/cvmg/ - Casters Vs Martials General

>pick the mundane fighting man whose only skill is hitting things very hard with sharp sticks
>complain that you can't do all the cool stuff that the magic man can do

What did martialfags mean by this?

Hey nightmare mode.

Without referencing D&D or its mechanics explain yourself.

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We're talking about D&D since that's what 90% of people play.

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Not OP but have this problem with people I play with in Shadowrun just as much as D&D people complain about.

>Team Wizard gets to see all kinds of astral stuff, bypasses many problems with magic, has clever ways of employing reality-bending powers to always contribute, only drawback is making sure not to overtax himself. Good mental stats and solid worldly knowledge skills round out his utility, and can still shoot guns pretty well.
>Decker gets to have an entire part of the game to himself, gathers invaluable amounts of intel and reliably knows where the enemy is and what they're doing before they even realize the team is there, has amazing control over almost all technology in his area of influence, simply by nature of being awesome, still gets to moonlight as a sniper.
>Merc character wanted to be shooty, wants to be action movie character. In spite of heavy investment into relevant stats, is only marginally more durable than the rest of the team if shit hits the fan. Armor and weapons are similar in budget to what everyone else has on the team anyway. Tries to employ security knowledge, but this frequently overlaps with the decker, who is far smarter than him, and can just look up the answers in a lot of cases. Legitimately amazing when it comes to using his guns, or having to bench press an enemy security op, but rarely has anything to do outside of being an area denial system, jokingly referred to by the team's fixer as "A high grade military turret with legs that costs slightly less."

It's not an exclusive problem to D&D.
When you invest character resources into the ability to FIGHT GOOD, the opportunity cost is utility.

At least shadowrun lessens the issue a hell of a lot by making everyone a wizard.
A planning stage is PART of the dang run-setup, which means that even a mundane gets to have as many tricks and bullshit as they feel like setting up and can afford.
Though, you are right about magic superiority being a problem.
And then if the rules are interpereted the correct way, the AI street sam gets to laugh all the way to the bank while being immune to most spells people will try on him

The problem with the "have you tried not playing D&D" is that people use it more often than not when playing a different system wouldn't solve anything.

Few problems discussed on this board can be solved just by switching systems, largely because at the end of the day, the system is actually only a small component to the game that's being run, and that switching systems just leads to a new veneer on the same old problems.

"Try X system" is not always bad advice, but it's not particularly helpful in a thread about problem players, or about story issues, or even alignment arguments, because even in the last case it's just a name (or a different name) for things you'll find in find in almost every other game. Even games "without" alignments still have degrees of morality to them or factions with codes of conduct, and most alignment arguments typically revolve around these two features of alignment.

Does D&D have flaws? Certainly, but most of these are remedied in far less time than it takes to learn a new system, and the idea that you should abandon a system just because something didn't work out is why we find a lot of people hopping through multiple systems hoping that a change of game will solve their problems.

Most of the whole problem with system discussion is that it's actually political in nature. Play X game or play Y game is a tactic to try to garner support for one game or dissuade people from playing another, and is largely dishonest in its lack of transparency. D&D becomes a target not because it's a bad game by any measure, but because it's popularity means people are less inclined to play other games.

As a person who has played his share of everything under the sun and now plays homebrews almost exclusively, I've really gotten tired of people claiming system superiority or inferiority when they're all just talking about the same inferior games just under different disguises.

If only they knew how amazing Duck in the Circle was.

why are you bringing up unrelated bullshit like alignments when we are talking about magical superiority?

It's an example of something people often claim is only an issue with D&D, though arguments over morality are actually a proliffic issue among most games. I think that would be self-evident without further need of explanation if you actually took a moment to read.

To me, it seems like you have some weird kind of bone to pick and don't actually give a shit about the thread or the topics at hand.

Just pointing out how that image is being misused. No reason for you to get upset.

It's a pasta.

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Can you show me a system that gives the fighter as many options as the magic user without severely gimping the latter?

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Exalted

I hear you, I do. But have you tried following this advice right here

ah, that explains it.
Next time just say you're using pasta.

>a game where everything is broken and the mechanics are an unplayable mess even according to player and developer consensus

Not really a great start.

That's not advice, it's a question.
And, I've tried other games, rendering it a rather pointless question.

Care to embarrass yourself a little further?

Well, I don't actually care much about this thread since it in itself is a troll thread, but this guy
is also a troll, and therefore you should also not respond to him.

What you should respond to is plans for dealing with mages in shadowrun, as that is the only legitimate conversation to come out of this thread.

Shadowrun is basically Magicrun now and had been heading that way for a good while now. Mages are just better and muggles struggle and mutilate themselves just to have a chance at being awful by comparison. Fixing essence is the only way this problem can even begin to be addressed.

So, you do plan on just further embarassing yourself. Good to know.

Carry on. I didn't think you'd go for the "Everyone who points out I'm an idiot is a troll" business right from the get go,

Develop some thicker skin or stop acting like an idiot.

To be fair everyone in exalted is a caster in there own little way so its not a great comparison.

Not even the guy you were responding to, troll user.

>legitimate conversation

You know perfectly well this is just another terrible troll thread for you to argue in. Let's not fool ourselves by thinking anyone hasn't caught on from the last fifty identical threads.

Hell, OP even is calling this a general just to poke fun at how often you make this shitty troll thread. He's hoping to contain your autistic ass.

Doesn't stop you from being an idiot, idiot user.

Ignore him. Dumbass seems to think only one person on tg detests 3.pf and everyone else is in love with it. Fucking embarrassing and a sign of newbie trash.

You are confused, OP is the one who makes this thread over and over.
Though it is good that people like
are getting contained, I was tempted in here by shadowrun talk and am now not getting any.

This... is also a troll, user.
You and
were made for each other.

>
You trolls are adorable, because there's a hundred threads where you guys argue the same thing and keep trying to pretend that everyone who calls you out as the same idiot trolls are just one person.

And, once again, the dance begins, where the argument is mostly just about how sad and pathetic you guys are to spend your hours complaining about games you don't even play inside of troll threads that only other trolls come into to keep baiting your retarded asses.

Thank god you're this stupid and easily spurred.

There's nothing wrong with essence, there's everything wrong with being able to summon bigger and tougher things than the party Street Sam at every level of the game while still being able to provide tons of utility and combat power.

Troll user, why are you so angry? I am going to engage with you on this.

No, there are definite things wrong with essence, and it's dumb in like a hundred ways. But hat doesn't really affect this conversation in the way that summoning does, holy shit.

>When you invest character resources into the ability to FIGHT GOOD, the opportunity cost is utility.
That's cause the very concept of the 'fighter' is stupid in a game where EVERYONE is expected to be fighting and have abilities geared towards that. So other classes get both 'utility' and 'fight good'. Coming at it with the presumption that EVERY SINGLE CLASS is supposed to be good at fighting and building archetypes by asking 'how do they fight and what else can they do?' is massively more productive than dragging along the broken carcass of a barely-developed idea.

Okay, so suppose I want to play Muscles McBeefcake, partly because of the archetypal nature of this kind of character and partly because, even in a party where everyone is good a fighting, it might be nice to have someone capable of taking punishment and returning it in kind. What unique utility should this kind of character have?

shifting large objects, breaking and entry, intimidation, dealing with corp goons, an understanding with bodybuilders, seduction (?), environment modification (tree bridge), things like that.
Though, really, I'm of a mind that most everybody shares a range of utilities. Mcmuscles might have assensing, or a side deck of stealth power.

Then the way he fights is by being able to take and deliver a lot of punishment. What else they can do besides that is something the system should also have you decide on. Are they adept at alchemy? Do they have a silver tongue? Are they intimately familiar with the criminal underground? Are they a 1337 haxxor? Do they worship the 'God of Gainz' and gain boons from that? Etc...

Being able to 'fight good' should always be an incomplete character in any game where fighting is a matter of course.

I never played Exalted, I don't know much about it, but it sounds very much the same as this old, beaten argument "everything non-mundane is casting".
If you are considering every ability that is unrealistic casting, then you are destroying the flavour of magical beasts abilities, various divine invocations, things like chi and psionics. If you are inclined to discard all of that, then I don't understand why you are against the concept of fighters being simple stick swingers.

Other user is full of shit. Solar Exalted are just that awesome that they can do awesome shit. It's supernatural, for sure, but they aren't casters unless they choose to become sorcerers.

Jeepers user, how many gosh darned times do we need this bait thread, you little scamp?

I like these threads because it allows for some fun magic system discussion.

What's your favorite way to balance casters and martials, if you balance them at all?

>Pic is entirely about 3.5 D&D
>B-but don't talk about D&D!

The biggest slice of the problem lays with the tool you use.

5e still heavily favours casters, but you can shorten the gap by doing the following:

Have more small encounters per long rest. So, instead of having two or three encounters per long rest, have the recommended amount, which the DM guidebook I think says is around 6. If you still feel like 6 isn't enough, you can add even more encounters per long rest.

And you may be wondering "How am I going to fit eight encounters in one day?". DnD 5e has a new mechanic introduced in Xanathar's which allows you to do the following changes:

A short rest is now 8 hours
A long rest is now one week

If you do this game mode, you have seven days to put in around eight combats. That should be easy, and you have a lot of freedom doing this.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. The way to balance casters and martials is to tire out the casters. The martials don't get tired. A short res is good enough for them in _most_ cases. But the casters are going to have to really be careful with their spell spending. If you start adding more combats (like 10+ combats per day), then you'll get to an even more martial favoured setting, but you don't have to go that far.

TL;DR: Make sure you're running at least the recommended 6 encouters per long rest. If it's still not helping, run ~8 encounters per long rest. If you want, you can do the alternate long rest rules introduced in xanathars where a long rest is 7 days and a short rest is 8 hours.

Making martials suck dick if they don't get 8 hours of rest after every fight isn't going to solve anything. Getting enough time for 1 hour short rests between every encounter is already a problem, what the fuck do you think is going to happen when you make it 8 hours?

If you can fit 6 to 8 encounters per day without using the alternate rest system, then more power to you.

And if you don't like it, that's your call. But at the end of the day, adding more encounters per long rest is going to make martials and casters be on equal footing.

>literal 5 minute workdays
>Warlocks
>Druids
>Arcane Recovery
>Barbarians suddenly unplayable because you have to take a full week to get their core fucking mechanic back

>literal 5 minute workdays
Why's this?

Because going into an encounter without your short rest abilities is suicide unless it's incredibly easy and is boring to boot. 4E's 5 minute short rests would work much better at squeezing more encounters in before a short rest and I'm still not convinced it's a good idea to begin with.

Before a long rest, you know what I meant.

You're making an assumption that either the fights will be too hard without short rest abilities, or they will be so easy that they will be boring. I think you can reach a happy medium in between the two, where the fights are challenging because of the lack of resources, but not completely suicide.

For example, you can have three encounters per day with this system, as every day would be a short rest. Do that three times, and you get 9 encounters per long rest. So, you'd be adventuring for three days out of the week. Again, this is just one example.

I think you can reach a happy medium. But you have to be willing to give it a shot without just disregarding it.

>Longer rest times.

Absolutely disgusting. Short rests should be no longer than 15 minutes to have any sort of sense in game.

Can you explain why?

My 'assumption' is that encounters where you don't have anything to do but basic attack, basic combat maneuvers, and beg the DM for anything out of the ordinary is shit and incredibly boring and that 'assumption' is backed by the experience of playing a Battlemaster under a DM who gave us the fight to short rest ratio you're talking up.

Playing a martial class in 3.5e or Pathfinder only makes sense if you have an humiliation fetish.

The Battlemaster has 4 superiority dice at < lvl 7, 5 at lvl 7, and 6 at lvl 15 or higher. Also, at 15th level, you always start the fight with at least one superiority die, even if you ran out of them.

You get your superiority dice back at a short rest.

Were you blowing through your superiority dice in each encounter? The battlemaster isn't designed to do that. Those superiority dice are meant to be kept for the more challenging fights, because at its heart, the battlemaster is still a fighter which is built on the auto-attack, grappling/tackling, none of which require resources. (A lot of people forget that martials can be really good at grappling and moving targets around or making enemies fall prone. You can do all of this without a single superiority die)

I think three encounters per short rest is more than enough. If you want to blow all of your superiority dice in one encounter, then you're probably going for one short rest per encounter. I don't think this system is fun because using your resources as a battlemaster becomes trivial. DnD is a resource management system game, and being able to make things happen with few resources is half the fun for me.

>The battlemaster isn't designed to do that.
What the fuck, yes it is.

>by making everyone a wizard.
When did that happen ?

You really think that the battlemaster is supposed to be "Ok I'm going to use all of my superiority dice this fight, because I know for sure that I'm going to get them back before the next fight"

as opposed to

"Ok, I got a fight on my hands and I need to be careful about which superiority dice I use. I want to trip that guy over there, so I can use my superiority dice for that. But I also don't know when the next chance for a short rest will come, and a difficult fight might be coming up ahead. So I have to make a choice. Do I use the superiority dice now to trip him, or do I risk a grapple check and try to ground him that way? Alright, I'm going to take the risk and go for the grapple, so I will save this superiority die for the boss fight."

Runequest and his brother Heroquest.

Mostly because greatsword to the face will ruin everyone's day and everybody is a wizard of sorts.

How would you make Big Boss in DnD, starting with level 1 Fighter?

Yes, because the effects of superiority die are not interesting enough to merit that and forcing you to fight 3 encounters per short rest makes suboptimal maneuvers a complete waste of time.

The problem of wizards (and caster in general) is not the class itself. The problem is that higher level spells are too good for their level.

This however leads to JRPG hording. When you start going "well this fight's not THAT hard, I'll save my sup dice" Every Single Encounter, get to the end and realise you made life pointlessly hard on yourself

I think you and I are fundamentally different players then.

For me, DnD is a game of resource management. You have a finite number of resources that you need to pick and choose carefully in combat. There's no case of "I'm going to use this resource now because I know for a fact that it'll be refunded before the next fight". For me, that makes the choice of when to use the resource (superiority dice, in this example) too trivial. Why wouldn't you blow all your superiority dice in every fight if you knew the DM would let you take a rest in between each encounter? I love actually being placed in situations where I have to try to make the best out of limited resources, which I don't know if they'll get refunded or not. That's what makes it fun for me.

It seems like you, on the other hand, just want to use resources as often as possible. Which is fine, I'm not judging. But games where people get lots of resources tend not to create the gameplay type I like.

Well this is true about any game of resource management where the protagonists aren't pushed hard enough, isn't it? If the DM notices that the players are doing this, then it's time for him to ramp up the difficulty where the players begin to realize "Holy shit, I either use my resources now, or there won't be a tomorrow left for me to save them for."

getting fireball at lvl 3 is waaaaayyy too early. It's only keep there because people have grown an attachment to it.

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>dat wizard hat
10/10

This. Reducing their number of spells or balancing the game around wasting their spells is not a solution. The problem with casters is the extremely powerful things that they have access to. Not even a question.

I have no problem with resource management. I have a problem with being forced to manage a tiny pool of resources with effects that are barely better than not spending them and the game being boring when they're not being used because it's basic attacks and combat maneuvers all day. I think the effects suck even when they're spammable every single fight, why would my opinion improve when I get to use them even less often and have even less of a reason to bother with stupid maneuvers like Lunging Attack?

Anima

Caster generally get more resources, even warlocks, while martials get short rest dependency in exchange for decent abilities.

>throwing in basic, pointless fights so that martials can feel good about themselves and casters can be gimped

U wot? Chromed and geared up SS is unstoppable if built right. Wizards, shamans, adepts and their ilk can't chrome up. Or rather they can, but their ability to do magic then is royally wrecked. Deckers and Riggers spend their time dead to the world surfing, cracking or controlling their drones. Each have their niche, but none can match SS in raw fuck-you power or toughness. Sometimes even Rigger's pimped-out custom tank can't.

Deckers can shoot, I guess, but they do it much worse than most. At best they're good for cover fire, suppress and overwatch, don't expect them to hit something. And even then the round's better spent them lobbing grens, hacking or markerlighting.

I vote to merge this thread with gunpowder threads

>D&D
3.5 was made with trading card logic, 4e was made to be a combat simulator and nothing else, and 5e was literally designed by 5 people being yelled at by the internet and somehow STILL manages to be marginally better than 3.5

And summoning a high rank spirit gets you about the same thing, if not better. And that's on top of spellcasting.

So is this seriously becoming a general? I can see some value in that.

Not really. At best you'd get a poorly controlled experimental drone. At worst the enemy'd use one or dozen of myriad ways to set it free and rip you a new one, if not outright wrestle control from you.
And those things get exponentially harder to control once they start being any good.
Mind, I like spirits. I love spirits. I well know that a well timed/placed one can wreck the best teams. I always try get at least one familiar, in the classic sense of the word, spirit, and have a habit of deploying a normal one once things heat up. I play shaman/mage/mystic adept. Aside from the adept, which is chrome-free SS-lite; while you certainly are good at killing and more than capable of pulling your own weight, the thing we casters shine at, much like in the D&D, is various supernatural ways to support the team and cripple the enemy, aside from dealing with mystic things proper.
Maybe your GM likes to coddle your casters much or is a caster supremacist himself?

Speaking of D&D, unpredictability, daily spell limits and necessity of the full night rest (meaning you can't put mage on any nightly duty) can be right crippling, if you enforce them. A wizard is good for one-two proper fights if he knows what he's facing and isn't taken down by anything that managed to get close enough, while a martial with the shittiest regeneration/invigoration trinket can keep going for hours, days without rest.

>4e was made to be a combat simulator and nothing else

Considering the pages and pages of GMing advice they wrote for non-combat situations, that seems unlikely.

And even if you restrict Battle magic so only caster careers can get it, warriors still can beat face comfortably.