You can only store and bring out ONE pistol with the gloves, and you can NOT wear two. Not to mention it cost 10000 gps and takes up a valuable slot.
So, lets assume that the mouse-cord thing wasn't a joke and move on to the rest of the point. They didn't take anything away from high level martials. They took away something from a cord that any 0 level commoner had access to. Gunslingers can still TWF with double-barreled pistols, they just need a Glove of Storing or the Gun Twirling feat now. The weapon cord errata literally had nothing to do with high level martials, it had to do with the relative expedience of leather cords.It's a free action to switch a weapon between hands, and a free action to stow or draw a weapon from the glove, so it works just fine thank you. And a Gunslinger going for that fighting style literally has no better choice for what to spend the cash and slot on.
Also, as I noted, Paizo came out with a feat that not only allows the trick, but actually gives it to lets Rogues slap their Sneak Attack damage on besides.
As I understand it, the idea was to wield two pistols, empty them, thn bring up two fresh new pistols, and empty them.
With the glove you can only bring in one new pistol.
You can only store and bring out ONE pistol with the gloves, and you can NOT wear two. Not to mention it cost 10000 gps and takes up a valuable slot.
So, lets assume that the mouse-cord thing wasn't a joke and move on to the rest of the point. They didn't take anything away from high level martials. They took away something from a cord that any 0 level commoner had access to. Gunslingers can still TWF with double-barreled pistols, they just need a Glove of Storing or the Gun Twirling feat now. The weapon cord errata literally had nothing to do with high level martials, it had to do with the relative expedience of leather cords.It's a free action to switch a weapon between hands, and a free action to stow or draw a weapon from the glove, so it works just fine thank you. And a Gunslinger going for that fighting style literally has no better choice for what to spend the cash and slot on.
Also, as I noted, Paizo came out with a feat that not only allows the trick, but actually gives it to lets Rogues slap their Sneak Attack damage on besides.
As I understand it, the idea was to wield two pistols, empty them, thn bring up two fresh new pistols, and empty them.
With the glove you can only bring in one new pistol.
This is why you wear two of them. It's not like you can have something on your other hand anyway.
This is why you wear two of them. It's not like you can have something on your other hand anyway.You can only store and bring out ONE pistol with the gloves, and you can NOT wear two. Not to mention it cost 10000 gps and takes up a valuable slot.
So, lets assume that the mouse-cord thing wasn't a joke and move on to the rest of the point. They didn't take anything away from high level martials. They took away something from a cord that any 0 level commoner had access to. Gunslingers can still TWF with double-barreled pistols, they just need a Glove of Storing or the Gun Twirling feat now. The weapon cord errata literally had nothing to do with high level martials, it had to do with the relative expedience of leather cords.It's a free action to switch a weapon between hands, and a free action to stow or draw a weapon from the glove, so it works just fine thank you. And a Gunslinger going for that fighting style literally has no better choice for what to spend the cash and slot on.
Also, as I noted, Paizo came out with a feat that not only allows the trick, but actually gives it to lets Rogues slap their Sneak Attack damage on besides.
As I understand it, the idea was to wield two pistols, empty them, thn bring up two fresh new pistols, and empty them.
With the glove you can only bring in one new pistol.
You've never actually looked at the glove of storing, have you? Go do that now.
No, I didn't, because I didn't imagine they'd change it from 3.5 >.< Whhhhyyyy?
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Uh...the Gun Twirling Feat also works. And isn't magic.For the record, that's actually 4 feats you need to get it to work, or 3 feats and a class feature (follow the link). I think it got pretty well-established in the "what fighters need" and other threads, including this one just above, that feat chains are one of the banes of martial characters. If we could eliminate some of the prerequisites, though, I'd be totally OK with a feat requirement there.
Sure...but that's an entirely different issue from the first one you brought up, and the existence of the Feat still invalidates that first complaint. Which was made in response to a post including said Feat.
If you have problems with the mundane solution being too Feat intensive, then that's fine (and a very legitimate complaint in many cases), but it's disingenuous to complain that only magic fixes the problem when that's not actually the case, and the person you're responding to already brought up the mundane solution.
It would depend on what it is but I believe reflecting a spell back at the caster with a normal shield would fall into the magic category.
It's simply the logical conclusion of this.
Or the Parry Spell (Su) Mythic Power.
Neither of which are spells, as you seem to be implying would be the end result.
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Awhile ago, I realized that the game already sorts itself into tiers based on the available spells, roughly every 4 levels.
By which I mean, usually even-leveled spells pretty much do what the last level's spells do, but better. Odd numbered spell levels generally get the 'new' effects. 9-level spellcasters get a new spell level every 2 levels, so they get a new 'tier' of powers every 4 levels.
1st-4th level, spellcasters can do some weird stuff, but nothing that couldn't be done the old fashioned way.
5th level, wizards get fireball and fly. These are sort of the base things people think of when they think of wizards, so this might be the place that a relatively diligent wizard can expect to reach during his career. (Also, getting a score above 15 is rare in NPCs, so a lot of wizards pretty much cap out here, even if they have more levels.)
We stay in that 'better than ordinary, but not earth-shattering' groove until level 9, when wizards start to be able to teleport and clerics start raising the dead or visiting Hell in person. Any semblance of 'normal' pretty much ends here.
Above 9th level, you can call Outsiders, visit other planes, travel the world instantly, and have beaten death itself. You're very special. And you're also rare enough that these abilities aren't so available as to warp society.
At 13th level, you get 7th level spells, you can heal any malady, or raise the dead from a lock of hair. You can create your own demiplane.
And at 17th level, you get wish, which sort of says it all.So to answer the question:
I'm quite happy, however, that those rare 17-18th level NPCs got there by doing something to tap into abilities they wouldn't normally have, while "normal" NPCs hit a firm-ish cap around 10th level (or 6th, or whatever!)That depends on your personal taste. It really does. Think of the most powerful non-story NPCs (the BBEG cheats) around. The deans of wizard colleges, archbishops, barbarian kings, that kind...
I know I'm late addressing this, but this thread is moving fast.
Ross is absolutely right with this and it underscores one of the main issues that Martials face.
By the reasoning Ross has posted above spellcasters can literally change the world. But the player base has a very different objective experience than the NPCs.
The players can use Point Buy to dump stats and buy up their casting stat. Then they can get permanent boosts from a headband.
*THIS IS THE DEFAULT ASSUMPTION for all PC casters*
I have not seen a full caster start the game with less than a 16 ever in a point buy game. That value easily puts them in the top percentile group of the entire world population. Point buy skews the power levels of classes. This isn't an issue of SAD vs MAD. it is an issue of Mental stats having a much higher value than Physical stats. That the full casters are basically all SAD classes just makes that disparity worse.
Martials are not really SAD, and Physical stat values simply produce static bonuses. Mental stat values give static values and increases your potential access to Class Feature elements.
I've always felt like this was one of the basic failures in the system and it rears it's head at the very beginning. A lot of the game elements are "Legacy Components". Those elements get retained but the alterations to other subsystems in effect change all manner of things.
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You know what would be a fun experiment?
1) Go through the cleric and wizard spell lists, taking note of the most commonly used spells of each spell level. (You know, the staples like grease, scorching ray, haste, blindness/deafness, summon monster, cloudkill, teleport, etc.)
2) For each such spell, check whether or not martials can do something comparable at about the same level. (For instance, scorching ray is "deal damage at range", which martials can in fact do. Comprehend languages is just a temporary shortcut version of putting ranks into Linguistics. Grease is comparable to the trip maneuver. Etc.)
3) If a spell is not something that martials can do a comparable version of, then create a fighter feat or rogue talent (requiring a class level of 2X the spell level, or the same level a sorc/oracle would get that spell) that does something comparable. Not identical, but comparable. (For example, for plane shift, maybe a Fighter12 can take a feat that lets him shatter/cut reality such that he forces open a temporary portal to another plane and anyone in that square has to save or get sucked in. Maybe it requires Knowledge [planes] 12 ranks and is usable 1/day. Something.)
4) If you can't come up with an appropriate martial ability that's comparable to the spell, instead come up with a martial ability that counters it. Maybe a fighter can cut the magic of a summon spell, ending it prematurely. Something.
5) This is important: if you can't come up with a way for a martial to do something as cool and powerful as a given spell, ban that spell.
I wonder what this process could give us—both in terms of character options, and in terms of insight into the current system.
Design Manager
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You know what would be a fun experiment?
1) Go through the cleric and wizard spell lists, taking note of the most commonly used spells of each spell level. (You know, the staples like grease, scorching ray, haste, blindness/deafness, summon monster, cloudkill, teleport, etc.)
2) For each such spell, check whether or not martials can do something comparable at about the same level. (For instance, scorching ray is "deal damage at range", which martials can in fact do. Comprehend languages is just a temporary shortcut version of putting ranks into Linguistics. Grease is comparable to the trip maneuver. Etc.)
3) If a spell is not something that martials can do a comparable version of, then create a fighter feat or rogue talent (requiring a class level of 2X the spell level, or the same level a sorc/oracle would get that spell) that does something comparable. Not identical, but comparable. (For example, for plane shift, maybe a Fighter12 can take a feat that lets him shatter/cut reality such that he forces open a temporary portal to another plane and anyone in that square has to save or get sucked in. Maybe it requires Knowledge [planes] 12 ranks and is usable 1/day. Something.)
4) If you can't come up with an appropriate martial ability that's comparable to the spell, instead come up with a martial ability that counters it. Maybe a fighter can cut the magic of a summon spell, ending it prematurely. Something.
5) This is important: if you can't come up with a way for a martial to do something as cool and powerful as a given spell, ban that spell.
I wonder what this process could give us—both in terms of character options, and in terms of insight into the current system.
I've actually been working on a project fairly similar to this. I'd say it's an eye opener, but it isn't, really. We know where a lot of the problem spells are. things like wish, simulacrum, miracle, etc. are pretty apparent and obvious as game changers.
The real thing you get out of the suggested course of action is non-linear balance; the martials may not be able to do everything the casters can, but they end up with more ways to act and react to the basic threats and challenges of living in a magical world. And that's good stuff.
You know what would be a fun experiment?
1) Go through the cleric and wizard spell lists, taking note of the most commonly used spells of each spell level. (You know, the staples like grease, scorching ray, haste, blindness/deafness, summon monster, cloudkill, teleport, etc.)
2) For each such spell, check whether or not martials can do something comparable at about the same level. (For instance, scorching ray is "deal damage at range", which martials can in fact do. Comprehend languages is just a temporary shortcut version of putting ranks into Linguistics. Grease is comparable to the trip maneuver. Etc.)
Even here, you have to be careful that what you're claiming is "comparable" is really comparable.
For example, the trip maneuver lets me trip a single person at melee range.
The grease spell lets me trip up to four normal humans at 25 feet. It also acts, without requiring further actions on my part, to keep them down and to prevent normal movement. It also allows me to disarm an opponent.
Similarly, comprehend languages allows me to read or understand any language, while linguistics points will allow me to speak, read, write, or understand any single language.
In both cases, I think the magic effect is considerably stronger.
I agree it would be a fun and eye-opening experiment, except I suspect that most of us already know how it would turn out.
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Maybe it requires Knowledge [planes] 12 ranks and is usable 1/day. Something.)Change that to Knowledge [planes] 3 ranks and +11 BAB and usable 1/day+number of ranks in Knowledge: Planes and you might have something there.
No, then you've got a plane shift-equivalent that you can use more times than a caster could ever cast it. You don't fix a problem by leaping as far as you can in the opposite direction.
Maybe it requires Knowledge [planes] 12 ranks and is usable 1/day. Something.)Change that to Knowledge [planes] 3 ranks and +11 BAB and usable 1/day+number of ranks in Knowledge: Planes and you might have something there.
Agreed. There's still a major issue here in that wizards have unlimited spells known and can swap them out on a daily basis. I don't need to spend limited resources, feats or skill points, in order to learn a plane shift spell. Even a sorcerer can pick up a scroll.
Fighters don't have a lot of skill points and aren't going to want to spend 12 of them (or even three of them) on a once-in-a-while ability. Ditto their all-to-precious feats. Which means that casters are still effectively the people you go to for something useful, because they just say "come back tomorrow" and they're optimized for what you need.
No, then you've got a plane shift-equivalent that you can use more times than a caster could ever cast it. You don't fix a problem by leaping as far as you can in the opposite direction.Maybe it requires Knowledge [planes] 12 ranks and is usable 1/day. Something.)Change that to Knowledge [planes] 3 ranks and +11 BAB and usable 1/day+number of ranks in Knowledge: Planes and you might have something there.
Disagree. How often do you want to cast plane shift?
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You know what would be a fun experiment?
1) Go through the cleric and wizard spell lists, taking note of the most commonly used spells of each spell level. (You know, the staples like grease, scorching ray, haste, blindness/deafness, summon monster, cloudkill, teleport, etc.)
2) For each such spell, check whether or not martials can do something comparable at about the same level. (For instance, scorching ray is "deal damage at range", which martials can in fact do. Comprehend languages is just a temporary shortcut version of putting ranks into Linguistics. Grease is comparable to the trip maneuver. Etc.)
Even here, you have to be careful that what you're claiming is "comparable" is really comparable.
For example, the trip maneuver lets me trip a single person at melee range.
The grease spell lets me trip up to four normal humans at 25 feet. It also acts, without requiring further actions on my part, to keep them down and to prevent normal movement. It also allows me to disarm an opponent.
Similarly, comprehend languages allows me to read or understand any language, while linguistics points will allow me to speak, read, write, or understand any single language.
In both cases, I think the magic effect is considerably stronger.
I'd contest that conclusion.
For grease, there are some differences you missed:
• The DC doesn't scale with level, while a fighter can keep his trip chance (at least against humanoids) pretty competitive for a long time.
• At the levels where grease has a good chance of tripping someone, it's a very limited daily resource.
• The fighter can even do it without the feat investments if he uses reach.
• A fighter can build around tripping, turning into an enlarged, polearm-wielding, AoO-spamming menace. Grease is always just grease.
Of course, grease has other options as well. Maybe it's better overall, maybe not. But it's a lot closer than you give it credit for.
Meanwhile, comprehend languages may give you all languages, but it gives you no ability to communicate; only the guy with a rank in Linguistics can actually have a conversation or write something down. Additionally, he's simultaneously getting better at things like creating and detecting forgeries. One is temporary and the other is permanent, while both are limited in different ways. Seems fair to me.
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Disagree. How often do you want to cast plane shift?No, then you've got a plane shift-equivalent that you can use more times than a caster could ever cast it. You don't fix a problem by leaping as far as you can in the opposite direction.Maybe it requires Knowledge [planes] 12 ranks and is usable 1/day. Something.)Change that to Knowledge [planes] 3 ranks and +11 BAB and usable 1/day+number of ranks in Knowledge: Planes and you might have something there.
If I had a level-per-day pool that didn't restrict other options when I used it? All the frickin' time.
But anyway, that was a two-seconds-of-thought example to explain what I meant for making equivalent abilities. Obviously it could be fine-tuned; make it X/day plus 1 more per day at every Y levels, or whatever. That's beside the point.
How often do you want to cast plane shift?
At least twice a day, so I can sleep on a fluffy white cloud on a fast-time plane. More than that is icing.
You know what would be a fun experiment?
1) Go through the cleric and wizard spell lists, taking note of the most commonly used spells of each spell level. (You know, the staples like grease, scorching ray, haste, blindness/deafness, summon monster, cloudkill, teleport, etc.)
2) For each such spell, check whether or not martials can do something comparable at about the same level. (For instance, scorching ray is "deal damage at range", which martials can in fact do. Comprehend languages is just a temporary shortcut version of putting ranks into Linguistics. Grease is comparable to the trip maneuver. Etc.)
3) If a spell is not something that martials can do a comparable version of, then create a fighter feat or rogue talent (requiring a class level of 2X the spell level, or the same level a sorc/oracle would get that spell) that does something comparable. Not identical, but comparable. (For example, for plane shift, maybe a Fighter12 can take a feat that lets him shatter/cut reality such that he forces open a temporary portal to another plane and anyone in that square has to save or get sucked in. Maybe it requires Knowledge [planes] 12 ranks and is usable 1/day. Something.)
4) If you can't come up with an appropriate martial ability that's comparable to the spell, instead come up with a martial ability that counters it. Maybe a fighter can cut the magic of a summon spell, ending it prematurely. Something.
5) This is important: if you can't come up with a way for a martial to do something as cool and powerful as a given spell, ban that spell.
I wonder what this process could give us—both in terms of character options, and in terms of insight into the current system.
Please don't mistake my bluntness for hostility, but . . . why? I just don't see how there's anything to be gained by this. I don't expect a (vanilla, non-archetyped, not-augmented-by-magical-infusions-or-whatnot) fighter to be able to cut a hole in the dimensional fabric without a magic blade/subtle knife/whatever. I don't expect a fighter to slash the air and cause meteors to fall from the sky. I don't expect a fighter to flex their muscles a la Armstrong to cause a charm person effect. It's just not their thing. If the system is going to be class based, the one thing classes should never be is completely interchangeable. Otherwise, it's better to ditch classes altogether and go with a build point or similar system.
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Please don't mistake my bluntness for hostility, but . . . why? I just don't see how there's anything to be gained by this. I don't expect a (vanilla, non-archetyped, not-augmented-by-magical-infusions-or-whatnot) fighter to be able to cut a hole in the dimensional fabric without a magic blade/subtle knife/whatever. I don't expect a fighter to slash the air and cause meteors to fall from the sky. I don't expect a fighter to flex their muscles a la Armstrong to cause a charm person effect. It's just not their thing. If the system is going to be class based, the one thing classes should never be is completely interchangeable. Otherwise, it's better to ditch classes altogether and go with a build point or similar system.
That's not what I'm suggesting. The fact that some magical effects just don't make sense for nonmagical means is exactly why I wrote steps 4 and 5. Did you get that far?
EDIT: Maybe more examples would help.
I'm not talking about using your fighting spirit to replicate the effects of levitate, but maybe at the level that casters get levitate I could spend a feat/talent to be able to jump really, really well. Like, maybe even better than a commoner with the same ranks. Is that making the classes "interchangeable"?
Awhile ago, I realized that the game already sorts itself into tiers based on the available spells, roughly every 4 levels.
By which I mean, usually even-leveled spells pretty much do what the last level's spells do, but better. Odd numbered spell levels generally get the 'new' effects. 9-level spellcasters get a new spell level every 2 levels, so they get a new 'tier' of powers every 4 levels.
1st-4th level, spellcasters can do some weird stuff, but nothing that couldn't be done the old fashioned way.
5th level, wizards get fireball and fly. These are sort of the base things people think of when they think of wizards, so this might be the place that a relatively diligent wizard can expect to reach during his career. (Also, getting a score above 15 is rare in NPCs, so a lot of wizards pretty much cap out here, even if they have more levels.)
We stay in that 'better than ordinary, but not earth-shattering' groove until level 9, when wizards start to be able to teleport and clerics start raising the dead or visiting Hell in person. Any semblance of 'normal' pretty much ends here.
Above 9th level, you can call Outsiders, visit other planes, travel the world instantly, and have beaten death itself. You're very special. And you're also rare enough that these abilities aren't so available as to warp society.
At 13th level, you get 7th level spells, you can heal any malady, or raise the dead from a lock of hair. You can create your own demiplane.
And at 17th level, you get wish, which sort of says it all.
An extension of this occurred to me during the discussion of the ACG classes, many of which are 6-level casters.
The 4-level casters (paladins, rangers, bloodragers) only get up to level 4 spells: That's the 'better than ordinary but not earthshattering' tier.
The 6-level casters only get up to level 6 spells. They eventually get the 'you're very special' tier, but they never get the 7th-9th sets of escalating trumps and things that can actively change the shape of the world.
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@kyrt-ryder: I wouldn't even need that. Just something fundamentally more fantastic than "commoner with higher stats". Maybe you can quickly ascend the walls of an alleyway with a rapid series of wall kicks. Maybe (to instead compare to spider climb) you can learn to run up the wall itself for a short distance.
Maybe, just maybe, when the wizard who literally flies all day is trying to escape, you could at least try a fantasy-caliber leap to grab his leg and weigh him down.
Pretty sure that doesn't make the classes interchangeable.
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This seems a useful exercise. So, let's start at the lower levels, shall we?
0th:
Detect Magic (Martials have no way to do this. Bit of a problem.)
1st:
Color Spray/Sleep (Non-lethal damage actually works here, given the HD limits. Doing it in an area is a bit trickier...but there is Cleave)
Grease (Trip and Disarm cover this, as noted)
Charm Person (Diplomacy is better in the long-term...though worse short-term)
Comprehend Languages (Linguistics, as noted)
Cure Light Wounds (The Heal skill does this...but poorly. Perhaps a boost to Heal?)
Bless (Cavalier's Tactician can serve a similar function. Not perfectly, but well enough)
Endure Elements (Should probably just be available as a FEat, but it isn't.)
Enlarge Person (Not much lets you wield an oversized weapon...but something probably should.)
True Strike (Some sort of Improved Aiming Feat seems warranted and useful...)
Vanish (Clearly we need a limited-duration Hide In Plain Sight available to pull the 'Batman vanish'...or Hide In Plain sight at a lower level)
Touch of the Sea (Swim needs to be better...or there needs to be a Feat or something)
Undetectable Alignment (Clearly there should be some way to do this with Bluff and a Feat.)
Protection From Evil (The immunity to mind control effect should be available somehow...don't know how. The rest comes close enough to being available.)
2nd:
Acute Senses (Huge bonus to Perception...I'm not sure how to clasify these.)
Blindness/Deafness (Dirty Trick can do this...but not for long. Increased duration?)
Scorching Ray (Ranged attack, as noted.)
Mirror Image (Okay, martials need a way to ameliorate this and lack one.)
Blur (Nope, nothing. Maybe a Feat that lets you use a Cloak to conceal your outline or something...)
Create Pit (Grapple's actually roughly equivalent here. It does damage and prevents them from acting meaningfully. Still, the pit's better, so maybe up Grapple a bit.)
Detect Thoughts (Already doable a bit with Sense Motive. Maybe roll immunity to this into the Undetectable Alignment Bluff-based Feat. Call it 'Doublethink' or some such.)
False Life (Eh...martials having more HP seems to cover this.)
Glitterdust and See Invisibility (Well, Dirty Trick can do the blindness bit from Glitterdust...countering invisibility is trickier.)
Resist Energy (Yeah...I don't even know how that'd work.)
Invisibility (Maybe Hide in Plain sight available earlier? I have no idea really.)
Spider Climb (Works better than Climb. Clearly climb needs some sort of boost.)
So, just looking at those, two Feats seem good: "Doublethink", which will allow you to make an opposed Bluff check vs. people's Sense Motive when they use alignment or thought detecting magic on you to give them wrong information, and something like "Counter-Illusion Training" that gives you some advantage against things like Blur, Mirror Image, or Invisibility. A third to get Hide In Plain Sight also seems reasonable. All these should probably have requirements that mean you need to be 3rd to 5th level to acquire them.
Also, there should be some way for mundane people to detect magic. Personally, I'd make it a use of Spellcraft (so it does require some investment, but not a whole Feat's worth), and harder than if you have the spell, but doable.
Combat Maneuvers being powered up a bit in general also seems worth pursuing.
More later.
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@Deadmanwalking - Yeah, at low levels, a lot of spells are just "shortcuts" to what skills can already accomplish (which is a classic fantasy trope, btw), or represent what we might want as an expansion of skills for the fantastically talented (for instance, a feat to expand the uses of Sense Motive to include guessing alignments or other things), or show us where martials' badassery needs to be more well-represented (hard to magically constrain/debilitate via charms/illusions/energy damage).
You know what would be a fun experiment?
1) Go through the cleric and wizard spell lists, taking note of the most commonly used spells of each spell level. (You know, the staples like grease, scorching ray, haste, blindness/deafness, summon monster, cloudkill, teleport, etc.)
2) For each such spell, check whether or not martials can do something comparable at about the same level. (For instance, scorching ray is "deal damage at range", which martials can in fact do. Comprehend languages is just a temporary shortcut version of putting ranks into Linguistics. Grease is comparable to the trip maneuver. Etc.)
3) If a spell is not something that martials can do a comparable version of, then create a fighter feat or rogue talent (requiring a class level of 2X the spell level, or the same level a sorc/oracle would get that spell) that does something comparable.
4) If you can't come up with an appropriate martial ability that's comparable to the spell, instead come up with a martial ability that counters it. ...
5) This is important: if you can't come up with a way for a martial to do something as cool and powerful as a given spell, ban that spell.
...
There's some issues with this. One of the memes of spellcasting in D&D is that it's a limited resource, whilst martials are more or less unlimited. When we break this, it changes things- look at the threads whinging on about how unlimited Detect Magic 'ruins my game".
And, I myself complain a lot about some rather cool rogue talent which are basically useless as they are once per day.
Now, I am glad you have worded it "something comparable". Mostly, I just can't see a Fighter being able to fly. BUT- I can see fantastic leaps and I can certainly see a Archetype (maybe of a Cavalier?) with a Flying mount.
But how do we do area effects? What matches Fireball?
Even here, you have to be careful that what you're claiming is "comparable" is really comparable.
For example, the trip maneuver lets me trip a single person at melee range.
The grease spell lets me trip up to four normal humans at 25 feet. It also acts, without requiring further actions on my part, to keep them down and to prevent normal movement.
Grease is once or a few times a day. Trip is every time you attack.
Things that are very limited in use SHOULD be more powerful than things that can be used at will, all day long.
Fireball is, ultimately, just damage. A martial character has alchemical items or a sword to fall back on. I think the bigger things to consider are 5th spell-level and higher effect like raise dead and teleport.
Fireball is, ultimately, just damage. A martial character has alchemical items or a sword to fall back on. I think the bigger things to consider are 5th spell-level and higher effect like raise dead and teleport.
There's a Paladin Mercy that brings you back, isn't there?
Ninjas can walk thru walls.
Ninjas can walk thru walls.
That's more like dimension door or passwall. I'm thinking about the 'other side of the continent' type use.
Fireball is, ultimately, just damage. A martial character has alchemical items or a sword to fall back on. I think the bigger things to consider are 5th spell-level and higher effect like raise dead and teleport.There's a Paladin Mercy that brings you back, isn't there?
Ultimate Mercy would do it. Ironically it's also a feat I have some issues with, but that's a different story.
Maybe, instead of starting with spells, we could start with the types of challenges that adventurers are expected to face, then look at various options for dealing with them. We need to also be aware of the fact that these challenges do not stay the same throughout an adventurer's careeer, so that low-level solutions don't always scale to high-level challenges.
1. Terrain.
(a) Low-level (cliffs, etc.): Mundane guys already get the Climb and Swim skills. Casters get spider climb, levitate, freedom of movement, and a host of other options. Everyone is more or less OK.
(b) Mid-level terrain (beholder caverns, etc.): Casters get fly and so on. Ideally, all martials would either get a flying steed (whose toughness increases as you level, so it doesn't get killed instantly), or else could use Climb to actually spider climb and such. At present, they mostly don't get any of these options.
(c) High-level terrain (planar stuff): Casters get resist energy, planar adaptation, plane shift, elemental body, and so on. Non-casters get nothing. That really hurts me.
2. Travel.
(a) Low-level: Everyone is in the same boat. Mundane guys are slower in armor, but horses are cheap. Casters get mount spells and so on. Everyone is more or less equally limited.
(b) Mid-level: Casters can overland fly or teleport. Mundanes either need fairly fast flying mounts (uncommon at present) or else some allies on other continents (sorta- kinda-achievable with Leadership and a DM willing to let carrier pigeons fly really, really fast!).
(c) High-level: Casters can instantaneously move anywhere in the same plane, or to other planes, and can even open gates. Mundanes get nothing comparable. One idea is if there were a multiverse-wide "brotherhood of arms" kind of thing where a high-level fighter could call on his counterparts on other planes to help out, either by "beaming him up to Mars" (like John Carter to Barsoom), or else by acting for him. Another option would be to add a "walk in Shadow" skill enabling fighters to emulate Corwin and learn to ride through the planes.
3. (etc.)
The thing is, at each level tier, every class should have some means of addressing it. Some will be better in some areas and some better in others, but no one should be totally helpless in multiple categories. And, of couse, "having casters in the party" is not a class feature of fighters and rogues; it's a cry for pity.
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There's some issues with this. One of the memes of spellcasting in D&D is that it's a limited resource, whilst martials are more or less unlimited. When we break this, it changes things- look at the threads whinging on about how unlimited Detect Magic 'ruins my game".
And, I myself complain a lot about some rather cool rogue talent which are basically useless as they are once per day.
Naturally the individual feats/talents would take this into consideration. Maybe an at-will ability is less powerful than a comparable spell at first, then scales up so that by the time the caster is able to do it more times than he'd actually want to in a day (at which point "limited resource" is no longer a thing) then the martial version catches up.
Alternatively, X/day is fine for martials to have. (The issue with those 1/day talents is probably that they're power-balanced toward being at-will instead of being balanced around the fact that they're less-per-day-than-a-spell-especially-a-few-levels-down-the-line.) Look at the samurai's resolve: 1/day at first, more uses later. That's probably my preferred model.
Now, I am glad you have worded it "something comparable". Mostly, I just can't see a Fighter being able to fly. BUT- I can see fantastic leaps and I can certainly see a Archetype (maybe of a Cavalier?) with a Flying mount.
But how do we do area effects? What matches Fireball?
Remember, I listed two whole steps after "make something comparable": make a counter, or ban the spell. Don't see a martial version of illusions or charms? Try making a "your parlor tricks are no match for my badassery" feat that makes the martial hard to affect with those spells. Can't figure a reasonable equivalent to summoning? Let him knock a summons back to its home plane.
As for fireball in particular, don't get distracted by its specifics: at its heart, it's just a magical form of "kill it with hit point damage". Martials already do that (in particular the fighter). All you have to do is make sure the comparison is fair: weigh the action cost, resource cost, feat investment, range, number of targets, reliability, and so forth against each other and do whatever it takes to make it so that one is not clearly "better" than the other. Make it a toss-up. When people are looking at one combat and saying "this is a job for a fireball" and looking at another combat and saying "the fighter is better here", you're in a good place.
That said, there are still possibilities for making a martial option that's similar to fireball—for instance, a stronger-and-cheaper-but-fighter-only version of Whirlwind Attack springs to mind. Or actually let him swing his sword so fast and hard that it makes a shockwave that deals damage in an area. It could be lots of things; all you need is a little creativity and outside-the-box thinking. :)
Now, I am glad you have worded it "something comparable". Mostly, I just can't see a Fighter being able to fly. BUT- I can see fantastic leaps and I can certainly see a Archetype (maybe of a Cavalier?) with a Flying mount.But how do we do area effects? What matches Fireball?
One obvious possibility is some sort of multishot effect -- you throw a fistful of daggers and hit everyone in an area. Stripped of the fluff, fireball is simply a ranged area-effect damage spell.
I can definitely see a martial Disintegrate equivalent being some sort of extremely powerful bow attack, something which amounts to an arrow-based MAC cannon (or Ashitaka's bow in Princess Mononoke) that leaves the poor target's compatriots going "What the hell was THAT?!"
Honestly the idea Jiggy presented seems both reasonable, balanced, and (this is the important part) FUN. Using a polished shield for a color spray equivalent or making a called strike on a pressure point for sleep? These are things I want to see in Pathfinder.