Fighter, Rogue, Blaster, Healer . . . Balanced?

[Particle_Man]

I had heard that the 3.5 game is more balanced if you have the "fab 4" of Fighter, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard, but the Wizard is restricted to blasting spells (and say read magic) and the cleric is restricted to healing spells (including also things like remove paralysis, neutralize poison, raise dead, restoration, etc.).

Has anyone tried this? Would that make the game more balanced?

 

[Sunseeker]

Not sure what you mean by "balanced". Wizards can do some obnoxious things with certain "utility" spells, but out of sheer damage a Wizard can be an insane blaster.

The same holds true for the Cleric, even when stripped of their damage spells, their available healing more than makes up for it. In some cases it can be so ridiculous that even otherwise lethal damage can be healed away in a turn.

I don't think restricting Wizards to blasters and Clerics to healers would make the rogue or the fighter seem any more balanced. A pure blaster wizard and a pure healer cleric could probably duo most challenges all the same.

 

[MichaelSomething]

The 3.5 game is more balanced if you run it like AD&D with clearer writing...

 

[Li Shenron]

I had heard that the 3.5 game is more balanced if you have the "fab 4" of Fighter, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard, but the Wizard is restricted to blasting spells (and say read magic) and the cleric is restricted to healing spells (including also things like remove paralysis, neutralize poison, raise dead, restoration, etc.).

Has anyone tried this? Would that make the game more balanced?

I don't think so, I would rather think that the game is more balanced when the Wizard knows plenty of utility spells and a small selection of combat spells, and then even only some of the combat spells are damage-dealers. This way the Wizard can capitalize on the special properties of such damaging spells (such as energy or force spells being fully effective against a monster with DR, or area spells being especially good when there's lots of enemies at once) when normal attacks can't harm the monster enough. Similarly, it's more balanced also if the Cleric does not only cover healing but also buffing for the party, and optionally some de-buffing or generally harmful spells for the enemies.

This at least, for my personal interpretation of "balance" meaning that everybody is useful to the cause and has plenty of chances to "shine", and the whole party is more or less able to take care of every situation, without having serious pitfalls.

Of course there's an alternative view of "balance" as "everybody does the same damage output every combat".

 

[Empirate]

The 3.5 game is more balanced if you run it like AD&D with clearer writing...

...which just goes to show that balance isn't everything. "Clearer writing" is NOT what made 3E a step ahead. A unified, streamlined (in many, not all places) core mechanic is what 3E is all about. Balance? They tried that in 4E, see where it got us. I prefer a varied game with few limitations in character design to a 'balanced' game that gimps everybody into using tricks from the exact same set, annihilating any interest that might be found in unique class mechanisms.


EDIT: or, to put it more succinctly: balance is sooo overrated!

 

[MichaelSomething]

...which just goes to show that balance isn't everything. "Clearer writing" is NOT what made 3E a step ahead. A unified, streamlined (in many, not all places) core mechanic is what 3E is all about. Balance? They tried that in 4E, see where it got us. I prefer a varied game with few limitations in character design to a 'balanced' game that gimps everybody into using tricks from the exact same set, annihilating any interest that might be found in unique class mechanisms.


EDIT: or, to put it more succinctly: balance is sooo overrated!

Have you ever considered playing a point buy game?

 

[Dozen]

Have you ever considered playing a point buy game?

Have you read what he said? And is there anyone on the planet who still rolls stats?

And since we better limit the number of sarcastic one-liner posts to avoid turning the thread into a circlejerk...
@Particle_Man , Me and a lot of people will tell you, that any effort to balance 3.x will fail miserably. It's not impossible...just a ton of work for nothing. You can run a more or less balanced game by limiting the class selection to a number of tiers, but a wizard is never going to be on the same power level as a fighter unless you take away what makes the Wizard class really fun, and a caster with just Heal spells is plain boring unless you factor in a Skinner box. The Healer class has more options than that, and the last thing I heard about it is praise for it's selection.

In short, no, it wouldn't make a game balanced, and even if it did, only a select few would actually want to play. If you want the usual fab 4 that is balanced somewhat, then a Dungeoncrasher or Barbarian, a Healer(preferably optimized) or Adept, a Rogue, Scout or Spellthief and a Warmage or Warlock(with a humanly bearable UMD check only) will do fine. You may also want to consider a fifth Jack-of-all-Trades member like an optimized Incarnate. These are sufficiently low powered to fot the DM to notice when they're trying to break the game if you know what you are looking for, and carry about the same punch normally.

 

[delericho]

If the player of the Wizard or the Cleric want to break the game, then no amount of restricting of their spell lists will fix that - the game will never be balanced.

If, however, you have a bunch of players who aren't obsessed with optimising, explicitly don't want to break your game, and just want to play... you'll have a pretty balanced game. And that applies whether you restrict the casters or not.

 

[Li Shenron]

...but a wizard is never going to be on the same power level as a fighter unless you take away what makes the Wizard class really fun

Didn't 4e try the other way around, i.e. give more to the Fighter?

It would be nice to try and design 3.x Fighter-only feats (i.e. feats which require "Fighter level X" just like Weapon Specialization did) that scale geometrically like supposedly Wizard's spells do.

 

[CroBob]

Didn't 4e try the other way around, i.e. give more to the Fighter?

It would be nice to try and design 3.x Fighter-only feats (i.e. feats which require "Fighter level X" just like Weapon Specialization did) that scale geometrically like supposedly Wizard's spells do.

An interesting idea, but it doesn't solve dead levels. Even still, what do you have in mind? Could they buy tricks to use in melee which are comparable to spells in utility or power (either). If the fighters can't compete with spells, the only way to fix it is to give them something that does, or to remove the spells. This sounds like the prior, but what kind of stuff would the fighter get which competes with spells?