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Polo-Rican posted:This all makes sense to me - I imagine how much of a problem this is depends a lot on the player group. If you're really into the role-playing aspect, I think it can be "fine" if a member of your party is overpowered - to use Lord of the Rings as an example, yeah, Gandalf is supremely overpowered and single-handedly dominates a lot of encounters the Fellowship has, but would that make me "angry" if I really wanted to play as Gimli? For players that are more into the serious gaming aspect though, yep, it could be annoying to have opportunities "taken away" from you by an overzealous wizard. I think this is a bit of a disingenuous argument your making, I don't think many people are playing the game from a competitive mindset, everyone is there to work together and have a good time for the most part but the system actively encourages this split by the amount of math and combinations you need to be building and pulling at to optimize yourself that it just naturally creates a divide between people who enjoy that stuff and people who glaze over at it. Someone said it in the thread (arivia i think?), D&D isn't good at emulating lord of the rings or any of the traditional fantasy media you could mention. Its good at being D&D where wizards are god kings that are considered to be equals to people whose entire skillset is 'swings a sword well'.
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Mar 17, 2017 00:18
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Using Gandalf as an example of OPness is interesting, and doesn't really fit into DnD at all. He's literally an angel sent by God to counsel the people and not to use his considerable force against them nor Sauron. He uses his magic only as a last resort and never directly against Sauron, as God expressly told him not to. In DnD he'd be the NPC you create to lead newbie PCs around and get them out of jams and then extricate him when you felt like the PCs could take care of themselves. Definitely not a wizard.
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Mar 17, 2017 00:34
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I think a surprisingly large amount of people play DnD with a competitive mindset. At least half the games I find myself in almost always have a "how can I be the MVP of this table" guy.
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Mar 17, 2017 00:36
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Nitrousoxide posted:At least a couple head people at Wizard agree. Yeah, I've never had to worry about a Monk being too min-maxy in 5e. Heck, last game I ran that had a Monk I basically let them benefit from Exalted's stunt system in terms of the amount of leverage I gave the player to do poo poo like wall-running, leaping attacks/grapples on mid-air opponents etc. Didn't hurt the game at all.
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Mar 17, 2017 01:08
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Deified Data posted:At least half the games I find myself in almost always have a "how can I be the MVP of this table" guy. It's more that certain players think they're being entertaining, and don't realize that they're detracting from the experience of the whole. They want to be the MVP because they want to be funny and cool to their friends, and by making a hyper competent character, they think they can do that.
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Mar 17, 2017 01:23
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Plus it's very rarely fun to suck consistently.
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Mar 17, 2017 01:42
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Rip_Van_Winkle posted:Option 1: certain spells need to just go away or be reduced in effectiveness because they're just too good at breaking narratives wide open. This shows up in video game implementations of D&D all the time - they remove spells that the game just cannot account for. They have no way of meaningfully interacting with most divination spells because they're too open-ended. Long-distance teleportation spells are limited to plot contrivances. Terrain-modifying spells and physical stuff often just don't exist, so no phasing through walls or reshaping dungeon corridors or any of that. Mind-controlling spells are temporary and mostly just make people fight for you. High-level summoning spells like Planar Binding are limited to simple effects that help that just get extra dudes to kill stuff for you instead of completely changing the way you approach challenges. Plus, in combat, all the bookkeeping is done by the computer, so having extra creatures around doesn't slow things down as much. It's time consuming, but that's basically the way to do it. Go through the spell list and remove/alter the spells that allow casters to play a completely different game that doesn't involve rolling dice - which barring early game nukes like Sleep, it's like half the spell list 4th level and above.
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Mar 17, 2017 02:01
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Hidingo Kojimba posted:Yeah, I've never had to worry about a Monk being too min-maxy in 5e. Heck, last game I ran that had a Monk I basically let them benefit from Exalted's stunt system in terms of the amount of leverage I gave the player to do poo poo like wall-running, leaping attacks/grapples on mid-air opponents etc. Didn't hurt the game at all. This is the good way to deal with the caster imbalance. Don't make playing magic classes suck, make the other classes fun and give them some agency.
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Mar 17, 2017 02:02
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rumble in the bunghole posted:Plus it's very rarely fun to suck consistently. Not if you're ROLEplaying instead of ROLLplaying 
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Mar 17, 2017 02:03
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AlphaDog posted:Not if you're ROLEplaying instead of ROLLplaying I haven't been fair to the interesting stories like Chad Jöckhardt, the average Rogue Wizard who died on the way to the volcano laboratory. Good stats and abilities may let you influence the story and have interesting decisions, but you can make several jokes with low stat guys. his sister Cindy had much better stats and survived the whole way. I like what I've seen of Tunnels and Trolls a fair bit
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Mar 17, 2017 02:24
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Kaysette posted:This is the good way to deal with the caster imbalance. Don't make playing magic classes suck, make the other classes fun and give them some agency. I like when they give fighters some good save or die abilities. Sucks that a sleep spell works, but you can't choke someone out.
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Mar 17, 2017 04:23
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The other thing with a character like Gandalf is that he's interesting to read or watch in a movie, because who doesn't want to see elderly Jesus analogue having a Conan-style knock-down-drag-out with Diablo? However, RPGs, movies and books are very different media, despite the amount of cross-pollination of ideas. In a book there's nothing wrong with leaving three-quarters of the cast to one side for hours while you pursue the ins-and-outs of a particular character. In an RPG, that's lovely GMing where most of the players are sat there doing nothing while you give the spotlight entirely to one.
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Mar 17, 2017 09:18
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bewilderment posted:If you were doing the co-operative thing you'd be playing a system better suited to do that. If you chose to play DnD then the assumption/goal (which the actual rules may fail) is that everyone is able to contribute equally. I also like asymmetrical competence. You're good at what you do, but what you do isn't all the game. 4e does this by not tying power source to role and competence. There's an arcane tank, for example, an arcane Leader, and multiple (unless I'm mistaken) arcane damage folks. In SWRPG you CAN spend XP and raise skills etc to be a better pilot, but the piloting-focused classes/specs have more specific talents that would be very expensive for you to get. It does have the issue of being less useful if there's no piloting, but, well, it's Star Wars, if you don't have space stuff in Star Wars, you better have told your players beforehand at the VERY least. Maybe they could untie the schools from the class? Sure, you can turn people into T-Rex very well if you're a Transmuter, but you're MUCH worse at summoning stuff, or shooting fireballs. Wouldn't make Polymorph, or Fly, etc WORSE, but it could make Wizards (for one example) a bit more linear. It's just a spitball though.
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Mar 17, 2017 10:58
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Serperoth posted:Maybe they could untie the schools from the class? Sure, you can turn people into T-Rex very well if you're a Transmuter, but you're MUCH worse at summoning stuff, or shooting fireballs. Wouldn't make Polymorph, or Fly, etc WORSE, but it could make Wizards (for one example) a bit more linear. It's just a spitball though. They kind of tried that in AD&D as far as being a Specialist Mage, but it didn't really work as far as locking out two schools to be good at one still leaves another five other spell schools that you're "okay" at, and that still quite a bit of versatility. You could probably do something like "pick a school, can only cast spells normally from that one school", but then you run into the problem of some schools not really having a lot of gameplay applicability, such as Divination. Which brings us to the larger point that the spell schools aren't really tailored/geared for gameplay applicability. As Rip_Van_Winkle said, the Baldur's Gate games are kind of better on caster supremacy because they tore out a lot of spells when porting them to the PC. I'd say most of these were just because they were impractical to try and model in a computer game circa-1998, but they coincidentally make a lot of sense as far as narrowing down the focus to just what you'd need in a game about going into Dungeons and slaying Dragons. Like, if I was going to make a dungeon crawler, why the poo poo would I make spells that allow large sections of dungeon to be skipped, right? A 30-foot teleport makes sense as far as being able to get out of melee reach in a pinch or jumping over a chasm, but not "teleport to anywhere you've been to, ever", especially when you can combo it with "scry into any place in the universe well enough that you can use it as a teleport-reference". At bottom, it's possible to improve this state-of-affairs if you're willing to put enough effort into it, but it's a lot of effort, and applies another layer of bureaucracy and book-keeping between you and the players that they can't just refer to the PHB and instead look at this separate spell list that you've crafted.
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Mar 17, 2017 11:55
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The trick to making magic-users more balanced and interesting is to eliminate the "wizard" and "cleric" classes and replace them with focused, thematic versions. So you'd have pyromancers, necromancers, ice mages, enchanters, diviners, druids and so on for "wizard-type" classes, while clerics can be delineated by the theme of their god. Much more interesting than just cherry-picking all the best spells from a giant list, with no theme at all.
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Mar 17, 2017 13:59
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That would also come with the benefit of giving you a "flatter" class progression: Firebolt at level 1, Flamestrike at level 2, Pyroblast at level 3, Fire Shield at level 4, Supernova at level 5, Hot Foot at level 6, and so on and so forth Frostbolt at level 1, Ice Slick at level 2, Ice Block at level 3, Blizzard at level 4, Ice Blast at level 5, Ice Lance at level 6, and so on and so forth Psychic Horror at level 1, Mirror Image at level 2, Minor Confuse at level 3, Disguising Glamour at level 4, Image Swap at level 5, Phantasmal Stampede at level 6, and so on and so forth
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Mar 17, 2017 14:26
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Locking out wizards from different types of spells is just going to result in parties full of specialist wizards. Honestly a big part of the problem is clerics have a niche that other casters, especially wizards dont fill nearly as well- replenishing hitpoints. I don't think people are as down on clerics setting the pace for a party to recharge healing spells, but wizards wanting to recharge their "kill a dude " spells while the fighter is saying "hey I can keep doing that let's keep going" is a different issue
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Mar 17, 2017 14:32
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As opposed to right now where parties are not composed of all Wizards because ... ???
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Mar 17, 2017 14:37
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mastershakeman posted:Locking out wizards from different types of spells is just going to result in parties full of specialist wizards.
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Mar 17, 2017 15:17
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Edit: double post
Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 15:18
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:If everyone is a different kind of wizard, the balance problem is kinda solved, no? I don't want everyone to be the same class but it's cool if everyone casts spells. Isn't that what multiclassing does?
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Mar 17, 2017 15:25
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mastershakeman posted:Locking out wizards from different types of spells is just going to result in parties full of specialist wizards. Please do not take this one sentence reply as a shitpost, I actually want to know your reasoning.
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Mar 17, 2017 15:32
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I'm on the camp for giving other non spell casters more options. I know it doesn't solve the bending narrative/world issues, but it makes it more than, "I hit". Also anyone have good advice/resources for running gridless combat? I've so far worked on breaking the battle area into zones, and telling my players to keep track of enemies via a color designation. So 3 goblins is red/blue/green or whatever. Any feed back, experience, or reading is appreciated.
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Mar 17, 2017 16:32
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Gort posted:The trick to making magic-users more balanced and interesting is to eliminate the "wizard" and "cleric" classes and replace them with focused, thematic versions. So you'd have pyromancers, necromancers, ice mages, enchanters, diviners, druids and so on for "wizard-type" classes, while clerics can be delineated by the theme of their god. If you can cast firebolt at will, burning hands every encounter, and fireball every day, you're A) not any weaker than someone with at-will firebolt, per-encounter glitterdust, and per-day haste and B) still stronger, more important, and more capable of dictating the pace of play than fighters and rogues are. You just give martial characters powers that are comparable with spells both in terms of effect and use limits. Then you don't need to make every wizard a pyromancer or illusionist, and at the same time don't need to make every fighter an archer or acrobat.
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Mar 17, 2017 16:40
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Ferrinus posted:If you can cast firebolt at will, burning hands every encounter, and fireball every day, you're A) not any weaker than someone with at-will firebolt, per-encounter glitterdust, and per-day haste and B) still stronger, more important, and more capable of dictating the pace of play than fighters and rogues are. Yes the second stage of this is to bring the non-casters up to a fun level, but you can't bring everyone up to the wizard's level if the wizard's level is itself indefinable.
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Mar 17, 2017 16:55
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There is no and never has been a "Wish issue".
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Mar 17, 2017 16:56
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Ferrinus posted:There is no and never has been a "Wish issue".
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Mar 17, 2017 16:58
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Ferrinus posted:If you can cast firebolt at will, burning hands every encounter, and fireball every day, you're A) not any weaker than someone with at-will firebolt, per-encounter glitterdust, and per-day haste and B) still stronger, more important, and more capable of dictating the pace of play than fighters and rogues are. I disagree. I think a pyromancer not being able to teleport, fly, turn invisible and know the answer to any question is a considerable step down in power (versatility is strength - a pyromancer has to think a bit if he's going to be fighting a dragon or fire elemental, while a wizard just loads up on cold spells, or save-or-suck spells, or charms the dragon, or or or) and a considerable step down in being able to bypass the adventure. I'm actually partial to merging ranger, rogue and fighter into a single class called "hero" that gets all their stuff and turns into Hercules later on, so no quibbles with the rest of your post.
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Mar 17, 2017 16:59
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Splicer posted:Thanks, that's super helpful and very much engages the majority of that post and how it relates to the discussion at hand. Good job well done. Wish, like Knock, is a meme but not actually a problem. Gort posted:I disagree. I think a pyromancer not being able to teleport, fly, turn invisible and know the answer to any question is a considerable step down in power (versatility is strength - a pyromancer has to think a bit if he's going to be fighting a dragon or fire elemental, while a wizard just loads up on cold spells, or save-or-suck spells, or charms the dragon, or or or) and a considerable step down in being able to bypass the adventure. That gets into the question of how big any wizard's personal library is and how easily they can swap what they have prepared. Like, in my own example, the wizard who can shoot fire, blind and confuse people, and speed people up can't as-described fly, teleport, turn invisible, or know the answer to any question, either. What he can do, though, is anything at all besides conjuring fire in different shapes. We've already seen a game - 4e - in which you can put a D&D "wizard" (guy who does Magic, not Fire Magic or Illusion Magic) next to a D&D "fighter" (guy who fights, with a weapon) next to each other and have them perfectly well balanced despite the hypothetical versatility of the former, even after taking the ritual magic system into account. I don't want to play a game that's like 4e but I have to do frostcheese or whatever.
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Mar 17, 2017 17:11
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Ferrinus posted:Wish, like Knock, is a meme but not actually a problem. Wish is the epitome of this problem because it can't just be a that massively powerful things can sometimes just owe you a favour, it has to be a spell that does that thing. And since it's a spell it must be something a wizard can cast. And since a wizard can cast it wishes aren't actually all that interesting because "go back in time and make it so Hitler never existed" isn't something you can really allow a player to cast. That's the Wish problem I was referring to. If you're still insistent on "well actually  "- ing away an interesting discussion if it's done in the context of wish then replace "Wish problem" with "Teleport problem" or "Scry problem" or whatever.
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Mar 17, 2017 17:43
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It's not a problem that the Wish spell exists or the way the Wish spell is mechanized. Neither are Teleport or Scry problems. This stuff just isn't important and only serves to distract from the design problems of 5e. Like, you know that 4e had long distance teleports and scryings and imprisonments and so on, right? Was there a The Teleport Problem? No, this poo poo doesn't matter!!
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Mar 17, 2017 17:54
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Ferrinus posted:It's not a problem that the Wish spell exists or the way the Wish spell is mechanized. Neither are Teleport or Scry problems. This stuff just isn't important and only serves to distract from the design problems of 5e. the lack of coherent design focus for Wizards in 4E, and the controller role in general, still caused their fair share of problems. Obviously not to the same degree.I'd elaborate but making a statement and giving absolutely nothing to back it up seems to be how this conversation is supposed to work.
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Mar 17, 2017 18:05
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Ferrinus posted:Like, you know that 4e had long distance teleports and scryings and imprisonments and so on, right? Was there a The Teleport Problem? No, this poo poo doesn't matter!! These were Rituals which had pretty large time/monetary costs for the powerful effects. A 4e wizard can use a class spell to teleport 100 feet; a 5e wizard can use a spell to teleport anywhere on the same plane.
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Mar 17, 2017 18:09
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Splicer posted:Well actually Wizards did have a coherent design focus. They had lots of AoE powers and lots of soft or hard disables. They were insanely strong, but so were fighters, rangers, warlords, clerics... Crucially, if wizards only had powers out of their spell list with the "illusion" tag and there was a separate wizard that only had powers with the "cold" tag or whatever it would not improve anything about the game, and in fact tend to force people to play the most distortingly overpowered kinds of wizard rather than positively affect the game's balance any. You are chasing shadows. Generic Octopus posted:These were Rituals which had pretty large time/monetary costs for the powerful effects. A 4e wizard can use a class spell to teleport 100 feet; a 5e wizard can use a spell to teleport anywhere on the same plane. So the problem ISN'T that a wizard who can shoot a fireball can also teleport from place to place, because that would describe a 4e wizard.
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Mar 17, 2017 18:13
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It's a little disingenuous to go "See? Teleportation ISN'T a problem!" when the example you're quoting talks about 5e teleportation spells being orders of magnitude more powerful.
Gharbad the Weak fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 18:23
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Ferrinus posted:if wizards only had powers out of their spell list with the "illusion" tag and there was a separate wizard that only had powers with the "cold" tag or whatever
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Mar 17, 2017 18:44
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I'm being pissy because I put effort into that first post and your reply was lazy < >
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Mar 17, 2017 18:59
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I feel like Battlemaster should kind of be the default goal for martial classes -- the base upon which you build. That is, if your job is hitting things until they're dead, you should be able to hit things with tactically meaningful choices and quasi-magical effects until they're dead without having to be one specific subclass of one specific martial class. Edit: Unrelated, been talking with DM about switching patrons via story from Great Old One to The Seeker and I'm pretty excited about bringing things to a confrontation with a cult of Tharizdun and dedicating myself to a cold, amoral knowledge-monger. Nehru the Damaja fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 19:46
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Gharbad the Weak posted:It's a little disingenuous to go "See? Teleportation ISN'T a problem!" when the example you're quoting talks about 5e teleportation spells being orders of magnitude more powerful. People are like, well the same wizard shouldn't be able to teleport and incinerate. But it turns out that they're wrong, because you can easily design a balanced game in which wizards don't need to commit specifically to fire magic or alchemy or whatever. The actual problem is a disparity between classes in terms of access to powerful and usage-limited abilities full stop, not the fact that those abilities aren't more tightly constrained in terms of theme. Splicer posted:I'm being pissy because I put effort into that first post and your reply was lazy < The problem is that all your effort was for naught, because you were wrong. Replacing wizards with pyromancers doesn't fix 5E, and it would make an actually good version of 5E, or heck just 4E, worse. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 20:12
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Hell I kinda wish my players would do an all wizard party sometime. Every game in every system at least one person is like "man I want to play a caster by we already have a sorcerer and a wizard. I guess I'll play a frontline guy like a fighter." It's like there's an unspoken rule that every D&D party needs to conform to MMO raid compositions.
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Mar 17, 2017 20:29
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