Balancing 3.5: Martials as Anti-Magic?

[PhantasyPen]

I just had an incredible vague idea pop into my head after two days of a rather frustrating flu, so I might not be too coherent or in my right mind. Basically, I'm wondering if it would have been a slightly more balanced design for 3.X if martial characters were essentially designed as mage-killers. That is to say, martial characters are made to be able to negate magic spells which target them, for example (like in my signature) fighters being able to deflect spells with their weapons or rogue-likes being able to sneak through impenetrable magical barriers. Perhaps also making abilities like Mettle and Evasion more common, where certain types of classes just completely negate spells that target specific saves.

[Venger]

I just had an incredible vague idea pop into my head after two days of a rather frustrating flu, so I might not be too coherent or in my right mind. Basically, I'm wondering if it would have been a slightly more balanced design for 3.X if martial characters were essentially designed as mage-killers. That is to say, martial characters are made to be able to negate magic spells which target them, for example (like in my signature) fighters being able to deflect spells with their weapons or rogue-likes being able to sneak through impenetrable magical barriers. Perhaps also making abilities like Mettle and Evasion more common, where certain types of classes just completely negate spells that target specific saves.

Like in all these other identical threads, the same problem arises.

Even if your character is, let's say, wholly immune to magic. Let's say he has Magic immunity like a golem. This doesn't actually make it any easier for him to kill enemies, much less do utility things that mundanes cannot do on their own, such as fly, teleport, overcome damage reduction, etc.

[PhantasyPen]

Like in all these other identical threads, the same problem arises.

Even if your character is, let's say, wholly immune to magic. Let's say he has Magic immunity like a golem. This doesn't actually make it any easier for him to kill enemies, much less do utility things that mundanes cannot do on their own, such as fly, teleport, overcome damage reduction, etc.

Okay, I wasn't trying to tackle the whole system all at once, I was just throwing an idea out there to see how it could be made to work, and possibly seeing how to build on it, but if you're going to be like that, then fine, let's get started on your points.

1. This foes not make it easier for mundanes to kill enemies
   A: I would argue that not the purpose of this change in the first place, we're looking at defense here, not offense, you're trying to change the subject.
2. This does not like mundanes fly/teleport
   A: I've found flight to be over-rated on this forum, and the few times it's been used in a campaign I was part of, the players have had ranged weapons sufficient to deal with the threat.
3. This does not help mundanes overcome damage reduction
   A: Again, I'm just working on defense here, not offense, and I don't see why the idea of martial characters being able to negate spells somehow means they can't use magic weapons still.

[Nifft]

There's no need to make martial PCs anti-magic. Phrasing it in that way invites the exact problems that Venger brings up.

Instead, consider removing some of the special dispensation that magic gets. For example:

- Magic attacks can be deflected and parried just like weapon attacks. That Monk with Deflect Arrow can also deflect melf's acid arrow or Bob's magic missile (... well the first one at least).

Now you just need some more rules for deflecting & parrying attacks on yourself and allies, and then a martial character can contribute by negating magical attacks on her friends, and can credibly protect them from legitimate threats at mid-level and up.

The hypothetical deflection-based character isn't anti-magic, she's anti-attack (including magical attacks).

[Venger]

Okay, I wasn't trying to tackle the whole system all at once, I was just throwing an idea out there to see how it could be made to work, and possibly seeing how to build on it, but if you're going to be like that, then fine, let's get started on your points.

1. This foes not make it easier for mundanes to kill enemies
   A: I would argue that not the purpose of this change in the first place, we're looking at defense here, not offense, you're trying to change the subject.
2. This does not like mundanes fly/teleport
   A: I've found flight to be over-rated on this forum, and the few times it's been used in a campaign I was part of, the players have had ranged weapons sufficient to deal with the threat.
3. This does not help mundanes overcome damage reduction
   A: Again, I'm just working on defense here, not offense, and I don't see why the idea of martial characters being able to negate spells somehow means they can't use magic weapons still.

How dare I offer you useful feedback. What exactly was your goal with this thread if you didn't want input on your houserule?

Defense does not help a character accrue xp by killing enemies. Monks may be annoying to kill, but their defensive capabilities (good saves, sr, evasion, etc) do not help them kill enemies, which is part of why they are a weak class.

Your anecdote about not needing to fly in your games doesn't somehow change the fact that flight is very important in the game past level 7 or so.

The "etc" means this is a nonexhaustive list, citing a few common things characters both magical and mundane need to be able to do to meaningfully contribute throughout the course of the game.

Be like what exactly?

There are many other interesting points to discuss regarding your houserule that may help you to improve it, but if you're going to be snotty and ungrateful, then I'm not going to bother explaining them to you.

There's no need to make martial PCs anti-magic. Phrasing it in that way invites the exact problems that Venger brings up.

Instead, consider removing some of the special dispensation that magic gets. For example:

- Magic attacks can be deflected and parried just like weapon attacks. That Monk with Deflect Arrow can also deflect melf's acid arrow or Bob's magic missile (... well the first one at least).

Now you just need some more rules for deflecting & parrying attacks on yourself and allies, and then a martial character can contribute by negating magical attacks on her friends, and can credibly protect them from legitimate threats at mid-level and up.

The hypothetical deflection-based character isn't anti-magic, she's anti-attack (including magical attacks).

This is definitely a good suggestion. Giving non-initiating mundanes access to a wall of blades-like effect will really help them out defensively

[Deophaun]

[*]This does not like mundanes fly/teleport
A: I've found flight to be over-rated on this forum, and the few times it's been used in a campaign I was part of, the players have had ranged weapons sufficient to deal with the threat.

How does a ranged weapon help you get to the top of a glacier or quickly move across a continent? I must be missing something regarding these weapons.

[Venger]

How does a ranged weapon help you get to the top of a glacier or quickly move across a continent? I must be missing something regarding these weapons.

Just throw your hammer really hard and hang onto it to fly, like Thor. Who needs magic? Better get that strength score up!

[redwizard007]

Oh! Are we playing "trash the thread because it doesn't support the way the Playground likes to game?"

I think the guy is trying to recreate some of the cool martial based stuff you see in fiction. That's not exactly unheard of.

[Quertus]

What do you want mundane's role to be? How do you want them to contribute to the game? Do you really want it to be, "I'm useless, but I survive to take a share of the treasure and XP from the people who actually contributed to our success"?

If so, then this is a good plan.

That having been said, I actually like the idea of giving muggles get huge, huge bonuses to saves (see Paladin), AC (see swashbuckling?) abilities like Evasion, etc. I just think that should be the icing on the cake, and you need to focus first and foremost on making them actually contribute to the game.

Of course, the same could be said for low-floor casters.

[PhantasyPen]

How does a ranged weapon help you get to the top of a glacier or quickly move across a continent? I must be missing something regarding these weapons.

Apparently this was a case of me misunderstanding the question, however I do feel like these aren't the types of situations thrown at your players if no one doesn't have some manner of dealing with them? Ultimately it's not the matter I'm trying to tackle at this exact moment however, and I am therefor hesitant to put too much concentration into addressing it until I get to that point organically.

[Venger]

Oh! Are we playing "trash the thread because it doesn't support the way the Playground likes to game?"

I think the guy is trying to recreate some of the cool martial based stuff you see in fiction. That's not exactly unheard of.

These things exist in the game already (mettle, mettle of mountains, evasion, sr, magic immunity, etc) but they alone do not help a character fight against characters with magic.

What do you want mundane's role to be? How do you want them to contribute to the game? Do you really want it to be, "I'm useless, but I survive to take a share of the treasure and XP from the people who actually contributed to our success"?

If so, then this is a good plan.

That having been said, I actually like the idea of giving muggles get huge, huge bonuses to saves (see Paladin), AC (see swashbuckling?) abilities like Evasion, etc. I just think that should be the icing on the cake, and you need to focus first and foremost on making them actually contribute to the game.

Of course, the same could be said for low-floor casters.

Yes, this is exactly the problem. There's a reason people don't take classes like witch slayer more often. Sure you'll make saves and ignore spells once in a while, but after that, what do you actually do to contribute to combat that you couldn't before? Not much, really.

Apparently this was a case of me misunderstanding the question, however I do feel like these aren't the types of situations thrown at your players if no one doesn't have some manner of dealing with them? Ultimately it's not the matter I'm trying to tackle at this exact moment however, and I am therefor hesitant to put too much concentration into addressing it until I get to that point organically.

And what exactly is the matter you're trying to tackle? If we knew, we might be able to help you more effectively.

While a gm may not say "you need to teleport 200 miles to stop the duke of darkness by tomorrow morning" when no one in the party has teleportation/fast travel, and this is an easy enough thing for him to avoid assuming he's not overtly malicious, the same is not true for flight.

If he's going from a module, rolling encounters, or even selecting monsters by hand because they are cool to fight against, or fit well in your campaign world, at mid-high levels an awful lot of monsters can fly.

If you're a melee-focused character without access to flight somehow, then when a vrock takes to the sky, you're kind of out of luck. sure you might have a bow and arrow to take potshots at him, but this is not going to have a meaningful impact on the combat.

This kind of thing can happen even if your gm isn't trying to pick on you.

[Cosi]

Magic immunity is a boring power. The game is about things happening. Blanket immunities make things not happen and the game not progress. This is something that should be done sparingly, and should absolutely not be the basis for half the classes. It's also unfun, because it means that lots of encounters involve people's abilities getting noped and them functionally having to sit out the fight.

Also, yes, it is absolutely true that this does nothing to allow Fighters to solve problems, which is the fundamental goal of adventuring. If you are 99% immune to Wizards, but can't kill them, you still lose.

Oh! Are we playing "trash the thread because it doesn't support the way the Playground likes to game?"

How is that different from "tell someone who posted something you think is bad that you think the thing they posted is bad"? What I am supposed to do if someone suggests a change I don't think is good? What is the point of asking for feedback if your response to negative feedback is just going to be "that's not what I'm trying to do"?

I think the guy is trying to recreate some of the cool martial based stuff you see in fiction. That's not exactly unheard of.

What "cool martial based stuff you see in fiction"? None of the moments from fiction I would describe as "cool martial based stuff" are people being immune to magic. The mode the fiction supports for balancing martials is giving them magic. Aragorn gets to be a Ghost King. Thor and Arthur get magical weapons. No one gets "total immunity to magic".

[PhantasyPen]

There's no need to make martial PCs anti-magic. Phrasing it in that way invites the exact problems that Venger brings up.

Instead, consider removing some of the special dispensation that magic gets. For example:

- Magic attacks can be deflected and parried just like weapon attacks. That Monk with Deflect Arrow can also deflect melf's acid arrow or Bob's magic missile (... well the first one at least).

Now you just need some more rules for deflecting & parrying attacks on yourself and allies, and then a martial character can contribute by negating magical attacks on her friends, and can credibly protect them from legitimate threats at mid-level and up.

The hypothetical deflection-based character isn't anti-magic, she's anti-attack (including magical attacks).

I have long advocated the idea of a parry mechanic ala melee evasion and Wall of Blades for D&D as being the default, however I am also aware that it effectively doubles the number of rolls made in combat, so that might not be the exact thing one wants to do, but it's a fairly decent representation of the overall idea and feel I'm going for I guess.

What do you want mundane's role to be? How do you want them to contribute to the game? Do you really want it to be, "I'm useless, but I survive to take a share of the treasure and XP from the people who actually contributed to our success"?

If so, then this is a good plan.

That having been said, I actually like the idea of giving muggles get huge, huge bonuses to saves (see Paladin), AC (see swashbuckling?) abilities like Evasion, etc. I just think that should be the icing on the cake, and you need to focus first and foremost on making them actually contribute to the game.

Of course, the same could be said for low-floor casters.

Well I suppose in this situation, the role of a mundane character is to be able to slay the mage, however, the real answer is that this is too broad a question for me to answer right now, and it is not an answer to my own question, which was "What if the mundane classes had more abilities that made them resistant to magic as the default?"

As I said in my first post, this whole idea was incredibly vague in my head, the reason I brought it to the forum is to try and refine it. Now what exactly about the suggestion that I gave specifically says to you that martials are "useless"? Is it that they still aren't throwing around pew-pew lazers and Time Stopping to chain-gate in Solars? Because that is a completely separate conversation that I will not be having in this thread. If it's something else then please explain that instead of shooting the whole thing down and dismissing it out of hand, doing that doesn't help anything move forward.

These things exist in the game already (mettle, mettle of mountains, evasion, sr, magic immunity, etc) but they alone do not help a character fight against characters with magic.

And what exactly is the matter you're trying to tackle? If we knew, we might be able to help you more effectively.

Yes, these things do exist in the game already, what I'm trying to propose with this thread is the idea of making them more common for mundane characters.

While a gm may not say "you need to teleport 200 miles to stop the duke of darkness by tomorrow morning" when no one in the party has teleportation/fast travel, and this is an easy enough thing for him to avoid assuming he's not overtly malicious, the same is not true for flight.

If he's going from a module, rolling encounters, or even selecting monsters by hand because they are cool to fight against, or fit well in your campaign world, at mid-high levels an awful lot of monsters can fly.

If you're a melee-focused character without access to flight somehow, then when a vrock takes to the sky, you're kind of out of luck. sure you might have a bow and arrow to take potshots at him, but this is not going to have a meaningful impact on the combat.

This kind of thing can happen even if your gm isn't trying to pick on you.

These are things that are the entire reason that a character does not adventure alone, making one single character able to tackle all situations renders having a party pointless. The reason I opened this thread is because I keep seeing people on this forum and elsewhere saying that once a mage unlocks Save or Die spells the martial character might as well go home because they no longer have anything to contribute because all battles are now wizards throwing disintegrates and Power Word Kills at one another. Well right now I'm just asking: what if mundane characters had the ability to negate those things? I'm not necessarily looking at out of combat utility options for all characters because I feel if I was going to do that I might as well create an entirely new game system myself, which is not what I'm setting out to do. I'm just asking a single question, and trying to examine that for now, not trying to answer every single possible reason that spellcasting is broken.

Magic immunity is a boring power. The game is about things happening. Blanket immunities make things not happen and the game not progress. This is something that should be done sparingly, and should absolutely not be the basis for half the classes. It's also unfun, because it means that lots of encounters involve people's abilities getting noped and them functionally having to sit out the fight.

I did not state magic immunity, I proposed making and adding abilities that let martial characters more able to overcome magic in interesting ways. Venger is the one who said outright immunity to all magic.

[InvisibleBison]

Leaving aside the issues of implementation, I think this is a problematic idea because it unnecessarily limits the range of concepts that a martial character can express. In particular, it seems like this idea would make most gish builds impossible - you can't both be magic and anti-magic, after all.

[Cosi]

I did not state magic immunity, I proposed making and adding abilities that let martial characters more able to overcome magic in interesting ways. Venger is the one who said outright immunity to all magic.

I don't think you can make "negate other abilities" all that interesting. Mettle and evasion are not interesting abilities. They're reasonably powerful abilities, but they're not super interesting. The issue here is that "doing things" is interesting, and you're trying to stake out a space in which characters don't do things.

[PhantasyPen]

Leaving aside the issues of implementation, I think this is a problematic idea because it unnecessarily limits the range of concepts that a martial character can express. In particular, it seems like this idea would make most gish builds impossible - you can't both be magic and anti-magic, after all.

How does this limit the range of concepts for martial characters? What kinds of archetypes are you thinking of that don't work with this idea?

The statement about Gish builds is an interesting point, but I don't know, I can think of a few concepts which disagree, but I suppose that's still something that bears thinking about.

[Remuko]

I don't think you can make "negate other abilities" all that interesting. Mettle and evasion are not interesting abilities. They're reasonably powerful abilities, but they're not super interesting. The issue here is that "doing things" is interesting, and you're trying to stake out a space in which characters don't do things.

I don't think this is entirely true. A fighter being shot by a mage or a dragons breath and resisting it, pushing and walking thru is, is an awesome image. I think theres plenty of "nopes" in fiction that are way more cool than the hero swinging his sword and cutting the dragons head off.

[redwizard007]

Magic immunity is a boring power. The game is about things happening. Blanket immunities make things not happen and the game not progress. This is something that should be done sparingly, and should absolutely not be the basis for half the classes. It's also unfun, because it means that lots of encounters involve people's abilities getting noped and them functionally having to sit out the fight.

That must be why all the build guides dip for evasion and mettle.

Also, yes, it is absolutely true that this does nothing to allow Fighters to solve problems, which is the fundamental goal of adventuring. If you are 99% immune to Wizards, but can't kill them, you still lose.

I seem to remember something about full BAB and concentration checks...

How is that different from "tell someone who posted something you think is bad that you think the thing they posted is bad"? What I am supposed to do if someone suggests a change I don't think is good? What is the point of asking for feedback if your response to negative feedback is just going to be "that's not what I'm trying to do"?

Example of what you are doing: "Hey, what color is the sea?" "The sand in New Mexico is white in some places."

That's not helpful. It's not even relevant.

What "cool martial based stuff you see in fiction"? None of the moments from fiction I would describe as "cool martial based stuff" are people being immune to magic. The mode the fiction supports for balancing martials is giving them magic. Aragorn gets to be a Ghost King. Thor and Arthur get magical weapons. No one gets "total immunity to magic".

He didn't suggest total immunity to magic. He suggested innovative ways to get around it. Sometimes that might be shaking off the effect of a spell like with mettle, but it could also be slicing through a spell like that dark elf from that one author did.

[InvisibleBison]

How does this limit the range of concepts for martial characters? What kinds of archetypes are you thinking of that don't work with this idea?

The statement about Gish builds is an interesting point, but I don't know, I can think of a few concepts which disagree, but I suppose that's still something that bears thinking about.

"Anti-magic/mage-killer" is a specific character concept. By making all martials be mage-killers, you're blocking off all other character concepts, which I think is a bad idea. Any archetype that doesn't specialize in fighting mages (which is most of them) becomes impossible to implement.

[Covenant12]

As others have said, a martial being tough to take down by magic is a solid side dish. It still needs a main course or two to contribute past 10 or so. (lower if poorly optimized)

I've experimented with martial builds without casting, and frankly they require some maneuvers and stances closing on 10, but with some help can play their role.

One main course is of course damage, generally melee. THF, power attack, reach(spiked chain most direct, other options), pounce, shock trooper when available. Damage standing still is acceptable, if charging can be the mvp of the party. (maneuvers to allow charging more effectively, I like crusader)

Another solid course, though more difficult, is lockdown of enemy casters. Including ones that mostly cast spell-likes. Combat reflexes, reach again, mage slayer, stand still, the crusader stance that makes 5' steps provoke AoO. I generally take the barb2 ACF improved trip, because why not. At high levels quickened utility/movement spells come on line, and I'm still working on a solution to that, but preventing the BBEG caster from doing anything is a big deal. Can you ready an action to interrupt a quickened spell?

And that's basically an effective martial plan. It takes far more planning than caster or gish, and is easier to fail at. But you can be a real force in any combat, and hopefully have survival or a social skill to occasionally use outside of it. I'm not trying to make martials have a solution when teleport or plane shift is the only option. Casters keep that, non-caster martials won't be T1. A very valuable T3 is plenty I think.

Non-caster martials have issues, some mentioned. They need flight, they have no good answer to invisibility or miss chance. They could really use swift or at least move action teleportation of some kind (maneuvers can help on the last, anklets of translocation and charge/pounce as well). A partial solution is WBL. Increase it. Spellcasters can often do everything with their spells naked, martials need magic gear. Increasing WBL buffs casters a bit but makes martials playable. Wings, permanent detect invis if nothing else affordable when they start to need them, not 3-5 levels later.

Longer than I wanted.

TL;DR: With limited ToB dips, non-caster martials make solid and valuable T3's. With a lot of planning and many trap options. A homebrew with some of the op's suggestions (resist/parry spells, ignore miss chance) could make them great in any combat situation. I do concede PHB-only, low-magic non-caster beatsticks become dead weight around 10. Some of the op's ideas are good, but I agree with most that without effective offense, personal survival doesn't help the party. You need to scare(damage) or restrict/lockdown enemy options.

[Cosi]

The Magic Item Christmas Tree is bad, and using WBL as a solution makes it worse. The game should be moving away from required items, not facilitating more of them. Again, look at the source material. When people have magic gear, it is a small number of powerful items, not a large number of weak ones. It is easy to tell iconic, compelling stories about Mjolnir or The One Ring. It is much harder to tell those stories about +3 swords, Belts of Healing, and Anklets of Translocation.

That must be why all the build guides dip for evasion and mettle.

Boring is different from weak. A no-save, no-SR, no-immunity free-action instant kill ability would be something people would dip for. That wouldn't make it good design. To be clear: I am not saying those abilities are equally bad design, or that evasion shouldn't be in the game. What I am saying is that if you are going to give people evasion, you need to also give them useful offensive tools. And useful utility tools.

I seem to remember something about full BAB and concentration checks...

And I seem to remember something about flight, and martials not having it.

That's not helpful. It's not even relevant.

It's perfectly helpful. If someone says "I want to move to Boise to start a career in showbusiness", it is entirely reasonable to tell them that Boise is not the right city to do that. Some ideas won't work well, or put the game in a worse place than alternatives. And that's fine. There is nothing wrong with having a bad idea. At least you're having ideas.

[Covenant12]

The Magic Item Christmas Tree is bad, and using WBL as a solution makes it worse. The game should be moving away from required items, not facilitating more of them. Again, look at the source material. When people have magic gear, it is a small number of powerful items, not a large number of weak ones. It is easy to tell iconic, compelling stories about Mjolnir or The One Ring. It is much harder to tell those stories about +3 swords, Belts of Healing, and Anklets of Translocation.

Going have to agree to disagree here. 3.5 does poorly run as low or no magic items. What balance exists assumes sufficient magic to say, hit stuff and do notable damage to it. There are rpgs out there that mesh well with it, 3.5 isn't one of them. Not just martials (excepting gishes with 9ths by 20), but rogues will have difficulty functioning like that.

[redwizard007]

The Magic Item Christmas Tree is bad, and using WBL as a solution makes it worse. The game should be moving away from required items, not facilitating more of them. Again, look at the source material. When people have magic gear, it is a small number of powerful items, not a large number of weak ones. It is easy to tell iconic, compelling stories about Mjolnir or The One Ring. It is much harder to tell those stories about +3 swords, Belts of Healing, and Anklets of Translocation.



Boring is different from weak. A no-save, no-SR, no-immunity free-action instant kill ability would be something people would dip for. That wouldn't make it good design. To be clear: I am not saying those abilities are equally bad design, or that evasion shouldn't be in the game. What I am saying is that if you are going to give people evasion, you need to also give them useful offensive tools. And useful utility tools.



And I seem to remember something about flight, and martials not having it.



It's perfectly helpful. If someone says "I want to move to Boise to start a career in showbusiness", it is entirely reasonable to tell them that Boise is not the right city to do that. Some ideas won't work well, or put the game in a worse place than alternatives. And that's fine. There is nothing wrong with having a bad idea. At least you're having ideas.

I'm not breaking another long quote down on my phone, so bear with me...

Vs. flight- casting flight in close proximity to a well built fighter = questionable outcome at best.

Touche with Boise

[Deophaun]

The reason I opened this thread is because I keep seeing people on this forum and elsewhere saying that once a mage unlocks Save or Die spells the martial character might as well go home because they no longer have anything to contribute because all battles are now wizards throwing disintegrates and Power Word Kills at one another.

I would say that the people you're seeing don't understand the problem at all, then. It's not that casters have Save or Dies that are the issue--mundanes can kill plenty of things in a single round, too, and more reliably--it's that casters have the flexibility to solve any problem you throw at them quickly, while mundanes can take hours or months to perform the same task, if they ever can.

[PhantasyPen]

I would say that the people you're seeing don't understand the problem at all, then. It's not that casters have Save or Dies that are the issue--mundanes can kill plenty of things in a single round, too, and more reliably--it's that casters have the flexibility to solve any problem you throw at them quickly, while mundanes can take hours or months to perform the same task, if they ever can.

Okay, I see. I give you this point: if I want something done particularly swiftly, I hire a spellcaster, that's fine. However that is not the topic of this thread.

The Magic Item Christmas Tree is bad, and using WBL as a solution makes it worse. The game should be moving away from required items, not facilitating more of them. Again, look at the source material. When people have magic gear, it is a small number of powerful items, not a large number of weak ones. It is easy to tell iconic, compelling stories about Mjolnir or The One Ring. It is much harder to tell those stories about +3 swords, Belts of Healing, and Anklets of Translocation.

Boring is different from weak. A no-save, no-SR, no-immunity free-action instant kill ability would be something people would dip for. That wouldn't make it good design. To be clear: I am not saying those abilities are equally bad design, or that evasion shouldn't be in the game. What I am saying is that if you are going to give people evasion, you need to also give them useful offensive tools. And useful utility tools.



And I seem to remember something about flight, and martials not having it.



It's perfectly helpful. If someone says "I want to move to Boise to start a career in showbusiness", it is entirely reasonable to tell them that Boise is not the right city to do that. Some ideas won't work well, or put the game in a worse place than alternatives. And that's fine. There is nothing wrong with having a bad idea. At least you're having ideas.

This isn't a thread about the Christmas Tree effect, nor is is about showbusiness in Boise, this is about trying to find interesting ways to give martial characters ways to work around magical chickanery. This thread also has nothing to do with mundane flight but if people are going to keep making is a topic of conversation then fine, here's my solution: making a Jump check as part of your attack roll (DC = Target's AC) allows you to hit a flying creature with a melee weapon.

[Venger]

Okay, I see. I give you this point: if I want something done particularly swiftly, I hire a spellcaster, that's fine. However that is not the topic of this thread.

Okay, so what is the topic of this thread?

This isn't a thread about the Christmas Tree effect, nor is is about showbusiness in Boise, this is about trying to find interesting ways to give martial characters ways to work around magical chickanery. This thread also has nothing to do with mundane flight but if people are going to keep making is a topic of conversation then fine, here's my solution: making a Jump check as part of your attack roll (DC = Target's AC) allows you to hit a flying creature with a melee weapon.

So mundanes can teleport after all! Nice.

[Deophaun]

Okay, I see. I give you this point: if I want something done particularly swiftly, I hire a spellcaster, that's fine. However that is not the topic of this thread.

I would suggest you rename the thread, then, as from what you're now describing your topic has nothing to do with balance.

[Quertus]

Now what exactly about the suggestion that I gave specifically says to you that martials are "useless"? Is it that they still aren't throwing around pew-pew lazers and Time Stopping to chain-gate in Solars? Because that is a completely separate conversation that I will not be having in this thread. If it's something else then please explain that instead of shooting the whole thing down and dismissing it out of hand, doing that doesn't help anything move forward.

The big problem with the balance of muggles - according to Playground conventional wisdom, at least - is that they do not contribute to the narrative, they're dead weight. If you are trying to balance muggles, letting them still utterly fail to contribute, but guaranteeing their survival, seems to at best sidestep the problem.

Would you rather play the hero who solves the quest, or the sidekick whose only power is plot armor?

I don't think this is entirely true. A fighter being shot by a mage or a dragons breath and resisting it, pushing and walking thru is, is an awesome image. I think theres plenty of "nopes" in fiction that are way more cool than the hero swinging his sword and cutting the dragons head off.

By all means, please elaborate on cool moments in fiction of Fighters saying "nope".

Off the top of my head, I've got:
* the Black Knight in Monty Python's The Search for the Holy Grail saying "it's just a flesh wound".
* saying "nope" to a hall of needles in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
* saying "nope" to the gods' indestructible gates in the celestial bureaucracy

Note that my list is entirely them saying "nope" to mundane things...

interesting ways to give martial characters ways to work around magical chickanery.

Evasion, better saves - not interesting, but useful.

Better "mind manipulation minigame" could be both useful and interesting. The Rogue has such great knowledge of anatomy, he gets an automatic will saves vs illusions of living creatures, with a bonus equal to twice his sneak attack dice, and vs illusions of walls with a bonus equal to half his ranks in climb. If mind controlled to preform a tactically suboptimal action, the Fighter gets an automatic will save, with a bonus equal to his BAB.

I would suggest you rename the thread, then, as from what you're now describing your topic has nothing to do with balance.

That may be in order, but we've got a meme going...

[Cosi]

Going have to agree to disagree here. 3.5 does poorly run as low or no magic items. What balance exists assumes sufficient magic to say, hit stuff and do notable damage to it. There are rpgs out there that mesh well with it, 3.5 isn't one of them. Not just martials (excepting gishes with 9ths by 20), but rogues will have difficulty functioning like that.

The balance of D&D does assume magic items. I'm not saying we should remove those. I'm saying doubling down on that is creating more problems that will have to be solved eventually. Better to pull from Weapons of Legacy, or Unearthed Arcana's proto-Weapons of Legacy subsystem, because that's closer to the source material.

Vs. flight- casting flight in close proximity to a well built fighter = questionable outcome at best.

Casters have all day flight -- overland flight is the obvious solution, phantom steed at higher levels, or even fly lasts long enough for a full day's dungeon crawling.

Okay, so what is the topic of this thread?

I think the topic of this thread is that giving martials anti-magic is the best solution and we should all support it.

[PhantasyPen]

Okay, so what is the topic of this thread?

I would suggest you rename the thread, then, as from what you're now describing your topic has nothing to do with balance.

I think the topic of this thread is that giving martials anti-magic is the best solution and we should all support it.

The intended topic of this thread was to open a discussion about the idea of if the mundane classes had generally-restricted abilities like Evasion and Mettle, or more novel/obscure abilities like a class feature version the Spellcutter enchantment, as a more common design, making such powers the rule rather than the exception for martials, and what it would do for those classes as a first step towards not neutering mundane characters for the high crime of "not having magic."