling).
In other words, we're playing a game in which high-level martials don't come close to their predecessors in myth & literature, but in which high-level casters massively overshadow their predecessors.
That's not an ideal state of affairs, to me. It speaks of a game that has, in the words of Steve King, "forgotten the face of its father." I'd love to bring it back on track. My houserules do it for Houstonderek and myself, but they're idiosyncratic at best, and I wholeheartedly encourage others to try what works for them.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In all this I hadn't considered the "20th level" issue, that there is, absent an additional progression, a theoretical cap to leveling and at that point even an accelerated progression would lead to a dead end.
Well that is very very helpful.
For the record I am with you, I think that at any tier a warrior of given power and ability should match his "equal" through some means that doesn't mean he had to loot someone else or ask another wizard to get him powerful enough into the equation.
I got out of the messageboard half of the site for a long time so I'm coming back, having done PBP for years and this tinkering and consideration of the disparity has become a bit of a hobby horse, so I'm glad to see there are others who have been thinking on this for a while.