(Trying to) fix 3.5 - how to.

[SquelchHU]

So a few days ago I made this post.

So the real question is - how do you fix 3.5 so that non casters can sit at the same table and participate in the same game as everyone else? Well, I looked around a bit, and experimented with some stuff and I found some answers. Not perfect of course, and you still have to know what you're doing to even consider fielding one, but it's still a remarkable improvement in that your entire party is not forced to break immersion as to why they are bringing a non contributor along and more to the point you can play the same game as everyone else and have fun doing it. The main problem you will have with such a set of house rules is the number of people who have the deeply ingrained conception that Fighters Do Not Get Nice Things that you will have to fight against each and every time you want yours to do anything that is cool, interesting, or relevant at all past level 5. If there is interest in this I'll make a new thread for it.

No one likes a piker. Not in an MMO, and not in a tabletop game. In fact it is worse in the latter case as it is likely that that person is your friend and you really want him to be able to play the same game as everyone else and have fun doing it. And if it's you I would hope your buddy thought the same of you. Now if you, or he were ineffective out of laziness, or some other factor that was in their control that would not be a problem for anyone other than them as they brought it on themselves. But if it happens because you wanted to play 'swordsman' instead of 'mage', this is a serious design flaw. The warrior type is not presented as an NPC only role, or otherwise inferior to real options (even though the Warrior class - a weak version of it is) so it should not be. And yet it is.

This is a surprisingly difficult problem to fix, as the reasons why non spellcasters are ineffective are many and varied. If you don't clearly understand the problem you will never be able to fix it effectively and will often make it worse by trying (see Pathfinder for examples of how NOT to do this).

So is my understanding perfect? No, of course not. I said it at the beginning, and I will say so again now. But better than most? Absolutely. And that's why I'm here.

Now there are several ways of doing this. The more in depth, comprehensive ways address more of the problem but also require much more technical know how to understand and implement. The quick and dirty fix is 'usually' enough for someone who doesn't want a Mensa exam just to bring a swordsman to their game. But even it requires certain assumptions to exist, or there is nothing to be discussed because you simply cannot do it if these assumptions are not held. And this is why the unusually common mindset that 'Fighters Do Not Get Nice Things' is your worst enemy here as a DM who doesn't get it will personally ensure any non spellcaster you ever play will never be relevant no matter how good an optimizer you are. You also may end up fighting yourself, as for some reason people freak out when a Fighter jumps down a hundred feet and sucks up the 10d6 damage despite the fact that at any level he could do that he could face multiple creatures, each with the strength of ten men in close combat and win and beating up ogres at that level isn't even that big of a deal. Just remember that everyone and everything else in D&D is going to Crazytown, so if you aren't with them you are out of state and not playing the same game as everyone else.

Now, here are the assumptions in question. These are absolutely not negotiable, so if you cannot get your DM on the same page, please save everyone a lot of headaches and just make a Druid or something as without them, non casters are absolutely non options.



32 point buy. Your game must have it. Why you ask? Because as a general rule that has few, if any exceptions spellcasting classes are Single Attribute Dependent (SAD) whereas non spellcasting classes are Multiple Attribute Dependent (MAD). As a SAD character, lower PB values are just fine as even 25 will allow you to get your prime stat maxed and Constitution to a respectable level - more than that adds to flavor stats, but not to character power. MAD characters need more than this to get up to par as they have to spread their stats thinner. 32 is the minimum value at which an MAD character can be fielded without being an embarrassment. More than 32 rarely offers a meaningful benefit, and is often too much for most so 32 makes the best middle ground.

'What about rolling Squelch?' you might be asking. Well getting one high and one solid stat is quite easy, and getting multiple solid or high stats is not. So it still favors SAD characters, just you don't have an easy option for a workaround. That and having the options available to you dictated by luck really sucks if you really had a particular character in mind and they don't line up with that. So don't do that.



Magic shops. Most people hate the concept of 'Mage Marts'. Among other things, reasons cited include 'magic items should be special'. If you want magic items to be special, you should not be playing D&D. Don't believe me? Look at any character. It's most obvious on the higher level ones because they have more stuff. Most of the items there aren't doing anything but getting their numbers up to par, simply keeping them level appropriate. It is nothing more than a basic tool of the trade. Policemen have a pistol, mace, handcuffs... Firefighters have a truck, an axe, and a suit, and your high level D&D character looks like a Christmas tree under Detect Magic. Attaching the word 'magic' to it does not make it special. Now, there are a few items that actually do something different, interesting, or unique but for the most part all having access to a 'Mage Mart' does is ensure you can keep your numbers at par by getting items that are directly and immediately useful to your character. Without this you're stuck depending on random luck for upgrades. Except that that really doesn't work. NPCs have less gear than you do, so the chances that anything they have is better than anything you have is quite low. To borrow MMO terminology for a moment, your upgrades come from selling the vendor trash that comprises the vast majority of what you will loot from dead enemies, treasure troves, etc. I don't like applying MMO terms to a tabletop game, but in this case it is entirely appropriate as the only use for all those +1 swords, rings of protection +1 and so forth is to save up for your next upgrade. Suffice it to say that because a 'Mage Mart' is required to keep your numbers at par, these need to exist and be readily accessible. By all means be realistic about it (you can get a +10 sword in a metropolis, but not Podunk village) just as long as said metropolis is reasonable to get to. That brings me to my next point.



Wealth by Level, or WBL for short. It's really a quite reasonable concept, particularly in a game where wealth directly equates to power and therefore limiting wealth also limits power. It is certainly an improvement over 1st and 2nd edition where there is a small but non zero chance the first goblin your newbie adventurer kills has a gem worth 1,000,000 gold. Particularly since you gain XP by finding treasure at a rate of 1:1, if I recall correctly. To say this is imbalanced would be an understatement, and what usually happens is the DM gets mad and chooses to ignore that you got one notch on your belt and instantly gained several kingdom's fortune and 20 levels. Which is fine, but it would have been better if he used a sane method of treasure generation so he didn't give the players something he didn't want to give them from the beginning. But back to 3.5 here. The problem with WBL is that the bar is simply set too low. Following WBL, a non caster simply cannot keep all their gear up to par, even with ready Mage Mart access.

It is often joked that Fighters have a hidden class feature called 'Gets Artifact Sword' because so many DMs, even those who are unaware there is even a problem to fix often hand the Fighter an Artifact Sword somewhere around 10th level. This sword is usually worth as much, or more as all the rest of his items combined and in some cases is worth more than the entire party's non artifact treasure combined. But what makes this notable is that despite its comparable value artifacts are NOT counted towards WBL. It's a quick and dirty fix though. Depending on class and level, you actually need something on the order of 150-200% WBL in order to get your gear up to par. This means either you get an artifact sword, you get a double share of the treasure for some reason or most commonly you set a pocket crafter on the job of making you everything for half price, making your money go twice as far. Again though many DMs don't like it, as they are operating under the erroneous assumption you are an equal party member without the help and would become too good with it.

One more thing. I use the word 'Fighter' a lot. While all of these are fully applicable to the class called 'Fighter' remember that it is not 'Fighters' that are deficient, but 'all non casters'. "Fighter" is simply a shorter way to say that.



Now with these assumptions in mind (your game is 32 PB, your game has Mage Marts, non casters have a pocket crafter to extend their wealth) here's the quick and dirty fix, for those who are not inclined to sit through a lot more technical jargon.

Rename the Tome of Battle Warblade to 'Fighter' and replace the PHB Fighter with it.
Rename the Tome of Battle Crusader to 'Paladin' and replace the PHB Paladin with it.
Unfortunately the Swordsage is not an acceptable replacement for the classes it overlaps with for various reasons, most notable being it's one of those main combat classes that has less than full BAB and nothing to boost their to hit to compensate unlike the Cleric and Druid (spell buffs) or Rogue (easiest time attacking as touch attacks, rendering the question of accuracy moot). If it had full BAB and had the Warblade recovery mechanic instead of the worst recovery mechanic of the three it would be an acceptable replacement for the Monk but not the Rogue. I'll go over the problems with BAB later in this document.



For those still here, the in depth fix follows. But again in order to fix the problems you must first understand what they are, aside from those already covered in the assumption section. As there are quite a few such problems, this section will be very long. You have been warned.

First, let us look at the core set of defenses available to any character. Those defenses are Hit Points (HP), Armor Class (AC), and Saving Throws (Saves). In general, AC works against physical attacks and Saves work against magical attacks. HP is supposed to be a second line of defense to both. If you're already saying 'Wait, what?' then you already know what's coming.

First, AC. Put simply you cannot get enough of it and also keep your offense relevant enough so that things actually want to attack you. Later on even if you are gimping your offense for defense your defense will still not matter, so all you have managed to do is ensure you cannot kill the enemy before they kill you. Some people will try to point at iterative attack penalties in response to this. Those only apply for manufactured weapons. Natural weapons take a maximum penalty of -5 (which becomes -2 with one feat and 0 with two feats) and you're going to quickly reach the point where weapon users are simply not a threat anymore, but the monster type brutes still are. So against the things that are actually a threat, your primary means of defense against them is completely ineffective even if you have spent a great deal of money on it. Obviously, this is a recipe for disaster. And often it is, as it sets a strict time limit on each and every battle.

Second, saves. Saves actually DO work, in that you can actually pass saves at later levels of the game. In fact you may actually do so more often than you did earlier on. The problem with saves is while they work in the short term, they do not work in the long term. If you are hit by one physical attack, that is not even an inconvenience (unless you really hate marking a few charges off your CLW/Lesser Vigor wand after combat) 1-2 full rounds of it will kill you, but until then you're fine. If you are hit by one spell, it's game over. So while having say... a 50% chance of not being hit by physical attacks (either due to Displacement or AC = Enemy to hit + 11) will roughly double your survivability, having a 50% chance of not being hit by magical attacks (due to saves = enemy DC - 11) still results in a very high chance you will not even survive a single combat. Even if you're saving 95% of the time that 5% chance a shot is going to approach 1 a lot quicker than you'd think. And not all builds can even do that. The only way to really compensate for the fact magical attacks are far more dangerous is to become immune to them. And this is either said than done - you can get the common immunities without much difficulty, but all of em? Not a chance. And please don't say 'anti magic field'. I don't want to hear Baby Jesus cry right now.

That just leaves HP. Except as you might have guessed, spells (or at least the ones worth talking about, which is just about any non Evocation) bypass HP entirely and as AC does not function as a defense they are evaporated very quickly by physical attacks. You would probably have enough HP to do your job if everything didn't sidestep it or go straight to it. But even so there is another problem. There isn't much of a HP difference between those supposed to have high HP and those supposed to have low HP. On the surface, the difference between say... a D10 and a D4 is quite large. Then you remember the default assumption is average HP, and there is absolutely no reason for anyone of any class to ever dumpstat Constitution unless they are intentionally making a gimp (and often, the Wizard will have a BETTER Constitution due to that whole SAD vs MAD thing) and the difference of '3 HP a level' at best amounts to something like the Wizard 20 weighing in at 151-191 and the Fighter 20 weighing in at... 214. That's not much of an edge. Especially when you have no alternatives and are supposed to be in close quarters. The Cleric and Druid will probably have better HP since they are only 1 HP a level behind but also SAD. Those are the numbers from 14 Con and a +6 item... the higher number for the Wizard are to illustrate the possibility of using that SAD thing to get a 16 Con and a 2 inherent bonus to Con for a total of 24 whereas the lower assumes all else being equal.

Remember here that HP, AC, and Saves are the only defenses non casters have, and only casters can bypass them either offensively or defensively. Remember also it's usually the non casters expected to run headlong into danger while the other guys hang back. See the problem yet? Not only are the supposedly most durable members of the party actually the least durable, but they can't even do their job by duking it out with enemies like themselves (big dumb melee brute).



Next, let's look at the offensive options available to non casters.

First there is 'attack for HP damage'. Doesn't matter if it means raging and charging with a great axe, throwing 10 vials of acid a round every round while blinking for sneak attack bonus, or whatever. It's still attacking for HP damage, and there is still no adverse effect to that HP damage until it reduces enemy HP to 0 or less. Not only is there no meaningful differences in method other than higher or lower numbers but for the same reason these are all counteracted by the same things. And I'll be going over that in a moment.

Then there are the various maneuvers. Namely Bull Rush, Disarm, Sunder, Trip, and Charge. I am deliberately ignoring Overrun because by the rules it doesn't actually do anything. Unless you are a rhino or other such trampler, but we're not talking about Druids here. I am also deliberately ignoring Grapple because you are not an octopus or similar (again, we are not discussing Druids), it's a huge pain due to clunky rules, and even if you do get it to work it hinders you more than the enemy. Not to mention it shares the same common weakness as all of the others.

So, what counters Bull Rush? Big, strong creatures. Multiple legs or exceptional stability also does.

What counters Trip? Big, strong creatures (or agile, but few enemies will have Dex higher than Str). Multiple legs or exceptional stability also does. And so does flight for that matter, at least the magical flight.

What counters Disarm? Being big, and high attack bonuses (partially a factor of Str, partially a factor of BAB). And simply not having something to Disarm.

What counters Sunder? Being big, and high attack bonuses (partially a factor of Str, partially a factor of BAB). And simply not having something to Sunder.

What counters Charging? Big, strong creatures on the grounds they have higher reach and get a free hit on you on the way in. This is notable because due to the other flaws often the difference between dying in one round and not dying in one round is one hit worth of damage. By giving the enemy a free hit, you cut the already short 'time limit' of 'kill the enemy before it kills you' in half. Not smart, especially if you actually want to keep the same character in the campaign.

What counters simply running up and hitting it? Well I think you get the pattern by now.

All of these things are blocked by the same thing. Which means no matter which ones are available to you, all of them are going to be blocked. No meaningful difference there. And when that happens you have no other answers.

Here is an illustration for contrast.

Let's take a level 3 wizard. Why level 3? It is a level at which you can start to see what I want to demonstrate, a level at which most agree the game is balanced, and a level that is not too complex just yet which makes the example simple. We will make him human, max Int (18) and a generalist to make this as general as possible.

Our hypothetical wizard has 2 level 2 spells (1 base + 1 Int), 3 level 1 spells (2 base + 1 Int) and 4 cantrips. Since the cantrips are probably flavor stuff such as Mage Hand, Mending, Prestidigation etc we will ignore those.

Let's give our sample Wizard the following spell load out:

1: Color Spray, Color Spray, Sleep.
2: Hideous Laughter, Hideous Laughter.

Now all five of those effects are very, very good. They have the effect of 'ends the encounter on the spot' which is about as good as it gets even. And as there are five of them, there's enough to throw one every battle with one extra. More than enough. Compare to stuff like 'may or may not have any meaningful effect whatsoever' or 'moves enemy around a bit which is really just you looking busy but not doing anything of substance' or 'costs enemy about half of a round at most' and it is quite obvious that the Wizard tricks are better than the Fighter tricks, even now at this low level where again, most agree the game is balanced.

However there is one problem. All of these are Will based Mind Affecting spells, and as such all of them have a common weakness as well. So a low level Cleric, or a low level Druid from the Eberron Child of Winter sect (notable for vermin animal companions), or a group of skeletons and zombies led by a Ghoul are all examples of level appropriate encounters that would completely school this hypothetical Wizard.

What does this demonstrate? No matter how awesome your trick is, in any game that has any form of tactical complexity you will need more than one trick, so you can do something notably different to hit things that the first trick will not work well or at all on. Further the more tactical complexity a game has the more often you will encounter a situation where you must find an alternative answer or have no answer. As 3.5 is extremely tactically complex, to the point of becoming a Chessmaster like duel of wits more than traditional RPG combat this comes up very, very often. If you cannot adapt, you will be screwed more often than not. Even if your tricks are as good as they possibly can be, they will still be non applicable at times.

The difference however is the Wizard can sub out his Hideous Laughter spells for Glitterdust or better yet Web and hit a different subset of creatures (namely those without high Reflex saves or Strength) which is very complimentary to something that mainly hits weak willed but not mindless brutes. In other words, he can adapt. There is still some overlap, for example a monstrous spider will shake off both the mind affecting stuff and Web but even by adding a second option you gain a lot more ground. And the problem is the Fighter simply doesn't have that option at all, no matter what because all of his stuff is blocked by the same thing. And then you remember that in addition to the Fighter tricks being less powerful than the Wizard tricks they also have a narrower spectrum of use and often don't help you at all (Bull Rush without Dungeoncrasher) or that actually hinder you by using them (Sunder)... Guess who can't keep up?

What actually happens is not only are the Fighter options not meaningfully different from each other but because they are not you might as well throw your eggs into one basket to get your numbers up, and indeed have to do this to even use the maneuver in the situations that you can at all. This leads to the situation of Fighters either being a Charger, a Tripper, or might as well be Not There for all the difference they are making. Just attacking doesn't do damage fast enough, disarm doesn't work on anything that matters since you cannot disarm claws and teeth, sunder doesn't work on anything that matters since you can't break claws and teeth (and if you did encounter a situation you could use it, you're still best off not doing so), and moving enemies around doesn't matter unless you're doing so on a Dungeoncrasher build and then it's just a novelty build that really just amounts to HP damage when it works. And even the charger and tripper are negated by more things than they are not, which without alternatives means they're dead weight on the battlefield. And that's without getting into many of the other things that block them aside from 'melees better at meleeing than they'. But I think the point is quite clear by now.

Back to my earlier comment about a Chessmaster duel of wits. Yes, your stats matter, even at high levels. But the more complex things get, the more the game hinges on your ability to successfully predict what your opponent will do and counter it. There is nothing wrong with this, it is the very nature of tactical combat. The critical design flaw is that only spells are allows to have a valid role in this. It's spells that block options against you, spells that determine which of your options are not blocked on the enemy, and spells that determine what options you should block. Success depends on your ability to think of something your opponent has not thought of to counter or cannot counter and hit them with that. If you guess wrong, you almost certainly waste your turn and the enemy gets the chance to do the same to you. But if you don't have access to spells you can't play the same game. You either live on the pity of others and give nothing back or get roasted by anything that goes your way, and you can't exploit enemy weaknesses - you're lucky to do anything at all.

Well, there's really only two solutions to this. The first is 'play a spellcaster' because there simply is no mundane answer to Gate (9th), and there barely is a mundane answer to Mirror Image (2nd). Without rewriting the entire game from scratch anything that can play the same game as everyone else is going to be a spellcaster, even if you name it Fighter. The second is 'strip all tactical complexity out of the game'. This is the 4th edition solution, and while it technically worked in that 'run up and hit it' works 1-30 the fact that the tabletop equivalent of hitting X repeatedly (and I do mean repeatedly - you will be grinding a while) makes for a completely unengaging game. Even deliberately easy and simplistic games like the Final Fantasy series provide incentives to mix it up a little. Not to mention pretty graphics, so you take longer to notice that doing 9,999 a hit is not that impressive when grinding on 7-8 digits worth of HP.

I don't consider either of those valid options. If you've seen any other post I have ever made about 4th edition you know why the latter is bad, and the former is simply giving up on the idea of a non magical character.

If you're willing to accept that the system will always make you a second class citizen even if you are not a gimp though, here is what you can do:

First, the reason why AC is not a valid defense is because you simply cannot get enough of it. If you could get AC 70 at level 20 then you would be missed 50-75% of the time by level appropriate enemies which constitutes significant mitigation, well worth the investment. The fact you actually cap out about 20 points lower, in a game where only 18 numbers (enemy to hit + 3 to enemy to hit +20) matter and consequentially those same enemies Power Attack for 10 and still hit on a 2 or better when attacking an AC specialist is a design flaw.

Pretty easy to fix. Raise the caps on AC gear from 5 to 10 (that's another 5 points from each of four different items). You will also need to significantly reduce the cost to make this affordable as otherwise the level squared formula will result in maxed out armor and shields being 225k each instead of 100k and natural armor and deflection items being 200k instead of 50k... which means you can't actually take advantage of the higher cap because you don't have enough funds. How significant you ask?

Well cutting the cost in half (500 squared for armor and shields, 1k squared for natural armor and deflection) results in 112.5k armor/shields and 100k natural armor/deflection. That's still 125k more than you'd otherwise pay, but it boosts your AC from 'practically irrelevant' to 'actually helping you' so I would say half is a good benchmark.

Saves... not a lot that can be done here. You could make 1s not auto fail if you want, and that would fix the 5% chance a shot quickly approaching 1 and making you die every few battles problem, particularly since you still need good saves to reach that point and it's not easy to get those. And on the caster side, they can still provide huge penalties to saves or just bypass saves outright so it's not like even that would fully stop them... but it certainly would help. Otherwise just rely on immunities, but high saves too to try and block things you forgot to cover.

HP... Making AC actually work also fixes the problem of HP vanishing too fast, as now you are taking about 25-50% of incoming damage instead of well over 95% (due to Power Attack). It still does not solve the problem of not actually having much of a HP edge despite being supposed to. For that I recommend weighting hit dice. The heavier you weight hit dice, the more you favor the larger HD.

Going back to the hypothetical typical wizard 20 vs fighter 20 example, the former has (2.5 * 19 + 4 + (20 * 5) = 151.5) and the latter has (5.5 * 19 + 10 + (20 * 5) = 214.5) with average HP, all else being equal.

If you assume 75% HP instead of average, the average wizard HD increases from 2.5 to 3, making for an increase of 9.5 for a total of 161. But the average fighter HD increases from 5.5 to 7.5, adding 38 HP for a total of 252. Much more of a difference now right?

If you max HP the wizard has (20 * 4) + (20 * 5) = 180 HP, and the fighter has (20 * 10) + (20 * 5) = 300 HP. Much more like the difference you'd expect to see? I'd certainly think so.

Of course as 3.5 is a system based on mechanical transparency - that is to say, enemies use the same rules as you this should apply to them as well. However it is still a change that favors the players of martial type characters as most of enemy HP comes from their Constitution and not their base HD. End result? Enemies gain a little, but players gain a lot.

Unfortunately you still don't have any tactical versatility. But at least now you can show up on the battlefield and not be a complete embarrassment, provided that your one trick is applicable. It's a remarkable improvement.

There are also other things that can be done such as fixing feats to not suck so much as these provide much of the chassis for non spellcasting classes. Still won't really help the versatility problem, but at least will do away with the insult that is offering Fighters Weapon Focus and similar junk. But as I've written quite enough here already, I'm done for now.

Any questions?

Edit: Realized I forgot a section.

Why BAB doesn't really matter:

BAB does exactly two things - First, it increases your to hit at a 1:1 ratio. Second, it gives an extra attack at BAB levels that are a multiple of 5 + 1 (1, 6, 11, 16) and those other attacks take a cumulative -5 penalty.

Well, going from 5 BAB to 6 (low level character) means going from +5 to +6/+1. This is a significant difference. It is one that roots you in place since barring Pounce or a few other things you cannot move more than 5 feet and also full attack but it is significant.

Going from 10 BAB to 11 (mid or high level character, the difference between bad and average BAB) means going from +10/+5 to +11/+6/+1. The third attack at -10 is not really helping so much, but it might help.

Going from 15 BAB to 16 (the difference between average and good BAB) means going from +15/+10/+5 to +16/+11/+6/+1. A fourth attack at -15 is simply not going to be useful. If your first attack will hit on a 2, the last attack is only hitting 20% of the time. If the last attack has a significant chance to hit you're better off Power Attacking and getting 2-3 strong hits than 4 weak ones.

That just leaves to hit. Most of the classes that have 3/4th BAB have an alternate means of ensuring they can hit. Clerics and Druids have buffs which more than compensate for the 1-5 points of to hit deficiency. Rogues have the easiest time attacking as touch attacks to ensure accuracy that way. The classes that lack both full BAB and compensatory measures simply fail at life, with the Monk being the iconic example of this along with his signature ability, often nicknamed 'Flurry of Misses' because it lowers accuracy still further. And the Monk has more problems than 3/4th BAB and no buffs or workarounds - lack of magic fists, and lower Strength for example. But this isn't about Monk hate, as much as a guildie of mine would love that.

What this is about is as bad as it sounds to have less than full BAB and no compensatory measures, you are actually worse off in a way if you have full BAB. Yes, you heard me right. Now at this point you're probably wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Well, as my earlier example demonstrated the difference between full BAB and 3/4th BAB is very small. Not much of an advantage for having it. However the developers had a completely different idea and drastically overpriced full BAB. End result? Full BAB classes printed before Tome of Battle were extremely weak because they thought a near worthless ability was actually an amazing one, so the full BAB classes get... a weak ability in the form of full BAB, and some other weak abilities like 'free feat' or 'favored enemy' and that's the whole package. And this is how Clerics or Druids (collectively nicknamed CoDzilla) came to be the best melee characters. It isn't that CoDzilla goes around stomping through town, although it does. It's that the competition is so weak that besting it is not a problem. It is also why in D&D like games where classes like the Fighter are actually worth a **** due to getting worthwhile abilities such as our very own DDO dedicated combat classes like the Fighter DO win out over 'battle Clerics'. It also helps that DDO is a lot less tactically complex so 'just hit it' is shut down a lot less often.

I've mentioned ToB quite a lot in this document. Many don't like it, and the reasons invariably are some variant of 'Fighters Do Not Get Nice Things'. About the only notable reason is it being called 'Anime', so named because more people know about Anime combats going straight to Crazytown than of the Western fantasy that does the same or at least was around far longer (King Arthur, Epic of Gilgamesh, Hercules etc). And anime combats do in fact feature viable swordsman and martial artists so ya know what? I can deal with the anime derision. And this is coming from someone who doesn't like anime as a general rule. Especially since as established earlier, arriving at Crazytown is an absolute requirement to continue playing the same game. For the most part though I keep bringing it up because it came out near the end of 3.5, when the developers finally realized that they were drastically overvaluing a full BAB progression and started writing full BAB characters that didn't suck.

Amendment 1: Replaced all instances of 'Hypnotic Pattern' with 'Hideous Laughter' to correct a minor mistake pointed out by Aspenor.

[TreknaQudane]

It would be easier just to switch to Pathfinder.

[KKDragonLord]

TL;DR (but i'll try to contribute)

I heard wonders about the Tome of Battle

also, i dont see how 3.5 can be really balanced without fixing certain spells and powers that are either too overpowered or just outright broken. (not saying this isnt a part of any system either).

but yeah, my suggestion is, check out what Tome of Battle did with martial classes

check out Pathfinder

or even True 20 (which is another alternative d20 system)

[Kaganfindel]

It would be easier just to switch to Pathfinder.

How does Pathfinder fix the problem?

[Angelus_dead]

Any questions?

1. Aren't there forums for this? Enworld, pathfinder, and giantitp if wizards is no good anymore?

2. Globally increasing hitpoints means a buff for characters who defeat enemies without regard for their hitpoint totals, which means casters get better.

[SquelchHU]

It would be easier just to switch to Pathfinder.

Negative.

This is a surprisingly difficult problem to fix, as the reasons why non spellcasters are ineffective are many and varied. If you don't clearly understand the problem you will never be able to fix it effectively and will often make it worse by trying (see Pathfinder for examples of how NOT to do this).

As the goal here is not to further buff casters and to further nerf non casters Pathfinder is not a valid solution. Instead it is an example of everything you should not do both because they have done the opposite of what they said they would do when they did anything at all, and because they clearly never understood the problem in the first place. One need only look at anything their devs have actually said to see evidence of this - not only do they clearly have no idea of what they are doing, they can't even decide what they are doing and consequently dev posts will frequently contradict each other. Even in the same thread about the same subject. But the easiest way to realize they can be dismissed out of hand is to realize they're the sorts to get offended when the Rogue does more damage with sneak attack than the Wizard does with Fireball - a situation that has so many problems I don't know where to begin. Suffice it to say their guidelines are invalid at best. Even when compared to 3.5 where Power Attack was changed from its 3rd edition version because Andy Collins got offended the dual wielder in his party was doing more damage than his Fighter using a two handed axe because it was 1:1 regardless of weapons used. And that isn't speculation - he actually said that on the record. At least when AC allowed his personal feelings to cloud his professional judgment he wasn't completely out in left field as to the reasons why, even though he was still very much in the wrong for allowing them to.

1. Aren't there forums for this? Enworld, pathfinder, and giantitp if wizards is no good anymore?

This is the pencil and paper forum. It is completely on topic.

But to answer your question anyways...

ENWorld: Follows the philosophy that newer = better. Saying anything remotely negative about 4th edition, even if fully constructive and free of nerd rage accomplishes nothing productive and merely serves to attract what can only be described as a swarm of rabid fanboys to spread misinformation and flame with express permission of the mods at best... assuming the mods do not get directly involved, in which case simple disagreeing is a bannable offense.

Pathfinder: Disagreeing with the devs is a bannable offense even if you refrain from attacking them. The community itself is quite clueless, which is why they honestly believe that Pathfinder is a solution to and not an exasperation of the problems with 3.5. Again, any form of constructive discussion is impossible.

GiantITP: The focus is more on 'being nice' than 'being useful'. Of course pointing out the flaws in something even if done fully constructively is not considered 'nice' by this definition, but passive aggressive behavior is. Again, nothing useful can be accomplished.

Compare to this forum, where you have some people that just don't get it no matter how many times you explain it, and some people who respond to anything they don't like or don't agree with with negative rep... but the moderation staff does not step in unless there is an actual disciplinary problem and because the Cube will stay out of productive discussions it is possible to have them.

2. Globally increasing hitpoints means a buff for characters who defeat enemies without regard for their hitpoint totals, which means casters get better.

This is true. And it is something I deliberated on before doing, but ultimately decided the difference was very small. Even the Tarrasque, which has the highest HP/HD of all non epic creatures stands to gain little. He weighs in at 858 HP using average dice. 75% HP increases this number by 72 to 940 for an increase of 9.5%. Max HP increases it by 168 for a total of 1,036, an increase of 20.7% over average. Compare to the Fighter (17.5% improvement for 75% HP, nearly 40% improvement for max HP) and the Wizard (6.3% improvement for 75% HP, 18.8% improvement for max HP). Most creatures get a lesser benefit, typically on the order of +30 HP at high levels, less at lower levels. Generally not even one attack's worth of HP so it's not actually slowing down killing the enemy at all. Even so it does make bypassing HP entirely more effective, granted.

I chose to do that anyways because one of the core conceits of the game is that players and enemies are playing by the same rules and weighting player HP, but not enemy HP would run counter to that.

My recommendation? Make enemies know the rules of their own world as they pertain to this. Namely that spellcasters are so devastating, so they need to do everything they can to counter that. Enemy stats are generally easy to boost via such thing as spell buffs which many enemies have and equipment which many enemies also have. Saving throws are not an exception to this rule. At this point you can apply the HP rule universally, and the result is that combat slows down a little for everyone. Not much, but a little. Which helps find a happy medium between 'whoever goes first probably wins' and 'grind on the mob for a while'. It's ok to even go a bit overboard with this - the level high teens enemy with saves all in the 30s, Mettle, and Evasion will still probably be beaten by a spellcaster. Just likely not on round 1. And with the other fixes, you aren't on a strict time limit so the swordsman can survive an extended (= longer than 2 round) combat.

Even without this (so enemies only have low to average saves and are therefore blasted through very easily) simply boosting the survivability of non casters by making AC more accessible and HP differentials more noticeable where it counts still has a significant inherent improvement - they're not being mook slapped off the battlefield and are actually surviving combat. But even so, yes it would be better to slow things down a notch for everyone than to further emphasize skipping HP.

[Krag]

2. Globally increasing hitpoints means a buff for characters who defeat enemies without regard for their hitpoint totals, which means casters get better.

Who cares?
It's not like Squelch plays anyone but casters.

[SquelchHU]

Who cares?
It's not like Squelch plays anyone but casters.

Hi Krag. I see you've chosen to join the troll party. And actually, you're wrong. I play both, but only play non casters when I know the DM understands what is required to make them relevant as more than anything else, I hate wasting my time and I signed up to play the game to ACTUALLY PLAY IT, not to spend most of the time shut out because I have exactly one option available, that more often than not cannot be applied at all.

[Krag]

Hi Krag. I see you've chosen to join the troll party. And actually, you're wrong. I play both, but only play non casters when I know the DM understands what is required to make them relevant as more than anything else, I hate wasting my time and I signed up to play the game to ACTUALLY PLAY IT, not to spend most of the time shut out because I have exactly one option available, that more often than not cannot be applied at all.

Very insightful observation.
Melee classes are one-trick-ponies at best. 3.5 would be my last choice if I were to play such a character.

[Magusrex777]

Why do you play PnP games?
What are you looking to get out of it?
What do you think your players want?

I always assume my players wanted to enjoy themselves. I want to enjoy myself too. Putting together and running a quality campaign is work so the result needs to be positive. So what makes me feel good? I want players to be engaged, I want them to pay attention and feel like they are part of the world. I want them to have fun, that feels good to me. I want to be able to challenge them, force them to think outside the box. I want them to work together and make the party feel like a family. I want the characters to care about one another and I want them to play that way. I need them to role-play, I do not want to be a narrator and adversary, I want it to be more.

How do I get that? I reward the good behavior with either XP rewards or positive game experience. Good role-play can net you favor with powerful in game factions or entities. The stick needs to be used at times too, but I always tried to use that sparingly. Maybe I am a natural but it has always been easy for me to encourage good play. Not many of my gamers never took up the challenge of trying to raise a pure mage to high level. You can't make it easy to attain that much power and you need friends. Melee types are your friends and you need to treat them in a way that they want to protect you and someday you will return the favor.

If you make combat nothing more than dice rolls melee can seem to be a one trick pony but a good party leader playing a fighter can make a huge difference when your PCs go up against another party of equal level and abilities. Do you let your mages breeze through early levels in a few sessions? You do not make them earn it over months? I dunno, I never had people complain about being pure melee, there was always one or two who that is all they wanted to do. I did not have issues with min/max people or rules lawyers either you didn't play in my campaigns. I do not let toads ruin a good campaign.

[Schmoe]

only play non casters when I know the DM understands what is required to make them relevant

When you say this, do you mean a DM who has a good command of encounter composition and game pacing, or are you specifically referring to certain types of house-rules?

[timberhick]

Any questions?

Nope. Play 4e

[flynnjsw]

It is very sad to see that either you are the bad DM or you have a bad DM that either A; can not make the game enjoyable for all players, or B; can not run a low magic world (which is still D&D mind you) without you are someone else pitching a fit. I am very sorry to see that you have received some type of "taint of evil" from this experience. I sincerly hope that eventually someone shows you how a real game of PnP should go, no matter what version it is played on.

Personally I have played and DM'd in multitudes of various pre-made and custome made worlds, varrying from low magic to high magic, and even Monty Haul campaigns. In none of them did I ever have as a DM, or had a DM hand any "swordsman" character type an Artifact just to make anyone feel useful. Even were ANY Artifacts found, they were not found until much later levels if they were something to be used by the party, and not something to be destroyed (some type of evil artifact).

[Gercho]

It is very sad to see that either you are the bad DM or you have a bad DM that either A; can not make the game enjoyable for all players, or B; can not run a low magic world (which is still D&D mind you) without you are someone else pitching a fit. I am very sorry to see that you have received some type of "taint of evil" from this experience. I sincerly hope that eventually someone shows you how a real game of PnP should go, no matter what version it is played on.

Personally I have played and DM'd in multitudes of various pre-made and custome made worlds, varrying from low magic to high magic, and even Monty Haul campaigns. In none of them did I ever have as a DM, or had a DM hand any "swordsman" character type an Artifact just to make anyone feel useful. Even were ANY Artifacts found, they were not found until much later levels if they were something to be used by the party, and not something to be destroyed (some type of evil artifact).

You have two different parts on a PnP game, the role playing part, and the combat, you dont need a change of rules to make the roleplaying part enjoyable for everyone, now when you get to the combat part, if you want everyone to be usefull, you need to twist the rules in some way or another, if you follow the rules of 3.5 then fighters will not be relevant on most encounters.

I think most dm's twist the rules one way or another, and i think many may not even realize they are twisting the rules, the op is only proposing some changes to the rules that can be transparent for all the players so the dm doesnt needs to twist the rules privately.

I havent played pnp in a long while, i used the full hit dice hp's rule, i never followed the wbl rule to limit players, and i allways had problems with the AC thing that never could get around, i think that twice as much bonus from items is a good idea.

As a DM i allways made my own enemies so that they will be more balanced against the party, hardly used the monster manual enemies, but thats more work, and its not easy to translate to every game, so i think that efforts in the direction the op are really worthy.

[KKDragonLord]

The newest RPG by White Wolf, Exalted, has a very good Social Combat system that makes non-combative characters just as good as combat centered ones because the system allows for social interaction to solve problems in a similiar way before you even have to draw a sword.

A discussion is like a combat of wills, in a way, like instead of attacking with a sword vs AC, you attack the mental defense of the enemy with your words making him lose points of Willpower to resist, until he can no longer defend himself and do whatever you say.

obviously its a bit more complicated than that, but it follows the same principles, round by round actions, special abilities, etc...

Its very interesting.

(PS: not entirely related)

[SquelchHU]

How does Pathfinder fix the problem?

It does not.

Nope. Play 4e

It does not.

It is very sad to see that either you are the bad DM or you have a bad DM that either A; can not make the game enjoyable for all players, or B; can not run a low magic world (which is still D&D mind you) without you are someone else pitching a fit. I am very sorry to see that you have received some type of "taint of evil" from this experience. I sincerly hope that eventually someone shows you how a real game of PnP should go, no matter what version it is played on.

Low magic is flat out not viable in D&D. Period. Full stop. This can be observed in any game run by someone who does not know this and tries it anyways, and it can be observed in D&D based games that do not feature a lot of magic such as D20 Modern (same enemies, but near zero magic so your ability to actually deal with them is greatly reduced if not outright eliminated... yes, even with guns). Now, systems designed from the start with the goal of low magic in mind certainly can work. And if you're into that sort of thing, I recommend you find such a system to play with. However low magic and D&D are like oil and water. Always have been, always will be. And the whole 'all non casters become even more hopelessly gimped in low magic' thing is only part of that. Point is, it has to be built from that from the start or it won't work.

Personally I have played and DM'd in multitudes of various pre-made and custome made worlds, varrying from low magic to high magic, and even Monty Haul campaigns. In none of them did I ever have as a DM, or had a DM hand any "swordsman" character type an Artifact just to make anyone feel useful. Even were ANY Artifacts found, they were not found until much later levels if they were something to be used by the party, and not something to be destroyed (some type of evil artifact).

Given your track record thus far, I am not at all inclined to trust your judgment on this matter.

You have two different parts on a PnP game, the role playing part, and the combat, you dont need a change of rules to make the roleplaying part enjoyable for everyone, now when you get to the combat part, if you want everyone to be usefull, you need to twist the rules in some way or another, if you follow the rules of 3.5 then fighters will not be relevant on most encounters.

That is not entirely correct. It would be more accurate to say that D&D, or any system for that matter is actually comprised of two games - First the combat, which is where the actual rules come into play and the differences between systems become apparent. The other part is a big game of pretend really. So when someone starts talking about having fun regardless of system, it simply means they like playing pretend and are willing to ignore the rules to do it. And there's nothing wrong with playing pretend (if they wanted to ignore the rules, they should just not play with any). But when someone says for example that they like D&D 4th edition, and what they are actually describing is not D&D 4th edition, or any rule system but a game of pretend they are not only being misleading, but they are defeating their own argument since if they really did like 4th edition they'd be able to describe things that were actually a part of it that they liked.

I think most dm's twist the rules one way or another, and i think many may not even realize they are twisting the rules, the op is only proposing some changes to the rules that can be transparent for all the players so the dm doesnt needs to twist the rules privately.

That is the principle behind the hidden class feature of 'Gets Artifact Sword' yes.

I havent played pnp in a long while, i used the full hit dice hp's rule, i never followed the wbl rule to limit players, and i allways had problems with the AC thing that never could get around, i think that twice as much bonus from items is a good idea.

Which reminds me. I gave the formula (half costs for armor enhancements, shield enhancements, natural armor items, and deflection items) but I did not actually write it out. So here you go.

Armor/Shield:

1: 500.
2: 2,000.
3: 4,500.
4: 8,000.
5: 12,500.
6: 18,000.
7: 24,500.
8: 32,000.
9: 40,500.
10: 50,000.
11: 60,500.
12: 72,000.
13: 84,500.
14: 98,000.
15: 112,500.

Nat armor/deflection:

1: 1,000.
2: 4,000.
3: 9,000.
4: 16,000.
5: 25,000.
6: 36,000.
7: 49,000.
8: 64,000.
9: 81,000.
10: 100,000.

And in case you are wondering why the armor/shield is written out to +15, well that is because it would be +10 without house rules, and only 5 of that could be AC. If the AC was raised to 10, but the total enhancement was not raised it wouldn't do anyone any good as certain special properties such as Heavy Fortification and Animated (on the shield) are more important than AC to prevent spike damage. So if you had to choose, you'd go for the non AC choice which rather defeats the point of making AC more accessible. So instead that cap is raised to 15 so you can get +10 armor/shields, and still have +5 worth of special stuff. And the cost reduction again makes it so you can actually afford it.

And since I forgot to mention it entirely, AC spells that give the standard bonus types (Magic Vestment, Barkskin, Shield of Faith) should simply give CL / 2 of that type as a bonus, max 10. That way they aren't useless.

As for exalted, I looked at it. The combat there of any sort is very binary. You can kill the guy, often many times over with one move. But perfect defenses say 'You miss'. So it's simply a matter of who runs out of perfect defenses first. Not very engaging. And enemies even a little more powerful than you always win because they will run out second. Even if you bring your friends along to even the odds. Yeah... Small squad of guys beats up someone stronger than themselves collectively by using teamwork to be greater than the sum of their parts is a common trope that is the principle of just about every other fantasy system out there, and it can't support that so I'm not interested.

[TheDjinnFor]

I must reiterate what a previous poster said with different wording.

I've seen the WotC forums on D&D, and after 2 years of posts I still can't convince the DMs there that they just simply suck at D&D. You don't really need any house rules at all to make mundanes feel special. It is very easy to force the casters into using non-combat spells, while enforcing time and space limits to ensure the resource crunch isn't easily bypassed. I know the usual tricks and that everyone always brings up when it comes to casters being overpowered, and I've never met a group of PCs that could successfully pull any of them off on me, except maybe by accident back in 2000.

The majority of DMs fail to realize that the existence and reasoning for mundane in a magical world comes about due to the chance of not having the magic you need at any and every moment; the moment you acknowledge that is the moment you can start making the game fun for mundanes. If you take the time to play CR 20 monsters properly (read: intelligent) casters are almost always out of spells, or lack the ability to use the spells, or must focus on fighting another spellcaster, when the critical point in a campaign is reached. I can even do this while playing core 3; no splat books needed (although the feats in the PHB are rather lacking).

I've built what could amount to 'anti-caster' campaigns before, but if you, like you even mentioned, make the assumption that NPCs know the potency of magic, it's far too easy to provide encounters that are mundane-friendly in nature. My fail-safe is always going for CR = PC Level + 2 enemy casters who the party caster must focus every atom of effort on holding back. What you described, of the tactical nature of magic, goes on quite a bit, but its always between a single NPC caster and a single PC caster who fight while the mundanes engage. Think of the age old archetype of the 'battle of the two arcanes' in fantasy novels or books; epic lightning crackling behind them as they hurl and counter spell after spell on one another. The rest of the PCs beat the rest of the encounter, and whatever it entails, while the two arcanes duke it out; all that really means is you've taken enemy and friendly spellcasting out of the equation (since they're both fighting each other) and now you need a fun encounter... that shouldn't be hard, right? This, of course, assumes the balanced party, but if your PCs decide they think melee is gimped and all want to play casters, or the reverse, then it's all regardless. But the general rule holds true: distract the magic users with magic business while giving the mundanes something fun to do (sounds like common sense, no?).

Sure, Gandalf probably could have kicked a lot of orc butt in the first Lord of the Rings, but there's a reason he went down with the Balrog halfway through. He could have probably led Frodo right to the foot of the mountain, but he needed to go look up stuff in Minas Tirith and talk with Saruman (so he sent Aragorn to guide Frodo to Rivendell), then he needed to solo the Balrog, then he needed to be at Helms Deep to save King Theodan, gather his riders, and beat off the uruk-hai, then ride to Minas Tirith and argue with Denethor, then save Faramir, then fight off the orc horde, then help lead the offense against the Black Gate. The same concept can apply to the PCs, forcing them to split up or divide their attention between two goals.

My level 20 PC example? PCs are trapped (for reason x) in a war between devils and demons on their respective planes (the three plane names escape me atm), and can't use inter-dimensional travel since their are a pair of unknown and/or unexplained devices, one on each plane, that prevent the other planes denizens from inter-dimensional travel (or two separate reasons a and b for the planes). PCs must first find out how to cross over to the opposite plane (which means crossing, using subtlety well-guarded, 'special', permanent gates between the two that the devils/demons are using to attack each other), then split up, two to a plane (since disabling one simply lifts the restriction off of the other plane, not the one you are on, and leaving it disabled is impossible due to c) to disable the devices near-simultaneously (this attaches a time limit unless communication between the two groups is possible).

PCs must infiltrate the location of the device, guarded by several thousand devils or demons each, disable the device, and either port out themselves or hook up at a meeting place and then use the wizard to port out... all the while inside, say, the plane of the devils where they've got sensors all across the plane that pick up large bursts of magic (5th level or higher) and they teleport a recon platoon in at the sign of any detection, that hounds you across the landscape and through teleport spells and brings in even more, and where the device site is guarded day-and-night and can pick up any spell cast at all; or maybe they're in the demons plane where magic works fine but the slightest disturbance brings a literal army of screaming devils down on you, and the site of the device is a hoard of activity no matter the time.

I had a much more complete campaign, but that's the gist of it: split the PCs, give them space and time restrictions, give them roles to fill (the devils are obviously mundane-friendly while the demons favor casters), add extra magical pressure on the casters, and wrap it all into a nice narrative that fits with the campaign. Perhaps a devious enemy has ported them there (or maybe just three out of four), or a celestial being tasks them with retrieving item y on those planes, or they were forcibly recruited by the devils/demons. In any case, casters can't go crazy without bringing a horde down on them, and so the specialists are required to fill the utility gap and the warrior-types need to cover dishing out the damage in an incognito way. Casters still have an important job: they need to bail everyone out in case stealth isn't an issue any longer.

I'm rambling, so I'll conclude: bad DMs make PnP unbalanced.

[Aspenor]

2: Hypnotic Pattern, Hypnotic Pattern

I have a feeling that you don't understand what hypnotic pattern actually does. Encounter "ender?" Hardly. Have you not looked up the effect, "Fascinated?"

Glitterdust is an encounter ender. Hypnotic Pattern is virtually useless.

[SquelchHU]

I have a feeling that you don't understand what hypnotic pattern actually does. Encounter "ender?" Hardly. Have you not looked up the effect, "Fascinated?"

Glitterdust is an encounter ender. Hypnotic Pattern is virtually useless.

Substitute it for any 2nd level Will based mind affecting effect then. It was the first I could find, I didn't look that closely at it, and I've never actually used it (Glitterdust and Web are too good to care). As it was simply meant to illustrate that even the almighty Wizard with his encounter enders needs some versatility to compliment his power and wasn't meant to make a point about Hypnotic Pattern, itself though I think we can fairly call that a minor correction.

Even so, as the first actual correction to be made thus far I will find something to change it to now.

Edit: Done. Hideous Laughter works just fine for illustration purposes.

[Aspenor]

After all this, I will agree with Squelch on one thing...

People that use weapons need a serious buff in DnD 3.5, in one way or another.

I am a big fan of the ToB for this purpose. It doesn't exactly equalize the playing field, but at least it closes the margin a little.