Why do all classes have to be balanced?

[pemerton]

This depends on what magic can cover, admittedly. Magic in my RPG doesn't really handle things like status effects or temporary hit points, and it only augments the skill use of treating poisons/diseases/infections and the like.

<snip>

Depends on the system, because it's sure not true in my system.

Unless I've misunderstood, your system is functionally a version of E6. (But with escalating hit points?)

15th level PCs in D&D have Teleport Without Error, Limited Wish, Legend Lore, Commune, Vision (the old Illusionist spell), flying carpets, flying mounts, Plane Shift, Create Food and Water, Heroes' Feast, Control Weather, etc. When they need mundane gear they don't have they cast Fabricate or a Creation spell. They can cast Heal, Restoration and Regeneration when they get hurt.

Whereas the PCs in your game walk from place to place, are troubled by inclement weather, learn new things by talking to 1st level sages, and need Appraise skill to learn if there is work in a town. And can't magically neutralise poisons.

That's not a criticism of your game. (Unless I'm missing something, it sounds like it would play a little like Runequest.) But it is an expression of doubt that it tells us much about the balance between classes in 15th level D&D.

 

[B.T.]

Fine. If you think it's preposterous, show how it's preposterous. Show how, with just the abilities from his class (which are, after all, what separates him from a commoner) a level 15 Fighter is more useful than a choice of D3+1 Celestial (or fiendish) Dire Tigers, D4+2 Anklyosauri, or D4+2 Bralani Azata. What do you think he's actually contributing to the party? Damage? He's not doing the damage of three pouncing Celestial Dire Tigers, all at +14 damage for smite. Soak? He doesn't have the area coverage or total hit points of a herd of bison, never mind a herd of anklyosauri. Even the Dire Tigers each have 133 HP (allowing for Augment Summons).

And do so without reference to spells cast on him please. Those are resources granted to him by other party members in order to make him relevant. Also magic items - most of them will be the proceeds from adventuring, which could be split with the commoner instead - or just go to the more useful people. Ignore them please.

Well, let's talk through this. First of all, calm down. I myself have a tendency to get over-excited when discussing issues of balance within D&D because I have seen firsthand what happens when a druid with Natural Spell and a bear animal companion is in a campaign. I completely agree with you that fighters are underpowered in 3e/Pathfinder, but there's no need to be so aggressive about it.

Second of all, let's look at the weaknesses of summoned monsters.

1. One-round casting time. When the fighter enters a fight, he can immediately act (and if he's smart, he'll have spent one of his feats on Improved Initiative, giving him a good chance of going first). Meanwhile, the wizard needs to spend a turn casting his summoning spell. The only time he will avoid this is the scenario that he knows ahead of time that he will be entering a fight and he casts the spell with precision timing. (1/round level just doesn't last that long.)

2. Magical vulnerability. Dispel magic will take a summoned monster out of the fight, completely wasting the spellcaster's actions and a spell slot. There are other spells that explicitly counter summoned monsters, such as protection from evil, dismissal, and banishment.

3. Options. A dire tiger doesn't have much in the way of options for fighting. It can charge and full attack, and that's it. On the other hand, any fighter worth his salt is going to have a ranged weapon, and he'll be decent with it even if he hasn't invested feats into it.

Now, all in all, the fighter is overwhelmingly weak compared to the options available to the other classes. On this, I agree. However, saying the fighter is useless because he is less good than a group of tigers is premature.

Even though he's not particularly strong, he has the following:

• High attack bonus + decent damage. Full BAB, his Weapon Training, and Power Attack give him a decent damage output. If you're feeling masochistic, you can do the Weapon Focus line.

• Decent defenses. d10 HD and a good Con score will give him some staying power. Armor Training also boosts his AC.

• Feats. Who doesn't want more bonus feats? Just look at what you can spend them on: junk, junk, junk, junk, and something that is occasionally useful. On the plus side, the fighter has enough bonus feats that he can be mediocre at both melee and ranged combat.

Overall, still terrible. But not useless.

 

[Crispy Critter]

Yes, it was a corner case, I chose it because it was so clearly one-sided. Ryan's rog/fgtr/bar contributed absolutely nothing to the encounter, and John's cleric only one spell, though admittedly an important one.

However I don't think there was a single encounter in that whole campaign where Ryan's character dominated in the way my PC did versus the ragewalker. His PC felt significantly underpowered, imo, compared to the two casters. All of us were good tacticians I'd say, and decent powergamers, but Ryan was gimped from the beginning by choosing to play a non-caster.

But was there any single encounter in the whole campaign where your party had this much information on an opponent coupled with the opportunity to pick the perfect place to pull off a plan like that against an opponent? I think flight gives any one character, including non-casters, a large advantage in an area where there's no ceiling preventing movement and the opponent is at the whim of gravity.

 

[Hussar]

I just want to post a little something that I feel the designers of 3rd edition/Pathfinder had intended for the games to turn out.

DM: "Okay guys I am going to run X campaign," "Sound Good?"

Bobby: "That's cool with me!" "I think I would like to play a cleric." "Everyone fine with me playing a Cleric?"

Tommy: "Sure Bobby, that would be great!" "I think I will play a rogue so the the roguish type stuff will be covered." "Everyone okay with that?"

Sammy: "Not a bother Tommy." "I think I am going to play a Wizard so our spellcaster will be covered." "Everyone okay with that?"

Etc...Etc....Etc....

This is how we handle games in our group. If a DM is going to propose a game then we talk amongst ourselves about who is going to play what class. Now there is nothing wrong with having two of the same class in the party at all and at times it does happen but nobody tries to out do anyone else. We work as a team and we try and pick classes that would work great together and sometimes each of us may have a concept that we are interested in playing so the classes kind of turn out all funky but that's okay because it's about the fun and not the win.

You say this as if this doesn't happen at every gaming table since day one.

We didn't have that problem, the party composition at 13th level (3.5 campaign) was a fighter, psion, rogue and spirit shaman, the fighter and rogue never felt underpowered, both used to deal out some serious smack-down (high damage), aside from all the other ways to contribute to a campaign.

Yup, when you don't have a cleric, a druid or a wizard in the party, the fighter and the rogue get to do okay. No disagreements here.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Second of all, let's look at the weaknesses of summoned monsters.

1. One-round casting time. When the fighter enters a fight, he can immediately act (and if he's smart, he'll have spent one of his feats on Improved Initiative, giving him a good chance of going first). Meanwhile, the wizard needs to spend a turn casting his summoning spell. The only time he will avoid this is the scenario that he knows ahead of time that he will be entering a fight and he casts the spell with precision timing. (1/round level just doesn't last that long.)

Yes, but, in that first round, the fighter can use a bow or charge. Probably charge since most fighters are melee based. So, he gets his one attack. The summoned monsters appear on round two and immediately full attack. The fighter has basically gotten an edge of one attack.

2. Magical vulnerability. Dispel magic will take a summoned monster out of the fight, completely wasting the spellcaster's actions and a spell slot. There are other spells that explicitly counter summoned monsters, such as protection from evil, dismissal, and banishment.

Firstly, how common are those to opponents. Very, very few straight up Monster Manual creatures have anything which counters summonings and, if you start adding class levels to every encounter just to counter the wizard, that's a bit limiting to adventure design.

3. Options. A dire tiger doesn't have much in the way of options for fighting. It can charge and full attack, and that's it. On the other hand, any fighter worth his salt is going to have a ranged weapon, and he'll be decent with it even if he hasn't invested feats into it.

Well, assuming we're not talking about flying opponents (in which case the wizard just summons flying creatures), a bow is likely a one round weapon. And, given the Tiger's movement rate, and the fact that they can move their full speed and still make full attacks, makes them effectively bows in their own right.

Now, all in all, the fighter is overwhelmingly weak compared to the options available to the other classes. On this, I agree. However, saying the fighter is useless because he is less good than a group of tigers is premature.

Even though he's not particularly strong, he has the following:

• High attack bonus + decent damage. Full BAB, his Weapon Training, and Power Attack give him a decent damage output. If you're feeling masochistic, you can do the Weapon Focus line.

Power attack pretty much only works if you buff the heck out of the fighter. Otherwise, he's whiffing pretty often. But, yes, his damage is likely similar to the summoned dire Tigers.

• Decent defenses. d10 HD and a good Con score will give him some staying power. Armor Training also boosts his AC.

Yup. He'll take a beating. Granted, I don't care if my summonings die because I can replace them in the next round. And the round after that. While the fighter might have more hit points than one or two dire tigers, he doesn't have more hit points than NINE of them.

• Feats. Who doesn't want more bonus feats? Just look at what you can spend them on: junk, junk, junk, junk, and something that is occasionally useful. On the plus side, the fighter has enough bonus feats that he can be mediocre at both melee and ranged combat.

Overall, still terrible. But not useless.

I think you're splitting hairs here. The difference between terrible and useless is semantic more than substantial. The whole point is that we totally agree on how bad the fighter has it.

 

[Hussar]

Sorry for the multiple replies, but, a further thought occurs.

ForeverSlayer (and I'm just picking on you because you happen to the be the latest, but certainly not the only one) is essentially arguing that this is a social contract issue. If everyone at the table agrees not to step on each other's toes, then all these balance issues go away.

And, to some degree, I'd agree with that. If you can get everyone on board with the idea, then sure, the problems don't come up and if they do, everyone will work together to resolve that problem - generally the caster classes simply agree not to take certain options.

However, that being said, while it does work as a solution, I do find it to be a very poor solution. For one, it presumes that everyone at the table recognizes the issue. I'll admit that I don't play weak characters. I don't think that I powergame particularly much, but, when I play a character, that character will be good at what it does. Not great, not fantastic, but, certainly competent.

Which means if I can recognize that a particular option is a good option (Craft Wands being a good option IMO), then I will naturally want to take that option. Which means I might step on other people's toes because, if I make a competent spell caster, that's generally going to overshadow anything but the most skillfully built non-caster.

The second reason I don't like the social contract solution is that it treats the symptoms but not the disease. By making it a social contract issue, you recognize that the problem exists, but, instead of fixing the problem, you agree, as a table, to work around the problem. I'd much, much rather simply fix the problem.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Second of all, let's look at the weaknesses of summoned monsters.

I picked the example I did because I was thinking of the Summoner class. And for a Summoner, Summon Monster X isn't normally their main means of fighting. It's what they do after their Eidolon is dead. I also quite deliberately picked a L13 summoner to compare to the L15 fighter - spotting the fighter two levels before we'd started.

So let's see what I'm handicapping the summoner by by not taking into account or deliberately surrendering

• The Eidolon
• A powerful spell list
• Two character levels
• Four feats

That's quite a lot to give up. And even surrendering those I can still challenge the fighter for more than half a dozen fights per day.

1. One-round casting time.

Ahem. Summoner. One stanard action casting time.

2. Magical vulnerability. Dispel magic will take a summoned monster out of the fight, completely wasting the spellcaster's actions and a spell slot.

Correction: Dispel Magic needs to win a caster level check to take a summoned monster out of the fight, completely wasting the dispeller's actions and a spell slot. If the dispelling caster loses then he's wasted his action entirely. If the dispelling caster wins and was using Greater Dispel Magic then he's exchanged a sixth level spell slot for a daily use of something I wasn't going to run out of anyway - and I still get a round of savaging the dispeller with the summoned tigers or lightning bolts. And can just do it again next turn. (If he was silly enough to use standard Dispel Magic then he'll just banish a single creature out of the pack I've summoned. I simply laugh at this point).

protection from evil,

Doesn't do a lot. "Summoned creatures that are not evil are immune to this effect. The protection against contact by summoned creatures ends if the warded creature makes an attack against or tries to force the barrier against the blocked creature."

dismissal, and banishment.

I do hope that the caster tries either of those. Using his standard action to banish some of my summons with no chance of banishing them all (at least unless he either has 21HD or I only managed two tigers).

Dispelling and Banishing are defensive options that mean that the caster who uses them on summons is automatically losing the action duel.

3. Options. A dire tiger doesn't have much in the way of options for fighting.

You're claiming that Summon Monster doesn't have much in the way of options? If I don't want charge-and-destroy, I'll summon D4+2 Bralani Azatas. Flying, lightning bolting, Wind Walling, healing. Talk to me about options again?

Now, all in all, the fighter is overwhelmingly weak compared to the options available to the other classes. On this, I agree. However, saying the fighter is useless because he is less good than a group of tigers is premature.

Less good than the reserve option for a Summoner two levels below him, accessible only without the Eidolon.

• High attack bonus + decent damage. Full BAB, his Weapon Training, and Power Attack give him a decent damage output.

But the tigers come at night. With their voices, soft as thunder...

• Decent defenses. d10 HD and a good Con score will give him some staying power. Armor Training also boosts his AC.

Pity about that will save...

Overall, still terrible. But not useless.

Less useful than a crippled summoner two levels below his level. Just to establish an upper bound on his usefulness. Given that a summoner isn't considered the strongest class in PF (that would be the Wizard or Cleric, although the Summoner is probably number 3), we can cap the effective level equivalent of the fighter as significantly less than 13. For an estimate I'm going to say level 10 due to the versatility issue - and that at least means 4th level spells even if it takes away the meatshield and stun potential of the anklyosaurus herd (95 hp * D3+1 at L11) and the repeating multiple lightning bolts of the Bralani Azatas.

At an effective power level five levels behind the other PCs, and with no basic capabilities they can't cover (unlike a mage in a party of non-mages) how useful are you?

 

[Fifth Element]

The second reason I don't like the social contract solution is that it treats the symptoms but not the disease. By making it a social contract issue, you recognize that the problem exists, but, instead of fixing the problem, you agree, as a table, to work around the problem. I'd much, much rather simply fix the problem.

Agreed - it's basically the "it's not a problem because you can house rule it" response.

 

[pemerton]

Agreed - it's basically the "it's not a problem because you can house rule it" response.

I agree with you and Hussar that social contract as a solution can have problems.

I don't know if I quite agree that it's just the "house rule it away" response, though. There are games where social contracts to maintain balance, or to work around imbalance, can work.

The problem with the social contract solution in D&D is that the rules don't tell you you'll need to think about it, nor offer any advice on how to handle it. This contrasts with Burning Wheel, for example, which frequently talks about its lack of mechanical balance in certain respects, and has both rules and advice that respond to this feature of the game.

TL;DR - The problem with the social contract solution in D&D is that it involves perpeutating a type of wilful denial in the rules of the game.

 

[Hussar]

THinking about it, yeah, I'd agree with that Pemerton. There are games where the social contract is the balance. I'm just not sure D&D has ever been one of them.