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People "hate" casters because there's a spell for everything. There's a spell to replace every single skill, better than someone with max ranks can do it.
There's spells to end encounters in one shot.
There's spells to bypass whole plot threads a GM can come up with.
The main gripe about magic items is that your character needs to be decked out like Mr. T to challenge CR appropriate enemies.
The resources "drawback" that casters have is a myth plain and simple.
Most games dont run more than 4 challenging encounters in a day period and many casters have powerful class features on top of having spell slots.
A druid for example is a more powerful martial combatant than most martials even without spell slots due to the versatility that is Wildshape.
A Cleric can be an incredible martial or Angel Summoner from day to day.
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They hate us because they ain't us.
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I don't hate magic items or mind being decked out. Christmas trees cater to my own personal tastes. But I do think there remains a large hole in the game as far as asceticism goes. Paizo's justification for their fantasy asceticism being deliberately weak was that real poverty sucks. But in myth and fantasy - particularly medieval myths - ascetics often gained immense power, not necessarily any inferior to that of a sword-swinging hero. I wouldn't mind seeing that represented as well.
Likewise, while I don't favor denying spellcasters a place in the game or enforcing low magic, I do mind when magic is the only way to do something well while nonmagical approaches are made to suck because of realism. Like if my fifteenth level Viking with tons of Swim ranks jumps into the ocean to fight a sea monster, he's going to suck at swimming. Meanwhile, someone who has never seen water in their life, but with an apprentice level spell, can swim circles around him.
Now, as to the arguments that you bring up, based on play experience at high levels I sincerely dispute that lack of daily resources (such as a fighter) automatically translates into sustained power across many combats. In fact, possessing only always-on abilities can easily coexist with being bad at sustaining combat power.
We'll get Comrade in here in a minute talking about the old myths about asceticism was just the nobility and powerful of the time trying to trick the poor into thinking being poor made them powerful.
"Me kicking you is you having power!"
I dislike the big six. The idea that a fighter NEEDS magic items to keep doing what he or she did at level one against CR foes (hitting things and avoiding hits) is frustrating. Magic items are suppose to expand your capabilities not make you viable at what you could already do.
Vancian casters are too strong. The magic rules are clunky, bog down play, and very exploitative. DSP psionics handles the situation better. Psions are better at playing straight up, but they have far less exploits to make use of.
Apparently most games end by 12 though, so none of that matters.
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There is no hate of casters or martials. People just notice some things more than others and whatever is not for _____ is seen as hate.
PS: Martial hate is really "I can't accept the non-magical guy doing _____".
edit: changed "can" to can't"
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We'll get Comrade in here in a minute talking about the old myths about asceticism was just the nobility and powerful of the time trying to trick the poor into thinking being poor made them powerful.
And I'm sure someone else could argue that dragons were just a story to keep the commoners from trying to wander off the edges of the estate, but that's a) questionable, and b) irrelevant to whether dragons (or ascetics) could have a good place in Pathfinder.
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The main gripe about magic items is that your character needs to be decked out like Mr. T to challenge CR appropriate enemies.
This.
Because when properly prepared you can bend the laws of physics to your whim. DM's frown upon that.
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We'll get Comrade in here in a minute talking about the old myths about asceticism was just the nobility and powerful of the time trying to trick the poor into thinking being poor made them powerful.
"Me kicking you is you having power!"
Are we comparing the asceticism of monks and other such characters in myth to simple poverty?
It seems to me that many of the monastic orders, while personally poor and humble of belongings, possessed fairly extensive political power. The real kind, not simply the ability to be kicked.
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The main gripe about magic items is that your character needs to be decked out like Mr. T to challenge CR appropriate enemies.
I pity the foo' who doesn't want to look like Mr T.
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We'll get Comrade in here in a minute talking about the old myths about asceticism was just the nobility and powerful of the time trying to trick the poor into thinking being poor made them powerful.
"Me kicking you is you having power!"
Are we comparing the asceticism of monks and other such characters in myth to simple poverty?
It seems to me that many of the monastic orders, while personally poor and humble of belongings, possessed fairly extensive political power. The real kind, not simply the ability to be kicked.
And in material like the lives of the saints*, ascetics gained personal power as well - that is, power comparable to the ability to smite a demon to death using your magic sword or turn it to stone with the help of your magic headband.
*(Personal power was a big feature of mythic ascetics in plenty of other myths outside of Europe, too)
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Paging Comrade Anklebiter, to the too serious thread.
Comrade Anklebiter to the thread with too much seriousness.
I'm sure there are haters of casters out there, I don't really know any personally. That said, I've participated in several of the low magic, no magic threads, because I do have interests in playing such games. But this, by no means, is due to any kind of hate on my part, rather I like variety and themed games. Many are very heavy magic, but that's not the only kind of game I wish to play. Low/no magic is just something else I want to try.
Consider I've published a PF setting that has every bit of magic that any standard fantasy might - Japanese horror is the flavor of that setting, so there's no reason to think I prefer low/no magic.
I think you're reading something in those low/no magic threads that isn't there. I don't really see caster haters in those threads, just people interested in alternatives that might more closely emulate storiess of fiction and film.
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{. . .}
Most games dont run more than 4 challenging encounters in a day period and many casters have powerful class features on top of having spell slots.
{. . .}
That's a problem with campaign design, not a problem with spellcaster design.
I remember that in the 1st Edition games I used to be in (which admittedly were all homebrewed, not necessarily by me), the only reason that casters DIDN'T turn out terrible was that due to the abysmal organization of the 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, we never found the rule about how often you can re-prepare spells until it was way too late to retcon. Our spellcasters (mine or somebody else's) NEEDED to be able to recharge whenever the party could get what in D&D 5th Edition would be called a Short Rest, because they were always running out of spells, especially the Clerics -- and without D&D 5th Edition's limitation on how many of those you can get per day, because by modern standards, the games back then were grueling dungeon crawls (remember wandering monster encounters? -- DMs including myself tended to take rolling those up SERIOUSLY). At higher levels, spellcasters did transition from seriously underpowered (but still necessary) to moderately overpowered, but they wouldn't have been able to keep doing their job without the martials.
EDIT:
A Cleric can be an incredible martial or Angel Summoner from day to day.
Linkified for you. (And now I want a Summoner archetype or Summoner-Cleric Hybrid Class that does this . . . because it would be awesome.)
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The big issue is that while at mid or even high level an optimized martial can more than beat a caster in single target damage, the caster can often replace you entirely with minimal effort. Why play a rogue when the wizard has knock, pass wall, detect magic, detect secret doors, and a wand of find traps? Your amazing acrobatics? He can fly. Bluff? Try charm person. Intimidate? Dominate person. Sleight of hand? Stealth? Invisibility. Now sure, there are situations where you might do better, but why should the wizard be a better rogue even half the time?
Why be a fighter when you could be a conjuration specialist, or a Druid? Feels bad to have the wizard show you up at your thing regularly. Now, casters have their own issues, but none to the degree of a high level fighter who can go buy pizza and the only impact is the wizard burns an extra spell slot.
That's a problem with campaign design, not a problem with spellcaster design.{. . .}
Most games dont run more than 4 challenging encounters in a day period and many casters have powerful class features on top of having spell slots.
Is it a good thing to have game balance depend upon every adventure being all about fighting multiple battles a day with no way of taking a break, even when you have access to teleport spells that ought to take the time pressure off, and the number of battles per day increasing every level to allow for the casters' ever increasing number of spells?
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The reason that a lot of people here don't like casters is that the GM cant "GM" very well.
Nobody dislikes casters. They dislike the fact that casters get vast numbers of cool powers and flight and burrowing and water-breathing with no real effort required while mundanes get the ability to climb a slightly steeper slope or swim in slightly rougher water. Often, the simplest solution to this is for everyone to play a caster of some kind, since that's the majority of classes.
If you only have 4 encounters then you rest while Raiding a fortress/dungeon/cave full of monsters, the GM is bad. So the characters in Fortress are like"oh i am out of spells lets camp. I am sure no one noticed the big explosions and the guards that are supost to be on 15 minute patrols to keep the place secure that we just killed will be missed." And so they camp 8 hours without the whole fortress finding them and killing them in there sleep.......Bad GM.
Or, more likely, they leave, go out to the nearby forest, cast Hide Campsite or similar for a safe night's rest, and then go back to the fortress.
Which, really, is how the game is designed to be played. Four encounters a day is standard.
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Exactly zero of those things reduce the native power of spells.
No amount of innovative GMing will make Fly less of a slap in the face to Acrobatics and Climb.
You have very clearly not attempted to read the posts in this thread, since you're ranting on about things regardless of what has been posted. If all you wanted to do was make text walls of your UN nformed opinions you should have cut to the chase instead of phrasing the thread as a question.
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First of all i want to thank everyone for responding.
So lets see here. The reason that a lot of people here don't like casters is that the GM cant "GM" very well. By this i mean, the GM cant think outside of the Quest book and innovate to how the party grows and plays. (The part of this that i find funny in most groups i have GMed or played in the rouges are the ones that make it a challenge for the GM and not the casters.) As for thinking out of the box here is an example: As the Party gains levels and completes quest treat them as They are gaining Fame and notoriety so you change the "Random Encounters" to have Bounty hunters that are Mage hunter is in build rather than the Group of goblins that they would have ran into.
Now as for the caster spell/day limits goes back to BAD GMing. If you only have 4 encounters then you rest while Raiding a fortress/dungeon/cave full of monsters, the GM is bad. So the characters in Fortress are like"oh i am out of spells lets camp. I am sure no one noticed the big explosions and the guards that are supost to be on 15 minute patrols to keep the place secure that we just killed will be missed." And so they camp 8 hours without the whole fortress finding them and killing them in there sleep.......Bad GM.
So for an example On Items if they just made +5 swords of super smiting and you feel that its a bit too strong make him work to keep it as in rust monster, slads, thieves, or create opponents that disarm. But dont make it so its worthless(that would be Bad GMing) but make them work to keep it.
But if the GM cant handle it when things dont go as he planned then he is a bad GM.
On a side not for those who like the Low magic try and find the stuff on like the Black Sun setting from DnD. Its interesting to say the least.
.... Reading comprehension fail. Nothing to read here.
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Problem with spellcasters in general is that they have solution for every problem via magic but in order to remove this option you only need two things as a GM: unpredictability and time constraint.
Wizard has the ability to prepare a Fly spell, but if the wizard isn't exactly in the need of such a spell, he won't prepare it. If he realizes that he needs the spell, he might not have time to prepare it since he can prepare it only at the start of a new day.
So it all boils down to a simple logic; if the spellcaster knows the type of problem and has enough time, he will find a solution.
Adam
This is true to an extent, but bad example. Flight is one of the staples for casters who don't want to die.
And given a minute, a Wizard can prepare situational spells in open slots. Plus they get Scribe Scroll for free, which is great for situational stuff like Communal Spider Climb, Stone Shape, stuff like that.
Casters also, funnily enough, have the ability to see the future and make magic items that cast spells without using slots. They also have a ton of slots.
I agree that a Wizard without any downtime at all suffers, but then the entire campaign is a rush from one plot point to another, making sure the Wizard can't prepare for anything. No one will have any attachment to the setting or the people or the village or anything. A race against the doomsday clock can be a cool, fun adventure, but if you run that sort of thing every time there's a prepared caster in your party, you're gonna have a bad time.
Also, spontaneous casters don't care about any of that at all, which makes it an even worse 'solution' to the problem.
Because last night I used a point of Mythic Power to cast 1 spell that turned a rough CR 11 encounter into an easy CR 9 encounter.
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This is true to an extent, but bad example. Flight is one of the staples for casters who don't want to die.
And given a minute, a Wizard can prepare situational spells in open slots. Plus they get Scribe Scroll for free, which is great for situational stuff like Communal Spider Climb, Stone Shape, stuff like that.
It was just an example. In normal circumstances, wizard will probably keep Fly or at least a scroll at hand.
Scrolls and all other things cost money. It's also unlikely that wizard would have enough scrolls to buff entire party.
Empty spell slots are meaningless to an extent. In 90% of games that I have seen, only once did this option prove to be useful but this was my own experience with empty spell slots. It might be better on higher levels however when you have more spell slots to play with.
It's a good tactic any level, but especially past 5th when Quick Study comes into play. The Wizard can then prepare spells with no issue. Quickly enough that your buffs don't even run out.
I don't think magic is a problem at all. Magic gets out of hand when you have stats too high. A 15 point buy and caster are not an issue from my experience. Caster get out of hand when when you have higher stats. I find it's when caster can max out their casting stat that DCs for saves are higher. A high casting stat alone isn't a problem, attaining that with 15 point buy results in weaknesses. Magic items in this case shore up weakness instead of increasing the caster's power. If the caster is more balanced the items instead bring the caster up to the level they would be if they maxed out the casting stat.
So higher stats mean less weaknesses with a maxed out casting stat that can be boosted high enough to cause unbalances to the game. The game still works but it introduces all the problems you see people complain about when it comes to magic.
<@> <@>
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Low point buys are worse for any class that doesn't rely on one stat.
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Your solutions do the opposite of what you think.
So now its the buff they can cast. I am not familiar with Quick study(its not in the PDR as far as the search could find and its not in any book I have seen)
It's misnamed
The ability is Fast Study"Fast Study: Normally, a wizard spends 1 hour preparing all of his spells for the day, or proportionately less if he only prepares some spells, with a minimum of 15 minutes of preparation. Thanks to mental discipline and clever mnemonics, you can prepare all of your spells in only 15 minutes, and your minimum preparation time is only 1 minute. You must be at least a 5th-level wizard to select this discovery."
Book: Ultimate magic
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Your solutions do the opposite of what you think.
I know right?
GMing that covers caster dominance is being an easy GM.
Don't require the PCs to hunt for information (because the casters will find it with divination or knowledge rolls)
Don't have enimies play smart (have enemies stand in full attack range of the fighter)
Run enemies extra dumb (don't have enemies 5ft step out of rogue reach)
Even attempts to drain caster resources require being an easy GM, because you are just throwing waves upon waves of low CR foes at the party.
If you hardcore GM, then the only thing viable in your game will be casters.
Why has Paizo not made any focused casters like dread necromancer to replace wizard and such? Restricting mages to one thematic rarely expanded spell-list usually does all of the nerfing needed to bring them in line with other classes. The closest I've seen to this move is mesmerist in Occult Adventures.
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Casters were not weak in 1E.
Sleep was a save or die spell that affected many monsters.
At low levels, very few monsters could save against your spells. At higher levels, they could and did save.
Direct damage spells actually killed things. No damage caps, remember? And monsters didn't get COn bonuses. A 5th level wizard's fireball literally killed every orc in the room. A 20th level wizard's fireball did 20d6 damage.
Clerics were the only reliable source of healing. No cleric, no heal. Okay, maybe a druid. But all this potion and wand nonsense? uh uh.
The problem with casters in 1e, primarily wizards, was low hit points. they were fragile. They got hit, they died. Therefore, you had to hide behind melees, not get shot in the middle of casting...but when you cast, you basically won the fight.
Because they had crappy BAB (2/3 for clerics, 1/3 for wizards) AND they NEVER got multiple attacks, they could never, ever do the fighter's job.
Now, clerics and wizards can do the job of casters, crooks and bashers without a problem.
That's the fact that annoys people.
==Aelryinth
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Monsters in 1e had a lot fewer hit points than monsters in pathfinder, which made casters a lot more deadly. The primary weakness of casters was low level survivability and few hit pionts.
Imagine yourself as a first level wizard in pathfinder. You have a handful of spells to cast plus a handful of infinite cantrips to cast. Think you're weak?
Now imagine yourself as a 1e first level caster. You have one spell for the day. That's it. One. amd that one could be a cantrip.
Once they survive low levels, then they really amplify in power. And with the lower hit point count for monsters, their damage was relatively much more deadly than pathfinder. Aelyrinth has the right of it.
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I think I can say I hate shamans. As in, I am a huge fan of Oracles and a huge fan of Witches so I was excited for the shaman and then... I saw the shaman... now I hate it. Granted, that's my fault because Paizo's vision didn't match my vision but still. However, I have a shaman player in my Wednesday Reign of Winter game so it should be fun. Even the shaman I don't hate enough to ban it.
Monsters in 1e had a lot fewer hit points than monsters in pathfinder, which made casters a lot more deadly. The primary weakness of casters was low level survivability and few hit pionts.
Imagine yourself as a first level wizard in pathfinder. You have a handful of spells to cast plus a handful of infinite cantrips to cast. Think you're weak?
Now imagine yourself as a 1e first level caster. You have one spell for the day. That's it. One. amd that one could be a cantrip.
Once they survive low levels, then they really amplify in power. And with the lower hit point count for monsters, their damage was relatively much more deadly than pathfinder. Aelyrinth has the right of it.
True but in 1 or 2E, wands could have stuff like Cloudkill on them.
Another difference in 1e/2e was that the XP requirement for leveling was different for each class, and wizards had to earn more XP than any other class to level up - which, though clumsy, was another built-in nerf to wizards that disappeared in 3x, with all classes leveling at the same XP. This is a bit annoying in bumping up the power level to casters.
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Not quite true.
Wizards had to earn the most xp...after level 11.
From 4-9, wizards leveled faster then any other class.
It's why you see things like fighter/magic-user 4/6, 4/7, 5/8, 6/9, and 7/10 on old PC sheets. Wizards leveled VERY fast in the midlevels, so they weren't weak long.
And due to the way xp worked then, a multiclassed f/m-u was never more then a level behind the straight wizard, and could actually be higher level then a straight classed fighter type.
Granted, at level 18, the fighter might be 20, 21. But he got 6 hit points and +2 to hit, and the wizard got meteor swarm at a time when meteor swarm could take out a demon lord.
wands in 1e were much closer to what staffs are today, just smaller. They often had unique abilities you couldn't duplicate with spells, and/or were more effective at certain spells. Wands of fire and lightning, for instance, counted 1's rolled as 2's when tossing fireballs and lightning bolts, respectively.
==Aelryinth
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So now its the buff they can cast. I am not familiar with Quick study(its not in the PDR as far as the search could find and its not in any book I have seen) But under normal circumstances if you caster has to prepare all utility spells then they are weak/useless in combat and as for spontaneous casting they suffer from they have a much smaller pool of spells to cast anyway so most focus on what their main role is and not a jack of all trades. But I would say its still falls to the GM to find a way to balance that ex: if your party has a buffing maniac counter with the monsters doing the same.
As for the "resting" if you walk out/teleport what's to stop the whole place from "resetting"/hunting the party down at that point. To me that's like some of the Worst GMing to allow that type of play.
its one thing to take it as easy mode to help a new player type party for a GM. But to say Things are too strong because the GM is using Kids gloves on a more veteran party in the first place when the powers they are using are meant to be used in a more challenging setting ......... the only thing I can say to that is you cant complain about it being to easy on easy mode play.
As a GM who actually runs monsters intelligently, let me assure you that if a GM is playing their monsters appropriately, at level 13 the gap between classes with no casting and those with full casting becomes insurmountable. Properly played, high level enemies have tons of SLAs that can completely invalidate an opposing martial. The only way a Fighter can compete at these levels is to invest heavily in UMD and scrolls and do their damnedest to fake being a full caster.
If this does not happen the problem is that the GM is going easy on the party and playing monsters poorly.