A rant on ASF

[Ridley's Cohort]

Why do we need ASF, again?

It is a sacred cow flavor issue IMO. A vanilla unbuffed Wizard should has the worst AC in the party.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Arcane casters, once beyond the earliest levels, are the ones most capable of inflicting the most damage to the most creatures in the shortest amount of time. Their low hit points and inability to wear armor are designed to be their primary weaknesses, making them "glass cannons" and forcing them to rely on their party for protection.

I think Arcane Spell Failure is at least moderately necessary to balance Wizards and Sorcerors, but I am willing to allow them to get around it with some sacrifice-- I change the prerequisite for Battle Caster from class-based ability to ignore ASF to the Combat Casting feat, and allow it to be taken multiple times.

 

[Merlion]

Arcane casters, once beyond the earliest levels, are the ones most capable of inflicting the most damage to the most creatures in the shortest amount of time

So? This is just one function. It doesnt make them better spellcasters, it makes them better at that specific function.


Also, as far as the magical dealing of damage, that tactic becomes quite weak at mid and high levels once you start facing mostly creatures that have energy resistances and/or spell resistance and/or extremely high saves.
At that point, save or die spells become the effective form of magical offense and while Wizards do have something of an edge in that as well, Clerics in particular are quite strong in this area as well.

Their low hit points and inability to wear armor are designed to be their primary weaknesses, making them "glass cannons" and forcing them to rely on their party for protection.

The hit point part of that is what matters. As long as mages have a d4 hit die, even if they can wear armor to up their AC, their still going to rely on the party for protection and avoid entering melee range with most enemies because they will still get hit, and one or two hits will still kill them. Just as it is now.

I think Arcane Spell Failure is at least moderately necessary to balance Wizards and Sorcerors

Its not. As RC has said, its a flavour/legacy issue, like so many things in D&D

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'm not sure what you mean by that last comment. Unearthed Arcana has the concept of a 'base magic bonus' that would give multiclassers a higher caster level even for fighter levels, and the Practiced Spellcaster feat can also be considered a way around this sort of thing. I'm OK with both of these systems, personally.

On the other hand, a fighter can take a feat to make Use Magic Device a class skill, then invest skill points in it to read from scrolls pretty reliably. Isn't that OK?

Well, for obvious reasons, whatever works in the game you are playing is OK. In terms of "official game rules" this is also OK. In terms of game flavour, I personally dropped the Use Magic Device skill from my campaign world. Of course, I dropped a lot of the "how magic items work" material from the game, and cobbled the better bits from earlier editions back in. This is all a matter of how you want your game to "feel" imho.

I tend to think that all of the classes are a bit deflated in 3.X. Not in terms of power, but in terms of unique abilities and roles. By adopting a fairly rabid "no restrictions" policy, 3.X also adopted a corresponding "no uniqueness" policy. Race, classes, skills, feats -- because of the way these things combine, there is no choice you can make that either has any real meaning (except the alignment restrictions on some classes) or offers anything that cannot be gained (many) other ways.

As a DM, I'd rather enable interesting PC ideas than place poorly founded restrictions in the name of 'flavor'. I think flavor should come from the setting you play in, not from the game mechanics--although you can never really get away from the latter.

From the above, I am not sure whether you think "flavour" should restrict choices or not. In any event, game rules always restrict on the basis of flavour, as even the most cursory examination of various games will show. For example, if you were playing in a world based off of Tolkein & other classic fantasy authors/mythologies (i.e., D&D), and I had a really good idea for a superhero, should the rules allow me to gain intrinsic super-strength, hypersonic speed, and X-ray vision? At any point in the game? Should Monopoly allow the Shoe and the Hat to get married in order to raise a family? Should d20 Conan support PCs carrying automatic weapons?

All games restrict the rules on the basis of flavour.

All games also relax restrictions on the basis of flavour. In D&D 3.X, the fairly homogenous race/class structure creates a fairly bland homogenous flavour. This is one of the things that, I think, people who complain about the "video game" feel of 3.X are reacting to.


RC

 

[Merlion]

From the above, I am not sure whether you think "flavour" should restrict choices or not. In any event, game rules always restrict on the basis of flavour, as even the most cursory examination of various games will show. For example, if you were playing in a world based off of Tolkein & other classic fantasy authors/mythologies (i.e., D&D), and I had a really good idea for a superhero, should the rules allow me to gain intrinsic super-strength, hypersonic speed, and X-ray vision? At any point in the game? Should Monopoly allow the Shoe and the Hat to get married in order to raise a family? Should d20 Conan support PCs carrying automatic weapons?

I think maybe what fuin is getting at is that D&D often restricts character concepts with rules based on D&D Legacy flavour issues. D&D often tries to be generic fantasy, and yet "still be D&D" at the same time.

What your talking about is drastic violations of genre flavour. Conan characters with automatic weapons (or D&D characters for that matter) is completely and totally breaking the whole basic flavour of sword and sorcerery fantasy. However, D&D often places restrictions on certain character types (like warrior-mages or warrior champions of good who arent also upholders of local law) for very specific legacy flavour issues.

And those I'd just as soon seen done away with myself.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Does Generic Fantasy Exist?

Well, as soon as we admit that the rules are going to be restrictive on the basis of flavour, the remaining questions relate to what types of restrictions and what types of flavour.

Any attempt to do "generic fantasy" is, imho, bound to fail to some degree. I am not certain that "generic" fantasy exists, unless by "generic" we mean "mostly bland". Even something like GURPS (surely is the closest to a detailed generic rpg system out there) cannot help but create a series of flavour options based upon what is presented in the rules. "Legacy flavour" is neither inherently better or worse than any other kind of flavour.

The D&D "Legacy flavour" is based upon the game's origins as a tabletop miniatures wargame, coupled with ideas culled from Lovecraft, classic fantasy novels, fairy tales, and mythology. Older versions of D&D actively attempted to provide a form of "retroactive continuity," coming up with reasons why things occurred in these stories the way that they did. Hence, LG paladins were based off of specific models, as were the original ranger, monk, dwarf, elf, and so on. Many things which, at first glance, seem to be surely created just for the game, on further examination come from another source. The 1st Edition DMG actually included a small reading list of game influences.

With some few exceptions, wizard-type characters in mythology, classic fantasy novels, folklore, and fairy tales do not wear armour. Of course, some current fantasy novels have different ideas, as they are influenced by different things (such as modern culture, video games, etc.).

Of course, had they decided to give wizards specific buffs for not wearing armour, it would have worked just as well.


RC

 

[moritheil]

Oh--and so can divine spellcasters, because their deities don't care if you screw up the somatic components.

Cheers!
Ben

That's a miserable way to put it. Rather, the somatic components of divine spells are specifically designed such that they can't be screwed up by wearing armor. Whereas the somatic components of mage spells have since time immemorial been designed without concern for the presence of armor, because mages lack proficiency with armor and the inclination to gain proficiency with armor anyhow.

(The exception, of course, is mage spells without somatic components.)

 

[fuindordm]

Well, as soon as we admit that the rules are going to be restrictive on the basis of flavour, the remaining questions relate to what types of restrictions and what types of flavour.
RC

Well, exactly. And if you want flavor then there are better ways to get it than tacking an inconsistent and poorly thought-out mechanic onto the game.

Let's say that you do like the stereotype of unarmored wizards, and like it so much that you are bothered by the idea of having armored fighter/mages running around in your homebrew.

Then at least you can come up with a different rationale. You could say that
1) in your campaign world, body armor of any kind interferes with ki flowing into the chakras,
so that arcane spellcasters who wear armor do not regain spells--for every hour of wearing armor during the day, the number of spell points that you can regain the next day goes down
by 10%. This wouldn't prevent them from wearing shields, or putting on armor in emergencies, but would keep it off on a daily basis. You might see fighter/mages that like to carry around a small spiked shield instead of a quarterstaff.

2) in your campaign world metal armor interferes with the flow of magic out of the body, imposing a chance of failure equal to the ASF. Divine casters don't suffer it because the energy comes from on high, not from them personally. Same mechanic, but at least you drop the silly pretense that divine and arcane casters use fundamentally different gestures for the somatic components even though the game definition of a somatic component and what it requires is exactly the same for both. The main difference in this rule is just that ASF applies to all spells, not just those with an S component. Viola, simple but no inconsistency in the rules. Of course, then you have to explain how the prestige classes that let you ignore ASF do it... perhaps the spellsword can do it because they learn to store the magical energies in their weapon, rather than in their body--add a bit of athame flavor, à la the Arcana Unearthed mage blade.

And so on... but rather than blindly defending and rationalizing an inconsistent and poor mechanic, there are lots of ways to fix it up, if you like the stereotype in your campaign.

Ben

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well, exactly. And if you want flavor then there are better ways to get it than tacking an inconsistent and poorly thought-out mechanic onto the game.

Didn't I say: "Of course, had they decided to give wizards specific buffs for not wearing armour, it would have worked just as well."?

I do note, however, that your first example makes use of spell points, which is inconsistent with the game in its core format.

Further, your second example doesn't really change ASF mechanically in any appreciable way; it merely changes the descriptive reason for it. Does beseeching an "on high" power have fundamentally different gestures than casting a spell yourself? I would guess that it does (and I would not be the first person on this thread to point that out). However, changing the descriptive reason alters the (admittedly abhorrent) core idea that divine spellcasters don't actually need any "on high" power to gain their spell abilities.



RC

 

[fuindordm]

Further, your second example doesn't really change ASF mechanically in any appreciable way; it merely changes the descriptive reason for it. Does beseeching an "on high" power have fundamentally different gestures than casting a spell yourself? I would guess that it does (and I would not be the first person on this thread to point that out). However, changing the descriptive reason alters the (admittedly abhorrent) core idea that divine spellcasters don't actually need any "on high" power to gain their spell abilities.

RC

For the first example, you could just as well say 'spell levels' instead of 'spell points' and recover something applicable to the core rules; I just used the latter because it seemed simpler to implement.

Well, the second example applies ASF equally to all arcane magic, not just wizard spells and spells with somatic components. It's the pretense that armor interferes with gestures even when it's not impeding the one arm required to make them that really gets my goat.
The point is that if you like ASF, the game effects of the mechanic should follow logically from its explanation. The current version of ASF doesn't do that.

It's not the mechanic, it's how it's presented. Isn't the vancian magic of D&D much easier to swallow now that they call what wizards to preparing spells rather than memorizing spells?

Ben