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All mystic party is going to own.
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Mar 17, 2017 20:37
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SettingSun posted: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. MMO's got that composition from perceived ideal D&D comp in the first place, blame Arneson and Gygax.
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Mar 17, 2017 20:58
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There's also just that people like to shine in their positions. Some jobs probably do a bit better with two people on the job, but even then, like if you're the tanky guy with weaker armor class, you're going to be the tanky guy who gets focus fired and has to be healed a lot and feels like a burden. You're probably better off with two bodies down there locking bad guys down, but you feel outshone.
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Mar 17, 2017 21:38
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mango sentinel posted:MMO's got that composition from perceived ideal D&D comp in the first place, blame Arneson and Gygax. I was careful at PAX with tables of newbies to dispel misconceptions about D&D they might be bringing from MMOs. Fighters don't taunt or hold aggro (although they should...), clerics aren't delicate healbots, spell slots instead of mana, etc. e: Ooh, here's a neat rules question. Wonder what the expert designer will say? It's ask your DM. Seriously. Kaysette fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 21:40
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Did you include "I promise you nobody wants to buy 50 gnolls' asses and ramshackle goblin scimitars" because that would have saved me a lot of time when I was playing with brand new folks
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Mar 17, 2017 21:43
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Did you include "I promise you nobody wants to buy 50 gnolls' asses and ramshackle goblin scimitars" because that would have saved me a lot of time when I was playing with brand new folks Hah, that would have been a good one. They did get excited trying to loot all the kobold daggers they found before I told them they were rusty and falling apart.
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Mar 17, 2017 21:46
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Ferrinus posted: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. b) Still lazy c) I realised halfway through this that they took Wish out of 4E. It's not even there as a ritual. Which I feel backs up one of us, not sure who though.
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Mar 17, 2017 22:57
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Did you include "I promise you nobody wants to buy 50 gnolls' asses and ramshackle goblin scimitars" because that would have saved me a lot of time when I was playing with brand new folks Get them playing Hackmaster instead. Loot the dungeon properly - down to the fixtures and fittings. Do you have any idea how much a high-quality solid oak door is worth? If you get just 100 of these brass sconces of the wall and back down the mountain, you'll be able to fix your armour. 30' tall iron sculpture of the Snake God? Worth a loving mint just in scrap, figure out a way to get it on a cart. What are you even talking about, they got the haunted piano in here didn't they? It's not like they built it in place... Well pianos are worth a fortune even if they're not haunted, so knock the wall out of the way. And get the rubble on a wagon, Farmer Brown said he wanted to fill in that old mineshaft that was full of spiders last week, he'll pay.
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Mar 17, 2017 23:15
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Splicer posted:a) I disagree I know you are lazy; that's why you haven't written any responses of substance. Nevertheless, forcing wizard specialization will not fix any of 5e's inherent balance problems. In fact, it will only serve to excuse and ingrain them into the game - hey, man, it's okay that I get daily powers and you don't, because all my daily powers do basically the same thing! In fact, it's precisely in 4e's move towards 5e that we saw exactly the kind of specialization you're clamoring for. We only started getting illusionists and pyromancers towards the end of the game's run, which didn't explicitly force you to have only fire powers but did provide passive bonuses which meant you'd end up that way anyway if you were trying to optimize. And, in 5e, you haven't actually been able to play a formal 'generalist' wizard until that one Unearthed Arcana came out - right out the gate you could only pick between evoker and diviner and so on. Do yout think it would make for a better game if evokers could only slot evocation spells? Do you separately think it would make a more balanced game? You know it's not actually okay for a wizard to have at-will firebolt, per encounter fireball, and per day meteor shower while a fighter still has at-will stab, right? What's more, that kind of mandatory specialization would hit proper martial characters even worse than it'd hit wizards. You want your fighter to be able to give a morale-boosting speech? Sorry, you're the "fights with polearms" class, if you want any powers based on charisma and inspiration you have to be a different class. Oh and if you're in that class all your combat powers are based on being charismatic so you don't get to do any of your polearm moves any more.
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Mar 17, 2017 23:21
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AlphaDog posted:Get them playing Hackmaster instead. Loot the dungeon properly - down to the fixtures and fittings. Do you have any idea how much a high-quality solid oak door is worth? If you get just 100 of these brass sconces of the wall and back down the mountain, you'll be able to fix your armour. 30' tall iron sculpture of the Snake God? Worth a loving mint just in scrap, figure out a way to get it on a cart. What are you even talking about, they got the haunted piano in here didn't they? It's not like they built it in place... Well pianos are worth a fortune even if they're not haunted, so knock the wall out of the way. And get the rubble on a wagon, Farmer Brown said he wanted to fill in that old mineshaft that was full of spiders last week, he'll pay. Dungeon Repo men Grand Lich Arkyrath is evading his Mortgage Warlord Marcetor is behind on his war horse chariot lease Master Wizard Nort overdrew his credit cards buying rare herbs off the aethernet
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Mar 17, 2017 23:30
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Kaysette posted:e: Ooh, here's a neat rules question. Wonder what the expert designer will say? It's ask your DM. Seriously. That's a terrible answer. Shadows are part of an object's visual representation. If it can't cast a shadow (including on itself) it will never be realistic in the slightest.
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Mar 17, 2017 23:31
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Ferrinus posted:I know you are lazy; that's why you haven't written any responses of substance.  big enough. I just... drat. Just drat. I am out.
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Mar 17, 2017 23:32
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Dungeon Repo men Kar'koth The Undying unwisely invested all his gold pieces into Bariaurcoins and can't afford the land tax on his Crypt of Ultimate Evil. "It's not my mom's basement!" - Kar'korth The Undying. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 23:38
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Splicer posted:Holy poo poo, there is not a I have written much more than you have on the topic. You just can't handle basic disagreement and decided to start melting down immediately.
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Mar 17, 2017 23:38
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AlphaDog posted:Get them playing Hackmaster instead. Loot the dungeon properly - down to the fixtures and fittings. Do you have any idea how much a high-quality solid oak door is worth? If you get just 100 of these brass sconces of the wall and back down the mountain, you'll be able to fix your armour. 30' tall iron sculpture of the Snake God? Worth a loving mint just in scrap, figure out a way to get it on a cart. What are you even talking about, they got the haunted piano in here didn't they? It's not like they built it in place... Well pianos are worth a fortune even if they're not haunted, so knock the wall out of the way. And get the rubble on a wagon, Farmer Brown said he wanted to fill in that old mineshaft that was full of spiders last week, he'll pay. Honestly this sounds pretty fun and I wish it was something built in (but optional) for d&d. give me as many charts and tables as possible ! As to why I said a party would play all wizards if there's a death wizard, charm wizard , teleport wizard, it's just a gut feeling. Every party needs healing, killing, and "problem solving" and those are all going to be done by casters best , then the martials second. If you aren't playing a low level caster = likely to die class like 2e and before I think you'd end up with this. Also the answer to the issue of "rally with a speech" is stop having social skills, tie that to charisma, and make the other scores far less important mechanically so it's actually viable to have characters roll stats and then put one of their best stats in charisma without it gimping them in swinging their polearm or asking the wizard to use a spell to solve the problem mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 23:46
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Ferrinus posted:What's more, that kind of mandatory specialization would hit proper martial characters even worse than it'd hit wizards. You want your fighter to be able to give a morale-boosting speech? Sorry, you're the "fights with polearms" class, if you want any powers based on charisma and inspiration you have to be a different class. Oh and if you're in that class all your combat powers are based on being charismatic so you don't get to do any of your polearm moves any more. a) Make caster classes more focused so you can actually define what they do, then b) Bring martial classes up to that level. Does not include "make fighters ultraspecialise to the point of uselessness". mastershakeman posted:Honestly this sounds pretty fun and I wish it was something built in (but optional) for d&d. give me as many charts and tables as possible ! Grab a castle building guide from any editon, retroclone, etc. Now you have a fixtures/fittings/furniture price list. Next, make sure that the players and PCs are aware that they're supposed to be looting vast amounts of money (eg, out of dungeons), but also that they'll need to spend vast amounts of money (eg, on repairs, new gear, travel, fine clothes, heralds to sing their praises, bribes, etc). Encourage the ransacking behaviour by making the regular D&D type loot from dungeons (the gp and silver candlesticks stuff) not quite cover their expenses. Make sure they know this is an expectation. You're done. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 23:46
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AlphaDog posted:a) Make caster classes more focused so you can actually define what they do, then It seems to me that if we won't let someone have both fireball and charm person, we shouldn't let someone have both whirlwind attack and.... well, charm person.
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Mar 17, 2017 23:50
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Ferrinus posted:People are like, well the same wizard shouldn't be able to teleport and incinerate. Well, I don't think this is quite their argument, which is unfortunate, because I think you two agree on a lot of things. Ferrinus posted:You know it's not actually okay for a wizard to have at-will firebolt, per encounter fireball, and per day meteor shower while a fighter still has at-will stab, right? This actually involves a lot of arguments that those people are making. What you said here is a closer representation to what they're actually arguing. So, in this case, it's not necessarily that "wizards shouldn't be able to teleport and incinerate", it's "wizards shouldn't have such a wide variety of abilities in the same game where the fighter ends up with just an at-will stab." To borrow from an earlier example: Generic Octopus posted: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. The problem here isn't that the 4e and 5e wizards can teleport, it's that the 5e wizard can do something of a magnitude that, reasonably speaking, fighters can never match, and with oftentimes minimal investment (which, if I'm reading you right, you're arguing is the problem). I'm trying not to bog the chat down into 4e talk too much, but: Ok, let's say a wizard can teleport 6 squares. That's pretty good! A ranger or rogue may not be able to teleport 6 squares. However, there's a good chance they'll be able to shift 6 squares, which, while not exactly the same, is comparable. Maybe they'll have an attack during it, or a minor action, or what-have-you, but the basic idea (get 6 squares away relatively safely) is something that a lot of classes have access to. So, in this example, the teleportation isn't a problem. In 5e, however, a wizard can teleport to another country, without using permanent resources like feats or class paths. There isn't really a way for a barbarian to take a group of people from one continent to another, and there's also nothing that a barbarian can do that can match that level of power. What most people are currently discussing is a two pronged approach to the problem: 1) Give non-spellcasting classes more capacity to interact with the game. So, here we'd talk about things like having a fighter who can use cool polearm moves, while also being a charismatic leader, or a good detective. Or Exalted-style stunts. You seem to not be a huge fan of "all I can do is stab", so I think you're probably pretty good with this. 2) Take away from spellcasters anything that completely outstrips anything that a non-spellcaster can do. Using the previous example, a rogue 20 would not be able to get an entire group of people from one continent to another in an extremely short period of time. If rogues can not do that, but also are not be able to do something comparatively as powerful, then they believe that spellcasters should be restricted from having that level of power. There's several ways this might be approached. Earlier, they talked about videogames removing spells that were either difficult to implement or game breaking (such as long distance scrying, long distance teleport, or the capacity to charm a target out of combat in order to completely bypass a social challenge without having to invest more than a spell slot). There are also suggestions that forcing spellcasters (and, from what I'm reading, spellcasters alone) to specialize in the kinds of things they can do. So, a wizard in this system might be able to turn into a T-Rex/roc/frog, but not also charm a person AND put an entire combat to sleep AND magically scout the next room AND fill an entire room of slippery, slippery grease. Gharbad the Weak fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Mar 18, 2017 |
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Mar 18, 2017 00:04
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In 4e a wizard can also teleport their party to another country without spending permanent character resources to do so, though. (Technically, gold spent on reagants which fuel the ritual is a permanent character resource since if your DM is strictly following the rewards by level chart you will only accrue so much of it over your character's lifetime and every ritual you cast is 0.2% of a new magic item, but you get what I'm saying). A fighter could do the same thing, but would have to spend a feat for the privilege. This has never actually bothered me because a great deal of ritual magic amounted to scene-setting or montage-skipping. The ability to instantly teleport 30 feet once every five minutes sees a lot more play than the ability to teleport 300 miles given an hour's prep time. Obviously to build a cooperative fantasy adventure game in which all the character types are worthy of being taken seriously and in which even one of the character types is characterized by a really broad power base like "nature magic", all the character types need access to abilities that vary both in power and in utility, and which have some ability to interact with the powers of others even if they come from different power sources. So you could have a knight's heartfelt plea shatter the magical mind control which afflicts their friend, or a ranger's wilderness expertise allow for a trip into the hinterlands which takes the party through a naturally-occurring interdimensional portal or whatever. What I don't see any use for (and what I primarily associate with 5e, Pathfinder, etc.) is having six different kinds of wizard - it won't balance fighters with casters on its own, and it'd be pointless in a game in which steps were actually taken to balance fighters with casters (such as in 4th edition, in which the same wizard could indeed roll around with evocations and necromancies and translocations and charms and...)
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Mar 18, 2017 00:27
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How do you balance a fighter or a rogue with wizards as 5th ed wizards are right now?
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Mar 18, 2017 00:31
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AlphaDog posted:How do you balance a fighter or a rogue with wizards as wizards are right now? Give fighters Exploit Slots (or Disciplines akin to the Mystic's which are powered by Stamina Points) that allow for a series of special per-rest actions that scale in power with the slot at the same rate spells do. Duplicate as many spells as is feasible (finger of death -> death strike, charm person -> charm person), write up some unique-to-martial characters effects as they occur to you. Maybe give the fighter slightly fewer total exploit slots per day than a wizard gets to account for the fact that the fighter's resting HP and AC are higher. Oh, yeah, they also get martial equivalents of cantrips. This probably replaces extra attacks. Overall I might institute some kind of cap on how many exploits/spells/powers all characters like wizards or clerics can know (or at least carry around in their person in spellbooks such that they can be prepared given a night's rest) at a time, such that if you want to have a vast library you want to maintain a tower or sanctum somewhere and swap stuff in and out when you're at liberty to spend a week at base. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Mar 18, 2017 |
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Mar 18, 2017 00:34
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Can they fly, open locked doors, turn invisible, shoot fire and lightning, conjure bears, see into the future, teleport between countries, etc with these exploit slots?
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Mar 18, 2017 00:35
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And you all thought this thread was bad before Ferrinus started posting in it.
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Mar 18, 2017 00:39
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AlphaDog posted:Can they fly, open locked doors, turn invisible, shoot fire and lightning, conjure bears, see into the future, teleport between countries, etc with these exploit slots? Fighters can already open locked doors using their special "kick" power. Martial powers probably couldn't give you continuous flight (maybe astounding leaps at higher levels), but I don't see why they couldn't afford impenetrable stealth, powerful ranged attacks (maybe with alchemical explosives), loyal squires, brilliant strategic analysis, and expedited travel. You're probably not going to teleport across the globe instantly or transform lead to gold, but if you wanted to why did you choose Fighter? To be clear, I'm absolutely fine with martial characters enjoying less absolute versatility than magical ones, at least in the sense that many of their non-combative powers don't work on an instant timescale or function totally regardless of context the way you'd expect magic spells to. What disempowers fighters in the current version of D&D is the inability to, to paraphrase the 4E PHB, reach into their deepest reserves of energy to perform an exploit so mighty they can't even attempt it again in the same day, not their inability to turn into giant snakes.
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Mar 18, 2017 00:42
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Just play a bard.
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Mar 18, 2017 00:58
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Ferrinus posted:Martial powers probably couldn't give you continuous flight (maybe astounding leaps at higher levels), but I don't see why they couldn't afford impenetrable stealth, powerful ranged attacks (maybe with alchemical explosives), loyal squires, brilliant strategic analysis, and expedited travel. You're probably not going to teleport across the globe instantly or transform lead to gold, but if you wanted to why did you choose Fighter? It's almost like you'd have to take things like "teleport anywhere on the planet" or "instantly and effortlessly bypass any wall or chasm" away from wizards before fighters and rogues could approach equivalence with them!
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Mar 18, 2017 01:13
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If you want all that, you don't want d&d. the underpinnings of tbe game go back decades , with the designers explicitly explaining that what characters do are also what opponents should be doing. If you're OK with that and want to design the entire game where goblin assassins can turn invisible, that's fine , but it's not the base of the game and you're better off going elsewhere.
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Mar 18, 2017 01:16
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AlphaDog posted:It's almost like you'd have to take things like "teleport anywhere on the planet" or "instantly and effortlessly bypass any wall or chasm" away from wizards before fighters and rogues could approach equivalence with them! Actually, you wouldn't. You could just have one class that can instantly teleport across the planet while another can't. It's fine, especially because instantaneous international teleports are mostly a matter of getting the party into position to keep playing the game to start with, and there's very little daylight between "you teleport to Britain" and "you reach Britain after a month-long voyage". As long as both characters have daily powers, and those daily powers are of equal consequence in the contexts they're designed for, it's okay if one character can cause things to happen in the narrative that the other can't. As my evidence I cite D&D 4th edition, a good and balanced game in which this was manifestly the case. Or is it your opinion that, because none of the 4e fighter's utility powers had the words Fly or Teleport in them, the class was a wash? mastershakeman posted:If you want all that, you don't want d&d. the underpinnings of tbe game go back decades , with the designers explicitly explaining that what characters do are also what opponents should be doing. If you're OK with that and want to design the entire game where goblin assassins can turn invisible, that's fine , but it's not the base of the game and you're better off going elsewhere. Well they don't actually turn invisible; they just hide in plain sight using cunning movements and impeccable camouflage. The effect is you don't know they're there or what square they're in by default and have an increased chance to miss them even if you do. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Mar 18, 2017 |
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Mar 18, 2017 01:18
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I want fighters, rogues, barbarians, etc to have an equivalent "this is the thing that happens" mechanic, and for the things that they can do with that to be on the same level as classes that use magic to do that. "Teleport" is fine if it's got equivlent combat utility to something that a warrior can do (eg, if it's "move 6 spaces without drawing OA"), or if the warrior gets an ability that's equivalent in power and utility to "instantly move to anywhere in the world". Does a rogue have something that they just declare happens that's on the same level as "I'm flying now"? Does a ranger have something that they just declare happens that's on the same level as "I am a dragon now"? If those things are there, then everything's fine.
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Mar 18, 2017 01:28
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Yes, that's the point of giving them explicit activated powers, sheesh! Or at least some near-equivalent with maybe a different activation pattern or something (like the fighter rolls to see if he hits first and then decides what happens to the victim, while the wizard declares a spell first and then the victim rolls to see if they escape it). Given that, you've got to be open to some kind of inherent differences in ability and efficiency between the power sources such that like, martial characters can never expect to for-real teleport (e.g. their "move six squares without drawing OAs could be stopped by solid but see-through obstacles, while a teleport wouldn't be (on the other hand, they could do it even if they lack line of sight (and maybe they can use a shoulder check to shatter a wall of force or similar at higher levels))), but on the other hand always enjoy better hit dice or easier ways to regain spent power points than their magical equivalents. There's no real point in having a fighter class and a wizard class if there's a strict one to one correspondence between all of their traits and powers, after all. Also I would happily turn "ranger' and "knight" and "barbarian" and maybe even "rogue" into Fighter subclasses, same as we have "evoker" and "necromancer" Wizard subclasses now.
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Mar 18, 2017 01:35
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If everyone has the exact same abilities what's the point of a class system the entire point of d&d-mashing Tolkien plus vampire stories plus jack Vance plus random other stuff - is for balance to not exist
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Mar 18, 2017 02:09
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 lol if you don't roll everything in a lead lined box
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Mar 18, 2017 02:11
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mastershakeman posted:If everyone has the exact same abilities what's the point of a class system They don't have the exact same abilities, but they should have comparably powerful ones or ones that can meaningfully clash with each other's. Super-stealth is similar to but not functionally identical to invisibility, because the former can't just be applied to any target, the latter doesn't also prevent you from making noises, etc.
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Mar 18, 2017 02:18
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Kaysette posted:
That page is the best/worst. If you miss the old grognards.txt thread and want to laugh at people getting lovely about elf games then that thread is for you.
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Mar 18, 2017 02:41
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How much benefit does being able to do things like teleport between cities get you in the average adventure? Asking because in my first campaign, my wizard saved the party a good two or three weeks of travel time in getting to the final battle by teleporting us across the country. All it did was make one of my two 5th level spell slots unavailable for said battle because it caught my DM unaware enough that he didn't really know how to reward something like that. We didn't get benefits such as catching the enemy unprepared, time to help fortify the good guys, etc. After the campaign, I asked the DM for his notes since I was in the midst of writing my own adventure, and there were actually no encounters planned for that travel that I bypassed. As for things like interplanar teleportation, how many DMs are going to say "welp, nobody in your party can get you to the plane of fire to kill the big bad, I guess the campaign's over! Someone be sure to roll a wizard next time." I suspect most are going to have some mechanism ready for the players to get them where they need to be in the event that none of them has the capability to do it themselves. Sure, one could make a mint in commercial circles by combining teleportation circle and a bag of holding to form a pretty solid fantasy logistics operation, but every campaign I've played to that point throws pressing-enough concerns at the PCs by the time any of them can teleport that they won't have time to use spellcasting for fun and profit.
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Mar 18, 2017 02:47
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Ferrinus posted:Yes, that's the point of giving them explicit activated powers, sheesh! Or at least some near-equivalent with maybe a different activation pattern or something (like the fighter rolls to see if he hits first and then decides what happens to the victim, while the wizard declares a spell first and then the victim rolls to see if they escape it). "You can move 6 spaces without drawing OA, including through barriers" is fine for a combat teleport. What's the fighter equivalent? If it's the same thing but "...except if X, Y, and Z", then it's not equivalent, it's a depowered version for non-casters, which is the exact problem I have with these things. Keep the "...except" part and add "...but also you can..." (eg, make a free basic attack on the way through, push back opponents you pass adjacent to, etc) and you're looking at equivalent but different which should be the goal. Fewer powers per refresh and better defenses? Yep, that's a good trade-off, so long as you're not still looking at a system where the the fighter has 5 abilities/refresh and better defenses and the wizard has 20 spells/refresh and worse defenses but can expend anything less than 15 ability uses to gain equivalent defenses - that is, if the fighter's trade-off for 15 fewer abilities/refresh is "higher AC", and the wizard can expend one ability to make their AC equal to the fighter's, then they're not equivalent. Again, I'm not talking about "their powers are the same", just that they're on the same level. A wizard casts Spider Climb and for an hour they can walk on the ceiling. That's pretty neat. A rogue can't do that, which is fine because yes, not all abilities should be the same. Maybe the rogue could get an ability to move at their regular speed across a surface in any orientation, for one round, once or twice per short rest? No roll, just "I do it"? Out of combat, this would let them auto-succeed at certain things (eg, short wall climbs), but then they couldn't use it in combat. Evard's Black Tentacles makes a 20' square into difficult terrain. Also, it makes anyone in it make a Dex save or take 3d6 damage and be restrained. If you start your turn restrained, you take 3d6 damage. Holy poo poo, that's pretty neat. Obviously you don't want a fighter doing the exact same thing though. Maybe instead they could activate a daily ability that... I dunno, made an area burst2 around them very dangerous to be in until the end of the combat? Or halved movement through it and did damage to enemies ending their turn in it? Then there's still the problem that a wizard can Spider Climb and Evard's Black Tentacles and fireball and etc etc. Maybe it wouldn't be an issue if everyone had a big list of abilities though, so it might not be important. If that's the kind of stuff you're talking about, I'm completely in agreeance. Still, "move instantly anywhere in the world" or "lol I'm a dragon now" are things that I have a hard time visualising the non-caster equivlant of. I'm not saying that fighters should teleport across countries, I'm asking what you feel a fighter could/should be able to do that's on that level. I'm not telling you that wizards shouldn't be able to turn themselves into dragons, I'm asking what a ranger could/should be able to do that's on that level. Because I can't see it, and if it can't be done then I'm not sure how you're going to balance things out without taking those things away from wizards. E: Again, I'm not asking "how does a fighter move instantly anywhere in the world", I'm asking what they get to do that's on that level. And I'm not seeing how to do it unless you go back to something like 2nd ed where a lot of this stuff is rendered moot because a Fighter gets to say, for instance, "Sergeant Brown, choose 10 volunteers. If we're not back in half an hour, light everything on fire and return to the castle". Ferrinus posted:Also I would happily turn "ranger' and "knight" and "barbarian" and maybe even "rogue" into Fighter subclasses, same as we have "evoker" and "necromancer" Wizard subclasses now. Yes, definitely this. Fighter/ranger/barbarian at the very least. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Mar 18, 2017 |
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Mar 18, 2017 02:52
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AlphaDog posted:Still, "move instantly anywhere in the world" or "lol I'm a dragon now" are things that I have a hard time visualising the non-caster equivlant of. I'm not saying that fighters should teleport across countries, I'm asking what you feel a fighter could/should be able to do that's on that level. I'm not telling you that wizards shouldn't be able to turn themselves into dragons, I'm asking what a ranger could/should be able to do that's on that level. Because I can't see it, and if it can't be done then I'm not sure how you're going to balance things out without taking those things away from wizards. Well, here's my thinking: what else can a wizard do that's on that level? According to the game itself, Time Stop, Precognition, Meteor Shower, and a few other things I'm forgetting. So in the absolute worst case in which we literally can't think of anything unique for the actually-balanced fighter to do, maybe it just gets Time Stop (burst of desperate speed + supreme combat initiative), Precognition (flawless instincts), Meteor Shower (some kind of insane rain of death delivered with a longbow, or straight up charging from place to place and colliding with a destructive shockwave each time). And, in exchange for having an absolutely smaller power list, the fighter has bigger hit dice. I don't think this is ideal, and would if someone was paying me actually write unique fighter stuff (temporarily ignoring effects you should be afflicted with up through force of will, shows of moving heroism that permanently turn enemies into allies, whatever) + bigger salient differences between the stuff the fighter and wizard share (martial effects tend to be slower but are less expensive and longer lasting, and they have fewer idiosyncratic weaknesses and end conditions), but, hell, it's a start.
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Mar 18, 2017 03:15
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Ferrinus posted:Well, here's my thinking: what else can a wizard do that's on that level? According to the game itself, Time Stop, Precognition, Meteor Shower, and a few other things I'm forgetting. So in the absolute worst case in which we literally can't think of anything unique for the actually-balanced fighter to do, maybe it just gets Time Stop (burst of desperate speed + supreme combat initiative), Precognition (flawless instincts), Meteor Shower (some kind of insane rain of death delivered with a longbow, or straight up charging from place to place and colliding with a destructive shockwave each time). And, in exchange for having an absolutely smaller power list, the fighter has bigger hit dice. Yeah, I get where your coming from. The other spells on that list include Power Word: Kill which seems like a no-brainer thing to give to Fighters. "Pick a target that has 100hp or fewer. You kill it instantly". Probably the only spell where I'd consider a straight up port to be the best way to do it. Also Astral Projection, which, like Teleport, isn't going to have a direct equivalence to something a warrior can do. It seems like if you removed that kind of thing, then it'd be way easier to put the martial stuff up to the same level. It's also that I don't see why spells like Teleport, Astral Projection, etc share the space of "spells for PCs to cast" with things like Fireball and Charm Person and Spider Climb. Separate them out and have them be stuff for the party to spend resources on rather than stuff for the wizard to do because spells are spells are spells. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Mar 18, 2017 |
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Mar 18, 2017 03:55
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Ferrinus posted:Actually, you wouldn't. You could just have one class that can instantly teleport across the planet while another can't. It's fine, especially because instantaneous international teleports are mostly a matter of getting the party into position to keep playing the game to start with, and there's very little daylight between "you teleport to Britain" and "you reach Britain after a month-long voyage". But one is a player changing the game with their powers, and the other is bad design. Slippery even had an example of this difference. In a better campaign, the long way would have involved minor encounters/dungeon crawls that would have helped the players or hindered the bad guys, which would be nearly equivalent to whatever bonuses would be granted by just teleporting into the final boss's lair. You protect an artifact, rescue a key member of the resistance, destroy a supply line, etc. It then turns out it took a month to do all that and get to the final lair, but more was accomplished than just walking.
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Mar 18, 2017 04:53
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Kuroyama posted:But one is a player changing the game with their powers, and the other is bad design. Slippery even had an example of this difference. In a better campaign, the long way would have involved minor encounters/dungeon crawls that would have helped the players or hindered the bad guys, which would be nearly equivalent to whatever bonuses would be granted by just teleporting into the final boss's lair. You protect an artifact, rescue a key member of the resistance, destroy a supply line, etc. It then turns out it took a month to do all that and get to the final lair, but more was accomplished than just walking. I think this kind of relentless focus on equivalence is at best distracting and at worst damaging. Like, really, not teleporting has to be exactly as good as teleporting? The advantages my enemies gained by preparing for an extra month were precisely (or at least nearly) negated by the encounters my party had along the way?? I suppose waiting a month and then taking a one month trip would've given us even greater commensurate benefits? If I was writing D&D I'd limit teleportation in various ways, like until you're super powerful you need to use existing gate circles, you always appear in a huge flash and are disoriented for several hours afterwards, warding spells can block or even trap teleporters, it might have a physical cost in gold and reagants as great or many times greater than what you'd have to pay in supplies and materials for a non-magical voyage, etc. But there's gotta be cases in which warping somewhere is clearly and maybe even strictly better than walking there - that's the whole appeal, and what justifies a character spending resources (whether abstract XP/skillpoints/whatever or in-game time and effort) learning to do it.
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Mar 18, 2017 05:06
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