Wizards admits Empty Levels are a problem...

[User3]

BAWWWWW!

[MrWaeseL]

I guess that from a picture of a crying rabbit that pissed his pants, this thread can only go up.

[Username17]

Here's what I don't get: Why not admit that Monks suck ass?

You could print a revised Monk in a new book that was modelled on the Rogue or the Wizard that people would then purchase. Then yu could publish PrCs that balanced to that and go so on and so forth.

In short, Power Creep sells books. Why not have a Dungeonomicon Monk? As is, they're selling power creep to spellcasters, but not to melee guys. In the iconic party, only 2 players are being incentivised to purchase new material. As an economic model, that doesn't make sense.

Every time they publish a Spell compendium that grants five new kinds of awesome to the druids, they should prepare a Races of War that puts up an evolutionary advance for Swordsmen. As is, people correctly see new material as simply benefitting the group which is already the most powerful (the spelljunkies) and then eventually banning the inclusion of new material for the sake of fairness.

So seriously guys, why follow a line of game balance reasoning that is not balanced and isn't economically viable?

-Username17

[Imban]

A lot of people still don't really understand that more options = more power, and that since the spell junkies are the only ones that reliably get more options with every single book they print, they're the ones who get 95% of the power creep. After all, new Fighter feats help Fighters, but even a Fighter 20 (argh) only gets 18 of them. Pretty much any spellcaster ever has access to many more spells - "all ever published" in the case of Clerics and Druids - over the course of their careers.

So, because a lot of people just don't see this, it may not be a viable marketing decision simply because a large segment of the D&D-playing population seriously thinks that Fighter 20s are worth playing, multiclassing is the devil, "low magic" - whatever it means - is what everyone really wants, that power creep of any sort is bad, and that making an effective character instead of maxing ranks in Craft (basket weaving) makes you the Lucifer.

[Crissa]

There are times when more options != more power...

And that difference is the difference between a Fighter picking n feats off a list for the whole campaign and a spell caster picking n spells off the list every damn day.

And I still can't believe they think a whole level's worth of class abilities should be summed up in a nerfed version of a magic item. Or a spell another class gets. That's lame. That's bad. That's just dumb.

-Crissa

[Username17]

More options == More Power.

The problem is that a Fighter never gets more options when new material is presented. They get 18 feats in 20 levels. No more, no less. No amount of feat publishing will ever change the fact that a Fighter always has 18 options at level 20.

Spellcasters, on the other hand, hae access to stuff like limited wish and Scroll purchasing that grants them access to new options when new spells are printed even if they don't get any more spells known.

Wizards, Sorcerers, and rogues have fixed access to spells, so the benefit isn't as obvious as it is for Clerics and Druids, but they can still grab bag and they still gain more options when new spells are introduced. And more options is more power.

-Username17

[Imban]

The only time more options != more power is if the option is only an option in the sense that you are legally allowed to take it. Skill Focus (Craft (Basketweaving)) and Toughness are both feats which are options for Fighters to take in the most broad sense, but neither of them is a real option in the sense that it develops your character rather than just funneling feats into suck.

Of course, Fighters do get more power, it's just not nearly as much. Compare a 20th-level Fighter built with just the Player's Handbook (where there seriously aren't even enough feats for him to not need to pick useless ones) to a 20th-level Fighter built with the Player's Handbook, Player's Handbook II, Complete Warrior, Tome of Battle, and so forth. They have more real options available to them at creation and that results in a pure Fighter that uses material from these books being more powerful than one that doesn't, because he'll be able to take full feat chains in things he cares about instead of having finding that he's taken literally every printed feat that helps his actual schtick.

It's just that at some point, you're going to get a Fighter 20 who has 18 good options. And then, no matter what, he just doesn't get any more. Meanwhile, a Cleric gets all of the new Cleric options printed in every book for free, a Wizard can buy scrolls and write new options into his spellbook any time he wants, and even a Sorceror can buy a staff and cast spells out of it using his caster statistics.

[User3]

The basic problem is, though, that a fighter's good options pretty much expire at two books.

While there's certainly room for a fighter to squeeze a little bit more power out, remember the levels that most games are played. If your DM will let you use Sword and Fist and Defenders of the Faith unerrata'd, you've pretty much jumped the shark right there. If your DM will let you use Complete Warrior, that book will be sufficient for 90% of sword-based character builds. I mean, it's hard to find a combo that beats the basic effectiveness of Elusive Target + Defensive Throw.

[Crissa]

Uh, what's that, Lago?

o-o

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1161446397[/unixtime]]My theory is that WotC is acting on a primal nerd instinct to not want the jocks to win.

Well, I don't know about that. I mean part of D&D was about being able to play the really strong barbarian warrior that you aren't in real life.

I think the problem tends to come more from the fundamental problem that magic can do *anything* and there's only a fixed number of things physical combat can do. It means that wizards options are going to be much broader.

It's also a problem with the sacred cow spellcasting system by which a vancian caster can learn an uncapped number of spells. Wizards are way too general, even specialist wizards. Casters should look more like the beguiler rather than the wizard or the cleric.

I think the beguiler is a great model for spellcasters. For once, you can have NPC casters that are easy to create, and still be a good solid class. And you can add new spells that the beguiler can take as extras, but like fighter feats, they take up a chooseable slot. You can actually balance a beguiler with a fighter rather well.

I'd personally like to see various other beguiler incarnations for other casting styles. Blaster, summoner, etc.

[User3]

1161472255[/unixtime]]
It's also a problem with the sacred cow spellcasting system by which a vancian caster can learn an uncapped number of spells. Wizards are way too general, even specialist wizards. Casters should look more like the beguiler rather than the wizard or the cleric.

I think the beguiler is a great model for spellcasters. For once, you can have NPC casters that are easy to create, and still be a good solid class. And you can add new spells that the beguiler can take as extras, but like fighter feats, they take up a chooseable slot. You can actually balance a beguiler with a fighter rather well.

I'd personally like to see various other beguiler incarnations for other casting styles. Blaster, summoner, etc.

I agree, but remembr that the Vancian Mage has always been a part of D&D. That doesn't mean that there isn't a time to let go, but I think it would be best to keep that in mind and make sure that some sort of 'preparation' (which could just be scribing scrolls) and 'generalism' (which would probably just be multiclassing) available.

[RandomCasualty]

1161552872[/unixtime]]
I agree, but remembr that the Vancian Mage has always been a part of D&D. That doesn't mean that there isn't a time to let go, but I think it would be best to keep that in mind and make sure that some sort of 'preparation' (which could just be scribing scrolls) and 'generalism' (which would probably just be multiclassing) available.

Well I mean if you wanted a beguiler that prepared spells just for the hell of it, you coudl have one. The key is the limited spell list.

[Username17]

The problem with this theory is that Beguilers are actually much more powerful than the vast majority of Wizards until levels deep in the double digits.

And when you think about it, that should surprise noone. A Beguiler knows more spells than any but the most time profligate wizard and casts more spells per day at many important levels (1,2,4,6,8, and 10+). The fact that every Beguiler casts spells off the Beguiler list rather than cherry picked off the Wizard list is not particularly relevent most of the time.

The Beguiler spell list is already cherry picked.

--

That being said, the Beguiler casting method has a lot of traction. It's easy to explain, easy to play well, and pretty forgiving of players early in their learning curve. It makes magicians who are potentially thematic, effective, and comprehensible to the player and the other players.

If you walk into a new group and say "I'm playing a Beguiler" people know exactly what you can do in a way that simply does not get across when you say "I'm playing a Wizard". And that's huge. That's why we wrote the Summoner that way. That's why we wrote the Elementalist along those lines. That's why we'll have the Paladin along those lines in the Tome of Virtue. That's why the Gadgeteer functions like that in Book of Gears. It's a method of spellcasting that is playable. And that's job one.

But let's not fool ourselves. It does less than nothing to bridge the gap in power between a Fighter and a Wizard. A Beguiler is at least as good as a Wizard and easier to play. That's not putting him in the same zip code as a swashbuckler any time soon.

-Username17

[NineInchNall]

Why won't WotC admit that certain classes are weak? Because it's almost impossible to comvince a large segment of the population that it's true. Just go look at the 80+ page threads on the WotC Classes forum dedicated to the enlightened trying to convince the masses that straight Fighter is weak compared to full casters.

If WotC were to do a rewrite of the weak classes, then half or more of the gaming population would consider the changes overpowered munchkinism, made for rollplayers who don't understand that the game isn't about the abilities and numbers, and that the rules are just guidelines, not rules.



Fvcking rp-elitists.

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

The problem is that a Fighter never gets more options when new material is presented. They get 18 feats in 20 levels. No more, no less. No amount of feat publishing will ever change the fact that a Fighter always has 18 options at level 20.

They could, but they won't.

Wizards (the corp) could say that, for example Power Attack--for no apparent reason--could suddenly do more crap than it does now. It now does double damage against nonliving creatures, or lets you take a penalty to your to-hit roll to boost your initiative, or whatever. Nothing stops Wizards from expanding a basic idea, stretching it to make it more useful, rather than printing all-new crap.

I would much prefer an expanded Weapon Focus that didn't suck instead of another +1 to hit feat because my character already has Weapon Focus and being able to do more with it would be cool.

But, like I said, we won't see that. I don't know why.

[User3]

I think the biggest thing the article writer is missing is that when you put non-ability abilities into dead levels, they really are supposed to be "abilities."

A +2 to IDing undead is not an ability. I'd hazard a guess that 9 out of 10 players would forget that they had that ability if you gave it to them.

However, here is short list of things that WotC expects people to pay character levels for, but could be added to empty levels and you'd never notice:

-Resistance: Fire 5, cold 5, whatever....its coming up three times in 20 levels, so no one cares.

-Favored enemy. Unless you are playing an Age of Worms premade capmpaign and know that at least one undead creature is in every adventure, this is another "three times in twenty levels".

-Turning at less than Turning Level=character level. Too many classes or PrCs start a feeble turning progression, and people seem to forget that being a 1st level Turner at 7th level is just like being given the option of throwing rocks instead of using real weapons or spells.

-Weapon proficiencies: Honestly, unless it is one of three or four awesome Exotic weapons, you can just add it to someone's list and they are not going to care.

-Spells that do out of combat things: Add [Guards and Wards to a Sorcerer's Spells Known and see his reaction.

-Local advantage: Give a hero some advantage that only applies to a very specific environment, and it'll see so little playtime that it can't affect his power level. For example, water breathing, water walking, reduced or no movement penalties in snow, normal magic on elemental planes, and ability to ignore a spsecific poison area ll so small as to b unoticable.


At the end of the day, over half of the abilities that people get as part of normal levels are non-abilities. A +1 is a bonus so small that you have t nmark it n your character sheet in a different color to just remember that you have it. Only Wizards or other spellcasters actually see new abilities when they level, and thats just part of the "fighters suck" mentality of DnD.

[RandomCasualty]

1162145022[/unixtime]]I think the biggest thing the article writer is missing is that when you put non-ability abilities into dead levels, they really are supposed to be "abilities."

Yeah, adn the fact that spellcasters already get abilities in the form of spells/wildshape progression/etc. I mean this guy thought that the druid had dead levels! wtf. As if full casting and wildshape progression wasnt' enough for you?

They just think that a dead level constitutes any level where you don't have some bullshit text written under abilities. So you can write "+1 to basketweaving checks" and that counts as an ability just because you have letters there instead of a dash. Crazy.

I still find it humorous how they say the barbarian is the perfect class. I mean this is a class that gets DR 1 or trap sense as their only ability, or something stupid like "no longer fatigued after a rage", wtf is that? Has a rage ever ended before combat did?

[erik]

1162170090[/unixtime]]wtf is that? Has a rage ever ended before combat did?

Heh, I've seen it happen. It's usually the sign of a really bad combat getting much worse.