Let me get this straight. You want discourage Haste use by spellcasters in order to "weaken" them in power. Do you have any idea how many players of martials will howl if that was done? Haste is one of the buffs most demanded by parties, who are you helping by eliminating it's use?Honestly, a lot of the issues the system now has can be traced back to them not faithfully converting spells from 2e to 3e. They took out the drawbacks that reigned in the spam casting of a lot of spells, like haste aging you a year. This made sense from the perspective of people want to actually be able to use their toys, and made the game a lot more fun for casters. But they didn't pay enough attention to how those limitations affected the spell's perceived power. Most of the spells that are considered broken today either had expensive material components that are now trivial to find because of reworks to the economy or metagame drawbacks to reduce their usage.Yes, they must destroy and rebuild it all from scratch... Following the same winning strategy that WOTC did when they moved beyond 3.5.Of course you ignore that they also used that strategy when they transitioned from 2e to 3.0.Ninja'd on this already.
Obviously, changing the underlying system does not mean failure or bad sales necessarily when seeing these items.
On the otherhand, I think PF might actually LOSE a LOT of players if they did something like this.
Haste is overpowered.
In 2E it was overpowered but only cast during major encounters because there were drawbacks to spamming it. It also wasn't needed because the entire system was structured differently.
3.0 it was worse, granting extra spellcasting and eliminating the drawback made it the opening spell for every combat after 5th level, and it was more of a boost to casters than martials.
3.5 toned it down, but it is still a ridiculously powerful buff. They could eliminate the AC and save bonus and drop the movement speed buff to 10 and it would still be a good spell for its level.
But this is the type of spell they want in the game. It encourages the group to work together as a unit, and boosts the martials more than the casters. But that is just a bandaid.
Personally, I would rework haste completely. I would have it give an extra move action and nothing else.
You'll get no arguments from me that Haste should be worked out of the game.
Calling an expected component of the game overpowered though... I had to refute that.
I would argue that anything 1 thing that becomes so expected it is worked into the system and that to be missing it puts you at a severe disadvantage against CR appropriate foes is by definition overpowered. Similarly, I argue that the Big 6 are overpowered.
But I agree, these are tangents for another thread.
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The LOTR films had a big impact on my view of the fantasy world(s). I liked the color-scheme that they used to portray the world as dark, gritty, mysterious, and melancholy.
I had also read the books around the same time the first film came out, and I have been a major fan since then. This has always impact my view of fantasy worlds, edging away from the "cartoony" look or feel and leaning much more so on the raw/gritty side.
I've often found D&D a very limiting game in that it only does the zero-to-hero style of story. Starting at a higher level is the only way to really modify that.This partly depends on the setting and how literally one chooses to read EXP [or better yet don't use it at all :P]
In a setting where almost nobody passes level 4 in their lifetime, you can start a level 1 campaign with a professional.
Not likely a full scale veteran, but someone who's been through several engagements [perhaps a small war, the kind that lasts no more than a few years] and knows their way around the battlefield.
The issue is that the system doesn't really support you making a veteran and me making a newbie. Let's say I make a young noble who's trained to become a knight and just starting out on his adventures. You make the grizzled veteran that my father sent along to watch my back. Let's also assume that we're the same class (or similar ones). If we make characters of the same level, there isn't really much to differentiate you being experienced and me being fresh out of sword school. We can describe our characters differently, but that's about all we can do. The rules don't actually support the concept and relationship dynamic.
There are many things wrong with Green Ronin's A Song of Ice and Fire RPG, but one of the things they handled well was age and ability differences. You could make a youngster (even a child) and actually be relevant to the game as someone who made a veteran knight. In a game I ran two characters were uncle and nephew. They were very similar characters (politically focused, lots of social skills) but their age differences equated to mechanical differences in the characters and each were useful in the same situation in different ways.
D&D does not do all story types, nor is it particularly good at mixing in certain tropes which are common in stories. It does well with certain tropes, or if you consider some tropes mutually exclusive, even though they would not be mutually exclusive outside of D&D.
I liken RPG's to tool boxes. An RPG can only fit so many tools inside it and often only certain kinds of tools. While carpentry tools are great at carpentry, they aren't as good for automotive repair. While some tools will cross over and be useful, not all of them will and many tools will require extra effort in order to be useful to certain tasks.
D&D doesn't do well with a starting party of...
1st level fighter
5th level fighter
1st level wizard
8th level cleric
2nd level rogue
Balancing encounters for that party would be a nightmare. While the 1st level characters would jump a few levels very quickly, for encounters to be survivable, they'd be steamrolled by the 5th and 8th level character. Even if you did start a campaign that way, you'd probably do so with the idea in mind of everyone reaching a certain level together (like making it to 10th level roughly the same time).
Aside from scrubbing out all the limitations like Haste aging and the like, the 3.0 developers basically just copy/pasted the spell descriptions, durations, etc from 2e. They didn't bother to take into account the (rather massive) change to a completely new system.
For example, durations got a MASSIVE buff in the transition. If something lasted 5 minutes in 2e, that was actually only 5 combat rounds. 5 minutes in 3.x/Pathfinder is 50 combat rounds. Essentially, a substantial number of spells got their duration multiplied x10.
3.0, and it's successors 3.5 and Pathfinder really are "Caster Editions" in almost every sense of the word.
I think much of that could change if they simply made Saves easier. In 1e and 2e, as you went up levels, it became a LOT easier to save vs. spells.
A 6th level caster in 1e or 2e was still rather powerful, and the saves still could be hard to make, but once characters got to very high level of 16th or 17th level (levels where many feel spellcasters are nigh all powerful in PF), saves vs. spells got to be extremely easy, especially in regards to PF or any D20 D&D type game.
If you would triple (or at least double) the save bonuses characters got vs. spells it could go a LONG way to alleviating the spellcaster all powerful idea. They still would have extremely powerful spells, but spells that simply rely on a save or die aspect wouldn't be necessarily as dangerous.
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The issue is that the system doesn't really support you making a veteran and me making a newbie. Let's say I make a young noble who's trained to become a knight and just starting out on his adventures. You make the grizzled veteran that my father sent along to watch my back. Let's also assume that we're the same class (or similar ones). If we make characters of the same level, there isn't really much to differentiate you being experienced and me being fresh out of sword school. We can describe our characters differently, but that's about all we can do. The rules don't actually support the concept and relationship dynamic.I've often found D&D a very limiting game in that it only does the zero-to-hero style of story. Starting at a higher level is the only way to really modify that.This partly depends on the setting and how literally one chooses to read EXP [or better yet don't use it at all :P]
In a setting where almost nobody passes level 4 in their lifetime, you can start a level 1 campaign with a professional.
Not likely a full scale veteran, but someone who's been through several engagements [perhaps a small war, the kind that lasts no more than a few years] and knows their way around the battlefield.
My suggestion didn't exactly incorporate a Grizzled Veteran. I said it could support a Professional.
There is a difference.
Fundamentally the level 1 Professional and the guy right out of Knight School are of equal skill and strength level, one just has more practical experience than the other.
That's fine. My post is a clarification of what I intended earlier and why I think a D&D-based game does not accurately reflect that style of story. It's a limitation of the mechanics.
I've played many games where this issue doesn't come up, or by picking different classes you can skirt around the issue. Like a "grizzled vet" as the Fighter, with his young, untrained charge being a Sorcerer. They can be the same level and it comes through in roleplaying and you can kind of ignore the lack of mechanical differences because they interact with the world slightly differently.
In ASOIAF RPG, the younger you are the more Destiny you have. The older you are, the more skills you have, but less Destiny. Destiny can be spent in several ways:
1) You can get a bonus to a roll
2) You can create a narrative advantage
3) You can cheat death
By making a younger character, even if you are traveling down the same skill set as an older character, your ability to influence specific rolls or influence the narrative is greater. Basically if you can't beat a situation, you can spend a point to get around it and create a new opportunity. An older character is more likely to beat the situation, but if they fail, can't avoid the consequences.
This is just one example, there are other games that address this issue in different ways, or define the difference differently (not by age, but specific experience vs general, mundane/naive vs magical/cynical, etc). Two other games I know pit it as power vs free will. You can get more and more power, basically at will, but the cost is that your character loses more and more of themselves as you do, eventually risking becoming completely lost/destroyed. The mechanic doesn't just exist in that game, but is central to the theme.
There are actually quite a few story types that D&D/Pathfinder don't do well IMO. That doesn't make them bad games, or mean that you can't touch on similar themes, but it requires a lot more effort to pull it off and sometimes the system actively works against you.
TL:DR - The mechanics of the game influence the fiction within the game more than outside sources of fiction IMO.
I'm not sure I'd call Jackson's Middle Earth movies or their palette dark or gritty.
Thematically I would say they are. They don't have to have lot's of blood and gore to be gritty. It's more so the feel of desperation that I think they bring.
And how are they NOT dark? IF you haven't read the books, they go into great detail as to just how evil many of the forces in that world truly are...
Wishes used to be chancy things, the DM was explicitly encouraged to twist them. Not to the point you never used them but enough to make you THINK about what you were asking for. Except when they were coming from an efreet or similar beast, in that case you were likely screwed.
Granted, many DMs went well past that, but no rule set can protect you from a Richard.
3.X gave you a nice, safe, menu of choices that the DM couldn't twist or interpret and then made getting Wishes relatively easy.
Plus they made combat casting stupidly easy. People used to carry large supplies of darts or throwing knives or throwing stones to help counter casters since even one point of damage would render you unable to cast a spell for a round.
Sorry, it's not any fun to have one DM just grant any reasonable wish and another DM that will crock every Wish, no matter how reasonable. In fact that got real old, real quick.
That's not true. You had to hit the caster while he was casting. Which means you have to get a better init, and also he had to cast a spell longer than one segment, since you couldnt disrupt a one segment spell- like Magic Missile.
Sorry, it's not any fun to have one DM just grant any reasonable wish and another DM that will crock every Wish, no matter how reasonable. In fact that got real old, real quick.Coward. I suppose the current scenario where people thunk they're entitled to so many wishes a day without consequence is preferable?
That's not true. You had to hit the caster while he was casting. Which means you have to get a better init, and also he had to cast a spell longer than one segment, since you couldnt disrupt a one segment spell- like Magic Missile.That's not what the PHB says.
Once casting has begin, the character must stand still. ... During the round in which the spell is cast, the caster cannot move to dodge attacks. Therefore, no AC benefit from Dexterity is gained by spellcasters while casting spells. Furthermore, if the spellcaster is struck by a weapon or fails a save before the spell is cast, the caster's concentration is disrupted.So it's harder than I remembered. Not only did any damage ruin your casting for the round, any hit ruined it, even if it did no damage. Or any effect that required a save. Plus casting was in effect a full round action that made you flat footed in d20 terms.
Remember that initiative worked differently before 3.0, with far less (actually almost no) consideration of position and everyone declaring actions, then rolling initiative, then acting. Now, by the basic rules, casters on the side that won initiative didn't really need to worry unless they were casting spells with multiple round casting times, but there was no real way to be sure who would have the initiative. If you were using the optional individual initiative and and casting time rules then it got significantly worse for the caster.
Well, since Wishes cost major resources, they have never been a issue with us. Of course- few games ever get to that point anymore.
There were four systems for Init, three in the DMG and one later in Combat and Tactics . So, it varied.
Yes, in some of them if you hit the Wizard before he cast his spell, but after he declared, then he couldnt cast a spell. In others, if you hit him DURING the casting of the spell, that spell was disrupted and lost. Still, it was pretty hard for a Fighter to hit a wizard who was casting a 1 segment spell. You had to be right next to him and have a fast weapon out or be readied with a fast weapon to throw.
Pretty much, casters simply didnt cast spells that could be disrupted. It hardly ever happened, about as often as it does now.
A low-level fighter with darts could wreck a mid-level wizard's day.
If he went first and if he hit.
No, it happened all the time.
You declared your actions then rolled initiative. Any attack that hit you before your initiative count came up disrupted the spell. That's the rules in the PHB. Any other system was optional or a house rule.
Turn sequence was:
DM decides what the NPCs are doing.
Players declare actions and targets.
Both sides roll 1d10, lowest acts first.
Resolve actions.Casters on both sides had to pick their spells and declare targets before they knew when they would act. If they got hit before their side acted, they lost the spell. Go dig out a PHB and read the rules.
You keep mentioning segments, are you maybe confusing or conflating 1e and 2e?
Well, we were talking AD&D, not just 2nd Ed. "People used to carry large supplies of darts or throwing knives or throwing stones to help counter casters since even one point of damage would render you unable to cast a spell for a round." I mentioned Segments which was 1st Ed. But even 2nd Ed had several versions of init:
http://merricb.com/2014/07/01/initiative-in-add-2nd-edition/No, it stopped the spell from being cast. You didnt lose it.
Weapon speed and spell speed modified the Initiative.
And Combat and Tactics (which is 2nd Ed) changed init again, going back to something like segments.
If the threat of being attacked kept the caster from casting anything but 1st level spells (Casting time was usually spell level, unless it was 1 round or more), that's a pretty effective deterrent.
And, depending on which optional initiative rules you were using, it would be at least half the time the caster would go last even with that 1 segment spell.
As for segments, 2E didn't use the terminology apparently but initiative count is practically the same thing.
You just used scrolls, wands rings staffs, misc magic items, etc.
Well, we were talking AD&D, not just 2nd Ed.No, you are. I was talking 2e.
No, it stopped the spell from being cast. You didnt lose it.No according to the book.
The spell is lost in a fizzle of useless energy and is wiped clean from the memory of the caster until it can be rememorized.Weapon speed and spell speed modified the Initiative.Optional rule.
And Combat and Tactics (which is 2nd Ed) changed init again, going back to something like segments.Again, optional rule and the precursor to the system changes in 3.X that made casters so dominant.
In our first discussion you simply said ""People used to carry large supplies of darts or throwing knives or throwing stones to help counter casters since even one point of damage would render you unable to cast a spell for a round." You didnt specify a edition.
And optional rules were used all the time.
