Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)

[Wicht]

Wrong system, but, thanks for that.

Huh? Leadership is in both 3.5 and Pathfinder. What system are we meant to be talking about?

Note, the wizard cohort can never be higher level than the fighter, so, can never cast higher level spells.

By your reasoning low level or high level spells are kinda immaterial as having access to one guarantees access to the other.

But, it's true, leadership would open that access.

Thank you for the acknowledgment. Which means you concede you were mistaken in your assertions?

So, the way to balance non-casters to casters is to make non-casters into casters. Yeah, I can see that. Take the most broken, out of balance feat you can, apply it to the broken classes (after all, why on earth would anyone deliberately take a non-caster cohort?) and you can finally have a non-caster that's almost on par with the casters in the party.

I wasn't thinking of it as a balance issue. Just a possible procedure issue. The ability of a wizard to cast planar binding is not a game breaking ability imo, so I do not concede that this is the only way to make non-casters have parity. I have maintained all along the classes are balanced satisfactorily for game play purposes.

I also cannot logically distinguish between summoning a servant and walking down the street to hire a servant. Both are primarily story-color by which an analogous resolution is acquired.

(after all, why on earth would anyone deliberately take a non-caster cohort?)

Heh. Because it fit the character and the story? Just a wild hunch there.

Different motivations for playing I guess.

 

[Wicht]

Same thing goes for the Glabrezu example. The player did everything right. He followed everything. Only to have the DM declare, completely out of the blue, that he had no chance of succeeding in the first place.

You really do have a problem not jumping to conclusions based on your biases don't you? Most of us are in agreement that the demon is a viable means by which a caster can acquire a certain type of wish. The whole, "the demon has already cast a wish," is just a possibility (and a funny one) but nobody has said that the process will never work.

The actual primary disagreement seems to me to be whether the ability of the caster to bargain for a wish is equivalent to the caster being able to cast a wish using a low-level spell. The argument as to whether the spell will always work as intended is a secondary argument and I don't think anyone has actually posited that it should, so there is no actual disagreement here. By conflating the two arguments you are misrepresenting the actual positions of those that are disagreeing with you. This is called a strawman.

 

[TwoSix]

Heh. Because it fit the character and the story? Just a wild hunch there.

Different motivations for playing I guess.

Exactly. If system mastery and character concept fidelity are both priorities, systems which put them in conflict are not much fun. I don't want to be in a position where I have to choose between ineffective but cool fighter and boring but powerful wizard.

 

[Wicht]

Exactly. If system mastery and character concept fidelity are both priorities, systems which put them in conflict are not much fun. I don't want to be in a position where I have to choose between ineffective but cool fighter and boring but powerful wizard.

Yes, but some of us don't see fighters as innefective.

 

[TwoSix]

Yes, but some of us don't see fighters as innefective.

Talk about coming full circle!

 

[sheadunne]

Talk about coming full circle!

The circle is now complete but I don't think any of us has become a master in the process

 

[N'raac]

I agree. Though I think the demon would ask for the sacrifice upfront and I also think the demon would time the fulfillment so as to be most inconvenient to the PC for the wish to be fulfilled.

Alternatively, as the Planar Binding spell indicates that the being returns for payment after accomplishing the task, the Glabrezu perhaps does not demand the sacrifice up front (which would not be RAW), but instead grants the Wish and pops immediately back to the Wizard to demand his payment at a time not overly convenient for a Demon to pop in, state that he has [done the task wished for] and now wishes his payment forthwith.

Hrm, sufficiently evil wish.

* I wish that a very large fireball be detonated in the nave of the Holy Bahumut Church during ((Insert appropriately large services time here)) *

OK – lots of pain and suffering potential there. Why could the Wizard not have cast his own Fireball? Now, if I want to hair split, you said “large”, but not “lethal”, but I see no reason the Demon would want to spare the worshippers of Bahamut. Maybe a high level Cleric or two survive to investigate and hunt down the wizard.

* I wish that the King's Crown be turned into a pile of deadly vipers the next time the king puts it on, thus killing the King and starting a war *

Can someone else wish instant death on you as well? It seems like you are going beyond a single wish, imposing the results of your wish (the king fails his save and dies; this results in a war).

* I wish that a meteor strike the orphanage down the street and the resulting blaze incinerate half the town. *

Again, Wishing both the wish and its consequences seems lengthy. That said, rephrasing to wish for a blaze that incinerates half the town, including that orphanage, seems reasonable.

You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment.)

Seems like your Wishes meet this criteria (maybe not the first – it asks for a 3^rd level spell, maybe higher if we assume a Delayed Blast).

Without the non-caster having any outside help, let's see you do the same with a non-caster.

Your wizard mined that powdered silver himself? After all, he can have no outside assistance, right? He certainly can’t PURCHASE something from a third party, right?

He takes the leadership feat and acquires a wizard cohort. Now he, by virtue of one feat, can personally cast every spell a wizard can cast. And if the wizard cohort has charm person, the skies the limits. Well not really, but the reasoning is the same as yours.

That's not really hair splitting. I was just interested why someone would go to the trouble of summoning a demon to try and get a wish.

I would argue its an indirect result, and hardly guaranteed. But you seem to think its practically in the bag just because the wizard wants to do it. In the instances cited above, the feasibility of the 1st is going to depend on DM fiat and the particular campaign setting (is the church protected in anyway). The second is poorly worded and open ended (you didn't specify which king), and the demon is going to have a heyday starting a war other than the one the caster wanted. The third one is the best wish, but your poor wizard is going to be left without a home as the fire is almost guaranteed to burn down something near and dear to him and (as cited above), the actual timetable of the wish has been left open and now the meteor will strike at a time most inconvenient to the wizard.

How difficult it is seems to depend largely on whether we are discussing whether wizards are, in fact, overpowered or whether the wizard has “earned” the wish so the GM is a draconian micromanager if he shuts it down.

Actually its not immaterial. It is the payment for services which makes it balanced. You are not getting the result ex nihilo, via nothing but a spell. That is the main point. So long as there is an additional cost, then the whole thing is mechanically sound. It is only when a DM does not exact some legitimate cost that the procedure breaks down mechanically.

Added to that, I would not expect the cost of extracting a wish from a Demon to be markedly less than the cost of purchasing a Wish from a Wizard – although the cost might take very different forms.

In the end the result is the same: the character has another character cast the spell. The exact process of acquiring the services may differ, but the result is the same. You seem to think that a demon somehow does not qualify as "outside help," but it does. The demon is an NPC and the goals of the demon are not subject to the direct control of the caster.

That seems to be the crux of the matter – the assertion seems to be that Planar Binding places the demon under the caster’s direct control, reliably and consistently.

You seem to have had a knack for finding bad DMs.

I’m not the only one who notices that, I see…

 

[N'raac]

Conan does this all the time. And isn't REH an instance of the genre we're aiming for?

I don't really follow this, for two reasons. First, perhaps the PCs are going to meet George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, both national rulers widely regarded as just and righteous who nevertheless presided over a polity that was filled with slaves brutally treated by their masters. Second, what reason do we have to think that this is the kingdom that was in play in @Manbearcat 's scenario?

This is the crux of my issue – we have no basis on which to think anything about the kingdom. It’s an absolute blank slate. No one knows much of anything about the kingdom. We’ve embarked on a Holy Quest to save this Kingdom, but all we actually know is:

The entirety of the Skill Challenge will be to get to and convince the king to act or sponsor/deputize them, or grant them resources/assets/hirelings in their effort to hunt and defeat the dragon that is either threatening to usurp his kingdom or already has it hostage. The obstinate chamberlain will be merely a complication as the stakes aren't high enough with a challenge itself being to "get past him to the king."

So, for all we know, we are fighting to defend a Kingdom of Open Devil Worshippers from a Great Gold Wyrm seeking to remove this devil worshipping stain from the face of the earth. Since everything develops in play, what prevents this result arising in play? My character has no clue whatsoever about what he is stepping into. For some characters, that’s appropriate. For others, it most definitely is not. I am forced to play a character who never does the slightest bit of intel gathering before stepping into the fray.

Perhaps the PC does know - but the player doesn't know everything the PC knows. Now why would the player not know? Perhaps because transition scenes take time to play out at the table, and the group prefers to play out action scenes.

So the player does not know things that would cause the PC to take different actions. Would that Paladin of Bahamut fight fiercely to defend the Devil Worshippers from a Gold Dragon?

You do realise that you are in the odd position of trying to tell Manbearcat that - from reading a post that he wrote to convey his recollections of a scenario that he ran - that you have a better grasp of the stakes that had been set than he does. That doesn't make much sense to me.

I am responding to YOUR INTERPRETATION of what he has written, and I am judging solely from the words which were written. Those words tell me that there was a roll to Bluff the drake to take no retributive action, which arose during the efforts to persuade the Chamberlain of something. Or, actually, to “convince the king to act or sponsor/deputize them, or grant them resources/assets/hirelings in their effort to hunt and defeat the dragon that is either threatening to usurp his kingdom or already has it hostage”, as manbearcat has been quite clear the Chamberlain is “merely a complication”, and not the goal.

I don't see why - two PCs carrying both a sword and a dagger, but one of whom attacks only with the dagger and the other who attacks only with the sword, are not identically mechanical at the moment which counts (namely, action resolution).

If they both use the sword, are they no longer mechanically identical when one rolls a 3 and the other a 17?

As I indicated, I prefer an approach in which the best thing for the paladin to do is not "torch to the groin". There are a range of more or less formal ways to achieve this result.

It seems like you are indicating that there should never be a situation where a character might have to choose between the most expedient and effective course of action and remaining true to his principals. That is not a presumption I would ever want in a game. That means that there could very well be scenes where your Paladin may have to choose between saving innocents and stopping the Dragon. That seems far more meaningful as to matters of theme and value than always structuring situations so that the Paladin never finds sticking to his principals remotely difficult.

Conversely, if I am playing a foul-mouthed fighter, then why am I trying to persuade the king via Diplomacy? And why have I been framed into that scene? Until you give me some answers to those sorts of questions, how do you expect me to explain how I might GM such a scenario?

So, again, you should never, ever be framed into a scene where your character’s style might be sub-optimal for success. If I build a melee monster – nothing but brute HTH strength, with every other ability sacrificed to enhance that melee might – then I should never, ever be framed into a scene I cannot readily resolve by slashing someone to ribbons.

This is not a surprise to anyone who has been following this thread.

No one is surprised that there are playstyle differences. What I still don't follow is why you seem to be reluctant to admit that aproaches that are different from yours are nevertheless capable of producing coherent and satisfying results for those who choose to adopt them.

If you find them coherent and satisfying, more power to you. I am not seeing any indication that the results are coherent or satisfying. I see some potential, but I see a lot of issues in getting there. And asking a question results in me being requested to read an extensive text. I am still waiting for you to say either:

• “Yes, a success is a success – full stop – is a tenet of all indie play – the PC/player intent is achieve and this achievement is advantageous if they are successful”, or

• “No, a success is a success – full stop – is not a tenet of all indie play – a successful roll can still result in complications later”

Hard(-ish) scene framing is another technique on the GM side - frame the PCs into difficult situations and put the onus on the players to back out or call for mulligans if they want to ("But before we went to visit the duke I would have primed my homonculus to record everything with its magical eyegems") while enticing them into tackling the actual situation in front of them.

So how does that align with “But before we went to visit the King, I would have taken a measure of the King’s reputation among his people, looked at which way the palace faces and listened enough to know if Dragons routinely fly in and out of the King’s palace.”

 

[LostSoul]

If you find them coherent and satisfying, more power to you. I am not seeing any indication that the results are coherent or satisfying. I see some potential, but I see a lot of issues in getting there.

Did you see any potential and/or issues arising from the play recaps I posted about my Burning Empires game?

 

[Imaro]

It seems like you are indicating that there should never be a situation where a character might have to choose between the most expedient and effective course of action and remaining true to his principals. That is not a presumption I would ever want in a game. That means that there could very well be scenes where your Paladin may have to choose between saving innocents and stopping the Dragon. That seems far more meaningful as to matters of theme and value than always structuring situations so that the Paladin never finds sticking to his principals remotely difficult.

Yeah this has been a point of contention between I and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] before... and is one of the big areas that I find pemerton's play style lacking for my own (and my players) purposes. I think one of the main points of playing a character like a paladin is the fact that there are hard choices (with consequences) that must be made but I find the approach of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] (at least from the discussions we've had) insipid as far as exploring the thematic underpinnings of a class like the paladin (well at least the pre-4e paladin). In other words this way of play seems to lack actual bite and the thematic exploration seems moreso color than any actual exploration.

So, again, you should never, ever be framed into a scene where your character’s style might be sub-optimal for success. If I build a melee monster – nothing but brute HTH strength, with every other ability sacrificed to enhance that melee might – then I should never, ever be framed into a scene I cannot readily resolve by slashing someone to ribbons.

Yep and this is just the problems I find with the paladin example above writ big. It's the reasoning behind rogue sneak attacks always being effective against all foes, and paladins having no consequences for breaking their code or alignment, and clerics that are no longer empowered or dis-empowered by their gods and water elementals who can be hurt by throwing more water at them... and so on. Again IMO, this goes back to my two earlier points...

Exploration and thinking outside the box... Part of exploring (and for some/many people an integral part of the fun in the game) is being thrust into new situations and whatever unexpected circumstances that accompany it... the rogue stumbling upon a creature his sneak attacks don't work on, a fire elemental which cannot be affected by fire based attacks, etc. It is these very situations that give PC's an incentive to think outside of the box. If my sneak attacks work on everything equally well, then what is my impetus to try something besides them? If every spell, even fireball works on the fire elemental, when does my pyromancer need to think outside the box to win? This was one of the aspects I feel hampers both the "exploration" aspect as well as the "outside the box thinking "aspect I was speaking too earlier in this thread.