Is this a thing?

I told my players back in the early 80's if a martial could initiate a chokehold, the caster couldn't cast a spell on them. Then the caster would be forced to defeat the choke, which the martial had clear advantage with because strength or martial skill. They took my advice and I was forced to 'GM Bluebolt' them in order to complete at least one adventure.

Game over.

How are casters THAT MUCH BETTER than martials that I see this argument all the time?

What game? There are a lot of games with casters. Do you mean D&D specifically? Which edition? What level? There are a lot of variables.

If you mean D&D (I'm assuming), then 3.X was probably the worst of offender of martial/caster disparity. Not intentionally, but they kept them at the same power level as previous editions but removed most limitations. Such as sucking at low level, instantly lose spells when hit, difficult to find spells, slower leveling, not benefiting form higher CON, etc. Plus a few things accidentally nerfed spell defenses, such as saving throws falling relative to casting DCs as you level, while in earlier editions saving throws were usually passed at higher levels, and fighters often had the best saves.

In D&D 4e they mostly got rid of caster/martial disparity by making all the classes very same-y. Basically they balanced through symmetry - which is the easiest and most boring way to balance a game. (Especially for a long-term co-op game it's not a good move IMO.)

In 5e there is some martial/caster disparity - mostly at higher levels due to the big things that casters can do, but it's not horrid.

In earlier editions the general rule was that casters sucked early & dominated late. Really early D&D seemed to realize it too, and martials started getting all sorts of soldiers to compensate. Plus - the game seemed to sort of assume that you'd retire shortly after hitting double digits. It's always been spell level 5+ that were the biggest issues - so shortly after casters started dominating the game usually ended. (Note: I've read them, but I haven't played much D&D pre-3.x, so my knowledge is spotty and mostly second-hand. But - I have researched the subject a good bit when writing my own system.)

Anyway - in broad strokes, it's that martials get a hammer and casters get a toolbox. When you need to pound in some nails the hammer (martial) works great. They can even sort of do screws if you don't mind making a mess. But when you need to fix a door, do some plumbing, or repair a bicycle chain, you'll wish you had the toolbox.

It seems to mostly be a 3.x thing.

With that said, Greyhawk (for OD&D) buffed fighters up somewhat by giving them exceptional strength and variable weapon damage (though then again, it also introduced 7th to 9th level MU spells).

AD&D buffed up fighters more by giving them more hit points (d8 to d10, keeping the MU the same at d4), introducing magic resistance to monsters (though I believe this actually started in Eldritch Wizardry with the Demons, it became standardized, if not exactly common, in AD&D) and then later in UA, introduced weapon specialization. To the point where some people consider that overpowered.

Yes, linear fighters versus quadratic casters is a thing in many, many games - and across various subgenres of fantasy.

It's part of why I've introduced the concept of narrative cost in my game: I don't believe Gandalf didn't cast more spells because of any in-setting limitations. He didn't do it because otherwise he would have overshadowed the story (even more). And when spell usage is priced on how significant the impact on the story in that particular instance would be, casters can no longer loom as large as they do in other games: they have a certain, limited amount of spotlight for a given scenario and so need to consider carefully when, where and how to spend it.

Quote from: Theory of Games;1090066Is this a thing?

I told my players back in the early 80's if a martial could initiate a chokehold, the caster couldn't cast a spell on them. Then the caster would be forced to defeat the choke, which the martial had clear advantage with because strength or martial skill. They took my advice and I was forced to 'GM Bluebolt' them in order to complete at least one adventure.

Game over.

How are casters THAT MUCH BETTER than martials that I see this argument all the time?

In D&D at least the fighter has the potential to out DPS the wizard even at the higher levels due to how the two work. And In AD&D and 2e spells could be disrupted during casting and restraining a caster tended to put the kibosh on any magic unless the spell was purely verbal. Which was like all of maybee one spell? If that. It was why one of my players loved using a Kua-Toa man catcher on casters. But the wizard and cleric had certain versatilities in what they could do out of combat. And the wizard in particular can do alot of damage in one burst that might blanket an area. But they cant do that very often.

And anyone can wrassle. But fighers, and Ultra Man, just wrassle better.

Casters really had it bad in Oriental Adventures as everyone and there brother twice removed seemed to know just enough martial arts to get you in a limb lock and thats that.

3e was really the edition that most demonstrated the linear fighter/rogue vs. quadratic wizard/cleric disparities to the point the game was derisively referred to as "Casters & Caddies."

It happened sometimes in earlier edition games, but that was due to DMs ignoring some of the main restrictions on casting either deliberately or as a side-effect of house ruling things like initiative and turn sequence rather than a direct result of the rules (at worst you could blame the rules being too fiddly for many players/DMs).

But as a result, a lot of the design work on 3e as I understood it at the time was based on 2e's "rules as played" (as understood by the designers) rather than "as written." The result was casting times became largely uninterruptible without wasting actions (the ready action was almost never worth it unless it was to coordinate with your own party).

A similar unintended change was because of how saves scaled, the use of "save or die" spells at higher levels tended to bypass hit points entirely.

In earlier editions a monster might only need a 4 or better to save vs. something like "finger of death" or "flesh to stone" so the high level spell game was to use "save for half" damage spells to widdle down opponents rather than rely on longshot spells.

And if you played 3e with that same assumption; where the wizard throws fireballs, cones of cold, etc. then the fighter can mostly keep up with the wizard.

The problem is that because of how saves worked in 3e that was a sucker's game. By the time 6th level spells were available there was probably a 5 or more point difference between a target's good and bad saves (which would only grow from there) and because the difficulty of passing those saves increased with spell level it became trivially easy for a wizard to throw out a spell the target needs a 15 or better on the die to save against and where failing just kills them regardless of their hit points (or so hinders them the fight is effectively over).

Who cares that a 20th level fighter can make 4 attacks per round (if they move no more than 5ft) for 1d10+2d6+20 damage each... if the target has 400 hit points and the wizard can drop the target with one of their 30+ spells by bypassing those hit points entirely?

Once save or dies come online, the fighter and wizard are playing completely different games and the wizard game gets to completely override the fighter game whenever it chooses.

That was one of the reasons for the hard pullback on casters in 4e that resulted in flat-out martial/caster parity by using similar subsystems, and for greatly restricting the number of high level spells and implementing things like hit point thresholds for some spell effects in 5e. In other words restrictions that actually restrict in the d20-system derived environments of all three WotC editions of the game.

3E, 3.5. and Pathfinder pretty much showcased the problem of Linear Fighter vs Quadratic Caster imo. Sure IF you can grab a caster he is screwed. That usually happens when the player either is a novice running the caster, insists on putting himself in melee or not paying attention. With the right selection of spells and the caster aware one is not going to be grabbing the caster. Summoning creatures, being able to turn Invisible and stay that way because one can have the summoned creature attack the target, flying, ranged spell attacks, Save or Suck/Die spells.


It is not to say the Fighter is useless he has nothing that can really compete imo. Combat Maneuvers are nice yet beyond having to take two feats to not receive Attacks of Opportunity, moving more than 5 feet and only being able to attack once. Taking away the fighter ability to attack more than once from previous editions. I get that it was annoying that taking one point of damage and the spell fizzled was annoying in previous editions. Yet it was at the cost of neutering the Fighter in 3E.

Could anyone be so kind and explain what is a "quadratic caster"? Searched the web but couldn't find anything.

Is it somethin about his power growing quadratically?

Quote from: kanePL;1090124Could anyone be so kind and explain what is a "quadratic caster"? Searched the web but couldn't find anything.

Is it somethin about his power growing quadratically?

Yep.

Basically the idea is that as they level martials gain power in a straight line up, while casters gain power quadratically. It was true even in early editions, they just gave martials a head start.

This always seems to be a problem on paper, that rarely crops up in actual play.

Maybe, amongst my group and others I've played with, we just all play casters wrong/poorly.

I mean, that's not to say that casters aren't powerful in our games, they just don't overshadow martials like the Internets claims they do.

Of course it was always, "Linear Fighter" not "Linear Martial".

"Martial" being a term, like "Build" that I wish would just die.

Edit: and "fluff" and "crunch" while we're at it.

Whaugh.

So what single word would you then use to group those like classes so that you can refer to them without listing each one?

Quote from: kythri;1090139Whaugh.

So what single word would you then use to group those like classes so that you can refer to them without listing each one?

Well it depends on what we actually mean doesn't it?

Do we mean just warriors (and does that include Paladins and Rangers, - not actually martials in 5e - although the latter were in 4E)?  Or are we including Rogues as well here?   What about Barbarians?  Not martial in 4E and depending on build not necessarily martial in 5E.

Or is it specifically fighters - in which case the word to use is "fighters".

"Martials" is 4E jargon and it had a specific meaning there (if ultimately pretty arbitrary).  It's not all that clear outside of that context.

If you say "Martials" were weak in 3e are you really accurately describing the problem (what about Bards and Monks are they martials? - even if we take martial to mean "not magic" no one ever seems able to agree if monks are magic or not)  Aren't you just misidentifying the problem (Full casters much stronger than everyone else)?

Jargon just gives the illusion of clarity while obscuring other things - it's generally best to resist it.

Quote from: kanePL;1090124Could anyone be so kind and explain what is a "quadratic caster"? Searched the web but couldn't find anything.

Is it somethin about his power growing quadratically?

Specifically, it's that fighters get better linearly... each level adds 1HD, +1 to hit, +2 skill points, a bonus feat every other level, +1 attack every 5 levels, etc.

The wizard, by contrast, not only gets more spell slots, but the power of their spells also grows.

For example, at level 5 you get a 3rd level spell (more if you've got Int 16+) and fireball does 5d6 damage.

At level 6 you not only get another 3rd level spell slot, but both fireballs now do 6d6 damage.

At level 7 you get a third 3rd level slot and a 4th level slot (that could be used for another fireball or a stronger spell) and the fireballs all do 7d6 damage.

In other words they're gaining power along two axis... more spells and the existing spells grow in power.

4E and 5e realized this issue and used different methods to address it, so it's mostly a 3e and related games problem.

Quote from: kythri;1090139Whaugh.

So what single word would you then use to group those like classes so that you can refer to them without listing each one?

Non Spell User or Arms Realm characters.