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Should martials be buffed by casters?
There. Fixed that for you. And the answer is yes, yes they should. That's one of the things many casters excel at.
Parties are a team that should work together. They may individually have their strengths and weaknesses but working in unison they can accomplish much more than they could by themselves.
Overall, it seems to me that more people would complain if you needed spellcasters than if you buffed martials.
Overall, it seems to me that more people would complain if you needed spellcasters than if you buffed martials.
Might be because all caster parties are pretty fun.
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Kindly note that in games with MacGuffin magic items, those magic items are often what we'd consider 'artifact class', with powers that can't be replicated by mere wizards, making them incredibly powerful and versatile for their weilders. In short, magic items are stronger then magic casters.
Put said magic items into the hands of skilled combatants, and wizards die.
==Aelryinth
I like what 4th edition did. Giving all classes "Encounter" and "Daily" powers meant that low level casters got access to rechargeable spells while still having access to more powerful but limited types as well.That's the very thing that kept me from taking a second look at 4e. Skill based, completely non-magical abilities that are limited to once per encounter or once per day? I'm afraid there's not enough cable in the entire multiverse to let me suspend that much disbelief.
You're complaining about suspension of disbelief in a fantasy genre where you KNOW mechanics have to be made in such a way as to balance abilities?
Of course I am. I look at RPGs from the perspective of a long time GM: if the characters' abilities don't make sense to me, I can't create a world that makes any sense for those characters to adventure in.
Translation - "I'm biased because a bunch of X abilities from another system don't make sense to me, but Y abilities from the system I like which are similar to X are fine"
As has been pointed out. There are plenty of things Martials have which are "Skill based non magical abilities limited to x/day or x/round" in PF.
No, the actual translation is: "Everybody has their own line where suspension of disbelief stops. 4e crosses mine." I don't know why that seems to bother you.
Sounds a bit lazy to me. Refluffing the abilities is like the easiest thing to do. The Martial techniques just may not work right used again whether it's due to stamina or the opponent being wary of it.
Though I don't care for martial abilities replicating spell ones.
In any event, in regards to Wizards specifically, I want specialization to mean something. Right now you don't lose anything really for specializing. There is no reason to play a Universalist in Pathfinder, unless for some strange reason you desperately needed to prepare multiple forbidden school spells and even then scrolls will suffice.
I like what 4th edition did. Giving all classes "Encounter" and "Daily" powers meant that low level casters got access to rechargeable spells while still having access to more powerful but limited types as well.That's the very thing that kept me from taking a second look at 4e. Skill based, completely non-magical abilities that are limited to once per encounter or once per day? I'm afraid there's not enough cable in the entire multiverse to let me suspend that much disbelief.
You're complaining about suspension of disbelief in a fantasy genre where you KNOW mechanics have to be made in such a way as to balance abilities?
Of course I am. I look at RPGs from the perspective of a long time GM: if the characters' abilities don't make sense to me, I can't create a world that makes any sense for those characters to adventure in.
Translation - "I'm biased because a bunch of X abilities from another system don't make sense to me, but Y abilities from the system I like which are similar to X are fine"
As has been pointed out. There are plenty of things Martials have which are "Skill based non magical abilities limited to x/day or x/round" in PF.
No, the actual translation is: "Everybody has their own line where suspension of disbelief stops. 4e crosses mine." I don't know why that seems to bother you.
Sounds a bit lazy to me. Refluffing the abilities is like the easiest thing to do. The Martial techniques just may not work right used again whether it's due to stamina or the opponent being wary of it.
Though I don't care for martial abilities replicating spell ones.
In any event, in regards to Wizards specifically, I want specialization to mean something. Right now you don't lose anything really for specializing. There is no reason to play a Universalist in Pathfinder, unless for some strange reason you...
Universalist has some cool school powers. The Arcane Crafter gets Craft Wondrous Items etc. for free at 3rd level which isn't a bad free feat to pick up, especially if you have other uses for a tight build. I had an NPC lich who used the archetype specifically for that reason.
Maybe I don't want to ban one school?
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Both, but martials need a buff far more desperately.
Casters, or more specifically, some of their spells could use some toning down, but it won't matter if martials don't get some very needed buffs. Mobility, in-combat versatility and out-of-combat usefulness are the main problem.
Save for specific exceptions, martials can't even move 10ft without suffering a huge drop in effectiveness. If they want to be better than "pretty much insignificant" after taking a few steps, they need to pay a feat tax, of course, and even then, they aren't very good.
They suffer with Pathfinder's love for unreasonable long feat chains filled with crappy prerequisites.
AoO mechanics should exist to make martials more useful and help them intercept enemies who move around them. And yet, every time a martial tries to do anything other than dealing damage, they provoke AoOs. Want to disarm someone? AoO. Want to trip someone? AoO. Want to drink a potion? AoO. Want to grab something? AoO.
And unlike casters, they don't get free mechanics to do their stuff without provoking. No, martials have to pay their feat taxes, complete with crappy prerequisites, if they want to try a disarm. After all, what kind of warrior learns how to trip or disarm, right?
The game actively punishes players for trying to do anything creative with martial characters. Martials are pretty much forced into being a DPR-obsessed 2-handler or archer that spams full-attacks without a second thought.
To make matters worse, Paizo has a tendency of nerfing good martial options to make the bad ones look less awful. "What is this? Cavaliers are weak? Let's nerf animals for everyone!", "Uh? martials got something unique and useful? Let's cripple CW into uselessness." or "Wait... TWF with a 2-handed weapon and armor spikes is slightly better than normal TWF, the weakest combat style in the game? Banned!".
Deviate from the norm, and your martial character will be either nerfed or banned. And you'll still have to hear that that is game balance.
(Meanwhile, Paragon Surge + Expanded Arcana goes unchanged for years. Coincidentally, only being fixed when Arcanists and their "Quick Study" ability are about to be released).
Martials have zero versatility in combat. Take Fighters. They should be masters of combat, but realistically, the only effective tool they have past 11th level is standing still and full attacking. Fighters are great at full-attacking, but they are terrible at actually fighting.
Meanwhile, any caster can have a dozen different tricks with a dozen different effects. Their standard actions are often far more useful than any martial's full round of actions.
They also suffer because of the idea that if you're good at hitting stuff with your sword, you're bad at everything else. The better you're at hitting stuff, the worse you're at doing anything useful. This philosophy goes to absurdly stupid design choices such as Fighters only having 2 skill points. You have a guy who lives and breathes mundane abilities. In fact, non-magical abilities is all they have, and yet, they somehow forgot to learn any useful skill. Meanwhile, Wizards can be amazing swimmers, climbers, acrobats and escape artists because they are just that smart.
Buffing martials is far more important than nerfing casters. Almost as important as removing the awful double-standard that Paizo has in relation to class design when it comes to martials and casters.
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Maybe I don't want to ban one school?
It's meaningless though since you can still cast spells from the school. You get a bonus spell slot of each level so you're still essentially the same as a Universalist, just that one of your spells has to be from your specialized school.
And then at 9th level you can clear one of your opposition schools. Divination for example, doesn't have much use as an "active" school, so if you're not playing a Diviner Wizard, it's a fairly painless opposition school. You're still able to divine during downtime and you can still make scrolls of the spells.
In general...it's easier to buff a class than nerf it. Since any nerf you do, no matter how valid, will incite rage in some proportion of players. Personally I am hoping Pathfinder unchained might offer some solution on this matter, although in general I don't think fighter is as problematic as some people think.
Really...my issue is that a common trope of magic in fiction is that you pay a price to use it, and the more powerful a magic the greater risk and danger involved in using it.
DnD pretty much took the route of providing powerful magic, but in simplifying it for the game they removed most of the risk associated with it. If wizards had to seriously consider if their world altering spells might blow up in their face or require some sort of sacrifice besides some gold or spell slot usage, mundane character classes might have more opportunities to shine.
Maybe I don't want to ban one school?
It's meaningless though since you can still cast spells from the school. You get a bonus spell slot of each level so you're still essentially the same as a Universalist, just that one of your spells has to be from your specialized school.
And then at 9th level you can clear one of your opposition schools. Divination for example, doesn't have much use as an "active" school, so if you're not playing a Diviner Wizard, it's a fairly painless opposition school. You're still able to divine during downtime and you can still make scrolls of the spells.
Eh, be careful with that. Making Detect Magic an opposition school spell is incredibly annoying.
I'd rather drop enchantment.
In any event, in regards to Wizards specifically, I want specialization to mean something. Right now you don't lose anything really for specializing. There is no reason to play a Universalist in Pathfinder, unless for some strange reason you...I agree with that, but I want it even more for clerics. A special emissary of Aphrodite should not have essentially the same spell list as a special emissary of Thor.
You have fun printing 12 (or however many there are) different, 9 level spell lists for one class in the CRB, and then a whole new spell list every time a new deity is introduced
Domain spells and Alignment restrictions are enough differentiation for me.
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In any event, in regards to Wizards specifically, I want specialization to mean something. Right now you don't lose anything really for specializing. There is no reason to play a Universalist in Pathfinder, unless for some strange reason you...I agree with that, but I want it even more for clerics. A special emissary of Aphrodite should not have essentially the same spell list as a special emissary of Thor.
I can't emphasize enough how annoyed I am that the only Cleric feature we got in Pathfinder was..."NOW YOU CAN BE A HEALBOT EVEN IF YOU DON'T WANT TO"
I can't emphasize enough how annoyed I am that the only Cleric feature we got in Pathfinder was..."NOW YOU CAN BE A HEALBOT EVEN IF YOU DON'T WANT TO"In any event, in regards to Wizards specifically, I want specialization to mean something. Right now you don't lose anything really for specializing. There is no reason to play a Universalist in Pathfinder, unless for some strange reason you...I agree with that, but I want it even more for clerics. A special emissary of Aphrodite should not have essentially the same spell list as a special emissary of Thor.
Ya, I feel like Clerics have the most "dead" levels of any class in Pathfinder and haven't played them in Pathfinder at all.
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My question is why are we worried about balance with PC classes at all? Are we concerned that there will be parties of all casters, or that there will be a no martial party? If that is the case so far, despite knowing caster to be far and away the dominate classes in the system, my groups tend to consist of 2-3 martial, one 2/3rds caster, and one full caster. Even if there are parties out there consisting of all casters, why is that a problem? Is it because, all martial parties would be weaker? To a degree it might be but given the WBL standard and a plausible int score of 10, on the side of the player of said character, his gear will be more than adequate to the tasks they face.
Furthermore, this heads into Schrodinger's Wizard territory here. Prepped casters with bad daily spell selection are horrible (one of the few reasons why the 'horrific' Arcane Blast feat isn't actually outright terrible for wizards and witches, but i'll get panned because it "isn't optimal'). Spontaneous casters are even worse in this because their spell selections are for the long haul.
Wizards might have been easier to save against in earlier editions but Lolth, the Demon goddess of the Drow, had like 49 hit points so less than a 5th level fighter that rolled max. Back then Fireball actually mattered as a spell. Because of that players didn't always optimize save or dies, or other strong spell combos, because magic missile meant 10-25 damage no save at level 9.
And if you think martial characters don't do amazing things then you haven't thought about it closely enough yet. A combat round is 6 seconds, getting 4 attacks off with 3 with a decent chance to hit, and one that is basically a coin toss, in that space of time is not easy to do. In HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) practice I can get that many attacks off with a in that time, but outside the first one I wouldn't count on any of the rest of them to have the force nor placement (Mostly due to proper edge alignment/point control for a sword without it you won't...
No offense, but I doubt you are a 16th+ level character. So if you can do 4 attacks in 6 seconds, why on earth is that how many attacks a *16th* level Fighter can perform? Shouldn't they be able to at least double that casually? Maybe hit every opponent in a radius? Maybe cut a mountain in two?
And that is the problem. People assume "they" must be capable of it or else its "too magical".
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I think martials should be buffed but the buffs should follow a per day mechanic like a caster, and just plain regular weapon damage should be nerfed. Each level up, everyone picks some set of abilities that all do roughly the same thing with kinda different flavor text.
If anyone can do something an unlimited amount of times, it should all be about as powerful as a Ray of Frost even if it's swinging a sword. If the party decides to have one superfun nova fight in the beginning of the day they can all enjoy 150 round combats chipping away at BBE for the next few hours.
Ok... I'm naming a new Fallacy right now. The 4E fallacy.
It goes something like this:
"Any attempt to balance 3.5/PF will turn the game into 4E."
Obviously, this is fallacy since there are many ways to balance the without turning to at-will/encounter/daily abilities.
Now whenever someone makes this fallacious argument, we can just say "4E Fallacy" and move on.
So my response to your post Leganduil is:
4E fallacy.
Maybe I don't want to ban one school?
There's a feat for that.
Edit: Another thing to note, opposition schools are no longer "banned." It just takes 2 slots to cast them.
You still end up with one banned school since you ban two at start. You can only take that feat once.
I enjoy having my prepared casters being able to completely change up play style at a whim.
Honestly Paizo should implement some of the Champion/Trickster Path abilities from Mythic play as class abilities.
Fighter who can move their speed then full attack? Yes please. Why the hell should casters be able to move AND cast?
That's it, ALL the spells are full round action spells!
I can't emphasize enough how annoyed I am that the only Cleric feature we got in Pathfinder was..."NOW YOU CAN BE A HEALBOT EVEN IF YOU DON'T WANT TO"In any event, in regards to Wizards specifically, I want specialization to mean something. Right now you don't lose anything really for specializing. There is no reason to play a Universalist in Pathfinder, unless for some strange reason you...I agree with that, but I want it even more for clerics. A special emissary of Aphrodite should not have essentially the same spell list as a special emissary of Thor.
The way we addressed this in our game was that Clerics lost the bonus Domain spell and the ability to cast Cure spells spontaneously - instead they were able to cast their Domain spells spontaneously. Worked great, kept divine flavor what it should be and Clerics who still wanted to be able to heal could.
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No offense, but I doubt you are a 16th+ level character. So if you can do 4 attacks in 6 seconds, why on earth is that how many attacks a *16th* level Fighter can perform? Shouldn't they be able to at least double that casually? Maybe hit every opponent in a radius? Maybe cut a mountain in two?
And that is the problem. People assume "they" must be capable of it or else its "too magical".
It should also be noted just how slow 4 attacks would actually be is 6 seconds. That's less than a punch every second. But then it's not like actual humans have gotten off more hits than a Monk can with flurry of blows, in an actual fight against a real opponent or anything like that, right? Oh wait, they have. Notable moment is at timestamp 3:54. I count 11 actual hits landed by 3:59.
A Monk's and indeed most other martial character's speeds aren't even extraordinarily fast compared to what we've seen humans achieve.
They actually did it in 2e, though. Divine spells were assigned to spheres, just like arcane spells are assigned to schools. Priests got major access (all spells), minor access (spell levels 1-3) or no access to the different spheres based on which god they worshiped. Adding another deity just meant deciding which spheres their priests had major and minor access to.
That does actually sound pretty neat. I really need to take deeper looks at older editions of D&D to try and get an idea of how those games worked. Whenever I try to, the system comes off as very obtuse, though. It's like it doesn't want me to understand how it works.
I enjoy having my prepared casters being able to completely change up play style at a whim.Generally, I find that reducing the differences between character types makes a game less interesting. So if a wizard specializes in a school, nearly all the spells they cast should come from that school. Generalists, in contrast, should be a lot more flexible in their spell selection, but a lot less competent in any one specialty.
When I want a more defined playstyle I go for spont casters.
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First the non-sequitur.
By the by boxing punches are designed to use the added weight and padding of the glove to increase their effectiveness/speed. When using boxing techniques bare handed you have a much higher chance of incurring a type of injury known as a 'boxers fracture' which is where you break your ring finger slightly below the knuckle, partially because swinging quickly with power the lower knuckles tend to lead the hand and they are structurally weaker than the top two where the sweet spot in many Asian martial arts is located. The stances and techniques of olden times bare knuckle boxers would be applicable to a counter argument as the elbow down configuration aligns the arm much...
Yes, boxing gloves are designed to protect the hands of the wearer, and not the face of your opponent. I am aware. It's one of the points I used to hear people into MMA bring up as to why their sport is safer than boxing.
Now everything else.
It should also be noted just how slow 4 attacks would actually be is 6 seconds. That's less than a punch every second. But then it's not like actual humans have gotten off more hits than a Monk can with flurry of blows, in an actual fight against a real opponent or anything like that, right? Oh wait, they have. Notable moment is at timestamp 3:54. I count 11 actual hits landed by 3:59.
A Monk's and indeed most other martial character's speeds aren't even extraordinarily fast compared to what we've seen humans achieve.
Add a blade to that put his opponent in armor, yourself in armor as well with limited vision because of a helm. Now take away the hard backing of the ring post. Furthermore you are talking about a FORMER HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD. Not a typical human.
Furthermore, only 4-5 shots hit 'clean' in that flurry. Most of the lefts landed on the elbow of the guard or on the glove and at least one right landed on the shoulder, now you could argue that that counts as a damaging blow in Pathfinder terms, but if i'm in a martial sport encounter and the other dude keeps landing on my elbow I am fine with that.
I count 5 or 6 clean hits, but that's semantics, and the number isn't too important when making the point. We're not comaring Ali to a regular human, and no class in a game as high fantasy as Pathfinder should be, either. Ali's the best there ever was, but he shouldn't hold a candle to a level 10 monk. At worst Ali appears to be something of an equal to a monk of level somewhere between 10 and 15.
I also feel it's necessary that we're counting hits and not trying to estimate the number of attacks. Honestly, that's fine with me, as I think that the number of attacks/the full attack action is more of an abstraction of opportunities where a character could land attacks in a continuous motion than a series of separate attacks. If we were counting number of attacks, then Ali would be putting a level 20 hasted monk to shame.
Also, don't give me the garbage about how the fighter or any other martial character's equipment decreases the number of attacks he can make a round. As true as it is in real life, it just doesn't have any bearing on gameplay. Weapon size only effects your damage, and armor only makes you harder to hit. If you were wearing 1000 lbs. of armor in Pathfinder, you still get the same number of attacks as if you were wearing 0 lbs. of armor. You just run a little slower. If you are wielding a 1000 lbs. weapon, you get the same number of attacks as if you were wielding a weapon that weight 1/2 lbs.
I have no interest in excusing martial characters their pitiful number of attacks for the equipment they are wearing or using when the game itself has already forgone that as an explanation or mechanic in any meaningful way.
And that's before we get to the fact that monks are actually magical (or "supernatural," whatever.) and just wearing a t-shirt.
And that's all after getting sidetracked on this specific part of the crux of my issue with martial characters as they are currently written: They are often held back in power scale, seemingly for the sake of being realistic, and yet they often fail to meet the standards of reality in some basic ways.
And yet you can still cast freely from a banned school. It costs 2 slots, but there isn't a single spell out there that you can't cast.When I want a more defined playstyle I go for spont casters.I enjoy having my prepared casters being able to completely change up play style at a whim.Generally, I find that reducing the differences between character types makes a game less interesting. So if a wizard specializes in a school, nearly all the spells they cast should come from that school. Generalists, in contrast, should be a lot more flexible in their spell selection, but a lot less competent in any one specialty.
Yes but preparing all spells from the school would be mighty disadvantageous.
Yet impractical and likely never happen. -_-
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I'm expecting to get a lot of heat for this suggestion, but I always just enjoyed the way Naruto physical fighters had access to the chakra gates to empower them in exchange for their life. The more gates you open, the stronger you become, and the worse the damage is once you're done. Any basic martial would be able to buff up for a couple of actions, then pay the price if they can't do what's needed in the time. Obviously the more powerful a martial, the less the drawbacks would be, but never completely removed. It may not be a great solution to the problem, but for a couple of rounds, a high level martial could be toe to toe with a high level caster.
I'm expecting to get a lot of heat for this suggestion, but I always just enjoyed the way Naruto physical fighters had access to the chakra gates to empower them in exchange for their life. The more gates you open, the stronger you become, and the worse the damage is once you're done. Any basic martial would be able to buff up for a couple of actions, then pay the price if they can't do what's needed in the time. Obviously the more powerful a martial, the less the drawbacks would be, but never completely removed. It may not be a great solution to the problem, but for a couple of rounds, a high level martial could be toe to toe with a high level caster.
Why would the martial have to sacrifice "life" to activate those abilities? I hope we're not talking about "life" as in HP, Con damage, or negative levels. If we're just talking Fatigue/Exhaustion there's the Barbarian.
Anyways, what you're describing can easily be done in terms of a Stamina pool, aka Grit. You can blow everything on a nova round, but you lose your passives until you regain some Grit.
What if feat prerequisites were removed? If martials could pick feats based on what they wanted instead of having to constantly pay "taxes" wouldn't that help a lot? (the exception being "Greater" versions of feats - ie Improved TWF you obviously couldn't use without TWF)
Maybe I don't want to ban one school?
There's a feat for that.
Edit: Another thing to note, opposition schools are no longer "banned." It just takes 2 slots to cast them.
You still end up with one banned school since you ban two at start. You can only take that feat once.
I enjoy having my prepared casters being able to completely change up play style at a whim.
uH, WHAT?
Read the rules, man. You don't 'Ban' schools in PF. You just make them one slot more expensive. You can use the magic items, make scrolls...all you are penalized is the casting of them.
So, if you want to cast an opposition spell. It takes two slots. Happily, you get an extra spell slot at EVERY LEVEL. Assuming you want to cast a spell of every level in your specialty, then taking an off-school spell MEANS YOU HAVE THE SAME NUMBER OF SPELLS AS A UNIVERSALIST per day.
If you don't, YOU HAVE MORE.
And that's why Universalist is annoying as heck to justify.
Not to mention the Mythic feat where you simply BUY OFF both schools, and get all your spec slots + free access to all other spells.
ugh.
Universalists should get a caster level bonus if they memorize at least one spell of each school. That way they are drawing power from each type of magic without bias. The specs can gloat over their spell slots, Univs should get CASTER LEVEL.
==Aelryinth
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First the non-sequitur.By the by boxing punches are designed to use the added weight and padding of the glove to increase their effectiveness/speed. When using boxing techniques bare handed you have a much higher chance of incurring a type of injury known as a 'boxers fracture' which is where you break your ring finger slightly below the knuckle, partially because swinging quickly with power the lower knuckles tend to lead the hand and they are structurally weaker than the top two where the sweet spot in many Asian martial arts is located. The stances and techniques of olden times bare knuckle boxers would be applicable to a counter argument as the elbow down configuration aligns the arm much...Yes, boxing gloves are designed to protect the hands of the wearer, and not the face of your opponent. I am aware. It's one of the points I used to hear people into MMA bring up as to why their sport is safer than boxing.
Now everything else.
...It should also be noted just how slow 4 attacks would actually be is 6 seconds. That's less than a punch every second. But then it's not like actual humans have gotten off more hits than a Monk can with flurry of blows, in an actual fight against a real opponent or anything like that, right? Oh wait, they have. Notable moment is at timestamp 3:54. I count 11 actual hits landed by 3:59.
A Monk's and indeed most other martial character's speeds aren't even extraordinarily fast compared to what we've seen humans achieve.
Add a blade to that put his opponent in armor, yourself in armor as well with limited vision because of a helm. Now take away the hard backing of the ring post. Furthermore you are talking about a FORMER HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD. Not a typical human.
Furthermore, only 4-5 shots hit 'clean' in that flurry. Most of the lefts landed on the elbow of the guard or on the glove and at least one right
Ali might have been 5th level.
Moving your fists fast enough to hit a punching bag 5 times in 6 seconds is not landing 5 lethal blows in 6 seconds. 4 of the blows are just there to find a way for the 1 decent blow to make its way through. The rest are just spam.
Test: Was Ali able to punch out a grizzly bear?
I think we are all of the same opinion that if he walked up to a grizzly bear while floating like a butterfly, the bear would wonder at the little bee-stings and promptly rip him apart.
A 10th level monk CAN take out a grizzly bear. A 10th level monk can shatter the aluminum baseball bat in your hand with a hit. Ali ain't no 10th level.
==Aelryinth
What if feat prerequisites were removed? If martials could pick feats based on what they wanted instead of having to constantly pay "taxes" wouldn't that help a lot? (the exception being "Greater" versions of feats - ie Improved TWF you obviously couldn't use without TWF)
Removing pre-reqs would be fine for FIGHTERS...they are the Sages of Feats.
Everyone else should have to put up with them. It's not like there aren't a metric ton of feats that only reference non-Fighter class abilities, and which are better then feats everyone can take (i.e. rage powers, extra mercies, unlimited mercies, extra lay on hands).
Don't believe me? Compare extra lay on hands to Godless Healing. 3 vs 1, and scales far more sweetly.
==Aelryinth
Everyone else should have to put up with them. It's not like there aren't a metric ton of feats that only reference non-Fighter class abilities, and which are better then feats everyone can take (i.e. rage powers, extra mercies, unlimited mercies, extra lay on hands).
I said feat prerequisites, not class prerequisites. That's what I was talking about when I said feat taxes.
Nobody likes feat taxes - so I don't think people should need to pay them, especially when they don't have a huge amount of feats they can pick up like the fighter.
You're basically just saying the fighter should essentially get even more feats right there.
I'm expecting to get a lot of heat for this suggestion, but I always just enjoyed the way Naruto physical fighters had access to the chakra gates to empower them in exchange for their life. The more gates you open, the stronger you become, and the worse the damage is once you're done. Any basic martial would be able to buff up for a couple of actions, then pay the price if they can't do what's needed in the time. Obviously the more powerful a martial, the less the drawbacks would be, but never completely removed. It may not be a great solution to the problem, but for a couple of rounds, a high level martial could be toe to toe with a high level caster.
I wrote up something for this that might work but I can't find it.