Like I said in "pointy stick" thread make both the fighter and wizard like 2e and enforce spell disruption and play a wizard like a part of team not some Diablo wannabe.  Wizards are wildcards, they are there to fill the gaps. A buff spells, some information spells, couple of summoning spells, bunch of defensive/utility spells and just maybe 2-3 direct offensive stuff.  Why you say? Because the frigging fighter is there to kill stuff, you're there to SOLVE stuff.

Quote from: Dimitrios;549496(My first post here. Hi)

Welcome to the adult swim.

First off, to get this thread a little bit back towards the OP: if you posit an AD&D-like high level environment where Magic Resistance is very high and ACs aren't a big problem for the swordsmen, then a rule that allowed a magic user to cast their spell into a melee weapon of another character such that the character's attack roll's success or failure was used instead of rolling Magic Resistance, then there would be more synergy between the magic user and the fighting man and the melee PCs would be less replaceable by groups of hobgoblin mercenaries.

However, and this is important: that wouldn't actually make the Fighter's ability to take up space actually matter at high level. Suggestions like this one:

Quote from: Marleycat;549503Like I said in "pointy stick" thread make both the fighter and wizard like 2e and enforce spell disruption and play a wizard like a part of team not some Diablo wannabe.  Wizards are wildcards, they are there to fill the gaps. A buff spells, some information spells, couple of summoning spells, bunch of defensive/utility spells and just maybe 2-3 direct offensive stuff.  Why you say? Because the frigging fighter is there to kill stuff, you're there to SOLVE stuff.

...Are a complete non-starter. Yes, you can make it so that Wizards lose their spells constantly. And yes, you can make it so that Wizards pop like zits when level-appropriate enemies look at them funny. And this still doesn't make Fighters actually matter! At low level, it totally does. But at high level, it does not and cannot. Because at high level, the encounter is this:


It's an 80 foot long flying lizard with scales as thick as your arm that is incinerating whole city blocks on strafing runs from the clouds. There is no front line, and it does not matter how good a Fighting Man supposedly is at holding it. It is flying around at more than 45 miles an hour and never gets closer than 70 feet to the ground. However deadly and sticky the fighter's sword reach is make absolutely no difference because the high level battlefield is simply too epic for a stalwart swordsman to even register on peoples' give-a-fuck meter.

-Frank

I never had a problem of balance between fighters and wizards. I played in countless D&D games, ran many versions of the game myself, including four 3rd edition campaigns, two of which reached high (16th-ish) level of play, and I just did not experience what all the internet theorists keep wanking and raging about endlessly.

I, and all the DMs I played with (including a few on this board who surely will recognize themselves), must have been playing the game wrong. Poor us. That makes us awful gamers in those same theorists' eyes, I imagine. Ah well, we'll keep on having fun the wrong way, I suppose.

Honestly, the problem I have with Wizard vs. Fighter balance is that there was originally an economy of cost, resource management, and complexity balancing the two, but the costs of the Wizard have been reduced and the complexity of the Fighter has been increased.

The Wizard gets more powers and *more complication*. The Fighter was supposed to be the simple alternative: get immediate gratification in the form of more hit points, better attack rolls, and not many fiddly bits to worry about in exchange for knowing that you won't get that much spectacular. The Wizard in exchange is pretty ordinary except for a one-shot power, but slowly adds more one-shot powers (but needs to spend money to get these powers, at least in the original rules.)

If you "balance" the two classes, you make them more alike. What if a player wants something simple? Sorry, can't do that any more, because someone got his panties in a bunch when a 5th level mage cast a one-shot Fireball and killed more monsters faster than he could with his repeated-use sword.

Duh, Frank, you do know the mount of choice for high level fighters are Griffins and especially SUBDUED DRAGONS! And nobody is better in dragon subdual than fighters.

Also see how Frank makes his point via the SUPERMEGAENCOUNTER culture of play.

EDIT: Just so you know, I have had a Tome Fighter in my campaign.

Quote from: Settembrini;549513Duh, Frank, you do know the mount of choice for high level fighters are Griffins and especially SUBDUED DRAGONS! And nobody is better in dragon subdual than fighters.

Also see how Frank makes his point via the SUPERMEGAENCOUNTER culture of play.

EDIT: Just so you know, I have had a Tome Fighter in my campaign.

I don't even think we're talking "supermega encounters" for high level when we're talking about dragons. At high level, the battlefield is epic even when your opponent is simply one dragon. Its regular attack is a 70 foot cone, so when people talk about the Fighter as if they can accomplish something by "standing in front of the cloth wearers", they are thinking in World of Warcraft terms. In a game like WoW or Final Fantasy XI where the enemies are content to sit there like a spawned mob and trade blows with one armored dude then "standing in front" might have some meaning. But in Dungeons and Dragons, the high level monsters have a normal move that is measured in hundreds of feet and standard actions that fill the entire table with fire.

Yes, you can make a warrior type who contributes to high level encounters by using a lance charge from griffin back that is so brutal that even mighty dragons are forced to take notice (if not die outright). And those kinds of characters can really matter even on a large battlefield. If the enemy is flying across the battlemap every turn and so are you, then you aren't being relegated to "also ran", are you?

Wonderwoman and Superman are indeed effective high level Fighters. It's just the people calling for Mad Martigan or Conan to be the high level Fighter archetypes that need to sit down and rethink their life choices. Those kinds of characters are low level. Mad Martigan didn't have the skills he needed to contribute in the final battle even in his own movie. Conan's adventures start with him getting threatened by a wolf.

The whole "I stand in front and stab anyone who tries to get past me" deal is workable at low level when the enemies actually are basically just dudes who are seriously put out by having to go around and need to actually get close to things in order to stab them in the face. But at high levels? Pit Fiends and Dragons don't give a fuck about you standing in between their target of choice and their giant red scales, because their attacks are physically large enough that that shit just doesn't matter.

-Frank

I'm not a "real" grognard. I just play one on the Internet. I started gaming in 1992, with the "black box" D&D Introductory Game, followed by D&D Rules Cyclopedia and AD&D 2e.

Now, even in these strange after the Fall of the House of Gygax, DM advice chapters in all these books warned you against players who gamed the system to gain benefit for their characters, in detriment of the emulated reality of the actual campaign. DMs were given ample warning to be careful with magic items and new spells, and encouraged to create and enforce houserules to "nerf" said items or spells if things got out of hand.

However, from 3e on, it seems that somehow the "munchkins", or "twinks", or "powergamers" -- the people who abused the system for the sole benefit of their character -- were no longer officially recognized as a nuisance, but as a segment of the market that had to be placated. WotC started going to greater and greater lengths to keep these fuckers happy, culminating with the clusterfuck that was 4e (not a dig against 4e as a game, but nowadays even they admit that it was a clusterfuck).

And I suppose therein lies my fundamental issue with these game balance threads, esp. those the greow around the "Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard" meme:

I cannot recall of a single instance of people being actually disappointed that the Fighter was not as effective as the Magic-User/Mage/Wizard at my game table. Not as a player, not as a DM; not at high levels and certainly not at low levels.

Maybe it's just a cultural thing, in which people who choose to play a Fighter kind of expect to "suck" at high levels (though I certainly wouldn't call the stuff that high-level Fighters pulled at my table, "sucking", and I don't think the players would either). Maybe it's just that our Magic-User (D&D RC), Mage (AD&D 2e) and Wizard (D&D 3.5e) PCs weren't "optimized". Whatever the case, it was never an issue at our table.

People playing high-level Fighters were happy in their +3 field plates and swinging their +4 two-handed swords. People playing high-level Magic-Users (or Mages, or Wizards) were just as happy swinging their staffs of power and rocking their meteor swarms (or my old favorite, the delayed blast fireball. "Bribing" the enemy guard with that shiny red gem... never gets old ).

Shit, I'm just ranting, ain't I? What I want to say is that "fixing" any perceived imbalance between sword-swingers and spell-slingers might not be on everyone's agenda. Frank is just one of dozens, maybe hundreds of clever and well-meaning geeks who gets caught up in theoretical minutiae that, while mathematically, logically sound, do not always impact the actual game as often or as profoundly as you'd expect from a rules-only analysis.

Frank... do you feel the game would be actually improved by making Fighters and Wizards "balanced"? Not the game as a mathematical construct, but the game as, you know, something you do with some friends, for fun. Honest question, no snark here; our playstyles are obviously different and I'd like to better understand yours.

I was horribly deprotagonised in today's D&D 3.0 game. My 1st level Ranger, Brunatz the Forester (a cross between Rumcajs and Hagrid) rushed an evil 3rd level priestess (more correctly, he had a jump spell cast on him, wo it was more vaulting than rushing). The priestess used her death touch ability, rolled 11 Hp, and Brunatz, who only had 10 left after the party priestess accidentally shot him in the back with an arrow in the previous combat, immediately dropped dead, another victim of priestess supremacy. Then the rest of the party clobbered the priestess in what was probably the least lucky combat ever - I have never seen that many natural 1s in one stretch. The party Fighter broke his ancestral sword (some ancestry!), the twin sun elf girls and the halfling Thief snapped their bowstrings, and basically hit each other more than their target.

Anyway, I rolled up a 1st level Fighter to avenge Brunatz. He is a disciple of Kelemvor and he is a grim motherfucker out to kick ass.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;549507First off, to get this thread a little bit back towards the OP: if you posit an AD&D-like high level environment where Magic Resistance is very high and ACs aren't a big problem for the swordsmen, then a rule that allowed a magic user to cast their spell into a melee weapon of another character such that the character's attack roll's success or failure was used instead of rolling Magic Resistance, then there would be more synergy between the magic user and the fighting man and the melee PCs would be less replaceable by groups of hobgoblin mercenaries.

However, and this is important: that wouldn't actually make the Fighter's ability to take up space actually matter at high level. Suggestions like this one:



...Are a complete non-starter. Yes, you can make it so that Wizards lose their spells constantly. And yes, you can make it so that Wizards pop like zits when level-appropriate enemies look at them funny. And this still doesn't make Fighters actually matter! At low level, it totally does. But at high level, it does not and cannot. Because at high level, the encounter is this:


It's an 80 foot long flying lizard with scales as thick as your arm that is incinerating whole city blocks on strafing runs from the clouds. There is no front line, and it does not matter how good a Fighting Man supposedly is at holding it. It is flying around at more than 45 miles an hour and never gets closer than 70 feet to the ground. However deadly and sticky the fighter's sword reach is make absolutely no difference because the high level battlefield is simply too epic for a stalwart swordsman to even register on peoples' give-a-fuck meter.

-Frank

Sure it does if make a fighter a death machine like pre 3e and you play tagteam with the wizard instead of everyone playing like a videogame. Your wizard does the research like they're supposed to do, given it's the entire point of the archetype.  Then proceeds to use "fly" on the fighter and lets the fun ensue. Basically the wizard's job is change the environment while the fighter does her job because dragon breath means nothing to them.

My example spells are what happens pre 3x when nothing was guaranteed and to point out that rpg's are a cooperative team endeavour.

The whole problem with point buy or standard array and set hp per level and guaranteed pick your own spells is that it enables powergaming or possibly theorywhank situations to become possible under inexperienced DM's. Random spell acquisition, capped ability scores, to learn % rolls erase this theorectical. It doesn't unbalance it horribly if 3x rules of pick 2 spells per level are used with hard ability caps and harsher %rolls to learn spells etc.

What should be done is a hard limit on total spells known ever.  Something like 70-80 not counting cantrips, for high magic settings 150-160 max. And scroll use that costs etc.

Quote from: B.T.;549485Instead of forcing the fighter to rely on the wizard, we should make fighters really good at fighting and shit.

From a while back, but no.

This is the kind of stuff I hate seeing. Don't make the Fighter a veritable superman, don't let him be 'really good at fighting' (which we all know means superpowers that are only fun if your goal is winning).

We need balance, we need options, we need rules that make improvisation intuitive and flavour that works with the setting to encourage roleplaying - what we don't need is crazy powers.

Quote from: pryingeyes;549548From a while back, but no.

This is the kind of stuff I hate seeing. Don't make the Fighter a veritable superman, don't let him be 'really good at fighting' (which we all know means superpowers that are only fun if your goal is winning).

Stupid idea with stupid premises.  If the guy whose class name is "fighter" (or "fighting man") isn't good at fighting, then what the fuck good is he?  A fighter can be good at fighting good HP, AC, and damage.

Frank is right that the fighter needs something to compensate when he's fighting a gigantic dragon.  He's wrong about what that "something" is, though.  That "something" in 2e was a high AC, a bunch of hit points, good saves, a strong attack bonus, and multiple attacks.  The fighter should be able to whip out a bow and fire an arrow through the dragon's throat.  He doesn't need to fly or do magic to win--just take a beating and give it right back.

Quote from: B.T.;549556Stupid idea with stupid premises.  If the guy whose class name is "fighter" (or "fighting man") isn't good at fighting, then what the fuck good is he?  A fighter can be good at fighting good HP, AC, and damage.

Frank is right that the fighter needs something to compensate when he's fighting a gigantic dragon.  He's wrong about what that "something" is, though.  That "something" in 2e was a high AC, a bunch of hit points, good saves, a strong attack bonus, and multiple attacks.  The fighter should be able to whip out a bow and fire an arrow through the dragon's throat.  He doesn't need to fly or do magic to win--just take a beating and give it right back.

In that case, that makes perfect sense - sorry for misinterpreting you!

I just feel that kind of balance should be reflected in the rules (which might include nerfing other classes) and that fighter powers shouldn't be flavoured as crazy stunts or the like.

Quote from: pryingeyes;549558In that case, that makes perfect sense - sorry for misinterpreting you!

Stop being reasonable.  This is the Internet.  Everything must be punctuated with rage and bawww.  Prepare your capslock key.