I do have to question how a thread about fixing issues people have with Pathfinder became a thread about the superiority of 4e?
The claim was made that it is inherent to D&D that the way you make non-casters comparable in effectiveness to casters is by caster-ising them. I disputed the claim with reference to both B/X and 4e. That is not asserting anything about the superiority of 4e to PF. It is contesting a claim about what is inherent to D&D, by reference to my own experience with well-known versions of D&D.
Power sources, healing surges, and inherent bonuses are all examples of non-casters being made into casters, just in a different way.
my point is that they aren't just doing martial stuff. Taking the old-school wands and potions of CLW and transmuting them into healing surges doesn't make them "martial stuff". It's basically just refluffed healing wands/potions.
I believe Pemerton's point is that 4e martial characters don't gain versatility and power in great leaps and bounds by taking wizard levels or by picking up a bunch of wands. 4e fighters, rogues, and so on are awesome just by doing martial stuff.
I've yet to throw a Fireball with my 4e Fighter, or have him do anything outright magical.
Tequila Sunrise is correct about my point. I also agree with EnglishLanguage - the fighter and ranger in my 4e game sometimes do magic, because both are also clerics who can use clerical abilities; but when fighting with hammer, axe or bow they are not using magical abilities. Nor when scaling a cliff or surviving a 200' drop.
I don't particularly care about the mechanical structure. In the Marvel Heroic RP game, both The Punisher and Doctor Strange have the same mechanical structure as PCs, but only one is a magician. The other is a really tough (and sometimes lucky) soldier. If I want to play a magician, I play Dr Strange. If I want to play a soldier, I play the Punisher. The different experience isn't about build or resolution mechanics - its about story elements and the shared fiction created by way of playing the game.
If you really wanted to, how hard would it be to pretend that the magic items in PF didn't exist, and that you were just picking up handy tricks and enhancements by defeating enemies?
I think the answer is - rather hard. For instance, you would have to deal with item creation feats; the fact that the default rules link treasure to defeating and looting enemies; the fact that some of these things produce overtly magical effects like fireballs and cones of cold; the fact that some of these things are useable only if you are of a certain class or have a certain sort of training (UMD); etc.
It's not a negligible difference between PF and 4e that the latter is designed to permit the use of items, inherent bonuses, and/or boons, in whatever mix the participants prefer, without having to deal with the sorts of issues that would arise in 3E/PF.
It isn't that non-casters have been turned into casters, or vice versa.
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It used to be that caster/non-caster was a meaningful functional distinction, but in 4e it mostly isn't.
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Continuing to hold to or be concerned with the caster/non-caster divide in 4e is like expecting to find pith on an apple - simply nonsensical.
I agree that in 4e there is no fundamental mechanical distinction between caster and non-caster. (Although there are still mechanical distinctions, such as access to damage types, to effect types like teleportation and charm, and other sorts of mechanical differences in power suites that correspond to the fictional differences between (say) Aragorn and Gandalf.)
It doesn't follow that it is nonsensical to think about the divide. It remains - or can remain - a significant story matter whether someone is a magician or not. Being a magician is an important part of Gandalf or Dr Strange's story. Being a soldier is an important part of The Punisher or Aragorn's story.
The initial claim to which I replied was that it is inherent to D&D that the only way to power up a non-caster to put them on a par with a caster is to turn them into a (partial, pretend, or unqualified) caster. I don't think this is true. It's not true in B/X (which does maintain a strong mechanical contrast between casters and non-casters). Nor is it true in 4e (which doesn't maintain such a strong contrast). In both cases, non-casters can be powered up by becoming better at their non-magical abilities (eg more hit points, better attacks and saves, etc).
4e is not a valid example for how PF or any other version of D&D would analyze the relative capacities of magical and nonmagical character abilities. Saying "well a 4e rogue can do X and Y without using wizard spells so why should a PF rogue have to pick up a wand to do X" is not accurate or pertinent.
What is pertinent to me is whether or not the game mandates, as a story element, that all powerful beings are (partial, pretend or unqualified) casters. This is not true for D&D in general, even if it is true of PF.
It is kind of like looking at American football, and then saying that a soccer player should be able to pick up the ball and run it in for a goal.
If you are playing soccer, and finding some problems with it, one would be tempted to look at other games with folks running around the field to fix the problem. I'm just saying that you have to be careful when you do that. Looking at a game where much of the primary ball movement is in picking up the ball and running with it may not be useful.
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This doesn't say the issue cannot be addressed, or that 4e is better or worse. It just means that you have to be careful of where you search for answers.
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There's more than one way to address the problem. I'm just noting that if you want to address it in the rules, you probably want to look at games with more similar structure for inspiration for solutions.
I don't have a problem I'm trying to fix. I have played very little 3E and no PF, and don't see any more of either in my gaming future. If its true that, in PF, the only way for non-casters to compete with casters is to become casters, then that is all the more the case. I'm personally not that interested in a fantasy game with such a narrow fictional scope.
My point was simply that this is not a general or inherent feature of D&D.
