How do you balance "Dude in metal who hits stuff really hard with other pieces of metal" in a setting with actual magic...

Simple, every stat doubles per level of the fighter.

>unless that "metal" is antimagium

The same properties that detract casters from wearing armour also work as a defense against magic.

BAM! hire me WotC

In one of my settings that was a consideration in. I went with a "Certain teachings show how to use physical martial arts in a superhuman way. Via manipulation of the metaphysics of the world."

There is also ancient amulets that project a sphere like field where magic goes to utter shit and will drive mages insane if they stay inside for too long. So mages tend to have a lot of guards to make sure they don't get shanked by an assassin wearing one.

Why must martial remain wholly restricted to the laws of physics? Have their natural progression take them to the levels of Hercules, Beowulf, and the like. By the time the wizard can throw fireballs like it's nothing, the fighter should be busting through walls with the same effort.

That, or lots of magic items.

Just make the fighter work off of mythical physics rather than actual physics.

You'd still need to restrict the utility of the wizards, though.

Are you talking about class fluff/crunch flaws or armies X fireballs?

Either way, the clear answer is pic related.

Let wizards do anything at the expense of casting time and fragility.

Fighters get powers from Cthulhu?

We have this conversation all the damn time, the number of answers don't increase.

>How do I balance magic and martial abilities?

Option 1: Make Magic rare, difficult, risky, etc [the Warhammer Method]

Option 2: Make Magic weaker, limited, specific and limited in application [that is, its not reality warping, its a specific art which can accomplish only so much]

Option 3: Make martial abilities scale into the clearly supernatural [The Exalted Method].

Option 4: Magic is a skill that is readily known to most of the population, not just pure Mages [The Elder Scrolls Method]. Every fighter worth his salt is casting defensive wards or healing.

And yet every time we have this thread there is at least one asshole who wants the non-existent Option 5.

Option 5: I want unlimited, D&D-style reality warpers to be on the level with completely mundane persons using only human-level abilities, and I want to do so without giving them any obvious easily exploitable weaknesses that have ABSOLUTELY NO POSSIBLE workaround or ability to abridge or limit.

No, I want normal everyday medieval soldiers to work alongside gods, and I want that to work. Why? Why do you want that? Its completely asinine. Most settings don't have this problem, or if they do its nowhere near the degrees of 3.X, so why is this such a constant request.

Fucking shit.

Magic takes time and preparation, is expensive and tasking on the user, and requires practitioners to keep themselves within certain moral, spiritual and physical constraints in order to maintain their powers. An unprepared spellcaster is no more useful than any other shmuck, giving a certain edge to those who cultivate internal power and skill.

Or, martials posses the ability to defy reality via sheer will and skill, giving them the tools to go up against reality-warping mages.

Immortal starfish.

I wouldn't really say that. I've always liked the concept that one novel did. Wizards are inherently powerful as shit but there is artifacts that can instant kill them with a touch, The gods hate them and will damn them to hell the moment they die and will send people to murder them if they attempt to expand their lifetime too long.

There doesn't need to be that many limits on what they can do. Just reason why they aren't unstoppable.

one idea I had had is sort of based a bit on Eastern concepts, namely how most martial arts is tied to Buddhism, which is about the search for objectivity and breaking through the 'self'.

Mages, generally, are about imposing their 'will' or 'self' on the false reality to control it, and ascribe to subjectivity.

So, basically: strong martials and mages sort of have this back and forward against one another because martials can resist and even cancel out magic.

A powerful enough fighters are walking anti-magic fields against weaker casters. While stronger mages basically banish fighters from 'their' reality.

>a guy in full plate hiding behind a tower shield takes less damage from gouts of acid or flame than a guy in nothing but a cowboy hat and assless chaps
>BAM! hire me WotC
lol what a hack

what

>No, I want normal everyday medieval soldiers to work alongside gods, and I want that to work.

This is possible but only if the gods are NPCs and the game is about trying to survive in a world where people can nuke you. Having it being a clear even functional thing though is impossible as you state.

The short answer is pick a different system

The long answer is numbers

We could

a) Restrict magic
b) Restrict mages
c) Restrict the frequency of mages
d) Make the dude in metal armor an anime character
e) Make the dude in metal armor a mage himself
f) Make the dude in metal armor like neo-nazis. Refusing to adapt to modern times and admit that the era of metal men is over
g) Give the dude in metal armor a gun

Pick your poison, OP. Protip: They are all shit options. The correct answer is to delete wizards.

By applying restrictions and limitations to the magic and divine, not by boosting or penalizing the fighter.

Option 6: "Just make Wizards NPCs" isn't really an option to balance magic and martial abilities so much as exclude them.

If they aren't excluded entirely, and a "lesser magic" exists for the PCs, then it has to follow one of the first four options as well, presumably 1, 2, or 4.

The. Entire. Fucking. Problem. Is. Manufactured.

The only reason casters are supreme is because of what they can do at what cost. There is no grand philosophical barrier to fighters being relevant, it's just shitty imbalanced spell lists.

>There doesn't need to be that many limits on what they can do. Just reason why they aren't unstoppable.
If players can be wizards, "not literally gods" isn't good enough. If players can't be wizards, your system is losing out on a lot of potential, and there's not a lot of reason to have powerful magic in mortal hands at all.

Magic is a law of physics that all organisms make use of in their basic functioning. What's known as spellcasting is actually just manipulating the properties of magic to outward effect, like how the same glucose that powers your body can also explode. As a martial character levels up, the magic in their body becomes more powerful, allowing them to preform feats of strength and endurance we would think of as superhuman.

That and martials don't have the options and utilitity they realistically should have

...

All classes get powers from Cthulhu.

No matter the differences between using Wishes to have dragon steak for dinner or cleaning plate codpieces with sand and vinegar, all become raw materials for the Elder God's anal acid sacs.

This is of them underwater.

By giving him super skills like increased stamina, reflexes and strength.

- Magic is hard to use
- Magic is expensive
- Magic has more subtle effects
- Magic isn't as good as everyone thinks it is
- Divine magic is fickle
- Magic takes its toll on the body
- Magic is governed and has punishable offenses

>magic can only kill magic users

Give martials a dinosaur body and an "extra head feat".

Add melee skill that can let them make different types of buffs that are comparable to spellwork, or methods to potentially block or assist in avoiding odd things like the example with the gout of acid in . Or to make it more simple, make the soldiers the sort that excel at one on one fighting or holding down a group around them, and make it actually work, and leave magicians as the siege weapons. Or just let adventurers be adventurers and don't bother with stuff like the lifting capacities so you can get more herculean feats for what is put in.

Magic is for the nobles only

An iron man suit.

Anything short of that won't work.

Unless the magic is far weaker than what's in d&d.

Give the metal dude technologically advanced armored beasts.

Use a superhero system.

Keep the magic either high cost or low impact. There, done.

The only upper limit is one you impose on yourself.

>Casting takes time, needs a couple of turns and no you can't take silent casting feats this isn't gurps or dnd
>Magic runs on a energy system, the most powerful, fight ending spells will make you drop to your knees and outright unable to fight properly, even if the spell fails
>The fighters stats get buffed to hell and back, while the wizard was mastering the chain block he was at the gym
>Wizards also need to spend xp/ gets less xp thanks to spells. Much like in dnd you could pick a overpowered race but they would be level 11 and you'd still be level 3 and quickly becoming weak as fuck.
There's many way you can do this, but some of the first steps are don't play dnd or gurps.

How about, not making the magic nearly as powerful as you are implying it is. If Wizards are essentially gods then what's the point of this?

Depends for me on what you are trying to do with the plot line. I've always kind of liked the players using large scale rituals and things like that to try to tip the odds and having consequences for taking on unnatural magic power. If the game is more low key though yeah likely just having wizards be weaker would work out better.

I've always liked the "Sure you can have magic. But realize while you are stronger then the rest of the party there is huge personal consequences for taking this and you will be Sacrificing a lot."

H E R C U L E S
B A T M A N

YOU DON'T EVEN FUCKING NEED TO BE CREATIVE JESUS FUCKING CHRIST STOP MAKING THIS THREAD OVER AND OVER.

By realizing that sufficiently powerful martials are supernatural in their own right.

If the epic level wizard is conjuring the legions of the damned and erasing mountains with a thought, the epic level martial should be taking on armies singlehandedly, suplexing dragons, and generally doing crazy wuxia stuff.

Another caster vs martial thread? Time to post my homebrew! This game balances casters and martials, you'll never have a balance issue again.

I think you could have option 5 as a game, but you would need to be very, very clear and upfront about it at the start. Have the game directly state that spellcasters are Gandalf without as many reasons to dial himself back while everyone else is stuck playing Boromir, more or less.

As long as the game makes it clear upfront that someone without magic will be very weak in comparison to someone with it, there's a lot less problems with the game. You don't have to worry about someone having a bad time just because they picked a class that sounded strong but was actually weak.

Then you can actually base the campaign around this fact, and discuss with everyone what you want to do. Granted it would be trivial to do this if the game were balanced as well, but that's beside the point.

I would save this pic if various wasn't spelled wrong

>hurcules
>not divine

>capeshit
>capable of settings with consistent internal logic

The point is so thoroughly over your head that it no longer in orbit of the sun.

Without making casters weaker (as they should be)?
You don't.
In a world with actual magic, though, why the fuck shouldn't a martial have magical/divine gear?

Otherwise you could impose severe limits on casters, like extremely long preperation times, bodily stress (ex. Magic Fever stuff), mana pools, etc.

This makes a lot of sense to me, wish more systems were like that.

Not him, but he pretty effortlessly countered yours. I don't see what the problem here is except with you.

Forged weapons and armor, and anything made with honest toil and high craftsmanship are resistant to magic to an extent. Some spells can be resisted by will power or dodged.

In mechanical terms, avoid stacking endless modifiers and work in defenses like evasion into most martial classes as they get stronger.

Wizards have to wear a dress and not carry a sword because it will interfere with weaving magic. Wearing a suit of armor is straight out of question. Magical armor enchantments are typically only useful against spiritual enemies, i.e. ghosts and demons and not a guy with a common steel blade.

A wizard might blow up a gaggle of bandits with a fireball, sure. But against a hardened knight in a good set of armor backed by iron determination, he might find his spells lacking.

By accepting that it's not possible and not enforcing "realism" on some classes and letting the others fuck with the laws of reality

By the time your wizard can start fireballing armies your fighter should be able to pull a cuchulainn and just go kill them all in single combat over and over again

By making the magic accessible ONLY to divine beings. You need a +20 Level Adjustment demigod template before being allowed to cast spells. Technically there's a "scholar" class with lots of knowledge skills that can learn rituals and make pacts, but they're all slow and/or very risky with side effects like physical corruption, eternal damnation and sudden death.

Or you can play a game where the guy studying scrolls and learning magic is on equal ground with the other guy that mastered every form of combat and battlefield strategy imaginable.

Maybe magic comes in different "schools" and like any complicated field it requires a lot of dedication to master one, so while magic can do anything, no one mage can do everything.

Depends on the setting, what you mean by "balance", and why you want to do it. These are easy subjects to tackle when you are specific about all of the important details.

Option 1 and 2 are the same, and so are options 3 and 4. Despite OP being a retarded faggot, there are only 2 options (if you say ignoring the problem isn't an option):

1 - Make magic weak enough that skilled magicians are as strong as skilled mortals.

2 - Make everybody a magician. This includes Herculean characters, sorry, super strength counts as magic.

This is done in the Book of Swords stories by Fred Saberhagen. Wizards can do a lot of cool stuff, but when exposed to large amounts of iron, they can only access their simplest spells, like turning invisible.

It costs 50k gold in Pathfinder to cast wish. That's how it's balanced

Make magic unreliable, of limited effect, or hard to access, or all three.

Trouble is finding a way to do these things without making spellcasting classes/characters play like shit.

And if a Wizard couldn't teleport to an infinite plane of earth and command an army of elementals to mine him gemstones, that might be a meaningful restriction.

They get will saves

Stop interrupting "magic" as able to do literally anything and everything with no effort while autistically restricting martials to your incorrect amateur understanding of the real world.

>wizards should be allowed to do all this without working out the math or cost or making checks or facing resistance and plot conflict from interested parties or you're a no fun martial lover

By giving him magical/divine/etc. pieces of metal to wear and hit with.

FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME

Hercules is divine and Batman's super-power is plot armor. Next.

how I would do it: lots of people can learn spells, but it takes a huge amount of training and practice to do so, and each spell is very particular in its usage and take a lot of properation. Most people wouldn't bother with it, though some people might practice a spell or two if they thought it was useful enough to justfy the time and effort.

Wizards are those who devote their lives to the study and memorization of many spells. A trained wizard readied for battle is a fierce and dangerous thing indeed.

But armor will absorb the impact of a fireball as well as it would anything else. A battlemage should really wear a helmet and at least some heavier than normal clothing to protect against shrapnel and debris.

WIzards well versed in healing spells to aid the injured after the battle tend to make a bigger impact on warfare than battlemages.

>How do you balance "Dude in metal who hits stuff really hard with other pieces of metal" in a setting with actual magic and divinity and shit WITHOUT giving him magical/divine/etc. pieces of metal to wear and hit with?
There are four established solutions to this issue:

1. A character that utilizes charm or another social ability to get others to assist them and fight their magical battles for them.

2. A character with sufficiently superior knowledge, gear, technology, and/or bestiary.

3. >Make him really good at hitting things with pieces metal.
This.
Extreme ability in a particular skill, whether that's martial fighting or another.
>By making skill and determination its own kind of magic, and drawing on real-world mythologies to give the game some flavour and variety.
This is another way of looking at it.

As for the counterpoint:
>it seems there's an upper limit of how well hitting something with a piece of metal will take you
See
>The only upper limit is one you impose on yourself.
and
>You either restrict the magic, or you allow the guy with the piece of metal to also go beyond those mortal restrictions.
>It's really that simple,

4. >I never really understood how a setting could have ubiquitous magical influence and pointlessly restrict the average guard/soldier/whatever from using it in some way.
This.
Have them use magic, there is really no reason not to give them "magical/divine/etc. pieces of metal to wear and hit with" or to let those who can fight also be able to cast.
It is very hard to justify people never using magic at all if it is available.

Magic makes you insane and leads to suicide

Have you tried playing something other than modern D&D/PF?

>How do you balance "Dude in metal who hits stuff really hard with other pieces of metal" in a setting with actual magic and divinity and shit WITHOUT giving him magical/divine/etc. pieces of metal to wear and hit with?
Limit magic severely. Some other user posted an idea on this board for D&D that I really like.
>Remove the wizard/sorcerer/cleric classes
>Create various caster-type characters with different specializations (necromancer, elemental master, enchanter etc.)
>Give all of them access to the same list of cantrips which they can cast at will
>Make all of their other "spells" X per day class features (with the X perhaps being something like once per 2 levels?)

This already balances things out. Especially if there's a healing spell among the cantrips, which severely swings things in favor of the melee characters (perhaps too much)? In other words, instead of balancing metal men against mortal gods, we balance them against five trick ponies.

Don't limit him to what a human can realistically do. His hit points are not abstract, he's just that tough. He's strong enough to push over a castle wall, can sprint up a cliff face, arm-wrestle a giant, shoot an arrow then catch up to it in mid-flight, deflect arrows back at the shooter with just his sword, he can double jump, and none of it is magic in any way.

Just make the magic impractical to use in the middle of combat.

Impractical enough that you're probably better off hitting people with pieces of metal unless you have the time and resources, and talent, necessary to dedicate your entire life to practicing magic - and even then you still want a big guy with armor next to you just in case someone tries to jump you.

You'd have to think of something slightly more clever for battlefields but for skirmishes and dungeoncrawling and such it's not that hard.

He can lift until he reaches the point that he can punch holes in reality.

The dude in metal that hits stuff really hard with other pieces of metal can leap on top of towers, run on water, fight at hypersonic speed, hurl boulders, charge through a solid stone wall, dodge or parry any projectiles and survive cannonballs to the face.
That's how.

You can't you fucking retard.

Just fucking make a difference between warriors and warriors that can mend their broken flesh and steel their skin.

>Let's not and say we did.
The question was asking how to balance non-supernatural fighters against magic users, not how to claim to balance non-supernatural fighters against magic users. Actually doing so is part of the premise.

So what, do you want me to write a talent tree for that clusterfuck that is D&D?

Actually somebidy did.

Spheres of Power limited mages
And spheres of might buffs martials with optionsl access to legendary talents that grant powers beyond the norm.

In a fantasy world, being extra strong is not supernatural, but casting spells is.

So, are you asserting that no amount of martial arts being impossibly kick ass could ever match mages, and if so, why?

Remember when DMs were supposed to limit how borken a Wizard is by Wizards only being able to learn Spells from other Wizards Spellbooks?
Remember how Wizards were supposed to invest TIME and GOLD into researching the Spell they want to learn before they learn it?
Remember how handing out Spells to Wizard was supposed to be treated the same way as handing out Magical Equipment to Non-Casters?
Remember when Warriors got Followers and Strongholds so they would be able to compete in Utility?

>The question was asking how to balance non-supernatural fighters against magic users
You fucking can't.

Just fucking add in supernatural fighters, you fucking retard.

Because an entire generation of players were brain damaged by 3.X. It's fucking hopeless to reason with them.

THe whole topic is literally like "how do I balance sticks and stones against a modern first world military".

Magic takes a lifetime to learn. You can become a good fighter by the time you're 20.

What's wrong with good old fashioned plot armor?

>The question was asking how to balance non-supernatural fighters against magic users
Yeah, and that's exactly what I did mate. Just because they no longer cast according to Vancian magic doesn't mean they stop being casters. Having an X per day spell system and a limited spell selection doesn't make them any less casters.

That's the problem here: your definition of magic user is so narrow, it's impossible to balance mundane warriors against them. What you want demands us to gimp casters by neccessity.

Give martials a range of extraordinary abilities in and out of combat
Restrict powerful utility magic with time/cost penalties
Structure all classes around role specializations regardless of power sources
basically just play 4e

a level 1 wizard is about equal to a level 1 wizard

so just give the fighter some really impressive feats of superhuman toughness, strength, and swordplay that can do as much damage as meteor swarm over time

the person who hits things with his sword should be able to match an equal wizard blow for blow, and do certain things better, like not run out of magical ammo

The only 2 solutions is either no-one uses magic or everyone uses magic.

Levels were never meant to be equal between classes