Martial/Caster Disparity Bingo Card

[Koumei]

Yeah, often the most complex things outside of elemental weaknesses and "the one core mechanic for this"* seem to be "this enemy is kind of high up so only ranged attacks work" (even in 7R that's the wild and crazy thing that makes some foes completely broken: Cloud mostly can't reach them without spells, and only a few of Tifa's moves hit. Swap to Barret and go to town.) or front-row-back-row.

*elemental spells affecting the strength of future ones on the field like... Chrono Cross? The Brave/Default system like Defaultly Brave. In-battle costume changing in FF: Charlies' Angels. Turn manipulation in the later Atelier Iris/Mana Khemia games (similarly, the staggering and cancelling system of Grandia). The "it's almost a fighting game" mechanics of Cross Edge and also the RPG it mostly drew upon for its battle system but that didn't have Darkstalkers characters so we'll never remember its name.

[Iduno]

"low magic campaigns are better anyway"

...Which is why we bought *this* elf wizard game.

[merc1138]

"low magic campaigns are better anyway"

...Which is why we bought *this* elf wizard game.

Hey, I'm not saying I agreed with any of it. Just things I've heard.

[gatorized]

can somebody explain the monopoly guy (I assume it has something to do with magic items and wealth by level) and the photo of houses?

[Foxwarrior]

I suppose the monopoly guy with the empty pockets is referring to how in order to use magic devices you have to buy them, where the caster gets lots of the same magic for free.

And the photo of houses is perhaps suggesting that there are a lot of houses in this world, probably many of which have tables in them.

[erik]

And the photo of houses is perhaps suggesting that there are a lot of houses in this world, probably many of which have tables in them.

House Rules.

[MGuy]

Monopoly man read to me more as Use Magic Device being the poor man's way of doing magic given that the top row seems to be concerned with how people view magic usage.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

That isn't just any monopoly man. It's one that appears on the pay poor tax card.

[Dogbert]

Thing is, the only reason most people playing dnd do so is the sloth of not leaving their comfort zone. Their sloth is stronger than their hatred of dnd... because they DO hate it and everything it stands for, including, but not limited to:

1) Agency (because NO, they don't hate the "haves vs have nots" failed paradigm, they just hate the existence of PC haves whatsoever).
2) High fantasy (they want Sword and Sorcery, make no mistake here).
3) Money/loot as a separate character advancement track (or rather, alternate possibilities for advancement).
4) Murderhobos as a mission and vision of the game mechanics.
5) Rules that take more abstraction than "roll a single die."
6) Math.
7) Gaming as a GAME (as opposed one-sided novel writing).

All that people would be much better served playing Dungeon World or Torchbearer... and make no mistake, they DO know of said games' existence (they were loud enough back in the day, even youtubers probably have at least heard of them). The comfort zone is just stronger than the desire of playing something that would actually fulfill them.

[gatorized]

oh also what is that eye symbol

[erik]

oh also what is that eye symbol

With the "Whoosh"?

It's missing the point (I dunno if that is actually an eye and not a chakram or something). Wherein the point, I think, was that Path of War was an attempt to correct some martial/caster disparity.

[Athaleon]

Believe it or not, I'm the one who threw together this bingo card about 10 years ago, to snark extra hard in heated debates on the Paizo forums. To answer some of the questions that I'm sure have kept people awake at night this past decade:

- The Monopoly Man is penniless because magic items for UMD'ing are prohibitively expensive, outside of consumable items for low-level spells. I didn't know the image was from the Pay Poor Tax card (I always hated Monopoly so I avoided playing it), I just thought a cartoon rich guy with his pockets turned out because he'd gone broke was the perfect image for that square.

- The photo of houses is a photo of a gated community, poking fun of the argument that "[thing] is not a problem because no one I know has ever encountered it." I was a student at the time and threw this thing together in MS Paint, hence the poor quality.

- The eye symbol is the logo of Dreamscarred Press, the publishers of Path of War, literally missing The Point. I mostly like Path of War, and to be honest, I think I was running out of ideas to fill squares by that point. It was meant to argue that you shouldn't solve Martial/Caster Disparity by just turning martials into pseudo-casters, but in hindsight it's not a bad approach if you're only able to add content and not rewrite the whole underlying system. D&D is already a game of fantasy-themed superheroes once you're past the low levels, so why not let Fighters have unexplained anime powers?

[Kaelik]

I just don't think it's possible to make fighters interesting without making them pseudo casters.

I've seen enough iron blade or whatever games that try to make flanking interesting and tactical and they all fail to make something half as interesting your average druid.

Martials need to be making choices about which ability to use or they are just going to be boring.

[deaddmwalking]

It's always struck me as fallacious that people will argue that Wizards get better at swording because they spend time walking around with fighters, but fighters don't pick up minor magic by being involved in epic spell-lobber on arch-mage battles. I do get that our society things that learning plumbing is easier than learning calculus, but I think a hard divide in 'you get no spells' and 'you get all the spells' with no in-between is damaging. Likewise, choosing classes that don't get a +1 Spell Casting level that might get you into that space where you have a few useful spells but usually sword (gish) has you fall off the power-curve extremely quickly.

To avoid this, we made picking up spells as easy as picking a feat. There's some advantages to being a wizard (more spells for free, casting time reductions) so if you want to make spell-casting your primary thing that's easy to do, but as soon as you feel your class has hit it's expiration date without adding magic you can do it. In the campaign we're playing primarily our characters just hit 5th level (out of 12 instead of 20, so definitely mid-levels in D&D) and my character is still a straight Knight (full martial), one character is a full wizard, one character is a rogue (no magic) and the 4th team member added magic to their berserker - just some healing and some defensive buffs - but we don't have any trouble justifying it as a natural development.