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You make a good point. That's when you start seeing casters create their own pocket realities, so martial deeds really should be of equivalent magnitude.
Uh every bandit king or evil tyrant is normally a warrior not a mage.
In most high fantasy settings aren't magic users>>>>mundane people at pretty much everything, including fighting?
Isn't it similar in Swords and Sorcery as well? Conan certainly wasn't a match for most casters in a straight up fight. Most of the times he tried to directly take on a magic user without the element of surprise, a maguffin or outside aid from other magic users he lost, miserably. In fact, what I would say characterizes S&S magic users is that they are incredibly powerful but so arrogant that they bring about their own downfall through sheer stupidity. "Normal" people (read:heroic mundanes) can sometimes defeat them by exploiting their bad life choices. This isn't really appropriate in an RPG, where wizards are piloted by genre savvy players who feel no compulsion to hold the Hero/Villain Ball for the sake of the narrative, and neither is the GM's BBEG for that matter.
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Pretty sure the ultimate enemy in Arthurian Legend is Mordred the Treacherous Kniggit. Also interesting how many semi-deities you went looking for, considering how hard people try to insist that's a level of power not appropriate for PF games and therefore martials shouldn't be like Hercules/Gilgamesh/Arjuna.
Yet again the wizard DOES get to be Dr. Strange, who sometimes even managed to solo Galactus and can mop the floor with all the Avengers combined (except Scarlet Witch maybe but guess what she's a caster too).
On the other hand the Fighter/Barbarian/Ranger is forbidden to be more than Hawkeye, Taskmaster or Daredevil minus blindness, because Hulk or Hercules are "unrealistic", but then still expecting them to go against Thanos, Dormammu, or Magneto.
If one wants to have the martials "realistic" and keep a fair game should lock everything at a certain level and CR (Daredevil vs Bullseye), otherwise we open the Cosmic Can and at that point being mundane just won't cut it.
High level fighters already can survive terminal velocity and take dragonfire that can melt stone into lava to the face, we should just take the further step and have them do truly extraordinary stuff
In most high fantasy settings aren't magic users>>>>mundane people at pretty much everything, including fighting?
Isn't it similar in Swords and Sorcery as well? Conan certainly wasn't a match for most casters in a straight up fight. Most of the times he tried to directly take on a magic user without the element of surprise, a maguffin or outside aid from other magic users he lost, miserably. In fact, what I would say characterizes S&S magic users is that they are incredibly powerful but so arrogant that they bring about their own downfall through sheer stupidity. "Normal" people (read:heroic mundanes) can sometimes defeat them by exploiting their bad life choices. This isn't really appropriate in an RPG, where wizards are piloted by genre savvy players who feel no compulsion to hold the Hero/Villain Ball for the sake of the narrative, and neither is the GM's BBEG for that matter.
Actually, in S&S stuff, the wizard is often pretty weak in the direct confrontation - the reason he's a threat is that he's raised an undead army or summoned demons or some such. Then our hero sneaks by them or beats the monster in a fight and is strong willed enough to ignore the wizard illusions or mind control and cuts him down.
Rarely is the wizard an invisible, flying simulacrum.
Nah, instead they can just go "lol die please" and blow a hole in someones chest, or turn into a giant snake, or one of a number of other ridiculous things. Much less powerful than a PF wizard, who can do all of those at once.
In fact, have a passage from a Conan book. This is typical of a competent mage vs someone else in a fair fight in the Conan setting. This is after Conan had slaughtered dozens of knights, by the way.
'I offer you life, Conan,' said Tsotha, a cruel mirth bubbling at the back of his voice.
'I give you death, wizard,' snarled the king, and backed by iron muscles and ferocious hate the great sword swung in a stroke meant to shear Tsotha's lean torso in half. But even as the host cried out, the wizard stepped in, too quick for the eye to follow, and apparently merely laid an open hand on Conan's left forearm, from the rigid muscles of which the mail had been hacked away. The whistling blade veered from its arc and the mailed giant crashed heavily to earth, to lie motionless. Tsotha laughed silently.
Amusingly enough, Conan would have died later in that book if it wasn't for the help of a friendly caster.
Thoth-Amon, the wizard HWalsh mentioned, is even worse in this regard. He almost killed Conan one to one with his bare hands, and would have succeeded if Conan's son hadn't shown up and stabbed the wizard. Thoth-Amon was pretty much crippled by that stage too.
The only saving grace for mundane types in the Conan setting is that magic users are generally incapacitated by a large sword to the chest, which lets the mundane follow up with enough stabbing to guarantee a kill. If you get the jump on the mage, you have a reasonable chance of success. Face to face in a fair fight. Generally, no.
It's interesting how martial characters always have their super human status questioned in every thread like this one. I've even read in another big thread how navy seals are similar to higher level martials because of how skilled and deadly they are in combat. I thought it was pretty funny, actually.
Well .. people complained about the fragility of wizards in the older editions. It was a common trope, sure, and one that you had to compensate for, but believe me people complained.
People complained about druid's armor and weapon choices, they complained that magic users got crappy weapon choices and no armor, they complained that it made it hard on them even at higher levels.
People like to complain is what I am saying. :)
As far as martial/caster disparity goes, my often used fix/adjustment is to give spell casters a variety of weaknesses to compensate for their Vast Cosmic Power. Once you tone things down and then look over the martials and adjust accordingly -- allowing them, as people mention, some form of narrative control (movement, communication, etc) that isn't dependent on being given toys by spell casters -- things smooth out a lot.
In game I don't call this a disparity any more than I called 2nd Ed Wizard's as suffering from a disparity vs Martials. Back then, no Wizard complained about having 2 HP and having to cower behind the Fighter for the first 6 levels. To survive you needed to be smarter, use items better, and use what you had to its maximum to survive.
It was a play style choice.
I recall that I complained about my incredibly low HPs when I was a wizard back in AD&D days. LOL And when I was introduced to Pathfinder after a decade long hiatus and heard that casters got a d6, and had unlimited use of cantrips, I was rather excited!
But I agree that the old system did impose a greater need for playing smart.
I don't know that cowering behind my fighters was a play style choice so much as a play style necessity!
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The line of argument that a caster needs to be powerful in order to be challenging is utterly pointless and adds nothing to either side.
Challenge lies in the hands of the GM and the tools available, not in the power of player options.
The only relevant point to make in regards to NPC's and player classes is the ease or difficulty through which a reasonable challenge can be made utilizing a player option.
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Back in the day before 3E made caster stronger imo. Martials were able to shine. In 2E they were the ones with decent saves, received a stronghold and more importantly were the only ones who could specialize the hell out of a weapon. Even if I found the weapon specialization table annoying.
As for blaming the flaws of a PF on the DM. That's a galaxy sized cop-out. I too used think that the martial/caster disaprity was a myth. Not anymore. One game I built a wizard just to craft items. I took some spells mostly I was a crafter. In terms of feats and spells etc. When I was overshadowing the fighter with a caster that specialized in crafting. I knew it was a actual problem imo. The player who ran the Fighter was experienced and knew what he was doing. The DM as well.
Again I remain unconvinced. If anything I'm even more convinced. When a DM has to bend over backwards to accomadate for the flaws of a class is not selling me that fighters are viable. Yes a certain amount of tinkering with the game as a DM needs to be done to be sure. If I need to rework, rewrite major/minor encounters in a AP or even a homebrew adventure to make sure fighters shine. Not a selling point as a DM or player when it comes to promoting a class.
Even then one can only use so many of the same creatures before players catch on that your building encounter specifically to cater to one clas. If their never any monsters/npcs who cast save or suck spells. Or that they target the caster over the fighter. Well players at least experienced one will notice.
So telling me that I need to take a certain build. The right feats. With magic items being a must. With the DM having to go out of his way to make a Fighter shine. Sorry while they are fixes they don't make the flaws of the fighter class go away. If anything it highlights them in a major way imo.
A looked through my Palladium fantasy rpg recently and even while fighters swing and hit. They have more skills, more attacks at first level. They can do so much more. One class that specializes in longbows can parry arrows. Without having to take a feat tree and with a minus on the dice rolls to do so but they can.
Magic was rarer in the pre 3E days. Magical items; spell slots were lower. It made magic special and precious. And the Rogue was needed for most adventures. They were scary due to their ability to move silently and backstab for 2x,3x,4x damage! A mage could use Silence to move silently, but because their slots were precious, you needed a good reason to do that.
I don't want to wander off on "Oh, the Golden Days of Yore" but the old system did have its good points as well as a lot of junk and clunky mechanics.
Pathfinder stripped the Rogue of his role and made it available to just about anyone, gutted the Fighter, and said: "Magic for everyone!" Because, yeah, magic fixes everything.
In most high fantasy settings aren't magic users>>>>mundane people at pretty much everything, including fighting?
Isn't it similar in Swords and Sorcery as well? Conan certainly wasn't a match for most casters in a straight up fight. Most of the times he tried to directly take on a magic user without the element of surprise, a maguffin or outside aid from other magic users he lost, miserably. In fact, what I would say characterizes S&S magic users is that they are incredibly powerful but so arrogant that they bring about their own downfall through sheer stupidity. "Normal" people (read:heroic mundanes) can sometimes defeat them by exploiting their bad life choices. This isn't really appropriate in an RPG, where wizards are piloted by genre savvy players who feel no compulsion to hold the Hero/Villain Ball for the sake of the narrative, and neither is the GM's BBEG for that matter.
No, Conan routinely kills casters who get within his reach. Very rarely does he need special tools. At least in the original Howard stories.
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And most of the people posting about the disparity are doing so based on their actual game experience and not theory.
The people arguing for change are arguing objective mechanical issues.
If you can't argue those you are wasting everyone's time.
There is no such thing as objective mechanical issues in the context of a traditional role-playing game. Any argument based solely around "the rules with no context" is completely invalidated.
You can only argue "objective mechanical issues" with a video game where there isn't a subjective overlord in charge of everything.
I know because all of these "objective mechanical issues" go away the second the Wizard has a sleepless night. These "objective mechanical issues" go away the second the party is on the run and doesn't have time to spend an hour in the morning and has to go, immediately. These "objective mechanical issues" go away the second the party has to travel overnight and doesn't have time for 8 hours of sleep.
All things that happen in the genre, and are fairly common, but yet nobody in the "objective mechanical issues" arena take them into account.
Edit:
To add... This is also why Paizo's own devs said they are more interested in actual game events than theory crafting in this manner. Because "objective theory crafting" is an invalid approach to a tabletop RPG.
Sure, you can certainly use some of these methods to slow down a caster and does impact them, to an extent -- that extent is that the caster will often not cast unless they have to -- which can cause some problems with encounters.
But, as many of those sources on DMing might tell you, if you go to the well too often on those sorts of things you can get some cranky players.
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A smart caster will also eventually come up with a countermeasure. The earliest probably being a ring of Systenance, cot, and a Bag of Holding.
Long horse ride ? 2 hours inside the bag on a cot and good to go.
Minimal downtime? Deploy the cot.
Higher levels? Personal rest demiplane. Teleports.
So, that leaves just the Fighter. Yep, he can pretty well do one thing really really well- Kill. (Sure- a human with a measly int of 12 does get 4 Skp a level, which means he's not totally left out skill wise, and there are some interesting archetypes, like the Eldrich Guardian).
And the rogue and the monk. And as I see it the slayer and the brawler, too because skills don't do much with magic around and that's all they have outside of combat.
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The people arguing for change are arguing objective mechanical issues.
If you can't argue those you are wasting everyone's time.
There is no such thing as objective mechanical issues in the context of a traditional role-playing game. Any argument based solely around "the rules with no context" is completely invalidated.
You can only argue "objective mechanical issues" with a video game where there isn't a subjective overlord in charge of everything.
I know because all of these "objective mechanical issues" go away the second the Wizard has a sleepless night. These "objective mechanical issues" go away the second the party is on the run and doesn't have time to spend an hour in the morning and has to go, immediately. These "objective mechanical issues" go away the second the party has to travel overnight and doesn't have time for 8 hours of sleep.
All things that happen in the genre, and are fairly common, but yet nobody in the "objective mechanical issues" arena take them into account.
Edit:
To add... This is also why Paizo's own devs said they are more interested in actual game events than theory crafting in this manner. Because "objective theory crafting" is an invalid approach to a tabletop RPG.
Again, you have nothing.
All you've done is describe a mechanical situation where the caster is at a disadvantage.
You've used objective mechanics to argue against objective mechanics to argue that they're invalid.
It's also an argument old enough to drive a car.
It's not new, it's been debunked and run around enough times that it predates Pathfinder by a good several years.
So what else have you got?
Do I believe that there is a caster/martial disparity? Yes I do, and apparently a lot of experienced players and gms believe that as well.
Do I believe that paizo will do anything about it anytime soon? No, not soon anyhow. Why you ask? It is not because they think there isn't one, to answer that question though we have to answer two other questions first.
1. What is paizo?
Answer: paizo is a business
2. What is pathfinder?
Answer: pathfinder in its most basic is an upgraded 3.5
Now keep in mind before you continue reading that this right here is an educated guess at best.
Seeing that paizo is a business clears a lot of things up in my opinion. People flocked to pathfinder when it came out because it was an upgraded 3.5. Paizo wanted to keep people buying their books. How do they do that? They keep their customers in the comfort zone, they don't divert from what they knew and grew up wth too much, but change enough so the whole thing does not feel stagnant.
So doing something like solving the caster/martial disparity would mean sweeping changes and that could mean another 4e. Do not misunderstand I am not saying that 4e is a bad game, what I am saying is that I believe that the backlash of the people was because of the massive changes it made, which is one of the reasons of pathfinders success. So it would be bad for business for paizo to do something similar, and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people began shouting boycott if paizo anounced 2.0 tomorrow.
What will happen though? Does that mean that paizo will never do anything to resolve this issue? Not at the moment, but not never. I am sure we all remember pathfinder unchained; one of the most enjoyable books that came out in a while in my humble opinion and honestly? A smart idea; notice how paizo stressed that the rebalanced classes were optional, also notice how they included several optional rules that altered the game to sell that whole optional thing, but in reality? And you can feel free to call me a conspiracy theorist, I believe that unchained was a well presented and well written pre-alpha and a way for paizo to test the waters without ruffling any feathers. I noticed how a number of people have said that they felt that the rebalance didn't change much and they were expecting more. I think paizo intended for the rebalance to be at that degree to see how much their customers were comfortable with change. Should they announce a second unchained book in the future I wouldn't be surprised if the next round of unchained classes are even more wild and different, again to test to which degree are you the customer comfortable with change, and after a few years you'll find yourself welcoming a pathfinder 2.0 with open arms when they announce changes that you will find just right.
Or I could be wrong and paizo will simply keep playing it safe. Either way I'll probably still purchase spheres of power to keep the casters in the games I run in line and cut out the vanilla monks and fighters(I'd still accept them with archetypes that improve them: zen archer anyone?) and of course the vanilla rogue will never darken my gaming table again, unchained rogue all the way.
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I think something needs to be said about the recent string of caster/martial disparity stuff.
People are solving the problem.
They're not working around it or wasting time convincing people who don't want or need to be convinced that there is a problem.
They're looking at 3pp, they're looking at different ways to run, they're implementing changes to their game to benefit martials and removing the greater excesses of the 3.0 toolbox.
Even the way Paizo has done its most recent work acknowledges and works on the problem without voicing it out explicitly.
Ultimately, people way better at game design than me are working out the exact issues and looking over them.
So, no there's no point in arguing against the existence of it, the argument is done.
The best thing anyone can do is either ignore those working out the problem and go on there way happy in their own superiority, learn about it and understand it, or mind there own table.
Do I believe that there is a caster/martial disparity? Yes I do, and apparently a lot of experienced players and gms believe that as well.
Do I believe that paizo will do anything about it anytime soon? No, not soon anyhow. Why you ask? It is not because they think there isn't one, to answer that question though we have to answer two other questions first.
1. What is paizo?
Answer: paizo is a business
2. What is pathfinder?
Answer: pathfinder in its most basic is an upgraded 3.5
Now keep in mind before you continue reading that this right here is an educated guess at best.
Seeing that paizo is a business clears a lot of things up in my opinion. People flocked to pathfinder when it came out because it was an upgraded 3.5. Paizo wanted to keep people buying their books. How do they do that? They keep their customers in the comfort zone, they don't divert from what they knew and grew up wth too much, but change enough so the whole thing does not feel stagnant.
So doing something like solving the caster/martial disparity would mean sweeping changes and that could mean another 4e.
Unless and until Paizo hires some decent math guys and listens to them, any PF 2.0 that's more than D&D 3.5.2.2 is going to be a giant, flaming fiasco. And in order to do that, they have to go beyond the shallow pool of talent available in their normal Washington coffee shops and game clubs.
4E has some bold design choices. It was also plagued by completely f&++ed math from day 1, and every patch job, from skill challenges v3 to the Expertise feats, made it abundantly clear that the math work was being done with monkeys and typewriters. For 5E, they did absolutely nothing to fix that problem, and their sales numbers are beyond the toilet and down in the actual sewers.
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To be fair it's also not helped with 5E poor release schedule. Compared to Paizo it's very little IMO.
@HWalsh if you say their no problem then we're supposed to take what you say at face value and believe it. Others like myself say the opposite we're lying and it's not true. With a hefty dose of it being our fault. Then you wonder why posters say that your post are inflammatory and provactive in tone. Two can play at that game. So far you have argued nothing at all in defence of the fighter class. Putting the blame on others. Insulting the abilities of both players and DM. Coming here and making it look like we're clueless and don't know how to play fighters. Then the "nothing is wrong with fighters" members of the forum wonder why they can't find common ground with those who feel differently.
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It is not because they think there isn't one
Actually, they DO think that there isn't one, with a rather strong added claim.
Q: What do you think of caster/martial disparity at higher levels?
A: I think it's a myth propagated by people with agendas.
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If high level melee counters high level melee, and melee in general counters magic, and mages get no skills, and magical assaults can't work, then what is the threat of the big bad evil mage that is the central core to 99% of fantasy?
The only way to counter high level melee power should be with high level melee power or outstanding versatility/cleverness. Trying to stop a melee's direct assault vs a mage's direct assault should be considerably more difficult. Trying to contain a melee, save-or-die a melee, outmaneuver a melee should be harder.
Because with time and preparation, mages have AoE's and kill armies and cities.
Melees kill individuals. If that means killing an army one by one, that's still time consuming. But it means that melees are far better at killing individuals then mages are. And that includes killing and NOT being killed by mages.
==Aelryinth
Plus magic can create demiplanes, black tentacles, webs and put people to sleep or stun them, charm people, dominate people, raise the dead, ... Lots of stuff besides epic combat.