Are Casters 'still' way better than noncasters after level 6?

[Votan]

A lot of the complaints I've seen about castes vs non-casters is from posts or comments that start with "The rules say...", or "I played one session and...".
These are often either unique or rare occurrences that people get up in arms about, or more likely, just theory being tossed around without seeing what happens in actual play. Something might look horrifying on paper... but plans never survive first contact with reality, because abilities and spells can't be looked at in a vacuum.

I have played two major 3.5 campaigns (well more than one in each case but groups). In the first one we were nearly pure core 3.5 and I never saw the casters dominate. Usually it was the Paladin, of all things. Only in the last couple of encounter of the campaign (level 16) was that looking like a less clear statement but it is hard to judge from a couple of encounters and the level 15 Paladin was still doing exceptionally well in the previous level's encounters.

Later on, I played a late 3.5 game with roughly 25 of the books allowed. My experience was that the casters completely ruled the field. Both in a high level game that I started in and in the second part where we began at level one. It frustrated the DM who claimed that rogues and warriros should still be viable but the whole party started to end up as casters. Part of it was that it was a very high danger campaign and the evasion type spells where literally life savers (dimension door, silence and invisibility).

So I have seen both happen in long term play. I am convinced that blending (many prestige classes and odd prestige class that directly compensated for caster weaknesses) were the trick in the scond campaign, though, as people found all of the ways to get huge saves (very important), melee ability and hit points despite being casters.

 

[Banshee16]

Sounds like having the Fighter is a liability if they can be turned too easily.

It could be....but, it was also a lesson to players in the group against making characters with glaring weaknesses just so they could maximize one or two main strengths....like focusing your scores on STR and CON, and dumping CHA and WIS. Well....there are consequences to that.....particularly if the DM limits the selection of magic items they have access to.

Yes, in 3E, there were magic shops or merchants or whatever. But I didn't usually just go and make it like there was a Wal-Magic around the corner in the town. Yes, there might be a shop or arcanist with a few items they were willing to trade...but it wasn't a matter of saying "open the DMG, figure out what you want, and tell me the cost, and you can buy it". I usually rolled up a spread of items that might be available, depending on the size of shop, reputation of the arcanist etc. That helps to avoid the problem of players stacking some scores while stripping others, then balancing the character out with magic items.

Maybe I just wasn't a friendly DM for optimizers.

To the main point, however, I *did* find that fighters were still viable options, even at high levels. Yeah, they could be vulnerable to charms etc. But they still chopped many spellcasters into chunks of meat........and in the party environment, they were still the ones who did a significant amount of damage to enemies, and kept the party's wizard and druid from being overwhelmed, so they would have enough time and space to use their own spells. By no means were they less important.

Particularly when 3.5 altered so many spells like Hold Person etc. to allow new saves every round. Once that happened, in combination with the lower save DCs of 3.5, I didn't really see many opponents get affected by those spells long enough for them to have significant effects.

Banshee

 

[Kaisoku]

Safety from charms were, and still are, just a Protection From <alignment> spell away. I recall an encounter where the mage put up magic circle, and I made sure to not step out for too long since we were fighting an Aboleth.

But yeah, it's a sophisticated game of rock, paper, scissors, unless you shore up your weaknesses appropriately.

 

[Falling Icicle]

In all my years playing 3e and 3.5, I've never found casters to be significantly more powerful than fighter types. Most of the examples people would cite on sites like this one were purely theoretical, arena type duels, and those kinds of things don't match up with the experience of actual adventuring at all.

Another thing people often forget is that casters can also help make the fighter types more powerful, thanks to their buffs. Haste is a great example of this.

Also, as levels increase, monsters tend to have spell resistance, more and more resistances and immunities, and proportionally higher HD and ability scores (and thus *much* higher saves), making a caster's life hell. Likewise, see invisibility, true seeing, immunity to mind-influencing effects, etc etc etc also become more and more common the higher level you go. In a high level campaign I once played, I felt lucky to have even a single spell actually affect a monster.

Fighter-types similarly complain about DR, but the new pathfinder rule that +3/4/5 weapons ignore metal DR goes a long way to getting rid of the golf bag of weapons problem 3.5 introduced and is an enormous buff for those classes.

Did spellcasters get anything comparable to help them get around immunities and resists? No, they even removed the archmage which was the main way arcane casters could change the energy type of their spells at high levels... The APG was supposed to reintroduce the archmage abilities as feats, but the energy substitution ability is only available to one very specific type of specialist... Ugh. And the old archmage ability to put holes in your area spells for your allies is now a metamagic that wizards have to prepare beforehand and increases the spell's level. I'd rather just have my archamge back, thanks.

The only thing I've ever really found to be overpowered about spellcasters is summonings. Those can get kinda crazy sometimes.

 

[Soramain]

Divine favor looks the same (3e was capped at +3 in errata after starting as going up to +5)

Divine power used to turn BAB into 1/1 give a +6 str, and some temp hp. Now it gives +1 to hit and damage per 3 levels (max +6), a haste style extra full base attack, and some temp hp. At 7th level 3e gave +4 to hit +3 damage versus PF +2 to hit and damage. At 20th 3e is +8 to hit, +3 to damage vs. +6 to hit and damage in PF.

Righteous might gave +4 str, +2 Con, +2 natural armor, 3/6/9 DR and size large. PF now gives RM +4 str, +4 Con, -2 Dex, +2 natural armor, 5/10 DR, and size large.

A little difference in these buff spells but not much.

Well, they also made divine power into a luck bonus, so it doesn't stack with divine favor. The end result is that PF divine power + righteous might is -5 to attack versus the 3.5 trinity of spells (or -7 if you didn't know about the errata'd divine favor).

Also there is no persistent spell feat in PF core. I have heard it suggested before that persistent spell was really a big part of the CoDzilla problem. A cleric spending two or more rounds buffing up to still be a worse fighter than a fighting class doesn't really seem like a problem to me - in those two rounds your fighter has closed with the enemy and unleashed a full attack.

Chances are also good that your cleric had to invest valuable stat points in something other than his strength, too.

 

[Jhaelen]

In all my years playing 3e and 3.5, I've never found casters to be significantly more powerful than fighter types.

Well, in what level ranges have you been playing? In my game (currently level 15), spellcasters are very noticably stronger than fighter types. Psionicists are definitely among the worst (i.e. strongest).

Recently we had a fight against an advanced elder storm elemental with 500 hp (DR 10/-). Now matter how well you optimize a fighter, it will still take him quite a few rounds to bring it down to 0 hp.
The cleric killed it with a single destruction spell. Sure, he was lucky that the elemental failed the save, but it was still something a fighter type could never do.

Since the encounter took place on the elemental plane of air, the fighter types wouldn't have stood any chance without the spellcasters. And that's a rather comfortable environment compared to some other planes.

Area-effect spells are another thing that cannot really be replaced by anything fighter-types can do. The game is full of things that can only be dealt with employing magic.

Try playing with an all-spellcaster party and with an all-fighter party. The former will work quite well, the latter is impossible (at high levels).

 

[Kaiyanwang]

Jahelen, I don't want to say the situation you told us don't come up often - actually, it come up quite often, but two nitpicks:

- Damage is not a true issue for meleers. An optimized fighter can bypass easily A 10/- DR, in the sense that can dish out enough damage with a single blow to make it not so relevant.

One could argue that it could anyway need buffs to reach the elemental, but items can do the job too. Rogues and bard can UMD. And pathfinder made feats that make the fighters able to build their own weapons (even if in a more limited way).

- Dead Magic or Wild Magic zone exist. One could argue that they screw the whole party, but nevertheless, the casters are the primary target.

 

[Voadam]

Well, they also made divine power into a luck bonus, so it doesn't stack with divine favor. The end result is that PF divine power + righteous might is -5 to attack versus the 3.5 trinity of spells (or -7 if you didn't know about the errata'd divine favor).

Also there is no persistent spell feat in PF core. I have heard it suggested before that persistent spell was really a big part of the CoDzilla problem. A cleric spending two or more rounds buffing up to still be a worse fighter than a fighting class doesn't really seem like a problem to me - in those two rounds your fighter has closed with the enemy and unleashed a full attack.

Chances are also good that your cleric had to invest valuable stat points in something other than his strength, too.

Excellent point on the luck bonus non-stacking.

A couple counterpoints to the other stuff you raise though:

Persistent spell is +7 on the spell level, that means only divine favor could be made persistent and only for 15th level or higher casters using an 8th level spell slot for it. On its own an all day +3 luck bonus is nice and a decent option for a 15th level cleric using a feat plus an 8th level slot.

It was the non-core persistent spell combined with the feat from Complete Divine that allowed you to trade in turning attempts to reduce the level cost of metamagics that allowed a cleric to be fully buffed past the warrior classes for every round of every combat in a day without wasting any combat rounds casting.

Pathfinder is generally compatible with 3e stuff so it is not unusual to say supplement stuff from 3e is allowed in. Probably best to compare core to core.

For that trinity of spells it takes a minimum of 9th level to have the 5th level righteous might, and it takes 3 rounds of combat buffing while doing nothing else to get that full bump up of combat spells. If a combat lasts 5 rounds then the CoZilla will whup on the enemies for 2 rounds at the end of the fight, while the fighter/barbarian will have been whomping on them actively engaged for all five rounds. Many times the first round of engagement for melee is no full attack as the combatants close, giving more advantage to a combatant actively engaged for more rounds.

The pathfinder one will get less bonuses but he will also be attacking in combat a round earlier if his divine favor cannot stack with his divine power.

IME though the clerics spend only one round doing one buff then wade in rather than let the party fight one man down for multiple rounds. In my high level game (went up to 17th) the melee fighter/cleric regularly went righteous might then started swinging his giant war maul. The fighter and paladin would attack from round one as would the eldritch knight with arcane strike and the quick shifting druid.

 

[IronWolf]

For that trinity of spells it takes a minimum of 9th level to have the 5th level righteous might, and it takes 3 rounds of combat buffing while doing nothing else to get that full bump up of combat spells. If a combat lasts 5 rounds then the CoZilla will whup on the enemies for 2 rounds at the end of the fight, while the fighter/barbarian will have been whomping on them actively engaged for all five rounds. Many times the first round of engagement for melee is no full attack as the combatants close, giving more advantage to a combatant actively engaged for more rounds.

When I played a heavily focused battle cleric this was often the case. You had too many rounds wasted buffing that if you did so you missed half the battle in all but the most extreme cases. Then, by the time you did get in there swinging, someone by then who had been standing toe-to-toe with some critter needed healing.

And on some occasions where we did have some warning of what was about to come my cleric would try buffing just prior. A nice perception roll in some cases by the dragon in the next room and now, even though the cleric was all buffed, so was the dragon.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I agree with the above. I ban Persistent Spell, it's a plainly unbalanced metamagic feat, it doesn't care at all what the original duration was, they all get boosted to 24 hours. It amazes me that so few people don't immediately recognize the stupidity in that...

Divine Metamagic is extremely costly, both to obtain (feat cost on top of the metamagic feat you're using it with, for each meta feat you want it with) and use (1 + level adjustment turn attempts per use). I also ban Nightsticks, so there's no cheap supply of stackable extra turn undead attempts. I have never found DMM without these two broken things to be a problem.

Persistent spell is +7 on the spell level

+6