Note that you can increase the volume of a Create Demiplane with a Rod of Widen Spell, which will increase the Volume x 8 (doubles all dimensions).
Someone noted that with fewer magic items, casters would be shut down. Well, no...casters are the one that MAKE the magic items, unless you move that specifically to magical artisans. Now, what do you suppose that wizard is going to want to make...a sword +5, or a Rod of Quicken?
In essence, earlier editions were intensely unrealistic. If a caster is going to permanently blow Con on an item, he sure as heck isn't going to make a sword he can't use. He especially isn't going to make a sword +1! There would be no minor magic items because no one in their right mind is going to blow Con on minor items when the same cost works for major ones.
Also, the counterpoint to the above was to have a summoner wizard. Woopsie, nopes. In 1E, you had to maintain control of all your summoned creatures, and if you didn't, they turned on you. Furthermore, an enemy could Dispel Magic and take your summoned creatures away from you! So, not only were creatures not 'fire and forget' like they are now, you couldn't even cast other spells while you were controlling them! If you took damage, they turned around and went after YOU! A dispel magic had the option of 'grabbing them for yourself' (and becoming the 'new' summoner) or 'dispelling the control'. Once uncontrolled, creatures went after their summoner until the duration of the spell was up!
So, guess what? Nobody much used summoning magic except outside of combat where you could sit inside a Prot/Evil and direct your slave in perfect safety. Summoned monsters were things you brought up and sent at the adventurers from another room or even further away!
So, yeah, Summoning was NOT a good option in 1E.
Oh, and the fastest advancing class overall was, I believe, the Illusionist. Surprised nobody mentioned him. If he wasn't, he was #2 to the Rogue.
The Druid gets props because he could end up with more hit points then any other class...unless you were one of the .03% who qualified to be a Bard.
Props for BECMI. They took you on the Epic road to greatness one Set at a time. I still consider that Cyclopedia of the BECM rules one of the greatest compiled rulebooks, ever.
===Aelryinth
Aelryinth, Widen Spell only affects burst, spread, or emanation spells. Create Demiplane is not a valid spell to be affected by this metamagic feat.
wooops! I stand corrected. HAH...they made a typo...they took out the 'line' AoE, but left in 'one of these 4 types'.
==Aelryinth
Well... it's weird. Pathfinder lowered the power "ceiling" on casters. But! They raised the power "floor". This means that players with lower levels of system mastery have a higher chance of stumbling across caster craziness. For example, Simulacrum no longer has an XP cost. In 3.5, players with lower levels of system mastery looked at XP costs as something to be avoided at all costs (even though XP is a river...). So without the XP cost, even a newer player can look at Simulacrum and go "For a small bit of gold why *wouldn't* I want that?". The disparity is mostly still the same, it just instead of making Ice Assassins of Gods, casters are limited to just creating demiplanes.
It's also worth noting that one of the main areas where casters in Pathfinder were nerfed, relative to 3.5, was their ability to beat martials at doing martial things. It seems like the martial/caster disparity wasn't really corrected so much as martials got better niche protection. 3.5's Persistent Spell and Divine Metamagic were removed so clerics couldn't have buffs up 24/7, polymorphing was completely reworked, etc.
Casters are still incredibly powerful and versatile, but they (generally) can't beat martials in the role of physical damage dealer. It seems to me like the devs aren't so concerned about the disparity so long as it doesn't extend to casters beating martials at martial things.
Although Bards have totally stolen the "Skill Master" role in Pathfinder. Nothing else even comes remotely close at this point. Rogues pretty much had *all* their niche protection ripped away... painfully. Now if we could just get a Sublime Chord style prestige class...
Its worth noting though. Even humans could make a planet given time and technology. Could we make a new dimension with laws that we set though?
A very large version of rope trick, but not something that huge in terms of real estate given that what it creates is still described as a number of cubes per level.
What do you call Create Greater Demiplane? He doesn't just create a planet, he creates a whole new plane of existence.
It gives you twice as much time (which means twice many spells per day, limits... what are those?) or even better numbers if you can gamble on flowing time, though good luck getting a sane GM to give you anything better then fast time. And seriously... once you start dumping your (twice) as many slots, you'll have a very large demiplane in short (outside time) order. Just say it took you only a week after the fact.
While I did not play 3.5, its my understanding that Pathfinder did reduce the Martial/Caster Disparity, but not to the point of balance, instead to the point of 'This is no longer a Vertical Line, but instead is now tipped to a ~45 degree angle'.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. Pathfinder actually buffed the casters; examples are maybe the increase of hit dice of wizards, or the human racial for sorcerers. There are many more examples. There's a reason why Pathfinder is generally called "Caster Edition" D&D.
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The difference is in the power of the tools of each class. The problem is spells being too powerful or versatile and not the class that uses them. If a fighters weapon scaled like a monk's unarmed strike the fighter wouldn't have to max out his damage stat and could opt for other stats. They already gain enough bonuses to hit despite a +10 from strength. Or the ability to move and full attack even if it was just an extra 5 foot step as part of a full attack that didn't count towards movement or the ability to use a swift action to move up to 15 feet as part of a full attack and the fighters potential would exponentially increase.
No, it would not.
Their thing would still be "attack and do damage'. They would still miss out on flying, being invisible, plane-shifting, teleportation and other things are level-appropriate in higher levels.
Since that's exactly the problem. The wizard's thing is: Do everything (since there is a spell for everything).
The average fighter's thing is: Attack a non-flying, visible, non-etheral (etc) creature from a dangerously close distance.
While I did not play 3.5, its my understanding that Pathfinder did reduce the Martial/Caster Disparity, but not to the point of balance, instead to the point of 'This is no longer a Vertical Line, but instead is now tipped to a ~45 degree angle'.Unfortunately, that is not the case. Pathfinder actually buffed the casters; examples are maybe the increase of hit dice of wizards, or the human racial for sorcerers. There are many more examples. There's a reason why Pathfinder is generally called "Caster Edition" D&D.
Core book spellcasters are more powerful than 3.5. 3.5 splats can abuse stuff better via natural spell abuse and divine metamagic/persistent spell fun along with some crazy prestige classes.
3.0 had the most powerful spell casters in 3rd ed IMHO. Red Wizards, Shadow Adepts, Incantrix, Spelldancers were all more abusable than 3.5 versions of them.
Throw in spells like haste and meta magic abuse with the animal spells (bulls strength, cats grace etc) 3.0 was very very borked. I forget to mention 3.0 spell focus, greater spell focus and persistent spell as well. Buff spells like Divine Favor scaled faster along with greater magic weapon and bows and arrows stacked. Cleric archers +25 to hit and damage or more with 6 attacks a round.
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This logic is broken right from the start.
A low level fighter can hit an enemy pretty damn hard.
A low level wizard can cast a spell.
A high level wizard can cast a spell better than they could at level one.
A high level fighter can hit an enemy harder than they could at level one.
Not entirely accurate. Its more like this:
At low level, a Fighter can hit an enemy hard and do damage to them until they die.
At low level, a Wizard can cast a spell that does damage to them, a spell that knocks them out, a spell that makes the fighter hit the enemy harder, or can [this is 3rd level and beyond], rip extradimensional holes in the floor under the enemy.
At high level, a Fighter can hit someone incredibly hard 4 or 5[or 6 or 7] times, doing lots of damage until they die.
At high level, a Wizard can cast a spell that can Sandwich the enemy between 2 conjured boulders, Scream People to death, or make acid erupt from his flesh and melt his enemies.
This isn't even trying any of the downtime Wish+Blood Money shenanigans, and is all direct damage. Its not "casting a spell better than what you cast at low-levels" its "casting a different, more powerful spell". The only times you are casting a spell better than before are when you are using Metamagic Feats, and there are virtually no low-level spells that are genuinely worth getting Metamagic'd up to a 9th level slot.
So until fighters can fly, go invisible, plane shift, teleport they'll be a sub par class.
Yes.
Got it.
I am afraid your self-assessment is overly optimistic at this point, since
Fighters will never be good because they have to be casters first.
No, they don't. They should be able to do those things as fighters because their opposition, the monsters they are expected to fight at level 20, can do those things and more.
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Differentiating between spell effects makes no difference. A caster can cast spells. As they gain levels they can cast spells better. They fail less casting defensively, they more easily...This logic is broken right from the start.
A low level fighter can hit an enemy pretty damn hard.
A low level wizard can cast a spell.
A high level wizard can cast a spell better than they could at level one.
A high level fighter can hit an enemy harder than they could at level one.
Not entirely accurate. Its more like this:
At low level, a Fighter can hit an enemy hard and do damage to them until they die.
At low level, a Wizard can cast a spell that does damage to them, a spell that knocks them out, a spell that makes the fighter hit the enemy harder, or can [this is 3rd level and beyond], rip extradimensional holes in the floor under the enemy.
At high level, a Fighter can hit someone incredibly hard 4 or 5[or 6 or 7] times, doing lots of damage until they die.
At high level, a Wizard can cast a spell that can Sandwich the enemy between 2 conjured boulders, Scream People to death, or make acid erupt from his flesh and melt his enemies.
This isn't even trying any of the downtime Wish+Blood Money shenanigans, and is all direct damage. Its not "casting a spell better than what you cast at low-levels" its "casting a different, more powerful spell". The only times you are casting a spell better than before are when you are using Metamagic Feats, and there are virtually no low-level spells that are genuinely worth getting Metamagic'd up to a 9th level slot.
I agree, but the statement that a caster casts spells better is a little misleading, because it implies that the caster is doing the same thing he was doing at level one, only a little bit different. That is what the fighter is doing. The wizard is using a whole new toy at each odd level, that could be doing something different each time[such as grappling people, dropping them down pits, bull rushing them, damaging them, reading/controlling their minds, etc.]. I'm not saying this is what fighters should be doing, but I'd like to see them frequently get new toys that were significantly different from "I hit it with a stick". Or "I give it a hug". Or "I knock it down then hit it with a stick".
honestly there just needs to be more feats where the only prereq is a level, and then you balance it around that level.
like off the top of my head
herp derp:
prereq: level 10
when you sunder an object that is unattended, if you do more damage than it's hardness, it is instantly destroyed, or if the object is large enough, a logical portion of it.
Troublesome door? I got FIST! *punches the door off it's hinged*
cutting a boulder in half
punching through a wall all kool-aide man
it's simple, but allows you to do something special rather easily in a way different than wizards do it. want to get through the wall here? instead of stone to mud, just cut through.
And when it comes to killing things, assuming he can get at it and it isn't magically immune to what he does, a fighter consistently out-damages a caster. Let us not get once again mired in this fallacious argument, in a stand-up fight (a "fair fight" to use that old saw) a fighter is better at fighting. The fighter's shortfall is without magic, (and for some reason we're supposed to ignore magic items) a fighter often cannot GET a "fair fight" and he can't do stuff outside of it that Schrodinger's caster can.
You have never seen what happens when a caster dedicates themselves to blasting have you...
They make fighters cry... and they do it at range... and hit all the buddies too... and can still fly xD
Right now a high level fighter can crush armies single handily, trade full attacks with Great Wyrms, Kill a careless Balor with pointy pieces of wood, and drink the finest poison while sky diving naked into his bed for a good nights sleep.
Yet for some reason a high level fighter has trouble dispatching stone walls quickly, takes ages to chew through invisible barriers, cannot prevent enemies from teleporting away, could not assault the demons lord's castle solo like an equal level wizard, could not rally armies with mechanics or rule nations effectively, can barely jump off the ground, can't have an effective mount, or handle many situations that supposedly equal classes could handle easily while being able to do what the fighter can.
Now I think I can hide a fighter's problems from a fighter player as a GM, but it is the mark of a troubled class where I would have to do that.
EDIT: Oh hi boring7. Has this conversation increased the amount of fun you have with Pathfinder? I guess it's too late to turn away now. I do hope you enjoy the decent down the rabbit hole.
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Right now a high level fighter can crush armies single handily
Not exactly...unlike a Barbarian who could take an army on single handedly, a Fighter can't attain the level of DR that requires. And that is required since an army is likely able to roll many natural 20s. So your average longsword from an NPC warrior(12 or 14 STR) will deal 5.5 to 6.5 damage. DR5/- doesn't quite cut it. Meanwhile a Barbarian starts at the same amount DR5/- and could gain up to DR13/-.
sky diving naked into his bed for a good nights sleep.
unfortunately he would need a wizard's help for that, mostly getting to the point to skydive.
Right now a high level fighter can crush armies single handilyNot exactly...unlike a Barbarian who could take an army on single handedly, a Fighter can't attain the level of DR that requires. And that is required since an army is likely able to roll many natural 20s. So your average longsword from an NPC warrior(12 or 14 STR) will deal 5.5 to 6.5 damage. DR5/- doesn't quite cut it. Meanwhile a Barbarian starts at the same amount DR5/- and could gain up to DR13/-.
he's talkign about mass combat rules
in which an army of 1 is CR-8 for their combat value, and an army of a hundred or so is CR for their combat value, so he can kill 100 CR 12 creatures or 1000 CR 6 creatures.
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I think that if we are being honest about the opportunity cost associated with feats versus spells, we can say that feats should have a relative effect similar to one line of spells. What I mean is that a feat should accomplish one thing, and that thing should improve as your character does. Its the only way to make a class with ten class features compete with a class that has 60 or so.
An example might be something like blindfight working as it does now up to BAB 6 and then granting blindsense and then tremorsense at BAB 11 and then finally something akin to blindsight at bab 16.
All that said, I think effects like blindsight should grant large bonuses to spotting stealthed characters as apposed to hard countering the ability altogether. Regardless, I think you get the idea.
Right now a high level fighter can crush armies single handilyNot exactly...unlike a Barbarian who could take an army on single handedly, a Fighter can't attain the level of DR that requires. And that is required since an army is likely able to roll many natural 20s. So your average longsword from an NPC warrior(12 or 14 STR) will deal 5.5 to 6.5 damage. DR5/- doesn't quite cut it. Meanwhile a Barbarian starts at the same amount DR5/- and could gain up to DR13/-.
he's talkign about mass combat rules
in which an army of 1 is CR-8 for their combat value, and an army of a hundred or so is CR for their combat value, so he can kill 100 CR 12 creatures or 1000 CR 6 creatures.
I won't pretend I was, but yeah. The mass combat rules are one of the few places where a fighter's class features doesn't get in the way of his CR.
Great Cleave plus Lunge is actually very handy for killing armies. Potentially you could kill 20 soldiers per turn. Our fighter has to worry about at most 8 melee attacks per turn and then some d8s and d6s from arrows. The damage rate is slow enough that said fighter could drink a potion every so many dozens of rounds and be just fine.
Fighters can work, provided the GM sees fighters as someone to load out with artifacts and other story important gear in lieu of actual class features. What is difficult is making a fighter work as a player (instead of as the GM). That is a serious issue with the class.
did everyone just like skip over my feat? there should seriously be feats that give you some ability that can be used in a vast number of ways. they should have just straight level prereq and maybe an attribute so that high level characters can start actually doing some crazy stuff.
I think that if we are being honest about the opportunity cost associated with feats versus spells, we can say that feats should have a relative effect similar to one line of spells. What I mean is that a feat should accomplish one thing, and that thing should improve as your character does. Its the only way to make a class with ten class features compete with a class that has 60 or so.
An example might be something like blindfight working as it does now up to BAB 6 and then granting blindsense and then tremorsense at BAB 11 and then finally something akin to blindsight at bab 16.
All that said, I think effects like blindsight should grant large bonuses to spotting stealthed characters as apposed to hard countering the ability altogether. Regardless, I think you get the idea.
Scaling bonuses for a lot of things are a commonly-missed opportunity. You have your Father's Armor™ which is the only thing that never betrayed you, right up until someone hands you a +2 suit of Fullplate and you have the option of character or quality.
But there are costs to that opportunity as well, I suppose. Especially where DM control of player wealth is concerned.
damn, this just reminded me of how much I miss favored weapon/armor from warhammer 40k, it wouldn't really port over well, but I sort of feel like doing it.
basically, the weapon scales with your notoriety, and if you have willingly use a different weapon or armor, then you have to atone for it and try to make it your favored weapon again. (which basically meant only use it for a few sessions.) that game system didn't have upgradable loot though like +1 swords.