Testing a theory

[mlund]

The thing for me is that those that favor caster-types and those that prefer non-caster types can both be equally concerned about balance for opposite reasons.

Some people love playing a 3E Swiss-army Wizard with 9,001 scrolls and wands, the master blaster that destroys small continents 8 times a day, or some CoDzilla that takes 5 rounds buffing to become a Super Saiyan and their concern about "balance" is in regards to preventing anyone from "nerfing" their play-style.

Some people hate those designs with the burning fire of a thousand suns and their concern about "balance" is never having to share an encounter with those scene-stealing, fighter-caddying, rogue-shaming, table-hogging abominations ever again.

Same concern. Same enthusiasm. Completely opposite desires.

- Marty Lund

 

[Manbearcat]

While "social science" polls are already dubious enough, you've added a considerable amount of noise that you have to filter out to even get a glimpse of the tea leaves that will confirm or deny your null hypothesis.

With consideration for your null hypothesis, I don't know why you included DMs into the framework of the poll and I don't know why you didn't narrow the choices to martial/hybrid caster vs pure caster.

For what its worth, I can give you a few anecdotal data points (beyond my own) of my tenured players over the years.

For 2e and specifically 3e:

- 7 players play(ed) martial or hybrid archetypes exclusively, recognize their relative weakness to pure casters (level 9 and beyond), rage against it in and out of game, and entrust/expect me to fix it and/or work around it (AAAAAAAAAAARGH)

- 2 players play(ed) eccentric class/race combinations and were more interested in being "color" than they were in caring about what was happening in the fiction. They were just hanging out with friends and were indifferent to game theory.

- 1 player play(ed) druids exclusively because of the flavor of the class. She was/is a very fine non-linear problem solver and exposed the potency of this class (3e) throughout the course of a 5 year long campaign.

- 3 players play(ed) generalist wizards almost exclusively (or specialist problem solvers in 2e). They were/are very fine non-linear and linear problem solvers. They made games terrifically "unfun" and "high maintenance" from the DM side of the screen during play, during prep, and during post-game dispute arbitration with players who felt irrelevant (see the first group - 3 of those 7 were particularly sensitive to this) throughout the course of a 4 year long campaign and a 5 year long campaign. 2 of them knew they broke the game after level 9 and reveled in it. The other one worked with me considerably to rein in his power and/or sideline his (acknowledged) game-breaking capabilities.

- I've DMed probably 30ish other players over the years (from 6 months to 2 years in duration) but those 13 were the primary players from 2 dispirate groups in the course of 20 + years of DMing.


In 4e, I've not DMed any of the primary casters (although one of the former martial exclusive players finally played a wizard - and loved it). My games have been small with 3 players and 2 players.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I'm saying some people (like myself) really liked playing Fighters, under the traditional rules where basically you decided whether to walk or charge to the enemy, and what weapon to use, but not a lot more elaborate than that.

There's a difference in views between us. My 1E Fighter did alot more than decide walk or charge. Maybe a cross body block to the wolfwere, maybe jumping on the dragon's back, or kicking over heavy barrels of oil and lighting them on fire. And the DM would adjudicate those actions within the framework provided for him within the system, not check to see if I had the right skill or feat to pull off my situational stunt.

Point is, I think we can both enjoy fighter-types for different reasons and vary on whether we see various types of balance issues.

 

[Lanefan]

I find this an utterly alien perspective. Do I conclude that you create or put together an "adventure" that is for a party of a specific size, with characters of a specific level, but don't take into account what those characters actually are?

Nope.

Can't really count on knowing party size ahead of time either.

Level I can usually get close enough for rock and roll.

Why? Because unless I decide on and plan out the adventure after they've already started it I often have almost no way of knowing ahead of time what characters these guys are going to send into the field. Most of 'em have a stable of characters* and tend to cycle them in and out between adventures. Add to that a variable amount of cycling during an adventure (one dies or retires or whatever, another comes in either pre-existing or rolled up new); and planning to your suggested level of detail would be pretty much a waste of time for me.

* - I actually very much like this, it gives the game some depth and also serves to keep things fresh.

I do everything specifically for the characters and that the players that make them; there really isn't a "swing" depending on what those characters are. I am rather baffled by this concept. I am really baffled at the notion that casters and noncasters would be different in that regard, as I find the party is shaped dramatically by every choice, not just some choices.

So what happens if your party starts out as F-5 F-5 MU-4 C-4 T-4 (thus, a bit heavy on the Fighter side) then partway through the two Fighters die and are replaced by a C-4 and a T-4 (thus leaving no front line at all)? Do you redesign your whole adventure on the fly?

Lan-"can someone please enlighten me as to what a 'BMX Bandit' is supposed to be"-efan

 

[Campbell]

On a conceptual level I prefer warrior PCs, but mechanically interesting play is one of the things that pleases me*. When I played 3e I generally played martial clerics, psychic warriors, warblades, etc. While I mostly GM 4e it has also granted me the ability to play fighters again.

That being said I'm currently enjoying playing a 6th level dwarven fighter in a 2e game. It's mostly purely a matter of enjoying the character for narrative tropes alone though. 2e combat in the hands of any class is pretty unsatisfying to me and I find that my proud dwarven warrior is finding excuses to avoid combat. It's mostly about the implied threat of the character.

*Call it a character flaw on my part. I grew up on Magic, Video Games, and Board Games. I also play other RPGs like Burning Wheel, Modern RuneQuest, Dungeon World, etc. that have solid interesting mechanical play with choices that have an impact on play for all participants.

 

[Kelvor Ravenstar]

Lan-"can someone please enlighten me as to what a 'BMX Bandit' is supposed to be"-efan

Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit is a great comedy bit from some Brit sketch show. Watch it here for context.
BMX Bandit and Angel Summoner - Mitchell & Webb - YouTube

 

[Someone]

Thanks for explaining your POV. Your point is the sort of comment that led to my theory.

I'm saying some people (like myself) really liked playing Fighters, under the traditional rules where basically you decided whether to walk or charge to the enemy, and what weapon to use, but not a lot more elaborate than that.

I can't speak for everyone who liked traditional Fighters, but the role/archetype was part of it for me (soldier is a more interesting archetype to me than the others), and frankly I liked the mechanics of having better hit points, better AC, and being in the frontlines of combat.

Whereas I think people who love to play Arcane Casters were looking on the Fighters and saying "poor little dumbies, their characters aren't as cool, we need balance to fix it and make them like casters".

To put it in a sports context, when I was a kid, I like the Fighter role in American football -- running into people hard and trying to get past them and sack the quarterback, or trying the hold the line against people doing that when your team has the ball.

Similarly in soccer, I liked fullback -- the last defensive position before the goalie. I liked playing zone defense or man-on-man, trying to take the ball, trying to intimidate people into missing a shot by going to quick, etc.

I really honestly like that kind of role, even though most kids and most fans probably think they are boring -- the people who play them aren't the stars.

If you put in rules that said "linemen get a turn to toss the football", it would not make American football more fun for me. I'd much prefer to run into people.

I see your point of view. I assure you that I don't think playing a simple character is badwrongfun, but we're talking about two different things as if they were the same: First if playing a one trick pony can be enjoyable (it can, for some people) and how powerful had traditionally versatile characters have been.

(Other than that, my comment on how I've enjoyed the psychic warrior or the 4e fighter, which is ancillary as it wasn't the main point as it doesn't concern balance)

About the second point, versatility and options equals power, and not in trivial amounts. Sorcerers in 3.X had more spell slots than wizards and access to the same spells, but the general consensus was that wizards were more powerful/useful. Same goes for psions/wilders (wilders could even make their powers more potent). Plus the spells have neven been precisely tame, hence my comment on how they dominate non-combat gameplay as level rises, forcing the plot around them. If at least that was balanced with fighter dominance in combat, that would be something, but again that wasn't true.

In practice, in D&D Angel Summoner isn't only able to summon hordes of angels, it can summon a BMX and be beter at wheelies than the Bandit.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't know. I think the whole debate has kind of (in general, not here) been pretty well poisoned by people taking extreme positions. Certainly in AD&D no wizard can even hope to come close to replacing a fighter. Clerics can do the job well enough that you won't MISS the fighter, but at least if you were a fighter (or ranger/barbarian) you could hit things harder.

I saw two problems as an AD&D player. The first was just plot relevance. I played a ranger in one long campaign. At least nominally this character's conflict was a driving force in the story. The problem was most of the actual problem solving was out of his hands. Once we hit maybe 9th level he simply wasn't relevant to accomplishing the overall goals of the party. The character was perfectly effective at hacking things to death, but there was no conceivable way any enemy you could face at that point who wasn't utterly incompetent or inconsequential was going to be stupid enough to let a non-caster within 100 miles of him. It was downright odd to be a major protagonist and just sort of be carried along.

As a DM it always seemed to me that providing plot relevance to non-casters got more and more strained past low levels, but there was also eventually a sense that if you were playing a high level non-caster you were kind of gimping the rest of the party. Certainly it was a given in our group that the PARTY would be more effective at mid to higher levels with another at least MC caster than with a straight melee type. If you liked playing a fighter it was sort of a bit of a bummer.

At LEAST in my 4e experience you could play the fighter and not be second-string when it came to a fight or at least SOME other types of problems. Wizards are still beating the pants off you in overall utility in terms of 'whatever might come up', but you have a spot on the front line nobody else can fill as well. You can also definitely come up with a couple other niches where you're going to be in very good shape (which ones they are depend on how you build the character, but that is another nice thing about 4e I find, you could be a sneaky DEX fighter, a super Athletic STR/CON fighter, or you could even pull off talky fighter or smart fighter with a bit of tinkering).

I thought it was also nice that there were a bunch of classes that blended and emphasized slightly different aspects. You could play a warlord and be a real smart combat tactician, or you could just be a fairly smart fighter, maybe with just a little side helping of the warlord stuff if it suited you, etc. I LIKE the way there's less of a huge gulf in mechanics between all the classes. Playing MC in AD&D always felt like trying to play a half duck, half bear. Duckbear can cast spells, but oh wait he has to not wear armor to do that and casting is useless as soon as you get close to the enemy... Sorta just didn't really work that well.

Honestly I think all the hew and cry about "every class needs different mechanics" is just going to make all these problems worse again.

 

[Ahnehnois]

So what happens if your party starts out as F-5 F-5 MU-4 C-4 T-4 (thus, a bit heavy on the Fighter side) then partway through the two Fighters die and are replaced by a C-4 and a T-4 (thus leaving no front line at all)? Do you redesign your whole adventure on the fly?

I don't usually have firm plans more than a session or two ahead, and I don't mind a newly reconstituted party suffering a little adversity. Sometimes my monsters can become inappropriate encounters, but in that case I generally just save them for when the party is at a higher level. It's more about redesigning the plot; taking out the religious element if my cleric died, adding an infiltration mission if a rogue joins the party, that kind of thing.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The thing for me is that those that favor caster-types and those that prefer non-caster types can both be equally concerned about balance for opposite reasons.

Some people love playing a 3E Swiss-army Wizard with 9,001 scrolls and wands, the master blaster that destroys small continents 8 times a day, or some CoDzilla that takes 5 rounds buffing to become a Super Saiyan and their concern about "balance" is in regards to preventing anyone from "nerfing" their play-style.

Some people hate those designs with the burning fire of a thousand suns and their concern about "balance" is never having to share an encounter with those scene-stealing, fighter-caddying, rogue-shaming, table-hogging abominations ever again.

Same concern. Same enthusiasm. Completely opposite desires.

- Marty Lund

And then there's category C. I love playing a swiss army knife wizard with a handful of scrolls, a few wands, and preparing for and being able to counter or disrupt most things. I just won't do it in 3.X because it is too easy. I like it because it's meant to be a challenge and that I use preparation and quick thinking to make sure I have a good enough tool for the job. When I played that sort of character in 4e the results were messy even at low heroic to the point that I retired my wizard. In 3.X my swiss army knife of choice is the bard - that way I actually need to work.