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Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

LuiCypher posted:

It's more precise to say what you did - they're not necessarily problematic, but the system/setting that they're in has to be designed around those no immediate obvious or universal limits. The issue is that most games with wizards are not properly designed to take those limits into account, D&D being the chief offender, and it quickly becomes most people's (mine included) understanding of what wizards in games look like.

Even with D&D I would say the issue is kinda perpendicular to that. I'm sympathetic to the poor sap who picks a fighter in 3E because it sounds cool, but at the end of the day trap options are an obstacle to good gameplay, an unnecessary and unfriendly act of gatekeeping, but not a crippling flaw. I can easily imagine an alternate universe version of 3.5 where fighters still suck but the spellcasting classes have more clearly defined roles, stuff that requires tremendous amounts of extra bookkeeping, adjudication, or that completely nullifies ostensibly core mechanics is excised, and so on. And it's all of that latter stuff that makes 3.5 a bad game, rather than simply an unbalanced one.

e: Or to put it concisely, the problem is design issues that happen to intersect with wizards (in the most popular and visible RPG series), not wizard issues that happen to intersect with game design, and understanding this is key both to making better wizards and to not repeating these mistakes in a game that doesn't even have wizards.

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Aug 30, 2017

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Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Reene posted:

5th edition fighters do the best damage of any class in the game, they're just boring out of combat. Also it's a bad game.

Yeah, part of the fighter dilemma to remember isn't how much damage they do versus other classes - a properly built 3.5 fighter can do a lot of damage and run their role - it's two issues. One, that's all they do. A fighter in many F20 games (not just d20) is reduced to twiddling their thumbs in social scenes, exploration scenes, investigative scenes, etc. Two, they don't deal well with "puzzle conflicts" (that is, dealing with foes with extraordinary abilities like flight, invisibility, mind control, incorporeality) unless they've prepared and kitted for it.

It's something you see in a lot of games, honestly, because historically games have used a balance measure of combat competency vs. noncombat competency. The real secret to a game like 4e isn't the fact that classes are more balanced or that clerics get to do things other than field medic (though both those things are nice), but basically it gives everybody relatively equal facility at combat. Particularly a lot of point-buy games (GURPS and Exalted come to mind) end up being a zero-sum game where any points put into noncombat traits is effectively reducing your capacity in combat and vice versa. And there are probably designs where that's a functional notion, but more often than not it's just cargo cult design where it's taken as how game balance is done.

Anyway, that's why the Soldier in the recent bestselling Starfinger is still pretty much bullshit. Not because they're bad at fighting - they're actually super good at it - but anytime they aren't doing that, they may as well hang up their red star plasma rifle and get out of the battle harness and go take a nap.

That Old Tree
Jun 24, 2012

nah


^^^^ Are you doing "Starfinger" on purpose now? I approve.

I'm not even done reading it, and don't know how this would really effect the game, but Shadow of the Demon Lord at least has a bunch of non-wizard options in it.

Serf
May 5, 2011


That Old Tree posted:

^^^^ Are you doing "Starfinger" on purpose now? I approve.

I'm not even done reading it, and don't know how this would really effect the game, but Shadow of the Demon Lord at least has a bunch of non-wizard options in it.

Wizards in SotDL are not as powerful as in D&D. Most of their use comes from utility spells, as a fighter-type will always be better at combat. And their utility spells are pretty strictly limited in the scope of what they can achieve. There is supposed to be a magic supplement coming out soon that adds new levels of spells that may mess this up, but those spells will only be usable by post-level 10 "epic" characters so at that point it may not matter. As it stands, the limited amount of spells and limited castings a magic-user gets keeps them mostly in check.

I did have a player make a character who took two Expert paths instead of a Master and could do some disgusting technomancy bullshit, but even then they only gave the fighter a run for their money damage-wise.

grassy gnoll
Aug 27, 2006

The pawsting business is tough work.
Fragged Empire (and presumably its spinoffs) solve the problem of equal contribution pretty neatly. The game is compartmentalized in how it handles combat, non-combat, and vehicle scenarios, and during chargen you get to pick from skills a bank of options for each minigame - you pick your technical or social or whatever skills, a combat option, and what you do aboard a ship.

I'm a little surprised it's not a more common solution, since it's so brain-dead simple.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

That Old Tree posted:

^^^^ Are you doing "Starfinger" on purpose now? I approve.

Huh? I don't know what you're talking about. :ssh:

grassy gnoll posted:

Fragged Empire (and presumably its spinoffs) solve the problem of equal contribution pretty neatly. The game is compartmentalized in how it handles combat, non-combat, and vehicle scenarios, and during chargen you get to pick from skills a bank of options for each minigame - you pick your technical or social or whatever skills, a combat option, and what you do aboard a ship.

I'm a little surprised it's not a more common solution, since it's so brain-dead simple.

Yeah, Battle Century Z had a similar solution, if you'll recall. You still have a bit of the combat v. non-combat when outside the mecha, but everybody gets the same amount of resources to kit out each mecha they have for the main fight sequences.

grassy gnoll
Aug 27, 2006

The pawsting business is tough work.
Yeah, but putting aside the shared context here, how often do you think Battle Century games focus on on-foot segments? I mean, you buy a game with a focus on giant robots to play with the giant robots, and everything else has to be a secondary concern to varying levels.

I could swear there's something else that I've played relatively recently that did a similar siloing thing, but damned if I can remember what it was.

Cease to Hope
Dec 12, 2011
cthulhutech has very, very little to recommend it but it tried to silo off mech combat similarly

Nickoten
Oct 16, 2005

Now there'll be some quiet in this town.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Yeah, part of the fighter dilemma to remember isn't how much damage they do versus other classes - a properly built 3.5 fighter can do a lot of damage and run their role - it's two issues. One, that's all they do. A fighter in many F20 games (not just d20) is reduced to twiddling their thumbs in social scenes, exploration scenes, investigative scenes, etc. Two, they don't deal well with "puzzle conflicts" (that is, dealing with foes with extraordinary abilities like flight, invisibility, mind control, incorporeality) unless they've prepared and kitted for it.

It's something you see in a lot of games, honestly, because historically games have used a balance measure of combat competency vs. noncombat competency. The real secret to a game like 4e isn't the fact that classes are more balanced or that clerics get to do things other than field medic (though both those things are nice), but basically it gives everybody relatively equal facility at combat. Particularly a lot of point-buy games (GURPS and Exalted come to mind) end up being a zero-sum game where any points put into noncombat traits is effectively reducing your capacity in combat and vice versa. And there are probably designs where that's a functional notion, but more often than not it's just cargo cult design where it's taken as how game balance is done.

Anyway, that's why the Soldier in the recent bestselling Starfinger is still pretty much bullshit. Not because they're bad at fighting - they're actually super good at it - but anytime they aren't doing that, they may as well hang up their red star plasma rifle and get out of the battle harness and go take a nap.

Another way to look at this problem is that damage numbers are 1) the most mutable aspect of designing encounters and 2) don't affect the fiction nearly as much as other abilities. A group that does too much damage is very easy to adjust for without significantly altering the game fiction. And specifically a fighter that does 2d8 instead of 1d8 isn't really altering the fiction because it's usually abstracted the same way ("the fighter fought and was good at it, or at least let's say he was").

Being able to carve any shape you want out of the ground or turn invisible affects the game fiction on a fundamental level that can't really be handwaved away like damage is. Those effects exist very concretely in the fiction of the game not as much in the abstracted reality that damage lives in.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

grassy gnoll posted:

Yeah, but putting aside the shared context here, how often do you think Battle Century games focus on on-foot segments? I mean, you buy a game with a focus on giant robots to play with the giant robots, and everything else has to be a secondary concern to varying levels.

Not often, I imagine, but I could see doing a Super Sentai or Gatchaman-style game where you have fights with baddies and then leap into your robots or vehicles to have it out with a giant mutant monster.

I didn't mean to imply it was a big issue, just that it wasn't solely siloed.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Zoro posted:

What are the best games if you just want to play a fighter who isn't insta-overshadowed by the wizard in the party?

Iron Heroes so that nobody's a Wizard

RuneQuest so that everyone has a shot at casting magic, and the spells are very well controlled

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Iron Heroes so that nobody's a Wizard

oh please god no

this is like telling a paraplegic you'll solve all their problems by chopping everyone else's limbs off too

Haystack
Jan 23, 2005





Zoro posted:

What are the best games if you just want to play a fighter who isn't insta-overshadowed by the wizard in the party?

Spellbound Kingdoms. The martial classes in that game are great.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

oh please god no

this is like telling a paraplegic you'll solve all their problems by chopping everyone else's limbs off too

I'm really baffled by this response, it's perfectly fine to decide to make a game where "be a wizard" just isn't on the menu the same way that you wouldn't go to your chosen version of Mage: the Whatever if you wanted to play a totally mundane and not at all magical dude.

I mean, you shouldn't be recommending people play Iron Heroes because it's absolutely riddled with all sorts of mechanical issues and at the end of the day it's really just another 3.X d20-alike, but I'd be okay with a few more games that took the stance that wizards are something for you to brutally murder after they turn into giant snakes and that's about it.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
I don't care about the fluff, I'm just saying that "3.x but spells don't exist" is dire. I'd happily play a game where everyone achieves magic-like results with muscle and willpower, the problem is Iron Heroes is not that game. It's like telling someone to play D20 Modern.

Iron Heroes makes a token effort ( :haw: ) at introducing resource management, which is nice in theory, but doesn't push it far enough and the class designs range from "bland" to "literally non-functional." Apart from that, you're left with the D20 skeleton, which is needlessly complicated, bad at anything that isn't combat, and where even tactical combat is only okay, and very slow due to the number of rolls and comparisons you need to make every turn.

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Aug 31, 2017

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
Oh yeah, sure, if what you mean is "don't play Iron Heroes because the game itself sucks and is bad" I can't really argue that.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Nickoten posted:

Another way to look at this problem is that damage numbers are 1) the most mutable aspect of designing encounters and 2) don't affect the fiction nearly as much as other abilities. A group that does too much damage is very easy to adjust for without significantly altering the game fiction. And specifically a fighter that does 2d8 instead of 1d8 isn't really altering the fiction because it's usually abstracted the same way ("the fighter fought and was good at it, or at least let's say he was").

Being able to carve any shape you want out of the ground or turn invisible affects the game fiction on a fundamental level that can't really be handwaved away like damage is. Those effects exist very concretely in the fiction of the game not as much in the abstracted reality that damage lives in.

Well, yeah. I was just looking at the fact that a fighter or soldier just doesn't get any abilities that don't relate to dealing more damage outside of a few basic skills many other classes have access to. It's not even that they don't have access to the supernatural, but even in martial-related endeavors like a chase scene, sneaking, or throwing around a bit of intimidation, they often can't compete with the sheer competency of other classes at doing things that don't involve subtracting HP.

Having classes that can fly or turn invisible trivially is just rubbing it in, but it's often not even necessary to demonstrate the issue.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
I wasn't being entirely serious about Iron Heroes, and yes you're right, it's a really flawed game.

RuneQuest was 100% earnest though!

Let's try that again:

* D&D 3.5, but the only allowed classes are full BAB, or 3/4ths BAB without spellcasting.
* Tunnels & Trolls
* Rolemaster
* Phoenix Command Hand-to-Hand Combat System
* Fate Freeport Companion
* Feng Shui 2
* World of Dungeons
* HeroQuest 2nd Edition / HeroQuest Glorantha
* Into the Odd
* Pendragon
* Riddle of Steel / Blade of the Iron Throne
* Torchbearer

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

gradenko_2000 posted:

* D&D 3.5, but the only allowed classes are full BAB, or 3/4ths BAB without spellcasting.

see, no, this still sucks

say "3.5 but everyone's a rogue and you belong to an outfit that specializes in stealing magic scrolls, all your loot is scrolls, and all your encounters require the use of spells you may never see another copy of" and you'd have my attention

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

see, no, this still sucks

say "3.5 but everyone's a rogue and you belong to an outfit that specializes in stealing magic scrolls, all your loot is scrolls, and all your encounters require the use of spells you MAY NEVER GET BACK" and you'd have my attention

I mean it would still probably really suck though.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Kai Tave posted:

I mean it would still probably really suck though.

Probably, but it's an experiment I'd be willing to take part in.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

see, no, this still sucks

say "3.5 but everyone's a rogue and you belong to an outfit that specializes in stealing magic scrolls, all your loot is scrolls, and all your encounters require the use of spells you may never see another copy of" and you'd have my attention

the latter half of your proposal is how Monte Cook apparently ran his 3.5 campaigns, and was the genesis of the idea for the Cypher mechanic of Numenera.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

gradenko_2000 posted:

the latter half of your proposal is how Monte Cook apparently ran his 3.5 campaigns, and was the genesis of the idea for the Cypher mechanic of Numenera.

There's gotta be a better system for it, though.

I mean all I know about Numenera besides "it uses XP as bennies" is that I have a general distrust of Monte Cook, but "XP as bennies" is bad enough.

Zurui
Apr 20, 2005
Even now...



Pendragon is also notable in this regard because there is an actual cost for spellcasting (magical sleep for weeks/months and artificial aging). Magic will gently caress you up; if you just want to kill things you're better off with a sword.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

There's gotta be a better system for it, though.

I mean all I know about Numenera besides "it uses XP as bennies" is that I have a general distrust of Monte Cook, but "XP as bennies" is bad enough.

To be clear, what I was referring to is that Cook used to post about how, in his 3e campaign (set in Ptolus, no less), he would often hand out random scrolls of magic. Stuff like Jump, or Truestrike, or Obscuring Mist, or Chill Metal, and then hand-wave away the Use Magic Device rules. The idea was that you could prompt creativity with them - a party planning a heist with just their character sheets is going to approach it differently if they know that they have ... Jump or Obscuring Mist.

This would eventually evolve into the Cypher mechanic in Numenera, where players start with 1 to 3 "Cyphers" as little bits of technomagic and are expected to regularly pick up more along the way. Rolling on the Cypher table just now gave me these three results:

Knowledge Enhancement - for the next 24 hours, the character is considered highly trained in a specific skill
Time Dilation (Offensive) - for the next 24 hours, the character's attacks are instantaneously fast
Vanisher - for the next 10 minutes, the character is invisible

It's not a stretch to think that, in a 3e context, Knowledge Enhancement is a large buff to a skill, Time Dilation is Haste, and Vanisher is Invisibilty

===

To go off a little bit more on this tangent, there was a discussion on RPPR a while back about how one of the drivers of creativity in old-school D&D was the random assignment of spells:

If you let a D&D newbie pick a Magic-User spell, they might go for Magic Missile as the most intuitive one.
If you let a D&D veteran pick a Magic-User spell, they might go for Sleep as the actually most powerful spell available.
But if you just assign a spell randomly, then the character has to make do with what they have, and that forces them to get creative, because what the gently caress are you going to do with Goodberry when facing down a pack of angry orcs?

(I suspect, but cannot confirm, that Light's ability to cause a dazzling attack penalty effect when cast on an enemy was probably a player at Gygax's table trying that exact thing once, and Gygax just formally wrote it into the books)

As a counter-point, when you allow a player to always choose what spells they get, they'll then figure out the best "combo" or most versatile/useful assortment of spells, and always lean on those. It's when their choices are sub-optimal that they resort to doing something different. Which is not to say that I necessarily advocate for this approach, but it's interesting to think about.

There was even a thought experiment of a game where a spellcaster might begin the game with a single high-level spell, like maybe ... Transport Via Plants, or Rainbow Pattern, or Reverse Gravity ... but that's all the spellcaster would be able to cast. There are a bunch of spells in D&D that are kinda cool or have a lot of potentially creative applications, but they never get used because save-or-dies exist.

===

To bring it back to the Fighter discussion, obviously it's just another expression of the martial-v-caster disparity that a caster can "negotiate" with the GM on what their Tenser's Floating Disc can actually do, but then it's the Fighter that can arguably benefit the most from being able to add even just a few "utility scrolls" to their repertoire.

ProfessorCirno
Feb 17, 2011

The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!
The problem is that every other class is a description of what the class does, whereas the wizard is a description of how they do things.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

ProfessorCirno posted:

The problem is that every other class is a description of what the class does, whereas the wizard is a description of how they do things.

It really bothers me that D&D's magic is so universalist, and that trying to break it down into things like Necromancer vs Elementalist vs Mesmer requires so much goddamn work.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

gradenko_2000 posted:

It really bothers me that D&D's magic is so universalist, and that trying to break it down into things like Necromancer vs Elementalist vs Mesmer requires so much goddamn work.

Even this doesn't really address the issue though because it still remains that one subset of classes, however finely you chop them, still wind up being the Haves as opposed to the Have Nots.

Serf
May 5, 2011


D&D 3.5, only Book of Nine Swords classes allowed.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Iron Heroes makes a token effort ( :haw: ) at introducing resource management, which is nice in theory

I was reflecting on this, and my recent experience on playing WoW again over the past month (just got to 56! working on Silithus!), and it occurs to me that so little design is ... synergistic.

Like, p.d0t correctly called it in 5e that a Champion Fighter gets an increased crit chance ... and then nothing ever interacts with it ever again. Not unless you multi-class to something else, which delays you getting access to the "full combo" even longer.

In 3e, you can Trip a dude, and tripping him makes him easier to actually hit and kill, which is cool, but that's like a 2-step, super-simple process (and some folks still thought it was overpowered anyway!). The Dungeoncrasher was even simpler than that, since all it involved was pushing a dude into a wall, and the rest of the build was cranking your Strength check as high as possible.

Even the vaunted Tome of Battle has Mountain Hammer, Stronger Mountain Hammer, and Even Stronger Mountain Hammer. Don't get me wrong, it's nice, but the player is pretty much ALWAYS ON 100%.

I guess my point is that Iron Heroes had at least the (badly implemented) germ of an idea that you'd start off slow, and then build up tokens to let you do better moves, and then even better moves on top of that. It's just that tokens were a really fiddly way to try and do it, combined with abilities that ... didn't really build up to anything spectacular once you finally got there.

In contrast, the Fury Warrior:

* always has Furious Slash as their "default" attack, which attacks with their off-hand
* they can Bloodthirst for more damage every 4 seconds, and every Furious Slash makes their Bloodthirst more likely to crit
* once they crit with a Bloodthirst, they Enrage, which lets them use Raging Blow, which hits with two weapons at the same time and is the most damaging attack
* the Bloodthirsts and the auto-attacks are building Rage all this time, and once they get to 85, they can use Rampage, which is the next most-damaging attack, and also enrages the Warrior, enabling the use of Raging Blow again

and maybe it's too fiddly to track that kind of progression in a table-top game, but even just the Raging Blow > Bloodthirst > Furious Slash progression is a lot more "interactive" that most systems I've seen. Not to mention the angle where Fury also has access to Whirlwind as an always-available AOE attack (and that you can take an ability that sometimes makes Whirlwind occasionally hit harder than Bloodthirst even against a single-target).

[and before I get called-out that what I'm suggesting is just another "make poo poo harder for the martials" idea, I would also fully embrace a model where the Frost Mage casts Frostbolt until they get a Deep Freeze proc, and then they cast Deep Freeze, and then they cast Ice Lance only while the Freeze is in effect]

aside posted:

A separate idea I had while writing this up was that "why do characters need to spend actions on normal attacks, anyway?". Maybe a Fighter should have an "auto-attack" ability, which just lets them deal their weapon damage to a target that they're adjacent to, just because. And THEN they can also do something else.

While I haven't dug into it enough to know this for a fact, I think the closest thing we have to such a design would be Spellbound Kingdoms, where there's a "track" of things you can do depending on your weapon and where you are in the combat relative to your opponent.

I just think it'd be cool to have a set-up where Ability A is your go-to when you have nothing else to do, but occasionally it'll activate the use of Ability B, which then later leads to Ability C, and then you also have a Limited Use Ability that can forcibly trigger the B (and the C) when you need it on-demand.

Nuns with Guns
Jul 23, 2010

It's fine.
Don't worry about it.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

There's gotta be a better system for it, though.

I mean all I know about Numenera besides "it uses XP as bennies" is that I have a general distrust of Monte Cook, but "XP as bennies" is bad enough.

Numenera is a good example of another game where the fighter blows, actually. The classes are still segmented into the fighter, wizard, skill-monkey/rogue, and the wizard class still comes out ahead in power because it has spells instead of the equivalent martial stunts the fighter class has. Cypher system games are supposed to prioritize adventure and exploration over combat and the fighter class in Numenera has maybe.... two? out of combat abilities it can acquire. It's been a while and I haven't felt like double checking. You don't even gain XP from defeating enemies in combat, only from GM intrusions, "discovering" things, and completing quests.

The skill-monkey/rogue is extra boring, too, because all of its abilities are a dull combination of the fighter and wizard. The Cypher system also has convoluted health mechanics that cripple melee classes further because you pull out of your HP pools to boost dice rolls. Most of the fighter's abilities key off of the might pool or the speed pool, and nothing from the intellect pool unless you're grabbing a focus that gives you some wizard-like powers. Guess what the most common incoming damage type is? Guess which pool has almost no-typed damage described in the game at all.

This isn't even going into GM intrusions, which are like someone looked at Fate's compels and decided they should be more arbitrary and bullshit and also happen whenever you roll a natural 1 on a d20.

Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Aug 31, 2017

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

ProfessorCirno posted:

The problem is that every other class is a description of what the class does, whereas the wizard is a description of how they do things.

Could you elaborate on that?

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

say "3.5 but everyone's a rogue and you belong to an outfit that specializes in stealing magic scrolls, all your loot is scrolls, and all your encounters require the use of spells you may never see another copy of" and you'd have my attention
That reminds me, I recently saw official AD&D character sheets for Fafhrd and Grey Mouser in a book, and I love how they handled Mouser's magic abilities: he's a black magician, but has no spellbook. If he finds one he can use any spells in the book but he can't hold on to it for very long, because he lives in Lankhmar and Lankhmar is full of thieves.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Nuns with Guns posted:

Numenera is a good example of another game where the fighter blows, actually.

I'd like to make it clear that Numenera is a bad and dumb game on the whole. I was just explaining where the Cypher mechanic of the game came from specifically.

(I think there's an essay to be made about how Numenera is really just a collection of Cook's 3e houserules, but I don't think anyone would want to read it)

Subjunctive posted:

Could you elaborate on that?

The Fighter fights

The Thief engages in thievery

The Wizard ... fights with magic, and can steal things with magic, and can do anything else that any other class can do ... with magic

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

gradenko_2000 posted:

The Fighter fights

The Thief engages in thievery

The Wizard ... fights with magic, and can steal things with magic, and can do anything else that any other class can do ... with magic

What does a Druid do, or a Bard, or a Cleric?

A Thief attacks and sneaks and disarms traps with stealth and skill. You could just as easily say that a Wizard casts spells, no?

Serf
May 5, 2011


It's also important to note that a rogue rolls to pick a lock whereas as wizard just casts knock and does it with no chance or uncertainty.

Plutonis
Mar 25, 2011

gradenko_2000 posted:

I wasn't being entirely serious about Iron Heroes, and yes you're right, it's a really flawed game.

RuneQuest was 100% earnest though!

Let's try that again:

* D&D 3.5, but the only allowed classes are full BAB, or 3/4ths BAB without spellcasting.
* Tunnels & Trolls
* Rolemaster
* Phoenix Command Hand-to-Hand Combat System
* Fate Freeport Companion
* Feng Shui 2
* World of Dungeons
* HeroQuest 2nd Edition / HeroQuest Glorantha
* Into the Odd
* Pendragon
* Riddle of Steel / Blade of the Iron Throne
* Torchbearer

Final Fantasy D6! The Dragoon and Dark Knight in my game are the biggest damage dealers of the party and the Warrior's tanking is pretty useful in it.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011
Gradenko don't do Silithus. They never updated it in Cataclysm so it's just old bad vanilla questing. That portal to Blasted Lands is there for a very good reason.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben
There's the "unicorn problem" too which is bad in D&D and worse in Shadowrun. In both cases magic users are supposed to be between relatively and exceptionally rare in the setting. Which is ok for the wider fiction but when the party is trailing one around with them it means everyone in the typical village should be like "OMG it's a wizard isn't that amazing" and _should_ be solving many problems trivially because nobody would have expected a wizard to show up; and if they do, they seem ludicrously paranoid/delusional.

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gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Subjunctive posted:

What does a Druid do, or a Bard, or a Cleric?

A Thief attacks and sneaks and disarms traps with stealth and skill. You could just as easily say that a Wizard casts spells, no?

Wizards are the most commonly invoked symptom of the martial v spellcaster problem because they are THE spellcaster, but Druids and Clerics are just as bad, for largely the same reason (CoD-zilla, as in "Cleric or Druid Godzilla" was a word invented for 3e for a reason).

A Druid has a nature-based theme to their spells, and a Cleric has a divine theme to their spells, but it's about the same thing. The Druid summons poo poo, and they still have self-buffs, and they still have direct damage spells, and they still have "utility" spells. The Cleric also has self-buffs, also has direct damage spells, can also summon poo poo, and also have "utility" spells.

Consider instead the Healer class. They Heal. Their spell repertoire is specifically tailored around that. They're a lot worse compared to the stock-standard Cleric, but that means that they're actually a lot more in line with a Fighter.

Bards are somewhat in the same boat, in that their spell selection is actually quite limited (didn't have direct damage until 4e!), and again, that does mean that they're not nearly as outrageous in power disparity with regards to martial classes, but when people say that 3e Bards were mediocre/bad, that's really because they're not as good as Wizards/Clerics/Druids.

Plutonis posted:

Final Fantasy D6! The Dragoon and Dark Knight in my game are the biggest damage dealers of the party and the Warrior's tanking is pretty useful in it.

I've never actually played a Final Fantasy before apart from maybe 30 minutes of FFTactics, but I did really like Septerra Core on the PC. You have a link to this game?

Arivia posted:

Gradenko don't do Silithus. They never updated it in Cataclysm so it's just old bad vanilla questing. That portal to Blasted Lands is there for a very good reason.

Okay!

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