Your first fight with a golem--which are pretty common RPG enemies--will demonstrate exactly how important having a strong martial member of the party is.You must be kidding. Bypass SR is super easy, you can destroy a golem with ease using a 1st level spell: Snowball.
Or create pit lol
sry full on rouges
AMF, casters sucks! There is always something for everything, not an argument.^^^
Wind wall...
Your comparing a level 6 spell that only Sorc/WIZ/arcanist and clerics.get with a VERY limited range to a level 3 spell that damn near everyone gets and has a large range.... nice.
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Martials do more damage and can take damage and fight in melee better than casters in general. A high-level paladin or Invulnerable Rager barbarian will be practically impossible to put down through raw damage. What they can't do is anything else.How does a high level paladin or AM BARBARIAN compare to a wildshape druid with an AC of lolno? I suspect the answer is "not bad, but not great either". Plus, y'know, fullcaster.
Their AC isn't that great anymore since the Wild Armor FAQ. (no change to how I played it - but major nerf to many)
Their AC isn't that great anymore since the Wild Armor FAQ. (no change to how I played it - but major nerf to many)Martials do more damage and can take damage and fight in melee better than casters in general. A high-level paladin or Invulnerable Rager barbarian will be practically impossible to put down through raw damage. What they can't do is anything else.How does a high level paladin or AM BARBARIAN compare to a wildshape druid with an AC of lolno? I suspect the answer is "not bad, but not great either". Plus, y'know, fullcaster.
Barding.
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Barding.Their AC isn't that great anymore since the Wild Armor FAQ. (no change to how I played it - but major nerf to many)Martials do more damage and can take damage and fight in melee better than casters in general. A high-level paladin or Invulnerable Rager barbarian will be practically impossible to put down through raw damage. What they can't do is anything else.How does a high level paladin or AM BARBARIAN compare to a wildshape druid with an AC of lolno? I suspect the answer is "not bad, but not great either". Plus, y'know, fullcaster.
Yes - but even ignoring the convenience issues (stuck with one animal - only useful for fights you know are coming etc) - it's still less AC than a martial with a shield.
The nat armor bonuses combined with size penalties are less than a shield with bonuses. Not to mention that they can't afford mithril full-plate barding until very high levels - to the point where Wild is probably the better option for mithril anyway. (that 10.5k becomes 42k for large barding)
Their AC is solid, but it's far less than it was with some of the very lenient rulings which seemed prevalent before. Far less than a dex monk, significantly less than a fighter with decent dex & Armor Training, and slightly less than any martial with a shield.
Oh why not? I am just answering the OP's inquiry and have not read other replies, and like the OP, am not here to engage with them.
And I'll give a quick answer to the OP first: if you are not sure, try it. Run an all-caster campaign and see what happens.
DISCLAIMER: I can only speak from my personal experience, with my particular gaming groups that I've played with or PBPed with. I will not speak from theory (where often ideal circumstances or high levels are presumed, when ideal circumstances and high levels seldom occur in gameplay); I will speak from practical experience with parties that most typically start at 1st level and go up to about 7-9th before the campaign ends, playing in adventures that are either Pathfinder modules and APs or built in similar ways. I have also run a high level party and can speak to that.
Things to bear in mind: I've played in a variety of groups, but most groups I've played with do not presume 15 minute adventure day and feature fairly well-rounded parties. Most people I play with are not uber-optimizers but tend to create effective-to-powerful builds.
I have also actually played in an all-arcane caster party and will also speak to that. Likewise I have also played in martial-heavy parties and that experience also informs me.
First, my general observation: The main difference between a caster and a non-caster (whether martial, skill monkey, or something else) lies in resource management. The challenge of playing a caster is that your resources are somewhat finite; while you always have at least endless 0-level spells as a last resort, but if you're playing in what I'd consider a typical Pathfinder adventure (akin to what might be presented in a module, AP, or by a creative GM), you're not going to be able to stop and rest every two minutes. Prepared casters struggle to make sure the "right" spells are prepared---a wizard can technically know every spell, but if he prepared unseen servant and charm person that day and it turns out he...
Thanks DeathQuaker, very enlightening! I agree and share a similar gaming experience. Even with open slots, prepared casters are prepared casters, which comes with challenges where 'martial' classes can help.
That does not invalidate other players' experiences, which seem to point to severe issues of disparity.
But disparity as perceived in a game is dependent on many other factors, such as the type of adventure, the composition of the party, the other players' styles, and the type of DMing. I believe that all these need to be taken into account in evaluating the game experience.
The way I see it, there is disparity as designed (especially when you are allowed to Schroedinger your way through arguments). It is a good thing for some; a bad thing for others. That does not mean there is disparity as experienced. That depends too much on the context, and DeathQuaker's account serves to highlight some of the ways by which disparity as designed is not experienced negatively but instead promotes interdependence and collaboration.
As a side note, Martial Flexibility and arcane bond are some of the few true Schroedinger abilities in the game.
Ok, let's define martial in this context, they are: Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue/Ninja, Cavalier, Gunslingers, brawler and monks. Might be missing some hehehe. Martial are defined has classes with 0 spell casting abilities.
Why would you want a martial with 0 casting level in your party?
Pros:
- Competent with a lot of weapons.
- Competent with a lot of armors.
- Mundane problem solving in some cases trump magic.
- Most of them have a bit more feats than full casters.
- Can operate relatively well with no magical gear at low level.
- Well built their ranged combat capability are usually better than caster.
- Overall they can be build with very good saves.
- Better HP curve (great meatshields!).
- Usually have more skills points than casters.
- Having diversity in a party allow better utilization of found magical objects.
- Some enemies are immune to currently available spells.
- You cannot prepare a spell expecting every possible situation, a sword and a bow are always useful to a degree.
- You need somebody with 16 STR to carry gear at low level.
Cons:
- Usually cannot stand alone too long without magical support.
- Lack the incredible utility of higher level casters.
- Usually are powerless versus foes with incredible mobility.
- Will have a very hard time at mid/high level without the proper magic gear.
- Armor class becomes almost obsolete in the long run.
- Combat maneuvers become almost obsolete in the long run.
- Action economy is overall bad unless they are ranged or get pounce.
- Spells can relatively replace most of their usefulness in the long run.
Current conclusion:
First point.
Martial at low level (before 5) are a great addition to an adventuring party, their ability to take care of a lot of the pain magic user might suffer from their smaller spell selection, be it via combat or their skills. A caster is useless if he or she fall unconscious and this is very possible at early level usually due to low AC and crappier action economy. A bowman or a gunslingers at early level can keep as long they have arrows and bullets, even an optimized spell caster that deal 5d6 with burning hand at level 2 will run out of spells or encounter an enemy immune to fire every not and then.
This brings my second point.
Martial are a great fallback. Martial are there and relatively efficient at all time. The reason being that beneficial spell effect do no require any saving throws and offensive spell effect require one. There is always a possibility that your spell fails, or that the enemy/situation encountered is immune to magic. In that case you need martial to cover you and give you that second round. Martial are like insurance policy, never appreciated until you have an accident. Martial guarantee your usefulness at every turn by shielding you, dealing damage while battlefield control is being taken care with by you.
Third point.
Martial are resource efficient. Sure at early level gear is super expensive, but a lightly underequiped martial will still be able to accomplish it's main function if it's well built. Not only that but let's face it, random loot will not yield 100% useful gear for caster, a +3 great-sword is useless to most casters.
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In PFS and Living Greyhawk, I played with a lot of martials. If you exclude the really crazy 3.5 level 12+ druids combining a dozen spell compendium spells to give their animal companions hundreds of tentacles while buffing them to huge size, etc (those characters didn't just invalidate martials, they invalidated to idea of a party altogether), martials added a lot to most parties.
1. Martials (especially at higher levels) have a higher damage dealing and damage taking ceiling than anything except for the aforementioned druid (who was probably twisting the rules somehow). A clericzilla was a good substitute if you didn't have a fighter/barbarian/paladin/etc but clericzilla wanted a more ordinary cleric to keep him up and handle cleric things during the fight if it was possible. And if you have the more ordinary cleric to hand out hero's feast, greater magic weapon, magic vestment, recitation/prayer/etc, then the fighter/barbarian/paladin did a better job than clericzilla, didn't need a round to cast divine power at the start of combat, and was less vulnerable to dispel magic.
1.A. In every party I've been in, it has been the martials that dealt the lion's share of the actual damage. At the end of the Age of Worms adventure path, my fighter/scout and the archer fighter easily averaged over 200 points of damage per round to most of the bad guys we faced. (And no, ally spells don't necessarily substitute for that; for the final battle, we had a planar ally planetar who was properly prepared and buffed as well; he was very handy (a little better than the monster manual solars we gated in) but not in the same league as the party's two good martials). The wizard and the favored soul were very valuable too (in enabling and battlefield control, etc), but the weren't able to dish out close to the same kind of damage.
Casters can do a lot of things but when it comes to actually killing enemies, hitting them with magic weapons is usually the best way to do it. It really helps if you can put them in a forcecage while you do it but you still need someone to fire the bow.
2. Martials give the party more endurance. Most of the "casters rule/martials drool" posing, assumes a 30 second workday and/or perfect foreknowledge of the upcoming challenges. My experience running casters was that, even at 17th level, casters were only able to operate at peak performance for a couple combats. Now, if the casters pace themselves by 17th level, they can stretch almost peak performance out a lot longer, but they still only have 4 or 5 combats in the tank before they have shot most of their best spells and are either taking rounds off or operating way below peak ability. Most martials can keep peak performance for longer and almost peak performance all day or at least until they run out of cure wands.
Now, in even high level combats, most parties managed their resources by letting the casters take a few rounds off once it was clear that the combat was in hand. (When the 17th level wizard is casting scorching ray, that is taking a round off). Doing so depends upon having characters who are able to operate at peak performance without expending resources: it depends on the party's martial members. Theoretically, an all caster party could mimic this by alternating the members who coast and who operate at peak performance, but this is problematic practically:
A. A lot of the caster resource expenditure happens in the opening rounds when it is not yet clear quite how challenging the combat will be.
B. A lot of a caster's almost peak potential still depends upon casting high level spells in the early rounds. So it's more challenging for casters to maintain their martial substitute performance levels while conserving resources than you might think.
C. Remember the 4 to 5 combat almost peak performance limit? If you need to add one peak performance combat in there because you are substituting for a martial, that becomes 1 peak performance plus 2-3 almost peak performances. The party that works that way has fewer total combats of almost peak performance in their tank.
D. What about adventuring days that go past the party's peak performance limit? This is where the all caster party really suffers. The party of 4 with a gassed cleric and a gassed wizard but full strength martials is going to be able to muddle through quite a few more combats at 60-75% effectiveness based on lower level spells and consumables because it still has half the party at full power. The party of 4 alternating substitute martials are not only gassed sooner, but when they are, they are operating at 30-50% effectiveness.
3. Martials mitigate the party's risks. Everyone in this kind of thread knows about things that shut martials down. Flight, invisibility, grappling, damage reduction, etc. (Martials or the party's casters have ways to mitigate most of these things but they are still real risks). However, there are a bunch of things that make casters less effective too. Anti-magic fields, dispel magic, spell resistance, immunities, evasion, mettle, super high saves, grappling, etc. (And yes, there are ways to mitigate these risks too but they aren't perfect. Some days you will find yourself unexpectedly in the city of brass and loaded up with fire spells). Having martials in your group diversifies your skill set. The buff and bash cleric is not going to be terribly effective in an anti-magic field. The paladin doesn't suffer nearly as much (typically, the paladin suffers even less than the druid's animal companion).
3B. They also expand the list of potential tactical options for the party too. Sometimes the party is outgunned by enemy casters and an anti-magic shell is the best option for them. Having martials in the group enables you to exploit that weakness on the enemy casters' part. I actually ran across this in a late Living Greyhawk module. Our party was ambushed by a group with several boneheart casters who had us completely outclassed magically (and would have even if my paladin based mutt character were a caster). The cleric saved our bacon with an anti-magic shell, but it was my paladin who saved the day when one of the lesser boneheart demons decided that a leveled up glazebru could probably take a party of adventurers without magic. It turned out that, even in an anti-magic field, the paladin made short work of him. Without martials, our party would have been in a much worse situation.
Yes - but even ignoring the convenience issues (stuck with one animal - only useful for fights you know are coming etc) - it's still less AC than a martial with a shield.
Pick your best combat form.
Its not only useful for fights you know are coming. A druid has 36 hours worth of wildshape a day. You can wake up in the morning, have the party get you dressed and you're good to go. Oh no, you can't use... your vast array of social skills as a velociraptor.
Their AC is solid, but it's far less than it was with some of the very lenient rulings which seemed prevalent before. Far less than a dex monk, significantly less than a fighter with decent dex & Armor Training, and slightly less than any martial with a shield.
But the mobility is still absurd. Velocirpator + long strider +pouncec and dragon style (and air walk for the dungeon at higher levels) and the thing is lucky to be alive after you charge it. Deadifying the other guy is the best ac there is.
but I do not want to play a druid
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but I want to play a Barbarian or a Fighter
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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A) What people THINK fighters are supposed to be doing and
Do you mean in my ideal RPG, or what I think fighters were designed to do in Pathfinder?
In my ideal RPG, fighters are supposed to be thematically and mechanically distinct from users of magic, but still able to engage the world at whatever fantasy-level (low fantasy, high fantasy, etc) the obstacles they face occupy. Although their primary means of overcoming obstacles would be to fight, there would be reasonably-accessible means of investing in narrative agency, and doing so would actually work, without requiring the addition of magic.
B) What spell casters can do to invalidate and more importantly
In Pathfinder, for any given obstacle, there's a spell to overcome it. Many of these solution spells are low-ish level and overcome multiple types of common obstacles, and therefore don't require unreasonable amounts of foreknowledge to make use of. The ones that are too situational to use in slots are instead pretty cheap to keep at hand as scrolls/potions/oils/wands. Thus, past the very early levels, it is very easy for a full caster to have access to all the tools they need to overcome the obstacles in their paths. (These two facts in turn make the "Your position requires you to assume perfect foreknowledge of every obstacle" argument pretty asinine, and anyone with any sense of intellectual honesty needs to drop it.)
Getting rid of affordable consumables and allowing skills to be the best way to overcome most challenges would go a long way toward fixing things.
C) Why do martials require a place in game if they're not really allowed to be important
Ideally, an RPG would allow you to roleplay any (setting- and campaign-appropriate) concept, and that includes nonmagical heroes. It's very important to allow those types of characters to be played. They just need a better implementation than in Pathfinder.
EDIT: D) What can a martial do that no other class type can do. Clearly anyone does damage, what else?
In Pathfinder? Not much. Aside from moving full speed in heavy armor (eventually), everything a fighter can do can be done by a commoner with sufficiently high stats. A fighter is literally a commoner with better numbers. He doesn't have anything of his own he can do, he only gets to interact with the world using the same baseline mechanics that are inherent to just being a creature at all.
Last campaign (1-20) I was in was close to an all martial party. A multiclassed oracle/Barb with only 6th lvl spells at 20th, a ranger/fighter 2hander, a fighter/Rogue/shadowdancer, a shieldbash fighter with psychic warrior dip.
The amount of DPR was staggering, anything under APL+4 with max+HP was 1-rounded. The oracle was rarely the MVP. I was surprised at how many encounters were trivialized by the scouting, planning, damaging.
Of course, tactics and UMD and proper magic gear were essential. Characters built and equipped for saves and mobility, not just damage. Everybody had some wands and staves.
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