Fact: Pathfinder has solved the Caster/Non-Caster Disparity of 3.5

[Powerdork]

Then how about the Illusory Wall? How can you even hit it - it's just illusion! It doesn't exist! There are nothing to hit! What's the AC of nonexistent target?

For any effect other than one on a creature, the barbarian must make her combat maneuver check against a CMD of 15 plus the effect’s caster level. ... If successful, the barbarian suppresses the effect for 1 round, or 2 rounds if she exceeded the CMD by 5 to 9. If she exceeds the CMD by 10 or more, the effect is dispelled.

You're forgetting this is magic. Magic can do things that have no clear parallel in our world. That's what makes it magic. Though the wall might not exist, the spell does, even if you normally can't reach out and touch it.

[ShurikVch]

You're forgetting this is magic. Magic can do things that have no clear parallel in our world. That's what makes it magic. Though the wall might not exist, the spell does, even if you normally can't reach out and touch it.

What's the AC of illusory wall?

Also, I'm highly skeptical about addition of (Su) powers into Rage: Barbarian always was one of those non-magical classes; also, it means he can't Spell Sunder while affected by Antimagic, which is super weird!

[Powerdork]

What's the AC of illusory wall?

Also, I'm highly skeptical about addition of (Su) powers into Rage: Barbarian always was one of those non-magical classes; also, it means he can't Spell Sunder while affected by Antimagic, which is super weird!

I just quoted the mechanic for sundering an illusory wall, please read the entire post, quotes and all. AC does not factor into the ability, only CMD. If someone wants to hit an illusory wall with a plain sword swing, they're entitled to try and will probably succeed (since it's basically a Large inanimate object, it's 10 -5 (no Dex) -2 (inanimate) -1 (size), so AC 2). It won't do much, though.

[Talakeal]

1: Deities & Demigods pre-dates 2e. Gods having stats was a thing at the time. Your campaign & setting may have varied -- the rules were very inconsistently applied from table to table at that time. (This was NOT a problem, until someone tries to say that the rules were like X everywhere because they were like X at his specific table. Then the inconsistent application at the time becomes a problem for discussion in the present.)

2: Demogorgon should have been a demon-prince, not a deity. Lolth also had stats dating back to Q1.

Deities and Demigods is a first edition book, I would think it would be superceded by the second edition book on the subejct, Legends snd Lore. To say otherwise would be like arguing that one should still use use Thaco0 in 5e because the book never says otherwise.

[Sneak Dog]

In immortal words of Talakeal:

Extraordinary abilities:

Indeed, extraordinary abilities do not qualify as magical, though they may break the laws of physics.

These immortal words do not apply to Pathfinder. In Pathfinder, breaking the laws of physics without magic is perfectly acceptable.

[squiggit]

In immortal words of Talakeal

Then how about instead of 'but dragons', 'but fighters'? Because this high level fighter I'm looking at is, well... Virtually immune to bullets, able to walk away from a fall from any height, can kill an average man in a single punch, enjoys hearty dinners of arsenic washed down with mugs of cobra venom and considers pools of molten lava, dragon's breath and giants with hammers bigger her whole body more mild inconveniences than serious threats to her health. Without any magic. If that's not enough, throw some mythic in there and she can clear a 20 mile long jump, as an Ex ability.


To then demand that this hilariously improbable and superhuman character be held to some standard of realism in one narrow aspect of her character when nothing else about her could possibly be described as such feels absurdly arbitrary and more than a little bit nonsensical.

[Psyren]

Try to do it with any nitro- or peroxide-based explosives, rocket fuel, or Thermite - you will swinging until it burns out

So clearly, a magic spell's relationship to its own fuel source isn't as resilient as flame's is to thermite; a spell might be closer to something like a candle flame, open lantern or campfire that can be more easily "blown out" or suffocated. You need to fit your conclusion to the evidence available, not the other way around. *Points at sig*

Your thermite analogy probably fits better with a Supernatural ability, which cannot be sundered.

Also, how, exactly, our Barbarian will sunder Prismatic Wall? Shouldn't his sword be destroyed by the Violet color? And shouldn't he roll 50% miss chance to hit invisible Wall of Force?

Where in the rules does it say your sword is passing through the wall itself?

The problem is to make that Rule Zero change work, you have to rewrite Rules One through Forty-Seven.

So then do that, if magic/martial parity truly matters that much to you. If you're not willing to make those changes, then you'll have to live with the disparity, or play another system like 4e where "martial" being an equal power source exists.

How are you defining "ExMagic"?

I mean, look at the Swiftblade - other than the spellcasting advancement, everything is a (Ex) ability or a bonus feat. Although several of them are keyed off of using the haste spell on yourself.

Actually, I think all of the Swiftblade's abilities are perfectly fine. Their Ex abilities give you lots of extra power/options out of the haste spell, but the haste spell itself is still magic and can be dispelled, detected, countered etc.

What I personally mean by "ExMagic" is fairly extensive, but to give a small example - I don't think Ex resurrection, Ex teleportation/planar travel, and Ex healing of others are okay. (Ex Self-healing however is totally fine.)

[Nifft]

Deities and Demigods is a first edition book, I would think it would be superceded by the second edition book on the subejct, Legends snd Lore. To say otherwise would be like arguing that one should still use use Thaco0 in 5e because the book never says otherwise.

Since I said that the idea of gods having stats pre-dates 2e, you'd think it would be obvious that the 1e book I mention is from 1e. I guess I need to say that, though, in case someone like you is skimming.

Regarding 2e gods, they're very easy to kill, since the only statistic which governs their life-span is the size of their statue. So 2e was a bit of a step backwards in terms of making gods immortal, but that's not really relevant to this thread, so maybe read what I say instead of whatever you mis-interpret and we'll be good going forward.

Capiche?

[Arbane]

1: Deities & Demigods pre-dates 2e. Gods having stats was a thing at the time. Your campaign & setting may have varied -- the rules were very inconsistently applied from table to table at that time. (This was NOT a problem, until someone tries to say that the rules were like X everywhere because they were like X at his specific table. Then the inconsistent application at the time becomes a problem for discussion in the present.)

2: Demogorgon should have been a demon-prince, not a deity. Lolth also had stats dating back to Q1.

1: I remember Gygax complaining in Dragon Magazine that some player had bragged to him about the time they killed Thor with a Push spell. Ah, the good ol' days.

2: Q1 was Queen of the Demonweb Pits, right? In which a bunch of adventurers have to venture into the Abyss and kill Lolth.
She had 66 hitpoints, and it was an adventure for levels 10-14.

D&D has changed a bit over the years.

(Line-by-line chatter deleted as nobody cares.)

Since when Goralion is a fair world?
If you want fair game, then you should play something else

You missed the part where Pathfinder is a GAME, not part of some Historical Re-Enactment Society, right?

Games, especially cooperative ones, tend to be more fun when the players are capable of contributing equally, if not all in the same way.

(I'd actually be a lot more OK with PF's Caster-Martial Disparity if the game would acknowledge it, but the folks at Paizo act like they're in denial.)

Firstly, let's don't forget: ancient folk don't knew many things which we are know now - so story about Atlas/Heracles holding the Sky sounded completely plausible to them - they wasn't aware about sky's nature
On the other hand, some of myth are at least physically accurate: Svyatogor attempted to flip the Earth, but instead just sunken into ground. Choke on Newton's Third law, epic power!

Dood, pick one position and stick with it. Either real-world physics is in effect and thus most D&D monsters immediately die to their physical impossibility, or else Mythic Physics is in effect, and someone jumping a mountain by TRAINING REALLY HARD is perfectly reasonable. As it is, you're flip-flopping between them whenever someone offends you by suggesting that non-spellcasters should be allowed Nice Things or that monsters should have to play by the same rules as PCs. You not allowing your waveform to collapse is just annoying.

Then how about instead of 'but dragons', 'but fighters'? Because this high level fighter I'm looking at is, well... Virtually immune to bullets, able to walk away from a fall from any height, can kill an average man in a single punch, enjoys hearty dinners of arsenic washed down with mugs of cobra venom and considers pools of molten lava, dragon's breath and giants with hammers bigger her whole body more mild inconveniences than serious threats to her health. Without any magic. If that's not enough, throw some mythic in there and she can clear a 20 mile long jump, as an Ex ability.

To then demand that this hilariously improbable and superhuman character be held to some standard of realism in one narrow aspect of her character when nothing else about her could possibly be described as such feels absurdly arbitrary and more than a little bit nonsensical.

What this guy says. Although I'd argue that by the rules, a high-level fighter is superhuman in one narrow aspect (giving and taking physical harm), but is being unjustly shackled to a bogus sense of "realism" on EVERYTHING ELSE while the wizards merrily float off into the stratosphere trailing pixie dust and lightning-bolts.

[Jormengand]

I don't think... Ex healing [is] okay. (Ex Self-healing however is totally fine.)

Behold! My magical powers of first aid!

[stanprollyright]

Then how about instead of 'but dragons', 'but fighters'? Because this high level fighter I'm looking at is, well... Virtually immune to bullets, able to walk away from a fall from any height, can kill an average man in a single punch, enjoys hearty dinners of arsenic washed down with mugs of cobra venom and considers pools of molten lava, dragon's breath and giants with hammers bigger her whole body more mild inconveniences than serious threats to her health. Without any magic. If that's not enough, throw some mythic in there and she can clear a 20 mile long jump, as an Ex ability.


To then demand that this hilariously improbable and superhuman character be held to some standard of realism in one narrow aspect of her character when nothing else about her could possibly be described as such feels absurdly arbitrary and more than a little bit nonsensical.

Everything a Fighter can do is still just an exaggeration of things normal humans can do. I can survive a fall from a second story window, but a baby can't. I can't survive from a tenth story window, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that someone could. And if they can do it, maybe they could also fall 11 stories, and so on, until you get to terminal velocity. I can ingest small amounts of arsenic and cobra venom and be fine, others can ingest more. A man can be punched to death, a strong and well-trained attacker can do it in fewer punches, and a 20th level PC can do it in just one. All a Fighter does is bend the physical laws of the universe, doing something possible at an impossible scale.

A Wizard does things that are impossible on any scale.

[Nifft]

1: I remember Gygax complaining in Dragon Magazine that some player had bragged to him about the time they killed Thor with a Push spell. Ah, the good ol' days.

2: Q1 was Queen of the Demonweb Pits, right? In which a bunch of adventurers have to venture into the Abyss and kill Lolth.
She had 66 hitpoints, and it was an adventure for levels 10-14.

Yes, and right.

66 was a lot of hit points back then!

And we got into and out of the Underdark by going uphill, both ways!

D&D has changed a bit over the years.

It has changed a lot, but overall it has remained very silly, and that's why I'm still enjoying the game.

[javcs]

Actually, I think all of the Swiftblade's abilities are perfectly fine. Their Ex abilities give you lots of extra power/options out of the haste spell, but the haste spell itself is still magic and can be dispelled, detected, countered etc.

What I personally mean by "ExMagic" is fairly extensive, but to give a small example - I don't think Ex resurrection, Ex teleportation/planar travel, and Ex healing of others are okay. (Ex Self-healing however is totally fine.)

For the record, one of the Swiftblade abilities turns any Haste spell you cast on yourself into an (Ex) effect, rather than an ongoing spell effect, and thus immune to dispelling and antimagic.



So ... (almost) anything you do to buff yourself (other than polymorph-type effects, of course) is okay by you? Most of those buff are either relatively low level, or largely redundant to a martial type (ie, Tensor's Transformation).

That's the thing - the high level buff spells give the caster the same sort of martial abilities a noncaster has, but do nothing for someone who is already a martial, and even the low-level buffs can still be useful to caster, but are redundant for a noncaster martial (ie, physical stat boosts, magic weapon, magic vestment).

The high level spell effects a martial noncaster wants are purely defensive ones - things that give immunities to various forms of magical attacks (especially Save or Die/Loose/Suck spells).
The caster types have save or dies - they can end an enemy with a single action, whereas the noncasters have to grind an enemy down purely through HP damage. Noncaster martials need ways to apply status effects to enemies (especi

[Talakeal]

Chromatic Orb was a 1st level spell; as you grow in levels, you get access to new orbs with different effects; at 12 level, you finally get access to Ebony Black orb; any target who isn't saved dies immediately; even gods occasionally "roll 1", and how exactly difficult to hit Large-sized target with ranged touch attack?



Demogorgon is one of bosses in Baldur's Gate.
Should I remind you about the Time of Troubles?

I get you; I thought you meant there was some cheap combo like the 3e/4e/5e tricks to solo / take out someone like a Tarrasque or Orcus in one round. Yeah, Chromatic orb is a damn cheap spell. Although you do have to hit, get through his saving throw, and get through his magic resistance while a fighter could, and theoretically, also one shot him with the death from massive damage roles, but that doesn't negate the fact that a level 1 save or die is just .


Also, that is actually the 1E Demorgogon stats. In 2E demorgorgon himself is just listed as a lesser god / plot device (as are most of the named fiends), although his avatar (which is iirc what the time of troubles stats are based on) is still perfectly killable, and in many ways actually weaker than his 1E counterpart:

In immortal words of Talakeal:

Thanks for the attribution! The But Dragons! fallacy isn't actually my idea though, I just spread knowledge of it because it (along with the "guy with a stick" fallacy) really bug me :P

[Talakeal]

Since I said that the idea of gods having stats pre-dates 2e, you'd think it would be obvious that the 1e book I mention is from 1e. I guess I need to say that, though, in case someone like you is skimming.

Regarding 2e gods, they're very easy to kill, since the only statistic which governs their life-span is the size of their statue. So 2e was a bit of a step backwards in terms of making gods immortal, but that's not really relevant to this thread, so maybe read what I say instead of whatever you mis-interpret and we'll be good going forward.

Capiche?

What the heck?

He said "In 2E you can kill Demogorgon with one first level spell" to which I responded "Are you sure you meant 2E? Because god's having stats was not a feature of that edition" to which you responded with comments about first edition. What did you actually mean to say?

Also, what are you referring to with the statue thing?

Then how about instead of 'but dragons', 'but fighters'? Because this high level fighter I'm looking at is, well... Virtually immune to bullets, able to walk away from a fall from any height, can kill an average man in a single punch, enjoys hearty dinners of arsenic washed down with mugs of cobra venom and considers pools of molten lava, dragon's breath and giants with hammers bigger her whole body more mild inconveniences than serious threats to her health. Without any magic. If that's not enough, throw some mythic in there and she can clear a 20 mile long jump, as an Ex ability.


To then demand that this hilariously improbable and superhuman character be held to some standard of realism in one narrow aspect of her character when nothing else about her could possibly be described as such feels absurdly arbitrary and more than a little bit nonsensical.

Extraordinary abilities:


These immortal words do not apply to Pathfinder. In Pathfinder, breaking the laws of physics without magic is perfectly acceptable.

The fallacy is insisting that the setting be either 100% realistic or 100% fantastical.

Also, it doesn't apply to just magic. For example, half the technology in Star Trek seems to violate the laws of physics, but no one ever insisted they were magical or failed to pick up on plot holes that don't involve insane technobabble.

[Nifft]

Also, what are you referring to with the statue thing?

2e was notoriously poorly edited.

If you actually read the 2e Legends & Lore entry for "All Gods" (on page 7, bottom-left part of the page), you'll see that the "Immortality" entry reads:

All gods are immortal. The only way for a god to die is to be destroyed by a god of higher statue in magical or physical combat.

Therefore, you just need a taller statue -- or a sufficiently high pedestal for your statue, if you're a cheese-weasel -- to permanently kill any god in 2e.

[Coretron03]

Therefore, you just need a taller statue -- or a sufficiently high pedestal for your statue, if you're a cheese-weasel -- to permanently kill any god in 2e.

I want to sig this, pity I don't know how

[Nifft]

I want to sig this, pity I don't know how

You have permission, if you had sought it. (You don't need it, of course. I can't stop you.)

[Jormengand]

I want to sig this, pity I don't know how

See the "Settings" link in the top-right? Click it, then search for "My signature" on the page (use ctrl-f if needed). Click that, and you'll be able to edit quotes in by copy-pasting the entire quote, in this case [QUOTE=Nifft;21478124]Therefore, you just need a taller statue -- or a sufficiently high pedestal for your statue, if you're a cheese-weasel -- to permanently kill any god in 2e.[/QUOTE] into the box given.

[Psyren]

For the record, one of the Swiftblade abilities turns any Haste spell you cast on yourself into an (Ex) effect, rather than an ongoing spell effect, and thus immune to dispelling and antimagic.

Fair enough but you're not quite right - it turns Haste Ex if you successfully cast it, but it's still a spell at the moment of casting and can be dispelled. It also means that you can't apply it while you're in a AMF or dead magic area; rather, you must successfully cast it outside such an area and then enter. So I'm still okay with it, as it can be interfered with by outside means.

So ... (almost) anything you do to buff yourself (other than polymorph-type effects, of course) is okay by you? Most of those buff are either relatively low level, or largely redundant to a martial type (ie, Tensor's Transformation).

For the most part yeah. It would depend on the specific buff though so I'd have to see specifics on what's being proposed to be Ex before signing off, personally.

That's the thing - the high level buff spells give the caster the same sort of martial abilities a noncaster has, but do nothing for someone who is already a martial, and even the low-level buffs can still be useful to caster, but are redundant for a noncaster martial (ie, physical stat boosts, magic weapon, magic vestment).

Those aren't redundant at all - a martial who can provide the buffs you listed themselves, has much more freedom in terms of their wealth to pick up the more situational response items like Winged Boots or Rod of Cancellation.

[137beth]

You have permission, if you had sought it. (You don't need it, of course. I can't stop you.)

You can stop a god from sigging your quote if you have a tall enough statue!

But since you granted permission anyways, I decided to extended-sig your quote

[ShurikVch]

These immortal words do not apply to Pathfinder. In Pathfinder, breaking the laws of physics without magic is perfectly acceptable.

I see you doesn't even looked the links?
This whole thing started in a thread about Pathfinder!

Then how about instead of 'but dragons', 'but fighters'?

OK, let's see...

Because this high level fighter I'm looking at is, well... Virtually immune to bullets

False.
Firstly, you don't even specified neither race and level of Fighter, nor number of bullets; 30d6 damage can ruin day for any Fighter, and 24 one-hit damage may be downright lethal at lower levels
Secondly, Fighter of any level is still perfectly can be killed with just one bullet - precision damage (and if Fighter is immune to precision damage - then it's nothing about "Fighter" or "bullets", and everything about "immune to precision damage")
And finally, there are numerous known IRL examples of surviving supposedly deadly shots:

Spoiler

Show

• Adrian Carton de Wiart: was shot multiple times, including twice in the face - in an attack upon an enemy fort at Shimber Berris, and through the skull and ankle at the Battle of the Somme
• Alexis Goggins: 7-year-old girl - full clip from the point blank range, including to the head
• Angel Alvarez: survived 23 bullets
• Gabrielle Giffords: to the head
• Howard Morgan: survived 28 bullets
• Joe Greenstein "The Mighty Atom": shot between the eyebrows from a 30' distance; the bullet did not enter his skull, but was flattened by the impact
• Kenny Vaughan: 20 shots from a rifle only 5' away
• Manfred von Richthofen "Red Baron": shot to the back of the head with aircraft machine gun
• Mike Day: was shot 27 times
• Otto von Bismarck "Iron Chancellor": during the attempt to assassinate by Ferdinand Cohen-Blind, was shot 2 times to the back, and 3 more times - to the front
• Roy Benavidez: 37 separate bullet, bayonet, and shrapnel wounds from the six-hour fight with the enemy battalion
• Saburo Sakai: head wound from aircraft machine gun
• Simo Häyhä "White Death": shot with explosive bullet to the face
• Lawyer Dodges Bullets: it's for real, and no body armor involved; lawyer was hit several times (including through the neck), but still walked away

Looking at all those example, I want to say: Pf Fighters are perfectly realistic (maybe, a bit brittle)

able to walk away from a fall from any height

It's have absolutely nothing to do with Fighter, and everything - with Falling rules; for example, Blue Whale would also survive falling from the space just fine; and Objects (of any size and hardness) are immune to falling damage

can kill an average man in a single punch

So what? Common Cat can too! "Average men" in Pathfinder are so brittle nobody of them dying from old age
Like IRL wasn't any cases when people were killed "in a single punch"
Nitpick: to "kill an average man in a single punch" Fighter still need either Improved Unarmed Strike or Gauntlet

cenjoys hearty dinners of arsenic washed down with mugs of cobra venom

Actually, anybody in Goralion can do it easily: Arsenic is so weak it have no chance to kill a Rat, and cobra venom is injury poison - it wouldn't hurt if ingested

and considers pools of molten lava, dragon's breath and giants with hammers bigger her whole body more mild inconveniences than serious threats to her health.

Lava can easily do 20d6 damage, and also destroy all her equipment
Gold Dragon, Great Wyrm: 24d10 - heck, what's the race and level of the Fighter?
Group of Shadow Giants with Lucerne Hammers is "mild inconvenience"?

Where in the rules does it say your sword is passing through the wall itself?

OK, it remove concern considering Prismatic Wall, but what about the rules considering hitting invisible targets? Wall of Force is invisible...

You missed the part where Pathfinder is a GAME, not part of some Historical Re-Enactment Society, right?

Games, especially cooperative ones, tend to be more fun when the players are capable of contributing equally, if not all in the same way.

And they are contributing: Wizard killing dragons, Fighter killing goblins; Fighter couldn't fight dragons, because Fighter don't fly

Dood, pick one position and stick with it. Either real-world physics is in effect and thus most D&D monsters immediately die to their physical impossibility, or else Mythic Physics is in effect, and someone jumping a mountain by TRAINING REALLY HARD is perfectly reasonable. As it is, you're flip-flopping between them whenever someone offends you by suggesting that non-spellcasters should be allowed Nice Things or that monsters should have to play by the same rules as PCs. You not allowing your waveform to collapse is just annoying.

False dichotomy fallacy detected! (also known as "If Jesus, Then Aliens")

Although I'd argue that by the rules, a high-level fighter is superhuman in one narrow aspect (giving and taking physical harm), but is being unjustly shackled to a bogus sense of "realism" on EVERYTHING ELSE while the wizards merrily float off into the stratosphere trailing pixie dust and lightning-bolts.

Wizard have magic; Fighter have no excuse

[Sneak Dog]

I see you doesn't even looked the links?
This whole thing started in a thread about Pathfinder!

I admit, I didn't check the links subform. It just means the proposed fallcy is wrong as per the rules of Pathfinder, and using it would be homebrew.

Wizard have magic; Fighter have no excuse

Well, there's the part that the laws of physics are so brittle in Pathfinder many abilities can break it, be it magically, extraordinarily or psionically.

[Segev]

Are you talking about the current paradigm though? Because I'm totally fine with the Ex abilities currently in the game, and I'm also fine with giving the martial classes more Su abilities than they currently have. What I'm not okay with is outright ExMagic.

It's a very valid discussion where the line of "what magic can do" and "what non-magic can't do" is. It's less about specific things, and more about ability to deal with those things.

One example you gave was that you don't like "Ex teleport." How would you feel about the ability to forcibly follow a teleporter, perhaps by using a fast-reaction Ex ability to lay hands (or gear) on them and "ride along?"

For example: Indianna Jones follows the Enchantress as she tries to teleport away with the Staff of Loki he was racing her to retrieve by lashing out and wrapping his whip around her wrist. They both wind up in her lair, and Indy, after jerking the whip to make her send the staff flying through the air (hopefully so he can catch it) makes a witty observation about how he was expecting a more mystical location for her lair than a suite in Trump Tower.

I don't think that's how it should be in all games. But I think you already have the tool you need (specifically, rule zero) to not make it that way in *your* game.

It's a lot easier to Rule Zero the "Saitama" class out if it's included in the rules than it is to Rule Zero it in if it isn't.



ShurikVch, while I appreciate your multiquoting replies, unfortunately, the very fine-grained nature of them combined with the fact that, were I to quote you to reply to them, my own quotes to which you were responding would be lost, makes it difficult to actually respond to you.

But here's my best effort:

Giants can't support their own weight because of the square-cube law. They'd collapse under it. Centaurs would suffocate because their air passages are not sufficient to supply oxygen to the massive horse-lungs in the equine portions of their bodies (and, if they lacked those, they couldn't oxygenate enough blood with their human-scale lungs). They also have digestive issues, what with a combination carnivorous and herbivorous digestive system that has to be fed through a human-scale mouth while sustaining a more-than-horse-scale anatomy. Trees lack the musculature to engage in rapid (i.e. animal speed) motion. Treants in no way are shown to have even the rudimentary motion-capacity of, say, a venus fly trap, and that capacity is not sufficient to engage in voluntary motion on the scale of a moving TREE, even if they did. Griffons lack the required wing span and musculature to shove enough air at a high enough velocity to take flight, and even a much-lighter-than-a-griffon human requires significantly greater surface area of "wing" to glide (even at high altitude with good updrafts) - see: hang gliding.

If you insist that anything that isn't real-world physics is magic, then you must state that all of the above operate on magic. Therefore, they shoudl collapse and die in anti-magic fields. They do not; their powers are (ex) in nature. They work in their settings, without being "magic." So, too, can a man who, by sheer muscle, can leap to the top of a building, or punch through a dragon's torso.

Finally, my point was never that "anything that can be done with magic can be done without." It was that you can have beings participating on a greater-than-EArth-physics level without having to have them be magical, and even have them be right up there with the magic users in terms of ability to achieve goals.

Sure, maybe Saitama can't bring back the dead. But the Eternal Dragon can't destroy Darkseid in a single punch, either.

[Talakeal]

I admit, I didn't check the links subform. It just means the proposed fallcy is wrong as per the rules of Pathfinder, and using it would be homebrew..

What does that even mean?

How can a theory about game design be "wrong as per the rules?"

Are you trying to say that Pathfinder does not apply consistent logic to its world-building?

Although you do have to hit, get through his saving throw, and get through his magic resistance while a fighter could, and theoretically, also one shot him with the death from massive damage rolls...

On second thought, no he couldn't. I just realized that crits in 2E are extra attacks, not extra damage, and I can't think of any RAW way a 2E fighter can deal more than 50 damage with a single attack.

If you insist that anything that isn't real-world physics is magic, then you must state that all of the above operate on magic. Therefore, they shoudl collapse and die in anti-magic fields. They do not; their powers are (ex) in nature. They work in their settings, without being "magic." So, too, can a man who, by sheer muscle, can leap to the top of a building, or punch through a dragon's torso.

I once had a long argument with someone on this subject.

I said that EX abilities were typically things that didn't necessarily follow real world physics, but lacked an overtly "magical" component. It was a fluff divide that was, basically, whether or not the average person would think it impossible if it came up in a Sci-Fi or over the top action move setting, while SU abilities were those that the average person would not accept without some sort of "its magic" hand-wave.

The other guy argued that there was no fluff difference between EX and SU abilities, it is purely a crunch mechanic used to denote which abilities would be OP if they could function inside of an anti-magic field.

[Segev]

The other guy argued that there was no fluff difference between EX and SU abilities, it is purely a crunch mechanic used to denote which abilities would be OP if they could function inside of an anti-magic field.

While I'd say that this is probably the proper line for balanced game design, there IS flat-out fluff difference. One uses fluff of "magic," the other uses some other fluff.

And there probably is a line where failing to use "magic" makes it hard to swallow.

But balance-wise, sure, there's no reason every (Su) ability couldn't have a higher-level (Ex) version. (Ex) just upgrades it to immunity to magic-destroying effects.

[ShurikVch]

ShurikVch, while I appreciate your multiquoting replies, unfortunately, the very fine-grained nature of them combined with the fact that, were I to quote you to reply to them, my own quotes to which you were responding would be lost, makes it difficult to actually respond to you.

Thanks!

Giants can't support their own weight because of the square-cube law. They'd collapse under it.

No, they don't.
Actually, you are speaking about "normal humanoids", enlarged by the freak accident in some sci-fi setting, i. e. assuming (without any reason) Giants - size difference aside - are about as strong as humans(/dwarves/whatever).
No matter if Giants evolved to be like they are naturally, or were engineered, they are clearly strong enough to be comfortable at their usual size

Centaurs would suffocate because their air passages are not sufficient to supply oxygen to the massive horse-lungs in the equine portions of their bodies (and, if they lacked those, they couldn't oxygenate enough blood with their human-scale lungs). They also have digestive issues, what with a combination carnivorous and herbivorous digestive system that has to be fed through a human-scale mouth while sustaining a more-than-horse-scale anatomy.

Honestly, I never was fond of centaurs.
If you ask me, I would say: "Let them go!"
IIRR, no of canonical D&D settings are big about centaurs (couple of adventures aside)

Trees lack the musculature to engage in rapid (i.e. animal speed) motion. Treants in no way are shown to have even the rudimentary motion-capacity of, say, a venus fly trap, and that capacity is not sufficient to engage in voluntary motion on the scale of a moving TREE, even if they did.

You say "Trees", but "Trees" ≠ "Treants"
We have no idea about internal anatomy of treants, so any guesswork there is as good as the next one

Griffons lack the required wing span and musculature to shove enough air at a high enough velocity to take flight, and even a much-lighter-than-a-griffon human requires significantly greater surface area of "wing" to glide (even at high altitude with good updrafts) - see: hang gliding.

I'm well-aware about the "wingspan problem", but it call for counter-questions:
1. What's the size of wingspan necessary for 500 lbs. Griffon to fly?
2. What's the size of wingspan which Griffon actually have (according to books)?

[Sneak Dog]

How can a theory about game design be "wrong as per the rules?"

Apparently Pathfinder has laws of physics, and they get broken. Which just sounds non-sensible. Logically, you cannot break the laws of physics. You break your theory about what they are.

So there's two options:
1.
Pathfinder is illogical and somehow has laws of physics that can be broken. Somehow. This is as per the rule.
The ways to break it are, for example, extraordinary abilities and magic. Even past that, a gryphon breaks them by being able to fly without any such descriptor. A descriptor is not necessary to break the laws of physics.

2.
In Pathfinder, magic isn't magic. It's physics. As are extraordinary abilities. The laws of physics are just different. This is the logical solution. In this one, a rogue is able to evade a fireball, centaurs don't suffocate and gryphons fly.

Seeing how 1 is RAW, the fallacy doesn't apply. Pathfinder breaks its own laws of physics. Without laws of physics, anything is possible.

Now you could houserule option 2 and I'd strongly suggest doing so. But then also take care to make a mental list of what is and is not possible and whether that is consistent. Be very aware of what you are doing. For I would find it inconsistent when a gryphon is able to fly, a giant to swing a tree-trunk, but a fighter can't jump a house.

Now on a sidenote: levels are supposed to represent similarly powerful characters. A level 15 fighter should be able to do similar things when compared to a level 15 wizard. He doesn't. Remember that this isn't limited to combat-only.

To solve this you could:
Level-cap fighters. Up-front and honest.
Allow fighters to do things that cannot be replicated by casters. Make them incomparable.
Allow fighters to break reality and perform feats similar to magic. Make them balanced.

[Psyren]

OK, it remove concern considering Prismatic Wall, but what about the rules considering hitting invisible targets? Wall of Force is invisible...

But the exact same answer applies there. Where do the rules say you're swinging directly at the wall itself?

More to the point though, let's assume you actually do have to swing at the spell effect itself (even though the rules don't say so.) The miss chance for invisible creatures is due to the fact that creatures in combat are constantly in motion, so you can't be sure of their position. It doesn't apply to something you have no chance of missing because there's no space around it. If you put a blind archer inside a windowless Forcecage and he fires his bow, his arrow is going to hit one of the sides because it has literally nowhere else to go. So no matter which way you look at it, Spell Sunder works.

It's a very valid discussion where the line of "what magic can do" and "what non-magic can't do" is. It's less about specific things, and more about ability to deal with those things.

One example you gave was that you don't like "Ex teleport." How would you feel about the ability to forcibly follow a teleporter, perhaps by using a fast-reaction Ex ability to lay hands (or gear) on them and "ride along?"

For example: Indianna Jones follows the Enchantress as she tries to teleport away with the Staff of Loki he was racing her to retrieve by lashing out and wrapping his whip around her wrist. They both wind up in her lair, and Indy, after jerking the whip to make her send the staff flying through the air (hopefully so he can catch it) makes a witty observation about how he was expecting a more mystical location for her lair than a suite in Trump Tower.

I'm fine with this ability. I'd want there to be some kind of check first to grab hold (attack roll or CMB from the martial, or a reflex from the caster or something) but once that's added it's good.

I seem to remember there's a way to do this in Pathfinder already (stow away on an escaping foe's teleport) but it's escaping me. In 3.5, this ability is supernatural (it's on the Hellbreaker PrC), but for a physical/melee-range countermeasure I'd be fine with Ex.

It's a lot easier to Rule Zero the "Saitama" class out if it's included in the rules than it is to Rule Zero it in if it isn't.

You're absolutely right about this, but here's the thing; as I said before, the designers have a choice to make. It's impossible to please both the folks who want an official Saitama class in the first-party game and those who do not; they had to choose which group to disappoint. I happen to think that by not supporting it. they made the right choice, whereas you appear to disagree; the only objective standard we have to measure by is how well the game is doing, and how much better or worse it would be doing by going with the other option.

What they did however is the next best thing - they published their game using the open license (not that they had a choice here), and are actively encouraging and supporting a vibrant ecosystem of 3PP (they did have a choice here.) So if "Saitamafinder" or even a single Saitama-esque class is truly what this game's niche audience yearns for deep down, eventually someone will get one published, and the resulting popularity of such a design will be self-evident. In short, if the demand for an "ExFighter" class is large enough, someone will make one and see success, and the design landscape will react appropriately. It could even be you. Until then though, there is little reason to deviate from the proven formula of magic being superior to not-magic, though I don't advocate for it to quite the extreme that Shurikvch appears to. (e.g. I'm fine with things like Spell Sunder, and Paizo obviously seems to be too, while he doesn't seem to want them in the game.)

[Talakeal]

Apparently Pathfinder has laws of physics, and they get broken. Which just sounds non-sensible. Logically, you cannot break the laws of physics. You break your theory about what they are.

So there's two options:
1.
Pathfinder is illogical and somehow has laws of physics that can be broken. Somehow. This is as per the rule.
The ways to break it are, for example, extraordinary abilities and magic. Even past that, a gryphon breaks them by being able to fly without any such descriptor. A descriptor is not necessary to break the laws of physics.

2.
In Pathfinder, magic isn't magic. It's physics. As are extraordinary abilities. The laws of physics are just different. This is the logical solution. In this one, a rogue is able to evade a fireball, centaurs don't suffocate and gryphons fly.

Seeing how 1 is RAW, the fallacy doesn't apply. Pathfinder breaks its own laws of physics. Without laws of physics, anything is possible.

Now you could houserule option 2 and I'd strongly suggest doing so. But then also take care to make a mental list of what is and is not possible and whether that is consistent. Be very aware of what you are doing. For I would find it inconsistent when a gryphon is able to fly, a giant to swing a tree-trunk, but a fighter can't jump a house.

Now on a sidenote: levels are supposed to represent similarly powerful characters. A level 15 fighter should be able to do similar things when compared to a level 15 wizard. He doesn't. Remember that this isn't limited to combat-only.

To solve this you could:
Level-cap fighters. Up-front and honest.
Allow fighters to do things that cannot be replicated by casters. Make them incomparable.
Allow fighters to break reality and perform feats similar to magic. Make them balanced.

I think the pathfinder text (which is copied verbatim from 3.5 IIC) is shorthand for "Even if the ability appears to violate the real world laws of physics as we understand them," which makes it far less contradictory and nonsensical.

However, that isn't really relevant to the point.

The "But Dragons!" fallacy is the idea that if any element of a setting is in any way unrealistic, then you cannot apply logic to any other element.

For example:
Person A: "In issue 35 super-man flew to Mars and back in under two minutes, but in issue 43 he failed to outrun a train, what gives?"
Person B: "You are talking about a guy who can fly, of course his speed isn't consistent!"

or

Person A: "Why did Captain Kirk bother knife fighting with the enemy boarding party, why didn't Scotty just beam them directly to the brig?"
Person B: "You are talking about a show where aliens all look like humans and speak English and a Star Ship can fly faster than the speed of light, why would character's ever be expected to act in a rational manner?"



Also, in addition to the solutions to the fighter problem you solved you could also fix the truly broken spells, stop gating mundane abilities behind feats and skill points, and add more ways for mundanes to interact with or even counter magical abilities that are not themselves magical. But you probably already knew that.