Martials Need Time: Low Level Magic

[Dean]

It is old news that martial character concepts like Samurai or Pirate are left behind by character concepts like Wizard or Shugenja. It’s known that Casters leave behind Martials by the mid game and the generally accepted solution is to have martial characters evolve their character concept, so Knights become Dragon Knights and Pirates become Lords of the Damned allowing their character concepts to access the magical powers required to maintain relevance into mid level. This solution is a good one but it ignores a large problem which is that Martial players NEVER actually get to play the concept they wanted: a character who is a great combatant. In TTRPG’s martial character’s abilities are surpassed by casters so quickly that they are never actually impressive. The transition from incompetence to competence to irrelevance is so fast there is never a period where martial mastery exists before the concept of martial mastery is obsolete, so Aragorn or Conan or Jaime Lannister can never really exist at all.

TTRPG casters eclipse martials not just because of too much power in the mid-game but because of too much power at the beginning. A 3rd level Wizard can cast Color Spray, Sleep, Charm Person, Disguise Self, Invisibility, and Flaming Sphere. He can also have 4 more spells on top of that and cast every spell I’ve just mentioned every day by 3rd level. If 3rd level casters can levitate, control peoples minds, go invisible, morph into other people, and knock whole groups unconscious with a snap of their fingers there is simply no room at the bottom for nonmagical character concepts. So while martial characters need to have their concept altered away from “Person who is good with a weapon” in order to fit the genre requirements of mid level so too do casters need to have their concept moved away from “Person who can instantly do impossible things on command” in order to fit the genre requirements of low level.

My goal in this thread is to look at what magic should be like at low levels. Low level magic is the kind seen in low fantasy worlds and it can be just cool or interesting as high level magic, it’s just different. It is notably NOT just smaller fireballs that do less damage, the very nature of what magic looks like in those sources is different. Magic at those levels almost always takes time and preparation. Magic in combat time has no place here because mages at this level are expected to fight with swords and staves just like everyone else. Magic should be less directly powerful but it should still be interesting and have unique but subtle effects like sending messages in dreams, divining meaning from the stars, seeing spirits, or entrancing animals. Early magic need to be balanced around the fact that every other character concept at these levels is only expected to have mid range skill checks out of combat.

Magic types I think are appropriate if designing low level magic are:
Ritual Magic: Pomp and circumstance is good, it’s atmospheric for casters to sit in circles drawn in salt while they burn oils or animals
Rune Magic: Effects being subtle and hard to prove is nice. Maybe your shield’s protective rune isn’t even doing anything, but it might, so just keep it on.
Herbology: Things being semi real is nice. Poison making, healing poultices, numbing leaves, cocaine energy giving leaves and so on
Divination: Sort of real again. The ability to know the future can be tailored to all levels by moderating how reliable the information and how far in the future it goes. As long as the odds are above 50 percent it’s still worth asking you.
Generally: Any effect that could be plausibly excused as just a show of tremendous skill, intuition or luck fits nicely Things like speaking to animals or seeming to know what someone was thinking all fit. Even if the players know that an Animal Message spell or a Glance Into Mind spell was used the players and the world should be able to maintain a sense of mystery about sorcerous workings.

[TarkisFlux]

Wanting casters to do different time consuming things instead of the same things with less time but super use limited sounds pretty good actually, and completely justified by plenty of source material. But the reasons you lead with piss me off, so I'm going to rant about why you're wrong. In a spoiler, because reasons.

You need to rethink these things in terms of opportunity costs, because your reasons are basically all wrong at low levels. Let's take a look at that spell list a bit...
[*]Charm Person: You can "treat the target as friendly" and give them orders that they will follow if you win an opposed charisma check. Lasts substantially less than a day. So basically Diplomancy, except you have a better chance of succeeding against hostile targets without bonus shenanigans and you can skip the talking time. It's not appreciably better, and it takes the place of your combat powers at low levels, so has substantial opportunity cost most days. You're basically trading slight time saving and efficacy for multiple and flexible uses (mundanes) at low levels.
[*]Disguise Self: You get to skip the 10-30 minutes of prep time to make an instant disguise. You get a +10 bonus to your check, but you probably don't have ranks so it's not as large a bonus as it sounds. It's also unclear if you can take 20 on the check or not, which makes it less good when time is not a factor. Lasts substantially less than an hour. So basically an actual disguise check, other than the height/weight thing and shitty duration. Again, has substantial opportunity cost and isn't much more than a minor trade.
[*]Invisibility: You can't be detected by sight. Basically a +20 to your stealth check, which is a good but not amazing bonus because you don't have ranks anyway and stealth is shit in default rules because of the egregious number of failure checks. Actually amazing on someone with actual stealth though, sometime. Again with the time restrictions though. Opportunity cost, no other real comparisons.
[*]Levitation: You get to climb up things without a rope or a wall. It's slightly faster than double move climbing (assuming <40' base move and not accelerated), and there's no chance of failure. Maybe better than climb, but not for very long or very high surfaces. Again with the opportunity cost.
[*]Color Spray, Sleep, Flaming Sphere, etc: Combat spell. If you're expected to fight 4 times in a day and only have 5 or so spells, you have basically 1-2 combat spells per fight. Having a single combat spell for each fight that does your whole fight contribution at once is probably necessary under those conditions, to avoid the suck now - rock later dilemma (note that this is not an endorsement of those conditions). Flaming sphere should get special mention as a spell that lets you contribute at a similar level to most of your party for a whole fight, not that you'd ever use it that way.

Wands, scrolls, and anything that reduces the opportunity costs associated with these effects is problematic, sure, but that's a different issue. Similarly, going up in level makes these slots worth much less for combat so sticking utility effects in them makes more sense, which also reduces the opportunity costs associated with them. And also contributes to mundane fall behind. But these are higher level problems, which isn't what you're talking about here.

Changing low level magic is fine and probably good and all, but it's hardly necessary because of how spells work at those levels. You'd be better served by going to the well of 'no one likes to cast sleep one round and crossbow / cantrip the rest because resource management' or some completely legitimate source reasons like you get at but don't lead with.

Rant over.

Actual suggestions on the premise to follow, probably.

[Occluded Sun]

Subtle magic, which lacks obvious immediate consequences, is actually a part of a lot of the traditions D&D draws upon. It has its appeal when designing settings.

You can also have settings with relatively common and flashy magic possible - like Le Guin's Earthsea - where most magic is illusion only, and real effects are difficult and sometimes dangerous.

[Ferret]

I really like the idea of anybody who cares to learn it being able to rock out Ritual magic (like in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series). Also like the alchemy in the Witcher stories/games. Seems like making those things available to mundanes would be very useful. Fighter wouldn't be so bad if he could reliably generate his own potions of Enlarge, Flight, and the like.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Two things.

The first thing is that you're way exaggerating the efficacy of spells (and downplaying the effectiveness of swords and skills) for solving adventures at low level. Assuming you're using 3E D&D for a straw model, I agree that it happens fairly early in the game, but you're not seriously suggesting that it happens at level three, do you?

More importantly, though:

This solution is a good one but it ignores a large problem which is that Martial players NEVER actually get to play the concept they wanted: a character who is a great combatant.

Who gives a shit what they want? No, seriously, in the context of designing a framework (i.e. a TTRPG) that will help users create stories that appeal to themselves and more importantly the people around them, who gives a shit what they want?

Serious action-adventure high fantasy has been trending away from the determined, callow or gritty mundane badass Everyman protagonist for quite some time now. Characters like Sokka are a last gasp of a dying paradigm and will soon only exist in deliberately retreaux high fantasy like the DC Conan comics and the Hobbit movies. And I say that it's for a good reason.

Unfortunately, there does exist a band of power in which Madmartigan is the equal of Willow and even where James Bond Jr. is the equal of Harry Potter. And this band can exist without the plot or author cheating for the characters. However, I claim that this band shouldn't be extended by looking for ways to universalize magical and reduce the effective of specialists: but instead the band should be shrunk. Even in Casterfinder pure martials have a place in the game at level 5 -- I think that this doesn't go far enough. They should be retired by level 3, tops. Instead of that silliness where a 7th level muggle can go up against a hill giant or a troll with no magic and have a non-zero chance of winning, they should get the living shit kicked out of them. Fights against anything stronger than a bugbear when you don't have magic should go like this. Then maybe people will stop chasing rainbows and twisting the games into knots to enable these worthless goatfelchers' uselessness addiction.

[Dean]

Who gives a shit what they want? No, seriously, in the context of designing a framework (i.e. a TTRPG) that will help users create stories that appeal to themselves and more importantly the people around them, who gives a shit what they want?

Every pronoun there refers to someone who gives a shit what they want. I feel like the first part of your sentence didn't listen to what the second part said. If the players are invited to a game on the premise that they can be Aragorn or Conan or Jaime Lannister or the Dread Pirate Roberts and that is the story element they request and they are the users of the game desiring to create those stories then every person there gives a shit what they want. What are you even saying? Also, if you accept the argument "Who gives a shit what anyone wants" as a valid argument is there any design failures it can't be applied to?

I support the idea that martial characters need to evolve but they also need to exist. If you say that nonmagical characters need to be retired by 3rd level tops then none of the iconics can ever exist. A Guard is a level 1 Warrior. How many town guards is the Mountain that Rides or Madmartigan supposed to be able to take? If you retire nonmagical characters after level 2 you have made a system that cannot support most fantasy protagonists ever written. If you create a framework that requires tossing out almost every fantasy icon and you accept that giving a shit what anyone wants is valid (and I'm not Shitmuffin so I do) then that is a shitty fucking framework and should be tossed.

Martial characters should evolve, they should change as the game changes but cries for them to evolve ring hollow when they are also being told they can never exist in the first place. By changing low level casters into something closer to what you see in low fantasy canon you add tremendous amounts of iconic fantasy material that you can now emulate. By making low level casters the sort of people who read entrails, speak to spirits, make protective talismans, and capture snakes with hypnotic gazes you add content and lose nothing. If someone wants to play a caster who walks on air and shoots fire from their hands the mid levels already exist and you can just play there. There's no reason to have low levels casters be exactly the same but with shittier numbers. By changing what low level magic looks like you can allow people to play magical characters like Thoth Amon, Melisandre, or Gandalf which people want. Then you can use the extra space those character concepts give you before nonmagical characters are obviated to NOT have level 1 guards be 1 level away from being the most powerful nonmagical characters in your setting before you hit level 3 (tops) and swordsman as a concept is banished from your setting. This matters because it's likely that more people get into the hobby to pretend to be badass fighters than probably every other character concept combined.

For exactly the same reason that "Nonmagical Warrior" does not fit into every level of play and must be changed when it doesn't, so to does "Magical Sorcerer" not fit into all levels of play and should be changed when it doesn't. By creating some additional space at the start to allow people to actually play martial characters in the way they want I think we can more acceptably demand them to change their concept once the game moves beyond them but they should get the game they were promised at some point in the process.

[Josh_Kablack]

I really don't think you've considered how collaborative TTRPGs differ from single-author fiction.

Magic types I think are appropriate if designing low level magic are:
Ritual Magic: Pomp and circumstance is good, it’s atmospheric for casters to sit in circles drawn in salt while they burn oils or animals

Yeah, the flavor is nice. But mechanically this is just giving spells lengthy startup times -- which does eliminate a lot of combat utility. But if you're not in combat time, then the time requirements of ritual spells are only a drawback in other time sensitive adventures and there is no reason not to spam them in general exploration adventures. And if you add rules to prevent spamming, congrats you've just re-invented slots per day.

Rune Magic: Effects being subtle and hard to prove is nice. Maybe your shield’s protective rune isn’t even doing anything, but it might, so just keep it on.

Magic so-subtle it might not even work again has a nice feel and dovetails with things I have actually done in real life "I'm wearing this because it's my lucky charm", but in a TTRPG it runs headfirst into the concrete wall of the difference between player and character knowledge. See the discussion of trying to invent mechanics for Doubt.

Herbology: Things being semi real is nice. Poison making, healing poultices, numbing leaves, cocaine energy giving leaves and so on

The flavor is nice, but to have this workable you have to get pretty damn far away from D&D conceits. Because within D&D assumptions, everyone uses Poison Weapons whenever they can get away with it, there's is no reason not to fight hopped up on coca-stimulents, and healing that doesn't get your character back into the fray in less than a day means you might as well go home for the rest of the game session.

Divination: Sort of real again. The ability to know the future can be tailored to all levels by moderating how reliable the information and how far in the future it goes. As long as the odds are above 50 percent it’s still worth asking you.

Reliable divinations in a TTRPG have a risk of running into player free will that divinations in single author fiction do not. This isn's as big a problem as many of the above, since the tradition of vague and metaphorical divination results allows a lot of leeway in interpretation.

Generally: Any effect that could be plausibly excused as just a show of tremendous skill, intuition or luck fits nicely Things like speaking to animals or seeming to know what someone was thinking all fit. Even if the players know that an Animal Message spell or a Glance Into Mind spell was used the players and the world should be able to maintain a sense of mystery about sorcerous workings.

Wait, wasn't your problem here that magic was already better then mundane skill? How is letting magic sub in for the high ends of mundane skill doing anything but worsening your complaint?

[OgreBattle]

Give me an example of what a level 1 adventure looks like in your mind, something straight forward like going to fight a level appropriate amount of orcs

[erik]

Not orcs. Honest to gosh monsters that otherwise look like something you would say "Nope! No mundane person is fighting that with pointy metal."



That's a proper level 1 battle. Why start lower than that?

[Sakuya Izayoi]

For me, the coolest part of a character arc like that of Conan or Guts is when they're told "your mook-slaying skills won't help you now" and the evolution takes place. It makes the antagonists more interesting too; that Guts has to become Mega Man to kill demons makes the demons a whole lot more intimidating than if he just killed them by being a Really Good Swordsman.

I'm not sure the answer is making pointy hats do entrail divinations. Melee Dude might have signed up to be Aragorn, but the same applies to someone who wants to be Turjan, Elric, Ridcully, Vivi, I-No, Marisa, or other pointy hat. 5e had a solution that might have worked if it wasn't Mearls designing it: tone down on the amount of memorized spells, but give out unlimited blasts to non-sorcerers.

[infected slut princess]

Fights against anything stronger than a bugbear when you don't have magic should go like this.

Conan killed two frost giants by himself. That skyrim character is a pussy.

[Dogbert]

Conan killed two frost giants by himself.

And lovecraftian horros, and splits steel helmets with a bronze sword... because Conan is not a d&d fighter.

When was the last time you saw an unequipped muggle survive an adult dragon? What about a pit fiend?

Yeah, I thought so...

Sorry to burst your bubble, but all I see here is an E6 solution that only works if:

a) The game ends by level 3 before Damage Reduction and GTFO abilities make their appearance.
b) MC coddles the muggles by always giving them the right magic loot at the right time like the VAH they are so they don't realize how useless they are in a gaming world with the d&d Monster Manual as their list of enemies.
c) You play in 5E.

[Schleiermacher]

Okay, that's bullshit.

Fighters, Barbarians and Rangers don't go obsolete by 3rd level. They just don't, and any attempt to claim that they should be phased out starting at Level 4 "for the good of the game" has no other justification than anti-VAH bigotry. If you can let players keep playing the characters you want without shooting themselves in the foot or ruining the game for anyone else, you should do that for as long as possible, because letting people play the character they want is a very high priority of any decent RPG.

It is obviously true that VAHs can't remain viable until 20th level, but it is equally obvious that they can quite handily hang in there and contribute until level 6. If you redesign the full-BaB classes so they're a bit more generous than the 3e core versions, there shouldn't be any problem keeping them relevant until level 8. It would be longer, but at level 9, 5th level spells come online and when the casters have access to Teleport, Overland Flight, Scrying and Raise Dead, no amount of Charles Atlas superpowers can keep you in the game out of combat.

[TarkisFlux]

I think a large part of why this reads as bullshit is summed up nicely here -

casters need to have their concept moved away from “Person who can instantly do impossible things on command” in order to fit the genre requirements of low level.

Casters just aren't that impressive or that prepared for everything at low level. So let me fix that for you -

casters should have their concept moved away from “Person who can instantly do improbable or time consuming things on command up to maybe 7 times a day, subject to preparation forethought and willingness to sacrifice doing other things” in order to fit the genre requirements of this other fiction I would prefer to focus on.

If that's all you want to do, I don't really care what level you want to stop supporting mundanes in the game, because you really just want to re-map some pointy hat powers to something more time consuming and the mundane discussion can sit on the fucking sidelines.

Josh is right about ritual magic removing basically all of the combat utility, but wrong at the end that limiting it is the same as reinventing slots per day. If your rituals just have "no retry" riders on them, you get as many as make sense but a lot of spam as people work through their options. Or you can take the slots and just drop the preparation aspect of them, and let people use whichever 3 rituals per day they feel like. I don't see a reason to avoid the spam though, as most of the spell effects aren't all that different to things skill checks can already do with sufficient lead time. And since you're adding the lead time...

Rune magic, I don't even. The game is already filled with tiny fiddly bonuses, why do you want to add fiddly bonuses that are even more fiddly because you don't know if they're even working? Magic weapon is already only helping you 5% of the time, should that be even smaller or more variable?. This seems like it should be a fluff rider to existing effects that have possibly been ritualized, and not an actual mechanic on its own.

All of the Herbology examples you list would be better given away to someone with more weapon proficiency and less cavern chest. Making people buff up by drinking something the pointy hat made during downtime rather than buff up by getting a spell from the pointy hat's limited selection of them for the day at combat time seems like a weird fit with your goals. Spell effects that you prepare ahead of time completely bypass the ritual time component and slot limitation because they're downtime expenses. And honestly it would be better as a mundane skill anyway, because why the fuck shouldn't the Witcher be making his own shit?

But none of this addresses what the pointy hat will be doing in combat. I suspect you don't like the low level slot based magic given your spell complaints, but the alternate magic you talk about doesn't work for them in combat. At all. Even a 2 round cast time on spells is basically unacceptable at these levels. And if they're swording it up with everyone else as an alternative, they don't feel much like a pointy hat. So you should figure out something else. I don't think you have any reason to retain slots for utility effects and you don't like them for combat effects at these levels, so just embrace that and drop them entirely. Warlock style blasts or upgraded combat cantrips (on any of at-will, recharge, or drain systems) are probably your best bets, and then you can add different combat rider effects come online at whatever level you care about.

[infected slut princess]

And lovecraftian horrors, and splits steel helmets with a bronze sword... because Conan is not a d&d fighter.

When was the last time you saw an unequipped muggle survive an adult dragon? What about a pit fiend?

Yeah, I thought so...

What are you talking about. I was just joking around and you took everything way too seriously and demonstrated that you suffer from acute retardation. The frost giants Conan fights are not the same as D&D frost giants. The "lovecraftian horrors" Conan fights are not like pit fiends or dragons. Nice job, dumb ass. lol

[erik]

Whoops, I got sidetracked and missed the original point of the thread- "How to make magic okay at low levels"

1. For combat give them options comparable to mundane characters (single target damaging attacks)
2. For non-combat give them options comparable to mundane characters

Ta-da.

In combat basically warlock or earthdawn caster at-will attacks.
In non-combat their schticks are not much more impressive than what a tracker, sneak, healer or whatever could accomplish.

As you raise up casters to give them more superior combat options you have to give equal options to fighters. And as casters get awesome non-combat options the fighters again need to be given equal fare.

Now, I would be bored by the options available at low level so I'd just call that garbage "level 0" and strongly suggest people start their fantasy game with something actually fantastical so that at level 1 the fighters may be doing a wind slash with their sword at guys 30' away and rogues are literally melding into the shadows while wizards are blasting lightning bolts.

[Dogbert]

Fighters, Barbarians and Rangers don't go obsolete by 3rd level.

Allip. CR 3. Incorporeal. Ghost Touch or GTFO.

Myth=Busted.

@ISP: Duh, I forgot to point out the rest of my reply was at the thread opener, not you. My apologies for the misunderstanding.

[Red_Rob]

Are you seriously telling me you have ever played a D&D character that didn't have a magic weapon by level 3?

[...You Lost Me]

Are you seriously telling me you have ever played a D&D character that didn't have a magic weapon by level 3?

I'm can't tell if this is a serious response or not...

[Schleiermacher]

Allips can go fuck themselves. If a 3rd Level party runs into an Allip, they have to hope that the Cleric gets a 19 or better on his turning check or that's a TPK right there. And if he doesn't do it on his first try, that cleric is crippled for the next 4 levels regardless. There is nothing else that a 3rd level character of any core class can realistically pull out of its hat that has better than a 10% chance of scoring victory over the Allip, if even that. (And even with the Turn Undead you'll most likely have to fight it again a few minutes later.)

Edit: Not necessarily a TPK - you don't have to outrun the Allip, you just have to outrun the Dwarf.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Every pronoun there refers to someone who gives a shit what they want. I feel like the first part of your sentence didn't listen to what the second part said.

Did you have shadzar permanently on ignore? I understand if you did. Regardless, if you listened to him for more than a couple of threads you'll know that there are some pre-3E D&D shibboleths that he's really, REALLY attached to. Shit like THAC0 and 3d6 in order. That was a line in the sand for him. What's more, he's not a minority. Nonetheless, future versions of D&D told them to fuck off even if they would successfully pull off their threat of abandoning the line and the game was better for it.

The analogy with people who want to play VAHs for an extended period of time in D&D is obvious.

If the players are invited to a game on the premise that they can be Aragorn or Conan or Jaime Lannister or the Dread Pirate Roberts and that is the story element they request and they are the users of the game desiring to create those stories then every person there gives a shit what they want.

Then D&D should stop handing out those invitations. We tried inviting these characters to previous versions of D&D, all they did was stink up the host's house. Either because they failed to pull their weight when playing with the Big Boyz or the fantasy had to be beaten with a nerf stick until it became a boring bodice-ripper.

If you create a framework that requires tossing out almost every fantasy icon and you accept that giving a shit what anyone wants is valid (and I'm not Shitmuffin so I do) then that is a shitty fucking framework and should be tossed.

The fuck you mean, tossing out almost every fantasy icon? The fantasy icons I have in mind are characters like Naruto and Aang and the Exile and Cecil and Ryu (both the martial artist and dragon-morpher) and Archer and so-on. There's still plenty of room for beloved fantasy characters and their continued adventures once you send Jaime and Madmartigan and Gimli to the glue factory. If people are attached to their VAHs that much then they can just stay in the level 1-3 sandbox. It's not like 75% most games aren't going to end outside of this level range.

so to does "Magical Sorcerer" not fit into all levels of play and should be changed when it doesn't.

Magical Sorcerer does fit into almost every level of play, even when being VAH is a valid life choice. Harry Potter and Presto and First Episodes Katara would get their ass kicked in a fair fight by James Bond Jr. or even Indiana Jones. Seriously, why are we neutering these characters even more?

[Dogbert]

Are you seriously telling me you have ever played a D&D character that didn't have a magic weapon by level 3?

You haven't played in many tables, have you? DMs who actually give sufficient treasure (let alone actually complying with WBL) are the exception, not the norm.

Furthermore...

Ghost Touch: Cost, +1. Total cost: 4000g (considering a magic weapon always require a minimum of +1 before enhancements).

WBL of a lvl 3 character: 3000g.

In addition, "Ghost Touch" is the kind of enhancement that falls on the "circumstantial" area, and seldom something that just "happens to appear inside a treasure chest." If you somehow happen to always have handy the magical McGuffin that's required for the job, then chances are your GM is coddling you and your character is a VAH.

[Schleiermacher]

The fuck you mean, tossing out almost every fantasy icon? The fantasy icons I have in mind are characters like Naruto and Aang and the Exile and Cecil and Ryu (both the martial artist and dragon-morpher) and Archer and so-on.

I literally don't know who half of those guys are. Of those I do know, Aang and Street Fighter Ryu are definitely higher than 4th level.

I agree that there comes a point when you have to throw out the VAHs, and that you shouldn't cripple the game you're designing ala 4E to put off that point, but there's no need to do the opposite either, and force obsolescence on the mundanes before it's necessary.

Beowulf kills Grendel, who has killed dozens of Hrothgar's finest warriors, by tearing its arm off with his bare hands. He needs a magic sword to kill Grendel's mother, who is even fiercer, but he does kill her (the sword doesn't do anything more than "penetrate her damage reduction", being made by giants). Then after becoming King he fights a dragon, and with the help of Wiglaf he wins the fight, although he dies too. Calling the dragon a Very Young red dragon seems reasonable from its behavior. All in all, Beowulf is about level 6-8 based on the monsters he fights, allowing for heroic luck and good stats.

And that's kind of the point: If you're going to be a heroic swordsman and stand triumphant on top of heaps of corpses Conan-style, level 3 just isn't enough. 3rd level characters can't do those things with any degree of certainty, no matter how much the narrative flatters them. 6th level martial characters can -and they can contribute in level-appropriate adventures, as long as they're not core Fighters who have all their non-combat competencies surgically removed.

[name_here]

Ghost Touch: Cost, +1. Total cost: 4000g (considering a magic weapon always require a minimum of +1 before enhancements).

WBL of a lvl 3 character: 3000g.

In addition, "Ghost Touch" is the kind of enhancement that falls on the "circumstantial" area, and seldom something that just "happens to appear inside a treasure chest." If you somehow happen to always have handy the magical McGuffin that's required for the job, then chances are your GM is coddling you and your character is a VAH.

Dude, magical weapons have a 50% chance of hitting incorporeal creatures without Ghost Touch. This is, incidentally, exactly the same chance that non-Force spells have.

[Lago PARANOIA]

and force obsolescence on the mundanes before it's necessary.

I used to think this, too, but after seeing the premise of this and similar threads on 'fixing' the fighter, I have to disagree. The VAH is a regrettable but unavoidable wart or skin tag on the body of D&D and the sooner it's ripped off, the better. Letting people play the class for 10 or even 5 levels only encourages people to look for ways to extend its sell-by date. VAHs should be regularly retired within most peoples' planned campaign arcs, otherwise the fanbase will get accustomed to the idea that it's an archetype that has more longevity to it than what the game designers say there is. And the next thing you know, people are writing up Pit Fighter and Daggermaster Paragon Paths and people are shrieking that the Book of Nine Swords 'fixed' the fighter and you have 4E and 5E D&D all over again.

No, I say that we need to force D&D groups to metamorphically yet regularly have the experience of personally shotgunning Old Yeller in the ballsack ditching Madmartigan in the inn/burning Conan's contract in front of him and replacing him on the spot with Harry Potter/throwing a spellbook at the side of Jaime's head and tell him that he has three weeks to cast a fireball or he's kicked out. Only then will the game be cleansed.

And that's kind of the point: If you're going to be a heroic swordsman and stand triumphant on top of heaps of corpses Conan-style, level 3 just isn't enough. 3rd level characters can't do those things with any degree of certainty, no matter how much the narrative flatters them.

Good. We wouldn't want them to get a fat head or anything.