Author Topic: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?  (Read 8310 times)

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oslecamo

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #40 on: October 08, 2011, 02:21:43 PM »
Basically, the problem of caster/non-caster balance is uncontrolled "theoretical optimization" and lazy DMing.

Thoughts?

It's not the only source of problems, but it's a big part of it.

For example, Sinfire Titan mentions several "problem" spells that attack the storyline, but they can all be prevented with some decent DMing. Teleport doesn't work towards locations of big power. There's multiple ways to stop ressurection. There's a freaking species of inevitable whose only purpose is hunting those that try to start wish loops or similar. Those are all completely 100% RAW tools the DM has at its disposal. And that are completey ignored in theoretical organization, and when brought up TOers tries to pretend they don't exist.

That's not to mention the rampart word twisting that's quite common in TO, and then spread around the net as if it was the truth, until nobody seems to bother to stop to read the original text and only the twisted version exists.

Then there's completely arbitary criterias like "A true character must rely only in his own skills under pressure, so non-casters can't use magic equipment they can't craft themselves, BUT wizards have shops with every scroll in existence in every village and artificers have all the raw materials for crafting and time in the world they could want, and even tough they can only craft 1000 GP per day worth of stuff and thus will eventually need weeks of downtime to craft all their crap, non-casters can't use that time to go loot stuff of their own. "

That's one of the main reasons that led me to make the DMing guide on my sig.

Only thing is, the "I can do this all day" guy can't do it all day because his health(his sole resource) depletes faster than spell slots. By the time the 12th level wizard is half down(requiring an epic number of encounters), the single resource types have run out already.

Ultimately, the resource mechanic isn't compatible.

Devoted Spirit's Stance of fanatic healing (or whatever it's called, what matters it's that it allows you to fully heal the party by hiting rocks from lv 1) says hi.

Also I'm currently DMing a campaign with a lv 15 wizard conjurer specialist with Abrupt Jaunt, Greater Mirror Image, circlet of rapid casting, three prc dips, and most of the super wizard crap, and trust me, he considers himself lucky if he still has meaningfull spells for the 3rd day ecounter. Buffs alone consume a good chunk of his spell slots, and when the enemies aren't mindless brutes whitout anti-caster defenses whatsoever, he needs to easily spend around half a dozen spells per ecounter. Fogs? IHS, freedom of movement, teleport abilities. No save touch spells? Scintilating scales, miss chances, or plain immunities (quite common by this level). Glitterdust? Please, everything has blindsight/mindsight or similar by now. If they fail the save that is.

It demands work on the DM's part, yes, but it would be foolish to think an unskilled DM that just picks monsters at random from the books can properly challenge a party of four or more much more experienced optimizers.


veekie

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #41 on: October 08, 2011, 03:13:26 PM »
Quote
Unlimited, if slow, healing is tragically cheap and easy to acquire. 
In which case the 4 encounters/day thing doesn't work, because you expended no resources in the conflict. Granted it didn't work to begin with, but this is the same source of complaints from GMs who feel they aren't putting pressure on the party(see common warlock, ToB complaints)
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Unbeliever

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #42 on: October 08, 2011, 04:04:29 PM »
^ how is this even a response to my point? 

To recap: 
I contended that one of the key balancers to spellcasting power was that they had limited resources.  But, that in practice, this is often overlooked.  You said that noncasters, the "I can do this all day" folks whomever they are, are just as limited b/c of hp is that kind of a resource.  To which I (and Oscelamo as well) pointed out that there was a very easy, ubiquitous patch for that. 

So, sure, the Fighter (or Warlock, TOB, whatever) didn't really expend resources in that fight -- that's the whole point of their "I can do this all day" advantage -- but the spellcaster still did.  Put in enough encounters, with some short breaks in between them, and you mitigate some (not all, not even the majority of, but some) of the advantages a caster has. 

RobbyPants

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #43 on: October 08, 2011, 10:40:52 PM »
Quote
IMO, Advanced Learning is still a problem. It could be fixed by providing a list of axillary spells, so that no broken ones get taken. Any others can be taken at the DM's discretion, but that gets risky.
  In response to that, way I'm seeing it, advanced learning ain't the problem at all. The problem is that there is a "broken spell" at all, so... what spell's are you so afraid of the dread necro getting his hands on in that case?
It's a matter of if you want to put your work effort into creating spell lists or into fixing all the spells. I find the former a bit easier, but either one is technically possible.
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Sinfire Titan

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #44 on: October 09, 2011, 01:42:19 AM »
(Playing Devils Advocate here)

What would you say to someone who claims that ...

1) From in game OBSERVATIONS, casters are only more powerful than non-casters because of "lazy DMs"

Show them the spells that allow no DM wriggle room. Show them that, even if you restrict the casters to half WBL and the noncasters get full, a 20th level Wizard is still more efficient than a 20th level Barbarian (or go so far as to show how the Warblade still doesn't measure up).

Quote
2) From in game OBSERVATIONS, casters are only more powerful than non-casters because of "whiny players"

See above, but with more emphasis on the spells that shut enemies down completely.

Quote
4) The caster/non-caster imbalance only comes about due to theoretical optimization and not in an average game table

Stat up a Wizard of X level, and prove the issues first-hand.

Quote
5) DMs can even out this potential imbalance by creating challenges and opponents that tax bot casters and non-casters with a little bit of effort 

Show them that such encounters only work until around 7th level, when the spellcasters start dominating encounters on a large-scale. Show them that noncombat encounters are far less risky when solved by spellcasting abilities than by noncasters doing their jobs.

Even the dreaded Tomb of Horrors can be swept by spellcasters, seeing as the 3.5 version is designed for 9th level characters (and Summon Elemental has just become an option)


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veekie

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #45 on: October 09, 2011, 05:15:23 AM »
^ how is this even a response to my point? 

To recap: 
I contended that one of the key balancers to spellcasting power was that they had limited resources.  But, that in practice, this is often overlooked.  You said that noncasters, the "I can do this all day" folks whomever they are, are just as limited b/c of hp is that kind of a resource.  To which I (and Oscelamo as well) pointed out that there was a very easy, ubiquitous patch for that. 

So, sure, the Fighter (or Warlock, TOB, whatever) didn't really expend resources in that fight -- that's the whole point of their "I can do this all day" advantage -- but the spellcaster still did.  Put in enough encounters, with some short breaks in between them, and you mitigate some (not all, not even the majority of, but some) of the advantages a caster has. 
You need to look beyond a player-to-player contest. The party, as a whole, is expected to go through resources over the course of an adventuring day, for gameplay pacing purposes. It's the opposite of the 15 minute workday.
This is not how it should be, or how it is, but how it is perceived(because with the spell mechanic as it is, you don't really run through that many slots), so the end effect, is you lose people who wind up seeing a class that can be awesome 24/7 because this is 'obviously broken'. Its the same reason why some people ban melee having nice things, because you can do things like kill enemies in one shot while expending no resources(shock trooper, leap attack etc)

And perception is important. People don't care how good your rules are if they think its broken.
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Necrosnoop110

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #46 on: October 09, 2011, 03:30:51 PM »
Page 42 of the DMs Guide "the classes are carefully balanced against each other at each level."

Shiki

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #47 on: October 09, 2011, 03:39:32 PM »
Page 42 of the DMs Guide "the classes are carefully balanced against each other at each level."
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Unbeliever

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #48 on: October 10, 2011, 12:22:19 PM »
^ how is this even a response to my point? 

To recap: 
I contended that one of the key balancers to spellcasting power was that they had limited resources.  But, that in practice, this is often overlooked.  You said that noncasters, the "I can do this all day" folks whomever they are, are just as limited b/c of hp is that kind of a resource.  To which I (and Oscelamo as well) pointed out that there was a very easy, ubiquitous patch for that. 

So, sure, the Fighter (or Warlock, TOB, whatever) didn't really expend resources in that fight -- that's the whole point of their "I can do this all day" advantage -- but the spellcaster still did.  Put in enough encounters, with some short breaks in between them, and you mitigate some (not all, not even the majority of, but some) of the advantages a caster has. 
You need to look beyond a player-to-player contest. The party, as a whole, is expected to go through resources over the course of an adventuring day, for gameplay pacing purposes. It's the opposite of the 15 minute workday.
This is not how it should be, or how it is, but how it is perceived(because with the spell mechanic as it is, you don't really run through that many slots), so the end effect, is you lose people who wind up seeing a class that can be awesome 24/7 because this is 'obviously broken'. Its the same reason why some people ban melee having nice things, because you can do things like kill enemies in one shot while expending no resources(shock trooper, leap attack etc)

And perception is important. People don't care how good your rules are if they think its broken.
I don't know if I'm just slow, but I still can't really understand what you're saying.  Are you for the 15 minute workday, or against it?  I  find this post incredibly difficult to parse. 

Are you saying that b/c people think guys who can do things 24/7 are broken they intentionally weaken them?  I don't know about that one way or the other.  The point I was trying to make was an obvious one:  part of what is built into D&D's balancing system, to the extent it exists, is that spellcasting, especially of the highest level spell slots available, is a tightly-limited resource.  So, by allowing for the equivalent of 15 minute workdays you tilt the scales very much in the favor of traditional spellcasters, and against warrior-types, binders, ToB characters, warlocks, etc. 

That's all.  The party is, ideally, supposed to be some melange of these abilities, or find ways to plug those holes.  That's part of the fun of the game (as opposed to other RPGs), but the thread was about comparing casters to non-casters. 

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #49 on: October 10, 2011, 04:28:48 PM »
  Hmm... I have a question, it seems to me that you Unbeliever are suggesting having number of encounters sufficient enough to overwhelm the amount of highest level spell slots full casters get.
  Yet, allow for cheap efficient, infinite, out of combat healing as a "patch" to deal with the issues that arise because Hp are a finite resource as well.
  Is that kinda long the line of what you're thinking? That brings about another set of isses, you should know.
1. I still think the non-casters roll sucks. Waiting all day long until you caster is out of spells, before you get to useful is kind of shitty to be honest.
2. The second you encounter a "Late Day Encounter" (and thats what were calling this from now on, The Late Day Encounter, method or LDE for short, which is the counter to the 15 min workday). . . Running a LDE is in MANY ways similar to running a horror campaign if you've read the Heroes of Horror, or played in the rokugan... thats an aside, but the moment you run across a LDE and the MAGES are out of magic, then you die... unless:
The encounters are needlessly simplistic,
or plays to the strengths of melee (obvious)
or is a caster itself.
I'll find some example of this given a day. 
3. Changing the dm style to accomodate for weaker classes is possible, but thats only one answer to the title question and in my book its kind of a shitty answer.

tl;dr? Running a Late Day Encounter system, is unsatisfying, obvious in terms of damaging verismlittude and doesn't take into account fighting spell casting monsters/melee defeating mosnters, puzzle monsters etc... when the mage is out of spells. ImHO
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Unbeliever

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #50 on: October 10, 2011, 06:20:47 PM »
^

tl;dr?  D&D (3.5 and earlier) assumes Late Day Encounter system.  It assumes you're going to have several encounters in a day and is built around that.  That may be dumb (I have no real opinion one way or the other), but that's part of the thinking that informs the system.  If, in effect, you don't have LDEs, then the system is likely to need some serious rebalancing, either boosting the "all dayers" or nerfing the "limited resource" guys.  

My contentions are that regardless of whether it's a good idea or a bad idea, the LDE model is what 3.5 D&D assumes to a large degree, and so not using it tilts things in favor of the casters/limited resources guys.  And, further, that the usual "hp are more limited than spells" contention is not all that true.  D&D is a game about resource management.  

You elide between "mage being out of spells" and "mage being out of all his best spells."  There's a big difference there.  Ray of Dizziness or Ray of Enfeeblement are good, low-level spells.  I rarely feel like a chump for casting them.  But, they do not have the encounter-changing effects of say, Solid Fog.  Ideally, this should track the level of the spell, though it does so only imperfectly.  I always found part of the fun, if occasional frustration, of playing a D&D spellcaster to be picking what ability you're going to choose to expend.   

Finally, I've said this a number of times, but I think the gulf between non-casters and casters is less than is usually assumed in practice, given a reasonable level of optimization.  I personally play 2 noncasters with some regularity -- a supermount with a gold dragon and a crusader/master of nine -- and I never feel outclassed, even when we have a single encounter a day.  Now, perhaps the response is "holy shit that's a lot of optimization you're using already!" and maybe that's the answer -- optimize the hell out of noncasters and not casters (though in both games there's a BFC, god wizard, Initiative of the 7Fold Veil, so it's not he's a chump ...).  

P.S.:  if you want to do away with the daily resource management of D&D, and I'm not saying that's a bad idea (Star Wars Saga Edition 90% did, and I like that game), I'd focus on encounter-based system like ToB does for spellcasting.  Perhaps with a number of Action Points that can let you refresh them, or some other type of mechanic.  
« Last Edit: October 10, 2011, 06:22:21 PM by Unbeliever »

bkdubs123

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #51 on: October 10, 2011, 06:29:31 PM »
D&D (3.5 and earlier) assumes Late Day Encounter system.  It assumes you're going to have several encounters in a day and is built around that.

Wrong. D&D 3.5 was "balanced" around the notion that on an average adventuring day a party would engage in FOUR encounters of CR equal to the average level of members of the party.

Quote
And, further, that the usual "hp are more limited than spells" contention is not all that true.

What evidence do you have to back this up? Your standard melee character will get the shit beat out of him in every fight where there is an "appropriate melee threat" that he is trying to fight.

Quote
maybe that's the answer -- optimize the hell out of noncasters and not casters

That's never the answer. You don't provide tons of options for one type of character and forbid other characters from taking them.

Unbeliever

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #52 on: October 10, 2011, 08:22:56 PM »
D&D (3.5 and earlier) assumes Late Day Encounter system.  It assumes you're going to have several encounters in a day and is built around that.

Wrong. D&D 3.5 was "balanced" around the notion that on an average adventuring day a party would engage in FOUR encounters of CR equal to the average level of members of the party.
I meant something on the order of 4 encounters per day to fit the LDE model.  The LDE model was proposed in contrast to the 15 minute workday, or at least so I understood.  If I'm abusing a terminology invented a few hours ago I apologize.  

Do the math on that:  3+ rounds x 4 encounters equals at least 12 rounds.  Casters do not usually have 12 spell slots for their highest level of spells (at high level they will have it for their highest two levels, I suppose).  See my above comment re:  eliding "being out of spells" and "being out of your highest level spells."  

Quote
And, further, that the usual "hp are more limited than spells" contention is not all that true.

What evidence do you have to back this up? Your standard melee character will get the shit beat out of him in every fight where there is an "appropriate melee threat" that he is trying to fight.
As noted previously in several posts, cheap between encounter healing is extremely easy to acquire.  The Wand of Lesser Vigor is the most common example.  Even if the melee character is down to 1 hp, if you have a bit of rest between encounters, then he can be back up to full for a trivial cost.  There are other ways as well, depending on the builds of the characters around, but that's probably the most broadly applicable one.  I was summarizing an argument made earlier.  

Quote
maybe that's the answer -- optimize the hell out of noncasters and not casters

That's never the answer. You don't provide tons of options for one type of character and forbid other characters from taking them.
I think I was being unclear, actually.  However, I don't think your comment speaks to what I was saying.  I would never deny a spellcaster the options that a melee character has -- that's absurd -- it's just a question of what options are on the board or not.  

This is sort of a separate issue.  But, I view, e.g., someone as having followed TreantMonk's guide in building a God Wizard as hella optimized.  Especially with regards to the thing that really matters -- spell choice.  It just so happens that matters a lot more than his choice of prestige classes or feats (he can be Wizard 20 and do just fine).  In conversations on this board, though, this is taken to be the standard example for what a wizard or conjurer can do.  I don't think my examples of noncasters differ from that level of optimization. My comments on this point would depend a lot on what one considers "high" or even "practical" optimization.  

I don't know what things look like on the other end of the scale.  I can't really tell how a Wizard with an essentially random set of spells and a non-optimized non-caster stack up.  From a game design perspective that might be the more important question, though D&D and games like it heavily reward system mastery.  

Midnight_v

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #53 on: October 10, 2011, 09:03:47 PM »
  I wanted to add that I agree with everything that Bkdubs has just said, but that isn't to say that I'm attacking "you" its just that I find the idea of a Late Day Encounter (LDE) ran game to be similar how it was in the rokugan/OA 3.5, setting.
  I mentioned that before, and I wanted to elaborate so:
Rokugan and the LDE
[spoiler] One of my earliest D&D 3.X games was a rokugan game,
I had played D&D before when I was a kid 13-14 ish but this was as an adult.
Set in the Rokugan 3.X I did like the settting the flavor and I sure as hell
didn't know jack about the difference between a horror campaign and a Heroic
campaign, but what I'd like to say is that it actually ISN'T the inclusion of
taint mechanics that create that enviorn (not that using vile damage, is somtimes
as equally bad for the puprose of "bad damage that doesn't heal right). What
created that environ of "helpless" was
1. The encounter level of the enemies and monsters but MORESO do they have the "AWESOME" tag.
and
2. The lack of effective Magic.

See in the Rokugan the only "Valid" spellcaster from a player perspective is the
Shugenja. The shujenja has a lot of problems as a full caster and if you optimize
it like any other caster its can get nifty prc's and maybe metamagics that let it
actually be a threat. Thing was, there were few prc's out at that time, and
really most people in the party wanted to be Samurai. Which was cool because we
had 3.0 2 Samurai, a "berserker" Samurai (3.5 barbarian), a shujenja, and a multiclass
"rogue" who was also a "samurai" by title.
 
 Much like you'll come to find in almost any practical game of inexperinced D&D, because
at level 1 the melee's are capable of killing things in 1 hit, and the casters are squishy,
people tend to think that the game works at all levels. OR people from the old school think
well yeah at low levels you guys are the nuts but at high levels "It is I!".

Well, this shugenja was a "fire" shugenja, so the healing mostly came from a wand or whatever.

So at somepoint we were pretty well off, however, at somepoint we had to enter into the shadowlands
For those of you who don't know this place, its the horrid part of the world where something terrible
has "broke the land" or whatver, the MOURNLAND, The BANEMIRES, whatever you want to call it, generally
speaking its a place  you can't go through without getting hit by Late Day Encounters.
Now this may be influenced by party composition or whatever, but what I learned was that without a GOOD
full-caster to help play GOD, team evil can totally kick your ass.
We fought mostly while we were out there undead, Oni(giants) and Greater Oni(outsiders), there were also
opposing casters. Thing about this is the opposing casters were Blood sorcerers (banned for player use) but
they were actually freaking sorcerers using the sor/wiz list.

  If you fight an opposed full caster and your team good caster is depleted for the day... its a curb stomp
in the making. I remember fighting a maho-sorcerer and some skele's... an really the skele's were just
mostly in the way so he could cast spells, but it totally ended up raping. We go duex ex'd out in that
the Dm let one of the samurai rollplay out an intimidate check, that sent the caster packing.
  I talked to the dm about it later and he said "I tried to use a bunch of non lethal spells to inconvience
the party, and the skeletons were really like medium hp bags, you guys could easily dust. I didn't expect
(whatver bfc spells he was using at the time) to get everybody wailed on like that...damn". Thing is our
caster was a blaster and he sucked yes (not paying attention, so sometimes we were in the radius of his spells)
but the thing was in the end we ended up getting saved a LOT because the MONSTERS sometimes were actually stonger
than us in melee, and I bring this up because:
Having an ineffective caster in the party simulates, what its like to have a caster who at the end of the day is
out of spells.
Though I admit for a while.. iujistu helped a bit.

The 15 minute workday ISN'T a thing because, wizards break the world, it exists because after a certain point
the wizards are the ones that win 90% of the encounters. Maybe not directly, maybe in a Treantmonk "God" sense
but they're the ones who make the difference in combat. They make the difference because the melee's will often
just DIE without them vs bigger, stonger monsters. . . and they get facerolled vs monsters with any decent spell
lists.

So when the wizards like "Hey, lets me rest and recharge" people tend to listen, and with good reason,
Team monster has the potential to totally wreck people on the LDE schedule.    [/spoiler]
So if you're not interested in that long winded anecdotal issues. LDE scheduling doesn't take into account the strengths of team monster, the fact that casters are used to defeat many encounters, the 15 minute workday is a result of people WANTING to live, and melee's losing at melee to oppsing melee brutes... AND enemy casters encourages that idea set. Even if the idea was "Lets buff the Warrior before we open the door" and not "Deep Slumber"... the Warrior is going to want to have the best buff's available each time, so he doesn't get smashed. Its more egregious when the mosters get the awesome tag, but honestly they don't particularly need it, if they 1 member who has spell likes.
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Littha

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #54 on: October 10, 2011, 09:07:40 PM »
I don't know what things look like on the other end of the scale.  I can't really tell how a Wizard with an essentially random set of spells and a non-optimized non-caster stack up.  From a game design perspective that might be the more important question, though D&D and games like it heavily reward system mastery.  

I did work out once (for a sorcerer rather than a wizard) that if they memorised and cast random PHB spells they would cast a decent spell once every 3 rounds at least at lower levels. The issue is that new people don't take random spells, they take blasting spells

Unbeliever

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #55 on: October 10, 2011, 09:28:11 PM »
The only point I really wanted to make was that the 15 minute workday really plays to spellcaster's strengths b/c it removes one of their major constraints.

If you are in the business of heavily remaking D&D and trying to figure out how to balance spellcasters v. non-spellcasters, I think that should be taken into account.

@Midnight's anecdote
[spoiler]
Is it the case that you guys didn't have particularly optimized non-casters?  I mean, they don't sound that optimized.  I mean, I hate to be repetitive here, but I play challenging games regularly, and my melee dudes do fine.  And, we don't have a ton of relevant house rules.  Now, that may be b/c by "melee dude" I mean "20 hit die gold dragon at 12th level."  And, as a patch to a game with imbalances (rather than say, playing 4E), I might advocate more melee dudes along those lines. 

I'm not saying parties shouldn't have spellcasters.  To date I've never played one without like 2 full-time ones.  I'm just saying that the gulf, to the extent it exists, always feels smaller to me than it seems to be on BG. 
[/spoiler]
« Last Edit: October 10, 2011, 09:31:51 PM by Unbeliever »

weenog

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #56 on: October 10, 2011, 09:36:50 PM »
^ Spells take 1 minute to cast per spell level, except Evocation spells which use their normal times?
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Libertad

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Re: What Would It Take For Non-Casters To Be On Par With Casters?
« Reply #57 on: October 13, 2011, 06:00:16 PM »
I think the biggest problem is in regards to the casters' versatility.

Spells can create "save or lose" effects, area of effects, enhanced mobility (fly, burrowing, teleport), the altering of terrain through grease and illusion, etc.

The Core classes like the fighter, monk, and rogue cannot replicate these abilities (if you're just using a Core-only game).  The Rogue has Use Magic Device, but this isn't a unique option because casters can use magic items as well (plus anyone can take ranks, albeit they're less effective).

Less of a game design element but more of a player bias thing: in pop culture and literature magicians are just more powerful.  I've met gamers and fantasy fans who have no problem with fictional magic-using characters doing earth-breaking stuff, yet shake their heads in disappointment if the "everyman hero" masters some cool technique.  I think this mindset translates into our tabletop games.

That's why I think that the Tome of Battle was a step in the right direction.  Give melee guys/noncasters the ability to do "spell-like" stuff and change the flavor text to something "martial."
« Last Edit: October 13, 2011, 06:17:04 PM by Libertad »