5 Foot Step wrote on May 27^th, 2016 at 5:41pm:

I agree, and I believe I made those same points.  But even a DM who carefully allows only certain splatbooks isn't going to end up with a balanced game.  As I also said, even the most martial focused splatbooks such as Complete Martial have a bunch of spells in them.

That's really the long and short of it.  Casters just have too many options.  And options are not just fun, they are power.

In 0e there were something like 12 spells per spell level, shrinking to something like 8 at the top end.  Now there are literally hundreds of spells per spell level.  Even just core has 39 1st level spells.  If you allow Complete Magic that number skyrockets, and again every splatbook adds to the count.

PersonaNonGrata wrote on May 28^th, 2016 at 12:21am:

How is this extreme?  An 18 in a stat is fully achievable using the point buy system, and Wizards are one of the least MAD classes.  They need Int, and then they might like some Con or Dex.  That's it, and those are just 'nice to have' secondary stats.  Pity the poor Monk who not only just straight up mechanically sucks as a class, but is also so MAD dependent that they could be given another 12 build points and still suck.

So your Wizard takes an 18 Int.  If he wants a 20, he is a Drow, or a Grey Elf.  Both right out of the rules, nothing homebrewed here.

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No.  It might have carried into that system, but it was born in 3.0 and lived in 3.5.  It's not a hard and fast rule, but to balance things it should be taken as a 3 +- perhaps 1.  More than 4 encounters per day and your martials are going to be sucking wind, after all.  Or dead.

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I agree with you, except for that "rules lawyering" bit.  You've missed the point entirely if you think that casters need to twist the rules in any way to dominate.  That is not the case at all, and in fact it is the reverse.  You've suggested cheating the casters in order to try to maintain balance.  If a player discovered that you were doing this, it would not be "rules lawyering" for them to be justifiably upset with the DM.

A caster doesn't need to look for rules loopholes, because the rules are weighted so heavily in their favor already that there is simply no need.

And keep in mind, this started as a debate over whether the PnP 3.5 system was inherently imbalanced when it was handed to Turbine to build a computer moderated game out of.  Computer moderators don't cheat, so there is no way to "rules lawyer" by the players, and no way for the computer to fudge the boss saving throws in order to keep the casters from simply slaughtering encounters.

That takes adding a boss mechanic where they are simply immune to death effects.  Which is exactly what you were suggesting doing in a PnP setting.

Again, this conceeds the point the the PnP system is not balanced and that Turbine had to make do with an unbalanced system as they tried to make a computer moderated game in which players could enjoy playing all classes.

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This again concedes the point, because computers don't have guidelines, they follow strict rule adherence.
And even in PnP it's farcical to claim that the rules are just guidelines and then have to make a huge number of house rules to try to allow the martial classes to play at an even level.  Or to just outright cheat the casters on a continuous and ongoing bases.  That's not a game, because games have rules.  It is instead a storytelling session with a few dice added in only for flavor and with very little impact on the already determined plot.

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Agreed.  But you'll forgive me for being confused by this statement after you speak about 'guidelines' instead of rules so often elsewhere.

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You miss the point again.  As written, the spell DC rules make spells land consistently at low levels, and as caster levels go up that chance just keeps getting higher.  The monsters can't keep up, as the rules are written.

So you can play by the rules, or you can house rule, or you can just cheat your casters.  In PnP D&D.  In a computer game the rules will be followed, so you'd better get them right.  And getting them right means starting from a point where they are not already broken.


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It's difficult for me to view something as clear as 3 > 1 as being "an opinion," but whatever.  I'd be happy to show you the figures, drawn straight from the rules.  But you seem to get a bit soft on the rules when it comes time to really understanding them, so perhaps that wouldn't be of any use anyway.

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See now...what is this?  "I have to change it to make it work well, but it's not broken" is a self-contradictory statement.

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A caster can be played by a person who doesn't know the rules well and is in the game only for the role-play experience and still dominate, all they have to do is notice that spell X they cast was pretty effective, and keep using it.  If the DM doesn't start cheating them, they will start being far more effective than the martials even can be, mechanically.  You see, that's the thing:  A lot of the spells which are really quite powerful are those which might appeal to a role-player.  Grease, Glitterdust, etc.  All very potent, and all it takes is casting it once for good effect and your roleplayer will quickly become an inadvertent powergamer. 


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Well, PnP 3.5 has sure had a lot of play test hours, but it still manages to be a broken system what requires huge modifications or outright cheating to try to balance.  And cheating isn't balance when you're taking about a game being played by a bunch of friends sitting around a table.  And again, computers don't cheat.

So the tools at Turbine, relaxing after their bagels and massages, were pretty much forced to impose a lot of new mechanics on the broken system they had to start with in order to make it play well under computer moderation where cheating can't happen and the rules will be followed as written.

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For balance?  4e is fairly balanced, and might make a decent computer game.  It got rid of all the long lasting movement spells such as Fly that make casters quite potent.  I dl'ed all the free 5e stuff and it looked interesting, but I didn't buy the core rules.  It might be ok, but that's said from a position of ignorance of much of that rules set.  Other than that, I've already stated that 3.5 would need to have its mechanics heavily modified in order to make a playable computer game.  And Turbine has done so.  We can disagree on the particulars of their modifications, but the simple fact remains that if they were to hold strictly to the PnP rules then we'd all be playing casters.  Except perhaps for people like Fran who can't understand how things work even after beating his head against the rock of playing a Fighter in a caster's game.

5thE is much better than 4thE, IMO. There's not much out for it for now, but that's never stopped a good DM.

And all the DM needs to do to slow casters right the fuck down is throw other casters at them. Or, you know, a beholder or seven.

WeHaveLived wrote on May 28^th, 2016 at 3:09am:


Sure.  This is just one of the arguments people try to make about the imbalance inherent in the game.  Fight fire with fire!  Tell me, what are your players playing Fighters, Monks, Rangers and such going to do in those encounters?  They don't have the options available to them that the casters have, so they usually just die when the DM decides to challenge the casters.  I made that point above, you must have missed it.

A Wizard has multiple means for getting out of the range of that anti-magic ray, various spells to help defend against the eye stalk attacks, and various spells for attacking any monster with a low save in one area, which the Beholder certainly has.  The martials have...a saving throw?  And except for the Monk, who is fairly useless in combat, not a very good saving throw.

WeHaveLived wrote on May 28^th, 2016 at 1:22pm:

destroyed

Frank wrote on May 28^th, 2016 at 1:41pm:


Your dick looks like a rotting mushroom?

Revaulting wrote on May 24^th, 2016 at 3:25am:


I'm feeling a lot of shame right now. 

OK... This whole thing escalted quickly. 

I supppose the point I was making was a little oblique, because it has some qualifications and variables.

So the back story: As some of you may recall, there was an infamous "meet the devs" moment at a convention where one of the Turbine team (I forget who, don't care enough to google) said that basically they could shit in a box and the stupid fanbois would still show up and buy it because it was stamped "D&D".

Galling.

Mostly because as RV said, he's right.

The point of linking this article (which other may read differently than I did) is that there is a danger in assuming that your IP makes ANYTHING YOU SHIT OUT sale-able.

Likewise, assuming that because you're working on a legendary IP you are "good" and ergo, in your Asperger's riddled binary thinking, everyone else must "suck" and "not think right." That is Circular Logic which always (although not always quickly) results in failure.

So if a massive brand like Final Fantasy, who is de facto "role playing" to most people born after 1980, can say "We need to get the fuck over ourselves" then perhaps Turbine could take a step back and re-assess.

Mostly I am amazed at the simple things that could be done with little to no effort to improve the customer experience that are simply being IGNORED.

Adding a few spells, maybe a few items from the source books or (God forbid) the actual Eberron core races would be cut and paste work.

Literally. It's all been set up prior to now. No thinking involved. Cut, paste, re-skin if you're feeling saucy, and move on.

It'd be fun, it'd drive up revenues, it'd help with player retention.

Yet it continues to not happen.

All I know, is that as a creative person in contact with other creative people in different fields, any one of the people I know (myself included) who put out something like "Memoirs of an Illusionary Larcenist" could expect a pink slip and a security escort off the company grounds.

How this team remains employed in what is supposedly a market driven field of Entertainment is something I would like answers to (mostly so I can insulate myself in the same way).

WeHaveLived wrote on May 28^th, 2016 at 6:03pm:

All that stuff you quoted are my words.  But I missed the part where you wanted to try to make a point using them.

Frank wrote on May 28^th, 2016 at 7:32pm:

They've artificially accelerated to the end-stage of Idiocracy. "Too hard" means, "Adding more Brawndo didn't fix it".

Revaulting wrote on May 28^th, 2016 at 7:53pm:

Brawndo is what DDO wants.

Well, it ended with Idiocracy quotes, so I am declaring this thread a win. 

Appealing to furries is all SquareEnix has done for years now.

i agree