3.5 players - what did PF 1 get right?

[Cosi]

I've played 3.5e with ToB a lot, and I've also played 4e, and from what I've seen first-hand you're absolutely wrong in that comparison.

Yeah, I don't understand how you think ToB and 4e are the same thing. ToB has variety in its resource management, 4e doesn't. It's not even like ToB has plumbed the limits of what you could do with their setup either. You could have maneuvers refresh when you switch stance. You could have maneuvers refresh when you kill an enemy. You could have maneuvers refresh every round. Whereas 4e is pretty explicit about it's "everyone is At-Will/Encounter/Daily all the time" plan.

You've caught me in a bit of hyperbole, I'll admit. It's more that I know wizard obsessed forumites would whine if I suggested it to them. Theoretically it would be better to strip them out, but in practice I'd rather keep the feats/ACF slots too.

Right, because everyone who disagrees with you slightly about the appropriate power level for Wizards is a "wizard obsessed forumite". It's impossible for anyone to disagree with the good word of Fizban on design questions for an reason other than selfishness. None of the reasons people in this thread have suggested for believing the things they believe are real, they're all secretly whiners. You alone have accurately understood how classes should be designed.

Then they should have less effective spellcasting in exchange. The bar for wizard-like spellcasting is spells+ a few bonus feats. The reason they get away with it in PF is because the wizard was also given a bunch of extra stuff which they didn't need. Circle back to the class feature glut and we're there.

Uh, why? PF was redesigning the game. They could just move the bar up. It's not like it's possible to tell coherent stories about a guy who can cast acid fog, but impossible to tell coherent stories about a guy who can cast acid fog and also gets Acidic Splatter and some minor bonuses to Conjuration spells. People want Wizards to have abilities beyond spellcasting, and you have yet to provide a coherent reason why that is bad. Just a bunch of rambling about how clearly everyone who disagrees with you is a powergamer.

[Krazzman]

Then they should have less effective spellcasting in exchange. The bar for wizard-like spellcasting is spells+ a few bonus feats. The reason they get away with it in PF is because the wizard was also given a bunch of extra stuff which they didn't need. Circle back to the class feature glut and we're there.

Afaik they do. The Witch is often times said to have "not that good" of a spell list compared to sorc/wiz.

I certainly am not a fan of full casters, prefering the gish or 6th level casting or even Martial classes over them... but from a design standpoint I would like to let the wizard feel different to the sorcerer, the witch, the arcanist, the psychic and the oracle.
Pathfinder realizes this with giving them something extra, which might make some options too powerful but that line is certainly hard to get. Options that bridge the seriously lousy early game for most full casters that are not Druid or Cleric.

I agree that Spellcasting is in itself a class feature and as thus would not be needed to be added but then their design philosophy with Archetypes would get... a bit impossible for full casters. I mean look at all the Fighter archetypes where most (if not all) remove the new additions to the class for alternative features... which sometimes makes things a bit... wonky for deciding to match your idea to a class/archetype combo.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I agree that Spellcasting is in itself a class feature and as thus would not be needed to be added but then their design philosophy with Archetypes would get... a bit impossible for full casters. I mean look at all the Fighter archetypes where most (if not all) remove the new additions to the class for alternative features... which sometimes makes things a bit... wonky for deciding to match your idea to a class/archetype combo.

Adding more class features to then be traded away by archetypes isn't strictly necessary, as they could fiddle with the spellcasting mechanic directly instead. Assuming the existing class features aren't enough, the 3e battle sorcerer removes spells per day and spells known, various wizard ACFs change the specialization mechanic, and so forth.

I mean, the "what to trade out" question was already a solved problem in late 3e. Bard ACFs swapped out certain bardic musics, cleric ACFs traded out domains, druid ACFs traded out the companion or modified wild shape, wizard ACFs traded out bonus feats or prohibited an extra school or two, and so forth; only the sorcerer in particular lacks multiple class features to trade out, but the sorcerer is also thought to need a boost compared to other casters, so it could have been given a few extra features without needing to do the same for the others.

But even that isn't actually required. The PF sorcerer starts with the same base number of spells known as the 3e sorcerer and then adds extra bloodline-specific spells, but they could have started with the Battle Sorcerer numbers (1 fewer spell known and per day of each spell level) and added both Bloodline Spells for spells known and "Arcane Reservoir" or something for spells/day (with flavor about how sorcerers can draw more deeply on their innate power for 1 extra slot of each spell level per day) and then traded out those separately for archetypes. That gives you nice compartmentalized features to trade out for archetypes, and no power-up relative to the baseline sorcerer.

So whether casters getting more stuff to raise the power level across the board is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of taste, but "They need more stuff or archetypes don't work" isn't a particularly good argument in favor of giving them more stuff.

[Nifft]

Basically, if 4e actually had straight-up shamelessly copied ToB class design, from the philosophy to the features to the disciplines to the maneuver usage to the maneuvers themselves, all of the major problems people had with 4e martial classes would have been solved.

AEDU almost got where it needed to be, I think. The actual problem was that everyone had the whole AEDU thing at the same time, instead of something like this for three major archetypes (Cleric is a heal-y fighter-y mage, I swear)

Yeah, I don't understand how you think ToB and 4e are the same thing. ToB has variety in its resource management, 4e doesn't. It's not even like ToB has plumbed the limits of what you could do with their setup either. You could have maneuvers refresh when you switch stance. You could have maneuvers refresh when you kill an enemy. You could have maneuvers refresh every round. Whereas 4e is pretty explicit about it's "everyone is At-Will/Encounter/Daily all the time" plan.

Hmm. Looks like we could have a thread about what 4e got right vs. what it got wrong, too.

[Pex]

You've caught me in a bit of hyperbole, I'll admit.

Been there myself. With empathy I drop.

Then they should have less effective spellcasting in exchange. The bar for wizard-like spellcasting is spells+ a few bonus feats. The reason they get away with it in PF is because the wizard was also given a bunch of extra stuff which they didn't need. Circle back to the class feature glut and we're there.

They do, if perhaps not to your liking. Oracles have to choose spells known like a Sorcerer. Witches have a smaller spell list. Arcanist is limited in the number of spells he can prepare.

[Ignimortis]

PF had the right idea for Armor Training (specialization) on Fighters.

They didn't go far enough. A whole host of primary melee classes need it, and the bonus needs to be boosted for Fighters and other straight mundanes. +10 at L20 in heavy armor, and more for shields.

More AC doesn't solve being a Fighter, but it does solve the problem with AC not ramping as fast as attack bonuses.

Make BAB give scaling defensive bonuses, say anyone who gets 9th level spells can't have more than 1/2 BAB, delete Divine Power. That's gonna work better than giving Fighters and only Fighters that one thing that doesn't help outside of combat.

[Cosi]

So whether casters getting more stuff to raise the power level across the board is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of taste, but "They need more stuff or archetypes don't work" isn't a particularly good argument in favor of giving them more stuff.

Not given the way archetypes currently work. But archetypes could have, in whole or in part, been class-agnostic trade-offs designed to support things like Rage Mage or Nature Assassin or whatever without needing to specifically write up a Witch/Druid crossover option. That would require classes to have some standardized interface to trade against.

Hmm. Looks like we could have a thread about what 4e got right vs. what it got wrong, too.

That could be interesting. I feel like a lot of things would be "good concept, bad execution" though.

[Fizban]

I agree that Spellcasting is in itself a class feature and as thus would not be needed to be added but then their design philosophy with Archetypes would get... a bit impossible for full casters. I mean look at all the Fighter archetypes where most (if not all) remove the new additions to the class for alternative features... which sometimes makes things a bit... wonky for deciding to match your idea to a class/archetype combo.

Trading spell slots and spells known worked for the Battle Sorcerer, and again, if you don't like generic bonus feats then you can make suitably powered features/archetypes to swap them for. I'd also have been interested to see someone take a stab at a 7 or 8 level caster if they wanted to add a bunch of powerful abilities to a major caster. Obviously that's not what they wanted to do or they'd have done it.

Afaik they do. The Witch is often times said to have "not that good" of a spell list compared to sorc/wiz.

They do, if perhaps not to your liking. Oracles have to choose spells known like a Sorcerer. Witches have a smaller spell list. Arcanist is limited in the number of spells he can prepare.

Aren't Oracles also spontaneous casters, like a Sorcerer?

As for the Witch, well I don't usually follow Pathfinder threads and like I said, usually all I ever see or hear is the Witch having a bunch of staple Sor/Wiz spells (and trying to skim the srd just shows a ton of spells). If you've got a link for a breakdown I'd take a look. But even then I'd bet that with all the splat support they've got the same problem as 3.5 with original limits eventually being ignored in the rush to new and interesting spells, where interesting means "things you couldn't do before."

[Pex]

I'll have to admit a smaller list for Witch is a misnomer now. It's still technically true, but with so many splat books that came after it was first published the list has expanded the difference is hardly noticeable. To link to the SRD would be evidence more to disprove my point. My defense is it's a Paizo problem not a class design problem. They couldn't stop making more spells. A good analogy is 3E Polymorph. The spell itself wasn't too much of a problem when it was only the Monster Manual, but as more monsters joined the fold with more Manuals the spell became ridiculous for many people. When it was only Advanced Player's Guide, where Witch was published, as the splatbook the difference in spells was noticeable. Witch does have good spells. It's allowed that, but it's not nearly the breadth the Wizard has.

[upho]

Alright, you're out wall-of-texting me.

Well, I decided it was in your best interest to have somebody crack down on any delusions of wall-of-text grandeur you may have started to nurture, seeing how you've been allowed to flaunt your mastery of the discipline largely unchallenged in a few too many threads now...

(More seriously though, promise I'm gonna try and compress this into as few words as I'm capable of.)

Spoiler: Polearms, medieval laws, serfs vs knights, and grappling realism

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Alright, more info than I had, but I'll still settle for the reason in my last post (which you haven't got to yet)- it is indeed an arbitrary gamist division being merely directed/labeled by a simulationist idea, which can be vague at times. But the game is still primarily a game, and I'm fine with that. The level of "actual" simulationism in 3.5 is just about where I want it to begin with, and when I cite simulationism as a reason for something it's usually either to direct a mechanical change I'm already okay with, or to refute someone making hyperbolic claims that every soldier in 3.5 is some sort of godlike warrior. I want there to be a difference between polearms because otherwise there's no reason to have anything other than one boring "polearm" entry, and the ability to trip is a significant difference which can be based on whether the shape of the weapon "looks" good at tripping, which 3.5 already settled on things with hook-ish shapes.

This seems perfectly fine to me. Guess part of the reason to my reaction may be I've become tired of people stating "realism" as a reason for altering non-magic combat rules as if it's just as valid as any other, usually without them having done even the most rudimentary research on the RL subject and simply taking for granted their often largely fiction-based beliefs are true.

There's another little bit in there: I'm told that some lords/knights would execute peasants found to be manufacturing polearms (might have been halberds specifically?), because they were so deadly against their category of heavy armor/cav kit.

Who's telling you this? Spontaneously, I have to say it sounds highly unlikely "commoners" or serfs were forbidden to manufacture polearms for that specific reason. Not to mention polearms is probably the group of medieval weapons including the greatest number of weapon types derived from farming tools, with early/basic designs near identical to those tools (bill types, fauchard, war scythe, large flails, etc.).

That said, if looking at medieval Europe alone, we're probably talking about several hundreds of different more or less well defined sets of laws and related agents/officials varying significantly depending on the specific geographic area and time period. So I find it perfectly plausible - if not highly likely - there was at the very least one period and region with say a feudal system where serfs or just non-nobility were killed by the ruling nobility for keeping/manufacturing actual weapons meant for warfare (which polearms most definitely are, unlike for example most types of swords). Especially since medieval Europe didn't exactly have a shortage of times and places fraught with more or less open civil war, and polearms are undoubtedly the most effective melee weapons for a relatively untrained wielder and especially in mass combat against cavalry.

I also know that in several regions and periods the laws instead explicitly demanded most adult male citizens to own arms and armor for personal use in war, for example in England and in Sweden (where I live).

If every weapon can trip, there's less reason for a peasant to need that type of weapon to kill a knight, because mechanically the trip is the most important part for a mook trying to overcome plate, and in 3.5 they can't do that safely without a trip weapon (due to AoOs).

I'd say what your mook actually needs to do in RL is to pin the knight in order to easily target gaps, knocking the knight prone typically still won't make it much easier for the mook to overcome full plate without the right specialized weapons. And thankfully armor (or shield) bonuses won't affect the mook's chances of successfully pinning the knight in PF.

PF adding drag and reposition stuff does sound pretty good as a more accurate distinction to give hook-ish weapons, though I'd have to look the maneuvers to see if I like how they're implemented. PF may actually be more simulationist in its slate of maneuvers and what weapons can do them, but I still don't think the single roll CMB/CMD system is the right direction.

Yeah, I think at least the actual total effects of those more numerous maneuvers can make for a more realistic feel of melee combat.

Exactly. All those other combat maneuvers? Completely unimportant like 90% of the time. But *tons* of monsters have innate grappling. If the change makes grapple make less sense then that pretty much trumps anything else, since touch -> manipulate already worked fine. Fix trip by adding BAB, great, add more physical maneuvering and use those for polearm granularity instead of tripping in general, groovy, but overhaul the entire thing and make the most common maneuver make less sense, nope.

Note that I said "perhaps". 'Cause a pretty large majority of esoteric bonuses actually do make sense also in the case of maintaining a grapple, and why such attempts gain a flat +5 bonus to CMB instead. The primary reason for this is the simple fact that initiating a grapple in PF is explicitly described as simply getting hold of the opponent with a hand or similar, not anything like a full-on wrestling move (which would be more of a pin). So "realistically" anything that makes the target more capable of resisting being actually "wrestled" should apply. And IME once people take a brief moment to consider what the grapple rules actually try to simulate more carefully, any initial instinctive feelings of poor verisimilitude disappear, making it clear and intuitive why for example deflection, dodge, insight, circumstance or more unusual bonuses to AC normally applies.

The much greater issues with PF's grapple related rules are their high complexity and the many potential situations when they're fuzzy or have a weird and most likely unintended net impact on related combat styles. And of course they suffer from the same CMB vs CMD and PC vs monster math issues as the rules for most other combat maneuver do, making them exceedingly difficult for PCs to use and often defend against when fighting monsters, even though this is generally less of an issue than in 3.5 (with the notable exception of trip).

I became disgusted by trip first, then realized that the solution to trip's ignoring combat skill was obvious and would make more sense anyway: put BAB in. Removing the free attack is similarly obvious as no other Improved (maneuver) feats grant them, and being prone is already one of the most devastating status effects in the game- Improved Trip is OP plain and simple.

I actually agree that 3.5's Improved Trip is OP in relation to other melee combat options. But I'd recommend altering the feat so the granted free attack is fluffed as an opportunity to further reduce the target's mobility by messing with it's limbs/gear/position/similar, resolved perhaps as an additional trip attempt and a success for example preventing the target from standing up or using any fine movements (no somatic components) or similar for one round, instead of dealing hp damage. That way, the feat remains a strong option, but encourages a more control focused combat style instead of needlessly furthering the same boring old damage fiesta.

These two changes tone it down without having to re-evaluate a bunch of other stuff (like changing the trip penalties or trying to buff all the other maneuvers), with the main "unintended" consequence that big high HD monsters are harder to trip, which is also a feature. They're such small alterations that I'd hesitate to even refer to them as such, especially when being compared to PF's one-size-fits-all mechanic.

Well, PF also offers a much greater number of non-damage maneuver options than 3.5 does, so I think the playability and simplicity demands for a reasonably consolidated base mechanic is also higher. And regarding the usefulness of trip against big high HD monsters, it should also be noted that the general size bonuses/penalties are reduced to +/-1, 2, 4 and 8. So skill - BAB in the case of high HD monsters - actually has a much greater relative impact than size in comparison to 3.5.

This is BTW also exactly how it should be IMO, as I believe "realism" should never have nearly as high priority as playability, mechanical balance (in every regard/sense) and potential for mythic levels of badass-ness when designing rules for a mechanics- and combat heavy high fantasy "near-zero-to-superhero" RPG like 3.5. I also believe size still has far too great overall impact on the usefulness of combat maneuvers also in PF, but that's mostly due to the common size difference caps and the few or non-existing options to overcome them even with serious additional investments.

Note that this doesn't in any way prevent or discourage tough opposition and an overall very challenging game without cheesy or boring overkill spam capabilities. For example, the now 12th level party in my current "long-haul" home game includes two full bab melee focused PCs overall considerably more capable members of an adventuring party than the "norm" in a PF game restricted to 1PP options, and likely anything even possible in a 3.5 game. But neither of them deal as much hp damage as full bab PCs can in such a 1PP PF game, and way less than melee focused PCs can in a 3.5 game. And the game also has a distinct gritty feel and a strong theme of the PCs struggling against impossible odds, reflected also in the party often facing opponents with a melee prowess also mainly granted by class levels, but which is even greater and/or - most importantly - of a very different and tactically challenging kind than that of the two PCs.

2. Define "make characters more or less interesting." If "more interesting" means "allow broken builds," then I guess not, but when you consider how helpless the few tripping monsters can make a player feel, I'd bet it still counts as more.

Definitely not "allow broken builds", but rather "actually competitive alternatives to spamming full attacks for maximum damage". And see above regarding my views on Improved Trip's free attack. But really, if I were to nerf anything trip related in 3.5, I'd probably first drastically nerf Power Attack and the other most significant static damage boosts/multipliers, including crits. Which has the added bonus of not just making IT's increased chance of successfully knocking a foe prone have greater value in relation to the free attack, but also to encourage the use of alternatives to max damage. Which in turn can make combat more interesting, reducing the chance of BBEGs being easily killed before they've even had the chance to act, or of doing the same to a PC. Death is often an unavoidable consequence of combat, but it sure doesn't help make combat more fun if it arrives too early.

3. Yes, because uber-trippers are boring, tedious, and unfun to play against, and a DM not having fun makes everything worse. A combat maneuver should have cost, risk, reward, and a limited window of opportunity, not be a constantly spammed effect whose removal only boosts dps

I absolutely agree, especially about the DPR boost aspect. But in order to get there, it's not even remotely enough to simply remove the free attack part of IT. You also need to provide alternatives to spamming full attacks for max DPR that are actually just as useful and effective. And of course, the less spammable those alternatives are, the less resources should be required to gain a corresponding level of expertise in each single such alternative. Otherwise, you'll still end up with melee having an even less interesting/varied/tactical spamming damage focus than before you nerfed IT, and further increase the relative power of the even more exclusively damage focused and effective spamming melee combat styles which already didn't rely on IT, such as charging.

4. The classic relative increase, by having one maneuver reduced from OP to just really strong, the others aren't as bad by comparison.

This method surely works, but not if applied by using such an extremely limited comparison. You need to take at the very least all melee combat alternatives into account, or preferably all combat options including also ranged and magic. Especially since the overall general relative power and cost/benefit ratio of 3.5 maneuvers not directly related to DPR is far worse than that of PF's, which is still poor without rather extreme specialization.

6. It's been a while since my last game, but no one tried to push a tripper before and I'm not going to accept players that have an issue with my main houserules, so that's a yes by default.

Well, neither should they in game played at a power level matching with DMG guidelines, I'd wager. Or rather, if they did, they sure also better keep the overall DPR potential low to compensate.

The former is a result of adding more maneuvers, not the basic CMB/CMD system change, which is the main part I disagree with. The latter is not something I think should be available, and is mostly predicated on the vague Dirty Trick maneuver. Even then it's mostly the fact that blind is on the initial list and the later feats that greatly extend and worsen the penalties, that I don't like. A general purpose dirty trick maneuver is great, but blinding is *huge*, and anything longer or stronger should require specialized training- as in specifically choosing to get it. Even a wizard has to pick their spells.

Yeah, blinding is huge. At least against most opponents during early/mid levels. But it's worth noting the standard action use, the move action to remove the condition and the short 1 round duration. Anyhow, I think regardless of which mechanic(s) you want to use for combat maneuvers, it's definitely worth taking a look at PF's maneuvers, and especially the related options.

Also, though I've declared my love of dirty trick, it's a good example of a maneuver which simply won't see use without pretty significant additional investments, which I think is problematic in itself (I'd prefer something like a couple of scaling feats instead). And the problem becomes more pronounced with maneuvers which are only rarely useful, such as bull rush, drag or reposition. Without loads of additional investments granting rider effects and/or improved action economy and greater flexibility to such maneuvers, there are typically very few situations which makes it reasonable to spend actions on them in combat, especially if doing so also provokes.

Spoiler: even more simulationism

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Stuff about Petty the halfling throwing darts at Bob the hero

The only reason I used a halfling was because of the incredulity of a humanoid actually smaller than the average 3-year old human being able to hurt an adult human martial arts pro in high quality full plate by throwing 4 ounce darts at him from 20' away. But go ahead and replace Petty with a human warrior NPC and adjust the chances accordingly if that suits your tastes, it does absolutely nothing to change the fact that they'd have a ridiculously unrealistic chance of causing hp damage to poor Bob in his full plate.

but it's still a game yo.

This.

That first video is the one I was thinking of, wouldn't be surprised if you'd posted the link I originally watched it from. Reducing tactical speed doesn't actually hinder your combat ability though- it hinders your pursuit ability. Dunno how often guys in heavy armor pursed other guys not in heavy armor on foot, but I'm fairly certain they'd have relied on maneuvering/terrain/cavalry to make it work.

But that would be the run action again. Not tactical movement in combat at less than maximum running speed. And see below.

Now, if you've timed your movement in plate that's pretty cool, but I'd still question how you're lining it up with the game. Dashing from one point to another on a signal within 6 seconds seems like it'd be very different from a combat situation where the signal is not being explicitly given, you may be actively engaged with another foe, and you need to start, stop, and possibly make some sharp turns in between. My point being that the dnd combat round is not precise and has lots of wiggle room for all the background movements that you aren't explicitly making, while a lot of what people might think of as combat movement could be termed in dnd as run actions rather than hustling. Or moving within your space, or 5' steps, or running/walking which average to a hustle. While the proper way to convert a speed into dnd terms is via longer times, tactical start+stop movement is affected more by inertia and harder to quantify, I think.

The point here is that I've sparred in full plate using decent remakes of medieval weapons as well as without much armor (using LARP or nylon weapons), including against multiple opponents sometimes spread out over a rather large area during the course of our "swing-a-real-sword-at-your-friends-without-really-hurting" melee parties. Which is more than enough to conclude that full plate simply doesn't noticeably decrease this kind of combat mobility, and most importantly it doesn't slow you down more than carrying the same weight in some other manner does.

Aside from your maximum running speed being a bit slower, the most noticeable related effects are of a more situational nature IME. Such as charging into/bull rushing someone potentially having quite a bit more spectacular results than without armor due to the often considerably higher impact energy, caused by the armor not only adding mass but also allowing you to really go all-in with very little risk of hurting yourself. (And I strongly urge you or anyone else reading this to not attempt any such "pretend to be a missile" stunts without armor... )

Come to think of it, that might be where they pulled the 1/3 reduction from. 40-50 lbs of armor (plus weapons) on a 150-180lb-ish body means your force to mass ratio is 3/4 the usual, which should mean your acceleration is only 3/4 usual (and no matter how strong you are in other ways you still have a 30' speed). Note that 20' speeds only drop to 15' in heavy armor for 3/4 normal (same at 40'). The reductions for higher speeds seem to fluctuate, many are close to 70% with the 30, 60, and 90 getting the short end at 2/3. Furthermore, remember that hustling combat speed includes the ability to constantly turn, constantly accelerate, so basing it on a presumed reduction in acceleration due to increased mass is more reasonable than you might think. It may be more accurate to say that the heavy armor speeds suffer from trying to be *too* simulationist. Or it may be that they just took the speeds straight out of the Chainmail minatures game and whoever wrote those is to blame.

I think you're completely missing the far most important part here, namely that the rules for armor reduce your speed in addition to any speed reduction caused by encumbrance. In RL, it's actually the exact opposite when it comes to armor in general and full plate in particular; it slows you down less than carrying the same weight in other manners do, as the armor's weight is distributed over almost your entire body.

And I think the fact that the rules say full plate and other heavy armor slows you down considerably regardless of your Str score or carrying capacity says quite a lot of the designers' lack of insight, matching with the old wide-spread and deeply flawed "knight who cannot stand up by himself and must be hoisted into the saddle" image of full plate which still seems to persist in the minds of many people today. So yes, I'm pretty certain they took the speed idea from Chainmail, likely not seeing anything wrong with simulating the "turtle-knight" myth which I believe was pretty much taken for granted by amateur historians and fantasy writers back in the early seventies. (See for example this with "the jousting historian" Dr Tobias Capwell explaining why that flawed image likely became so widespread.)

All of that said, reducing the speed penalty is perfectly reasonable. A -5' penalty will still matter tactically, just not as much as -10, but I prefer the -10 so that light armor is actually "getting" something out of the deal, especially considering how many people want to play light or unarmored characters. And if those light armored characters have as much AC and combat ability as heavy armor characters with no penalties, then obviously you should get rid of the heavy armor penalties.

Yeah. And it actually goes much further than the speed penalty, such as flat-out not allowing for winged flight and a number of other arbitrary and potentially very punishing limitations. It's not the slightest surprising mithral and magic able to reduce the armor category are such complete no-brainers.

Stop- re-read the weapon size rules. A Large weapon is not double the dimensions of a Medium weapon, it's double the weight. At least in 3.5 anyway. The square-cube law says you don't even want to make your weapons that way, because your increase in useful force doesn't go up as fast as the mass.

The Large sword's mass isn't eight times that of the Medium, but the giant's mass surely is eight times the human's. And that mass is accompanied by enough muscles to move it just about as effortlessly as Medium humans move their mass according to the rules. Meaning the sword itself really doesn't need much greater mass than the Medium one for stupidly devastating effects, as long as it's stiff enough for the acceleration of the swing and the delivery of the giant's mass behind it on impact without much loss of energy, which any RL big two-hander such as a large XVIIIe type "Danish Warsword", German "zweihander", Italian "montante" or other greatsword equivalent easily would. Also, while the sword is maybe just an additional couple of feet longer, the giant's body and arms are definitely twice as long and able to swing the sword for a considerably higher speed measured at its point of percussion, which you may have noticed I estimated to be a very modest "x 1.25" in my dumbed-down calculation.

Most importantly, this is merely a pointer. Because thankfully, the error margins are so great for the pointer to remain valid in this case it doesn't have to be more exact science.

Damage does not matter, results matter.

Yes, and I'm saying none of the results are even remotely close to realistic, and the far greatest reason for that is the size differences having much less impact than they do in RL. And speaking of the halfling, instead of the horse, it's perhaps easier to imagine how much of a chance a humanoid the size of a 3-year old realistically has in melee combat against an equally (un)fit and (in)experienced adult human. Do you seriously believe that chance to be roughly equivalent to the chance a human warrior NPC has in melee against a warrior hill giant according to the rules?

If you'd like to dig deeper into the subject, I'd suggest searching for various measurements of modern day martial arts professionals like boxers and compare things like impact energy of a punch, body length and reach with various weight classes. Again, I can assure you that the numbers will confirm the reasons why those weight classes exist, even though the weight differences between them are microscopic in comparison to the rules' gigantic "mass x 8" steps.

The hex feature itself. You're already a full spellcaster with all the spell slots that entails, but apparently you need a whole extra set of abilities for all the levels where two extra spells known and more spells per day just aren't enough. Said abilities generally have no use limits or can be used once per foe, also known as having no use limit, and are often as strong as proper spells. It's kinda like if you gave out bonus reserve feats or dragonmarks, except every two levels instead of the "usual" 5 for wizard bonus feats. Maybe their spell list is so bad they need the extra power? I doubt it (but it's hard to read the original list, at least with the srd I've been using putting all the spells from everything on there, as you'd usually want).

OK. So I take it you also regard say the druid's wild shape or the cleric's turn undead as similar needless "feature bloat", since they're also "full spellcaster with all the spell slots that entails"?

You don't need a whole extra set of abilities to differentiate a spellcaster, that's what spell lists are for. But that's hard to do with the precedent that healing= cleric, plant/animal= druid, and literally everything else= sor/wiz, so there's that.

Just FYI, the witch is definitely less powerful than the wizard, has a much shorter spell list which includes spells not on the wiz/sorc list, and certainly also plays differently because of hexes. I'd say the witch easily differs from the wizard as much as the druid differs from the cleric.

[Krazzman]

if you don't like generic bonus feats then you can make suitably powered features/archetypes to swap them for. I'd also have been interested to see someone take a stab at a 7 or 8 level caster if they wanted to add a bunch of powerful abilities to a major caster. Obviously that's not what they wanted to do or they'd have done it.

I think 'generic' is the one that makes me unsure here. I mean in both PF and 3.5 the Cleric has the exact same stuff... some nerfed spells and some feats/tricks won't work anymore but still everything is the same... the only difference I see is that Domains got a buff and that Channel Energy doesn't work like Turn/Rebuke Undead. Although at level 20 a 3.5 Cleric has 1 level 1-5 spell slot more than the Pathfinder Cleric which might get calculated against average WIS mod being higher for the PF one... or not. But I agree they could have done other things for the casters... but with PF1 at the end of it's cycle this comes far too late.... (and it's not like the guys behind it would have listened anyway)...

Aren't Oracles also spontaneous casters, like a Sorcerer?

As for the Witch, well I don't usually follow Pathfinder threads and like I said, usually all I ever see or hear is the Witch having a bunch of staple Sor/Wiz spells (and trying to skim the srd just shows a ton of spells). If you've got a link for a breakdown I'd take a look. But even then I'd bet that with all the splat support they've got the same problem as 3.5 with original limits eventually being ignored in the rush to new and interesting spells, where interesting means "things you couldn't do before."

The Oracle is the spontaneous casting cleric. I mean Oracle could have easily implemented as an Archetype. Trade Good Fort save for 2 more skill points, trade Domains, "Cleric Spontaneous Casting" for Mystery and Curse and change Prepared casting to Casting like a sorcerer.

The Witch, similar to the Cleric, has a way to gain access to spells not natively on her list. She can choose between multiple "Patrons" as the source of her power, granting her for example in the case of the Trickery Patron Invisibility as a 2nd level spell at level 4. Witches generally have a spell list more focused on debuffing but also get stuff like CLW and Restoration. They still have a smaller spell list than wizards though, even with all the Splats. The Witch still has access to some of the best spells in the game even without splats.

[Fizban]

Spoiler: stuff not directly pointed at PF anymore

Show

Who's telling you this? Spontaneously, I have to say it sounds highly unlikely "commoners" or serfs were forbidden to manufacture polearms for that specific reason. Not to mention polearms is probably the group of medieval weapons including the greatest number of weapon types derived from farming tools, with early/basic designs near identical to those tools (bill types, fauchard, war scythe, large flails, etc.).

Eh, some guy in a thread. Bit of a longshot, but if illicit polearms were counted as a specifically worse offense than illicit weapons in general, by someone at some point (as suggested by that poster), that does suggest something. Probably not much though, I probably just brought it up 'cause the thought stuck.

I'd say what your mook actually needs to do in RL is to pin the knight in order to easily target gaps, knocking the knight prone typically still won't make it much easier for the mook to overcome full plate without the right specialized weapons. And thankfully armor (or shield) bonuses won't affect the mook's chances of successfully pinning the knight in PF.

It's easier and safter to start the grapple if they're on the ground first, though mechanically one peasant would never get the chance, and as always bashing someone's helmeted head is easier if it's on the ground.

I actually agree that 3.5's Improved Trip is OP in relation to other melee combat options. But I'd recommend altering the feat so the granted free attack is fluffed as an opportunity to further reduce the target's mobility by messing with it's limbs/gear/position/similar, resolved perhaps as an additional trip attempt and a success for example preventing the target from standing up or using any fine movements (no somatic components) or similar for one round, instead of dealing hp damage. That way, the feat remains a strong option, but encourages a more control focused combat style instead of needlessly furthering the same boring old damage fiesta.

You say this as if getting +4 on the attempt and ignoring AoOs isn't already a strong option, as if -4 attack and AC and not being able to move until you spend an action and eat an AoO isn't enough of a penalty. None of the other Improved [maneuver] feats in 3.5 do more (or are as widely applicable, or as powerful of a status effect), why should Improved Trip?

This is BTW also exactly how it should be IMO, as I believe "realism" should never have nearly as high priority as playability, mechanical balance (in every regard/sense) and potential for mythic levels of badass-ness when designing rules for a mechanics- and combat heavy high fantasy "near-zero-to-superhero" RPG like 3.5. I also believe size still has far too great overall impact on the usefulness of combat maneuvers also in PF, but that's mostly due to the common size difference caps and the few or non-existing options to overcome them even with serious additional investments.

And I disagree. A high level mundane melee guy can trip or wrestle an Elephant and I'm fine with that, but there has to be a limit.

Definitely not "allow broken builds", but rather "actually competitive alternatives to spamming full attacks for maximum damage". You also need to provide alternatives to spamming full attacks for max DPR that are actually just as useful and effective.

I don't have a problem with dealing damage. I do have a problem when people only see mundane combat as what offensive actions you can take. There is no melee DPR role- the melee role is to take (or negate) melee hits in place of those in the party who are bad at taking melee hits, and have some amount of reliable no-resource damage. There is no "competitive" melee build, because there is no competition.

Otherwise, you'll still end up with melee having an even less interesting/varied/tactical spamming damage focus than before you nerfed IT, and further increase the relative power of the even more exclusively damage focused and effective spamming melee combat styles which already didn't rely on IT, such as charging.

That's essentially a "but this other thing is OP too!" defense. I do nerf charging. The main reason I haven't nerfed Power Attack back to it's original 3.0 ratio (which was only ever 1:1) is because I'd already made multiple combat feats incorporating 1:2 ratios. Might still decide to cap it at -5 like basic Combat Expertise though.

And if you're not satisfied with what a Fighter can do, then you take a PrC, or be a Tome of Battle class, or both.

You need to take at the very least all melee combat alternatives into account, or preferably all combat options including also ranged and magic. Especially since the overall general relative power and cost/benefit ratio of 3.5 maneuvers not directly related to DPR is far worse than that of PF's, which is still poor without rather extreme specialization.

You may have lost the origin of this tangent: You said that because the game isn't a great simulation one shouldn't go tweaking without good reason, I pointed out that your insitence PF trip was better made you the one calling for tweaks while also stating that my problems were smaller tweaks, you questioned whether those tweaks were good, I responded point by point on why yes they were, and here we are on point 4 increase/decrease of options where I say nerfing one makes the others less bad by comparison. Again, you're basically using the "but everything else is crap!" defense, setting an arbitrary power level that everything must meet.

Combat maneuvers are not about "power." They're about maneuvering, tactics. You don't trip or disarm or grapple because it's powerful, you do it because it fits the situation.

Well, neither should they in game played at a power level matching with DMG guidelines, I'd wager. Or rather, if they did, they sure also better keep the overall DPR potential low to compensate.

Not sure where you're aiming at here. Obviously if I've written down the limits and changes required to keep things in line, there shouldn't be a need for players to "self-censor." And obviously if someone takes a splatbook'd/char-op'd character into a game that is not designed for it, the game isn't going to work.

I think you're completely missing the far most important part here, namely that the rules for armor reduce your speed in addition to any speed reduction caused by encumbrance. In RL, it's actually the exact opposite when it comes to armor in general and full plate in particular; it slows you down less than carrying the same weight in other manners do, as the armor's weight is distributed over almost your entire body.

Nope: "If your character is wearing armor, use the worse figure (from armor or from load) for each category. Do not stack the penalties." It's at the end of Carrying Capacity- Weight, right before -Lifting and Dragging.

And I think the fact that the rules say full plate and other heavy armor slows you down considerably regardless of your Str score or carrying capacity says quite a lot of the designers' lack of insight,

Or game design. Because if there's no penalty for having tons of AC there's no reason to ever have anyone not in heavy armor. And then instead of nimble lightly armored rogues and wizards in robes you have everyone in full plate from 3rd level until the end of time.

Yes, and I'm saying none of the results are even remotely close to realistic, If you'd like to dig deeper into the subject, I'd suggest searching for various measurements impact energy of a punch,

I was really looking forward to your response to the example, and instead you've completely ignored it- ignored the results in favor of energy equations. Maybe I should have said "energy does not matter?" or "the abstraction of hit points means that relative damage values have no reason to reflect energy equations and thus the ratio between a human and a giant does not matter." The hill giant still pastes even the experienced warrior in seconds. The only thing that will extend their life significantly is, ironically enough, having more AC. Significantly more than you can get from just mundane armor and shield- so magic and heroic dodging skill

OK. So I take it you also regard say the druid's wild shape or the cleric's turn undead as similar needless "feature bloat", since they're also "full spellcaster with all the spell slots that entails"?

3.5 PHB is the starting point, so by definition it's not the bloat. Splatbooks and adaptations can develop bloat.

Even so: duh the Druid is bloated as all heck, everyone knows that. It's pretty well known story that one of the playtesters revealed the Druid player never used Wild Shape for anything more than scouting, and the statblocks in Enemies and Allies (purported to be the playtest statblocks) don't even have animal companions listed (familiars and mounts, no ACs). The cleric has three non-spell features: domain 1, domain 2, and turn undead. Turn Undead is a safety feature that ensures the party always has some sort of response to incorporeal undead and does almost nothing else aside from dust mooks outside of splatbooks. The two domains are worth 2-3 bonus feats, frontloaded compared to the Wizard, but neccesary if you want domains to be part of their identity from 1st level. It's also a well known story that the person who wrote the Sorcerer hated them. So we have: one class with measured bonus feats, one class with measured features, one class denied any features, and one class with a ton of features no one tested. Which of these four, two of which are the default classes for their roles and two not, are the correct measures to design new classes against?

Actually the Druid can still be proper bloat- carried over from earlier editions where randomized character generation specifically gave you the ability to roll a better class, which the 3.5 removal of those requirements retroactively bloated. Assuming the Druid even had all those abilities in previous editions.

Just FYI, the witch is definitely less powerful than the wizard, has a much shorter spell list which includes spells not on the wiz/sorc list, and certainly also plays differently because of hexes. I'd say the witch easily differs from the wizard as much as the druid differs from the cleric.

Honestly, there's pretty much no amount of "but it has a shorter spell list" that is going to convince me they need a bunch of at-will/encounter abilities to make up for it. PF made them a full caster because full caster, and gave them Hexes because class features. A "restricted" class list isn't a "balancing" feature, it's an identity feature.

I think 'generic' is the one that makes me unsure here. I mean in both PF and 3.5 the Cleric has the exact same stuff... some nerfed spells and some feats/tricks won't work anymore but still everything is the same... the only difference I see is that Domains got a buff and that Channel Energy doesn't work like Turn/Rebuke Undead. Although at level 20 a 3.5 Cleric has 1 level 1-5 spell slot more than the Pathfinder Cleric which might get calculated against average WIS mod being higher for the PF one... or not. But I agree they could have done other things for the casters... but with PF1 at the end of it's cycle this comes far too late.... (and it's not like the guys behind it would have listened anyway)...

Not sure how we jumped to the Cleric here. Yeah, the PF Cleric and Wizard are mostly the same, and the Cleric lacks obvious features to swap at later levels same as before. But we were talking about how the Witch's Hexes are nearly half a class on top of full spellcasting, since I consider that a glut and people want to try and talk me out of it.

The Oracle is the spontaneous casting cleric. I mean Oracle could have easily implemented as an Archetype. Trade Good Fort save for 2 more skill points, trade Domains, "Cleric Spontaneous Casting" for Mystery and Curse and change Prepared casting to Casting like a sorcerer.

As could the Witch, or any number of true spellcaster variants made by re-alloting the spell lists.

The Witch still has access to some of the best spells in the game even without splats.

So yeah, not a ringing endorsement. You only need enough of the best spells in the game, and I expect if they didn't have enough they wouldn't be nearly so popular.

It's kinda like saying a Fighter variant with a shorter bonus feat list deserves a bunch of extra stuff, even though they've got XYZ of the best feats still on the list. Either they needed the stuff to begin with and shouldn't have the restriction, or they didn't and the class is blatantly more powerful for anyone who was already willing to play with just those feats, which were already good enough.

[Cosi]

The Druid has the correct number of class features -- enough to make taking a casting PrC not mandatory. You want casting PrCs (or something else in basically the same space, note that this isn't exclusive to casters) because people are going to want to be Demon Summoners or Apostles of Thrym or whatever other niche concepts, and those don't deserve their own base class or need to be class-exclusive. So there needs to be something to facilitate them, and it needs to be compatible with a variety of classes. And it needs to not be a strict power up. Which means casters need to have class features they can trade off. No, they can't trade off levels of casting, that makes balancing far to complex (and is also way too steep for basically ever proposed class feature).

And Fizban is still operating under the assumption that the only possible balance point is the 3.5 PHB as he understands it (with his bizarre contention that balance operates at the party level but Wizards are somehow still overpowered). PF 1e was a new game, it was free to define new balance expectations. It doesn't matter whether Wizard + Class Features looks overpowered to you, it matters if it is bad design for substantive reasons.

I actually agree that 3.5's Improved Trip is OP in relation to other melee combat options.

That's not really the right frame of reference though. It doesn't matter if Improved Trip is better than Weapon Focus, it matters if Improved Trip is too good in absolute terms. And I think it clearly isn't, which means the correct fix was to buff other melee options.

This is BTW also exactly how it should be IMO, as I believe "realism" should never have nearly as high priority as playability, mechanical balance (in every regard/sense) and potential for mythic levels of badass-ness when designing rules for a mechanics- and combat heavy high fantasy "near-zero-to-superhero" RPG like 3.5.

This is certainly true, but it's important to distinguish "realism" and "verisimilitude". The game world's physics need not be consistent with reality (though it should have a baseline similarity to reality in order to adjudicate basic actions like jumping or throwing things), but they need to be consistent with themselves. If tripping (or whatever) is a super awesome tactic, armies should include lots of pikemen or other trip specialists.

Just FYI, the witch is definitely less powerful than the wizard, has a much shorter spell list which includes spells not on the wiz/sorc list, and certainly also plays differently because of hexes. I'd say the witch easily differs from the wizard as much as the druid differs from the cleric.

While I obviously disagree with Fizban's position that no one with spells should have other class features, I do think "it has a shorter list" is a bad argument. It's still (presumably) longer than the list of spells any given Sorcerer has access to, and those guys are fine. This board tends to dramatically overestimate the value of versatility.

[Gnaeus]

While I obviously disagree with Fizban's position that no one with spells should have other class features, I do think "it has a shorter list" is a bad argument. It's still (presumably) longer than the list of spells any given Sorcerer has access to, and those guys are fine. This board tends to dramatically overestimate the value of versatility.

A better but incomplete way to put it is that witches have a slightly worse list in terms of the top handful of most abusive spells. It doesn’t matter if the list has 50 or 150 spells. It really only matters how good the best 20-30 spells are. Few tables will really see more than that get used.

Witches are worse than Wizards in spells per day. except for a few 3.5 elven generalists or crafter specialists almost all wizards are specialists. A specialist wizard has at least as good a list as a witch and more spells per day at all levels.

Functionally, witches trade the bonus spells of their top 2-3 spell levels for at will abilities that are weaker than those spells. That is a good or bad trade depending on whether your game has one encounter per day or 10.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Actually the Druid can still be proper bloat- carried over from earlier editions where randomized character generation specifically gave you the ability to roll a better class, which the 3.5 removal of those requirements retroactively bloated. Assuming the Druid even had all those abilities in previous editions.

Yes, the druid had all its 3e abilities in previous editions, but they were quite different power- and role-wise. Animal companions were just normal animals gained via animal friendship, with no extra HD or attitude adjustment to make them want to engage in combat or good at doing so. Wild shape let them turn into a normal bird, reptile, or mammal once per day each, again with nothing that made them better at combat or let them mix-and-match their own abilities with a combat-capable wild shape.

Which is why the playtest druid didn't put a specific AC in its stat block (they could change the companion easily, and they could just use the MM animal stats) and didn't use wild shape in combat (going by the 2e playstyle that the devs were trying to replicate, wild shape was only good for scouting and stealth, so they weren't thinking of combat shapes like someone new to D&D might have been).

The Druid has the correct number of class features -- enough to make taking a casting PrC not mandatory. You want casting PrCs (or something else in basically the same space, note that this isn't exclusive to casters) because people are going to want to be Demon Summoners or Apostles of Thrym or whatever other niche concepts, and those don't deserve their own base class or need to be class-exclusive. So there needs to be something to facilitate them, and it needs to be compatible with a variety of classes. And it needs to not be a strict power up. Which means casters need to have class features they can trade off.

Well, maybe. Firstly, trading off spells known and per day rather than spellcaster levels, Battle Sorcerer- or Archmage-style, is certainly doable. If you look at things in terms of spells, trading out one or more 4th-level slots (like several polymorphs per day) for Wild Shape, a 1st-level slot (like animal friendship) for a 3.0-style animal companion or a scaling slot (like summon nature's ally) for a 3.5-style one, etc. allows for more granular balance and can work better than forcing every archetype to trade out things of equivalent value, in the same way that Archmage lets you pick various class features based on what kind of powers you want and trade off roughly equivalent spells instead of having to strengthen or weaken all of them to a uniform balance point.

Secondly, there's no reason that Beastmaster (granting animal companions) or Shapeshifter (granting Wild Shape) can't be class-adjacent things just like Demon Summoner or Apostle of Thrym. In a new system, nothing prevents you from handing out kits/PrCs/etc. before 5th level, just as PF did with its archetypes, nor are you required to have PrC-equivalents replace your existing class instead of existing alongside them.

Beastmaster could be a whatever-you-call-PrCs-available-at-1st-level available to, say, Barbarians, Druids, Rangers, and people with max ranks in Handle Animal and Survival (or the equivalent in a new skill system) and Shapeshifter could be a PrC that lets you pick one kind of creature based on entry requirements (like animals for Knowledge [Nature] vs. outsiders for Knowledge [Planes]) and turn into combat-capable forms of that type. So druid could be a relatively-class-feature-light class like the 3e cleric or wizard, and you'd have a choice between going, say, Druid (Beastmaster/Shapeshifter/Hierophant) if you want a "classic" druid, Druid (Ruathar/Greensinger/Forest Lord) if you want a druid with lots of plant-related abilities, or Druid (Witch/Blighter/Vermin Lord) if you want a druid with a creepy curses/poison/disease/insects theme.

In that scenario, you never have to trade or lose class features at all, rather every character gets to bolt on kits/PrCs/etc. at appropriate levels, and having to give classes enough to discourage PrCing out isn't an issue. There are plenty of other approaches as well, of course, but in general I'd say that an approach that doesn't force you to choose between essential base class stuff and niche customization stuff is preferable to one where you need to beef up the base class with flavorful, balanced, relevant class features just to enable trading them out for other things.

[Pex]

I had played a witch once. I was using my hexes more often than casting spells. It was probably a result of the campaign style. It was a lot of dungeon crawling. Hexes gave me something useful to do while conserving my spell slots to use through out the game day. I suppose that's what I like about spellcasters having other things to do. It's peace of mind and ease of pressure you'll have spells available when you need them for the third and later combats of the day.

[Florian]

Jepp, playing a Witch for the first time was a great experience! Same actually for an Oracle.

Spells are powerful game elements, yes, but especially 3E made them boring as class features by way of WBL.

Playing a Winter Witch or a Shadow Oracle is a very different experience than playing a Wizard or Cleiric, because of the class features.

[Gnaeus]

I had played a witch once. I was using my hexes more often than casting spells. It was probably a result of the campaign style. It was a lot of dungeon crawling. Hexes gave me something useful to do while conserving my spell slots to use through out the game day. I suppose that's what I like about spellcasters having other things to do. It's peace of mind and ease of pressure you'll have spells available when you need them for the third and later combats of the day.

Bearing in mind that both classes are T1 and can be respecced significantly.

In something like cheesegrinder or World’s Largest dungeon with large strings of fights, I’d strongly prefer Witch.

In a sandbox that usually only has one or 2 fights in a day, I’d strongly prefer Wizard.

In an adventure path or other thing tracking 3-5 fights per day, it’s close to coin toss. Probably play style matters more than the marginal difference between those 2 classes.

I think that’s pretty excellent really. They feel different to play and that looks like balance to me.

[Cosi]

Well, maybe. Firstly, trading off spells known and per day rather than spellcaster levels, Battle Sorcerer- or Archmage-style, is certainly doable.

It is doable, but it tends to make designs less modular. An effect that trades off with a spell known has different costs for a Cleric, a Wizard, a Beguiler, and a Sorcerer. That constrains the ways you can design classes without causing balance issues. That's not necessarily insurmountable, but I don't really see the benefit of solving that design problem when you can trade off against class features that are designed to be balanced.

Secondly, there's no reason that Beastmaster (granting animal companions) or Shapeshifter (granting Wild Shape) can't be class-adjacent things just like Demon Summoner or Apostle of Thrym. In a new system, nothing prevents you from handing out kits/PrCs/etc. before 5th level, just as PF did with its archetypes, nor are you required to have PrC-equivalents replace your existing class instead of existing alongside them.

Sure. But there is a benefit to having an established baseline for the class. It helps with class definition if all Druids have Wild Shape or an Animal Companion or Trackless Step, at least as a default.

I think that’s pretty excellent really. They feel different to play and that looks like balance to me.

That's really exactly how balance should work in general. Pick a "standard" balance point, design classes so they're balanced at that point, but give them abilities and resource management that work differently so that they change in power differently depending on how the expected encounter composition changes.

[Krazzman]

Not sure how we jumped to the Cleric here. Yeah, the PF Cleric and Wizard are mostly the same, and the Cleric lacks obvious features to swap at later levels same as before. But we were talking about how the Witch's Hexes are nearly half a class on top of full spellcasting, since I consider that a glut and people want to try and talk me out of it.

I brought him up because of the Oracle as an example that the oracle could be fitting to PHB1 balance standards. It could've been an ACF for the cleric in PHB2 or it could have been a new class fitting right into 3.5. The same goes for the witch. Despite being a full caster with a familiar the witch has less spellslots, has an overall weaker list (as weak as the argument is) and no Bonus Feats.

This means a Wizard ACF could easily result in the witch. Trade all Bonus feats and scribe scroll for hexes. Spellbook and School specialisation is traded for Patron and using the Familiar as a Spellbook or something along those lines.

So yeah, not a ringing endorsement. You only need enough of the best spells in the game, and I expect if they didn't have enough they wouldn't be nearly so popular.

It's kinda like saying a Fighter variant with a shorter bonus feat list deserves a bunch of extra stuff, even though they've got XYZ of the best feats still on the list. Either they needed the stuff to begin with and shouldn't have the restriction, or they didn't and the class is blatantly more powerful for anyone who was already willing to play with just those feats, which were already good enough.

Limiting the stuff gained from the Bonus Feat itself? Maybe not. But limiting the amount of Bonus feats? Certainly. As is evident by Dungeoncrasher Fighter. If I was focusing on Bullrush anyway it is exactly as you mentioned an improvement. Do you miss the 2 bonus feats? Not really. Or the Thug, giving up one measly feat and profiency in medium armor and all shields for at least 40 skill points, more skills on his list and broadening up his list of stuff he can choose with his bonus feats. Or just outright trading all Bonus Feats for Sneak attack. If you only wanted to use one trick and don't need the bonus feats then Sneak Attack Fighter is also an improvement.

The Druid has the correct number of class features -- enough to make taking a casting PrC not mandatory. You want casting PrCs (or something else in basically the same space, note that this isn't exclusive to casters) because people are going to want to be Demon Summoners or Apostles of Thrym or whatever other niche concepts, and those don't deserve their own base class or need to be class-exclusive. So there needs to be something to facilitate them, and it needs to be compatible with a variety of classes. And it needs to not be a strict power up. Which means casters need to have class features they can trade off. No, they can't trade off levels of casting, that makes balancing far to complex (and is also way too steep for basically ever proposed class feature).

And Fizban is still operating under the assumption that the only possible balance point is the 3.5 PHB as he understands it (with his bizarre contention that balance operates at the party level but Wizards are somehow still overpowered). PF 1e was a new game, it was free to define new balance expectations. It doesn't matter whether Wizard + Class Features looks overpowered to you, it matters if it is bad design for substantive reasons.

I have to sadly disagree with your assessment on the druid. From a 3.5 standpoint it's just too much. I doubt that the druid even has a point where he is comparatively weak compared to other casters in the early levels and seems to break the design "philosophy" of the 3.5 creators, which shouldn't have been their design in the first place but alas.... They could easily (as they also did) make PrCs for the different druid types. Which pathfinder thankfully tried to change with their "have your concept playable asap" instead of "at around level 13, after having been in 3 different prcs and used 4 other classes my concept is now starting to come together"... which is alright but was one of the few things I really dislike about 3.5... hence my love for the classes where you could just take another level without gimping yourself like Duskblade, Totemist and Warblade.

This board tends to dramatically overestimate the value of versatility.

Yes. This is the reason why I personally did not like the Factotum. This according to so many people "good" class... just sucks in actual play unless you have ultra deep system mastery and can basically recite the statblocks of even the most obscure monster...

[PairO'Dice Lost]

It is doable, but it tends to make designs less modular. An effect that trades off with a spell known has different costs for a Cleric, a Wizard, a Beguiler, and a Sorcerer. That constrains the ways you can design classes without causing balance issues. That's not necessarily insurmountable, but I don't really see the benefit of solving that design problem when you can trade off against class features that are designed to be balanced.

Sure. But there is a benefit to having an established baseline for the class. It helps with class definition if all Druids have Wild Shape or an Animal Companion or Trackless Step, at least as a default.

Having packages is certainly easier to balance in aggregate, and having a default loadout of class features (as opposed to something like 5e where there's no "default" subclass for any class) can be convenient for setting baseline assumptions. I'm just saying that you can't really talk about having a "correct" number of class features, because that judgment is based on how PF ended up doing things but that's not the only way it could have been done.

The 3e druid has a good number if you want to have lots of stuff in the base class to trade away, the 3e sorcerer has a good number if you want base classes to basically be a resource mechanic and a minor signature ability and add other subclass/kit/etc. stuff on top of that, the 3e cleric and wizard have a good number if you want something in the middle. The point you choose is arbitrary based on how modular you want classes to be, so it makes sense to say things like "if you add stuff to one class you should do the same for the rest and raise the bar across the board" but not so much things like "the druid has the right amount of class features."

I have to sadly disagree with your assessment on the druid. From a 3.5 standpoint it's just too much.

Number of features and power of features are two entirely orthogonal concerns. Exhibit A: the monk. Both the druid and the monk get lots of new and scaling features and have few to no dead levels, but the druid is powerful because all of its class features are useful and synergize with one another, while the monk isn't because they aren't and don't.

A hypothetical 2e-style druid where the druid got all the same class features but the animal companion didn't advance, wild shape didn't give combat-relevant forms, and summoning wasn't a main schtick of the druid would be plenty balanced, despite still having lots of class features. The shapeshift druid in PHB2 is halfway there, actually--it has a couple combat forms, but most of them are for mobility, and you give up the companion--and it's widely agreed that even that by itself it brings the druid's power level down quite a bit (though still not necessarily down out of tier 1).

Yes. This is the reason why I personally did not like the Factotum. This according to so many people "good" class... just sucks in actual play unless you have ultra deep system mastery and can basically recite the statblocks of even the most obscure monster...

The problem is not overestimating the value of versatility, it's that factotums are great if you can get enough inspiration and the assessment of factotums being a good class assumes you'll either load up on Font of Inspiration, you have lots of smaller encounters every adventuring day, or you do a lot of stuff during downtime so your inspiration refreshes frequently. It sucks in actual play if you try to play it exactly as you'd play a rogue, complete with spending all your inspiration to get level-appropriate sneak attack and then wondering why you can't do anything else, but as a secondary skill monkey, a PC in a social-heavy campaign, or the like, it works pretty well.

It's almost an anti-druid, in a way: where the druid is balanced in terms of number of class features but the individual things are too powerful, the factotum has a good spread of class features but was given too little inspiration to work with because the devs misjudged the average number of encounters actual groups had. Another example of how number and power of class features are uncorrelated.

[Krazzman]

Number of features and power of features are two entirely orthogonal concerns. Exhibit A: the monk. Both the druid and the monk get lots of new and scaling features and have few to no dead levels, but the druid is powerful because all of its class features are useful and synergize with one another, while the monk isn't because they aren't and don't.

A hypothetical 2e-style druid where the druid got all the same class features but the animal companion didn't advance, wild shape didn't give combat-relevant forms, and summoning wasn't a main schtick of the druid would be plenty balanced, despite still having lots of class features. The shapeshift druid in PHB2 is halfway there, actually--it has a couple combat forms, but most of them are for mobility, and you give up the companion--and it's widely agreed that even that by itself it brings the druid's power level down quite a bit (though still not necessarily down out of tier 1).

Yes, that's what I meant. The Druid not only has actual class features besides casting but he has really strong ones if used right. Compared to Pathfinder the druid was a bit brought down... so far that people actually mused if he was pushed out of T1... but the Druid is still versatile and best of all a class that you can focus on things if you want to, to get to some concept you want. Don't need Wildshape in your build? How do Slayer Talents sound? Want to only use one specific form for Wildshape? There are archetypes for most of them. Don't care for an Animal Companion? How about grabbing a Domain?

The amount of time I wanted to play a Shapeshift Druid is unbearable... either PHB2 wasn't allowed or someone else was already a druid and something else was needed... or I got to play something that I was actually longer waiting for (Warblade).

And about the factotum... your assessment is true... far too low Inspiration, especially when Font of Inspiration as a feat wasn't allowed and... well let's just say the strengths of this class couldn't be played out due to the type of game/GM/other stuff.

[Beckett]

Originally, I had went into Pathfinder as a continuation of 3E, and PF had been promising. They did make some improvements but they also made some mistakes, both in my opinion.

I do think sometimes that they get a little too much credit fir some of their changes, or that some of the downsides are ignored, ultimately, again in my opinion, making PF more of a different game rather than better or worse.

Skills: On the surface, it was nice. Ultimatly they did this for two reasons. Admitedly they loved the Bard (and Rogue), so wanted to give them a boost, and to simplify the game. The problem is it both favors some classes more than others, and simplification is not always (or most of the time) a good thing.
Some of the issues it led to where Int based classes that wanted to max out Int like Wizard and Witch having just as many skills as a decent Bard or Rogue "Skill Monkey". Add in that there where no restricted Skills, a decent (not overly optimized) Wizard could do a Rogues job fairly easily.
In some ways that is good, allowing smaller parties to cover more roles, but PF has a huge problem with stepping on toes.
Another huge factor is that the simplification, while mostly working the same, it hurt being able to throw a few ranks into this or that for fun because of the way Number of Ranks to spend works. For example, a +1 Int Dwarf Cleric (no FCB) gets:
3E = 2 + 1 (x4) @ level 1 <12>
PF = 2 + 1 @ all levels <3>

So, in both I can max out three skills. In PF, that is all I can do. In 3E though, if I want, either to build into a PC or for fun, I could put 1or 2 Ranks into any Skill, being a little better at it without really hindering others. Say not maxing Spellcraft to have a rank in Handle Animal or Know Nobility.

Archetypes: While cool and fun, the main reasons for these, (essentially Kits or Variant 3E Classes), was a mixture of PF devs hating Prestige Classes, being more interested in fluff than crunch (admitedly, that isn't an insult), and because Archetypes are much easier. One of the design goals I hated was that they wanted to restrict PC to in world groups, which I really hated, and led to what few PC we got largely being underwelming, (and not getting FCB either).
Archetypes are wholesale, where VCF you could choose each of the portions. I like that better, because a given Archetype might not be exactly what you want. This isn't a power arguement, but rather it might give you one thing at low levels, but take something later you might find essential. I just mean, in some ways Archetypes didn't do their job as well as they should, barring DM handwaving. Another huge issue I encountered was just how much PF, and Archetypes are a major factor here, not only allowed, but seemed designed to allow classes to step on other classes toes easily. Sometimes it is a good thing, again allowing smaller parties to cover more bases, but I have also seen multiple characters, <not over or under optimized> ruin other character's build or essentially force pigeonhole another character. For example a Witch being a better healer than a maxed out healbot Cleric, (while still being a blaster or whatever) or a Magus being better at both the Fighter's and Rogue's main schticks.
One major thing I also hated about Archtypes vs PC was Archetypes are just free. PC you actually (usually) had to work towards, which meant earn. To me, that felt rewarding and special. The counter I often hear is how abusable it was, which is true, but is the exact same with Archetypes. You can't badmouth one and not the other, and I would argue that stacking PCs was possible, but not really that common outside of theory builds. Doing so with Archetypes, however absolutely is (was). To be fair, I stopped playing PF just before the Survival Guide, and have not followed it at all since. Also primarily played PFS, which was pretty wide spectrum as far as styles and playerbase, but actively did try to prevent some of the worst offenders (of power gaming combos). Between the two, I think I would rather have the 3E PC over Archetypes (at their best), and hands down Variant Classes over Archetypes.

Sneak Attack: A little on the fence here, but never been a Rogue fan, to be honest. I like that they opened up Sneak Attack, but I do think they should have not included Undead, as fighting Undead is/should be largely for Divine Classes to be best at, and in some ways cheapened Undead as antagonists.

Caster/Martial Dispatity: So, I know Im not going to win a lot of frends here, but I would actually say PF worsened this significantly, just not in the way people tend to think. I do think just about every spellcasting nerf was bad, either not making sense, removed fun, or whatever. Most Save or Die spells just became substandard evocations, that could probably drop a spell level or two. But it isn't really that that was hurting the Fighter. It was a combination of not great options for martials and the push to make Rogues more able to be up front in Combat. Boost their HP, reducing the need to do as many skills, boosting Sneak Attack availability. Toss in some free Feats, Dex to Damage options, and things like that, and that is what really starts making the Fighter look less and less interesting or needed. But, the other side is that the Rogue can also do plenty of stuff outside of combat, an area many martials have trouble at is the extra kick while you are down. Now, looking back at Skills earlier, this is kind of where Fighters, Paladins, Clerics, and 2+dump stat really feel the burn. Ultimately, the best solution for Skills should have been to remove 2+Int and/or not made it Int based.

Domains/Other: Hated PF Domains. Firstly, I much prefere flat out bonuses, Feats, and permanent effects over times per day. PF really, really likes times per day abilities or Rounds per Day. Hate them so much. Seriouslt, if I can do something like a 1d6 Firebolt 6-10 times a day at level one, just make it infinite at will. Why extra book keeping? Especially as Orisons/Cantrips where made infinite to make it feel more magical. Bloodlines did something similar. Sorry, its a pet peeve that just really annoys the crap out of me.
On the surface, Domains look like they got an improvement. Key word is look. Like so much of what PF changed, at the end of the day, they basically ignored the worst offenders (Sleep, Color Spray, Luck or Travel Domain), then made the mediocre changes the standard to balance everything else off of. So, each Domain now gets two powers, you know, to help fill those "dead levels". Except what they tended to do was split one power into two, and not give you the second one until 8th level. Not so cool/fun. <It gets worse if you you can track down a 3.5 PF1 playtest book. A lot of good stuff that was just dropped>

Channel Energy: So, they took away a really cool, if heavily DM style dependent ability and gave an ability to the whole party that has a Cleric in it one instead. It was ok, but wasn't really a fan, and like Turn or Rebuke Undead/Elemental options more overall. Overall, I did not like the abundence of cheap healing really altering playstyle as well. Person preference.

Magic Weapons overcoming DR: At first I liked this. Actually, let mw baxk up. This was one of those rules they slipped in under the radar, with the intent of buffing martials. Hence why Greater Magic Weapon doesn't get this bonus. At first, like I said, hey that sounds cool. But to be honest, as a 4 Star DM of PF for like a decade, it didn't really work out so well, in my opinion. Both because you had later classes and options, (all from magical classes) that got it basically for free, (BB Magus, Greater or Improved Arcane Strike), basically benefitting non-martials or archers the most. The other thing I didn't like, and for me this is the bigger issue was it kind of made the game like easy mode. Needing different weapons for different enemies just didn't matter so much, often once you got that +3 weapon, but +5 just threw DR out the window almost completely. And archery, the single best fighting style in the game benefitted the most, because it was cheaper to by magical ammo for effects and keep your bow all +'s for DR.

CMB/CMD: At first I was neutral here. Intent was to streamline manuevers and try to give Fighters/Martials/Monks an edge, and to also attempt to make things like straightup damage less required. It really took PF until its later years to sort of fix this though, so it was not mostly an obsolete, wasted Feat path after level 5ish. Streamlining is usually not a good thing, all in all, despite it seeming to be a common design goal these years. It led to some oddities in rules like Trip Weapons being required rather than offering bonuses like in 3E, or the 3.5 Mounted Overrun issue coming back, or some Manuevers no longer really working the right way.

Fly Skill: Why?!?!?! Seriously, if there was one thing I would outright remove from the game, it is this. It does nothing but slow down combat, it hinders everyone that is 2+dump stat or even 4+Int to try to take away another advantage they might eventually get to help keep up, and is just more bother than it is worth. Bad move. Bad.

Multiclassing & Favored Class Penalty: 3E, as a system did an amazing job with allowing custimization options. And honestly, how often did the XP penalty even come up. I don't remember it being a huge deal. Ever. Now, PFs optional FCB is usually cool. I do agree that I don't think the vast majority of the other options should be racially based, but rather just options for the class, unless it is a rare case that it is really tied to a specific race. However, some are just downright trap options and others are too good.

Traits: Are interesting. A little bit of a background and a little bit of an extra boost that can help out with the lack of skill points at first level. Traits are meant to be like 1/2 Feats. Good idea and good implimentation. Keep.

Feats: A very mixed bag. Some options where great, (and largely portable), and some not. On the other hand, PF had at least two published Feats that actually made you worse at something or did absolutely nothing. Like much of PFs work, there is some fairly obvious bias towards some things, which tended to leave other things out in the cold most of the time. I tended to hate most of the changes PF implemented from 3.5, like Power Attack, and there was also a really bad habit ofgood Feats for anyone NOT Arcane, Bard, Rogue, Oracle, or Druid getting nerfed and a ton of crappy Feats. Actually, Barbarians had some nice options, too. Martials did get some towards the end, but tended to be out of luck much of the time.

[Beckett]

Functionally, witches trade the bonus spells of their top 2-3 spell levels for at will abilities that are weaker than those spells. That is a good or bad trade depending on whether your game has one encounter per day or 10.

Not really. Many of the Hexes scalled very well. Witches are more like Wizards with Reserve Feats (or even Warlocks in a sense). They didn't really get significantly weaker over more encounters per day because they could conserve spells much easier, and even if out of spells, could usually still own with just Hexes. They did, partially trade out versatility (comparitevely to a Wizard) for a lot more enegizer bunnies.

[upho]

Spoiler: stuff not directly pointed at PF anymore

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You say this as if getting +4 on the attempt and ignoring AoOs isn't already a strong option, as if -4 attack and AC and not being able to move until you spend an action and eat an AoO isn't enough of a penalty. None of the other Improved [maneuver] feats in 3.5 do more (or are as widely applicable, or as powerful of a status effect), why should Improved Trip?

Because the other maneuvers are underpowered. By a lot. And not because they don't have as strong DPR boost options as trip, but because their effects are by themselves far too weak to make them worthy of investments. You nerf IT down to their baseline, the only result you'll get is that none of the maneuvers will see use except as rider effects in spam combos to maximize DPR. Which doesn't make for interesting (or realistic) combat.

If the goal is to make each maneuver the most effective use of an action in certain situations, they all need to be boosted considerably and/or at least full bab classes probably need to get their related Improved feats for free. Otherwise, those "windows of opportunity" you mentioned will simply happen so rarely the maneuver rules won't be worth the paper they were written on.

And I disagree. A high level mundane melee guy can trip or wrestle an Elephant and I'm fine with that, but there has to be a limit.

And what is the reason for there having to be a limit to these things, when the entire game otherwise has none of them?

I don't have a problem with dealing damage. I do have a problem when people only see mundane combat as what offensive actions you can take.

Which dealing damage is the epitome of.

There is no melee DPR role- the melee role is to take (or negate) melee hits in place of those in the party who are bad at taking melee hits, and have some amount of reliable no-resource damage.

Why should melee be confined to this singular role?

And if this one role was intended for melee, why are there so many very strong DPR options, relatively few and weak options for surviving focused fire at the frontline, and no options for forcing enemies to attack the melee frontliner instead of the squishy allies?

As is, a party is much better off not including a PC attempting to fill the role you're talking about. Mostly because of its sad lack of support, but also because of the design of so called "squishy" classes in 3.5 means they have little need of someone to take melee hits for them, at least not after the earliest levels in a game played according to guidelines.

There is no "competitive" melee build, because there is no competition.

Not in the sense you seem to refer to, no. But there is plenty of competition between options for a PC's limited resources, all the way from race and class options down to options for how to spend an action in a specific situation. And these options vary greatly in not only their capacity to reflect a character concept mechanically, but also in their capacity to help a PC overcome the challenges they face in an adventure.

That's essentially a "but this other thing is OP too!" defense.

No. First, I'm saying that IT being OP in comparison to other Improved maneuver feats tells you absolutely nothing of whether it's net total cost/benefit ratio stands out as significantly greater than that of other options of comparable cost in the game. And if you nerf stuff primarily on the basis of comparisons limited to such a very narrow selection of options of a conceptually similar nature, there's a very high risk you end up nerfing the wrong things and simply make the actually OP options even more so.

Second, I'm saying that maybe there are additional related concerns and goals worth considering here, such as giving maneuver related options overall a good enough cost/benefit ratio they'll see more play and decrease the old monotonous damage focus of melee.

But of course, if none of this is a concern and the effects of your nerf are known and fully intentional, then go ahead.

And if you're not satisfied with what a Fighter can do, then you take a PrC, or be a Tome of Battle class, or both.

And what are your thoughts on your IT nerf making the Fighter even weaker and more confined to a repetitive single-target DPR melee combat style in comparison to the ToB and less melee focused classes? Is this consequence an unfortunate but acceptable degree of "collateral damage", fully intentional, simply unimportant or something else in your opinion?

Again, you're basically using the "but everything else is crap!" defense, setting an arbitrary power level that everything must meet.

No. First, if I actually thought "everything else is crap", I'd obviously not only invalidate any argument based on power against nerfing trip or improving the other maneuver options, but I'd also have very little reason to call everything else crap in the first place. And I sincerely don't believe you actually have such extremely low expectations of my cognitive capabilities.

Second, despite what I've said about related matters in my previous post, it appears you still don't understand how I determine whether something has an acceptable power level, nor whether I take aspects other than power into account or what those aspects are. Hopefully what I've already written in this post makes this clearer.

Combat maneuvers are not about "power." They're about maneuvering, tactics. You don't trip or disarm or grapple because it's powerful, you do it because it fits the situation.

And how do you determine whether it fits the situation?

Not sure where you're aiming at here. Obviously if I've written down the limits and changes required to keep things in line, there shouldn't be a need for players to "self-censor." And obviously if someone takes a splatbook'd/char-op'd character into a game that is not designed for it, the game isn't going to work.

I honestly wasn't aiming much at all, mostly just making a nod towards the fact that generally speaking, the less tightly balanced PC options are, the greater the need to define a specific game's expected mechanical power level, and the greater the responsibility is typically put on the players to build PC's matching with those expectations. How far one should go towards either extreme on this scale is of course highly dependent on the players in question and your own preferences.

Nope: "If your character is wearing armor, use the worse figure (from armor or from load) for each category. Do not stack the penalties." It's at the end of Carrying Capacity- Weight, right before -Lifting and Dragging.

Sorry, I was being sloppy in my wording. I was referring to the fact that if you're strong enough to take no movement penalties whatsoever for carrying a full plate in your backpack, the moment you take said full plate out of your back pack and put it on you'll suddenly become considerably slower for some weird reason. The exact opposite is true in RL.

Or game design. Because if there's no penalty for having tons of AC there's no reason to ever have anyone not in heavy armor. And then instead of nimble lightly armored rogues and wizards in robes you have everyone in full plate from 3rd level until the end of time.

First, there are plenty of other ways to balance armor aside from mobility penalties, and quite a few significantly more realistic (some also used in other RPGs). Second, as I mentioned a few posts back, of course realistic rules would make full plate a complete no-brainer for most PCs once you can afford it, which would be a highly accurate simulation of the RL historical situation.

I was really looking forward to your response to the example, and instead you've completely ignored it-

I didn't ignore it. I very clearly responded to it, and even provided my own counter-example from a RL perspective (fighting a humanoid the size of a 3-year old). But I guess I must spell it out:

The statistics and probabilities you mention do nothing to help make the game's size rules appear more realistic. And while damage is of course not the same thing as impact energy, it does point at the issue of there being something serious missing if the rules attempted to actually simulate RL physics. Might've been least a bit more realistic if a human hit by a giant's melee attack is simply knocked off their feet and thrown some distance, maybe something like an integrated Awesome Blow or +50% the damage (if the giant pounds the smaller human into the ground instead).

Regarding hp, the giant should obviously have a lot more, likely at the very least four times that of the average human per HD or a combo of more hp and DR/- to reflect the increased ability to withstand physical punishment inherent to a much greater body mass. Likewise, judging by the carrying capacity numbers which are actually comparable to RL values, the Str score of a creature of about the same mass as the giant should probably be least four times that of the average human's, and probably a lot more for a hill giant, as I'd assume it's intended to be a lot stronger than say a horse of equal mass. The end result would of course be a very weird foe difficult to balance, being much more dangerous in melee than the current hill giant, but just as vulnerable to the usual non-physical stunts. Which is also most likely why size differences are so toned down in the game.

But really, if you actually want to compare statistics like hp and Str more accurately, there's no need for fantasy humanoids able to wield weapons, so I'd recommend you use a Large creature that exists in RL, like a horse. But I can assure you that if you compare the associated relative differences between the game's horse and human with those of their RL counterparts, it'll simply confirm how size differences are significantly toned down in the game. Hints: the likely equivalent of a large "knight's horse" or destrier (say 1,200 lbs) has a Str of 14 and a large draft horse (about 1,600 - 2,400 lbs) a Str of 16, and both have 19 hp according to the rules.

(It may save you a lot of time if you assume that I'm already fully aware of the basic numbers and rough probabilities a PC has against a monster I'm using in an example. It's sort of a side-effect of not using CR when designing encounters, as I prefer the actual challenge level far closer to the one intended than the CR system is capable of.)

3.5 PHB is the starting point, so by definition it's not the bloat. Splatbooks and adaptations can develop bloat.

So you believe no casters after the PHB are allowed to have any features besides their casting, may only be defined by their spell lists, as anything else would be needless "feature bloat"?

Even so: duh the Druid is bloated as all heck, everyone knows that. It's pretty well known story that one of the playtesters revealed the Druid player never used Wild Shape for anything more than scouting, and the statblocks in Enemies and Allies (purported to be the playtest statblocks) don't even have animal companions listed (familiars and mounts, no ACs).

I think you're talking about a 3e playtest and not 3.5, because this seems similar to how people would play a 2.5 druid. But regardless of how WS is used, you're saying it's needless "feature bloat" that does nothing to help define the druid as a class?

The cleric has three non-spell features: domain 1, domain 2, and turn undead. Turn Undead is a safety feature that ensures the party always has some sort of response to incorporeal undead and does almost nothing else aside from dust mooks outside of splatbooks. The two domains are worth 2-3 bonus feats, frontloaded compared to the Wizard, but neccesary if you want domains to be part of their identity from 1st level. It's also a well known story that the person who wrote the Sorcerer hated them. So we have: one class with measured bonus feats, one class with measured features, one class denied any features, and one class with a ton of features no one tested. Which of these four, two of which are the default classes for their roles and two not, are the correct measures to design new classes against?

All of them, plus all the other classes released.

Also, it appears you believe the witch is supposed to be some sort of archetype or sub-class of one of the PHB casters. It's not, and I'm certain it never was intended to be.

Honestly, there's pretty much no amount of "but it has a shorter spell list" that is going to convince me they need a bunch of at-will/encounter abilities to make up for it. PF made them a full caster because full caster, and gave them Hexes because class features. A "restricted" class list isn't a "balancing" feature, it's an identity feature.

Why do think I claimed the witch is less powerful than the wizard because it has a shorter spell list? Please read my post again. And yes, at least in the case of the witch, the shorter list wouldn't be much of "balancing feature", hence why I didn't claim it was.

But let me make it clearer for you:
Fizban: Goddamn OP witch class gets at-will spells on top of full wizard casting!
upho: Hexes are generally quite a bit less powerful than spells. And the witch doesn't get full wizard casting. It gets 2 slots/level less than a specialist wizard.
Fizban: It should be defined by a unique spell list instead of this needless feature bloat crap!
upho: It has a unique spell list, which is shorter than the wiz/sorc list and includes other spells. And hexes do also very much help define the witch, in terms of fluff as well as crunch. It doesn't feel or play like a wizard, but has it's own distinctly different identity, despite what you may think of the differentiating factors.
Fizban: But it's STILL goddamn OP and badwrongfun because it doesn't follow the Divine Design Commandments given to us by the Holy Cows in the Sacred PHB! BLASPHEMY!
upho: Great, it's actually a different class! More importantly, I think most people who have actually played or GM'ed a witch for more than a level or two would agree with me when I say it's definitely less powerful than both the PF and 3.5 wizard. Especially in an official AP or game run according to guidelines, since the at-will nature of hexes are less powerful than the wizard's greater number of spells/day beyond the very earliest levels in such games.

I'm sure you'll let me know how much I'm misrepresenting you here...

[upho]

PF 1e was a new game, it was free to define new balance expectations. It doesn't matter whether Wizard + Class Features looks overpowered to you, it matters if it is bad design for substantive reasons.

Exactly.

That's not really the right frame of reference though. It doesn't matter if Improved Trip is better than Weapon Focus, it matters if Improved Trip is too good in absolute terms. And I think it clearly isn't, which means the correct fix was to buff other melee options.

Indeed. Which you'll notice I also say in the very post you're quoting, and further emphasize in my latest reply to Fizban (see spoiler).

This is certainly true, but it's important to distinguish "realism" and "verisimilitude". The game world's physics need not be consistent with reality (though it should have a baseline similarity to reality in order to adjudicate basic actions like jumping or throwing things), but they need to be consistent with themselves. If tripping (or whatever) is a super awesome tactic, armies should include lots of pikemen or other trip specialists.

Ah, I've already been through this with Fizban, and it seems we actually mostly agree on this. And yes, verisimilitude is more important. But it's also primarily PF's own internal fictional verisimilitude that usually matters the most, not likeness to actual RL.

While I obviously disagree with Fizban's position that no one with spells should have other class features, I do think "it has a shorter list" is a bad argument. It's still (presumably) longer than the list of spells any given Sorcerer has access to, and those guys are fine. This board tends to dramatically overestimate the value of versatility.

It wasn't the argument Fizban understood it to be and had nothing to do with power. It was a response to his specific demand that a caster must be defined by its spell list, saying that the witch's list indeed different, being both shorter and containing spells not on the wiz/sorc list.

[Gnaeus]

Not really. Many of the Hexes scalled very well. Witches are more like Wizards with Reserve Feats (or even Warlocks in a sense). They didn't really get significantly weaker over more encounters per day because they could conserve spells much easier, and even if out of spells, could usually still own with just Hexes. They did, partially trade out versatility (comparitevely to a Wizard) for a lot more enegizer bunnies.

They scale, but are still worse than most similar spells by mid level.

What are the best hexes?
Slumber: mind affecting single target SOL. Clearly worse than level 4 will disablers like Fear or confusion
Evil Eye: mind affecting single target will debuff. Most of the time people on this board argue it isn’t even worth using. I disagree, but totally not good as a high level spell
Misfortune: will debuff that gives disadvantage. Very slightly better than third level spell pugwampi’s Grace.

Yes, they are good in days with lots of encounters. Pretty sure I said that. But still, for most of their career the hexes are worse than the top level spell slots.

[Fizban]

Spoiler: yeah I'm getting tired of this

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If the goal is to make each maneuver the most effective use of an action in certain situations, they all need to be boosted considerably and/or . . .

No they don't. You just need to have better situations.

And what is the reason for there having to be a limit to these things, when the entire game otherwise has none of them?

If by "the entire game otherwise" you mean "hit point damage" then sure, whatever.

Which dealing damage is the epitome of.

Missed the point.

Why should melee be confined to this singular role?

Because that's what the rest of the game is balanced on. Even so, you're the one complaining about confinement in response to. . . not being as OP as you want to be. (Because if you demand an option that is clearly OP, that's what you're doing, even without getting into the fact that your definition of OP rather different than mine, since the only possibly supported definition by the 3.5 rules would be based on monsters, whose CRs you apparently ignore. So let's not deal with that).

And if this one role was intended for melee, why are there so many very strong DPR options, relatively few and weak options for surviving focused fire at the frontline, and no options for forcing enemies to attack the melee frontliner instead of the squishy allies?

1: People like damage, splatbooks crank up the damage- if you actually look at the PHB, you'll find very little "strong DPR options". 2: Well when you stop ignoring AC and start factoring in the rest of the party like you're supposed to, it's not nearly so hard. 3: Because tactical wargamers don't need MMO style forced aggro.

As is, a party is much better off not including a PC attempting to fill the role you're talking about. Mostly because of its sad lack of support, but also because of the design of so called "squishy" classes in 3.5 means they have little need of someone to take melee hits for them, at least not after the earliest levels in a game played according to guidelines.

And if you play the game differently from how it was expected, you get different results. Which people like to complain about. Which leads to a whole different line about how the game "promised" them they could play whatever they want however they want in any combination and everything would work perfectly. Which it did not.

No. First, I'm saying that IT being OP in comparison to other Improved maneuver feats tells you absolutely nothing of whether it's net total cost/benefit ratio stands out as significantly greater than that of other options of comparable cost in the game. And if you nerf stuff primarily on the basis of comparisons limited to such a very narrow selection of options of a conceptually similar nature, there's a very high risk you end up nerfing the wrong things and simply make the actually OP options even more so.

I mean, I already covered how tripping itself was still the king of combat maneuvers even without the feat giving free attacks, and how I've probably nerfed all the other things you think Improved Trip is supposed to be competing against, what more do you want?

And what are your thoughts on your IT nerf making the Fighter even weaker and more confined to a repetitive single-target DPR melee combat style in comparison to the ToB and less melee focused classes? Is this consequence an unfortunate but acceptable degree of "collateral damage", fully intentional, simply unimportant or something else in your opinion?

Shouldn't that already be obvious- you think I'm "confining" them to a single role after all. ToB is actually quite overrated in what it does regarding "combat maneuvers," the biggest thing being that it gives defenses and more non-full-attack options. Mundane martial characters aren't competing with anything else because party roles do not compete with each other, so the "less melee focused classes" don't matter in this comparison. If someone in the group is making a character for a different role and is also infringing on yours, they're the one in the wrong, and rather than unending the entire paradigm of the game maybe you should just fix whatever they're using to infringe?

Second, despite what I've said about related matters in my previous post, it appears you still don't understand how I determine whether something has an acceptable power level, nor whether I take aspects other than power into account or what those aspects are. Hopefully what I've already written in this post makes this clearer.

Nope, still clear as mud. At best you seem to be presenting the idea that if anything is weaker than the most powerful option, it must be buffed until it matches the most powerful option, and said most powerful option can be drawn from any published material including those which are obviously more powerful than those that came before them, and can include classes from other roles. Those are all ideas implied from your post. And yes, I'd like to think your cognitive capabilities are enough to see that "balancing" a game based on all of those simultaneously is impossible.

And how do you determine whether it fits the situation?

Apparently based on what is most "powerful," by your implication. Or, you know, based on tactical needs. Like if it's more important to stop a guy for a turn right now, or reduce their damage output, or get past them, or capture them, or prevent them from attacking someone else. No, these should not be coming up every fight, which seems to be what some people want.

First, there are plenty of other ways to balance armor aside from mobility penalties, and quite a few significantly more realistic (some also used in other RPGs). Second, as I mentioned a few posts back, of course realistic rules would make full plate a complete no-brainer for most PCs once you can afford it, which would be a highly accurate simulation of the RL historical situation.

I thought we just got past the part with the quibbling about simulationism. There may be "plenty of other ways," but they're also more complicated, and aren't tactical. You're probably thinking stuff like "armor as DR"- great, now everything is more reliant on magic to get past the DR, or you have to print a bunch of DR-penetrating stuff to fix your fix, and the vast majority of monsters that were not designed for that are going to need to be re-designed, nice fix.

I didn't ignore it. I very clearly responded to it, and even provided my own counter-example from a RL perspective (fighting a humanoid the size of a 3-year old).

A small creature isn't a human child. A small creature is an adult with the appropriate strength to survive in the wild- a shorter primate armed with weapons would be plenty deadly.

And while damage is of course not the same thing as impact energy, it does point at the issue of there being something serious missing if the rules attempted to actually simulate RL physics.

So if the game is a physics engine instead of a game, then it's game-ness is a problem, gotcha.

Might've been least a bit more realistic if a human hit by a giant's melee attack is simply knocked off their feet and thrown some distance, maybe something like an integrated Awesome Blow or +50% the damage (if the giant pounds the smaller human into the ground instead).

You've seen how people just hit the ground and spring back up in various things, right? That's not being knocked prone. And you've got a whole 5'+ in your one combat square, could be as much as 10' if you're counting the amount that you can push forward and be pushed back towards other squares. Hey look, 10' of distance and falling over is just part of the attack, took me about as long to reconcile as it did for you to make it up. Assuming that hit was even a square enough hit to throw someone, when I specifically pointed out that any attack which isn't a kill is by definition a glancing blow, and a glancing blow doesn't usually throw people that far.

Regarding hp, the giant should obviously have a lot more, likely at the very least four times that of the average human per HD or a combo of more hp and DR/- to reflect the increased ability to withstand physical punishment inherent to a much greater body mass.

Now who's against heroic combat?

Likewise, judging by the carrying capacity numbers which are actually comparable to RL values, the Str score of a creature of about the same mass as the giant should probably be least four times that of the average human's, and probably a lot more for a hill giant, as I'd assume it's intended to be a lot stronger than say a horse of equal mass. . . .Which is also most likely why size differences are so toned down in the game.

So you've made an assumption that giants should have far more useful energy than other creatures of the same size, and are complaining that the game doesn't reflect that. In actuality, the game's carrying capacity numbers are already massively inflated for anything bigger than a horse, because that useful energy is going to go down as the square cube law wrecks you. Elephants can't actually carry all that much. So your complaint about realism stems from forcing an assumption about the fantasy creature through a faulty physics engine.

So you believe no casters after the PHB are allowed to have any features besides their casting, may only be defined by their spell lists, as anything else would be needless "feature bloat"?

So you take every instance of the word "can" as "always do?"

I think you're talking about a 3e playtest and not 3.5, because this seems similar to how people would play a 2.5 druid. But regardless of how WS is used, you're saying it's needless "feature bloat" that does nothing to help define the druid as a class?

Was there even a significant 3.5 playtest? Just because bloat is iconic doesn't mean it's not bloat.

All of them, plus all the other classes released.

The game is designed around roles, not "class balance." You may personally have reached a spot you like, but people who try to "balance" everything against everything are going to have a loooong trek from 3.x to where they want to be. And they've been trying for years, essentially writing entire new editions and then claiming 3.5 is bad for not matching their personal version.

Also, it appears you believe the witch is supposed to be some sort of archetype or sub-class of one of the PHB casters. It's not, and I'm certain it never was intended to be.

Well if it's a full caster whose only change is a "shorter" spell list, and their features aren't any more powerful than the PHB casters' features, then shouldn't it be?

Why do think I claimed the witch is less powerful than the wizard because it has a shorter spell list? Please read my post again. And yes, at least in the case of the witch, the shorter list wouldn't be much of "balancing feature", hence why I didn't claim it was.

Well everyone else sure is.

But let me make it clearer for you:
Fizban: Goddamn OP witch class gets at-will spells on top of full wizard casting!

Well you had been reasonable for while, guess it had to end eventually.

upho: Hexes are generally quite a bit less powerful than spells. And the witch doesn't get full wizard casting. It gets 2 slots/level less than a specialist wizard.

You are literally the first person I've seen mention specialist wizards in this context. To which I would respond that specialist wizards aren't actually balanced either (on various planes). Also, people keep claiming that the Witch has fewer spells than a Wizard, but they clearly use the exact same table and both are SAD, so where is this supposed loss of spells coming from?

I guess I answered the question myself with the assumption of specialist Wizards. Fine, chalk up the continuation of the myth of specialization as a balanced feature as one of the things PF got wrong, along with every game element they balanced on top of it.

And hexes do also very much help define the witch, in terms of fluff as well as crunch. It doesn't feel or play like a wizard, but has it's own distinctly different identity, despite what you may think of the differentiating factors.

Bloat with identity is still bloat. I would have thought the Druid example made that point.

Not really. Many of the Hexes scalled very well. Witches are more like Wizards with Reserve Feats (or even Warlocks in a sense). They didn't really get significantly weaker over more encounters per day because they could conserve spells much easier, and even if out of spells, could usually still own with just Hexes. They did, partially trade out versatility (comparitevely to a Wizard) for a lot more enegizer bunnies.

It's funny how people will accuse me of holding up a sacred cow of core class balance, while simulatneously holding up an even greater sacred cow of core class balance (I'm just quoting Beckett because it's the shortest post about Witches getting extra mileage from Hexes).

The Witch has greater staying power at the cost of "versatility relative to a Wizard," in a game where the strategic use and conservation of resources is rather a big part, and there is no role that depends on "versatility of a wizard." People look at the Wizard and all the things they can theorhetically do, and count any class with less than that as less powerful and thus deserving of compensation, because the wizard is apparently the balance of everything. Except the "wizard" role is actually just getting past physical defenses and hitting groups of enemies, nothing more (and nothing less).

Does the Witch fill this role with their spells? Pretty sure, yes. Does the Witch have as many spells as a Wizard? Yes. Does the Witch also have a bunch of extra staying power from Hexes? All signs point to yes. But I'll give you that maybe if you upgrade the default balance of everything from Wizard to Specialist Wizard, then the Witch is giving up a few slots (and feats) for those Hexes with are worth more than a few slots.

[Segev]

Yeah, I don't understand how you think ToB and 4e are the same thing. ToB has variety in its resource management, 4e doesn't. It's not even like ToB has plumbed the limits of what you could do with their setup either. You could have maneuvers refresh when you switch stance. You could have maneuvers refresh when you kill an enemy. You could have maneuvers refresh every round. Whereas 4e is pretty explicit about it's "everyone is At-Will/Encounter/Daily all the time" plan.

It's not that 4e "is" ToB. It's that they clearly took the basic idea of ToB and used it to design all of the class features. All of them.

The fact that you can point to ToB and STILL see more mechanical variety is another strike against 4e for its failure to explore how mechanics can model cool, different-feeling things.

[Nifft]

It's not that 4e "is" ToB. It's that they clearly took the basic idea of ToB and used it to design all of the class features. All of them.

The fact that you can point to ToB and STILL see more mechanical variety is another strike against 4e for its failure to explore how mechanics can model cool, different-feeling things.

That's a more coherent point than what the other poster offered, but you're also wrong.

ToB Maneuvers and their recovery mechanics are vaguely similar to 4e Encounter powers, but they're not actually encounter-based -- the Crusader, for example, has a recovery mechanic which is expected to trigger during an encounter, possibly several times per encounter.

ToB Maneuvers have no Daily and no At-Will equivalents.

There are some ToB ideas which did make their way into 4e -- for example, the Devoted Spirit maneuvers whereby you stab a jerk and heal an ally at the same time, instead of having to choose between healing vs. stabbing -- but the AEDU mechanical structure doesn't seem to trace back to ToB Maneuvers.