Marionnen's Musings: Featless?

[Jackinthegreen]

I want D&D Lite, but I also want it to be 3.5 For the most part there is nothing wrong with monsters, races, and character classes. If you leave the details to those things, the idea is that I could still use my vast 3.5 library minus some of the fiddly bits. (Spells could use some simplifying, but that's for another discussion.)

"Some simplifying" being a fairly large understatement. Or at least balance them decently.

 

[Larkas]

Hmmm, intriguing idea! Personally, I think it would work out pretty well, specially for teaching people how to play the game. All the complexity can come later, when people are more comfortable with the basic mechanics of the game.

I don't think, however, that limiting the fighter's options to some "trees" might be such a good idea. First, fighter's should be seen (in a non-ToB campaign, anyways) as a master of combat, and these should be pretty adaptable on the battlefield. Say I want to make a fighter who is very good at wielding an einhander, but who is also competent at tripping people. That wouldn't be possible using fighting style-like trees, though that would certainly be simpler. Second, and this closely relates to the first point, it isn't very complex to choose fighter bonus feats. They are more or less pretty straight forward, and aren't that many to worry about. Besides, the DM can always help with the choices. Lastly, and this is IMHO, fighting styles should be the ranger's schtick.

One last thought is that, while the change would do wonders to highlight the usefulness of the fighter, it might screw over the sorcerer. The wizard is getting all those juicy metamagic and the poor thing can't even quicken a spell. Maybe it would be better to simply use the PF sorcerer instead?

 

[airwalkrr]

If you really want to allow fighters to pick combat feats from other books, feel free. I think it would be fine to limit them to Player's Handbook combat feats though.

Sorcerers are already immensely powerful with the sheer volume of spells they can cast. I doubt the five bonus feats a wizard gets is going to immensely overshadow them. Besides that, sorcerers are made for players who want a less complex arcane caster. Missing a few feats (and most games don't go beyond 10th level IME anyway) isn't going to severely compromise that power difference.

 

[Larkas]

Sorcerers are already immensely powerful with the sheer volume of spells they can cast. I doubt the five bonus feats a wizard gets is going to immensely overshadow them. Besides that, sorcerers are made for players who want a less complex arcane caster. Missing a few feats (and most games don't go beyond 10th level IME anyway) isn't going to severely compromise that power difference.

For what it's worth, wizards are widely regarded as much more powerful than sorcerers, for the simple reason that they can learn every spell in the book, and thus have the best spell for any given situation, while sorcerers must make some very difficult choices, and mostly must choose some utility spells that might be useful for a few situations, while being perfect for pretty much none. You can "fix" a wizard merely by choosing better spells tomorrow, while a sorcerer with poorly chosen spells is pretty much broken beyond repair. Playing an effective sorcerer is much more difficult than playing a Wizard. Besides, the "spell per day supremacy" is pretty much undone when you put specialist wizards and focused specialists in the mix, though that wouldn't matter much in a game for beginners, I guess

 

[airwalkrr]

Character classes do not have to be perfectly balanced for them to have a niche. Some players choose not to play wizards simply because they do not care to keep track of the mechanics of so many spells and that is perfectly fine.

As for broken sorcerers with poor spell choices, I have always endorsed the idea of retraining (PH2) and spell swapping (sorcerer ability every 2 levels). So long as it is done within reasonable limits, I don't buy the idea that a sorcerer who made a few bad choices is broken beyond repair unless you have a very strict DM.

Specialist wizards still don't have the sheer volume of spells as sorcerers. Furthermore, they must forever forgo two schools of magic, which is a difficult choice to make. So there is some balance there.

While I agree with your central thesis that wizards are more powerful, I do not believe that marginalizes the sorcerer in any way. A skilled player can do pretty much the same with the sorcerer as a wizard (remember there are always scrolls for some of the more common utility spells which a sorcerer probably never needs to slot). For a new player, the sorcerer is a good class to learn the mechanics of arcane spellcasting while still allowing the player a lot of power.

 

[Li Shenron]

I want D&D Lite, but I also want it to be 3.5 For the most part there is nothing wrong with monsters, races, and character classes. If you leave the details to those things, the idea is that I could still use my vast 3.5 library minus some of the fiddly bits. (Spells could use some simplifying, but that's for another discussion.)

If you want 3ed Lite, removing non-class-bonus feats is fine, I don't think there is any bad consequence for doing that.

But what probably causes problems to your players is not that they get a feat every 3 levels, but rather that since you say you have a vast library then they must have hundreds to pick from. If you just tell them "only core feats allowed as non-class-bonus feats", this already achieves practically the same "slimming" effect.

 

[airwalkrr]

What you say is true, [MENTION=1465]Li Shenron[/MENTION]. Yet still, the core feats alone can still be daunting for a new player to choose from. I think it's a far simpler matter to just do away with the level-based feats altogether.

 

[Larkas]

While I agree with your central thesis that wizards are more powerful, I do not believe that marginalizes the sorcerer in any way..

Indeed, it really doesn't. I just wanted to point out that without the ability to take feats, the gap between wizards and sorcerers could broaden even more. And sorcerers already are a little boring! The poor things have 19 dead levels! Admittedly, they have spells, but so do the cleric, the druid, the wizard... That's why I pointed to the PF sorcerer. At least the player can look towards a neat new ability, not to mention the spells. Anyways, just a thought.

And I'm totally with you on retraining. But I ALWAYS have strict DMs =/

 

[airwalkrr]

Cutting back on the complexity of the game is part of my overall goal. So the PF sorc and all the PF classes for that matter with all their fiddly bits are counter to my purposes.

Honestly, spells are interesting enough. A 5th-level sorcerer still probably has more tactical options than a 5th-level fighter.

 

[MoonSong]

Character classes do not have to be perfectly balanced for them to have a niche. Some players choose not to play wizards simply because they do not care to keep track of the mechanics of so many spells and that is perfectly fine.

As for broken sorcerers with poor spell choices, I have always endorsed the idea of retraining (PH2) and spell swapping (sorcerer ability every 2 levels). So long as it is done within reasonable limits, I don't buy the idea that a sorcerer who made a few bad choices is broken beyond repair unless you have a very strict DM.

Specialist wizards still don't have the sheer volume of spells as sorcerers. Furthermore, they must forever forgo two schools of magic, which is a difficult choice to make. So there is some balance there.

While I agree with your central thesis that wizards are more powerful, I do not believe that marginalizes the sorcerer in any way. A skilled player can do pretty much the same with the sorcerer as a wizard (remember there are always scrolls for some of the more common utility spells which a sorcerer probably never needs to slot). For a new player, the sorcerer is a good class to learn the mechanics of arcane spellcasting while still allowing the player a lot of power.

Actually the extra spells per day the sorcerer gets don't really translate into power, that is a total fallacy. You could even double their numbers and they still wouldn't get any more powerfull. Denying the sorcerer access to metamagic feats really cripples the class, part of their power rellies on being able to apply metamagic feats on the fly, the one thing the wizard cannot do, and metamagic feats allow them to use better the little amount of spells known, extra slots puf, they are meaningless with a spell list so restricted, if you don't have a spell that could change the current situation, that is as good as not having any slots left, you don't cast a spell on any of those situations.

As a dedicated sorcerer player, I will tell you the sorcerer takes longer to be created than a wizard, but once done it play smoothly faster, you don't have to decide between preppared spells, you only gaze at the number of spells you have casted so far, period. I suggest you try to play the class at least once in order to understand it better, don't try to change what you don't know.

If you think that giving up two or three schools is a big price for a wizard, think it better, it isn't, banning schools is such a low price when done right that may as well be meaningless (most wizards lose so little by banning Evocation and Echantment that it is almost a meme). Any extra slot for a wizard is an exponential increase in power, any extra slot for a sorcerer is just another fight he can take. Also no amount of retraining compares to the ability to basically rewrite your character sheet overnight, don't overlook that.

If you are going to remove metamagic feats entirely from sorcerers, you should at least duplicate their spells known. To them is such a massive loss it isn't funny.

Edit: At 5th level a sorcerer only knows 6 spells (10 if you count cantrips), at least one of those is mage armor or shield, and half of the rest are tipically situational utilities, which leaves only 3 spells that could be used for combat. So I would argue that no, the fighter is still better than a metamagicless sorcerer at that level.