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I really like the OSE mage class, which is essentially Gandalf. You don’t have spells but instead have an array of at Will powers like Jedi mind tricks, holding/opening doors like the wizard from Conan the destroyer, read/detect magic at Will, heal/rally allies and emit an aura of fear. You can still use and make scrolls so you have access to magic, and your staff always count as magic and can emit blinding light.
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Jan 21, 2022 04:12
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PeterWeller posted:I think so many balance issues in WotC editions come from an inability to grasp that a class's resiliency should be reflected by more HP and better scaling saving throws. High level AD&D fighters were nigh immune to the spells and effects that high level casters could throw at them. I'd argue the reverse, at least so long as D&D insists on having spells that are save or suck. If everyone easily makes saving throws, you're left using spells with no save (Wall of Force, anyone) or save to half spells. It'd be far better for higher-level spells to have a bad thing happen if you fail the save, and a less bad thing happen if you make it, even for the non-damaging magic. Failing that, ensuring that every PC has some kind of saving throw weakness (and ideally, every monster, too) means you can choose the right spell to go after the right foe. Hill Giant problem? Int/Wis/Cha save spells are your best bet! neonchameleon posted:Edit: And while I'm at it do you have a single shred of evidence that the fighter players would be having less fun if they got larger than life ways of hitting people and things, such as causing fissures with their mace at high level? Geowarrior SUPREME MANEUVER 16th level Choose one of the supreme maneuvers listed below to learn. Cratering Strike Fighter: When you hit a target with a melee attack, you can expend one superiority die and add it to your damage. If that target is on the ground, you can then choose to form a crater with the impact of the blow. The total damage dealt by the attack sets the maximum diameter of the crater in feet, and its depth can be no more than half the damage in feet; you may choose to make the crater smaller. The crater is centered on one of the vertexes of the squares occupied by your target, your choice. All creatures completely within the area of the crater (including you) must make a Dexterity saving throw or be knocked prone. They also suffer falling damage equal to 1d6 per 10 feet of depth to the crater. All creatures in squares adjacent to the crater or only partly within its area must also make a Dexterity saving throw or be knocked prone, additionally suffering 2d6 bludgeoning damage on a failure or half that on a success due to the shrapnel from the initial strike. The crater may potentially break through the floor, leading to the potential of increased falling damage or other complications. Once you have used this maneuver, you cannot use it again until you complete a short or long rest. Rogue: When you hit a target on the ground with a melee attack, you can then choose to form a crater with the impact of the blow. The total damage dealt by the attack sets the maximum diameter of the crater in feet, and its depth can be no more than half the damage in feet; you may choose to make the crater smaller. The crater is centered on one of the vertexes of the squares occupied by your target, your choice. All creatures completely within the area of the crater (including you) must make a Dexterity saving throw or be knocked prone. They also suffer falling damage equal to 1d6 per 10 feet of depth to the crater. All creatures in squares adjacent to the crater or only partly within its area must also make a Dexterity saving throw or be knocked prone, additionally suffering 2d6 bludgeoning damage on a failure or half that on a success due to the shrapnel from the initial strike. The crater may potentially break through the floor, leading to the potential of increased falling damage or other complications. Once you have used this maneuver, you cannot use it again until you complete a short or long rest. COST: 2 Hail of Stones Fighter: When you hit a target with a melee attack, you can fill a 30 foot cone with flying shards of stone. Your target must be within the cone. All creatures within the cone must make a Dexterity saving throw, suffering 4d6 + your superiority die in bludgeoning damage on a failure and half that on a success. In addition, all squares within the cone are now treated as difficult terrain. Once you have used this maneuver, you cannot use it again until you complete a short or long rest. Rogue: In place of a single melee attack on your turn against a creature that qualifies for Sneak Attack, you can instead fill a 30 foot cone with flying shards of stone. The creature must be within the cone. All creatures within the cone must make a Dexterity saving throw, suffering your sneak attack dice in bludgeoning damage on a failure and half that on a success. In addition, all squares within the cone are now treated as difficult terrain. Using this attack expends your Sneak Attack for the turn, and you cannot apply any other maneuvers to it. Once you have used this maneuver, you cannot use it again until you complete a short or long rest. COST: N/A Kaal posted:If I were to try and fix Wizards a bit, I'd start by making the Schools more important, particularly when it comes to which spells they use. An Evocation Wizard and a Divination Wizard are probably going to have very similar spell lists, even before they start building up their spellbooks, and to my mind that's a missed opportunity to diversify. There should be more of a push for them to interact with the spell schools when learning and preparing spells. This would narrow the focus of the Wizard class but would actually improve the characterization. For my alt/classes experiment, I opted to have all casters choose a specialization at L5. Class spell lists end with L2 spells. After that point, every specialization has its own spell list: you get some automatically prepared spells up through L5, and a narrowing set of spell choices ending with only 2 L9 spells. Protection specialists can learn Invulnerability and Prismatic Wall; Summoner specialists get Blade of Disaster and Gate. And your abilities complement your magic specialization. I will note that this takes up a lot more book space. Note that you cannot build a wizard school specialization system in 5E as written. If your player has only the PHB to refer to, then you run into some problems: for example, there is no L3 enchantment spell, no L5 necromancy spell, no L7 divination or enchantment spell, and no L8 divination or illusion spell. Certain schools have lots of spells in them, and others have next to none. Again, computing only from the 5E PHB, the total spells of each school are: Abjuration=24, Conjuration=32, Divination=13, Enchantment=21, Evocation=37, Illusion=27, Necromancy=18, Transmutation=38. Subsequent sourcebooks have generally made these imbalances worse, even if they have built a little more flexibility into certain schools (like adding a Divination that deals damage). And yes, I did have all those counts computed. One of the first things I did after getting the PHB was to see whether it was possible to implement the school specializations for wizards.
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Jan 21, 2022 04:14
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I think Fighters (and other martials) should at a certain point in their development pass into one of several magical or semi-magical templates that gives them cool powers. One road for demigod, another for "found a cool sword in a talking tree" another for Paul Bunyan-esque "supplex a river" style fuckery and so forth.
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Jan 21, 2022 06:50
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neonchameleon posted:4e actually had them in the Elementalist Sorcerer. I should polish and publish my 5e take, which is the arsonist warlock. Fluff text: "At the back of your mind is a voice that says the same thing whenever you look at anything. 'Wouldn't it look better on fire?' Whether fire elemental, demon, or your own suppressed rage it gives you the power to make it so. And you're aware that if you stop setting other things on fire one of the things it thinks would look better on fire is you." The patron is just Mr. Torgue from Borderlands.
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Jan 21, 2022 06:58
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Well, the party was supposed to chase out a teenage dragon and so the wizard cast 'suggestion' on it and told it to fly away. So I guess the dragon has to fly away from its tower for the next 8 hours? Pretty clever way to solve that problem, although it's gonna be pissed when it comes back in a day or two and finds that the party has looted its home bare.
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Jan 21, 2022 07:13
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Forcing wizards to be school specialists doesn't solve the problem inherent in some classes getting access to scaling spell slots and others not. A wizard with at-will scorching burst, per-encounter burning hands, and daily fireball isn't somehow more fair than a wizard with at-will scorching burst, per-encounter hypnotic pattern, and daily summon demon when compared to a fighter with at-will attack, per-encounter nothing, and daily nothing. Conversely, if there were real martial powers on the table, you wouldn't want to force a martial hero to commit to only ever being able to prepare melee ones or ranged ones or inspirational ones (although some surely would of their own volition).
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Jan 21, 2022 07:36
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Mendrian posted:I think Fighters (and other martials) should at a certain point in their development pass into one of several magical or semi-magical templates that gives them cool powers. One road for demigod, another for "found a cool sword in a talking tree" another for Paul Bunyan-esque "supplex a river" style fuckery and so forth.  we could have a series of prestigious new classes, each more powerful than the last. That'll move some splat books
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Jan 21, 2022 07:55
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Release a weeaboo splat for 5e cowards.
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Jan 21, 2022 07:59
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sullat posted:Well, the party was supposed to chase out a teenage dragon and so the wizard cast 'suggestion' on it and told it to fly away. So I guess the dragon has to fly away from its tower for the next 8 hours? Pretty clever way to solve that problem, although it's gonna be pissed when it comes back in a day or two and finds that the party has looted its home bare. Hah! That's pretty good  Kinda reminds me of a part in the Witcher short stories where Geralt encounters a Djinn. (Spoilers just in case) He holds the seal from what was containing it, then says some ancient phrase that he was told is a ward/phrase of power forcing it to leave. Which it did - it was highly pissed but flew off for a couple days, before eventually returning to cause more trouble....It's much later revealed that it translates to "go gently caress yourself" and as Geralt was holding the seal, he had three wishes...so that was the first! Very understandable for the djinn to be annoyed after that haha
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Jan 21, 2022 08:02
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Devorum posted:The patron is just Mr. Torgue from Borderlands. CAN I TALK TO YOU ABOUT OUR LORD AND SAVIOR EXPLOSIONS?
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Jan 21, 2022 09:00
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Warlock is certainly closer to the simple blaster wizard, but it's still way more complex than a fighter. You have a bunch of invocations to pick, lots of spells/arcana etc. Plus the flavor is pretty specific. For a new, inexperienced player who wants to shoot fireballs at people, I think it's still quite overwhelming when you compare to a champion.
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Jan 21, 2022 10:41
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Narsham posted:I'd argue the reverse, at least so long as D&D insists on having spells that are save or suck. If everyone easily makes saving throws, you're left using spells with no save (Wall of Force, anyone) or save to half spells. It'd be far better for higher-level spells to have a bad thing happen if you fail the save, and a less bad thing happen if you make it, even for the non-damaging magic. Failing that, ensuring that every PC has some kind of saving throw weakness (and ideally, every monster, too) means you can choose the right spell to go after the right foe. Hill Giant problem? Int/Wis/Cha save spells are your best bet! How do you get from "Fighters should be extremely resilient to magic with really good saving throws" to "everyone easily makes saving throws"? Like, the idea is that if you're a fighter, you are specifically and specially able to really gently caress up an NPC spellcaster's day in a way that is very difficult for them to deal with. So yeah, if the fighter is getting in the evil wizard's face, that does restrict them to spells with no save or save to half spells, that's the point. So they wall of force, sure, but depending on how the fighter has positioned themselves, it could be the fighter positioned themselves between the wizard and the party now leaving the wizard on the other side of the barrier from the entire group, effectively neutering them temporarily, or maybe the fighter got round behind the wizard and is walled off alone, but the wizard on the other side is exposed to the entire group, using their concentration on this instead of some more powerful spell and now is just one failed concentration check away from losing their wall and getting another face full of fighter again.
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Jan 21, 2022 11:25
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Narsham posted:I'd argue the reverse, at least so long as D&D insists on having spells that are save or suck. If everyone easily makes saving throws, you're left using spells with no save (Wall of Force, anyone) or save to half spells. It'd be far better for higher-level spells to have a bad thing happen if you fail the save, and a less bad thing happen if you make it, even for the non-damaging magic. Failing that, ensuring that every PC has some kind of saving throw weakness (and ideally, every monster, too) means you can choose the right spell to go after the right foe. Hill Giant problem? Int/Wis/Cha save spells are your best bet! While I was mainly referring to fighters and how they used to get excellent saving throws along with their larger hit dice, I'd argue that it's better for high level characters to be able to regularly shrug off save-or-suck spells because sucking is bad, and high level PCs should rarely suck. A level 20 fighter shouldn't have the same garbage wisdom save as a level 1 fighter because they haven't invested ASIs and feats into boosting their wisdom save. Now I agree most monsters (but not every monster) should have some kind of saving throw weakness because, yes, that encourages more thoughtful and strategic play.
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Jan 21, 2022 16:27
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PeterWeller posted:While I was mainly referring to fighters and how they used to get excellent saving throws along with their larger hit dice, I'd argue that it's better for high level characters to be able to regularly shrug off save-or-suck spells because sucking is bad, and high level PCs should rarely suck. A level 20 fighter shouldn't have the same garbage wisdom save as a level 1 fighter because they haven't invested ASIs and feats into boosting their wisdom save. Giving you a third, free-floating save proficiency at level 1 for starting as a fighter or down the line at like 10 would be great. Really double down on the "fighters are just good at things" throughline that getting extra ASIs hints at
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Jan 21, 2022 16:41
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change my name posted:Giving you a third, free-floating save proficiency at level 1 for starting as a fighter or down the line at like 10 would be great. Really double down on the "fighters are just good at things" throughline that getting extra ASIs hints at A few ideas occur to me: *Give Fighters prof in all saves. Do the same for Monks and turn Diamond Soul into advantage on all saves. *Replace Indomitable at level 9 with a third save proficiency of the Fighter's choice. *At the very least, change Indomitable to recharge on short rests and grant proficiency on the re-roll.
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Jan 21, 2022 17:16
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I feel like giving Fighters better or additional save proficiencies isn't really addressing the larger issue with the Fighter class as a whole. The problem isn't of effectiveness of Fighters within their niche, it's of lack of versatility and options. Fighters, even in their current state, are quite effective at doing a large amount of damage to one dude and/or sustaining large amounts of damage without being downed, the problem is that's all they're really good at doing. It's the old "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" issue: As they level up Fighters get better at fulfilling their class niche, as wizards and other casters level up they gain the capability to do more things. If we want to address the martial/caster discrepancy we need to address the root problem that the current scope of caster classes means that they are able to achieve a much broader range of effects than martials.
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Jan 21, 2022 17:34
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Yeah. You could give Fighters "advantage/proficiency on all saves, advantage on all attacks, resistance to all damage" and... you'd have something pretty overpowered in combat, but you'd still not fix the problems people have about there being an interesting martial option.
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Jan 21, 2022 17:38
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Razakai posted:Yeah. You could give Fighters "advantage/proficiency on all saves, advantage on all attacks, resistance to all damage" and... you'd have something pretty overpowered in combat, but you'd still not fix the problems people have about there being an interesting martial option. That’s what I was thinking too. IMO, every class should have fun options both in combat and outside of combat. The Bard is a good example of this. Although even that class has some things a bit off, like valor bards not getting their armor, shield and weapon proficiencies until 3rd level.
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Jan 21, 2022 17:47
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Any time there's a discussion on what's wrong with fighters, I cannot avoid thinking the problem lies in the class fantasy. What should a fighter be? What's his flavor of heroism? Who are famous fictional fighters to use as an example? Achilles? Enkidu? Cu Chulainn? Lu Bu? Jeanne D'Arc?
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Jan 21, 2022 17:48
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Char posted:Any time there's a discussion on what's wrong with fighters, I cannot avoid thinking the problem lies in the class fantasy. What should a fighter be? What's his flavor of heroism? Who are famous fictional fighters to use as an example? Achilles? Enkidu? Cu Chulainn? Lu Bu? Jeanne D'Arc? Achilles, Jeanne D'arc and Lu Bu feel fightery to me. Cu Chulainn (with his warp spasms) and Enkidu (being literally a wild man) feel more Barbariany to me. Though I could see Jeanne D'arc more as a paladin pretty easily. In any case the distinction for me is that while Barbarians are powered mostly by their ferocity and Paladins by their faith/devotion: Fighters are powered by skill primarily. A Barbarian can be skilled, but he is mostly ferocious and unrelenting. A Paladin can be skilled, but it is through their oathsworn gift that they derive power. A fighter may have an oathsworn gift or be ferocious, but it is their study and mastery of arms primarily that is their strength and source of power. The tactical and martial implementation of their weapons to be in the right place in combat and dominate the opponent. Again these are all fuzzy and can have overlap, but for me that is the primary draw, the fighter is the martial master, the skilled fighter. Madmarker fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jan 21, 2022 |
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Jan 21, 2022 17:51
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Jeanne is more of a warlord imo. She was a standard bearer, tactician, and charismatic leader of men into battle, but there's not much evidence she was a frontline fighter.
Mr. Lobe fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Jan 21, 2022 |
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Jan 21, 2022 17:52
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Char posted:Any time there's a discussion on what's wrong with fighters, I cannot avoid thinking the problem lies in the class fantasy. What should a fighter be? What's his flavor of heroism? Who are famous fictional fighters to use as an example? Achilles? Enkidu? Cu Chulainn? Lu Bu? Jeanne D'Arc? D'Artagnan, Conan, Blade, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Samurai Jack, edit: Martin the Warrior from Redwall. Fafhrd. Plenty more out there. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Jan 21, 2022 |
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Jan 21, 2022 17:53
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I feel like there's no reason casters should have a casting stat tied to something that also gives them a strong out-of-combat advantage. Have a body stat that sort of meshes STR and CON, DEX if you think you still need it, and INT, WIS, CHA, but then a separate magic affinity stat. Now your wizard isn't automatically the most knowledgeable about the world just because he's a wizard. Your druid and cleric don't automatically have the keenest eyes or best insight. Your warlock isn't automatically a charmer. And now you have room for more Conan types who live off their cunning, dashing knights, worldly educated rogues, etc. Casters would still have some advantages by way of approaching problems with more flexibility, but they don't get the compounded advantage of always being the "smartest" in the room in whatever way you want to measure that, and presumably they lose a bit of combat effectiveness because they still want to dip Body.
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Jan 21, 2022 17:53
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Two of those were touched by the divine (Achilles and Jeanne D'Arc), and one of these two never shed blood but inspired morale on her troops wherever she went and won battles on this trait alone (the maid of Orleans, again). The other was a terrible leader, but defeated the posthumous called "God of War" in a duel (Lu Bu and Guan Yu, respectively). So, what's the fighter fantasy again? Char fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jan 21, 2022 |
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Jan 21, 2022 17:55
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The commitment some people have to never letting martials have fun never fails to amaze
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Jan 21, 2022 17:56
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Char posted:Any time there's a discussion on what's wrong with fighters, I cannot avoid thinking the problem lies in the class fantasy. What should a fighter be? What's his flavor of heroism? Who are famous fictional fighters to use as an example? Achilles? Enkidu? Cu Chulainn? Lu Bu? Jeanne D'Arc? If the Fighter is going to be on par with wizards at high level your gonna have to think more SSJ Trunks than Lu Bu  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGMtXqo1N9E
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Jan 21, 2022 18:00
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Froghammer posted:The commitment some people have to never letting martials have fun never fails to amaze Agreed, there are multiple "touched by divinity" subclasses—celestial sorcerer and warlock, zealot barb—why can't a fighter be supernaturally empowered by a god or something?
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Jan 21, 2022 18:00
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Char posted:Two of those were touched by the divine (Achilles and Jeanne D'Arc), and one of these two never shed blood but inspired morale on her troops wherever she went and won battles on this trait alone (the maid of Orleans, again). To me it's Beowulf. Swims across an ocean just because. Fights a monster with skin weapons can''t pierce, so he rips his arm off at the shoulder. Swims back home with 30 sets of armour. Dies duking it out with a dragon after (almost) everyone else ran away.
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Jan 21, 2022 18:03
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I don't think it should be possible to be level 20 without being in some way superhuman. You don't have to be divine or something, but you should be affecting reality in some way fundamentally unachievable by mortal men. At the very least fighters should be able to pull off that anime bullshit thing where they walk through a small army of men for in couple seconds and they all fall dead from precision lethal cuts in a flash, or strike with their hammer hard enough that they can sunder the earth.
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Jan 21, 2022 18:05
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Right, what makes a paladin a Paladin in this edition is a commitment to a cause, the oath and all that. No reason a fighter couldn't be blessed with superhuman strength or lent a holy boon of some kind.
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Jan 21, 2022 18:06
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:D'Artagnan, Conan, Blade, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Samurai Jack, Agreed. What about the Red Baron? Or Sami Hahya (the deadliest sniper in history, fought in WW2)? These are the basis of what a fighter is, and the best way I can describe the fantasy they represent is that they mastered their craft, which was combat, defined the physical limits of what a human can do, and led everyone around them, foes and allies both, to think they could do the impossible, break the unbreakable, row row fight the power. Redesign the fighter starting from this or let it go to greener pastures, because we already have monks, barbarians, rangers and paladins.
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Jan 21, 2022 18:09
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Mr. Lobe posted:I don't think it should be possible to be level 20 without being in some way superhuman. You don't have to be divine or something, but you should be affecting reality in some way fundamentally unachievable by mortal men. At the very least fighters should be able to pull off that anime bullshit thing where they walk through a small army of men for in couple seconds and they all fall dead from precision lethal cuts in a flash, or strike with their hammer hard enough that they can sunder the earth. Feats of super strength seem like an obvious niche to give fighters. They should be able to jump an extra 20 feet per level, like the incredible hulk. In order to keep up with everyone else's movement options. Or clap their sword on their shield to make a sonic boom AOE attack
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Jan 21, 2022 18:12
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change my name posted:Agreed, there are multiple "touched by divinity" subclasses—celestial sorcerer and warlock, zealot barb—why can't a fighter be supernaturally empowered by a god or something? For sure. I think that some of the issue here is that the WotC folks don't really know what archetypes to base Fighters on, so they limit themselves to fairly mundane examples. But leaning into the legendary heroes of folk myth seems like it would be a great idea.
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Jan 21, 2022 18:13
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Rutibex posted:Feats of super strength seem like an obvious niche to give fighters. They should be able to jump an extra 20 feet per level, like the incredible hulk. In order to keep up with everyone else's movement options. Or clap their sword on their shield to make a sonic boom AOE attack Don't those two sound more like a Barbarian thing?
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Jan 21, 2022 18:15
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Paladins, Barbarians, and Rangers are all just fighter subclasses with delusions of independence, change my mind
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Jan 21, 2022 18:16
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Except Conan who is technically a thief, barbarian is his race, Robert e Howard was weird about that stuff best not to ask
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Jan 21, 2022 18:17
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A level 18+ barbarian rolls more or less always a 20+ on his strength checks. edit - sorry, phoneposting, was meant to Ash Rose edit2 i read that wrong. it's the check only  my interpretation is way funnier
Char fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Jan 21, 2022 |
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Jan 21, 2022 18:18
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Char posted:Agreed. What about the Red Baron? Or Sami Hahya (the deadliest sniper in history, fought in WW2)? Fun fact: it's a fantasy game. Fighters don't have to have real world verisimilitude or obey the "physical limits of what a human could do" while wizards are allowed to control reality.
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Jan 21, 2022 18:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Paladins, Barbarians, and Rangers are all just fighter subclasses with delusions of independence, change my mind This used to be the case. At 9th level a fighter would either become a Lord with a keep or they would become a wandering fighter and get a sub class. Lawful became Paladins and gained spells, neutral became knights and gained a bunch of feudal rights and chaotic fighters became a kind of anti Paladin called an avenger. This seems like the obvious answer to fighters losing focus at higher levels, but people wanted to play first level paladins and they ruined it.
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Jan 21, 2022 18:31
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Ash Rose posted:Don't those two sound more like a Barbarian thing? Yea but I think there are too many classes. They should have 4 main classes, Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Magic-user then put all the other classes as subclasses of these main ones. Fighter feels boring because it lost so much it's subclasses.
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Jan 21, 2022 18:35
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