Caster versus noncaster imbalance: It stems from something deeper

[midnight_v]

The problem isn't that casters can kill with HP damage (or that they can kill AT ALL). It's that they can do that AND EVERYTHING ELSE.

Magic isn't the only enabler, mind you. It's just the most ridiculously easily accessible and consequence-free method.

We KNOW this... so.
I agree with you but you're pulling to a different tact. Please focus on what I'm saying vs what you've read on other boards.
Like over on giant in the playground... Where every week you see a post from a dm saying "What do I do about the ubercharger killing everything"

So first and foremost, the math of melee is relevant.
Sneer touched on it how a fighter has to deal with hp bags and casters bypass it.

Why is it okay for the Samurai to kill a Hobgoblin in one round but not a Balor?
Once we establish this we can move on to things that facilitate them hearing the air or whatever.

Bad: Fighter kills everyone in a one-mile radius by looking cool since the wizard can already do the locate city bomb. Makes no sense, and exists purely to keep up with wizards.

Agree... there are good versions of that too though.
The Tome Barbarian for example gets Primal Assault, in which he generates a field of ex antimagic. thats not JUST to keep up with mages, but a nod to the state of the world at hight level.
The samurai gets a reflect magic attack.

Really its the basis from which we should look at for many things imho.

[SneeR]

Why is it okay for the Samurai to kill a Hobgoblin in one round but not a Balor?
Once we establish this we can move on to things that facilitate them hearing the air or whatever.

Who said that it's not cool to kill a Balor in one hit?

The only thing I can say is that you should not compare level 1 specifically to high-level play. level 1, maybe 2, has most things being killed by 1 hit, zero optimization. It takes serious optimization to kill a balor in one hit at the appropriate level. I would say its okay to relatively compare all levels higher than 5.

The only reason I can think of is the story. Killing anything but routine minions in one hit feels dirty to me, but that is subjective and irrelevant to mechanics. Killing the Balor in one hit should use a vast majority of your daily resources, whether those be maneuvers or what-have-you. It should be a crowning moment of awesome that cannot be overused. I think the same thing about a wizard! It should require a good chunk of their spells to keep up a good enough combo to kill the Balor before it reacts. That it doesn't is a travesty in my eyes.

[Libertad]

Why is it okay for the Samurai to kill a Hobgoblin in one round but not a Balor?
Once we establish this we can move on to things that facilitate them hearing the air or whatever.

The Balor's traditionally viewed as a "boss monster," while most Hobgoblins are viewed as "the Red Shirt Army."

Games with "boss" monsters are made to be really tough, so more people have a problem with one-hit kills on them.  It's more acceptable for red shirts to drop like flies.

[Basket Burner]

The Balor is the weakest or second weakest CR 20. If you can't put out 300 to an AC 50ish target, good luck touching any of the six dragons. Strictly speaking it's five hits, but in one round. That's only 60 a hit, which is a fairly low bar. I mean I could make a level 2 do half that a hit.

[Unbeliever]

...
Examples:
Good: Fighter can change planes by slicing a hole in the cosmos and stepping through. Crazy, but awesome and somehow conceivable.
Bad: Fighter kills everyone in a one-mile radius by looking cool since the wizard can already do the locate city bomb. Makes no sense, and exists purely to keep up with wizards.

As my earlier comments indicate, I don't even need the Fighter to slice holes in reality.  I guess I might be ok with a well thought-out "roles" or "archetypes" approaches.  I just need the Fighter to be (1) good at his bailiwick, and (2) that bailiwick or bailiwicks to be sufficiently central to the game. 

I find "fighter" to be a little too vague, so I'll hop back to my Knight example.  Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the Knight's role or archetype is to tank, so draw aggro and be able to take it, and dish out credible melee damage, not the most imaginable, but a lot.  Of course the PHB II Knight doesn't do this, but maybe the Tome one (or the Tome Fighter or Samurai) does.  And, maybe we'll throw some social skills on there to round him out. 

In a standard D&D game, where running around and murdering monsters is the chief thing people are doing (or at least that they are doing which they need a lot of mechanics to support), that archetype is good.  It might need some ways to deal with things that easily shut it down.  So, for example, he might need some way to shrug off magical effects by dint of will, ultra-awesome enchanted armor, the will of the gods, or skill.  This is my version of SneeR's "good" thing -- it's plausible given the description of the character, though potentially a really mechanically potent effect (viz. Iron Heart Surge).  If flight is common, then maybe he needs a credible ranged attack or a flying horse or something.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's inherently a problem that some classes/archetypes are more flexible or have more ... I don't know, fantastical for lack of a better term, abilities.  It's only a problem when they start stepping on other people's toes.  Back on the original BG forums I noted my affection for more thematically-limited casters, things more along the lines of Beguiler and Dread Necro, which would help stop things like the Druid from being able to simultaneously fill every conceivable role. 

[Kuroimaken]

...
Examples:
Good: Fighter can change planes by slicing a hole in the cosmos and stepping through. Crazy, but awesome and somehow conceivable.
Bad: Fighter kills everyone in a one-mile radius by looking cool since the wizard can already do the locate city bomb. Makes no sense, and exists purely to keep up with wizards.

As my earlier comments indicate, I don't even need the Fighter to slice holes in reality.  I guess I might be ok with a well thought-out "roles" or "archetypes" approaches.  I just need the Fighter to be (1) good at his bailiwick, and (2) that bailiwick or bailiwicks to be sufficiently central to the game. 

I find "fighter" to be a little too vague, so I'll hop back to my Knight example.  Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the Knight's role or archetype is to tank, so draw aggro and be able to take it, and dish out credible melee damage, not the most imaginable, but a lot.  Of course the PHB II Knight doesn't do this, but maybe the Tome one (or the Tome Fighter or Samurai) does.  And, maybe we'll throw some social skills on there to round him out. 

In a standard D&D game, where running around and murdering monsters is the chief thing people are doing (or at least that they are doing which they need a lot of mechanics to support), that archetype is good.  It might need some ways to deal with things that easily shut it down.  So, for example, he might need some way to shrug off magical effects by dint of will, ultra-awesome enchanted armor, the will of the gods, or skill.  This is my version of SneeR's "good" thing -- it's plausible given the description of the character, though potentially a really mechanically potent effect (viz. Iron Heart Surge).  If flight is common, then maybe he needs a credible ranged attack or a flying horse or something.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's inherently a problem that some classes/archetypes are more flexible or have more ... I don't know, fantastical for lack of a better term, abilities.  It's only a problem when they start stepping on other people's toes.  Back on the original BG forums I noted my affection for more thematically-limited casters, things more along the lines of Beguiler and Dread Necro, which would help stop things like the Druid from being able to simultaneously fill every conceivable role.

This seems particularly relevant and in keeping with I believe.

Maybe it's just that D&D is a little strict, mechanics-wise, on how much leeway your abilities have. The downside of the opposite approach, of course, being Pun-Pun.

[SneeR]

I feel as though bringing up Pun-Pun on these boards is the equivalent of other boards' bringing up Hitler...

"You know who was also a vegetarian?
Yeah, that's right.
Pun Pun.
Pun Pun was a vegetarian, you game-breaking jerk. Heil min/maxing!"

Too far? 

[Unbeliever]

...
What I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's inherently a problem that some classes/archetypes are more flexible or have more ... I don't know, fantastical for lack of a better term, abilities.  It's only a problem when they start stepping on other people's toes.  Back on the original BG forums I noted my affection for more thematically-limited casters, things more along the lines of Beguiler and Dread Necro, which would help stop things like the Druid from being able to simultaneously fill every conceivable role.

This seems particularly relevant and in keeping with I believe.

Maybe it's just that D&D is a little strict, mechanics-wise, on how much leeway your abilities have. The downside of the opposite approach, of course, being Pun-Pun.

Can you say more about what you mean?  I'm curious. 

I was thinking you might have something in mind along the lines of my earlier thoughts of comparing the Hulk to Green Lantern.  Take a game system like Mutants and Masterminds, my preferred superhero RPG.  Green Lantern's bag is he can do a whole mess of things.  He can fly, scan things, make green cuisinarts, whatever.  The Hulk is pretty much just big, strong, and tough.  But, both of those characters work fine in M&M.  I think, in part, b/c being big and strong covers a lot of ground there.  They have things like "power stunts" that would let you use your powers in creative ways, assuming you can sell the idea (viz., Hulk's classic thunderclap move). 

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Oo! derailed anticaster threads! I know what to do!

Dammit, just spent an hour on TVTropes. Spoiler those links! >.>

Best damn way to troll on the internet. You know you'll waste someone's time!

I hate to contradict, but I think that fast-acting, low-impact wizards would have been fine. However, when the designers decided to make spells that simply bypass normal play measures (like hitpoints), that is where everything went wrong.

This is... 100% correct. It's cool and all to have a hundred different ways to kill DnD characters ... but chances are mundanes won't be given a hundred different defenses. Hp? Now that is easy to balance.

Seriously the OP should just look at DotA. Casters are the weakest of the 3 architypes at high levels...

[veekie]

Ultimately, you can't really bring mundanes all the way up to the outer limits of casters, not without seriously stretching verisimilitude. You can do it partway, but remember also, mundanes come in martial and skill varieties. Unless you completely fuse the two archetypes, you have a problem here:
-Mundane
--Martial. Supposedly good when it comes to putting down enemies
--Skilled. Supposedly good when it comes to resolving non-combat situations
-Caster. Good at enemies, and incidentally can solve more situations than skill can.

So as discussed previously, you have the non-mutually exclusive ways of dealing with it:
Role exclusivity - More a game-side logic. As is, the game has little of it, casters can do anything skilled or martials can, but the reverse is not true.
Mechanical equality - Everyone resolves the conflict using the same set of base mechanics. This necessarily involves expanding status effects and utility effects such that mundanes can make use of them.
Power at a price - This WAS the model used in prior editions, until the limiters were removed. The caster can do things more effectively or differently from the other characters, but he takes a real cost to do so.

So I suggest a combination application:
-First, open up skilled characters capabilities, especially towards the upper end of the scale. They need to be able to expand the scope of challenges they can resolve using skills.

-Second, open up martial characters combat options. Status effects, battlefield alterations, means of targeting alternative defense can be provided.

-Third, Partially fuse 'skilled' and 'martial', a 1:2 ratio each side wouldn't go amiss, making them more well rounded

-Fourth, open up magic, give everyone access to minor magic. Common stat buffs, wards and healing charms, such are a staple in the mythic aspect of the division. The rationale is simple, everyone can do martial things to some extent, skill likewise, but magic is somehow exclusive. Martial or skill actions draw magic from the world itself. What else were the simple acts of hanging up a horseshoe(wasn't for luck, it was to ward off the faeries), throwing of salt(it banishes evil influences or reveals them), or even the brief prayers offered up to the gods?

-Fifth, split magic. You have the things that work on the same basic mechanics as the warriors and skilled types, these remain on combat speed and limitations as Low Magic. You have the things that ignore the basic mechanics, these become High Magic.
--Low Magic then would be largely weaker energy bolts, brief buffs and short term control effects, which you can fit into the schematic as the controller specification. Its relatively weak and intentionally so.
--High Magic have greater costs in personal sacrifice and time. Battle high magic would then be dealing in greatly increased casting time, vulnerability and fatigue. Non-combat high magic requires ritual, foci and offerings.

-Sixth, If everyone is equipment dependent, equalize it. Require focus items for spellcasting power, much like everyone else needs their tools to be at full effectiveness. At the same time make the others less tied to their gear, build bonuses into class chassis.

-Seventh, limit magical knowledge. It doesn't matter what magic can do. It matters what one character can do with magic. The arrays of spells available are ludicrous, no magi of myth actually know anywhere near as many spells as a 10th level wizard.

-Eighth, Theme. While you limit spell availability, the fact remains that you require a certain degree of flexibility. So you take the restrictions as fields of magical knowledge, and expand capabilities within them(ala psi augments). Generalist wizards are not a low level concept.

[SneeR]

I love the idea of forcing casters to choose a theme. Clerics need to justify how their spells deal with their deities domains. Casters need to pick a schtick and justify how everything relates to it, whether it be necromancies, blasting, transformations, healing, travel/steath, etc.

[Kuroimaken]

...
What I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's inherently a problem that some classes/archetypes are more flexible or have more ... I don't know, fantastical for lack of a better term, abilities.  It's only a problem when they start stepping on other people's toes.  Back on the original BG forums I noted my affection for more thematically-limited casters, things more along the lines of Beguiler and Dread Necro, which would help stop things like the Druid from being able to simultaneously fill every conceivable role.

This seems particularly relevant and in keeping with I believe.

Maybe it's just that D&D is a little strict, mechanics-wise, on how much leeway your abilities have. The downside of the opposite approach, of course, being Pun-Pun.

Can you say more about what you mean?  I'm curious. 

I was thinking you might have something in mind along the lines of my earlier thoughts of comparing the Hulk to Green Lantern.  Take a game system like Mutants and Masterminds, my preferred superhero RPG.  Green Lantern's bag is he can do a whole mess of things.  He can fly, scan things, make green cuisinarts, whatever.  The Hulk is pretty much just big, strong, and tough.  But, both of those characters work fine in M&M.  I think, in part, b/c being big and strong covers a lot of ground there.  They have things like "power stunts" that would let you use your powers in creative ways, assuming you can sell the idea (viz., Hulk's classic thunderclap move).

Your example pretty much approaches what I meant. Casters are more like the Green Lantern, whereas mundanes are a nerfed Hulk. But D&D has no such thing as power stunts, which means big and strong is limited to "You punch hard and break stuff easy, that's it."

[Prime32]

Here's something I saw on another board recently: www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12193029

Spells come in a wide variety with tightly-defined effects, right?
So mundane solutions, which come in a small variety, should have disassociated mechanics.

But wait, you say, surely disassociated mechanics are a bad thing?
Well, in this case you have to provide the description yourself on each use. You can do the same thing in multiple ways depending on the situation. If you want to attack a wizard on the other side of a wall of force you might say "I strike the ground, creating a tremor which passes under the wall and knocks him over" or "I shoot an arrow at something nearby and it ricochets to hit him". If you want to use a maneuver that causes blindness on something with tremorsense... yeah, hitting the ground works here too.

This could result in martial characters feeling significantly more epic, but it also brings in a lot of DM fiat. It's also hard on uncreative players, but an uncreative player wouldn't draw out the full power of a spellcaster either.

[Necrosnoop110]

Examples:
Good: Fighter can change planes by slicing a hole in the cosmos and stepping through. Crazy, but awesome and somehow conceivable.

Bad: Fighter kills everyone in a one-mile radius by looking cool since the wizard can already do the locate city bomb. Makes no sense, and exists purely to keep up with wizards.

I'm confused, the difference bewtween standard fighter to "sword slicing plane hopper" and the difference between standard fighter and "city bomb-fighter" seem fundamentally the same. Both plane hopping and city bombing seem to me to be completely disconnected from the game mechanics of the fighter, unless magic becomes involved. (Note: Obviously plane shifting is not as strong combat-wise as city bombing)

Peace,
Necro

[oslecamo]

This could result in martial characters feeling significantly more epic, but it also brings in a lot of DM fiat. It's also hard on uncreative players, but an uncreative player wouldn't draw out the full power of a spellcaster either.

Honestly, with the sheer amount of caster guides out there, you don't need one shred of creativity to unleash the fullpower of a spellcaster nowadays, or at least seriously mess up the campaign.

In the case of a druid, they'll be very hard pressed to mess up. Natural spell is hard to miss as it's a druid-only feat in core, they have a bunch of animal buffs,  and when they unlock wildshape with large size they'll wonder about turning into a bear or similar.

And personally speaking, it would just be kinda weird if magic works in a 99% predictabilit way, and nonmagic is something completely unpredictable and situational.

Anyway, magic needs to be nerfed. Like Veekie pointed out, a caster that can do everything is simply not a low level concept neither is it expected in fantasy. Popular mages are renowed for specializing in one or other field of study, and a mage that wants to have armies of undeads while teleporting trough planes and mind controling people and seeing the future should pay very very dearly for it, not have it as default options.

[Basket Burner]

Or you could play 3.5 instead of 4th edition. Just a thought.

[Unbeliever]

I love the idea of forcing casters to choose a theme. Clerics need to justify how their spells deal with their deities domains. Casters need to pick a schtick and justify how everything relates to it, whether it be necromancies, blasting, transformations, healing, travel/steath, etc.

I generally go for a theme with all my casters, just out of personal preference.  Although our fluff is pretty mutable.  We have played a few sessions of a game set in the Malazan setting, where players are entitled to pick a few "warrens" (you can google it, or I can post our campaign guide document if you like), which define their themes.  It's worked well.  It also has the side benefit of making spellcasters easier to make -- you've got a heuristic for limiting the spells you should be looking at. 

Honestly, with the sheer amount of caster guides out there, you don't need one shred of creativity to unleash the fullpower of a spellcaster nowadays, or at least seriously mess up the campaign.

In the case of a druid, they'll be very hard pressed to mess up. Natural spell is hard to miss as it's a druid-only feat in core, they have a bunch of animal buffs,  and when they unlock wildshape with large size they'll wonder about turning into a bear or similar.

I think this is a really important point.  It takes a lot of optimization to make a God Wizard -- not so much in the question of build (wizard 20 is probably sufficient, if not necessarily ideal).  But, at the level of spells chosen, when to cast them, and so on.  I have found that with a lot of optimization as well, you can make "mundane" characters, which I'll just blanket define as non-full casters, that can easily keep up with any reasonably-optimized caster.  And, I'm happy to see that we're going to be putting together similar handbooks for those builds. 

The fact that you can make such builds is a big part of why, despite all the caster v. non-caster threads I participate in, I happily play 3.5.  I feel that I can make pretty much any concept viable, and even tailor it to a particular play-style, especially with a house rule or two. 

P.S.:  I notice that no one since the OP has really defended the OP's point.  We're mostly talking about mechanics idiosyncratic to D&D. 

[veekie]

Examples:
Good: Fighter can change planes by slicing a hole in the cosmos and stepping through. Crazy, but awesome and somehow conceivable.

Bad: Fighter kills everyone in a one-mile radius by looking cool since the wizard can already do the locate city bomb. Makes no sense, and exists purely to keep up with wizards.

I'm confused, the difference bewtween standard fighter to "sword slicing plane hopper" and the difference between standard fighter and "city bomb-fighter" seem fundamentally the same. Both plane hopping and city bombing seem to me to be completely disconnected from the game mechanics of the fighter, unless magic becomes involved. (Note: Obviously plane shifting is not as strong combat-wise as city bombing)

He means granting the fighter a completely unrelated ability(to automatically win combats) as a means of compensating for a lack of ability(the highly valued ability to cross planes). The granted ability is overpowered, yet in no way actually improve the fighter's lack.

It also has the side benefit of making spellcasters easier to make -- you've got a heuristic for limiting the spells you should be looking at. 

Definitely a plus, theres just so many spells to filter through(and a ton of them are rather limp wristed blast spells in new flavors).

So, the most popular nerf would probably be to tighten spell access(wizard spell learning is slightly absurd for mythic magi, and then the divine casters access would be giving them stuff even their own gods wouldn't normally be doing) and theme control, followed by enhancing melee then?

Thoughts on the magic division of High and Low? Obviously long cast time High combat magic requires a revision of Rocket Tag, else you'd never get the spell off.

[RobbyPants]

I feel as though bringing up Pun-Pun on these boards is the equivalent of other boards' bringing up Hitler...

"You know who was also a vegetarian?
Yeah, that's right.
Pun Pun.
Pun Pun was a vegetarian, you game-breaking jerk. Heil min/maxing!"

Too far? 

I'd sig this, but I'm limited to 5 lines. I put it in the forum quotes instead.

[RobbyPants]

I love the idea of forcing casters to choose a theme. Clerics need to justify how their spells deal with their deities domains. Casters need to pick a schtick and justify how everything relates to it, whether it be necromancies, blasting, transformations, healing, travel/steath, etc.

I like this idea a lot. I've been making a few niche casters with the same base chassis as the beguiler/dread necro/warmage for a while. It seems to be the fastest way to help bridge the gap. It lets you

1) Keep them from being able to do everything and

2) lets you prune spells you'd like to simply ban in the first place.