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I'll follow your campaigns with "and banned in every PFS game ever ran"I'll follow your anecdotal evidence with: it's been allowed in all the campaigns I've played ever.NPC's only in most campaigns.Who gets to access all that power?
And so? House ruling the power away means it's there, and face it, PFS is nothing but bunch of house rules.
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We had this thread already, Warrior Spirit gets you any weapon ability or even a feat when you use it.
You can use this and Barroom Brawler to multiple variable feat slots, and the AWT that grants Item Mastery allows you to bypass item prerequisites. Whatever silly niche things you want can be done basically for free whenever, considering you can take versatile training to play around with skills and retrain them on the fly.
This is not news.
Being able to switch your training up on the daily and manipulate your weapon to be whatever you need while retaining the best flat damage and AC is pretty solid narrative power. People need to stop sh*ting on the fighter.
Also, snub.
You are being very and unduly aggressive. I suggest you dial back the hostility.
And again, the Fighter who operates at the extreme level of system mastery you suggest, drawing on so many specific features from so many specific sources, and requiring knowledge of so many options from so many sources just to keep pace with a core or mostly core mage.
More importantly, it breaks the suspension of disbelief that the mage of comparison is holding back on their more absurd options like the core Simulacrum spell. You're bringing up 17th-level Fighter options like Stunning Critical, but at that level, a Wizard can literally scry the Fighter from the other side of the continent until they take a bath, then pull out a metamagic rod, cast Extended Time Stop, teleport into the Fighter's bathroom, drop a few spells, teleport out, and with absolutely no idea what happened or how, they're naked, in a force cage, with multiple lingering AoE damaging effects and a gated in greater fiend. Whether or not the Fighter lives, they simply don't have that kind of flexibility or tool set, nor a means to meaningfully counter those kinds of strategies.
And you still haven't even touched the greater issue that the Fighter is not given the tools to meaningfully interact with the world outside the context of combat.
Being able to switch your training up on the daily and manipulate your weapon to be whatever you need while retaining the best flat damage and AC is pretty solid narrative power. People need to stop sh*ting on the fighter.
It's a solid narrative power, sure, but it's not a unique one, nor is it a particularly broad narrative power. It's kind of like saying, "Being able to switch your spells daily and manipulate the battlefield to be whatever you need while throwing down massive damage output to groups of opponents (that martials cannot match) and keeping yourself at a distance where AC doesn't particularly matter is a pretty solid narrative power. People need to stop sh*tting on the wizard."
Basically, we're playing the game of, "Anything you can do, I can do better." Also, it's been firmly established through gameplay that if you boost your AC high enough, in order for your character to face meaningful challenges, the GM is forced to oppose you with things that do not interact directly with your AC, making your AC meaningless (which naturally renders "retaining the best AC" meaningless as well). Power-turtling for the lose.
Best wishes!
And you still haven't even touched the greater issue that the Fighter is not given the tools to meaningfully interact with the world outside the context of combat.
I feel like meaningfully interacting with the world outside the context of combat shouldn't really require anything beyond "talking to NPCs" and "making choices about how one course of action is preferable to another."
I don't think that any definition of "meaningfully interact with the world" that requires flight, teleportation, summoning or demiplanes is a good one for general use.
Like if a party has to get inside a stronghold in order to retrieve the map, everybody has the option of getting in via stealth, wholesale slaughter, or just lying your way inside. Sure, the Wizard can just teleport to the place the map is, but that doesn't make those other choices meaningless.
And so? House ruling the power away means it's there, and face it, PFS is nothing but bunch of house rules.I'll follow your campaigns with "and banned in every PFS game ever ran"I'll follow your anecdotal evidence with: it's been allowed in all the campaigns I've played ever.NPC's only in most campaigns.Who gets to access all that power?
Being there and being accessible are two different things. Between PFS, campaign time constraints, and outright gm banning it (as legitimate an argument as any "my gm only allows core book stuff" that always gets brought up when WMH and AMH are referred to) I feel relatively confident in my statement that its primarily an NPC thing.
edit: theres a thread in the advice forum right now about someone who's gm not only banned craft wondrous item, but limited the number of scrolls the wizard was allowed to have crafted at any given time. So, we can do the dance but i kind of think ive got a good chance of burying you in examples until i get bored of doing it and move on.
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And so? House ruling the power away means it's there, and face it, PFS is nothing but bunch of house rules.I'll follow your campaigns with "and banned in every PFS game ever ran"I'll follow your anecdotal evidence with: it's been allowed in all the campaigns I've played ever.NPC's only in most campaigns.Who gets to access all that power?
Being there and being accessible are two different things. Between PFS, campaign time constraints, and outright gm banning it (as legitimate an argument as any "my gm only allows core book stuff" that always gets brought up when WMH and AMH are referred to) I feel relatively confident in my statement that its primarily an NPC thing.
edit: theres a thread in the advice forum right now about someone who's gm not only banned craft wondrous item, but limited the number of scrolls the wizard was allowed to have crafted at any given time. So, we can do the dance but i kind of think ive got a good chance of burying you in examples until i get bored of doing it and move on.
You can bury me in examples all night long, but what does it prove? That GMs take steps to prevent disparity by taking away part of caster tools. You are still making my argument for me. We also severely limit any type of minionmancy and boost the skill points of fighters does that mean that rules of the game don't allow you to bind fiends or raise dead?
You engaged under the premise that crafting items wasnt primarily a NPC thing in most campaigns. You're trying to shift the goalposts to "well it exists!"
Fine, it exists, and in most campaigns its primarily an NPC occupation and they're npc feats.
It exists is not an argument that discounts mine in any way.
I feel like meaningfully interacting with the world outside the context of combat shouldn't really require anything beyond "talking to NPCs" and "making choices about how one course of action is preferable to another."
I don't think that any definition of "meaningfully interact with the world" that requires flight, teleportation, summoning or demiplanes is a good one for general use.
Like if a party has to get inside a stronghold in order to retrieve the map, everybody has the option of getting in via stealth, wholesale slaughter, or just lying your way inside. Sure, the Wizard can just teleport to the place the map is, but that doesn't make those other choices meaningless.
All things are relative. The mages also have the tool of unsupported roleplay, but that's not relevant to any discussion of the rules.
One group is given far more and more potent tools, over which the GM has very little say within the bounds of fair play. Powers like, "Oh, the antagonist is a demon, and we know their name? That's great, 'cuz that means I can now cast Planar Binding to bring them to a place of our choosing to fight on our terms. Oh, and as I perform the ritual, the Cleric readies Dimensional Anchor to drop as the demon appears so they can't call in reinforcements." GM has to walk on pins and needles to prevent little tricks like that from the mage, in ways they don't have to even think about from anyone else.
Being there and being accessible are two different things. Between PFS, campaign time constraints, and outright gm banning it (as legitimate an argument as any "my gm only allows core book stuff" that always gets brought up when WMH and AMH are referred to) I feel relatively confident in my statement that its primarily an NPC thing.
edit: theres a thread in the advice forum right now about someone who's gm not only banned craft wondrous item, but limited the number of scrolls the wizard was allowed to have crafted at any given time. So, we can do the dance but i kind of think ive got a good chance of burying you in examples until i get bored of doing it and move on.
Crafting is presented as a standard and available rule, and is even explicitly given to some classes as an explicit class starting from the core rule book. The current point of comparison, stamina and combat tricks, is an optional rule from a late cycle splat.
"No crafting" is a house rule.
"No stamina" is not a house rule.
Yes, you can houserule. But if you houserule, it's a houserule.
In your experience, crafting is mostly an NPC thing. In my experience, I would say most of my PCs have engaged the crafting system in some capacity, whether or not it had any significant mechanical benefit to do so, as I'm fond of artists and artisans as a character type. And I've encountered very few GMs who ban crafting. Only some that limit crafting in character creation.
That's why the rules of the game are the default for general discussion; to account for such variance in table norms and houserules.
Again, given that PFS is as large as it is, my position isn't "standard vs house" Thats a theoretical consideration, mine is a practical one. PFS disallowing it takes a huge chunk out of the campaigns that allow pc crafting, whether its available in standard rule or not. Add in campaign time considerations, GM's who limit or ban it outright and I'm comfortable making the claim, that in campaigns as a whole, crafting is rarer than the theorycrafting on these boards would suggest. People's anecdotal evidence about their campaigns is on the face of it crushed by the weight of every single PFS campaign being run flat out banning it.
Again, i have issues with the choices PFS makes, i dislike a lot of the things they ban, but its common enough that it should be considered and likely outweighs everyone on this forum's experience with campaigns by a factor of 10 or more.
... I'm comfortable making the claim, that in campaigns as a whole, crafting is rarer than the theorycrafting on these boards would suggest. ...
Your argument essentially boils down to "My theorycrafting is better then every other persons theorycrafting."
Sorry if I don't feel that is an impressive argument.The bottom line is that magic item crafting allows, (and even expects) a PC with a couple crafting feats to have up to %150 of WBL. The devs have been very, very clear about that. Magic items increase a characters power, and casters, (especially wizards), are the king of crafting, while non-casters struggle to participate at all. You could dismiss this as "messageboard theorycrafting", but it is explicitly the way the devs have said it should be handled in game, so I put more weight on their words then your opinions - with all due respect.
... I'm comfortable making the claim, that in campaigns as a whole, crafting is rarer than the theorycrafting on these boards would suggest. ...Your argument essentially boils down to "My theorycrafting is better then every other persons theorycrafting."
Sorry if I don't feel that is an impressive argument.The bottom line is that magic item crafting allows, (and even expects) a PC with a couple crafting feats to have up to %150 of WBL. The devs have been very, very clear about that. Magic items increase a characters power, and casters, (especially wizards), are the king of crafting, while non-casters struggle to participate at all. You could dismiss this as "messageboard theorycrafting", but it is explicitly the way the devs have said it should be handled in game, so I put more weight on their words then your opinions - with all due respect.
No my argument is that PFS is a pretty large segment of the campaigns run and its banned there. Adding in the anecdotal evidence of campaigns that don't give enough time to craft or outright ban/control it throwing it in as an automatic allowance makes less sense than allowing AWT/AAT as at least PFS allows those.
If your theorycrafting ignores PFS as a % of campaigns people play in, your theorycrafting is flawed.
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At this point the actual topic should probably just be banned from these forums as the discussions never actually go anywhere. Proponents of martials point out things that narrow the gap, proponents of casters claim it isn't enough, people continue to play martials and have fun and the people continue to snivel about the disparity on the boards with theorycrafted casters that never see play in a real game.
It can take a number behind paladin threads.
Fair point
Paladin thread, AKA my gm is antagonistic to the party and bad at his job of making sure everyone has fun halp!
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It's interesting to me how every wizard in Forum Theorycraft threads is a diviner wizard, but in actual games I've found those to be extremely rare both for PCs and NPCs.
There's a 1 in 9 chance that a wizard made using the CRB is a diviner. It's a very attractive school to specialize in because divination spells are very versatile and the school helps protect you from some of the msot dangerous situations a caster can find themselves in. Compare to the divine guardian, Trained Initiative, Sprightly Armor, Stamina pool, scorpion familiar fighter who needed 6 books and gave up all of his fighter advantages and ask yourself if "how likely is this character to actually show up in play" the argument you want to be leaning on. Divination wizard is used because it's a clean, core-only example that accentuates the absurd lenghts martials (fighters in particular) have to go to in order to still not catch up in a single metric. I can take literally any casting class in the game and get to a comparative or higher initiative score (or pretty much any metric other than raw full attack damage, and I can still pull some highly competitive numbers there with far more versatility and fewer resources required by both the player and the character).
By this logic(and all the topics like this) I would think I should have already won the AP I'm in. Or atleast have the Martials huddling in a corner saying "He took our jobs".
False equivocation. You could have house rules or gentleman's agreements limiting your power, or you could simply have made suboptimal choices in your character progression. I've played in games where I was a diviner wizard who was impossible to take by surprise, couldn't be permanently killed even he was thanks to clones, stolen bodies, illusions, and contingencies, and who regularly had far and away the greatest impact on every single encounter we ran into over the course of the campaign. I've also played an evoker who didn't use any of those tricks (though he could have), but instead just blew stuff. Neither of these is necessarily representative of what actually gets played at a majority of tables, but the diviner was simply using the full breadth of the tools at his disposal in a game where that was expected. Just because I wouldn't take that diviner to most tables doesn't mean I couldn't.
Schrodingers fighter wasn't schrodingers fighter, he was a dex or archery based fighter that spent three feats or two feats and forwent level 7 armor training reduction, and had two reasonable and common for the class magic items.
The wizard offered burned all his first level spells on a boost that ended each time initiative was rolled and carried a dueling weapon for some reason. The argument ended because as usual, a realistic build here is always met by an extreme build that no one would ever actually play in game but manages to outmath in theory.
You know other people can read the thread just as easily as anyone else, right? Your mischaracterization is so painfully obvious it's not even funny. The wizard barely scraped his resources to surpass the archer fighter who had to give up the vast majority of the resources that would have made him good at being an archer. I even showed the math on a wizard burning multiple scrolls for every encounter while carrying multiple back-up spellbooks and how he still comes out with more than 3 times the cash on hand of the fighter.
Also, see the top of this post as regards your "realistic" comment. As you were the one who pulled out the "PFS card", lets talk about how realistic your fighter, who requires over $100 of additional books to create and play in organized play, is compared to the wizard you can play in PFS for free. You're talking circles around yourself and trying to make desperate rationalizations about how a wizard taking an enchantment he can afford much more easily than the fighter is unrealistic when I already showed that even if you strip out all the generic variables and ignore the wizard's natural advantages that are baked into the class while giving the fighter half his WBL, the wizard still comes out ahead. All of your arguments come down to "If you fill the game with homerules and only use builds I deem as realistic, I still lose the moment anyone does math". Ask yourself how robust your argument really is if you have to appeal to realism in a fantasy roleplaying game where spellcasters get the abiltiy to surpass most Greek demigods by 11th level.
I don't mind fighters. I've written a few different resources for them and a lot of replacement options, and at the end of the day I'm pretty much over having any issues. I don't judge someone for wanting to play one and occasionally play one myself. That doesn't mean that I suddenly forgot how to do math or that I'm under any illusions about how the fighter holds up compared to other classes, I've just kind of accepted that it's a bit behind the curve, but the curve in Pathfinder is ridiculous anyways. The difference between the floor and ceiling of the game is such that you probably won't even find the ceiling until you've played for several years and played for an extended period of time at each level, and maybe not even then. As far as discussing class potential goes, that's irrelevant. Someone having disparity issues doesn't care about your game or my game, they care about the game they're playing and issues that lie at the heart of the system. Denying it, or trying to rewrite and mischaracterize conversations on it, isn't helping anyone, especially when most of your arguments are actually proving the disparity.
"PFS doesn't allow crafting!" .... Maybe because crafting, which classes like the wizard get free access to, is so good that they need to nix it to give non-casters a chance. Proves the disparity, doesn't disprove it.
"I wouldn't give a caster an enchantment that's very favorable for casters!" Sooo.... You're saying that in your game, you use houserules to mitigate the impact of disparity. Proves the disparity, doesn't disprove it.
"Only that one wizard option is used in this comparison!" Yep, one core line wizard that you have a pretty reasonable chance of playing if you pick up a CRB. Should I do inquisitors, rangers, or bards? They'll win too, you'll respond with something about houserules or your personal concept of realism in a fantasy game, and once more you'll prove the disparity without disproving anything.
"Diviner wizards aren't realistic!".... And the 6 book fighter who has the archery skills of a 3rd level character at 8th level is? For every player or character resource the fighter brings to bear, the wizard can maintain or enhance the lead he started with in core by applying the same amount of resource or less. Proves the disparity, doesn't disprove it.
Vast majority being 2 feats and an AAT Ridiculous.
Also, "you have to pay money for printed resources" isn't an argument. Stating basic facts about having to pay for books over again as though it marks you out as anything but a cheapskate isn't a convincing argument.
Buy the pdfs, they're cheaper and also PFS legal.
And it isn't "diviner wizards aren't realistic" its, diviner wizards who burn all their first level spells on an initiative boost that ends after each use and carry a dueling weapon in one hand aren't realistic.
Those wizards exist only on paper, to win forum arguments.
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Vast majority being 2 feats and an AAT Ridiculous.
4 feats, unless you want to withdraw your eldritch guardian archetype suggestion, which puts you even farther back. I actually argued against it, but you defended it. Just in case you forgot, let me link it for you. Here's where you suggested eldritch guardian and here's where you doubled down on what a good idea it was.
For reference, here's where I showed that if you strip out all the options that are available to both characters, ignored the wizard's spells completely, and gave the fighter the best armor he could possibly afford at 8th level while spending none of the wizard's WBL, the wizard still came out ahead. I could go into how the fighter's advantages only just came online, how the wizard has had his benefits since 1st level, how the fighter needed multiple splatbooks and the wizard used core line options only, or how the wizard's benefits were part of his base package and came with a bunch of other benefits as well while the fighter had to sacrifice other options and undermine his combat effectiveness, but I've already gone over all that, in detail.
Also, "you have to pay money for printed resources" isn't an argument. Stating basic facts about having to pay for books over again as though it marks you out as anything but a cheapskate isn't a convincing argument.Buy the pdfs, they're cheaper and also PFS legal.
You realize the .pdfs still cost money and it doesn't change my point at all, right? You're the one who brought up PFS and tried to use it as an example of what most people play, I just pointed out that doing so only brings up even more holes in the argument. Trying to pretend that a CRB-only wizard is less likely to be played than a fighter leveraging $60 worth of .pdfs is what's really ridiculous.
And it isn't "diviner wizards aren't realistic" its, diviner wizards who burn all their first level spells on an initiative boost that ends after each use and carry a dueling weapon in one hand aren't realistic.
I'm afraid that's simply not true, as I've already shown. The wizard doesn't need the dueling enchantment to be ahead, and he's far more likely to have it than the fighter anyways, for reasons I've gone into at length. Regardless, it's a moot point, because as I already demonstrated the wizard doesn't need it.
Those wizards exist only on paper, to win forum arguments.
Says you. I GM 4 games a week for three different groups, one of them an open table with two to three rotating seats. I've played PFS and in Pathfinder games at most major conventions in the country, and I've seen at least a dozen different divination wizards that I can easily recall (largely because of what a massive impact they've had at the table).
But let's ignore my totally anecdotal experience and focus on this: your main "defense" of the "there's no disparity" stance right now is that a fighter pulling from handfuls of splatbooks and giving up his advantages as a fighter is somehow "more realistic" than a wizard made using only core-line options, the vast majority of which are right in the CRB. With the fighter leveraging all those resources, and the wizard not even getting to use his wealth on hand, the wizard still came out ahead. Accessibility, affordability, and plain old likelihood for a player to even be aware the options exist are all stacked towards the wizard.
YOU...DONT..NEED...QUICK..DRAW
I question your ability to read as you kep throwing that back in there.
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YOU...DONT..NEED...QUICK..DRAW
I question your ability to read as you kep throwing that back in there.
It's probably not a good idea to question my reading abilities from your position. Particularly given that you misspelled a 4 letter word.
"I'll concede the point that the ability could work with a sheathed weapon sans Quick Draw. Given that I factored it in as a given with all the previous math anyways, it changes very little other than the fact that the theoretical fighter has the feats of a 4th level archer instead of a 3rd level archer at 8th level."
By this logic(and all the topics like this) I would think I should have already won the AP I'm in. Or atleast have the Martials huddling in a corner saying "He took our jobs".False equivocation. You could have house rules or gentleman's agreements limiting your power, or you could simply have made suboptimal choices in your character progression. I've played in games where I was a diviner wizard who was impossible to take by surprise, couldn't be permanently killed even he was thanks to clones, stolen bodies, illusions, and contingencies, and who regularly had far and away the greatest impact on every single encounter we ran into over the course of the campaign. I've also played an evoker who didn't use any of those tricks (though he could have), but instead just blew stuff. Neither of these is necessarily representative of what actually gets played at a majority of tables, but the diviner was simply using the full breadth of the tools at his disposal in a game where that was expected. Just because I wouldn't take that diviner to most tables doesn't mean I couldn't.
With how often this subject comes up and the debates around it, I would assume playing any Magic user at anytime breaks the game no matter what you do.
Congrats, you have broken the game and have shown how to break it. Did you have fun? Because I'm sure not having fun in my game.
"Magic and Wizards are broken, if you pick to break it and other factors side with you".
Examples; My Shaman in Iron Gods is screwed due to spell list. I denied an Enchanter wizard(Hey mind effects break games right?) in mummy's mask because Oh wow, look at all the Immune monsters he'd face. Oh hey you're a Fire Blaster(Why you subpar player?) well then you're going to have a bad time in this FIRE themed dungeon.
If Magic is so busted, why does one have to follow a bloody power guide to actually get anything done?
There's a 1 in 9 chance that a wizard made using the CRB is a diviner. It's a very attractive school to specialize in because divination spells are very versatile and the school helps protect you from some of the msot dangerous situations a caster can find themselves in.
While I've never been in a Pathfinder game that's "just the CRB" ("everything first party, barring explicit exceptions" is closer to what I'm used to) I have to think that the 11% of Wizards are Diviners is a vast overestimate.
I mean, if don't already know what all the spells are, what sounds more exciting- Conjuration or Divination? Illusion or Divination? Necromancy or Divination? Transmutation or Divination?
The diviner wizard is the sort of thing that gets chosen pretty much exclusively by the person who already knows the ins and outs of the system, and in my experience those are the people who assiduously avoid playing wizards.
You know, Ryan Freire, if you want people to take your argument seriously, the best way to do it is to actually take the time and stat out a level 8 Fighter build that has both great initiative and great combat capabilities.
Once that is done, we can test your build against a basic Wizard of similar level. For the sake of fairness, we'll say that the basic Wizard build won't take the Divination school as their school of choice. Do these terms sound agreeable to you?
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By this logic(and all the topics like this) I would think I should have already won the AP I'm in. Or atleast have the Martials huddling in a corner saying "He took our jobs".False equivocation. You could have house rules or gentleman's agreements limiting your power, or you could simply have made suboptimal choices in your character progression. I've played in games where I was a diviner wizard who was impossible to take by surprise, couldn't be permanently killed even he was thanks to clones, stolen bodies, illusions, and contingencies, and who regularly had far and away the greatest impact on every single encounter we ran into over the course of the campaign. I've also played an evoker who didn't use any of those tricks (though he could have), but instead just blew stuff. Neither of these is necessarily representative of what actually gets played at a majority of tables, but the diviner was simply using the full breadth of the tools at his disposal in a game where that was expected. Just because I wouldn't take that diviner to most tables doesn't mean I couldn't.With how often this subject comes up and the debates around it, I would assume playing any Magic user at anytime breaks the game no matter what you do.
Congrats, you have broken the game and have shown how to break it. Did you have fun? Because I'm sure not having fun in my game.
"Magic and Wizards are broken, if you pick to break it".
Next argument.
You realize that saying "Next argument" doesn't mean you win by default right? One of the things I've pointed out over and over is that the wizard in the "who's got the biggest initiative" contest can be made using entirely core line options and beats out the fighter who's gone splatbook diving. That means the probability of accidentally buiding that wizard is fairly relevant.
To that point, the vast majority of times where disparity has come into play at tables I've been part of, it happened on accident. A few examples from tables I've been at-
A player shows up with a summoner fashioned as a "dragon rider". Another player brought a cavalier. The summoner, thanks to having a flying mount and the ability to cast heal and control spells to protect said mount, is far and away the dominant mounted combatant throughout the adventure. Fly and concentration checks were made as appropriate, all relevant rules fully enforced, the summoner was just better at being a mounted combatant than the martial mounted combat class, making more charge attacks, able to play more aggressively since he could heal his own mount and guard their flanks more effectively with control spells.
We're running an adventure that involves infiltrating a castle and retrieving important documents. There are two "stealthy" characters in the group, a magus fashioned as a "ninja" and an unchained rogue who are both scouting different potential routes to the documents. Before reaching the relevant documents, the rogue fails his stealth check and is caught by the castle guards. Hoping that we'll bail him out later and not wanting to cause a ruckus that could undermine our chances at success, the rogue surrenders and get taken to the dungeons. The magus uses vanish and invisibility to navigate the most treacherous areas of the keep with an almost unbeatable stealth check, recovers the documents, and breaks the rogue out on his way back.
We're playing through the module "The Midnight Mirror", with a group comprised of a wizard (diviner, ironically enough), a bard (arcane duelist), an investigator, and a fighter. Over the course of this adventure, the fighter fails literally every saving throw that comes his way. His rolls aren't terrible, but he's just not holding up super well and there's a few times where the bard has already burned her saving finale on herself and thus doesn't have it available for the fighter. Throughout the first half of the adventure, the fighter has almost nothing to contribute as they try to unravel the web of lies and deceit hiding the true source of the problems plaguing the town (Murder's Mark is a 4th level adventure, so even if the fighter had AMH and WMH available, it wouldn't have helped his skills and saves any), and during the second half of the adventure he keeps being taken out of combat or forced to act defensively due to failed saves- a shadow evocation scorching ray that he failed his Will save to recognize as fake, a save vs. paralysis that he should have been able to make but didn't, a failed save vs. blindness/deafness that really left them in a tight spot since it's a permanent effect and the party was on a bit of a timer, and one or two more things. Some of those were just bad luck, but at the end of the day the other characters just had more options for mitigating bad luck and the adventure was rough enough that they frequently struggled to afford the resource burn represented by the fighter. That particular player actually no longer plays Pathfinder and tells me all the time how much better 5E fighters are and what a better game it is.
So that's the crux of the issue, really. Disparity can rear its ugly head regardless of whether or not any of the players involved is intentionally trying to break the game, and when it does it's the kind of thing that can permanently cost Pathfinder a player. That's not something that the hobby can really afford right now, so denying disparity and putting the onus on the player(s) is the kind of thing that's just harmful and utterly unhelpful. That's largely the only reason I even participate in threads like this- disparity is not a problem at my table. I have numerous options to bring to bear to keep it from being an issue, whether that be enforcing PFS restrictions that help mitigate caster superiority, introducing 3pp content that changes the dynamic, or using my years of experience as a GM to help mitigate common issues (usually a combination of all of the above). That doesn't mean there aren't any issues, just that I know how to address them, which is the kind of advice someone experiencing C/M disparity might want.
Unfortunately it's rare that a thread that can deliver those solutions since it will inevitably be inundated with people who see the title and decide it's an excellent opportunity to come in and let everyone know that there is no disparity, it's their fault if they're experiencing it, and everyone should just shut up because they're being ridiculous and their core-only spellcasters made following the rules would never show up in a real game. That's not only not helpful, it's rude. If you don't believe disparity exists, why are you even in a thread discussing options to balance an issue you don't believe in? Do you spend your weekends walking into churches, synagogues, and mosques loudly announcing "There is no god!" and then belittling everyone in the congregation? Do you bust into AA meetings to tell everyone that alcoholism isn't a real issue because you have a drink every weekend and have never struggled with addiction? If you don't do those things, why would you feel it's appropriate here, which is the exact same situation. You don't experience a problem that other people do. That doesn't mean those people don't have a real issue that legitimately occurred, it just means that their circumstances are different than yours.
If Magic is so busted, why does one have to follow a bloody power guide to actually get anything done?
Because Pathfinder is a complex game with lots of options, and spellcasters have more options than non-spellcasters. The reason not everyone experiences it, or doesn't experience it in the same way, is because there is a vast gulf between what's possible in the game, and what many people are capable of piecing together during their free time. It's like asking why everyone can't hit a home-run; we know it's possible to hit a home-run, we know people do it all the time, but outside of the big leagues you're going to have a hard time finding someone who can actually do it. It requires, at a bare minimum, either natural talent or tons of experience and practice, often both. But by that same token, if you walked onto a little league field and told aspiring young baseball player Johnny that he shouldn't ever try to hit a home-run because you've never seen it happen in all the games you've played, the obvious response by any of Johnny's supporters would be "Just ignore that man; he thinks you can't hit a home-run because he's not talented enough to hit one himself".
Gamers are getting increasingly better at finding the most optimal builds and solutions. I've had Magic players who have never played a roleplaying game in their life see us having fun playing a game, and ask if they can join in. I, of course, say yes and give them the character-building handout I use that explains stat generation, allowed sources, etc. These kids often go home, type in "Pathfinder wizard builds" online, and then use the guide or build they find to make a character that would have required years of experience to come up with not that long ago. This happens all the time, and I never prompt players to look for build guides online. The accumulated knowledge of decades is available at a click, and many other hobbies are translatable and provide the necessary skills to utilize those options. I routinely see 12 to 15 year-olds showing up at tables with optimized characters I couldn't have pieced together until I'd had almost 5 years of experience under my belt, and more often than not they know exactly what they're doing with them.
The existence of a skill curve does not mean that no one ever plays on the high end, it just means that everyone plays different games and some games are more likely to have issues than others. On the forums, the likelihood of having people run into disparity is much higher, because they're much more likely to either be more experienced, or to have guides and builds right at their fingertips. The higher the optimization of the group goes, the greater the likelihood of disparity existing since optimization favors casters more often. I'm not talking about "dirty min-maxers" either; we have a rule against selling down stats without consulting the GM, so it's rare to see a stat below 8, and that typically only for races with a negative stat modifier. But you can't easily unlearn skills. When I sit down with a group, my "non-optimized" character is typically much stronger and more well-rounded than most of the other players. I'm familiar with a much broader range of the game since I work as a freelance designer, I'm usually more experienced than most of the people I play with, and as a result me picking what I consider "basic" options is often something that's already "optimization" compared to what they're doing. That's one of the reasons I frequently play support characters; I know that I'll almost always have a mechanically superior character, so I focus on mechanics that raise up the group. Even if disparity is a thing and I'm the linchpin of the group, I'm in a role that raises everyone up with me. I've learned how to do that because I've played a lot, but a player who's trying to keep track of all the options an optimized caster has available is going to need to get a firm grasp on how to take care of themselves until they can start channeling that into taking care of other people. To a very great extent that means that the two groups most likely to experience disparity are very experienced players and very new players; while it can be argued that the experienced players should have the skills to solve their problems themselves, the same can't be said of the new players, and blaming them for not being savvy enough to navigate the pitfalls of the system is a great way to endanger the longevity of the hobby as a whole.
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Examples; My Shaman in Iron Gods is screwed due to spell list. I denied an Enchanter wizard(Hey mind effects break games right?) in mummy's mask because Oh wow, look at all the Immune monsters he'd face. Oh hey you're a Fire Blaster(Why you subpar player?) well then you're going to have a bad time in this FIRE themed dungeon.
If Magic is so busted, why does one have to follow a bloody power guide to actually get anything done?
It does not require following a power guide. It requires a conceptual understanding of the nature of power.
Look to your examples. An "enchanter," as you portray them, uses only mind-affecting enchantment spells. A "fire blaster," as you portray them, is only casting damaging fire spells.
It does not take a guide to realize that magic can do pretty much everything, and that there is no particular penalty to using or knowing spells that aren't the thing you're particularly specialized in. That enchantment Wizard has no reason they can't prepare and use Transmutation, Conjuration, or Necromancy spells when in a situation where they cannot rely on mind effects. There is no reason the fire blaster can't prepare Cone of Cold, or better yet, control and defensive spells.
If you take a class whose greatest strength is their immense versatility, and then laser focus them down to doing one thing, you have ignored the advantage of playing that class, and become easily shut down. That is not due to the class being ineffectual. It's because of fundamentally poor tactics on the most basic level.
You realize that saying "Next argument" doesn't mean you win by default right?
DUH. CORRECT STATEMENT AM ‘SILLY CASTY, BARBARIAN AM ALWAYS WINNER.’
IN PINCH BARBARIAN ALSO HEAR OF ‘AM RUBBER CASTY AM GLUE, BOUNCE OFF BARBARIAN AND CASTY DIE BECAUSE AM HAVING LIKE 2 HP. POOR CASTY.’
Meh. Just as a sample.
I play two diviners.
At level 7, i'm sporting...
+4 from familiar. Compsagnathis
+5 from dex
+4 from Improved initiative
+3 from diviner bonus.
+1 trait bonus
+1 from ioun stone
I usually a Heightened awareness (+4) and/or an anticipate peril (+5) slotted.
And this is being lazy - I have yet to purchase by dueling spiked glove.
Lazy, as in.. why bother I usually win initiative. +18 usually, but +27 in a pinch and plus 32 probably next level.
All for what... 4 prestige and 8505 gold?
I will say that I decided to make a divination wizard for a campaign, and I sat down and thought about what really they could do aside adventure in order to get by at level 1. The answer is not much, outside of mass producing scrolls. They can't even be a proper seer because you have to be 3rd level to get augury.
Thinking about economic concerns of low level casters was more fun than it had any right to be, though.
Point I'm trying to make is to be effective you have to know what's coming. You have to know the AP, The campaign, the world, etc etc. I suppose that's why Divination is so strong when you have basically a cheat sheet(Legal too) to work from.
Oh and Ssalarn, the point of "Next Argument" was less "Please try again with a better thought out explanation" and more "Hey when's the next argument going to happen?"
Paladins took over the board quite a bit in..., November-December? This month it's Casters/Martials. Would like to see what the next multi-topic dust up is.
Why yes I know I'm not helping by throwing more fuel on the fire.
At this point the actual topic should probably just be banned from these forums as the discussions never actually go anywhere. Proponents of martials point out things that narrow the gap, proponents of casters claim it isn't enough, people continue to play martials and have fun and the people continue to snivel about the disparity on the boards with theorycrafted casters that never see play in a real game.
"Ban this topic because my opponents are wrong and annoying and what they're complaining about never happens."
Absolutely classic.
I'd love to know how Ssalarn addresses it at his gaming table.
Also, Paizo... Unchained Fighter, please. The fighter hasn't aged well, especially as you keep on adding classes. About the only recent class that the fighter is clearly better than is the shifter, and that's setting a very low bar.
What sorts of things would people want to see in an Unchained Fighter? At least a few class abilities that grant more generic utility (outside of combat) are a must-have.
I made 9th level casters 6th level casters, 6th level casters into 4th level casters, and those with 4th level casting have no spells. The paladin and ranger have alternate abilities that still provide them excellent options to make them not feel left out. One would think that would be crazy...but it works.
all the 9th level casters gained additional abilities useful, and capping magic at 6th level was rather healthy. Can still get that magic world field without timestopping, wishing, miracles, firestorms, and all that silly stuff. I also made thinks like raise dead, teleporting etc still be able to be used, but not hot button items. Puts a lot of classes near the same. Even classes like the warpriest are still impressive with 4th level casting.
Drastic-yes
More balanced-yes
Hurt my party's optimizers-yes
Same amount of fun-yes
Worked for Starfinder.
Though I'd sooner just nix the 9th-level casters and leave the rest as they are, since the existing 6th-level casters already generally have the features to still do stuff.
Of course that's arcane casters. Divine casters aren't as flexible in practice as they are in theory (lots of domains to choose from, but in the end you do have to pick one or two and sacrifice the rest eventually) but they still have plenty of options and are FAR more durable at the baseline before buffs get involved. There's a reason Clerics and Druids are regarded close to if not just as highly as Wizards. The main tradeoff being that divine casters have to ask permission to do things (spells from deities), and so are much more easily restricted by the GM to be more in line with the rest of the group ("Your God doesn't want you to have that spell available today.")
Cleric, maybe.
Druid, though, is almost as good a spell list as a Wizard, but you also get an animal companion, wild shape, and a medium BAB frame.
I will say that I decided to make a divination wizard for a campaign, and I sat down and thought about what really they could do aside adventure in order to get by at level 1. The answer is not much, outside of mass producing scrolls. They can't even be a proper seer because you have to be 3rd level to get augury.
Thinking about economic concerns of low level casters was more fun than it had any right to be, though.
You can cast other spells.
Mending is an amazing spell for practical purposes. You could make a living on that alone.
Point I'm trying to make is to be effective you have to know what's coming. You have to know the AP, The campaign, the world, etc etc. I suppose that's why Divination is so strong when you have basically a cheat sheet(Legal too) to work from.
Oh and Ssalarn, the point of "Next Argument" was less "Please try again with a better thought out explanation" and more "Hey when's the next argument going to happen?"
Paladins took over the board quite a bit in..., November-December? This month it's Casters/Martials. Would like to see what the next multi-topic dust up is.
Why yes I know I'm not helping by throwing more fuel on the fire.
And my point is, no. No, you do not need to know what's coming.
You have to set yourself up to be flexible, ready to adapt to a variety of situations. You can do this quite easily without foreknowledge. You don't go preparing all spells that can be shut down by a single immunity or resistance or strong save; you prepare yourself to go after a variety of weaknesses.
I'd love to know how Ssalarn addresses it at his gaming table.
Also, Paizo... Unchained Fighter, please. The fighter hasn't aged well, especially as you keep on adding classes. About the only recent class that the fighter is clearly better than is the shifter, and that's setting a very low bar.
What sorts of things would people want to see in an Unchained Fighter? At least a few class abilities that grant more generic utility (outside of combat) are a must-have.
You know the sad thing?
The Fighter is actually one of the best purely martial classes.
I'd love to know how Ssalarn addresses it at his gaming table.
Also, Paizo... Unchained Fighter, please. The fighter hasn't aged well, especially as you keep on adding classes. About the only recent class that the fighter is clearly better than is the shifter, and that's setting a very low bar.
What sorts of things would people want to see in an Unchained Fighter? At least a few class abilities that grant more generic utility (outside of combat) are a must-have.
If you are open to 3pp, Legendary Games has got your back.
You know the sad thing?
The Fighter is actually one of the best purely martial classes.
Compared to...what exactly?
Certainly not compared to the Barbarian, or the Slayer. I'm honestly not sure if I would put the Fighter above stuff like unchained Monk
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You know the sad thing?
The Fighter is actually one of the best purely martial classes.
Compared to...what exactly?
Certainly not compared to the Barbarian, or the Slayer. I'm honestly not sure if I would put the Fighter above stuff like unchained Monk
In terms of static bonuses if you include class specific items they are a head of most classes.
slayers are 20 bab +5 study
barbarians are 20 bab + 4 rage 1 furious (reckless abandon helps here)
fighters are 20 bab + 6 weapons training with gloves + 1 greater weapon focus (with 4 extra damage from weapon spec lines).
Now, is that worth worse saves, few skills, lacking the utility of rage power/ slayer talents? I don't think so but fighter are good at getting big number to attack and damage. If looking at other classes you give up not having 4 levels of spell casting (ranger/bloodrager/pali), not having an animal companion, not getting cha to save, losing lay on hands and smite etc.
I have little love for the fighter it can get a lot of +1s. And be a competitive and reliable damage dealer.
You know the sad thing?
The Fighter is actually one of the best purely martial classes.
Compared to...what exactly?
Certainly not compared to the Barbarian, or the Slayer. I'm honestly not sure if I would put the Fighter above stuff like unchained Monk
The Barbarian and the Slayer are the clear winners among the muggles.
But Vigilante, Ninja, Rogue, Cavalier, Samurai, Swashbuckler? It's not hard to argue that Fighter comes out on top. The others tend to either end up too scattershot to be effective at any one thing, or able to be pretty good at something that often isn't applicable.
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Is it bad that I honestly forgot about most of those terrible classes?
Is it worse that the two "clear winners" among the muggles have literal classes that are better than them at everything (i.e. Primalist Bloodragers & Sanctified Slayer Inquisitors)?
THIS IS NOT A DEBATE.
Of course. Quite understandable that you wouldn't want a debate, if your points aren't backup up by things like "facts."
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With how often this subject comes up and the debates around it, I would assume playing any Magic user at anytime breaks the game no matter what you do.
In the words of #2, "That actually happened."
I was the very unhappy guy who brought a vanilla cleric into Mundane's Underwater All-Stars game and accidentally ended the campaign single-handedly while inadvertently making lifelong enemies of the the other two players. I wasn't trying to be a jerk. I even tried to be a gentleman -- I intentionally avoided undead minions and planar allies, because I knew they would upstage the others. I also tanked Str and Dex and avoided combat boosts, so the martials would be more likely to shine, right?
It didn't matter. Social situations? I had better Cha (for channeling), higher Int (for skill points), and much, much better Sense Motive (due to Wis). Figuring out the plot? Why investigate when divination spells basically tell you not to bother? When we came to the shark tank encounter, I almost lied and said I didn't have control water prepared -- but I totally did. The cavalier even saw it on my sheet and said, "Why are the scout and I even playing?"
I didn't have an answer. I was ashamed of myself for ruining the game -- by accident. I was doing everything I could to not ruin it.
At this point, I assume anyone who claims that caster superiority is all theorycraft is, in fact, the one who has never actually played much, or at least not in groups that don't have a zillion houserules and gentleman's agreements and outright DM fiat to keep things copacetic.
I for one never saw a martial/caster disparity on paper, until I experienced it in the actual game.
It's also relevant to note that unlike barbarians, bloodragers aren't restricted by alignment. You can't have a palibarian or monkbarian by default, though grey paladins (which kind of suck) and I think martial artist monks can get around that.
Monkrager or bloodadin though? Completely kosher.
As for slayer vs inquisitor I believe there are some rare cases where slayer is preferred.
Variant Multiclass does not have the same alignment restrictions, so a Paladin VMC Barbarian is possible and IMO the best way to go about it. The opposite (Barbarian VMC Paladin) is not possible because VMC Paladin still has the alignment restriction as part of its code of conduct.
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Design Manager
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I'd love to know how Ssalarn addresses it at his gaming table.
Sure! Hopefully you'll forgive me if I plug a few products as I go, because part of the journey to getting to a point where I felt the game worked exactly right for my tables involved working with different publishers and designers and making products that I thought would help close the gap and get characters where I wanted them to be.
When I wrote The Genius Guide to Bravery Feats back in 2014 I did a lot of things that would later be adopted in core products, like expanding Bravery's functionality to apply to a wider range of Will (and Reflex) saves, and giving the Fighter ways to bypass some of the more onerous prerequisites with more useful abilities. I also gave the Fighter some "shortcut" feats that would allow him to perform combat maneuvers without having to burn as many resources, skill bonuses that scaled up alongside his Bravery bonus, and ways to buy Bravery back on archetypes that gave it up so that more archetypes had access to these options. I tackled the project from the assumption that class features are better than feats, and since the fighter's class features are feats, he needed some unique feats that acted like class features. And what better way to make sure it stayed unique to the fighter than to tie all the bonuses to Bravery, one of the least likely class features to be picked up by other classes. I really like this product and still use it to this day, but I also realized in relatively short order that while it did help the fighter up, it was mostly raising him to the same field as the better martials and low casters, like the barbarian, paladin, and ranger. It was getting the fighter onto a more level playing field with his full BAB peers, but it wasn't addressing the main disparity that existed between martials and casters.
I did some work for Amora Games after that experimenting with making a martial that looked a lot more like the ones I'd read in novels, martials like Dujek Onearm from the Malazan cycle, or even Bruenor Battlehammer from the Drizzt Do'Urden books, and that led me to writing the Battle Lord (originally released as part of Liber Influxus Communis). An Int-base martial with 4+Int skills on a strong chassis with buffing, skill boosters, out of combat options, and access to the Bravery feats I'd written for the fighter. This was finally what I really thought a martial should be, and it clicked in really well alongside 2/3 casters like the bard and inquisitor. I had the fighter I'd always wanted; narrative power, a true "master of the battlefield" who had his own resources and could lead and fight effectively. The problem was, we still had some issues that would pop up- for one, the battle lord covered the "smart fighter", but the fighter isn't the only martial out there (just the one that gets referenced the most since he's on the most focused chassis). The products I'd added to our game were great for the people who wanted a "fighter" with a more robust toolset, but it didn't take care of the other martials, and even the battle lord still wasn't on the same playing field as the 9-level casters.
It was around about this time that I stumbled across Spheres of Power. If you're not familiar with it, Spheres of Power breaks down spellcasting into more modular components; you can pick a casting tradition that defines the limitations tied to your spellcasting (whether that be blood magic that drains your health, song casting that requires you to perform for your spells, or more traditional verbal/somatic limitations), and magic is comprised of talents. You can't just suddenly cast a fireball when you reach 5th level, you have to build up to it in a very similar manner to a fighter filling out a feat tree; first you have to learn how to fire destructive magical energy, then you have to learn how to control fire, and then you have to learn how to shape it into a ball. In addition to that, spells that have the potential for massive narrative are separated out into advanced talents, which gave me as a GM more ability to control and gate access to effects like true seeing, resurrection, and create demiplane. Instead of massive narrative-impacting effects being assumed for every caster, I could very easily impose my own limitations on when and how those effects could be accessed without having to maintain an ever-growing list of house-ruled limitations. I was essentially 90% of the way there as a GM, but I still hadn't solved the initial problem of extending the patches I'd made with the battle lord and bravery feats out to a broader array of martial character types.
Which takes me to Spheres of Might. After how impressed I was with Spheres of Power, I reached out to Adam Meyers at Drop Dead Studios and joined him as a freelancer working on a few projects. Adam knew pretty much from the time we started working together that he was going to do a martial companion to Spheres of Power and it was something we worked towards in many ways with a few different projects. When I wrote the Luchador, it was in part a pitch for what I hoped we'd accomplish with Spheres of Might- "cinematic" combat that involved lots of movement, a higher skill base for martials, and narrative abilities that allowed the luchador to have a kind of strength and functionality normally gated to casters, but in a way that made sense for the character and not just spell effects refluffed as "sword magic". There's nothing wrong with sword magic, but a lot of what draws people to classes like the fighter and rogue is the idea of playing a non-magical character who manages to thrive in a magical world. So, along with the talented team of Adam Meyers, Ehn Jolly, and Andrew Stoeckle, I got to finally work on Spheres of Might, where I got to add more classes like the blacksmith, commander, conscript, and scholar, as well as spheres like Alchemy and Scout (and many more), that introduced more concepts, more facility, and more narrative tools that could fill out a lot of the under-supported martial tropes. The spheres were also available to the existing martial classes, which helped round out that final concern regarding unsupported martial tropes.
So, ultimately, getting the game to a point where I had minimized disparity to a non-issue for my tables involved introducing new martial options and classes with a more robust chassis, introducing limitations on casters that took away the "magic wish box" effect of unbounded spell lists and narrowed their focus (or power ceiling), and moving certain extremely high-powered story-shaping effects behind story and/or level gates. When using Spheres of Power and Spheres of Might, I'll typically utilize restrictions on Advanced Talents and Legendary Talents as a way to adjust the story depending on what kind of tone we're going for.
With how often this subject comes up and the debates around it, I would assume playing any Magic user at anytime breaks the game no matter what you do.In the words of #2, "That actually happened."
I was the very unhappy guy who brought a vanilla cleric into Mundane's Underwater All-Stars game and accidentally ended the campaign single-handedly while inadvertently making lifelong enemies of the the other two players. I wasn't trying to be a jerk. I even tried to be a gentleman -- I intentionally avoided undead minions and planar allies, because I knew they would upstage the others. I also tanked Str and Dex and avoided combat boosts, so the martials would be more likely to shine, right?
It didn't matter. Social situations? I had better Cha (for channeling), higher Int (for skill points), and much, much better Sense Motive (due to Wis). Figuring out the plot? Why investigate when divination spells basically tell you not to bother? When we came to the shark tank encounter, I almost lied and said I didn't have control water prepared -- but I totally did. The cavalier even saw it on my sheet and said, "Why are the scout and I even playing?"
I didn't have an answer. I was ashamed of myself for ruining the game -- by accident. I was doing everything I could to not ruin it.
At this point, I assume anyone who claims that caster superiority is all theorycraft is, in fact, the one who has never actually played much, or at least not in groups that don't have a zillion houserules and gentleman's agreements and outright DM fiat to keep things copacetic.
I for one never saw a martial/caster disparity on paper, until I experienced it in the actual game.
And yet, when I bring my own experience of seeing it, from the other end that makes me feel Under-powered, it either;
A) Doesn't matterB) Doesn't count
C) I'm doing things wrong.
Seriously I tried looking at my spell list. The best, the BEST I could come up with? A spell to attempt a trip. Which I turned into a wand.
Now again this isn't to say this NEVER EVER happens. I saw someone break the game with Summoner, just wide open. The only times he didn't dominate combat was when there was a gimmick to the fight he couldn't just exploit.
But this guy has gone on to make; Busted Archer, Busted Gunslinger, Busted Magus, and now has some sort of busted new thing running around.
So how do you balance casters/martials? I don't know but in my own experience and bias, don' let power gamers get a hold of them.