Mak Magic really slow. You can do really awesome shit with prep time, but once someone is up in your face with a sword you're fucked unless you can defend yourself or get others to protect you.

>>47194500
I like that idea, but how do you implement.

>>47194654
Check out Mage: the Awakening's ritual magic rules.

>>47194665
Well, I'm talking from the perspective of a fighter fag. I want fighters to be balanced and fun.

>>47194448
By not playing D&D.

>>47194682
What system do you suggest?

>>47194696
ANYTHING else. Really, anything. The Wizard-Warrior divide is almost entirely a D&D thing.

>>47194711
Pathfinder?

>>47194654
in a certain unnamed tabletop game that starts with dungeons and ends with dragons, simply doubling the casting time for spells can work wonders. Allow the caster to move and cast as normal but give his spell a turn before it goes off. This allows a melee NPC to try to interrupt his spell unless he passes a concentration check

another idea I've been playing with is to allow characters more freedom with their hold actions, giving non-caster classes more reactability to the situation. For example they can hold action and focus on an enemy until he makes an action, the player can then activate Power Attack, Combat Expertise, or throw up a towershield in response.

>>47194696
4e D&D.

>>47194725

That's like saying "You probably shouldn't drink coke it's got a fuck load of sugar in it"

then you going "OKAY!" and proceeding to chug a bottle of pepsi.

You think you're cute. But you're just stupid.

>>47194770
This.

>>47194725
Pathfinder is an arguably worse version of D&D, with nearly all of the same issues and a few more tacked on for good measure.
What you should probably do is have the cost to use magic be logarithmically related to how powerful it is.
Yeah, that ritual can cause the earth to split in half right under that city you hate, but the stars have to be in just the right position or all that planning goes straight to hell.
>>47194750
I always considered having the casting time for a spell be one action per level, but I think that would get me lynched in most Dungeons and Dragons communities.

Just bring back spell casting time from the older editions. Might not solve the problem, but it makes it easier knowing that that wizard/cleric/etc is going to get bumped a ways down the initiative order to cast a high level spell.

>>47194770
That was a joke, what with unlimited cantrips.

In all seriousness, what system makes fighters fun?

>>47194768
Sadly my group hates it.

File: d6 mini6.pdf (1 B, 486x500) Image search: [Google]

1 B, 486x500

>>47194838
Have fun.

>>47194838

>In all seriousness, what system makes fighters fun?

1) Legend of the Wulin

2) Dungeon World (if you're into storygame SHIT)

3) REIGN

4) The Malifaux RPG

5) Fate (again if you're into storygame SHIT)

>>47194838
Shilling it harder than a Vector employee: Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.
>But they hate it and don't want to learn a new system
Then grow a fucking pair and tell them you're sick of being sidelined by every chump with a pointy hat.

>>47194793
I like that idea too, I'm trying to find a flaw with it but the only thing I'm coming up with is maybe some higher level spells need to be modified into one action. But something like fireball could easily be 3 actions. Wish similarly being 8 actions is just fine. It gives higher level spells a more epic feeling as the other characters try to disrupt the caster's focus turn after turn hoping that his save or die spell won't go off.

I'd argue that the caster should be able to either spend his whole turn pouring two actions into the spell he's casting or allowing him to move while putting one action into it if he chooses.

>>47194916
As the guy you replied to, it would make Metamagic even more powerful that in was previously, to be frank.
I honestly think you should just get a different system. 5e is the least bad about it, and to be perfectly honest, you're not going to run a long enough campaign to get to the point where it matters.

>>47194448
Remove magic from every area where it competes with mundane skills. Wizard could divine your location and travel there unobserved, but he needs a thief to handle the locks quietly and a warrior for the kill itself.

Alternatively, as makes most sense in a high-magic setting, give every archetype access to spells they need to do their jobs.

>>47194989
>it would make Metamagic even more powerful
I don't follow, I looked up a few metamagic feats just now to see how this system would interact with them. I don't see any obvious problems with it.

I'm one of those stubborn 3.5 players who don't like to give up the billion splatbooks and ridiculous amount of epic levels unfortunately. My group likes it here so I make it work.

>>47194989
Isn't 5E still full caster edition?

>>47195059
I don't see how one can like fighters and play 3.5

>>47195130
I don't play fighters.

I'm not OP btw

>>47195059
>Quicken Spell for bypassing casting times
>Persistent Spell for near-permanent effects
>Repeat Spell for any spell above level 3
>>47195130
>Isn't 5E still full caster edition?
It's less blatant about it, especially because damage is now WAY more important than it was in 3.5 (lol instant death spell).

>>47195151
>Quicken Spell only works on spells with a casting time less than 1 round

>Persistent Spell uses a slot six level higher than normal so it takes 6 more actions to prepare

>Repeat Spell takes three more actions to prepare and is just as effective as normal

I play GURPS, and I find casters and martial are fairly balanced for a couple reasons, esp. compared to D&D. 1) Lack of HP bloat means dealing damage is most always a decently speedy option, unlike D&D where the options are spend an hour dinking away at a giant sponge or have the cleric cast a single spell. 2) Of all the magic systems in GURPS, I don't remember a single one that isn't some combination of slow, limited in scope/effect, resource-intensive, or risky; D&D wizards always struck me as strange as they're no-fail instant-casting sanity-maintaining with no real costs or drawbacks at all. 3) OPTIONS OPTIONS OPTIONS. This doesn't make the two options more balanced in terms of mechanical competency, but it does make them more balanced in terms of FUN. Giving martial characters choices of what to do in combat beyond Charge or Full Attack makes them more exciting and let's them flex their creative muscles in interesting ways. 4) Have matching levels of power; if you're running a game where martial characters are constrained by realism, don't give the wizards a high-fantasy magic system that lets them skullfuck the universe effortlessly.

>>47195216
>Persistent Spell
>Lasts 24 Hours
>Takes +6 actions to prepare
Even if I gave you the other two (when Repeat, say, Feeblemind could make or break a fight, though that's sort of a stretch) AND assumed that Quicken Spell's one-round requirement fell under the extra rounds rule (which makes sense, now that I think about it), come on, man. Persistent Shield/Mage Armor?

>>47194448
Save or dies suck.

>>47195151
>It's less blatant about it, especially because damage is now WAY more important than it was in 3.5 (lol instant death spell).

Mind you, Out of Combat still goes to spellcasters without effort.

>>47195383
Actually, that's a bad example, given that you'll want Persistent Shield whether the rule holds or not.
>Persistent Fox's Cunning/Owl's Wisdom
>Persistent Fly (because when you need Fly, it's probably a situation you don't want to spend 3 rounds in)
Man, now that I think about it, that rule doesn't really prevent any Persistent cheese at all.

so what fantasy systems do fighters well? My DM finds fantasy craft rather clunky.

>>47194448
By not playing D&D.

OH suure, get your angels, dude. They will never be able to pull as much of sick stunts as I do anyway.

>>47194793
>the cost to use magic be logarithmically related to how powerful it is.
I do not think "logarithmically" is what you want.
In that progression, one step on one axis is increase by ten times on the other. Second level spell is 10 times bigger than first. Third is 100 times than first. Fourth is 1000 times.

I just give martial classes cooler magical gear to make it up the lack of casting

>>47194448
ToB+XPH+MoI only.
Or DSP only.
Or by not playing D&D. Yes, that includes PF.

>>47194448
Angel Summoner is cool, but BMX Bandit is still the coolest.

>>47194854
>3) REIGN

I feel that this can be elaborated upon.

In REIGN, martials and casters are balanced out in a couple ways.

First, anyone can learn magic if they are correctly trained. There's nothing special about a sorcerer vs a normal joe; Sorcery is a skill the same as Fighting and Athletics. Moreover, Sorcery doesn't necessary have to fall under a single stat-- different forms of Magic might use your Body or Coordination, instead of just your Mind.

Secondly, anyone can learn how to Counterspell, which is the ability to muck up a mage's flow and disrupt his spells, effectively acting as a straight-up defense against magic. A magician's worst nightmare is a dude in plate armor with a shield and lots of points in Counterspell.

Finally, fighters have access to Martial Paths, which are really cool feats and techniques that give them options in combat outside of "I Attack!" or "I use Power Attack!"

Magic in REIGN is still really powerful, but you can have exactly as much fun playing as a martial character (more fun, in my opinion)

>>47194448
On a scale

Some systems have better build in balance than othesr. It's mostly painful in 3.X or Shadowrun. The simplest solution is to have mages of similar level challenge you casters. A blob of kobolds is a waste of a wizards time, leave them to the fighter. Now, a kobold sorcerer who can counter spell and debuff is an actually challenge for a spell caster.

>>47194448
I give warriors cool trinkets and artifacts. Casters have their spells and warriors have their weapons that level buildings and split the sun.

>>47194448
I don't.
>Wizards > not wizards.
I tell this to everyone and then they decide if they're either cool with it or find a new GM.

>>47197842
Does anyone play a "not wizard" in your games?

>>47196585
>ToB+XPH+MoI
>DSP
No fucking clue how people stomach playing 3.PF any other way.

>>47197872
Right now everyone does, got a rogue, a Paladin, and 2 fighters.
They fight the allpowerfull evil wizard.
It's my favourite cliche.

3.5 treats Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit as the same level, but really they aren't. Either BMX Bandit has to use Motorcycle Marauder for a high power game or Angel Summoner has to downgrade to Crab Control for a low power game.

Play Fantasy Craft though.

>>47197749
Neat. I'm guessing there's a reason people specialize in magic and don't just dip a few points in for utility spells?

>>47197930
Yes. It's called Attunement.

You can totally dip in to get a couple utility spells, but for the really strong ones you need to be Attuned. And Attuning is a one-way ticket to crazy town.

For example, there's a school of magic called the Ironbone Priesthood, which covers earth and metal magic. To use the really good spells you need the Greater Mark of Earthly Attunement. Here's what that means:

If you do your Greater Mark of Earthly Attunement just right, your bones turn to iron. You also become perfectly attuned to Ironbone magic and can’t cast any other spells, but let’s back up and think about that metal bone business for a minute.

First off, you become incredibly heavy – a weight gain of 100-200 pounds is typical. Expect to walk on bruised feet for a while. Carrying this extra weight around is tiring – it costs you a point of Body, permanently. It’s not that the muscles went away: It’s just that they have a much bigger load to carry, now.

However, an iron skeleton is a lot harder to crack. Whenever you take Killing damage from weapons, two points of Killing damage become Shock instead. (You take Shock damage normally, and Shock converts to Killing normally, but this is still a pretty big advantage.)

Furthermore, when you strike someone with a punch or a kick, you do an extra point of Shock damage. It’s sort of like wearing brass knuckles, only they’re under your skin.

You can also screw up your Attunement and end up with bones made of lead or tin or something super heavy and less durable than iron.

Being Attuned to Fire Dancing, the fire magic school, makes you basically immune to cold and causes your blood to ignite when exposed to the air, but also makes you sterile.

>>47194682
D&D is, so far, the only game franchise to convincingly and consistently balance warriors and wizards against each other *in the same scene* in such a way that they're both about equally useful to the party, are equally engaging to play, and neither are absolutely indispensable. They stepped back from that immediately of course, but that doesn't diminish the accomplishment and 4E remains the gold standard for fighters and sorcerers working as a seamless team.

Of course lots of games manage magic/martial balance fine by giving magic lots of utility but making it an inferior choice for straight murdering people, so that characters step into the spotlight as their particular speciality becomes necessary. That's fine too.

>>47198030
While the mutations you get from attuning are cool, the main point to take away is that attuning to a school simultaneously unlocks the high-level spells and locks you out of every other school.

>>47198042

My favorite thing for 4e was making two martials or two spellcasters play differently.

A Wizard and a Sorcerer FELT different. Rather than 'We do the same thing, just at different rates'.

A wizard called up arcane forces at long range, working slow but powerful spells.

A sorcerer went 'Fuck that, I am the magic' and proceeded to turn into a lightning bolt, zap through three guys, return to human form and then presumably pull an 80s action pose.

>>47194448
Wizards find new spells from enemy spellcasters books just like martial classes get new equipment.

Wizards have to have spell components which the player and me keeps track off. Spell components for some of the better spells are more costly than others.

Thats it. Thats all you fucking need to not make wizards not break the game.

>>47198116
>Wizards find new spells from enemy spellcasters books just like martial classes get new equipment.

>I got a fly spell!
>now I can fly!

>I found a +1 axe!
>Now I can switch my +1 sword, to an axe to axe people instead of sword them!

What a fucking huge improvement.

>>47197885
They probably don't know any better.
I know I didn't.

Whenever a wizard, sorcerer or other arcane caster uses a spell, it takes 3 times as long to cast as stated in the manual, unless they aee willing to sacrifice 1 max HP for each level of the spell (returned upon rest)

Greatly reduce the versatility and/or power of spells. If magic can do anything, why bother being anything but a wizard? On the other hand, if magic can do anything but not very well, or can do a certain limited number of things well, then other options become far more viable. Since the latter is much easier, I recommend using that one - make wizards extremely limited, not just to one spell school, but to one narrow type of magic. E.g., pyromancy, curses, mind magic, summoning (with summons being weaker than the fighter but more disposable). Anything outside of that simply won't be possible for them.

>>47197892
That's actually a really good way to do it. Wizards are far stronger, and are therefore a villain-only class. Players don't get to play them any more than they get to play a dragon or demon - they're obstacles to be overcome.

>>47194838
>In all seriousness, what system makes fighters fun?

3E D&D after you've banned every PHB class that isn't tier 3 and every PHB-equivalent class (Shugenja, Favored Soul etc.)

Also one other thing from REIGN; not a specific rule but a guideline for Magic, specifically what it shouldn't do. All fantasy games should really take this to heart:

"when you’re building a game around your central issue, see if you can identify any magic uses that are absolute poison to your concept. If I’m doing an exploration-based game, I don’t want magic to take the trouble out of travel. If I’m doing a game of revenge, I don’t want it to be easy for the PCs to level up to the point that they learn the Spell of Phantom Stalking Doom, cast it on the main bad guy, and then have a light supper while the magic flits off to what should have been the climax of the game. A quest game won’t be as fun if there’s simple magic that leads the PCs where they need to go. Or that leads their enemies right to them."

In other words, no matter what the system is, magic shouldn't be able to completely sidestep core elements of what it means to play the game. DnD has always had this problem with stuff like Sleep. It didn't used to be a problem; back in Basic, Sleep was basically your "time to get out of the dungeon" spell, because the entire game was about going into dungeons and stealing treasure from orcs and kobolds. When instead it's able to totally wipe out an encounter that might have taken a DM several hours to engineer, then it ruins the game.

>>47194838
>What system makes fighters fun

If you don't want to stray TOO far from 3.X in order to keep your players comfortable, FantasyCraft

Fighters get a bunch of different special actions depending on the weapons they specialize in (polearms can trip and do damage as one attack, axes can do damage and sunder at the same time, whips can be used to manipulate items from further away, and so on) and the Soldier class itself gets a bunch of useful class features, like counting as cover for themselves and their friends, stacks of DR, and crafting bonuses for arms and armor so that they can make and maintain their own custom weapons.

It's also got a fairly robust mundane crafting/customization system, and magic gear is a lot rarer so having a tricked out normal sword is actually useful.

>>47198131
>Fly spell on the same level as an Axe +1

Nothing will ever be fun to you if you are deliberately autistic you mongoloid. You are that guy who gives anyone who enjoys playing Non/Wizards a bad name.

Make the wizard keep track of his components. That shit is a total turn off, not very many shops sell bat guano for your fireballs.

>>47199117
Making spellcasting less fun isn't a great way to balance things out.

>>47199098
Okay, so what should the fighter get then? A magic sword +2?

Or what should the wizard get? Magic missile v3?

Face it, your solution is fucking retarded. Magic items in D&D either confer the same amount of benefit to everyone (i.e. ring of protection or boots of flying works the same for both fighter and wizard), or do useless shit like giving +1 to hit and damage or +1 AC.

Fucking exciting shit right there.

As long as one character's entire reason d'étre is hitting things with a stick, it will never be really balanced in a game where options outside of hitting things with sticks exist.

>>47199098

Okay lemme ask something else then.

Wizards by level 10 get 3 5th level spells.

Are you seriously telling me that by level 10 I need to give every non-caster character 3 magic items that're equivolent to 5th level spells? And the wizard doesn't receive magic equipment at all?

That is an incredibly wonky level of balance you have there that's also incredibly delicate and hard to take back the moment you fuck it up.

>>47194665
mages in WoD are hilariously unbalanced, though.

>>47199117

Ah yes. Tedious bookeeping. The solution to everything.

Also why wouldn't shops have bat guano? If wizards/adepts are enough of a class and fireball is ubiquitous enough of an offensive spell most major metropolitan areas should sell it to wizards.

>>47194448
Use the tier system and gestalting.

An unoptimized wizard is reasonably balanced, in most games, with an optimized fighter/rogue or fighter/monk gestalt.

>>47199305
Most probably would, unless there's strict guano control laws.

>>47199218
Not true; you just need to let them do more interesting things while curtailing the ability of the non-stick wielders to do everything.

In a fantasy setting, a person who devotes his entire life to learning how to fight with a stick should be as formidable in combat as a person who devotes his life to learning a certain kind of magic. What this really means depends on the setting. If it's "low magic", then his feats may do no more than stretch the limits of human ability, but the magical guy at the same time shouldn't be wielding godlike power either.

If the setting his mythic, high fantasy then the weapon dude sure as heck better be able to be, like, Cu Chulaain or Siegfried or another figure of similarly immense martial prowess.

>>47199282
What if that's the only way they get spells?

>>47199382

Again: a really wonky solution that kinda makes you out to be the asshole going "NO! THE BOOK SAYS YOU CAN HAVE THIS COOL SHIT BUT I'M NOT LETTING YOU"

Your answer is kinda like you wanting a really nice looking BB gun but your mom goes "Sorry Billy but your retarded brother is too stupid to not hurt himself with this thing and I want to be fair so you can't have it".

I don't need to worry about it, because my players are too stupid/lazy to play wizards efficiently and it balances it's self. If I was worried though, I would probably homebrew martial feats that allow them incredible exploits of strength, dexterity or fortitude. I don't think I could balance it, but I think I could make martials interesting enough that they would fit in among the retardedly powerful wizard. I already allowed a homebrew feet that allows massive weapons and one that allows any wieldable weapon of appropriate size (as in: not the massive ones) to be thrown efficiently.

I don't. I'm the only one who ever plays full Wizard in our group, and even though I know how badly I could break a game, I choose not to with my spell choice usually relying on what areas of study my Wizard focuses on, plus some minor utility spells.

I usually ask the DM to just give me gold instead of magic items as well, so they end up with more magic gear than I do.

>47194448
I shouldn't need to. It's like asking how to keep your car from exploding. How about not driving a Pinto?

>But my group hates other games /doesn't want to learn

Yet they are fine with your fatass Cheeto stained hands rewriting half the game they like/know based on only your game design hunches gleaned from a decade of fapping to Mike Mearls/Monte Cook yaoi and some ideas cribbed from a 4chan thread.

>>47199412
Your analogy is shitty. I'm not refusing to give you the BB gun because your brother can't be trusted with it, I'm refusing to give you the BB gun because you asked me for fifty presents and I'm giving you two or three, you selfish little brat.

>>47198030
That sounds metal as fuck. I'll have to look into REIGN, thanks.

Any opinions on the overall system? My group doesn't like /too/ much crunch.

>>47199522

No you're not giving him the BB gun even though the objective arbitrater of the rules (the book, which declares you're doing more than a make believe freeform roleplay) says he can have it and it's perfectly reasonable for him to have it and the reason why is because if you actually do what it says then he winds up with 50 presents and the brother winds up with 5.

Except it doesnt' actually look that way unless you actually break it down with every single wizard player you get and if you have the patience and time for that well congradufuckinglations but I and a good chunk of people don't. The book tells you that you get ______ and we trust the book to at least be honest with us and you're telling us that the book is so monumentally wrong that you need to cut out and put entire chunks of it behind walls.

At which point the question arises: why are we playing this?

>>47199371
>should be as formidable in combat
>in combat

My point exactly. Even if you make "fighter" a combat beast, it doesn't matter, because that dude with a pointy hat can sorta do that AND SO MUCH MORE ON TOP OF IT. See: 5e.

>>47199545

The initial dice mechanic might be tricky to really get.

Basically you roll a group of d10's and you need to look for matching dice. The amount of dice that match and the number of the matching dice are what's important.

>>47194793
>I always considered having the casting time for a spell be one action per level
Makes blasting completely and utterly useless in a game where it's not good in the first place. It takes legitimate effort to optimize a sorceror, a class that gets unique spells for this exact purpose, to the point of being able to blast effectively per action.

It's also fucking retarded because combat in 3.5 is over in a couple of rounds anyways, so good luck ever getting anything over 3rd level off.

Build your wizards first. Determine what a level one wizard will be like, how it'll progress and how a max level wizard will be.

However absurd they are at max level make Warriors capable of similar stupidity just through strength and rage. Max Level Wizards can spawn meteors? Max Level Warriors can cause ground shattering earthquakes by slamming their weapon into the ground.

>>47199611
Here's the thing: you people who are triggered by 5e are just regurgitating 3e talking points rather than actually caring about in combat + out of combat function, because if you did, you would jizz your pants over the rogue, who indeed is top notch in and out of a fight.

>>47199609
You're really bad at analogies.

>>47194998

Going a bit further on this, I would say if you specialize in a particular skill, getting crits in that skill results in a magic like effect.

For example, being athletic as fuck should become magical at some point: You try to climb and bam! A nat 20 suddenly you find yourself scrambling up the wall with the greatest of ease because you just pulled off Spider Climb because you're that awesome at climbing

>>47199779

That may be.

But that doesn't change that your "solution" is nothing more than a patch that attempts to gloss over the real issue by essentially walling off wizard progression and handing them abilities piecmeal.

>>47199772
>you would jizz your pants over the rogue, who indeed is top notch in and out of a fight.
No, that's the Bard. The Rogue is a second stringer in combat.

>>47199772
>you would jizz your pants over the rogue, who indeed is top notch in and out of a fight.

I have played a rogue from 1-10.

When the fuck does this happen? In combat I can literally do a single thing; I can't even waste my attacks like a fighter can, because I only have one. When it hits it's nice, don't get me wrong.

Out of combat I have... expertise. The same shit full caster bards get? Fucking wow.

By giving enemies a chance to disrupt spells.

For example, in 2nd edition Dnd a spell fizzled if you were hit while you were casting it. I don't get why they didn't have a similar thing in 3rd edition. Just give spells an initiative cost, which lowers a wizards initiative. If someone damages a wizard between the casters original iniative and the iniative the spell goes off on, they need to do some kind of save to keep it from fizzling.

>>47199622
That doesn't sound too confusing, neat.

>>47199780
Ever played Dungeon Crawl Classic? That game has some crazy critical effects, like Knock opening every door for a mile around or Detect Evil forcing baddies to rethink their evil ways. It's great.

>>47199853
I actually love DCC for how it handles a lot of things. I kinda dislike all the randomness involved, it makes games where you actually have a heroic character concept already in mind kinda hard to pull off (which is intentional), but it's a really nice game overall.

>>47199830
>I don't get why they didn't have a similar thing in 3rd edition.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? They do.

>>47194665
>the mage did his prep time before, you know, showing up to the party
>sorry fighter you're fucked, you should have known there was a wizard in a warded hidden basement somewhere

>>47198212
This.
The problem with D&D magic is that it doesn't have any limits because lol magic and spells just continually ramp up and up in raw power and bullshit potential.

>>47199810
Well, the better solution is play a different game which offers both martials and mages interesting things to do without letting either conquer the game. Which is easily a preferable option. But if your players won't go for that, mummifying the rules in patches is about all you can do.

>>47199927
Easier said than done, since in the majority of RPGs the consolation prize fighter analogs get is "nothing." 3e is actually more generous than most RPGs in this respect, which isn't saying much.

>>47199897
No they don't. On 2E a hit would cost you the spell. In 3E you just have to make a concentration check, which is pretty easy. Also, in 2E casting spells takes segments, which means you can be hit between the time you start casting and finish casting; in 3E it's a standard action which can only be disrupted by someone holding their action.

>>47194448
Assuming you mean in D&D 3.5 then the answer is ban anything that causes "instant death" of any variety and divide all caster levels in half. Compensate them by raising all spell DCs to 10+Caster stat+Highest spell level known that way lower level spells stay useful.

If you want to get more complex make the wizard pick a school to focus on, spells from all other schools count as one spell level higher. That will help mitigate the whole "caster can do everything" issue.

File: stop.jpg (24 KB, 300x225) Image search: [Google]

24 KB, 300x225

>>47198821
> fighters get a bunch of special actions

see, the problem is people think that Fighter's aren't fun, and then they start tacking on a bunch of different special abilities for Fighters to get because, "That's what makes wizards fun, right?"

But no, the issue isn't that Fighters are inadequate, it's that the core combat mechanics of D&D are very poor. OG D&D was based on the naval warfare game Don't Give Up the Ship! (which was Guygax's first game, and the project that he first teamed up with Arneson on), hence Armor Class (the ranking of the ship's hull) and Hit Points (How much damage the ship could sustain and stay afloat). D&D is stating living (mostly)humanoid organisms with mechanics intended for bulky mechanical armored watercraft.
So many of the isms that plague D&D's combat stem from this:
> Your ability to hit targets being based almost entirely on your class of character
> Remaining fully functional as long as you have at least 1 Hit Point
> How well you can defend yourself is based almost entirely on what sort of armor you're wearing
> Your proficiency with weapons being functionally equal across all weapon types
etc

The most of the numbers line up for balanced exchanges fighter-to-fighter, but the mechanics are obtuse and clumsy. Fundamental combat boils down to an exchange of blows between how accurate you are and how effective the armor your enemy is wearing because it's based on a game meant to emulate the exchange of fire between naval combat vessels. Fighters aren't the problem, it's D&D's combat that needs to be revised entirely. 4e tried Bloodied, which helped a bit, but gave in to the misconception that an abundance of special abilities is how you make a game interesting. Every edition adds or exchanges the bells and whistles, but they never go back and re-do the game from the ground up.

>>47199969
>In 3E you just have to make a concentration check, which is pretty easy

It isn't. Read the rules. The DC is 10+damage done. If an enemy is even remotely a threat, you CANNOT pass the check, assuming you even survive the hit.

>in 3E it's a standard action which can only be disrupted by someone holding their action.

Or by being in reach; at moderate levels this requires Mage Slayer, however. CT 1-3 segment spells are also all you need in 2e: Sleep, Color Spray, Grease, Web, and Stinking Cloud are just as powerful as they are anywhere else.

>>47197749
REIGN is criminally underrated

>>47199545
Definitely. The default setting is super crazy and original. Basically the world is comprised of two continent sized humanoid bodies embracing one another. It's got lots of crazy stuff including:

-Dindavarans, a militaristic nation whose national magic is Deathforging, which involves plunging a newly forged sword into a corpse (or indeed living body) to grant it magical powers.

-The belief that riding a horse astride induces sterility in men, so only women at as cavalry

-Drug-addicted cannibalstic barbarian tribes that ride wooly mammoths and created a form of combat called "The Winnowing Axe." That should say all there is to know

-Wind magic that grants you flying wings if you properly attune yourself, but if you mess up it creates screwed up horrors like having them be upside down, featherless or emerging from weird places

-Ghosts! If you kill someone after they beg for mercy, they become spirits that will haunt you forever out of pure spite. That's why the most popular way to execute a criminal is to put them on top of a giant tower and let them either starve to death or throw themselves to their own death.

As >>47199622 said, the system is called the One Roll Engine and is both really intuitive and super fast-- I've yet to find one that resolves combat as swiftly and efficiently as it does.

REIGN also includes really good rules for running factions and nations, some of the best I've ever seen.

Be advised that if you want the awesome setting stuff, you need to buy the actual REIGN book. There's another book called the REIGN Enchirideon, which is all the rules from the the core game but with the fluff mostly scrubbed away, so it's excellent for building your own settings using the system.

>>47194854
Storygame?

>>47200175
Games where the rules are more about narrative progression instead of mechanics.

>>47194854

Dungeonworld has the opposite problem, fighters and paladins shit all over everyone else and dominate every encounter

>>47199772
>you people who are triggered by 5e are just regurgitating 3e talking points
Because they're still applicable?

5E is a retread of 3.5. Right down to druids being OP,

>>47200045
But fighters in OD&D are fun. The suck sets in when you start locking the fun shit up like video game powerups.
>you can't do a backflip, that would be unfair to the guy who spent four levels to get the backflip feat
>you can't swing from a chandelier without taking the chandelier swinger prestige class
>you can't trip an enemy as well as the Tripping Knight because all he can do well is trip people... so he does it all the fucking time.

The abstraction is cool. Maybe not realistic, but fun.

>>47200194
You mean like I receive some bonuses for describing my attack,system is based around describing attacks or mechanics are so primitive only people who play RP for the story play it?

File: hqdefault.jpg (13 KB, 480x360) Image search: [Google]

13 KB, 480x360

>>47194448
By remaining indoors, and not mentioning The Event.

>>47194448
TSR-era D&D sort-of does that.

Low level wizards are fragile and useless.
Mid level wizards are vulnerable and useful.
High level wizards are vulnerable and powerful.

Fighters have a more natural progression, but even at mid levels tend to be more useful.

There's two main reasons for this:
Any damage during casting will always interrupt the spell and waste the slot
Spells have initiative penalties, higher level spells generally have higher penalties

Fighters also seemed a lot stronger from a thematic standpoint, because a lot of mechanics were fairly abstract. Specifically, a turn represented an entire minute of combat.
A fighter with two attacks per round didn't "swing twice each minute" they attacked the entire minute and between all the glancing and parrying had a chance to get two meaningful hits in a given minute.
A wizard, meanwhile, is acting a lot slower. Every spell they cast is significant, but it takes a full minute of muttering and gesturing to throw a simple fireball.

>>47200244
I liked how LoTW did it. A hit debilitates you, but if you can find a way to adequately describe how you can attack anyways you can.

>>47200244
They don't have stunting mechanics like Exalted, if that's what you mean.

File: adventures_in_the_highlands_by_6doug9-d4fd1na[1].png (3 MB, 1608x1150) Image search: [Google]

3 MB, 1608x1150

What systems are good at giving that high fantasy while making martials useful?

>>47200243
Those aren't rules though, that's just leaving the game so open ended anyone can do anything. Open-ended-ness is a double edged sword, and there are ways to properly stat these things without limiting characters mainly by not using classes to begin with, but that's a different issue all together

>>47200053
I disagree. As you cast a spell instantaneously, you'll almost never get hit by anyone in 3rd since enemies will not be holding their actions to shoot you. And even if they do so, the checks are laughable easy, as long as you've put any ranks in concentration. The hardhitters aren't the ones attacking the mage anyways, they'll be preoccupied with the fighting men. The mage will just get plinked with arrows and rocks.

I've never seen a mage lose a concentration check. Giving them a casting time so the enemy actually gets a chance at stopping them is a very fair way of handling the situation. Also reinforces the notion that you should protect your mages.

>>47200234

>Because they're still applicable?

Talking points that apply to pre WotC D&D are not valid (ie wizards can do stuff out of combat). That's the game.

>>47200244
Usually storygames grant the players some "meta mechanic" for manipulating the flow of events (rather than controlling their character directly).

Often things like resource management and strategy are handwaved as boring minutiae, and the overarching goal is for everyone to build a satisfying story (rather than levelling up, getting treasure, etc).

I don't like them at all but I'll save the vitriol since it's all over /tg/ already.

>>47200298
>low level TSR wizards are fragile and useless

They're fragile, but not useless. Sleep, Grease, Colorspray, Web, Stinking Cloud.

>>47200344
No, they're still valid. Mainly because they had fixed it in 4E.

Then they re-fucked it in 5E.

>>47200337
It's fun tho

>>47200371
>Usually storygames grant the players some "meta mechanic" for manipulating the flow of events (rather than controlling their character directly).

Amusingly enough, I don't think DW actually does this. Yes, your mechanics are simple and narrativist, and it tries to avoid simulationism wherever possible, but the only ways you can influence the story are the same as with standard D&D. Like there's some fuckery with bonds, but all those give you is about on par with Eberron action points.

I may be mixing it up with other PbtA systems tho.

>>47200340
>And even if they do so, the checks are laughable easy, as long as you've put any ranks in concentration.

10+ damage dealt is not "laughably easy," its code for "you generally can't pass this." Orc warrior with greataxe, CR 1/2 greataxe orc warrior deals average of, what, 10.5 damage. DC 21. A hill giant is CR 7 and with -1 to power attack, does 21.5 damage, DC 31, and at these levels monsters can be big enough, and have enough reach, to blanket the entire combat area.

>The hardhitters aren't the ones attacking the mage anyways, they'll be preoccupied with the fighting men.

DM welfare for wizards isn't my concern. 3e's borked, but DM welfare isn't the concern of the system.

Wizards taking advantage of unintelligent monsters who get locked onto the melee guys, however, is perfectly reasonable and the system working as intended (for once) -- mindless undead and giant vermin etc. have low CR specifically because they can be tricked easily like that.

>Giving them a casting time so the enemy actually gets a chance at stopping them is a very fair way of handling the situation.

There are more than enough resources for the DM to casually make monsters at any level of challenge for the wizard desired, up to and including guaranteed 24/7 ass whooping.

>>47200390
4e's not really relevant to the discussion of any other D&D edition. These are issues that are going to happen when you have magic guys and muggle guys.

>>47200466

No you're basically right. In terms of combat DW is basically babby's first DnD, as the name implies.

What DW does that's bad on a conceptual level is that many of the non-combat abilities encourage the players to make up details about the setting. Fuck you, I'm the DM, it's my god damned setting. If you wanna play quiet year or some shit we'll just do that

>>47194725

w e w

>>47200517

>Fuck you, I'm the DM, it's my god damned setting

You sound like a pleasant person to play with.

>>47200517
We excused the DW thing in my old campaign by having the DM tell us about the setting during spout lore.

>>47200558
Not him, but as a player I don't like making up setting elements unless its, say, a background thing for my character. Narrativism isn't for everyone and I hate how insufferably, cuntishingly arrogant narrativist players almost universally are, acting that if you don't like describing the environment to the DM, you're unimaginative or whatever.

For fuck's sake, I like D&D and similar RPGs because you're immersed in an environment in which you search for advantages and avoid death, not in which you dictate to the DM stuff in the environment that will give you an advantage.

>>47194448
really fucking difficult nigh impossible, the game I'm running its based on elder scrolls

However, martials have access to magical weapons so that they can compete equally with mages, if not better

The game is a bit of a linear wizards-quadratic warriors:
-low level wizard: cast magic missile that deals 50 damage, depletes half its mana
Low warrior: makes an attack that deals 10 damage

High level wizard: can cast the same magic missile, only depletes a third of its mana

High level warrior: can make three attacks that deal 25 physical+20 magical damage

>>47200376
Spells gained by leveling are random.
You have a high chance to fail to learn spells gained elsewhere.

And you're significant underestimating how starved you are for spell slots.

Level: Slots
1: =level
2: =level
3: =level
4: level+1
5: level+2
6: level+2
7: level+3
8: level+4
9: level+4

That's without bonus slots for high ability scores.
Clerics got extra spell slots for that, Wizards did not.

But if you're lucky with your starting spells,
and party coordinates to protect you,
while also managing to staying out of your way,
and you're lined up well with the enemies,
and you luck out and win initiative,
a low level wizard can trivialize one fight every day.

Probably every other day, since you'll almost certainly need to recast Armor (or whatever).
And you're so starved for spell slots that you'll be casting it then refilling it's slot.


Don't forget: wizards also needed the most XP to level up.

>>47194654
Could just buff warriors more. Less like weeaboo fightan but still fast and though enough to close with weaker mages, somewhat challenging with those on the same level and very hard ro reach the ones on a higher level.

Also, broken stuff takes more time and concetration, magic punch is relatively spammable, petrification adn super-fuckyou blast takes time and effort. And wizards juct cannot make canned spells to bypass this. No matter the meta-tantrums.

>>47199908

If your plan for fighting a wizard is "get close and skewer with sword", you're already ashes, just don't know it yet.

You get to live only if you prepare, fighter or mage.

File: 1433368285746.jpg (119 KB, 500x333) Image search: [Google]

119 KB, 500x333

GURPR Ritual Path Magic

>>47200591
>Spells gained by leveling are random.
Mmm, I don't think so. It just says you get one a level. In 1e there's not so much of a whiff of it being random (after level 1), nor do I know of any such rule in 2e.

>And you're significant underestimating how starved you are for spell slots.

You're significantly underestimating how much of a giant pain it is that the fighter is only marginally better off than in a coin flip contest versus an orc.

Let me just correct this for you.

>if you are level 2 or more,
>an party coordinates to protect you,
>OR
>you luck out and win initiative (not exactly hard with casting time 1-3 spells, which are most of the good ones)
>you can trivialize more fights per day than your party could probably win without you

The idea that mages are particularly squishy in TSR era D&D is a fair comparison, but it glosses over badtouch monsters. Beyond dispute, Mirror Image and Stoneskin gives you a better shot at surviving poisonous and energy draining monsters.

>>47200609

NGL I've seen more arrogant "HURR NARRATIVISM IS THE DEVIL" tribalism than I have the opposite.

And the way PbtA games often word it is just "Hey DM if you don't got any clear idea what this thing is why don't you ask a player and see if he has an idea?"

Which ya know isn't a terrible idea or anything. I get that maybe the idea of having control over your character's culture or other elements of the setting might take you out of your usual comfort zone for this kinda thing but why the fuck is experimenting with player input on roles usually assigned for GM work suddenly decried as "not true RPG's"?

Shouldn't we at least praise a game for doing something interesting even if it's not our cup of tea?

>>47200656
I said this before, a PC warrior should be Conan or Aragorn, not just a dude with a sword.

Sleep? Fuck you, I use my sheer willpower to resist it.

>>47200697

>NGL I've seen more arrogant "HURR NARRATIVISM IS THE DEVIL" tribalism than I have the opposite.

OK that's a lie to be fair. I DO see it but more often than not I see it being used against D&D 3.5 which is probably one of the worst examples of a rules-heavy "simulationist" type game I can think of.

I'm sure like, Phoenix Command is fine.

>>47200697

When the players start constructing their surroundings, they are no longer playing a game, they are putting on a play

>>47200668
If your plan is "your reach is more or less the battlefield," its probably fine. Although hardly representative, a CR1 ogre zombie with a greatspear covers a 20' area.

There are so many monsters that just have inhuman reach, that can quicken or at least move action teleport (virtually anything, thanks to incarnum or martial adeptry), who are incorporeal, who can burrow, who fly (and thus have hover if they are moving in any precise situation and thus aren't going to be targeted until you're at point blank range) that getting into melee vs a caster is not an issue.

Also its greatly underappreciated how much more obnoxious, say, incorporeality is vs casters than vs melee guys; the latter can simply have a ghost touch weapon, while compensating for incorporeal foes is an eternal pain in the ass for casters, requiring either a focus on force spells or metamagic nonsense for everything; there's no easy fix for them with incorporeal guys.

>>47200794
But if the fighter doesn't have a ghost touch weapon he can't harm said foe AT ALL.

Runequest. Not only is melee so much more dynamic and better than dnd that they can't even be compared properly, the magic isn't completely overpowered shit and it mostly deals with utilitarian spells rather than purely damaging spells.

>>47200849
But can I play as a duck?

>>47200697
>NGL I've seen more arrogant "HURR NARRATIVISM IS THE DEVIL" tribalism than I have the opposite.

The universal assumption is "if you don't like narrativism you're a dick." >>47200558

Every fucking day. Every fucking day.

>I get that maybe the idea of having control over your character's culture

No. Stop. "talking about elements of your character's culture" is not 1% comparable to other elements of narrativism, ie "there is a chandelier for me to swing on" or "one of my informants is nearby!"

I don't even think that there's a case to be made to say "who are you playing?" "well amongst other things my character is a barbarian who comes from a tribe where they have elaborate, thin scarring on your body and they feel superstitiously nervous around golems and giant bugs." That's just normal character design.

>but why the fuck is experimenting with player input on roles usually assigned for GM work suddenly decried as "not true RPG's"?

Because narrativists are insanely aggressive and patronizing, and never cease to talk down to people for playing D&D and insulting people who don't think its the player's place to declare the presence of chandeliers.

>Shouldn't we at least praise a game for doing something interesting even if it's not our cup of tea?

When the proponents of the game are incredibly aggressive, all the time, and the game is solely ever brought up to bash people playing D&D etc., then I'm sure you can see how people would have a bad attitude towards it.

FFS I was very intrigued by Dungeon World until people on /tg/ started to "sell" it.

>>47200823

You mean if he doesn't have a magic weapon.

And chump change on something you may as well get either way is a hell of a lot more convenient than your entire library of spells having a miss chance against a very broad and potent category of monsters. Mages tend to lean very heavily on conjuring atrocious terrain (that incorporeals ignore) and summoning monsters (that almost never have magic strike), so incorporeals throw a monkey wrench into their plans to a disproportionate degree.

Doesn't even come 1% towards making it even but mages do depend heavily on having some buffer space and having broadly effective spells, so it is much easier to give them consternation without outright killing them or giving them foes with numbers who are too big for them (which is too easy).

>>47194448
The D&D way. You hand magic weapons like it was candy and make the game so convoluted that both classes are getting overwhelmed so much that they'll need to call their hero and true lord: the Cleric.

>>47200849
Yeah, nah. Runequest is a good example of a game where caster vs muggle imbalance is significantly worse than 3e.

Its in the broad category of "RPGs in which the consolation prize for not being a caster is nothing beyond 'you don't have to spend points getting magic."

>>47200110
Rock on, Anon. Guess I'll have to ask for REIGN in the next filesharing thread now, you've definitely convinced me to give it a read

>>47200932
>>47200823
Also, since fights in 3e tend to average 2 rounds, the simplest way to make a mage feel below the power curve is to use monsters which can stymie the mage for one round: its incredibly easy to give a monster a one round grace period vs the mage. Rage goes well with almost all monsters, and Mad Foam Rager lets you delay one effect for one round, and likewise its easy for a monster to get a round or so of incorporeality, or so on a move.

Keep it sparing, or reserve it so that it makes sense in the narrative (ie drow and drowberrations with the Phase Spider Cloak soulmeld isn't the least bit odd, orcs with Mad Foam Rager isn't the least bit odd, etc), and decide whether you want to set this stuff up long in advance (so you'll be impartial) or in response to a mage that pwns everything 24/7 (which isn't impartial but it is reasonable).

The first spell of each day is perfectly safe, but each additional spell has an increasing potential of backfiring

>>47200887

>"if you don't like narrativism you're a dick."

TO BE FAIR when you word it like "FUCK YOU I'M IN CONTROL OF THIS SETTING! ME! NOBODY ELSE" that kinda sounds like something a dick would say.

>No. Stop. "talking about elements of your character's culture" is not 1% comparable to other elements of narrativism, ie "there is a chandelier for me to swing on" or "one of my informants is nearby!"

Well first of all that's typically not how narrativism works? I mean why would you spend a FATE point or a benny or whatever on something like a Chandiler. Having a contact makes more sense but even then would it be any worse than say, having "Relationship with _______ group!" as a merit/feat and then proposing to the GM that one of them is close by? A lot of what you're saying here assumes that narrativism means I can command things that logically would not make sense to appear when that, literally, contradicts the point of narrativism.

>Because narrativists are insanely aggressive and patronizing, and never cease to talk down to people for playing D&D and insulting people who don't think its the player's place to declare the presence of chandeliers.

Well again. That's probably because D&D is just a bad example of a rules heavy "simulationist" game. I'm sure there are better ones out there and as a fan of narrativist games I'd gladly give one a try if I thought it had merit. I just... don't think D&D 3.PF is one of those. Also you're really hung up on chandeliers and their placement huh...

>FFS I was very intrigued by Dungeon World until people on /tg/ started to "sell" it.

Dude. Knock it off. I get it's tiring to be on /tg/ sometimes and there are just agressive assholes everywhere but you know as well as I do that letting said assholes get to you like this is just making YOU an equal and/or greater asshole. Which in turn makes the narrativist scum you hate so much get more agressive and in turn YOU get more agressive in retaliation. It's a cycle, man.

Any sort of drawback at all will do it.

Make it slow. Make it unpredictable. Make it risky. Make it expensive, in materials or souls or some other resource. Make it morally questionable. Make it weak. Make it draw the wrong sort of attention from demons. Etc.

Magic will still be useful in all of these cases because it still offers unique utility. Even if it takes a day to regenerate from a wound, that's still far superior to natural healing. A teleportation circle might cost some ungodly sum in diamonds and the soul of an innocent, but how else will you get to the Temple of Zot in time?

Dungeons and Dragons sort of fails in this regard because magic is almost mundane. A wizard is more of a magical superhero than a man who controls magic. You have to boost others into performing equally improbable feats, ruining the theme of the setting, or put a lot of effort into countering the casters in actual play, which is entirely possible but makes more work for the GM.

File: 1442486889677.gif (2 MB, 256x256) Image search: [Google]

2 MB, 256x256

It's actually easy enough to make warriors better than wizards in combat (just give spells lengthy cast-times and make them easy to interrupt), so one option is simply to make combat a martial-only area, and let casters rule outside combat. But I don't favour having casters sit on their hands while warriors do all the work in combat and vice versa.

If in doubt, merge weak classes, split strong ones. For instance, instead of a "wizard" class, you might have a necromancer, a summoner, an oracle and so on. And instead of a "fighter" and "rogue", you might have one all-round martial class that is flexible and skilled in many different areas, similar to classic swords & sorcery heroes like Conan. The same thing can be acheived in a points-based system by making magic very expensive and mundane skills cheap. Someone who invests in magic will probably no points left over for other things, someone who forgoes magic can freely become an expert at a wide range of skills, including combat. In this approach, casters have raw power while martials have versatility.

Alternatively, you can consciously make warriors into superhuman monsters like Beowulf or Guts. Make it so that the highest levels of physical ability and skill are reserved for martials, the same way spells are reserved for wizards, not something that anyone can invest into.

Or give them straight-up magic. It's all relative. In a game about Jedi, the Jedi who focuses on lightsaber combat is your warrior, the one who focuses on telekinesis is your wizard, but they both have magic. Likewise, if your game is high-magic enough, you might as well make magic knights your baseline warrior class. They're probably going to be relying on magic equipment anyway.

Or remove warriors and just play an all-wizard game. Or the other way around.

I just keep most mages very, very simple. You don't have the power to shape spells on the fly or anything of that nature. Most mages will know one or two rote spells at most, and it's almost always simple things like throwing fireballs or healing wounds. And casting them causes a sort of slow, delayed backlash as the world attempts to compensate for the event (IE, fireballs drain heat and other energy from the ambient atmosphere to replenish what was used, healing spells cause slow cellular death equal to the healing done, but with a much wider spread so as to still be a net positive.).

This way, magic becomes something you can use right now to a decent effect, but if you abuse it, the drawbacks are going to be much, much more worse.

>>47194665
Mage is fine until you go past about 1.5 dots in any arcana, and then you start having to abuse the shit out of paradox to even put them close to anyone else.

>>47201184
>Alternatively, you can consciously make warriors into superhuman monsters like Beowulf or Guts. Make it so that the highest levels of physical ability and skill are reserved for martials, the same way spells are reserved for wizards, not something that anyone can invest into.

This is something that more settings need to do. DnD 4e was close but it could be even better. Beowulf, a guy who had no magical or divine pedigree but was just a ridiculously tough guy, held his breath for like a full day to fight Grendel's mother underwater. That story is, like, the soul of western literature but since it's not a fantasy novel written by a guy with a bunch of initials in his name, /tg/ players don't know about it. Again, Beowulf wasn't magical or half a god or anything like that-- he just DID it because he can.

>>47200707
that's a good point if wizards can just pull shit out of their hats via intelligence everyone else should have soemthing going on besides "Scream vary hard and hit a bit harder"

>>47198263
This. 3.5 is actually pretty fun and varied once you stop using the PHB classes (bard and other actually balanced classes excepted)

>>47201184
>and let casters rule outside combat
Making non-combat a class specific task is a fools errand which isolates players in all situations.

>>47198821
3.5 has plenty of fun fighters, just not the actual fighter class. Look to the latter parts of the expansion once they got their shit together, a totemist or binder or if you want a direct fighter equivalent, a warblade are all fun as hell and can tear things up without casting spells.

>>47201075
Yeah, I'm not really surprised that when someone points out that narrativism is hated because its proponents badmouth other RPGs, that you respond by badmouth other RPGs.

>that letting said assholes get to you like this is just making YOU an equal and/or greater asshole

Not really. Avoiding narrativist games is a good way to weed out the cuntish types. I mean, you'd generally agree that you're a cunt, right?

>Also you're really hung up on chandeliers and their placement huh...

Apparently "there is a swimming pool here" is too powerful for a narrativist point and was regarded as a strawman so "there is a chandelier here" sounds better.

>>47201343

Did Mage 2e radically RADICALLY change Mage? Because in Mage 1e and owod, paradox is never a balancing factor for them; its what enforces their masquerade equivalent, big difference. Mind magic is the most powerful sort, and its virtually always covert.

>>47199117
Casters in D&D can just use Arcane Focuses, now. So they don't need guano, they just need a wand, staff, crystal orb, or mistletoe.

>>47200234
To be fair druids are only OP in 5e if they're a moon druid and for the first few levels (and 20), if you want consistently broken observe your friendly neighbourhood bard or wizard breaking the game in half.

>>47201436
The problem is there's no way for someone coming into the game to know that.

A guy shows up at the table and wants to play someone who fights, he's gonna look to the fighter first and foremost.

Not to mention how many DMs go for 'first party/core only'

The bloat of 3.X has created a lot of problems for making the game actually playable when someone sits down at the table.

>>47201474
Correction, they only need the Arcane Focus in 5e.
Frankly I don't understand why anyone wouldn't take one instead of keeping track of somatic components and what have you.

>>47200707
Or you would if you had a high will save (3.5) or proficiency in wisdom saves (5e), it was only 4e that ever encouraged fighters to grab some wisdom. Unless it's 4e, the fighter solution to everything is to hope taking and dealing damage in melee solves the problem and cry and wait for the wizard to fix everything if it doesn't.

>>47201184

3e borked a lot of things, but one concept I enjoyed was how Zhentarim Fighters (the absolute best ACF, bar none) get great in and out of combat intimidation bonuses, and Dungeoncrashers can get from a +6 to a +19 bonus to breaking inanimate objects, again useful in and out of combat. That is a decent niche for a fighter; others can do that sort of thing, but its at least *a thing* and gives them some feeling of utility out of combat.

>Guts

The thing I really like about Guts, as far as a model for a fighter is, that his nonmagical (if very Gonzo) fighting style includes:
1. A huge sword that attacks an area and can be thrown in extremis.
2. Braces of throwing daggers.
3. A huge cannon.
4. A full automatic repeating crossbow.

This gives him a huge variety of things he can do in combat, just from those alone. If instead of just one weapon style, dedicated combat chars could easily get throwing, launcher weapon, and aoe melee abilities on one char with no resource splitting required.

A 1/2 caster (say a ranger or paladin) may only have two styles (lancer and swordsman typically for paladin, bow and dual wield for ranger), and a 2/3 caster (say a magus or hexblade) might only have one.

Hell, even full casters could be given a very limited but effective combat style (staff fighting or dagger tossing), though that wouldn't help balance them.

>>47201494
3.5 is fine first party, but why would you ever play it core only? 5e is basically core 3.5 but better in every respect. 5e is the sit down at the table game, 4e is for when your players are sick of martials only being allowed to autoattack (plus maybe add a few modifiers per rest if you're lucky) and want some real tactics, 3.5 is for when they want to do things 5e's dumbed down mechanics won't let them (in 3.5 if you want to make a flying house you can do it yourself by the rules, in 5e you need to ask the DM mother may I?).

>>47201522
Oh, I agree. That's why sleep and other such spells are so broken, because the fighter has shit will saves.

But that's retarded. I can't imagine Conan going down like that, and when I play a fighter I wanna be Conan.

>>47201494
Its generally polite to have some pregen chars and pregen character builds for newbies.

>>47201522
To be fair, in 3e, Steadfast Determination is a must have without its will bonus.

>>47201357

I always liked the detail that he didn't really have a dog in that fight, he just wanted everyone to know GEATS STRONG and maybe pick up some treasure.

>>47201561
True. That's kind of what I hoped 5e's utility would look like for fighters, abilities like Zhentarim and Dungeoncrasher that were martial specific.

I keep hearing in conversations about balance the fact that a fighter can lead an army as one of the reasons they're balanced with wizards, despite the fact that the wizard is a tactical genius and the fighter is not (int 20 vs int 10) so the wizard is a better general too. Why not give fighters a bunch of options, one of which being recruiting and leading followers?

>>47201522
>>47200707

I would argue that Aragorn is more expansive than the niche of 'warrior', but I digress.

Anyway, in S&S, the principle attributes of a true warrior protagonist are his sharp mind and wits, and his unshakeable, dogged determination, imo. Yes, they're usually strong. Who fucking cares? The strength of a mighty man is nothing compared to that of an ogre or giant or dragon. What allows them to win the day is cleverness and grit. They virtually always beat sorcerers etc. by out-mentalling them, not out-muscling them.

>>47201628
And so is Conan. But barring Boromir Aragorn is my best example.

>>47201610
Genius =/= tactical genius.

The wizard knows tons about magic and shit, but you really fucking think he knows shit about army tactics?

>>47201561
>The thing I really like about Guts, as far as a model for a fighter is, that his nonmagical (if very Gonzo) fighting style includes:
>1. A huge sword that attacks an area and can be thrown in extremis.
>2. Braces of throwing daggers.
>3. A huge cannon.
>4. A full automatic repeating crossbow.

Don't forget his considerable unarmed combat skills.

>>47201587
True, I don't recall ever not getting that as a fighter. I'm not the guy who first mentioned Zhentarim fighters below, but it is what my fighter ended up being - a changeling fighter who took Zhentarim, dungeoncrasher and every beneficial racial substitution level there was, and of course he had steadfast determination, improved trip/knockdown etc.

The end result of that was an actual useful character, but it was pretty much one of the only ways a fighter could be useful - I would much prefer a game in which that was just one of many useful paths a fighter could take, which is what I was hoping we'd get from 5e =/

>>47201597
Exactly! The original murderhobo!

Actually he's the ideal high level old school fighter. Insanely strong and has a keep with followers and everything.

It's funny to me that whenever martial exploits get brought up people start throwing out accusations of WEAABOO FIGHTAN MAGIC when the very basics of the western canon of literature and mythology is based on ridiculously strong martial heroes defeating demons and gods through sheer grit and fighting prowess.

Please, let me be Cu Chulainn. Accuse me of being an anime when you've got blowfish spines crammed into every joint in your body because of my awesome spear. Which I threw with my foot.

>>47201610
I don't think that "followers" was ever a balancing factor unless you make mercenaries problematic in OSR stuff.

White Raven/warlord stuff, however, is perfectly good as far as martial "spells" are concerned, although I prefer the idea of the vanilla fighter as a demoralizer, not as a moralizer for his own side; the ignoble mercenary/middle class warrior strikes me as someone who breaks enemy spirit and hurts their feelings, and the noble knight/upper class warrior as the guy who maintains the spirits of his own side.

>>47201660
More than the fighter does, that's for sure. Unlike the fighter he has skill points coming out of his ears, is incredibly intelligent and has all kinds of spells like divinations and battlefield control that come in useful with an army.

Not saying every high level wizard is a perfect general, but the average wizard is a better commander than the average fighter, and the best wizard for the job is a better commander than the best fighter for the job.

>>47201660
Because all the knowledge skills key off of INT?

So even in a worst case scenarion he'd stll know more than somebody with a lower INT bonus.

>>47201660

D&D doesn't separate domains of intelligence, it just rolls it all into a single stat. If you rely on INT for your military strategy then the guy with the bigger number just automatically does better.

>>47198098
And that's why 4e sorcerers are my favourite class out of all classes from all games with a class system

>>47201686
>changeling
>dungeon crasher

dirty cheating bastard, dungeon crashers have to be large!

>>47194448
Because I play old school D&D with a soft cap of level 9-10, it isn't an issue.

>>47201724
...bwuh? You're thinking of warhulks or the knockback feat, unless "have to be" is merely a good guideline.

>>47194838
>what system makes fighters fun?

TOME OF BATTLE. Just rename the Warblade "fighter".

>>47194838
4e

>>47194448
Magic items that enhance fighters.

>>47201739
...

I was thinking of knockback.

>>47201184
>Or give them straight-up magic. It's all relative.
I really like this. I imagine a setting where all PCs are inherently magical, and that's what separates them from commoners and allows them to be adventurers.

Let's see, it would have to be a classless system where you just get a pile of magic points and can allocate them anywhere, kinda sorta like Shadowrun's karma system. Dump them all into strength to cleave through stone or everything into magic to bend reality, and your epic-level character would run the gamut from Hulk to Thor to Dr. Strange.

Neat! Too bad such a thing will never overtake D&D in general support.

In a D&D style game you really can't.

>>47201699
Urgh that reminds me.

>3.5: White raven, devoted spirit, marshal happen towards the end of the edition, interesting martial leader options. Warblade etc happen, interesting martial options in general. Hope they build on this!

>4e. They did! Warlord base class, a proper martial leader that can choose to command from the back or boost from the front lines. All martial classes have a bunch of different options, nobody has to spend 20 levels autoattacking ever again. Pity about the rest of the game though, hopefully 5e improves things while keeping all they've learned about making martials fun.

>5e: Hey guys one subclass that gets a few maneuvers per short rest is a good substitution for everything mentioned above, right? All you need to replace the warlord, warblade, 4e fighter and such is the battlemaster subclass, right? And every other martial should go straight back to early 3.5 style auto attacking several times a round every round for the rest of your life?

Legit what the fuck happened?

>>47201718
The problem there is that there's no incentive in most DnD type games for a fighter-type to put points into INT. A smart fighter is a worse fighter because all he's supposed to care about is STR, CON and DEX. Of course you could have one of those as a crappy stat in favor of INT, but what's the point? Sure it's good for roleplaying but you can roleplay your character as a cunning tactician without having a 16 in INT. There's nothing in the rules that say you can't.

It's dumb and limiting and a core problem with DnD. Back in basic your Attributes meant jack-all, which is why you were supposed to roll for them. Even if you got horrible stats out of it you could still be a Fighter, who was probably one of the best classes in that version of the game.

Since then Attributes have become all-important and it's done nothing but weaken the game.

>>47201785
>point buy

There's your problem. Take your 3d6 in order like a man, or do something like 4d6, drop lowest and reroll 1s, in order

>>47201760
There are ways around that, too. Changeling is the best goddamn race, that feat that allows them to pretend to be other races for prerequisites... nothing in life is so satisfying as cherry picking what racial substitution levels you want from all different races. I'm playing a changeling paladin at the moment, the gnome substitution levels are amazing.

>>47201810
fuck off, neckbeard.

>>47201810
Then in almost no cases will you have a character that has an incentive to be a fighter, you'll mostly end up with useless characters and most of the high int characters will want to be a straight up wizard.

>>47201810
Again, that's fine if your roll doesn't matter that much. In DnD Basic, your roll determined what class you could be and a couple of advantages. If you were a Fighter with really high STR you got +1 to your attack and slightly more XP. Woopee. And several of the other classes, which had way more stringent requirements, were pretty much worse than the Fighter, which had nothing.

Either that or do it the way that REIGN does, where your Random Character Gen always creates a character with the same base point total. When you randomly have a crappy character because the dice said so then it's a bad system.

But that's not really a discussion for this thread.

>>47201760
yeah knockback + dungeoncrasher is great, and I'm tempted to at some point try a knockback + dungeoncrasher bloodstorm blade.

I really, really REALLY REALLY REALLY hate to say it but Captain America sounds like a snazzy way to play one... the idea of a martial who can fling a weapon at a bunch of people that gets power attack, makes them dazed and tripped, get knocked back, and cheesegratered against the wall.

>>47201494
>The problem is there's no way for someone coming into the game to know that.
That is not true, anon. I started playing 3.5 only during 4e's tenure, and I knew about Warblades just fine: there are ample fan-made guides online, and if I were computer-illiterate my group would have explained it instead.

>The bloat of 3.X has created a lot of problems for making the game actually playable when someone sits down at the table.
As a person who actually was new and sat down at the table, all I can say is you're completely wrong. Building a good Fighter core-only is hard. Building a good character of any type is easy with the supplements.

>>47201785
Remind me of OotS. Roy spends ages in that fight against Thog going on about being smarter and beats him via DM fiat with knowledge (architecture and engineering), him being intelligent has been useful in a fight precisely once and only when the author wanted to try to make a point. For comparison look at Vaarsuvius, who is by far the most useful party member directly because of their class and its dependence on intelligence.

Roy shoulda rolled a warblade.

Just play anima senpai.

>>47201816
Huh, I wasn't aware that they were particularly good. I just liked them for their /d/ side.

>>47201870
>Building a good Fighter core-only is hard.
Impossible, I say. No reason at ALL to play a Fighter, a Rogue or a Monk in a core-only table.

>>47201871
And of course, V banned BY FAR the most useful wizard school,

The thing that aggravates me about Roy is not that he's of a low tier class, but he's bad by fighter standards. I mean, if you have two whole rounds of two fisted full attacks with an anti undead weapon and a focus in taking out casters, versus an enemy caster in melee, and you can't do it, you need to be level drained to one and start over.

>>47201919
There is a reason to, namely being able to play a massive amount of fighters in combat at the same time, since all you do is "charge->Can't?->full attack"

>>47201919
Eh. You can do it. It won't be very fun or effective, but you can function basically.

>rogue

Rogues may be underpowered in core, but they don't remotely belong in the same category as those two. In the roguelike Incursion, which for the most part is straight up 3e (some touches of earlier editions), with challenges that are 100% in line with 3e and you even see the math and rolls involved, beating it with a rogue is much easier than with a caster, despite the fact that mages literally get 60+ spells per day at level one.

>>47194448
>How do you balance wizards and warriors, /tg/?

Who said that they had to be balanced?

>>47201917
Oh, they're brilliant. Even without cheating into other racial substitution levels (seriously stuff like shifter druid is amazing, and not having to be a shifter to get there is even more amazing) they have amazing racial substitution levels of their own - changeling egoist gets a bunch of free powers including metamorphosis at level 5 (psionic polymorph, basically) and changeling wizards can specialise in two schools at once and can change their familiar into any other eligible familiar at will. In a normal familiar that's a fun bonus, in an improved familiar that's useful as hell and for an arcane hierophant or any other combination that lets you combine your familiar with your paladin mount, animal companion or cohort it's downright amazing. It's a bear companion! Now it's a dragon! Now it's a grey render!

>>47202064
Good design? If two players are playing two different characters, one shouldn't have an overwhelmingly greater degree of impact on the game than the other.

>>47202037
>Muh incursion
>As 3.5 balance
>Incursion AKA Gods actually do fucking shit
Opinion=Trashed.

Incursion is great

>>47201610
>despite the fact that the wizard is a tactical genius and the fighter is not (int 20 vs int 10)
Int doesn't measure tactical ability, it measures scholastic ability.

In the same editions that a Fighter got land, a keep, a title, and a fighting force as a class feature it is specifically stated that powerful wizards have a grim reputation and people will want to deal with them less as they grow in levels and reputation. Sure, they could just hire mercenaries, but theirs would probably be either lower quality or more expensive or both, while capable men who were successful adventurers in their own right show up to pledge fealty to a level 9 fighter.

Additionally, what each character can do is informed by your class over anything else. Sure, the high-level wizard might have read a book on the subject of organized warfare, but the high-level fighter has executed what the book has suggested and has a more thorough understanding--even if they have 8 int and wouldn't be able to personally dissect their own tactics or strategy. Simply put, they'd be a natural.

>>47202098
The problem is that while 3e bitching largely pertains to casters trivializing encounters, which is a given issue, by the point of 5e we have to put up with autists complaining about guys who can teleport or resurrect the dead not being balanced OUT of combat with the muggles.

>>47201628
>Anyway, in S&S, the principle attributes of a true warrior protagonist are his sharp mind and wits, and his unshakeable, dogged determination, imo. Yes, they're usually strong. Who fucking cares? The strength of a mighty man is nothing compared to that of an ogre or giant or dragon. What allows them to win the day is cleverness and grit. They virtually always beat sorcerers etc. by out-mentalling them, not out-muscling them.

You're right, but it's hard to represent in RPG terms. Not only because casters almost always have higher mental stats than martials, but also because the player is making the decisions, not the character. A dumb player with a smart character is not much good unless you're getting some kind of concrete mechanical benefit.

You could use fate points but I don't want to start another argument over narrativism.

>>47201951
V had to ban conjuration, otherwise there wouldn't be a comic. V plays a wizard that pretty much does nothing but blast and has banned two great schools and even then is by far the most useful character. The most amusing part I find is that Roy's father was actually right - Roy has enough intelligence to be a good wizard, and he would have been far more useful as a wizard than he ever was as a fighter.

He's brave, intelligent and resourceful with good constitution, dexterity and intelligence scores - the high strength is a waste, but a wizard with high strength and good other stats is far more useful than a fighter with the same setup. And considering that he's now pretty high levelled and not THAT strong, he probably started with all stats at around the same point and boosted strength.

Roy is a character who seems to have rolled about 50 point by worth of stats (albeit a very flat array) and wasted it by rolling a fighter.

>>47202098

'tis an assumption, not a fact. D&D gets flak for being unbalanced, yet there are plenty of beloved games that also do not have balance. Take WFRP 2e, for example. Is a Hedge Mage in any way equal to an Apprentice Wizard? No, a hedge mage is shite, both in fluff and in game. Yet it can still be fun playing a mad rural bumpkin trying to grope his way with the Warp, barely surviving to learn greater powers. Likewise, the WFRP 2e Messenger is hopeless compared to a Knight Errant, yet both work together just fine.

It has never been necessary for all players to have an equal impact on the game table.

>>47202134

I'm talking about the range of very basic things you run into in Incursion. "there are spiders in a boot" "a kobold shanks you" "you trip a trap" etcetera. As far as that element its a tour of very minimalistic problems wizards have that get glossed over in wizardbalance discussions.

>>47202157
The issue in 3e was always both things.

>>47202157
They're more useful IN combat (all can deal and take damage, while casters also get huge amounts of control and other utility) while most martials are completely useless out of combat while casters can teleport, control minds and raise the dead. You don't see a problem?

>>47202148
If you can hire mercenaries, full stop, the fighter's stupid little level 9 followers are basically irrelevant, and what matters is your Cha score.

>>47202148
That may have been the case once upon a time, but this thread has been solidly focused on the post 2000 side of D&D. And in that post 2000 side of D&D, the average wizard is a better commander than the average fighter, and the great wizard is a better commander than the great fighter.

>>47202096
...huh. That sounds really interesting, especially as I'm on a kick with familiar/mount, mount/companion, etc type builds.

This sounds pretty intriguing, especially because normally shapechange stuff doesn't go so far as the changeling familiar stuff.

>lets you combine your familiar with your paladin mount, animal companion or cohort it's downright amazing.
>with your... cohort

Is there such a fountain?

>>47202206
True. Forget the wizard (he can be your lieutenant or something, cast spells to help your army) and forget the fighter (he's just an unusually useful grunt), your general should be the bard. Charisma to lead, music and spells to buff the army and enough skills to take every single skill your DM deems army leading related.

>>47202206
>stupid little level 9 followers
The Fighter's level 9, and has 21-71 followers who are literally more capable than any merc the wizard can hire--potentially including flying mounts and magic gear they show up with.

And this is *on top of* other mercs the Fighter himself can hire as class-granted followers don't even interact with hireling rules.

>>47202239
Hadn't really thought about it when I said it, but upon thinking about it, according to the DMG, a paladin with the Leadership feat may treat a cohort as his special mount for +2 LA. Get your familiar combined with a mount somehow (should be doable, high one warrior wizard, halfling outrider, something along those lines) and you now have a second character you can morph into any other eligible character as a full round action. One round it's a dwarf wizard, the next it's a water orc warblade, the one after that it's a diprotodon.

>>47202169
>It has never been necessary for all players to have an equal impact on the game table.
that's dumb. you're dumb.

>>47194448
Let martials do unrealistic shit like rip trolls' arms off with their bare hands and throw boulders. A fighter shouldn't be "just a guy with a sword" any more than a wizard is just some jabroni spitting whiskey at a lighter. Anyone who wants to whine about "wuxia shit" can eat my boypuss

>>47202195
Not at all, because that's a """"""problem"""""" as old as D&D.

>>47202198
I just said that trivializing encounters is a problem, while clerics resurrecting the dead and fighters not being able to do that sort of thing is not.

>>47202287
But will they be more capable than the undead army the wizard raises when he gets bored and teleports himself to a graveyard, and will they survive when the wizard decides to carpet bomb the area?

>>47202287
>The Fighter's level 9, and has 21-71 followers who are literally more capable than any merc the wizard can hire

They usually aren't.

>potentially including flying mounts and magic gear they show up with.

If you are very, very lucky. You probably will not be lucky enough to get anything cool.

The most you will get is what is essentially a free henchman (or two).

Basically if you've been hiring mercenaries with no real limit save dosh for 7 levels, probably no one will notice the guys you get as being any different.

>>47202304
Isn't it though? Once you leave combat the fighter is basically useless, while the casters can fly, use divinations, teleport, breathe underwater, burrow through the earth, read minds, summon goddamn magical houses and abuse conjuring walls and fabrication to become filthy rich. Is one character being useful in only one aspect and the other character also being useful in that aspect but also in every other aspect supposed to be fun for the first character?

>>47202295
Nice catch. That would be disturbingly silly, but yeah it checks out.

>>47194448
You don't. Magic is inherently unbalanced, it's fucking magic. If a non-magic person could be just as good a person who uses magic there'd be no real point to using magic, would there?

>>47202169
If your argument is "I know my system is unbalanced but my group has fun anyway" then you aren't really contributing to this conversation in a meaningless way and might as well just leave. Nobody's saying that you can't like an unbalanced or even a bad game. No game is perfect. I love REIGN and the One Roll Engine in general but it's not without its warts, just like every other system. But I'd like to think it has the merit of at least being balanced and fun for everyone involved, not just the one guy who rolled well or chose the correct class.

>>47194448
>D&D
Tell people about all the annoying stuff in the rule book. Concentration checks, material components, needing to make gestures for some spells, needing to speak for some spells, getting hit if you try to cast within enemy's reach, high tier enemies having spell resistance, intelligent enemies focusing on casters first because bandits are not stupid.

>Homebrew system
All classes use special abilities from an energy pool. "Caster" type classes like Telekinetics are powerful, but all other classes have special abilities as well. Martially focused classes have abilities focused on willpower and luck that can make them very hard to kill while casters don't have as much. Example: the Telekinetic might use "space magic" to hurl a large rock at a Leader and a Berserker. The leader uses commander's luck to dodge the attack after it has technically already hit him and the Berserker just tanks it while running up to the telekinetic as a free action using Single Minded Ire.

>>47202229
Reread what I'm replying to. They brought up editions where "they're leaders of men" as a feature, so I talked about details they overlooked.

>>47202371
How? This is one of the worst arguments, and its merely "how dare you be allowed to have nice things!" which is the most petty and unreasonable argument possible.

>Is one character being useful in only one aspect and the other character also being useful in that aspect but also in every other aspect supposed to be fun for the first character?

If it wasn't, and people actually cared, which they clearly don't, then people would play clerics somewhat as often as they whined about clerics. But they don't.

Its only very rare that people want to be able to do those things, but very common that they want to bitch about those things.

The only real solution is to make them something like Incantations from d20 modern (as opposed to 4e rituals, which is basically "if you want to do cool things, drain your bank account and a feat").

>>47202337
>They usually aren't.
They *literally* are. The actual definition, not the 'actually figuratively' one.

>The most you will get is what is essentially a free henchman (or two).
...no, that's not how it works.
And they're not henchmen or hirelings, they're followers. These are specific terms in the game, with specific rules.

Read the actual book, you silly bastard.

>>47202417
Many normal enemies probably shouldn't focus on casters, but bandits definitely should, as the most apropos class is thief and thieves probably know that magic mans are the source of the uberly valuable magic items.

On the other hand...

>material components
>needing to make gestures for some spells
>needing to speak for some spells

Please don't.

>>47202148
>Int doesn't measure tactical ability, it measures scholastic ability.

The real problem is that tactical ability doesn't really have a value on DnD on the whole, except in edge cases which trivializes its value.

If a fighter had interesting ways of leveraging his tactical knowledge against his enemies in combat, then it would be great. Lacking rules for that, the only answer is GM fiat, which is a patch job at best.

>>47202375
Disturbingly silly my ass, once I figure out how to get rid of the familiar range limit I'm making a changeling that sits at home and playing as the ever morphing familiar cohort. Is it a thrallherd? Is it a wizard? Is it a dragon? Yes it is! Get constitution drained? One round later you're a gravetouched ghoul. Cleric turns you? Bam, now you're a lesser fire genasi factotum burning all your inspiration in one round. Next round, get remade into a slightly different factotum, and the round after that you become a druid because you need to revivify the party member that just died.

The only limit is your imagination and ability to dodge dungeon masters guides at head height. Seriously, anyone know of a way around the range limit?

>>47201610
>I keep hearing in conversations about balance the fact that a fighter can lead an army as one of the reasons they're balanced with wizards, despite the fact that the wizard is a tactical genius and the fighter is not (int 20 vs int 10) so the wizard is a better general too. Why not give fighters a bunch of options, one of which being recruiting and leading followers?

Pet classes are generally a nuisance, especially if they deal with lots of pets. And it completely changes the nature of the game when you move from small battles to fighting with armies.

The idea of the fighter being their own little mini-party is kind of cool. They could be like a little team of commandos, along the lines of the Black Company, each with their own skills and abilities. We're talking like 4-5 skilled guys who follow the fighter around rather than a big army of random mooks.

But it's probably not the best idea. Even with just a handful of guys it slows down combat and gives you more characters to keep track of.

>>47202511 This is what happens when games are constructed without stuff like >>47198281 underpinning them.

>>47202476

>Read the actual book, you silly bastard.

There's a reason I said that you may get what is essentially a free henchman or two. It is not clear whether they can advance.

There's not likely to be much to be excited about. Some mercenaries will be level 0, some will be level 1, some will be as high as level 5.

Probably the most exciting followers are those belonging to the ranger (iirc slim chance of a stone giant or copper dragon) and the Athasian fighter, who does, in fact, get large blocks of high level fighters.

I genuinely don't foresee many situations where a fighter's followers will make a difference without being prone to dying in the use, aside from the guy with the magic battle axe or such.

>>47202542
So, worse? Because playing the game as a guy four levels behind his party that can turn into whatever class or race he wants at the drop of a hat sounds fun as hell.

>>47202478
>Please don't.
I really don't want to, but it's hard to rein in their power. Really, it's the clerics who I dislike the most. No spell failure chance, access to all the spells so long as they prepare for them at the beginning of the day, can be competent in melee combat.

The only other option is to give the party items that only benefit the martials, and that gets sort of weird..

>>47202511
I don't interpret leadership as working that way and is a bit too silly for my tastes, although I could envision an RPG in which changelings work something like that.

>>47202542

Technically, the issue in silly changeling person's familiar thing is with leadership, ie "I am a leader of men," and that there's a gulf between what cohorts are thought to be and what they are.

What they are thought to be: "Leadership nets you one cohort. You choose the cohort."
What they actually are: "Leadership nets you the ability to attract cohorts, which the DM creates, though the player may attempt to attract a specific kind of cohort. There is no limit to the type, or numbers, of cohorts a PC may have."

Leadership is itself a nonmagical mechanic and if the DM permits nothing stops you from having all the things he mentioned and more as cohorts, but the limit is actually persuading the NPCs to follow you.

>>47202602
>The only other option is to give the party items that only benefit the martials, and that gets sort of weird..

And the clerics can also use those, unless it's literally got "can't be used by full caster class" on it.

>>47202573
That does sound fun. It also sounds like it's breaking the game in half over one's knee and negating core elements of the experience. And it's also showing how the structure of magic in game makes it possible for one person to basically do anything whenever he wants and singly solve any problem the group is faced with.

>>47202602
>I really don't want to, but it's hard to rein in their power.

Okay. In what sort of mirror universe are verbal gestures (a deep space campaign?) and somatic gestures going to be a problem? When are material components going to be a problem? Give me animal hoof, ground mica, skunk cabbage, and powdered peas and I'm happy.

As for reigning in cleric power I don't have any particular advice.

Keep track of wizards prepared spells.

>>47202631
That isn't how leadership works. That's how morphing familiar combined with a cohort (doable, but takes a few steps) works.

>>47202631
>Technically, the issue in silly changeling person's familiar thing is with leadership, ie "I am a leader of men," and that there's a gulf between what cohorts are thought to be and what they are.

Fair enough. I retract my comment due to the spirit of negativity with which it was fashioned. It's still a silly rule but one that isn't especially germane to this discussion.

>>47202631
And diplomancy breaks the game

>>47202641
Four levels is a big deal in D&D, if you're level 5 and they're level 9 there's going to be a big gap in power, though whether that's enough of a price for the frankly stupid versatility is up to you.