Oh, I get it now, Fighters /should/ have spells.

[koz]

Oh look, Shadzar found a literate friend. How cute.

[OgreBattle]

Actually, chess went through many major rules changes. Chess also spawned similar other games in other regions, with I think Shogi being the most recognizable adaptation.

naw, that'd be Chinese Chess. It's like DOTA the boardgame, and old men in the streets play it like they're in a Yu Gi Oh episode.

[nockermensch]

I hate how every "fighters can't get nice things" discussion degenerates in two groups shouting past each other.

Yes, the fighter class, AS IT IS, is hopeless. We got that. Bashing grognards who believe that there can be some balance AS IT IS is pointless.

No, this doesn't invalidate the niche of what a Fighter SHOULD BE. If we ignore shit like epic feats for fighters who give +1 to hit and starting to give actual heroic / epic things at the right times, the class can be interesting. We know this is true because Samurai Jack.

Also, yes, there can be such a thing as "too much power" and D&D tier 1 and 2 classes may be on it. I keep seeing a lot of discussions about the ability of influence the story/world degenerate when someone points that "the wizard could summon some angels to do X". Yeah, the wizard can make fucking Solars his bitches and this turns a lot of problems into trivialities. But do we want to go there? I mean, really? Once you Summon "minions" that are actually boss monsters or Fabricate Adamantite / Black Lotus extract, any hopes of coherence in your world already went bananas. (I don't think Tippyverses work unless we're talking parody, then they work awesomely).

So, to recap:
1) yeah, the fighter in the PHB is boring and nobody should play it.
2) this doesn't mean an awesome fighter can't exist. It just needs to be made from scratch.
3) of course fighters have less story control than wizards. ANYBODY has less story control than wizards (other than clerics, archivists, etc). High level spell shenanigans are the problem here, not the fighters.

[Username17]

I hate how every "fighters can't get nice things" discussion degenerates in two groups shouting past each other.

Yes, the fighter class, AS IT IS, is hopeless. We got that. Bashing grognards who believe that there can be some balance AS IT IS is pointless.

The groups aren't shouting past each other. Stormbringer and CRKrueger believe (or claim to believe) that the only reason that Fighters are underpowered is because 3rd edition rules allow the Wizard to cast defensively in melee and take levels in Loremaster.

Now their position is deeply absurd. Magic Users were massively more powerful than Fighters all the way back to the beginning. There is a reason that of the original Circle of Eight, there are seven casters and one Fighter. That is not a coincidence. Further, the ability to take Prestige Classes and Cast Defensively is an incredibly trivial portion of a Wizard's power in 3rd edition.

But that is their position, and they have come here to defend it. Or rather, to assert it loudly and repeatedly and offer up little to no evidence to actually defend it. Regardless: to say that the understanding of how the Fighter is underpowered, let alone why is well established is poppycock. It took like five years of hammering the point home to get people to accept that Fighters were underpowered in 3rd edition. 1st and 2nd edition AD&D Grognards still haven't accepted that reality for their own editions, even though the things that marginalize Fighters are fundamentally the same.

No, this doesn't invalidate the niche of what a Fighter SHOULD BE. If we ignore shit like epic feats for fighters who give +1 to hit and starting to give actual heroic / epic things at the right times, the class can be interesting. We know this is true because Samurai Jack.

Samurai Jack is not a terribly good piece of evidence, because he lives in the world of authored fiction and his powers and abilities go up and down according to the needs of the plot. Samurai Jack is really cool, and I think you could make an RPG character based on his exploits that would be cool, but the show does not provide good evidence as to what is possible in an RPG context, because Samurai Jack is inherently episodic and gains and loses abilities as required to make the adventure of the week challenging and overcomeable.

As to what characters need in order to compete at high levels, they fundamentally need to be able to interact with challenges that are presented at high level that low level characters cannot. What those challenges actually are depends on what kind of game you're making.

One of the biggest challenges in making high level abilities is that stuff like "redirect river" (an action used to great effect by Hercules) is way too specific to put on a character sheet. There may not be a river (either not close enough, or if you're on a cloud island, at all), and the things river redirection does is generally not going to be something you care about. Indeed, I would think that even if you had the ability to redirect a river that you'd only end up doing that less than once per campaign. So what you're going to want is a more general "modify terrain through over-the-top Paul Bunyan exploits" ability. An ability that the player is supposed to fill in explanations for as appropriate - maybe smashing a chasm into the ground one time and pushing a river into the city another. The key is that the high level Fighter has to be like He Man or Wonderwoman or something - be able to actually do things about problems like "the city is on fire" through drastic, high level actions.

-Username17

[Josh_Kablack]

I did ask to check the dictionary, he said that using the dictionary was cheating, and he then slapped me for back-talk. Also, I was 9 at the time.

Well in that case you had an abusive father - I'm sorry to hear that.

[echoVanguard]

I hate how every "fighters can't get nice things" discussion degenerates in two groups shouting past each other.

Fixed.

echo

[CRKrueger]

CRKrueger believe (or claim to believe) that the only reason that Fighters are underpowered is because 3rd edition rules allow the Wizard to cast defensively in melee and take levels in Loremaster.

Or you could go back and actually read what I said, whichever.

Wizards had casting times, were easy to interrupt, had memorization times, system shock, some spells aged you, they (or the cleric) couldn't summon an Abyssal Tyrannosaurus, they couldn't 5ft step, they didn't have metamagic feats, they had to find spells, not automatically pick some at each level, etc etc etc.

All of these restrictions together (all of which WotC removed) means that the 3e Wizard and the 1e Wizard are about as far away from each other as Golden Age and Modern Age Superman.

If you want to balance the fighter against the wizard, you first undo the insanity WotC D&D brought in - AND THEN work on the fighter. Otherwise, all you're doing to do is make a fantasy superheroes game as the Fighter becomes as stupidly overpowered as the rest.

BTW, you guys don't really have to dig in your assholes to pull out laughable lies and exaggerations about what I posted, you could just read what I posted.

If what you really cared about was simply getting the point across that "Hey, the 3e Wizard and Cleric are off the charts stupidly powered." Then you might want to do that instead of trying to ram down everyone's throat the lie that fighter's were completely ineffectual in every single edition.

In 1e take a party of all wizards and clerics through the G1-3 Series, D1-2, and Q1. You've got all the giants in the world to charm, lets see how far you get. I'd love you see you "self-buff" a 1e Cleric and try to outfight the fighter.

At this point, you guys have forgotten how abjectly ridiculous the power levels in 3e became.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Wizards had casting times, were easy to interrupt, had memorization times, system shock, some spells aged you, they (or the cleric) couldn't summon an Abyssal Tyrannosaurus, they couldn't 5ft step, they didn't have metamagic feats, they had to find spells, not automatically pick some at each level, etc etc etc.

Let's go through that list:
1) Casting times: doesn't hinder non-combat at all. In combat, wizards went slightly slower than everyone else. It's kind of a big deal if they get attacked, but if a wizard is getting attacked he's pretty much going to explode.
2) Easy to interrupt: doesn't hinder non-combat, at all. Was incredibly unfun in actual combat, and either failed as a whole because the wizard had the good sense to prepare and avoid or the wizard was getting hit and his low HP meant he exploded (as above). There wasn't a lot of room for a wizard between "you get interrupted" and "you die."
3) Memorization times: Doesn't hinder non-combat at all. Doesn't actually hinder combat at all, unless you are deliberately cutting the balls off wizards. Did you seriously play the game balancing fighter and wizard by not letting wizards have enough time to prepare any spells, so wizards were always running dry?
4) System shock. Yeah, that's a fantastic idea; sometimes, magic wins really hard. Other times, you explode in a ball of fire. But also, none of the spells you'd actually use to fight in combat caused system shock.
5) Aging. Again, who is dropping shit like wish to win encounters? You seriously do not even understand the elementary problem here. It is not that the wizard had big scary problem spells which were balanced by occasionally exploding him in a ball of fire or taking years off the life of a character (because that doesn't matter either; what are you going to do when the level 13 character ages himself to death? Force the character to bring in a level 1 to party with his previous level 13 companions?), the problem is that the wizard's basic go-to spells are awesome save-or-sucks, and they do not have giant attached costs.
6) Metamagic feats. That you brought these up at all makes me seriously wonder if you ever even tried to play a half-competent 3e wizard. The number of metamagic feats you need is zero. If you find yourself with any at all, you might want to rethink. Unless you're trying to make a viable evoker, pulling some cheesy combo, or doing metamagic discount splat haxx, having metamagic feats at all is probably a sign you are doing something wrong.

I'm convinced you haven't actually thought about any of this and are just reciting the goto list of big scary changes from AD&D to 3e. The actual reason AD&D fighters and AD&D wizards could stand together in combat was that hitpoints were smaller, so hitting things with a sword was nearly as valid a combat strategy as taking it out with one spell. Wizards did not pick up any significant tricks. And even then, the idea of fighters contributing in high-level combat is still a rickety illusion: there is nothing a AD&D fighter with a sharp stick can do to make a flying, fire-breathing lizard give a shit that he exists.

And whenever it comes time to solve problems that can't be solved by stabbing with the sharp stick, the fighter's repertoire is empty and the wizard can replicate everything anyone else can do, frequently better.

So, uhh, no. There was no balance. There has never been balance. Not even close out of combat, and only with enough caster, DM and plot pity could they compete in combat against high-level threats like dragons.

These all got covered, so erm...

I've never actually played 1e, but weren't hirelings and battle dogs available to PCs, so you could have them tank while you spell? Just wondering.

EDIT: This is still a fucking stupid and pointless argument which has spread across 3 boards.

[DSMatticus]

@CRKreuger, Capn beat me to quoting my old post, so I've got nothing left to add except angry words. Spoilered for vile profanity and length:

I don't like you very much.

[CRKrueger]

I've never actually played 1e

I doubt many here have, or have forgotten what it is like.

which has spread across 3 boards.

Three boards? Where else did the clusterfuck spread?

I don't like you very much.

More likely you just don't like that I don't subscribe to the groupthink that the ridiculous design of 3e was in all versions of D&D since the beginning.

[MisterDee]

A few more comments:

1) Casting times: doesn't hinder non-combat at all. In combat, wizards went slightly slower than everyone else. It's kind of a big deal if they get attacked, but if a wizard is getting attacked he's pretty much going to explode.

Fun fact - in 2nd ed. - if you were using casting times, you were using weapon speed factors. And casting times were actually quite a bit faster - they're usually roughly equal to the spell level, unless the spell is a need-to-cast-quick-type spell like Dimension Door. A Shortsword had a speed factor of 3, a Longsword 5, and a two-hander 10. So, at the levels when wizards don't have Fly or the like to make who goes first mostly irrelevant, they were faster on the draw.

2) Easy to interrupt: doesn't hinder non-combat, at all. Was incredibly unfun in actual combat, and either failed as a whole because the wizard had the good sense to prepare and avoid or the wizard was getting hit and his low HP meant he exploded (as above). There wasn't a lot of room for a wizard between "you get interrupted" and "you die."

Gotta disagree on that, however. Obviously, meleeing wizards got to worry about dying more than about losing their spells. But there are just so many ways for a DM to plink the party wizard in AD&D - tons of monsters with weak area-of-effects, tons of humanoid that have damage xdy or by weapon, plus the crippling ACs of AD&D wizards, and let's not forget the "hordes of orcs-and-goblins are good encounters" ethos - at playable AD&D levels, the threat of interrupt was constant.

Of course, once the wizard actually gets his hand on enough spell slots to actually matter, the game change entirely, but by then AD&D is completely broken already.

3) Memorization times: Doesn't hinder non-combat at all. Doesn't actually hinder combat at all, unless you are deliberately cutting the balls off wizards. Did you seriously play the game balancing fighter and wizard by not letting wizards have enough time to prepare any spells, so wizards were always running dry?

By the book, a 20-level AD&D2 wizard simply could not memorize all his spells in a day and still have time for adventuring. Just memorizing his ninth- and eighth-level spells would take seven hours. So if you were playing srictly by the rules, a high-level caster would not blow through his entire memorized spell complement every single day.

Of course, I don't know a single person who actually computed that time, and the time to memorize drops significantly once you return to the levels where people actually played. At level 7 you're at three hours of memorization to get back to full. Not hugely convenient but handwaveable by saying that the party wizard is exempt from camp chores and guard duty.

4) System shock. [...] 5) Aging [...]

System shock and aging came up so little they might as well have been flavor text. Well - not in the case of Haste, perhaps, but then again the aging applied to the recipient, not the caster.

6) Metamagic feats. That you brought these up at all makes me seriously wonder if you ever even tried to play a half-competent 3e wizard. The number of metamagic feats you need is zero. If you find yourself with any at all, you might want to rethink. Unless you're trying to make a viable evoker, pulling some cheesy combo, or doing metamagic discount splat haxx, having metamagic feats at all is probably a sign you are doing something wrong.

LOL. Metamagic feats. You know, the new ones in Pathfinder aren't all bad. Well, they're not actually good - more like "meh - I have this idea for a character, and I guess I can waste a feat on having a bit of gameplay to go with the fluff."

I'm convinced you haven't actually thought about any of this and are just reciting the goto list of big scary changes from AD&D to 3e.

You know what's funny with that list? It misses the single one massive power multiplier that a D&D 3.x wizard has: item creation/purchase that isn't MTP bullshit.

If you remove the wizard's ability to easily obtain/create scrolls of Utility Spell that is Useless 95% of the Time, you can significantly cripple a wizard's ability to Be the Solution to non-combat stuff. I mean, the fighter will not suddenly be actually useful, but at least the wizard is as useless! Yay for balance!

[CapnTthePirateG]

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=5760.0

So the clusterfuck of stupid stands.

FYI, I don't know why we're arguing about this when the vast majority of D&D players don't give a damn about 2e and 1e.

[Username17]

FYI, I don't know why we're arguing about this when the vast majority of D&D players don't give a damn about 2e and 1e.

Only to point out that the (admittedly small and clueless) AD&D community outright rejects the idea that a dumb melee fighter with no abilities at all is underpowered. They continue to think to this day that if a Fighter got enough bonus damage with a longsword, they'd be able to matter in an adventure about going to cloud castles and fighting storm giants.

Have you seen a single thing in this discussion that refutes that point? Yes: the AD&D community (such as it is) continues to dogmatically assert that Fighters having any abilities at all would be bad for the game.

-Username17

[Blasted]

I'm currently playing 1E with a bunch of other guys old enough to have played when first released. For fun, but that has little to do with the system in and of itself.
I'd like my 2c on these:

1) Casting times: doesn't hinder non-combat at all. In combat, wizards went slightly slower than everyone else. It's kind of a big deal if they get attacked, but if a wizard is getting attacked he's pretty much going to explode.

I've only seen it as an issue when a spellcaster is surprised, or otherwise silly enough to let himself get attacked.
[edit] - I'd like to point out that weapons speeds only come into play when initiative is a draw. Otherwise it's a separate system to casting time. Easily confused though [/edit]

2) Easy to interrupt: doesn't hinder non-combat, at all.

See point 1. Because of the insanity that is the initiative system, the odds of not only being attacked, but being attacked while casting a spell are actually very slim. Also, many of the best spells are 1 seg casting time.

3) Memorization times

Given everyone needs healing, this is a non issue. Because natural healing takes so bloody long BtB, you have your 6-8 hour rest and then get going.

4) System shock. Yeah, that's a fantastic idea; sometimes, magic wins really hard. Other times, you explode in a ball of fire. But also, none of the spells you'd actually use to fight in combat caused system shock.

Both CRKrueger and DM miss the point on system shock and aging.
Of all the spells that actually cause system shock, the only one that impinges on the caster is statue IIRC. Which few casters in their right mind would take. Polymorph self & shapechange specifically don't require one. System shock is actually a way to turn otherwise innocuous spells into killers, which I'll get to here:

5) Aging.

Aging only affects some spells when they're cast from memory, so if you instead write a scroll, you ignore this. So guess what high level casters do?
Haste is the only low level spell that causes aging, by one year if, you read the DM's guide. RaW this also causes a system shock. A system shock has a 30% chance of instantly killing a CON 10 recipient. Haste provides no save and has a 6" range, with a 4"x4" AoE (In Gary's range scale) 1 creature/level. Doesn't let you cast faster. Join the dots.

As for giants, charm monster affects them. But from my dim memory of those modules, you'd be stupid to take them on full frontal. Mages are where it's at: they have many, many ways of defeating the giants, fighters were superfluous.

I'd also like to point out a restriction I touched on earlier: random spells.
BtB a MU or illusionist gets random spells to start. If the DM thinks that the adventure is difficult, he could allow the choosing of one. After 1st level, MU + I are supposed to be buying spells and detailed rules are provided as to how. So after 1st level you choose all of your spells, unless provided by DM fiat, via scrolls or spellbooks.

[Lago PARANOIA]

LOL. Metamagic feats. You know, the new ones in Pathfinder aren't all bad.

Unless your DM is handing out metamagic wands like candy (in which case lingering and/or persistent spell isn't too bad) or your DM lets you abuse spell-storing arrows like crazy (in which case intensified spell comes in handy) I can't think of a single reason to use a Pathfinder metamagic feat.

Empower Spell at least explicitly increases all variable effects by 50% now, including the addition expression at the end as long as it's attached to a base die. No real abuses come to mind, however.

[Josh_Kablack]

when the vast majority of D&D players don't give a damn about 2e and 1e.

I care a whole lot about 2e, in that: a gamer's opinion of 2e AD&D is far and away the single best predictor of whether I should continue the conversation with them or not.

[erik]

Empower Spell at least explicitly increases all variable effects by 50% now, including the addition expression at the end as long as it's attached to a base die. No real abuses come to mind, however.

Yeah, abuses only flow from metamagic cost reduction.

There used to be the potential for Empower abuse with Simulacrum in original 3e since it was 50+1d10% as good as the original. Of course that still relied upon metamagic cost reduction to get to the ≥100% abuse.

[ModelCitizen]

In 1e take a party of all wizards and clerics through the G1-3 Series, D1-2, and Q1. You've got all the giants in the world to charm, lets see how far you get. I'd love you see you "self-buff" a 1e Cleric and try to outfight the fighter.

I was just reading G3 for a discussion in another thread, so let's talk about that one. An all wiz/cleric party could definitely complete all objectives in Hall of the Fire Giant King. It's a great dungeon for a party using teleports and mind control and information-gathering spells. Different factions, multiple points of interest, secluded caves to Dim Door into, several challenges that aren't about bashing a monster in the head. You need to assassinate King Snurre, which wizards and clerics can do just fine, but there are also drow to learn about and evil altars to poke at.

So wiz/cleric works fine, but let's see what would happen with an all fighter/thief party.


To the rest of you: Yeah, I quoted Butthurt Fanboy #2 because gave me the idea for this rant, but really I'm just posting this for anyone who might be interested. I guess it bears demonstrating just how much mid-level PCs rely on spellcasting to participate, and I want an excuse to talk about this module. Anyway here goes.


Introduction: Have Fun Running Blind!

In the introduction, Gary explicitly assumes the party uses Contact Other Plane and Divination to gather intel in advance. Fighters and thieves can't do any of that, so they're missing critical tools before they even step in the door. They have to do the whole dungeon blind, and it has lots of dead ends that waste your resources without advancing your goals. All they've got is thief Hide In Shadows (you know, that thing 10th level rogues still lean on that's worse than a 2nd level spell) and that only even sort of works on the first two dungeon levels (more on that later).

Levels 1 and 2: The Side with the Most Combined HP Wins (Hint: Not You)

The first level is a bunch of fire giants who fight to the death. It's a big ole straightforward slugfest. Seems like that would be great for the fighters, right? Well, they don't have any way to minimize incoming damage (no wizard -> no field control, level-appropriate pets, or shortcuts). The fighters have to win by pure HP attrition, which they lose because no cleric -> no healing. They have to get through a couple dozen fire giants on just their own HP pools and they can't even come close.

If they go to level 2 they have roughly the same problem only now their are spellcasters and a few permanent diseases (no cleric -> no debuff removal). It's a bit less densely populated so the thieves can scout a little better, but still.

The party's only chance for reaching level 3 seems to be skip is much of levels 1-2 as humanly possible. They can probably get through level 2 without fighting anyone but the torturer (one fire giant with a room-specific iron maiden attack), but on level 1 their HP has to last through 13 fire giants (and 12 gnolls). This is assuming the shortest possible route, completely ignoring their objective of killing King Snurre and fighting just the occupants of rooms 14-16 and 18. So, realistically they'll never even see level 2, but for the sake of argument we'll see what happens if they're good at dead-dropping d20s. On to level 3!

Level 3: Monsters with Actual Abilities

Ok first, let's talk about fighting drow. Drow levitate and either have magic (field control and ranged damage) or badass poison bolts (which the party isn't allowed to use because lolalignment). The melee shtick you used on the giants is now invalid. Hope you packed longbows. Your thieves can't scout down here (it's dark and all the monsters have infravision), so you can't avoid encounters. Also drow have 75% passive stealth which somehow can't be thwarted by your infravision, so you don't even get one round to decide to run. Take a wrong turn at random, start an unavoidable fight with an enemy that's very unfavorable to non-casters.

Since you can't scout anymore, let's see what other shit you might stumble into at random!

• "holy fuck that's a lot of trolls" (56 to be exact). If ever there was an AoE fight, it's the Stinking Caverns. Your non-caster party gets to do this one target at a time, especially since trolls regenerate and you have to execute them singly with flaming oil or something. This is yet another unwinnable attrition fight. As usual the monsters move faster than dwarves / halflings / heavy armored fighters so running isn't an option. The two thieves can stalemate the fight by climbing the walls, but the fighters die here.
• 88 HP red dragon. You have no magical protections vs fire. If it breathes on round 1 it kills a thief whether he saves or not. A fighter who saves for half could scrape by just *nearly* dead and gets finished off shortly after. Winnable if you spread out, but you probably still lose 2 people here. This is one of the few actual good strategies for a fighter/thief party though, because if you luck into this fight early enough you can trade your two thieves for a subdued dragon. Not that you have any way to know the dragon exists or where to find it, but hey, it's something.
• Drow Noble + Entourage Gygax specifically says this drow doesn't like Eclavdra so you're probably supposed to parlay here. Unfortunately you don't have any divinations to know that or enchantments to help you do it. Hope for a good reaction roll (if the DM is generous enough to make one) or you're stuck fighting a bunch of drow casters. And a glabrezu.
• 3 Mind Flayers. Ok, this refresher course on 1e psionics is going to give me a headache. But anyway, illithids have Astral Projection and Probability Travel so they get to play Hit and Run with you across the entire known multiverse. Fighters, when monsters start having at-will teleports you're just fucking done, take your keep and quit. Now, there's no reason for fighters and thieves to engage the mind flayers - they're not allied with the drow and their only loot is in a box that says "Must Have 18 Int to Open" (LOOOLLLL). But without divinations or mind control you will never know that.

Level 3, post-TPK Debrief: "Uh, Were We Supposed to Fight the Purple Elves?"

So level 3 is another unwinnable attrition fest, but the real kick in the ass is that even if the party could win it wouldn't get them anywhere. The point of the lower levels isn't to assassinate Giant Boss anymore, it's to learn about the drow, and fighters just don't have investigation or interaction abilities. And neither do thieves in this case, because their one weaksauce information-gathering ability doesn't work around monsters that live in the dark. The party doesn't even have a way to figure out why this dungeon level exists. If they somehow got here at all, they'd just stumble around in the caves until they find an unwinnable encounter and die.

Conclusion: Fighters Suck, Thieves Suck, Get Over It

The difference between casters and non-casters is bigger in 3e than it was in AD&D, but non-casters sucking has been a problem for the game's entire history. AD&D fighters sucked and thieves sucked even more. You need abilities other than "hit with sword" to pull your weight even in a Gygax module from the 70's.

[OgreBattle]

hirelings!



... but in seriousness, what kind of abilities should fighters and rogues have to complete those encounters without magic users? Would Tome Fighters and 3e rogues have done the job?

[Blasted]

In 1E, the damage of fighters is incredibly low without significant magical assistance. For a fighter to meaningfully contribute to any of these encounters, to start it needs a damage boost. That could be an artefact swords, or alternatively a damage boosting ability. Either works.
Secondly, the multiple attacks of the fighter sucks ass. It's just not interesting slowly building up to 2 attacks. So you need some type of useful AoE to damage multiple monsters of reasonable toughness.
Finally, some type of damage mitigation, more than just AC, or 3 extra HP/level. Currently a fighter can't even provide a meatshield for any useful amount of time.

That will bring him up to a level where he can contribute to head on battles of an appropriate level. That doesn't touch being useful outside of combat, or even any combat where something more interesting than 'I swing my sword' or 'I stand in the way'. It also doesn't consider the fighter in any adventures where flight, teleporting or gating is required. Fighters don't do other planes. It doesn't allow the fighter to contribute outside combat, at all.

Thieves, monks and assassins (I'm still talking 1E here) have more shtick, but the abilities table screws them over. Not only this, but the spellcasters can do their shtick, but better - without chance of failure.

So they need the damage and survivability boost, but they could also do with a significant boost to their skills and removing the ability of other classes to do their shtick.

Which is for another thread. Probably another edition. I may make a thread that goes over the 'fixes' introduced for 1E & BECMI, but I need someone with a better idea of 2E to do that.

[ModelCitizen]

... but in seriousness, what kind of abilities should fighters and rogues have to complete those encounters without magic users? Would Tome Fighters and 3e rogues have done the job?

Here's a list of resources Gary assumes you have on 24 hours' notice:

-HP recovery
-Some advance knowledge of the dungeon and its inhabitants
-Ability to scout/scry ahead once inside
-Ability to discern or influence monsters' motivations (this is a big one)
-AoE that defeats troll regeneration
-Either protection from fire, or ability to deal >50 damage to a red dragon in a surprise round
-Counter for teleport evacs with a high enough success rate to lock 3 enemies

That's just things Gary assumes you can do. I'd have loved to put "Dimension Door or Equivalent" on the list because goddamn it'd be nice to be able to attack up from level 3, but the module doesn't require you to do it to win.

Anyway, some of these are module specific, but to pull your weight in G3 you need to be able to do at least two or three of them.

[fectin]

when the vast majority of D&D players don't give a damn about 2e and 1e.

I care a whole lot about 2e, in that: a gamer's opinion of 2e AD&D is far and away the single best predictor of whether I should continue the conversation with them or not.

Where does "in retrospect, I don't hate it" fall on that scale?

[nockermensch]

The groups aren't shouting past each other. Stormbringer and CRKrueger believe (or claim to believe) that the only reason that Fighters are underpowered is because 3rd edition rules allow the Wizard to cast defensively in melee and take levels in Loremaster.

I admit skimming this thread but I thought that their position were that pawns aren't underpowered compared to queens because pawns can promote, or something.

One of the biggest challenges in making high level abilities is that stuff like "redirect river" (an action used to great effect by Hercules) is way too specific to put on a character sheet. There may not be a river (either not close enough, or if you're on a cloud island, at all), and the things river redirection does is generally not going to be something you care about. Indeed, I would think that even if you had the ability to redirect a river that you'd only end up doing that less than once per campaign. So what you're going to want is a more general "modify terrain through over-the-top Paul Bunyan exploits" ability. An ability that the player is supposed to fill in explanations for as appropriate - maybe smashing a chasm into the ground one time and pushing a river into the city another. The key is that the high level Fighter has to be like He Man or Wonderwoman or something - be able to actually do things about problems like "the city is on fire" through drastic, high level actions.

Landscape Artist(Ex):
Some people make History. You make Geography.
Insert text here to explain how you can permanently alter terrain. At low levels its things like instantly generating difficult terrain (with pinpoint accuracy within a range). At mid levels is wall of * / move * effects and permanently changing terrain types, at high levels it's straight up disintegrating huge cubes of stuff and changing terrain types to a ludicrous degree (the charming meadows is now on fire, forever).
"Justification" depends on the favor of fighting man you're pursuing.

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One thing I was thinking that ties into the He Man thing: Barbarian Rage is a really, really feeble thing when compared to level appropriate things. It starts by turning a human into a Orc (+4 Str), and ends by high levels turning the human into a weak ogre (+8 Str). This is pathetic because by level 10, a barbarian is supposed to go toe to toe with a fire giant if he wants to pull his weight. (in fact, this is pretty much why is usually better to change fighter/barbarian levels for some beefy race/template, no?)

What if then, if the non-magical, fighting men classes start giving up attribute increases like candy? If by level 10 the fighter has Str 26* and by level 20 something like Str 60*, a lot of tall tales exploits should start becoming viable by trivializing high DC Strength checks. It would also combat the effects of hp inflation.

The superman strengh route works better for a "barbarian" kind of fighting man that ends becoming He-Man/Hercules. Other kinds of "skilled" fighters could get massive Dex increases, or maybe extra BAB to get pretty much the same bonus the strong guy gets. So a samurai by level 20 could have like BAB +70*. He'll hit anything, make the most impossible called shots and with power attack and expertise he actually has a huge number pool he can allocate to damage and/or AC as needed.

* These numbers may be completely out of the whack, I'm just picking stuff that seems on a first glance "large enough" to make a fighting man numerically compete and dominate level appropriate opposition.

[Lago PARANOIA]

At any rate, can we get a thread on the alternate fantasy rules that other D&D systems used?

[StormBringer]

One of the biggest challenges in making high level abilities is that stuff like "redirect river" (an action used to great effect by Hercules) is way too specific to put on a character sheet.

You think that might have had more to do with Hercules being a demi-god than his ability to wrestle lions and kill hydras?