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View Full Version : Impossible to enjoy a imbalanced system with a group of good players?



Kaihaku
2009-02-26, 09:52 PM
This originated over in the Martial Characters thread and threatens to take that thread further off topic so I thought I'd move it here.

What proceeded...

But then he is just in the same boat as CoDzilla & Co. He is an egoist who doesn't really need to travel with those other berks. He just tolerates their continued existance because they amuse him. Or something.

And that is a bad bad thing for a game that is meant to be played by friends. :smallfrown:

True, true. Though, for the most part, class and system imbalances have never greatly hindered games I've played with friends. We aim to have fun regardless and we succeed, even if there's a Wizard and a Monk together in the party. Now, games with acquaintances, friends of friends, and online are a completely different story. :(


You can have a lot of fun without ever killing anything yourself. But to have fun, you usually have to feel that you did contribute to the parties success.

I agree. But most of the people I'd call friends would allow another friend their moment of glory (even a monk) and opportunity to contribute (even a monk) rather than going on an ego trip showing off how they could do the same thing better (ala how most caster vs all discussions seem to go.) Playing with people who aren't jerks doesn't erase the system imbalances but it makes it possible to have fun in spite of them.


Thats kind of the problem with most of the melee classes at high levels. In order to "let them shine" usually you have to hold back and pull your punches intentionally so as to not completely outclass them (Clerics no using any spells, wizards only using low level damage spells, ect.) in which case, its a horribly trivial encounter anyways and smacks of being a kiddie pool.

It's not as difficult or contrived as you make out to be, it means instead of buffing himself into Codzilla the Cleric buffs the martial peeps and the Wizard follows 80% of the Batman routine only without the smug jerk attitude. Actually, attitude is most of it from my experience.


in any appropriate level encounter, they'll never get their chance to shine truly; their attacks and moves won't be near useful enough to really put a noticable dent in an enemy at the same speed as your allies, and if they hold back so as to not shown up the monk, then the enemy will tear them apart since they're pulling their punches.

They don't hold back not to show up the Monk, they bolster and support the Monk instead of trying to take the spotlight. It's a teamwork thing. No, it's not optimal and I'm sure it probably could be done faster by a Wizard on his own but we had fun the way we did and, yes, that time I was playing a full caster.


Unfortunately, at high levels the normal melee classes turn into glorified cohorts.

Yes, the system definitely tips that way. Decent attitudes on the parts of players and good roleplaying can balance it out somewhat, but it never completely vanishes, no.


Thats why most of us are saying to be a tome of battle character. It lets you shine all on your own; no one "gives" you anything, you take it yourself!

Yes, that's one solution. As someone else said, a wonderful team of egoists...

I have my own issues with Tome of Battle, personally, but I've already detailed them.


When righteous might and divine power can be cast on other characters, let me know. Because Self cast spells which CANNOT be spread to other characters are the only reason by CODzilla exists.

And those are the only two worthwhile buffing spells a cleric can cast?

I meant to imply that there are other viable routes that don't steal the martial spotlight for a Cleric to take than that of CODzilla. I've played divine casters quite a bit and I've always found that there's plenty of room for awesome there without the ego boost of showing up the martial characters.


Unfortunately, while your giving the monk pep talks and pumping him up with spells, the monsters WILL rape you. Flurry will not cut it in any appropriate right.

I think you missed the part where I said I've been there and that didn't happen.

I would take a team working together over a group of individual show-offs trying to one up each other any day; from my personal experience the team of individual show-offs is probably more powerful but the team working together has more fun overall.


Its just the reality of a situation. unless your DM has enemies stare at their shoe laces half the fight, they will tear through your party. I'm not doing this as an anti-monk/fighter thing, its just the SITUATION.

Teamwork doesn't mean going into a situation unprepared or playing stupidly.

It's not THE situation, it's A situation, which certainly happens but is not universal.


Unfortunately, no matter how much you "congratulate" someone, it won't cover up issues in combat. Just like how on say, Buffy it was incredibly clear that individuals such as Xander were basically entourage members, at high levels it really becomes clear in fights that basic melee classes are more or less just minions.

Um... No.

Why? Because it's a roleplaying game. Are the rules out of balance? Without question. The core martial classes got screwed by WotC, I have not claimed otherwise. But unless you're playing with a bunch of jerks you can have fun anyway. It doesn't fix the problems in the system, no, but those problems certainly don't absolutely ruin the game. If it did, no one would have ever enjoyed playing a martial character before Tome of Battle came out.

I've played a Fighter from 1 to 19, definitely the weakest character I've ever played, but I still had fun playing him because I was playing with friends. I got frustrated that the system was so imbalanced and that the other characters were far stronger than me, certainly yes, but it didn't ruin the game for me. I've also played a Barbarian in epic which was vastly outshone by a certain Wizard but I still had made quite an impact regardless. And I've played a Paladin to 17 who was the leader of a group including several full casters and I didn't feel like a minion once.

Unless I am drastically misunderstanding you, you are essentially arguing that it is impossible to feel like part of a team and have fun playing as a high-level martial character without Tome of Battle. Maybe that has been your experience and if so that is valid, but it certainly has not been a universal experience.

Team-oriented Cleric vs CODzilla aside

The best buffs are self only. So it's not a choice between making the Cleric CoDzilla and making say... a Fighterzilla. It's the choice between Cleric becomes CoDzilla or... Fighter gets Bull's Strength.

Or... Enlarge Person, Monstrous Regeneration, Elation (forget enhancement, go w/ stacking), Divine Agility, etc.

Divine Power and Righteous Might are, yes, stronger but persisting "lesser" buffs on a martial character instead of on the divine caster is not a game ruining decision. And, in the end, it comes down to actions per turn; round by round I'd personally rather have a buffed up martial character meleeing and a divine caster casting than have a unbuffed martial character meleeing and a buffed divine caster meleeing.


:smallyuk: That's not even a choice at all - buffs are force multipliers, and thus already better on the better classes... the fact you're stuck with subpar buffs for others just amplifies this. You can multiply awesome by awesome, or you can multiply suck by marginally less suck. Gee, that's a tough one...

No?

You can choose to be the Cleric who tries to be awesome not just in the standard ways but also in melee, spreading himself thin equipment and feat-wise, or you can choose to let the Fighter who has already blown all of his money on a high-end magical weapon be the recipient of a few well placed buffs. The power gap you describe does exist but it is not as ruinous as you claim it to be. The Cleric is certainly a better class and far more powerful than any core martial class, but for the vast majority of campaigns CODzillas and Batman Wizards are not necessary for survival. People have played the game for years just fine before those builds and Tome of Battle became popular.


See above for why this is just empty words.

Your judgment call is wrong. My words were not empty but backed up by years of experience playing this system.

I never claimed that the system was fair and balanced, I claimed that it is possible to enjoy playing a martial character despite that in a good group. My experience alone disproves your claim, and I am not alone in having enjoyed playing martial characters pre-Tome of Battle. I'm not attempting to invalidate your perspective, the imbalance is certainly there and Tome of Battle is one way of addressing it, so why are you struggling so to invalidate my perspective? The judgment calls are unnecessary and hurt what is already an overstated and fairly obvious point. The system is broken, most people admit that, but most players who continue using it do so because they enjoy it anyway.


Good roleplaying means recognizing that buffs are force multipliers.

No, that's good rollplaying and; yes, it can augment and help roleplaying but the two are not the same thing.


Which means they might try buffing the Monk, but when they see he still sucks, even with the gifts of the Gods they aren't going to bother in the future.

If that is how you choose to play, then you are certainly welcome to it. I, personally, would not react that way to a friend who choose a sucky class for an interesting character concept. Few of my friends would and we have made it through many a campaign just fine over the years.

Monks and Fighters got screwed by WotC but I'm not going to screw my friend's characters because of that. In the vast majority of campaigns system imbalance will certainly be factor but it won't result in a total party death.


The concept of 'having fun' is a purely metagame one, as the characters likely do not regard continuously risking their lives as fun.

If "having fun" playing the game is metagaming then, yes, count me a metagamer. Haha.

Gamiress
2009-02-26, 10:14 PM
Amen, sir. I applaud you.

I've played "weak" classes, taken "bad" feats, and made utterly stupid decisions in game. It never stopped the group from having fun. Some of the best gaming anecdotes come from someone doing something that would make any powergamer cringe.

Knaight
2009-02-26, 10:25 PM
Agreed. Some of my best GMing anecdotes involve players doing entirely stupid things, which can really spice things up. But I'm story focused, I make a setting, and the story naturally evolves around the players choices. Optimization and tactics have their place, but they aren't what bring me to RPGs. Interesting combat does have tactics in it, although stuff usually hits the fan pretty quickly in most fights anyways (In one of my games the players are averaging a totally destroyed jeep per two or so combats. Although one of them is still technically in one piece. More in one piece than ever before. Axles fused to the bottom of the jeep for example, hub caps melted on, etc.). But its the story, and the stupid, bad, but in character decisions that can help advance it that really drive things forward. That said, I dropped 3.5 a long time ago, because the balance was all off, because it was too slanted towards combat, and wizards were just better. That and it doesn't cover a lot of the settings I use without difficulty. Not that I ever got into 4e either.

bobspldbckwrds
2009-02-26, 10:37 PM
why do min/max'ers have to try to invalidate the playstyles that others enjoy?

Aron Times
2009-02-26, 10:39 PM
It's possible to enjoy and unbalanced system (3.5) if you have decent players. Just make sure that the group abides by a Gentlemen's Agreement that they will not go out of their way to break the game.

Many of us 4E fans actually liked 3E and 3.5. We managed to play memorable campaigns despite the flaws of the previous edition by holding back on our CharOp-fu.

But the thing is, holding back all the time gets old after a time. Also, as I learned more about 3.5, it became apparent that it was quite easy to break the game without even trying. CoDzilla is the ultimate example; a single-classed cleric or druid will outclass most builds out there without even trying.

4E lets me go all out without making the rest of the party useless. Argent is one of the most powerful characters in my adventuring company, but the gap between him and the ranger who uses Careful Attack is much smaller than the one between CoDzilla and the 3.5 fighter.

LucyHarris
2009-02-26, 10:42 PM
A post of awesome

*Stands up and applauds* That is a fantastic, well-written and well-thought response there, Kaihaku. Me personally, I've often played the "weak" classes, and you know what? I had fun. Sure, the wizard might be throwing fireballs around, and cleric could raise up a dead party member, but I loved being able to mow through enemies in the blink of an eye, simply by swinging a sword. My groups never complained about me "holding them back" or hindering their fun--hell, they were clamoring FOR a frontliner because the game was serious hack and slash, and they hadn't anyone like that. We had fun, we came, we saw, we kicked the badguys' butts and saved the day. In the end, that's all I and my fellows were in the game for.

Temp.
2009-02-26, 10:49 PM
This is absurd.

What are you trying to say? That you enjoy playing in a less competitive setting than Advocate, krossbow, et al? That's not something that's been contested (at least in a way that anybody has taken seriously).

Yeah, you can play in a less competitive setting and have fun. That doesn't mean that arguments about character optimization in a thread that was started to discuss optimization are null. They're fully justified within the context of that thread to discuss optimization in a setting where other players are also optimizing.

They're, for the most part, right in what they said -- if optimization is being pushed to the level where the game more or less becomes an Initiative race, each battle has to more or less be over by the end of the first round. Many classes just don't provide the tools to cut the mustard.

But no, that's not how D&D is usually played. I've only played that sort of game in three groups over the years; every other one has been more concerned with laughing at the host's beer selections, discussing the underlying symbolism of Ghidora the Three-Headed Monster and one-upping the level of absurdity the other guys bring to the game.

But I don't see how you're arguing with clearly competitive personalities that they're wrong in playing in a clearly competitive game. Maybe the Cleric only has enough resources to spare a few ten-minute-per-level or longer buff spells while maintaining the spell effects that are critical to his own survival and success.

I guess I must be missing something.

ocato
2009-02-26, 10:53 PM
Many of us 4E fans actually liked 3E and 3.5. We managed to play memorable campaigns despite the flaws of the previous edition by holding back on our CharOp-fu.

As a recent convert to 4e, I must point out that this is true. The fun of D&D is role-playing, not following the directions of someone else that you found on the internet. Step, pivot, power attack. If your idea of fun is to follow instructions mindlessly, I suggest you go buy some Ikea furniture, but that's just my opinion.

So yes, any group of players that lets you play your 10 int 8 cha character the way he ought to be played without treating you like you're stupid, or treats the company of adventurers like a team and not a talent competition, is a good group and can enjoy any system from 3.5 to GURPS bunnies and burrows.

Mando Knight
2009-02-26, 10:54 PM
No, that's good rollplaying and; yes, it can augment and help roleplaying but the two are not the same thing.

Although that given Roll vs. Role would become pointless if your character was the party's Chessmaster (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheChessmaster)...

Jerthanis
2009-02-26, 11:03 PM
A good group is all you need to have a good game.

However, not every group is good. Some of them are mediocre. Because of the fact that life is too short to settle for mediocre games, you need a system by which the mediocre group can play good games. This requires a balanced system in most cases.

THAC0
2009-02-26, 11:23 PM
A good group is all you need to have a good game.

However, not every group is good. Some of them are mediocre. Because of the fact that life is too short to settle for mediocre games, you need a system by which the mediocre group can play good games. This requires a balanced system in most cases.

You also need a system that fits what your group wants, I would say. You can have a great group, but if the system doesn't match their wants and needs, frustration can easily ensue.

Kaihaku
2009-02-26, 11:55 PM
This is absurd.

I agree.


What are you trying to say? That you enjoy playing in a less competitive setting than Advocate, krossbow, et al? That's not something that's been contested (at least in a way that anybody has taken seriously).

I'm trying to say that my perspective is equally valid. As I said earlier, I am not attempting to invalidate their perspectives, that is what I felt that they were attempting to do with absolute statements and judgment calls (ala "empty words"). I feel that it has been contested and obviously I am not alone in that.


Yeah, you can play in a less competitive setting and have fun. That doesn't mean that arguments about character optimization in a thread that was started to discuss optimization are null. They're fully justified within the context of that thread to discuss optimization in a setting where other players are also optimizing.

It was my impression that optimization was part of that thread, not the whole of it. I was not attempting to introduce an "argument", I simply made what I thought was a relatively simple comment on martial class balance based on my experiences and it was challenged. You are correct that I should have moved this discussion into a new thread sooner.


They're, for the most part, right in what they said -- if optimization is being pushed to the level where the game more or less becomes an Initiative race, each battle has to more or less be over by the end of the first round. Many classes just don't provide the tools to cut the mustard.

Please note that I said that they were correct multiple times. I simply disagreed that I was incorrect.


But no, that's not how D&D is usually played. I've only played that sort of game in three groups over the years; every other one has been more concerned with laughing at the host's beer selections, discussing the underlying symbolism of Ghidora the Three-Headed Monster and one-upping the level of absurdity the other guys bring to the game.

But I don't see how you're arguing with clearly competitive personalities that they're wrong in playing in a clearly competitive game. Maybe the Cleric only has enough resources to spare a few ten-minute-per-level or longer buff spells while maintaining the spell effects that are critical to his own survival and success.

I'm arguing it because it was challenged, repeatedly. I had no intention of entering into an argument, I prefer discussions personally but I intend to answer the challenges made against me. If I'm incorrect, I'll admit it but in this case I don't believe that I am.

Dungeons and Dragons can be a competitive game, it can be many things... I was not attempting to put it into a box where one playstyle works and another does not, I was attempting to state the opposite. I have played optimized characters and I have enjoyed them, I have also played weak characters and I have enjoyed them. The wonderful thing about roleplaying in a system like this is the vast range of options and styles of play, it seems near infinite to me...


I guess I must be missing something.

I believe so.

Jerthanis
2009-02-27, 12:44 AM
You also need a system that fits what your group wants, I would say. You can have a great group, but if the system doesn't match their wants and needs, frustration can easily ensue.

Yes, but a lot of the aspects that can make an otherwise good group into a mediocre group are not fixed by an imbalanced system, and in many cases are exacerbated by them. Rampant spotlight-hogging can be a pain when the other person is statistically three times as strong as anyone else in the party, just as an example.

I agree though, that a game system that fits a good group well can make a good group play great games, and balance isn't an absolute requirement for a system to fit well.

THAC0
2009-02-27, 12:50 AM
Yes, but a lot of the aspects that can make an otherwise good group into a mediocre group are not fixed by an imbalanced system, and in many cases are exacerbated by them. Rampant spotlight-hogging can be a pain when the other person is statistically three times as strong as anyone else in the party, just as an example.

I agree though, that a game system that fits a good group well can make a good group play great games, and balance isn't an absolute requirement for a system to fit well.

I never said it was, did I?

Jerthanis
2009-02-27, 01:11 AM
I never said it was, did I?

No... that's why I said that I agree.

Myatar_Panwar
2009-02-27, 01:28 AM
Of course you can have fun with an imbalanced system. People have been having fun with 3.5 for years, and its a well known fact that it can be a very imbalanced game.

Kind of a silly question really.

THAC0
2009-02-27, 01:30 AM
No... that's why I said that I agree.

Ah, I see. My reading comprehension is lacking at this point in the week. :smallsmile:

Nerd-o-rama
2009-02-27, 01:37 AM
It's pretty clear from this forum that nobody has fun playing anything.

Next question.

Tharivol123
2009-02-27, 01:46 AM
Imbalanced and not quite fitting the party can be a fun time. It wasn't in D&D, but we had a Metabarons party that never should have worked together and was completely imbalanced towards a few people.
We had a gunslinger, a demolitions expert, a pilot, a brawler, and my diplomat (read: useless in all forms of combat). The story ended up centering around my diplomat, and it was my "useless" character that got us out of the vast majority of our problems; through bureaucratic knowledge and bluff/diplomacy.

nightwyrm
2009-02-27, 02:02 AM
It's not impossible, but you have to have a group that knows the system is imbalanced and willing to work with that. It all comes down to expectation. The players have to know that some classes are stronger than other and either the player playing the strong class is willing to tone down his character or the player with the weak class is OK with playing a weak character. If a player makes a samurai expecting that his character is going to be as strong as the wizard, then there's a problem.

tcrudisi
2009-02-27, 02:16 AM
Since 4e came out I have attempted to play in one 3.5 game. I loved 3.5 and really didn't want to let go.

One particular player decided that he wanted to play gestalt. The DM let him. When the rest of us found out, we demanded to be allowed to do gestalt as well. Then, by the 3rd gaming session, I realized what he was doing; he was building Pun-Pun. The Pun-Pun. This was the guys first attempt at 3.x, mind you. His friend was giving him advise on how to create him and what to do.

Let's just say that caused me to love 4e all the more. I've not been back to 3.x yet and I do not plan on it.

In all fairness, I enjoyed the game, the DM, and all the players that were not playing Pun-Pun. But I would have been a lot happier if the system had been balanced enough that something like gestalt or Pun-Pun could not exist. In fact, I am happier now playing 4e. Knowing that I can create a really bad character and still be able to pull my weight in the group means a lot to me. It's wonderful. God bless balance in the system. (At least until 2010 when there are so many sourcebooks that the system has been unbalanced.)

Satyr
2009-02-27, 03:56 AM
The mechanical power aspect of a character is only one part of it, and in my opinion, not the most important one. A character who constantly overshadow the other characters, trespass into their niches and steals the spotlight time is just terrible, even though he is super powerful; it is much worse than a character who hardly pull his or her own weight but grants other characters the time to shine and is good sidekick.

Remember, that for the success of the group, every mechanical success within the game is marginal at best; it doesn't matter if your character eats dragon elders for breakfast when the group has no fun. And it doesn't matter that you constantly run away from most fights because those ogres are still looking dangerous on 5th level if the group is constantly thrilled and the players thoroughly enjoy it.

The art of creating a roleplaying character is not based on the key question "How can I create the most powerful character?" but "How can I create an interesting character all imvolved people would have fun to play with?" For the actual gameplay, the same question applies: Being better in the optimisation and the exploiting of loopholes doesn't make you a good roleplayer; if you constantly rub in the nose of the other players that their characters are too weak or if you constantly steal the focus and make the other look bad in comparison; if that describes you: congratulations, you are a jerk.
A good roleplayer is someone other players have fun to play with, who is able to make the story more interesting, offer plot twists and sometimes act as a step ladder for other players to shine.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-27, 04:18 AM
why do min/max'ers have to try to invalidate the playstyles that others enjoy?

To answer a usually untrue stereotype with another usually untrue stereotype: Because so do people who dislike powergaming and claim that if you have a strong character, then you're there to win the game instead to have fun and couldn't roleplay nor enjoy a good story even if your life depended on it.

Dixieboy
2009-02-27, 04:22 AM
To answer a usually untrue stereotype with another usually untrue stereotype: Because so do people who dislike powergaming and claim that if you have a strong character, then you're there to win the game instead to have fun and couldn't roleplay nor enjoy a good story even if your life depended on it.
Though people who take levels in 4 different prestige classes in order to get maximum whatever in a game are NOT in it for the roleplaying
Atleast that is my theory

Buuuuut wutever

Tengu_temp
2009-02-27, 04:30 AM
Though people who take levels in 4 different prestige classes in order to get maximum whatever in a game are NOT in it for the roleplaying
Atleast that is my theory

Buuuuut wutever

Your theory couldn't be more wrong - I know a lot of people who enjoy making very strong (though not game-breaking, there's a difference between powergaming and using loopholes in the system) characters, and still love to roleplay. Heck, I'm one of those people.

Panda-s1
2009-02-27, 04:41 AM
The only problem I have with the imbalance in 3.x is it encourages people to be overpowered. I mean of all the editions of D&D, munchkining is easy once you get it down.

Saying the system isn't bad when you have the right players basically means the system has failed to make sure crazy stuff like Pun-Pun won't ever happen. You mention the wizard letting the monk have his moments of glory, but that's entirely because one player decided to hold back. But doesn't the PHB say monks do crazy things with their sheer skill alone? Shouldn't they be able to do these things without a character holding back? On the flipside, if the wizard decides to be amazing, then the monk has very little chance of being anywhere near as important.

The way I look at it is like this: if you're gonna have a game that's essentially broken who's only balancing factor is the people who're playing it, then what's wrong with a system that's balanced anyway?

Satyr
2009-02-27, 04:45 AM
Though people who take levels in 4 different prestige classes in order to get maximum whatever in a game are NOT in it for the roleplaying
Atleast that is my theory

There is nothing wrong with roleplaying powerful characters. It can be fun to play a character who is a natural force etc.
The problem does not depend on the character's power, but on the chracter's power in relation to the other characters and the player's atitutde to it. Some player can play a powerful character in a "weak" group without overstepping into the other player's territories; or, if every character is more than usual competent, there is no problem, either (apart from the somewhat dull plots that derive from flawless protagonists).


The way I look at it is like this: if you're gonna have a game that's essentially broken who's only balancing factor is the people who're playing it, then what's wrong with a system that's balanced anyway?

First of all, every game has informal rules like "not threpassing onto other player's niche" or "don't rape the puppies" in complete independence from the formal rule within the book. These informal conventions are the more important ones, as they are the ones the players and gamemasters agree upon, even though they normally dont do it in a formulated way. Still, the idea that a roleplaying group works with the game rules alone is completely neglecting the social aspect of the game.
Second, there is no such thing as a balanced game. This is an illusion. You can only have a game where the possibilties of abuse are less obvious or numerous or, the much more elegant and effective way, where the pure mechanical power of a character isn't as significant for the gameplay and the focus is more on method acting and player creativity instead of slaying hordes of faceless mooks.

Kaiyanwang
2009-02-27, 05:13 AM
So... there are pepole out there considering Pun-Pun more than an interesting and amusing mental exercise?

@Satyr: well, well, well said. I second more or less all the things you pointed out.

AslanCross
2009-02-27, 05:19 AM
I totally agree that enjoyment of the game is not necessarily tied to a character's power level. I've only been a player in one game (though I'm handling two characters). Neither of them is incredibly optimized (The Warforged Fighter/Warblade is, sort of, but other party members have had more kills; the artificer is hard to not make overpowered, but she hasn't had much time to craft stuff.), but I enjoy RPing them, and I do RP the warforged even if he only has 9 Cha.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoy making optimal choices for my characters. Chargen to me is a bit of a puzzle that I like to work on. "I want to do this. How do I go about it?" Still, if I end up not making a perfectly optimal character, I don't mind. I don't mind either if one of my ability scores is low, as long as my rolls aren't 13 12 11 8 12 15. :P (One of the guys I play with whimpers and whines when even just one of his abilities isn't a positive modifier)

The level of optimization I enjoy is not "I will so totally rip anything the DM throws at me into shreds," but "Hey, that might not be such a good idea; <character option x> will allow you to do the same thing but for less."

Honestly, I think optimization should be part of a gentleman's agreement between the players and the DM. When I DM it's mostly "You optimize, I optimize." I don't let it degrade into an arms race, but I do have to keep in step to make sure the players continue to be challenged.

Bosh
2009-02-27, 05:28 AM
Games are a lot more fun if everyone is in roughly the same power range. Making sure that everyone is in roughly the same power range is much easier to do in some games than in others. Doing so in 3.5ed D&D can be rather hard.

For example I like playing warlocks, they're one of my favorite classes but every GM in my RPG club has banned them for being overpowered. :)

Similarly we had a very badly-built scout/rogue archer in our party who was doing average damage per round of 8 or so at level 8. Was just sad so see someone's contribution become a rounding error.

As a GM I like having things relatively balanced but it can annoy a lot of people if I ban their favorite thing. For example I had one player get very annoyed at me for enforcing the RAW for were tigers (that they can't use all of their funky tiger abilities unless they actually turn into a tiger). Actually banning things that are kosher according to RAW would give me a lot of hassles, but luckily our resident munchkins are very very bad at min-maxing so as long as I keep people from actually breaking the rules I haven't had much issues with overpowered characters.

With a better balanced system I wouldn't have to deal with those headaches. It would be nice.

AslanCross
2009-02-27, 05:37 AM
For example I like playing warlocks, they're one of my favorite classes but every GM in my RPG club has banned them for being overpowered. :)



...o_O. I hope they realize that several core classes can do much more to make the game unbalanced. But that's another story.

What are their reasons for this? That they can cast from an extremely narrow selection of abilities over and over again and not really do anything else? Or that they can deal as much damage per round as a decently built-fighter (albeit with a ranged touch and subject to SR)?

Kaiyanwang
2009-02-27, 05:44 AM
...o_O. I hope they realize that several core classes can do much more to make the game unbalanced. But that's another story.

What are their reasons for this? That they can cast from an extremely narrow selection of abilities over and over again and not really do anything else? Or that they can deal as much damage per round as a decently built-fighter (albeit with a ranged touch and subject to SR)?

I agree with you, but I noticed that several people simply are scared by the at-will thing. :smalltongue:

Tengu_temp
2009-02-27, 05:50 AM
I agree with you, but I noticed that several people simply are scared by the at-will thing. :smalltongue:

For those people, I suggest houseruling that melee types can use power attack only several times per day, as well.

Kaiyanwang
2009-02-27, 05:53 AM
For those people, I suggest houseruling that melee types can use power attack only several times per day, as well.

*laughter* exactly :smallsmile:

Edit: I have to point out that mocking the Warlock class in not in my intention. I love the class, and I'm playing a campaing now where invocation users and "standard" casters get along well.

Jayabalard
2009-02-27, 07:44 AM
[QUOTE=nightwyrm;5827076]It's not impossible, but you have to have a group that knows the system is imbalanced and willing to work with that.[quote]Not so. Plenty of people play D&D without realizing it's imbalanced and they have fun doing so.

Bosh
2009-02-27, 08:12 AM
As for the reasoning behind our three most recent DMs all banning warlocks I quote selections from our listserv:


Almost every D&D class you need a core stat or two....but if you're
playing a Warlock, there is no real 'core stat' that's absolutely
necessary.


I also hate Warlocks. I have the same concerns.

He may lack that huge punch that wizards can get, but with these considerations

1. Only need to hit touch AC
2. Fly at will
3. Super awesome range
4. Unlimited shots

It unbalances the game.


If they are so weak, I wonder why everyone wants to play them.


I restrict non PHB classes because of imbalance to the game and unneccassary duplication of PHB classes. Take the warmage for instance.


As for warlocks. I think they're overpowered. Give me a 3rd level warlock and he'll beat down a 3rd level fighter with no problem in a 1 on 1 fight. Give them party members to hide behind, and their consistant damage becomes a problem for enemies.

And poor PunPun shed a tear. They're not bad GMs, but it can be frustrating to have a game run by people who have fundamental misunderstandings of how the system they're running works. And in 3.5ed it can be HARD to get a real understanding of how the system works, I only got the hang of the rough bits of the system by lurking for a long time on the WotC charop boards (something I highly recommend for all DMs).


[QUOTE=nightwyrm;5827076]It's not impossible, but you have to have a group that knows the system is imbalanced and willing to work with that.[quote]Not so. Plenty of people play D&D without realizing it's imbalanced and they have fun doing so.

Right at a low level of system knowledge a lot of the weirdness of D&D doesn't come up (unless you play a druid), at least in the single digit levels. At a high level of system knowledge everyone has a good idea of how the game works and can dance around the broken bits. Its the middle levels that are messy where people know enough about the system to break the game but not enough to fix it, where they know enough about imbalance to lash out and do silly **** like ban warlocks but not enough to understand what are the really systemic imbalances with D&D.

In my personal group, the only balance problems that crop up are people who don't know the system at all gimping themselves accidentally and DMs who don't know the system well enough to wield the nerf rod fairly (poor poor innocent warlocks).

Dragonsdoom
2009-02-27, 08:28 AM
In all fairness, I enjoyed the game, the DM, and all the players that were not playing Pun-Pun. But I would have been a lot happier if the system had been balanced enough that something like gestalt or Pun-Pun could not exist. In fact, I am happier now playing 4e. Knowing that I can create a really bad character and still be able to pull my weight in the group means a lot to me. It's wonderful. God bless balance in the system. (At least until 2010 when there are so many sourcebooks that the system has been unbalanced.)

You might say part of the so called 'imbalance' in the system is caused by too many sourcebooks, which is somewhat true and inescapable, (and also why lawyers have jobs) but I would have to say that if you have a game that you feel is 'imbalanced', the DM is not doing his job.

Morty
2009-02-27, 08:42 AM
It's perfectly possible to have fun with an imbalanced system. In my campaign, I'm playing a wizard who banned Conjuration and my friend is playing a TWF ranger with more Dexterity and Strenght. We're having fun. Which is not to say the system wouldn't be better off as balanced. I don't know why do people bring 4ed up here, but whatever.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-27, 08:52 AM
You might say part of the so called 'imbalance' in the system is caused by too many sourcebooks, which is somewhat true and inescapable, (and also why lawyers have jobs) but I would have to say that if you have a game that you feel is 'imbalanced', the DM is not doing his job.

Seeing that wizards, druids and clerics are core, I wouldn't say imbalance in DND is not caused by sorucebooks.

Narmoth
2009-02-27, 08:57 AM
2nd ed. AD&D. Just saying

Dyllan
2009-02-27, 08:58 AM
Of course the imbalance in the system is caused by too many sourcebooks. Every book that includes more options for any of the base classes makes those classes more powerful.

Options = power. That's just the way this (and every) system works. Obviously some options are more powerful than others. You could make a balanced system... but to do so every option would have to be mechanically equivalent. I don't want to play in a system like that. (Actually, for me, 4e is too close to that... which is my primary fault with it. I suppose as they release more books, that'll improve, at the cost of balance).

I think the biggest fault here is the assumption that all classes should be of equal power. I really wouldn't want to play in a game where a level 20 Fighter could expect to defeat a level 20 Wizard on his own. The Fighter has focused on improving his body and weapon skills... and can do amazing things up close with those weapons. But the Wizard has neglected his physical self to learn to alter the very threads of reality. Of course the wizard should be more powerful. But then again, he's also more frail.

Everyone seems to overlook the fact that the Wizard isn't always more powerful. At lower levels, the fighter can kill that Wizard in one round.

But the truly important thing to remember is, the game was never designed for that Fighter PC and Wizard PC to be competing. They're supposed to work together - and each has an important role to play.

And when someone shows me a Codzilla that doesn't require Divine Metamagic: Persist and a bunch of nightsticks in order to truly outshine a well built Martial Character, I'll admit that there's a serious problem with the Cleric's power level... until then, there's a serious problem with either Divine Metamagic, Persist Spell or Nightsticks - take your pick.

Dyllan
2009-02-27, 08:59 AM
Seeing that wizards, druids and clerics are core, I wouldn't say imbalance in DND is not caused by sorucebooks.

Wizards, Druids and Clerics are core.

Most of the things that can be used to break them are not.

kamikasei
2009-02-27, 09:03 AM
if you have a game that you feel is 'imbalanced', the DM is not doing his job.

I see this view occasionally, and it bothers me.

The DM and the players share responsibility for "balancing" their game, as in, the game they sit down to play; things like making sure one guy's character doesn't consistently outshine another's, that they all have something useful to contribute, get a chance to shine, etc. The DM has a larger share of responsibility here since he has to manage the entire rest of the world and the kinds of challenges they face, while the players each have responsibility mostly for their own character only.

However, when they're doing this, the system should support them, not fight them. It may not be your intent, but your statement seems to put an unfair portion of blame on the DM for flaws in the system he's working with.

Spiryt
2009-02-27, 09:18 AM
Wizards, Druids and Clerics are core.

Most of the things that can be used to break them are not.

Druid are broken in Core as they stand.

Force Cages, Overland Flight, Teleportation, Solid/Killing/whatever Fog, Time Stop and many more are core.

Core is very broken, and splatbooks actually help, giving more interesting feats, and whatever to noncasting (or halfcasting classes).

With feats that are available in Core only, Fighter is truly useless, not to mention rather boring and uncustomizable.

shimmercat
2009-02-27, 09:25 AM
...a bunch of awesome... ALL SO TRUE.

We don't have the problem of players powergaming. This is partly because of a group that really isn't interested in it, and partly because the DM has restricted the sourcebooks. We can pull from the unholy trinity, the original four Complete books, and Stormwrack without asking permission. If we own the book (we also have the Eberron CS and Frostburn, I think a couple of others?), we can ask the DM if we can take something from it (and he will almost always say no). Any other book is off limits, as the DM has decided they are unbalanced (and I have to agree with him).

Just because the book EXISTS and is from WotC doesn't mean that you have to USE it. The game is a bit more balanced when you keep this in mind.

Also, to keep fidgety players busy between sessions, we have forum-based text RPs that are optional to post in. This means that people end up working on their reactions to the other characters, rather than how to best destroy important evil NPCs.

It works for us.

Edit: And our druid is actually the weakest of us all, as she's decided to limit her focus significantly. Although maybe this is just an instance of a good player.

Kaiyanwang
2009-02-27, 09:32 AM
I see that people have different point of view about the issue... as an example, IMO, splatbook are not more problematic than the core (most of "gamebreaking things" are in the core.

I think that most of imbalances are DM's fault. Maybe in 3.5 more, be a DM is very diffiult.

Players fault can be:

- take the many option not as a tool for your immagination, but sorta "Magic:the gathering combo" on RPG

- Take the Dm as one to trick instead of the person you rely upon for your enjoyment of the game.

krossbow
2009-02-27, 09:34 AM
For example I like playing warlocks, they're one of my favorite classes but every GM in my RPG club has banned them for being overpowered. :)






Wait, WTF? is this 4.0 warlock or 3.5 warlock? Because 3.5 warlock is a actually fairly weak after about level 6 or so.






On the area of balance, its perfectly good, but it relies HEAVILY on the dm usually. A good DM can easily keep things rolling with no trouble, but it can require obvious dm fiats on things, or houserules.
*laughs* I swear, Artifact empathy might as well be a fighter class feature given the number of times i've seen fighters stumble across Artifact greatswords tailor made to their character *Glares at roy* :smallbiggrin:

Dyllan
2009-02-27, 09:34 AM
Druid are broken in Core as they stand.

Force Cages, Overland Flight, Teleportation, Solid/Killing/whatever Fog, Time Stop and many more are core.

Core is very broken, and splatbooks actually help, giving more interesting feats, and whatever to noncasting (or halfcasting classes).

With feats that are available in Core only, Fighter is truly useless, not to mention rather boring and uncustomizable.

If you're calling Druids broken due to Wildshape issues (which are really just an extension of Polymorph issues), then I can see a limited argument. Though that depends on whether Wildshape is restricted to creatures the Druid is actually aware of in character or not.

As for the spells you've listed. They're powerful, high level spells. That doesn't make them inherently broken. No one claims that a level 20 fighter is the equal of a level 20 wizard. My point is that they don't need to be. Each has a unique roll to play. Wizards need their meat shields, and fighters need the arcane support.

krossbow
2009-02-27, 09:44 AM
Though that depends on whether Wildshape is restricted to creatures the Druid is actually aware of in character or not.



How so? All a druid really needs to know about are grizzly and dire bears and he already trumps a fighter.

Spiryt
2009-02-27, 09:48 AM
If you're calling Druids broken due to Wildshape issues (which are really just an extension of Polymorph issues), then I can see a limited argument. Though that depends on whether Wildshape is restricted to creatures the Druid is actually aware of in character or not.

As for the spells you've listed. They're powerful, high level spells. That doesn't make them inherently broken. No one claims that a level 20 fighter is the equal of a level 20 wizard. My point is that they don't need to be. Each has a unique roll to play. Wizards need their meat shields, and fighters need the arcane support.

I'm calling them broken beacuse of Wildshape, powerful full spellcasting, strong animal companion, and to add to this, not bad skills and tons of good lesser abilites.

Discussed thousands times on these boards anyway, and this is not the point.

The point is that additional books don't break casters, they're already broken. Those books are actually golden for other characters.

Kaiyanwang
2009-02-27, 09:51 AM
How so? All a druid really needs to know about are grizzly and dire bears and he already trumps a fighter.

Not quite. Druids are awesome, are Bears With lasers, but have not the tricks of an arcane spellcasters.

It obviously depends on cheese and builds, but I think that unless the fighter is grappled at high levels (so wildhsape in a biiig beast) the druid must use other spells and tricks and maybe flee to heal himself summon and so on to beat the fighter.

He can beat the Fighter, of course.

And yes, splatbooks help a lot meleers. Even if i found the first times a core only fighter enjoyable, I admit that I start from a splatobook to make my fighter builds. I love fighters and rogue. Loooove.

Advocate
2009-02-27, 09:52 AM
Enlarge Person is only available to Clerics with the Strength domain. Not a valid example. Divine Agility has such low duration that it's taking a full round away from winning the encounter. No. Now had you said Recitation and Righteous Wrath of the Faithful you'd actually have a point. Of course, buffs being the force multipliers that they are, they still help strong characters more than weak ones, so really you're just getting in on it because there's no reason to exclude you. It's free.

The rest of your post is a mix between falsehoods on your part, claiming some empty 'enjoyment', despite the fact the same claim can be just as easily made for a commoner, therefore it means nothing, and blatant metagaming.

See, from the character's perspective, those monster(s) over there want them dead. The goal of said characters is to prevent that from happening, most likely by killing them first. This means actually doing things that bring this about. Which may mean buffing someone up so they can do it better... but is not going to mean buffing someone up who can't do it otherwise, or worse yet can't do it even with the buffs. Those last two bits refer to the Fighter and the Monk, respectively. If you did want someone who is only playing the same game as everyone else because you take the time to make them remotely relevant at the expense of actually doing stuff, the party can take a commoner, and get the same result. Chances are the commoner will be a better party member, if for no other reason than the unlimited supply of chicken and eggs, combined with someone who is presumably a good cook.

Getting into metagame crap like 'the Monk isn't having fun because he sucks' is taking yourself right out of the ROLEplay you claim to purport. If he isn't having fun because he sucks. it's on him to make himself not suck. The slaughter will continue until play improves.

As long as we're talking about actual roleplay and not 'roleplay', fake roleplay, or whatever the correct solution to the problem of 'monsters want to kill you' is 'do stuff to stop that from happening'.

You can do stuff RIGHT NOW to make that happen. The Fighter can only do stuff to make it happen if you spend rounds buffing him, meanwhile the monsters are eating the party. The Monk can't do it even then.

Or, put this another way...

You are being shot at. You are unwounded, and have a gun.

Do you:

A: Shoot back at the enemy.
B: Give your gun to the guy who can't use one of his arms.
C: Run around like a chicken with his head cut off, then give your gun to the guy who lost half his body from an explosion, and is seconds away from death.

There is only one correct answer.

Also, it doesn't take much optimization to make combats one round affairs. Many creatures do this without even trying, such as the many enemy beatsticks that are actually decent at being beatsticks, or enemy casters with a save or lose effect. Just using stock enemies gets you one round combats with zero optimization. Sometimes it actually takes a little, as the normal fight length is 2-3 rounds, and that push gets it to 1-2. Of course, a little optimization on the enemy side (namely, save improvement via different feat selection, and using treasure allotment intelligently) brings it right back to 2-3.

So this illusionary scenario of super optimized characters being the only thing that makes one round fights? Wholly false. If anything, such characters make combat longer, as they don't die the moment they get hit with a proverbial rocket.

Adventurers are a talent contest, because if you aren't at least this skilled, you get everyone killed with your incompetence. Try going into say... the military, when your grenades are only marginally more dangerous to the enemy than your own squad. See what happens.

Lastly, Artifact Sword fixes indeed.

Edit:
Not quite. Druids are awesome, are Bears With lasers, but have not the tricks of an arcane spellcasters.

It obviously depends on cheese and builds, but I think that unless the fighter is grappled at high levels (so wildhsape in a biiig beast) the druid must use other spells and tricks and maybe flee to heal himself summon and so on to beat the fighter.

He can beat the Fighter, of course.

Grappling certainly helps. But even without that, the Druid has better auto attack numbers, and the AC is 80% of an optimized Fighter, over 100% of a non optimized one. He also likely has the same or more HP, better stats in the other relevant areas...

krossbow
2009-02-27, 09:56 AM
He can beat the Fighter, of course.


I was going from the view of him being broken compared to the basic melee; i was just pointing out that a druid can, without thinking about it more than a second, make a fighter seem irrellevent in melee combat.


I wasn't trying to point out that he beats everyone, just that he "breaks" melee easily by surpassing fighters, paladins and barbarians.


Our groups usually require the PHB II druid for this reason.

Kaiyanwang
2009-02-27, 09:58 AM
Grappling certainly helps. But even without that, the Druid has better auto attack numbers, and the AC is 80% of an optimized Fighter, over 100% of a non optimized one. He also likely has the same or more HP, better stats in the other relevant areas...

Well depends from the fighter. I mean, you could build one that strike you 6 times each time you try to grapple, cast a spell, use a (Su), strike him and the like.

Sometimes you win initiavie, charge and mercurial crit. Sometimes you suck.

Winterwind
2009-02-27, 10:11 AM
All other things aside, the importance of system balance pales compared to "story balance". Being vastly superior in a fight, or even being vastly superior in every mechanical regard imaginable, matters little if one is not in the right place at the right time. I strongly presume Samwise and Aragorn were not exactly balanced against each other. But, if the Lord of the Rings was a roleplaying campaign (with good players and gamemaster, unlike the DM of the Rings), I bet both Samwise and Aragorn would have had fun (and, to counter the inevitable counter-argument I always hear when bringing forth this example right away, yes, I do consider the Lord of the Rings a story that could have perfectly well happened in a roleplaying campaign, it being a literary work instead does not change anything).

kalt
2009-02-27, 10:31 AM
No it is not impossible at all, but it still is an issue. Here is an example of a severe imbalance that just occured in our campaign that I think really miffed off the DM just because nothing is really too cheap about anything.

Player A is a Dread Necromancer at 8th level (this isn't even a strong character mind you)who just got animate dead. DM decided to let the guy have 3 Firegiant skeletons. The dread necromancer focused solely on summoning/animating feats and now has 3 of these things with 3 Troll skeletons to tag along. He also has his little summon undead spells.

Player B (myself) is playing a conjuror/MS/Malconvoker who also focuses on battlefield control and summoning fun.

Player C is a druid that doesn't even really focus on summoning, but has augment summoning and of course his animal companion, and wildshape.

Player D is a Barbarian/Champion of Gwynharwyf. This combo is even typically thought of as a fairly decent melee build and he most certainly is optimized, but I mean seriously.

The barbarian for all anyone really cares could just disappear and no one would notice. The player is a great guy and much beer is consumed in a single session, but from an actual need to be there he just isn't I mean he the Barbarian is good(nice saves, solid damage) but with the wall of meat that can easily be brought against an enemy it just doesn't matter.

So sure we still have lots of fun playing, but there is an imbalance no doubt and I think it is a hard situation to deal with. The spells haste and mass snakes swiftness are just hilarious.

Advocate
2009-02-27, 10:32 AM
Well depends from the fighter. I mean, you could build one that strike you 6 times each time you try to grapple, cast a spell, use a (Su), strike him and the like.

Sometimes you win initiavie, charge and mercurial crit. Sometimes you suck.

That trick only works if you have the same or less Reach. Remember, we're talking about a class that can turn into Huge creatures all day.

Also, even the basic Entangle works wonders against a silly little Fighter.

Also, Frodo was really only there due to DM fiat, making it necessary to babysit him.

Dyllan
2009-02-27, 10:42 AM
So the druid can be a good melee combatant. That doesn't make him broken - just powerful. The underlining assumption seems to be that if class X can do something better than class Y, and that "something" is what class Y is supposed to do, then class Y must be worthless.

You don't have to be the best melee combatant to contribute. Just because the druid's bear form is better than you at melee during a certain level range doesn't mean your fighter is useless, or not contributing.

As for the 1 round kill monsters. Yes, they exist. But if the party can't survive more than a round against them, then the DM is not balancing his encounters properly against the party. CR is a guideline, not a rule. A good DM needs to gauge the power of the monsters versus the power of the party. Not all level X builds are equal, but that's okay.

And the "do you use the gun or give it to the one armed guy" argument is absolutely ludicrous. First of all, none of the base martial classes are so weak as to be your theoretical "one armed man." They may be less optimized, but they're not worthless. Second, we're not talking about guns here... buffing the fighter so he can go toe to toe with the big monster means you're not likely to be the one who's getting attacked by that monster. The analogy should be, do you give the gun to the soldier and send him out into the gunfight, or do you keep the gun and go out yourself?

Dyllan
2009-02-27, 10:45 AM
Player A is a Dread Necromancer at 8th level (this isn't even a strong character mind you)who just got animate dead. DM decided to let the guy have 3 Firegiant skeletons. The dread necromancer focused solely on summoning/animating feats and now has 3 of these things with 3 Troll skeletons to tag along. He also has his little summon undead spells.

Player B (myself) is playing a conjuror/MS/Malconvoker who also focuses on battlefield control and summoning fun.

Player C is a druid that doesn't even really focus on summoning, but has augment summoning and of course his animal companion, and wildshape.

Player D is a Barbarian/Champion of Gwynharwyf. This combo is even typically thought of as a fairly decent melee build and he most certainly is optimized, but I mean seriously.

Well the problem here isn't the power of any particular character, necessarily. It's the fact that Players A, B and C are effectively running multiple characters, while Player D just has one.

Winterwind
2009-02-27, 10:48 AM
Also, Frodo was really only there due to DM fiat, making it necessary to babysit him.Debatable. I'd argue he was there because he, the character, decided to go there (so, player decision, not DM fiat), and made it as far as he made it by the player using his cleverness and his character's abilities, limited as they might have been. Or, rather, that's what would have happened had it been a roleplaying game campaign.
I imagine the gamemaster might have been actually quite surprised when Frodo suddenly departed from the group and jumped into that boat.

At any rate, what I'm trying to say is, if the player tries to get into a position where s/he can shine in the story, and the gamemaster is not actively working against that (and the very name of this thread assumes that the GM is not as awful as that), then I see no reason at all why the player should not get the arc in which s/he shines. And ultimately, it's who saved the prince/ss and saved the kingdom that matters, not whether they did 5 or 500 damage per round while doing so.

Incidentally, that's also one of the reasons why I find that splitting up parties are a good and important thing in roleplaying games.

kalt
2009-02-27, 10:52 AM
Well the problem here isn't the power of any particular character, necessarily. It's the fact that Players A, B and C are effectively running multiple characters, while Player D just has one.

I think this point above all is where you truly see the largest disparity between a straight melee character and a spell caster. The spellcaster can merely summon a melee character or in the case of the Dread Necromancer have 3 with sky high strength and hit points that easily match that of a tank.

I'd like to note that we still have tons of fun and get rather immersed in the storyline, but this is despite the imbalance.

Advocate
2009-02-27, 10:54 AM
You don't have to be the best melee combatant to contribute. Just because the druid's bear form is better than you at melee during a certain level range doesn't mean your fighter is useless, or not contributing.

If character a does everything you do, as well or better and lots of other stuff, there is no reason for you to be there. That isn't what makes you useless, the monsters do that.


As for the 1 round kill monsters. Yes, they exist. But if the party can't survive more than a round against them, then the DM is not balancing his encounters properly against the party. CR is a guideline, not a rule. A good DM needs to gauge the power of the monsters versus the power of the party. Not all level X builds are equal, but that's okay.

Any enemy with a save or suck.

Any enemy with a decent full attack.

There's your one round killers. It takes nothing special, especially considering that even the half assed melee brutes can still 30% you in 1 round. Which means lucky bad melee brute, or single competent one and your beatstick dies. Or, enemy casts spell, you don't save, you die. Has nothing to do with poor balancing as this is just stock encounters.


And the "do you use the gun or give it to the one armed guy" argument is absolutely ludicrous. First of all, none of the base martial classes are so weak as to be your theoretical "one armed man." They may be less optimized, but they're not worthless. Second, we're not talking about guns here... buffing the fighter so he can go toe to toe with the big monster means you're not likely to be the one who's getting attacked by that monster. The analogy should be, do you give the gun to the soldier and send him out into the gunfight, or do you keep the gun and go out yourself?

Nope, wholly accurate. 'Unwounded guy with all his limbs' represents the baseline for soldier fighting, just as competent party member represents the baseline for adventurer. Competent party member does not necessarily mean caster, however just about every caster qualifies, and only the high end beatsticks (ToB, gishes, a few others) qualify. 'Guy missing limbs' or 'Guy missing limbs and near death' represent below average and far below average respectively... terms that are wholly accurate when referring to the Fighter and the Monk. You also demonstrate a complete failure to grasp the meaning of analogies... which is all the more amusing, as analogies are designed to explain things in such a way so that even a layperson can understand them.

Also, your statement is fallacious, in that it assumes the monster will actually fight the Fighter instead of walking around the 5 foot square of difficult terrain. It is fallacious in that if it does auto attack the Fighter instead of moving and attacking you once at most, the Fighter won't just need even more babysitting by dropping to sub 30% health, if not dying outright even with your buffs. Further, it is fallacious in that it assumes the Fighter is actually more competent than yourself, and that throwing some minor buff on the Fighter is actually better than neutralizing the enemy yourself. No matter how you spin the meaning of that statement, it is utterly laughable, not to mention 'absolutely ludicrous'.

Edit: Frodo was only there because of some DM fiat giving him an Artifact. He was far below everyone else, except maybe the other guy with him such that there was no reason to bring him along otherwise, or babysit him all this time. He would be a case for the Fighter's place in a party, except Gimli fits it a bit better. He's still vastly inferior to the caster though.

Hm.

Frodo = Fighter.

Gimli = Competent beatstick.

Gandalf = Wizard.

Discuss.

Doug Lampert
2009-02-27, 10:57 AM
How so? All a druid really needs to know about are grizzly and dire bears and he already trumps a fighter.

And if he does need to be familiar with other creatures, there's this marvelous thing called knowledge skills, which have actual rules for determining what creatures you know about already and can recognize when you see and know something about their powers.

Unless your Druids don't bother with Knowledge Nature there's an excepent chance that the Druid is familiar with most of the things things he can turn into. And the DM doesn't get to choose which ones he knows about, and the Druid gets a reroll every level he gains on anything he wants to know about.

Nerfing Druids with "you've never heard of that" is no more playing "By the Book" than nerfing druids with "you simply can't use wildshape in combat" would be.

Advocate
2009-02-27, 11:01 AM
See edit. Also...


And if he does need to be familiar with other creatures, there's this marvelous thing called knowledge skills, which have actual rules for determining what creatures you know about already and can recognize when you see and know something about their powers.

Unless your Druids don't bother with Knowledge Nature there's an excepent chance that the Druid is familiar with most of the things things he can turn into. And the DM doesn't get to choose which ones he knows about, and the Druid gets a reroll every level he gains on anything he wants to know about.

Nerfing Druids with "you've never heard of that" is no more playing "By the Book" than nerfing druids with "you simply can't use wildshape in combat" would be.

You don't even need to roll. Just take 10. The DC is 10 + HD. You can turn into something of up to HD = level. You don't even need to max it, you just need a modifier equal to your character level, and take 10, and you automatically know everything you can turn into.

Doug Lampert
2009-02-27, 11:09 AM
Also, Frodo was really only there due to DM fiat, making it necessary to babysit him.
Yeah, you'd need a lot of GM fiat to make TLotR work as a game.

But it's worse than that. GM fiat can work in a game, but roleplaying games have a rule of thumb. DON'T SPLIT THE PARTY.

This comes from both powergamers (the group is stronger togather) and people just having fun in a group (everyone should have something to do or some way to participate).

If TLotR were a game, then just what were Frodo and Sam's players doing while the rest of the group roleplayed out books 3 and 5? That was a pair of REALLY LONG bathroom breaks. What was Aragorn's player doing during book 4? He went to Disney maybe?

But splitting the party is vital to making the hobbits matter. The way the power imbalance is handled is for Frodo and Sam to be the only ones there in Mordor, and for Marry and Pippin to be the only ones there in Fangorn, and for the four hobbits to be alone for the return to the Shire scenes.

Dragonsdoom
2009-02-27, 11:15 AM
I see this view occasionally, and it bothers me.

The DM and the players share responsibility for "balancing" their game, as in, the game they sit down to play; things like making sure one guy's character doesn't consistently outshine another's, that they all have something useful to contribute, get a chance to shine, etc. The DM has a larger share of responsibility here since he has to manage the entire rest of the world and the kinds of challenges they face, while the players each have responsibility mostly for their own character only.

However, when they're doing this, the system should support them, not fight them. It may not be your intent, but your statement seems to put an unfair portion of blame on the DM for flaws in the system he's working with.

The players have a responsibility for their characters and their actions in the game, and the DM has a large portion of responsibility for everything else. The players should take their own initiative in determining broken techniques, but the DM has the final say over everything.
As a DM myself I have much fewer flaws in my game after outlawing some of the more troublesome books, as well as the fact that I communicate with my players to a very high degree: we have a close understanding that allows the players to use some fairly potent abilities as long as they abide within the realms of reason. I let them get away with some things because I know they are not the type of player to abuse their powers.

I am not directly blaming the DM for flaws, but if the DM knows of the flaws he can run a perfectly fine game with a much lower amount of flaws in it.

Winterwind
2009-02-27, 11:17 AM
Edit: Frodo was only there because of some DM fiat giving him an Artifact. He was far below everyone else, except maybe the other guy with him such that there was no reason to bring him along otherwise, or babysit him all this time. He would be a case for the Fighter's place in a party, except Gimli fits it a bit better. He's still vastly inferior to the caster though.

Hm.

Frodo = Fighter.

Gimli = Competent beatstick.

Gandalf = Wizard.

Discuss.Hence why I spoke of Samwise initially, not Frodo - because I figured you would argue this way, and deliberately picked the one who was not bestowed with a powerful artifact, but instead merely chose to accompany and protect a friend by free will.
For that matter, Pippin and Merry work, too.
Frodo, yes, that would be a rather blatant example of the gamemaster helping a character to a bigger role; however, this negative example does not preclude the possibility of a story where a character gains importance by the player's initiative, not the GM's.

Either way, the Lord of the Rings was just an example I chose, for a far more general point I elaborated upon in the other half of my previous posts. If you have to pick only half of my post and debate it, I would much prefer if you picked the other half, as that's the one that contains my actual point. :smallwink:

Advocate
2009-02-27, 11:22 AM
Sam = cohort, hireling, whatever. Who says he's a PC? For that matter, what if Frodo is just some weak NPC the real characters have to protect?

The other half? Fine. In order to stand out, you need to have the actual ability to do so. Which means you have to save the princess or whatever... if you're a gimp, you get to feed the dragon instead. I... guess that's shiny? :smallconfused:

Dyllan
2009-02-27, 11:25 AM
If character a does everything you do, as well or better and lots of other stuff, there is no reason for you to be there. That isn't what makes you useless, the monsters do that.
First of all, if another character does everything you do as well or better than you, your presence still means there are TWO of you doing it. That's not useless.

And monsters don't make a character useless. Jumping from "fighters aren't as powerful" to "fighters are useless and couldn't possibly win encounters" is a bit of a stretch. A stretch you're not backing up here at all, but expecting us to accept as some kind of self-evident truth.


Any enemy with a save or suck.

Any enemy with a decent full attack.

There's your one round killers. It takes nothing special, especially considering that even the half assed melee brutes can still 30% you in 1 round. Which means lucky bad melee brute, or single competent one and your beatstick dies. Or, enemy casts spell, you don't save, you die. Has nothing to do with poor balancing as this is just stock encounters.

If an enemy has a good enough melee attack to kill the party in one round, it's too powerful for that party. 30% isn't one round win. 100% damage is. Sure, most creatures of appropriate power levels could kill a single party member if they were exceptionally lucky with their rolls (multiple crits)... but they could do that to the wildshaped druid as easily as they could do it to the fighter.

Also, save or suck works just as well for the other party members as it does for the fighter. And a well balanced creature will not have a save or suck that is going to work consistently. They'll have to get lucky for it to work.

Both of these scenarios - ones where the fighter COULD be killed or COULD be rendered useless if the enemy is very lucky, are more reason to prove the usefulness of the fighter even IF the Druid or Cleric can fight as well. By having 2 melee combatants, the odds of both being removed by lucky rolls becomes substantially lower. Whichever one isn't unlucky can save the other. Remember, the party is supposed to be a team working together, not contestants working against each other.


Nope, wholly accurate. 'Unwounded guy with all his limbs' represents the baseline for soldier fighting, just as competent party member represents the baseline for adventurer. Competent party member does not necessarily mean caster, however just about every caster qualifies, and only the high end beatsticks (ToB, gishes, a few others) qualify. 'Guy missing limbs' or 'Guy missing limbs and near death' represent below average and far below average respectively... terms that are wholly accurate when referring to the Fighter and the Monk. You also demonstrate a complete failure to grasp the meaning of analogies... which is all the more amusing, as analogies are designed to explain things in such a way so that even a layperson can understand them.

I'll choose not to respond in kind to the unprovoked insult to my intelligence.

As for your actual argument, again you are claiming that the existence of classes from other classes who may be better at melee means the base martial classes are worthless. Yet those base classes have functioned well in countless adventures. Just because you can't do as much damage as a more optimized class doesn't mean you can't fight monsters and win.


Also, your statement is fallacious, in that it assumes the monster will actually fight the Fighter instead of walking around the 5 foot square of difficult terrain. It is fallacious in that if it does auto attack the Fighter instead of moving and attacking you once at most, the Fighter won't just need even more babysitting by dropping to sub 30% health, if not dying outright even with your buffs. Further, it is fallacious in that it assumes the Fighter is actually more competent than yourself, and that throwing some minor buff on the Fighter is actually better than neutralizing the enemy yourself. No matter how you spin the meaning of that statement, it is utterly laughable, not to mention 'absolutely ludicrous'.


First of all, most unintelligent monsters will attack the guy who's swinging the big sharp thing at them, rather than the guy who's standing back and mumbling while waving his hands, but not producing any obvious effect. More intelligent monsters - that will vary by situation. This is why we have a full party, so there are other ways to deal with creatures who can and will bypass certain character's strengths. Of course, you're ignoring the feat trees that could give this fighter the ability to keep his opponent from getting past him easily. Tripping builds, as one example. Again, that doesn't work on everything, but see my full party statement above.

And no, I didn't ignore the fact that the fighter might need help. Babysitting seems a rather biased word to use. Is the fighter babysitting the wizard when he tries to keep himself between the monster and the wizard? This is part of the team dynamic. One of the roles of the cleric is to heal those who take damage. If the cleric needs to go in and cast heal on him, so what? If it was the cleric who went forward, he'd have to do the same, casting heal on himself, after all.

And I never said the fighter was more competent than the cleric. Just, if the fighter is fighting, it frees the cleric to heal, cast offensively, or fight alongside him (doubling the number of targets for the enemy, the melee damage dealt, and the number of attacks of opportunity it'll take if it tries to get past them).

kamikasei
2009-02-27, 11:26 AM
I am not directly blaming the DM for flaws, but if the DM knows of the flaws he can run a perfectly fine game with a much lower amount of flaws in it.

My point is that a DM has a whole lot of stuff to do that's intrinsic to the nature of gaming. He shouldn't also have to fix the system.

Winterwind
2009-02-27, 11:34 AM
Sam = cohort, hireling, whatever. Who says he's a PC? For that matter, what if Frodo is just some weak NPC the real characters have to protect?Who says he's not a PC? For that matter, which part of what I'm saying is so unclear to you? All I say is that, by being in the right place, at the right time, which can be accomplished by player decisions without any GM intervention, any character can play an important part in the story, no matter how much weaker than his companions the character actually is.


The other half? Fine. In order to stand out, you need to have the actual ability to do so. Which means you have to save the princess or whatever... if you're a gimp, you get to feed the dragon instead. I... guess that's shiny? :smallconfused:Or you save her by other means. Combat is far from the only solution.
The point remains that if the warrior is the one who reaches the castle where the princess is kept prisoner, while the wizard is fighting the foes of the kingdom to make sure there is a kingdom left to which the princess can be returned in the first place, it matters nil whether the warrior is inferior to the wizard in every imaginable regard - he is there, the wizard is not, so this is the warrior's part of the story, not the wizard's. And as long as every player gets an important part to play in the story, everything seems fine to me.

Doug Lampert
2009-02-27, 11:58 AM
The other half? Fine. In order to stand out, you need to have the actual ability to do so. Which means you have to save the princess or whatever... if you're a gimp, you get to feed the dragon instead. I... guess that's shiny? :smallconfused:

Adequate balance doesn't require that everyone be of even close to comparable in combat utility. I've been in plenty of Ars Magica games (both as a player and as a GM) where the people having the most fun were playing Grogs or Cohorts rather than the vastly more powerful wizards.

There are several reasons this works: combat is rarely key to Ars Magica, Grogs and Companions had SOMETHING they could do, and being accompanied by Grogs and Companions didn't cost the wizards anything much so NOT taking them when available would have been stupid.

The system was designed for imbalance and as such worked well. A wizard could be good at many things, but he couldn't be good at everything so having some other characters around to help out was a solid gain. There was no loss of XP or important gear in the system for having such characters along since important loot all went to the wizards anyway and thus there was no reason to consider weaker characters an actual negative value.

Adequate balance only requires is that everyone have something they can contribute that outwieghs the costs of having them along and that every character have some way to get some spotlight time.

D&D is built arround combat to a much greater extent than most games. Spotlight time almost requires combat utility. Thus all PC classes NEED to have at least some combat utility. This isn't a big problem, a level 20 fighter still has some combat utility even if Advocate is right that it's basically speed-bump or something to avoid.

But unlike having an extra grog or companion along in Ars Magica which is effectively free, having a Monk or Fighter along in D&D has substantial costs. Adequate balance requires not just that he contribute, but that he contribute more than he costs.

The cost is that the Monk takes XP and loot from the rest of the party. If the Monk class were clearly labled as a weaker "cohort" class then anyone playing it would know they were basically a cohort and should expect greatly reduced loot, and the GM would know not to count them in XP awards but to simply have them advance when the rest of the party does and I don't think Advocate would have any legitimate claim that a monk wasn't a real contribution to the party or potentially quite fun to play.

But D&D isn't built that way. A Monk PC takes resources from everyone and returns almost nothing. Once the rest of the party notices this continuing to haul him along and give him a full loot share may well represent such stupidity that it is bad Roleplaying for the other characters to do it.

Design a character who can work with the group and is sane enough that we can understand how he lived past age five is a good guideline for any non-comedy RPG. And I think Advocate is claiming, with some justification, that Monks fall down on both of these in a typical D&D gameworld.

valadil
2009-02-27, 11:59 AM
If I wanted balance I'd play chess or rock paper scissor. I find those games boring however. I do not find D&D boring. In fact, I find it quite enjoyable when played with a good group of players. I therefore think it's quite possible to enjoy an imbalanced system.

I'll even go a step farther. I don't think D&D is unbalanced enough. D&D is supposed to model fantasy books right? Fantasy books are full of unbalance. Aragorn, Legolas, or Gimli, alone could have slaughtered the four hobbits without breaking a sweat. Gandalf could have slain the three aforementioned characters just as easily. No balance at all. And it's not just because Gandalf is a wizard and the hobbits are NPC classes - Gandalf is higher level than them too. Fantasy stories often have that one character who knows whats going on and could win the quest, but wants the lowly farm boy to do all the work. Where's the balance in that?

Personally I'd love to run a game for characters of wildly different abilities. You'd need the right group of players for it of course, but I think it would be an interesting experiment in interactive fantasy storytelling.

Disclaimer: I would rather run a game that modeled a fantasy book than a tactical warfare game. My priorities are on storytelling, not on mechanics. If you disagree with this, don't play in my games - you wouldn't like them anyway.

Dyllan
2009-02-27, 12:08 PM
But D&D isn't built that way. A Monk PC takes resources from everyone and returns almost nothing. Once the rest of the party notices this continuing to haul him along and give him a full loot share may well represent such stupidity that it is bad Roleplaying for the other characters to do it.

Design a character who can work with the group and is sane enough that we can understand how he lived past age five is a good guideline for any non-comedy RPG. And I think Advocate is claiming, with some justification, that Monks fall down on both of these in a typical D&D gameworld.

That depends largely on what you're facing. Monks work well against humanoids with class levels.

It also depends on the makeup of the rest of the party. Not every wizard is a batman - and some parties don't have a wizard (they have a beguiler, or a sorcerer, or a warmage, or even lack arcane talent). What you contribute to the team does have something to do with what else the team consists of.

I admit monks are weaker than most classes - that's obvious. But completely refute any claim that they can't contribute enough to make it worth having them.

PinkysBrain
2009-02-27, 12:14 PM
That's a whole lot of threads on the same topic lately ...

Dragonsdoom
2009-02-27, 12:21 PM
My point is that a DM has a whole lot of stuff to do that's intrinsic to the nature of gaming. He shouldn't also have to fix the system.

Except that if he wants to use the additional content from other supplements he probably will have to fix things, as with any other large base of rules that do not follow a scripted formula. Even if he does not use anything except the base books he may need to make changes according to his style of play.

I try to adhere to the second edition school of thinking when DMing:

Take the time to have fun with the AD&D rules. Add, create, expand, and extrapolate. Don't just let the game sit there, and don't become a rules lawyer worrying about each piddly little detail. If you can't figure out the answer, MAKE IT UP! And whatever you do, don't fall into the trap of believing these rules are complete. They are not. You cannot sit back and let the rule book do everything for you. Take the time and effort to become not just a good DM, but a brilliant one.

Advocate
2009-02-27, 12:48 PM
First of all, if another character does everything you do as well or better than you, your presence still means there are TWO of you doing it. That's not useless.

And monsters don't make a character useless. Jumping from "fighters aren't as powerful" to "fighters are useless and couldn't possibly win encounters" is a bit of a stretch. A stretch you're not backing up here at all, but expecting us to accept as some kind of self-evident truth.

Except that only one needs to do it. If that. You could completely skip the beatstick entirely, including CoDzilla, and never notice. Monsters do make characters useless, because monsters are the baseline by which PCs are measured. It's not a stretch at all to go from 'can't handle monsters' to 'useless', because their sole purpose in existence is to handle monsters.


If an enemy has a good enough melee attack to kill the party in one round, it's too powerful for that party. 30% isn't one round win. 100% damage is. Sure, most creatures of appropriate power levels could kill a single party member if they were exceptionally lucky with their rolls (multiple crits)... but they could do that to the wildshaped druid as easily as they could do it to the fighter.

Or it means it is a decent beatstick of the same level. Or anything with save or dies. Very easy to 1 round someone. Getting dropped to 30% health or less is not a 1 round kill... but unless someone casts Heal on you, you die in round 2. So you either finish in 1.5 rounds, make the Cleric waste his actions keeping your sorry butt alive with Heal spam, or die violently. Choose one. Notice I am specifically referring to the spell Heal. This is because, prior to that spell's availability you do not have any worthwhile in combat healing as a Cleric, therefore there's no point in even bothering as you'll waste your action, and they'll die on round 2 anyways. The Wildshaped Druid has much better stats, so it takes an actually strong creature to kill them off. Not just standard encounters with level appropriate enemies.


Also, save or suck works just as well for the other party members as it does for the fighter. And a well balanced creature will not have a save or suck that is going to work consistently. They'll have to get lucky for it to work.

Depends on the monster and what it is getting aimed at. Fighter is far more vulnerable due to weaker stats.


Both of these scenarios - ones where the fighter COULD be killed or COULD be rendered useless if the enemy is very lucky, are more reason to prove the usefulness of the fighter even IF the Druid or Cleric can fight as well. By having 2 melee combatants, the odds of both being removed by lucky rolls becomes substantially lower. Whichever one isn't unlucky can save the other. Remember, the party is supposed to be a team working together, not contestants working against each other.

Except that the CoDzilla is at par with the enemies, and the Fighter is not. So all bringing Leeroy Jenkins along does is make more trouble for everyone else to clean up.

Skipping past redundant stuff that misses the point.


First of all, most unintelligent monsters will attack the guy who's swinging the big sharp thing at them, rather than the guy who's standing back and mumbling while waving his hands, but not producing any obvious effect. More intelligent monsters - that will vary by situation. This is why we have a full party, so there are other ways to deal with creatures who can and will bypass certain character's strengths. Of course, you're ignoring the feat trees that could give this fighter the ability to keep his opponent from getting past him easily. Tripping builds, as one example. Again, that doesn't work on everything, but see my full party statement above.

You completely skipped the other half of my point when mentioning the enemies that will stand there and trade auto attacks with you. That point is that said creatures will ****ing kill you in 1, maybe 2 rounds. Very easily.


And no, I didn't ignore the fact that the fighter might need help. Babysitting seems a rather biased word to use. Is the fighter babysitting the wizard when he tries to keep himself between the monster and the wizard? This is part of the team dynamic. One of the roles of the cleric is to heal those who take damage. If the cleric needs to go in and cast heal on him, so what? If it was the cleric who went forward, he'd have to do the same, casting heal on himself, after all.

No, he's looking busy while making a fool of himself, as he has no actual ability to stop the monster from attacking the Wizard, so it becomes a question of Wizard vs Monster with the Fighter irrelevant. Even if he could actually protect the Wizard, it still isn't, because the Wizard can actually do something... thus making it a case of teamwork, and not babysitting. Of course, he can't, so moot point. The Cleric would not have to Heal himself, because he has better stats, won't be two rounded by auto attacks, and even if he could he's far more capable of winning in one so he doesn't need to resort to Heal spam every round.


And I never said the fighter was more competent than the cleric. Just, if the fighter is fighting, it frees the cleric to heal, cast offensively, or fight alongside him (doubling the number of targets for the enemy, the melee damage dealt, and the number of attacks of opportunity it'll take if it tries to get past them).

No, it means the Cleric, who has far better quality of actions is stuck turning into a healbot, instead of doing it better because otherwise Leeroy Jenkins will get himself killed. And unlike the WoW video, the rest of the group aren't following. That results in a net loss of Action Economy, as effectively the Cleric is trading his good actions for the inferior actions of a Mook... who also costs just as much as a real character to keep around, without actually returning the favor at all.

Put another way, you have a few rooms in your house you can rent out. Do you give a room to the responsible guy with a steady job, straight and narrow lifestyle, etc? How about the guy who is unemployed, and thus would have a very hard, if not impossible time actually paying the rent? How about the stoner guy who literally just sits around smoking cannibis, and potentially getting you busted by the cops? Why or why wouldn't you take each of these tenets? Now replace those with Caster or other such actually relevant character, Fighter, and Monk. Notice how nothing really changes?

Dyllan: Humanoid NPCs are the absolute weakest foes you can throw at PCs. They are also the most rewarding, so humanoid NPC only is literally Easy Mode D&D. And even then, a PC Monk could only handle NPC Monks (just like them, except with far lower cash and therefore far lower power), maybe NPC Fighters (the fact Fighters, as bad as they are are far better than Monks is offset by the low cash), and that's about it. Throw higher end NPC beatsticks at them, they fail. Throw NPC casters at them, they Epic Fail.

Beguilers get most of the good Wizard spells. Sorcerers, by virtue of limited selection only pick the good Wizard spells. Warmages, while the weakest of those three, are still better than a Monk.

Also, Doug brings up another good point. Cohorts are free. As such, they are held to lower standards, and you don't have to worry about some guy whining at you because they died. So for example, it's perfectly ok for my cohort to be there for the sole purpose of debuffing enemies via 2 negative levels per hit. He only costs half as much gold, and no XP to keep around, and that's good enough to justify the cost. As a PC, he would be held to a standard at least twice as high as he now costs double gold, and assuming a 4 man party originally, 20% of everyone's treasure. That's huge. Now, if it's a teamwork thing where both sides are actually capable of helping each other, that's fine, as it's a reasonable cost to have a competent ally. If however, it's the 'teamwork' that much of the other side bats around where one side is doing all the work and the other side can't, or won't keep up... that's the same as tossing it out the window. No return on your investment. Full stop.

Satyr
2009-02-27, 12:53 PM
My point is that a DM has a whole lot of stuff to do that's intrinsic to the nature of gaming. He shouldn't also have to fix the system.

I am not sure bout the fixing part, but I am quite certain that no no DM is able to run a game without a certain adjustment to the group's interests, his or her own personal preferences and other subjective elements. Every group runs its own game, even when the formal games and prescibed settings are identical.
If a certain element appears as a problem for the group, it should be vocalized and solved, no matter if it is an inconvenient rule or a plot element the players find inconvenient.
Roleplaying is mostly about fun*, so when something comes into the way of having fun, this should be solved somehow.



*: Okay, this is actually not true, but right now I don't want to introduce the great "roleplaying is an artform" discussion. For simplicity's sake of this discussion, let us all assume mere fun is objective enough.

Lycar
2009-02-27, 01:07 PM
Unless your Druids don't bother with Knowledge Nature there's an excepent chance that the Druid is familiar with most of the things things he can turn into. And the DM doesn't get to choose which ones he knows about, and the Druid gets a reroll every level he gains on anything he wants to know about.

Nerfing Druids with "you've never heard of that" is no more playing "By the Book" than nerfing druids with "you simply can't use wildshape in combat" would be.

LOL what? Are you serious? The DM decides which creatures even EXIST in his setting to begin with!

Just because some critter or other has ever seen print in any supplement or other doesn't mean that any player is in any form or shape entitled to use that as a wildshape form.

With that attitude, all you prove is that it won't be possible to enjoy playing an inbalanced system with you.

How about this: The forms a druid can wildshape into are, in a manner of speaking, part of his 'gear' or maybe 'class features'.

Instead of making some lame knowledge check, the party travels to exotic locales and the druid gets to discover and explore new forms of (wild)life. Which he eventually learns to add to his list of 'forms known'.

Kinda like a wizard stumbling across a scroll with a rare spell or a fighter chancing upon a famous sword or something.

And if a player insist on being a jerk about those Knowledge Nature rolls... well, maybe the DM just has to rule that for every step of removal from your druid's place of origin, the difficulty for those checks goes up a step? Druid from a temperate forest wants to know about those jungle-dwelling Fleshrippers (provided they even exist to begin with)? +10 to the DC, try rolling that once every time you level.

On the other hand, why not simple make a little houserule...

DM: "Oh sure, you know all about hose animals.. sure.. there is just a tiny little problem... as of now, wilshaping into a certain animal requires a preserved heart of that animal as a focus."

Player: "But some critters don't even have hearts!"

DM: "Tough. Don't make me make you take ranks in Craft: Taxidermy for those hearts too."

You know what? That is actually a nice idea. So a 'good' player could have even more fun trying to hunt down the creatures he is interested in. Plot hook and fun for the whole family party in one big package.


And to anyone who's objection is: "A DM being able to houserule a problem away doesn't mean there is not a problem." Hellooo! Read the thread title again: This isn't about the problems with the RAW, this is about coping with them. And if the abundance of critters a druid can turn into by RAW is troublesome, then you prune it back. Or better yet: Turn an obnoxious problem into a feature to generate adventures from.

And suddenly the druid player can feel he has earned/achieved something when, after a long hunt, he can finally add that Dire Eagle heart to his collection.

Much more satisfying then having it basically shoved up your rear by the RAW.

Lycar

Advocate
2009-02-27, 01:18 PM
Ah, so you have to slaughter animals to become them. That's very Druidic of you.

Even with random handwavy houserules, guess what? DC 24 for Fleshraker. You have a modifier of 9 + Int at level 4, and 10 + Int at level 5. Also, 6, 7, and 8 at 1, 2, and 3.

So assuming neutral Intelligence, you have a 76.8% chance to know about Fleshrakers before turning into one becomes relevant. I like those odds.

Asbestos
2009-02-27, 01:25 PM
Ah, so you have to slaughter animals to become them. That's very Druidic of you.

Even with random handwavy houserules, guess what? DC 24 for Fleshraker. You have a modifier of 9 + Int at level 4, and 10 + Int at level 5. Also, 6, 7, and 8 at 1, 2, and 3.

So assuming neutral Intelligence, you have a 76.8% chance to know about Fleshrakers before turning into one becomes relevant. I like those odds.

Indeed every creature in every MM and splat book exists everywhere in large enough numbers for any chump with a high enough intelligence to know about them. The rules totally say so.

Advocate
2009-02-27, 01:30 PM
Indeed every creature in every MM and splat book exists everywhere in large enough numbers for any chump with a high enough intelligence to know about them. The rules totally say so.

Your sarcasm aside, RAW > random handwaving when discussing things from the standpoint of credibility.

Doug Lampert
2009-02-27, 01:43 PM
Indeed every creature in every MM and splat book exists everywhere in large enough numbers for any chump with a high enough intelligence to know about them. The rules totally say so.

Nope, they only say it for every monster that exists in your setting, which by default means every one that's in any of the manuals the DM is using.

Those are the rules of the game. The knowledge skill includes knowing about monsters.

"That doesn't exist" is fair game for a DM, but requires that the monster actually not exist in the setting. "You've never heard of that" requires that the character not be able to make a fairly trivial knowledge check, there are rules that SAY, "yes you have heard of that". Just as much as there are rules for any other skill or action in the game.

It's no more reasonable to say the druid hasn't heard of an existing monster than it is to say the fighter hasn't ever heard of greatswords and therefor isn't proficient with them.

The claim was that the DM can say the character has never heard of a monster where there are CLEAR unambiguous rules that say he has heard of it. You want to move the goalposts to "Bears don't exist in this setting" then you run into the fact that animal companion lists include bears in the PHB, these obscure splatbooks you're not allowing include the PHB?

Doug Lampert
2009-02-27, 01:50 PM
Oh, and note that a single skill rank is enough to speak a language fluently. It's enough to earn a fairly good living with a profession.

One skill point is far more than enough to have knowledge equivelent to memorizing every entry in every MM or setting book WotC has ever published. The only way to justify it being as DIFFICULT as it is to know about animals is because the characters can't get the knowledge set down in convienent mass produced manuals that don't include any substantial errors. They have to sort the wheat from the chaff. But "you've never heard of it" is (a) lame, and (b) a flat out straight up contradiction of the rules of the game.

Satyr
2009-02-27, 01:52 PM
Your sarcasm aside, RAW > random handwaving when discussing things from the standpoint of credibility.

If you would err any more, I would offer you a membership in the Flat Earth Society...

RAW is completely irrelevant. The only thing that matters are the applied rules, which can or cannot overlap. The important rules are the ones which are used by the group, and not the prescriptive idea how you are supposed to play the game. When a rule element is regarded as a nuissance by the group, it should be changed or ignored (in the case of not masochistic groups).
The opinion of the group - or in more authoritvely structured groups, the opinion of the GM - is always more important than anything ever written in any gaming book, from any standpoint, credibility or not.

Piedmon_Sama
2009-02-27, 02:02 PM
My Half-Orc character had to go on a vision quest and succeed on 3 will saves to stay awake all night, then another one not to efface himself before the God-King of All Badgers, before he could get his animal companion. God knows what my friend will want me to do before I get a Wild Shape.

But you know what, I like it that way. The same way I like dragging my mediocre-statted character (he's a Half-Orc with Str 13!) into glory against the odds. I like being the underdog--and if it means this character is probably going to die before he reaches 5th level, well, no big deal. It's just a game, and how much more fun is it when you succeed against the odds like a real hero, instead of climbing up a force-fed safety chain of Appropriate Encounters?

valadil
2009-02-27, 02:04 PM
"That doesn't exist" is fair game for a DM, but requires that the monster actually not exist in the setting. "You've never heard of that" requires that the character not be able to make a fairly trivial knowledge check, there are rules that SAY, "yes you have heard of that". Just as much as there are rules for any other skill or action in the game.


"They are less plentiful than indicated by the Monster Manual, thereby increasing the difficulty of a check to have knowledge about them" is also fair game for a DM. The 3rd ed MM assumes Greyhawk. Any settings outside of Greyhawk (included a DM adjusted Greyhawk) may have different distributions of critters.

Lycar
2009-02-27, 02:08 PM
Your sarcasm aside, RAW > random handwaving when discussing things from the standpoint of credibility.


The claim was that the DM can say the character has never heard of a monster where there are CLEAR unambiguous rules that say he has heard of it. You want to move the goalposts to "Bears don't exist in this setting" then you run into the fact that animal companion lists include bears in the PHB, these obscure splatbooks you're not allowing include the PHB?

Both of you, look at the thread title again:

"Impossible to enjoy a imbalanced system with a group of good players?"

The game is unbalanced. That is a given. You don't have to regurtitate the same tired points over and over again ad and trans nauseam.

All you have contributed to this thread so far is proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that you aren't the kind of players an (or even any) unbalanced game could be enjoyed with.

Especially you Advocate. It is sad, really. You are smart enough to find the flaws in a rules system, but all you make with this knowledge is find the most powerful combos/builds and then demand that everybody plays by those broken rules, ridiculing everybody who dares to disagree with your opinions and getting outright rude if your arguments get attacked. Stop it. :smallmad:

If you can't contribute to this thread constructivly, then don't bother posting at all.

If you want to contribute, truly contribute and not just stroke your ego, do the decent thing and use your knowledge of the rukles to propose FIXES!

Yes, that is what I ask of you, actually provide input on how to FIX the flaws!

RAW is broken. We know. You don't have to shove it down everybody's throat time after time. But if the rules get in the way of the enjoyment of the game, the rules are a problem that need solving.

In all the flood of posts in this or other threads (you know which) you have done nothing whatsoever to provde actual solutions. No fighter/warrior/beatstick build that would solve the many problems of the fighter class.

No ideas for alternate class features to help out the warrior types. And especially no, none whatsoever clues how to curtail the excessive power of spellcasters (without crippling them).

If you can do any of that, pleas do. This will do more for the game then pointing out for the umptieth time how much class x is the suxxor.

But if you can't, you could at least have the basic decency, to let those people, who would rather try to find ways to fix the problems with the RAW to preserve their enjoyment of the game, have their discussion unmolested without the thread being hijacked. :smallannoyed:

Lycar

krossbow
2009-02-27, 02:18 PM
LOL what? Are you serious? The DM decides which creatures even EXIST in his setting to begin with!

Just because some critter or other has ever seen print in any supplement or other doesn't mean that any player is in any form or shape entitled to use that as a wildshape form.

With that attitude, all you prove is that it won't be possible to enjoy playing an inbalanced system with you.

How about this: The forms a druid can wildshape into are, in a manner of speaking, part of his 'gear' or maybe 'class features'.

Instead of making some lame knowledge check, the party travels to exotic locales and the druid gets to discover and explore new forms of (wild)life. Which he eventually learns to add to his list of 'forms known'.

Kinda like a wizard stumbling across a scroll with a rare spell or a fighter chancing upon a famous sword or something.

And if a player insist on being a jerk about those Knowledge Nature rolls... well, maybe the DM just has to rule that for every step of removal from your druid's place of origin, the difficulty for those checks goes up a step? Druid from a temperate forest wants to know about those jungle-dwelling Fleshrippers (provided they even exist to begin with)? +10 to the DC, try rolling that once every time you level.

On the other hand, why not simple make a little houserule...

DM: "Oh sure, you know all about hose animals.. sure.. there is just a tiny little problem... as of now, wilshaping into a certain animal requires a preserved heart of that animal as a focus."

Player: "But some critters don't even have hearts!"

DM: "Tough. Don't make me make you take ranks in Craft: Taxidermy for those hearts too."

You know what? That is actually a nice idea. So a 'good' player could have even more fun trying to hunt down the creatures he is interested in. Plot hook and fun for the whole family party in one big package.


And to anyone who's objection is: "A DM being able to houserule a problem away doesn't mean there is not a problem." Hellooo! Read the thread title again: This isn't about the problems with the RAW, this is about coping with them. And if the abundance of critters a druid can turn into by RAW is troublesome, then you prune it back. Or better yet: Turn an obnoxious problem into a feature to generate adventures from.

And suddenly the druid player can feel he has earned/achieved something when, after a long hunt, he can finally add that Dire Eagle heart to his collection.

Much more satisfying then having it basically shoved up your rear by the RAW.

Lycar




No, that is almost textbook houserule. Seriously, the druid should easily pick up such knowlege by conversing and studying with the locals.


Any natural environment has large, strong animals which almost anyone should know about; such things will work themselves naturally into people's minds and languages simply as being useful metaphors.
You will LITERALLY never find an environment, barring a barren desert, that lacks large animals which a person could turn into.


And requiring a druid to hunt them down and kill them isn't playing a D&D game, its you requiring wow quests to play.




If you require druids to do that, Fighters should be required to spend half their time looking for masters to learn feats from. Sound fun? didn't think so.

Dyllan
2009-02-27, 02:25 PM
stuff that's gotten too long to justify the board spam of quoting... if you want to see, go read the post a few above this

Okay, Advocate, I'm not going to go point by point to refute you as you repeat the points I've already refuted while ignoring the basis of my argument. That is, you don't have to be AS powerful as the most powerful character to contribute. You're taking the attitude that anyone who's sub-optimal is useless, and that fighters and monks fit that sub-optimal role.

As long as everyone's contributing (and last I checked, fighters and monks could still do damage to bad guys, therefore they're contributing), they're not useless.

Let me sum up our differences. You seem to believe that 1) Wizards, Clerics and Druids can be made to be much more powerful than fighters or monks.
2) therefore, anyone playing them correctly WILL make them much more powerful
3) therefore, the DM will only choose monsters that are a serious threat for the CoDZilla, Batman Wizard and Wildshape optimized druid, and these monsters will destroy the fighter in a single round.

I agree with 1). 2) is utter hogwash. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you must. I've never seen a player take a CoDzilla to the extremes seen on these boards. Nor have I seen a true Batman wizard played. Both of these builds are designed to hog the spotlight, and do everything themselves rather than counting on allies to assist them. And I've never seen Wildshape abused to the point where it invalidated the fighter types. It can be done, but it's an extreme, not the norm.
3) Any good DM will not put forward challenges that will consistently kill the PCs in one or two rounds. This isn't a contest to see if the DM or the party wins. The DM is there to make an enjoyable challenge for the party, not an impossible one.
Therefore 4) Over optimization is counter-productive. By attempting to make yourself so powerful that you marginalize the rest of the party, you force the DM to either throw enemies at the party that will kill your allies, or to throw enemies that will be gunning for you. Neither will increase your own livelyhood versus playing at a more reasonable level and allowing your party members to assist you.

Unless you're TRYING to make the fighter worthless, he won't be. Even if you try - he's still not worthless... he's just worth less than you, mechanically speaking.

nightwyrm
2009-02-27, 02:29 PM
You know how you can totally nerf the druid? Make a world that contains no creatures with the animal type. Yeah, that's right, everything is a magical beast or abberation or dragon or whatever. No animal companion, no wildshape. *sarcasm*

kalt
2009-02-27, 02:35 PM
Dylan, while i would agree with much of that the only problem comes when another party member has to essentially gimp himself to keep the other character alive. For example a cleric having to take all of his actions to just spam heal the fighter to keep him up. While this is an important piece of teamwork it sometimes isn't too enjoyable to play as a duracell battery.

Dyllan
2009-02-27, 02:42 PM
Dylan, while i would agree with much of that the only problem comes when another party member has to essentially gimp himself to keep the other character alive. For example a cleric having to take all of his actions to just spam heal the fighter to keep him up. While this is an important piece of teamwork it sometimes isn't too enjoyable to play as a duracell battery.

Well, on the one hand, I've known players who enjoy the role of healer - even if all they do is spam-heal the fighter. Not everyone needs to be in the spotlight during combat. And a healer like that should definitely reap the rewards in gratitude from the fighter (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the party) after combat.

But that being said, yes, not everyone wants to do that. But if the party works as a team, they shouldn't have to. A well built fighter, with a wizard and cleric who are each willing to spend a small part of their resources to buff him, shouldn't need spam healing as a general rule. If they do, the DM is probably throwing too hard of encounters at the party.

The only reason the DM would need to do that is if the rest of the party was not working as a team, and tried to each be the best at everything - forcing the DM to send enemies after them that could take care of the CoDZilla, the Batman Wizard and the fighter. Once it gets to that point, whoever's taking point is going to need spam-healing (after all, forcing the CoDZilla to spam heal DOES keep him from using munkiny tricks).

Now obviously, there will be the occasional fight that does require spam healing, or something like that. But if you're playing a cleric, that is part of the gig. If you don't want to do that from time to time, don't play the cleric.

kamikasei
2009-02-27, 03:13 PM
I am not sure bout the fixing part, but I am quite certain that no no DM is able to run a game without a certain adjustment to the group's interests, his or her own personal preferences and other subjective elements. Every group runs its own game, even when the formal games and prescibed settings are identical.

It seems like you're presenting this as a counter to my comments, which I don't understand. This is part of the exact point I'm making.

I will start from the beginning, since it seems I expressed myself unclearly.

I am not talking about D&D specifically; I am talking about RPGs in general. For any game where you have a bunch of rules, the DM will have to adapt the rules to the game he wants to run, and the players will have to communicate with him and with each other about the characters they want to play. This is all part of balance in a wider sense than the mechanical, power-level kind: keeping everyone on the same page, keeping the tone consistent, giving everyone a fair share of the spotlight.

My contention is that the rules can make this process easier, or harder, and in the case of D&D I think they make it harder. Compare 3.5 D&D to a system like Mutants & Masterminds - or rather, to the tone and presentation of the rules, more than the rules themselves. In M&M, it's stated up front what style of game the rules are supposed to let you run. The powers especially and the book in general are littered with pointers on how they affect game style and power level. You are given a set of parts and guidelines on how to assemble them to achieve various results.

By comparison, D&D presents its rules as supposedly all balanced against each other and all fitting into a coherent world. Fluff and mechanics are jumbled together promiscuously. Try to put a game of one sort together, and you find that the decision to exclude some element makes other elements that assumed its presence work badly or not at all. Making a group of characters who work well together, all of whom have something to contribute and can each shine when given the opportunity - setting it up so that they can grow and develop as characters reasonably organically, without falling far behind or leaping way ahead of the rest of the group for making in-character choices that shouldn't have such effects - and giving the DM the means to present them with interesting challenges which are pitched properly to their abilities, and are hard, easy or challenging when they're meant to be rather than when the stars are briefly right - is hard. Harder than it needs to be, and the nature of the problem means it's bloody hard to start with. Rules which get out of your way and make it easier for you to do the real non-play work of the game are better than ones which trip you up and trick you and lead you down blind alleys and dead ends.

Fawsto
2009-02-27, 03:37 PM
Is this thread derailed yet? No? Good. I challenge you to read my Wall of Text.

Now, I am not defending that since casters are superior a group should consist of something like Cleric, Druid, Wizard and Beguiler or Cleric, Druid, Wizard and Wizard or even Wizard, Wizard, Wizard and Wizard. Hell, no! The last party could not even survive past level 1 to begin with! (well... It in fact... could... But I will not strecth this point, ok?)

But there is a point to be understood. Non casters, specially Fighters and Monks (because this thread is mostly talking about them) simply do not stand a chance against casters. And by "against" I am not saying that the party members should be in a popularity/effectiveness constest. I mean the way that the classes fulfill their roles! I am to assume this: The "Modern" Wizard's role is to hinder the enemies, debufing them. The "Modern" Cleric's role is to protect the party, making everybody more durable avoiding unnecessary uses of healing spells (I will not discuss here why healing is so much worse than preventing damage, ok?). The role of the Rogue is the good and Old skillmonkey and flanking buddie. The Role of the Fighter is to lockdown and damage a monster as much as he can.

Now, let's make some analisis: Do the Cleric, the Wizard, the Rogue and the Fighter fulfill their roles very well?

The Cleric: When it comes to buffing, protecting, curing and saving people, no one can match the Cleric or a class with access to his spells. I do not need to go further on saying that it is the best buffing class around (if we do not count the druid targeting himself) and he does not even need DMM, but I will. A Cleric can Persist some great spells even without DMM (with DMM things simply go out of the cosmos for them): Divine Favor, Vigor and etc that allow him to fight harder and for longer than the Barbarian or any other Combatant. Ok, this would cost him some 9th level slots, but it is OK, he has a hell bunch of spells! And I am talking about a Buffer cleric! If you are still concerned with the shortnage of spells, try "Scribe Scroll". The XP cost is NOTHING! Experience, quoting another fellow forum poster, is a "forever flowing river". So you should not worry about that. And there is the Complete Cheddar, a.k.a. the Complete Champion with a god-damn destructive PrC known as the Ordained Champion (if you want to focus on combat) and things known as "Reserve Feats". You know Holy Warrior, right? I mean, if I keep my 9th level domain spell from my subpar War domain I can deal +9 hp of damage per swing. For free. No penalties. Forever. Why does not the Fighter Receive something like this?


The Wizard: Now, talking about the strongest class in the game brings the question that almost everybody knows the anwser for: Why the Wizard is so damn overpowered? The very commonly known answer is: Because he has access to most of the best spells in the game and can use them in such versatile ways that he can do almost everything that the other classes can do. Simply like that. He does not need splatbooks, he does not need to be cheesed up. By simply being played on a totaly valid and possible way this single class can overshadow every other in the game. He hinders his enemies and do anything else he is required to do.


The Rogue: The Rogue IMO is one of the most balanced classes in the game. Not only he has a role during combat, but he is also an important character out of the combat. While he is not sneak attacking everything (with the exception of undead and other creatures), he is being useful opening locked things and getting past traps. Also he has access to one of the best skills: Use Magic Device. How I LOVE this skill! Remember the Cleric and his scrolls, the Wizard also has them, they both indeed own a lot of magic items like wands and rods that can be activated by the Rogue with the proper use of this fabulous skill. If somehow the Party is screwed, the Rogue can grab that Mass Cure Wounds Scroll and use it. A excelent character to have around.


The Fighter: In the lower levels a fighter, or at least, a fighting type character is probably the Party's best buddy. That high starting HP and nice damage output can be decisive during the initial adventuring days. The Fighter was designed to be the meatshield, locking down monster so the casters behind him can bring the mo-fo down. Now, here is the problem, a problem taht I will present to you in form of a question. Let's say you are playing as a member of a 4-men party around level 7 or 8. Suddenly what seems to be a rival party of adventurers pop out and a fighting starts. Who would your character atack? Assume your character has an average int score of 10. Would you forget about their casters and simply kill the meatshield of would you ignore him and try to annihilate their casters? I would choose the second option, unless my character had a very good reason to do it the other way. Although you should not expect this of every monster in the game, they would do pretty much the same thing. The Fighter is not the threat. Magic is the Threat. Magic users pointing their fingers on your direction = pain and death. Inteligent monsters know that. They know that because some of them even have some similar abilities, and they know taht those abilities hurt.


Now, I mean, the Fighter has no way of really fulfilling his role. He can fulfill it partially during the low levels, but when things start to get uglly, he becomes even inconvenient, because the rest of the party has to save his ass.

What I am trying to say is: It's not that the Wizard or the Cleric do not want to help the Fighter, the problem is that he can't hold himself while fighting high level baddies. Try being a Fighter, even buffed with the best buffs a Cleric and a Wizard can give you, and exchanging full attacks against a Balor for example. You die. You die hard. If you even consider thos big scally creatures known as dragons, you do not even approach them, because they kill you with 1) Their breath weapon, that you will probably receive directly on your face, 2) their reach, something you can't even try to copy and 3) their superior full attack, that not only hits more times than yours, but also has a decent chance to hit past the second blow! Besides that, if there are several enemies, how is the single person fighter supposed to take care of them all?

Ok. Let's assume that every creature in the game is programmed to go after the fighter and then after the other guys. This does not make any difference! The monster, after a given level, WILL drop him in 2 rounds, 3 tops. It requires only two Full attacks, and god damn it, pray for not receiving a critical!

My point is that fighter types can't survive without everybody else in the group expending resources to save them. And it is a sad thing.

You know why it is sad? Because most of mankind's legends and tales of epic are about guys armed with swords, shields, skills and bravery. And a RPG system that was based on those legends can only hope to give existence, and not true glory to these heroes.


And about my experience with this matter: Once I was playing with my regular group and one our friends decided to go Druid. Just for the Lulz. He never had played one. He never ever visited a DnD forum. He never ever even looked at the Druid spells. At level 3 our party of solid built characters (all meleers), were completely useless in battle. The Druid simply killed everyting alone. I mean, he, his Animal Companion and his summoned friends.


This thread should not become a flame war, ok? Instead we should focus on the topic. No. It is quite easier to enjoy the unbalanced game with good players. By good players I am referring to mature, aware of the rules and problems of the system and looking for fun persons. I they are also experienced, it is even better.

Dyllan
2009-02-27, 03:52 PM
Actually, if I was the fighter I'm not sure I would go after their casters first. Because that leaves MY casters open to their fighter. I'd probably try to trip, disarm or otherwise prevent their fighter from attacking my casters.

It seems all these arguments assume the fighter will fail. He won't be able to trip the enemy, or disarm them (if they're using weapons), or use knockback, or anything along those lines. You assume we're fighting in an entirely open arena, where the enemies will be able to easily walk around the fighter, and he won't be able to physically block their path. Those kind of fights may come up, but they're certainly not the norm in a game called Dungeons and Dragons.

Fiery Diamond
2009-02-27, 04:40 PM
I applaud you, OP.

I completely agree with you. I've played 3.5 for all of my D&D experience, both as a player and a DM. I've played with both martial melee classes and with spellcasters, and if the character concept is interesting enough, both are fun. As a DM, I accommodate my players - I don't make it obvious that I'm holding back, but I do- I NEVER try to kill my players, just put them all in the danger zone (negatives), so it is certainly possible for a good DM to accommodate good players and have a good game in an imbalanced system.

Plus, my idea of a fun caster is a sorcerer, not a wizard. Blaster caster, mainly. Most optimized? No, but certainly fun. I also love playing bastard-sword-wielding fighters. I worked with my brother (the DM for the game) on a class that took fast movement and rage in place of fighter feats and got diplomacy as a class skill and had a blast playing that character. He was a ruins-crazy, diplomatic intellectual who went blood-crazy in battle. I loved that character.

Fawsto
2009-02-27, 04:57 PM
But, before I continue, who is the biggest threat between all the enemy party's components?

Answer this and I shall continue my line of tought.


Besides that, I am not saing that playing as meleers is not fun. Damn, I've been playing paladins for all too long, since I can remember it is my favourite class with the concept I most like. Do I liking the class changes the fact that it is weak, and will hardly be able to survive in a very, very dire situation? No. Does it makes it less fun for me to paly it? No.

My toughts are the same of everyone who likes those classes. They should be improved, so they can contribute to the party sucess in a fashion that the character feels needed.

God... It is a very complicate matter. I've been trying to improve meleers for a long time. I've been trying to make them at least as contributing as casters, but I am not being sucessful.

One thing that no one here can argue against is this: Casters are much more powerful than non-casters. At the high levels non casters cant expect to contribute to the party success equaly to a caster.

The motive is simple: Magic does everything that everybody can do. Seriously. Just check the spells. The one who has more of them, or can use them better is the best.

Dyllan
2009-02-27, 05:01 PM
Fawsto:

There's no question that, at high levels, the wizard is the most powerful member of the party. By then, his spells have helped him overcome much of his physical frailty.

However, my only point was that the fighter is still a valued member of the party, even if he doesn't contribute as much as the casters do. I don't think you and I really disagree on that point though.

Advocate
2009-02-27, 06:05 PM
If you would err any more, I would offer you a membership in the Flat Earth Society...

RAW is completely irrelevant.

Ok. Except if you actually believe that, you have no reason to be here, as handwaving DM fiat only extends as far as your own game table, at best. You are out of your jurisdiction. These forums are for discussing the RAW, as otherwise no one is speaking the same language.

Since you are presumably still on these forums, you do not honestly believe that, and are quite literally incapable of being correct regarding this point, due to Catch 22. QED.

Ignoring Lycar's lying about me, except for one point. Want to 'fix' the Fighter? Be a Warblade. Problem solved. Any Fighter fix, ever is either going to completely miss the point, or be at least 90% Warblade based anyways, so why not cut the middle man and just take the damn class? Want to fix the Big Five? Be a Specialist caster or Sorcerer (Wizard), Wild Shape Ranger (Druid), or Favored Soul (Cleric). Gee, that was hard.


Okay, Advocate, I'm not going to go point by point to refute you as you repeat the points I've already refuted while ignoring the basis of my argument. That is, you don't have to be AS powerful as the most powerful character to contribute. You're taking the attitude that anyone who's sub-optimal is useless, and that fighters and monks fit that sub-optimal role.

No, you still don't get it. You don't anyone beatsticking. Really, you don't. It's not a vital role at all. If however you do, you only need one doing it... which means the best wins. There's more, but it's more appropriate further down.


As long as everyone's contributing (and last I checked, fighters and monks could still do damage to bad guys, therefore they're contributing), they're not useless.

Incorrect. Their actions are coming at the cost of at least one caster's actions, as they get slaughtered at close range and therefore need Heal spam to stay alive, unless you can one round feats in which case the need for beatsticks just went from 'zero' to 'negative integer'. As those caster's actions are considerably more valuable than their own, as they're one of the ones actually influencing combat...

Also, even if you completely ignore this and every other opportunity cost that negates their so called contribution and then some... Flurry of Misses says Monks don't even do damage at all most of the time. Also, they have low damage per hit, so what few hits they do manage barely do anything at all.

See, opportunity cost invalidates your points several times over. The Fighter and Monk aren't free.


Let me sum up our differences. You seem to believe that 1) Wizards, Clerics and Druids can be made to be much more powerful than fighters or monks.
2) therefore, anyone playing them correctly WILL make them much more powerful
3) therefore, the DM will only choose monsters that are a serious threat for the CoDZilla, Batman Wizard and Wildshape optimized druid, and these monsters will destroy the fighter in a single round.

Incorrect. Wizards, Clerics, and Druids do not require themselves to be 'made' to be better than Fighters and Monks. They are born that way. It requires zero effort on their part. The Fighter and the Monk Can't Catch Up.

They do get better if played correctly. This is not necessary though. See above.

Standard MM level appropriate stuff destroys the Fighter in one round, sometimes two. It has nothing to do with CoDzilla, Wizards, or anyone else. They'd do the same thing if the party was all Fighters, just to four different PCs instead of one. Again, for emphasis as this fallacy keeps getting spouted.

The Fighter's irrelevancy is independent of the Caster's awesomeness.

Now, my correct stance is that, without the DM doing anything in particular, he is going to be fielding monsters that only relevant PCs can do anything against. Relevant PCs includes but is not limited to casters. The Tome of Battle adepts are not casters, and are still relevant. Duskblades, Psychic Warriors, etc? They're relevant. Stuff like Swift Hunters and properly designed Rogues are borderline. Such enemies are capable of threatening casters, but can be dealt with by lower tier classes. Fighters and Monks are significantly below these levels.

Now, it's certainly possible the DM will ramp it up so that only the Big Five can compete. However I'm not saying that, I'm not assuming it, and I'm not doing it.

It's also possible he'll ramp things down. I'm sure the PC Fighter and Monk will feel real useful when they kill off NPC versions of themselves, who have inferior equipment and thus inferior power by far. They'll feel even better when the other humanoids, who are also as easy as opponents get kick their asses all over the field anyways. That is coddling, pure and simple. And even it doesn't save them.


I agree with 1). 2) is utter hogwash. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you must. I've never seen a player take a CoDzilla to the extremes seen on these boards. Nor have I seen a true Batman wizard played. Both of these builds are designed to hog the spotlight, and do everything themselves rather than counting on allies to assist them. And I've never seen Wildshape abused to the point where it invalidated the fighter types. It can be done, but it's an extreme, not the norm.
3) Any good DM will not put forward challenges that will consistently kill the PCs in one or two rounds. This isn't a contest to see if the DM or the party wins. The DM is there to make an enjoyable challenge for the party, not an impossible one.

Define extremes. Divine Favor, Divine Power, and Righteous Might already means the Cleric is better than an average or poor Fighter, and any Monk in beatsticking, while doing many other things. By a fairly large margin actually. And all of those are self only, so no the Fighter can't get them. A Batman Wizard is simply right tool for the job. Unless you only play with blaster casters, you've probably seen one. They're the ones who Spiked Tentacles the Medium size minions after Mazing the BBEG, and before following the tentacles with a Stinking Cloud so that the minions die a slow death, while being unable to act. 'Abusing Wildshape to the point of invalidating Fighters' is as simple as 'turning into a remotely level appropriate combat form'. So unless they only use it for travel utility, it's happened. Also, the animal companion is almost as good as the optimized Fighter, at least as good as a normal one, and better than a bad one. And that's just one class feature. So simply because the 1st level Druid 'has a Wolf or Riding Dog' it's happening. Later he might have a bear or something, whatever. You don't even need a Fleshraker for that.

The last bit is just empty words. D&D is Rocket Tag. Combat lasts 3 rounds, maximum, and if it takes longer than that it's because something is going VERY WRONG and a TPK is imminent. Also, stock monsters easily fit the 'kills a PC in 1-2 rounds' model. Therefore, you are either wrong, or insisting that a good DM is one that coddles the ever loving crap out of their players with stuff like encounters no higher than (party level - 4) while awarding much higher XP than such trivial encounters would warrant, as that is the only way you can possibly be right.


Therefore 4) Over optimization is counter-productive. By attempting to make yourself so powerful that you marginalize the rest of the party, you force the DM to either throw enemies at the party that will kill your allies, or to throw enemies that will be gunning for you. Neither will increase your own livelyhood versus playing at a more reasonable level and allowing your party members to assist you.

Irrelevant. False premises.


Unless you're TRYING to make the fighter worthless, he won't be. Even if you try - he's still not worthless... he's just worth less than you, mechanically speaking.

See above for a few of the many ways real PCs do it better by pure accident. Read your MM for the many ways stock encounters do it by pure accident. Actually trying is completely unnecessary, as he does an excellent job negating himself on his own. Particularly read the MM, as your post there is extremely deceptive due to ignorance. Once you have done so, you'll understand why you're wrong.

Edit: More.


Dylan, while i would agree with much of that the only problem comes when another party member has to essentially gimp himself to keep the other character alive. For example a cleric having to take all of his actions to just spam heal the fighter to keep him up. While this is an important piece of teamwork it sometimes isn't too enjoyable to play as a duracell battery.

Teamwork requires the other guy to be able to give something back, so that they are better than the sum of their parts.

Only going to reply to parts of this.


The Wizard: Now, talking about the strongest class in the game...

False. He is one of the strongest classes in the game. He shares that tier with Artificers, Archivists, Clerics, and Druids. They all rank about the same, because they all cast each other's spells to some extent anyways.

Also, Red Rogue needs Gravestrike badly!


Try being a Fighter, even buffed with the best buffs a Cleric and a Wizard can give you, and exchanging full attacks against a Balor for example.

Now hold on a minute. Yes, Fighters do suck against level appropriate opposition. This is incontestable. However if you conveniently ignore that Balor's 24 Int it is no longer level appropriate as it is being nerfed hard due to coddling. 24 Int is smarter than any human on the planet. Full stop. Now, would you, who is most likely not the most intelligent human on the planet sit there trading auto attacks when you have save or dies and save or sucks, being the caster that you are? Exactly. Even the MM, notorious for positing bad enemy tactics gets this part right. If the Balor is auto attacking the fighter, it's because he got save or sucked first and can't fight back.

You are on the right track, but stick to actual examples like dragons, as otherwise the other side might think they actually get points for being a heavily gimped, coddling enemy.

Dyllan: So basically, you go after the least threatening guy. Yeah, let me know how that works out for you.

Diamond: Negative HP are a very narrow window. Even at the lowest levels. Especially at levels 3+, where you go from conscious to dead very easily in one hit.

Kalirren
2009-02-27, 06:20 PM
Advocate, I would not have responded to your post except for this:



You are out of your jurisdiction. These forums are for discussing the RAW, as otherwise no one is speaking the same language.


I'm sorry, as one of your peers, I'd have to disagree. Neither are you on any privileged ground to rule any fellow forumite's jurisdiction out, but you have also completely ignored that the forum has gone from being titled Gaming (d20 & General RPG) to Roleplaying Games, which is a de-emphasis on the primacy of D&D from the previous status quo if anything at all.

The plain truth is that there are plenty of people here who play different systems and discourse upon different system languages than you do, and it is extremely arrogant of you to presume the superiority of your own position. Incidentally, this is not the only way in which you presume the superiority of your own position, but it is to me the most glaring, and hence to it I voice my objection.

If you want to have this sort of a mentality about discussions about the D&D RAW, I suggest that you go to the Wizards forums, which are explicitly for the discussion of their systems. I think the discussions there would be more to your liking. As it stands, your comments are not inflammatory, but I would surmise that the majority of people who were willing to discuss the original topic would find them nonetheless uninsightful and unwelcome.

Lycar
2009-02-27, 06:35 PM
No, that is almost textbook houserule. Seriously, the druid should easily pick up such knowlege by conversing and studying with the locals.

Yes, that was the idea: If he wants to, the DM does get to decide if any given critter exists in the first place or is know to the player druid.

Houserule it in any way neccessary to deal with a problem player.


Any natural environment has large, strong animals which almost anyone should know about; such things will work themselves naturally into people's minds and languages simply as being useful metaphors.
You will LITERALLY never find an environment, barring a barren desert, that lacks large animals which a person could turn into.

Certainly, no contest there. But some players might want to 'cherrypick' the best critters out of the entire range of Monstrous Manuals.

These people might need to be stopped. Which the DM does by invoking rule 0. As often and as hard as it is required to drive home the point that, if the player doesn't play nice, the DM won't either.



And requiring a druid to hunt them down and kill them isn't playing a D&D game, its you requiring wow quests to play.

If you require druids to do that, Fighters should be required to spend half their time looking for masters to learn feats from. Sound fun? didn't think so.

Actually, back in 2e, it was neccessary to find trainers and shell out lots of gold (1000 gp or so) to be able to level. No money, no level-up. Stuck in the middle of nowhere? No level-up.

3.x relaxed the rules somewhat. You can go *ping* with a good night's rest. Wizards are supposed to do be doing some private research in their spare time, just happening to pay off between levels to gain their spells. Fighters are assumed to be able to develope some tricks of their own.

And you don't have to pay for the priviledge of leveling anymore.

It speeds up gameplay and avoids frustrations. That is a good thing.

But why is it impossible that some people would actually enjoy this 'questing for power'? Why should not some people like the idea of making a few adventures about 'finding that fabulous Spell of XXXX' or 'find the Swordmaster to be trained in the ancient art of the Shocktrooper'?

It is just another option to play the game. It is a chance to make players work for their rewards. Which will, in return, be much more rewarding. Plus the DM retains a lot more control about what feats enter gameplay.

If, for example, Energy Admixture is a) causing trouble or b) is a good way to to boost the blaster wizard/sorceror, then the DM can either say that there is no teacher available, or drop hints about a caster who knows that trick. And might be willing to teach it to the PC. For a price of course... no no, not money. Something which cannot be paid in gold (read: quest).

t is just an idea how troublesome players could be forced to play nice.

Or how to make a lower powered game more fun. If the idea appeals to people. It is not for everybody. You don't seem to like it. Doesn't mean others can't enjoy it though.

Lycar

arguskos
2009-02-27, 06:43 PM
I'm sorry, as one of your peers, I'd have to disagree. Neither are you on any privileged ground to rule any fellow forumite's jurisdiction out, but you have also completely ignored that the forum has gone from being titled Gaming (d20 & General RPG) to Roleplaying Games, which is a de-emphasis on the primacy of D&D from the previous status quo if anything at all.

The plain truth is that there are plenty of people here who play different systems and discourse upon different system languages than you do, and it is extremely arrogant of you to presume the superiority of your own position. Incidentally, this is not the only way in which you presume the superiority of your own position, but it is to me the most glaring, and hence to it I voice my objection.

If you want to have this sort of a mentality about discussions about the D&D RAW, I suggest that you go to the Wizards forums, which are explicitly for the discussion of their systems. I think the discussions there would be more to your liking. As it stands, your comments are not inflammatory, but I would surmise that the majority of people who were willing to discuss the original topic would find them nonetheless uninsightful and unwelcome.
Normally, I would totally agree with this sentiment. No one has the right to say that anyone else is "out of their jurisdiction" or whatever.

That said, Advocate makes a fine point. In threads about D&D, RAW is the ONLY way to discuss the game, since houserules vary. The Rules As Written are the common language that let's us discuss the same stuff, and so we adhere to such things in these discussions. Note that I'm not getting into the actually discussion at hand, just saying that Advocate is correct in using RAW only as basis for argument and discussion.

Oh, and to the OP, Kaihaku, I completely agree. If you have a group of players that is committed to FUN, then balance is irrelevant. They'll have fun anyways. :smallcool:

Advocate
2009-02-27, 07:06 PM
Advocate, I would not have responded to your post except for this:



I'm sorry, as one of your peers, I'd have to disagree. Neither are you on any privileged ground to rule any fellow forumite's jurisdiction out, but you have also completely ignored that the forum has gone from being titled Gaming (d20 & General RPG) to Roleplaying Games, which is a de-emphasis on the primacy of D&D from the previous status quo if anything at all.

Ok. Except that if you aren't talking about the RAW in ANY system, you aren't speaking the same language as everyone else regarding said system. So what relevance does D&D have to this? The rest of your post is elaboration upon the above false premises, so no need to reply. When I say 'you are out of your jurisdiction' it is not an insult. It is just fact. The correct response is to fix that, either by not speaking a different language from everyone else, or by using the common language that others can understand. If someone told you your fly is open, would you thank them and fix your zipper or accuse them of messing with your pants? Same deal.

You're welcome by the way.

Kalirren
2009-02-27, 07:07 PM
In threads about D&D, RAW is the ONLY way to discuss the game, since houserules vary. The Rules As Written are the common language that let's us discuss the same stuff, and so we adhere to such things in these discussions. Note that I'm not getting into the actually discussion at hand, just saying that Advocate is correct in using RAW only as basis for argument and discussion.


I remain in disagreement with your assertion that RAW is the only common language, and here's why.

Yes, houserules vary. Look on the front page and count how many threads involve houseruling at some point. Count how many threads in the character builder boards invoke fractional BAB or fractional saves. You may take their occurrence for granted, but these are all technically "houserules" that have just gotten established enough in the gaming community that they are part of the system's lingua franca.

Count how many threads ask about appraising the effectiveness of houserules. About "fixing" D&D by writing a new RAW. Look at how many threads involve different interpretations of Rule 0, which -was- at one point RAW, and arguably still is. The fact that RAW still needs to be interpreted when it is ambiguous means that even RAW is not as useful of a common language as one would expect it to be in actual gaming practice.

My point in raising all of these examples is that WotC's RAW is not the only common language that we have on this forum. This is a well-recognized fact by no small fraction of the denizens of this board. I think what is more universally agreed is that people come here expecting to find ideas that can be applicable to their games, whether RAW or not, D&D or not.

Besides, notice that this thread isn't even about D&D. It's about any imbalanced system, of which D&D happens to be one. On some level, D&D RAW is inherently irrelevant to the general case.

Advocate
2009-02-27, 07:11 PM
Really, stop that. RAW = The rules of whatever system you are discussing, which is not necessarily D&D. It is not a D&D specific term, as every system as Rules As Written.

Kalirren
2009-02-27, 07:20 PM
I'm sorry, Advocate, You ninja'ed me. It was not my intention to not reply to your post in my previous.

I offer a trivial example for your consideration. Freeform games are widely acknowledged to be imbalanced, because the power afforded to each character is highly dependent upon the level of trust that the character's player has with the moderating entity of the game.

In such games, the RAW is often the null set by default. Often there may be traits and backgrounds, but no pre-set way in which they interact with each other and no hard guidelines for their individual interpretation.

Is it possible to have fun playing such a system? Many people do. The fact that so many freeform games are played is testament to this. Entire communities of freeformers are often governed by minimal rules about narrative privilege, like not dictating the results of other peoples' actions.

I doubt the moderators would close or move a thread containing an intelligent discussion about the social dynamics of freeform roleplaying on the grounds that it was non-germane. Therefore I believe these forums are not for exclusive purpose of discussing -any- set of RAW as you would have them be.

I could be proven wrong. You could point out to me a list of threads that were closed and moved because they didn't discuss any RAW, and I would be forced to concede the point.

I challenge you to do so. I believe you will lose.

arguskos
2009-02-27, 07:29 PM
I remain in disagreement with your assertion that RAW is the only common language, and here's why.

Yes, houserules vary. Look on the front page and count how many threads involve houseruling at some point. Count how many threads in the character builder boards invoke fractional BAB or fractional saves. You may take their occurrence for granted, but these are all technically "houserules" that have just gotten established enough in the gaming community that they are part of the system's lingua franca.

Count how many threads ask about appraising the effectiveness of houserules. About "fixing" D&D by writing a new RAW. Look at how many threads involve different interpretations of Rule 0, which -was- at one point RAW, and arguably still is. The fact that RAW still needs to be interpreted when it is ambiguous means that even RAW is not as useful of a common language as one would expect it to be in actual gaming practice.

My point in raising all of these examples is that WotC's RAW is not the only common language that we have on this forum. This is a well-recognized fact by no small fraction of the denizens of this board. I think what is more universally agreed is that people come here expecting to find ideas that can be applicable to their games, whether RAW or not, D&D or not.

Besides, notice that this thread isn't even about D&D. It's about any imbalanced system, of which D&D happens to be one. On some level, D&D RAW is inherently irrelevant to the general case.
I agree in many ways, though I still feel that RAW is the baseline for most discussions here concerning D&D (look at any "Pimp my character" threads for examples). I do think that this is a... poor way of looking at things, and I don't fully agree with it, but, there it is nonetheless.

As a fun side note, houserules by definition are not common language, since they vary from person to person. Their existence is. They themselves are not. And really, that's all I'm trying to say. RAW exists so we can discuss games in an objective light, not to be the end all, be all of the game in question. Houserules exist to fix the myriad issues that RAW has in any game. :smallbiggrin:

Also, I thank you for being civil and a pleasure to discuss with. It's a rarity on the internet, and I appreciate it immensely. :smallsmile:

krossbow
2009-02-27, 07:56 PM
The thing is, in this situation, the question appears to be about by the books, uncooked out of the box classes.
For that, i assume the baseline of undoctered systems, and i assume the same for the situations being replied to.



Now, if we're supposed to respond to how to houserule to make things better, then i think we need to make another thread to talk about that. but as for the basic point of this thread, yes it is possible, but its dependent on what your players are after; heavily dependent.

Lycar
2009-02-27, 08:15 PM
Now, if we're supposed to respond to how to houserule to make things better, then i think we need to make another thread to talk about that. but as for the basic point of this thread, yes it is possible, but its dependent on what your players are after; heavily dependent.

But this thread IS about how it is possible to enjoy an unabalanced game, given the right players.

What if one the possible solutions is that these supposed 'good' players simply agree on houserules, that allow them to fix the perceived imbalances, so they can still enjoy the game?

Then, by neccessity, the question becomes: What are these houserules and how do they interact with the RAW to cope with the failings of the RAW?

But yes, this all first and foremost depends on what a given group of players agrees on to be 'fun' and 'balanced' vs. 'unbalanced'.

For example, the consensus seems to be to empower the martial classes to emanzipate them from the help of the casters.

I personally would rather prefer changes that would make the caster classes depend on the melee classes: Co-operate or perish. Because my own image of un-fun is the band of marauding egoists.

But that is just me and others have different opinions. Still, if someone came up with a few good ideas how to help fix the issues, I could profit from them myself.

As for the OP's question, the answer would then be: Enjoying a game that offers unfair advantages to those willing to abuse it (i.e.: play the rules rather then the game) requires players who put the comunal enjoyment of the game by the group above their own self-gratification.

If this is caster players willingly limiting themselves to blasters, or game masters mastering campaigns which revolve more around interaction with other sentient humanoids then, say, encountering every single beastie from the various MMs depends on personal style and preference.

Or in other words: It is not about if you use houserules, but just about how your houserules work to achieve a fun gaming experience for everybody.

Lycar

The_Jackal
2009-02-27, 09:01 PM
Here's the problem with the 'Casters are better than Fighters' argument. It's not that casters can't trump fighters in a vacuum, or that fighters aren't easily neutralized without magic support. Both of these things are true.

What's MORE true is that are cast on a non-spellcaster are stronger than those cast on a spellcaster. At day's end, the game isn't PCs versus each other, it's PCs versus monsters and enemy PCs. A buffed up, tricked out fighter can dish out tons of damage, can soak up tons of damage, and just generally make an enormous nuisance of themselves, while, yes, the spellcasters carve out their share of the glory.

An adventure party is like a football team. Yes, the quarterback gets the glory and is crucial to the offense. But you need those big, huge linemen to tough it out in the trenches for you. You need some guys in the backfield to run the ball and pick up blocks. Yes, a quarterback can run the ball himself, he can block after he's gotten rid of it, but that doesn't mean you want him doing it all the time.

krossbow
2009-02-27, 09:07 PM
just the issue is, its better to have a party of Wizard/rogue/cleric/druid than one including the fighter or barbarian. If given the choice, a wizard is much better off buffing up the cleric; and he rarely has time or resources to follow up the fighter afterwards.




However, as its been stated that individuals are asking for houserules, so here's what my group commonly views as good.

One, for the druid require the player handbook II version. its WAY less abusable. However, it unfortunately doesn't work with any prestige classes, so there can be issues.

Another way is require casters to have 2 stats for casting, similiar to the favored soul; what this means is that intelligence increases spell DC, ect. while charisma is what you look at for bonus spells per day; have the wizard and the sorceror use this for their saves and bonus spells.

If you truly want a cleric who plays a healbot or buffer type role, outlaw cleric and only allow the Healer class. Unfortunately, let me tell you, hard time getting anyone to play this class, no matter how hardcore you RP that unicorn that it gets (Unless you give them god of war II's pegasus).

Unfortunately, you should note that most houserules like this would require you throwing weaker enemies at them.

Fortinbras
2009-02-28, 01:01 AM
Games are a lot more fun if everyone is in roughly the same power range. Making sure that everyone is in roughly the same power range is much easier to do in some games than in others. Doing so in 3.5ed D&D can be rather hard.

With a better balanced system I wouldn't have to deal with those headaches. It would be nice.

That was more or less my point in creating the martial characters dissusion thread. I was frustrated that it seemed like fighters were being out done by everone else. This didn't reflect poorly on everyone else, they were just playing their characters as well as they could. In my experience having to hold back is not fun and neither is being dramaticly less efective than everyone else. My theory was that an optimized fighter would be roughly that same power level as everyone else. Then everyone could go "all out" and have fun without worrying about anybody being slighted. Since some people (like me although I'm changing) like fighters, effective characters, and don't like all that number crunching wheares some people do like number crunching I was hoping that people could find powerful fighter builds which they could then play said builds and be as efective as everyone else without having to do number crunching if they didn't enjoy it. My theory was that optimization doesn't really interfere with other aspects of gaming (especialy if the optimization is done by someone who actually enjoys it) unless you let it. This theory may have been a little niave.

I understand that this post is kind of wordy, I was trying to avoid any misunderstandings.

Kalirren
2009-02-28, 02:03 AM
^^ Fortinbras:

Ah...now I understand how the argument got started.

Someone probably said this in the other thread, but I'm just going to say it again. The reason why fighters can never really compare to casters, even if you eliminate things like a druid's animal companion which completely fills the fighter's niche, is that there are only so many things a fighter can do with their weapon and comparing those capabilities to the breadth of opportunities and powers that are afforded by full casting and/or strong skills reveals a stark paucity of options available to the fighter. I think these threads have probably done quite a good job of explaining just how that is so I won't harp on the point.

If you want a system where fighters and martial-types don't have to worry about optimizing just to be on a comparable level to everyone else, I have a simple solution for you. Play 4th edition D&D. 4e is designed to be balanced in this respect. 3.X wasn't. In 4e you don't have the problems with Vancian casting or linear-quadratic scaling or differences in the breadth of effects that you can create with magic versus with swords that you run into in 3E. For the most part those have gone away. All you have to do is make sure your stats are distributed sanely and pick the powers that interest you, since the progressions of powers have been balanced with respect to one another. This sounds like it is what you want; a system environment where you can play the kind of character you want to play in terms of fluff, yet be assured that you have a place in the party.

Advocate
2009-02-28, 01:04 PM
*stuff*

Except that you are completely missing the point. When someone says 'D&D' everyone reading immediately defaults to the RAW for D&D. Same is true for any other system.. Freeform has no default, so in order for anyone to understand what you're saying you have to spell it out yourself.

Now imagine if you will I said say... 'Fighters are the best class in the D&D game'. Naturally, a lot of people would come out of the woodwork to correct me, as they should because I could not possibly be more wrong with such a statement, and preventing the spread of misinformation is simply what responsible posters do.

Now let's say the reason why I came to this conclusion is because I'm referring to some other system with those initials, or perhaps because I renamed the Wizard 'Fighter' or whatever. Maybe I buffed the class so much that it actually is the best (in my games). However, because I'm not mentioning all that, I am not speaking the same language as those talking to me. There is no communication, because we're all talking past each other.

Even if I do mention these details in advance to avoid that confusion, the fact of the matter is the details are still only applicable to me, and those who do the same thing as I'm still not discussing things using the common language for such, RAW. So we still aren't speaking the same language, I just gave you a crash course in translating. Now you can kinda understand me, but what I say is still not relevant to your interests.

Also, freeform itself invariably devolves into Cops and Robbers, with adults, demonstrating that even within the subset of the game itself communication invariably breaks down. So how can it possibly hold up in a much higher level here?

As for the topic itself, there is really not a whole lot to say. Ban the strong casters, and ban the weak beatsticks. When the Wizard necromancer is a Dread Necromancer, the Druid is a Wild Shape Ranger, and the Fighter is a Warblade you actually have people playing the same game. This assumes you care about being weak. Obviously, if you don't mind being a lackey you don't need to do anything to change the status quo. Which means you can just be a Commoner or something, and it won't make any difference since clearly, you 'enjoy' yourself, weak or not. The fact the thread exists in the first place implies changes are required to reach that state.

Artanis
2009-02-28, 01:09 PM
Here's the problem with the 'Casters are better than Fighters' argument. It's not that casters can't trump fighters in a vacuum, or that fighters aren't easily neutralized without magic support. Both of these things are true.

What's MORE true is that are cast on a non-spellcaster are stronger than those cast on a spellcaster. At day's end, the game isn't PCs versus each other, it's PCs versus monsters and enemy PCs. A buffed up, tricked out fighter can dish out tons of damage, can soak up tons of damage, and just generally make an enormous nuisance of themselves, while, yes, the spellcasters carve out their share of the glory.

An adventure party is like a football team. Yes, the quarterback gets the glory and is crucial to the offense. But you need those big, huge linemen to tough it out in the trenches for you. You need some guys in the backfield to run the ball and pick up blocks. Yes, a quarterback can run the ball himself, he can block after he's gotten rid of it, but that doesn't mean you want him doing it all the time.
So what do you do when your tailback blocks better than the linemen?

Advocate
2009-02-28, 01:30 PM
So what do you do when your tailback blocks better than the linemen?

Dum dum pish. If we really want to get into football team analogies, the (competent) linemen are the competent beatsticks. The Fighter is that guy you only let on the team because he's your brother, and the poor guy suffered a head injury, massively reducing his intellect. Also, you work out deals with the other team so that the guy can score touchdowns and feel good about himself... of course, if he catches on everyone is letting him win, his whole football team life is a lie.

Winterwind
2009-02-28, 01:31 PM
Also, freeform itself invariably devolves into Cops and Robbers, with adults, demonstrating that even within the subset of the game itself communication invariably breaks down. So how can it possibly hold up in a much higher level here?Umm... what? :smallconfused:

Speaking as someone for whom a lot of the most interesting, immersive and complex roleplaying experience has been in freeform games, I would be very much interested in you elaborating upon these statements.


As for the topic itself, there is really not a whole lot to say. Ban the strong casters, and ban the weak beatsticks. When the Wizard necromancer is a Dread Necromancer, the Druid is a Wild Shape Ranger, and the Fighter is a Warblade you actually have people playing the same game. This assumes you care about being weak. Obviously, if you don't mind being a lackey you don't need to do anything to change the status quo. Which means you can just be a Commoner or something, and it won't make any difference since clearly, you 'enjoy' yourself, weak or not. The fact the thread exists in the first place implies changes are required to reach that state.I still see no reason whatsoever why differing power level between characters should result in one of them being forced into a lackey role, or prevent them from playing a significant role within the story (upon their own power, without necessitating GM help). Would you please explain why that would, in your opinion, happen, instead of simply stating it as a fact?

Fortinbras
2009-02-28, 02:14 PM
Except that you are completely missing the point. When someone says 'D&D' everyone reading immediately defaults to the RAW for D&D. Same is true for any other system.. Freeform has no default, so in order for anyone to understand what you're saying you have to spell it out yourself.

Now imagine if you will I said say... 'Fighters are the best class in the D&D game'. Naturally, a lot of people would come out of the woodwork to correct me, as they should because I could not possibly be more wrong with such a statement, and preventing the spread of misinformation is simply what responsible posters do.

Now let's say the reason why I came to this conclusion is because I'm referring to some other system with those initials, or perhaps because I renamed the Wizard 'Fighter' or whatever. Maybe I buffed the class so much that it actually is the best (in my games). However, because I'm not mentioning all that, I am not speaking the same language as those talking to me. There is no communication, because we're all talking past each other.

Even if I do mention these details in advance to avoid that confusion, the fact of the matter is the details are still only applicable to me, and those who do the same thing as I'm still not discussing things using the common language for such, RAW. So we still aren't speaking the same language, I just gave you a crash course in translating. Now you can kinda understand me, but what I say is still not relevant to your interests.

Also, freeform itself invariably devolves into Cops and Robbers, with adults, demonstrating that even within the subset of the game itself communication invariably breaks down. So how can it possibly hold up in a much higher level here?

As for the topic itself, there is really not a whole lot to say. Ban the strong casters, and ban the weak beatsticks. When the Wizard necromancer is a Dread Necromancer, the Druid is a Wild Shape Ranger, and the Fighter is a Warblade you actually have people playing the same game. This assumes you care about being weak. Obviously, if you don't mind being a lackey you don't need to do anything to change the status quo. Which means you can just be a Commoner or something, and it won't make any difference since clearly, you 'enjoy' yourself, weak or not. The fact the thread exists in the first place implies changes are required to reach that state.

Aside from the quote marks on enjoy and the fact that by saying monks are the best class you are more wrong than saying fighters are the best I couldn't agree more.

Kalirren
2009-02-28, 02:42 PM
Except that you are completely missing the point. When someone says 'D&D' everyone reading immediately defaults to the RAW for D&D. Same is true for any other system. Freeform has no default, so in order for anyone to understand what you're saying you have to spell it out yourself.

In case it was not clear before, I acknowledge the fact that RAW is the default language by which we talk about D&D. Just because it is the default doesn't mean it's the only language, because you can, as we both clearly understand, use a dialect of the language that involves houserules. I believe I understand your point completely. I believe your model is that the RAW is a received corpus of rules, and that the jurisdiction to interpret the RAW by any given GM is confined to their own gaming sessions, hence your comment about Satyr "overstepping his jurisdiction". This all I acknowledge.

However, my original point against you, to which you still have not yet responded, is that the fact that RAW is the default langauge does not substantiate your assertion that the forums are only for the discussion of RAW as you claimed. You do not have jurisdiction to rule that Satyr is overstepping his jurisdiction by extending his opinion into the public sphere defined by this forum; that is the privilege of the forum moderators.

In particular as it applies to this thread, people are not interested in the rules or even how they are applied, but rather the variety of different strategies that players can employ to make a meaningful gaming experience for themselves despite the gross imbalances of their chosen system. Some people houserule, some people ban stupid classes, some people coddle the fighters, some people change the focus of the game so that seeking victory over monsters is not the only goal. This is the point that I believe you are missing. Correct me if I am mistaken.

Advocate
2009-02-28, 03:25 PM
Umm... what? :smallconfused:

Speaking as someone for whom a lot of the most interesting, immersive and complex roleplaying experience has been in freeform games, I would be very much interested in you elaborating upon these statements.

'I shot you!'

As there are no rules to adjudicate such things as hostile actions against another, it turns into this big hand waving thing. And when there's a disagreement, just like with a games of Cops and Robbers the 'I shot you!' argument comes up, and cycles Ad Nauseum. Using a system with actual rules avoids these communication breakdowns, because everyone is speaking the same language. Further, if you can't even speak the same language when using the system, you certainly cannot when discussing it with an undefined large number of random people outside of your gaming group.


I still see no reason whatsoever why differing power level between characters should result in one of them being forced into a lackey role, or prevent them from playing a significant role within the story (upon their own power, without necessitating GM help). Would you please explain why that would, in your opinion, happen, instead of simply stating it as a fact?

Your ability to influence the world is based upon your power. Power relative to your enemies, power relative to your allies, and power relative to the world itself. This is especially true in D&D, where most campaign settings are set around the Iron Age, where your ability to command others is exactly identical to your ability to kick the ass of said others. That is to say, your right to rule extends only as far as your fist. The one major setting that doesn't do this (Eberron) ends up doing the same thing except via more modern means such as economic and political power, rather than personal power. However, as these things are irrelevant to beatsticks, due to lacking the skill set for that I will simply focus on the majority.

Specifically, when I say lackey I mean lackey to his allies, therefore I am referring to his power relative to his allies. This is stated as a fact because it is. The abilities of that character are vastly inferior to that of his allies, therefore he is a lackey to said allies, as opposed to an equal, or said allies being his lackeys. Those who are most competent do the most. If he were capable of doing as much on his own merits, well he wouldn't be a lackey now would he?


Aside from the quote marks on enjoy and the fact that by saying monks are the best class you are more wrong than saying fighters are the best I couldn't agree more.

'With such a statement' is the keywords. Saying Monks are best is a different statement. Enjoy is quoted because it is a subjective term. Just like when discussing things less defined than RAW things break down communications wise, discussing terms that have at least as many definitions as people you ask causes communication to break down. If you have fun playing a weak character, it doesn't really matter what you pick, as you simply don't care about that. If you mind staying alive, it's time to examine your options.


However, my original point against you, to which you still have not yet responded, is that the fact that RAW is the default langauge does not substantiate your assertion that the forums are only for the discussion of RAW as you claimed. You do not have jurisdiction to rule that Satyr is overstepping his jurisdiction by extending his opinion into the public sphere defined by this forum; that is the privilege of the forum moderators.

In particular as it applies to this thread, people are not interested in the rules or even how they are applied, but rather the variety of different strategies that players can employ to make a meaningful gaming experience for themselves despite the gross imbalances of their chosen system. Some people houserule, some people ban stupid classes, some people coddle the fighters, some people change the focus of the game so that seeking victory over monsters is not the only goal. This is the point that I believe you are missing. Correct me if I am mistaken.

Consider yourself corrected. As RAW is the only common language, RAW is the only language that can be used when speaking to those here. As a language's use is directly proportional to the number of people you can use said language to communicate with, and RAW allows you to talk to everyone, whereas the alternatives only let you talk to a few people that aren't even here... you have exactly one option. Full stop.

As for Satyr, pointing that out was more along the lines of 'Hey buddy, you need to fix that' than 'You are under arrest'. No 'ruling' about it.

And the thread itself... if you don't care about being weak, you don't need to do anything, because the Fighter doesn't care he's far inferior to the Druid's Animal Companion in combat, and far inferior to everyone outside of it. If you do care, and presumably the OP does to make this thread and others do for posting here I presented a very simple and effective fix already. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that advice is irrelevant to anyone who does not take it.

Winterwind
2009-02-28, 03:44 PM
'I shot you!'Actually, it's "I try to shoot you". How it is decided whether you actually accomplish this feat depends on the group, though in all freeform groups I saw it was the gamemaster who determined that. Certainly not the only way to decide it though.


As there are no rules to adjudicate such things as hostile actions against another, it turns into this big hand waving thing. And when there's a disagreement, just like with a games of Cops and Robbers the 'I shot you!' argument comes up, and cycles Ad Nauseum. Using a system with actual rules avoids these communication breakdowns, because everyone is speaking the same language. Further, if you can't even speak the same language when using the system, you certainly cannot when discussing it with an undefined large number of random people outside of your gaming group.You... haven't really ever played in a good freeform group, have you?
Nothing of what you described here ever happened in any of the freeform groups I ever participated in.
I would say more to that, but really, what more is there to be said but to ask you to please not make any further derisive statements about things you seem to have little experience with?


Your ability to influence the world is based upon your power. Power relative to your enemies, power relative to your allies, and power relative to the world itself. This is especially true in D&D, where most campaign settings are set around the Iron Age, where your ability to command others is exactly identical to your ability to kick the ass of said others. That is to say, your right to rule extends only as far as your fist. The one major setting that doesn't do this (Eberron) ends up doing the same thing except via more modern means such as economic and political power, rather than personal power. However, as these things are irrelevant to beatsticks, due to lacking the skill set for that I will simply focus on the majority.How about being in the right place at the right time? How about seeing opportunities to influence the story and using them? The story could be completely changed by any word or deed coming from any character, spoken to the right person or commited in the right way, a change induced by a character's personality and presence, rather than his personal power.
And, while we're at it, why this fixation on power in combat?


Specifically, when I say lackey I mean lackey to his allies, therefore I am referring to his power relative to his allies. This is stated as a fact because it is. The abilities of that character are vastly inferior to that of his allies, therefore he is a lackey to said allies, as opposed to an equal, or said allies being his lackeys. Those who are most competent do the most. If he were capable of doing as much on his own merits, well he wouldn't be a lackey now would he?How does power correlate with inter-personal relations in the slightest? The weakest, most incompetent character in the group could be their leader and the mightiest, nigh-omnipotent wizard the guy who licks his shoes clean every day, the proper backstory and context of how the group came to journey together provided.

Advocate
2009-02-28, 04:05 PM
Actually, it's "I try to shoot you". How it is decided whether you actually accomplish this feat depends on the group, though in all freeform groups I saw it was the gamemaster who determined that. Certainly not the only way to decide it though.

Which starts the argument.


How about being in the right place at the right time? How about seeing opportunities to influence the story and using them? The story could be completely changed by any word or deed coming from any character, spoken to the right person or commited in the right way, a change induced by a character's personality and presence, rather than his personal power.
And, while we're at it, why this fixation on power in combat?

Requires you to have the actual abilities to do so, else does not work. Full stop. Power in combat is what matters because it is the primary way in which you could deal with foes. Dealing with them via non combat means is not the purview of the beatsticks, as you lack the skill set to give you the power to make that happen. Combat only is mentioned, because combat only is all you can do. I was being fair here, by only sticking to the things they had a chance in. DM fiat has no basis in argument, and simply leads to 'babysitting Frodo' scenarios.


How does power correlate with inter-personal relations in the slightest? The weakest, most incompetent character in the group could be their leader and the mightiest, nigh-omnipotent wizard the guy who licks his shoes clean every day, the proper backstory and context of how the group came to journey together provided.

See above, and that statement also requires everyone involved to clearly ignore very drastic disparities in competence. So what happens is that weak guy is just a figurehead, while the real characters have the real power. Assuming it even goes that far, which it won't... in addition to being stronger, the Wizard is also far smarter, and the Cleric/Druid far wiser, thus they are clearly better suited to take charge. That is a subset of the 'mentally retarded football player on your team' scenario, in which they only win because you let them win, and the moment they get a clue you're just humoring them they deflate into nothingness. Alternately, it involves some DM fiat railroading, which is your cue to make like a tree and leave.

Lycar
2009-02-28, 04:28 PM
Let us get back on topic for change.

So, if one of the problems the fighting classes face is having a weal will save, why not simply fall back to the days of 2e and give fighters what they had in 2e: The best all-around saves.

It is still not as good as a permament MIndblank, but it sure helps with the caster dependency. As far as flight and true seeing goes, there are magic items for that. And damage dealing is something that the fighter has covered.

Then he still 'only' deals damage to his enemies, but he has a much better chance to not be taken out by a simple SoD/D spell.

As for inflicting status effects on his enemies: There are a few feats which do that. Unfortunately, both the way the save DC scales and the duration are laughable. That needs to be fixed.

Kia Shout and Greater Kia Shout are a good start though. Too bad the save DC is CHA based, which is a dump stat for many fighters. The duration is pretty meh with only 1d6 rounds (although 2d6 for the Greater version ought to do). How about adding the CHA modifier to that duration?

3 uses/day are a bit weak though. How about making it equal to the CON modifier instaed?

Brutal Strike is better: Make a power attack, save DC is 10+ extra damage from PA vs. being sickened. Since this only hinders an opponent, but does not negate him and on top of that can only be used once per round per RAW, the 1 round duration is simply too short.

So I propose that either this feat can be used on all PA attacks with bludgeoning weapons in a round (yay for iterative attacks, if they hit), or that the duration gets keyed to the initiator's STR mod (maybe half the STR mod, minimum 1 round).

That way a fighter has a chance to keep a small number of enemies debuffed constantly.

Now we only need a follow-up feat that renders the target dazed and we are getting to the point where a fighter can render an opponent ineffective.

And that would help take care of the 'fighters can't do squat to protect his fellow party members' complaint.

Thoughts?

Lycar

Advocate
2009-02-28, 04:39 PM
Because all giving them 'good' save progressions would do is give them the Monk flaw - namely, that gullible people will think good base save progression means good saves overall, while conveniently ignoring the extreme MAD and gear dependency that limits the save boosting that actually gets you good saves in the non tricking you sense. Which just means a whole lot more misinformation that needs to be set straight. Now, Fighters aren't as bad as Monks with the MAD and stretched thin on gear, but they are second to last. +20 saves just means you have a coin toss chance to not die every round. You have to do better than that.

Flight items conflict with haste items and teleport items, as they are also foot slot items. True Seeing... best you can do is 1/day for 1 minute. Which is actually very good... if you know when you're supposed to be using it, and turn it on right before kicking in the door. Of course, the things True Seeing counters can be summarized as trickery... and the whole point of trickery is you don't know you're being tricked until it's too late, if you know at all. Which means burning a round mid fight... and then another round for flight... except now the encounter is over.

Any sort of special ability needs a DC tied to Strength, or damage to be relevant, as that's the only way you're getting a DC on the RNG.

Brutal Strike is way too expensive for what it does, and the DC is absolutely trivial unless you are PAing for full (which means you have Wraithstrike or something, and really don't care about sickened 1 round for several feats at mid levels). It needs a DC based on total damage (which obviously PA improves), and applicable to his entire auto attack sequence, at the least. As for duration... see how that works first, as with it this way he could at least debuff saves a bit for the SoD.

Kalirren
2009-02-28, 04:46 PM
There are elements of roleplaying games, D&D included, that do not reduce to the rules as written. Even if I concede that the RAW is the only common language, it is by no means a complete language: it doesn't address every problem that arises in a D&D game. When a DM runs a by-the-books RAW game, and the person playing a fighter feels left out of the action because he is being overshadowed by a druid's animal companion, it is not due to any conflict or inconsistency with the RAW. This angst is rooted in the unfulfillment of expectations that the player carried to the game; that he would be a meaningful part of a collaborative effort, that he would have a chance to shine, that he feels the fighter class best describes the character he wished to play, and that the system was in the end unable to deliver on its promise that a standard fantasy character type could meaningfully adventure. This is why the Martial Characters thread which spawned this thread existed in the first place.

You can respond that the player is being stupid, and that if he had taken the time to familiarize himself with the system, he wouldn't have had these expectations. But that's not a meaningful response, because there are people here who treat it as a serious problem and attempt to solve it. They have expectations from their game system that exceed your own, and that is their prerogative. They are willing to either tweak the system or tweak the way they play, either of which can allow the system to deliver on its original promise.

To this I can envision two meaningful responses. Either you concede to others that it is useful, perhaps even imperative, to consider things outside of the RAW that are consistent with it, or you deny the use of that entire school of thought and attempt to impose upon others a burden to eliminate concepts from their discourse that are irreducible to elements of the RAW.

I see no reason why you should feel entitled to constrict the scope of other people's discussions about their own games on a public forum to the bounds of your own insipidity. You are not forced to read this or any thread. Neither are you compelled by anyone to respond.

krossbow
2009-02-28, 04:48 PM
Unfortunately, the inherent flaw with magic is magic can truly only be defeated by magic; even in most books where a humble hero defeats an individual, its through his "inner strength" or an artifact sword.




In order to make a normal martial character defeat magic in current D&D WITHOUT using warblades, ect. is to give all melee the ability to crazy anti-magic things. Such as the ability to dispel magical attacks made against them with attack rolls, ect.
And if your going to do that, just go with tome of battle.

Thurbane
2009-02-28, 05:39 PM
Amen, sir. I applaud you.

I've played "weak" classes, taken "bad" feats, and made utterly stupid decisions in game. It never stopped the group from having fun. Some of the best gaming anecdotes come from someone doing something that would make any powergamer cringe.
Exactly - lack of ultra-optimization really only becomes an issue in a "DM vs players" or "player vs players" game, in which everyone else is an uber-optimizer. In the majority of games out there, where the players work as a team, and the DM doesn't consider it his job to try and screw them over or kill them at every possible opportunity, all but the most horribly sub-optimal characters will find a way to contribute to the group.

At least that's been my experience. But hey, I play in a game where people still play fighters and monks! :smalltongue::smallbiggrin:

SmartAlec
2009-02-28, 06:11 PM
Exactly - lack of ultra-optimization really only becomes an issue in a "DM vs players" or "player vs players" game, in which everyone else is an uber-optimizer. In the majority of games out there, where the players work as a team, and the DM doesn't consider it his job to try and screw them over or kill them at every possible opportunity, all but the most horribly sub-optimal characters will find a way to contribute to the group.

Not sure if this quite scans as a blanket statement. My own group certainly works as a team, and individually, we all want to contribute as much as we can to that team. We're not trying to build effectively to out-do each other.

Thurbane
2009-02-28, 06:30 PM
It's pretty clear from this forum that nobody has fun playing anything.

Next question.
LOL - don't believe the hype! Point taken, however. :smallwink:

So... there are pepole out there considering Pun-Pun more than an interesting and amusing mental exercise?
You'd be surprised, my friend.

Not so. Plenty of people play D&D without realizing it's imbalanced and they have fun doing so.
Indeed - I've played with such groups many times.

Seeing that wizards, druids and clerics are core, I wouldn't say imbalance in DND is not caused by sorucebooks.
Quite so, but additional splatbooks are often extra fuel for the fire. While it is certainly possible to make a "broken" character in the core, adding more possibilities and rule loopholes in extra books can certainly take broken to a new level.

Thurbane
2009-02-28, 06:40 PM
Not sure if this quite scans as a blanket statement. My own group certainly works as a team, and individually, we all want to contribute as much as we can to that team. We're not trying to build effectively to out-do each other.
There's nothing wrong with that, and it also doesn't contradict my above statement. It sounds like your group has a good dynamic, and no one feels left out because they aren't optimized?

SmartAlec
2009-02-28, 07:40 PM
There's nothing wrong with that, and it also doesn't contradict my above statement. It sounds like your group has a good dynamic, and no one feels left out because they aren't optimized?

Sure we're all fairly well-optimised. Er, let me rephrase - we're not optimising to out-do each other, we're optimising because no-one wants to let the group down.

Winterwind
2009-02-28, 11:38 PM
Which starts the argument.Only if you have some exceedingly immature players. Since this thread's premise was not only to not have that kind of people around, but actually presumed good players, it becomes a non-issue.

I am seriously confused what you are trying to accomplish here. I have played in multiple freeform groups; none of them devolved into bickering and arguments. Ever. Not even a single time. So, unless you are trying to tell me my memories are implants and I never actually participated in these groups, you don't really have a case here.

Again, please do not try to present your opinions as facts, especially when they concern matters you evidently possess little experience with.


Requires you to have the actual abilities to do so, else does not work. Full stop. Power in combat is what matters because it is the primary way in which you could deal with foes. Dealing with them via non combat means is not the purview of the beatsticks, as you lack the skill set to give you the power to make that happen. Combat only is mentioned, because combat only is all you can do. I was being fair here, by only sticking to the things they had a chance in. DM fiat has no basis in argument, and simply leads to 'babysitting Frodo' scenarios.Indeed, DM fiat has no basis in there, which is why I specifically excluded it. As for the rest... no, I decidedly disagree. Unless the DM is actively trying to sabotage a player (and that's excluded by this thread's premise of a good group), even the weakest character can impact the story in manifold manners. All it takes is some creativity on the player's part. It takes no special powers to present the argument that convinces the important NPC. It takes no special powers to inspire others with one's courage. It takes no special powers to decide to split off the group in the right moment, in order to be in the right place to spy on the enemies' conversation. It takes no special powers to come up with something so bold and unexpected that the gamemaster never took it into account, which completely changes the course of the story.
As long as there is roleplaying, everyone can impact. There is only then no way to influence where the story is going when there in fact is no story at all, but instead only a mass of challenges and fights for the sake of fighting.

And as for me wondering about that fixation on power in combat, that was more because nothing guarantees there will be any combat at all, when speaking about roleplaying in general. I have seen plenty of sessions where there has been no combat at all, and in no group I have ever played in combat took up a major part of the sessions. Your group's preferences may vary, of course, but you cannot presume them as standard, either.


See above, and that statement also requires everyone involved to clearly ignore very drastic disparities in competence. So what happens is that weak guy is just a figurehead, while the real characters have the real power. Assuming it even goes that far, which it won't... in addition to being stronger, the Wizard is also far smarter, and the Cleric/Druid far wiser, thus they are clearly better suited to take charge. That is a subset of the 'mentally retarded football player on your team' scenario, in which they only win because you let them win, and the moment they get a clue you're just humoring them they deflate into nothingness. Alternately, it involves some DM fiat railroading, which is your cue to make like a tree and leave.Okay, now you have completely lost me. How can you make such definite and generalized statements when we are dealing with the infinite number of possible backstories to the people involved, infinite number of circumstances under which they might have decided to join forces and infinite number of personalities both the players and characters in question might have? Fixation upon the mechanics beyond the characters to determine who gets to lead is metagaming at its worst; it is the interplay of personalities and circumstances that leads to the social interaction that bonds the group together, and that is not related to any rules or mechanics.

Kaihaku
2009-03-01, 12:22 AM
Though people who take levels in 4 different prestige classes in order to get maximum whatever in a game are NOT in it for the roleplaying
Atleast that is my theory


I disagree. I've done it. I think that rollplaying enhances roleplaying, if I didn't I'd only be playing freeform not Dungeons and Dragons. But the times I've intentionally optimized a character I was maximizing a specific role that fit into the group, not trying to take the spotlight. Good characters can still be powerful.


2nd ed. AD&D. Just saying

True story. :D


The DM and the players share responsibility for "balancing" their game, as in, the game they sit down to play; things like making sure one guy's character doesn't consistently outshine another's, that they all have something useful to contribute, get a chance to shine, etc. The DM has a larger share of responsibility here since he has to manage the entire rest of the world and the kinds of challenges they face, while the players each have responsibility mostly for their own character only.

However, when they're doing this, the system should support them, not fight them. It may not be your intent, but your statement seems to put an unfair portion of blame on the DM for flaws in the system he's working with.

Indeed. Often enough Dungeon Masters don't even know how the system is imbalanced until after something blows up in their face. I agree they can have a powerful role in balancing out the system and party, but I wouldn't claim that that is their responsibility alone, every player has a role in that as well.


Enlarge Person is only available to Clerics with the Strength domain. Not a valid example. Divine Agility has such low duration that it's taking a full round away from winning the encounter. No. Now had you said Recitation and Righteous Wrath of the Faithful you'd actually have a point. Of course, buffs being the force multipliers that they are, they still help strong characters more than weak ones, so really you're just getting in on it because there's no reason to exclude you. It's free.

My mistake, I've grown accustom to using the Transformation domain over the last three years and neglected that it wasn't on the main list.

Yes. They help strong characters more than weak characters, how many times must I agree with you before you stop repeating yourself?


The rest of your post is a mix between falsehoods on your part, claiming some empty 'enjoyment', despite the fact the same claim can be just as easily made for a commoner, therefore it means nothing, and blatant metagaming.

Ah, the "you're a liar" card. I've seen you pull it on others who disagreed with you and I was wondering if, when really, you'd decide to label me. My enjoyment is not "empty" because I have a different play style than your own. What is a falsehood is your claim that your way is the only way.

Enjoyment is subjective, you personally might never enjoy the prospect of playing in a group with a Monk, but that does not by any means invalidate the experiences of others. The vast majority of others, in this case, and it certainly does not make others liars.


See, from the character's perspective, those monster(s) over there want them dead. The goal of said characters is to prevent that from happening, most likely by killing them first. This means actually doing things that bring this about. Which may mean buffing someone up so they can do it better... but is not going to mean buffing someone up who can't do it otherwise, or worse yet can't do it even with the buffs. Those last two bits refer to the Fighter and the Monk, respectively. If you did want someone who is only playing the same game as everyone else because you take the time to make them remotely relevant at the expense of actually doing stuff, the party can take a commoner, and get the same result. Chances are the commoner will be a better party member, if for no other reason than the unlimited supply of chicken and eggs, combined with someone who is presumably a good cook.

Getting into metagame crap like 'the Monk isn't having fun because he sucks' is taking yourself right out of the ROLEplay you claim to purport. If he isn't having fun because he sucks. it's on him to make himself not suck. The slaughter will continue until play improves.

Perhaps if you were personally in danger you would choose to allow those weaker than you to die, taking every advantage and resource available to improve your personal chances of survival while seeking out only individuals on your level. That certainly happens in real life but in real life it also happens that stronger individuals band together with weaker individuals. You personally may be inclined towards the former but it does make the latter false.


As long as we're talking about actual roleplay and not 'roleplay', fake roleplay, or whatever the correct solution to the problem of 'monsters want to kill you' is 'do stuff to stop that from happening'.

How often have your groups been ambushed without an opportunity to prepare? In my experience, through skills, scrying, or knowing what we were getting into my groups have not been constantly caught so off guard. Occasionally, we have been ambushed with someone critically failing spot/listen, and in those cases your example is valid and about what might happen, a panicked reaction of unleashing the biggest weapon in your arsenal. In other situations, it has not been a matter of reaction but a matter of planning, in which case buffing the group instead of the individual is a "suboptimal" but valid response.


You are being shot at. You are unwounded, and have a gun.

Do you:

A: Shoot back at the enemy.
B: Give your gun to the guy who can't use one of his arms.
C: Run around like a chicken with his head cut off, then give your gun to the guy who lost half his body from an explosion, and is seconds away from death.

There is only one correct answer.

The options should be more along the lines of...

A: Explode a biological weapon in your attacker's face.
B: Give your gun to the guy who can't use one of his arms.
C: Run around like a chicken with his head cut off, then give your gun to the guy who lost half his body from an explosion, and is seconds away from death.
D: Give everyone present a gun.

Even with celerity cheese and what not, combat comes down to actions per turn and enabling everyone present to take meaningful action is not a waste. Now, I agree that it is not optimal since most casters have the choice between exploding a biological weapon on the enemy or giving their allies guns, but it is not suicidal and it remains a viable option in Dungeons and Dragons as it was designed. I feel that there would be little point to playing this sort of game if there was only one correct answer, it's charm for me personally is in the variety it offers.


No it is not impossible at all, but it still is an issue.

It is, I agree. It always has an impact. Every game has some degree of imbalance, even the most balanced system can be off.


Both of you, look at the thread title again:

"Impossible to enjoy a imbalanced system with a group of good players?"

The game is unbalanced. That is a given. You don't have to regurtitate the same tired points over and over again ad and trans nauseam.

Yes. One reason I started this thread is that I was tired of seeing attempts to invalidate "enjoyment of an imbalanced system" by those whose minds are focused on said system imbalances.



Actually, it's "I try to shoot you". How it is decided whether you actually accomplish this feat depends on the group, though in all freeform groups I saw it was the gamemaster who determined that. Certainly not the only way to decide it though.

Which starts the argument.

With a group of players who lack communication skills, don't trust the game master, and take missing personally, yes. Otherwise, no. I've both played and Game Mastered freeform for over a decade and it depends completely on the people involved. Which is what this thread is about; it's not about how imbalanced the system is, we know that already. That's been articulated very clearly and very often. This thread is asking if it is possible to have fun regardless, I and many others say yes, you claim those are "empty words" and then comment on system imbalances... Which does nothing to negate the fact that in our experiences it is possible to enjoy playing in an unfair and imbalanced system. You can call that a lie all you want, it doesn't make it less true.

Also, there are piles of other threads on how to fix Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. This isn't one of them. I know that Fighters and Monks got screwed by WotC and like most people I have my own ideas on how to remedy that. But that discussion is not this discussion, this is about the possibility of having fun (metagaming or not) in an imbalanced system, not yet another thread of houserules to fix things that no two people can agree on.

Porthos
2009-03-01, 12:51 AM
Man, this thread is funny.

My favorite character I ever ran was a 3e Monk. Did people complain about him in my group? Not because he was a monk (he had a few... interesting.... quirks that aren't germane to this thread). :smallwink:

Did they ever complain that he "didn't hold up his weight" in combat? Nope. Never came up.

Was he a memorable character that was discussed years after he left the scene?

Yep.

And at the other end of the power scale, my second favorite character was a Druid I played. Did people complain when he entered the High Level Don't Mess With Druids Sweepstakes? Nope (though the DM groused slightly :smalltongue:).

Did they think that the Druid was showing everyone up, without allowing people to pull their own share? Strangely, no. Mostly because this was a Meat Grinder World, and we as a group were thankful just to survive sessions.

So the two favorite characters I played in 3e were at the opposite ends of the power scale.

Why?

Because I created character concepts for them that would only work for those classes and I wanted to have fun with those characters. For instance, I wanted to play a martial arts flavored character (Crouching Tiger had come out recently) and I had a blast playing it. Later I wanted to play a Tree Hugger/Environmentalist Extremist, and I had a blast playing my Druid.

As for my third favorite character, it was a urban flavored Ranger (albeit with some tweaks). What that meant on the power scale I never quite bothered to figure out. :smallbiggrin:

Character concept, character concept, character concept. Really that's the alter I worship at. All I try to make sure is that my characters are strong enuf to survive a game session. As long as I can do that and make sure I'm developing my character concept the way I want to, I'm having fun.

And as long as my character concept force other people to act in ways they don't like (i.e over-officious paladins - yuk), the people I play with tend not to mind either.

Mind you, I realize this playstyle ain't for everyone. But it seems to suit me just fine.

And, when it comes right down to it, that's all any of us can ask for, inn't? :smallsmile:

FatR
2009-03-01, 05:33 AM
Yes it is possible. In fact, mechanical power of character is not very important compared to player's strength of personality and degree of activity in-game. It is entirely possible to play a full caster and be a sword-crafting, buff-casting servant for the party's melees, moreover, it is entirely possible to enjoy this role, because you don't even want to be as active during the game session as them.
Things might be different if the player group consist of people who barely know each other and feel that a$shole behavior towards other players is acceptable. I don't run games for such groups and don't want to.

Advocate
2009-03-01, 07:55 AM
I'm skipping most of this, as it's bordering on baiting.


Indeed, DM fiat has no basis in there, which is why I specifically excluded it. As for the rest... no, I decidedly disagree. Unless the DM is actively trying to sabotage a player (and that's excluded by this thread's premise of a good group), even the weakest character can impact the story in manifold manners. All it takes is some creativity on the player's part. It takes no special powers to present the argument that convinces the important NPC. It takes no special powers to inspire others with one's courage. It takes no special powers to decide to split off the group in the right moment, in order to be in the right place to spy on the enemies' conversation. It takes no special powers to come up with something so bold and unexpected that the gamemaster never took it into account, which completely changes the course of the story.

That requires the ability to make a successful Diplomacy check. Beatstick doesn't get that. Courage is stupidity if the guy can't follow through, so he needs power to make his bravery bravery. Overhearing a conversation requires perception skill power, which you also don't have. Also, splitting the party gets you killed, and deciding to split it in the first place implies you can actually control it. You do realize the difference between player and character here, right? Because most, if not all of that post was blatant Story Lawyering to get free abilities for your character, just because your player can do it... or hoping the DM coddles you, which still means you aren't succeeding on your own power.


As long as there is roleplaying, everyone can impact. There is only then no way to influence where the story is going when there in fact is no story at all, but instead only a mass of challenges and fights for the sake of fighting.

Straw man.


And as for me wondering about that fixation on power in combat, that was more because nothing guarantees there will be any combat at all, when speaking about roleplaying in general. I have seen plenty of sessions where there has been no combat at all, and in no group I have ever played in combat took up a major part of the sessions. Your group's preferences may vary, of course, but you cannot presume them as standard, either.

Doesn't matter how much there is. It still happens, and it's still what determines power for you. Not having combat just means beatsticks can't even try, as they lack the non combat power to even participate. You're supposed to catch the fact that a high combat campaign actually supports you and use that as your grounds, as that's the only way you can even begin to have a success rate.


Okay, now you have completely lost me. How can you make such definite and generalized statements when we are dealing with the infinite number of possible backstories to the people involved, infinite number of circumstances under which they might have decided to join forces and infinite number of personalities both the players and characters in question might have? Fixation upon the mechanics beyond the characters to determine who gets to lead is metagaming at its worst; it is the interplay of personalities and circumstances that leads to the social interaction that bonds the group together, and that is not related to any rules or mechanics.

Ignoring DM coddling and story lawyering. It is very obvious who is strongest IC, no metagaming required. On the other hand, it takes some blatant metagaming to make the guy responsible for everyone's safety the guy least capable of ensuring it, and leading in general. Would you trust an incompetent leader with your life? No? Would you put such a person in charge? Why or why not?

Kaihaku: As long as you still bring it up, that's how long. The liar card is played as you put it (not my words) because things that are not solid and objective are empty claims. There is no proof you enjoy it, your enjoying it doesn't mean anything to anyone else here... it has no basis in any debate. In a debate, you stick to facts, as facts are independently verifiable, and actually mean something to your opponent and to observers.

D&D is far more dangerous than the real world. Even a war time real world, on the front lines. Unless they too go fighting serious opposition 4+ times a day every day... somehow I doubt combat is that frequent, though soldiers certainly do a lot of it. Also, D&D hazards come with far less, or no warning... troop movement is a bit easier to notice than the invisible assassin who silently teleported beside you for example.

Not sure why ambushing is coming into this. My group doesn't get ambushed often, because they have taken appropriate countermeasures. They also know anything with the balls to come after them is doing so because they have the very real capability to succeed in killing them, so yes, every single one of them will conclude they need a decisive win. Not only does it stop the threat, but it further scares off other threats by casually disposing of those who dare oppose them.

The gun example was accurate. Competence, moderate incompetence, severe incompetence. The guys who already have guns, including a few non casters don't need the help.

MartinHarper
2009-03-01, 08:31 AM
There is no proof you enjoy it, your enjoying it doesn't mean anything to anyone else here... it has no basis in any debate. In a debate, you stick to facts, as facts are independently verifiable, and actually mean something to your opponent and to observers.

What 'facts' would convince you that I enjoy the 3e game I play? What facts should convince me that you enjoy the games you play?

Jayabalard
2009-03-01, 08:35 AM
Except that you are completely missing the point. When someone says 'D&D' everyone reading immediately defaults to the RAW for D&D. Not true; you may default to that, but not everyone.

Advocate
2009-03-01, 08:42 AM
What 'facts' would convince you that I enjoy the 3e game I play? What facts should convince me that you enjoy the games you play?

None, and none. Which is why you stick to facts when dealing with random strangers on the Internets. Even if you do, you can't prove it, so it's inadmissible.

Winterwind
2009-03-01, 09:25 AM
I'm skipping most of this, as it's bordering on baiting....yes, I noticed that denouncing arguments you find no answer to as baiting in order to avoid answering them is one of your favourite methods... :smallannoyed:


That requires the ability to make a successful Diplomacy check. Beatstick doesn't get that.Last time I checked, it was not necessary to roll dice to say "My character says 'X'".


Courage is stupidity if the guy can't follow through, so he needs power to make his bravery bravery.Or the stuff from which legends are born. Going up against overwhelming odds may well be the most inspiring example an adventurer can give to others (and this is what I was talking about, after all).


Overhearing a conversation requires perception skill power, which you also don't have.Or simply being close enough no checks are required.


Also, splitting the party gets you killed, and deciding to split it in the first place implies you can actually control it.Funny - our parties spend the vast majority of their times split, everyone following their own, interacting, interweaving story arcs. So far, we haven't had all that many deaths because of it.
For the third time, please do not present your opinions and preferences as facts. Other people may have a different, yet equally valid playstyle, so generalizing like you do here does not make for a good argument.
And note, this is something you cannot refute, because, while your statement that splitting the party gets one killed is not a fact, me having played with split parties often and having survived that, and thus splitting the party not necessarily getting one killed, is.


You do realize the difference between player and character here, right? Because most, if not all of that post was blatant Story Lawyering to get free abilities for your character, just because your player can do it... or hoping the DM coddles you, which still means you aren't succeeding on your own power.Yes, I do realize the difference between player and character, though I do not see how it enters into the equation. Making good use of opportunities does not require any usage of out-of-character knowledge.
And what the hell is Story Lawyering? :smallconfused:


Straw man.Okay, now that was just random. Which part of what you quoted there was, at all, concerned with your position? That entire part was a presentation of my own view, not interpreting your position at all. When you pull the straw man fallacy, at least make sure your opponent is talking about your position at all.

Once more: Power is the only thing that constitutes one's ability to influence a story only then when there are only mechanical challenges against which that power can be used. The moment another element enters, like roleplaying, it becomes possible to influence the story by means of that as well.


Doesn't matter how much there is. It still happens, and it's still what determines power for you. Not having combat just means beatsticks can't even try, as they lack the non combat power to even participate. You're supposed to catch the fact that a high combat campaign actually supports you and use that as your grounds, as that's the only way you can even begin to have a success rate.Why are you reducing a character to his role as warrior? Every warrior has a (more or less) complex personality and backstory behind him, and as I said in my previous post already, it's the interaction of personalities that influences the story the most.


Ignoring DM coddling and story lawyering. It is very obvious who is strongest IC, no metagaming required. On the other hand, it takes some blatant metagaming to make the guy responsible for everyone's safety the guy least capable of ensuring it, and leading in general. Would you trust an incompetent leader with your life? No?As I said several times now, there is no generalized answer to that, aside of "Maybe, depending on the circumstances". Maybe he managed to convince me that he is, in fact, competent? Maybe he was instituted by my superior as my leader, or we are part of the same organisation and he is superior in rank? There are infinite possibilities here.


Would you put such a person in charge? Why or why not?Same answer as above. Depends on the circumstances.


None, and none. Which is why you stick to facts when dealing with random strangers on the Internets. Even if you do, you can't prove it, so it's inadmissible....what? You are seriously saying that if one of us states a fact regarding how they feel about their game, you are going to disbelieve us, because it is cannot be proven? :smalleek:

Okay, that's it, I'm out of this thread. If you do not have the courtesy to assume people you debate with are not liars until proven otherwise, then you are not worthy of the time wasted with talking to you. Or rather, at you.

Advocate
2009-03-01, 09:53 AM
Last time I checked, it was not necessary to roll dice to say "My character says 'X'".

DM: Roll a Diplomacy check.
*beatstick fails*
DM: He's not convinced.

Say whatever you want, it doesn't mean it works.


Or the stuff from which legends are born. Going up against overwhelming odds may well be the most inspiring example an adventurer can give to others (and this is what I was talking about, after all).

Something the competent characters do. Something beatstick doesn't do.


Or simply being close enough no checks are required.

At which point, you were detected a long time ago. No check needed, because you have no stealth skills either. The hypothetical situation doesn't happen.


Funny - our parties spend the vast majority of their times split, everyone following their own, interacting, interweaving story arcs. So far, we haven't had all that many deaths because of it.

'Not all that many' he says. And let me guess, 'not all that many' is actually a pretty high number, and/or the reason why it isn't more than that is because encounters don't auto magically become easier because you violated the First Rule of survival - Don't Split Up. Sure, that's most true of horror movies, but considering your typical D&D foe is some crazy guy out to kill you, or a large predatory beast it amounts to the same thing... as those as horror movie protagonists as well.


Yes, I do realize the difference between player and character, though I do not see how it enters into the equation. Making good use of opportunities does not require any usage of out-of-character knowledge.
And what the hell is Story Lawyering? :smallconfused:

It does require IC abilities. As you don't have those, you have to metagame it. This is what Story Lawyering is - where you try to get free power, arguing that it makes sense for the story or whatever. Far worse than even the worst Rules Lawyer by default, as the Rules Lawyer position is founded on the solid facts that are well... rules, whereas the Story Lawyer's position can be summed up as whining for free power.


Once more: Power is the only thing that constitutes one's ability to influence a story only then when there are only mechanical challenges against which that power can be used. The moment another element enters, like roleplaying, it becomes possible to influence the story by means of that as well.

DM: Make a Diplomacy check.

Hey look, mechanics! Now if you want your whole character's story to be about meaningless shooting the breeze in the tavern, no you don't need mechanics, because you aren't actually doing anything. Unless you're arguing that you should get free Diplomacy via Story Lawyering?


Why are you reducing a character to his role as warrior? Every warrior has a (more or less) complex personality and backstory behind him, and as I said in my previous post already, it's the interaction of personalities that influences the story the most.

Because that is the only area in which he can actually do meaningful things. See shooting the breeze in tavern, Story Lawyering. Why are you continuously undermining your own points via putting the fish out of water? At least stick to the area where you might be able to do something if built right. Otherwise you're just making my point for me.


As I said several times now, there is no generalized answer to that, aside of "Maybe, depending on the circumstances". Maybe he managed to convince me that he is, in fact, competent? Maybe he was instituted by my superior as my leader, or we are part of the same organisation and he is superior in rank? There are infinite possibilities here.

DM: Make a Bluff check.
*beatstick rolls 1d20-1, and for some reason doesn't get massive circumstance penalties because the party has actually seen you in action, thereby making the lie unbelievable*
DM: Nope, [Character names] see through your flimsy ruse.

The second possibility requires your superior to be the one he's trying to trick. Otherwise see above. The third? Competence again. It changes the details a little, but still amounts to the same thing.

Kalirren
2009-03-01, 11:59 AM
*argument that because a beatstick doesn't have ranks in social skills, he has no social agency*


Again, you are forgetting that there exist systems without any social rules at all. This argument doesn't hold up when Story Lawyering, as you call it, is RAW.

Even in the case of D&D, by RAW a diplomacy check changes attitudes. It is -not- a substitute for what would be called a Persuade check in another system. So by RAW, your argument that no one gives the fighter any credence whatsoever no matter what he says is baloney.

Arguably this is why the rules as written were written that way; to essentially guarantee through silence that even someone who didn't have any social ranks could still influence things by saying the right (wrong) thing at the right (wrong) time if it were true.

Winterwind
2009-03-01, 12:00 PM
As I said, I'm out of this debate (I re-thought my position and came to the conclusion it was much more sensible to just ignore a poster, rather than abandon an interesting thread entirely), so I will not respond to this post (as always, riddled with condescension and the assumption that his playstyle is the only valid one) in detail, however I will not tolerate somebody putting falsehoods into my mouth.


'Not all that many' he says. And let me guess, 'not all that many' is actually a pretty high number, and/or the reason why it isn't more than that is because encounters don't auto magically become easier because you violated the First Rule of survival - Don't Split Up. Sure, that's most true of horror movies, but considering your typical D&D foe is some crazy guy out to kill you, or a large predatory beast it amounts to the same thing... as those as horror movie protagonists as well.The number is 2. That's within several campaigns, usually numbering about 4-5 people, meeting weekly, for several years. The number of people dying without splitting off was about twice as high. The deaths of the ones who split off were both times a consequence of what the characters chose to do after splitting off, not of the splitting off per se.

How about assuming that when people say something, they might actually mean what they say, instead of the exact opposite?

Advocate
2009-03-01, 12:16 PM
Diplomacy = Persuade. *yawn*

You aren't even trying anymore.

Kalirren
2009-03-01, 12:28 PM
Diplomacy = Persuade. *yawn*

You aren't even trying anymore.

Ooh, ooh, so if I'm playing by your rules I should get to say, "hey buddy, you ought to fix that," because "Diplomacy = Persuade" is very much not within the RAW and therefore must be a houserule.

For your convenience the relevant portion is reprinted below.


DIPLOMACY (CHA)

Check: You can change the attitudes of others (nonplayer characters) with a successful Diplomacy check; see the Influencing NPC Attitudes sidebar, below, for basic DCs. In negotiations, participants roll opposed Diplomacy checks, and the winner gains the advantage. Opposed checks also resolve situations when two advocates or diplomats plead opposite cases in a hearing before a third party.

Fortinbras
2009-03-01, 07:04 PM
DM:

It does require IC abilities. As you don't have those, you have to metagame it. This is what Story Lawyering is - where you try to get free power, arguing that it makes sense for the story or whatever. Far worse than even the worst Rules Lawyer by default, as the Rules Lawyer position is founded on the solid facts that are well... rules, whereas the Story Lawyer's position can be summed up as whining for free power.



Unless you're arguing that you should get free Diplomacy via Story Lawyering?



Because that is the only area in which he can actually do meaningful things. See shooting the breeze in tavern, Story Lawyering. Why are you continuously undermining your own points via putting the fish out of water? At least stick to the area where you might be able to do something if built right. Otherwise you're just making my point for me.



DM: Make a Bluff check.
*beatstick rolls 1d20-1, and for some reason doesn't get massive circumstance penalties because the party has actually seen you in action, thereby making the lie unbelievable*
DM: Nope, [Character names] see through your flimsy ruse.

The second possibility requires your superior to be the one he's trying to trick. Otherwise see above. The third? Competence again. It changes the details a little, but still amounts to the same thing.

Of course it wouldn't make any sense that a dwarf would get a bonus on an a knowledge(history) check to remember some of the exploits of his grandfather. I makes sense that the halfling rouge from a million miles away would be more likely to know something like that.

you are constantly contradicting yourself by saying that warblades are good and beatsticks are useless. Or are warblades in fact arcane spellcasters and I'm just playing them wrong?

Lycar
2009-03-01, 07:21 PM
Diplomacy = Persuade. *yawn*

Uh oh... either you just willfully presented false facts as truth agains better knowledge (and I do hope what thats called), or your grasp of the RAW isn't as flawless as you'd like to think.

As the poster before already pointed out, Diplomacy can make people more favourably disposed towards you. They will still not act against their own interests. They may be more inclined to accept a less favourable deal on your behalf, that's about it.

Now back to people who care about actual gameplay:

How often has it happened to you that the players of the 'face' classes (bard,rogue etc.) totally dropped the ball on clues you dropped for them how to handle certain social situations?

Has something like that ever occured to you?

*Party needs favour from local baron to do stuff. Baron happens to be ill-disposed towards adventurers (bad past experience) and isn't likely to comply.

Party is in inn and hears rumours about the baron having been a triple champion at the royal tournament in his days.

Bard and rogue try to sweettalk (read: Diplomatize) the baron but fail.

Fighter remains silent. GM tried to move plot along and inlcude player of fighter. Baron adresses fighter.

B: "So, how comes a stalwart warrior like you travells with this lot?"

F: "Uhm sorry. How does one properly adress a triple winner in the royal tournament? Thrice Champion or something? Can't figure it out.. wouldn't want to say something wrong and embarrass my friends and me..."

And suddenly the ice is broken...

Ever had something like that happen at your table?

Lycar

Kaihaku
2009-03-01, 08:17 PM
As long as you still bring it up, that's how long. The liar card is played as you put it (not my words) because things that are not solid and objective are empty claims.

There are many civil ways to challenge another's perceptive without resorting to public attacks on their personal creditability.


There is no proof you enjoy it, your enjoying it doesn't mean anything to anyone else here... it has no basis in any debate.

It doesn't mean anything to you. I think that it obviously does to others.


In a debate, you stick to facts, as facts are independently verifiable, and actually mean something to your opponent and to observers.

In a formal debate, debaters twist the facts to support their position at every opportunity while ignoring valid points that the other side raises. Which you have done admirable throughout this "debate". That's elementary debate training.

As I said, I prefer discussions over debates. Discussions are about mutual learning, debates are about winning. I made the effort to engage you and I did learn from you. However, further effort strikes me as providing more frustration than those learnings were worth. If you consider me putting you on my ignore list a victory, congratulations you won this "debate".


As long as I can do that and make sure I'm developing my character concept the way I want to, I'm having fun.

True, though I also enjoy seeing what twists the other characters and Game Master put on my initial character concept. The influence of others is one of the reasons roleplaying is so much more interesting to me than solo-writing.


Things might be different if the player group consist of people who barely know each other and feel that a$shole behavior towards other players is acceptable. I don't run games for such groups and don't want to.

It's interesting... I've been in groups were characters had "a$$hole attitudes" that worked out amazing (ala Raistlin in Dragonlance), but I've never been in a group were a player had an "a$$hole attitude" that didn't end in overblown conflict. There's something about being able to trust the other players and Game Masters.

Thurbane
2009-03-01, 08:55 PM
None, and none. Which is why you stick to facts when dealing with random strangers on the Internets. Even if you do, you can't prove it, so it's inadmissible.
Funny, I thought we were all a bunch of gamers discussing various points of the games we play, not in a court of law... :smalltongue:

http://shanoboy.com/images/wiinintendo/objection_jack.jpg

Fortinbras
2009-03-02, 12:20 AM
[QUOTE=Advocate;5836788]

Kaihaku: As long as you still bring it up, that's how long. The liar card is played as you put it (not my words) because things that are not solid and objective are empty claims. There is no proof you enjoy it, your enjoying it doesn't mean anything to anyone else here... it has no basis in any debate. In a debate, you stick to facts, as facts are independently verifiable, and actually mean something to your opponent and to observers.
QUOTE]

Funnily enough it appears that most of the observers do care what Kaihaku thinks and they disagree with you. Since then entire point of this thread was basicly counter to what you are saying. I won't get into the nature of facts but I think that it is more or less a fact that Kaihaku was enjoying the game. Maybye not that the game was fun but it is a fact that he enjoyed it. I personaly would say that Kaihaku won this debate, based on popular opinion.

Temp.
2009-03-02, 04:25 AM
Just to throw in my 2 cents:

I've never had trouble playing in an unbalanced system. I have a hard time believing anyone has -- repeatedly, anyway.

Why?

Because D&D's a game. It's something a bunch of ladies and dudes meet up to do on their weekends between work and bowling. For most groups, there is no imbalance in D&D; Fighters hit things with their swords, Wizards shoot things with Glitterdust, Fireball, Enervation and such, Clerics heal and buff and sometimes smack things around with their clubs and Rogues do whatever it is they do.

Nobody has any problems. And if something looks like it might be game-breaking, the group either just accepts it or, if it's making the game less enjoyable, makes up houserules or outright bans it. If somebody feels useless because the Druid is too powerful, it doesn't really matter. If players don't think it's fun, it won't happen again.
No problems.

And once players recognize imbalance -- that it's not just the Spellsword, it's half the classes in the PHB that make the Fighter feel useless and unwanted -- the game will adjust accordingly. Party composition might change from Fighter/Wizard/Cleric/Rogue to Spellsword/Wizard/Cleric/Rogue or Fighter/Warlock/Dragon Shaman/Rogue. Still no problems.

Even when there are mixmatches, when a new player in the group brings a Fighter to a higher-powered game, it's no big deal. Instead of standing along uselessly on the side of a fight because the dragons will eat his face, the Fighter will activate his Armor of Giant Size, turn on his Sword of Wraithstrike and Power Attack the dragon for all he's worth.

Is the Fighter being "coddled"? Sure. Is this RAW? Nope. Does it even directly contradict the Wealth-by-level guidelines? Absolutely. But does any of that matter? Not at all, because the Fighter's player feels wanted and useful at the table. This is the sort of game most people actually play because most people don't like to feel unwanted or rejected.

Now someone might say the Fighter's still a waste of space, that a Warblade, Psychic Warrior, Cleric or somesuch would make better use of the equipment that's keeping him afloat. They might say the party would do better to kick the Fighter out and stick the Spellsword in that suit.

That would be fair enough, except the gear wouldn't exist without the Fighter using it. Without him, some baddy would probably Disjoin the lot of it long before the Epic Showdown.

See, this isn't a video game; real people (players and DMs alike) adapt to make the game work, boosting and restricting characters and tweaking rules where they see fit. Real people rarely make an effort to make their friends unhappy. "Coddling" is as much a part of the game as the rules in your PHB.

Now I agree that RAW is all that matters in a rules discussion on the internet. But this thread isn't a rules discussion; it is deliberately subjective, it is deliberately experiencial, it is deliberately opinionated.
It was, as far as I can see, made to discuss the game that's actually played. That game which has almost nothing to do with RAW.

Satyr
2009-03-02, 06:32 AM
Dear Advocate, I thaught for two days how to write an elaborate, convincing and capacious answer to your claims, but I recognized that it just isn't worth it.
There are many people who do not share my opnions in questions of roleplaying; in many positons, my perspectives and ideas are regarded as problematic, and not withot reason. I am as elitist as a roleplayer can be, drive for ridiculously high standards, little tolerance for what I conscider as stupid and sometimes a brash way to express my views.
But I still have the deepest respect for many people who have even completely complimentary views. This respect is a necessity for an arguement, especially if you are interested to actually exchanged positions and experiences. One might learn from other people.

Unfortunately, you do not seem to share this mutual respect, which makes extremely tiresome to even read the discussions you are involved in. You cherry-pick arguements and ignore most of the other discutant's claims if you don't have an answer to them, or difaming them to "bait". That is terrible style of discussion. You seem unable to relate the people have fun playing in a style of gaming substancial different from yours.

Congratulations - you are the Stop Having Fun Guy.


The target of a roleplaying game - any roleplying game - is, that all involved people are having a good time, and having fun. That's it. There are no other objectives besides this (apart from a slight educational value if this is another objective, but in most roleplaying groups that is negliable).
The thing that matters is how the different groups are having fun and how they make it. As fun is as subjective as a thing can be, these ways are automatically vastly different. There is no general solution for how people are supposed to have fun - it is even absolute and completely impossible to find a general solution for having fun for different people with different tastes, living situations and ideas. Within a small group of five to ten people, it is usually possible to find a compromise, but that's it. A compromise isn't a general solution, either - it is only a way to make sure that everyone feels regarded and
As there is no possible way to determine a generalised way of how people are having fun, all ideas how people are supposed to play or otherwise prescribed ways are either completely irrelevant or a try to control and manipulate others. In both ways, they have little to no significance, or should have at least. The important thing is not how anyone is supposed or presumed to have fun, but how someone actually has fun. If the prescriptive doctrine comes in the way of having fun, the doctrine is always and without exceptions, wrong.
There is one exception of the ideal gamemaster who is that good that his or her players are completely awed and fascinated by the game that it doesn't matter that the GM's ideas of how to run a game does only barely correlate with the ideas of the players but is that good, that the player's personal preferences becomes secondary. As all ideal things, this is highly utopian on a long term scale.

So, if people are having fun with a highly formalised game where all forms of conflict resolution and interaction is solved with dice rolls, it's great - for them.
If another group is having the time of their life and mental orgasms through a completely dice-free game where the question of success and and failure is nigh irrelevant compared to the acting and personification of the character, that is great, too.
And a third group may have the biggest fun if they combine features of both playing styles and roll for combats but play out all social interactions while deeply enjoying the game.

The important thing to understand is, that no one of these groups is intrinsically "right" or "wrong". Arguing for the superiority of any of these playing styles is like arguing for the superiority of chocolate icecream to straciatella, and it is not an iota less ridiculous.

Advocate
2009-03-02, 08:16 AM
{Scrubbed}
Upon closer inspection, there is one thing that doesn't fall under the blanket irrelevance... The Fighter is far more susceptible to Game Disjunction than those other guys. And since it isn't the Artifact Sword fix because they are not actually artifacts...

Dogmantra
2009-03-02, 08:34 AM
instead of fixing it you apply fingers to ears and sing Kumbayah.

You know, that's exactly what you seem to be doing. The people posting here are all giving constructive arguments, mostly regarding enjoyment, and you're dismissing them for trivial reasons.

I enjoy playing Fighters, Paladins, even Monks. That's not to say that they're not worse than all the other classes, but I contribute. I have fun. Advocate, what you seem to be saying is that I'm not allowed to adapt the rules, so that they're more fun for everyone. It seems what you're saying is that if there's a higher than 50% chance something will happen (i.e. there's about a 60-70% chance of a fighter sucking) then that something will happen (i.e. all fighters will suck no matter what) and therefore, the player will be upset because, to quote a chick tract, "It's their fault Black Leaf died"

In the end of the day, who cares? It's a game, and to be perfectly honest, most of the fun (for me, and plenty of other people I know) comes from just sitting down, having a laugh with some friends, or developing a character and telling a story. None of those things care whether there's a rule for that or not, so balance doesn't generally factor into it.

Jan Mattys
2009-03-02, 08:40 AM
Advocate, I liked your reasoning "A character is a person, and his only concern is to take down the monster before the monster hits back, so a character will never choose the underperforming way over the overperforming one".

Now, though, ask yourself another question:
What if you are a fighter in a world of magic? You grow up, ignore those arcane books because, frankly, only nerds like them and all those formulae mess up with your head... You take a big sword instead, wear your coated armor and start the adventuring path.

At some point, where you're beginning to make a name for yourself and you're enjoying your rightful role as a party leader, your buddies start to charge before you even unsheate your sword. That thin and pale guy in the back starts shooting lightning from his fingers, lightinings that fry enemies dead in seconds. Your hippie pal polimorphs into some huge wild beast and tears apart all opposition... and your friendly healer, mr. cleric niceguy, turns himself into a war machine with holy light sprinkling from his eyes and with a power halo that frightens you.

...what do you do? You know you're improving, but you feel so little league compared to the heights your friends have reached. Would you start hating them for taking the spotlight? Would you start to feel more and more useless? Would you feel that your part of the loot is not so deserved any more?

I think you would. After all you've started your career to BE the hero and right the wrongs and stuff, and not to be the sidekick of the thin and pale nerd in red robes!!! A nerd in red robes, I might add, that scares the hell out of you now...

What I am saying is that you would probably end up quitting your group, if the other members wouldn't show you the proper respect. It's not all about power, it's all about perception. If you're reckognized a role and a purpose in your group, you stick to it. If you're not, you leave.

In terms of roleplay you can call it metagaming, but the truth is that no self-esteeming wizard in the 15+ lvl range would travel with a warrior sidekick in a high-fantasy world ruled by D&D (I'm assuming that fighting power is the primary requisite in choosing a travelling buddy, which I know is a big assumption anyway). So, all players in a d&d setting must agree to this metagaming rule: working as a TEAM is the sensible choice for all the party members. No matter the power. All have to accept it, for the sake of the story. Even if it would make sense to drop the warrior after the 10th level, and hire another wizard...

So your "true and pure" ROLEPLAYING view, Advocate, isn't really meaningful. Playing the "it would make more sense" card in a group roleplaying game is bad. Because it doesn't take into account the purpose of the game, which is to narrate and live a story, just like in a movie, and suspension of disbelief is needed in certain critical areas just to make it WORK.

ps: I agree with Satyr and more importantly I share his view on the games in general.

Satyr
2009-03-02, 08:45 AM
Get off the bandwagon where you try to prove the big bad Advocate wrong because he has proven you to be wrong, and instead of fixing it you apply fingers to ears and sing Kumbayah. Because we all know that's the only reason you're all posting this way. You are as transparent as my windows.

You have proven me wrong? Where? When? In which alternative reality? When you took one single sentence out on an argument, quoted like a stalinist and "proved" that a single component doesn't fit in your personal worldview, which makes it wrong? That is only a "proof" if you ignore the difference between subjectivity and objectivity.

Kurald Galain
2009-03-02, 10:29 AM
I never claimed that the system was fair and balanced, I claimed that it is possible to enjoy playing a martial character despite that in a good group.
Of course it is. Excellent post, Kaihaku. Game balance is never an issue for many roleplayers because the point is to have fun, not to compete against the other players. Incidentally, this is why no RPG other than D&D, to my knowledge, makes much of an attempt to be balanced: because nobody cares if it does.

Kurald Galain
2009-03-02, 10:33 AM
The important thing to understand is, that no one of these groups is intrinsically "right" or "wrong". Arguing for the superiority of any of these playing styles is like arguing for the superiority of chocolate icecream to straciatella, and it is not an iota less ridiculous.

And another excellent post.

Except that chocolate is much superior to straciatella, of course :smallbiggrin:

Kaiyanwang
2009-03-02, 10:39 AM
Except that chocolate is much superior to straciatella, of course :smallbiggrin:

Can I start a flame war for this? :smallmad:

:smallwink:

Dyllan
2009-03-02, 10:43 AM
Can I start a flame war for this? :smallmad:

:smallwink:

Not until someone brings me some of this straciatella so that I may make a proper comparison.

Advocate
2009-03-02, 10:48 AM
{Scrubbed}

Kaiyanwang
2009-03-02, 11:23 AM
Not until someone brings me some of this straciatella so that I may make a proper comparison.

*Kaiyanwang conjures some Stracciatella from the best Messina ice-cream palrour*

Sigh. I wish i were actually able to conjure stracciatella. I wouldn't ask more from conjuration school. :smallfrown:

OP: in short, is possible enjoy an unbalanced system unless players are of the kind you sometimes find in teh internet.

But for those players, no system is balanced. Is better directly not to play with that kind of players, because are able to ruin you day even when you play chess.

Even if you go to have some Stracciatella Ice Cream.

Kurald Galain
2009-03-02, 12:08 PM
Can I start a flame war for this? :smallmad:

:smallwink:

Waaaay ahead of you (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5841779) :smallbiggrin:

Quietus
2009-03-02, 12:34 PM
Advocate, I'd love to know what you think of this one statement :

D&D, despite its imbalances, is a game, and was created for the equal enjoyment of all players. In a mature group, everyone contributes to the fun, and no one seeks to overshadow the other players.

Advocate
2009-03-02, 12:42 PM
Advocate, I'd love to know what you think of this one statement :

D&D, despite its imbalances, is a game, and was created for the equal enjoyment of all players. In a mature group, everyone contributes to the fun, and no one seeks to overshadow the other players.

The statement is irrelevant, as it assumes because no one is 'seeking' to overshadow the other players it isn't happening. Except that it is, by pure accident.

So basically, that's another straw man immolated.

Quietus
2009-03-02, 01:04 PM
The statement is irrelevant, as it assumes because no one is 'seeking' to overshadow the other players it isn't happening. Except that it is, by pure accident.

So basically, that's another straw man immolated.

First off.. You seem to have some issues with accusations of fallacies, when you don't actually know what they are. Let me help.


A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.

I haven't misrepresented ANYONE'S position. I asked for your thoughts on a statement, and rather than arguing against it with logic, you tossed a reasonable statement aside and became aggressive. That's not really conducive to real conversation.


As to the statement itself : If you aren't seeking to overshadow other players, then it doesn't just "happen". In the group I'm playing with later tonight, there's me (druid with snake companion), a sorcerer, a cleric, a barbarian, and a barb/fighter. The melee guys contribute the most to the game, and we're starting to crawl out of the low levels now... so by your thinking, or at least what I've gathered of it, I and the other casters should be becoming like unto gods. But it's not happening. In fact, in my experience, it's rare that it does.

It's much more common for players to play as the game was intended (healbot cleric, blaster arcane casters, beatstick melee) than for anyone to use casters to completely overshadow the party. A Sorcerer who loves fireballs, and a Cleric who supports his party instead of spending three rounds buffing herself so she can fight on the front lines... these aren't overpowering, and they represent a much more common situation than "Casters win in one turn always".

Advocate
2009-03-02, 01:36 PM
Except that isn't that the game where the DM is power tripping to mess with you, by forcing the snake onto you?

All a blaster caster does is ensure the beatsticks get slaughtered, because the enemies are not crippled. Also, CoDzilla doesn't burn combat rounds to go beatsticking.

Lastly, no. Stupidity is not more common.

Quietus
2009-03-02, 01:51 PM
Except that isn't that the game where the DM is power tripping to mess with you, by forcing the snake onto you?

All a blaster caster does is ensure the beatsticks get slaughtered, because the enemies are not crippled. Also, CoDzilla doesn't burn combat rounds to go beatsticking.

Lastly, no. Stupidity is not more common.

No, I chose the snake. I could've taken any animal on the PHB list I wanted, but it fit my character. If the DM isn't actively trying to screw over the players, then you don't NEED to end a fight in one round.

It seems to me that you and I.. play very different, but similar games. You play a power gaming combat romp, where if you don't optimize to the edge of Pun-Punhood and end combats before they start, you die. Tell me if I'm wrong. My games, however, tend to focus more on the characters, their goals and motivations. There's combat, of course, but the DM isn't going to just out and out screw us over if we don't murder the enemies in record time.

Advocate
2009-03-02, 02:08 PM
You're wrong. And stop building fields of crow bait.

Edit: The snake guy was someone else though.

Quietus
2009-03-02, 02:16 PM
You're wrong. And stop building fields of crow bait.

Edit: The snake guy was someone else though.

Alright then. So, given that my group plays the game the way it was intended, and doesn't play casters like arrogant, self-centered, uncaring gods - what inherently is wrong with that play style?

Advocate
2009-03-02, 02:51 PM
{Scrubbed}

Lycar
2009-03-02, 03:12 PM
Alright then. So, given that my group plays the game the way it was intended, and doesn't play casters like arrogant, self-centered, uncaring gods - what inherently is wrong with that play style?

Nothing.

The problem would seem to be then, that dear Advocate is plaing the rules, rather then the game.

We understand that the game is about an idea, and the rules (as imperfect and imbalanced as they are) are merely a means to an end and nothing more. Therefore they are not the immutable Law of the Universe, but merely guidelines that should allow like-(or at least similarily-)minded individuals to come together to play an elaborate game of make-believe.

Some of the assumptions the game operates under is, that a stalwart warrior should be an able and worthy companion for both wizard and rogue alike.

They don't work that way, unless you stay within the parameters of the GAME.

Now dear Advocate, and others of his ilk, either are unwilling to, or incapable of playing the GAME. They see all those rules and set out to master them, but, as the saying goes, they don't see the forest because of all those trees, and end up not mastering the GAME.

And as others before me have put it much more elaborately then I ever could hope to: If you don't understand the meaning of the GAME, the rules will be useless to you.

Lycar

Fawsto
2009-03-02, 03:14 PM
I call a Cease Fire. Now. Ok?

Let's just stop the personal attacks ocurring here before a mod simply give a nice warn to everybody and closes the thread.

Now, this thread is clearly divided between two points of view. I will launch my point of view to set some contrast here.

First of all, check my avatar. It is a self made joke with the Game Character who is, btw, a Lawyer. Now, this was meant to be funny, but also means something else: I am a damn Lawyer too! It is my profession! This means, and it is a common thing on my profession, that I like facts, especially if they have a good proof to back up them.

This means that most posts that do not have a empirical proof to back them up have little value on a discussion (and by discussion I mean a healthy conversation between two people that are trying to achieve something they can call "true" about a subject), meaning that all estatements that are based on "I had fun" or "This worked for me" are not valid, unless you can prove them in a valid manner.

However sometimes a "proof" is not something you are searching for when you come to a forum like GiantITP's.

Let I extend this: For exemple, when you are searching for a character build, you are hoping to find something that works; and by definition, the best way to make something work in every, or at least most, D&D tables is to use RAW, thus why RAW is the one and ONLY language worth using in a rule improvement discussion, simply because the Houserule person X uses on his gaming table may not be accepted at my gaming table; thus you are looking for proof that the build works. But them, there are times when you don't need proof, you simply need a estatement that you are willing to consider even without any proof, like when you are looking for a character concept or an adventure concept, when all your basis for the acceptence of the information is reduced to a simple "I like it" matter.

Stretching a little the RAW x Houserule thing. Yes, you can point out Houseruled things in a RAW discussion, there is no problem. However, you should not expect that everybody accepts your estatement if it goes that way. what Advocate is saying when he points that thing about story lawyering is that you cannot expect that every DM will let your character to talk his way out without the needed skills.

For example, I've played on many D&D adventures, with many DMs and many Players. One of my DMs houseruled that if wanted, the Plyer could choose between using social skills or roleplaying the conversation between the character and a NPC without using any rolls, just plain good and old talking (he had a penalty system for players roleplaying their characters in a totally disparity from the character concept, meaning that the brute Barabarian, f. ex., talking in equal terms to a noble should suffer some XP penalty), this was good, but as Advocate explained, what would have happened if a player had invested a lot on his character social skills? (There are many conclusions to this, but no one could be applied to every gaming table, so there is no point on saying "It woul've been ok in my group", ok?). In the other hand, I had another DM who followed the RAW on this matter, meaning that every negotiation was followed by a diplomacy check, meaning that the talking, no matter how good it was, was at mercy to a roll and teh circunstances. It was, IMO, a fair decision, since I am not allowed to neither describe how I climbed a wall to have success on the task or detail how I brandished my sword in such a fashion that the monster simply was hitten without the need of a roll.

Guys, D&D can be a freeform RPG in many gaming tables, but it was not designed for it, if it has rules, they are there to, at least, be considered. Rule 0 is important, though, but it requires mature players and DM to make it work. Goddamn it, but not every gaming group is so mature to survive withou any rules to back the roleplaying.

Unfortunatly, when we discuss a way to improve the effectiveness of a class or anything else here in the forum we are bound to back it up by rules, otherwise we are not able to guarantee that the improvement will work in every gaming table. And note, that the outcome will be considered Houserule, and thus only something we can expect to be used by other players.

This was everything that the other Thread was about. Now, about this one. Please, let's just stick to the topic and stop the attacking between opposed Ideas about somthing that is not even being discussed in this thread.

There are facts that cannot be denied:

Yes, it is possible to enjoy an unbalanced game, but it becomes harder and harder with the increasing levels.

It is not fair for the Players nor for the DM to hinder themselves so the weaker classes can shine. You cannot expect from the Wizard Player to use his weak spells for teh sake of the Fighter, who is Full Attacking every round thus using his best resources. Why the Wizard shouldnt be able to use his best resources too?

Ok, there is no comparisson between a Fighter's Full Attack and the Wizard's Spells, but both are the resources that the classes have. It is totally up to the Wizard's Player to use his weak spells or not, you can't expect from every player in the world to achieve a Gentleman's Agreement about letting the Fighter shine while the casters simply do not use their full potential.

And I am not saying that the Wizard player was trying to steal the spotlight. By using the best spells to confrontate the monster, he would be just using his resources as well as the Fighter would, but, and here is where the problem lies, his resources are simply better.

And that said, I politely ask that everybody willing to improve the current core martial classes to do it in a way backed up by the RAW, even if that means making proposals to modify the rules.


Thanks.

Dyllan
2009-03-02, 03:42 PM
...First of all, check my avatar. It is a self made joke with the Game Character who is, btw, a Lawyer. Now, this was meant to be funny, but also means something else: I am a damn Lawyer too! It is my profession! This means, and it is a common thing on my profession, that I like facts, especially if they have a good proof to back up them...

Sorry, was a bit too long to quote all of it... but I must say, I do think we found some truth in this thread.

Fawsto is definitely a lawyer. Nothing against what you said, Fawsto - but I've never read anything that sounded more like it came from a lawyer. :-)

Nohwl
2009-03-02, 03:46 PM
Also, even if you do get into blatant metagaming where you babysit the gimp, you are still misusing the word team. Because if he were actually a member of the team, there would not be a problem.

To those looking for more detailed information, you're going to have to wait until I curb the spread of misinformation first, which is coming on fast and strong here.

you seem to keep assuming that the party is a fighter codzilla, a batman wizard, and an artificer, and thats not always the case.

what happens if the party is a complete warrior samurai, a monk, a fighter and a wizard, and the dm isnt trying to kill the party every chance he gets? imbalance is still there, but its the wizard who isnt in line with the rest of the group. the dm (and the rest of the players) wont allow the wizard to win every encounter in one round every time, even though he can. you can be a good player and play a weak class.

afroakuma
2009-03-02, 03:47 PM
Peace, guys. The argument is over. Continue with the original discussion.

Roland St. Jude
2009-03-02, 03:48 PM
Sheriff of Moddingham: Please be more civil in this thread going forward. Our Forum Rules contain broad definitions of Flaming and Trolling, and we know our posters expect this to be a friendly, civil forum. Please help us keep it that way and keep the number of official nudges to a minimum. Thanks.

Winterwind
2009-03-02, 04:14 PM
@Fawsto: The thing is, I would argue that having fun and properly contributing to the story is not necessarily tied to rules (no matter whether As Written or houseruled) or balance at all.

You say it becomes increasingly more difficult with increasing levels for everybody to enjoy an unbalanced game, but then - and please correct me if I am misunderstanding your position here - you proceed with explaining that this is because the players of the stronger characters have increasing difficulty to not outshine the weaker characters, and have to deliberately pick inferior options. This, essentially, means that it becomes increasingly more difficult with higher levels to re-institute a state of balance in an inherently unbalanced system.

That's perfectly correct, of course, but it is founded on the core assumption that balance is necessary in order for everyone to enjoy the game, and with balance being absent, the players have to work on returning to a state of balance so that everyone can have their enjoyment.

I would like to point out now, though, that not everyone requires balance at all in order to have fun. It is a perfectly understandable stance to demand balance, and having a requirement of balance does not make one a lesser player, but depending on playstyle, balance might as well be of completely negligible importance for the players involved. It's a matter of pure personal preference. I have seen people who created children (who had neither the physical capabilities nor the education to shine with any particular skills), or deliberately incompetent people (like, say, rich, spoiled brats who never learnt any useful skills at all in their lives) as characters, simply because they had a character concept and figured it would fit interestingly into the world or interact in an interesting fashion with the already existing characters. I have done so myself, too.

I could simply state that these people quite obviously had fun playing these characters (I know I did! :smallbiggrin:), but if you wish for more convincing arguments, how about this: There was no reason for these players to have less fun than the rest, for they still played an equally major role in the story itself. Partially, because all characters had their own sub-plots that, in strange and complex fashions, were interwoven with the campaign's main plot (which is as much the characters' as the gamemaster's doing), and partially, because they simply did the right thing at the right time (like, say, deciding to jump onto that truck when it was driving away and thus getting into the right location, saying the right (or wrong) thing to the right person (and by that, I don't necessarily mean an attempt to persuade anyone of anything - simply deciding to share a crucial information or withhold it from a powerful NPC might suffice), or deciding to push that ominous red button. And in such a playstyle, parity of power levels becomes completely irrelevant.

Fawsto
2009-03-02, 09:35 PM
I would like to point out now, though, that not everyone requires balance at all in order to have fun.

Exactly! :smallbiggrin:

Yes, this is the point I wanted to get into!

I assume this thread is somewhat the offspring of the previews one, ok?

The begining of this serie of threads was to find:

A) A way to improve the role of the martial guys; and

B) If a unbalanced system could be enjoyed.

We can surely answer question B. You did it. I did it. Everybody who said "Yes, it can be enjoyed" said it. We are all correct. Because it is possible to enjoy an unbalanced game, the fact that we cannot show proof that we enjoy the game is nothing to the fact we like it. The fact that I like the game is something I can only prove to myself. However, this whole forum could be used as a proof that there are people out there, and it seems that we are many, that enjoy this game.

However, there is the group of people who are interested on the question A. They are people who enjoy the game, but would enjoy it even more if the game was more balanced. I am one of them. It is a matter of taste.

My previews post was based solely on the assumption that I, as a person who enjoys DnD and is interested on the answer to question A, would find it even more exciting if it was balanced.

I never pointed out that every D&D adventure gets less funny while you are on the High levels. I said that they CAN become less funny for the meleers, I did not say it was something mandatory.

And you must agree that if the Wizard's Player is not trying to break the game, but is just playing his character as a exciting and powerful being he is, who can say him to stop having fun? He is not deliberatly trying to impose himself, he is just being above the edge because his character was "born" this way. This is what happens to most druids. You do not need to be a D&D expert to use a Druid well, and in given time, he will surpass the Fighter, even if the player don't see it, even if the rest of teh group neglect it.

The only thing you can hope to do is to ask the Player rping one of the Big 5 to pull some weaker tricks, if they don't agree, well you tried, there is no way you can impose this to them if they are not deliberatly trying to overshadow everyone else.


I could simply state that these people quite obviously had fun playing these characters (I know I did! ), but if you wish for more convincing arguments, how about this: There was no reason for these players to have less fun than the rest, for they still played an equally major role in the story itself. Partially, because all characters had their own sub-plots that, in strange and complex fashions, were interwoven with the campaign's main plot (which is as much the characters' as the gamemaster's doing), and partially, because they simply did the right thing at the right time (like, say, deciding to jump onto that truck when it was driving away and thus getting into the right location, saying the right (or wrong) thing to the right person (and by that, I don't necessarily mean an attempt to persuade anyone of anything - simply deciding to share a crucial information or withhold it from a powerful NPC might suffice), or deciding to push that ominous red button. And in such a playstyle, parity of power levels becomes completely irrelevant.

Again, you are correct. Everyone can have fun. But for some people like me, who is interested on the answer to question A, it would be possible to ensure a little more that everybody had a interesting role in the campaign if the game was more balanced.

This is my OP. As I said, a matter of taste.


I close my case.


edit: @ Dylan


Quote:
Originally Posted by Fawsto
...First of all, check my avatar. It is a self made joke with the Game Character who is, btw, a Lawyer. Now, this was meant to be funny, but also means something else: I am a damn Lawyer too! It is my profession! This means, and it is a common thing on my profession, that I like facts, especially if they have a good proof to back up them...

Sorry, was a bit too long to quote all of it... but I must say, I do think we found some truth in this thread.

Fawsto is definitely a lawyer. Nothing against what you said, Fawsto - but I've never read anything that sounded more like it came from a lawyer. :-)


DO you mind if I sig that? It is a matter of pride to be recognized like that.

Yahzi
2009-03-02, 11:25 PM
So, given that my group plays the game the way it was intended, and doesn't play casters like arrogant, self-centered, uncaring gods - what inherently is wrong with that play style?
But casters are supposed to be like that. That's what they're intended to be. Like, for instance, V. :smallbiggrin:

The problem is not an unbalanced game : if everyone in the group is playing rogues, it hardly matters that casters are gods, because they're just another NPC enemy. And it's true that even in an unbalanced party, the GM can do some things to help out - the Fighter is the one NPCs like or trust, or he's related to the King, or there are lots and lots of low-level mooks that attack every 5 minutes, or whatever.

But it's also true that D&D originally came from Chainmail, where Fighters were the caster's cohorts and followers. In 1st and 2nd ed, wizards took more XP to go up a level because it was recognized their spells are more powerful. In 3+ed, they leveled the XP for all classes... but they didn't nerf the spells. :smalleek:

And as others have said, D&D is about combat, so it matters. The only fix that really works is to play at low levels, where Fighters are still plenty equal to casters.

It would be nice if a 20th level Fighter were as scary as a 20th level... Adept, even. :smallsmile:

Eldariel
2009-03-03, 05:02 AM
And as others have said, D&D is about combat, so it matters. The only fix that really works is to play at low levels, where Fighters are still plenty equal to casters.

It would be nice if a 20th level Fighter were as scary as a 20th level... Adept, even. :smallsmile:

Or use ToB + homebrew. I mean, that's why there is such an insane amount of homebrew on the subject.

Satyr
2009-03-03, 05:32 AM
But casters are supposed to be like that. That's what they're intended to be.

And because someone said that this is the one way it is supposed to be played, everyone who prefers a different playing style or even dares to change the rules and roles to the personal preferences of the group he or she is involved in is a heretic who should be shunned and damned for having an own opinion.
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.
.
I mean, does anyone truly believe that it is better to stick to the books if you don't like their contents much instead of making up a version yourself which works almost indefinately better for you or your group?

Ravens_cry
2009-03-03, 06:07 AM
This whole thread is rather a strawman. Of course it is enjoyable to enjoy a unbalanced system, hells, even a crummy one. I am sure there is some group in the world who actually enjoys FATAL. That doesn't mean that one isn't perfectly valid in finding the unbalance distasteful if that is their opinion.

I don't mind the unbalance inherent in the system, and if you do mind, I do think WoTC have made a valiant stab at balancing in 4e. But come on folk, it's just a game.
It. Is. Just. A. Game.
A fun game, A fun imaginative game.
But in the end,
a game.

Dyllan
2009-03-03, 08:28 AM
I don't mind the unbalance inherent in the system...

Come and see the unbalance inherent in the system.

Help, my playstyle is being repressed.

Did you see that? Did you see him repressing me?

------------

Fawsto: Of course you can sig that.

Jan Mattys
2009-03-03, 09:24 AM
(I know this is probably the worst thing I can write in a D&D discussion forum, but...)

To all those who think that enjoying an unbalanced setting/ruleset is impossible, I suggest a few sessions of Vampires: The Masquerade.

That will either teach you a thing or two about roleplaying games, or will totally drive you mad...

Winterwind
2009-03-03, 09:29 AM
Exactly! :smallbiggrin:

Yes, this is the point I wanted to get into!

I assume this thread is somewhat the offspring of the previews one, ok?

The begining of this serie of threads was to find:

A) A way to improve the role of the martial guys; and

B) If a unbalanced system could be enjoyed.

We can surely answer question B. You did it. I did it. Everybody who said "Yes, it can be enjoyed" said it. We are all correct. Because it is possible to enjoy an unbalanced game, the fact that we cannot show proof that we enjoy the game is nothing to the fact we like it. The fact that I like the game is something I can only prove to myself. However, this whole forum could be used as a proof that there are people out there, and it seems that we are many, that enjoy this game.

However, there is the group of people who are interested on the question A. They are people who enjoy the game, but would enjoy it even more if the game was more balanced. I am one of them. It is a matter of taste.

My previews post was based solely on the assumption that I, as a person who enjoys DnD and is interested on the answer to question A, would find it even more exciting if it was balanced.

I never pointed out that every D&D adventure gets less funny while you are on the High levels. I said that they CAN become less funny for the meleers, I did not say it was something mandatory.Ah, I see now. Yes, it would appear we are in perfect agreement, then. :smallsmile:

My whole purpose in this thread was to point out that, while question A is without doubt of big importance to many, and that a desire to answer question A is perfectly understandable and completely unrelated with one's quality as player (or emphasis of roleplaying, or any other thing like that), the view that question A is unimportant and balance strictly not required (for some maybe even undesirable, see my example in my previous post) is equally existent and legitimate (not more, not better, just a matter of taste and playstyle).

In fact, if you pardon me for going on a bit of a tangent here, I would argue the best solution for everyone would be if there indeed were unbalanced classes, but with these classes being clearly denoted as such, and with a separate class for each flavour in each power tier. This way, everyone would be free to pick whether it was a balanced game or not they wanted, with the added benefit of easier regulation of the overall power level. Want a game of truly epic, for all purposes superhuman heroes? Have everyone play someone from the upper tier. Want a more gritty playstyle, where the adventurers are rather low-lives who struggle to survive in a harsh world? Have everyone play someone from the lower tier. Want a world where magic is truly powerful, and have players not concerned with balance? Let the casters pick from the upper tier and the mundane ones from the lower tier. Etc.


And you must agree that if the Wizard's Player is not trying to break the game, but is just playing his character as a exciting and powerful being he is, who can say him to stop having fun? He is not deliberatly trying to impose himself, he is just being above the edge because his character was "born" this way. This is what happens to most druids. You do not need to be a D&D expert to use a Druid well, and in given time, he will surpass the Fighter, even if the player don't see it, even if the rest of teh group neglect it. Indeed, agreed.


The only thing you can hope to do is to ask the Player rping one of the Big 5 to pull some weaker tricks, if they don't agree, well you tried, there is no way you can impose this to them if they are not deliberatly trying to overshadow everyone else.Agreed again; the only thing I'd like to add is that this is only an issue if the player of the Fighter has less fun because of being surpassed in power. If not, there is no reason to ask the player playing one of the Big 5 for anything in the first place. The Fighter not wanting to be surpassed would be a perfectly understandable stance, of course, but it is not mandatory.


Again, you are correct. Everyone can have fun. But for some people like me, who is interested on the answer to question A, it would be possible to ensure a little more that everybody had a interesting role in the campaign if the game was more balanced.

This is my OP. As I said, a matter of taste.I couldn't agree more. :smallsmile:


This whole thread is rather a strawman. Of course it is enjoyable to enjoy a unbalanced system, hells, even a crummy one. I am sure there is some group in the world who actually enjoys FATAL. That doesn't mean that one isn't perfectly valid in finding the unbalance distasteful if that is their opinion.I don't think anybody claimed that though.

Fawsto
2009-03-03, 12:07 PM
It is good to find such a precise agreement over a discussion of this caliber. :smallsmile:

horseboy
2009-03-03, 05:33 PM
But the thing is, holding back all the time gets old after a time.
This. If I've got to hold back the lion's share of my power to be challenged, I'm not going to really be challenged. No challenge means no tension. With no tension there's no drama. Without drama an RPG is just a mathematical exercise and an excuse to drink.

My point is that a DM has a whole lot of stuff to do that's intrinsic to the nature of gaming. He shouldn't also have to fix the system.Exactly. You shouldn't have to rewrite most of the PHB just to get the system to work.


Adequate balance only requires is that everyone have something they can contribute that outweighs the costs of having them along and that every character have some way to get some spotlight time.
And all the rest.I very much agree. Playing a game that doesn't revolve around killing and taking opens up a lot more options. The party needs more different things. The problem becomes trying to turn 3.x into an RPG, which mechanically only qualifies because of leveling. Otherwise you wouldn't have to fight the rules so hard to define your role.

Houserule it in any way necessary to deal with a problem player.Except it's not a problem player, but a problem rule system.

I mean, does anyone truly believe that it is better to stick to the books if you don't like their contents much instead of making up a version yourself which works almost indefinitely better for you or your group?Eh, see it's a work vs reward ratio. Sure I could spend all that time "fixing" all the problems with D&D and adapting it for a different style, or I could just use another system that's already done and spend that time working on the campaign.
To all those who think that enjoying an unbalanced setting/ruleset is impossible, I suggest a few sessions of Vampires: The Masquerade.

That will either teach you a thing or two about roleplaying games, or will totally drive you mad...OH OH OH! Can I play my Blooded by Samuel Salubri name Zarathos? :smallwink:

Thurbane
2009-03-03, 09:26 PM
Come and see the unbalance inherent in the system.

Help, my playstyle is being repressed.

Did you see that? Did you see him repressing me?
10 THIS = "THREAD_WIN"
20 GOTO 10

Kurald Galain
2009-03-04, 04:49 AM
This. If I've got to hold back the lion's share of my power to be challenged, I'm not going to really be challenged. No challenge means no tension. With no tension there's no drama.

That depends on whether you want a tactical challenge, or a psychological challenge.

horseboy
2009-03-04, 07:56 AM
That depends on whether you want a tactical challenge, or a psychological challenge.
If a villain's only way of hurting me is by telling me they love me colour me unimpressed. I deal with those types of BBEG's every day IRL. :smallwink:

But no, the problem with psychological is that it's only cool so many times, then you've seen it and it has no impact.

Tyrael
2009-03-04, 10:47 AM
The DM monitors the power levels of the party, and if one of the players is min/maxing or optimizing head and shoulders above everybody else, he takes that player aside, explains why it might not be fun for the rest of the group, and asks him to tone it down a bit.

That's what I've done, and so far, my Problem Player's been pretty good about it, primarily because I've been trying to make up for it by throwing him a few bones in terms of RP and plot scenes.

That's my experience, at any rate.