| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Okay, so now that I've caught your attention, there is a matter of game design that I'd like to dicuss. I've mulled over this some and think I can explain my thought.
The tl;dr version is this:
Martial stuff stacks well which means each ability is made weak which encourages players to get "all ze abilities" for a single action; Caster stuff (originally) stack badly and each ability is instead very strong of it's own, leading casters to easily diversify; also lately casters stacking have been made easier which allows casters to become kind of super-charged. I don't provide a solution, just a problem.
Martial stuff stacks well.
Consider a fighter that has EWP (Longhammer), Weapon Focus (Longhammer), Power Attack, Furious Focus, Weapon Specialization (Longhammer) and Iron Will. In addition she has Shattering Strike, Overhand Chop and Weapon Training.
Of her 9 feats and abilities, 7 are applied to the same actions, which are also her main contributions in combat. Sure, she could drop one or maybe two of those and remain useful, but swapping three or more for feats that aren't applied to the same actions would make her notably less powerful. In addition most of her wealth might have gone into a magic weapon that further increases this.
When designers design classes, they know this. They know that martial stuff stacks, and so they're careful with giving out powerful abilities, since they have to consider "how will this ability perform when the character gains a +10 to hit and damage?". I know I do this at least when creating homebrew classes, and seeing what kind of stuff is released I'm fairly certain Paizo does this as well.
Caster stuff stacks badly (in core)
Compare to casters. A 5th level sorcerer knows 6 relevant spells; Say mage armor, summon monster 1, grease, color spray, blindness/deafness and invisibility. Her feats might be improved initiative, spell focus (enchantment), and spell focus (conjuration) since she's going for augment summoning later on. She might be a fey bloodline sorcerer, giving her entangle, hideous laughter, woodland stride, laughting touch, and +2 DC on compulsion spells.
She has 8 spells and 5 other relevant abilities. Of these, the most stacking you get is like color spray + bloodline arcana + spell focus, meaning 3 of your 13 are applied in a single action.
Due to caster stuff not stacking well, designers dare put in more power in each single ability. You would NOT see a martial ability like that bloodline arcana, at level 1 granting +2 to hit constantly with say a weapon group of choice. Weapon Training gives 3/4 of that (valuing dmg at half AB) at 5th level, and is considered one of the defining features of the class, while the bloodline arcana is treated like "eh, nice bonus".
This means fighters are encouraged to specialize while casters are free to diversify.
Any feat a fighter does not devote to one of her few main attack methods will make the fighter feel weaker, since you loose power with your most common attacks while gaining something much less useful, as the alternatives will have so little support as to be meaningless.
Consider the fighter above, and consider she want to delve a bit into sword & boarding too, to give her a more defensive option. She could switch Furious Focus and WF (Longhammer) to say Shield Focus and Missile Shields. So now, if she needs to be a bit more defensive, she can drop her hammer and draw her axe and shield - and be a lot weaker for it, her hammer attacks having dropped by -3 meaning she can't power attack as often and her axe attacks being at -4 (-1) constantly as well as not benefitting from overhand chop.
Contrast the sorcerer, who could easily drop Spell Focus (Enchantment) for Spell Focus (Transmutation) - which is about the same percentage of the specialization - and still be nearly as powerful with her most powerful spells while having a feat that is useful to a completely valid and circumstantially optimal choice of action.
High levels and new material allows casters to stack, supercharging them
I am of the opinion that if we consider just the core rulebook, there's a handfull of spells that would need to be modified because they are too good and/or open-ended as is, but other than that, the M/C disparity isn't that big, and it doesn't hit until mid-levels.
A big part of the reason why the M/C disparity appears is in my mind durations; short-duration buffs that stack badly (because they take actions to cast and can't be reliably pre-cast) become to a large extent "always on when it counts" abilities due to a combination of increased duration and often increased intelligence.
A bigger problem however is how the material published after the core rulebook (whether it's in the core line or not) have allowed casters to stack their abilities much easier and more effective; previously, metamagics where always a huge opportunity cost, and an empowered enervation took the same slot as a disintegrate. There where the metamagic rods, but only on the core metamagic feats and they as rods aren't that excellent.
Along comes rods of dazing spell and persistant spell, wayang spell hunter, magical lineage, spell perfection, various effect that buff blast damage and so on and so on. This turns the expensive metamagic feats into Weapon Focuses for spells - but they are still designed as if caster stuff doesn't stack well. Orc bloodline only adds +1 dmg/dice to an underpowered niche of casters, and elemental spell does the same (but only for an element) so that can't be too strong. Some ability adds +1 CL to a spell of your choice and hey it's just a single spell so that can't be too strong. Then comes dualblooded dipping etc etc and you end up with some 4rd level wizard doing 8d4+32 area with burning hands or whatever (okay I took those numbers out of my ass, just know I saw some wizard doing a lot more damage than it should here on the boards).
And note that while they can stack and specialize - their other abilities are still balanced as if they can't, meaning picking up those other abilities are still completely valid. You don't need to go "all in", unlike martials.
This has meant that regardless of level, there's usually a caster that has the easiest time solving an issue. The M/C disparity has spread to a lot more levels, which is a problem.
I don't have a solution for this, and certainly not one that would be possible without a huge rewrite of the system. It's mostly just something I've thought about from a design perspective.
Am I on to something here, or is my analysis wrong? What do you think?
Not that far off I would say.
One way to resolve this would of course to be to consolidate some (perhaps many) of the feat chains into scaling feats. This would allow the martial classes to diversify more.
How does the Crane Wing nerf fit into your analysis?
Not that far off I would say.
One way to resolve this would of course to be to consolidate some (perhaps many) of the feat chains into scaling feats. This would allow the martial classes to diversify more.
That might work, unless the chains stack too well with each other. The risk is that consolidated feats still encourage the same focus on a single tactic, and just means that choice of tactic gets a whole lot more powerful.
For some feats that inherently stack badly with other options - a prime example being vital strike, a badly stacking feat that is designed at a power level of a well stacking feat for example - that would work, but I'd be wary of doing it with stuff that just arbitrarily increases the numbers.
Style feats and similar are one way to approach it I think, where you can just apply a single style at a time, meaning the styles can be made with a balance level of a non-stacking ability. The styles themselves being just a single feat (or very short chain) that scales well would then not be a big problem.
If Vital Strike was a style, the damage bonus it could give could be far far higher and it could also grant other benefits, such as CMD bonuses or similar.
How does the Crane Wing nerf fit into your analysis?
I'm not sure, and I'm not saying my analysis is correct in every single case; it's more about broad strokes than individual abilities. I would say that the feat was designed with a non-stacking power level, but stacked quite well with high AC and similar things. If martial feats are intended to be balanced around an "it stacks" attitude, it makes sense for them to nerf it as it is more akin to stuff designed around an "it doesn't stack" attitude, such as mirror image.
That mirror image actually stacks very well wasn't something they took into consideration, however.
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
How does the Crane Wing nerf fit into your analysis?
Because it was powerful and useful in and of itself, without requiring 120000 prerequisites and a number of stacking boosts to be worthwhile.
And we can't have that, now can we?
Not that far off I would say.
One way to resolve this would of course to be to consolidate some (perhaps many) of the feat chains into scaling feats. This would allow the martial classes to diversify more.That might work, unless the chains stack too well with each other. The risk is that consolidated feats still encourage the same focus on a single tactic, and just means that choice of tactic gets a whole lot more powerful.
For some feats that inherently stack badly with other options - a prime example being vital strike, a badly stacking feat that is designed at a power level of a well stacking feat for example - that would work, but I'd be wary of doing it with stuff that just arbitrarily increases the numbers.
Style feats and similar are one way to approach it I think, where you can just apply a single style at a time, meaning the styles can be made with a balance level of a non-stacking ability. The styles themselves being just a single feat (or very short chain) that scales well would then not be a big problem.
If Vital Strike was a style, the damage bonus it could give could be far far higher and it could also grant other benefits, such as CMD bonuses or similar.
well you have done more in depth analysis of it than I have so I will have to take your word on that end.
I have been playing around with the feat chains as a single feat thing for a while now but I can only assume my "play testers" (read that as local group) are either not expert optimizers or (far more likely) are taking this opportunity to diversify their characters more.The idea of style feats does sound like a valid method of approaching this as well.
How does the Crane Wing nerf fit into your analysis?Because it was powerful and useful in and of itself, without requiring 120000 prerequisites and a number of stacking boosts to be worthwhile.
And we can't have that, now can we?
Remember anything that deviates from the imbalances made in the CRB is bad power creep. Now enjoy this new feat "Prone Shooter" and the other talent "Rumormonger". These add DEPTH to the game. Oh and here is 50,000+ really situational spells that casters can/automatically learn, because that's fair.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
How does the Crane Wing nerf fit into your analysis?Because it was powerful and useful in and of itself, without requiring 120000 prerequisites and a number of stacking boosts to be worthwhile.
And we can't have that, now can we?
From a martial? Heavens to Betsy, of course we can't. I mean martials being able to do things... lord the vapors.*
*Southern accent not optional.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
C'mon, guys! Don't be unfair!
It's not like there's an agenda to keep martials down. It is just an agenda to maintain the horrible balance issues from core... Which happens to keep martials down and let casters have all the good stuff.
Same difference.