Changing the "Caster beats Mundane" paradigm

[digiman619]

To Cosi: You know, thinking back to earlier rounds of this topic, I sometimes have felt you have slipped from "I like casters better" to "I think casters should just be better no questions asked" and that may have tinted my opinion of you. I feel a sudden urge to apologize for that.

Yeah, that's the source of my love/hate relationship with him. We both very much agree that the huge gap between weapon-types and spell-types should be gotten rid of. We basically just argue about whether they should meet in the middle or if they should all have T1 power and versatility.

[Florian]

Going back to the OP, the option that s missing is "Magic is an extreme extension of the mundane".
That would, for example, cover Wuxia when someone must first learn to jump, bevor he can glide through the air and actually fly later on or first shoot an arrow, then a magic missile, the a fireball, and so on. Basically, there´s next to no way to start with a "Wizard" and also no way to end with a "Fighter" because sooner or later, you´d have to make the transition between those two.

[Darth Ultron]

So if character A has a Magic +1 to hit.

And character B has a Mundane +1 to hit.

Where is the difference?


And ok wizard can say make a fireball...and that can't be done in the Real World (maybe).......but if such people are so focused on playing a game ''like the Real World'', then why not play d20 Modern or any of the other ''close'' to the Real World games with no magic?

[Calthropstu]

So if character A has a Magic +1 to hit.

And character B has a Mundane +1 to hit.

Where is the difference?


And ok wizard can say make a fireball...and that can't be done in the Real World (maybe).......but if such people are so focused on playing a game ''like the Real World'', then why not play d20 Modern or any of the other ''close'' to the Real World games with no magic?

Because they don't like the fact that there is a HUGE section of people who switched to Pathfinder after 4e became a thing, and maybe dislike the 5e paradigm as well.
Yeah, there are plenty of systems where there is "balance," but no one, or not enough, want to play them. So they want to rain on our parade.

In short, they're throwing temper tantrums.

[CharonsHelper]

So if character A has a Magic +1 to hit.

And character B has a Mundane +1 to hit.

Where is the difference?

There isn't one. That's why symmetrical balance is boring.

[Max_Killjoy]

Because they don't like the fact that there is a HUGE section of people who switched to Pathfinder after 4e became a thing, and maybe dislike the 5e paradigm as well.
Yeah, there are plenty of systems where there is "balance," but no one, or not enough, want to play them. So they want to rain on our parade.

In short, they're throwing temper tantrums.

And what of those people who left D&D well before Pathfinder was even a thing?

[Anymage]

So if character A has a Magic +1 to hit.

And character B has a Mundane +1 to hit.

Where is the difference?

And ok wizard can say make a fireball...and that can't be done in the Real World (maybe).......but if such people are so focused on playing a game ''like the Real World'', then why not play d20 Modern or any of the other ''close'' to the Real World games with no magic?

In a wargame, mages as artillery makes sense. So do dragons as air support, and all sorts of other thin veneers on modern tools. (Keeping in mind, of course, that you're going to want to impose some sort of balance while modern militaries put a lot of effort into creating imbalances in their favor.)

In an RPG, mages as glass cannons in battle is fine. The issue is when mages can also fly, see the past or the future, summon up extradimensional help, mislead enemies with illusions, bend the minds of others, or anything else in the thousands of pages of published spells out there. Meanwhile, the warrior has little to no mechanical support for having eagle eyes, a deft touch, or a nose for BS. He's just the guy with a pointy stick.

[Max_Killjoy]

In a wargame, mages as artillery makes sense. So do dragons as air support, and all sorts of other thin veneers on modern tools. (Keeping in mind, of course, that you're going to want to impose some sort of balance while modern militaries put a lot of effort into creating imbalances in their favor.)

In an RPG, mages as glass cannons in battle is fine. The issue is when mages can also fly, see the past or the future, summon up extradimensional help, mislead enemies with illusions, bend the minds of others, or anything else in the thousands of pages of published spells out there. Meanwhile, the warrior has little to no mechanical support for having eagle eyes, a deft touch, or a nose for BS. He's just the guy with a pointy stick.

Part of the problem in a system like D&D/d20 is that so much of what a character can do is tied up in their class, even skills are limited (by forbiddance or by cost) on a class basis in many D&D-like systems.

So a Fighter finds it harder to also be a scholar, or a trader, or anything else, who happens to be great with weapons.

[Florian]

Part of the problem in a system like D&D/d20 is that so much of what a character can do is tied up in their class, even skills are limited (by forbiddance or by cost) on a class basis in many D&D-like systems.

Other class-based systems avoid that, by having a class give a discount on tied abilities, specials or skills. For example, the WH40K systems use class and level, but use a reverse process when compared to d20, as feats and skills have an XP cost and you level up when you´ve "bought" enough stuff wort XP. Classes either give a discount on certain things, or move feats up and down the requirement scale (Example: "Assassin Strike" costs 500 XP and is a level 5 feat. Guardmen and Assassins can get it at level 2, tho, due to class discount)

[Anymage]

Part of the problem in a system like D&D/d20 is that so much of what a character can do is tied up in their class, even skills are limited (by forbiddance or by cost) on a class basis in many D&D-like systems.

So a Fighter finds it harder to also be a scholar, or a trader, or anything else, who happens to be great with weapons.

To go a little deeper, explicit abilities tend to be easier for both players and GMs to wrap their heads around. A power that lets you fly, lets you fly. A power that lets you control animals, allows you to control animals. It's all pretty straightforwards and evocative. Meanwhile, with the exception of 3.x, nonexplicit powers were much vaguer and you couldn't necessarily guess what you could reliably do with a given score. (3.x did a bit better with all the example DCs they gave, but then kind of blew that up with rigidly defined class skills and scaling that could only reach significant numbers with a magic boost.)

It's just that for a variety of reasons, throughout D&D's history, "explicit abilities" and "spells" tended to be synonymous. 5e's backgrounds allow a fighter-merchant without too much inefficiency. It's just that aside from a vaguely defined background power, all the fighter-merchant gets is a super vague suggested DC table and +1/4 levels proficiency bonus boost. (Okay. He can also sink ASIs into off-stats and/or flavor feats. That's grossly inefficient, though.) There's a lot less ambiguity about what the wizard's spells are able to do.

[Pleh]

There isn't one. That's why symmetrical balance is boring.

Yes, I believe what we are looking for (in regards to changing "Caster Beats Mundane" paradigm) is Perfect Imbalance. We want Combat in RPGs to have that Rock-Paper-Scissors/LoL feel where a Fighter and Wizard duel for characters of equal level should be an even match, not because they have symmetrical balance (where they just both have the same bonuses of different types), but because they have perfect imbalance where they utilize almost completely different strategies and it comes down to Luck (dice rolls), Strategy (player choices), and Skill (being familiar enough with the challenger to anticipate threats and consequences to navigate while making spontaneous changes to Strategy).

Anime Swordman vs Anime Caster where one uses magic with their sword and one uses magic with their mind is fine. What most people want out of D&D is the sense that the Fighter didn't essentially need magic to beat the spellcaster. Part of what skews the thought experiment is definitely the influence of Schrodinger's Wizard, who gets to benefit from having whatever potential abilities would be most useful in any given scenario, rather than having the more realistic expectation that the Wizard might not have been perfectly prepared for this exact scenario.

As much fun as it can be to watch a story of a Guy With A Sword try to outmaneuver the Perfectly Prepared Wizard (see Wolverine Vs Magneto), we also have some delightful fictions and fantasies about the Underprepared Wizard trying to survive an encounter with the Guy With A Sword Who Never Has To Stop Swinging. The Perfectly Unprepared Wizard turns into the ultimate Science Survivalist, retreating to avoid direct conflict until they've managed to take whatever resources available to construct an improvised advantage.

Thing of it all is, in either scenario, we tend to root for the underdog. We want there to actually be a hope for winning, even when Magneto only has to grab Wolverine by the metal skeleton and he's basically won. We want the poor, nerdy scientist wizard who took fluffy, NPC spells and has no viable tactical magic against the fighter to find a clever use for that Mage Hand spell he happens to have prepared and turn the tables.

We want a game that acknowledges first that power disparity occasionally happens (something that Symmetrical Balance intrinsically prevents), but gives players some hope that making a few creative choices can overcome the disparity. We want Perfect Imbalance.

[CharonsHelper]

Yes, I believe what we are looking for (in regards to changing "Caster Beats Mundane" paradigm) is Perfect Imbalance. We want Combat in RPGs to have that Rock-Paper-Scissors/LoL feel where a Fighter and Wizard duel for characters of equal level should be an even match, not because they have symmetrical balance (where they just both have the same bonuses of different types), but because they have perfect imbalance where they utilize almost completely different strategies and it comes down to Luck (dice rolls), Strategy (player choices), and Skill (being familiar enough with the challenger to anticipate threats and consequences to navigate while making spontaneous changes to Strategy).

There would be ways to do this within a D&D style game - but it would require a level of designer discipline to avoid giving wizards spells which break it.

It would be fine if in a prepared duel the caster beats the martial 99% of the time IF the caster had TWO flaws - both of which D&D's fluff implies but aren't true mechanically.

1. If caught off guard the caster is totally screwed. (This is something which D&D's fluff implies, but especially in 3.x there are too many ways to escape the ambush/grapple/etc. Or spells to keep from being ambushed. All of these couldn't ever exist to make flaw #1 do its job.) This would allow there to be a R/P/S of Caster/Assassin/Martial - where the standard martial could beat stealthers, but stealthers could beat casters.

2. If casters could disrupt each-other more easily. If a level 5 caster could hold back a level 8 caster for a couple of rounds, then it would give the martial time to go up and get in their face - reverting to flaw #1. Two level 8s might counter each-other for some time, making the fight be about who had better martial support. 3.x even added counter-spelling to the game mechanics - but while very cool in fluff, mechanically they're too weak to be a viable tactic.

With the above two flaws added to casters the D&D style caster/martial could work fine.

[Arbane]

I've said it before: the problem with fighters is that people make stipulations about what they should or shouldn't be able to do, that don't flow from the concept. That happens because there are lots of incredibly specialised non-casters, and people complain when there's any significant overlap. Ultimately, the entire 'mundane' concept in D&D needs to be re-examined, and it's not just about balance.

Agreed. Part of the problem is that the Tier One casters can essentially reroll their entire character with a good night's sleep, since their spell selection is 90% of their abilities. Meanwhile, a Fighter who picked a bad feat at level 3 is stuck with it FOREVAR (barring retraining), and 3.5 at least has an obnoxious habit of requiring Feats for the peasantry to do anything more interesting than swording the hitpoints out of targets.

A fighter of the same level? A low level illusionist can stall, or even kill, a fairly large number of mundane soldiers. A low level fighter would get mobbed and cut to ribbons long before he was pretty effective. At higher levels, a high level illusionist could wipe out an entire army in a round or two, the fighter still has to wade in swinging his stick. Even with a feat like "Great Cleave", he's still going to have to be on the front line, while mr illusionist can sit in a tent, safely behind the lines and cast at leisure.

....And you see no reason why this is a problem?

In an RPG, mages as glass cannons in battle is fine. The issue is when mages can also fly, see the past or the future, summon up extradimensional help, mislead enemies with illusions, bend the minds of others, or anything else in the thousands of pages of published spells out there. Meanwhile, the warrior has little to no mechanical support for having eagle eyes, a deft touch, or a nose for BS. He's just the guy with a pointy stick.

What he said. Again, the basic unit of Doing Cool Stuff As a Mundane being Feats doesn't help at all - Pathfinder has a lot of feats that in a saner system would barely qualify as stunts, but you're expected to spend your once-a-level (or less) feat on being able to.... pick up a fallen weapon quicker, or flash light in your enemies' eyes IF you're in a place with bright light AND you have a shiny weapon AND they don't make their save.

[Florian]

What he said. Again, the basic unit of Doing Cool Stuff As a Mundane being Feats doesn't help at all - Pathfinder has a lot of feats that in a saner system would barely qualify as stunts, but you're expected to spend your once-a-level (or less) feat on being able to.... pick up a fallen weapon quicker, or flash light in your enemies' eyes IF you're in a place with bright light AND you have a shiny weapon AND they don't make their save.

Honestly, comparing what PF as a system could possibly do and what fraction of the system is actually used in official modules, APs and PFS gives a strong hint why a lot of regular groups (you know, the kind that don´t participate in discussions here...) don´t have any balancing problems at all.

[Tanarii]

Pathfinder DID go back to it, and supplanted D&D as the most popular rpg in the process. So clearly there is definitely something quite popular about it.
If you think there's something better, by all means play it. If you think you can build something better, by all means build it.
But the tens of thousands of us who enjoy it will continue to do so.

No, pathfinder did not go back to it. Pathfinder is based off 3e, which is the system that broke it in the first place, when it moved away from the oD&D/AD&D model. Pathfinder is just as broken in this regard, and MORE broken in plenty of others.

And 5e outstrips pathfinder popularity by spades. It also fixed a lot of the stuff 3.P broke in trying to move away from the oD&D/AD&D model in regards to casters, but did so without going back to the old model. In fact, it moved even further away from the old model in many regards.

So far your posts in this thread show a distinct lack of understanding of what's really going on in a variety of fields, from your comments on science/football, to the military, to the evolution of D&D/pathfinder.

[Florian]

And 5e outstrips pathfinder popularity by spades.

Before you start berating others for their lack of understanding, maybe stop and think about why D&D stopped being significant outside of english speaking countries, while PF is going strong as a RPG export: There is no localized 5E as WotC pulled the plug on that. You can´t get it in spanish, french, german or japanese and you never will and frankly, gaming in a foreign language flat sucks. So, if you want, D&D outside the US is dead for quite some time now, with Paizo having taken over that role with solid contracts and good partner support.

[Tanarii]

So, if you want, D&D outside the US is dead for quite some time now, with Paizo having taken over that role with solid contracts and good partner support.

That won't last much longer:
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/news/localization

Edit: don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with enjoying Pathfinder, and at least (unlike AD&D or BECMI) it's a live system with active support. And much easier to find games in to boot.

But the idea that it the d20 system or its Piazo derivative somehow "went back" to AD&D way of wizards is ludicrous.

[Max_Killjoy]

As an aside, it would be nice if these discussions in the general RPG forum could avoid turning into D&D editions wars with some posters presuming that all disagreement comes from D&D edition preference, or from D&D-vs-their-pet-not-D&D-system.

[Tanarii]

As an aside, it would be nice if these discussions in the general RPG forum could avoid turning into D&D editions wars with some posters presuming that all disagreement comes from D&D edition preference, or from D&D-vs-their-pet-not-D&D-system.

Bound to happen when the discussion is mundane vs caster.

Because D&D established some original ground rules for a certain kind of 'balance' when it came to Wizards (specifically, as a sub-set of casters), which were frequently disliked. 3e shattered them by removing said balancing factors without compensating, in a way that's widely regarded as broken. So the following two editions had to deal with that legacy.

Alternative takes on magic are very interesting, because they aren't forced to deal with sacred cows and edition wars.

For example, I love the Warhammer universe magic/psyker stuff. Dangerous to the user and even the party to use. It fits the system's flavor. I'm not fond of the Rifts/Palladium way of doing it, but that's because Sembieda doesn't believe in a system. He believes in tossing together a dozen mini-systems and ignoring or papering over the cracks, and bases his mini-systems on whatever feels right. (Which is kinda how we ended up with D&D magic. I know, that's hypocritical of me to like one and not the other.)

[Cosi]

There are ways to resolve the caster/noncaster disparity in combat. Two off the top of my head are the wargaming style where the artillery needs front lines to be used effectively, and the 4e style where crowd control, DPS, and tank are all distinct jobs.

I think this kind of hard power source based role division is unsatisfying. Yes, generally martial characters will tend more towards the front line than magical ones will, but that's far from universal. For example, if "martial" means "goes into melee", you've basically forsworn having archers in the game, which seems dumb. Similarly, gishes are definitely a concept people want to play, which means that there are going to be some mage-ish people on the front lines. Having required roles also means that people are going to be (or at least feel) forced into being "the Controller" or "the DPS". We've tried to move away from that kind of thing for the Cleric, I don't think we want it to be a general default.

Pathfinder DID go back to it, and supplanted D&D as the most popular rpg in the process. So clearly there is definitely something quite popular about it.

Note the slight of hand here. "Pathfinder succeeded, therefore Pathfinder is doing something right, therefore Pathfinder doing the thing I want is the reason for its success." Pathfinder does a lot of things, and there's not inherently more reason to think "give mundanes the shaft" is the reason for its success rather than "have a Summoner class" or "have nice art" or (as I think is probably most likely) "capture the existing market for 3e by capitalizing on sunk costs and network effects".

A fighter of the same level? A low level illusionist can stall, or even kill, a fairly large number of mundane soldiers. A low level fighter would get mobbed and cut to ribbons long before he was pretty effective. At higher levels, a high level illusionist could wipe out an entire army in a round or two, the fighter still has to wade in swinging his stick. Even with a feat like "Great Cleave", he's still going to have to be on the front line, while mr illusionist can sit in a tent, safely behind the lines and cast at leisure.

I think you're confusing is and ought here. People aren't contenting that the characters are equally effective, just that they should be.

To Cosi: You know, thinking back to earlier rounds of this topic, I sometimes have felt you have slipped from "I like casters better" to "I think casters should just be better no questions asked" and that may have tinted my opinion of you. I feel a sudden urge to apologize for that.

I hope I haven't come across that way. It's certainly not my intention. My position has always been that the game should be balanced, and that for that to be accomplished at high levels, characters in general need to receive some kind of supernatural powers. That doesn't necessarily mean that they have to cast spells, or even that they need to stop using swords.

I think there are a few things that contribute to this communication problem. At a high level, the problem is that I (and the people I'm arguing with) don't define terms properly, and often have several conversations on different topics either serially or in parallel.

First, there are certain kinds of abilities I think the game should support. Broadly, I support the game changing dramatically as levels increase (meaning I think of teleport obsoleting long trips as challenge as a feature rather than a bug) and I support characters having abilities that work on the strategic scale (like fabricate). As it happens, those abilities are concentrated among casters, particularly in D&D, so I often end up as coming across as promoting casters because I cite those abilities. But that's not the intention. The intention is that characters in general would have abilities like that, not necessarily that everyone would literally be a caster who has literally those abilities.

Second, there's a tendency for people to mean different things by "magic" and "caster" and "martial" and "mundane". I generally think those as meaning roughly "abilities that don't exist in reality", "characters that get spells in D&D", "character who contributes by fighting with a weapon", and "character who doesn't have magic". Other people define those terms differently, so you get things like Talakeal vehemently objecting to "making Fighters into Wizards" when I suggest that Fighters should pick up magical abilities at high levels.

Third, there are sometimes discussions about fixing 3e specifically, and in this case I tend to be bullish on "give people casting". This is not because I think that everyone should be a Sorcerer with some minor abilities, but because I think making everyone a caster is a low-effort, high-reward solution to imbalance.

Fourth, my view is that the forum as a whole is more hostile towards casters than it should be, so I tend to sometimes be more aggressive in my positions than is strictly justified.

Hopefully that explains some part of what I believe, and how that was (unintentionally) coming across as "everyone needs to be a Wizard".

Yeah, that's the source of my love/hate relationship with him. We both very much agree that the huge gap between weapon-types and spell-types should be gotten rid of. We basically just argue about whether they should meet in the middle or if they should all have T1 power and versatility.

To pick up an issue from another thread, this is where describing me as being pro-Tier One breaks down. In general, I think trying to describe people's goals for the game in terms of the Tiers is just a bad idea. Because they aren't, and were never intended to be, design targets. They're descriptions of how the system works. And that means that they're necessarily skewed based on the contingent design decisions that exist in 3.5. For example, it happens that the class that gets rage (the Barbarian) is in Tier Four. Does that mean that wanting the game to have a character with Rage is wanting a "Tier Four game"? Does thinking the Crusader's delayed damage pool is a cool mechanic mean you want a "Tier Three game"?

I think most people would (quite reasonably) argue that those things are not what the Tier System is talking about. There's nothing about having Sneak Attack that inherently makes you Tier Four, it just happens that the class that gets Sneak Attack is in Tier Four. If you gave the Sorcerer Sneak Attack, it wouldn't magically become a Tier Four class. So let's compare the definition of Tier One to what it is I actually want:

(1) Capable of doing absolutely everything, often better than classes that specialize in that thing. (2) Often capable of solving encounters with a single mechanical ability and little thought from the player. (3) Has world changing powers at high levels. (4) These guys, if played with skill, can easily break a campaign and can be very hard to challenge without extreme DM fiat or plenty of house rules, (5) especially if Tier 3s and below are in the party.

(numbering mine)

Before getting into the details it's worth point out how sparse those details actually are. None of these terms are well defined. What does "doing absolutely everything" mean? Does it mean "use any ability in the game" or "solve any challenge"? Does "break the campaign" mean infinite loops or going off the DM's rails? How you think those answers fall out is going to heavily determine what exactly you think "Tier One" means, and as a result what you think wanting a "Tier One game" means. That said, I'll attempt to outline what I think these things mean, or are taken as meaning, and how that is similar to and different from what I think the game should look like.

Explanations spoilered for length.

Spoiler: 1

Show

This is an example of the warped perspective the Tiers have as a result of being descriptive. This is defined in the context of other classes that are, admittedly, weaker than the Wizards and Clerics of the world. As a result, I think you can basically throw out the "better than specialists" part of this when considering what a new game, or a rework of the game would look like. A Tier One generalist isn't better than a Tier One specialist at the specialist's field, any more than Tier Four characters are (for reference, consider the damage output of an optimized blaster Wizard versus a Wizard who doesn't have that investment).

When you scrape out the relative portion of this, I think it's saying "characters have a wide range of powers". I think this is basically a good thing, because it allows abstraction.

To explain what I mean, consider the effect of CR. CR is an abstraction -- it reduces all of the attributes of the monster that contribute to the danger it poses into a single number that measures when it's an appropriate challenge. This means that when a DM needs to compose an encounter, rather than looking at every monster to see if it's appropriate, he can pull out a CR = APL monster, pop it down in an encounter, and be reasonably confident he'll have a level-appropriate challenge. The reason you can do this is because the game assumes that characters will have a roughly standard level of power at any given character level. Note that this is different from having the same abilities. What CR does is that, in exchange for standardizing character power progression, it is now easier for DMs to prepare combat encounters.

Back to the notion at hand -- give characters lots of powers. I would like to be able to have an abstraction similar to CR for non-combat encounters. That is, I would like for DMs to have a tool that they can use to pick non-combat encounters without having to check if the specific abilities their PCs have are able to resolve that encounter*. Right now, if you add a non-combat obstacle like "the enemy is on another plane" it's entirely possible that the party won't be able to solve that, and there's no consistent way of predicting if they can without looking at their specific abilities (or giving them a DM-provided solution, which I think is unsatisfying). I would like that to change. I would like the game to be able to say that "the castle is in hell" is a 10th level (or 5th level or 15th level) non-combat obstacle in the same way that it says that a Fire Giant is a 10th level combat obstacle.

But to do that, you need characters to have a fairly wide range of abilities. Because if they don't, you're going to have cases where players don't have a solution to some problem that the game says they should. In the same way that the Rogue's combat abilities allow them to solve a variety of combat problems, the Rogue's non-combat abilities need to allow them to solve a variety of non-combat problems. At first approximation, it's reasonable to assume that players' selections of non-combat abilities will be distributed randomly. Assuming you have 10 benchmark non-combat abilities and a 4-person party, you get the following chances of not having a solution to a given problem in the party for a given number of problems a player has a solution to:

3: 24%
4: 13%
5: 6%
6: 3%
7: .8%

I think that the party should have at least a 95% chance of having a solution to a level-appropriate problem, which means that you're looking at characters having solutions to six out of ten problems at minimum, and seven out of ten wouldn't be unreasonable.

One final point: solution shouldn't be binary. People should have abilities that have a range of effectiveness for solving a given problem, which means that they will be differentially effective in different situations. Maybe the Wizard has teleport, which is long range and (largely) unlimited but limited use and the Druid has tree stride which is short range and limited but unlimited use. But they're both travel powers. Sometimes they'll be fairly close in utility (like if the party needs to cross a forest). Sometimes the Wizard will be clearly ahead (like if the party needs to cross a desert). Sometimes the Druid will be clearly ahead (like if the party needs to search a forest). But they both have a solution available to the problem "we need to go a long distance quickly".

The ultimate goal is to make it easier for DMs to craft worlds that are dynamic by reducing the effort needed to come up with a level appropriate challenge when the PCs go "off the rails" in some fashion by increasing the degree of standardization in PC abilities so that more standardized challenges can be dropped in dynamically.

*: When I say "without", I don't necessarily mean in absolute terms. I just mean with less effort.

Spoiler: 2

Show

This is flawed, but I think it is essentially saying "encounters are scaled poorly to Tier One abilities". Which I agree with to some degree, but substantially less than most people do. That said, you clearly can challenge such characters, so I think this is largely a matter of moving things around. Obviously, "characters trivialize encounters" is failure, and something I don't think the game should do (let alone try for).

Spoiler: 3

Show

I think this is just an obviously good thing. Part of the point of gaining levels is changing the sorts of encounters you contend with, and I think going from having abilities that are personal in scale to those that are national in scale is an obvious way of achieving that. This is also I think the thing that is most caught up in the nature of the Tiers as a description of the system. "Has teleport" is, I think pretty clearly not inherently related to "can break the game", it just happens that the classes that do get teleport also get game breakers. As a result, advocating for teleport can be (intentionally or accidentally, and on both sides) conflated with advocating for game breakers. I want the first, but not the second.

Spoiler: 4

Show

There are several things going on here.

First, there are the game breaking abilities. Like polymorph abuse. Those are bad and should go, though in many cases the underlying abilities are important and need to be preserved. You should be able to shapeshift. That should not give you Real Ultimate Power because it was poorly specified.

Second, there are abilities that go off the rails. I think these are an important part of what makes TTRPGs worth playing, and the game should lead towards providing advice for dealing with them rather than removing them entirely. I also think, as pointed out in 1, that making these more common would (somewhat paradoxically) make them easier to deal with. If teleport is an ability people sometimes have, you can't really plot around it, so it often ends up breaking the story. But if teleport is an expected ability, stories will tend to be written with it in mind.

Third, there are the abilities that point to subsystems that are not implemented. The game does not have a good economics engine. As a result, spells like fabricate or wall of iron are "overpowered" because the system they interact with doesn't have the mechanisms it should for responding to the shocks they create (also, how 3e deals with magic items is wrong). The game doesn't deal with with having armies of minions, or kindgoms, because it doesn't have rules for those things. But it should, and if it did, abilities like animate dead that interact with those things would be less dangerous.

Spoiler: 5

Show

This is purely an observation of imbalance. If all characters were, hypothetically, Tier One, you would no longer define Tier One as being particularly problematic in the context of Tier Three characters.

[Pleh]

There would be ways to do this within a D&D style game - but it would require a level of designer discipline to avoid giving wizards spells which break it.

It would be fine if in a prepared duel the caster beats the martial 99% of the time IF the caster had TWO flaws - both of which D&D's fluff implies but aren't true mechanically.

1. If caught off guard the caster is totally screwed. (This is something which D&D's fluff implies, but especially in 3.x there are too many ways to escape the ambush/grapple/etc. Or spells to keep from being ambushed. All of these couldn't ever exist to make flaw #1 do its job.) This would allow there to be a R/P/S of Caster/Assassin/Martial - where the standard martial could beat stealthers, but stealthers could beat casters.

2. If casters could disrupt each-other more easily. If a level 5 caster could hold back a level 8 caster for a couple of rounds, then it would give the martial time to go up and get in their face - reverting to flaw #1. Two level 8s might counter each-other for some time, making the fight be about who had better martial support. 3.x even added counter-spelling to the game mechanics - but while very cool in fluff, mechanically they're too weak to be a viable tactic.

With the above two flaws added to casters the D&D style caster/martial could work fine.

Yes, and I think the real problem here is the designers shied away from Assassins. Maybe my perspective is too limited to judge (I've played mostly 3.5 for about 10 years, but I haven't dug into system mastery until fairly recently), but as a player who would tend to prefer playing in the Assassin spectrum of D&D over Casters or Martials, my experience tells me that if Fighter's can't have nice things, then Assassins just need to get out right now.

I mean, Sneak Attack? Sure, if the enemy is vulnerable to precision damage (basically, if they're animals or humanoids) and they don't see it coming (so just the dim witted humanoids then). Feint? Sure, but your enemy adds BAB to their Sense Motive, so good luck beating their opposed check and we'll just be taxing your turn in combat for making the attempt. Death Attack? Oooo, that'll cost you 3 turns.

I get the other side of it, too. No one wants the DM sending a party of imperceptible assassins out to murder their party while they sleep, but if Rocks Fall is the concern, the DM only has to use Casters or Uberchargers (or just plain ROCKS) instead. The bias towards casters in 3.5 was pretty palpable.

I mean, the spells required to Cover The 2 Meter Port on the Caster's Death Star would even be okay if doing so were some significant detriment to their other abilities. Like if getting a tip that Assassin(s) were coming for you, you had magical options to guard yourself against unforeseen attacks, but at the cost of switching from Offense/Utility to Total Defense. Now the Wizard has to rely on their Martial buddy to do his thing of being the Anti-Assassin and the game turns into a form of Siege Combat, where the Wizard has pulled back into a fortified posture and the Assassin stands outside reach forcing an attrition of resources for the Caster.

And the whole point of all this is that if D&D had been designed to Perfectly Imbalance Martials, Assassins, and Casters, tactics like this might be a lot more interesting and diverse a subject than it is. You can completely remove a Wizard's defenses against Assassins, but all you really had to do was make such defenses an either/or choice pitted against doing anything else. Act and place yourself in jeopardy, or defend yourself and leave your team in jeopardy without your assistance.

This could force the Caster to actually rely on having a team with diverse abilities and skill sets! Gasp!

[CharonsHelper]

I mean, Sneak Attack? Sure, if the enemy is vulnerable to precision damage (basically, if they're animals or humanoids) and they don't see it coming (so just the dim witted humanoids then). Feint? Sure, but your enemy adds BAB to their Sense Motive, so good luck beating their opposed check and we'll just be taxing your turn in combat for making the attempt. Death Attack? Oooo, that'll cost you 3 turns.

I will say - eventually Pathfinder fixed those. Feint is useful & SA works against nearly everything. But besides skills, even Urogues are mostly another flavour of martial rather than filling the "scissors" slot to the martial's rock & casters' paper.

I get the other side of it, too. No one wants the DM sending a party of imperceptible assassins out to murder their party while they sleep, but if Rocks Fall is the concern, the DM only has to use Casters or Uberchargers (or just plain ROCKS) instead. The bias towards casters in 3.5 was pretty palpable.

That gets into one of the trickiest aspects of game design - where abilities don't only have to be fun to use, but they have to be fun to have used against you. (most important for PvP games - but still a good rule in tabletop games where NPCs might have your same abilities)

The stealth system would have to go in a different direction to fulfil that goal. (Quite a few individual spells actually do fulfil that, but unfortunately many of the most potent do not.)

Generally D&D monsters actually do the latter quite well - and it's one of the major strengths of the system.

[Pex]

That won't last much longer:
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/news/localization

Edit: don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with enjoying Pathfinder, and at least (unlike AD&D or BECMI) it's a live system with active support. And much easier to find games in to boot.

But the idea that it the d20 system or its Piazo derivative somehow "went back" to AD&D way of wizards is ludicrous.

Instead of "went back", "kept" then, but the main point remains that the popularity of Pathfinder shows that those who complained about the magic system of 3E do not speak for everyone nor most players. There was not a problem in the first place.

[Calthropstu]

There would be ways to do this within a D&D style game - but it would require a level of designer discipline to avoid giving wizards spells which break it.

It would be fine if in a prepared duel the caster beats the martial 99% of the time IF the caster had TWO flaws - both of which D&D's fluff implies but aren't true mechanically.

1. If caught off guard the caster is totally screwed. (This is something which D&D's fluff implies, but especially in 3.x there are too many ways to escape the ambush/grapple/etc. Or spells to keep from being ambushed. All of these couldn't ever exist to make flaw #1 do its job.) This would allow there to be a R/P/S of Caster/Assassin/Martial - where the standard martial could beat stealthers, but stealthers could beat casters.

2. If casters could disrupt each-other more easily. If a level 5 caster could hold back a level 8 caster for a couple of rounds, then it would give the martial time to go up and get in their face - reverting to flaw #1. Two level 8s might counter each-other for some time, making the fight be about who had better martial support. 3.x even added counter-spelling to the game mechanics - but while very cool in fluff, mechanically they're too weak to be a viable tactic.

With the above two flaws added to casters the D&D style caster/martial could work fine.

Pf fixed the counterspell mechanics.

[CharonsHelper]

Pf fixed the counterspell mechanics.

Not really.

Even if you burn a feat on Improved Counterspell it's AT BEST trading your action for a single foe's future action, and unless you have the same spell you're burning a more valuable resource. With Dispel Magic you have a 50% chance of failing (assuming equal caster level)

And they can negate your counterspell by just using an item that turn so that you totally wasted your turn.

The only time I've ever used counterspell was on a support bard who already had his buffs up and not much left to do - so he tried using Dispel Magic to counterspell.

[Tanarii]

Instead of "went back", "kept" then, but the main point remains that the popularity of Pathfinder shows that those who complained about the magic system of 3E do not speak for everyone nor most players. There was not a problem in the first place.

If we use that logic, just because people enjoy something and it's popular, it's okay. But that doesn't mean it isn't wrong.


Seriously though, I enjoyed the hell out of 3.X while it was a live game. And the editions before. And the editions after.

But the changes to the system in each edition, and the ramifications of them in various aspects of the game, both positive and negative, are fairly well known at this point. Which makes claiming something like 3.P "went back" or "kept" oD&D/AD&D-style balancing, with wizards that go from glass cannons to reinforced-glass howitzers as they (slowly) level, totally ludicrous. They're the system that removed most of the glass, turned the howitzer top end up to 11, and made getting there lightning fast.

[Calthropstu]

Not really.

Even if you burn a feat on Improved Counterspell it's AT BEST trading your action for a single foe's future action, and unless you have the same spell you're burning a more valuable resource. With Dispel Magic you have a 50% chance of failing (assuming equal caster level)

And they can negate your counterspell by just using an item that turn so that you totally wasted your turn.

The only time I've ever used counterspell was on a support bard who already had his buffs up and not much left to do - so he tried using Dispel Magic to counterspell.

Unless you are going up against a full caster as party vs single caster. At that point, counterspelling becomes absolutely the thing to do. Plus, there are ways of getting counters as immediate actions... so you're using your swift for the next round instead of standard for previous. I actually built an antimage wizard to do just that... and boy did it work well.

[CharonsHelper]

Unless you are going up against a full caster as party vs single caster. At that point, counterspelling becomes absolutely the thing to do.

Except... if he's higher level you can't. You're just wasting your action. If he's pulling out his high level spells then you can't counter-spell them without Dispel Magic - which will only work a small % of the time.

If he's the same or lower level, he shouldn't be much of a challenge anyway.

[Calthropstu]

Except... if he's higher level you can't. You're just wasting your action. If he's pulling out his high level spells then you can't counter-spell them without Dispel Magic - which will only work a small % of the time.

If he's the same or lower level, he shouldn't be much of a challenge anyway.

It's straight caster level checks, and the build I had was running a +8 bonus. I forget where all of them came from, but it was +4 from feats, +2 class and +2 item. Haven't played him in 2 years. So equal caster level, he succeeded on a 3. 5 levels higher it was 8+ which is still fairly significant.

[Knaight]

Before you start berating others for their lack of understanding, maybe stop and think about why D&D stopped being significant outside of english speaking countries, while PF is going strong as a RPG export: There is no localized 5E as WotC pulled the plug on that. You can´t get it in spanish, french, german or japanese and you never will and frankly, gaming in a foreign language flat sucks. So, if you want, D&D outside the US is dead for quite some time now, with Paizo having taken over that role with solid contracts and good partner support.

If you're looking at translation then you run into a whole host of smaller games in languages with fewer speakers than English clobbering D&D in whatever language they're primarily published in. Paizo's role is playing second fiddle (at best) in a number of places internationally, where things like DSA or Tenra Bansho Zero clobber it.

Instead of "went back", "kept" then, but the main point remains that the popularity of Pathfinder shows that those who complained about the magic system of 3E do not speak for everyone nor most players. There was not a problem in the first place.

All this shows is that Pathfinder benefits from advertising, network effects, etc. much the same way D&D does and that most players don't dislike it enough to go out of their way to find and learn at whole new system (probably more than one). This doesn't indicate that it isn't deeply flawed so much as that most of the audience doesn't have particularly high standards (which is totally fine).