I'm genuinely curious about what attracts people to martial classes.
I can't fathom why anyone would choose to play a simple fighting man with a sword when you can be the guy that hurls fire and lightning at his foes, the guy that reanimates the dead, the guy that shapeshifts into a bear, or even the guy that can heal wounds and banish the undead.
Martials just seem like the most boring characters to play. What's the appeal?
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I've never had to dip my hands in shit to use my hammer, and I've never run out of hammer. Also, I like the simple, likeable character, and I like fun over power. The party works together, after all.
>shitty spam image is the first thing in a troll bait thread
What a surprise.
But it's the same with any edition. Martials might be stronger and more balanced in other editions but they're still boring and one-dimensional.
At the end of the day, all they can do is hit stuff with their sword/axe.
It's fun. Some people like magic, I like the powere fantasy of surviving by my strength and skill and overpowering terrible monsters. People like different things mate. This isn't to say I never play casters, but I prefer characters that go toe to toe with enemies.
No, my character cooks well, leads well, and is hitting on that dwarf hunny. Combat isn't the only thing in a good game.
mechanically speaking, I dream of a system where casters are like towers. Very powerful, but immobile and thus vulnerable. Opposed to this would be Martials who can flit about the battlefield and lock down enemy movement.
Casters would be crowd control and AoE damage, while Martials would reign supreme in single target burst damage.
So I guess I should go play 4e or something
In a more general sense, the appeal to playing a martial is because they're closer to the heroic ideal. Superman fucking punches people into submission. Aragorn cuts down foes with a magic sword who's only magical ability is being able to hit ghosts. Gilgamesh and Enkidu were nigh on Gods and were known for their ability to fight, with hand and swords and shit. Beowulf strangled a giant monster with his bare hands. Conan punched demons to death when his swords broke, he didn't resort to arcane tricks.
Casters were originally support, that's all there is to it.
Because, quite simply, a lot of the most popular mythical and fictional heroes people want to emulate weren't magicians. They may have used magic weapons or done impossible things, but they're not spellcasters. There's a certain appeal to beating enemies through grit, wit, and skill instead of cosmic power. Hell, even a lot of the most popular mages in fiction are more like a mage/martial multiclass who use their magic sparingly and spend the rest of the time having to be clever.
With all that Superman and Conan talk, I think what y'all really need is Mutants and Masterminds.
would never get a DM for it, and if I did, I wouldn't be able to resist making Sanic and putting literally everything into going fast and maybe like, also fire
>you will never move so fast that you make heat mirage after images of yourself to confuse your enemys
Good point. You sound like a cool person to game with.
I dunno. I guess it depends on what sort of stories you grew up with. You look at Star Wars for instance and the Jedi are similar to casters. Dragonball characaters also more closely resemble casters...
Because I play RPGs for reasons other than a power fantasy and don't give a single solitary fuck about my character being optimal because if the DM isn't incompetent they'll find ways to give every player a spotlight and make them feel involved and useful.
So basically I'm attracted to martial if the character concept I have i my head makes more sense for a martial. I don't always want to play some devote priest/crusader or some bookworm who's been studying in a fucking tower/Hogwarts for most of their life.
Jedi are casters who spend most of their time using swords.
Jedi are gish weeaboos, which are still primarily martials. A Jedi still kills people by slashing them with a sword
True but Jedi are so much more than just swordsmen. They can employ telekinesis, control people's minds, etc... And the sith can shoot lightning from their fingertips.
They're definitely a hybrid between martials and casters.
Try one in a system where they don't suck.
Not to mention some of the most popular characters in Star Wars are Han and Boba Fett (for some reason). Average people like more grounded heroes.
People like Han because he scores with Leia and they like Boba fett because of his cool armor and gadgets.
>for some reason)
Because he was competent, strangely important (was just casually hanging out with one of the most powerful gang lords in the series), had a good aesthetic, and was just vague enough that people could fill in the backstory gaps themselves.
And yet neither Han or Boba Fett have "super" powers. Fett was a cool dude witb a growly voice, two rocket launchers and a jetpack, and Han had a cool ship, a cool buddy and a love interest. And a fast shot.
Neither were casters.
Because some people play systems where martials aren't utterly castrated by RAW and caster-fapping writers?
Anima kinda works like that, user.
Casters are usually burst-damage monsters or reality fuckers, but their mana pool limits their mayhem to either a bunch of little spells a day or one real whopper once or twice a week.
Psychics are good general-purpose shit wreckers, with no real cooldown but early plateau(though a Railgun Psychic can still drop a metric assload of hurt on high-level things, consistently, if they get their hands on an unbreakable metal Heavy Ballista Quarrel).
Summoners usually have long prep times(excepting incarnation ones, who get their bonuses from being like the hero they're trying to take the form of), followed by a lot of mayhem(binding a demon, making everyone within several miles fail utterly at literally everything, nuking a city).
Martials are jacks-of-all-trades, and can specialize easily for any role: stealth, raw bals-out damage, summoning, flinging ki blasts at people, or denying the other classes their resources to do THEIR stupid shit.
A lot of people into medieval RPGs are into medieval history, too, which is filled with martial warlords and badass mundane kings for obvious reasons.
What system are they using?
This is why Han is beloved
Martial characters overcome obstacles with cunning, skill, and using the physical ability they've honed for years. Everything they accomplished feels earned, and when they overcome a challenge it's due to their own strength and those of their companions.
In comparison, casters overcome obstacles by breaking the rules of the universe. Spells represent ways they can interact with the world that normal people can't, and spells are almost always EASY. Their power doesn't come from themselves, it often comes from elsewhere - nature, Gods, elemental planes, sorcerous bloodlines, or the like. Some casters draw from inner strength, but the potential for such magic (like with psionics) is often random and not the person's choice. It's arguable that wizards achieve their power through honest means (years of study and mental exercises) and I'll admit they may be the exception to the rule, but generally speaking magic isn't something you choose - it's something chosen for you. You're either gifted or you're out of luck.
Martials vs. Casters is, to me, very similar to Caped Vigilantes vs. Superpowered Heroes. People love heroes like Batman, Nightwing, Black Widow, and other non-powered types not DESPITE their lack of powers, but often BECAUSE of it. These heroes, just like like martials, fulfill the fantasy that anybody can be amazing if they work hard enough. That's a theme that resonates with me, hence why I like to play martials.
I advocate that in a high-powered game, or one with mixed martials and casters, the martials function more like greek demi-gods than normal men and women. In my last high-powered game I played a flesh golem Fighter that looked mostly human but was obscenely tough and strong, to the point of suplexing dragons and throwing stone pillars at flying enemies.
Fantasy Craft. Basically some dudes tore 3.x D&D down to its bare skeleton and then built it back up again with solid math and balanced design, like what Pathfinder claimed it would do and totally didn't.
It's good if you like crunchy tactical combat of a 3e style, and don't mind that there's not a lot of modules and splats for it. If you roll your own adventures, it's excellent, and martials in it are all varied, powerful, and interesting. Magic's a bit dull, but if the magic splat, Spellbound, is ever finished, that won't be a problem anymore. (It's taking forever, though, probably due to the scope of balancing all of the stuff that's in it to meet the developer's stringent standards.)
It sounds like you judge characters primarily by their power levels. This is why you don't understand the appeal--you think that the "strongest" character, or the one capable of the most fantastical feats, is automatically the most interesting to everybody. You see, what you're describing here aren't characters, they're collections of powers.
It's a fairly normal phase to go through, just make sure you pay attention in your literature classes and by the time you graduate high school you should have a better understanding of how to make a character interesting.
Being an OP meme faggot isn't fun.
Neither is waving shit off as magic.
You're completely missing the point. My assertion is not that martial classes are weak, it's that they're boring.
Casters can produce numerous interesting effects via spells while martials are just meatshields that swing chunks of metal around. That's not interesting to me from a gameplay perspective. Casters just have so many more options.
It's pretty boring to have all the overpowered tools to fix every problem, user.
For me? It's cause it's more fun than 'there's x-monster? I use anti-X-Monster spell' when you gotta go 'right, this thing is dangerous let's see... we're going to have to use tactics' Or the times of just being the big guy who grapples with the horrible monster and then breaks it over his knee.
A few points. First of all, there's more to an RPG than fighting. Second, in-combat or out of combat, a martial is just as capable of using the environment to their advantage as a caster, and in different ways. It is a truly garbage DM that does not have the environment be more than just a setting for combat. That boulder on a ledge? Wizard can't do jack with it, but a fighter could possibly dislodge it and drop it on the monster's head.
I would go so far as to argue that casters are MORE limited than martials, given a half-decent DM. Their spells have a finite and very specific assortment of effects, whereas a martial has a tremendous variety of options thanks to their physical prowess.
Are these threads spammed often enough to be janitored like elf wat do?
I feel like it's the opposite. I have more fun figuring out tactics on the battlefield, team synergy, etc. It's fun to play a guy that swings into the battlefield brandishing a sword and harrying enemies with it. Maybe drawing them in, or leading them around, etc. The whole standing in the back and throwing fire or shooting lightning out your dick, or whatever, seems real fucking boring. It's also a lot less, in my opinion, heroic and interesting.
Punching and wrestling my problems is just fun.
>My assertion is not that martial classes are weak, it's that they're boring.
You asserted that they're boring *because* they're weak. Ergo, conflating powerlevels with how interesting a character is. Your choice of go-to examples (DBZ) doesn't exactly help your case either.
That may have something to do with the granularity of the fights and how they're described.
Honestly, have you never seen a decently choreographed or read a well written fight scene?
To be fair, at a certain level it's each to their own good. I find the idea of someone pitting their body, their will, and a yard of sharp steel against the world, if it stands against his object, to be fundamentally compelling.
Ultimately though, if you don't, I'm unlikely to convince you otherwise.
Where did I claim they were weak?
>I can't fathom why anyone would choose to play a simple fighting man with a sword when you can be the guy that hurls fire and lightning at his foes, the guy that reanimates the dead, the guy that shapeshifts into a bear, or even the guy that can heal wounds and banish the undead.
>Why would you play guy without powers when you could play guy with powers, or guy with powers, or guy with powers, or guy with powers?
If that's not what you were trying to say here, then you really need to learn to phrase your ideas better, my dude.
Some people want to be Gandalf. Some want to be Conan. Some want to be Robin Hood. Some want to be Sinbad. Some want to collect (you)s.
Because martials in D&D 2e were inmortals gods of carnage and destruction without triying. Then you added ability bonus and magical items.
You need better reading comprehension. I said they were dull and mundane not weak.
This thread again?
In systems/settings where there are gross disparities like you described, yeah, I can understand not wanting to play a martial. But if the only magic available is shit like calling fog, starting small fires after focusing for a while, and at the high end calling a thunderstorm but not being able to direct it, i think its justifiable to play either.
On the flip side, in a system/setting where casters CAN throw around fireballs and lightning bolts willy-nilly, martials should be able to perform Herculean/Superman-like feats of strength, or sneak so well not even light can find them, and stuff like that.
Ok, So a subtle shift in the argument from Martials vs. Casters as a Capability to Martials vs. Casters as an entertainment option, letting you browbeat anyone who brings up the previous threads.
I'm almost impressed. This is very nearly clever.
6/10 Would respond to bait again, lacking subtlety. Needs variety in shitposted topics.
Epic-level 4e martials are the shit
Well yeah if casters are relegated to glorified weathermen then obviously martials become more interesting.
Why do you assume that I'm trolling? If you don't want to discuss this topic just fuck off mate.
I gotta look into 4e again. I tried it when it first came out and it felt too "game"-y for my taste then (i started on 3e, then moved to shit like FATE)
>mate
Ah, Nah, I'd rather not, especially since I'm now fairly certain you're VirtualOptim.
Who?
this is definitely shit, but at the same time...
Because martials are the guys who get things done, especially high-skill martials. If I play a fighter with 14 int, I've got almost as many skill points as the wizard, and I don't have half of them consumed by Spellcraft, Knowledge:Planes and other only barely situational shit that wizards none-the-less NEED to do their shit. Good luck playing any half-decent system with a party of nothing but casters, you'll get wrecked by the first thing to beat you on initiative, because you don't have a nice, tough guy with a dozen things he can do in a fight to keep himself and his allies alive around to run interference.
from an "options" perspective, well, a skill-based martial who takes a bunch of equipment has all kinds of options available to him, and he doesn't have to choose which of those options he wants to use three hours in advance. Especially in low-mid level play, how often is your option as a caster "I cast fireball"? How is that significantly more "options" than "I hit it with a sword", "I hit everything around me with a sword" or "I hit it with a sword, REALLY HARD"?
If you find martials boring, you're doing it wrong.
No, he doesn't have enough elf-hate and smug, "enlightened" sadism to be virt. He's just incapable of understanding why anybody would find something fun if he doesn't. Both empathy issues, but subtly different.
>At the end of the day, all they can do is hit stuff with their sword/axe.
You make it sound like that's a bad thing user
It is distinctly "game"-y, but that's an intentional design decision. It's a tactical dungeon crawler.
Also it has been significantly improved from launch. Pretty much every book released after the first three is a direct improvement (up until Essentials came out and was shit)
If martials are just "i swing my sword" then casters SHOULD be using weaker or at least more subtle magic. Im saying theres massive tonal dissonance if casters get tons of super flashy and strong powers, and martials get to swing their sword good-er. A system/setting that allows players to play either needs to make sure that the classes have the same number of options.
Because I don't like being the guy who takes one shank from a small dagger and goes down crying and sobbing like a baby, and gets put in critical condition by a hit from anything larger than an orc's handaxe.
Oh, come now, it's fairly obvious.
>D&D Shitpost that's specifically targeted at editions past AD&D
>Reposted several times over the last few days.
>mate
Nah, he's recognized that as a giveaway so he's changed his style. Last time he posted anything like that was almost two months ago.
youtube.com
Because I can swing my sword
I totallu get that it was intentional, and after some time playing Wakfu with some friends i feel like it might be exactly what I'm looking for.
Not bad per se, just boring compared to the options casters have.
I'm not basing my assertions on how you think the game should be balanced. I'm basing them on how it is. As it stands, caster can do awesome and cool things every round whilst martials seem dull by comparison. Not necessarily weaker but just dull.
A wizard can charm an enemy, put him to sleep, incinerate everything in the vicinity. Meanwhile the fighter can swing with his sword. Again.
>based on how it is
Come on user, if you've spent 5 minutes on this board you know not every system is like that.
You're paranoid dude. It's just inconceivable that I'm not trolling isn't it?
I'm talking about d&d.
is that faggot actually still around? I thought he just faded into the aethir, what happened? Did his trips get banned?
Your argument still boils down to
>Martials are boring
>Why do you find martials boring?
>Because they're boring
You gotta support your opinion with some data, broski, otherwise you're just pissing into the wind.
His trip was banned, but he still shitposts here now and then. Sometimes he posts screencaps of his "epic trolls" on his tumblr account. Because obviously he would have a tumblr.
Play Anima BF
Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords aka Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic would like to say hello as it makes martials awesome (and plenty of the stuff in it is non magical) and it's an official book.
It's only Core martials that are boring, but only morons play core only.
Paranoia is for people who care. I'm just the peanut gallery. It's like a game. The board is full of shitposters, and you win if you can find Virt. among them. Like Where's Waldo, except with inflated egos and autism instead of red and white shirts.
>But it's the same with any edition. Martials might be stronger and more balanced in other editions but they're still boring and one-dimensional.
4e
Oh, my mistake. I do have answers for you, just different ones from when I didn't understand the context.
A person, myself included, could want to play a martial for a variety of reasons.
My most common reason is that my character concept works better with a martial class than a non-martial, and the sacrifice of having interesting combat is in exchange for having more fun RP
The reason at least one of my friends does it is he sucks at resource management, and always forgets what he has prepared, forgets to stock up on components in town, etc.
Another reason is that casters while not HARD to build them to be competent, it is HARDER than buiding a competent martial (this is excluding editions where martials are never comparatively competent.)
Not the guy you're talking to, but martials are boring in 3.5 because their grand list of options in-game is very short compared to spellcasters,m and they have to spend all their resources on specializing on one option in order to be able to succeed at anything at higher levels, which further limits the amount of choices they can make.
Wait... we are talking about 3.5 right?
>and plenty of the stuff in it is non magical
Literally nothing in there is magical. Or are we mistaking for the 100001th time magical with supernatural/extraordinary? because those two are pretty fucking different in D&D
I got curious and did some digging, my favourite thing so far is apparently his actual real life GF dumped him via reddit. Fucking... what?
I said that for the autists who think anything martial must be mundane. Im of the camp that says bring me my supernatural and extraordinary martials. I want literal weeaboo fightan men.
>(this is excluding editions where martials are never comparatively competent.)
This is none of them, for the record. Veeky Forums exaggerates the caster-martial gap ridiculously.
Not saying it doesn't exist, just that it's rarely as bad as shitposters claim.
It's pretty bad though, you probably won't find it before 6th-7th level (earlier if there's a druid) but beyond that is so obvious it hurts.
2e fighters in particular are walking meatgrinders that laugh as spells bounce off of them.
This.
Martials in 4e is the best.
Hence why e6 is such a good idea
Enforce spell components and carry weight. Each archetype has its limitations.
>Martials
Smaller vocabulary of abilities, no access to reality bending. High reliance on feats.
>Divines
Have to adhere to their patron's wishes or be fucking powerless.
>Arcane
Spellcasting is expensive as fuck and requires carrying lots of components. Enforce this as a DM and virtually 100% of the balance issues go away.
Also, consider the political implications of people wandering around who can suddenly open rifts to literally Satan's asshole. In basically any setting, magic would be extremely well regulated or monitored. Political powers like kingdoms would keep extremely powerful wizards on retainer and have them Wish murderhobowizards out of existence.
tl;dr,
If Martials face consequences for their actions, make it the same for casters, and ENFORCE MATERIAL COMPONENT RULES
Funny thing in 4e, you can have a fully functional party, filling all four "party roles", with 3 fighters and a warlord.
I've wanted to use this to run a 4e game focusing on an elite squad of soldiers in a war for some time now
>such a good idea
From a balance point of view? maybe. It's pretty boring though, maybe for a low as fuck fantasy setting, because you lack lots of options and your effect on the battlefield as a martial is just swinging your stick.
eschew materials
component pouches
Boom, literally free of 99.99% problems with components
True.
It works, but 5e does the same basic thing and does it better
Oh, there was this huge story about it we had a year or two back. I was there for the last That Guy thread to feature a story by his "Friend." His GF tried to leave him for the friend, but obviously anyone who would willingly sleep with Virt(Excluding the paid prostitutes he hired) isn't exactly right in the head. He discovered a few messages on his friend's phone, and basically raged his way out of the Game Store, thinking he'd been cucked.
He's gotten a vasectomy, so he'll never breed, at least.
Do you want to just skip all the nuh-uh yuh-huh back and forth, and agree to disagree? I have a feeling nothing I say will sway you, and vice versa is probably true as well.
>in-combat or out of combat, a martial is just as capable of using the environment to their advantage as a caster, and in different ways.
See, the problem is that while yes, a Fighter is just as capable as any Wizard at using the terrain to his advantage, a Wizard can do the same amount of creativity while also having a truckload of guaranteed "No DM, THIS happens" abilities he has up his sleeve, ie spells.
The other problem is that most of those creative and useful require skill checks, sometimes multiple, to achieve whatever effect they're going for, and said effect is usually worse than just punching them to death.
Like, yeah you could spend two turns luring the monster into just the right spot to drop a boulder on him and pin him under it if you make 3 skill checks and an attack roll.
Or you could just full attack him for those two turns and he'll be dead.
>That boulder on a ledge? Wizard can't do jack with it, but a fighter could possibly dislodge it and drop it on the monster's head.
Why can't the Wizard do anything with it? As you said earlier, a martial is capable of using the environment to his advantage as caster, so the opposite must also be true which makes "The Wizard can't do jack with the boulder" sound silly. if anything, a Wizard would have an easier time since they can just use a spell (or even a cantrip) to dislodge it, and have the INT and likely WIS to notice the boulder and come up with a plan on how to use it.
I'm fine with extraordinary, I'm just not a fan of supernatural for martials(using the D&D definitions). I'm fine with being hercules, god ammong men, but I don't want my sword swings to cut down a fucking forest from the wind off my blade, or to magically heal my ally for no explained reason. The Path of War splat for Pathfinder is pretty good for this, though like all things pathfinder it's like 1/3 usable 2/3 cancer.
You don't necessarily need a leader if you don't want to have them though.
Just a DM or a party willing to give out/buy healing potions for tough fights and battles should be easier with either more strikers or defenders.
Do you actually know what the component rules are?
Yeah but Anima is a shit tier garbage of a mess.
>Confirmed for not speaking Spanish even as a 4th language
It's a mess because the translation is horrible
But casters in Pathfinder goes over the realm of mortals and fiction from 5th level onward.
Why not martials as well?
Arguably don't even need to limit it like that, since there's a martial class for each role, you can very easily play a non-magic using party and go just fine. Toss in inherent bonuses and you can just dump magic altogether.
Assuming you can't/don't/won't reflavor magical classes anyways.
yeah, in future games I'm probably gonna home rule both of those out and force players to actually plan and carry with them their material components. How much Guano are you willing to carry with you on this weak long journey, exactly? Otherwise uh... where do you keep getting your Guano from? That bag has to have a maximum capacity, right?
would a game with with tome of battle martials and psionic casters be good?
True, but rangers and rogues don't wear heavy armor
I like the idea of an armored squadron. It fits the "military" motif better, and fighters are fully capable of being controllers, strikers and (obviously) defenders
I want my 20th level martials to be able to pull off pic related. Then again I grew up watching wuxia and 70s kungfu movies.
Yes. Very much so. It's actually considered one the ways to fix caster supremacy. Add in a few other books I can't remember and you'll have a fun good time with a varied and interesting party and world.