Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)

[Wicht]

Would you mind if I tried out the Pathfinder Sorcerer options? I had a partially assembled Pathfinder Sorcerer from an exercise long ago intended to figure out exactly what Pathfinder changed with regards to sorcerers and what effect it has. I must say, I found the APG Human Sorcerer Favored Class option to be quite interesting.

If the crowd doesn't mind, I can go for that.

 

[LostSoul]

One guideline I have for my own game is that if I as DM can't think of (at least) three different ways for the PCs to deal with a problem, it's probably a single-point-of-failure roadblock and needs to be rethought.

Players, lacking the DM point of view, often don't see some or all viable solutions due to various reasons such as imperfect information, having a bad day, misunderstandings, poor communication, missing players, or not being invested in the problem and wanting to go somewhere else.

Conversely, they often come up with completely unanticipated solutions, some of which are so good they just work, some of which have varying chances of success and some of which aren't viable.

Sometimes they come up with something that shouldn't strictly work due to hidden info they aren't privy to, but is so awesome it's worth changing the setup so that it does work.

I find that too many failures drains the morale of players, and may indicate a lack of understanding of the true situation and perhaps a need to discuss things OOC.

I have been talking about "DMing principles" for a while now; I'd be interested in hearing which ones you go with. (Even if you don't think about DMing that way.)

 

[Savage Wombat]

I actually watched a 17th level party flawless victory the Tarrasque because the cleric simply stood back and tapped in Heal spells every round and let the rest of the party beat the thing to death.

My group did it at 15th. Since they knew they were facing it, they equipped the party with a temporary "radiant weapon" effect.

 

[ImperatorK]

It can be done by a 7th level caster. Killing the Big T, I mean.

 

[Dandu]

Anyone who can fly has already made himself immune to its damage...

 

[ImperatorK]

That doesn't get you any closer to killing it, though. In fact quite the opposite (Get it? Because you fly away from it! I'm so funny... not ).

 

[Dandu]

I believe that the first step for killing the Tarrasque is to not die.

 

[ImperatorK]

Go on.

 

[Manbearcat]

Starting to run out of material to pursue here so I'm going to run down a different angle of the conversation; "how do we make the 3.x fighter better."

I may break out a post about issues with the Fighter in combat at a later point (which I have a few, related to tactical inflexibility, lack of dynamism in decision-points, and lack of mobility - which is as much a product of the action economy as anything else), but I want to keep this post short and relatively focused. So for now, I'm just going to give my take on:

Non-Combat, Conflict Resolution

I'm going to break out some points that I posted in the recent Pathfinder Skill Consolidation thread. There are multiple issues working against the fighter here.

1 - First and foremost is their primary shtick (Athletics) is broken out into component parts Climb, Jump, Swim. The Fighter needs to be functional to good at these things by default.

2 - The Fighter's Trained Skill pool is deeply contracted.

3 - The Fighter's Skill Points/level are a meager 2 + Int.

4 - The Fighter's primary modes of resolution dictate that Intelligence is a dump stat.

5 - The Fighter's primary modes of resolution dictate that Charisma is a dump stat.

6 - The Fighter gains no Features that improve non-combat, conflict resolution.

1-6 creates a fairly predictable level of incompetence in non-combat conflict resolution. 3 + 4 ensures that the number of Skill Points to invest will be the leanest of the lean. 1 compounds matters as the Fighter is spending his meager 2 (lowest possible) + Int (primary dump stat) Skill Points 3 ways just for minimum functionality in their thematic center (Athletics). That is rough. 2 ensures that the Fighter has little to no breadth available to diversify expertise (not that he would have the resources to do so even if he could). 4 (along with no trained skills) ensures no functionality with Knowledge Skills or any of the various Int skills. 5 painfully ensures that another area of thematic potential (Leader of Men) is rendered inert as the Leadership feat is as useful for the Fighter as any character it could be for. What's more, any investment into Social Skills (or the thematic Intimidate) will have a net yield of average to slightly below average functionality (and it will cost the Fighter in Athletics). Obviously, 6 isn't in the fold to mitigate the compounding issues of 1-5.

So, given that these things could each use a significant bump in functionality and it wouldn't perturb the balance of the game anywhere in the vicinity of overpowering the Fighter, it bears out the Fighters position in The Tier System and says to me that the Fighter needs a lot of help closing the gap. So what are some of the options here? I proposed a few in the aforementioned Pathfinder Skill Consolidation thread.

- If consolidating Climb, Jump, and Swim (into Athletics) is off the table, then I think the Fighter (and probably Ranger) needs a scaling (with level) bonus to all 3 of these skills so they don't have to invest so deeply (with their already limited skill points) just to have base competency in their primary shtick (Athletics).

- For the social/Leader of Men shtick, a robust, scaling (with level) bonus to Intimidate and Leadership score (with automatic gain of Leadership at 7th level) would get the job done in softening the blow of being spread thin twice-over (low number of skill points + primary shtick "Athletics" being split across multiple skills).

- Giving Fighters an extra bonus for the "Bonus" option of Hero Points if they use it for a skill (eg a + 12 or even + 15 bonus) wouldn't be the worst idea in the world either.

- Finally, you could give Fighters 2 free Traits amongst a specified list of Equipment, Regional, and Social that are thematically Fighter-ey.

Any combination thereof would go a long way toward establishing a "thematic center" for the Fighter, simultaneously providing base competency and giving players a cue as to their natural role in non-combat resolution. Personally, however, at epic tier of play, I'm strongly of the position you MUST provide metagame resources for martial characters to play to the thematic weight of their forebears and to load-bear any of the responsibility of resolving non-combat conflicts. This is particularly true of a game where spells possess so much inherent fiat power in the non-combat conflicts.

 

[Dandu]

Some form of gaining better action economy would not go unappreciated.