Author Topic: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?  (Read 8312 times)

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Necrosnoop110

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What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« on: September 28, 2011, 03:05:44 PM »
Speaking generally I would think it would require three mains things:

(1) Ways to be as strong offensively and defensively as the casters without actually becoming casters
(2) Ways to do their own jobs in their own domains better than any caster
(3) Ways to do things either as interestingly or with as much utility as casters   

Thoughts?

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2011, 05:58:27 PM »
I think this very concept was just deliberated in the thread you first posted in. :p

What would non-casters need to hold their own vs. equal CR creatures?

A point was made about proper magic item optimization, primarily people forget that Fighters and the like are meant to have magic items at higher levels, and most people try to compare them to casters with out taking that into consideration.

On the other side of coin strong arguments were made with the opinion that melee classes would benefit from having more/better optimized/strengthened special abilities on top of what they already get (including extra feats). Within that same deliberation was a reference to Races of War (Frank and K) which I've been looking over, and agree are pretty decent boosts to melee classes. Especially Fighters. It treats them a bit more like the extraordinary characters (read heroes) that they're suppose to be... especially at higher, near epic, levels.

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2011, 06:07:47 PM »
A point was made about proper magic item optimization, primarily people forget that Fighters and the like are meant to have magic items at higher levels, and most people try to compare them to casters with out taking that into consideration.
The problem with this line of thought is that casters get just as much wealth, and they aren't forced to spend that wealth on anything in particular (see: multiple weapons; armor; shields; mounts; mobility items; various offensive, defensive, and utility items). All a caster really needs is to boost his Con and primary casting stat and he can use his spells to do any- and everything else. Even wizards don't NEED to buy more spells to throw into their spellbooks; they could easily make do with the 2/lvl they get, or they can use any of various means at their disposal to get more if they want.

If fighters got wealth and casters didn't (or if they got six times as much wealth in magic items), this would be fine. But they don't. And worse, casters can stretch their wealth to a ludicrous extent. Fighter-types generally can't.
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Endarire

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #3 on: October 03, 2011, 09:40:36 PM »
Here's a brief list of what casters can do that's special.  Maneuvers and stances can't, and probably shouldn't, try to mimic anywhere near all that.
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Speaking of which:
Don't even need TO for this.  Any decent Hood build, especially one with Celerity, one-rounds [Azathoth, the most powerful greater deity from d20 Cthulu].
Does it bug anyone else that we've reached the point where characters who can obliterate a greater deity in one round are considered "decent?"

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #4 on: October 03, 2011, 09:56:27 PM »
What would happen if you eliminated the two free spells per level wizards and archivists get and remoevd or severely nerfed the cleric's self buffing spells? This would be in addition to granting access to things like ToB. How much would that change right off the bat?

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #5 on: October 03, 2011, 10:03:29 PM »
What would happen if you eliminated the two free spells per level wizards and archivists get and remoevd or severely nerfed the cleric's self buffing spells? This would be in addition to granting access to things like ToB. How much would that change right off the bat?
With wizards, it depends on how much wealth they have access to, really, as well as enemy mages. Regular WBL means a wizard just has to have access to the right spells and he can have all the spells he likes. And it'd be more likely that he'd go enemy-wizard-hunting to scavenge their spellbooks.
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Endarire

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2011, 12:32:30 AM »
And casters who can't cast spells at the levels when the game expects them complicates the game and tends to frustrate players.  As a Wizard, I want to be able to use all of my spell levels.  This isn't Second Edition anymore.
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Speaking of which:
Don't even need TO for this.  Any decent Hood build, especially one with Celerity, one-rounds [Azathoth, the most powerful greater deity from d20 Cthulu].
Does it bug anyone else that we've reached the point where characters who can obliterate a greater deity in one round are considered "decent?"

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #7 on: October 04, 2011, 12:39:39 AM »
Quote
A point was made about proper magic item optimization, primarily people forget that Fighters and the like are meant to have magic items at higher levels, and most people try to compare them to casters with out taking that into consideration.

Thats what you got from all of that?  :banghead
No one forgets that, we all know that, its just that it doensn't make them equal. Getting an "artifact" sword (figuratively speaking) doesn't make a Monk = to a mage. Unless that thing gets mage casting on its own.
And even if it does get mage casting, the mage can buy/aquire one as well.
Giving them magic item gift cards doesn't make that mechanics more viable. Thats why people like frank and k, that and well the awesome explanations of the fluff.
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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #8 on: October 04, 2011, 12:57:59 AM »
Quote
A point was made about proper magic item optimization, primarily people forget that Fighters and the like are meant to have magic items at higher levels, and most people try to compare them to casters with out taking that into consideration.

Thats what you got from all of that?  :banghead
No one forgets that, we all know that, its just that it doensn't make them equal. Getting an "artifact" sword (figuratively speaking) doesn't make a Monk = to a mage. Unless that thing gets mage casting on its own.
And even if it does get mage casting, the mage can buy/aquire one as well.
Giving them magic item gift cards doesn't make that mechanics more viable. Thats why people like frank and k, that and well the awesome explanations of the fluff.
That's not all I took away from that, but some rather decent points were made about melee not being as feeble and helpless as they're often made out to be. But the melee vs caster issue plagues virtually every system. Melee will always be much more gear dependent when compared to magic users of just about any flavor. Hell, look at World of Warcraft and their warriors versus.... just about any other half caster or full caster. Or even Mass Effect, Dragon Age or even Star Wars. Any melee brute needs the right equipment for the right situation, most casters will have most of what they need on hand already, and equipment is just icing on the cake. xD

SRs, DRs, and Anti-Magic field as a (su) could help, but then you start getting into the 'anime' fight, I'd think.

...I may have derailed my own comment. Sorry. >_>

RobbyPants

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #9 on: October 05, 2011, 12:18:09 PM »
Here's a brief list of what casters can do that's special.  Maneuvers and stances can't, and probably shouldn't, try to mimic anywhere near all that.
What are you saying, then? If we want them to be equal, you can do one of three things:

1) Strengthen non-casters

2) Weaken casters

3) Both

I think you can close the gap a long way with "mundane" options by having them mimic a lot of what spells can do. It just requires a certain amount of WSoD. So, at a certain level, your rogue can move so fast as to gain Greater Invisibility for a round. In addition, certain non-magical classes need to become magical as they gain levels. So, eventually, barbarians start getting spirit totems or whatever, that let them do stuff like fly, summon spirits, and gain mystical protections.

Basically, figure out what you want PCs to do at certain levels, and make sure everyone can do that. A good place to start is the Monster Manual. Any class should be able to win a one-on-one encounter against any of these monsters about 50% of the time, and you need to assume the monsters are using their SLAs to their advantage. You need to assume these fights could be happening on any plane.
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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #10 on: October 05, 2011, 01:05:38 PM »
2 is definitely necessary, theres only so much strengthening you can do to a mundane without fundamentally altering them so they don't behave the same anymore(look to many of the Tome rewrites, they're mechanically good, but most regular players would deny they share much more than the name of the class.

And really, a party of effective T4s is already going to handily deal with pretty much all the situations, but as a team. Aiming for that is much more feasible than the T3 goal often set.
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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #11 on: October 05, 2011, 05:26:48 PM »
What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?

Spells.

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #12 on: October 05, 2011, 06:28:54 PM »
...
2) Weaken casters
...

I've been thinking about this a bunch the past few days. Some spells could be seriously tweaked down by making them either more ritualistic in nature, longer casting times, concentration to maintain, longer periods of time before the spell takes effect... etc. Basically making useless for spur of the moment combat casting.

As for some others... minor, lesser, and greater versions might help, being accessed at higher spell levels. Or just change how they scale.

Alternatively, start giving Spell Resistances to melee heavy roles. Or create melee specific feats with a level requirement doing the same thing, instead of a granted class feature.

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #13 on: October 05, 2011, 08:55:54 PM »
Spell Resistance isn't much of a help.  You have to get numbers so big that most developers and DMs would shit their pants at the sight to matter at all, what with True Casting, Assay Spell Resistance, and the numerous ways to just boost your caster level for real.  Then it doesn't even help against instantaneous conjurations, and indirect spell attacks like telekinetic thrust with poisoned ballista bolts.

Maybe if you started with SR 15 + class level (class levels stack for all classes that grant it), with feats available to boost it further, and starting around level 10 you started projecting an antimagic field as an Ex effect that doesn't affect you or your gear, and reaches 5' per class level (again, stacking, and again with feats to make it better).
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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #14 on: October 05, 2011, 09:46:22 PM »
I have been toying around in my head a possible limitation on Wizards. Its not going to be a fix (as you would need to change the spells themselves to really fix spellcasters I think) but at the very least its a limitaiton.

Work maximum spell level know kind of like the rangers favoured enemy, for example: Wizards start out with a specalist school as per normal and 2 other schools of magic that they can cast a maximum spell level of 0 (cantrips) from. Every odd level their specalist school maximum spell level increases by one (as per the standard Wizard spell progression) and 2 schools of their choice have their maximum spell level increase by 1. At 5th, 10th, 15 and 20th they can add a new school to cast cantrips from, which can then be increased as previously stated. These extra schools would be a new class feature so would not be gained by classes that increase caster levels.
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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #15 on: October 06, 2011, 12:39:57 AM »
Spell Resistance isn't much of a help.  You have to get numbers so big that most developers and DMs would shit their pants at the sight to matter at all, what with True Casting, Assay Spell Resistance, and the numerous ways to just boost your caster level for real.  Then it doesn't even help against instantaneous conjurations, and indirect spell attacks like telekinetic thrust with poisoned ballista bolts.

Maybe if you started with SR 15 + class level (class levels stack for all classes that grant it), with feats available to boost it further, and starting around level 10 you started projecting an antimagic field as an Ex effect that doesn't affect you or your gear, and reaches 5' per class level (again, stacking, and again with feats to make it better).
Still doesn't do it.
That works only by dint of fucking over casters, so in an arena match of some sort you might come out on top. You aren't dealing with the functionality issues that way.
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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #16 on: October 06, 2011, 02:03:43 AM »
Spell Resistance isn't much of a help.  You have to get numbers so big that most developers and DMs would shit their pants at the sight to matter at all, what with True Casting, Assay Spell Resistance, and the numerous ways to just boost your caster level for real.  Then it doesn't even help against instantaneous conjurations, and indirect spell attacks like telekinetic thrust with poisoned ballista bolts.

Maybe if you started with SR 15 + class level (class levels stack for all classes that grant it), with feats available to boost it further, and starting around level 10 you started projecting an antimagic field as an Ex effect that doesn't affect you or your gear, and reaches 5' per class level (again, stacking, and again with feats to make it better).
AMF or Antimagic Shield as a free action that last x/rounds per encounter per level?

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #17 on: October 06, 2011, 09:59:34 AM »
I did actually homebrew something along these lines once in an attempt to boost the sohei (Sort of Monk/Paladin/Barbarian) to tier 2. Not entirely sure if I succeeded but it basically involved a lot of spell like abilities at relevant levels.

It does have spells but with a worse list than a paladin so... yea...

if you want to read it its here:
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=8388.0
« Last Edit: October 06, 2011, 10:01:27 AM by Littha »

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #18 on: October 06, 2011, 11:16:56 AM »
...
2) Weaken casters
...

I've been thinking about this a bunch the past few days. Some spells could be seriously tweaked down by making them either more ritualistic in nature, longer casting times, concentration to maintain, longer periods of time before the spell takes effect... etc. Basically making useless for spur of the moment combat casting.
I've been working on some 3.5 house rules lately, and switching how spells work is part of it. Admittedly, it's a very quick and crude patch, but it might help a bit. It was more of an effort to make different types of spells be on par with each other. Basically, it goes like this (I go into a bit more detail in the actual rules):

Save or Die:
Increase casting time to an entire round (not a full-round action), similar to Sleep and the Summon Monster spells. The advantage is it gives people time to react, and the caster has to consider if it's worth trying to cast. Also, I like the cinematic concept of the caster ominously chanting while everyone either runs for cover or desperately tries to get past the fighter and stop him.

Save or Lose:
These are categorized as spells that deal a laundry list of conditions (such as blinded, stunnded, and nauseated), spells that lower your movement to half or less, and spells that completely trivialize your actions (like Baleful Polymorph). These are cast as full-round actions. You can still fire them off in one round, but you can't also move. Makes it a little harder to set up Color Spray at low levels.

Direct Damage:
These get boosts to damage based on the spell level and an additional rider effect based on the damage type (catch on fire for [fire], Str-based penalties for [cold], Dex-based penalties for [electric], etc).


Again, this doesn't even come close to bridging the gap between casters and non-casters, but I'm curious to see how it works in practice. I think a full approach would sadly include re-writing most of the spells from scratch.
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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #19 on: October 06, 2011, 11:30:20 PM »
I don't know if the spell system needs an overhaul.  Again, I don't think there's a huge issue, but that's also b/c I am willing and able to engage in serious optimization to make my non-casters work out. 

Brief suggestions: 
  • Remove some of the most broken spells.  That is, the "I win" buttons.  These are things like Celerity (with daze mitigation, it's probably ok otherwise unless they get wands of it or something), nerfing Polymorph, etc.  The obvious stuff.  I'd be happy to do the same for non-casters, too, but generally 1000+ hood-style battle jumpers are frowned upon in my gaming groups.
  • Restrict casters thematically.  I'd be happy if they all got turned into something in the middle ground between a Dread Necromancer and a Sorcerer.  Sorcs agonize too much about their particular spell choices (annoying), but there aren't enough Dread Necro type classes to go around.  But, something along those lines, that way 1 spellcaster can't be all things to all situations.
  • Work in some of the things that non-casters need into their classes or into feats.  For example, maybe beef up Iron Will, et al. into mini-Iron Heart Surge type effects.  Stuff like that.  That way they don't have to rely on items or on super-good optimization as much.  These might include ways of "countering" spells or supernatural effects, viz. Tome's Foil, which would help along the lines of what RobbyPants is discussing.
  • I like the idea of scaling feats.  I don't love the way they're implemented in the Tome, as they still lose a bit of the mix and match flavor I like for feats.  But, the idea is sound. 
  • Make things like combat maneuvers more viable without committing an entire build to them.  That is, given interesting, dynamic combat abilities.  TOB and things like Stunning Surge weapons are decent models.

I think much of this can be done in the current system, but it's a headache.  So, making it less of a headache so that people can both access it more readily and also do more things with their resources would be great, especially once you've restricted spellcasters a bit.