There's been a lot of shitposting about caster supremacy lately, and it's made me think

there are a lot of casters at tier 3 too

if you allow ToB and ban tier 1/2 you get a kind of janky balance.

Woah, calm down there, Satan.

>casterfag gets worried.

Sweet, now I know what to implement the next time I have to run 3.PF

I'd play Mythras instead. Classic Fantasy Supplement if I'm going for a Heroic Fantasy setting similar to anything in Pathfinder. Martials have a strong presence in the game from the start, with various maneuvers and attacks being open to all characters from the start as various combat actions.

Of course, transferring this to Pathfinder would take quite some work. You'd have to consider something like ToB maneuvers as combat actions available to everyone, and it really doesn't translate well to a system that lacks locational damage, though I believe there are options in Mythras that doesn't standard hit points.

Still, that would probably only bump some martials up to tier 4.

>party casters lock themselves in a tower, self-lich, tell the martials they're welcome to roll up Fighter IV and Rogue Rogueson to continue the campaign in a few decades

Break the idea that non-casters HAVE to obey the laws of physics that wizards get to spit on by stretching the limit of what is possible. Give them abilities at mid-high levels that would only be possible for someone with their talents, strength, mind, and skill at arms could pull off.

>A rogue with 13 ranks in Stealth tip-toeing around guards by staying out of their line of sight, even though there's no cover.

>Barbarians should be able to slam their hammer down and trip anyone within 10 or 15 feet with the shock wave.

>A charging cavalier with a magic lance should be able to charge through the castle gate like a wrecking ball.

>Cunning duelist is surrounded by guards and manages to not only dodge their blows, but drive their halberds into each other.

>Fighter with a whole toolkit of weapons shoots a vrock from the sky with his longbow, leaps at the cyclops to bash it to the ground with their flail, then running a spear through the cyclops's eye all in the same round.

>Paladin smiting evil with a holy blade that swings at every demon around them simultaneously.

>Monk meditating to travel to another world by attuning his ki to that world's essence (monks especially should be able to do a lot of quasi-magic stuff with ki)

go to the point of greek gods then

have an epic level martial be literally able to hold the planet together. have a mundane tinker guy (i don't play 3.X or PF) be able to construct a giant robot able to defend an entire continent, have an epic rogue be able to literally steal the entire concept of progress

this

there's this really, dare I say, toxic concept that not paying attention to what our reality's laws of physics are like means that magic is involved in some way

just let a barbarian crack open a mountain with his axe. he's not magic, he's just much more pissed than the mountain is

So Exalted.

Exactly, its not (necessarily) magic, its mythic.

Yeah, basically. I much prefer buffing the fighter instead of nerfing the wizard (unless you want to play a low-magic game, of course).

The real issue with ToB is that while it provides in-combat parity it utterly drops the ball out of combat.
The T3 caster can still shit on the T3 martial outside combat, because magic is utility is non-combat power.

I'm working on a homebrew plugin that should help with this, but it'll be months before its postready.

Just move on and play Mutants and Masterminds or even the dozens of other better options ya dummy.

fuck dipshit fighters

everyone of you

HURR I SWANG SWURD AT U LUL

fucking grow up

This is my favorite game. thank you for mentioning it.

You don't because balancing around classes with the power to break the game 500 different ways is an extremely shitty idea.

...

>Implying it's just fighters
>Implying half-casters, barbs and rogues don't also need some serious balancing up to be on par with the Veeky Forums theorycraft gods
>Implying mages shouldn't be forced to be specialists and discount all but one or two schools
>Implying casting times shouldn't be longer
>Implying ivory tower design OR ivory tower play is in any way fun

Congratulations, wank-user, I guess you "won" D&D, I hope you have fun by yourself.

>mythic strength feat
>when subjected to an imposed effect from a spell or ability of any kind*, a character with this feat can attack the concept of that effect, counting the effect as having health equal to twenty times its spell level, or twenty times the level or CR of the ability/spell's user, whichever is higher, and an AC of 0. When the effect is "killed", it no longer applies.
>There is no concievable force in the universe which can prevent a character with this feat from attacking the effect limiting them. They can even attack whilst unconscious, paralysed, or otherwise inhibited
>Characters that are subjected to the same spell or ability again after having "killed" the effect are not in any way affected by it until they complete a long rest.
>*this ability only applies to spells or abilities found on a monster or character's profile. It does not work on death or damage of any kind.

My DM did something like this. It was a laugh.

fuck dipshit casters

everyone of you

HURR I SWANG WAND AT U LUL

fucking grow up

WOW good one

you really got me!

Mages with access to everything like that shouldn't exist. They should be broken down into sub-classes like Dread Necro and Warmage to actually attempt to balance the spell schools against each other and give them actual structure.

They could start by having a Magic Resistance that actually works for shit.
None of that "it gets easier for high-level wizards to bypass" bullshit, bring back percentage based Magic Resistance.

The real issue isn't "mages with access to everything", it's how a wizzy can go from 1 to 16 without touching conjuration or transmutation (admittedly he's a 'tard if he does so, but for sake of argument) then upon reaching 17 just grab Gate and Shapechange with no fanfare.
The ability to grab spells willy nilly with no sense of progression is the issue. Well, that and godawful balancing.

...

Gradual specialization. Level 1 and 2 spells no worries. Level 3, choose a school of magic. Cant learn lvl 3 spells of that school. Level 4, 1 fewer, so by lvl 9 spells you only have 1 school to choose from. Assuming there are 8.

>tome of battle
>Tome of Battle.
source?

Badly said but I hope it makes sense.

the problem is that wizards are fundamentally deities and swordsmen are just mortals.

a wizard fundamentally alters reality and a barbarian, no matter how skilled doesn't.

so just change that. granted you might as well just discard the system because it's a lot of work.

And then you have Conjuration and Transmutation specialists fucking the game in the ass just like they used to while Evokers and Enchanters cry themselves to sleep

>Break the idea that non-casters HAVE to obey the laws of physics
Not playing an anime character, fuck off

Dunno, I play Anima, I don't have these problems

>>Implying mages shouldn't be forced to be specialists and discount all but one or two schools
WINNER
I
N
N
E
R

...

Let's fix conjuration then.

>>Implying mages shouldn't be forced to be specialists and discount all but one or two schools
What do you mean by specialist?
Because I played a focused specialist (all schools banned but 3) and was even more broken, I basically had 3 extra spells of my fav school (conjuration) per day per level (3 of level 1, 3 of level 2, and so on) plus class features like Int+3 teleports as immediate action per day, +2 Str+2 Con to all summons and double their time, etc. Add feats like cloudy conjuration and I was breaking the game at 4th level with only 15 on Int.

hk

h

That's not going to make Evokers and Enchanters not suck. Warmage is T4 despite getting all the blasting spells you could ever want and having their whole spell list castable spontaneously.

Then play a Greek character you pleb.

Obviously a without the boons of a focused specialist, you dense turdburglar.

I do, I'm Achilles.

Rolled 6 (1d100)

jhkh

>Forced to be a specialist! but not a specialist, you mong
Be more specific next time

This. It's not the Wizard itself that is broken, it's its spells that are broken.
Some of them are completely fucking useless and others are jus a "I WIN" button.

I thought it was pretty obvious that he meant "limited to one school".
Not that that'd *fix* anything, mind, like people here are pointing out, some schools are shite on a stick and some just roflstomp challenges.

Nigger we obviously mean that the lore behind being a wizard should change, and magic should be structured in a way that wizards don't have access to all schools or to all spells like the other user said where he can ignore all conjuration spells up to level 17 and then pick the highest one with no repercussion to skipping literally the entire school.

The castercuck should be resigned along with his spells.

This is how you fix it. You make everyone else just as insanely powerful.

t. Wizard Player

So, what if you tie your left arm to the arrow you are shooting? poorfag's fast travel method?

At which point you're better off banning Wizard and making Dread Necro/Beguiler/Warmage-esque subclasses complete with class features to represent every spell school that isn't already covered. Even then, you've got shit like Diviners and Abjurers that are extremely difficult to make useful in the heat of combat.

got a link to the pdf senpai?

My point is morr that casters go past that.

Say you make a high level Fighter into Ares. He can singlehandedly win any fight. He can win any war with just a few men under his command. He can convince people to fight him with a short speech. He's skilled with every weapon, combat manuever, and feat of Athleticism.

And even with all that he's still probably not as strong as a 3.5 Wizard.

d20herosrd.com/

I think in the MnM topic that's up also has a link to the pdfs but here is the SRD with all the base rules and other stuff.

Yes, that's exactly what is being suggested.

Not him but I got the 3 edition and character sheet. What other pdfs am I missing? Modules, guides, I don't know you tell me.

It's not, though, there's a world of difference between locking Wizards to a single spell school and making up new classes for them.

Very easily done. Add in a mechanic called Spell Sundering.

Have it work like this: as a standard action, you can make an attack with your weapon to disrupt the delicate energy flow of an ongoing spell. The requirements are thus:

You can only sunder spells that have a spell level equal to half your BAB or lower. So only full BAB classes are going to be sundering the highest level spells, and wizards (as if they could hold a weapon) wont be spell sundering shit.

You can only sunder a spell that you can attack into the area of effect of. So if a wizard lays down an aoe, being in that area lets you sunder the spell. But if a wizard directly casts a spell on a person (yourself included) or himself, you have to be within striking distance of that person. This makes position matter.

The AC of the spell is equal to 10 + half the caster level, and the health of the spell is the casting modifier of the caster + the spells level. If your damage rolled exceeds this threshold, the spell ends immediately. Damage against a spell evaporates at the end of your turn, its an all or nothing attempt.

And then introduce a feat that lets you prepare an action that allows you to attempt to sunder a spell as it is being cast at a -2 penalty, again having to meet the same level and range requirements.

This gives martial characters a way to interrupt casters in much the same way that casters have a boatload of ways to screw over martials. Indeed, against a Fighter that is intent on locking you down your best bet is to avoid casting spells at them until you have taken out their friends first. Sticking near the fighter so he can break you out of enemy spells is a valid defensive tactic, and against a group of martials a lot of save or die effects lose their teeth unless you can get all of them locked down fast. If martials get into melee with you, they can just attack your buffs and contingencies directly, stripping you of your preparations.

Doesn't do shit.

4e character sheets.

I wouldn't change anything.

Martial/Caster disparity is a myth spread by white box , forum posters who don't bother playing real games, fail to realise D&D is a co-op game and happen to ignore all the mechanics that make casters difficult to play.

d20srd.org/srd/spells/shapechange.htm

Why not? I can dedicate one guy to undoing everything your wizard does the turn after he does it. Most 'save or die' effects are not literally death, they just take people out of the fight so you can effortlessly mop them up. With one feat I can even NOPE your Baleful Polymorph out of the air before it hits me.

It punishes area effects even worse, and it lets you strip the buffs of of wizards that they are using to augment their spellcasting It doesn't invalidate every spell, but it reshuffles the value of every spell in the game because now the wizards best bet for winning the fight might actually be going the damage route, because save or dies can't be trusted to stick.

>spend your whole round to undo one action from one enemy
>or ready an action, therefore giving up your entire round, to counter a single enemy action IF it's aimed at you
>in a game where combat is usually over in 2 rounds
I thought we already established that in combat healing is shit for these exact reasons.

>Spell you can only cast at level 17
>Can only cast it once per day at that level
>Costs 1500 a pop
>Well built fighter at that level is more powerful than whatever the druid turns into
>I.E perfectly fine and balanced

This is also the reason grappling is shit on top of that, so I really don't know why you thought this was a good idea.

One out of four right. Nice job making it obvious you don't know what you're talking about.

Grappling is retarded because it's game-breakingly good if and only if you have monster-only abilities (or polymorph, thanks mister wizzy).

That's pretty much nailing the biggest issue with martials
A mighty barbarian should easily be able to kick a knight down along with his horse and wrestle a giant, a monk should be capable bullshiting through everything jackie chan and punching through walls, a fighter is a goddamn battle expert, he should be more than capable of moving and multiple attacking. In fact, every martial should be capable of multiple attacks and movement in the same round, especially the monk, who is supposed to be a acrobatic battle sage

While we're on the topic of balance changes, what kind of effect does Spheres Of Power have on the power of casters in PF?

>tfw at 12th level I can be 12 headed cryohydra which has CR 13, which means is equal to a group of four 13th level chars

Yeah, druids balanced

It'd be a nice equivalence, like making the wizard take a feat to learn from another school, just like the martial has to burn a feat to not get slapped by the wizard if he wants to do some shit like tackle the wizard

Raw umph is mostly unchanged, but they're forced to specialize if they want that umph to keep scaling to the really fancy stuff.
It's not quite the silver bullet PF needed, but it's quite close. I doubt we'll ever see better.

If you want to talk about caster supremacy, you need to pin down the exact problem that makes martials so second-rate first.

The main problem with full casters is twofold.
Firstly, they have options (i.e. spells) that non-casters simply cannot counter or deal with. You can be as strong as you like, as sneaky as you like or as tough as you like, it does not protect you from an enemy caster turning you into a duck (baleful polymorph), mind controlling you (dominate person, geas), or simply taking all those advantages away from you by taking you down a few levels (enervation)
Secondly, non-casters don't bring a lot to the table that casters cannot do by themselves with their spells. Sure, the fighter and barbarian are pretty tough and good at combat, keeping the men with pointy metal things away from the casters, but casters can make melee fighters by themselves. The druid is the obvious example here, but wizards and sorceres can always spend a few slots on summon monster or planar ally and throw some meatshields into the fray. As for rogues, what point is there to being good at sneaking if the caster can just make himself invisible, teleport where he wants to go and use illusions to distract trublesome guards- while still able to do all the other stuff here.

The counterpoint to all of this is that casters use a finite resource to cast spells (spell slots, and sometimes material components), while martials can do their thing all day long. And that is true in concept, but in practice the resources are not that limited, and especially at higher levels (where the spells themselves get REALLY broken) casters have enough slots to cast all day every day, especially when you get to feats like versatile spellcaster. Also, people will mention by now that casters only have access to so many spells, but for everyone but the sorcerer (and the favourite soul), and very specialised casters (warmages, beguilers), that is simply not true.

>medium BaB and on top of that -2 due FoB
>shit AC
>battle sage
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Monk sucks at battle

You could do that at level 8 if you had a Bead of Karma.

>versatile spellcaster
I prefer the reverse, don't remember the name, in which you could spend 1 spell slot and get 2 of lower level.

Yeah, and even at 12th level that's absurd, imagine at 8th.

Hence 'supposed to be'

Limit arcane casters to a few basic spells and ONE school. No generalist period

Apply domain tags to all cleric/druid spells. Clerics and Druids can only cast spells with their domain tag.

This still won't fix the problem but it will cramp down on casters being OP, which is a start

That's the very point
The monk archetype is along the lines of a mystic weaboo warrior, just like if you merged jackie chan and the monkey king into a single character.
And then we have dnd monks to resemble that

Not really, you'll just see more transmuter gods and conjurer gods.
Or shadow evocation/conjuration illusionist gods. Those are fun to play too.

Using magic drains their physical vitality, and diving into the realm of magic separates them from the physical realm.

Mages don't see the world around them the same way we do, so have difficulty doing even simple things like finding their way in a crowd. They can't do much in the real world, they're the equivalent of a really really old person.

Meanwhile, a normal person who doesn't get involved with magic is perfectly capable of normal things. So the mages rely on normal people do to stuff like guide them and be the talkers and all those sorts of things.

>I can dedicate one guy to undoing everything your wizard does the turn after he does it.
>after he does it
There's your problem. Can't sunder a spell if you're unable to attack. Even if you could, you'd have to go immediately after the Wizard to make him not win that trade because otherwise someone else is also getting nailed by spells.

Allow more feats of strength. That's all you need. Just rolls to do insane shit.

That and equal power levels between stats. Apparently a dragon with 32 strength is stronger than a barbarian with 32 strength.

So basically, if you want to "fix" casters, you need to either give the martial classes ways to deal with their bullshit, make spells in general less potent (especially on higher levels), give martials things to do that the casters can't (or take options away from the casters so that martials have a chance to shine) or limit the caster's resources further, by limiting how many spells they can cast per day.

The last option just by itself would make playing a caster really boring, and giving martials ways to deal with a wide variety of spells would be impractical. Just being able to stop spells from being cast does not do much against ambushes from invisable wizards, for instance. Limiting what casters can do, or giving the martials something unique that can not be replicated by spells is a cool idea, but putting it in practice is going to be hard. Overall, the best idea is probably going to revolve around reworking the spell themselves, and seriously toning a few of them down. Doing this would also mean that limiting a caster's options of spells known would actually mean something, as you can no longer break the system with one or two spells alone.

We ban Tier1, 5, 6 classes. Our group found that Tier 2-3 is the sweet spot.

Spells are
>expensive as shit in components
>might not work as intended
>are disrupted if an opponent so much as breaths on you
>harmful, aging the caster and decreasing his CON

>all these faggots saying that giving martials superpowers is REEEE ANIME

Sir Kay, Arthur's brother is attributed with a number of further superhuman abilities, including the ability to go nine days and nine nights without the need to breathe or to sleep, the ability to grow as "tall as the tallest tree in the forest if he pleased" and the ability to radiate supernatural heat from his hands.

Chu Chulainn turns into a literal cyclops monster when he gets mad and had to be dunked into 3 barrels of water (the first exploaded, the second boiled, the 3rd heats to bath water) to calm him down

Nobody cares about your houserules.

I always found that "fixes" like this only makes that PCs skip casters and that dispensable enemies become casters and ruin the game by making it impossible to win encounters. What cares the GM that his dispensable minions might die at 30 years old? they're dispensable and they're most probably die against the PCs. What cares the GM that the dispensable minions can only cast 3 spells per day due cost? they are only for this encounter

A PC has to deal with that shit through the entire campaign, an NPC only exists for 1 encounter so that long lasting shit is fucking meaningless