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I think there a disconnect going on here.
As a group game, the players I know work in teams. Many faults of any class get shored up by the team itself.
Let's look at some versatility stuff.
I have 20 years of dnd experience. Hundreds of players and multiple DM's fall into my purview of experience. But they are still just my experiences. Nevertheless, none of you can say otherwise about your stuff so let's proceed.
I've never seen the Wizard dominate campaigns like people discuss on these boards. Neither at high level nor low level. I've seen them toast encounters, I've seen them do well in some sections. I've also seen them fail to get an effect through saves from the enemy so their turn is wasted. I've seen them have spells of no use in situations at all so rely on low level cantrips in high level fights. I've watched them terrified when they realise their defences are useless against blind fight/true sight/ scent/ reach etc.
I have played with people who are absolute masters of this game and still their wizards didn't rule. The reason is, having the "potential" to face any situation is not the same as being "ready" for any situation.
Paladins can fly apparently (from a post above). Fighter switches to bows and shoots the crap out of opponent instead. Two round of attackin while the Paladin gets fly on then moves to attack. Paladins are also Lawful Good code followers which limits their out of combat contributions far more than anything fighter brings to the table.
Barbarians get pounce. If you build exactly that build. But then it's AC is crap. And it fatigues. Which is when the next group of opponents come in. Seen a fatigued barbarian in combat? Barbarians suck through healing faster than any class I know, because they are expected to be in combat but rarely get to avoid second and third attacks from opponents due to poor AC. If you build a barbarian to have great AC he no longer performs as well in other areas.
In other words, to make Barbarians better than fighters in "all" aspects, you have one build only, if at all. That's not fun over six campaigns. The same character. Over and over again.
Same with ranger.
Divine casters? They have to follow their gods will. This impacts gameplay a lot in campaigns in my area. It impacts the way you can respond socially,it impacts on certain plans in battles, it certainly impacts on campaigns such as carrion crown and wrath of the righteous.
So Marcus is saying he feels much is covered by DMs being clever at high levels. I'd counter that by saying many of these uber classes are coddled so much through all levels that players walk away feeling like their class is god.
Cheers
I thought it means Unchained. You know. The book that does something like this with Monks and Rogues? And is the whole freaking premise of the thread?Yes. Because changing the Skill points from 2-4 means overall power creep, and also means a new 2nd edition, which means hundreds of dollars down the drain and many upset Paizo customers.If someone's definition of fun doesn't even register balance as a factor, should that person care about whether the class is balanced?No. But then, balancing the class will not destroy the fun for that person. If paizo improve, lets say, the skill per level and skill class for fighters Do really people that now enjoy fighter stop having fun with the class?
What basic changes have they made to those classes?
"Preorder expected April 2015", no?
I don't see anything in the OP about "Pathfinder Unchained". While I think some changes to martial classes could be fun & cool, I have grave doubts if they are just gonna "fix" the Fighter class by giving it 4SkP.
Agree, however note the simplest way to "fix" the Fighter would be new Fighter-only feats. No actual need to "alter" anything.
I have suggested that very thing. Not to "fix' the fighter, but because they'd be cool and fun.
well, Bravery could stand an upgrade. It's worse then Trap Sense as a class feature, and that's saying something.
==Aelryinth
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People, I'd like to press the pause button on this conversation.
Let me make some points clear to ease the conversation. I don't want the focus of this topic to be bogged down in semantics, but then again this is a forum of a d20 game so grammar is all you people do.
So just to be clear to everyone here:
- This is not about low levels, this is about scaling: Early on, everyone has a chance to shine. It is the poor scaling of feats into later levels that makes the Fighter fall behind in effectiveness and versatility. This is inherent to how feats work: a Fighter can specialize to do one thing as many times as she likes, whereas a Wizard can take a spell to do that thing once per day-ish. If the situation does not allow for that strategy, the Wizard has other spells. The Fighter, however, becomes a burden and has a moment of the dreaded UNFUN: you've spent months on this character that can do X incredibly, and now she's useless because of quadrupeds, natural attacks, DR, critical strike immunities, Will-save-or-die, etc. Which brings us to...
- This is not about GM discretion, this is about equal parity opportunity; No one likes to feel baby-sat during a campaign. While GM creativity can relieve the Fighter from those moments of UNFUN when the player feels like she's getting outclassed by other, well, classes, by having the GM custom-build a niche for her, this actively subtracts from the enjoyment of the game, which is having the player use their own creativity to defeat encounters. Because of the mechanics of feats, the Fighter becomes stuck as a one trick pony and thus has less space to navigate encounters. And then the most important point of them all...
- POPULARITY DOES NOT EQUAL BALANCE: Popularity indicates popularity. It does not indicate whether a class is, in terms of relative power, better or worse than others. If a class is played by 54% of the public, for example, this could be detrimental to a game's health, because it shows that there is a dominant strategy. This is not necessarily bad, but it is bad if part of the appeal of the game is diversity and personal expression, which is core to Pathfinder. Conversely, poor representation could imply another kind of imbalance.
However, both cases could indicate something different. A high playrate for Dhampirs could correlate with a Twilight film release. A low playrate for Clerics could be attributed to perception-related solutions. Which is important because...
- FIXING A CLASS IS NOT ABOUT BUFFS: What I find most galling about this discussion is the sheer amount of times the fact that Clerics get power buffs because they were unpopular rather than imbalanced gets repeated, as though as it were an argument for anything. It's actually a pretty good example of a misguided decision. If the issue with Clerics was related to perception rather than power, then the effort should have gone to cosmetic detail, marketing, etc. Why is it important not to adjust power unnecessarily? Because...
- INCREASING POWER DISPARITIES BETWEEN CLASSES EXACERBATES THE POSSIBILITY THAT THOSE DREADED MOMENTS OF WILL TAKE PLACE, AS YOUR CHARACTER WILL BE RELATIVELY USELESS COMPARED TO OTHERS, JUST BECAUSE YOU PICKED A CLASS (FOR REASONS OF PERSONAL EXPRESSION, THE SOURCE OF FUN OF THE GAME) THAT WAS STRICTLY WORSE THAN OTHERS.
Now:
- If you wanna come and argue that "fixing" means "make popular", please, make another thread. This thread is about class balance to ameliorate some classes becoming obsolete at higher levels. If you have nothing of import to bring to that conversation, please withdraw.
- If you wanna come and argue that "popularity implies balance", please make another thread to explain that notion further, because it is not what the topic is the about. The topic is about Fighters lagging behind at higher levels and feeling useless compared to others.
- If you wanna come and argue that Martial Classes will always be imbalanced because it wouldn't be realistic for them to be as strong as a Wizzerd, then explain why a level 20 Wizard can fall for 190 feet and survive without using any spells, or hell, a Fighter can do that from even higher without sustaining major damage. Once you've reached a conclusion that is satisfying to a jury of peers, feel free to make another thread about it because, guess what, that's not what this thread is about.
I, personally, have a vested interest in this topic. I wanna play a Fighter. I want someone who uses martial expertise, and not brute rage, divine favor or arcane prowess, to defeat their opponents. I can't play a high-level game because I get wrecked by Will saves and encounter difficulties unless my party babysits me. I don't want this. I want to add to the encounter and not subtract. I don't want to feel like I should have played another class to be a warrior other than a Fighter.
But I am not arguing that. I am arguing the points above... because what I mentioned is ANECDOTAL and related to my own playgroup, which likes high CR encounters at higher levels. If you want to bring your own anecdotal information, do so in another thread.
Thank you.
So Marcus is saying he feels much is covered by DMs being clever at high levels. I'd counter that by saying many of these uber classes are coddled so much through all levels that players walk away feeling like their class is god.
What GM would go out of their way to make other classes feel worse?
What I have seen is GMs smashing any and all attempts at creative problem solving because they think the fighter is only weak because of "spineless GMing". Of course in these games the fighter ends up just as useless, and everyone ends up playing casters anyways, because this kind of GMing only makes flexible casters playable, since your average martial build gets destroyed when the GM decides that that one trick you do is too OP and decides that "by RAW" it doesn't work.
As a GM I find this style too combative. I'm not putting a dimension lock on every dungeon and having all the orcs protected by "protection from X" just so I can make the fighter's lack of options less glaring compared to all the non plebeian classes. (I still drop an appropriate boot on planar binding sno-cone nonsense. There is a difference between letting people play their class and letting them abuse loose interpretations of mechanics)
Can we agree, at least, that there might be a way to balance the Fighter to be on par with the Barbarian/Ranger/Paladin that wouldn't be noticed by those who don't care for balance?
Sure! In fact, I'll wager that there are undoubtedly changes that could be made to the fighter that would make it more balanced to the majority of players who care about it (according to each player's idea of balance) while being either unnoticed or even approved of by the majority of players who don't really care about balance. I ain't no Leibniz. : D
But, given the availability of other classes that generally address most players' complaints about the fighter and the expense involved in printing changes that have very subjective effects on a player's experience, is it worth the expense to find such changes, publish them, and account for the existing materials based on the original fighter? At best, it might be more economical to publish another fighter-like class that has the changes (see ACG and possibly Unchained for similar situations) , but if existing classes already pick up the slack then even that may be a waste.
But what if I don't see my character as a raging warrior? Or a blessed champion? Or a rugged outdoorsman? Why do I need to have class features that simply do not mesh with my vision of my character? I'm my group's munchkin and even I look sideways at a class dip just for power.
That's fair, and it's exactly why I want to keep the fighter largely the way it is--because I don't want my fighter to have Cut Mountain In Twain (Ex) or Assume Gish Form (Su). The fluff don't fit the crunch. I'd rather play something imbalanced but consistent with my character than a balanced mismatch. If a change doesn't break that, go nuts.
There are going to be some players that like the power level of the fighter as-is, of course. That is, they don't want the fighter to be balanced--they want it to be exactly as powerful as it is now. Good luck pleasing them. : D
Agree, however note the simplest way to "fix" the Fighter would be new Fighter-only feats. No actual need to "alter" anything.
Sounds reasonable, but there are several classes and archetypes that get access to "fighter-only" feats, so this wouldn't close the gap between fighters and those options. It'd be pretty difficult to make "no, really, these are fighter only" feats at this juncture, if only from a linguistic standpoint.
Please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks "Cut the mountain in twain (ex)" would be awesome, flavorful, and fit Fighters to a T?
I am afraid this discussion may be getting too heated. Many great opinions and posts here, but I think I shall recuse myself further.
Dude, its not that hard really to do. I'm playing a wizard right now, and frankly its not that difficult to walk into a battle, snap your fingers, cast a 2nd level spell, and have the battle be basically over. You don't have to optimize around it, just cast the spell and you're good.
Sure, if you have the spell prepared or have dumped all your funds into contingency items. Wizards are versatile, but they require the player (or the wizard) to have sufficient foresight, genre-savvy, or understanding of probability to prepare the right spells and/or acquire the right contingency items to cover the trials ahead of them. If you guessed wrong, having prepared a lot of mind-affecting and fire spells only to be faced by burning skeletal giants, you're going to feel pretty useless. It happens--frequently, in my experience.
Saving slots can help sometimes, but even with Fast Study there isn't enough time to prep a spell on the fly if you're getting your face chewed off. A bonded item can help even more. It's only once a day, but there's no time overhead, and sometimes you only need that one odd spell to save your bacon.
(All of this, of course, is b&@&!~+s when you get to high-level play. Either you have the slots to cover pretty much everything or you have the funds to get equipment and consumables to cover the rest.)
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You don't make 'fighter only' feats. You make feats that reference fighter class features. i.e. Bravery, Armor Training and Weapon Training.
There are no 'barbarian only feats.' There are Rage Powers. There are no 'paladin only feats'. There's Extra Mercies, Aura feats, smite things.
Etc. Follow that example.
As has been stated a hundred times, the fighter's problem is not DPR. He does fine on DPR. It's his saves, his skills, his versatility/adaptability to different conditions, and his ability to influence the metagame outside of combat. A non-magical combatant should have access to options that defy and/or neutralize magic.
Unfortunately, the standing Paizo system is that 'magic is better', not 'anti-magic is viable'. And so things that work against or without magic are underpowered or next to useless, except a very few that stand out, and come from classes with Supernatural or Magical edges (Barbarian Superstition and Spell Sunder, Paladin Cha to all saves and Immunities, etc).
==Aelryinth
I'm actually playing 3.5, so I'm playing an arcane class that allows me to do prepared casting and spontaneous casting. I cast every round and still cast longer than the fighter full attacks ever day.
3.5 problems and Pathfinder problems are very very different.
In Pathfinder the problems are with non-casters (except the barbarian and some monk builds).
In 3.5 the problems were with all non-full casters (except for a few broken builds)
EDIT: Actually nvm. All those monk builds have SLAs.
In Pathfinder the problems are with non-casters (except the barbarian and some monk builds).
In 3.5 the problems were with all non-full casters (except for a few broken builds)
EDIT: Actually nvm. All those monk builds have SLAs.
Qinggong Monk saving the class singlehandedly. Literally, if you want to fluff his attack that way.
Also, between games the 3.5 martial could do damage in the thousands, while casters had less class features and less HP.
If a martial was getting that much damage then an equally optimize caster had 9th level slots from 2 or more kinds of casting and can evasculate an enemy down to 1/16 health and then full attack them for more than half their max HP.
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@Thomas - can't snip and quote sorry. Too hard on the iPad.
The wizard thing. I know people claim it's not hard. Snap fingers, battle over. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen that happen in 20 years with hundreds of players, including organised play, low level, mid level and high level. Most often I see snap fingers, lots of opponents save, battle continues. Real game data does not support theory craft. I believe you'll find the folks at Paizo have vast quantities of data that support that statement, despit the differences between your experiences and mine.
The paladin thing was a PvP scenario, it was about the ability to,adapt to levels of play. Another poster stated Paladins eventually gain access to fly in order to take on that sort of encounter. I said fighters don't necessarily need to. They can use bows as effectively as close combat weapons if they choose to. And do so faster than the Paladin gets his fly in.
Barbarian AC gets as high as Fighters with very narrow build options. In other words cookie cutter character. Fighters get great AC in vast numbers of builds and archetypes.
Finally, while I agree you can staple on multiple personalities to exactly the same character, many people would find it tedious to play exactly the same build over and over when you could similar effectiveness with multiple themes and feats combinations from the fighter class.
@Thomas - can't snip and quote sorry. Too hard on the iPad.
The wizard thing. I know people claim it's not hard. Snap fingers, battle over. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen that happen in 20 years with hundreds of players, including organised play, low level, mid level and high level. Most often I see snap fingers, lots of opponents save, battle continues. Real game data does not support theory craft. I believe you'll find the folks at Paizo have vast quantities of data that support that statement, despit the differences between your experiences and mine.
The "theorycraft" math you deride is equivalent to the results of a sample size of infinity.
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@ secret wizard.
The title of this thread is why won't you fix the fighter.
It's not let's blance the fighter. It's not let's create homebrew rules for fighter. It asks a specific question.
The answer for vast quantities of players out there is " Because we don't think its broken or imbalanced."
A small number of very vocal people think it is imBalanced and broken. They create threads like this and all get on it, make lots of noise and get upset when some folk espousing what appears to be the majority consensus about fighters being good as is come in.
You stated people should create their own threads for things like popularity etc. I would suggest, given the title of this thread, you in fact need to start another thread that deals with why and how you feel fighter should be balanced. Or you could look for the few hundred other threads out there on a similar vein and just necro one. That's been happening a lot lately.
I'm with DR Death on this one. Will leave you guys to it now. My earlier posts hinted at the fact no one gets convinced, and it's time to get out before poo poo head gets thrown into someone's face :)
Thanks for the discussion all.
Cheers
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The "theorycraft" math you deride is equivalent to the results of a sample size of infinity.@Thomas - can't snip and quote sorry. Too hard on the iPad.
The wizard thing. I know people claim it's not hard. Snap fingers, battle over. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen that happen in 20 years with hundreds of players, including organised play, low level, mid level and high level. Most often I see snap fingers, lots of opponents save, battle continues. Real game data does not support theory craft. I believe you'll find the folks at Paizo have vast quantities of data that support that statement, despit the differences between your experiences and mine.
Theory craft as used in all these boards involves probability analysis using rules and formulas based on sterile conditions.none of which exist in any actual dnd game. Ergo, they are absolutely worthless in terms of anything other than "cool story bro".
All your probability analysis falls apart because conditions change every time another person acts in any scenario, which none of your probability can account for.
However, lots of people like theory craft. I don't deride it for its own sake, I merely understand that its data is useful only in so far as helping people understand some good combinations of tricks to use in the game. Some folks take it as gospel though. And that's where things get all icky in threads.
Cheers
You don't attack creatures in an actual DnD game? You don't make skill checks in an actual DnD game? You don't roll saves in an actual DnD game? You don't roll for damage?
What the hell are you talking about with "sterile conditions that don't happen in actual DnD"?
Better PM him, because he says he's left the thread.
Theory craft as used in all these boards involves probability analysis using rules and formulas based on sterile conditions.none of which exist in any actual dnd game.
Play at 11+ with a GM who believes in CR, in WBL, and doesn't pull punches with said monsters.
I've tilted at the DPR windmill myself more than once, and on balance I don't like the statistic, but it's not accurate to describe it, or similar calculations, as "absolutely worthless." Often misused, yes, certainly.
That said, as Marcus indicates, play as a high level fighter is far more informative than spreadsheets.
I've tilted at the DPR windmill myself more than once, and on balance I don't like the statistic, but it's not accurate to describe it, or similar calculations, as "absolutely worthless." Often misused, yes, certainly.
That said, as Marcus indicates, play as a high level fighter is far more informative than spreadsheets.
DPR is fine, as long as you actually know what it is and how to use it. At the end of the day, it's just a figure for average damage vs an average enemy for your level. Nice to know, but only one of many factors in character effectiveness. If I'm going to be playing a guy whose primary combat skill is hitting things with a sword, it's nice to have some baseline idea of how good he'd be at doing that. Much like it's nice to know how good my skill points and saving throws are, or how useful any other class abilities will be. The more you know about how your character functions mechanically, the better off you are.
The only time worrying about DPR becomes an issue is when you over-focus on it to such a degree that you create a character who is a complete glass canon with no ability to do anything other than hit something with a weapon for hit point damage. And really, any hyper-specialized one-trick-pony character is going to have that problem, whether you're maxing out your DPR, or maxing out Craft (basketweaving).
Then again, I find that the "Builds that sacrifice everything for more DPR" seem to exist primarily in the minds of people who feel compelled to rant about how evil DPR is, and how it is utterly ruining the game by allowing people to have badwrongfun. Heck, a lot of people seem to use the term so absent any context that it seems they don't have any idea what the term even means, beyond "Optimizers talk about it, ergo it is an evil thing of evilness that must opposed for corrupting the sacred purity of Holy Pathfinder!"
Without having read the entire thread, my answer is quite simple. The fighter class doesn't need help. Feats need help, reliance on full attack actions that don't allow mobility need help, 2 weapon fighting, unarmed combat, and other unusual fighting styles needs help, maneuvers (for all that CMB/CMD was a big improvement) need help. Fix those things, and the fighter is vastly improved without having touched the class itself. To go further, fix those, and a lot of the corner cases and special abilities they have to bake into all of the martial classes right now, fighters included, become less necessary. Barbarians, monks, rogues, and summoners all have challenges within their classes that need to be resolved to fully take advantage of any general improvements to the combat system as a whole. Fighters really don't; any fixes elsewhere will give the fighter immediate benefits.
DPR is fine, as long as you actually know what it is and how to use it. At the end of the day, it's just a figure for average damage vs an average enemy for your level.I've tilted at the DPR windmill myself more than once, and on balance I don't like the statistic, but it's not accurate to describe it, or similar calculations, as "absolutely worthless." Often misused, yes, certainly.
That said, as Marcus indicates, play as a high level fighter is far more informative than spreadsheets.
*on rounds that you are able to full attack, and also are hampered by no non-AC defenses whatsoever.
;)
(sorry, I couldn't help myself)
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Dude, the basic math holds true even when another person acts. Math doesn't simply cease to be.
I think his argument is less that the mass doesn't hold true (it does), but that it's nearly impossible to establish a baseline in a game where so much is DM discretion and the rules purposefully allow so much leeway (also true).
I actually use the Fighter as my bar when valuing a chars full attack.
Alchemist+14 strength + power attack + strength mutagen and mutagen discoveries + some long to mid duration buff extracts ends up being a bit better than a fighter at full attacking depending on the buff extracts. An alchemist that actually focused on melee would be even worse, this sample alchemist is a generalist. Full attacking is just a side thing.
When I crunched the numbers on my strength magus, I compared AC and full attacks to the fighter. It's why my magus is actually int focused with only an 18 in strength before items. Having an insanely large arcane pool to burn on arcane accuracy is just better than main stating dex or strength, and ends up being more flexible. Oh and the shield spell really makes up for AC deficiencies and that is before mirror image or any other kind magic defenses.
DPR is fine, as long as you actually know what it is and how to use it. At the end of the day, it's just a figure for average damage vs an average enemy for your level.I've tilted at the DPR windmill myself more than once, and on balance I don't like the statistic, but it's not accurate to describe it, or similar calculations, as "absolutely worthless." Often misused, yes, certainly.
That said, as Marcus indicates, play as a high level fighter is far more informative than spreadsheets.
*on rounds that you are able to full attack, and also are hampered by no non-AC defenses whatsoever.
;)
(sorry, I couldn't help myself)
Well, it's not that hard to do a DPR-calculation for rounds where you can't full attack...
But yeah, obviously a broad statistical average can't account for every single variable that might pop up in an individual fight. Granted, you could run a DPR calculation modified to account for stuff like miss chance or DR, if you really wanted to know what your average damage would be against every single enemy in the game. That's just way too much work to really be worth it, most of the time.
Personally, I'm fine with just using a quick ballpark figure to get some idea of how my damage stacks up, even if I know that number doesn't account for every possible contingency.
I actually use the Fighter as my bar when valuing a chars full attack.
Alchemist+14 strength + power attack + strength mutagen and mutagen discoveries + some long to mid duration buff extracts ends up being a bit better than a fighter at full attacking depending on the buff extracts. An alchemist that actually focused on melee would be even worse, this sample alchemist is a generalist. Full attacking is just a side thing.
When I crunched the numbers on my strength magus, I compared AC and full attacks to the fighter. It's why my magus is actually int focused with only an 18 in strength before items. Having an insanely large arcane pool to burn on arcane accuracy is just better than main stating dex or strength, and ends up being more flexible. Oh and the shield spell really makes up for AC deficiencies and that is before mirror image or any other kind magic defenses.
In before someone tells you that the Fighter is better because he can do it an unlimited number of times per day.
In before someone tells you that the Fighter is better because he can do it an unlimited number of times per day.I actually use the Fighter as my bar when valuing a chars full attack.
Alchemist+14 strength + power attack + strength mutagen and mutagen discoveries + some long to mid duration buff extracts ends up being a bit better than a fighter at full attacking depending on the buff extracts. An alchemist that actually focused on melee would be even worse, this sample alchemist is a generalist. Full attacking is just a side thing.
When I crunched the numbers on my strength magus, I compared AC and full attacks to the fighter. It's why my magus is actually int focused with only an 18 in strength before items. Having an insanely large arcane pool to burn on arcane accuracy is just better than main stating dex or strength, and ends up being more flexible. Oh and the shield spell really makes up for AC deficiencies and that is before mirror image or any other kind magic defenses.
Then someone doesn't know that an alchemist can reuse her mutagen with a 2nd level extract.
Did I mention the bombs? Yeah bombs. Take that Fighter bow!