3e: Was there a consumer demand for caster dominance?

[Libertad]

Over on another board, I brought up the idea that the caster-noncaster imbalance in 3rd Edition had to do with preconceived fantasy tropes of mages in our popular culture. I argued that the melee/skill users were meant to represent "everymen heroes," or people at a more down-to-earth power level.

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=619.0

We had a very spirited conversation. Over time I began to see a different view: the possibility that Clerics, Druids, and Wizards are more powerful because of consumer demand and the belief that the "suck now, rock later" attempt at balancing low-high levels worked.

Back when I still posted on Wizards, I remember reading the arguments of posters who had the idea that spellcasters are supposed to be better because they have MAGIC. Magic, as they view it, should go beyond the limits of others, do things that people without magic can't do. They see the Tome of Battle as overpowered despite the fact that most manuevers don't have as many Area of Effects, Save or Dies, ranged attacks, or non-combat utility abilities. Why? Because it made warriors like casters!

There is also a desire to make things "realistic" while leaving casters untouched. Examples: see the elfwood artists' shield AC house rule in the post in the link. Also, you can't trip creatures two or more size categories larger than you in Pathfinder.

I believe that several of these factors contributed to an environment where many gamers actively wanted spellcasters to be the dominant power force in Dungeons and Dragons.

Thoughts?

[Josh_Kablack]

Thoughts?

16 pages of flaming about DMFs, VAHs, verisimilitude, and other jargon to follow.

Lemme start it off by saying that I think if you asked them, most D&D players would tell you that they want all classes to be relatively balanced against each other, and they would probably tell you that they want magic to feel magical and speshul. Of course, there demands are outright contradictory and impossible to reconcile - but 3e did an admirable job of obfuscating that so that people could think both were true.

[Gx1080]

Reading the source material, in most Medieval Fantasy stories the martial classes are bouned by the "mundande" restrictions (in some cases up to wuxia levels, but that's it) while casters can do a lot more things.

A problem with that is that is all fine and good when the martial protagonists have plot armor and authorial fiat to rely on, but that's TERRIBLE on a TTRPG when there's the expectation that everybody should pull around the same weight.

That's the reasonable angle. The cynical angle says that is just "Revenge of the Nerds: Nerdy Wizards should be better than Jock Fighters!" aka a powertrip.

EDIT: Oh yeah, is about time for the bi-monthly 15+ page threadnought of fighters vs. wizards.

[Juton]

I always thought the design team broke into smaller teams, but each team thought that being a wizard was too hard and being a fighter was too easy so they each made changes to address that. Then they added all those nerfs and buffs together and you get what we have now. Also they only ran one test game above level 10, so that should tell you how rigorously high levels where tested.

[ishy]

Also, you can't trip creatures two or more size categories larger than you in Pathfinder.

That is also true in dnd though.

And no I don't think most people wanted casters to dominate everything. Most want casters to do special things and non-casters to do other special things.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Actually, I think that casters being better than non-casters is very well-reflected in source material, even in source material that ostensibly has nothing to do with D&D such as Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Hell, as much as we talk about the whole idea of martial characters pulling their weight being Eastern and 'weeaboo', the fact of the matter is that even in most fantastical anime they embrace the paradigm of explicit phlebtonium users > non-explicit phlebtonium users pretty hard. Even so-called non-caster fapping anime like One Piece and Fist of the North Star have pretty much given in and said that there is an elite and exclusive power source available that will make you way better than people who don't have it but will also completely derail any previous thematic connections you had.

D&D is really heading into uncharted waters by designing a game where A) casters are just as good as non-casters and B) where all phlebtonium sources are separate but equal. The massive fail of 4E D&D at doing so in a satisfying way shows just how hard it is. Source media sure isn't providing any fucking help.

[Libertad]

Then what was up with the vocal minority of posters saying "but of course casters are supposed to be better! Ever heard of a high-level Ranger altering reality and fighting gods?"

Heck, some people even go so far as to nerf non-caster in the name of "realism" without doing anything to bring down the levels of spellcasters.

I know I said it in the link, but it bears repeating: there was a dude on Elfwood (fantasy art site) who houseruled in his games that Shield Bonuses to AC didn't apply against creatures one size larger. Why? Because he didn't like the idea of the party fighter blocking blows from trolls and giants! Now I don't know all the things he does in his home campaign, but I wondered if he did anything equivalent to mages who can blind opponents and erect Walls of Force.

[Gx1080]

@Libertad

Loyalty to the source material + good old powertrip. "Realism" is usually one of the keywords that people use when they want to promote their powertrips, but can't directly say it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Because:

A.) Source material embraces casters > non-casters pretty damn hard. Let's face it, Lord of the Rings or Slayers or Naruto or Avatar: The Last Airbender would just not feel or even be the same stories if casters didn't have a strangehold on the power level and plot. If you view Dragonlance as the end-all, be-all of fantasy then while you are prepared to accept D&D wizards as-is (with perhaps a level cap), the idea of non-casters actually being able to keep up with casters is a frightening and alien experience. Record of Lodoss War would not be Record of Lodoss War if Parn was able to kick ass without ascending to paladin.

B.) People hate giving up power. While nerfs are more hated than sideways buffs, there will always be a contingent of players who whine when they're using the top-tier option and other people get buffed to compensate. 4E D&D went with the 'keep non-casters the same, nerf casters' option which didn't just alienate selfish fanboys but also people who were sympathetic to the idea of non-caster equality but didn't want to have to give up their own.

C.) People just hate and fear change whether or not it's positive. There weren't many of them, but I distinctly remember people whining about there not being Thieves anymore and the idea that dwarves could become wizards as good as elves--or even at all. Not because they weren't positive positives for gameplay and storytelling, but because it was a departure from the status quo.

[Juton]

I really hate the whole casters are supposed to be innately more powerful than non-casters. You can easily set them on par, like in Skyrim. Or you can do what older versions of D&D did, which is load them up with a bunch of restrictions, so a good team will require both casters and non-casters to function.

The question in my head is, did the team intentionally set out to make casters that much more powerful or where they just careless. Because either explanation works.

[Lago PARANOIA]

See the discussion on associated and dissociated mechanics. A lot of people have trouble accepting that something supernatural can happen 'just because' or if it's rooted in something that's ostensibly achievable in the real world. People accept weird gestures and mind powers being used to create supernatural effects because there's no real world analog, but when you source your supernatural effects as coming from push-ups and meditation people flip out because push-ups in the real world don't let you fly.

So to avoid people derping out about this writers just don't push the envelope at all. Writers will graft magic onto someone else's body or allow them to pick up magic, but not do supernatural things with non-magic. But for all of this hand-wringing in the end it remains that casters > non-casters.

So in order to prevent caster/non-caster imbalance, you can do one of two things:

1.) Limit the power level of the game. While James Bond is totally non-magical and Harry Potter has almost nothing but magic, there's a range of play in which James Bond is not only equal to but is BETTER than Harry Potter. You can't scale the effects too much because James Bond is still not allowed to do explicitly impossible things but before that point possible things can still match the output of impossible things.

2.) Get the audience to accept noncasters doing impossible things 'just because'. Of course any phlebtonium pretty much boils down to this, but noncasters have the problem that the degree of separation between what they do to achieve supernatural effects and what's possible in reality is a lot smaller so it offends peoples' WSoD a lot more easily.

I remember seeing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in theaters when it first came out. And the minute the actors started flying people busted out laughing. My old man went from enjoying to hating the movie at that very instant even though he loves action movies and liked Harry Potter. That's what you're up against when you want to give non-casters superpowers.


Because of that, is there any mystery as to why most writers, including the 4E D&D staff, decided just to punt and go with A?

[Winnah]

I get the idea that some people require, for lack of a better term, physics to be meaningful within the narrative of the campaign world. Consistency for realism based rules and exceptions is difficult to maintain for several reasons. Not least because characters that have to abide by the constraints of realism also have to coexist with fantastic characters.

Now certain people are prepared to accept exceptions to realism in the name of gameplay. Noone questions the fact that a massive creature like a giant can fight effectively, let alone stand, despite it's frame being unsuited to support it's mass. Realism is conveniently ignored here because a fantasy game requires fantastic creatures. A character in a fantasy world should be, or become, similarly fantastic.

For a spellcaster, this is easy. For a non-caster, it is more challenging, especially when players expectations of a non-caster are also non-fantasy. I'm glad noone has used the word mundane yet, because a protagonist in this sort of game should be anything but.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The WSoD issue for non-casters is bullshit but very real. The fact that a Gelatinous Cube or a Storm Giant shouldn't exist at all doesn't bother people but the idea of a fighter surviving a jump off of a 800-foot tall cliff and walking soon afterwards does. But it's reinforced by source material and the game itself.

The thing is, because it is bullshit and arbitrary it can be changed in the minds of the audience by hammering away at it hard enough. Most of the people who complain about attempts to 'weeaboo'ize noncasters are older grognards. So it's not impossible to have people accept fighters being able to teleport with a well-executed sword slash or fly by doing infinite double jumps.

The question then becomes: are you willing to endure the drop in sales and grognard hatred in order to pursue the long-term viability of the hobby, which may not happen for a point well after you led the charge into the breach? For most people who aren't marketing to a niche audience I'm guessing 'no'.

[Gx1080]

We aren't "most people" though.

[virgil]

I do wonder how much of it is Western culture. Crouching Tiger is referenced, and Bollywood films are known for making their action stars over the top while maintaining them as not slapstick comedy.

It's a matter of whether Western culture will continue to adopt those other views more and more, marginalizing the realism-grognard more and more.

[Username17]

Thoughts?

16 pages of flaming about DMFs, VAHs, verisimilitude, and other jargon to follow.

Lemme start it off by saying that I think if you asked them, most D&D players would tell you that they want all classes to be relatively balanced against each other, and they would probably tell you that they want magic to feel magical and speshul. Of course, there demands are outright contradictory and impossible to reconcile - but 3e did an admirable job of obfuscating that so that people could think both were true.

Boom. This exactly.

The fanbase wants things which are bot compatible. They want balanced classes, but they want wizards to be able to overcome challenges that are outright impossible for non-magical types.

Most damning of all is the basic Elennsar logic on display. What people want is generic fantasy literature. They want wizards to be objectively more powerful than warriors and they want the warriors to win anyway by "overcoming the odds". That's really what people want, even though that is one of the things that most demonstrably cannot be given by a game system.

-Username17

[FatR]

I do wonder how much of it is Western culture. Crouching Tiger is referenced, and Bollywood films are known for making their action stars over the top while maintaining them as not slapstick comedy.

It's a matter of whether Western culture will continue to adopt those other views more and more, marginalizing the realism-grognard more and more.

I believe that the improvement of SFX will eventually make this true, by increasing popularity of fantastically-powerful guys. This is already largely the case with videogames - these days it is "relatively realistic" beat-em-ups that go against the trend.

That said, I think that "use some form of explicit pleubotinum or GTFO" is a more reasonable approach than "get superpowers just from martial excellency". Reasons are:

1)It already is relatively entrenched in mainstream fantasy. For example, in Wheel of Time every single core character had superpowers by the time my boredom got better of me, even if not all of them were able to shoot lightning bolts out of their asses. You can try to rally fans of WoT and numerous other huge-ass fantasy sagas behind the banner "you must be this tall to be the main character".

2)Less struggling against grognardism, better maintenance of WSOD. While I think it is possible to successfully push "mystical martial arts give you powers" angle, I think the keyword here must be "mystical", not "martial arts".

3)Let's face it, dumb melee fighter will remain dumb even if it can cleave a mountain in half, because "stabbing things" is just too thematically narrow compared to what even thematially restricted caster versions can be envisioned to do. You need to have a foundation behind your power that will allow you to branch into things other than stabbing.

[Dominicius]

In my perfect game the difference between a wizard and a warrior is momentum. A wizard will become more and more powerful as the battle progresses, unlocking new spells and powers but is extremely vulnerable during the start.

A warrior on the other hand has all his options available to him from the start and can just flat out kill a wizard before he gets the chance to power up. This way a wizard gets to keep all the things that make him special but would need to rely on mundanes to protect himself before he is ready to lay down the smack.

[Zinegata]

The difference between casters and melee classes doesn't even have to be about momentum. As long as each of them has their own equally useful schtick, then they can co-exist.

The problem is that casters have such a wide suite of powerful tools that they can even beat the crap out of meleers at their own game.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The problem is that casters have such a wide suite of powerful tools that they can even beat the crap out of meleers at their own game.

I notice that you used the term melee-r rather than non-caster. Was this just a bad turn of phrase for non-caster or did you mean 'character that primarily fights in melee'?

If it's the latter then no shit melee people won't stand up and will never be able to stand up. Fighting, let alone melee fighting, is an increasingly narrow and weaksauce way to advance the plot as time goes on.

The thing is though that when people talk about fixes to the Fighter and the Ranger all of the fixes end up pumping up the - invariably melee - fighting portion of the class. Which while better than the status quo (being inferior at melee fighting in addition to other problems) still leaves them sucking the cocks of casters when the combat music isn't playing.

The question you really should be asking yourself is:

How do we make non-casters more competitive without increasing their fighting ability?

Because people have been focusing on how to make non-casters better at fighting in short-range small-squad engagements for well over a decade. And frankly it's not a very hard nor interesting question to answer. The million dollar question is how to make non-casters more competitive outside the narrow ranges of 'I hit it with my SWORD!'

[virgil]

I know one frustrating thing to hear about in comics. There have been a number of characters with purely martial power sources, but have since been retconned to be metahumans, essentially taking their training away.

Most notable example off the top of my head, Black Condor. A Mogli analogue that could fly because he was raised by condors, got changed to meteor radiation when adopted to DC comics. Green Arrow is getting hints that he's actually a metahuman. Wonder Woman's steel door strength tearing, super breath, telepathy, & 160wpm typing powers (which could be negated when tied up by a man) used to be pure training before she became a godly endowed clay statue.

[Zinegata]

The problem is that casters have such a wide suite of powerful tools that they can even beat the crap out of meleers at their own game.

I notice that you used the term melee-r rather than non-caster. Was this just a bad turn of phrase for non-caster or did you mean 'character that primarily fights in melee'?

Nope, I'm referring specifically to meleers (somebody who fights primarily in melee). And yes, I'm well aware that it's a very focused definition.

Because back in 3.X you had classes who were focused on meleeing (i.e. Barbarian, who's primarily a melee fighter since Berserk gives Str bonuses used mainly in melee), and yet these classes were STILL beaten in melee by say, a Cleric that decides to get Divine Power, Righteous Might, and a couple of other spell buffs. And that's before they deploy the non-melee stuff like Harm, Flame Strike, etc.

Or take the more classic case of the Cleric Archer. Again, you have a caster doing better at archerying than martial classes supposed to specialize in it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I know one frustrating thing to hear about in comics. There have been a number of characters with purely martial power sources, but have since been retconned to be metahumans, essentially taking their training away.

Gee, it's almost like there was something happening to the core constituency of comic book readers that caused these trends.

[Gx1080]

Like what, comic book writers getting retarded?

(Note that I hold Marvel and DC on deep compemt because they thinjk that grimderp from the 80's + Lara Croft copies from the 90's make comics awesome)

[Swordslinger]

The question in my head is, did the team intentionally set out to make casters that much more powerful or where they just careless. Because either explanation works.

I'd say careless. 3E is actually well balanced within the narrow level range where they playtested and starts to break down as you get to spells that they just copy/pasted from 2E that were never tested in actual play.