The reason why fighters will never have nice things.

[Red_Rob]

If a fighter were given whatever increases in power (horizontally and vertically) that you consider appropriate but the flavor text was very emphatic that it was "non-magical" and that they were "just that good", would that be acceptable?

Frank had a diatribe somewhere stating that even if the magic and non-magic characters have exactly the same power list with different flavour, the non-magic guy will have a nightmare trying to use any of his powers in any kind of restrictive situation because "that would be really hard" whilst the magic guys just says "its magic" and teleports or goes invisible or whatever.

Badass Normal is a level 1-5 character concept. The only answers to Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards are either Linear Wizards or Quadratic Warriors. Which means you either choose inbuilt transformational martial classes or mandatory prestige classes or something, or you go play E6 and like it. I think a lot more people would accept Charles Atlas Superpowers than some people here give credit to. We live in an age of video games and anime, people are no longer shocked by the sight of a man with a sword defeating an army.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Oh, and I don't consider "uses a sword" to be a gadgeteer, as then every class in D&D apart from the wizard is a gadgeteer. Gadgeteer means the class gets its powers mainly from the equipment it obtains. I had assumed we were looking toward giving Martial classes some decent high level abilities. Sure, these might require the use of a sword, but "The fighter throws a weapon with such power and precision he can make a full melee attack up to a range of 60'. The weapon returns to his hand at the end of the action" is not a gadgeteer power.

This is exactly the kind of stuff I'm talking about when I say that the DMF is not a high-level character.

That kind of shit, while cool, does NOT MAKE A HIGH LEVEL CHARACTER. It's a subset of one specific ability, namely being good at close-range combat. While it's enough to solve low-level adventures, at higher one it won't do a fucking thing towards helping you advance the crazier plots.

If a fighter were given whatever increases in power (horizontally and vertically) that you consider appropriate but the flavor text was very emphatic that it was "non-magical" and that they were "just that good", would that be acceptable?

Depends on what you mean. If you're doing it like One Piece where obviously impossible abilities still aren't magic because they don't run off of any identifiable phlebtonium, that does work.

However, that other stuff you mentioned is simple low-grade action movie bullshit. Namely, the hero can do improbable things (such as have a million bullets in a row miss him) but he can't do impossible things (such as survive being shot directly in the heart with a harpoon). That's still a problem, because at higher levels you explicitly need to do something that's impossible to advance the plot under your own power.

John McClane might be able to kill a thousand terrorists, but none of his abilities do a damn thing towards helping him with the 'travel to another dimension and kill the hell king' plot unless you offscreenedly buff John McClane, nerf the unassailability of the adventure, or he gets the keys to the plot handed to him.

If asking a disgruntled employee about the BBEG's fortress gives mechanically the same level of benefits as several divinations, then you're just being a jerk by forcing only what you think is cool.

You're still thinking low-level.

We're not fucking talking about boring castles in the mountains that any mook can find, we're talking about interdimensional acid castles impossibly hidden in the alleyway of the world's most evil metropolis and hasn't been found in decades by those it doesn't want to find it.

You can't just walk around and ask people how to get to the castle or the true name of the lich queen within like a small child would do, not without the DM nerfing the adventure. You need to research and cast a ritual to find it. Or concoct an epic disguise to make yourself look like her incubus husband. Or rip time and space a new one and march in. Or speak to her long-dead daughter in Nightmare Land. Whatever.

For how crappy it ended up being in practice, the 4E notion of Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies was a good one. Saying "You take a PP at Level 11" is tantamount to a giant neon sign proclaiming "YOUR FIGHTER IS NOT RELEVANT ANYMORE!".

4E never intended for characters to undergo a fundamental transformation in ability to affect the plot. They went out of their way to nerf anything that didn't fit in a low-budget swords and sandals ripoff.

[CCarter]

Has there ever been an RPG launched that was rejected by the players because they lacked the DMF archetype?

I'm not sure what DMF stands for, but from context if this is something like Dumb Motherfucking Fighter (i.e. with no magic powers) a couple of class-level games I can think of that didn't support a pure fighter archetype are Synnibarr and SenZar. Both were tremendously hated on at RPGnet. Synnibarr has other problems (flying grizzly bears that shoot lasers, overcumbersome mechanics), but SenZar is a reasonably solid system mostly hated on for the powergaming. While it did have a "Warrior" class, all characters have magical Power as an innate statistic and all classes receive at least half-maximum-rate progress at magic. Also, the rate at which you could cast spells was based on number of hand-to-hand attacks, so while a "Warrior" had poorer spells that a pure wizard they could actually cast the spells they did have in combat much faster than a wizard could.

[angelfromanotherpin]

The Persuader, a villain from DC comics, is an example of a high-level Dumbass Melee Fighter. He can use his atomic axe to cut through anything. I don't mean, like through Dragonforce and Excalibur. I mean he could cut through gravity and send you hurtling into space, or cut open space and step through to wherever he wanted, or chop off sunlight and take away Superboy's powers.

Hell, I'd actually like to see a prestige class for that guy.

[Sashi]

If The Persuader actually has the ability to do that with any edged weapon he's not "mundane", and if the power comes from his axe, he's just a pair of legs for the axe and you'd be better off giving it to Superman.

[ScottS]

Are "Aladdin"-style stories something you want to support at high level, and if so would you also consider him a gadgeteer (he wins the game via wish magic, but arguably the point of the story is that even regular guys that are crafty enough should be able to defeat wizards and such)?

[Sir Neil]

Who said fighters never use ranged weapons?

DMF: Dumbass Melee Fighter. There are allegedly real people who think that one melee weapon is all they need to contribute from 1-20. It makes me sad. -->

[CatharzGodfoot]

...like having a collection of intelligent darts that grant bonuses to knowledge skill checks (aka "The Sharpest Blades in the Drawer")...

Tome magic items can be pretty sweet that way. You could just have easily made it a set of orbs containing the souls of various powerful creatures, which open up more and more to the character as she gets more powerful. Basically orbs of dragonkind without as much stupid.

Are "Aladdin"-style stories something you want to support at high level, and if so would you also consider him a gadgeteer (he wins the game via wish magic, but arguably the point of the story is that even regular guys that are crafty enough should be able to defeat wizards and such)?

Aladdin (movie version) wins by having powerful cohorts. The carpet is a cohort, the monkey is a cohort, and the genie is a cohort too.

[Username17]

The Tome Barbarian K wrote, like it or not, was created to fill a genuine niche - that of the player who does not understand the setting's cosmology and just wants to "freeform" and kill monsters they are pointed at. In short, players like the DM's girlfriend or your little brother actually do want to play and they do want to kill monsters, but they haven't actually spent enough time with the game, or even any game to really know what characters can do to advance the plot.

In short, even in an ideal world with a perfect game, you actually do want a spot for a character who is basically "along for the ride" until it is time to kill stuff, because some of the players are twelve or otherwise new and are actually along for the ride until it is time to kill stuff.

I don't especially like it, but there it is. There is a real segment of the demographics who not only shouldn't be trusted with plot influencing power, but actually don't really want any. And while I am certainly not saying that every sword-wielding character should fit into that bracket, I am saying that there is a place for it. Of the Tome Warrior classes I am most proud of (Barbarian, Fighter, Knight, Monk), only one of them fits that description. The Fighter becomes a gadgeteer able to craft mighty plane cleaving swords that can transport the party to the Abyss, the Monk learns transplanar martial arts that allow him to hurl his friends into the Abyss, and the Knight is forced to mandatorily prestige class out to Angel Knight or Slaad Knight or something and can presumably get to the Abyss that way. Really, only the high level Barbarian is forced to be along for the ride while one of his teammates figures out how to advance the plot once the plot goes to The Abyss.

Every character without exception needs to be able to contribute to the combat minigame. And every character needs to be able to talk during the "roleplaying" sections. But when it comes time to advance the plot to get to next zone, not every character needs to be able to raise their hand. Just, at least one character needs to do it. And it would be fair if the character who was doing it rotated around the table somewhat. But it doesn't ever need to fall on your 12 year old younger brother Trevor, and honestly there is a very real chance that things would be better if it did not.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Point.

So how should a character be constructed? Should they just get a big 'easy mode' flag? Because if you're building classes like spellcasters from 3E or any 4E class they're complicated enough that if someone can get through that they might as well get some amount of plot-affecting power.

I personally think that there should be a generic 'Hero' or whatever class. They have a hodgepodge of thematically unrelated powers (shooting elemental lasers, swinging an axe hardcore, riddling enemies with arrows), making it harder to with the Hero class to construct a Blaster Guy or a Melee Guy than with one of the other classes (Paladin, Wizard, etc.) but since they don't get non-combat powers if you want to be an axe-only guy you can do so.

They're sort of like a cut-rate gish in other words, except that they can avoid having magical flavor for their classes if they want to. Their combat powers definitely keep up and they will even have more of them, but they're clearly playing the game on 'easy mode'.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Lago, if you give the barbarian player elemental lasers, she'll use nothing but elemental lasers. It won't matter that you've given her the option of axing or archery.

[souran]

I have an idea,

MAYBE THE WIZARD SHOULDN'T HAVE THE ABILITY TO DO EVERYTHING

Seriously, the problem is equally with the god damn wizard as it is with the fighter.

The wizard simply SHOULDN'T be able to break the game at level 10 because the authors are tired of writting level appropriate spells.

The wizard shouldn't be able to be able to completly replace other classes with magic.

The wizard shouldn't be able to use magic to break the economy

The wizard shouldn't be able to to use magic to create objects or equipment he couldn't normally afford.

Magic shouldn't be so good that it can solve most "classic" fantasy plots ever.

So divinations + teleport ganking villians shouldn't be possible, building castles instantly in other planes shouldn't be possible, no chain binding, no summoning monsters better than other players, no uber illusions.

All this shit is bad for the game and sucks anyway. Instead of trying to figure out someway of making fighers into to "jesus" level epic characters perhaps the games wizards should be reduced to being more like wizards from literature/movies/anime where they are really NEVER as powerful as D&D wizards are.

Magic in storytelling usually has very specific rules, and it ALWAYS has limitations. Jack Vances wizards were not just limited to D&D's "style" of magic, but they were also limited in what the magic could actually do.

Gandalf is a really powerful wizard, an anglic being and his magic is quite limited.

Rand Al'Thor figured out how to teleport and it was mind blowing to even the forsaken.

From Earthsea, to Harry potter or from dragonball to the last airbender even in marvel comics a "magical" has magic rules and constraints.
Magic requires this when used in storytelling otherwise you end up with the problem of D&D where it does whatever.

So instead of "whats wrong with the figher" maybe we should move onto "why do we let the wizard do EVERYTHING?"

[Lago PARANOIA]

Seriously, the problem is equally with the god damn wizard as it is with the fighter.

Okay, we fixed the wizard. The wizard is no longer a 'do anything' class. Wizards are now a blasting/summoning class. Warlocks are the illusion/enchantment class. Artificers are the conjuration/transmutation class. Necromancers are the necromancy/divination class. All four classes have their own unique strengths and weaknesses and you'll be situationally glad or mad to have any of them.

Stuff like this misses the goddamn point why the fighter is a big bag of fail. Yes, the fighter is competing against Mary Sue classes like the Wizard. But even if they weren't, they're STILL being compared to the bard and the beguiler and the warblade and they're coming up way short. And I don't mean in stupid combat number crunching, which can be easily fixed, I'm talking about the ability to affect the plot outside of combat.


Now Frank's point about there needing to be an 'easy mode' class is a good one and I think worth discussing. But it's worth discussing only in the context of people who are excited about the game but are utter noobs. The fighter is condemned to suckage not because there's something wrong with his functioning friends, but because the target audience needs a less effective character.

[8headeddragon]

I have an idea,

MAYBE THE WIZARD SHOULDN'T HAVE THE ABILITY TO DO EVERYTHING

There isn't too much disagreement there. Most of the Tome and Tome style spellcaster classes written up tend to be structured towards specialization.

Gandalf is a really powerful wizard, an anglic being and his magic is quite limited.

Bard. Gandalf's a bard.

On the matter of both casters and fighters, an excellent point was brought up a little ways back, which is the way upper level play turns into Rocket Tag when everyone gets a bit more dangerous. The bar fight of low level play where one needs staying power to survive being punched long enough to punch out the other guy out transforms to the quick draw duel of upper level play where the guy who shoots the other guy first wins. It is widely accepted that Epic level play simply doesn't work but could the problem be with high level play? I see the dissent here over higher levels in 4e where the "padded sumo" is disliked and my own experiences with upper (and Epic) levels in 3e are nothing this board isn't familiar with already. Best example, in a game I played in once, at 18th level the Big Bad started doing some positively debilitating things to our party... until the DM realized that he made a mistake with initiative and one of our guys was to go first. The battle was then over in the first turn of the first round.

Maybe we're breaking it down a bit more than originally intended, but nobody really agrees on what upper level play is supposed to look like either, do they?

[souran]

Okay, we fixed the wizard. The wizard is no longer a 'do anything' class. Wizards are now a blasting/summoning class. Warlocks are the illusion/enchantment class. Artificers are the conjuration/transmutation class. Necromancers are the necromancy/divination class. All four classes have their own unique strengths and weaknesses and you'll be situationally glad or mad to have any of them.

NO you didn't fix a thing. The problem isn't that wizards have TOO MANY game breaking options, its that they have game breaking options at all.

Dividing up the game breaking options to four or five classes doesn't fix anything.

Stuff like this misses the goddamn point why the fighter is a big bag of fail. Yes, the fighter is competing against Mary Sue classes like the Wizard. But even if they weren't, they're STILL being compared to the bard and the beguiler and the warblade and they're coming up way short. And I don't mean in stupid combat number crunching, which can be easily fixed, I'm talking about the ability to affect the plot outside of combat.

The problem here is that rpgs are basically little more than stupid combat number crunching simulators.

There are just NOT that many NON COMBAT ways to effect plot anyway.

Before you try "really fixing" the fighter first you need to build a game where the skill system actually has as much depth as the combat system.

Basically if you are not fighting you are either "exploring" or "interacting" with something. What bards and duskblades have are spells that can trivialize the non combat parts of the game. That is exactly the crap that needs to be gone from the game.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Gandalf is a really powerful wizard, an anglic being and his magic is quite limited.

Bard. Gandalf's a bard.

I'd say he's a cleric.

A low-mid level Aasimar cleric.

Okay, we fixed the wizard. The wizard is no longer a 'do anything' class. Wizards are now a blasting/summoning class. Warlocks are the illusion/enchantment class. Artificers are the conjuration/transmutation class. Necromancers are the necromancy/divination class. All four classes have their own unique strengths and weaknesses and you'll be situationally glad or mad to have any of them.

NO you didn't fix a thing. The problem isn't that wizards have TOO MANY game breaking options, its that they have game breaking options at all.

Dividing up the game breaking options to four or five classes doesn't fix anything.

You could remove the game-breaking effects, and also divide up what the wizard does.

I'm assuming that's what Lago means.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Depends on what you mean by gamebreaking, Darth Rabbitt.

If you mean gamebreaking as in Simacrulum or Wish Loops, then yes, get rid of that.

If you mean gamebreaking by teleportation or raising the dead or constructing interdimensional mansions in a few seconds, then no. That's not gamebreaking, that's just you being unable to get a handle around how much your precious widdle DMF sucks eggs after a certain point and refusing to realize that if you want to play high level you need that stuff to get into the gate.

Now I agree that one or two classes shouldn't automatically get all of the keys to plot advancement. That is a problem with the 3E wizard (and cleric and druid and etc.). But the idea that no one should get the keys to plot advancement? Get the fuck outta here.

Before you try "really fixing" the fighter first you need to build a game where the skill system actually has as much depth as the combat system.

Look, unless you want to implement Charles Atlas Superpowers, which are really no different from spells, skills become generally pointless after a certain point in the game. That's intentional. It's a fucking insult that you can get into the Nightmare King's castle just by having a few ranks in Jump, Stealth, and Open Lock.

[Zinegata]

Regarding Wizards...

At low levels, the "answer" to most problems is to simply stab things to death. An Orc Chieftain is attacking you? Stab him. A Kobold Chieftain is attacking you? Stab him too.

The problem is, at high levels monsters start getting very good defenses. Some become immune to physical damage. Others have so much HP that hacking away at them is pointless.

That's where the Wizard comes in. A Wizard is versatile. He has stuff that can bypass physical immunity. He has stuff that can bypass hitpoints. He is broken not because spells are powerful. He is broken because he can cast a wide variety of spells - each of which is broken when confronted with a particular situation.

That's why specialized Wizards are actually gimped. Take for example, a Fire Mage. What if the Fire Mage encounters an enemy that is immune to Fire? In that case, he's totally taken out of the fight - the same way a Fighter is taken out of the fight if he's fighting a physical-immune monster.

So to me, the answer isn't over-specialization. Because it just results in specialized Wizards who just twiddle their thumbs when they meet an X-immune monster. Instead, you either:

* Make everyone more versatile. OR.
* Give everyone ways to bypass immunities or virtual immunities.

[8headeddragon]

Gandalf is a really powerful wizard, an anglic being and his magic is quite limited.

Bard. Gandalf's a bard.

I'd say he's a cleric.

A low-mid level Aasimar cleric.

The old joke brought up often in DM of the Rings discussion was that Gandalf wasn't actually a wizard but a bard due to it being a D&D game in which he didn't have all the horrible insta-win spells, some ability to melee, a focus on small enchantments, and no spellbook.

[Username17]

I really wish that I had the power to punch people through the internet when they were being retarded. Then, every time someone complained about high level characters being able to "break the economy" I could punch them right in the mouth.

If you can provide goods and services at some rate per day, that's not breaking the economy. That's acting in the economy. That's not even remotely the same thing. The economy is growing all the time. People make stuff and trade their surplusses around. That's what an economy is. If you make one more thing today, and another thing tomorrow, and so on for a long time, that is not breaking anything. That is how an economy is supposed to work!

Yes, conjurers and artificers and necromancers should be producing things that have lasting economic value. That isn't breaking anything. In fact, the fact that lots of other people are not doing that is fucking pathetic. You know what actually breaks an economy? This:

The moment someone busts out actual medium of exchange that is in excess of the value of all locally available goods and services, the economy in fact breaks. You've issued in a monetarist currency crisis with the associated hyper inflation and social upheaval.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

Who is Frank trying to intimidate again? Because I feel as though he just went on a completely unrelated tangent here.

[8headeddragon]

Yes, conjurers and artificers and necromancers should be producing things that have lasting economic value. That isn't breaking anything.

I completely agree, Frank. Now that said, what should the Barbarian you just described be doing to interact with the economy?

[Username17]

Yes, conjurers and artificers and necromancers should be producing things that have lasting economic value. That isn't breaking anything.

I completely agree, Frank. Now that said, what should the Barbarian you just described be doing to interact with the economy?

Well, here's the thing about our hypothetical Trevor: he is twelve. He probably thinks "Demand" means "something I want". He doesn't even want to invest in concentrated textile manufacturing capital so that the sheep on his land provide greater value when the products go to market. He wants to have a pile of gold, that he sits on, that gets bigger and bigger when he stabs dragons in the face and does not particularly go down.

In short, what he wants is to completely and utterly drop out of the economy as rapidly as possible. He wants his character to be "living off the land" or some shit so that he doesn't have to pay for food or supplies. While he does in fact want his character to eventually sit on a throne surrounded by treasures and tigers and near naked women, and indeed, there is totally precedent for that:

... he does not want to pay for any of that or keep track of how much he could sell it for or how much it costs per month to keep the tigers fed. He wants that shit to happen and get taken care of.

In short, as Trevor's character continues to rise in power, the abilities he gets should allow him to live at a higher and higher level of apparent luxury without actually doing any accounting or micromanagement himself. At low level this can be living off the land, at high level this can be a grand vizier that takes care of all the levies and payments and shit. But at all points this should require as close to zero actual effort or accounting from Trevor as possible.

Meanwhile, the Knight character really can have lands and products and capital investments and shit to worry about, because he is a sword character that is being played by someone who is not twelve.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

I still don't get how we went from "Fighters can't have nice things" to "The Wish Economy."

That being said, that's totally not analogous to what conjurers or necromancers do. A conjurer can craft stuff without having to leave his house or risk his life. A Barbarian needs to go out and kill stuff. And that assumes something exists in the general locality that has a ton of wealth in the first place.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Depends on what you mean by gamebreaking, Darth Rabbitt.

If you mean gamebreaking as in Simacrulum or Wish Loops, then yes, get rid of that.

Yeah, that is what I meant.

Bard. Gandalf's a bard.

I'd say he's a cleric.

A low-mid level Aasimar cleric.

The old joke brought up often in DM of the Rings discussion was that Gandalf wasn't actually a wizard but a bard due to it being a D&D game in which he didn't have all the horrible insta-win spells, some ability to melee, a focus on small enchantments, and no spellbook.

Oh, I feel stupid now.