How can we have casters and martials on an even footing while still making them feel different...

Some other systems get rid of caster supremacy by having all characters use a unified resource pool for all abilities representing the fatigue and effort to do whatever thing it is. It's why Tome of Battle works, and why 4e works. You just don't like them for stupid reasons that you would apply to every solution.

5e came up with a solid way to trick idiots like you with Superiority Dice and Divine Smite, but that is because you require being duped into things feeling different.

>How can we have casters and martials on an even footing while still making them feel different

This is a non-issue except for when people get the ludicrous idea that role-playing games should be like Dota, where every possible option should be "balanced" against each other.

Usually this is the result of playing games and sessions that basically devolve into murderfests where characterization is a matter of what specific method you use to kill orcs.

If you tell someone who's read a lot of fantasy that people who learned the cheat codes to the universe and can set stuff on fire with their mind might be more dangerous than people with big arms or who are really good with a spear, they go 'right, of course, makes sense'.

If you present the same idea to D&Dfags, you get this thread. For the millionth time.

If you want casters to be balanced with martials, make your playable casters be low powered examples, that way the archetypical evil wizard or gandalf can still exist in the setting, without making it retarded because you somehow decided that all possible proffessions and character backgrounds need to be equal.

Most people can get behind the idea that say, an apprentice that ran off before finishing his training, or a wizard school dropout, or someone who's got some talent but no schooling, or lots of schooling but no talent, might feel on a somewhat equal footing with a man at arms, knight or mercenary etc.

It's when you put "guy who's been reading stuff that makes normal people go insane and who can fucking fly" next to "guy who's really good at stabbing people in the back or "glorified hunter" that things inevitably get retarded.

Role-playing should be about immersion and characterization, when you start bending the fiction until it screams, just in order to make every possible character "balanced" the point of the exercise suffers.

If you want balance, play dungeoncrawl boardgames like arcadia quest or descent, not role-playing games.

>Role-playing should be about immersion and characterization, when you start bending the fiction until it screams, just in order to make every possible character "balanced" the point of the exercise suffers.

Isn't having a party stay together when one guy is superman, and the other are shitty batman wannabees at best, more immersion breaking than accepting that this guy has to be special to be in the same group as this other guy who is also special in his own way? Doesn't that sound more, dare I say, fun?

Like, why would Elminster drag a fighter along with whatever he does? Unless there's some shitty forced plot element on the fighter, that "guy with the sword" has no reason to be there.

This happened time and time again in my 3.PF games, where the player playing the fighter character was basically just tagging along my bard and the party cleric. He was basically just taking naps whenever it wasn't combat.

As a roleplayer, go fuck yourself with a rusty rake.

Balance is extremely important, especially when the focus is on collaborative storytelling. Your ability to interact with the world, the events playing out and the plot in meaningful, enjoyable ways is key to the experience, and it is no fucking fun being a side character in someone else's story.

Of course, in more thematic and narrative terms that balance is extremely easy, because the sort of resource systems OP loathes can be applied to everything, in different ways to create a different 'feel' where necessary, but it does wonders for rewarding cooperation and teamwork.

As a side note, it's amusing that you suggest powering down casters instead of powering up martials. It's something I've noticed a lot, people would rather make casters weaker than touch the for some reason abhorrent concept of making martial characters fantastical and heroic as they have every right to be in the context.

So you end up having situations where fighters are useless and sit there doing nothing (when a spirit needs banishing) and situations where wizards are useless and sit doing nothing (when something needs to be killed with a sword).

Instead of having the entire party contribute to most challenges.

Just play another game, already.

Without nerfing casters to the point where the autism rage would be so deafening as to end the earth, you can't. Meaningful casters and meaningful martials simply cannot exist in the same game system.

Or Warhammer

Spells either take day long rituals that can be interrupted or can be canceled with ease by disrupting the caster.

Horse fucking shit. Anima: Beyond Fantasy and Legends of the Wulin both prove you wrong.

...

Or, you know. Making martials potent too.

How about you just limit what spells are available to wizards and remove the new spells upon level up mechanic?

Wizards in Harry Potter still have to worry about the muggle world, because the muggle world has guns and cruise missiles and predator drones and nuclear warheads. Same for wizards in the Dresden Files, and countless other series.

Magic is pretty powerful, but a lot of the more straightforward applications of magic can be just as easily replicated by skill or technology.

Merge rogue and fighter into a single class that gives you the best of the two's in evey aspect like you were doing a gestalt. Also, ban magical manipulation of the action economy once you get that high.

Or just don't play 3.5

>
Hey, that's a book I have.

Don't have martial characters who are simply really good at hitting things. Have knights who have serious social clout and barbarians who understand the wilderness. Give most martial characters lots of followers and practical skills.

Make casters really good only when it comes to things which no martial class can reasonably do; notably buffing other party members (including instant healing), de-buffing enemies and area-effect attacks.

Make the best magical effects be ones which enhance the abilities of martial classes so both are necessary for full effectiveness.

Let people who aren't casters participate meaningfully in magical rituals; they can provide energy through exhausting physical elements (anything from ritual dancing to blood sacrifice), use their social influence to get a crowd of worshippers together, gather rare herbs using their knowledge of the wild, hold down the sacrifice or whatever.

Give martial classes some level of over-the-top martial-arts bullshit which is distinct from spellcasting. Probably by making it good at the things which spellcasting is artificially limited from doing for balance purposes.

Lump martial classes together to give them the best elements of several concepts; combine barbarians and rangers into one class so you have guys who are strong, agile, good at survival and get awesome pets. Split caster classes up so they each only get a small fraction of all the magical abilities.

Assume that a typical martial PC is an exceptionally good warrior while a typical caster PC is probably an average wizard (or whatever) at best.

Use meta-game methods to balance shit. Give martials more fate-points or narrative control options or whatever.

Make it compulsory for followers and allies to be controlled by another player and have a lot of caster's utility be in summoned allies.

Or Iron Kingdoms.

Sounds good, let's limit them to first level spells only. They can use the higher level slots for metamagic. Same for other casters as well, obviously.

Or Reign (sort of).

don't give casters more hp. If a dude puts his all into learning magic he'll be just as squishy to a sword as a peasant until he casts spells to toughen himself.

That's anime TOB shit that the OP explicitly said not to use. Which is why it can't be done without nerfing casters

This is also TOB shit.

Play fantasy craft.

Literally this.

>people who learned the cheat codes to the universe and can set stuff on fire with their mind

Fuck magicfags and their "I should be super overpowered at level 1 and create my own harem of archangel bitches and genocide entire empires with my mind because magic"

I know this is bait, buuuut

>How can we have casters and martials on an even footing while still making them feel different
Use ToB/PoW for martials whilst also nerfing the options for casters via stronger thematic grounding. There isn't wizards, there are conjurers and necromancers and evokers and such. There aren't clerics, there are priests of the hearth, of the dead, of art and joy. There aren't druids, there are protectors of the northern ice, of the savannah, of the blighted lands, and such. Restrict the spell lists via thematic lists tied to specializations. Nerf certain spells and their ability to just break shit. Remove certain spells and make them rituals that anyone with a skill check and/or feat can use. Druid specific: force them to choose between spellcasting and companions/wildshaping.

Basically take certain specific things from 5es nerfs to casters and use them for 3.pf.

>instead of making everyone effectively a caster like Tome of Battle or 4E?
Oh, you're a moron looking for (you)s and a flame war. 4e martials function nothing like casters, and ToB is nowhere near the same as a caster.

Most of the people posting on this thread are going to call for things are are fuckign retarded and go against the spirit of the game and its rules.

Or that they just don't find the exact spell they need. They'll have some of the "useless" spells literally no wizard ever picks for their spells.

You can't. No matter how much the wannabe tough guys fucking cry about it, "I STAB PEEPLE WITH SHARP METAL!" will never be on equal footing with the guy who melts steel with his fucking brain and whose hands are basically fucking artillery. Remember that melee-based infantry and firearms didn't coexist well for very long either and fighter players will start to see their sad little dilemma.

Except that all rests on a bullshit double standard which continues to be perpetuated for no good reason, as evidenced by half this fucking thread acting like it is a divine law sent on from above that Martial characters must all be perfectly realistic in a setting full of wizards and dragons. It boggles the mind.

>Melee based infantry and firearms didn't coexist well for very long
8/10 I replied.

>If you tell someone who's read a lot of fantasy that people who learned the cheat codes to the universe and can set stuff on fire with their mind might be more dangerous than people with big arms or who are really good with a spear, they go "What about Conan?"

FTFY

>be fighter
>get hit with attack
>don't die
>be wizard
>get hit with attack
>one shot, unconscious and bleeding out
hmmm...

>someone posts the 'lel i'm behind 1000 arcane wards and contingencies good luck dispelling all of these btw you stepped on the nuclear explosion rune i set up in advance goodbye' whiteroom non-argument

Doesn't fix clerics or druids though.

>Dark Souls magic
I have similar opinions on how magic should work, but why the fuck did you have to call if Dark Souls magic? Dark Souls didn't innovate any of that shit.

You're never going to have a party that contributes equally when half the party can do everything at no cost while the other half needs to invest in being second-rate at best.

Back then, Fighters fought, Thieves snuck/stole, clerics healed, and mages used magic after a few rounds. It was clunky and everyone could only afford to do stuff when their requisite time to shine kicked in but it was better since every role was important.

>one shot, unconscious and bleeding out
Dumb PF kiddies once again thinking that low HP means it's okay to have instadeath attacks. And forgetting about Sorcerers who don't need to prepare spells.

We've been over this time and time again.

Limiting a wizard's spell alottment just encourages people to go Cleric or Druid.

Yeah nah. Conan was level 5.

Historical level 10 fighters like Roland had a golfbag of magic items and hacked gaps through mountains with their indestructible holy swords.

Level 15, in 2e, was when fighters became eligible for a demigod template.

That's a more even match to mortal men with teleport and cloudkill spells.

If you don't like western fluff, use eastern fluff where enlightenment beats sorcery 9/10 times. Or rip off Anima, where martial supremacy is the norm despite mages with power similar to d20 settings.

Reinstate weapon mastery rules from becmi along with despair and limit it to fighters only.

Clerics must utilize a new resource called "Allowance". Every day, god allows them to do some shit, but he gets tired of funneling his divine powers into their mortal bodies, so he may just call it quits for the night, you're fucked if you wanted more help.

At this point, your Cleric will be able to use a new skill called "Begging", where you can make a plea, like, "Oh shit this goblin is going to chop my head off, please god grant me the power to save me so I can bug you some more tomorrow!" At which point god will consider smiting the goblin or whatever.

>Shadowrun already does this to an extent, and it's one of the system's better points
Shadowrun takes it to the point of "you only cast if you know you're going to drop the motherfucker" or "you use a gun". Magic is for dealing with magic elsewise, and not for mundane problems that bullets can do for faster and cheaper.

(That or you cheese the system, get cybernetic eyeballs, and be an invisible flying witch what sets people on fire through walls because with enough technology in your eyeballs - and all at the measly price of 1 Magic - you can see and see through *anything*, effectively giving you 11 kilometers of line of sight - or better, if you can get to an elevated position.)

Okay...that's incredibly fucking retarded. Imagine how this would look to the plebians.

>"Man, I want to be a Cleric of X"
>"Wow, I didn't know you were a masochist"

Clerics are beings who channel the power of their deity to perform miracles and spread their word. If you had clerics literally begging their god to be useful, it'll only make them and their religion look like a bunch of gimps who can only be impressive if their god allows them to be.

Not to mention, it'll just encourage people to become Druids, since they get their power from the forces of nature itself, rather than learning arcane spells or begging for their miracles.

Use the same system for Druids.

Druids ask for help from their little squirrel friends, but sometimes the squirrels are too busy trying to get a nut and tell him to fuck off.

Cyber lowers your essence, which lowers your overall magic rating, which makes you a shittier mage than someone who decided to go all in one way or the other.

>like a bunch of gimps who can only be impressive if their god allows them to be
Maybe they should focus on mundane abilities to supplement their role? Oratory skills, knowledge, skills related to their religion, etc.

>The low cost of 1 Magic
Literally even the most advanced cybernetic eyeballs cost a FRACTION of 1 essence (which means it lowers your magic by only 1 point, which you can regain by, y'know, Intiating).

(Actually, "most advanced" are cheaper, essence-wise; they're more expensive nuyen-wise. You still only lose 1 MAG.)

Paying 1 Magic for the ability to see through walls (and other visual obstructions) and have it count as natural sight, when your casting range is literally literally "natural line of sight"? Hell to the fuck yeah.

Or they could pick and choose when to be useful, as in, the divine power is a limited resource for them that keeps them from doing whatever they want at all times because they aren't the deity themselves.

>Or they could pick and choose when to be useful
You are saying that they can't be useful without magic which is wrong. Don't treat casters like superheroes who interact with the world only through their flashy special powers.

I'm saying that in terms of being useful with the powers gifted to them by divine beings.

Nobody is going to take a tree man seriously if he has to beg a fucking squirrel to give him the power to protect nature. Beyond that, what makes squirrels any more important than the trees that its climbing or the nut that it's trying to eat? What about individual blades of grass? Hell, what about the insects in the grass? I mean, if I ask every living creature within a square meter of where I'm standing, I'm bound to get my spells sooner or later.

Not to mention, I could just forgo the hassle and invest in becoming a man who can transform into a bear, being flanked by another bear, who can then summon more bears.

Second edition had simple things like bend bar check for warriors and run up walls for thieves.

While those are not super out landish, they are still things that are considered nearly impossible. In fact to do such feats in 3 on ward you need to either use a spell (Or dip into psionic stuff which is still kinda magicy).

The problem is people thinking the Melees need to me Mundane. Then when someone mentions to add "Hey lets add super human elements to it". Most common examples are things like Hercules and his super human strength, or Conan able to just shrug off magic due to force of will.

You bring those examples up and you often run into the road block of saying "Those examples fell pretty barbarian specific" and the argument dies. It's a very multiplayer argument apparently.

People need to disassociated some thematic between classes first of all, and allow some overlap. Next people need to put on their High-Fantasy Caps and like Melee class start picking up wagons carts and toss them, or slipping through door cracks a breath wide. Really super human mythic stuff.

>I'm saying that in terms of being useful with the powers gifted to them by divine beings.
They don't need powers to be useful

>makes you a shittier mage
So you paid something like 0.3ess for eyeballs that have thermoptic vision and can see through walls and shit, and the other guy didn't.

They other guy can cast spells with like, two more dice than you - effectively they get 0.67 more successes than you on average.

Meanwhile, you are down the street three blocks, in your favorite pub, tipping back a pint, and zooming in with your cybernetic eyeballs, watching (and recording) while you make the other guy cum a gallon in the middle of the street. In broad daylight.

Because you have magic and metal eyeballs, and only roll a whole fucking 0.67 fewer successes on average than the other guy, who can't even see you to cast at you. Hell, the moron probably doesn't even know where you are.

Simply revert back all the changes from 2e -> 3e.

>Casters being targeted or forced to make a saving throw lose any spell they are casting period. No save, not even if the attack/save fails.
>Undo the experience tables and make them asynchronous again
>All spells have V and S components now. Lacking one element nullifies ALL magic for that caster
>Remove bonus spell slots
>Spell save DCs are now based on the defender, not on the attacker
>Spell penetration to negate resistance is no longer a thing.

Done.

Or better yet, just play OSR where this isn't a problem.

You're missing the point.

I think you are missing my point too.

Clerics get 0 armor proficiency and half BaB scaling.
Druids don't start with an animal companion and must find one. Spells are found randomly.

I could literally just astrally project myself and get the same benefit, in addition to being able to cast spells while being untouchable to anything that isn't dual natured or another mage.
Casting magic also tends to be obvious as fuck and letting yourself be caught casting magic in public is going to either get you marked on video camera or get your ass geeked should you be in the company of people who don't take kindly to no magic folk.

Even if you could get away with it without getting caught, it's just a stupid waste of resources when there are already ways that would allow you to do what you're suggesting without spending nyuyen or lowering your essence.

I understand your point that Clerics can do things besides cast spells ie. mundane skills and that those things can be useful.

You are not understanding that I was strictly speaking about the use of divine powers in terms of being useful.

I'm suggesting that divine powers should be limited, asserting that they should in fact be more adept in other facets of their profession. When their divine powers are a limited resource, they have to decide when to use those powers more carefully.

I'm still waiting for an RPG system where you're always playing a "wizard".

Whether that means being a frail old man that flies and throws fireballs, or a big hulking hero who punches so hard, he can literally crush goblins by just throwing a punch at a distance and let the air pressure explode their innards.

>I could literally just astrally project myself and get the same benefit
A mage with cybereyes can still do this too. They just don't have to, because they have the option of being able to cast spell through walls (and other visual obstructions) without having to first astrally project.

>Casting magic also tends to be obvious as fuck
Nope. SR4A 179: "Just how obvious are magical skills? Not very, since most spells and spirits have little, if any, visible effects in the physical world." "Noticing if someone is using a magical skill requires a Perception Test (p. 135) with a threshold equal to 6 minus the magic's Force."

Also, even if "casting magic also tends to be obvious as fuck" were true, not having cybereyes does not somehow make magic casting more subtle - ergo, the guy without cybereyes is not better than the guy with cybereyes, in this regard.

The differences between martial and magic classes in 4e is just fluff. Classes are actually divided up into the typical MMO classes tank, healer, DPS.

You mean like Exalted, D&D 4e, Grancrest, Night Wizard, arguably Anima, etc.?

But user, D&D 4e had horrible Blizzshitard art. :(
Actually, Exalted had/has horrible Blizzshitard art too.

>stupid waste of resources
Standard grade rating 3 Cybereyes loaded with Thermographic, Low-Light, Enhancement, Magnification, and Smartlink cost a whole 9500 nuyen and 0.4 essence.

That is *incredibly* cheap for the ability to see through walls (well, to target things via their heat emissions), from a long distance, and in fine detail. Plus then you can spend the leftover 0.6 essence on stuff too, since it's not going to lower your Magic attribute any further (remember, you only lose Magic/Resonance from Essence loss for every whole or part of a whole point of Essence; spending 0.0...1 Essence and 1.0 Essence have the same effect on Mag/Res.)

Basically, you lose 9500 nuyen, 0.4 essence, and (on average) 0.67 successes on every roll if you get cybereyes as a mage, compared to an identical mage who did not; but you gain a ton more versatility.

Except there are mechanical differences between martials and magic classes and Defenders do not correspond to MMO tanks, Leaders do not correspond to MMO healers and Controllers do not correspond to anything in MMOs.

As I've mentioned before, even if you could get away with casting spells subtlety, you're wasting so many resources on a stupid gimmick that it'd ultimately not worth it in the end.

And even if you could raise your MAG rating using initiate, you're not going to be able to regain any essence that was lost from your cyberwear, which will impact how high your MAG rating can go later, if I'm remembering how that shit works correctly.

>Controllers do not correspond to anything in MMOs
Nigga what the fuck do you think CC stands for? Crowd Control.

You can't make equal what is objectively not equal.

>Defenders do not correspond to MMO tanks, Leaders do not correspond to MMO healers and Controllers do not correspond to anything in MMOs.

The particular subclass names are arbitrary. There are roles and there are professions that fill those roles, magical or otherwise.

You could try Legends of the Wulin, if you like wuxia.

>...a big hulking hero who punches so hard, he can literally crush goblins by just throwing a punch at a distance and let the air pressure explode their innards.

There is my friend.

Did I say anything about their names? The way they function is substantially different.

>you're wasting so many resources
Oh no! 4 karma worth of nuyen at character creation! WHAT A MASSIVE RESOURCE SINK

>I'm remembering how that shit works correctly.
You are not. Initiating raises your MAG cap, which means Initiating literally reverses any MAG loss from Essence loss. (You still have to buy up the MAG separately, but that too is not a big problem - as has been mentioned previously, several times, being short 1 MAG of another mage means you roll, on average, 0.67 fewer successes (well, 0.33 just purely from the difference in MAG, but most tests are Attribute + Skill, and most Magic-linked skills are capped by your MAG attribute, so the difference is basically doubled).

So do 3.5, PF and 5e.

Again, I can already do that shit for free without wasting money or damaging my essence pool.

Hell, I could spend that 9500 nuyen on shit that could make my summons better or on new spells that could cover the same exact purpose. Not to mention, if someone decides to use hacking or gremlins on you, you're basically SOL, especially if the enemy knows that you're a mage.

That's 4 karma that I could've spent on making my magic better, which would serve me better in the long run.
>Initiating raises your MAG cap, which means Initiating literally reverses any MAG loss from Essence loss.
Yet at the same time, I'm spending resources to initiate and raise my MAG to a point where I would've been if I just focused purely on magic.

I mean, what you're basically saying that if I spend 4 karma, 9500 nuyen, and a point of essence, I can do everything that I could've already done before as a vanilla mage, with the added benefit of wasting additional resources so that I'm weaker than another mage of equal power.

Which is, again, a waste of resources.

Yeah because the name doesn't imply in any way how the class is used, the names are arbitrary.

>When their divine powers are a limited resource, they have to decide when to use those powers more carefully.
I wonder if different approach to limited resources could be used. Something like Fate Points your GM holds, lets call it Favor. Player doesn't know how much Favor with his god/gods has but can approximately guess it through omens, prayers and events. When your Favor with god is high it works like passive luck. Good stuff happens to you related to deity in question, flowers bloom, money flows to you if you follow god of merchants, arrow misses you by hair's breadth deflected by war god. Cleric can direct divine magic with hope or words (this costs Favor) but he doesn't know for sure how much Favor it will cost or what god has to do fullfil his wish.

What does that have to do with 4e's roles not corresponding to MMO roles?

>delusional 4rries claim 4e is nothing like an MMO
"As far as I know, 4th edition was the first set of rules to look to videogames for inspiration. I wasn’t involved in the initial design meetings for the game, but I believe that MMOs played a role in how the game was shaped. I think there was a feeling that D&D needed to move into the MMO space as quickly as possible and that creating a set of MMO-conversion friendly rules would help hasten that."
-Mike Mearls, a lead developer for D&D 4e R&D

It was designed to be as much like a table top MMO as possible. It's incredible obvious.

>I can already do that shit for free
It is not free; you are now vulnerable in the astral as well as the physical. Also, you cannot astrally project perpetually (SR4A 192: "The magian can maintain [their astral projection] for a number of hours equal to her Magic attribute. After this time, if she has not returned to her physical body, her astral form will die")

Also, astrally projecting takes a Complex Action. Using your eyes does not.

>hacking
Not likely to happen, unless you're some kind of moron that has his cybereyes wirelessly-accessible. This is why hackers generally don't hack street samurai: they literally *can't*, because what fucking idiot enables wireless on their arms and shit? One of the books (I can't remember if it was core or Unwired) EXPLICITLY calls out the fact that most cyber implants either absolutely don't have wireless features (externally-accessible cyberware, like a limb), or have very short range wireless that essentially requires external users to be within sneezing range (internal implants that can't be easily accessed, such as an encephalon).

>gremlins
This is why you can astrally perceive - so that even if you get gremlins'd by a sprite, it don't matter.

>on new spells that could cover the same exact purpose
No; there are no spells that allow you to see through walls or have better long-range sight. (Clairvoyance lets you have remote viewing, but it does not let you cast spells through the remote view.) Additionally, casting spells to see lights you up on the astral because you just cast a spell.

>That's 4 karma that I could've spent on making my magic better
There's almost nothing you could spend that 4 karma on to make you a better spellcaster, unless you have literally no spellcasting skills. Most foci worth a damn (i.e. more than Force 1) cost more than 4 karma (Sustaining Foci @ Force 2 cost exactly 4 karma, plus the usual boatload of nuyen that foci cost).

That there are corresponding roles. There are tanks, healers, and crowd control in both.

What you said was that specific subclasses don't match up to those roles, which doesn't make any sense because you can call a class whatever you want and it either functions like a tank or doesn't, the name is arbitrary.

Yeah, I'd like a source on that.

No, I said that 4e's roles do not match up to MMO roles.

Mike Mearls, a lead developer for D&D 4e R&D

Are you retarded? Use google.

And I'm saying that's incorrect.

rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8309:

>I mean, what you're basically saying that if I spend 4 karma, 9500 nuyen, and a point of essence, I can do everything that I could've already done before as a vanilla mage
Vanilla mages cannot snipe targets from an arbitrary distance away without having to astrally perceive/project (which, again, exposes you to the whole of the astral and anyone or anything that might want to get at you can now get at you via either the physical or the astral, or both).

A mage with cybereyes just needs sufficient elevation. You've got, essentially, a baseline of 11 kilometers range on a flat plane, due to the fact that the Earth is curved and therefore things past the horizon are out of your LOS due to the geothermal gradient interfering with your thermographic vision. (This is also an insurmountable problem for pure mages; the Earth is considered a living being, and therefore its astral form blocks astral LOS, meaning you can't snipe people literally on the other side of the Earth by going through it.)