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The problem people are having, is they are looking at a very narrow scope of the game. Each group pas specific playstyles and Published adventures are different from homebrew once.
Really, unless your playing homebrew and martials should have no problem in the game.
Currently, im Dming a group of Paladin, Wizard, Dwarf barb/rogue (1 lvl of barb for the 30ft movement) and Wizard.
The Rogue with sneak hits 20-35 damage easily + bleed. Our party wizard can can greater invis the rogue or black tentacles. alot of the time greater invising the rogue is the best option.
But really, Theres no power discrepancies in the group because they are playing as a team (or trying to).
As ive said before Martial caster issues are a thought experiment that in my experience rarely applies, or a break down in social dynamics between players.
As ive said before Martial caster issues are a thought experiment that in my experience rarely applies, or a break down in social dynamics between players.
I didn't know a wizards ability to cast color spray was just a thought experiment. Guys! Don't worry, magic doesn't really exist! Its just a theory. Like gravity.
More seriously, saying things like that sort of pretends there isn't any gap between their power by saying it doesn't matter, but that doesn't actually say its not there, and to be honest I do care if my fighter is underpar or my martial characters have trouble hitting challenges, or if I have to plan around the god like powers of casters. That goes for both me as a player and GM.
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Color spray wreaking encounters on the otherhand is a though experiment.
The counter point is druid. A druid without spells and just wildshape can be built to out fight the fighter.
But it's a weird way to build a druid.
Except that is not quite the case. The problem many people are having is that they are comparing Wizard vs Wizard+Fighter. Or, in the case of the rogue, try to force the wizard to fill both his own role and the rogue of the party when the correct thing would be to have a whole seperate caster filling only the rogue slot.
A party of casters would actually end up significantly more powerful than otherwise. For instance:
Replace FULL BAB MARTIAL DUDE with:
Synthesist Summoner
Master Summoner
Druid Wildshaper
Cleric
Oracle of Battle/Metal
Bard
Inquisitor
Warpriest
Beastmorph Vivisectionist Alchemist
if you are playing with Mythic Tiers, Ravingdork has a Pure Wizard Transmuter that can put martials to shame.I mean all of these guys can do everything a FULL BAB guy does, but also have a HUGE assortment of spells at their disposal...
Lets ignore the Rogue for the moment because he's a big old bundle of s~@*e and we'll ignore mythic because mythic has never been intended to be balanced, does that seem reasonable?
Lets say you're running a party of 5 characters, with 20 point buy, and lets assume commonly banned content is banned aka the Summoner. Let's also assume the DM rather than providing content he intends for you to steamroll is pushing the envelope of your ability to kill things by providing high AC high DR and high Saves on the mobs. Now which of these classes can maintain an equivalent to hit score as a Full BAB class when said full BAB class is buffed by a Bard(5th man), a Cleric, and perhaps the odd spell from a wizard and equipped properly.
I think the real issue is many of these classes can't stack spells, clerics, oracles, and inquisitors all share buff spells. Bards, Alchemists, and Summoners, mostly share spell lists with Wizards although with a few exceptional ones they keep to themselves/get early access to. So at a certain point unless the personal spells alone make up the difference you're not really getting value out of adding extra...
Druid says hi...
EDIT: ninja'd.....
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I'm confused why we're banning summoners in this thought experiment but not oracles or clerics or druids.
I'm also confused as to why color spray is a thought experiment. The spell seems pretty straight forward and I think it's hard to argue that 2d4 rounds of unconsciousness in an AoE at level 1 is anything other than amazing, especially with 1d4+1 rounds of stun on top of that.
Honestly my rogue would kill for something that gave 2d4 rounds of unconsciousness, even if it were single target and didn't have the secondary effects.
Because no one has ever played a Heavens Oracle. They're purely theorycraft and have never seen a single game of "real play". (/sarcasm)
Basically, any thing the "Martials are fine" side doesn't like is "theorycraft that could never happen in a real game".
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Color spray wrecking encounters, on the other hand, is a thought experiment.
Mmm, I would disagree. Not terribly long ago while playing RotRL I definitely saw Color Spray straight up end encounters on a couple of different occasions. Other times when it didn't completely wrap up the encounter it still managed to trivialize it by disabling 50% or more of the enemies in one go. It was pretty much the spell for dealing with goblins, goblin dogs, rogue cultisits, etc.
I don't think there was a ever moment where any of us actually doubted that the elven wizard was the most powerful member of the group, we just kind of accepted it and carried on.
Note that I was actually playing a Fighter in that adventure (until I later retrained so I could playtest the Path of War materials Dreamscarred Press was just releasing for open playtest at the time). I knew going in that I was not going to be the most powerful member of the party, but I played it because I thought it would be fun (and because no other class had the feats to use a double crossbow).
I think that's one of the disconnects between the casters vs. martials discussions. It's hard to draw the comparisons, and anecdotal evidence is going to be very inconsistent because everybody plays a slightly different version of the game.
For one thing, my definition of "martial" is a little more fluid than others. I have a hard time considering the Ranger and Paladin to be martials, because they have 1/2 casting and a packet of abilities that seem very magical in nature. Lay on Hands certainly screams magical to me. I would say that probably the only classes in the game that really qualify as true martial classes are the Fighter, Rogue, and Cavalier. Some monks and barbarians may make appearances as well, and some Rogues really push the limits of actually being martials with access to SLA's Dispelling Strike, etc.
I think even a little bit of spellcasting goes a very long way in opening up options, survivability, and adaptiveness.
I'd probably play one of the listed martials, but generally only if I knew I'd have a caster in the group ready and willing to back me up with some buffs, healing, etc.
Oddly, I don't think I've ever started rolling up a Wizard and then frozen, asking "Wait, is there going to be a Fighter in the group? Because screw this spellcasting noise if I don't have a Fighter to lean on". Part of that, of course, is because there's lots of guys who serve the role of durable damage soak and melee combatant as well as or better than the Fighter. If someone said they wanted to play a class who could tank well, my first suggestion would be Paladin, and then probably Monk (with archetypes), and Fighters would be somewhere down the list from there. The Fighter's crappy saves just make him too much of a liability for me to feel comfortable trusting that guy to try and keep squishier party members safe. My group has seen more character deaths due to party Fighters or Barbarians who didn't take any save boosting abilities getting dominated, charmed, possessed, etc. and then using their gobs of feats and high single-target damage to murder the healer or primary caster than they've ever seen due to direct damage or save or die spells from the enemy.
I usually GM and almost never play, but when I do play its always a martial class - usually paladin, ranger, samurai, very rarely rogue or monk. I have played a magus and a witch for only a few games each. I haven't played a cleric or wizard/sorcerer in years and years, though probably a cleric more recently than the others.
Above 12th level I do feel that casters overpower martials, but that doesn't mean I don't play martials, in fact quite the opposite.
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In older editions, someone had to play the cleric. Now someone has to play the martial class. No matter how many spells you have, you still need a blocker, a PC who does damage and takes it too. At my tables, in order for the casters to win glory, there has to be people in the trenches.There is no such blocking or tanking mechanic in Pathfinder. And anyone can take and deal damage. And casters can summon meatshields that can also take and deal damage.
Edit: Additionally, everything MrSin said above.
Actually the Warder has a sort of blocking mechanic.
If you meant in the core rules though yea, the closest thing to a blocking mechanic is Wind Wall, or the other Wall spells...which martial characters can't cast.
Yeah, there aren't any classes in Pathfinder core who are actually mechanically capable of "tanking" in the sense you see in online games where they can pull aggro and use other abilities to prevent damage to party members. A Paladin or Cleric tank using shield other gets kind of close, and there's some builds you can put together that get a semi-functional kind of tanking, like polearm Fighters with Combat Reflexes and Combat Patrol.
For actual tank classes, you have to look 3rd party.
Dreamscarred Press has the Warder who is an excellent tank, with a marking mechanic to draw enemy attention and the ability to provide AC and save bonuses to allies, or use his counters to try and block an enemy attack against an ally.
Rogue Genius Games also has a class called the Armiger (I think) that is an actual tank, able to act as cover for party members, wield a polearm one-handed, and with strong saves and abilities that help prevent him from being turned against the party or casually dropped in a pit and ignored. As I mentioned previously, I kind of feel like bad Will and Reflex saves automatically detract major points from a character's value as a tank.
When I GM for some reason I see almost zero straight martials. This always ends badly. Elsewhere I see martials often enough but usually Barbarians and Rogues. I NEVER have actually seen a Fighter in play and Cavalier shows up when I play one.
To be fair I've been playing for about four years so I may not have seen all that much.
Martials are preferred by far in my groups.
The most popular classes are:
1. Fighter (current archetypes in use: Crossbowman, Two-Weapon, Two-Handed, Mobile Fighter, & Roughrider)
2. Rogue (Burglar, Spy, Pirate
3. Ranger [Skirmisher archetype has been most popular] (of late, it's being displaced with Kobold Press' Spell-less Ranger)
4. Cavalier
So yeah, the whole "Fighters & Rogues are broken, casters are the only classes worth playing" has been relegated to a failed Internet meme by my group.
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Martials are preferred by far in my groups.
The most popular classes are:
1. Fighter (current archetypes in use: Crossbowman, Two-Weapon, Two-Handed, Mobile Fighter, & Roughrider)
2. Rogue (Burglar, Spy, Pirate
3. Ranger [Skirmisher archetype has been most popular] (of late, it's being displaced with Kobold Press' Spell-less Ranger)
4. CavalierSo yeah, the whole "Fighters & Rogues are broken, casters are the only classes worth playing" has been relegated to a failed Internet meme by my group.
I don't think I've heard anyone say casters are the only classes worth playing, just that martials don't compare, especially at higher levels.
Which is true.If everyone is playing martial characters no one is going to notice that casters out-perform them, in the same way that someone who always plays Mario Bros. is never going to care that an MMO like WoW is a more robust platform capable of more varied and complex dynamics.
I don't think I've heard anyone say casters are the only classes worth playing, just that martials don't compare, especially at higher levels.
Which is true.If everyone is playing martial characters no one is going to notice that casters out-perform them, in the same way that someone who always plays Mario Bros. is never going to care that an MMO like WoW is a more robust platform capable of more varied and complex dynamics.
The forums are littered with "fix the rogue", "fix the fighter", "why can't (martial) have nice things?" threads.
While most of those threads come at the game from a "everyone should be magic-powered/wuxia-capable", a lot of players want to emulate heroes they see in fiction.
I'm not disputing that high-level casters can invoke greater power than their spell-less counterparts. I just take issue with the notion that spell-less character classes must be broken as a result.
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@BPorter: Hey, do you think casters are overpowered? If not, you aren't really the audience being polled. Just thought I'd mention.
Yes, I tend to think casters are over-powered at high levels. The level of power introduces problems with campaign consistency, genre emulation, and feeds the power creep cycle.
The fix, however, should lay in scaling back that power (reserving current high-level spell abilities for Mythic) instead of straining the game by trying to amp everything else to "catch up".
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I think the unspoken part of this argument is always that because this is an RPG, where the purpose of the game is to tell and interact with a cool story rather than to just kill monsters, the players do a lot of self regulating. Just because a Wizard or Druid can be build to be ridiculously powerful, doesn't mean that many players do it, as doing so would be boring. Unlike competitive games in which you are encouraged to make use of a broken build in order to win, you are instead discouraged from breaking your build in a tabletop RPG for the sake of enjoying the game more.
Way past the point that it matters, but I'll answer the OP.
Cheers. I'm not contributing, but I am still reading (so it matters to me, at least!) I've appreciated the input/reports. :)
@BPorter: Hey, do you think casters are overpowered? If not, you aren't really the audience being polled. Just thought I'd mention.Yes, I tend to think casters are over-powered at high levels. The level of power introduces problems with campaign consistency, genre emulation, and feeds the power creep cycle.
The fix, however, should lay in scaling back that power (reserving current high-level spell abilities for Mythic) instead of straining the game by trying to amp everything else to "catch up".
At that point, it boils down to a question of design philosophy more than game balance. Should Pathfinder be a gritty low fantasy game, or a high fantasy one where the PCs are larger than life?
At that point, it boils down to a question of design philosophy more than game balance. Should Pathfinder be a gritty low fantasy game, or a high fantasy one where the PCs are larger than life?
I think the only point that matters is whichever kind of game you want to play use PF to do that for you. Not one or the other as somehow better, only the one you intend to actually play.
For example, while many/most PF games involve high fantasy, the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG) is intentionally designed as a low fantasy, dark and gritty setting, yet completely relies on PF to accomplish that.
The forums are littered with "fix the rogue", "fix the fighter", "why can't (martial) have nice things?" threads.
While most of those threads come at the game from a "everyone should be magic-powered/wuxia-capable", a lot of players want to emulate heroes they see in fiction.
Okay, remove all the stuff you just said about magic and wuxia and connect those two sentences. Maybe... People have "why can't martials have nice things" because they want to 'emulate the heroes they see in fiction', and the glue on their feet style martial that is inept and can't handle magic being thrown at him isn't actually a good fit.
Just calling it "Magic powered or wuxia capable" is categorizing them in a place not all of them are.
Color spray wrecking encounters, on the other hand, is a thought experiment.Mmm, I would disagree. Not terribly long ago while playing RotRL I definitely saw Color Spray straight up end encounters on a couple of different occasions. Other times when it didn't completely wrap up the encounter it still managed to trivialize it by disabling 50% or more of the enemies in one go. It was pretty much the spell for dealing with goblins, goblin dogs, rogue cultisits, etc.
Positioning of the wizard and the enemies is key to how effective colorspray is.
At that level the cast defensively check is something to worry about, so you don't want to be right next to the target.
A 15ft cone covers 5-6 non-adjacent squares. So that is the most creatures you will get with the spell.
You also don't want to cast the spell on your allies.
To wrap up:
1. Don't hit allies
2. Don't be next to foes
3. Fit 3 or more enemies in 5-6 squares
Idk how your GM ran the monster, but for ours, those are hard conditions to meet.
We also had 3 melee in the party(one was an AC) and one of them was a rogue looking to flank.
EDIT: Our RotRL party is a druid, wizard, synthesist, inquisitor, and rogue.
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I don't think I've heard anyone say casters are the only classes worth playing, just that martials don't compare, especially at higher levels.
Which is true.If everyone is playing martial characters no one is going to notice that casters out-perform them, in the same way that someone who always plays Mario Bros. is never going to care that an MMO like WoW is a more robust platform capable of more varied and complex dynamics.
The forums are littered with "fix the rogue", "fix the fighter", "why can't (martial) have nice things?" threads.
This, to me, would actually indicate that there must be a lot of people who want to play Rogues and Fighters and are frustrated at being stymied by their mechanical deficiencies, quite the opposite of people thinking they're not worth playing.
While most of those threads come at the game from a "everyone should be magic-powered/wuxia-capable", a lot of players want to emulate heroes they see in fiction.
This is you assuming a stance that doesn't exist and creating a false dichotomy.
Let me pause to say that first, I don't think we're even talking about the same things. I strongly suspect that your group rarely plays past level 12 and spends the bulk of their play time below 6th level. People who would like to see the Fighter improve aren't talking about the Fighter at levels 6 and lower. He does fine there, and his weaknesses aren't overly pronounced.The issues start creeping in at levels above 6 and that's part of what people are wanting to address.
I, personally, would like the Fighter to be logically consistent within his own framework. See the earlier point in this thread about a Fighter being able to exert around 5 tons of force while simultaneously being unable to jump 10 feet in the air.
I can't emulate a lot of heroes I see in fiction with the Fighter class. I can't play John Carter, Moon Knight, Dujek Onearm, Kratos, or a host of other high level equivalent Fighter types using the Fighter class.
Let me reiterate a point. Your ability to play a character like Gimli from Lord of the Rings, a world where no one is really above a 6th level character, is not in any way impacted by allowing the classes to continue to scale in such a way as to allow me to play a character whose abilities exceed what you can easily see in the Olympics.
Almost the only fictional Fighter-type characters who translate well into Pathfinder are dwarves, largely because dwarves have a built in ability or good racial options to overcome the inherent weaknesses in the Fighter class.
The fix, however, should lay in scaling back that power (reserving current high-level spell abilities for Mythic) instead of straining the game by trying to amp everything else to "catch up".
Everything else already caught up. It's the Fighter who isn't playing the same game as everyone else, and the solution definitely isn't "Nerf the other (almost 30 now) classes in the game to bring them in line with the Fighter". It should be "Bring the 1 or 2 classes that are lagging in line with everyone else".
That's what they did with the Monk via archetypes and feats.
LotR characters are epic and beyond the realms of anything actual people could do.
The fellowship of the ring was mainly comprised of level 4-6 characters.
That's because all semblance of realism stops after 3.
Most people and even Olympic athletes are just differently optimized level 1 characters.
Special forces would be level 2
The greatest historical heroes all time would be level 3.
In my opinion, all semblance of realism stops with the concept of "level".
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Positioning of the wizard and the enemies is key to how effective colorspray is.
At that level the cast defensively check is something to worry about, so you don't want to be right next to the target.
A 15ft cone covers 5-6 non-adjacent squares. So that is the most creatures you will get with the spell.
You also don't want to cast the spell on your allies.
To wrap up:
1. Don't hit allies
2. Don't be next to foes
3. Fit 3 or more enemies in 5-6 squaresIdk how your GM ran the monster, but for ours, those are hard conditions to meet.
We also had 3 melee in the party(one was an AC) and one of them was a rogue looking to flank.EDIT: Our RotRL party is a druid, wizard, synthesist, inquisitor, and rogue.
Our group was sneaky. We had a "ranger" (build, not actual class) along scouting things out and our Wizard was an elf with high Dex and rank(s) in Stealth. Between that combination I think the enemy only ever got the drop on us once, and that was when an invisible Barghest murdered our Rogue who was moving ahead searching for traps. That happened a lot. I think we lost a Rogue in every book, if not every chapter. Occasionally twice in one chapter.
The rest of the time the monsters were doing what monsters do, things like gathering around fire-pits, huddling up in stables, playing cards at tables, etc., basically exactly how you'd like them to set themselves up for a color spray to the face delivered by a stealthy wizard.
Our group was sneaky. We had a "ranger" (build, not actual class) along scouting things out and our Wizard was an elf with high Dex and rank(s) in Stealth. Between that combination I think the enemy only ever got the drop on us once, and that was when an invisible Barghest murdered our Rogue who was moving ahead searching for traps. That happened a lot. I think we lost a Rogue in every book, if not every chapter. Occasionally twice in one chapter.
The rest of the time the monsters were doing what monsters do, things like gathering around fire-pits, huddling up in stables, playing cards at tables, etc., basically exactly how you'd like them to set themselves up for a color spray to the face delivered by a stealthy wizard.
I'm playing a rogue in RotRL and I haven't died.
I did have to retrain my build when I noticed TWF flanking rogue was either worthless or suicidal in 90% of all fights. There is a big temptation to try to flank foes when that what put: Party > Enemy > Rogue > 5 other enemies.
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Our group was sneaky. We had a "ranger" (build, not actual class) along scouting things out and our Wizard was an elf with high Dex and rank(s) in Stealth. Between that combination I think the enemy only ever got the drop on us once, and that was when an invisible Barghest murdered our Rogue who was moving ahead searching for traps. That happened a lot. I think we lost a Rogue in every book, if not every chapter. Occasionally twice in one chapter.
The rest of the time the monsters were doing what monsters do, things like gathering around fire-pits, huddling up in stables, playing cards at tables, etc., basically exactly how you'd like them to set themselves up for a color spray to the face delivered by a stealthy wizard.
I'm playing a rogue in RotRL and I haven't died.
I did have to retrain my build when I noticed TWF flanking rogue was either worthless or suicidal in 90% of all fights. There is a big temptation to try to flank foes when that what put: Party > Enemy > Rogue > 5 other enemies.
I think our player running the Rogue was suffering from "Stealth envy" since every other member of the party was as good as or better than him at being sneaky and he kept trying to prove himself by scouting, flanking, or otherwise not keeping the party between him and danger. To his credit, he built entirely new characters every time, switching up race/archetype/combat style/etc. with every character. So he killed a tree, but at least he was going all in.
A large number -- way more than half, probably towards two thirds -- of the players in our games have been martials, predominately fighters or rogues. This has held true from 1st edition through Pathfinder.
Some of this has to do with "wizards being too much trouble", a lack of interest in magic in general, interest in other concepts that aren't dependent on spell casting and so on. In fact, I believe that we've had more clerics than straight up wizards, with a goodly dose of them being nature themed. Druids and rangers are also heavily favored as well. Outside of myself, I can count less than a handful of other players (when I get to play) that are interested in full blown arcane casters.
As often as people keep repeating it around here, I'm starting to equate "I cast color spray" with "I hit it with a weapon".
As often as people keep repeating it around here, I'm starting to equate "I cast color spray" with "I hit it with a weapon".
Well that is a mistake. Let me explain the differences for you because Color Spray is a lot better then "I hit it with a weapon". What with the multiple targets, average will save being easier to hit then average AC, and on success guarantees removal from fight regardless of remaining HP.
Fun note, this is exactly why in our games we think casters are overpowered compared to martials.
I think our player running the Rogue was suffering from "Stealth envy" since every other member of the party was as good as or better than him at being sneaky and he kept trying to prove himself by scouting, flanking, or otherwise not keeping the party between him and danger. To his credit, he built entirely new characters every time, switching up race/archetype/combat style/etc. with every character. So he killed a tree, but at least he was going all in.I think the enemy only ever got the drop on us once, and that was when an invisible Barghest murdered our Rogue who was moving ahead searching for traps. That happened a lot. I think we lost a Rogue in every book, if not every chapter. Occasionally twice in one chapter.I'm playing a rogue in RotRL and I haven't died.
I did have to retrain my build when I noticed TWF flanking rogue was either worthless or suicidal in 90% of all fights. There is a big temptation to try to flank foes when that what put: Party > Enemy > Rogue > 5 other enemies.
My rogue stays better at stealth with things skill focus and skill mastery.
Of course some people think you can take 10 on the stealth check to sneak past guards (and that the guards can take 10 on the perception check). That difference in play may account for a lot of my perspective.
We also don't have anyone else pumping dex as much.
To answer the title question: yes, for me.
I think our player running the Rogue was suffering from "Stealth envy" since every other member of the party was as good as or better than him at being sneaky and he kept trying to prove himself by scouting, flanking, or otherwise not keeping the party between him and danger. To his credit, he built entirely new characters every time, switching up race/archetype/combat style/etc. with every character. So he killed a tree, but at least he was going all in.I think the enemy only ever got the drop on us once, and that was when an invisible Barghest murdered our Rogue who was moving ahead searching for traps. That happened a lot. I think we lost a Rogue in every book, if not every chapter. Occasionally twice in one chapter.I'm playing a rogue in RotRL and I haven't died.
I did have to retrain my build when I noticed TWF flanking rogue was either worthless or suicidal in 90% of all fights. There is a big temptation to try to flank foes when that what put: Party > Enemy > Rogue > 5 other enemies.
My rogue stays better at stealth with things skill focus and skill mastery.
Of course some people think you can take 10 on the stealth check to sneak past guards (and that the guards can take 10 on the perception check). That difference in play may account for a lot of my perspective.
We also don't have anyone else pumping dex as much.
Well Skill Mastery doesn't make you better per say at Stealth, just removes the odds.
The guards usually can take 10. You on the other hand are threatened/under stress and therefore can't.
You can however take 10 on stealth when you're not otherwise threatened immediately. You know a patrol comes at 3'oclock so you siddle into place at 2:30.
The biggest irritation to me when using Stealth is when the DM makes you reroll it every time someone might see you. So almost always you end up rolling stealth to "enter steath" then end up rerolling it as soon as something might see you which is SO dumb since the first roll isn't even used half the time.
As often as people keep repeating it around here, I'm starting to equate "I cast color spray" with "I hit it with a weapon".Well that is a mistake. Let me explain the differences for you because Color Spray is a lot better then "I hit it with a weapon". What with the multiple targets, average will save being easier to hit then average AC, and on success guarantees removal from fight regardless of remaining HP.
Fun note, this is exactly why in our games we think casters are overpowered compared to martials.
Oh Anzyr, you're my hero.
What does the fighter do? I hit it with my weapon!
What does the wizard do? I cast color spray at it!
You see how they look the same now? Do you? I guess I should have made my statement a little more obvious.
Well Skill Mastery doesn't make you better per say at Stealth, just removes the odds.
The guards usually can take 10. You on the other hand are threatened/under stress and therefore can't.
You can however take 10 on stealth when you're not otherwise threatened immediately. You know a patrol comes at 3'oclock so you siddle into place at 2:30.
The biggest irritation to me when using Stealth is when the DM makes you reroll it every time someone might see you. So almost always you end up rolling stealth to "enter steath" then end up rerolling it as soon as something might see you which is SO dumb since the first roll isn't even used half the time.
I don't believe entering stealth is a thing.
That's also why I like skill mastery. One failed roll is enough to get you noticed. So after enough roll, you are guaranteed to roll low. Skill mastery prevents that. If you were going to fail on a 10 you would probably have failed if you rolled the dice.
As often as people keep repeating it around here, I'm starting to equate "I cast color spray" with "I hit it with a weapon".Well that is a mistake. Let me explain the differences for you because Color Spray is a lot better then "I hit it with a weapon". What with the multiple targets, average will save being easier to hit then average AC, and on success guarantees removal from fight regardless of remaining HP.
Fun note, this is exactly why in our games we think casters are overpowered compared to martials.
Oh Anzyr, you're my hero.
What does the fighter do? I hit it with my weapon!
What does the wizard do? I cast color spray at it!You see how they look the same now? Do you? I guess I should have made my statement a little more obvious.
Well, if you really want to dumb it down its:
I CAST SPELL!
I HIT WEAPON!
But its a bit more than that. Colour spray at level one can wipe out a horde in a cone with the right saves, a weapon attack? Not so much. That's just an example of AoE save or lose at work. There are also powerful narrative tools, like detect magic, invsiiblity, teleport, etc. There are also shaping abilities like stone shape, that can change the battlefield more than any martial can hope to. Martials from 6-20 tend to play a lot a like, trying not to sacrifice their full attack to hit things and having few other options. 1-5 they hit things also, but only once, and they're more mobile when they do it.
As often as people keep repeating it around here, I'm starting to equate "I cast color spray" with "I hit it with a weapon".Well that is a mistake. Let me explain the differences for you because Color Spray is a lot better then "I hit it with a weapon". What with the multiple targets, average will save being easier to hit then average AC, and on success guarantees removal from fight regardless of remaining HP.
Fun note, this is exactly why in our games we think casters are overpowered compared to martials.
Oh Anzyr, you're my hero.
What does the fighter do? I hit it with my weapon!
What does the wizard do? I cast color spray at it!You see how they look the same now? Do you? I guess I should have made my statement a little more obvious.
inb4 response
"But I have other spells!" -- said the wizard with spell perfection where every other possible spell they could cast is worse.
It's like a fighter with Greater weapon focus saying "I can use other weapons!"
Sure you have options, but things like spell perfection give you a "best" option, so 90% of the complaints about martials become true for you.