3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?

[Hackulator]

Fair enough point, and I certainly won't argue that D&D 3E's "tier one" characters are a very poor thing to balance towards. Really, I don't think the tier system is a particularly good or useful tool for that at all. It analyze's 3E's unbalanced environment but I don't think it can tell us much about creating an environment that is balanced.

Well I mean, Wizards are pretty much the worst designed class in the game from almost every perspective other than that of a player who wants to be able to do everything.

[Crake]

On top of this, it appears you're forgetting about the summoners other major class features, such as super-boosted spontaneous Cha-based 6/9 casting from the best short list in the game. How often do you see Hulk do the equivalent of casting haste, spiked pit or greater teleport in combat? How about the equivalent of summon monster 10+ times per day?

If we're using the tech=magic analogy with iron man and captain america, then it would follow that scientist = magic user, he just hasn't picked very many appliccable spells. I mean, clearly he's got craft construct, since the helped tony build ultron.

[Talakeal]

Fair enough point, and I certainly won't argue that D&D 3E's "tier one" characters are a very poor thing to balance towards. Really, I don't think the tier system is a particularly good or useful tool for that at all. It analyzes 3E's unbalanced environment but I don't think it can tell us much about creating an environment that is balanced.

Doh, forgot to link the thread I was talking about.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...ot-the-problem

[Quertus]

Oh absolutely.

Characters always need limits to make themselves unique, which is one of the reasons I have long argued that the existing T1 characters are bad for the game.

We discussed it at length in this thread.

Although, I will say that personality and aesthetics do go a lot further towards making a character interesting than a list of abilities.

My point was merely that if we are looking at the theoretical maximum capabilities of a mundane character we can do a lot better than Captain America.

Edit: Forgot to link the thread I referanced:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...ot-the-problem

Fair enough point, and I certainly won't argue that D&D 3E's "tier one" characters are a very poor thing to balance towards. Really, I don't think the tier system is a particularly good or useful tool for that at all. It analyzes 3E's unbalanced environment but I don't think it can tell us much about creating an environment that is balanced.

My contention in that old thread was "characters actually getting to contribute to the adventure is a good thing. Tier 1 characters are the most likely to be able to contribute to the widest range of adventures. Therefore, Tier 1 characters are a good thing. To my mind, they represent the solution, not the problem. Unless you really want to play the game of 'I cannot contribute to this and want to just sit and twiddle my thumbs', of course." (with the caveat that "broken abilities are broken, why are we even discussing them?")

Also, that thread had this gem:

@ImNotTrevor:

I agree roleplaying games are group endeavors. However, you are using this fact to leap to conclusions.

Namely, it's implicit throughout your argument that you think players acting as a group requires their characters to be equals in a group.

This need not be so.

Furthermore, you imply that when someone knowingly chooses to play a weaker character, the GM has to change their challenge design to make that character have equal share of the spotlight.

This need not be so either.

For example, in the game where there are heroes and crippled orphans, the game can be about those heroes protecting said orphan from harm. The challenge for the heroes is to keep the orphans alive and tackle the epic threat, the challenge for the orphans is to stay alive.

Who in such scenarios has more spotlight? Who knows? Whether the heroes or the orphans have more spotlight isn't decided by how they contribute against a single challenge, the challenge isn't even the same for all characters. It's decided by player activity and GM giving out turns. Furthermore, "having spotlight" and contributing to the game aren't the same as contributing against challenges. From an in-game perspective, the orphans can be entirely useless or even detrimental to the heroes yet at the same time be dear and important to the players, because the players wanted to play a game of heroes protecting crippled orphans. The players of the orphans can be fine with this. The players of the heroes can be fine with this.

The dynamic of a dysfunctional group can be the challenge, it can be the focal point of a game, and it doesn't have to imply a dysfunctional player dynamic nor a dysfunctional game. And you don't need unbroken before-the-fact consensus about this: As I suggested earlier, you could as well tell the players that they'll create their characters individually and have to deal with what comes out after-the-fact.

Tl;dr: When designing a new game, you can blow up any pre-existing metagame about the characters being equals and leave it on each player to decide how much they want to contribute against challenges and how central they want their characters to be, through how they design their character and how they play them.

, which I think explains my thoughts on the matter better than I could. Balance <> fun.

Thanks, Talakeal - I may pull in some more quotes for reference as I dig through that thread.

[MeimuHakurei]

(Frozen_Feet's quote)

which I think explains my thoughts on the matter better than I could. Balance <> fun.

Thanks, Talakeal - I may pull in some more quotes for reference as I dig through that thread.

Keep in mind that once again playing a weaker character needs the group's buy in just as much as a stronger character does, since not all players are willing to babysit a weakling - why do you think escort missions tend to be so contentious in video games?

But I would like to bring up again that just because imbalance can not only be unproblematic but also desirable it doesn't mean that any method to accomplish imbalance is adequate. The martial/caster divide and a number of other design quirks in 3.5 do not properly work as a power level adjuster since they require careful research to accomplish the intended table balance delta - margin of error is somewhat forgivable here. If you believe that different levels aren't the best way to do it either (which is fair, since the scaling exp mechanics makes lower level PCs catch up), there actually is another possible option to make your character more/less powerful: the base stats. A lower point buy will weaken your character while a higher point buy will do the opposite. That needs tweaking, however, since classes like the Monk are dependent on many more attributes than classes like the Wizard are, so the former will be far more inhibited by low stats than the latter.

[Ignimortis]

No. Because you can do mundane characters (and more limited mages) at low level. You don't lose the ability to support "guy who swords good" and "reality warping demigod", you just stop pretending those characters are equivalent. Your 6th level Barbarian is someone like Conan and he's perfectly able to play in a party with a 6th level Wizard like Gandalf. If that game goes up to 16th -- and if you want to play "mundane guy" there's no reason to do that -- the Barbarian becomes Thor and the Wizard becomes Doctor Strange. Or whatever you want to use as "high level Barbarian" and "high level Wizard". Maybe Karsa and Quick Ben.

It would not require 40 levels. Map it out. Can you pick forty distinct power levels from whatever you think the source material is? Most books have like three power levels that characters are at. A long series might have ten. Twenty is already enough that you're going to have to stick characters from multiple sources together. Splitting up levels that much isn't going to satisfy people's desire to progress, it's going to piss them off because they don't get the abilities that are important to their concept. If "Conan" takes ten levels, that means you only get to be Conan for 10% of the campaign.

But that was part of my point. This isn't about simulation, it's about levels being fun and meaningful in a gameplay sense. While I do agree that delaying abilities only frustrates players (IMO, all the major parts of your character should be there by the end of the first act out of three, and then you get more of them or upgrades to what you already can do, but not specifically new stuff), you can't also drop all the things at level 1. Every RPG ever created includes character progression, which probably can be split into at least five levels, and actually could be very well stretched to ten. It's just that D&D doesn't do much with its' levels if you're not a spellcaster or someone similar, but 3.5 does mash together a lot of power levels - a lot more than the typical RPG does.

This is doable if you split the game itself into tiers, and there's no level 20 Fighter - by that point he's a Cosmic Defender or a Dawn Solar or something, who used to be a Fighter a long time ago, before mortality and rules of physics became too much of a burden. A split of 5/10/5 would be fine, as would a split of 7/7/6 or 6/7/7. Actually, 6/7/7 might be the best, since there are rules for E6 and all that.

But making the game work with those would require either severe jumps in power built into classes (so a Fighter gets a power spike at level 7 and another one at level 14), or packs of 6-level long classes which can progress into wholly different 7-level classes, which end up as a third 7-level long class.

I can't exactly put my finger on what would be the problem with the first way (maybe it's actually fine), but the second actually makes it so that if you want to play a Wizard, you have to play Warmage first, and if you want to play a Warblade, you have to play Fighter first, which is actually bad, because currently those classes can be played for a better part of 20 levels, and these changes would reduce that significantly.

Both of those things could be made in a balanced way for the power levels you suggest. And in any case, the game can progress from a point where "Exotic Weapon Master" is an appropriate concept to a point where "Planar Shepherd" is an appropriate concept. Just as it progresses from a point where "a gnoll" is an appropriate enemy to a point where "the demon lord of gnolls" is an appropriate enemy.

The concept of Planar Shepherd is that instead of connecting to nature on this world, you connect to nature on some other world. The broken things about it are that one of the specific planes in Eberron has a broken trait, and that the specific way its shapeshifting works makes it OP. If you just didn't have a plane with a 10:1 time trait and didn't grant SLAs (and generally had less broken shapeshifting), there's no reason the concept is incompatible with a Fighter/Warmage/Healer balance point.

Exotic Weapon Master is even easier. The class has a mandate that you learn how to use weapons that are weird in ways that are cool. Yes, most of those weapons aren't particularly impressive. But there's no reason they couldn't be. You could have an Exotic Weapon Master who learned the secrets of the implanted bio-weapons of whatever those things from the Fiend Folio are (K-something I think?). Or they could learn to use regular exotic weapons for mystical martial arts, like using a whip to gain snake powers. Frankly, if you gave it full casting progression, it would probably be a semi-viable option for a gish without doing anything else.

So basically turn Planar Shepherd into Horizon Walker and Exotic Weapon Master into a full spellcasting class which also has a weird weapon. To be honest, I don't think that works particularly well, unless you write a lot of Exotic Weapon Master-exclusive content, which would be like an initiator discipline for each of the various weapons.

[upho]

If we're using the tech=magic analogy with iron man and captain america, then it would follow that scientist = magic user, he just hasn't picked very many appliccable spells.

Ok. Who is this "he" you're referring to? If it's Bruce/Hulk, you're simply saying "But he knows how to cast a rare few rituals with casting time of at least an hour, and he has a few crafting feats and skills!" In which case I say "So what?" This still has virtually zero actual relevance in regards to determining how well Bruce/Hulk matches the synth.

Again, just by simply looking at the distinguishing qualities and abilities of these heroes and the synth, it's clear those of Iron Man matches with those of the synth in far more ways than those of Bruce/Hulk do. For example, you don't need to stretch your imagination very far to say that both Iron Man and the synth: a) wears fantastic power armor, b) can call on expendable minions to fight under their direct command, c) has tools to directly support other team members, and d) can use various control effects in combat. Whereas Bruce/Hulk matches none of these distinguishing qualities and abilities, not without also having to resort to such far-fetched and contorted likenesses as to render all qualities and abilities largely indistinguishable and the whole exercise meaningless.

And if it matters whether the source powering their abilities are based on "science" or "magic", then Bruce's/Hulk's abilities is most definitely far closer to the Int-based Ragechemist alchemist, and neither his or Iron Man's matches well with the Cha-based synth.

I mean, clearly he's got craft construct, since the helped tony build ultron.

What has Craft Construct to do with the synth? It's a feat, not something specifically tied to the Summoner in any way whatsoever, and arguably even less to the synth. Not to mention that it's also a feat a synth is far less likely to have than any full caster is, as a synth generally has a greater number of more important options competing for their feat slots.

And regardless of the whether we think it's fair to say Bruce has Craft Construct and "magic = science", the perhaps far greatest mismatch here is that Hulk remains largely the same mean green muscle man with largely the same physical abilities. A synth on the other hand takes on different highly fantastic shapes which typically vary very significantly with time and are rarely anywhere near as human-like as Hulk's, including multiple more or less weird limbs (even heads), natural weapons and supernatural abilities (like blindsight, half-invisibility, wingless flight etc).

[upho]

I agree that Logen as depicted in the First Law series is low level, but it should be pointed out that he's low level in no small part because the story takes place in a time period where the spirits his magic relies upon are mostly asleep and don't really do much. He gets an infodump in The Blade Itself, does a fire breath thing in one book, and talks to the guardian spirit in Best Served Cold, but other than that he doesn't do much magic (IIRC). But as I understand it, his power isn't fundamentally different from the power Bedesh got from Euz. So if you rewound things to the time of Euz or the Old Empire when more spirits were awake, his powers would presumably become some amount more impressive.

Hmm... We could perhaps call him a "potentially high level barb"? Unlike say Conan.

You're probably underestimating Karsa's power. This is a decent summary, but highlights include "basically immune to magic", "defeated two dog-gods of darkness", and "fought through a ship full of elite basically-elven mages and warriors".

Fair enough. As I haven't read the books I'm really not qualified to say anything.

[Crake]

A synth on the other hand takes on different highly fantastic shapes which typically can vary very significantly with time and are rarely anywhere near as human-like as Hulk's, including multiple more or less weird limbs (even heads), natural weapons and supernatural abilities (like blindsight, half-invisibility, wingless flight etc).

FTFY

You can literally just make your sythn summon an overly strong and large humanoid shaped creature. It doesn't HAVE to have all that other stuff. Say he's level 15, so 20 eidolon points, A humnaoid base, climb, slam and improved natural attack are 1 point each, costing 3, improved natural armor taken 3 times brings it up to 6, +2 str and con brings it up to 14, and 6 points to make him huge for a final looking statblock of

42 str
14 dex
24 con
13 natural armor
12 armor bonus
3d8+24 slam attack

I'd honestly say that's far more indicative of hulk than a +4-8 strength buff on an 8 strength scientist.

Edit: This is getting a little off topic though

[upho]

Edit: This is getting a little off topic though

Absolutely true, so I'm gonna try bringing this back on track with a related question:

Imagine if the PF barb's rage could grant say +1 size (stacking), +14 Str, +10 Con, +6 NA, +5 Will and DR 10/- by 15th level, do you think that make the game worse (=less fun)?

Spoiler: Hulk = Synth?

Show

You can literally just make your sythn summon an overly strong and large humanoid shaped creature. It doesn't HAVE to have all that other stuff. Say he's level 15, so 20 eidolon points, A humnaoid base, climb, slam and improved natural attack are 1 point each, costing 3, improved natural armor taken 3 times brings it up to 6, +2 str and con brings it up to 14, and 6 points to make him huge for a final looking statblock of

Huge+ size
42 str
14 dex
24 con
16 Int
18 Wis
28+ Cha
13 natural armor
12 armor bonus
3d8+24 slam attack
(Sp) summon monster VIII 12/day, dimension door 2/day
Spells CL 15, level/known/day: cantrips - 6 known at will, 1st - 6 known 8/day, 2nd - 6 known 7/day, 3rd - 5 known 7/day, 4th - 4 known 6/day, 5th - 4 known 5/day
(incl. create lesser demiplane, heroism, dimension door, haste, (greater and lesser) evolution surge, enlarge person, teleport, simulacrum, planar binding, greater invisibility, mass invisibility, glitterdust, create spiked pit and many more)

FTFY

I'd honestly say that's far more indicative of hulk than a +4-8 strength buff on an 8 strength scientist.

No, not a "+4-8 strength buff" but +6-10 Str, +4-12 Con, +2-8 Dex, +12 NA and -2 Int, Wis and Cha. And why necessarily "an 8 strength scientist"? For example, 16th level Ragechemist alchemist would typically have a Str of at least 32 after drinking a mutagen granting +10 Str, +2 Dex, +10 Con, +10 NA and -2 Int, Wis and Cha. The same alchemist would typically still have an Int of at least 22 (without mutagen), which is most likely far more than Bruce Banner has.

But more importantly, it seems you've forgotten

Yes, currently no 3.5/PF class is more capable of accurately reflecting Hulk's abilities in game mechanics than the synth. Yes, all three(!) current barb classes lack the raw physical power to do so even remotely as well as the synth. That does not in any way mean Hulk is anything other than the quintessential raging barbarian in every important regard, but with his power turned up to what is more appropriate for higher level D&D play. Nor does it mean the current synth is otherwise anywhere near as suitable to capture the "Hulk concept", as I believe most people (myself included) find a summoning- and buff-focused "sorcerer" able to wear a custom outsider creature like a power-armor to be pretty darn far from that concept.

And really, considering a 16th level abyssal Primalist Bloody-Knuckled Rowdy bloodrager could easily be Large size, have a Str of 40, deal several times more damage with his fists and have far less spells and other unsuitable stuff along with more numerous fitting feats and abilities than your synth above, I don't really see why you insist why a synth would be the most suitable for Hulk.

[Quertus]

Keep in mind that once again playing a weaker character needs the group's buy in just as much as a stronger character does, since not all players are willing to babysit a weakling - why do you think escort missions tend to be so contentious in video games?

Agreed. Balance to the group. Note that balance is a range, not a point. And I happen to prefer groups with larger ranges.

[Crake]

Keep in mind that once again playing a weaker character needs the group's buy in just as much as a stronger character does, since not all players are willing to babysit a weakling - why do you think escort missions tend to be so contentious in video games?

To be fair, people hate escort missions not because they're babysitting a weaker character, but because the AI for said character typically lends to absolutely stupid situations where the mission critical NPC will just stand right next to a grenade and die or something like that. Because said escort missions tend to basically have you controlling the second character using clunky mechanics, rather than having the character have some sort of intelligence.

And even weaker characters can still sometimes bring something useful to the table, a level 1 ranger with high survival can track where nobody else in the party would have been able to at that point for example, or a level 1 rogue with trapfinding etc. And yes, I know someone is going to respond with "there are spells to find traps" but not all parties are necessarily going to have that.

[upho]

To be fair, people hate escort missions not because they're babysitting a weaker character, but because the AI for said character typically lends to absolutely stupid situations where the mission critical NPC will just stand right next to a grenade and die or something like that. Because said escort missions tend to basically have you controlling the second character using clunky mechanics, rather than having the character have some sort of intelligence.

I agree. And "babysitting" is absolutely fine as long as the group has agreed upon including more serious PC imbalance in the game. And by that I mean the players as well as the GM should first ensure they're aware of the likely consequences and agreed to this before the game starts.

And again, it's also obvious the primary reason many groups unintentionally run into problems related to PC imbalance and players unknowingly having incompatible expectations in the first place is the frankly terrible related sub-systems and guidelines. Not only is there a distinct lack of good advice on how to deal with these situations in the core books, but the guidelines and sub-systems are also arguably doing their best to hide the fact these problems even exist, without even give so much as a hint of the fact that the system has a strong tendency to generate them.

I find it very likely that for example the thread which spawned this one wouldn't have existed if the rules instead had been honest and upfront about these issues and included the proper robust sub-systems, guidelines and advice.

And even weaker characters can still sometimes bring something useful to the table, a level 1 ranger with high survival can track where nobody else in the party would have been able to at that point for example, or a level 1 rogue with trapfinding etc. And yes, I know someone is going to respond with "there are spells to find traps" but not all parties are necessarily going to have that.

Yeah, I think one would have to be stuck staring myopically at pretty high-level play exclusively not to see that plenty of skills remain very useful for several levels, regardless of spells, and in at least some (most?) games quite a few skills remain highly efficient "plot tools" well worth the investments all the way to 20th. Besides, the party having access to more than one ability which can be directly applied to help overcome a challenge is also rarely a bad thing, and may IME even turn out to be a necessity in more challenging games.

So if for no other reason than my own peace of mind, I hope you won't get that "B-but spells?!" response. It would have me lose yet another little bit of my already greatly reduced faith in humanity and feed my inner cynic...

[Tron Troll]

I find it very likely that for example the thread which spawned this one wouldn't have existed if the rules instead had been honest and upfront about these issues and included the proper robust sub-systems, guidelines and advice.

Where do you see all this?

Exactly what part of the rules are dishonest or lie?

And the rules are full of guidelines and advice, the more pointed question is why do you not take and use the guidance and advice?

The rules are quite clear that the game can ''suddenly" become unbalanced, and even has ways to fix it.

[Cosi]

The First Law is a setting, much like the Hyborian Age or Nehwon, where warriors and wizards both have advancement tracks, but they are simply not comparable.

I don't think that's an accurate assessment for several reasons. Most obviously, the primary example of a Wizard in the story (Bayaz) is simply much higher level than everyone else. Saying that he's better than Logen or Ferro or whoever doesn't really prove much, because the story makes it very clear that as a student of Juvens who has been amassing his power for thousands of years, he is expected to be very powerful. It's also worth pointing out how little characters advance in personal power. The only character who substantially advances over the course of the story (at least the main trilogy, that's all I've read) is Ferro, and she goes from being basically a warrior to being able to crush an Eater's head with her bare hands. There is clearly power out there for the taking, characters just generally don't take it very much (as you note, Logen does not really do anything to develop the Spirit Talking powers he does have). Finally, there's also an old school D&D-ish element to it, where it's expected that martial characters will gain political power rather than personal power for leveling up. Political power does seem to be something that the Wizards care about, as both Bayaz and Khalul have gone to great lengths to maintain control of their respective empires. Bayaz even says something like "this is the last war that will ever be decided by magic".

I'm quite fine with things more powerful than LotR.

Well, you've mocked Malazan, Wheel of Time, and having more than once-a-campaign access to teleport, so it seems like you have at the very least a sharply limited conception of acceptable levels of character power.

Fair enough point, and I certainly won't argue that D&D 3E's "tier one" characters are a very poor thing to balance towards. Really, I don't think the tier system is a particularly good or useful tool for that at all. It analyzes 3E's unbalanced environment but I don't think it can tell us much about creating an environment that is balanced.

Yes, and that's why saying things like "don't balance to Tier Ones" is a mistake. You're conflating the way JaronK ranks the classes with all the properties the classes have. That doesn't make any sense. The reality is that a new game, or a revision to 3e, would want to look at the properties the classes have and maintain or not maintain properties of classes from a variety of tiers. As I've frequently pointed out, the lowest tier class with access to teleport is in Tier Two, so if you want teleport in your game at all, you are accepting that at least some of what the Wizard does is acceptable. I think you want classes to have the plot impact of Tiers One and Two, the variety of resource management systems of Tiers Three and Four, and the being balanced of whichever tier you believe is balanced.

Well I mean, Wizards are pretty much the worst designed class in the game from almost every perspective other than that of a player who wants to be able to do everything.

No. Monks and Fighters are both substantially worse. Undershooting the balance point is dramatically worse than overshooting it, and the Wizard overshoots by a fairly small margin outside of cheese no one actually defends. If you think the Swashbuckler, Truenamer, and Ninja are less of a problem than the Wizard, you have failed at a pretty fundamental level in your analysis of the game.

But making the game work with those would require either severe jumps in power built into classes (so a Fighter gets a power spike at level 7 and another one at level 14), or packs of 6-level long classes which can progress into wholly different 7-level classes, which end up as a third 7-level long class.

Why would it require severe power jumps? Unless "severe power jumps" means "gains as much power as the Wizard does when he gains a new level of spells" (which case, sure, whatever), it seems to me that the existence of the Wizard is a pretty compelling disproof of the notion that you need huge power jumps to progress as much as the Wizard.

I can't exactly put my finger on what would be the problem with the first way (maybe it's actually fine), but the second actually makes it so that if you want to play a Wizard, you have to play Warmage first, and if you want to play a Warblade, you have to play Fighter first, which is actually bad, because currently those classes can be played for a better part of 20 levels, and these changes would reduce that significantly.

I don't understand how you think this is a problem. The issue is not that the Wizard's concept is always better than the Fighter's, it's that the Wizard scales more than the Fighter. The Wizard goes from 1 to 11, the Fighter goes from 1 to 6. Your question seems to be "but what if I want to go to 4", and I just don't understand how that's supposed to be a problem at all.

So basically turn Planar Shepherd into Horizon Walker and Exotic Weapon Master into a full spellcasting class which also has a weird weapon. To be honest, I don't think that works particularly well, unless you write a lot of Exotic Weapon Master-exclusive content, which would be like an initiator discipline for each of the various weapons.

I don't really see how "slightly different shapechanging rules" and "not having planes with abusable traits" is "Horizon Walker" (though, to be frank, you don't really need two PrCs that get their power from planar attunement). The Planar Shepherd works fine out of the box in a Fighter-level game if you assume it is advancing Fighter-level casting and that it's attuned to a plane with traits like "Fire Dominant" and no inhabitants with super good SLAs.

I don't understand why you think writing a bunch of Exotic Weapon Master-specific content would be necessary. I mean, that's totally a thing you could do, but you don't actually need to do it. If Exotic Weapon Master gave full casting advancement and full BAB it would be on the shortlist for every Gish if it had any class features at all.

Hmm... We could perhaps call him a "potentially high level barb"? Unlike say Conan.

Yes. That's the thing about magic. Once you have magic at all, you can scale pretty much as high up as you need to without further modification to your concept. Logen can adventure in a party with the Lord Ruler, Thor, and Khellus in a way that Conan can't because he has a justification for getting pretty much any elemental or nature magic you happen to think is necessary. Conan, on the other hand, needs to get some power up, which does change his character.

\Yeah, I think one would have to be stuck staring myopically at pretty high-level play exclusively not to see that plenty of skills remain very useful for several levels

Well, sure, but it seems obvious to me that if your contribution is "use skills you had at 1st level" that is by definition not a high level contribution. Again, think about these things in terms of analogous combat situations. I'm sure you could figure out a way for a 1st level Ranger to have some impact in an ECL 11 fight, but no one could reasonably claim that was an appropriate impact for an 11th level character.

[Zarrgon]

I think:

1) I do not subscribe to the school of thought that character choices should all be equal.

2) I believe character optimization is a fun part of the game for many. As long as it doesn't dramatically ruin other players' fun, it's fine.

3) There are different things to be good at. Balance is too often a codeword for "good at single combat".

"Balanced" should mean that two characters present the same amount, wait for it, of FUN to the players. Gygax said quite openly "If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D&D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly" and then proceeded to fill both PHB and DMG with a lot of rules and advice to restrain magic, and Zeb Cook proceeded to tear out most of the advice, with the rules being removed by Monte Cook, Jonathan Tweet, and Skip Williams. Everything I'm reading from you says you still use the advice that hasn't actually been part of D&D since 1989 (and D&D is the worse for it).

[Cosi]

Gygax was a foundational figure in D&D, but his advice on how to run a game ranges from "flawed" to "horrible". There's a reason calling a DM "Gygaxian" is not a complement.

[Luccan]

Gygax was a foundational figure in D&D, but his advice on how to run a game ranges from "flawed" to "horrible". There's a reason calling a DM "Gygaxian" is not a complement.

Yeah, I recall in a panel Tim Kask mentioned Gygax couldn't understand for some time why anyone wouldn't want to Conan. Apparently it was sometimes a fight to get Magic Users what we would consider basic D&D spells.

[Hackulator]

Yeah, I recall in a panel Tim Kask mentioned Gygax couldn't understand for some time why anyone wouldn't want to Conan. Apparently it was sometimes a fight to get Magic Users what we would consider basic D&D spells.

I mean, D&D spells are clearly overly versatile for any sort of balance between characters with and without full access to them, so maybe he was right..

[Morty]

Modern D&D magic is really bad, but every time I see people talk about how older editions restricted it, it sounds like it'd be really annoying to actually play. To say nothing about the sad show that were low-level mages/magic-users.

[Cosi]

The problem is not that spells are too good, it's that there are whole swaths of the game for which the only defined mechanical tools are spells. Travel spells don't have to be better than travel maneuvers or travel soulmelds or travel rage powers or travel whatever the hell, but you have to define some travel abilities that aren't spells for there to be a contest at all. Of course teleport and overland flight are better than what the Fighter is doing, the Fighter isn't doing anything! And before you mention it, neither is the Rogue, or the Ranger, or the Incarnate, or the Crusader. There are plenty of ways to compete with "basically a Wizard" characters without being "basically a Wizard", D&D has just never done a very good job of supporting any of them.

[Bartmanhomer]

If only Tier 1 classes was nerfed to keep the game balanced then it wouldn't be an issue in the first place.

[Hackulator]

The problem is not that spells are too good, it's that there are whole swaths of the game for which the only defined mechanical tools are spells. Travel spells don't have to be better than travel maneuvers or travel soulmelds or travel rage powers or travel whatever the hell, but you have to define some travel abilities that aren't spells for there to be a contest at all. Of course teleport and overland flight are better than what the Fighter is doing, the Fighter isn't doing anything! And before you mention it, neither is the Rogue, or the Ranger, or the Incarnate, or the Crusader. There are plenty of ways to compete with "basically a Wizard" characters without being "basically a Wizard", D&D has just never done a very good job of supporting any of them.

The spells are too broad in function when given to a class who has access to all arcane or all divine.

[Mechalich]

The problem is not that spells are too good, it's that there are whole swaths of the game for which the only defined mechanical tools are spells. Travel spells don't have to be better than travel maneuvers or travel soulmelds or travel rage powers or travel whatever the hell, but you have to define some travel abilities that aren't spells for there to be a contest at all. Of course teleport and overland flight are better than what the Fighter is doing, the Fighter isn't doing anything! And before you mention it, neither is the Rogue, or the Ranger, or the Incarnate, or the Crusader. There are plenty of ways to compete with "basically a Wizard" characters without being "basically a Wizard", D&D has just never done a very good job of supporting any of them.

Well, Exalted tried to do this, and only partly succeeded (insofar as Exalted succeeded at anything). 'Sorcery' in that system was still vastly more flexible than the various charms connected to abilities, in part because it got it's own version of Planar Binding that was, if anything, even more broken than the 3.X D&D one. Part of the problem is that 'Magic' had a thematic flexibility that an audience will buy that becomes a harder sell when talking about other types of ability suites, even something as all encompassing as 'martial arts.' Goku, for example, has teleportation (instant transmission) in Dragonball, and that ability has always integrated weirdly with the rest of even that patently ridiculous setup to the point of having characters in-universe make comments to that effect (as can be seen in the recently produced Brolly movie).

And there are plenty of other examples of this. For example in the Fate/ franchise you have super-powered martial servants of six types who are freely capable of competing with the Caster class of servant in raw power, but the Caster class (and to a lesser degree the actual mages who control the servants) has access to a whole set of 'change the narrative complete' techniques that nobody else gets to use (unless they also cheat and use magic too anyway).

So I think it's rather a bit harder to match the power range of 'magic' than it seems, just because of the ways the thematics work. Magic is intrinsically defined as being able to do whatever the plot needs it to do, while other abilities are defined in terms of doing one specific thing and then additional powers are extrapolated out from that. This might work out to being functionally equivalent, for example, The Flash's super-speed powers have gradually evolved their own jargon for doing whatever the plot demands that they do, but they often do not.

To put it another way, in Mage: the Ascension a character's overall power is limited pretty much only by how their personal paradigm is defined, but not all paradigms are created equal. Some are simply better than others, and in fact a central premise of the entire game is that science is a better paradigm than classic high sorcery. If you apply this to a typical fantasy context, 'magic' is a better paradigm than 'swordsman' almost all the time unless you're really careful about how you define the two. Part of what you can do in this regard is define magic use more narrowly and force your spellcasters to specialize, which is broadly what the Tier 3 casting classes actually do.

[Darth Ultron]

Gygax was a foundational figure in D&D, but his advice on how to run a game ranges from "flawed" to "horrible". There's a reason calling a DM "Gygaxian" is not a complement.

Depends on the DM :)

, D&D has just never done a very good job of supporting any of them.

This is the ''balance" problem in a nutshell: the only fix is to give every single character class 'non-spells', that do exactly what all the spells do.

[Cosi]

If only Tier 1 classes was nerfed to keep the game balanced then it wouldn't be an issue in the first place.

Or you could buff other classes. Then instead of telling people they can't play characters they want to play, we could make the characters they want to play more effective.

The spells are too broad in function when given to a class who has access to all arcane or all divine.

Wow, you missed the point entirely. The point is that it doesn't matter if Wizards are arguably too good, because Fighters are definitely too bad. So instead of more empty whining about Wizards, explain what you think people should get. Because the anti-Wizard people never seem to get around to explaining how their paradigm is supposed to result in people having any abilities at all. It's all "Wizards are too good" all the time, without any explanation of a concrete alternative, which really makes it seem like the objection is not to Wizards, but to having abilities. What's your model? The Warblade, whose most powerful non-combat abilities are "smash things, but good-er" and "scent"? The Incarnate, who boasts "fairly good tactical mobility" and "skill checks that are sometimes slightly larger than a Rogue"? What class is in the right place? What set of abilities would be appropriate? Build something, instead of just insisting that things can't be built.

Well, Exalted tried to do this, and only partly succeeded (insofar as Exalted succeeded at anything).

I don't really find the argument that White Wolf couldn't do something especially compelling. White Wolf failed at a lot of things, including "not tastelessly exploiting real life atrocities" and "writing a functional melee combat system for their fantasy game" and "allowing vampires to gather in groups in a game about vampire society". I view White Wolf failing at something less as evidence that doing that thing is hard and more as evidence that it is possible for that thing to be failed at.

So I think it's rather a bit harder to match the power range of 'magic' than it seems, just because of the ways the thematics work.

Well, sure, but "magic" is really freaking broad. Way broader than "spells". Way, way broader than "Wizards" (which is what the "Magic User" is, really). Look at The First Law, because it was brought up in this thread. The magic isn't super deeply explored, but in addition to Magi (like Bayaz and co), you've got Devil Bloods (who seem to be basically like Marvel's mutants, with totally arbitrary powers like "super strength and frost" or "invincible, but only on half your body"), and Spirit Talkers (who are not really well explored, but could presumably do various elemental magic if the setting weren't in the middle of a LotR-esque fading of magic), and the Maker's Artificer-esque powers, and the ability to bargain with demons. That's five different kinds of magic, and there's no particular reason to expect any of them to run out of room to grow before the others.

If you apply this to a typical fantasy context, 'magic' is a better paradigm than 'swordsman' almost all the time unless you're really careful about how you define the two.

Well, yeah, but again we're not talking about "magic" versus "swordsman". We're talking about "death magic" versus "rage power". I could imagine death magic scaling more than rage power (Necromancers in the Conan books are more powerful than Conan), but I could also imagine the reverse being true (the Hulk and Icarium both have pretty much uncapped rage scaling). The whole "nothing can beat magic" thing only seems to hold if you define "magic" as "getting to scale to high levels". Of course if getting to high levels means you're magic, nothing can scale as much as magic, but at that point it should be uncontroversial to declare that people will eventually either become magic or stop advancing.

[Bartmanhomer]

Or you could buff other classes. Then instead of telling people they can't play characters they want to play, we could make the characters they want to play more effective.



Wow, you missed the point entirely. The point is that it doesn't matter if Wizards are arguably too good, because Fighters are definitely too bad. So instead of more empty whining about Wizards, explain what you think people should get. Because the anti-Wizard people never seem to get around to explaining how their paradigm is supposed to result in people having any abilities at all. It's all "Wizards are too good" all the time, without any explanation of a concrete alternative, which really makes it seem like the objection is not to Wizards, but to having abilities. What's your model? The Warblade, whose most powerful non-combat abilities are "smash things, but good-er" and "scent"? The Incarnate, who boasts "fairly good tactical mobility" and "skill checks that are sometimes slightly larger than a Rogue"? What class is in the right place? What set of abilities would be appropriate? Build something, instead of just insisting that things can't be built.



I don't really find the argument that White Wolf couldn't do something especially compelling. White Wolf failed at a lot of things, including "not tastelessly exploiting real life atrocities" and "writing a functional melee combat system for their fantasy game" and "allowing vampires to gather in groups in a game about vampire society". I view White Wolf failing at something less as evidence that doing that thing is hard and more as evidence that it is possible for that thing to be failed at.



Well, sure, but "magic" is really freaking broad. Way broader than "spells". Way, way broader than "Wizards" (which is what the "Magic User" is, really). Look at The First Law, because it was brought up in this thread. The magic isn't super deeply explored, but in addition to Magi (like Bayaz and co), you've got Devil Bloods (who seem to be basically like Marvel's mutants, with totally arbitrary powers like "super strength and frost" or "invincible, but only on half your body"), and Spirit Talkers (who are not really well explored, but could presumably do various elemental magic if the setting weren't in the middle of a LotR-esque fading of magic), and the Maker's Artificer-esque powers, and the ability to bargain with demons. That's five different kinds of magic, and there's no particular reason to expect any of them to run out of room to grow before the others.



Well, yeah, but again we're not talking about "magic" versus "swordsman". We're talking about "death magic" versus "rage power". I could imagine death magic scaling more than rage power (Necromancers in the Conan books are more powerful than Conan), but I could also imagine the reverse being true (the Hulk and Icarium both have pretty much uncapped rage scaling). The whole "nothing can beat magic" thing only seems to hold if you define "magic" as "getting to scale to high levels". Of course if getting to high levels means you're magic, nothing can scale as much as magic, but at that point it should be uncontroversial to declare that people will eventually either become magic or stop advancing.

I do agree that buffing other Non-Tier 1 classes would make the game balanced a whole lot easier.

[Mechalich]

Wow, you missed the point entirely. The point is that it doesn't matter if Wizards are arguably too good, because Fighters are definitely too bad. So instead of more empty whining about Wizards, explain what you think people should get. Because the anti-Wizard people never seem to get around to explaining how their paradigm is supposed to result in people having any abilities at all. It's all "Wizards are too good" all the time, without any explanation of a concrete alternative, which really makes it seem like the objection is not to Wizards, but to having abilities. What's your model? The Warblade, whose most powerful non-combat abilities are "smash things, but good-er" and "scent"? The Incarnate, who boasts "fairly good tactical mobility" and "skill checks that are sometimes slightly larger than a Rogue"? What class is in the right place? What set of abilities would be appropriate? Build something, instead of just insisting that things can't be built.

People, including myself, have suggested several times in this thread and others, on having a Tier 3 balance point. The model, in that reference frame, is the Pathfinder 2/3rds caster. There are quite a few of these: Alchemists, Bards, Hunters, Inquisitors, Maguses, Skalds, and Warpriests, plus several of the Occult classes. They have numerous abilities, generally casting up to 6th level spells plus a suite of support abilities usable in combat or for specialized actions suited to their theme. I'd be perfectly happy with a D&D style world that has Inquisitors and Warpriests instead of Clerics, Bards and Maguses instead of Sorcerers, Hunters instead of Druids, and Alchemists and Occultists instead of Wizards.

Now, most of the PF martial classes are Tier 4 and could probably do with a little bit more buffing to match the 2/3rds casters (better feats, more skill points, and a few other minor tweaks might do it, alongside some adjustment to the item side of the equation) but the problem is much more manageable. In fact this is much more in line with balancing 'death magic' and 'rage power' ie. dread necromancer vs. barbarian than 'magic' versus 'swordsman' which is absolutely what wizard vs. fighter boils down too.

[thelastorphan]

The 2/3 casters are perfect. With a robust ritual system and more useful skills all around you could cut the most egregious spells and other abilities from the game, you could maintain much if not all of the 'noncheesy' power already present in the game and hopefully keep the current feel of high level play in tact. 9th level maneuvers are probably still balanced in this scenario even.

[Luccan]

I mean, D&D spells are clearly overly versatile for any sort of balance between characters with and without full access to them, so maybe he was right..

Magic Missile was the specific example given