Why the resistance to limiting spellcasters?

[Gulthor]

Bluenose wrote:

Pathfinder is designed with casters with magic from genres like superhero and/or high-magic shonen or shojo anime.

I'm going to have to disagree pretty strongly with you, there. If anything, the correlation goes the opposite direction (D&D inspired many JRPGs, which in turn inspired this kind of magic in anime. FF1's magic system is almost unabashedly taken from D&D.)

It's true that there are many fantasy settings where magic plays a less prominent role, and it can't be argued that D&D drew its inspiration from LotR - a much lower-magic setting, however...

Orfamay Quest wrote:

I just want to take this and run with it a little further, because it's one of the big issues with fantasy game design generally.

When you're writing a fantasy novel (or film), it's usually about an ordinary, relatively mundane person who accomplishes great deeds. Think, of course, of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, but also about Luke Skywalker.

Ironically, OQ makes the opposite point, here, by correctly mentioning Luke Skywalker. Luke Skywalker is the PF equivalent of a low-level magic user. As the story progresses and he attains more experience, his ability to use magic grows exponentially. You could even say that Luke started as a martial and multiclassed into - say - sorcerer as he began training with Yoda, eventually becoming something like an Eldritch Knight.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time features a whole cast of young, low-level sorcerers or oracles who grow to the equivalent of 20th level (and at least one of them mythic on top of that.)

The Shannara series prominently features fresh, young heroes just learning how to master innate magical abilities.

The same could be said of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, who slowly masters the innate power of the white gold wild magic he possesses - and Shannara and Covenant were two of the first successful fantasy series to make it big in the wake of LotR.

So D&D decided to embrace this kind of magic - powerful, yes, but giving players the opportunity to fulfill the character fantasy of playing a middling wizard who grows to greater strength and power as the story progresses.

And it's been extremely successful. You cannot possibly look at games like World of Warcraft or Diablo and not see where things have been lifted from D&D - and both of those games are arguably even *higher* fantasy than D&D/PF.

Now, that said, there's no problem if you want to shake things up in your campaign world as long as your players are up for the ride. Some of D&D's most successful Campaign Settings feature fundamental shifts in the way that magic operates, like in the Dark Sun setting. In the Planescape setting, we're introduced to the concept that belief literally shapes the planes.

One of my best campaigns was a 3.5 "survival" campaign in which the party was not allowed to play any class that had healing abilities, the party was stranded in hostile, enemy-controlled wilderness, and featured prominently environmental dangers and trying to make natural healing work as well as successfully scouting, and performing hit & run attacks against enemy camps to both weaken them and steal supplies and equipment upgrades. The party wizard had no ability to acquire new spells other than leveling up, and the party had to assist him in gathering materials necessary to even create the ink needed to scribe those new spells into his spellbook, and they all had a blast doing it. As a one-off. And that last sentence is key. It was successful because it challenged baseline assumptions and created a very different experience, but it was not a gaming experience my group wanted to explore all the time. It was also an experience the group *chose* to play; we had a brainstorming session on what to play next, and that was what the table came up with. So if you're going to make these changes, you're going to need the buy-in of your group, or they'll just play without you.

[Orfamay Quest]

Milo v3 wrote:

Matthew Downie wrote:

(But I'm pretty sure Pathfinder classes aren't intentionally unbalanced.)

Didn't SKR say sorcerers were innately designed to be weaker than wizards because they wanted to accommodate the fact it takes more work to play a wizard?

Whether he did or not, the CR system shows up that statement for the confused nonsense it is. If a sorcerer is supposed to be less powerful than a wizard, why are they both the same CR? (And the same CR as a [chained] rogue, for that matter?)

[Milo v3]

HWalsh wrote:

"Players shouldn't be concerned with what class is stronger. The DM can find ways for everyone to contribute. Players should seek to have fun cooperatively."

"People shouldn't care that we designed the game badly, we'll just leave DM's to fix it themselves"

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Whether he did or not, the CR system shows up that statement for the confused nonsense it is. If a sorcerer is supposed to be less powerful than a wizard, why are they both the same CR? (And the same CR as a [chained] rogue, for that matter?)

Yes it is rather ridiculous for people to claim "classes are supposed to be imbalanced" when the game rules are written assuming they're are balanced.

[HWalsh]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Milo v3 wrote:

Matthew Downie wrote:

(But I'm pretty sure Pathfinder classes aren't intentionally unbalanced.)

Didn't SKR say sorcerers were innately designed to be weaker than wizards because they wanted to accommodate the fact it takes more work to play a wizard?

Whether he did or not, the CR system shows up that statement for the confused nonsense it is. If a sorcerer is supposed to be less powerful than a wizard, why are they both the same CR? (And the same CR as a [chained] rogue, for that matter?)

You're not suggesting that the CR system is consistent are you? Have you looked at the CR of monsters?

A freaking Young Red Dragon would wipe the floor with a Giant Crocodile. It's not even a contest. They are both CR 10.

[wraithstrike]

Classes are supposed to be equally useful in an adventure. That has nothing to with their ability to be bosses as NPC's, which is why a CR 11 fighter, and a CR 11 wizard are not equal as opponents.

[Rysky]

HWalsh wrote:

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Milo v3 wrote:

Matthew Downie wrote:

(But I'm pretty sure Pathfinder classes aren't intentionally unbalanced.)

Didn't SKR say sorcerers were innately designed to be weaker than wizards because they wanted to accommodate the fact it takes more work to play a wizard?

Whether he did or not, the CR system shows up that statement for the confused nonsense it is. If a sorcerer is supposed to be less powerful than a wizard, why are they both the same CR? (And the same CR as a [chained] rogue, for that matter?)

You're not suggesting that the CR system is consistent are you? Have you looked at the CR of monsters?

A freaking Young Red Dragon would wipe the floor with a Giant Crocodile. It's not even a contest. They are both CR 10.

A Succubus with 6 levels of Antipaladin is also "only" CR 10.

[captain yesterday]

Isn't that why they started Greenblood on a Blackrock? To find out who'll win in a giant crocodile-young red dragon-Anti-Paladin succubus death battle.

[thejeff]

wraithstrike wrote:

Classes are supposed to be equally useful in an adventure. That has nothing to with their ability to be bosses as NPC's, which is why a CR 11 fighter, and a CR 11 wizard are not equal as opponents.

And yet they are treated as equal. The Encounter design rules present them as equal. You gain the same experience for overcoming them.

I agree that they're not, but the evidence seems to point more to "failure to meet design goals" than "intentionally not balanced".

[captain yesterday]

Of course with MythBusters off the air, we'll probably never know for sure.

[HWalsh]

thejeff wrote:

wraithstrike wrote:

Classes are supposed to be equally useful in an adventure. That has nothing to with their ability to be bosses as NPC's, which is why a CR 11 fighter, and a CR 11 wizard are not equal as opponents.

And yet they are treated as equal. The Encounter design rules present them as equal. You gain the same experience for overcoming them.

I agree that they're not, but the evidence seems to point more to "failure to meet design goals" than "intentionally not balanced".

Actually you'd be incorrect.

See in 2nd edition each class had its own experience chart.

A 5th level Fighter needed 16,000 experience points. A 5th level Wizard needed 20,000.

In 3rd edition this was deemed "too complicated" and thus a unified chart was made. The classes did change, but not really power levels. They did it to simplify things.

Pathfinder is based on 3rd edition after all.

The same thing with the CR system. Originally each monster had their own experience value, (So did traps) but again 3rd edition designers thought this was too complicated for newer generation gamers so they unified it.

It's not "they were designed to be balanced" so much as they are a victim of oversimplification.

[thejeff]

OTOH, within a couple levels, just as the wizard started getting the good spells, those trends reversed - the wizard only needed 60,000xp to reach 7th, while the fighter needed 64,000xp. The gap widened from there and didn't close until 14th level where both needed 1,500,000xp.
I wouldn't rely on that to prove anything about power levels or balance. I've got no idea what Gygax was thinking with the old xp tables, but it clearly wasn't: Wizards are more powerful, so they need to advance slower.

[HWalsh]

thejeff wrote:

OTOH, within a couple levels, just as the wizard started getting the good spells, those trends reversed - the wizard only needed 60,000xp to reach 7th, while the fighter needed 64,000xp. The gap widened from there and didn't close until 14th level where both needed 1,500,000xp.

I wouldn't rely on that to prove anything about power levels or balance. I've got no idea what Gygax was thinking with the old xp tables, but it clearly wasn't: Wizards are more powerful, so they need to advance slower.

You'd be incorrect again.

See Fighters gained an additional percentage of any experience gained through combat.

Wizards gained extra experience per spell cast. (Which was less than the Fighter got.)

So the Fighter, on average, would hit 64k long before the Wizard hit 60. Especially at that level.

By the time that 60k worth of monsters were killed the Fighter had earned around 72k.

Unless you played it for years and years you wouldn't understand how much was lost between 2nd and 3rd. There was elegance in the complexity.

[Cellion]

To answer the OP: You see resistance to limiting spellcasters because most of the methods to limit them also end up making them terribly unfun to play.

Even without making any changes, vancian spellcasters are already (IMO) on the cusp of being frustrating to play.
Most spellcasters are much more fiddly to play than non-spellcasting classes... you have to manage a spell list, have to worry about weaker base defenses and how to cover them with spells, have to manage spell use, etc. In exchange for having to deal with various irritations, you get sweet sweet spells. Adding more irritations to spellcasters makes gameplay more frustrating (I'd be pulling my hair out if every spell was a 1 round cast time and I constantly got interrupted at low/mid levels) in exchange for "balance".

"With Great Power comes Cripplingly Unfun Gameplay" is the wrong approach.

I'd personally appreciate a more approachable version of spellcasting (narrower spellcasting list, at-will abilities, pruning of outlier/too strong/ too weak options) but that kind of overhaul ends up being so complicated that it is impractical for most DMs and leaves the magic system totally different than standard D&D3.5/PF. My understanding is that Spheres of Power managed to execute this overhaul successfully, but I have yet to use it in a game I'm DMing.

[Bill Dunn]

HWalsh wrote:

Actually you'd be incorrect.

See in 2nd edition each class had its own experience chart.

A 5th level Fighter needed 16,000 experience points. A 5th level Wizard needed 20,000.

In 3rd edition this was deemed "too complicated" and thus a unified chart was made. The classes did change, but not really power levels. They did it to simplify things.

Pathfinder is based on 3rd edition after all.

The same thing with the CR system. Originally each monster had their own experience value, (So did traps) but again 3rd edition designers thought this was too complicated for newer generation gamers so they unified it.

It's not "they were designed to be balanced" so much as they are a victim of oversimplification.

That assumes the different XP charts actually balanced anything. They really didn't. They just led to uneven advancement in classes and abilities.

[Saldiven]

The best part about thread like this are all the immediate "Wrong bad fun" posts that come out because someone else dares to play the game in a different way.

[Kitty Catoblepas]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Milo v3 wrote:

Matthew Downie wrote:

(But I'm pretty sure Pathfinder classes aren't intentionally unbalanced.)

Didn't SKR say sorcerers were innately designed to be weaker than wizards because they wanted to accommodate the fact it takes more work to play a wizard?

Whether he did or not, the CR system shows up that statement for the confused nonsense it is. If a sorcerer is supposed to be less powerful than a wizard, why are they both the same CR? (And the same CR as a [chained] rogue, for that matter?)

When encountered in the wild, a Sorcerer is functionally as powerful (if not more) as a Wizard.

How can that be, you ask? A Wizard's strength lies not only in the raw power of his spells, but the versatility of his spellbook. A Wizard can therefore adapt to many situations, where a Sorcerer must specialize. In the wild (as a NPC/Monster), they will only encounter one situation. In that case, a Sorcerer's spell list can be as tailored as a Wizard's.

[Bluenose]

Gulthor wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

Pathfinder is designed with casters with magic from genres like superhero and/or high-magic shonen or shojo anime.

I'm going to have to disagree pretty strongly with you, there. If anything, the correlation goes the opposite direction (D&D inspired many JRPGs, which in turn inspired this kind of magic in anime. FF1's magic system is almost unabashedly taken from D&D.)

It's also the sort of magic that's frequent in manga published long before D&D existed.

[thejeff]

HWalsh wrote:

thejeff wrote:

OTOH, within a couple levels, just as the wizard started getting the good spells, those trends reversed - the wizard only needed 60,000xp to reach 7th, while the fighter needed 64,000xp. The gap widened from there and didn't close until 14th level where both needed 1,500,000xp.

I wouldn't rely on that to prove anything about power levels or balance. I've got no idea what Gygax was thinking with the old xp tables, but it clearly wasn't: Wizards are more powerful, so they need to advance slower.

You'd be incorrect again.

See Fighters gained an additional percentage of any experience gained through combat.

Wizards gained extra experience per spell cast. (Which was less than the Fighter got.)

So the Fighter, on average, would hit 64k long before the Wizard hit 60. Especially at that level.

By the time that 60k worth of monsters were killed the Fighter had earned around 72k.

Unless you played it for years and years you wouldn't understand how much was lost between 2nd and 3rd. There was elegance in the complexity.

I did play it for years and years. And again, I don't think that falls into some kind of intentional balance - IIRC, the experience tables basically carried over from 1E to 2E, while the combat & spell experience was added in 2e (as an option, again IIRC).

Which puts it in the same kind of "Well we tweaked this thing for other reasons and it affected balance."

Regardless, your simplistic argument in the earlier post is untrue - The balance didn't come from wizards needing more experience and go away when that changed in 3E.

[HWalsh]

thejeff wrote:

HWalsh wrote:

thejeff wrote:

OTOH, within a couple levels, just as the wizard started getting the good spells, those trends reversed - the wizard only needed 60,000xp to reach 7th, while the fighter needed 64,000xp. The gap widened from there and didn't close until 14th level where both needed 1,500,000xp.

I wouldn't rely on that to prove anything about power levels or balance. I've got no idea what Gygax was thinking with the old xp tables, but it clearly wasn't: Wizards are more powerful, so they need to advance slower.

You'd be incorrect again.

See Fighters gained an additional percentage of any experience gained through combat.

Wizards gained extra experience per spell cast. (Which was less than the Fighter got.)

So the Fighter, on average, would hit 64k long before the Wizard hit 60. Especially at that level.

By the time that 60k worth of monsters were killed the Fighter had earned around 72k.

Unless you played it for years and years you wouldn't understand how much was lost between 2nd and 3rd. There was elegance in the complexity.

I did play it for years and years. And again, I don't think that falls into some kind of intentional balance - IIRC, the experience tables basically carried over from 1E to 2E, while the combat & spell experience was added in 2e (as an option, again IIRC).

Which puts it in the same kind of "Well we tweaked this thing for other reasons and it affected balance."

Regardless, your simplistic argument in the earlier post is untrue - The balance didn't come from wizards needing more experience and go away when that changed in 3E.

No. You're putting words into my mouth. They weren't balanced. They were never supposed to be balanced.

[Gulthor]

Bluenose wrote:

Gulthor wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

Pathfinder is designed with casters with magic from genres like superhero and/or high-magic shonen or shojo anime.

I'm going to have to disagree pretty strongly with you, there. If anything, the correlation goes the opposite direction (D&D inspired many JRPGs, which in turn inspired this kind of magic in anime. FF1's magic system is almost unabashedly taken from D&D.)

It's also the sort of magic that's frequent in manga published long before D&D existed.

I find it beyond incredulous to believe that Gary Gygax was influenced by Japanese culture in virtually any way.

Now, PF lends itself very well to such "new" influences in the tastes of modern Western gaming appetites, and I'm one of those who feels that this is an extremely healthy trend that has helped keep my favorite hobby relevant in an increasingly digital world, but I don't believe that it influenced the creation of the magic system that we refer to as "Vancian" when one needs look no further than Jack Vance to see where it derives that namd.

[knightnday]

Resistance may just depend on your table and how you lay things out. I've played in and run a number of games where magic was limited in some way, shape or form. If laid out and explained players usually didn't have much problem with it.

[Rysky]

Gulthor wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

Gulthor wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

Pathfinder is designed with casters with magic from genres like superhero and/or high-magic shonen or shojo anime.

I'm going to have to disagree pretty strongly with you, there. If anything, the correlation goes the opposite direction (D&D inspired many JRPGs, which in turn inspired this kind of magic in anime. FF1's magic system is almost unabashedly taken from D&D.)

It's also the sort of magic that's frequent in manga published long before D&D existed.

I find it beyond incredulous to believe that Gary Gygax was influenced by Japanese culture in virtually any way.

.... wat??

[PossibleCabbage]

Was manga and anime even being translated into English (and made available in Wisconsin) in the early 70s?

[thejeff]

HWalsh wrote:

thejeff wrote:

HWalsh wrote:

thejeff wrote:

OTOH, within a couple levels, just as the wizard started getting the good spells, those trends reversed - the wizard only needed 60,000xp to reach 7th, while the fighter needed 64,000xp. The gap widened from there and didn't close until 14th level where both needed 1,500,000xp.

I wouldn't rely on that to prove anything about power levels or balance. I've got no idea what Gygax was thinking with the old xp tables, but it clearly wasn't: Wizards are more powerful, so they need to advance slower.

You'd be incorrect again.

See Fighters gained an additional percentage of any experience gained through combat.

Wizards gained extra experience per spell cast. (Which was less than the Fighter got.)

So the Fighter, on average, would hit 64k long before the Wizard hit 60. Especially at that level.

By the time that 60k worth of monsters were killed the Fighter had earned around 72k.

Unless you played it for years and years you wouldn't understand how much was lost between 2nd and 3rd. There was elegance in the complexity.

I did play it for years and years. And again, I don't think that falls into some kind of intentional balance - IIRC, the experience tables basically carried over from 1E to 2E, while the combat & spell experience was added in 2e (as an option, again IIRC).

Which puts it in the same kind of "Well we tweaked this thing for other reasons and it affected balance."

Regardless, your simplistic argument in the earlier post is untrue - The balance didn't come from wizards needing more experience and go away when that changed in 3E.

No. You're putting words into my mouth. They weren't balanced. They were never supposed to be balanced.

I suppose I am, but that makes your post about different XP in 2E and the changes to 3.0 kind of a non-sequitur.

If you weren't saying that there was balance in 2E that was lost in the XP change to 3.0, I'm not sure why you replied to me.

[JAMRenaissance]

Bob Bob Bob wrote:

You mean critique of your houserules here? You can't derive a general trend from a single thread. Maybe they just didn't like your houserules.

Nope, I was speaking in general. Hence I didn't link to them. This is far from my first go around with this... and we see it in every single thread about a Fighter, or martial-caster disparity, or anything similar.

Bob Bob Bob wrote:

If you actually mean as a general trend, you're going to need to put up some actual evidence. It shouldn't be too hard to link if it's on the forum, if it's in person... well, then it's just those people.

Well, you can look at this thread if you'd like more evidence....

Saldiven wrote:

The best part about thread like this are all the immediate "Wrong bad fun" posts that come out because someone else dares to play the game in a different way.

Pretty much this. I'm cool with different people playing different ways; I'm old enough to ASSUME that most GMs customize things for themselves.

On the other hand, the immediate response to "Hey, how about some modifications to make a role playing game based on a specific genre actually look like what I expect from that specific genre??" seems unintuitive. I feel like you're told you are having wrongbadfun if you expect the game to look like the genre.

Sundakan wrote:

Because the way the game system is designed most limits people come up with just makes the classes unfun to play.

Without doing a full re-write of the magic system (like Spheres of Power), most of peoples' "solutions" are just ways of soft-banning casters by making them so tedious to play or hamstrung that nobody would want to play them.

Now THIS I buy. I think there is definitely a discussion to be had about how to look at this to make it fun. That's different from shutting down the conversation.

I want to have the conversation.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

DrDeth wrote:

Beren could shape change thru spells, and he was Human.

Beren's power came though a magic cloak.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

Saldiven wrote:

The best part about thread like this are all the immediate "Wrong bad fun" posts that come out because someone else dares to play the game in a different way.

That isn't the issue. The problem is people who come out advocating major changes to the game when it's obvious that they've never actually implemented the changes they propose. It's like putting out a video game, expecting people to buy into it when you've never actually run the software yourself.

Very few of these people who propose those changes come out with a story that has demonstrated why it already worked for them. Apparantly many who propose such changes simply don't have the guts to actually TRY those changes unless they get messageboard approval. Those folks deserve all of the derision they justly earn.

[Rogar Valertis]

Well magic users surely changed a lot in the transition from first ed D&D to D&D 3.x (and by extension PF).
Part of the problem is the 3.x business model that ended up giving spellcasters (and wizards in particular) so many options they can take all together while most other classes are limited.
Nowadays wizards get a lot of spells, a lot of feats they can use to make their spells even more powerful, lots of items to cast and recast said spells often applying metamagic feats, even at lower levels they get many uses per day of their special abilities and are the most SAD of all classes.
Should magic in D&D be changed? I believe so, but this cannot be done with simple house rules and requires a full new edition of the game, rewriting most of its spells, give a long hard look at certain feats and magic items and a general reballance of challanges as well.
A route that can be taken is introducing ritual casting (concept:the really powerful reality altering spells cannot be achieved by snapping your fingers, you need preparation and time for those. The pay off is big but in order to pull it the wizard needs his team mates help), limits to preparation (concept:you can cast all the contingencies you want but their duration and effects are limited and there's always a chance they'll fail you, not doing anything stupid despite having them on is usually a good way to live longer) and the perils of magic (Concept: powerful magic is dangerous. Sure you can burn down a city in a meteor storm but the baclash of such power can very well incinerate you as well in the process, tread carefully).
Wizards and other spellcasters SHOULD be able to do awesome stuff, it should not be so easy and cheap for them though.

[Anzyr]

Saldiven wrote:

The best part about thread like this are all the immediate "Wrong bad fun" posts that come out because someone else dares to play the game in a different way.

Where? No really where? Which post is saying that OP is having fun the wrong way. All people are saying is 1. Pathfinder does not really support the kind of game you want to play; here are some options or 2. your changes are large enough that calling the game you play "Pathfinder" is misleading. Much like if I replaced the Rook and Bishop pieces with pawns and then claimed I played "Chess".

But badwrongfun? I'm not seeing it.

[Bob Bob Bob]

JAMRenaissance wrote:

...

Bob Bob Bob wrote:

If you actually mean as a general trend, you're going to need to put up some actual evidence. It shouldn't be too hard to link if it's on the forum, if it's in person... well, then it's just those people.

Well, you can look at this thread if you'd like more evidence....

...

RECURSION! wrote:

It's not "resistance to limiting spellcasters", it's "pointing out this system was designed with the exact opposite assumptions and you'd have a much easier time starting with a system that wasn't actively fighting you".

Though you're right, I did miss "It wouldn't be fun to play spellcasters under such a system". Again though, it's not resistance to the concept but to the specific implementation. If people didn't like the concept there wouldn't be so many other systems that do exactly that, as people here have already listed off. Or as someone else put it:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

That isn't the issue. The problem is people who come out advocating major changes to the game when it's obvious that they've never actually implemented the changes they propose. It's like putting out a video game, expecting people to buy into it when you've never actually run the software yourself.

[Bluenose]

Gulthor wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

Gulthor wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

Pathfinder is designed with casters with magic from genres like superhero and/or high-magic shonen or shojo anime.

I'm going to have to disagree pretty strongly with you, there. If anything, the correlation goes the opposite direction (D&D inspired many JRPGs, which in turn inspired this kind of magic in anime. FF1's magic system is almost unabashedly taken from D&D.)

It's also the sort of magic that's frequent in manga published long before D&D existed.

I find it beyond incredulous to believe that Gary Gygax was influenced by Japanese culture in virtually any way.

Now, PF lends itself very well to such "new" influences in the tastes of modern Western gaming appetites, and I'm one of those who feels that this is an extremely healthy trend that has helped keep my favorite hobby relevant in an increasingly digital world, but I don't believe that it influenced the creation of the magic system that we refer to as "Vancian" when one needs look no further than Jack Vance to see where it derives that namd.

I wasn't saying that Gary Gygax was influenced by manga - I'd be surprised if he knew of it. I was suggesting that saying the FF1 magic system was taken from D&D neglects that it's a magic system that could equally have been derived from existing Japanese media.

[HWalsh]

Rogar Valertis wrote:

Well magic users surely changed a lot in the transition from first ed D&D to D&D 3.x (and by extension PF).

Part of the problem is the 3.x business model that ended up giving spellcasters (and wizards in particular) so many options they can take all together while most other classes are limited.
Nowadays wizards get a lot of spells, a lot of feats they can use to make their spells even more powerful, lots of items to cast and recast said spells often applying metamagic feats, even at lower levels they get many uses per day of their special abilities and are the most SAD of all classes.
Should magic in D&D be changed? I believe so, but this cannot be done with simple house rules and requires a full new edition of the game, rewriting most of its spells, give a long hard look at certain feats and magic items and a general reballance of challanges as well.
A route that can be taken is introducing ritual casting (concept:the really powerful reality altering spells cannot be achieved by snapping your fingers, you need preparation and time for those. The pay off is big but in order to pull it the wizard needs his team mates help), limits to preparation (concept:you can cast all the contingencies you want but their duration and effects are limited and there's always a chance they'll fail you, not doing anything stupid despite having them on is usually a good way to live longer) and the perils of magic (Concept: powerful magic is dangerous. Sure you can burn down a city in a meteor storm but the baclash of such power can very well incinerate you as well in the process, tread carefully).
Wizards and other spellcasters SHOULD be able to do awesome stuff, it should not be so easy and cheap for them though.

I don't think ritual casting is the answer... My answer would be "Spell Prerequisites."

Namely, if spells required certain ability scores to learn and/or cast then you make Wizards/Clerics more MAD.

I'd break it up by school.

Divination/Illusion uses Wis.
Enchantment/Evocation uses Int.
Necromancy/Transmutation uses Con.
Abjuration/Conjuration uses Charisma.

Make it a requirement that to cast a spell you need 10+ the Spell Level in the associated stat.

[Gulthor]

Bluenose wrote:

I wasn't saying that Gary Gygax was influenced by manga - I'd be surprised if he knew of it. I was suggesting that saying the FF1 magic system was taken from D&D neglects that it's a magic system that could equally have been derived from existing Japanese media.

Oh, oh, I understand now. But that would also require you to also willfully ignore FF1's use of Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon; Tiamat, the Five-Headed Dragon Queen; Mindflayers; Beholders; Sahuagin; Carrion Crawlers; Otyughs; Marilith; Remorhaz; Bulette; Death Knights; and Purple Worms, to name a few, many of which are now protected intellectual property that not even Paizo can use. As well as the class's weapon proficiencies and stats eerily lining up with those of their D&D counterparts. But the magic system is as big a giveaway as any of those.

But I'll leave this at that since I'm afraid I've derailed the conversation too much as it is; the bulk of my post was trying to point out fantasy references that had young protagonists starting out as spellcasters still mastering their powers and how that is a character fantasy that is innately interesting to some players (which has been further reinforced over decadesby D&D's own influence on broader gaming culture) which is why there is pushback.

[CorvusMask]

Gulthor wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

I wasn't saying that Gary Gygax was influenced by manga - I'd be surprised if he knew of it. I was suggesting that saying the FF1 magic system was taken from D&D neglects that it's a magic system that could equally have been derived from existing Japanese media.

Oh, oh, I understand now. But that would also require you to also willfully ignore FF1's use of Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon; Tiamat, the Five-Headed Dragon Queen; Mindflayers; Beholders; Sahuagin; Carrion Crawlers; Otyughs; Marilith; Remorhaz; Bulette; Death Knights; and Purple Worms, to name a few, many of which are now protected intellectual property that not even Paizo can use. As well as the class's weapon proficiencies and stats eerily lining up with those of their D&D counterparts. But the magic system is as big a giveaway as any of those.

But I'll leave this at that since I'm afraid I've derailed the conversation too much as it is; the bulk of my post was trying to point out fantasy references that had young protagonists starting out as spellcasters still mastering their powers and how that is a character fantasy that is innately interesting to some players (which has been further reinforced over decadesby D&D's own influence on broader gaming culture) which is why there is pushback.

Plus Japanese don't care much about intellectual property rights, I mean, Coeurl is still recurring Final Fantasy monster despite Paizo not being allowed to update Coeurl to pathfinder version because that 3.5 statblock was one time thing they got rights for.

[Matthew Downie]

Anzyr wrote:

Pathfinder does not really support the kind of game you want to play

I've played in a game where no player chose to play a character with significant spellcasting abilities. Pathfinder supports this OK. (Though many pre-written adventures become very difficult.)

[HWalsh]

Matthew Downie wrote:

Anzyr wrote:

Pathfinder does not really support the kind of game you want to play

I've played in a game where no player chose to play a character with significant spellcasting abilities. Pathfinder supports this OK. (Though many pre-written adventures become very difficult.)

I'll say though having all casters can fail just as hard. Xaneshia (RotRL) managed a clean TPK on a group of a Wizard, Sorcerer, Arcanist, and Cleric.

Wizard died in the surprise round, Sorc in round 2, cleric in 4, Arcanist in 6

[CorvusMask]

Well, pre written adventures ARE written with assumption of martial, skill monkey, arcane & divine caster.

Like, if you want hardmode(assuming you aren't super optimizer) you just need to not fulfill all the roles :D Like Iron Gods without any healing focused class(closest being bard) has been interesting so far since when people go down, they don't get up until fight is over.

But yeah, playing Pathfinder on low fantasy campaign isn't hard, playing low fantasy party in high fantasy campaign is xD

[JAMRenaissance]

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Saldiven wrote:

The best part about thread like this are all the immediate "Wrong bad fun" posts that come out because someone else dares to play the game in a different way.

That isn't the issue. The problem is people who come out advocating major changes to the game when it's obvious that they've never actually implemented the changes they propose. It's like putting out a video game, expecting people to buy into it when you've never actually run the software yourself.

Very few of these people who propose those changes come out with a story that has demonstrated why it already worked for them. Apparantly many who propose such changes simply don't have the guts to actually TRY those changes unless they get messageboard approval. Those folks deserve all of the derision they justly earn.

How in the hell do you know what people have and haven't played?

Personally, I've been playing this system for abput two years now, and am currently running a Hell's Vengeance campaign through it. So, personally, I have no clue what you are referencing.

More broadly, though, by deriding people that want to make and discuss theory-level changes you are exactly saying it is wrong bad fun to play the game in a different way.

[Saldiven]

Anzyr wrote:

Saldiven wrote:

The best part about thread like this are all the immediate "Wrong bad fun" posts that come out because someone else dares to play the game in a different way.

Where? No really where? Which post is saying that OP is having fun the wrong way. All people are saying is 1. Pathfinder does not really support the kind of game you want to play; here are some options or 2. your changes are large enough that calling the game you play "Pathfinder" is misleading. Much like if I replaced the Rook and Bishop pieces with pawns and then claimed I played "Chess".

But badwrongfun? I'm not seeing it.

I went back to look for examples, got to post #2 of the thread, and figured I could stop there.

The assertions that pathfinder doesn't work that way are patently false, and (IMO) merely people trying to project their views of the game on someone who wants to play a different way.

BTW: Your point number two is exactly saying "You're doing Pathfinder wrong." Also BTW, there are a very wide number of Chess variants that use different starting positions and piece combinations, and they're all still called Chess.

[JAMRenaissance]

Bob Bob Bob wrote:

Though you're right, I did miss "It wouldn't be fun to play spellcasters under such a system". Again though, it's not resistance to the concept but to the specific implementation. If people didn't like the concept there wouldn't be so many other systems that do exactly that, as people here have already listed off. Or as someone else put it:

There's a reason I didn't post any specific rules. What I am referencing is not a function of people not liking specific rules because no specific rules are being discussed. Somehow we have already leapt to the thought that the very idea is stupid, the game absolutely does not support it, and you deserve to be derided for mentioning it. THIS is my problem.

I'm not saying that there isn't a problem with the rules. I am saying the rules themselves are not the problem being discussesd here.

[taks]

It is worth noting that martial characters in these other settings are weaker, too, as are healers and just about every other equivalent to a Pathfinder class.

[Alzrius]

CorvusMask wrote:

Plus Japanese don't care much about intellectual property rights, I mean, Coeurl is still recurring Final Fantasy monster despite Paizo not being allowed to update Coeurl to pathfinder version because that 3.5 statblock was one time thing they got rights for.

Saying that "Japanese don't care much about intellectual property rights" comes dangerously close to being a racist sentiment - you've essentially indicted an entire culture as being intellectual property thieves. At the very least, it shows ignorance of the subtleties of Japanese culture.

It's more accurate to say that the use of the coeurl is an example of how popular or iconic imagery will be reused in other media as an homage to the original thing, which is something that's still common in Japanese popular culture. Rather than being concerned with creating a version that's "just different enough" to avoid litigation issues (much like how Dungeons & Dragons did with the "displacer beast"), there's a tendency to understand that such uses aren't theft, but rather to honor that something that has become striking enough to become an archetype. This is combined with a reciprocal understanding that the person whose work is being exalted will receive that praise with aplomb. This, combined with the cultural understand that making trouble for someone else purely so that you can benefit is disgraceful, means that such homages are rife through Japanese media, and no one has a problem with it. Such instances are made in good faith (e.g. they're typically shout-outs, or part of small works with limited runs, rather than taken whole-cloth for use in major media works) and are received that way in turn.

This goes both ways, it should be noted. When The Lion King turned into such a big hit, the owners of Jungle Emperor Leo (with Kimba the white lion) didn't file a lawsuit, but simply sent Disney a letter asking that they politely acknowledge the developmental role that it had played in The Lion King. (Disney's response was right out of a lawyer's playbook, claiming that no such developmental role had occurred, that the people behind he movie had never heard of the Japanese work, and that they weren't legally liable for anything - needless to say, the response was taken as rather insulting in Japan.)

To put it another way, they care just as much as anyone else about intellectual property rights. They just aren't as litigious about them as other societies are.

[PK the Dragon]

Saldiven wrote:

Anzyr wrote:

Saldiven wrote:

The best part about thread like this are all the immediate "Wrong bad fun" posts that come out because someone else dares to play the game in a different way.

Where? No really where? Which post is saying that OP is having fun the wrong way. All people are saying is 1. Pathfinder does not really support the kind of game you want to play; here are some options or 2. your changes are large enough that calling the game you play "Pathfinder" is misleading. Much like if I replaced the Rook and Bishop pieces with pawns and then claimed I played "Chess".

But badwrongfun? I'm not seeing it.

I went back to look for examples, got to post #2 of the thread, and figured I could stop there.

The assertions that pathfinder doesn't work that way are patently false, and (IMO) merely people trying to project their views of the game on someone who wants to play a different way.

BTW: Your point number two is exactly saying "You're doing Pathfinder wrong." Also BTW, there are a very wide number of Chess variants that use different starting positions and piece combinations, and they're all still called Chess.

Ah, here's the problem, you have a very loose interpretation of BadWrongFun. Even post #2 was simply stating the reason why people might not like it, as opposed to calling the OP out as wrong. Point #2 in that post is debatable for sure, but saying the game you're playing isn't Pathfinder isn't the same thing as saying the game you're playing is BadWrongFun.

The overall theme I've got from this topic isn't that "you're wrong to limit spellcasters", it's more "be careful, for such changes have ripple effects".

This board has enough genuinely negative and argumentative topics that I think it's important to keep perspective on borderline topics like this that IMO haven't spun out of control yet.

[CorvusMask]

Alzrius wrote:

CorvusMask wrote:

Plus Japanese don't care much about intellectual property rights, I mean, Coeurl is still recurring Final Fantasy monster despite Paizo not being allowed to update Coeurl to pathfinder version because that 3.5 statblock was one time thing they got rights for.

Saying that "Japanese don't care much about intellectual property rights" comes dangerously close to being a racist sentiment - you've essentially indicted an entire culture as being intellectual property thieves. At the very least, it shows ignorance of the subtleties of Japanese culture.

It's more accurate to say that the use of the coeurl is an example of how popular or iconic imagery will be reused in other media as an homage to the original thing, which is something that's still common in Japanese popular culture. Rather than being concerned with creating a version that's "just different enough" to avoid litigation issues (much like how Dungeons & Dragons did with the "displacer beast"), there's a tendency to understand that such uses aren't theft, but rather to honor that something that has become striking enough to become an archetype. This is combined with a reciprocal understanding that the person whose work is being exalted will receive that praise with aplomb. This, combined with the cultural understand that making trouble for someone else purely so that you can benefit is disgraceful, means that such homages are rife through Japanese media, and no one has a problem with it. Such instances are made in good faith (e.g. they're typically shout-outs, or part of small works with limited runs, rather than taken whole-cloth for use in major media works) and are received that way in turn.

This goes both ways, it should be noted. When The Lion King turned into such a big hit, the owners of Jungle Emperor Leo (with Kimba the white lion) didn't file a lawsuit, but simply sent Disney a letter asking that they politely acknowledge the developmental role that it had played in The Lion King....

Geez, and you are awfully fast to throw out "Hmm, I sense racism" card and assume a lot about my beliefs. Please don't be insulting, you could at least check what I meant before launching on a lecture.

Like, if you ask me, intellectual property and patents and copyrights are part of a larger problem that results in things like Disney milking Mickey Mouse years after Disney's death, patent trolling, medicines and technologies not being allowed to be developed/produced because one company holds the patent and such. I'm all for public domain and such, sure ips/patents/copyrights have good things about them too, but greed and capitalism has tendency to ruin good things.

So I wasn't saying, "Japanese are thieves", I was saying that they aren't as much afraid of lawsuits related to them as American companies are. Plus I'm really annoyed we can't have updated version of cool scifi creature's statblock due to copyrights meanwhile FF has used the monster for years :P

That being said, nice to see people who do know about Japanese culture's details :D Always found the culture interesting, tried to once even learn the language, though I ended up learning that I suck in learning languages.

[PK the Dragon]

My own opinion:

Honestly, in my games spellcasters have never been a problem. We've had much more issue with lacking skill checks than lacking spells. You can survive without spells, it's much harder to survive without skills. Unless you have spells which replace skills, but as we don't play 15 minute adventure days, it's VERY difficult to juggle those and combat spells, at least early on. Which is not to say that things are balanced, not at all, just that it's not a big problem for my group's playstyle.

I can pinpoint the moment I got genuinely interested in Pathfinder- I was looking through the spells in the APG and saw Create Demiplane. Wow. The fact that characters could ascend to literally creating their own worlds- that was AWESOME. I didn't see it as a balance issue, but a perk. Even now, it's a major appeal of the system, and the thing I'm most interested in when discovering new role playing systems is "what rediculous things can you do with magic by the end?"

So my problem, then, is more that martials can't do the stuff spellcasters can. Now obviously martials are not going to be able to create their own demiplanes based on their own power. But we surely can give them a little bit more narrative power, can't we?

So tl;dr: buff martials, don't nerf spellcasters, imo.

[Matthew Downie]

PK the Dragon wrote:

Now obviously martials are not going to be able to create their own demiplanes based on their own power.

Feat: Smash Reality. Requirement: Str 30, base attack bonus +16. Once per day the user can punch a cavity into the fabric of the universe...

[HWalsh]

PK the Dragon wrote:

So my problem, then, is more that martials can't do the stuff spellcasters can. Now obviously martials are not going to be able to create their own demiplanes based on their own power. But we surely can give them a little bit more narrative power, can't we?

So tl;dr: buff martials, don't nerf spellcasters, imo.

Narrative power isn't always about "powers" or "feats" or mechanics. The GM can give Martials narrative power.

This is an example:

My Fighter had craft and profession. He was a weaponsmith. He, early on, started investing his gold in the shops in our home city.

Eventually he opened his own smithworks. Since he was an adventurer he started loaning its use out when he wasn't there. As we traveled I invested gold into establishing traders to deliver rare materials.

This lead to my Fighter becoming very wealthy. He eventually made a bid for mayor and, due to his business contacts, won.

I had tremendous narrative control. Through role-playing. You don't need codification.

Yes you can't do this in PFS but that's because PFS isn't role-playing. PFS is a tabletop video game.

If it's a module or AP there are tons of opportunities that a DM could take.

You don't always need mechanics.

[TOZ]

HWalsh wrote:

Yes you can't do this in PFS but that's because PFS isn't role-playing. PFS is a tabletop video game.

The hell you say.

[PossibleCabbage]

How would people feel about a game where the GM said "No 9-level casters"? A lot of the conceptual niches filled by the 9 level casters could be filled with 6 level ones (especially factoring in archetypes), and the 6-level casters are some really strong, interesting, and powerful classes. So if the GM said "For this campaign, nobody play a full caster" would that be unreasonably limiting to the point where it breeds resentment?

[captain yesterday]

Darn you! I was just going to suggest that! :-)