Neonchameleon
Legend
It's also not as if the hobbits stayed with the party past the single dungeon expedition. And I always got the impression that Gollum killed orcs by sneak attacking them rather than head on.
How balanced should a game be?
- Thread starter Morrus
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Celebrim
Legend
Not necessarily. And to a large extent, you will bring out how one of the problems with a class system can be too great of similarity later on in your post.
Oddly, this is the opposite of my experience of 4e. I set down to design a module in 4e and all the options felt bland to me. The amount of work required to build interesting options wasn't worth the results. None of the character options looked interesting to me as a player. I can never recall feeling so bored reading rules as with 4e.
I get where you are coming from there, especially as a long time player of 1e AD&D, but I think you exaggerate the situation. Starting with stock 3.0, the non-casters are probably stronger than the casters up until about 6th level, and hold their own well until 9th-12th level depending on the tier of the non-caster and spell-caster optimization. It's only in high level play that you have the situation of non-casters being wholly dependent on casters for utility. Really breaking the parity even at low level doesn't begin to happen until 3.5, particularly late 3.5, when the number of spells, items, and feats that allow for breaking spell-casters wide open really gets ludicrous. By that time though, there are relatively potent options in what are technically at least non-casters if you are willing to go there.
So keeping in mind that in my current 3.X campaign we are just hitting 7th level after about 4 years of (mostly) bi-weekly play (4-5 hour sessions), it's more than possible to play 3.X without the players feeling that their non-casters can't contribute much.
Ridiculous, certainly. But in terms of mechanics, since I don't know he mechanics, I have no way of knowing whether pogo sticks are underpowered or overpowered. If pogo sticks give large bonuses to acrobatics, jump, and speed, and allow 'death from above' maneuvers (high ground, leaping charges, crush attacks, etc.) then fighters on pogo sticks might well be quite scary as well as ridiculous.
Here is where you and I fully agree. No game should have both tier 1 and tier 5 options presented to the players as legitimate. As bad as you think 3.X is, RIFTS was actually far worse in this regard, but nevertheless having both tier 1 and tier 5 options presented as equal is ridiculous. It's ok to have both in the same game, but they should be separated out by tier and clearly presented as different game options with different assumptions of play. Nevertheless, with a little house ruling of 3.X I've managed to bring the classes IMO to a range of tier 2 to at worst tier 4, and as far as I've been able to tell all classes in my game are tier 3 up until 9th level or so when the game breaking 5th level spells come on line.
I'm not sure that it was. oD&D/AD&D was created by historical wargamers explicitly in a medieval setting where 14th century tech was high tech. Renaissance and later archetypes, like doublet and hose wearing swashbucklers dueling with rapiers and the like were considered anachronistic. Heavy armor was prioritized because missile weapons had just begun the slow process of obsoleting armor, and Gygax (more so than Anderson) seems to have wanted a 'pure' setting without guns. Gygax's choice of the galley as the prototypical warship of the day and the cog as the civilian ship indicates he wants a setting inspired by technology that is earlier than the battle of Lepanto. Under such constraints, Zorro, d'Artagnan, Captain Blood, Cyrano, and 20th century staged versions of Robin Hood in hose (the 19th century version of literature wears mail) and other archetypes of the lightly armed fighter are anachronistic and don't need to be supported.
Moreover, for complex reasons I won't go into here, IMO for balance reasons they can't be supported in the way that many people want. Lightly armored fighter is generally inherently better than heavily armored fighter if lightly armored fighter is a viable choice in the sense most people mean. Even power gamers in 1e understood this, and preferred if at all possible to rely on bracers rather than armor for protection when they could get them - which incidentally opened up doublet and hose presentations as viable mechanically.
And yet, you prefer 4e, a system I rejected in part because it made balance equivalent to being 'samey' to an extent no other edition had. Because it was precisely that for the first time in D&D, 4e unified all the classes under a blanket system instead of giving each class its own subsystem and set of rules unique to that class, and for the first time 4e became a game where everyone was working off the same core rules that channeled them into the same play style and incentives. And I note that in your revision of 4e, you are precisely removing this 'feature' from 4e inspired classes and giving them their own unique rules and play style. You are attempting to merge the best of 4e's balance with every other editions variety of play style. And that's great, and something I wish the 4e designers had realized was necessary and part of D&D's attraction. But it's still certainly true that 4e made the classes more 'samey', and your own chosen revisions prove you are aware of that just as my own chosen revisions of 3e prove I know that 3e's biggest problem was lack of balance.
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Celebrim
Legend
Certainly. Gollum was definitely thief/rogue class in D&D terms. So for that matter was Bilbo the Burglar. The whole Halfling = Thief trope has to come from somewhere. But backstab/sneak attack or not, he's more than a match for an orc even when naked and unarmed.
GMMichael
Guide of Modos
I beg to differ. Why shouldn't all rules be equally accessible to all PCs? As I've mentioned before, class design is a popular concept when discussing game balance. Throw out classes. Let the players choose whatever powers they want for their characters - whatever rules they want to use. My sharebrewed game does this. Now, to my knowledge, Morrus hasn't tried it, so it might bore the heck out of him. But the same concept was used in Skyrim: you get better at what you do, and you can do anything. Skyrim was a far cry from boring.
Saying that Fate and GURPS have the same balance, or class-appeal, problems is bold. Two more dissimilar games have I never seen.
Are you saying, then, that balanced classes each need their own rulebook? Or just that the magic subsystems of D&D add enough interest?
The two questions you pose sound to me like:
1) Which of the existing rules would a member of this class use?
2) What new rules to we need to write for a member of this class?
(1) places class-creation in a later part of the game-writing process, and wraps up fairly neatly. (2) requires that classes be written early, even first, so that the rest of the rules can be written for the classes. And suggests that writing more classes is a god-awful headache, requiring more sourcebooks. Did I interpret your questions correctly?
Neonchameleon
Legend
This also happens with points buy.
I'm a kinaesthetic learner and used to be both a dancer and a wargamer. How people move matters to me. The difference between a shift 1 and a shift 2. The Paladin being incentivised for actually getting into the middle of the enemy
Not my experience at all. If we ignore the stock 3.0 Ranger (that was just a mistake), a first level specialist wizard can cripple three fights per day with either Sleep or Colour Spray. And between cantrips and more skills they can hold their own out of combat with any front line non-caster from level 1 onwards. They are competitive from first level onwards and pull out a lead at fifth level with third level spells. At seventh they've a commanding lead, and by the time you hit Teleport at 9th it's all over.
Wizards pull away faster than clerics - but the fighter's total advantage over the cleric at first level is +1 BAB and a single feat; unless that feat is Cleave (which, admittedly, it frequently is) this does not make up for the vastly superior endurance several castings of Cure Light Wounds brings.
Rifts is an industry-wide joke this way.
Given the house ruling - and specific house rules for your play group - you can put in a measure of balance. The basic rule of thumb of the tier system is stark, however: Nothing that can cast sixth level spells is less than tier 3. Nothing that can't (outside the Bo9S) is more than tier 4.
oD&D was created by the sort of fantasy wargamers who wanted to play Aragorn and made a class round it (1e Rangers) or even a baby Balrog (Mike Mornard played a baby balrog in both Gygax' and Arneson's original groups). The vampire as a class predates the cleric - with the cleric brought in explicitly to counter the vampire, both from Hammer Horror Studios rather than anything historical. And one of the inspirations behind it points was Eroll Flynn.
The core inspiration for D&D was not "What would happen in a historically accurate setting" but "We made up some
we thought would be fun".Agreed. Swashbucklers should be relying on speed and picking their targets - it's trickier to design and only 4e and Next seem to have come close to getting it right.
Whereas to me there is more variation between two different (pre-Essentials) 1st level 4e fighters than there is between any two non-casters in 3.X. And that includes between e.g. a paladin and a rogue.
This part is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. 4e is the only edition where, in core, some PCs are mechanically encouraged to jump right into the middle of the enemy and they get bonusses for it. Jump right into the middle of the enemy mob with a rogue in any edition and you're looking at a Darwin Award. Jump into the middle with a paladin pre-4e and you're still looking at a Darwin Award whatever the fluff says. In 4e, as a Paladin right in the heart of the enemy is exactly where you want to be and where you will be most effective. And this starts from first level.
And pre-4e wizards were, to me, practically interchangeable. Their biggest difference was their equipment. Which matters a lot - but it's still your equipment rather than who you are.
I know what you look for in terms of difference is different from what I do. But to say that 4e PCs are all the same is to me risible. You simply do not appreciate the vast differences between the 4e PCs.
Which is a common response. But even looking from your perspective, assuming that a homogenous power structure means the classes are the same, you literally have one point of variation in 3.X - whether someone's a spellcaster or not. (There's arguably a third option for spontaneous casters).
And I'm trying to do that while keeping 4e's unmatched variety of play style. What different people look for is important. No other D&D to me has near the variety in play style for martial classes 4e enables (the Bo9S was a semi-decent first try).
I'm also not trying to include every other edition's variety of play style. I've got an Archivist Wizard - but it's very explicitly an AD&D wizard not a 3.X wizard. And the 3.X druid can go whistle.
What's true is that 4e's classes are differentiated in different ways to those of prior editions. When I look at 3.X I find all the non-casters very samey - and the casters variety boils down to their spell selection. (Here I have to give props to the 5e Rogue for being the first non-4E rogue that actually looks worthwhile - which is why I stole its central feature)
There are three big problems with 4e:
1: Combat takes too long.
Fix: Focus on striker-esque abilities, and drop Enhancement and Item bonusses and add them to the basic math
2: The way different characters were differentiated changed
Fix: Bring back many of the old ways while keeping the new
3: The presentation was terrible - and more or less required computerised tools
Fix: My Trifold class sheets mean the classes are at least short - and can be printed out from any printer.
Neonchameleon
Legend
Why should they?
Throw out classes and the system dominates. What classes enable is that each class is its own separate subgame within the game's core structure. So you get the flavour of the class rather than the overarching game.
That's not what I meant. If you're playing GURPS Discworld (as terrible a thematic match as there is - possibly even wrose than MERP) the GURPS swamps the Discworld. Likewise Fate Core is Fate Core.
I'm saying that if classes don't have a mini-rulebook each then you might as well not have them. The rulebook doesn't have to be big - a side each will do (I've gone for two and explanatory notes). But enabling a mini-rulebook is the entire strength of the class system.
Which doesn't mean that you need a class system. Merely that that's what it brings.
All of them where the class rulebook doesn't explicitly contradict them.
Start with the core rules. The class rulebooks are designed to overlay the core rules.
And yes, writing good classes is a challenge. Churning out PRCs doesn't add much. Think of each class as a separate module.
I would note that Skyrim was a single player game. Being a jack of all trades and Master of All was useful in it.
D&D is meant to be a team game. Each player supplies a function. Hence the Class design, which silo'd abilities so each player had to make a choice and rely on another player to supply the missing capabilities.
Obviously, players hate that, because it restricts their power. Players tend to me self-centered, so they fail to see the bigger design picture. Left to their own devices, they'll build hybrid classes that can do everything, or invent a build system to get them the best of each class's abilities. We'd end up with munchkin fighter/thief/mage/cleric PCs if we let them.
I exagerate, but I am pretty sure everybody has seen players like this.
Celebrim
Legend
Sure, but the balance in Elder Scrolls games is a joke, and fundamentally irrelevant because they are single player sandbox games that leave it up to the player what sort of experience they want to have. To speak of Oblivion or Skyrim in terms of balance is to miss the point entirely.
Celebrim
Legend
Agreed. My experience with point buy is that it works primarily when the players are approaching the system from primarily a method actor perspective. Balance problems are usually extreme and intractable in point buy, and over time that diversity of options tends to seem more like traps where you can choose to gimp yourself or choose to be effective.
Incentives don't have to be direct. If I'm a 1st level fighter with Cleave, the best AC in the party, and the highest hit points in the party, there are non-mechanical incentives to 'drawing aggro' from multiple foes. The 'Paladin' in my current PC party (actually homebrew Champion class, but a 'Paladin' replacement), frequently drives into the middle of enemy forces precisely because the party as a whole benefits if more of the foes are focused on attacking him. This is straight forward 'meat shield' tactics that have been used in D&D since forever.
I have no desire to edition war with you.
The key is 'in my experience'. In my experience, the players that believe that had very particular experiences of play that don't match mine. There experience was that monsters tended to be passive foes that didn't plan or act proactively. Dungeon crawling tended to be rare. Often 50% or more of all foes are humanoid (which low level casters are quite effective against). Terrain tended to be unimportant, with the vast majority of fights occurring on what was effectively an open wall-less plain. One good indication of this type of game would be if you played an urban campaign with a large number of fights occurring 'on the street' or in the BBEG's lair (a large room, effectively an arena or tournament floor) and you didn't do a lot of mapping as players. In general, there were a predictable number of fights per day, usually one large fight where the caster could 'go nova', and often as not one that occurred at a predictable time. In general, most of the play experience was at 10th level or higher. Often, most characters are started at 10th level or higher.
A wizard that is casting Sleep or Color Spray can contribute well to a fight, provided they aren't facing things like oozes, undead, and constructs regularly. But if they are doing so 3 times per day, they don't have many slots left for Shield, Mage Armor, and other highly important things. That means that they almost certainly have to be scribing scrolls if they don't wish to be defenseless, which means also that to compete equally with the other classes they have to slow their advancement by spending XP. I've had several players of low level Wizards bitterly complain about this, where wizard is the 'only class that is forced to be a level behind'. To a certain extent, they have a valid point. In 14 years of playing 3.X edition D&D I've never once had a pure Wizard survive past 6th level. For that matter with 30+ years experience I've never seen a pure classed Wizard/M-U survive to high level in any game whether player or DM. And this includes the group I was in that was sufficiently power gamey to regularly placed highly in DragonCon tournaments.
But beyond that something like Color Spray when it works dominates the action economy and is basically a 'win button'. But its also just a 15' cone that offers a saving throw. It also has some of the same problems of wieldiness as a fireball in that often its hard to catch a large number of foes in it and not catch party members. Trying to do so forces the Wizard to the front line where they are toast if things don't work out. Eventually after pushing the 'I win button' once too often, I see so many Wizards get a failure and then just die.
In my experience, the spell-casters have problems with sustaining their momentum, being both effective and protecting themselves, and dealing with situations they aren't prepared for. The non-spellcasters make up for these deficiencies, buy the spell-casters time to do their thing, and reduce the XP that the spellcasters have to spend out of their pool to maintain readiness.
However, I won't argue that the most optimal 3.X party you can have is probably divine spellcasters built around a smaller number of arcane caster problem solvers.
I agree on the teleport, but not much else. At 5th-7th you have something like parity IME, with the edition of 4th level spells only then pulling them into a lead. Prior to that, spell-casters have too few spells to make major contributions in every situation while still protecting themselves. They have to be very selective about their spell use, and they are squishy because they've not yet acquired the defensive magic items they need to replace the mundane items they can't use.
Yes, but at low level the Cleric is often gaining even more endurance if most of his CLW castings or on a party fighter. In general, I find that the gap is greater than you suggest because the Cleric must devote significant points to Wisdom rather than physical skills. Typically this means dumping either Str or Dex depending whether you are going for a more caster or more melee style cleric. So this means that the fighter typically so has either more to hit and damage or else more AC and better ranged attacks. Also, War Domain aside, the Fighter also tends to have a superior weapon worth basically +1 damage per attack compared to the cleric's weapon, and has 1-2 more hit points. And in terms of casting CLW, that's a spent action that roughly negates one attack - ei, you are trading an action for an action. It's more important in terms of party endurance than in terms of winning a combat until you get to higher level cures that negate multiple enemy attacks.
I'm not sure I agree Wizards pull away faster than clerics. Wizards are really squishy. Clerics can rely on normal armor items. Clerics can replace non-casters far sooner than Wizards can barring optimal abuse of shape changing spells (particularly the 3.5 revision of Alter Self).
Going into how you fix that is a tangential discussion. Nevertheless, this rule of thumb only matters if you are regularly playing above 11th level.
They did an exceptionally bad job, but that is a different discussion.
The core inspiration for D&D was not "What would happen in a historically accurate setting" but "We made up some
That is certainly true to a certain extent, but Gygax is the primary editor/writer of 1e PH and DMG, and that sets a completely different tone. It is the tone set by those books which we must take as the one adopted by most groups, and as being the designers main preferences when he could get his own way. For example, the 1e DMG utterly squashes the idea of playing a monster as being utterly undesirable and not fun, and generally not to be allowed. The cleric makes it into the text as a class - the vampire doesn't.
As for what you say about the balance between swashbucklers and heavy armor types, I think its very telling in what you think play looks like. A more pertinent statement might be that 1e drawf in plate mail had a move of just 3" and couldn't reasonably remove his armor when needed. As such, the higher AC didn't necessarily equate to higher survivability. This is even more highlighted by the addition of a skill system.
I'm not going to edition war with you, but I disagree. All the playstyles you think are so radical are encapsulated in just my current PC party, and 4e does a much better job is smoothing out when the individual class gets to shine by leveling out the 'I win' buttons and reducing the weaknesses.
Anyway, I like where you are going with your homebrew 4e variant, but I can equally tell its not really for me. I might enjoy it as a player depending on the GM, but I'm not going to jump out and adopt it.
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Neonchameleon
Legend
Not always true. The trick is to work out what the monster's plan will be and be one step ahead of them. Grabbing multiple groups of enemies before breaking out the AoE works.
Yup.
Say living rather than humanoid. There are few powers that differentiate between humans, dogs, and rats. In short unless it's Undead Fest...
This drives me up the wall. But in this case terrain is the casters' best friend. With the weakness of AoOs in 3.X, walls are the main thing preventing smart monsters with a ruthless DM from gutting the mage.
In other words a Paizo AP - or probably the most common style of play in 3.X
And there goes the Hexcrawl. Hexcrawls are a gift to casters. One hex explored per day.
Basically by now you've cut out just about everything except hard core dungeon crawling - something that was the 3.0 tagline but was in full retreat by the time 3.5 was published.
Mage Armour only has a very limited level range of usefulness (especially when Twilight was added in the BoED and readded in the PHB2). I've never had a caster prepare Shield.
1XP per first level scroll. This is trivial.
That was a weak argument in 3.0. In 3.5 XP is a river.
Which probably lowers the survivability of wizards to be honest. Because a tournament group faces enemies playing hardball -the 3.X power imbalance tends to ensure they don't.
And eventually the fighters take a crit.
I think the Artificer/Bard/Druid party I was part of was pretty close to optimal. Especially when we were able to hit enemy encampments at a run, all with Bane weapons and some ridiculous singing buffs.
A 5th level 3.X specialist wizard or cleric has a dozen spells (plus cantrips). That's in my experience normally enough if you don't burn wastefully (novas are generally bad play) and if the minor fights are handled by beating things over the head. (By comparison a 5th level 1e wizard had six spells and most of those were DM-determined). The 18 spells at 7th level is definitely ahead, and I think the 12 at 5th is.
First, no the cleric doesn't have to, Most do. And fighters who dump Wis get mind controlled.
Second, yes, the cleric normally heals the fighter. But that just means that the fighter isn't bringing the resilience - the cleric is and only a cursory glance misattributes this to the fighter.
If you're casting CLW in combat you're already in trouble. CLW is best used after the battle (and that was another vast change 3.0 made by accident - the easily creatable Wand of Cure Light Wounds freeing up the cleric's spells).
Oh, indeed. Doesn't mean that that was why the rules were there.
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