Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)

[sheadunne]

Because the character can't.

Explain.

 

[Hussar]

I think I can field this. Ahn and N'Raac both belong to the strong immersion side of the fence. You the player can only interact with the game world through your character and anything beyond that is immersion breaking and thus bad.

I think that's how the argument goes.

What is being ignored here is that this is only one play style and what is bad for strong immersion is largely irrelavent to to rest of us.

N'raac brought up the point of Conan and Khelben Blackstaff being in the same group and how it would not work. Isn't that what we've been saying all along? After all, a 3e fighter cannot do anything Conan couldn't and Khelben is a by the book DnD wizard.

 

[Bluenose]

N'raac brought up the point of Conan and Khelben Blackstaff being in the same group and how it would not work. Isn't that what we've been saying all along? After all, a 3e fighter cannot do anything Conan couldn't and Khelben is a by the book DnD wizard.

And for a variety of reasons, the same people object to Khelben being in a party with Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki, Cuchullain or Rama. Who are capable of some things that make them useful members of a party with Khelben.

 

[pemerton]

There is a clear hangup about spellcasters being overpowered (although your recent posts seem to restrict this to a much smaller subset of spellcasters). That seems to go beyond "making it happen faster without needing help or equipment".

I think you are underestimating the significance of "making it happen faster without needing help or equipment" - if "it" refers to (say) building a castle, or crossing a continent, or learning the content of another's mind, then being able to do so withou needing help or equipment is a big deal.

My experience with higher-level AD&D caster is that (i) they tend to overshadow other characters through their broad range of capabilities, and (ii) their ability to do certain things "faster witout needing help or equipment" enables their players to reframe many scenes in major ways. (Teleport and scrying are the biggest two contributors here.)

The likelihood the pass is snowed under is not affected by the PC's survival skill.

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And, again, I do not believe any amount of character skill can cause the Wizard to not be out of town after all.

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the odds of the mountain pass being snowed in when the character would prefer it not be would then be influenced by level (or this luck/favour mechanic, however implemented) and not by his own skills at tracking or wilderness survival.

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This, to me, is not "weather sense". It is "the weather favours your character".

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To me, that is not a "survival skill", but a "persuade the nature spirits" skill. It is not governed by the character's own knowledge and skill at woodcraft

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Sure, we could play the game in this manner. For me, however, it breaks the suspension of disbelief that a character who is said to "predict" the weather can actually dictate it.

In the post to which you replied, I said (and you quoted it), "Notice that both in the rules paragraph and in my paragraph it is the player, not the PC, who is dictating the weather. For a character to dictate the weather would require some sort of weather summoning magic.'

I also said (and you quoted), "A skill is first and foremost a player resource: for instance, having a high Diplomacy skill (which is in part a function of level) means 'When I declare Diplomatic actions for my PC, things are more likely to go right.'"

I'm therefore not sure why you are stating my examples back to me as if it were the character who is manipulating the weather or the presence/absence of the wizard. I understand that you do not enjoy RPGing in way that distinguishes player and character resources and capabilities; but I assume you are capable of drawing the distinction.

Pemerton's approach, to me, also can be effected by a change to the setting, and a more subtle one, that the world bends to the will of more powerful characters. Their actions and desires influence the world around them (whether they know it or not), so a character believing he is predicting the weather may actually be dictating it.

This has nothing to do with my approach. My approach - as I think I made pretty clear - is one in which the skills on the character sheet are first and foremost player resources. A strong Weather Sense ability or a Diplomacy or Streetwise skill is a device for ensuring that, when my PC engages in that domain of actvity, s/he is likely to have things go the way s/he wants. What the ingame cause of that is is a distinctive question.

It also feels "off" to me that my character ALWAYS succeeds in predicting the weather he desires, failing only if the weather will be other than what he desires.

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How do we determine the weather when my roll fails? Does my character know what the weather will actually be (which still allows him to use this weather to best effect), or does he miss his prediction, or just not know what the weather will be like?

if s/he fails then of course the weather is different from what s/he wanted.

If he had failed on the roll, the DM would probably use the opposite intention (foul weather instead of sunny skies, etc) as the result of the roll.

Adding to what I said in the post that was quoted, and to sheadunne's comment: the GM would take the same approach as to any failed roll, that is, narrate a complication that increases the pressure on the PC in a way that thwarts the player's desire for the outcome of the situation. If the GM thinks that foreshadowing will help with this, then the PC correctly predicts bad weather. If the GM thinks that surprise will help with this, then the PC wrongly predicts desired weather. (In Burning Wheel, at least, the player will know that s/he failed the roll, so taking this approach would depend upon the player taking steps to keep player and PC knowledge separate.)

We also get the question of which abilities trump. The Ranger has used his Survival skill to "predict" the weather he wants. An opposing Druid has cast a Weather Control spell to impose the desired weather for his side of the battle. Who wins?

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if the Ranger is persuading the nature spirits, now we have a challenge to the Druid's domination of the weather.

Similarly, if the Ranger and Barbarian have opposing desires for the weather, who gets the weather they want?

In Burning Wheel, if in doubt the better roll wins. That solves the ranger/barbarian problem. It also solves the problem of the magical ranger vs the druid.

If a caster is using Weather Summoning magic, and succeeds, that determines the fiction, and therefore determines the content of a successful prediction - just as [MENTION=27570]sheadunne[/MENTION] described in his post.

Ahn and N'Raac both belong to the strong immersion side of the fence. You the player can only interact with the game world through your character and anything beyond that is immersion breaking and thus bad.

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What is being ignored here is that this is only one play style and what is bad for strong immersion is largely irrelavent to to rest of us.

It is a bit frustrating when I describe play options in way that expressly presupposes a player/character divide, and have them (mis-)stated back in a way that runs elides that distinction.

It is fine not to like a style, but it's not helpful in discussing it to misdescribe its techniques!

 

[Ahnehnois]

Explain.

Because it's a roleplaying game. If the player is playing the role of one particular character, but has in-game information that the character does not, or causes an in-game effect that their character does not, then that is what we refer to as "metagaming".

Of course, metagaming is not a moral affront as certain parties will naturally try to strawman it into, it's simply outside of the activity that the DM and the players have agreed to do. In general, each player controls one character, knows the things that this character knows, adopts the perspective of this character, and controls the decisions of this character. Everything external to the psychology of the characters is out of their hands.

Speaking practically, if a DM generates the weather, then the players don't know where it came from (regular weather, a specific tonal choice by the DM, or some supernatural influence). Not knowing allows them to react to it in the same way that a person does. If the DM tells the players that it's raining, maybe it's a bit of a downer to them. If it's not yet raining, but it looks like a massive storm is accumulating, perhaps a sense of dread is conveyed. If instead it's clear skies and a light breeze, a sense of calm may prevail, which has its own uses. If the player initiated the weather, it would be hard to expect him to feel that emotional response. And ultimately, the players subjective experiences are the end goal of the game.

 

[Ahnehnois]

And for a variety of reasons, the same people object to Khelben being in a party with Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki, Cuchullain or Rama. Who are capable of some things that make them useful members of a party with Khelben.

This is a little silly because it presupposes that those characters are garden-variety fighters. To me, they seem like the sort of thing that PF has subsequently released mythic rules for. They're clearly larger than life figures, perhaps supernatural, which would entail some race or template or other modifications.

Gilgamesh/Beowulf/etc, might be portrayed as simply a fighter of higher level than everyone else in the world, perhaps epic/mythic if you like. I see no reason from that mythology to assume that those characters were ever in a balanced party with characters of different persuasions (let alone spellcasters, let alone D&D spellcasters), so I don't see that it follows that a level 20 Gilgamesh must be balanced with a level 20 spellcaster that does not exist in his myth.

Moreover, any of those stories is necessarily from the perspective of a civilian; in D&D terms they are written by and for low-level commoners. There is no reason why the feats of a reasonably high-level 3e fighter would not appear that impressive to a bunch of non-adventurous, non-combatants with no other basis for comparison. If you want to run the Beowulf myth as a session, just put a high level fighter in a world with few to no other PC classed characters. He sure looks like a god then. If you want to port him into FR and put him in a party with Khelben Blackstaff, I think it follows that he won't look as impressive. Then again, he'll still he a high-level character, which is not a bad thing to be.

 

[Bluenose]

This is a little silly because it presupposes that those characters are garden-variety fighters. To me, they seem like the sort of thing that PF has subsequently released mythic rules for. They're clearly larger than life figures, perhaps supernatural, which would entail some race or template or other modifications.

Are you suggesting that Khelben is a "garden-variety" spellcaster? That he hasn't got some special template making him exceptional (Chosen of Mystra, oh so normal).

Gilgamesh/Beowulf/etc, might be portrayed as simply a fighter of higher level than everyone else in the world, perhaps epic/mythic if you like. I see no reason from that mythology to assume that those characters were ever in a balanced party with characters of different persuasions (let alone spellcasters, let alone D&D spellcasters), so I don't see that it follows that a level 20 Gilgamesh must be balanced with a level 20 spellcaster that does not exist in his myth.

And of course we get back to the argument that they can't possibly be balanced with D&D spellcasters because they just can't be as good as spellcasters ever - even the ones that did have caster companions and/or enemies.

Moreover, any of those stories is necessarily from the perspective of a civilian; in D&D terms they are written by and for low-level commoners. There is no reason why the feats of a reasonably high-level 3e fighter would not appear that impressive to a bunch of non-adventurous, non-combatants with no other basis for comparison. If you want to run the Beowulf myth as a session, just put a high level fighter in a world with few to no other PC classed characters. He sure looks like a god then. If you want to port him into FR and put him in a party with Khelben Blackstaff, I think it follows that he won't look as impressive. Then again, he'll still he a high-level character, which is not a bad thing to be.

And apparently it's just not acceptable for a high-level character to be as good as another high-level character, because one of them casts spells and therefore deserves to be better.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Are you suggesting that Khelben is a "garden-variety" spellcaster? That he hasn't got some special template making him exceptional (Chosen of Mystra, oh so normal).

Good question. I recall seeing stats for him somewhere and I am not an FR expert. The point is what is being compared here, and is it a fair comparison.

And apparently it's just not acceptable for a high-level character to be as good as another high-level character, because one of them casts spells and therefore deserves to be better.

Absolutely. Apples and oranges. The term "supernatural" literally means "above natural". If a character that is divinely blessed or channels arcane power or even is a psychic, is not ultimately better than a character that does not have those things, the game is fundamentally broken (i.e. the antithesis of balanced).

After all, what is a deity promising? "Devote your life to me and my perfect ideals and you will be roughly as powerful as you would be if you didn't?" What kind of deal is that? And what does the word magic even mean? "Stuff that you really could have done anyway if you'd tried hard enough?"

Now if you want to say that your favorite martial hero of legend is a supernatural being, then again there are mechanical options for conveying that, of which the fighter and rogue classes by themselves are not. As it is, those classes grant you a reliable effectiveness without having to depend on external sources of power, not the ability to move mountains.

 

[Hussar]

Ahn, I'd point out that in many genre stories, magic isn't the godlike powers you are talking about. Not every DnD game has to be Harry Potter with wizards and muggles.

But thank you for finally straight up admitting the caster/noncaster divide not only exists but is baked into the system.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Ahn, I'd point out that in many genre stories, magic isn't the godlike powers you are talking about. Not every DnD game has to be Harry Potter with wizards and muggles.

If you want to match a genre other than "D&D", it follows that you'll need to change a lot of rules, not just the magic ones.

But thank you for finally straight up admitting the caster/noncaster divide not only exists but is baked into the system.

Nonsense. They're well balanced, and magic is better than not magic. These things are not mutually exclusive.