The class balance thread (let's try to keep this one trolling free)

[jibbajibba]

Don't you think putting a 15th level fighter against a magical construct with immunity to most magic items while not giving him a weapon able to damage the creature a bit of a disingenuous matchup?  By the time a character reaches 15th level, it's not a leap of logic to assume they will have an item that could damage the creature.

So it seems from my position that by saying the fighter can't have a magic weapon, you're arguing for a scenario that never happens with any statistical significance and therefore is a moot argument.

Well not I could pick any number of monsters about as tough as iron Golem. I didn't pick the monster I am just participating in the thread.

As for my argument I think you may have misconstrued it.

I am saying there is a disparity. The most common solution is magic items. You seem to agree that that is the most common solution.
I then go on to compare that solution to some others and to point out that mechanically they are the same so the key differentiator is story or how the effects are described.

So I am not arguing that a fighter has no magic. I am arguing that fighters will have magic (if that is the chosen solution of the DM) but that if that is the chosen solution and its always goign to be the case as you point out then we recognise it as a solution.

MGuy went on to postulate that it be 'baked' into the class. I had suggested that was an option since it is already ubiquitous, as you yourself agree.

[jibbajibba]

There's a difference between amping up the power on what normal people can do and doing things normal people can't.

Killing monsters / breaking things : something anyone can do.
Killing gods / knocking down buildings: something a heroic someone can do.
Flying: not so much.

Getting back to the original argument that you were getting at (that the fighter already defies logic, so why not do it more?) this is why it's pointless to really discuss hp any further. Point is that even if you were right about how they work, it doesn't follow that one either should or might as well "bake in" magic in a nonmagic class.

As for the golem, apparently the magic can be disrupted by sufficient physical trauma. Which doesn't have to mean total annihilation. HP are a a catch-all for many things. They aren't always just meat.

BJ,
how would you respond to my take on uquitous magic being akin to any baked in power and giving DMS the option of doing just that to ensure that a PC is engaged in play at all levels?

[Bedrockbrendan]

Baking it in produces a certainty and uniformity that i think kills the experience of the game and its setting (at least for me). It is a solution, but they are trying to argue it is a solution we have to embrace. How they gain the items matters.

[jibbajibba]

If it's a magic stick? No problem. Nonmagic stick breaks. Magic weapons disrupt the protective magic of some monsters and the animating magic of some undead and constructs.

Fighter doesn't have to break the iron to disrupt the enchantment and kill the thing.

That might be the most stretched explanation of a figther against an iron golem I have ever heard.... It doesn;t damage itit disrupts the feild of magical energy that makes it work.... really. In my game the figher is chopping big chunks of iron off with his magic sword.... just like conan would do.

[Lord Mistborn]

I already did a few pages above.  Then you decided that you wanted to change the definition of how hit points worked to something other than what the game defined them as.

How about you answer my question.  What specific action did the fighter take in that combat round that was superhuman?  You like to ask questions and ask for proof, but you haven't ever actually provided proof for any of your claims.  

Seriously, how old are you?  I'm guessing 12 or 13.

OK so this earth elemental it's really big. 32ft tall in fact. It's massive, 24 tons of rock and dirt. It's also totally undifferentiated. It has no blood to bleed, no veins to cut, no organs to puncture, it has in fact no discernible anatomy whatsoever. So with your sword you need to somehow render inanimate this 32ft tall 24 ton earthen behemoth, while it's smashing you with arms that are bigger than your entire body and weigh around 2-3 tons each. Good luck with that mister ordinary human.

[jibbajibba]

Baking it in produces a certainty and uniformity that i think kills the experience of the game and its setting (at least for me). It is a solution, but they are trying to argue it is a solution we have to embrace. How they gain the items matters.

I woudl tend to agree with you I am a roleplayer that likes stories but ..

Does it though if they exist in a world of entitlement where the items are statistically guarenteed?

Why not allow a choice or a random roll off a table each level?

[Black Vulmea]

Mage Hand object to push open door. Yes, you can do that. Not exactly something complicated. I have cats that can nudge open free swinging doors in my house. Not a big deal.

I'm gonna hazard a guess and say that your cat probably weighs more than five pounds, and can exert more than five pounds of force in any case.

But you're also drawing an equivalence between a hollow-core residential door on hinges with modern lubricants and a solid door swollen by moisture hanging from rusty hinges in a dungeon, which is a pretty ridiculous comparison. This is why there's actually a rule for pushing open doors earlier editions of D&D, because it is, in fact, a fairly big deal for dungeon explorers.

If you want to add "the door is stuck, heavy, barred, iron, etc" to the mix then that's fine I have can handle all of those with, you know, a team of people with hands or a single spell if I'm inclined to waste one on the task. So the fuck what? The idea is still stupid and I have no idea why anyone would want to defend it.

Translation? "I was wrong, but the whole thing is stupid, so it doesn't matter anyway."

C'mon, try to be better than that.

Now, you could use a "team of people with hands" if you want to put, say, a battering ram or a long prybar in those hands, and now all those hands are filled with wooden log or iron bar instead of weapons or spell components once that door is open and whatever's on the other side is revealed.

And you could use knock - if it's among the spells available to your character - which means that you're giving up web or invisibility or levitate or detect evil, because spells are a finite resource to be managed in D&D.

MGuy, if you haven't played a game where this sort of thing is relevant, I can totally understand why you would find the argument to be silly. There's a school of refereeing thought which says that stuff like doors which are hard to open is simply pixel-bitching, cock-blocking the fun of The Encounter Almighty. But, again, in older editions of the game, and in the culture which surrounds those editions, dealing with doors in a dungeon is actually A Thing, so much so that there're specific rules for it in both the PHB and the DMG in 1e (and I believe in OD&D as well).

[beejazz]

The conceptual space "ordinary human with training" is sharply limited and the game needs to acknowledge that.

Your argument re:hp was that the fighter is not within the bounds of ordinary human with training.

If you are correct on that point, why does the game need to acknowledge a conceptual space the fighter has already surpassed? Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premise when it comes to the hp argument.

If that really is the limit to the conceptional space for the fighter class then the class needs to end as soon as the can't meaningfully participate in adventures without stepping outside his conceptual space. This means that the fighter ends at 5-7 end of story

Good thing you got into a lengthy argument over how that isn't the limit of the conceptual space. Looks like the fighter can continue after level five.

Now if you acknowledge that the fighters conceptional space the much more versatile "person who can surpass human limits through training and being a badass." then you can push the fighters point of obsolescence back much further. Possibly to level 20. What exactly being a surperhuman with training in weapons and armor lets you do still needs to be hashed out.

As I said earlier, there's a difference between doing things anyone can do but better (everyone can break stuff but not everyone can pull a Samson on the badguys' temple) and doing things people plain can't do (telekinesis, flight, invisibility, etc).

And there's also a difference between having abilities foes have at level x (such as flight) and having an answer to those abilities (such as arrows).

The fighter's conceptual space is fine where it is. The "ideal" mechanical expression of that space varies table to table and is quibbling over nothing terribly related to balance on the whole.

These tangents don't really support any larger argument.

[beejazz]

BJ,
how would you respond to my take on uquitous magic being akin to any baked in power and giving DMS the option of doing just that to ensure that a PC is engaged in play at all levels?

What, as a variant in D&D? Sure. Vow of Poverty works kind of like that in 3rd, and it works okay. May or may not be a bit minmaxable but whatever.

That might be the most stretched explanation of a figther against an iron golem I have ever heard.... It doesn;t damage itit disrupts the feild of magical energy that makes it work.... really. In my game the figher is chopping big chunks of iron off with his magic sword.... just like conan would do.

With a stick? The hypothetical I was answering was kind of absurd to begin with. How would you explain DR/magic if not by a magical force (either protection or animation) being disrupted?

[Lord Mistborn]

Your argument re:hp was that the fighter is not within the bounds of ordinary human with training.

If you are correct on that point, why does the game need to acknowledge a conceptual space the fighter has already surpassed? Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premise when it comes to the hp argument.

My point is that the fighter is already superhuman and he should be able to leverage that into at least some lateral advancement

As I said earlier, there's a difference between doing things anyone can do but better (everyone can break stuff but not everyone can pull a Samson on the badguys' temple) and doing things people plain can't do (telekinesis, flight, invisibility, etc).

You do realize the Samson's stregnth was (Su) right.

And there's also a difference between having abilities foes have at level x (such as flight) and having an answer to those abilities (such as arrows).

The fighter's conceptual space is fine where it is. The "ideal" mechanical expression of that space varies table to table and is quibbling over nothing terribly related to balance on the whole.

These tangents don't really support any larger argument.

Like I said I never said the fighter needs to have spells or (Su) class features. It's just hitting things can't be the only thing that he gets from his class.

[Exploderwizard]

Tell me when I said the fighter need to fly. The fighter does need some kind of lateral advancement.

LM's argument is as followed

The conceptual space "ordinary human with training" is sharply limited and the game needs to acknowledge that.

If that really is the limit to the conceptional space for the fighter class then the class needs to end as soon as the can't meaningfully participate in adventures without stepping outside his conceptual space. This means that the fighter ends at 5-7 end of story

Now if you acknowledge that the fighters conceptional space the much more versatile "person who can surpass human limits through training and being a badass." then you can push the fighters point of obsolescence back much further. Possibly to level 20. What exactly being a surperhuman with training in weapons and armor lets you do still needs to be hashed out.

Explain 'lateral advancement' .

[Lord Mistborn]

Explain 'lateral advancement' .

So as characters level up they get better at the thing they alread can do. Fighters Bab/Thac0 gets better, The Rogue/Thief get's better at his skill's. The Wizard/Cleric get a better CL/ can do more damage with spell/heal more hp.

However characters can also learn to do things they could not do before. This is lateral advancement. Casters get this in huge amounts, the start to fly, teleport, force saves vs death, replicate skills. So what kind of lateral advancment should the fighter get.

Without items a 20th level fighter is only really diffrent from a level 1 fighter in the fact that his numbers are better.

[beejazz]

My point is that the fighter is already superhuman and he should be able to leverage that into at least some lateral advancement

Then give some damn examples of how you think that should work, if you think that's actually relevant (it's not). At least then people wouldn't have to guess what you're arguing for.

You do realize the Samson's stregnth was (Su) right.

And when a bulldozer does it it's (Su) too right? Point was about the breaking of things, not the guy who did it.

Like I said I never said the fighter needs to have spells or (Su) class features. It's just hitting things can't be the only thing that he gets from his class.

So give him more skills and skill points.

But then there's the argument that everything needs to be codified in the form of button mashing. Give the guy some stat bonuses, code some cool shit into high level stat checks, and most people won't know the difference.

This line of argument still doesn't do shit to get us closer to a definition of balance.

[MGuy]

No he really shouldn't. We're talking general class balance and (ostensibly) no one wants to get dragged back into that bullshit thread.

Actually the points I bring up are completely related considering that Sacro is bringing out the ole "magic item" part of the conversation to argue how a fighter stays relevant in combat. So IF he is going to bother getting bogged down by the magic item Christmas Tree fighter he might as well bring up the broader points about how the fighter (with the shit necessary to swing a sword) still can't compete with other better classes.

Preferably I'd like the conversation to be about general class design but somehow we are inescapably tethered to talking about fighters.

If it's a magic stick? No problem. Nonmagic stick breaks. Magic weapons disrupt the protective magic of some monsters and the animating magic of some undead and constructs.

Fighter doesn't have to break the iron to disrupt the enchantment and kill the thing.

So why isn't it the same for bus sized insect, earth elemental, animated objects?

So to sum up, the fighter is worthless because a mage can expend a limited daily resource to do something the fighter can with a shove and you don't like the way D&D treats HP.

-Facepalm- First off, no and second no. I'm a convinced you are trolling me because not only is HP not something I brought up/weighed in on/said was bad but ANY FUCKING BODY CAN OPEN A GOD DAMN RANDOM DOOR!

It isn't assured though because a built in draw back of being a mundane is you have to possess tools like that in order to use them.

What?

[MGuy]

Then give some damn examples of how you think that should work, if you think that's actually relevant (it's not). At least then people wouldn't have to guess what you're arguing for.


And when a bulldozer does it it's (Su) too right? Point was about the breaking of things, not the guy who did it.


So give him more skills and skill points.

But then there's the argument that everything needs to be codified in the form of button mashing. Give the guy some stat bonuses, code some cool shit into high level stat checks, and most people won't know the difference.

This line of argument still doesn't do shit to get us closer to a definition of balance.

I would think it would work like the monk (save for the class being subpar at whatever it does I would think) as he just gets powers for discipline and blah and there's no reason to assume that sword masters would get something similar.