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Compelling and Differentiated Gameplay For Spellcasters and Martial Classes
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<blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 7825613" data-attributes="member: 16586"><p>Within a context of role playing game design it is absolutely possible. You discard two of the central conceits that have been with us since Third Edition. The first is that at will abilities cannot be awesome and daily and encounter rationing is needed to balance anything that is more involved than I attack with my sword. The second is the idea that spell casters should be doing the same things other characters do, but better.</p><p></p><p>You make martial characters the undisputed masters of single target personal combat with access to techniques that match what a character with their level of skill should be capable of. You then provide a niche for spell casters that is different from the niche of martial characters and skill users. This does generally require defining what skills and martial techniques can actually do.</p><p></p><p>This is the way a number of games that are not Dungeons and Dragons have balanced spell casters and more martially inclined characters for years. In practice this largely matches my experience with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition without the fun techniques for martials. It's how RuneQuest, Legend of the Five Rings, Vampire, Exalted, Shadowrun, and Pathfinder Second Edition work. Spellcasters have to marshal resources just to keep up with martials in their areas of expertise, but are more capable in other areas like area damage, divination, protective spells, and plot device level magic like teleportation. Their spells are also less certain.</p><p></p><p>I agree these structural changes will not work with Fifth Edition as designed. I do think you could keep the existing structures in place and layer on subclasses that got more interesting at will abilities as they level up that might require some setup or perhaps use attacks as a resource so a Fighter with say the Tactician subclass might be able to use 2 attacks to strike an enemy and apply a powerful debuff. You could feed this into Action Surge as well. I really like this idea. I might start drafting something up.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Campbell, post: 7825613, member: 16586"] Within a context of role playing game design it is absolutely possible. You discard two of the central conceits that have been with us since Third Edition. The first is that at will abilities cannot be awesome and daily and encounter rationing is needed to balance anything that is more involved than I attack with my sword. The second is the idea that spell casters should be doing the same things other characters do, but better. You make martial characters the undisputed masters of single target personal combat with access to techniques that match what a character with their level of skill should be capable of. You then provide a niche for spell casters that is different from the niche of martial characters and skill users. This does generally require defining what skills and martial techniques can actually do. This is the way a number of games that are not Dungeons and Dragons have balanced spell casters and more martially inclined characters for years. In practice this largely matches my experience with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition without the fun techniques for martials. It's how RuneQuest, Legend of the Five Rings, Vampire, Exalted, Shadowrun, and Pathfinder Second Edition work. Spellcasters have to marshal resources just to keep up with martials in their areas of expertise, but are more capable in other areas like area damage, divination, protective spells, and plot device level magic like teleportation. Their spells are also less certain. I agree these structural changes will not work with Fifth Edition as designed. I do think you could keep the existing structures in place and layer on subclasses that got more interesting at will abilities as they level up that might require some setup or perhaps use attacks as a resource so a Fighter with say the Tactician subclass might be able to use 2 attacks to strike an enemy and apply a powerful debuff. You could feed this into Action Surge as well. I really like this idea. I might start drafting something up. [/QUOTE]
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