What nice things should melees get? (3.5/3.P)

[Chemus]

It's an understood rule that melees can't have nice things.

So I'm going to make a list of things that melees can get. Then I'll try to make a useful way to implement it. Please feel free to contribute.

Wish List:
Regeneration
Fast healing
Damage Reduction
Energy Resistance
Spell Resistance (!!!)
Spell absorption/reflection
Add status effect to target(s) (there are a few, but they need more)
Increased movement: rate and types

Edit: I mean for these things to be inherent in a class or feats or skill trick. Races can fit a little, but items should be out, for the most part.

Martial maneuvers may already cover the status effects, and perhaps there are more things under heaven etc...

[Chemus]

Holding for completed methods for the above list.

Done with holding posts. (Just want the one.)

[Solo]

Monks get three of those

[Chemus]

Damned OP monks! They should get more...

[RobbyPants]

Mobility and plot-hax tend to be two things they really lack at higher levels. These are the things that casters just tend to innately do, and the fighters require caster friends to even participate.

Now, I'm not so much trying a shameless plug here, but the Shadow Blade I made was created with that sort of stuff in mind. It mostly allows you to play like a normal melee guy but without worrying so much about range. It's sort of missing the plot-hax at this point, but might do better if I ever put those divinations in...

[dman11235]

It's not that melees don't/can't get nice things, it's that the things they get are negated or over shadowed by magic.  You will not be able to fix anything by just giving the melees these things, all that will do is overpower melees, ironically, since they have what they already have and what casters do.  Or, you'll make another Monk, with a bunch of useless, incompatible abilities.  No, what needs to happen is that the melees must be able to get abilities that make them still relevant.  This absolutely requires casters that aren't as universally powerful.  You can get this done by making casters weaker through various means (casting times, weaker spells, components, whatever) or by making monsters stronger against magic (and not stronger against mundanes) through various means (better SR, better saves, better magic defense mechanics in SR and saves, etc.).  Then with mundanes, you make them able to do things casters just can't do.  Make skills a more valuable part of the game (think about low levels where Climb, Jump, Swim, etc. are all actually possibly useful).  Give mundanes abilities that let them control the battlefield as well (Crusader.......).  Give mundanes abilities that let them move around the battlefield like experts, rather than BSFs (Swordsages......).  Give mundanes abilities that let them so superhuman feats of endurance and power at high levels, like they actually are super humans and not mooks (Warblades......).

Alternatively, you could just plaay F&K's Tomes where everyone's a caster even the mundanes.  That also works.

[Garryl]

Mobility and plot-hax tend to be two things they really lack at higher levels. These are the things that casters just tend to innately do, and the fighters require caster friends to even participate.

Now, I'm not so much trying a shameless plug here, but the Shadow Blade I made was created with that sort of stuff in mind. It mostly allows you to play like a normal melee guy but without worrying so much about range. It's sort of missing the plot-hax at this point, but might do better if I ever put those divinations in...

What kinds of "plot-hax" abilities are there? Divination, long range teleportation, and plane shifting are some of the ones that get talked about frequently, along with planar binding on occasion (although for different reasons). What else is there?

[RobbyPants]

What kinds of "plot-hax" abilities are there? Divination, long range teleportation, and plane shifting are some of the ones that get talked about frequently, along with planar binding on occasion (although for different reasons). What else is there?

A lot of magical stuff could count. When I say "plot hax", I'm really referring to stuff that either has a huge effect on the plot in ways that mundane stuff usually wouldn't, or stuff that interacts with the game in ways the DM frequently doesn't expect. I doubt this is close to an exhaustive list, but it could include:

• Divination (often seriously shortens adventures or makes fights much easier)
• Charms (may ruin plots by turning enemies into allies)
• Illusions (I'll throw these in here just because they're so open-ended in their potential effects)
• Teleportation (long range, or through solid objects. Works very well with Scrying to kill the BBEG and/or grab the McGuffin while bypassing the entire adventure).
• Contingency (immediately responding to things in ways the DM doesn't expect)
• Physics-breakers (stuff like Shrink Item, Bags of Holding, and various things that create stuff from nothing can be used to crazy effect if using even a quasi-real interpretation for how they would work with physics).

Of those, the class has teleportation and divination (if I ever get around to assigning those two abilities levels). Most of the rest is defensive, crowd controlling, or utility abilities, neither of which I'd call plot hax, but are still nice additions for an otherwise martial character.


Edit:
I should probably clarify: a lot of the above abilities tend to frustrate DMs. This is typically because they tend to run adventures with a "low level" mentality on what expectations are from the PCs. This can be solved by not using low level material and planning accordingly, for the most part. For example, expecting that PCs will charm people for information and do scry-and-die ambushes can make it easier to design encounters for those tactics. Making dungeons without a clear "ending" that require exploration can save a lot of grief as well.

Of course, the more "high level" the DM pitches the adventures, the more and more the fighter will have trouble participating. He suddenly is either begging the wizard for buffs to participate, or his player runs off and plays Smash Bros while the casters do all the leg work, and comes back to the table when the combat music starts playing. This is why I think they should have more plot hax type abilities (and mobility for non-2D fights).

[Prime32]

Mundanes should get "screw you, action economy" abilities, moreso than casters. Like nonmagical celerity, adding your fighter level to initiative checks, etc. (at every 5th fighter level, you get an iterative turn). Also throw in the Knowledge affiliation's powers to identify enemy abilities and disable them.

At high levels martialists should also be able to sunder spells, jump miles in a single bound, fight with their eyes closed, read peoples' personalities from their fighting styles, alter the terrain with their attacks, charge through spheres of annihilation without dying, and so on.

[Chemus]

My hope is not a fighter rewrite, but a set of feats or other abilities that can be added to characters, but that assist mundane combat and skills more than spellcasting. Perhaps I'm going at this backwards; should I be looking at ways to make it easier for melee's to be casters? Would doing this make it too individually focused, rather than team oriented?

Prime32's ideas are easiest to address:
Iterative 'turns'/Celerity, etc.: Definitely; feats that give pounce, or better, full attacks as a standard action, should happen. Let's try to keep away from extra actions that would let casters do more casting, though. (Again, perhaps I'm 'hating' too much on casting here...)

Scaling bonuses to anything (Initiative was his example); yes. I'll have to look at ToB more for that; Initiator Level roughly equates to a Caster Level for 'mundanes'.

Super stuff; yes, these things are what I was hoping to do. ToB likely does some/most of it already.

Dman11235: You're right; powering up fighters/mundanes will be problematic without fixing casters. My goal is to make it so that a character or group w/o any casters is viable through perhaps lvl 15-16. Without having large amounts of optimization. Fast healing, DR, SR etc. are what I'm trying to add to make mundanes have fewer binary defenses and the ability to recover from failures of their defenses without casters fixing them. Really, maybe I'm just thinking about this wrong, but that's the intent.

RobbyPants:

Mobility: most definitely yes. Super jump , zippy-fast movement, climb speeds, swim speeds, slow fall and even flight are where I'm looking to go. Looking at monk (without nausea!) and increasing the scale of his abilities could be one way to start increasing mobility for 'mundanes.' Mobility is the greatest need that non-casters have to fill at higher levels.

Some "Plot-hax" seem OK for 'mundane' characters. Mind reading, fear effects, short-range teleportation (d-door), clairvoyance/scrying all seem to be OK for mundanes. The shrink item, long-range TP, extradimensional stuff is a definite maybe. Invisibility/untouchability (Gaseous Form, Etherealness, Wraithstrike) are desirable.

Now, after thinking about it some, I know that characters can't exist in a vacuum; teamwork is really the crux of D&D's design. However, since casters can usually spend their resources (Summoning/Calling meatwalls/trap springers, knock, etc.) to play without mundanes, the reverse should be true as well. Just as in the case with casters, having another player providing that support should be better than doing it yourself, but you should be able to function passably well alone.

[Prime32]

Prime32's ideas are easiest to address:
Iterative 'turns'/Celerity, etc.: Definitely; feats that give pounce, or better, full attacks as a standard action, should happen. Let's try to keep away from extra actions that would let casters do more casting, though. (Again, perhaps I'm 'hating' too much on casting here...)

How to solve this: give full casters (i.e. wizards but not bards or paladins) a minimum casting time of 1 round.

Some "Plot-hax" seem OK for 'mundane' characters. Mind reading, fear effects, short-range teleportation (d-door), clairvoyance/scrying all seem to be OK for mundanes. The shrink item, long-range TP, extradimensional stuff is a definite maybe. Invisibility/untouchability (Gaseous Form, Etherealness, Wraithstrike) are desirable.

Try also retroactive stuff along the lines of Uncanny Forethought. If you want to be Batman then you don't have to declare the contents of your utility belt, and can just declare that it contains whatever you need.

[Garryl]

Prime32's ideas are easiest to address:
Iterative 'turns'/Celerity, etc.: Definitely; feats that give pounce, or better, full attacks as a standard action, should happen. Let's try to keep away from extra actions that would let casters do more casting, though. (Again, perhaps I'm 'hating' too much on casting here...)

How to solve this: give full casters (i.e. wizards but not bards or paladins) a minimum casting time of 1 round.

Given that mundanes only use standard action singular attacks (for the most part, barring Monks and TWFers) until level 6, I've always wanted to suggest standard actions for most level 1-3 spells and full-round for level 4+ spells, maybe even 1 round (or more) for level 7+ spells. More powerful magic taking longer to cast has been in 1st and 2nd edition, numerous other games (such as Final Fantasy and even World of Warcraft), and plenty of literature. It's actually surprising that it was removed in 3rd edition, now that I think about it.

[Jackinthegreen]

Making skills mean something would be one good thing, I agree.  Since it's decently established that 6th level or so is the pinnacle of normal human ability, things past that should definitely be more powerful.  Climb, Jump, and Swim could all use boosts both in terms of numbers as well as uses.  Various epic skill uses should be lowered a bit since that also ties in with "melee don't get nices things until epic, and even then they kinda suck."

[FlaminCows]

What PF and 4e did with Jump, Climb, and Swim was merge them into Athletics, thus creating one skill with three times as many uses as j/c/s each had individually. Probably the best approach for those skills, all things considered.

[dman11235]

That's the first step.  The second step is making them useful past level 3.  Although I already to a skill condensation, I haven't fixed all of them yet, since things like Athletics don't matter past low levels still.

[FlaminCows]

That's true, I suppose. It certainly is hard to justify climbing or jumping when flying is possible, and sooner or later that's in reach for anybody. Swim is highly situational, and the DCs are pretty low except for things like swimming up a waterfall — which, while awesome, is in the same boat as climbing: you can just fly up anyway. I don't think there really can be a fix for that. You could perhaps make flight achievable through an Athletics check, although all you would have done is raise the line for where players stop spending skill points on it — the line would still be there. All it would do, really, is save them some GP.

The truth is, there are very few skills that could be considered "major" abilities of the character. It just isn't what skills were made for. They're there either to enable your class features or to cover the things that people want to get but are too minor or situational to contribute to power in any meaningful way. I don't think skills are the way to give the warriors their power levels, because its pretty clear that that isn't what skills are for.

[Chemus]

Actually, I'm going to put 'Re-pricing items' up for consideration. Mundanes using items like wings of flying, boots of teleportation and medallions of thoughts are much easier to swallow for most people. Rather than pricing the damned spells into an item, take the power and give it a 'level' and price by that level.

Additionally, perhaps have items actually get more powerful with levels. Perhaps base it off of BAB or IL.

Huh? Huh? 

[FlaminCows]

The thing is, those are the same sorts of items everybody uses, not just melee characters. I don't think changing their prices would have any serious affect on the power disparity. If everybody can get teleport for cheap, all that would mean is that spellcasters buy the item and use their precious spell slots and spells known on something else, and they'd be ahead of melee characters by exactly as much as before.

I think what really needs to be examined is the very concept of a "mundane character". The truth is, high-level D&D characters are far from mundane, spellcaster or no. Yes, some people have difficulty swallowing that, but it is just a fact of the tier. You can jump over a building, swim through lava, bench-press a cathedral, kill a dragon with your bare hands (unbelievable, isn't it?) all without casting a single spell. Its just that by the time you can do that, the spellcasters can do it too but in less time with less risk, and they can do a whole lot of other things besides. Yes, many people don't like the superhero theme, but the answer to that is to not play high-level D&D, as calling yourself a "mundane hero" at that point is wilful ignorance.

What I'm saying is, at some point in the progression you should just start giving everyone magic because that's what they are. You don't need them to depend on items, as everybody gets items.

[Prime32]

That's true, I suppose. It certainly is hard to justify climbing or jumping when flying is possible, and sooner or later that's in reach for anybody. Swim is highly situational, and the DCs are pretty low except for things like swimming up a waterfall — which, while awesome, is in the same boat as climbing: you can just fly up anyway. I don't think there really can be a fix for that. You could perhaps make flight achievable through an Athletics check, although all you would have done is raise the line for where players stop spending skill points on it — the line would still be there. All it would do, really, is save them some GP.

Try adding your ranks in Athletics as a bonus to your speed, rounded down to the nearest 5ft.

[InnaBinder]

Let Weapon Focus and the rest of that line speed up the rate at which iteratives are gained, so that Weapon Focus makes it 1 in 4 (rather than 1 in 5), Greater Weapon Focus makes it 1 in 3, and Weapon Mastery makes it 1 in 2.  This boosts an otherwise crappy feat-chain (and possibly provides additional benefits to TWF-fanboys) that's nearly fighter-specific, and hearkens back to earlier editions, where only the fighters could get multiple attacks.