Do wizards really use toughness as one of their precious few feats? I don't think I've ever seen a Pathfinder NPC wizard with Toughness. False life adds a few more but is very quickly stripped away. Again Con 14? Dex is normally my second stat then Cha or maybe wisdom but it is a rare day when I have more than Con 12 or 13. Again I've never seen a Con 18 wizard. I'm not saying it can't be done just that it isn't typical.
As for spell casting, mirror image, displacement, improved invisibility and blink is going to take several rounds to raise at which point the wizard is already toast. Also in a normal sized room you can't attack from afar.
There is no doubt that a fresh wizard/fresh fighter duel in an open area, with a few rounds to prepare would give a wizard win. N Jolly's point is well received that a wizard shouldn't find themselves in that position. My point is that underlying all these layers of protections and advantage is a fairly squishy wizard.
Also can you point me to the place where it says miss chances stack in a FAQ. I get mirror image and then total concealment of some form would work together, but not more stacking, I have seen a 1000 post long thread arguing it. but I don't know why you wouldn't just close your eyes and take the 50/50 rerolled with blind fight?
[Edit] Don't worry just seen James Jacobs clarification that multiple miss chances don't stack and a separate one that demonstrates mirror images don't benefit from the miss chance. If a wizard spends the first 3 rounds erecting defences they aren't attacking the fighter.
STR: 10 DEX: 14 CON: 14 INT: 18 WIS: 10 CHA: 10
is a 20 point buy Human. Why on earth would you boost Wisdom or Charisma?
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As for spell casting, mirror image, displacement, improved invisibility and blink is going to take several rounds to raise at which point the wizard is already toast. Also in a normal sized room you can't attack from afar.
There is no doubt that a fresh wizard/fresh fighter duel in an open area, with a few rounds to prepare would give a wizard win. N Jolly's point is well received that a wizard shouldn't find themselves in that position. My point is that underlying all these layers of protections and advantage is a fairly squishy wizard.
Also can you point me to the place where it says miss chances stack. I get mirror image and then total concealment of some form would work together, but not more stacking. but I don't know why you wouldn't just close your eyes and take the 50/50 rerolled with blind fight?
I agree with Sword here. Assuming you'll have those spells up is suspect for the most part, and generally a wizard will only have up spells with 1 hour/level duration all day (15 hours is basically all day.) In that respect, having contingency and overland flight should be assumed. Displacement? That's 1 round/level, so that shouldn't be assumed for a sneak attack. If a wizard expects danger (in a place where they might fight someone), 10 min/level buffs could be assumed too (stoneskin and such, it's cheap by this point), but as Sword mentioned, adamantine arrows (and really by this point, a +4 weapon) should cut through that.
10 min/level should last nearly 3 hours, which really should be long enough to last any dungeon crawl. Anything less (1 min/level or 1 round/level) is generally an in battle spell, and foolish to cast without an immediate cause. Quicken Spell can help instantly raise some defenses, but it's a limited resource through either a metamagic rod or spell slots in the case of the feat, so that should be considered as well.
I do believe miss chances stack, but again Sword has a good point of just closing their eyes to get 50% miss chance.
A non diviner wizard is susceptible to being snuck up on, it's something that can happen, but a wizard also has a lot of ways to avoid it (echolocation is blindsense 40 ft for 10 mins/level) as well as other options, so it becomes the level of preparation of the mage (again, contingency "I was dealt damage, I teleport to X location" ends the encounter) is what decides the encounter. But surprise screws over everyone for the most part, it's not mage exclusive as a countermeasure.
I'm generally play with an array, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and I like my wizards to be relatively good at social interactions - rather than the crotchety recluse. Particular if I am going for the enchanter or conjured look - I prefer to be a little more grandiose and a little less plain. Or in the case of Wis for the improved will save. I find feats go very quickly for a wizard even with the bonuses to spend on iron will etc. Even with the 20 point buy there is no way I would put Con up to 14 without increasing either Wis or Cha. If you look at most NPC wizards they are the same.
Also do people not generally play specialists wizards? Evocation, Conjuration, Abjuration and Transmutation are a given for me, which means two of of either Divination, illusion, enchantment or necromancy are out of the picture (unless you are doubling slots). In practice I find that few of these combinations are very common.
STR: 12 DEX: 15 CON: 14 INT: 18 WIS: 13 CHA: 10
is your array then.
You have a good Will save and Charisma is pointless for a Wizard unless you are the party face.
You can't argue the theoretical potential of a class based on flavorful character choices.
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Man, the focus on what the disparity is changes so much in this thread.
N.Jolly, I wasn't actually suggesting removing books etc from casters. It's not something I ever do in my games. I was actually saying its perceived as a bad DM move. I happen to agree it is a bad DM move.
I have more creative ways to deal with casters, and I've pointed many of them out in this thread.
Please note, I've not once said my ideas are unique or novel. In fact, I've said on numerous occasions that many of the situations I've posted are from published materials.
I happen to,fall into line with what it appears Paizo is doing to mitigate this narrative disparity people talk about. I use unique situations, create environments to challenge everyone equally, mix encounters by creatures and style and other things this game is renowned for. All of those strategies work very well for me, and have been supported in numerous APs and published adventures from varying companies.
This thread specifically asked for different ways to tackle the apparent m/ cd issue.
If mine don't suit you, fine. However it's getting tiring watching posters attack my posts in his thread while I was specifically asked to accept others ideas and move on without comment if I disagreed.
So, can I recommend, if posters don't think my ideas would work for them, they can show it by not clicking like, and not responding to my post. They can instead post their own solutions, as I was asked to do.
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I like a charater who can bluff, intimidate and be a bit persuasive... Why on earth would I want to play in a group where only one character gets to interact with NPCs just because they have the highest charisma? Our typical bard player can be a right pain in the fundament - I wouldn't let him represent me unless my life depended on it lol.
Even so an extra 15 hp isn't really here nor there.
[Edited to be less snarky]
Are we talking about how much HP an optimized Wizard has?
-> Yes.
Did you imply a 14 CON was unlikely?
-> Yes.
Did I provide an optimized Wizard stat line that had 14 CON?
-> Yes.
Having fun and enjoying tabletop games as a social experience is nice. It's why most people I've talked to play the game.
But it is not what this topic is about.
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I happen to fall into line with what it appears Paizo is doing to mitigate this narrative disparity people talk about. I use unique situations, create environments to challenge everyone equally, mix encounters by creatures and style and other things this game is renowned for. All of those strategies work very well for me, and have been supported in numerous APs and published adventures from varying companies.
I'd ask what support you're talking about in APs. Like not as a challenge, I'm actually curious.
You're right though, it was unfair of me to just shoot down what you said without adding anything in response, I can apologize for that.
Personally, TOB has done wonders for shortening the gap. Sure, it's combat focused, but it's still helpful.
The best advice I can give is abiding by the tier system though. Some people hate it, but it's a great tool for making sure people are playing at the same power level. I would say everyone plays within 2 tiers of each other (so a fighter and a wizard, no go. A fighter and an investigator, you're good!), and you'll see a much better balance between what people can do.
This won't help martials do more, but what it will do is lower the ceiling of what is possible in the game so that there isn't as large a disparity in abilities. Now it's not Fighters attack and Wizards make demiplanes, it's Fighters attack and Investigators heal/buff/etc while still staying at a realistic level compared to the Fighter.
There's been other suggestions for lower tier characters, such as allowing them to gestalt with another lower tier class (T4 can gestalt with a T5 and vice versa), increased wealth for lower tiers (as we all know, money equals power), or increased feats (probably worse than money, but feats can still add power) to help even things out.
I haven't used spheres of power, but I might check it out sometime (who knows, maybe if I like it enough, I'll write a guide for it), see if it fixes the problems. But I'd say those are my ways to help deal with these issues.
EDIT: As an aside, I do think that if someone does think there's issues with an idea being presented, they should discuss it if they don't help due to the possibility of someone taking what one would consider bad advice. So I don't mind if people reply to my post with 'that doesn't work' since really, it has worked for me.
I was talking about typical wizards that get played in a pathfinder game not an optimised paper based character.
You are right though that you can raise con to 18 without too much trouble and build a high hp wizard, I just don't see it very often in published materials.
14 CON. Maybe 16 at 4th level if you use that array you were talking about and prioritize CON over DEX.
Not 18.
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Jiggy's current post about the disparity is a good one, but it provides no solutions.
So, without fighting about what the disparity really is (please!?!?), how can it be fixed?
One common solution is to chop the top off of the game. E8 or E6, etc. Just stop leveling before casters get their ultra power. But that's only half a solution (many "disparity" spells fall within those levels, such as flight or invisibility). And, when you get down to it, you're no longer playing the same game. It's vastly different. A whole BUNCH of material becomes inaccessible and whole APs are impossible to finish.
Another common solution is to turn every martial into a wuxia superhero who farts fireballs and barfs acid, who flattens armies with the stamp of a boot and shrugs off every natural disaster like Superman shrugs off bullets. While that might be fine and dandy for an actual superhero game, or for a supernatural game where all the heroes are Greek gods or other immortals running around a mundane world, it's very much out of place in this game system as published. Wuxia martials is simply not Pathfinder.
A third common solution (the one I think the devs are trying to achieve) is to recognize and accept this disparity, work as a team with each guy doing his part (sometimes Aquaman just has to make the sandwiches for the real superheroes: "Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice, Aquaman uses his super powers to summon a can of tuna fish..."). Theoretically a good GM and/or a good campaign writer can create situations where the caster Superman types can do their awesome stuff and the martial Aquaman types can support that and not feel useless.
I personally think that many groups play mostly in line with this third solution (especially those guys who don't think the martial/caster disparity exists, or don't think it's a problem). And it seems that the material published by Paizo tries to achieve this, at least somewhat.
But obviously not everyone agrees. For some, this disparity is ruining the game. Some...
I think that we first need to ask whether or not this potential problem is a real problem at anyone's table.
For those who say yes they need to address why and how it is a problem.
I prefer to address things from the player side when I have a problem before messing with game mechanics. With that said one person's "fix" is another person's "broken" so instead of trying to find a one size fits all bandage we should have every person with a real problem say how it is a problem at their tables, and we help that person on an individual level.
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I'll be honest, if the disparity crowd is also saying that the GM can't use class based enemies and must use only 100% stock bestiary enemies then there is no point in continuing the discussion.
Not even Paizo's APs do that.
Heck Shattered Star Book 1 has custom Goblins, class-enabled Were-Rats, Class-Enabled Thugs, and Class-Enabled Humans.
If anything the disparity is worse once you take Class based enemies into account. Since a level 20 wizard/cleric/druid should probably have higher CR than a level 20 fighter.
Having to battle against a faction of wizards would be much harder than battling against a faction of fighters.
have been supported in numerous APs and published adventures from varying companies.
Definitely not Paizo's AP's.....
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N. jolly some spoilers ahead.
Legacy of fire - city of slavery doesn't allow unsanctioned magic. There's an alternate plane created by a wizard that is cursed (so create Demi plane is actively changed for plot stuff here). The players are dragged in and stuck there. You can teleport, but plane shift fails. You have to actually undo the magic of the plane to escape it.
Next adventure you get plane bound to,the city of brass in a cursed genies palace. Can't teleport out or plane shift. Can't contact divine agents, though can get divine spells. Summoning in works, but nothing gets out. Walls are made of living metal, so damage to them just grows back in about 5 minutes. You have to negotiate or destroy multiple opponents to get gear required to trigger an alarm that then brings the guardian of the place who has they key. Which is powered by its death. All of which can be solved as easily by Martials as casters.
The second AP from dungeon magazine had half the adventure on the isle of dread. An entire chapter is set in a demonically cursed environment where casters can't rest enough to recover spells. They have to seriously conserve spells for big fights or hope they had scrolls and wands to use as back up. And it came without warning due to a ship wreck. And this was a lost island, teleporting to it was really risky.
Carrion crown. There's a whole chapter set in an underwater city. To get there though, the group can use the diving bell built by the local scientist who's spent years trying to find the mystery of the lights under the water. You don't need a caster to get through it.
Zeitgeist is a setting and campaign by en world. The setting made it easy to control most caster tricks with an age old magic trick. An unbroken circle of precious metal. That's it. Can't portal in or out. Can't scry in or out. Prevents planar stuff. A simple idea in a campaign that allows easy ways to prevent casters running rampant over your stories.
That same company produced the war of the burning sky where similar restrictive stuff happened and it all made sense to the setting.
Second Darkness. The entire drow city is filled with defensive measures that negates huge amounts of caster tricks. Whole citadels in fact. What's more, the plot is protected by high priestess of the drow which means finding the information through divination etc is near impossible.
There's more, but I'm tired of writing this post
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I'll be honest, if the disparity crowd is also saying that the GM can't use class based enemies and must use only 100% stock bestiary enemies then there is no point in continuing the discussion.
Not even Paizo's APs do that.
Heck Shattered Star Book 1 has custom Goblins, class-enabled Were-Rats, Class-Enabled Thugs, and Class-Enabled Humans.
Nobody said that. They said to make fighter feel dumb you can go with bestiary, and to make wizard feel dumb, you need to make custom enemies. Stop twisting the words of people you are trying to argue with.
A combination good GMing (having enemies understand and prepare to fight casters) combined with this one simple solution I keep suggesting:
Combine the Rogue and Fighter class (gestalt) and make all saves strong saves.
There you go. Tons of skillpoints, great damage output AND neat customizable abilities per the Rogue talents.
I would play that.
This is something I've been advocating for a while now.
For me, this is more of a problem than the martial vs caster problem.
Fighters are effective in combat, but useless the rest of the time. Rogues are the opposite. Barbarians are similar to fighters, but perhaps merely need more skill points, as do paladins and clerics. One alternative way to address this is to make all classes get their class skills each level plus a couple of spare skill points that can be assigned by the player.
For the martial vs caster discrepancy, in my experience, as long as the party as a whole has the caster capabilities, we haven't suffered too much annoyance. It becomes more of a problem when a player with a character lacking in mental stats and or skills wants to role play that lack yet feels left out of the party discussions when deciding a course of action.
Just clarify what do we mean by useless outside of combat. What do we expect fighters to be doing outside of combat?
I like a charater who can bluff, intimidate and be a bit persuasive... Why on earth would I want to play in a group where only one character gets to interact with NPCs just because they have the highest charisma? Our typical bard player can be a right pain in the fundament - I wouldn't let him represent me unless my life depended on it lol.
Even so an extra 15 hp isn't really here nor there.
[Edited to be less snarky]
Why on earth would you buff Cha when you could just take Clever Wordplay, Student of Philosophy, Bruising Intellect and/or Cunning Liar. Seems to me like thrown away stat points that could go to a stat that modifies HP and saves.
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Because we use traits occasionally as background only. Plus that doesn't fit every time. It's not throwing away stat points if it's going towards a character feature that you want to represent. Sometimes you want to play a sociable, charismatic character and sometimes you are asked for straight up charisma checks. Eg binding.
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Why is the wizard on the ground where the fighter can hit him in the first place?
EDIT: Also what Doomed Hero said below.
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Nobody said that. They said to make fighter feel dumb you can go with bestiary, and to make wizard feel dumb, you need to make custom enemies. Stop twisting the words of people you are trying to argue with.I'll be honest, if the disparity crowd is also saying that the GM can't use class based enemies and must use only 100% stock bestiary enemies then there is no point in continuing the discussion.
Not even Paizo's APs do that.
Heck Shattered Star Book 1 has custom Goblins, class-enabled Were-Rats, Class-Enabled Thugs, and Class-Enabled Humans.
I'm not. I gave 2 class based enemies that are literal nightmares for casters, and they insisted I was insisting that it needed both to challenge a wizard. Also about custom... On one of the two the custom was 1 feat and 1 low level magical item.
You want to see a Wizard end up dead as a doornail?
Fighter, Step Up, with a pair of Stagger-Proof boots.
Use that against another fighter and the other fighter will say, "Meh." And bash it over the head. Use it against a Wizard and the Wizard will be screaming for mommy within seconds.
Edit: To add...
What makes this worse is it is WORSE for the Wizard if he or she goes first. That is the crazy thing. The Wizard goes first and then the Fighter goes: "As an immediate action, during the act of spellcasting, I use my 1/day boots ability to move 30 feet up against the wizard, his casting provokes an attack of opportunity, I hit him, I disrupt his spell... My turn? I full attack him.
You're missing what the disparity discussion is about. Please refer to this thread.
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I'm still at a loss as to how taking agency away from one character improves the agency of another. Can someone explain that to me?
As far as I'm concerned, fighters with a level above ten ought to be pretty impressive figures in society. The saga of Beowulf has the king of a region treat the warrior as an equal rather than a subordinate. That's significant.
I think high level martials should be able to rally nations and inspire armies. They are, after all, completely bonkers warriors that no normal human could match. That's inspiring to the people.
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Just clarify what do we mean by useless outside of combat. What do we expect fighters to be doing outside of combat?
An anecdote to exemplify my point: I played a barbarian, with a custom half-troll template. My Int, Wis and Cha were all 8 or less. At 4th level, I had 4 skill points. The only positive skill totals I had were Swim and Climb.
I tried to role play my low mental abilities, which meant that my character didn't really contribute to any out-of-combat interactions between the party and NPC's, or help come up with ideas for the party to carry out other than 'hit it'.As a player, I could have come up with stuff for the party to do, but my character shouldn't.
Compare this to a rogue, who has skill points, knowledges, is expected to have urban contacts, etc. (My barbarian had contacts with his tribe but we weren't in my homeland.) Even a rogue with low mental stats still has skill points, and a face rogue has far more options.
If you combine rogues and fighters, you don't become any more powerful. You become more versatile, with more options. Which is part of the point of this thread.
Because we use traits occasionally as background only. Plus that doesn't fit every time. It's not throwing away stat points if it's going towards a character feature that you want to represent. Sometimes you want to play a sociable, charismatic character and sometimes you are asked for straight up charisma checks. Eg binding.
1: Someone with good social skills is FAR more "sociable" and "charismatic" that someone with a higher charisma. If you're a wizard with those traits and a higher int, your more "sociable" that either a cha 10 or 14.
2: Binding I guess is something, but I see it rarely.3: the rules assume 2 but even if you have none at start, you can pick 2 for a feat. Even then, seems a bargain to switch skills to int for a feat over CHA points unless you planned to specialize in binding magic.
Why is the wizard on the ground where the fighter can hit him in the first place?
EDIT: Also what Doomed Hero said below.
Why is he VISIBLE and on the ground?
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In a narrative game, the entire concept of power is defined by the ability to effect the narrative.
There is literally no other way to exercise power (and no other way to have power at all) than to effect the narrative. Strong characters are the ones with the greatest narrative effect. Weak characters are the ones with the least narrative effect.
Versatility allows the narrative to be effected in the largest number of ways.
Versatility is power.
Seriously dude. I have to wonder what the point is in a railroad game. I can get a better experience out of a videogame.
It varies class to class. Off the top of my head a Fighter needs:1 Adamantine Weapon
1 Magic Weapon
1 Ranged Weapon (slings ain't bad)
1 Blunt Weapon
1 Slashing Weapon
1 Silver Weapon
1 Piercing Weapon
1 Weapon that can deal with swarms
1 Cold Iron Weapon
1 Reach WeaponThose can be doubled (or tripled) up.
So...
Say, level 12-ish a weapon load out might be...
1 +2 Flaming Adamantine Longsword
(Handles swarms, DR adamantine, DR slashing, DR Magic)1 Cold Iron Heavy Mace
(Handles DR Blunt, DR Cold Iron)1 Silver Longspear
(Handles DR Piercing, DR Silver, Reach Weapon)1 +1 Sling with Silver, Adamantine, and Cold Iron bullets.
Probably need a way to fly in a pinch, so a feather token maybe. Potion of See Invisible. Lesee an item with a heightened Continual Flame can be useful if they don't have dark vision, a crowbar, etc etc.
Just the basic, "prepared Warrior" stuff.
I think the only real problem I see here is you can't legallly have a potion of see invis.
I don't really care about criticisms of golf-bagging or whatever as your typical medieval soldier carried more than a couple of weapons themselves.
So outside of that what would your typical adventuring kit look like?
I point again to most wizard Characters in APs having Con 10 - 12.
Just to be clear: the example for fighters not being able to affect things out of combat is a half troll barbarian with Int, Wis and Cha 8 or less and 4 skill points? I think that might be your starting problem.
Surely there are any number of methods of influencing people through choices. We are playing skull and shackles and the PCs decisions affect the story, not the method by which they achieve them.
People keep saying the phrase 'affect the narrative' can someone give an example of affective get the narrative through magical means that couldn't be achieved through normal means - I say normal as most residents in a campaign world are not casters.
Isn't a bag of flour as useful as glitterdust if you know where the wizard is?
Absolutely. Though all but he most extreme diseases can be healed with the heal skill and 4 ability points for a full day of rest and a heal check isn't bad. Most low level healers can't cast more than two or three lesser restorations a day, max.
But to be fair most casters can do nothing about the heal/greater restoration issues - that isn't limited to casters, its limited to healers.
If you put the party against mummy's then you need to find some method of curing mummy rot, otherwise you're just a poor DM. We happily ploughed through Carrion Crown with a witch as a healer because the DM felt throwing channel energy around would spoil the dark mood of the path. It was great fun. He had to make sure we were able to overcome the challenges though otherwise he's a <€}%
Quite a lot has been said in the 389 comments already posted and I am considering adopting some of the fun ideas as house rules. However, one paragraph from the original post was mostly ignored:
A third common solution (the one I think the devs are trying to achieve) is to recognize and accept this disparity, work as a team with each guy doing his part (sometimes Aquaman just has to make the sandwiches for the real superheroes: "Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice, Aquaman uses his super powers to summon a can of tuna fish..."). Theoretically a good GM and/or a good campaign writer can create situations where the caster Superman types can do their awesome stuff and the martial Aquaman types can support that and not feel useless.
This works, but it requires skill from the caster player. In addition, the caster character will earn a reputation as a considerate soul who watches out for his friends or a tactical genius who makes the most of the manpower available. This does not fit some character concepts.
I like to illustrate with examples from my campaigns. In my Jade Regent campaign, the party had to defend a fortress built out of a blind-end canyon against 19 earth yai oni. This was a homebrew encounter, because I added some smart tactical commanders to the oni. The commander's plan was that the first wave of earth yai oni would bypass the stone walls of the fortress with Passwall and drive the defenders into the open where the second wave of oni with Area-of-Effect abilities would have an advantage. The oni were flying and invisible.
The party was 14th level: ninja, arcanist, sorcerer, samurai, and ranger, with two 14th-level NPCs, oracle and bard, and many lower-level NPCs, the strongest an 11th-level barbarian cohort of the samurai. (The fighter player was absent for most of the battle.) That gave them 16th-level effectiveness. Earth yai oni are CR 13, and nineteen of them is about CR 21. So this was a CR +5 challenge. The party knew the oni army was coming, but had only one day to prepare. They evacuated the non-combatants and equipped the low-level soldiers with acid flasks.
The ninja, arcanist, and bard could use See Invisibility, and the time oracle and yokai-hunter ranger had similar abilities. The samurai and sorcerer lacked such abilities, because the sorcerer was a dedicated enchanter who was guarding a high-level Dominated enemy oracle taken prisoner.
The first thing the arcanist did was cast Glitterdust on a cluster of invisible oni so that the samurai and barbarian could attack them. He also cast Fly on the samurai's horse to that flying was no longer a defense for the oni. The oracle and bard teamed up with soldiers to help them, i.e., keep the NPCs away in their own battles to focus game time on the PCs, but the oracle transferred over to the samurai and barbarian when the barbarian needed magical support. The ninja, useless in combat at these levels, kept watch for the sorcerer. Her agility did help when the oni used their Earthquake ability to collapse a room.
The arcanist, ranger, and bard were the only three characters who could combat the oni on their own, due to their magic powers, and the bard was an NPC. The oracle and ninja could see the oni but not hurt them effectively. The samurai, barbarian, and sorcerer could hurt the oni, if they could see them. But through teamwork, all characters became effective.
The martial-caster disparity existed; in fact, the arcanist had retrained from a magus when the player decided that the magus's martial abilities were no longer relevant. But the rules usually allow teamwork that hides the disparity, and the players are rewarded for using those rules.
In most high-level games, the party needs fast travel to avoid trivial cross-country travel. Who wants to fight 2nd-level highway bandits at 10th level, because the setting cannot justify 8th-level bandits? If the arcane caster can teleport, then the party has fast travel. Due to frequently running large parties, we use a house rule that a high-Con character can hold his breath in a bag of holding to allow the entire party to teleport off one spell. This has the nice side effect that the party won't teleport directly into the enemy stronghold, since they need time to extract the travelers from the bag. Before Teleport, the wizard cast Phantom Steed. Just like a low-level party needs a rogue to unlock doors, the high-level party needs a wizard for fast travel. It is a role.
The arcane caster has another role of battlefield control, which includes debuffing the magical threats to that the martial characters can handle them. The disparity is that the caster plays many more roles than the other characters, but so long as everyone has at least one role that lets them have fun, the players can ignore the imbalance.
Ignoring the imbalance is not as good as having no imbalance, but it will serve as a workaround until the imbalance is corrected.
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Wizard Defenses, re:
James Jacobs is not a rules expert. In fact, I caught him contradicting his own prior post on how Resist Fire and protection from fire work with saving throws, and he admitted it. Don't ask JJ for rulings. You can ask how he plays in HIS CAMPAIGN...but not for rulings.
As for the rest: Blinking is a Ring. Displacement is a 24/7 cloak. Mirror Image is a low level spell that is quickenable. Improved Invis still falls in the level range of Contingency if he does not want to leave.
So, yeah, a wizard can DEFINITELY have all 4 of those effects going in 1 round or less if he wants to arrange things that way. It's not all that hard once you have a few levels. (Quicken/Contingent Mirror Image and Invis, Activate Ring, Cloak is already active - Done!). If the Ring is Command Word, you can even cast an offensive spell...or escape spell, as you choose.
As for the miss chances:
Invisibility - you miss because you can't see him.
Mirror Image - You miss because he's not the image you're swinging at.
Displacement - You miss because you're swinging right at him, but he's not where you think he is.
Blink - You miss because he blinks away before you can hit him.
=Those are all different kinds of miss chances. You can argue that Displacement and Invisibility don't stack, but the rest definitely do, and closing your eyes won't help you with Mirror Images or Blink.
As for sleep - if sleep is a problem for more then one night, that's what Rings of Sustenance to cut the need down to 2 hours, and Rope Tricks for safe other-dimensional hidey-holes are MADE FOR.
These things can be circumvented. They are MADE to be circumvented with a little cleverness, the same way Martials wear armor. It's a problem requiring some investment, and then it isn't a problem anymore.
==Aelryinth
Casters to do an edge when it comes to equips , since the can craft them half the price (while i have yet to play at a table where this is allowed AND the crafter dont just also make equips for the martials for half the price also , which means they get the benefit without paying the feat) , but if you start considering them , then a martial should have one to bypass displacement , should have one to blink after the caster , should have one for...
When you count in equips , it becomes a never ending cicle of what a char could/should have if he wants to do X/Y...
It's also a lot easier to swap out gear and spells then feats.
Ideally, the martial should be able to sense the unseen. Have you looked at the pre-reqs for Imp Blind-fighting? 19 Wis? ()*&()& But what you want is BLINDSIGHT. or Tremorsense. or something some nitwit with access to level 1 spells can't dump on you.
it would be nice if a martial could shut down magical flight and dimensional hopscotch. Who cares about being 'able' to fly if I can just take it away from you? I'll settle for it. You think you can teleport away? Dream on. You're staying right here, bastard...
Nope.
meh.
==Aelryinth
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Are people really asking paizo to create 4e? that's total parity between classes.
Wizards suck it up at low levels, and get rewarded for their sacrifice at higher levels.
GMs should tailor encounters to their group so everyone has an important role to play, and avoid having the spotlight on only one PC. It's not easy to do this *all* the time. Sometimes a specific character is the star of the session, sometimes that happens just for one encounter, and that's fine as long as it moves around from character to character.
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Are people really asking paizo to create 4e? that's total parity between classes.
Wizards suck it up at low levels, and get rewarded for their sacrifice at higher levels.
GMs should tailor encounters to their group so everyone has an important role to play, and avoid having the spotlight on only one PC. It's not easy to do this *all* the time. Sometimes a specific character is the star of the session, sometimes that happens just for one encounter, and that's fine as long as it moves around from character to character.
I believe this is Jiggy Argument 3 or 4?
referenced 4e AND being weak at low levels. And the GM 'just needs to house rule."
==Aelryinth