Core classes. How are they balanced?

Personally, here's what I do, as I fully realise that there's a huge discrepancy between power levels of the Cleric and the Druid and other classes.

Clerics have Light Armour and Light Shield profs and 1/2 BAB and good Will - and they also add their Charisma modifier to all Fortitude-based saves they make versus undead. They also add all Knowledge skills to their list and the Knowledge Domain grants a +1 to all Knowledge skill checks, the Plant and Animal Domain add +1 to Knowledge Nature checks, and the Travel Domain adds +1 to Survival checks. Also auto-prof in their Deities favoured weapon if not already.

Druids use the alt. wildshape in PHBII and are prof with dagger, dart, club, handaxe (new), greatclub (new), javelin (new), longspear (new), morningstar (new), quaterstaff, sling, spear, shortbow (new), shortspear, sickle, throwing axe (new - and they drop scimitar, by-the-by) + all natural weapons in wildshape etc etc. Light armour and light shields as well. Skills are the same, plus Knowledge: history, geography, and religion.

That more-or-less brings the druid and cleric class down to earth, gives them some appropriate boosts, and is well enough suited to my games.

cheers,
--N

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Now playing: Borknagar - The Stellar Dome

Sylrae said:

explain how that is balanced against the wizard please? also, how would you recommend altering the class to fix it?

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It isn't balanced and was never supposed to be, if you ask me. There's no way to 'fix' the class. You'll want to use the shapeshifting from PHB2 instead of Wildshape, though.

Sylrae said:

explain how that is balanced against the wizard please? also, how would you recommend altering the class to fix it?

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It isn't balanced and was never supposed to be, if you ask me. There's no way to fix it in 3E.

Sylrae said:

these also have exponential via spell power, so can you guys explain how this is supposed to work? or how to rework it?

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The fix for fighter is to not play a fighter. Play one of the classes from the Tome of Battle.

Now, really. Forget about trying to balance the 3E classes against each other. It's just not possible, nor is it really necessary. The basic assumption pre-4E (or at least pre-ToB) was that high level spellcasters will outshine martial classes.

If you feel that class balance is important I can only recommend you to switch to 4E.

It's true 4e has much more balanced classes.

Unfortunately all the classes have neatly defined roles, and that I don't like.

There's also no multiclassing. the stuff they call multiclassing doesn't work enough to count. it's less multiclass than 2e's dual classes, and those weren't multiclassing either.

the more balanced classes in 4e are on of the few things it has going for it in my opinion (besides a few specific mechanic changes which are easily adapted to 3.5, and a shortened skill list similar to the one i have house rules into 3.5 anyways.

I'm not trying to balance caster classes against melee ones, because it really isn't possible cause of the different style in which theyre designed. Melee classes are ahead for maybe the first 12 levels, then the caster classes stat to outshine them (assuming you didnt multiclass or take a +la race or a prestige class, that is) what I'm suggesting is that the caster classes should be balanced against eachother.

and you say they aren't supposed to be balanced against eachother. not that i disagree, there is certainly evidence to support your opinion, but what specifically would you recommend to balance it myself?

anything not already mentioned, besides the phb 2 wildshaping? (which i have not yet looked at)

get back to me.

and im not going for perfect balance, that would be damn near impossible. if theyre close to the same power level, spread out over all their abilities (combat and otherwise) thats good enough for me.

the wizard is say for example, the exponential curve. the fighter the line, and the cleric is what you get when you take 75% of the fighter and add it to 100% of the wizard.

It's all about resources. Essentially there is at least one spell for every particular niche. Some that circumvent what is supposed to be a weakness. You could have better armor, or you could have Shield and Mage Armor and Invisibility and Expeditious Retreat and False Life and Alter Self etc.

Likewise, a melee class probably spends 3-4 feats to up one special attack or situational attack (trip, AoOs). On the other hand, Extend spell boosts every single spell that has some type of duration? Who's getting more bang for their buck?

You totally missed the point.

I just said that melee characters follow a different progression than casters. they start out stronger but finish weaker.

my issue is not with that.

my issues is that the cleric and the druid have the benefits of both melee characters and casters, added together, and they dont lose one to have the other. It's like playing 2 characters.

But they don't have the powerful wizard/sorc spell list. That's where the balance is found--they're not overpowering casters, and they're also more robust at early levels. They're roughly half-way between the fighter arc and the arcane arc.

heres the question then.

how is the cleric spell list weaker than the wizard spell list?

I'd like to note that I dont allow save or die effects. save or die spells either do stat damage (like Con) or remove it entirely. So ifthe Save or dies are the only thing balancing the Wizard to the cleric, then they don't.

I'd like to hear how it is balanced otherwise, but even if its just via save or dies, i'd still like to hear it.

I always thought the cleric/druid spells were balanced in power with the wizard spell levels. I figured a level 5 spell would be a level 5 spell. Sometimes theyre slightly tweaked by spell, but theyre about the same usually, no?

Sylrae said:

my issues is that the cleric and the druid have the benefits of both melee characters and casters, added together, and they dont lose one to have the other. It's like playing 2 characters.

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Well, in my experience, the cleric is overpowered only in theory. Because everything the cleric in my game is ever doing is healing, removing conditions from others and raising them from the dead. If he didn't do that, there'd be at least one dead pc in every fight (actually, currently that's almost the case even though he's healing as much as he can, but I digress...).

The druid is more problematic, especially if he has a pet and wildshape. I remember quite vividly a combat which he basically fought alone (well, he was 'supported' by a sorcerer, who was busy casting mirror image every round...). He was summoning a new pet every round until the enemies were surrounded by a zoo of critters and were eventually overwhelmed.

When druid has one or two rounds to buff himself, he's a lot tougher than any fighter could ever be (in animal form) and unlike the cleric, he usually has the time and resources to do it, too. He's not one of the major damage dealers, though. He's the group's best defender!

The two main damage dealers are the psion and the wilder - when these two go nova, they annihilate pretty much everything.

By comparison the rogue, ranger and barbarian are merely an annoyance. The fighter, due to clever multiclassing and feat choices is a real threat, though.

The average party level is currently 10-11, btw. I expect the tendencies I've noticed so far to become more pronounced as they level up. They'll soon need a second dedicated healer, though. The group is simply to big, even if the druid supports the cleric.

I appreciate your Idea that the cleric spends time healing, but if a cleric decides NOT to be a dedicated healer, then they are much like hat you described the druid to be. they're a self-buffing and healing fighter.

I dunno about the Psion and Wilder. I've never played a game with psionics, so I don't know how beefy they are.

Well if you want to use actual number values, we created the Prestige Class Cookbook where we break down every class and prestige ability into a numeric value.