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[Bohandas]

A wizard's pretty crappy against enemies that have high spell resistence or energy resistence against whatever they have memorized

[Bauglir]

A wizard's pretty crappy against enemies that have high spell resistence or energy resistence against whatever they have memorized

It's true. This is why psionics is overpowered - you can choose your energy types on the fly, and you can dump hundreds of power points on a single power! Fortunately, Core is well-balanced, and nobody has ever had problems with, say, Druids.

[Flying Dice]

Actually, I'd be interested in seeing a mechanic go the other way, with a sort of 'weapon investment'. For characters that use material weapons, have their weapons gain exp with them. At certain points the character can choose from a selection of abilities associated with the weapon. Fairly early on, have the weapon become sentient -- probably around the equivalent of 3rd or 4th level. After that, the character can take 24 hours to attune and transfer the spirit of their weapon to a new one, so that it continues to develop. Additionally, once it is a living weapon, it is functionally an artifact and impossible to destroy (or nearly so).

It'd be separate from normal magical enhancements, and probably more specialized/interesting than "+n". At lower levels this might be something that would resemble a non-numerical enhancement -- say, you chose for the weapon to align with elemental lightning, after that point it does an additional 1d6 shock damage on hit and arcs with small sparks when unsheathed. At higher levels you could get more complex, with things like being able to dispel illusions with a blow, or gain AoOs against spells effecting or passing by the wielder, allowing them to make an attack roll against the spell's DC to dispel it. At really high levels you could get into esoteric effects, things like cutting portals between planes or locations, killing with something akin to the principle of contagion, or cutting away knowledge and memories from people. At epic level you could get into really crazy things like killing ideas or cutting down impossibility a la Hoon Ding.

A big part of martial characters is apparently supposed to have been their attachment to their weapons and fighting style; that's why there were so many feats for weapon focus, specialization, &c. With something similar to what I described you could very easily match caster flexibility and power with martial characters despite going at it from an entirely different angle. With casters, they're legendary heroes known for their magical might. Martial characters are legendary heroes known for their skill with their weapon of choice, why shouldn't those weapons and their skills be as significant as the magical power and skills of casters?

Thoughts? The overall flexibility of it would probably still be lower than a wizard-fair, given that being Batman is pretty much the wizard's thing-but at the very least it should be equivalent to most other casters. It's still a distinct divide between casters and martial characters in terms of how they function, but the power level should be much closer.

[Bauglir]

Are you familiar with Weapons of Legacy?

[Flying Dice]

Never heard of it before. I'm assuming it uses something like that?

[Bauglir]

That's the idea, although the implementation leaves something to be desired, IIRC. You might look into it to get something to serve as a jumping-off point for homebrew.

[Bohandas]

I think a better idea would be weapons amd magic items that draw ppwer from the user's lifeforce, meaning in game terms that the fighter with the good hit dice and high physical ability scores could weild them to greater effect than a flimsy caster.

[mainiac]

Linking magic item levels allowed to BaB would do that at lower levels.

[Sergarr]

Yeah, TBH. If I'm not playing a primary caster or something I enjoy RPing, I'd rather just go for a good old fashioned borderline-abuse martial setup so that I can at least trivially resolve any situation which can be dealt with by hitting a dude really really hard. Charge builds can get up to absurd levels of damage once you start stacking the multipliers, and that's one place (particularly when it comes to sustainable damage) where a well-built martial character can still outshine other things. Even a Mailman will eventually run out of spells, but the charger will never run out of sword and the masochist will never run out of AoO provocation.

A fighter has to worry about running out of HP, kek.

Also limited amount of spell usually just make people rest more often, leading to so-called "5 minute workdays", because playing a Wizard with depleted spell-stock is deeply unfun. So in essence balancing Wizard's uber-capabilities by limiting the amount they can do it per an arbitrary and easily manipulatable resource in-game doesn't work properly.

It doesn't for properly for the same reason why the 2e "Fighter strong at the low-levels, Wizards strong at high-levels" paradigm wasn't working properly - because not all games take the group all the way from 1 to 20. And not all games throw enough shit at group to make the Wizard run out of spells, and when they do throw enough shit to do so, the optimal course of action at this point becomes "finding a place to rest and replenish the spell-stock ASAP", because usually Wizard (or any other full spellcaster) is the main carrier of the group. Incidentally, I think that's why they made cantrips at-will powers in 5e.

A wizard's pretty crappy against enemies that have high spell resistence or energy resistence against whatever they have memorized

Plenty of spells work indirectly and thus not affected by the SR or ER in the slightest. Like the Forcecage, which is basically the ultimate "fuck you" to any class not able to cast either teleport or a fucking disintegrate, which is everybody who's not an arcane caster.
Or all illusion spells. Put an illusion of a floor above the spike pit, and have fun.

A wizard's pretty crappy against enemies that have high spell resistence or energy resistence against whatever they have memorized

It's true. This is why psionics is overpowered - you can choose your energy types on the fly, and you can dump hundreds of power points on a single power! Fortunately, Core is well-balanced, and nobody has ever had problems with, say, Druids.

Core is well-balanced? Really? Are we talking about the same Druids that can, with wild-shape, be better than a fighter in every way?

[Flying Dice]

That's the idea, although the implementation leaves something to be desired, IIRC. You might look into it to get something to serve as a jumping-off point for homebrew.

I might do that as a longer-term project once I'm done with applying to grad school and such. Thanks for the heads-up!

I think a better idea would be weapons amd magic items that draw ppwer from the user's lifeforce, meaning in game terms that the fighter with the good hit dice and high physical ability scores could weild them to greater effect than a flimsy caster.

Eeh. I really hope you don't mean something equivalent to casting from HP. And I'd still be worried about there being a power imbalance; remember that the real power casters have is largely independent of their ability scores. All high INT/WIS/CHA does for a caster is raise their DCs and give them some extra spells, the flexibility and power comes from the effects of their spells and the ease with which they can change the paradigm of a campaign. A wizard with 3rd level spells is in many ways more difficult for a DM to manage than a 20th level figher, unless that fighter has spent a good chunk of his or her wealth on items which have effects that replicate useful spells.

And, ultimately, what would it do? Add damage? Make it easier to hit things or more difficult to be hit? Martial classes aren't in troubled waters because they're not good enough at hitting things and being hit.

I mean, if my read of what mainiac is suggesting is right, that's one way to level the balance, but it stops working so well at higher levels (which is where the problem is greatest) and doesn't do anything about the same core issue I hit on above.

There's ultimately a choice. Either you balance things like they did in 4e, by making everything homogenous and boring, or by making martial and skillful classes as strong and broadly applicable as primary casters.


@Sergarr: I wasn't suggesting reducing the number of spells available. That's why I made that other long post. It's boring for the exact reason you stated. That's why my ideal solution is to make every class equal at every stage of the game without doing it by making them all dull (including being equally absurdly broken at high levels).

[Bauglir]

Casters can get higher physical ability scores than noncasters (Shapechange is fun), and I'm not sure what sort of hit-dice mechanic you could implement that would scale well and interact with multiclassing cleanly. BAB helps, but runs into problems with Divine Power on divine casters. I mean, not to shit all over the idea or anything, I'm just mentioning the classic tricks you'll want to design around.

Core is well-balanced? Really? Are we talking about the same Druids that can, with wild-shape, be better than a fighter in every way?

It was sarcasm. Everything in that post was supposed to be glaringly stupid, including my agreement that SR and energy resistance are meaningful impediments to a wizard. The truth may be found in the spoiler below.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

While within a Time-Stop (Extended via a metamagic rod), a simple 5th level spell (Wall of Stone) domed around the wizard can invalidate the need to worry about Antimagic Fields, casting while silenced or grappled, Energy Balls, Energy Bolts, Mordenkainen's Disjunctions, Crystal Shards, Ectoplasmic Cocoons, and a huge number of other spells, powers, tactics, and effects. Building a WoS inside of a Prismatic Sphere protects the WoS from taking any kind of damage until the Sphere is taken care of (and unless your psion has a Rod of Cancellation handy, he ain't taking it down). The Ring Gates I mentioned earlier could just as easily be held by some summonables, rather than glued to the foreheads of some really nasty CR 27 dragons (which I also did via Time-Stop). And guess what? Many of my summoned creatures have some very high-level casting abilities - and you'd better believe that an army of them is coming for you.

The only way to get in is to Metamorphosis into a creature that can burrow (which is why I'd plan on casting Wall of Iron to push over and stand on), or to teleport in (which is why I'd cast Dimensional Anchor on the walls).

I could have my familiar running around in an Antimagic Field effect. All it would have to do would be to run within 10 feet of you. Then the aforesaid dragons would likely eat you alive. If that didn't work, I'd make a Knowledge: Psionics check, likely figuring out that it was your psicrown that was giving you invulnerability, and have my dragons use their entire attack routines to sunder it (and any other equipment you were carrying, just in case).

Assuming that you managed to kill my familiar, and survived the Summoned/Gated creatures, then found ways around my turtle-shell, AND somehow got to me, I used my free time in my temporal plastic bubble to cast Shapechange, which means that I'm now an incorporeal undead, so you'll likely not be able to hurt me. And if you get past the 50% miss-chance imposed by incorporeality, I also used a Limited Wish to get a Contingencied Dimension-Door to transport me 5' underground, if something actually can damage me; since I'm incorporeal, I can exist within solid matter, so that's specifically allowed. Good luck getting to me there.

Also, to counteract your Schism effect, I have about 5 10th-level Simulacrums running around, trying to hit you with Forcecages and such (and unlike yours, they have no duration, have a full complement of spells as 10th-level casters, and don't drain any of my current resources). They were in my Bag of Holding, which I dumped out as a move-action on one of my plastic-bubble rounds, or perhaps on a later round; it doesn't matter that much.

And, assuming that you somehow managed to survive, have taken down all of my defenses, and then *killed* me, remember that it wasn't actually *me.* You've been fighting my Astral Projection this whole time, which has instantaneously returned to my real body (which is in my Bag of Holding, inert and in stasis). What this means is that I can learn from my mistakes and try to kill you all over again. By that time, you're likely down to 1/2 your power points or less, assuming that I haven't killed you after my familiar's AMF, my MKDs or my dragons' sunders and MKDs (or AMFs) take out your Timeless Body. Stat damage/drain is horrible, especially to either a manifesting stat (Int) or one of your weaker stats (Con or Cha), not to mention innumerable save-or-dies that target your rather weak Fortitude save (and that's not even including the spells that make you suffer without a single save - such as Otto's Irresistable Dance or Maze).

And to keep you and that pesky psicrystal from galavanting about with teleportation spells, my dragons and I have hit you with a half dozen Dimensional Anchor spells - touch attack, no save. You ain't going anywhere.

And, assuming you killed me AGAIN somehow (as I Extended Time-Stopped before teleporting out of the bag, and put up my defenses again), note that I had at least one Clone in my Bag of Holding (which is now me, and I could have more - note that all it costs is, at most, 1500 gp, and that I can have as many of these as I like, up to my gp limit), and that it's about to be teleporting out to keep up the barrage of spells that I've been flinging at you.

And before you start yelling about how I'm chewing through my spell-slots like mad, note that I've perhaps only actually casted a few spells from slots. The rest have been through my chock-full Rods of Absorption, and perhaps a few scrolls (and I can have tons of these, if I wanted them). Thus, I've only used a fraction of my resources thus far.

We are, at most, 15 rounds or so in. You've hardly been able to touch me, very likely, and if you have, I'm still in the running.

Still want to duel using legitimate maneuvers? Every single one of those are RAW, RAI, allowable uses of arcane power.

EDIT: In case of confusion, the above spoiler was not my work. Though I wish I could claim the credit.

[Qmarx]

Battle Blessing.
Sword of the Arcane Order

There.  Now you cast off the wizard list, and are auto-quickened.

[Criptfeind]

Those don't actually work together. Battle Blessing only works on Paladin spells. Sword of the Arcane order spells are still explicitly wizard spells (not paladin spells from the wizard list.) At least, that's my reading of the feat. Even if they did work together you just gave the paladin some spells that are only about ten levels out of date and made it so that instead of 4 different attributes he needs, he now has 5.

Edit: Also there was a lot of conversation I missed that I'm not going to try to recapture. I'm just going to put in that I don't think things need to be perfectly, or even well, balanced. I just think that every player should be able to mechanically contribute something to the party. It's fine if all the martial type character can do is kill things so long as they are not totally overshadowed by other peoples ability to kill things. And furthermore, even though 3.5 is unbalanced, it's more like it has a large range of possible power levels, and I think that a majority of the actual balance work that needs to be done for it needs to be done on a group by group basis, which is, in my experience, not actually a issue with a good group.

[Sergarr]

@Sergarr: I wasn't suggesting reducing the number of spells available. That's why I made that other long post. It's boring for the exact reason you stated. That's why my ideal solution is to make every class equal at every stage of the game without doing it by making them all dull (including being equally absurdly broken at high levels).

I've got a question: how would you differentiate between different martial characters, if you're using the same system for them all that's intended to power them up significantly? Kind of an important question here.

Casters can get higher physical ability scores than noncasters (Shapechange is fun), and I'm not sure what sort of hit-dice mechanic you could implement that would scale well and interact with multiclassing cleanly. BAB helps, but runs into problems with Divine Power on divine casters. I mean, not to shit all over the idea or anything, I'm just mentioning the classic tricks you'll want to design around.

Core is well-balanced? Really? Are we talking about the same Druids that can, with wild-shape, be better than a fighter in every way?

It was sarcasm. Everything in that post was supposed to be glaringly stupid, including my agreement that SR and energy resistance are meaningful impediments to a wizard. The truth may be found in the spoiler below.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

While within a Time-Stop (Extended via a metamagic rod), a simple 5th level spell (Wall of Stone) domed around the wizard can invalidate the need to worry about Antimagic Fields, casting while silenced or grappled, Energy Balls, Energy Bolts, Mordenkainen's Disjunctions, Crystal Shards, Ectoplasmic Cocoons, and a huge number of other spells, powers, tactics, and effects. Building a WoS inside of a Prismatic Sphere protects the WoS from taking any kind of damage until the Sphere is taken care of (and unless your psion has a Rod of Cancellation handy, he ain't taking it down). The Ring Gates I mentioned earlier could just as easily be held by some summonables, rather than glued to the foreheads of some really nasty CR 27 dragons (which I also did via Time-Stop). And guess what? Many of my summoned creatures have some very high-level casting abilities - and you'd better believe that an army of them is coming for you.

The only way to get in is to Metamorphosis into a creature that can burrow (which is why I'd plan on casting Wall of Iron to push over and stand on), or to teleport in (which is why I'd cast Dimensional Anchor on the walls).

I could have my familiar running around in an Antimagic Field effect. All it would have to do would be to run within 10 feet of you. Then the aforesaid dragons would likely eat you alive. If that didn't work, I'd make a Knowledge: Psionics check, likely figuring out that it was your psicrown that was giving you invulnerability, and have my dragons use their entire attack routines to sunder it (and any other equipment you were carrying, just in case).

Assuming that you managed to kill my familiar, and survived the Summoned/Gated creatures, then found ways around my turtle-shell, AND somehow got to me, I used my free time in my temporal plastic bubble to cast Shapechange, which means that I'm now an incorporeal undead, so you'll likely not be able to hurt me. And if you get past the 50% miss-chance imposed by incorporeality, I also used a Limited Wish to get a Contingencied Dimension-Door to transport me 5' underground, if something actually can damage me; since I'm incorporeal, I can exist within solid matter, so that's specifically allowed. Good luck getting to me there.

Also, to counteract your Schism effect, I have about 5 10th-level Simulacrums running around, trying to hit you with Forcecages and such (and unlike yours, they have no duration, have a full complement of spells as 10th-level casters, and don't drain any of my current resources). They were in my Bag of Holding, which I dumped out as a move-action on one of my plastic-bubble rounds, or perhaps on a later round; it doesn't matter that much.

And, assuming that you somehow managed to survive, have taken down all of my defenses, and then *killed* me, remember that it wasn't actually *me.* You've been fighting my Astral Projection this whole time, which has instantaneously returned to my real body (which is in my Bag of Holding, inert and in stasis). What this means is that I can learn from my mistakes and try to kill you all over again. By that time, you're likely down to 1/2 your power points or less, assuming that I haven't killed you after my familiar's AMF, my MKDs or my dragons' sunders and MKDs (or AMFs) take out your Timeless Body. Stat damage/drain is horrible, especially to either a manifesting stat (Int) or one of your weaker stats (Con or Cha), not to mention innumerable save-or-dies that target your rather weak Fortitude save (and that's not even including the spells that make you suffer without a single save - such as Otto's Irresistable Dance or Maze).

And to keep you and that pesky psicrystal from galavanting about with teleportation spells, my dragons and I have hit you with a half dozen Dimensional Anchor spells - touch attack, no save. You ain't going anywhere.

And, assuming you killed me AGAIN somehow (as I Extended Time-Stopped before teleporting out of the bag, and put up my defenses again), note that I had at least one Clone in my Bag of Holding (which is now me, and I could have more - note that all it costs is, at most, 1500 gp, and that I can have as many of these as I like, up to my gp limit), and that it's about to be teleporting out to keep up the barrage of spells that I've been flinging at you.

And before you start yelling about how I'm chewing through my spell-slots like mad, note that I've perhaps only actually casted a few spells from slots. The rest have been through my chock-full Rods of Absorption, and perhaps a few scrolls (and I can have tons of these, if I wanted them). Thus, I've only used a fraction of my resources thus far.

We are, at most, 15 rounds or so in. You've hardly been able to touch me, very likely, and if you have, I'm still in the running.

Still want to duel using legitimate maneuvers? Every single one of those are RAW, RAI, allowable uses of arcane power.

EDIT: In case of confusion, the above spoiler was not my work. Though I wish I could claim the credit.

Well yeah I know, that's why I suggested to make heroic shit as class abilities that would work kinda like the spell-list of the Wizard does, but with less magic and more punching reality to bend it to your will. Fighters would be like Wizards, with lots of moves potentially available, but having to specifically prepare for them at 8-hour rests. Barbarians - more like Sorcerers, with a short limited list, but able to do more of them and do them without preparation. And so on.

Battle Blessing.
Sword of the Arcane Order

There.  Now you cast off the wizard list, and are auto-quickened.

"Benefit: You can use your paladin and ranger spell slots to prepare Wizard spells."
Still limited by the 4th circle.

[Criptfeind]

So. Book of nine swords, is basically what you are describing. Sorta. At least it seems that way to me.