An attack would be to say all you *put appropriate derogative term here* clowns need to die in a fire. Which I most definitely didn't do.Or suggesting that one has to be impaired to play a character with "anime" style abilities, or using derogatory terms like "weeaboo" to describe people who might enjoy it. Also, while you are welcome to your opinions, I don't see how you can't be aware that you're being pretty dang antagonistic in your presentation.
There was no suggesting. I made a statement that I would have to be impaired to want to do so. My language was deliberate I said 'should *I* ever' not 'should anyone ever'. You inferred... If you have any advice on how to state things like that more clearly though I would legitimately be interested.
Also it's less antagonism more... antipathy ? I have no desire to fight the other ways of thought, no care to defeat them. I'd just prefer to minimize contact with them since they irritate me. Like how I don't wear silk since the sensation of it drives me crazy and I frequently refer to silk as terrible.
No, you just made broad and insulting assumptions about the motivations and character of people who believe and think differently than you do, then attempted to justify it with the "I hate everybody equally" defense. Classy. Why should anyone find bigotry offensive, right?
That's putting a lot of words into my mouth... First of all, I never said I hated anyone or anything. I said I found certain behaviors distasteful, with a similar level of rancor most people would have when asking someone to not chew with their mouth open or to brush crumbs from their beard. I also deliberately didn't point out or quote any specific people, though after going through all the posts again the backstory comment does seem to deliberately call out Kyrt in a way i didn't intend it to so That I apologize for.
Bigotry is an awkward word to throw around. It means you take the power to define what is and is not unfair unto yourself. When a game gets 'to anime' and I don't have a way to not participate in that I do not have fun. Wanting viable options that still allow for me tohave fun is hardly unfair.
I, personally, find the "Wah, wah, wah, keep your weeaboo anime bull out of my game" arguments to be absolutely hilarious, considering that Pathfinder is the game where pink haired nature midgets can summon up their custom magical beasts to duel on their behalf. Or where you can take a mid-level Wizard, scratch out "magic" and "wizard" and replace the words with "chakra" and "ninja" respectively, and you end up finding out that Naruto Shippuden, that high powered anime all the kids are watching, is full of characters who are actually based on, informed by, and mechanically indistinguishable from Vancian casters.
Ugh.. Golarion gnomes are in fact something I hate. Perhaps the only thing I hate more than Golarion goblins. Anyways, I said nothing about keeping it out of the game. I said keep it out of the fighter so that there remains at least one archetype for the mundane badass. Though to be fair I suppose the gunslinger, swashbuckler, and brawler have this too so it's not as vital as it could be.
Good for Naruto is has an established set of rules that its supernatural BS works on. Supernatural BS is usually better when it has established rules. Now if my problem with the anime I dislike was in any way based on its internal mechanics and not it's paradigms, writing, tropes, the little things for it's target audience, and other forms of flavor that would be comforting. Since it's not though that's a fairly poor salve.
The fact that you further go on to explain that your version of the game requires 3 spiral notebooks of houserules only serves to emphasize the fact that it's actually you who isn't really playing Pathfinder.
It's less extreme than it sounds. Sevenish years of regular playing where every time something comes up where each thing that doesn't work gets at least 1 dedicated page when it includes stuff that rules didn't exist for at the time <Surviving in the vacuum of space>, rules interactions that were unclear <How does an unchained barbarians rage work with a Skald's raging song>, or things that were officially erratad <The spell that makes you feel guilty or punch yourself in the face> adds up fairly quickly. Admittedly out banned/nudged spell list is more robust than most people might want. My table has a long standing no electronics for anyone but the GM rule so some things being written down is invaluable.
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Now if my problem with the anime I dislike was in any way based on its internal mechanics and not it's paradigms, writing, tropes, the little things for it's target audience, and other forms of flavor that would be comforting.You say this as though anime were a single genre with a single target audience.
Anime is nothing more than a medium- albeit one far easier to display fantastic elements with than live action film- filled with innumerable distinct stories and vast numbers of distinct styles/genre.
What, you don't see the blindingly obvious similarities between Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood? Or Death Note and Gurren Lagann? Or Kill la Kill and Ghost in the Shell SAC? C'mon man, open your eyes!
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]I think the point is that if pathfinder spellcasters are of a different standard than other fantasy spellcasters, so holding martials to the standards of other fantasy martials is silly.If that's his point, which it well may be, and I am a full-fledged believer in the Caster/Martial disparity, he's doing some serious beating around the bush to put it that way. You cannot use Pathfinder Wizards to really judge much of anything, except possibly Clerics, Oracles, Arcanists, Druids, and Sorcerers, due to the inordinate amount of power that has been foolishly put into their grasp. Hell, logically nothing else except for those classes should exist, due to the fact that they would have been wiped out entirely by the above.
Martials need a leg-up, and bad. They will NEVER get there if the focus is on 'Well, X Wizard can do this, which (insert character from another cosmology which operates nothing like D&D) can't.'
High-level martial characters have never been portrayed as being just 'mundane guys who hit hard' in the history of the game, until 3rd edition. Somehow, the notion that they had to be held to a different standard of reality came about, and they were brutally neutered of much that made them effective in comparison to spellcasters. This was a terrible decision, but it has been carried on into Pathfinder,whilst we have been told that such a thing isn't real.
High-level characters should not be held, in many cases, to what we consider physical limits of mortal men, but the limits of legend. Like the legends of the Round Table, or the stories that built up around Charlemagne, or the power of Gilgamesh and the Monkey King, these should be the kind of things martials are capable of in a world where wizards are capable of taking even the laws of magic, and telling them to sit down and shut up.
Not "Gee, I hope Gronk the Furious can Pounce on the dragon, or he's only going to get one attack this round."
/facepalm
For the love of God people....
I'M SAYING THAT IF YOU THINK GIMLI OR CONAN ARE THE EPITOME OF WHAT A MARTIAL CHARACTER SHOULD BE, THEN YOU HAVEN'T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION TO THE GAME YOU'RE PLAYING.
People who actually agree with me jumped into the middle of something without taking the time to read it in context and now here we are however many posts later with people arguing about what the f@!* Sauron or Gandalf are. Lets ignore the fact that a Balrog may be the literary inspiration for the Balor but the Balor has power leagues beyond anything the Balrog exercises, and focus on what I was actually trying to say a page ago.
For some people, Conan is the height of what a martial should be. He never does anything particularly outside of what might be accomplished in the real world outside of a few feats of strength and agility, and he's probably the most badass "mundane" in trad fantasy. However, it's stupid to try and have Conan as your epitome for a D&D/PF martial, because the most wicked and powerful spellcaster in his world lacks the ability to throw around the kind of power even a moderately potent wizard has in Pathfinder. Making a character like Conan or Gimli the definition of what a martial should be is positively stupid, because neither of those characters displayed any kind of prowess or ability beyond what a 6th level Fighter or Barbarian might have.
So, again, I DON'T GIVE A F+## WHAT YOU THINK SAURON IS, OR IS NOT. And I don't care what you think Thulsa Doom or Thoth-Amon are. What I care about, is that heroes are defined by their enemies and the enemies in those examples just don't have the "oomph" that Pathfinder enemies have. If you never play above 7th or 8th level in your group, then great! Conan, Gimli, Sauron, and Thoth-Amon are great character archetypes for what you want to play. But there are people who want martial heroes that grow in power in such a way that they belong in the same world as high level spellcasters, and Conan and Gimli are not examples of that, and neither is Steve Austin, the man or the myth. None of those heroes break the 10th level ceiling, in no small part because the villains they face don't get much more powerful than that either. The kind of adventures that are had in the Lord of the Rings or that are had by Conan of Cimmeria are low level adventures, and most people who feel that martials are broken aren't even talking about those levels. But high level spellcasters in PF are above and beyond, and you either have to go to really old school Celtic or Norse mythology to find examples of "martial" characters that match that kind of power, or you have to turn to anime (much of which is actually inspired in its own turn by western mythology and Dungeons and Dragons).
You can bring martials up to the level of Cu Chulainn or you can bring casters down to the level of characters like Thoth-Amon or Gandalf, but trying to maintain a world where Gimli and Naruto are best buddies who go from level 1 to level 20 together is a huge part of why martial/caster disparity exists in the first place. Gimli manifestly does not belong in the world of Naruto Shippuden, and Naruto obviously would have annihilated the enemy forces of the Lord of the Rings. These two concepts and types of fantasy are practically anathema to each other they're so different. If you want to balance martials and casters, you have two directions, or a middle ground compromise.
Direction 1, is that you nerf casters. Their spells get a hatchet taken to them and you beat them down until they're a good approximation of Gandalf, with so few offensive spell options that it's generally a better idea to swing around your magic sword and bludgeon people with your staff, and leave them basically wards and parlor tricks for their spells.
Direction 2, is that you buff martials. Instead of Gimli or John Cena at levels 1-20, around 6th-10th level you transcend and take that next step, becoming Beowulf or Might Guy.
Your middle ground is some compromise between the two. Your casters get a bit shaved off the top, and while your martials might not be Cu Chulainn or Might Guy, you can reasonably expect Samurai Jack or Rock Lee.
To steer the course of the conversation in a slightly different direction, I'd also like to reiterate something I've said before - the two bad saves, no skills, "mundane" Fighter we have now isn't even actually supported by the history of the game itself. Gimped Fighters, and by extension gimped martials since the Fighter is supposedly the epitome of what a martial can/should be, are an aberration that only exists in versions of the game based off 3rd edition. In earlier editions, the Fighter was a badass thug whose saves were so good he could walk through a storm of beholder death rays or a dragon's breath weapon and have a really good chance of coming out the other side singed but swinging. In some editions, he got a keep, a title, even armies at his command, built right into his class. You may have started as Wulfgar, the not-particularly-well-known, but your strength and the word of your deeds would get out and assuming you survived long enough you were guaranteed respect, power, and resources. Somewhere in the development of 3rd edition though, the magical threats and the power of outsiders and dragons scaled up exponentially, but the Fighter was actually scaled down, knocked from his lofty perch. No longer is this the class of invincible knights and canny warlords, instead it's the class of bumbling beefcakes who need a friendly spellcaster to tell them where to go and what to do, and more often than not how to do it. It would be nice to see a return to form that also aligns with modern fantasy media, and raise the Fighter back up to that kind of level, dragging the other martials up along with him.
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Ugh.. Golarion gnomes are in fact something I hate. Perhaps the only thing I hate more than Golarion goblins. Anyways, I said nothing about keeping it out of the game. I said keep it out of the fighter so that there remains at least one archetype for the mundane badass
Why would anyone want something "mundane" in a fantasy game about raiding dungeons and slaying dragons (or alternatively, the finding of paths in and through areas which are likely to contain both dungeons and dragons)? Who goes to a table and says "Ah, slaying monsters today are we? Excellent. My character Bob the Bodybuilder is really looking forward to carrying more alchemical supplies and spell components for Merlin the Magnificent".
I, and many others, just want the Fighter to have options where he can scale and make sense. Bob the Bodybuilder is great for whacking goblins and wrestling orcs, but he has no business fighting balors and pit fiends. Once I've passed about 6th level or so, I want Fighters who are actually badass, able to slash through magical defenses, leap 20 feet in the air and grab a dragon by the tail, or tackle a succubus as she tries to teleport to safety and chase her through her own magical escape. I want Fighters who are tough and fast, with three good saves and enough skill points that they don't have to choose between whether they're going to take Handle Animal and Ride so they don't have to walk everywhere or Climb and Swim so they don't drown or fall when they get where they're going. I want a guy who's so badass, he doesn't need some wussy song about being a hero to inspire his allies, he just starts ripping his enemies apart in a display of such utter awesomeness that all the warriors who see him become stronger and faster as he instills hope and courage in them. When Druss the Legend wants to inspire an army of men to fight their hardest, he doesn't call for the court bard, he beats the enemy back with their own siege ladders to clear a space for his guys to send out a retaliatory force. That is the kind of stuff that would suit an actual badass.
Now if my problem with the anime I dislike was in any way based on its internal mechanics and not it's paradigms, writing, tropes, the little things for it's target audience, and other forms of flavor that would be comforting.You say this as though anime were a single genre with a single target audience.
Anime is nothing more than a medium- albeit one far easier to display fantastic elements with than live action film- filled with innumerable distinct stories and vast numbers of distinct styles/genre.
That's why I specifically pointed out "the anime I dislike" and not all anime ever. There have been some Anime movies and series that I found phenomenal.
Ugh.. Golarion gnomes are in fact something I hate. Perhaps the only thing I hate more than Golarion goblins. Anyways, I said nothing about keeping it out of the game. I said keep it out of the fighter so that there remains at least one archetype for the mundane badassWhy would anyone want something "mundane" in a fantasy game about raiding dungeons and slaying dragons (or alternatively, the finding of paths in and through areas which are likely to contain both dungeons and dragons)? Who goes to a table and says "Ah, slaying monsters today are we? Excellent. My character Bob the Bodybuilder is really looking forward to carrying more alchemical supplies and spell components for Merlin the Magnificent".
I, and many others, just want the Fighter to have options where he can scale and make sense. Bob the Bodybuilder is great for whacking goblins and wrestling orcs, but he has no business fighting balors and pit fiends. Once I've passed about 6th level or so, I want Fighters who are actually badass, able to slash through magical defenses, leap 20 feet in the air and grab a dragon by the tail, or tackle a succubus as she tries to teleport to safety and chase her through her own magical escape. I want Fighters who are tough and fast, with three good saves and enough skill points that they don't have to choose between whether they're going to take Handle Animal and Ride so they don't have to walk everywhere or Climb and Swim so they don't drown or fall when they get where they're going. I want a guy who's so badass, he doesn't need some wussy song about being a hero to inspire his allies, he just starts ripping his enemies apart in a display of such utter awesomeness that all the warriors who see him become stronger and faster as he instills hope and courage in them. When Druss the Legend wants to inspire an army of men to fight their hardest, he doesn't call for the court bard, he beats the enemy back with their own siege ladders to clear a space for his guys to send...
Mundane as in non-magical not mundane as in boring. Druss is actually about perfectly on par with what I want out of my fighters. He doesn't do a lot that screams impossible, but he does on a regular basis what for most people would be a one in a million chance. And he does it all through blood sweat and determination. That's the perfect level and fluff right there.
Druss wasn't a demigod, he wasn't trained in esoteric magic like the twenty. He was a man with a <maybe> magic axe and a bad attitude who in his own words 'If I were a strong man I'd have been a farmer.'
A fighter is not just expected to fight the denizens of Hell. He is expected to best its mightiest inhabitants. The fighter treats with Gods and archmages as a being worth respect and apprehension. When you stand before a fighter in battle, you should know that death dances with you both.
We can guess how to achieve that. I'll propose ideas. Firstly, using the revised action economy and the automatic bonus progression rules helps martials. It removes the central problem of the full attack mechanic and helps fighters stand independent of casters. That is some purely RAW help that works for all campaigns. Further fixes require changes to GMing style or house rules.
As for GMing style, a reliance on martial foes and unoptimised spell DCs and ACs helps the martial. Once AC climbs far enough you need magic to keep up. High spell DCs highlight the lack of martial defenses. Constant attacks and AOE damage will keep the casters pressured enough so that fights still feel challenging even without the caster chess minigame. Tight spaces or easy access to mounts also help the martials lack of mundane flying/movement. Lastly many problems need to be solvable by players not just their characters. You'll have to let the fighter do things without calling for 6 skill checks and a feat chain. If problems depend solely on character abilities then martials suffer unless the answer to every problem is a martial one.
House ruling can also help but it's difficult to implement and even if you make perfect rules, the fix will only be if you GM. Unlike the Unchained stuff, your personal houserules don't have the paizo seal. GMs tired of PF problems but don't want to learn a new system are more likely to try variant rules first before cobsidering houserules.
Mitigation of the problem is something we can do while working out a better solution.
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I think any reference is futile. As I said the game accepts all genres of fantasy and at least some scifi.Better tell the people who reject any "weaboo fightin' magic anime superhero" stuff, then.
I can only preach so hard before I say f!$$ it and let em burn.
Here's the issue with using a literary reference, these days at least, to inform you on game design.
Novels make shitty games.
Consequently, as video games have found out, so do movies and any other one sided interaction media.
Now you can take the novel, establish certain mechanics from it and produce a good game. Star Wars, Wheel of Time, Chronicles of Amber, and LoTR all of decent to great games based off their worlds.
Pathfinder, and by extension D&D are not based on those worlds. It uses it's own mechanics. Because it's purpose is not to emulate the expectations of another brand, it's meant to emulate its own setting.
And last I checked Golarion is a kitchen sink setting.
BEcause, yes, Paladins from Taldor are meant to be fighting along side elven gunslingers, cat girl ninjas, robotic bards learning to be human, and priests in full bondage gear teaching the virtues of vice and vengeance.
We have a swordsman and mercenary who became a god while drunk, possibly sans pants.
We have a god who literally worked out at the gym and meditated until the universe gave up and conceded the fact that he was god.
The freaking Moon over the boneyard will freaking smash you unless is it held back by the overwhelming power of atheism.
In the lands of the cold north if you want to be recognized as king you must slay a Linnorm. Until recently this was always done in hand-to-hand combat. The one who didn't a lot of traditionalists felt cheated her way into it.
I'm in a game right now playing a red headed barbarian mammoth rider who hunts robots.
I don't need a freaking literary reference. I could care less if you think it's "weaboo" or "traditional". The setting, the encounters, the lore of the game has already established what it should be. It's long since past the point for the mechanics to match.
If you don't like it? Great, fine, your table, your domain. As long as it's understood that the flavor of game you want does not really correspond to the flavor on offer. You can get your neapolitan, but you're still standing inside a baskin robins. And they've got a whole lot of the same flavor and empty buckets of the ones I want.
Well this has been fun to read. Now I'm just wondering when Game of Thrones characters start being compared to high level fighters.
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Slight correction Ashiel.
It's far less the class features that keep casters from prestiging in pathfinder as it is the lackluster prestige classes.
I can count on one hand the number of prestige classes I've noticed that are even worth considering [most of them for full casters ironically] and they mostly require rather specific niches from their practitioners.
Now sure there are handy things in the base classes that make them marginally more difficult to give up, but I'd certainly do it for something awesome like a Malconvoker or an Incantatrix.
Indeed. But even if the only prestige class you had access to was loremaster, that's still makes wizard a 5 level class in 3.x because the only thing wizard had in 3.x was a bonus feat every 5 levels and those bonus feats suffered from a sort of diminishing returns (because you were limited in the types of feats you could take and would usually take the good ones first).
Meanwhile going into something like loremaster means that you continue progressing all your spellcasting AND get class features. Loremaster is a natural progression for wizard and the feat you "waste" on Skill Focus [Knowledge] is easily worth the cost since you get 5 "secrets", three of which are +2 to a save, and one of which is "Any feat", and probably +1 dodge to AC.
Same deal for clerics and sorcerers in 3.x. You got a class feature at 1st level and 19 dead levels after. Well, dead except for the obscenely overpowered spellcasting.
And that's really where the power of casters lie. In their spells. Pathfinder made some of them a little less squishy and gave them a few in-class toys with, and then rampaged through the core spells nerfing stuff left and right. The entire polymorph line, while imperfect, is a small shadow of its former glory.
For example, polymorph could be used to turn into a Fire Giant that set your base Strength to 31 before buffs or magical doodads, made you large size, gave +8 natural armor, etc. 4th level spell.
Or a 15 headed hydra.
Or a swarm complete with the swarm subtype. If you want to see something gloriously hilarious, face a wizard who has pre-buffed with things like resist energy and ambushes a party as a swarm.
Black tentacles was a 4th level spell that was near hopeless for enemies to escape as it grappled enemies in a fairly large AoE with a grapple modifier of caster level +8. The opposed grapple check that the majority of enemies got against this was a flat Strength check plus a size modifier if they were really big (being smaller gave a stiff penalty). In addition the tentacles dealt 1d6+4 DR-ignoring damage and anyone moving through the area (even if not grappled) moved at half speed). Being grappled at all had far stiffer penalties for those involved (you couldn't use anything but unarmed strikes, natural attacks, or light weapons, and you took a -4 to attacks even then. Also merely being in the process of grappling meant you no longer provoked other squares, were flat-footed against anyone except who you were grappling with, and you can't move.
Glitterdust all by itself ended tons of encounters because it targets Will and blinded for its entire duration. Grease had similarly debilitating effects (made enemies on it flat footed, gave no save vs enemies running or on an incline, etc).
Then they had a ton of save or die effects (there's only a couple in Pathfinder now and those are flesh to stone and phantasmal killer/weird). Pathfinder even nerfed spells that didn't need nerfing (like ray of enfeeblement which isn't even worth taking anymore).
Now, Paizo has also released some really stupidly overpowered spells but going from core 3.x to core Pathfinder, full casters got spanked with the nerf-paddle all over the place on the way in. People who think they're OP now would shudder to see what you can do in core 3.5.
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Honestly Ashiel, I think your games are ridiculous and brimming with subtle houserules that drastical removes your results from normal play.
Such as? You've got me curious now.
Next to no one has problems with fighter damage, the issue tends to be being able to do that damage or damage not being the answer.
My criticism of the fighter's damage is in relation to his peers since Barbarians, Paladins, and Rangers are all very much capable of out damaging him almost all of the time. The Fighter doesn't even see a damage increase at all until 5th level when they get Weapon Training +1/+1. The Barbarian is sitting at +2/+2 or +2/+3 right out of the gate and until 5th level, Fighter is a Paladin or Ranger with no tricks, worse saves, no animal companion, no skills, no immunities, etc.
When Fighter finally gets his +1/+1, Rangers get things like poison immunity or energy resistances, another character (the companion), or make their weapons hit as if they were bumped a size category (which adds +3 average damage to a longsword or longbow and more to a large weapon). Paladins get divine favor which gives them a +1/+1 for 10 rounds (which can be adjusted with the trait you mentioned as well) that applies to all weapons, attacks, and CMB.
So as per the definition of his tier, Fighter is only good at one thing and he is casually outdone by his peers and those who aren't even doing his one thing as their primary shtick.
I never said clerics were best damage, I said best martial because they handily fill the role and bring fullcasting to the party. I also believe that being a martial is more than just doing damage.
What do you see as being a martial's job? To me, being a martial means putting physical pressure on an enemy to serve as a solution or deterrent to that enemy being a threat to the rest of your group. This is typically done by putting out enough difficult-to-resist damage that the enemy cannot rationally ignore the martial and continue being a threat to the other PCs. When the martials' presence forces enemies to either change focus to them or begin fleeing and wasting actions to keep the martial from killing them, then the martial is doing its job nicely. Being able to down an enemy and move on to he next is likewise a very handy thing to be able to do.
This is a very different role than "meatshield". Though martials are often meatshields not all meatshields are martials. A conjured mount can function as an adequate meatshield in a pinch if the goal is simply to "clog up the pipes" or provide soft cover.
This is one of the reasons I myself really enjoy battle clerics, because they are excellent at being decent at faking it as a martial (as are bards) and they have the ability to flood the battle with meatshields to make the job of their enemies harder while they attempt to apply pressure to the enemy through physical means.
However, I think we do martials no favors for ignoring where they do excel. People need to understand that because one of the most common answers people initially make for martials is "mwoar damaaaage!" which is not what is needed at all.
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Just looked up the Malkonvoker and immediately knew I would never want to GM for someone playing one in my entire life.
That's a PrC for NPCs, not players.
Also some of the later Paizo casters have pretty cool and useful class features, like the Shaman, Oracle, and Witch.
Actually played a Malconvoker once. They're pretty amazing. She was a party-support that specialized in summons and save-or-die tactics. She's the reason I became an expert at making save or dies stick (which is much better done with a party that combos attacks with you). She collected lawn ornaments.
EDIT:
Had games become one man circus acts due to abuse of planar binding mechanics and summon monster mechanics on a similar PrC, the Diabolist. Though one case it was just a straight sorcerer abusing planar binding.
The turns take forever, the character and his circus steps on way too many toes around the table, and due to the strong narrative power of the circus the player becomes the "main character."
Literally Angel Summoner and BMX bandit.
Perhaps oddly enough, this didn't come up during that campaign. The only guy who felt inferior was the WARBLADE and he was feeling outshone by the BARBARIAN. :P
However, it did lead to one of the most awesome mini-adventures ever. Two members of our group (brothers) had a familial obligation on our set game day, and the other had some sort of issue spring up with his car and was taking it out to get worked on. So only two of the other players showed up, the Barbarian and Sorcerer player. Since we couldn't progress the main plot without the rest of the party (and wouldn't want to since they would be sad), instead I pitched the idea of having the Malconvoker call up a Succubus and Vrock and let them play as the monsters for a session on a reconnaissance mini-adventure.
They had a blast. :P
EDIT 2: Oddly, the guy who slowed combat down more than anyone else was usually either the Barbarian (who could never keep his combat modifiers strait and would often ponder deeply over which enemy he needed to run into) or the blaster wizard who would spend a while each turn deciding which way did he need to make metamagic BBQ.
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It's the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction. Early D&D, the Fighter was strong and the Wizard was really fragile but capable of great power eventually. But it sucked to be a Wizard at those early levels. "Hey - I've cast my 3 spells for the day! I'm done!"
In the newer iterations of the game, Wizards (arcane casters) were buffed: more HP; more spells; more cantrips, then unlimited cantrips. Because it sucked to not be able to contribute anything.
It's now become the arcane caster's game and martials lose out, having less and less they can contribute as you gain levels.
I loved and hated playing a magic-user in those old AD&D days. I hated the low HP and the few spells I got and then had to sit there with little to add.
I feel similarly about playing a martial character in PF - except that now, as I level up, I lose my ability to contribute rather than add to it. That's what needs to get fixed.
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Wizards were definitely nerfed in the change to Pathfinder in much the same way Fighters were nerfed from 3.0 to 3.5 (here's a funny thing, Fighter the class didn't change at all). In fact, wizards, clerics, and druids have all been drastically nerfed from their status in 3.5.Giving wizards an invisible "Toughness" feat and class features to encourage single-classing (all casters in 3.5 were only 5 levels long as they say) does not by any means result in a net gain for them.
tbh I dunno how you can believe this to be true
Not being locked out of your opposition schools is a pretty major buff imo. So is having obscenely good school powers.
All this has really done is give you reasons to specialize in certain schools. If you wanted to be a specialist wizard in 3.5, you specced conjuration or transmutation and you probably dumped some combination of enchantment, necromancy, or evocation because you didn't need them. In fact, the only good thing you'd ever lose from Evocation was contingency and you could mimic that with greater shadow evocation with no downsides. If you had splat material, Craft Contingent spell was even worse IIRC.
Like, maybe some spells are slightly worse??? I don't think this matters when you also add a ton of broken stuff like aroden's spellbane and blood money and sacred geometry and and and.
Like I said, Paizo dropped the ball later, but they are hugely nerfed. The only spell that really got buffed in 3.5->PF was simulacrum and that buff was just not needing a piece of a creature to be copied (a bit of hair, a fingernail, a scale, whatever).
EDIT: When I say really buffed, I mean appreciably stronger in a way that makes them better as opposed to just making them more competitive with spells of their level. For example, flaming sphere got buffed from 2d6 to 3d6 but it sucked in 3.5. Now you can find people using it instead of defaulting to scorching missile ray.
Its basically the same brokenness on a better chassis
It's still not even close to the same brokenness of a core wizard in 3.5. Not even close man. Like, even a teeny, tiny, itsy bitsy bit. XD
EDIT 2: And if you account for splat-silliness, the stuff Paizo added (and ohhhh boy, I've made a stink about Aroden's Spellbane on these boards too, because that spell is nutters) is still not as consistently terrible as options that also existed in 3.5 with splat material.
In the SRD is the Tainted Sorcerer that could eat 23 damage (just damage, that's all, not ability damage, just damage) to ignore any spell component over 750 gp when casting their spell. How's that for Blood Money?
Did I mention that each time they cast a spell, their save DCs increase by +1? And that they released an even stronger version in Heroes of Horror that had more class features, the same benefits, and additional rules that made it so that if you became undead you got stronger and stronger and stronger while doing all of it?
Or Craft Contingent spell which allows you to layer defenses to make yourself essentially unstoppable.
Or the fact using wish spells via SLAs allowed you to create a magic item of any value.
Or that you could take feats that granted you all the special abilities of monsters you turned into via transmutation spells, so you got all those cool monster abilities too.
The martial caster disparity is real. But we must be honest about how far we have come! (0o0)
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It's the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction. Early D&D, the Fighter was strong and the Wizard was really fragile but capable of great power eventually. But it sucked to be a Wizard at those early levels. "Hey - I've cast my 3 spells for the day! I'm done!"
In the newer iterations of the game, Wizards (arcane casters) were buffed: more HP; more spells; more cantrips, then unlimited cantrips. Because it sucked to not be able to contribute anything.
It's now become the arcane caster's game and martials lose out, having less and less they can contribute as you gain levels.
I loved and hated playing a magic-user in those old AD&D days. I hated the low HP and the few spells I got and then had to sit there with little to add.
I feel similarly about playing a martial character in PF - except that now, as I level up, I lose my ability to contribute rather than add to it. That's what needs to get fixed.
One of the most hilarious parties I ever had in (Vanilla) Baldur's Gate was a party of 5 fighters and a Fighter/Thief, all full specialized in shooting bows. They literally walked over everything in that game. Stuff died as soon as it appeared or turned hostile or whatever. Nothing was safe. I probably should have made the 3rd guy a Fighter/Mage/Thief just 'cause he would eventually get some buff spells like haste (which was stupid because it outright doubled the number of attacks you made) but honestly it was already overkill.
Overkill to the point that I could safely rest even in the heart of my enemy's lair because every time a random encounter (even like 10 bandits) popped, they would just get up, fire, collect any arrows on the enemies, and go back to sleep. I 1-HP rested back up to full in the middle of the iron throne mines this way.
Oh boy, the insanity.
EDIT: Admittedly a lot of that falls off if using the Sword Coast Stratagems mod which makes the AI not suicidally stupid and account for long-duration buffs that would be active (like mage armor lasted 9 hours but NPCs never cast it pre-combat, stuff like that). When enemies are using tactics that transcend "run at it and hit it" it tends to alter the results drastically. :P
My criticism of the fighter's damage is in relation to his peers since Barbarians, Paladins, and Rangers are all very much capable of out damaging him almost all of the time. The Fighter doesn't even see a damage increase at all until 5th level when they get Weapon Training +1/+1. The Barbarian is sitting at +2/+2 or +2/+3 right out of the gate and until 5th level, Fighter is a Paladin or Ranger with no tricks, worse saves, no animal companion, no skills, no immunities, etc.
Ashiel, I agree the Fighter class could use some buffs. I will say though, if you implement the Unchained Combat Stamina system free for Fighter (and Fighter only), it pretty much wipes out any disparity in actual damage dealt between Fighter and other classes (except for maybe a Paladin when Smite Evil is actually up).
That leaves the core problems with a melee Fighter -- in the context of combat, mostly their saves and limited mobility. Damage-wise it pretty much fixes them though.
In 3.5 Conjuration was better at blasting than Evocation. What with all its SR:No blasts.
A lot of schools and spells got nerfed, just like a lot of Fighter feats got slapped silly. Thats how PF nerfed both the Fighter and Wizard while making their base chassis look nicer.
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"Balance" used to be: interdependence. You needed a Fighter, and you needed a Rogue.
But it sucked to be a spell-caster (at early levels) because you were so limited in what you could do during an adventure. So gradually more abilities got added until spell-casting is what it's all about. Spells are interesting, and spark the imagination, and developers love to dream up new and creative ways to do things via "magic!"
Now there's far less interdependence because magic can solve pretty much everything. The Rogue was largely removed from the game, followed by the Fighter.
When comparing characters from literature to characters in game many forget one really crucial moment.
In stories getting hit by a sword is something like - "Make reflex save or die. Saved ? Loose your hands anyway".
Case in point - Witcher books. In the last book of series high level wizard (teleport, something like tenser transformation and some other spells shown) fights against Geralt (witcher), Yennefer (wizard) and Regis (very old vampire) at the same time and holds his ground without much trouble. Until he gets "slightly" unlucky and suffers limb detachment problems followed by death.
The "literature to game mechanics" argument is silly.
Stories work according to what works for the story. They're not bounded by random chance and a system of game mechanics. As TarkXT has said: "Novels make s#+!ty games."
EDIT: As a source of inspiration for a game, or characters, great! But no writer that I know of ever paused to roll a d20 and see: "Does my hero succeed at dodging that attack? Or save against that spell?"
The "literature to game mechanics" argument is silly.
Stories work according to what works for the story. They're not bounded by random chance and a system of game mechanics.
Yes. And that means that characters in games should not be restricted in their actions in the same way as characters in stories.
It's okay to have powerful magic if at the same time one sword hit or lucky shot from a bow can kill almost any wizard. It's not okay to have same powerful spells if you need to beat said wizard for 3-5 rounds (up to half a minute of cutting him to pieces!!!).
Of course if your game is not called Ars Magica.
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EDIT: As a source of inspiration for a game, or characters, great! But no writer that I know of ever paused to roll a d20 and see: "Does my hero succeed at dodging that attack? Or save against that spell?"
I'm led to understand that the original cast of the Dragonlance books were all characters in a D&D game first, and were then transferred to the novel medium. Also, in R.A. Salvatore's "The Sword of Bedwyr" there's a halfling swashbuckler type who was one of Salvatore's D&D characters that was apparently so obnoxious, everyone cheered when he got clobbered to death by a troll, leading Bob to decide that such a character absolutely must appear in a novel.
I'm sure your point is still valid and no one ever actually involves dice in the direct writing process, but I think there is a surprising amount of TTRPG influence to be found in a lot of fantasy novels.
I think the important thing to understand is the limitations of both mediums, and avoiding trying to bend and twist one to fit within the constraints of the other. None of Ed Greenwood's characters ever follow the rules of the game for the things they do, and the stories would be markedly less interesting if he attempted to force them to. Similarly, trying to squeeze and compress the entirety of Pathfinder down to be Lord of the Rings isn't going to work, because Pathfinder is designed with a much broader scope and larger array inspirations.
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The "literature to game mechanics" argument is silly.
Stories work according to what works for the story. They're not bounded by random chance and a system of game mechanics.
Yes. And that means that characters in games should not be restricted in their actions in the same way as characters in stories.
It's okay to have powerful magic if at the same time one sword hit or lucky shot from a bow can kill almost any wizard. It's not okay to have same powerful spells if you need to beat said wizard for 3-5 rounds (up to half a minute of cutting him to pieces!!!).
Of course if your game is not called Ars Magica.
I don't think comparing to literature is a means of translating mechanics but translating tropes. One of the persistent arguments in this thread is exactly what can a mundane martial do that can contribute in a game with what wizards can currently do without becoming magical himself, so we look to other sources for flavor that justifies it. We also compare the general scope and power of what magical characters do in other mediums to describe how powerful casters are in the game.
TTRPG influence, yes. Mechanics, not so much. Unless they are novels being produced by a particular franchise (such as TSR) to further advertise their system, and so will smack of system mechanics in terms of feats, spells, and abilities the characters possess.
I think the important thing to understand is the limitations of both mediums, and avoiding trying to bend and twist one to fit within the constraints of the other.
Yes - it was all the LotR's references to Sauron and Gandalf that prompted my post. And while LotR's was an influence on Gary Gygax and Co., it didn't translate into the system mechanics. (Jack Vance did, however, to some degree.)
I don't think comparing to literature is a means of translating mechanics but translating tropes. One of the persistent arguments in this thread is exactly what can a mundane martial do that can contribute in a game with what wizards can currently do without becoming magical himself, so we look to other sources for flavor that justifies it. We also compare the general scope and power of what magical characters do in other mediums to describe how powerful casters are in the game.
Right now mechanics work good for spells and their tropes (save or die, nor save you lose, teleport, invisibility, etc.) but very bad with things like "get hit by a sword - die". Not counting some very specific builds that rely on one shot kills. And in PF they are much harder to pull off than in 3.5 (and that's a good thing for a game).
In most stories non-undead wizards die after being hit one or two times. Sometimes they die horribly. Is it a trope ? I think yes. But after a couple of levels it kind of moves to the background and rarely can be seen again while spells are still right here.
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However, I think we do martials no favors for ignoring where they do excel. People need to understand that because one of the most common answers people initially make for martials is "mwoar damaaaage!" which is not what is needed at all.True, increasing damage just to increase damage is a poor attempt at addressing the actual problem. However, making it easier to do more damage by freeing up more feats (consolidating feat chains and having them scale) creates flexibility and opens up more options. Allowing more than a 5' step with full attack increases mobility options, not just increasing damage output. We can't just dismiss options simply because they also increase damage output.
The martial caster disparity is real. But we must be honest about how far we have come!CRB made great strides in closing the martial/caster gap vs 3.5. Those of us that were part of the playtest wouldn't have accepted it if it didn't. But the gap has grown again since then, not as rapidly as in 3.x, but it has grown none the less. Too liberal toward magic, too conservative toward martials. While I count myself as someone who thinks the CRB didn't go far enough, I still stand by my assessment at the time that it was a vast improvement over 3.5. I feel the recent surge in martial/caster disparity discussion is less about trying to force more gains in balance but more pushback against losses to the gains we had made.
Indeed. I have myself felt endless frustration with Paizo's direction over the past few years whereas I was riding the wagon gleefully initially. However they keep making bad FAQs, pushing more and more and more power towards casters, and keep nerfing martial abilities that have no business being nerfed.
Trust lost.
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So someone like Samurai Jack then?
You. I like you.
Cool holy sword? Check.
A whole bunch of useful skills at max? Check.
Awesome leader? Check.
Can fight a bunch of chumps and/or one big bad thing? Check.
Relies on magic to save the day exactly 0% of the time? Check.
Jack is definitely an example of a "just that badass" high fantasy character done right.
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All he has is an +1 Adamantine Aku bane Katana.
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As for the Path of War, Let me first explain my stance on magic. Magic ? Magic is magic. Psionics are magic, SLA's are magic, Dragons ability to fly and other square/cube law funzies like giants? Also magic. Magic is any form of BS that allows someone or something to do the blatently impossible. Now some of this like most spell effects are big flashy i summon fire and rain doom upon my enemies and this is blatent BSing at its best. No one argues it's impossability and for caster types this is fine. For martials it's to much for me. Your milage might very you might like it I don't.
See, that explanation sheds some much needed light. You ascribe any capability that violates real world physics to magic, and that's totally okay, but the default assumption of Pathfinder's high fantasy world is that, while dragons may be chockers with awesome magic, those wings they have work. Their bodies don't collapse or tear themselves apart because gigantic sentient flying lizard wizards can exist "naturally" in Golarion.
Again, not hating on your interpretation, but I feel compelled to point out that it is yours, and that by cannon, the natural laws of Golarian accommodate things like Dragons and Giants and the Tarrasque.
The question asked by critics of the disparity, a question I see being sadly misrepresented way too often, seems to be "if all of these other things can exist without magic, why are fighters arbitrarily barred from tapping into the same natural/extraordinary/nonmagical goodness?" Or, to put it another way, "why are nice things only for non-humanoids and primary spellcasters?"
Why is a warrior who transcends real world limitations just a little bit via legendary prowess, less sucky skills, and little things like better climb/jump/run/swim rates so offensive? The Fighter can already start their day with a refreshing cup of liquid hot magma, outrun the fastest humans who ever lived, lift spine-snapping loads, then sleep off the damage from those lightly cooked internal organs and do it all again tomorrow. Why is patching in some far more reasonable extraordinary capabilities suddenly crossing a "must be magic" threshold?
All he has is an +1 Adamantine Aku bane Katana.
It could be Excalibur, with or without the scabbard, and it wouldn't make him any less badass, or less of a "pure" magic-is-fer-pussies martial. An awesome magical sword is always an acceptable accoutrement!
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...As for the Path of War, Let me first explain my stance on magic. Magic ? Magic is magic. Psionics are magic, SLA's are magic, Dragons ability to fly and other square/cube law funzies like giants? Also magic. Magic is any form of BS that allows someone or something to do the blatently impossible. Now some of this like most spell effects are big flashy i summon fire and rain doom upon my enemies and this is blatent BSing at its best. No one argues it's impossability and for caster types this is fine. For martials it's to much for me. Your milage might very you might like it I don't.See, that explanation sheds some much needed light. You ascribe any capability that violates real world physics to magic, and that's totally okay, but the default assumption of Pathfinder's high fantasy world is that, while dragons may be chockers with awesome magic, those wings they have work. Their bodies don't collapse or tear themselves apart because gigantic sentient flying lizard wizards can exist "naturally" in Golarion.
Again, not hating on your interpretation, but I feel compelled to point out that it is yours, and that by cannon, the natural laws of Golarian accommodate things like Dragons and Giants and the Tarrasque.
The question asked by critics of the disparity, a question I see being sadly misrepresented way too often, seems to be "if all of these other things can exist without magic, why are fighters arbitrarily barred from tapping into the same natural/extraordinary/nonmagical goodness?" Or, to put it another way, "why are nice things only for non-humanoids and primary spellcasters?"
Why is a warrior who transcends real world limitations just a little bit via legendary prowess, less sucky skills, and little things like better climb/jump/run/swim rates so offensive? The Fighter can already start their day with a refreshing cup of liquid hot magma, outrun the fastest humans who ever lived, lift spine-snapping
Called Shots do silly things due to a lack of size limit. Jump higher than you ever could because you need to hit that giant in the eye. In full plate.
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All he has is an +1 Adamantine Aku bane Katana.It could be Excalibur, with or without the scabbard, and it wouldn't make him any less badass, or less of a "pure" magic-is-fer-pussies martial. An awesome magical sword is always an acceptable accoutrement!
What I meant is that in compared to Pathfinder Martials he generally accomplishes a lot more with a lot less. We're all collecting magical trinkets and artifacts like it's Pokemon, but Jack does it all with just a magic sword and a robe.
There is no way on Earth his robe isn't magical though. It's got at least some sort of self-regeneration magic on it. Given the amount of crap he goes through, there's no other explanation for how he's still wearing the same one after all this time.