Huh? How does Polymorph, Teleport, or Shadow Walk break the game world reality more than laser eyes? I don't get it.
Darqueseid, you seem to be eliding between breaking the rules assumptions -- what most people refer to as "broken" -- and breaking "reality." And, it's highly unclear what you mean by the latter. Further, you'd be hard-pressed to find any such abilities that a Tier 1 character has at level 1.
Are you trying to make the following comparison? Look at Fireball. It does what it says it does. And, that might be good or bad, but it's readily discernible the extent of Fireball's power. Contrast Fireball with Polymorph, though. Polymorph's effects are tremendous, and it sort of shifts the mechanics paradigm into another level b/c it means that players get to go hunting through monster manuals. Lots of unanticipated interactions, and so on.
That being said, the "breaking the game's rules" heuristic isn't helpful at all. Celerity and Synchronicity are badass b/c they break the action economy. But, Polymorph, Solid Fog, Evard's Black Tentacles, Shivering Touch ... and so on aren't. Further, a great many feats pretty much have the structure of "you get to break the rules in this particular way" (e.g., Cleave, Combat Reflexes), and that doesn't explain why they are generally weaker than the above list of effects.
Think of it this way, fighter (at any level) is always going to be at the whims of the story. he can't hit anything if the DM doesn't put a monster in front of him, he can't use his abilities if the story doesn't merit it. Even the feats that he gets let him break the rules of combat etc, but they don't let him break reality-they have their own rules, they don't really give him any open-ended abilities.
A wizard can really
become the story. He can break reality in such a way that the DM couldn't really kill him without heavy hand waving and being unrealistic about it (especially a conjurer with abrupt jaunt).
But, Polymorph, Solid Fog, Evard's Black Tentacles, Shivering Touch ... and so on aren't.
Are you saying they "aren't badass period" or are you saying that the above aren't badass because they don't break action economy?
Either way your sort of touching on what I was saying,
lets say a level 5 wizard with only blasting spells and no reality breaking abilities were put against a level 5 fighter in terms of balance.
I would venture to say that the fighter doesn't totally suck placed against such a wizard.
Blasting spells are considered the suck for spellcasters, because again, these are abilities that are rooted in reality. fireball does a rote amount of hp damage it doesn't cause lasting effects etc etc and it doesn't do enough damage when there are save or dies/sucks out there at the same or earlier levels.
The really "powerful" spells for spellcasters are the save or sucks/dies, buffs that are way too powerful (like polymorph) and things that break the action economy. All of these spells alter reality in some way often in unexpected ways.
a level one wizard can put multiple enemies to sleep, can summon other creatures to help him, make creatures flee, etc etc etc...
these are things that change the combat in ways that a fighter just cant, strictly from a numbers point of view sleep can put 4 1hd creatures out of commission in one round, a level 1 fighter has little hope of killing more than one creature a round barring some extremely fortuitous circumstances.
don't get me wrong I think there should be feats and character options that would let the fighter do things that are on par with the wizard, I just think the designers didn't put that in. There's no combination of feats that a fighter can get that would let him dimension door for example, or change into a demon.. his only means of attack is targeting one ablative defense on an enemy, HPS. he never breaks out of that standard
Fighters usually suck because only the last point of damage to kill a creature will actually change the fight dynamics. Those fighters that suck less are the ones that can change things up with stuff that will quickly and reliably deny the opponents the ability or opportunity to do what they want, before becoming dead of course.
Exactly what I'm getting at. The fighter cannot generally change combat (reality) in a meaningful way until he deals that last hp of damage. Whereas a wizard can change combat over 3x as effectively as the fighter can. And that difference multiplier scales up exponentially as they level.
