Also, is there some reason you can't play a battlefield controller now? Is it because the god-mode battlefield control spells are all late game spells, or do you feel there simply aren't enough control spells in the game yet?
Why would I even want to make attack rolls? I've played wizards where I could probably count on one hand the number of times I rolled to hit.
What I'm asking for is battlefield control.
And a lot of control spells now need to hit EAC. You need to hit EAC with Dominate Person and that is the hardest control spell in the game right now.
Although it is possible that the majority of pathfinder players disliked battlefield control wizards (I have no idea of knowing), I doubt the majority dislike the idea of area denial itself. There are already effects in Starfinder that do the same thing, like the Grease spell and Stickybomb grenades.
Generally speaking, I find the most important thing with any kind of denial-based option is that it shouldn't completely invalidate or neutralize opponents. Inconvenience and slow down, sure. But any effect that goes "Right, you failed a save so you can sit out the next five turns" can be frustrating on both sides of the GM screen.
Grease and Fog Cloud are in my opinion examples of good control spells that will, if used intelligently, force the opponent to choose between bad options. On the other hand Dazing Ball Lightning shenanigans, Vacuum the Wizard builds* and the various "no save just suck" spell combos that don't allow the opponent any options at all, are trademarks of bad control spells.
The 1/2 BAB needs to be offset for spells or your pure caster isn't better at it's schtick than the hybrid technomancer and mystic classes, in fact it's worse...
So add a class feature that gives them a bonus to hit with spells (and not with weapons).
That is what I am suggesting.
I was thinking the same. Specifically, I was thinking our potential space wizard could get that instead of weapon specialization at 3rd. Something like "Esoteric Focus: When rolling a spell attack, your base attack bonus is considered to be equal to your space wizard class level."
I'll have to double check the language of how vigilantes and mediums, and I think war priests are written, since they have similar abilities, but you get the idea.
Edit: alternatively, this could be an item for purchase that would replace the money sink weapons currently are. Like a 4E implement that gives bonus to spell attack rolls.
There could be a "Manipulator" class, where you choose your Manipulator Attunement between Earth, Air, Energy, or Dimensional. Earth would allow you to create and destroy metal/stone to build walls and the like. Air would let you slow your enemies, reposition them, etc. Energy could do as some of you suggest, and provide a bonus to-hit with your spells targeting EAC, along with giving some blast abilities. Dimensional could let you create pits, phase out enemy attacks, hop your allies around the battlefield, etc. And each of them would have many other cool abilities as well, of course, these are just examples. They'd share a common spell list but get different class features.
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I honestly think the 3/4 BAB caster is an awesome way that paizo has embraced to achieve balance.
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You know what else is balanced? 4e. Balance is important and good, but saying "we want everyone to be the same so that the game is balanced" is bad.
We can differentiate and balance. It's really not impossible.
Yeah, I would really like a game to be balanced in the sense that Class A is really good at important thing 1, while Class B is really good at important thing 2, and Class C is really good at important thing 3, and Class D is effective (but not really good) at all three. I'd rather not have a game where there's only 1 important thing and everyone is equally good at it.
The problem with Wizards (and Druids/Clerics/other Tier1/0 classes) in 3.x is that it was pathetically easy to make them really good (and potentially best) at all the important things.
I still think you can have the good kind of balance with full casters, especially if they work like Sorcerers/Oracles.
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Yeah, I would really like a game to be balanced in the sense that Class A is really good at important thing 1, while Class B is really good at important thing 2, and Class C is really good at important thing 3, and Class D is effective (but not really good) at all three. I'd rather not have a game where there's only 1 important thing and everyone is equally good at it.
The problem with Wizards (and Druids/Clerics/other Tier1/0 classes) in 3.x is that it was pathetically easy to make them really good (and potentially best) at all the important things.
Beware the other direction though. Another way to unbalance things is if you have a class really good at 1, but no way to contribute at all to 2 or 3. Even if 2 and 3 aren't really the class's thing, they should at least not be deadweight.
I honestly think the 3/4 BAB caster is an awesome way that paizo has embraced to achieve balance.
I certainly think its simpler, but whatever makes the game more fun. If we have to bend the rules and make a class that's able to use jolting surge but would have trouble slapping their own face to achieve that, let's try it.
And honestly I think we could use spell focus items for mystics and technomancers anyways.So some ideas I've had while reading this thread:
- I still think a 5E warlock chassis is a good start. Maybe a few more spells before tapping out, since combats do last longer, but their refreshing spells is I think the best way to achieve "casting all day" without also running the risk of "3 minute mage."
- That said, for fights where you DO want to nova, spending resolve to get back spell slots sounds fun. And dangerous, but that's life in the big leagues.
- A slightly less dangerous way of going about it is to let you burn resolve, but get some of it back when you get your spell slots back. Like, say, at 3rd you regain one resolve point you burned into a spell slot after combat has finished. If needed, you can immediately use that point to refresh your stamina. At 9th and 15th you gain back additional points.
- I'm going to go ahead and start calling the space wizard (space warlocks?) Esoterics. They're in the game lore already, might as well use that as flavor.
- At every even level, you should gain bonus spells along a theme (like battlefield control, blasting). Given the flavor, I'm calling these Thesis. This is how you'd select your area of focus, and can also be traded out for Archetypes.
- I'm thinking you'd get at least 2 thesis, one at 2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th, and 18th; the other at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 20th.
- Thesis should also come with a base ability. Not much stronger than a feat, since you'd get it pretty early, but potentially let it upgrade throughout your esoteric career.
- That leaves 5th, 7th, 11th, 13th, 17th, and 19th unaccounted for. Although I suppose you can pick up a 3rd thesis at 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th, and just leave 5th and 13th bare. Or they could potentially get defenses bonuses at those levels, maybe some way to boost their space fighting checks, idk.
I...guess I should fire up word and start brewing this.
Beware the other direction though. Another way to unbalance things is if you have a class really good at 1, but no way to contribute at all to 2 or 3. Even if 2 and 3 aren't really the class's thing, they should at least not be deadweight.
Yeah, I was trying not to be too verbose while still getting my point across. I meant for "important thing 1" to refer to a party "role" like tank, which could encompass multiple things (and multiple ways of doing the same thing).
I'm not sure I agree about them not being dead weight, though. At least not in the way I'm used to thinking about party makeup or when referring to specific situations. It's totally okay for me if a member of a particular class is completely useless some of the time. That's part of why we're not all adventuring by ourselves.
For example, I think it's fine for one or two party members to be the "face" and for the half-orc barbarian to know he should probably be quiet and let the half-elven bard talk to the elven king. As long as the game design also allows for situations where "diplomacy" means that the half-orc barbarian has to fight the tribal champion and the half-elven bards "flowery" words would just get them into more trouble, I think that's all fine. (I know this is a Fantasy example, but it's the first thing that came to mind.)
As long as spellcasters don't just have a 2nd level spell for dealing with both situations, I don't think they'll end up broken the way they are in 3.x.
What you described is an example of "able to contribute And not be total deadweight."
An example of total deadweight is our hypothetical Esoteric that is a complete technophobe. Give him a computer, and he throws it against the nearest wall. And misses, because he has a BAB of a ground sloth, but never mind. His contribution to space combat is holding on tightly and pressing random buttons, since his engineering, computer, and piloting skills are all untrained and cross-class. This doesn't actually do anything, because the captain is spending all of their actions covering that role instead and has disabled the display.
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Well in think we've answered the OP's original question, no 95th level casters would not be balanced by removing the buff spells. But we've also concluded that a pure caster is wanted and that there should be ways to creates a pure caster class that is balanced. I think At this point we should start a new thread around building a couple of pure caster classes. I like the esoterics idea animated paper had. I'd also like to create a druid and cleric space analog too.
Okay. I believe I'm in full agreement, then.
Instead of them being total technophobes. I would recommend just making them unable to use armor (not just no proficiency, no casting/class abilities if they're wearing armor). Instead give them a class ability to create armor (including environmental protections), but have it be 1-3 points lower in AC compared to average light armor for their character level. To offset the WBL advantage that gives them, you could add in something like the spell focuses you mentioned. They can't cast without (expensive) "wands" or whatever of the appropriate type(s) at appropriate levels. Maybe they're all two handed so while they can use machine guns if they want to blow the feats, they'll have to waste actions switching guns for wands to cast and vice versa. Maybe make it so they can't use cybernetics a la shadowrun (but the bio-engineered +10% equivalent and hybrid/magic items are fine). I don't think they need to avoid technology entirely. I don't see why even the most curmudgeonly alchemist wouldn't have learned how to press buttons by now. If nothing else, they need to email their colleagues.
Just my 2cp. (or should I say .02credits?)
I'm not familiar enough with 5e to give an educated comment on the class build you're proposing. I think it works, even if it's not what I necessarily want, but I'd have to see it to be sure.
Good point. Excuse my anthropocentricity. My best friend is a Skittermander. :p
I had a thought on how to limit armor for a pure caster class. If we start with a class that is 1/2 BAB but acts as a full BAB with targeted spells through a class feature. We can add any armor check penalty to the class feature bonus. This would mean that heavy armors are not usually a good choice and even some light armors are poor choices. Also it means less fiddling with game mechanics.
So I added a thread in the homebrew forum where we can build a caster focused class. Let's jump over there since we are fully into homebrew country now :)
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Ever been primed for combat, playing a Paladin, not a particularly great Reflex Save class and then get slapped with a Pit Trap spell? I have. I sat out that entire fight unable to contribute, but I had a lot of fun hearing other people play.
That's pretty easily solved, add "The pit cannot be conjured so that it occupies the same space as a creature or another object." to the spell's description. This way it becomes a low level alternative to wall of stone, one that can circumvented with a decent athletics check. The pit can be used to create choke-points or block off an avenue of approach, but not to neutralize players. Off-topic: It's a bit weird to hear about a paladin failing saves, they tend to have godlike saves. They're a control build's worst nightmare.
Oh, hey, how about a situation where you get slapped with Hold Person. That is a barrel full of laughs to sit out and hear other people do stuff.
Hold Person is in Starfinder already, it's a level 2 mystic spell. It also lets you make a new save on each turn, how many times in a row did you fail the save?
Hey, how about Darkness? Oh you can't see. Thus you can't do a whole lot? Hah! Sucks to be you!
Darkness is another spell effect that's already in Starfinder. It's also fairly easy to circumvent. If you don't have a baseline darkvision ability I'd suggest looking into buying Darkvision capacitors (augment), Infrared Sensors (armor upgrade) a spell augment of Darkvision (mystic 2 spell), or if all else fails - retreat. It's only a 20 foot radius.
There are definitely control issues in Pathfinder but I honestly can't say I would have considered Create Pit or Darkness among them. Hold Person's iffy, but it rewards having a decent will save and most people will be able to break out of it in a turn or at most two. I'm more worried about spells like Dominate Person, where a clever user can force you to sit out a full fight because of one failed will save.
...And I just checked, Dominate Person is already in Starfinder. It becomes available to mystics at level 13, and works the same way as Dominate Person in Pathfinder. That makes me quite a bit less excited to try late game Starfinder. :(
Well, I would spend many hours carefully crafting encounters, only to have them get blown apart. The enemies I crafted to get shut down by 1 spell and be left in save or suck vs DCs that they can't possibly save against. I felt like, "Why did I bother spending all of this time to set up what was supposed to be a fun and interesting encounter if it is all going to be shut down by things that I can't do much about?"
I absolutely see your point here and this is what we'd be aiming at avoiding. Again, Vacuum builds, Slumber Hex, dazing metamagic shenanigans etc, anything that can completely shut down an encounter with a single failed roll should be avoided at all costs.
Guess what? For the group that had the God Wizard? I stopped planning interesting encounters. I just threw enemies at them with no care for tactics and planning because I found that I wasn't willing to waste my time.
Intentionally making dull encounters sounds counterproductive and honestly, more than a bit passive-aggressive. At that point you'd be better off either sitting down with the players and discussing how and why you're not enjoying the game and together work some changes to fix the issue, or if that doesn't work then take a break from GMing that particular campaign.
It is fun for the sniper and annoying for everyone who isn't the sniper. No thanks, not in my game, have a nice day.
I disagree that Control builds are annoying for the rest of the party since if you play it right then everybody should benefit from it. If anything it can be more fun than straight DPS monsters since a true Control build is a support build. It's true purpose is to set up situations for other people to shine - funneling enemies one at a time at the behemoth barbarian so he doesn't get swarmed, slowing down enemies so the archer can pummel them with impunity, blinding an enemy so a cleric can run in and land a clutch heal etc.
The Battlefield Control Wizard is fun in the same way the Sniper is fun.
The goal here isn't to faithfully recreate Pathfinder's Battlefield Control wizard though. "Control caster" is a nuanced term, we don't have to choose between "completely useless" and "God-like".
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I enjoy playing against enemies that use interesting control tactics.
No one remembers "that fight where I used Manyshot and Rapid Shot every single round," they remember the fight "four of the five party members got nauseated with a stinking cloud and we had to fall back to regroup."
Additionally, however much it sucks to get knocked out of a fight or hindered, it can make it more interesting for the rest of the party. Your only frontliner gets frightened and runs away? Now you have to adapt your tactics to deal with that. Your only ranged character gets trapped behind a wall of stone? Now the rest of you need to figure out how you are going to deal with those flying attackers. Sure, it may suck to miss that fight, but overall I enjoy the interesting challenges presented, and I would miss the on-the-fly adaptation if I were playing in a system where the design was to avoid debuffs and control. (I'm not saying Starfinder is that system, but it almost sounds like some people here want to keep it that way as much as possible.)
The key part for me is that control effects should be temporary (ie have a limited duration), avoidable (either by clever maneuvering or by checking against save or AC, if not both), and if they do come into effect they should have a decently common relief option available. Let's do some comparisons using Blind-effect spells:
I think Glitterdust, while quite powerful for a level 2 spell, is a good control spell. The effect is avoidable (will save), is temporary (rounds/level) and can be saved against for free so even if you fail the first save it's a temporary drawback (relief). I'm not convinced it needs the anti-invisibility utility, AoE blindness is already a very good effect and it kind of steps on See Invisibility's main schtick. Then again, Invisibility is pretty damn good in its own right so having more counters isn't a bad thing.
Mudball I think is a bit too good, especially for a level 1 spell. With good timing it's effectively a 1-round blindness, and ranged touch attacks are very likely to hit in Pathfinder. In my last game the faerie dragon familiar was toting a wand of Mudball and even though the DC 11 reflex save was trivially easy to make, he'd still consistently blind CR 16-17 creatures with it long enough for the rogue to obliterate them with sneak attacks. Porting it to Starfinder wouldn't be too bad since the gap between EAC and KAC is much, much smaller.
Finally, Blindness/Deafness. This spell is a problem. Not only is it permanent, it comes online a full level before you get access to Remove Blindness. The difference between minute/level and permanent duration debuffs rarely matter for enemies since they tend to only stay alive for a single encounter, but a player's whose character is hit by this spell may as well start playing Angry Birds because he's gonna be useless until that condition is removed. Most GMs I've played with actively avoid casting Blindness/Deafness at low levels as an unwritten rule, even if it's written into the creature's tactics.