Shitty character concepts need to die

[Foxwarrior]

Avoraciopoctules: That is one of the most aggressively rules-light abilities I have ever seen. Adding an Adventurer with 4 Fate Points/day to a party of a Cleric, a Wizard, and a Druid (at some reasonably high level) would make the game totally ridiculous in ways that I'm very curious to see.

[fectin]

Fectin: No.

B is "fighters punch the universe to planeshift", F is "The presence of fighters causes the universe to punch itself, creating one of those 'purely random' temporary planar portals nearby". Unless you just meant for Fighters to autosucceed on saves while running pointlessly on the ground far below the battle.

J and K are sufficiently similar to fit under the same category, using the level of reductionism Ishy established. Whether the mob is better at fighting or at mining gold is just details.

G is just what you get when you take E and try to make people who are prone to envy accept it.

Still no.

F really is "Fighters autosucceed on saves"-style shenanigans.

"The level of reductionism Ishy assumed" is begging the question. OF COURSE if you assume there are only four classes of answer, all answers must fall into those four classes. Even so, you're wrong: J is playing more than one dude; K is playing one dude with arbitrarily infinite resources.

G and E are not the same. E is "accept/ignore that there are imbalances"; G is "dick over anyone who isn't a fighter". They aren't even a little bit alike.

[Foxwarrior]

Wait, so how's F supposed to be good enough then? If your only non-realistic ability is "whenever you would roll a die, choose the result", how are you supposed to fight an invisible, astral projecting, flying wizard who summons ghosts and force cages at you?

[Caedrus]

AHA, the text wall doesn't stop from getting any taller

You can mostly go fuck yourself because the answers to "how to keep the fighter relevant while game changes" is not "stop the game from changing". If you want that go play 4e.

So making it so that the Fighter is better at using magic swords or making it so that flying creatures aren't perfectly stable fortresses in the sky in a way rather unique to D&D or letting fighters interact with divination or enabling fighters to invest in both ranged and melee attacks without crippling one or the other stops the game from changing? Okay. +1 internet.

Also, as I said in my previous post, those were various ideas to stretch the Fighter's relevance as the game continues to change (not make the concept last indefinitely) by simply changing some of the preconceptions D&D has (such as stable flight, fast actions for Wizards but not Fighters, easy diversification of investments for wizards and of fighters, no rational expectations for wizard capabilities, and so on and so forth, all of which you seemed to take as "the game not changing" which strikes me as a non-sequitor reply) which cripple the fighter well before you even bump up against conceptual space limitations for the mundane guy.

[fectin]

I meant that as representative of a class of solutions. By itself, it helps a little, but isn't a panacea.

You could do all kinds of metagame stuff: only fighters are allowed to look at their inventory in combat; only fighters can look at the map; fighters always win initiative (nevermind. That one just duplicates an in-game effect of being really fast); fighters are allowed to punch other players, right in the mouth; etc.

[OgreBattle]

So to start with we need to stop lying to the players if there can't be a fighter class that lasts for 20 levels we can't ever make a fighter class that has that many levels.

Nah, I don't think there's a problem with that. There are plenty of people who have DM's give them artifact swords to compensate, it just works out.

Y'all keep on trying to solve a problem nobody asked. The people who play as lvl20 fighters enjoy it, alongside their wizard buddy who throws fireballs.

The people who see it as a problem just... don't play level 20 fighters.

How many of you really play that much level 20 D&D, with the wizards doing everything they can do?

[nockermensch]

AHA, the text wall doesn't stop from getting any taller

You can mostly go fuck yourself because the answers to "how to keep the fighter relevant while game changes" is not "stop the game from changing". If you want that go play 4e.

Pretty much this. I don't really care about how the the conceptual space for non-magical characters is necessarily more limited, because I still have to deal with two friends that will ask the following question when I announce I'll DM again:

"Cool, how do I make the guy that whacks things with a sword?"

nocker you are and continue to be an irredeemable piece of shit. The answer to that question is easy because "the guy that whacks thing with a sword" is not the same concept as totally mundane character.

Mundane sword guy is a shitty concept but the are a rainbow of other potential sword guy concepts that are not shit. For example even in core we have the Paladin. He's a sword guy that also has powers granted by his god. So the Paladin swords people but has divine magic and the his conceptual space is not limited by mundane nonsense. So when say he has to deal with say flying adversaries he can just grow angel wings or summons a Pegasus.

I don't think you're understanding, Misty. They didn't like Tome of Battle because it was too video-gamey, with called attacks and such. Their mindset is pretty much set on Conan. And yet, they liked the tome barbarian's anti-magic and the tome fighter messing with actions. It's something to do with how abilities are explained, I think.

Then again, Frank's point about simply dropping a source of magic on them AFTER the characters are created could possibly work (what the heck, it obviously works, because before knowing the tome classes my "fix" for them was usually in the Elothar's vein).

This probably betrays a lack of imagination from this kind of player, because they can only imagine a character starting pretty much like themselves (mundane people, with a mundane perspective), but the problem certainly exists at least at character creation time. Simply telling them "play a paladin" doesn't work.

[nockermensch]

Wait, so how's F supposed to be good enough then? If your only non-realistic ability is "whenever you would roll a die, choose the result", how are you supposed to fight an invisible, astral projecting, flying wizard who summons ghosts and force cages at you?

By banning such monstrosities before the campaign even starts. The problem disappears like that.

[Mistborn]

So making it so that the Fighter is better at using magic swords or making it so that flying creatures aren't perfectly stable fortresses in the sky in a way rather unique to D&D stops the game from changing? Okay.

I have to assume that once again I'm being trolled.

What the fuck does how well them fighter use magic swords have to do with it we've established that the artifact sword hidden class feature is stupid a long time ago.

[Avoraciopoctules]

go with a job system. if the fighter is holding a sword, he has fire powers. switching to a mace means you can smack rivers to freeze them, and spears let you control the weather and summon lightning bolts.

the elemental spirits think high level fighters are really cool, you see. djinn and efreet spend half their time arguing over whether a varangian guard could beat a jaguar warrior in a fight

[Caedrus]

So making it so that the Fighter is better at using magic swords or making it so that flying creatures aren't perfectly stable fortresses in the sky in a way rather unique to D&D stops the game from changing? Okay.

I have to assume that once again I'm being trolled.

What the fuck does how well them fighter use magic swords have to do with it we've established that the artifact sword hidden class feature is stupid a long time ago.

How about you go back and read the full entry that relates to that statement, eh? If you can't tell how there's a difference between what I said and what you said, then I don't have the patience to help you. Would you consider the ability to use scrolls and wands "not a feature"? And of course you didn't answer my question. How are my suggestions about "keeping the game from changing"?

Also, this is like responding to my list of a few dozen suggestions for factors that help the fighter by saying "just addressing flying enemies wouldn't help." Pretending that I said that things wouldn't change or that someone should just get an artifact sword to solve everything is just trolling me.

What I actually suggested was not limiting the fighter concept unnecessarily, and keeping in mind how your magic system interacts with melee folks as *that* is being conceptualized as well.

D&D screws over fighters far more than is necessary; it is not SOLELY an issue of expanded conceptual space. There are dozens of things like "Shields can't block touch attacks" or, the flipside for wizards, things like "Fireballs always center just how you want them to." Fighter abilities don't scale well on their own... you have to continually reinvest in them to keep even a single trick halfway relevant. All kinds of things.

[Wrathzog]

I have to assume that once again I'm being trolled.

Pro-tip: No one is actually trolling you. I know it might be difficult to accept, but People may actually believe in things that you disagree with.

[OgreBattle]

I don't think you're understanding, Misty. They didn't like Tome of Battle because it was too video-gamey, with called attacks and such. Their mindset is pretty much set on Conan. And yet, they liked the tome barbarian's anti-magic and the tome fighter messing with actions. It's something to do with how abilities are explained, I think.

Then again, Frank's point about simply dropping a source of magic on them AFTER the characters are created could possibly work (what the heck, it obviously works, because before knowing the tome classes my "fix" for them was usually in the Elothar's vein).

This probably betrays a lack of imagination from this kind of player, because they can only imagine a character starting pretty much like themselves (mundane people, with a mundane perspective), but the problem certainly exists at least at character creation time. Simply telling them "play a paladin" doesn't work.

So the actual Level 20 Fighter class should only exist in the DM handbook, that works.

Before we go about making solutions, we really need to address what the audience will accept in the first place.

[Caedrus]

These people really do exist in great numbers!

Caedrus's ideas seem like pretty good suggestions of ways to nerf casters without making casters weak and boring.

Glad you like it. But yeah, that's basically what I'm getting at.

Wizards and Fighters have all sorts of little (or big) features that benefit one or hinder the other that have little to do with their respective cool factors or conceptual space limitations.

[Mistborn]

So the actual Level 20 Fighter class should only exist in the DM handbook, that works.

Before we go about making solutions, we really need to address what the audience will accept in the first place.

Well we have two potential sets of players we that the mundane/magic shitstorm touches on.

In set one we have the people who want to be a DMF/Sord Guy. The want a simple class that's esay to get a handle and that want to sord things to death. We can totally make classes that work for them to an extent that have at least some of the stuff required to to not suck. "Smart" classes like wizards and clerics are allways going to be a little better than the "Dumb" classes but as long as they can sord thing to death the DMF players will be happy. I for one say that those sorts of players should receive as little encouragement as possible but that's beside the point.

Then there are these douchebags

This is all depressingly Elennsarish. Again. People like Wrathzog want:

• To play a character who does not have abilities requisite to accomplish things at level X.
• To play at level X.
• To succeed anyway.

Then they want to be told that succeeding at a level X adventure with a character lacking level X abilities was accomplished through some combination of Chuck Norris style bad assery and extreme cleverness. This is of course total unmitigated horse shit

You see these are the people who want to be Batman but that dosen't happen in RGPs. What happens in RPGs is that the crushingly superior foes crush you with their superiority. There is literally nothing we can for these people.

[RadiantPhoenix]

How to fix sword guy:

Sword guy is something like:

• A wizard whose familiar is a sword.
• A cleric whose holy symbol is a sword.
• A psion who likes swords, so most of his powers manifest as swords.

etc.

I definitely like Frank's suggestion of background levels too, though.

[nockermensch]

So the actual Level 20 Fighter class should only exist in the DM handbook, that works.

Before we go about making solutions, we really need to address what the audience will accept in the first place.

Well we have two potential sets of players we that the mundane/magic shitstorm touches on.

In set one we have the people who want to be a DMF/Sord Guy. The want a simple class that's esay to get a handle and that want to sord things to death. We can totally make classes that work for them to an extent that have at least some of the stuff required to to not suck. "Smart" classes like wizards and clerics are allways going to be a little better than the "Dumb" classes but as long as they can sord thing to death the DMF players will be happy. I for one say that those sorts of players should receive as little encouragement as possible but that's beside the point.

Then there are these douchebags

This is all depressingly Elennsarish. Again. People like Wrathzog want:

• To play a character who does not have abilities requisite to accomplish things at level X.
• To play at level X.
• To succeed anyway.

Then they want to be told that succeeding at a level X adventure with a character lacking level X abilities was accomplished through some combination of Chuck Norris style bad assery and extreme cleverness. This is of course total unmitigated horse shit

You see these are the people who want to be Batman but that dosen't happen in RGPs. What happens in RPGs is that the crushingly superior foes crush you with their superiority. There is literally nothing we can for these people.

Dear Misty, go fuck yourself.

Seriously, stating your opinions as if they were laws of nature doesn't actually make them true. It only makes you sound like a deluded idiot.

What Frank is not saying is that you can have actual abilities written on your sheet that allow you to compete. Foil Action is one of them. The "remove obstacle" ability posted here a while ago being another one. Most of them require you to do your RPGing at a different level from where you might like it: they're abilities that recognize that a RPG is essentially shared storytelling and fix the imaginary problem you and Frank love to sperg about how you cannot do Batman in a RPG by giving some autoral control to Batman's player.

So yes, you can totally have abilities like Throw the idiot ball (Ex) that requires a saving throw or some shit and make the target commit a stupid tactical mistake (the player decides exactly how) for the next round. Place those abilities on a limited schedule (the hero knows he cannot push his luck too much, after all) and you're done.

Now, this has a phlebotinium source, namely "being a plucky protagonist". But since this is how people expect John MacLain to succeed anyway, this should be easier to digest than the "is secretly a demigod", "technobable" and "being asian" power sources.

And no, you're not being trolled.

[Caedrus]

However, I would like to add a caveat to A, which is that I'm not sure that the people who claim that they want to play Swordy McSwordface actually are adverse to gaining phlebtonium sources later on. I can't recall anyone ever throwing a tantrum because they got an artifact sword, nor can I recall anyone ever turning down a supernatural ability that came from a prestige class or being in any way upset that they gained demonstrably magical or psionic powers as a quest reward or as a result of immortality or whatever.

In short, for all the people whining and bitching about how they want to play 20th level Fighters, I don't think there is a shred of evidence that anyone would be upset if Fighter was 10 levels long and then they started getting levels of Angel Knight or Thunder Lord or something. When people actually talk about signature D&D swordologists, they tend to mention names like "Lord Soth", who fucking became a death knight and now his signature attack is casting a 20-die fireball!

I generally agree with this... I've often felt like a lot of the issue with the fighter debate has been because of psychological issues and cognitive dissonance, and that many of the people complaining would be satisfied if the issue were simply presented differently.

Like a previous poster said, people really do want to come to the game table, start out and make "sword guy" but are often okay if sword guy EVENTUALLY learns Sever the Aether when he graduates from Knight to Shining Phlebotinum Knight. I doubt there'd be too much outcry at having something like the Tome Knight, and that there'd be even less outcry if every class was capped that way and requiring people to move on to a graduated concept.

Simply messing around with the names like that is probably a viable way of avoiding a backlash from all the psychological problems people have with just saying "there is no mundane level 20 guy."

[Mistborn]

Dear Misty, go fuck yourself.

Nice to see your not being a condescending piece of shit.

Frank love to sperg about how you cannot do Batman in a RPG by giving some autoral control to Batman's player.

So yes, you can totally have abilities like Throw the idiot ball (Ex) that requires a saving throw or some shit and make the target commit a stupid tactical mistake (the player decides exactly how) for the next round. Place those abilities on a limited schedule (the hero knows he cannot push his luck too much, after all) and you're done.

No handing the opposition the idiot ball so they don't crush you plucky hero is seriously the worst thing that you can do. Why are you narrative mechanics douchebags always so hung up on such shitty narratives.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Avoraciopoctules: That is one of the most aggressively rules-light abilities I have ever seen. Adding an Adventurer with 4 Fate Points/day to a party of a Cleric, a Wizard, and a Druid (at some reasonably high level) would make the game totally ridiculous in ways that I'm very curious to see.

ADVENTURER (Prestige)
Requirements: at least 6 hit dice, BAB 6+ OR Sneak Attack 3d6+, must have foiled a nefarious plot

Hit Die: d10
Skills Points: 8 + INT modifier, x4 at first level
Class Skills: All
BAB: Good
Fortitude: Good
Reflex: Good
Willpower: Good.

Level	Ability	Luck Points	Fate Points	Destiny Points
1	Improvisation	2	0	0
2	____	4	0	0
3	____	6	1	0
4	Sneak Attack +1d6	8	1	0
5	____	10	2	0
6	____	11	2	1
7	____	11	3	1
8	Sneak Attack +1d6	12	3	1
9	____	12	4	1
10	___	13	4	2
11	___	13	5	2
12	Sneak Attack +1d6	13	6	2
13	___	13	7	3
14	___	13	7	3

• Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Adventurers are proficient everything. The more improbable, the better.
  
  Improvisation (Ex.): The Adventurer may take 10 on Use Magic Device checks, and adds its Adventurer level to all Use Magic Device checks.
  
  Luck Points (Ex.): The Adventurer may spend Luck Points to automatically make a save, avoid being hit by an attack, or otherwise avoid harm from an attack or event. This is not an action.
  
  Fate Points (Ex.):The Adventurer may spend Fate Points to remove an obstacle from a scene. This could be a monster such as a dragon or a squad of troll guards, but it could also be an avalanche or a volley of arrows. The obstacle is not necessarily destroyed, and it may cause trouble in future scenes.
  
  Destiny Points (Ex.):The Adventurer may spend Destiny Points to conveniently discover friends and allies, or acquire/be given/reveal powerful treasures suited to a situation. Destiny Points cannot give the party an ally more powerful than the Adventurer's character level minus 2, and though it can give the Adventurer Major Items, it cannot give unique items or artifacts.

[Kaelik]

So yes, you can totally have abilities like Throw the idiot ball (Ex) that requires a saving throw or some shit and make the target commit a stupid tactical mistake (the player decides exactly how) for the next round. Place those abilities on a limited schedule (the hero knows he cannot push his luck too much, after all) and you're done.

Now, this has a phlebotinium source, namely "being a plucky protagonist". But since this is how people expect John MacLain to succeed anyway, this should be easier to digest than the "is secretly a demigod", "technobable" and "being asian" power sources.

This is a terrible idea, and fuck you for suggesting such an ability. I think I would break my usual rule of not passive aggressively dicking with people.

Instead, if anyone picked the stupid idiot ball class, I would have every fight be whatever I had wanted the fight to be + 40 of those idiot ball classes. And every single one of them would make the stupid player who stupidly choose the idiotball class to be an idiot every round of every fight, and his character would universally be known as the idiot who the rest of the party drags around. Because fuck that shit.

[OgreBattle]

Like a previous poster said, people really do want to come to the game table, start out and make "sword guy" but are often okay if sword guy EVENTUALLY learns Sever the Aether when he graduates from Knight to Shining Phlebotinum Knight. I doubt there'd be too much outcry at having something like the Tome Knight, and that there'd be even less outcry if every class was capped that way and requiring people to move on to a graduated concept.

Simply messing around with the names like that is probably a viable way of avoiding a backlash from all the psychological problems people have with just saying "there is no mundane level 20 guy."

So the format is Lvl 1-10 Heroic tier for Fighter

This would also mean fitting Wizard into that 1-10 scheme. Having mandatory prestige classes would also serve to limit Caster power, or at least break up their Hax powers so you only get 1 per Archmage paragon path.

[Mistborn]

So since we're airing out our bad design ideas given Avoraciopoctules's shitty posts and my half hearted attempt a designing a class.

The best way to deal with concept obsolescence is to have tiers (but unlike 4e actually matter). So you have level 1-5 expert tier classes level 6-10 Heroic tire classes, level 11-15 paragon tier classes and level 16-20 epic tire classes. That way the fighter players will be less peeved about being kicked of their class the same thing is happening to everyone else.

[Foxwarrior]

Avoraciopoctules: Bad. Wrong. 4 Fate Points per day is sufficient to solve 4 encounters per day, independent of level. Destiny points handing out allies mean that 2 Destiny Points allows you to summon a force equal to yourself. Neither of these things should be scaled, although taking a few levels to get up to full speed is okay because "guy with hit points and arms" works fine for the first two levels or so.

Kaelik: It's just a suggestion that's been refluffed in the most annoying way possible.

[RadiantPhoenix]

If I was going do the tier thing, I think I'd probably do something like this:

2 levels of 'background' tier, for peasants and guardsman and courtesans and stuff.

4 levels of 'heroic' tier for people who are badasses, but you can beat them with numbers.

6 levels of 'epic' tier for people who stand equal to kingdoms of 'background' tier characters.

8 levels of 'mythic' tier for people who can kill people of background tier by sneezing, and even heroic tier people have to beg for mercy if they offend them.

A later expansion would introduce 10 levels of 'meta' tier for people who have abilities too ridiculous for anything resembling normal storytelling, and imply the release of 12 levels for 'meta-meta' tier that will only be discussed or played on April Fools Day. When the end of the edition's lifetime was reached, it would be explained that the ultimate question of the universe was, "how many levels will this edition have"

The reason for arranging levels like this is to give a sense of symmetry and avoid the 2/6/6/6 that was the other option for going to 20 levels.