Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[The Ugly One]

A bit off topic, but I saw a discussion on Discord recently about dedicated healers. Basically complaining that in certain systems, healing is worthless because enemy damage output always outstrips healing in the long run. People try to explain that it's a design choice to stop infinate combat or stop the party from being unkillable, but they don't like that answer.

Similar discussion happened about a dedicated tank. Complaining that only paladins can do it. People try to explain you can go full armour fighter or other builds like a high dodge monk or a high con barbarian. But they aren't "pure" tanks.

It feels like a MMO way of looking at RPGs.

It is, and it's stupid because you don't stand there and drain massive health bars. Even the toughest enemies die in 3-4 rounds. The purpose of healing is to allow you to survive combat, and it does that.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

Quests/plots in my games always have multiple solutions. Maybe the REAL Amulet of Funkytown were all the friends and sick dance moves you learned along the way and the real power to defeat Count Funkenstein, Lord of the Bat Dance was inside the party bard the whole time.

Unironically would be a funny one-shot. "Step Up" the campaign.

 

[Ghostse]

It is, and it's stupid because you don't stand there and drain massive health bars. Even the toughest enemies die in 3-4 rounds. The purpose of healing is to allow you to survive combat, and it does that.

Survive combat, negate negative effects to keep you in combat, and speed recovery after combat.
If heals are being spammed you've done something wrong.

 

[Quintus]

Similar discussion happened about a dedicated tank. Complaining that only paladins can do it. People try to explain you can go full armour fighter or other builds like a high dodge monk or a high con barbarian. But they aren't "pure" tanks.

It feels like a MMO way of looking at RPGs.

I don't blame people for attempting to apply what's familiar to another game. In my opinion, you can go into a ttrpg with this mindset providing you use it as a starting point for what you want your character to do. If you want to be a "tank " you can sort be one, but you have remember that the game you're playing operates differently than an MMO. The biggest thing to remember is that, the DM ultimately determines who is attacking what. So it helps to know how they target things. But you don't really have any control over that. So what can you do yourself?

There's no taunting here. There are some spells like "Compelled Duel." But those are not only extremely rare, they aren't guaranteed to even work. Doing lot of damage is a start. Generally, if big armored man is a menace on the battlefield, it's only a matter of time before someone decides to try and gang up on him.

From here you're going to need to get creative. It's hard for the enemy beat up on your weak little friends if they can't get to them. The shove action can be used to put somebody on the ground. Standing up is going to take half that enemy's speed. Grappling sucks in 5e. But it still forces the target to break the grapple or not move. Don't forget the environment. If there's a pond nearby, shove or drag them into it. Unless they have a swim speed, they're going to be moving slower until they get out. If you can cast spells or use abilities that slow or stop your targets, that works too.

This is clearly written with 5e in mind as that's what I have the most experience playing. But I think most of these can be applied to a variety of different systems.

 

[p1138]

From here you're going to need to get creative. It's hard for the enemy beat up on your weak little friends if they can't get to them. The shove action can be used to put somebody on the ground. Standing up is going to take half that enemy's speed. Grappling sucks in 5e. But it still forces the target to break the grapple or not move. Don't forget the environment. If there's a pond nearby, shove or drag them into it. Unless they have a swim speed, they're going to be moving slower until they get out. If you can cast spells or use abilities that slow or stop your targets, that works too.

This is clearly written with 5e in mind as that's what I have the most experience playing. But I think most of these can be applied to a variety of different systems.

Sure, but the problem with this is that the most effective character to be doing this stuff, especially potentially to multiple enemies at a time is the wizard/sorcerer. This would be for more than 5e because it's lacking in some spells compared to past editions but...
create pit, slow, spike growth, grease, just about any wall spell, some illusion spells that can affect more than 1 target(color spray, hypnotic pattern, etc.) can all affect multiple targets either directly or indirectly while the "tank" still doesn't have a means to actually force anything to attack it instead of anyone else in the party. You can make an argument for a "tank" taunting an intelligent creature by talking shit(if a player is trying to taunt an NPC and comes up with a good enough line may as well let it work for a bit) but that's not a guarantee of anything, wouldn't work on unintelligent creatures, and probably shouldn't have an effect on really smart creatures either.

There's a reason why "geek the mage" is a thing, and unless the group of players are idiots, they're probably also thinking the same thing when it comes to a group of enemies. I get what you're saying, there's stuff that a fighter can try to do, but a caster can still do a better job at a distance even. Even in pathfinder 1, the tetori monk(or any of the other grapple builds) is still doing a better job than a normal fighter type class at controlling enemies(but still gets made useless by a freedom of movement effect).

 

[The Ugly One]

The reason monsters don't want to ignore the Fighter is he's kicking the shit out of them.

 

[Corn Flakes]

From here you're going to need to get creative. It's hard for the enemy beat up on your weak little friends if they can't get to them. The shove action can be used to put somebody on the ground. Standing up is going to take half that enemy's speed. Grappling sucks in 5e. But it still forces the target to break the grapple or not move. Don't forget the environment. If there's a pond nearby, shove or drag them into it. Unless they have a swim speed, they're going to be moving slower until they get out. If you can cast spells or use abilities that slow or stop your targets, that works too.

A Fighter's two best friends are another Fighter (or a Paladin) and a 10-foot wide corridor. Can't get to the squishies in the back line if you have two angry bank vaults with sharp sticks hitting you really hard every time you come close.

 

[Rick Nekieta]

There has always been a class that was good at offense but top at defense and a class that was top at offense while still being good at defense. The idea that "one party holds all the aggro for multiple rounds" came with the MMO. The idea of a distracter creating a window for another to capitalize on precedes the MMO (I'll start the attack so you can get a series of backstabs in or I'll start the attack to group them up for a spell are tactics that predate the MMO) but the idea of a tank over time was only made possible with low functioning A.I. level of thinking and is very inorganic. This kind of thinking works good for a blitz, but is lousy for an extended fight.

 

[p1138]

The reason monsters don't want to ignore the Fighter is he's kicking the shit out of them.

As opposed to the evocation wizard that's likely doing as much or more damage, or the rogue backstabbing and getting sneak attack damage? It sure as hell isn't a fighter, a paladin with smite is going to be doing more than a fighter.

Just sticking with 5th edition, a fighter gets their 2nd attack at what, lvl 5 plus action surge once per rest? Even a firebolt from a wizard is doing 2d10 at that point and it can be spammed all day due to being a cantrip and still has the rest of their spell list to choose from for an aoe, area or monster control, etc. The fighter isn't kicking the shit out of anything unless your adventure consists of nothing but 5' wide hallways. Even at lvl 11 when a fighter can do 3 attacks plus 2 action surges before a rest(I think?) the wizard is now doing 3d10 single target with again just a cantrip and of course now has even more evocation spells available for damage, debuffs, or area/monster control.

And that doesn't get any better going to something like 3.5 or pf where the cantrips don't scale because then the wizard ends up with more spells to be using anyway with the swordswinger doing even less if they didn't start taking a bunch of feats that aren't always going to be applicable.

Even in 5e this still happens, the only thing that changes between editions of D&D and its clones is when that crossover occurs, and it's usually pretty damned early. And even if the damage output or other effectiveness between the caster and fighter is equal, it still makes more sense for an intelligent creature to identify the squishier target and take it out first to cut the output of the party quicker during combat. If a fighter actually had abilities to force the attention to be on them(like threat mechanics in an MMO), it could work, but they don't.

 

[The Ugly One]

As opposed to the evocation wizard that's likely doing as much or more damage

Fighters out-damage evocation wizards on single targets, especially if one of the party casters is smart enough to realize how beneficial an Advantage-granting effects are for Fighters. Paladins even more so.

Just sticking with 5th edition, a fighter gets their 2nd attack at what, lvl 5 plus action surge once per rest? Even a firebolt from a wizard is doing 2d10 at that point

Firebolt is about half as powerful as a Fighter dual-attack:

Firebolt: 2d20, min 2, max 20, average 11
Duelist Fighter: 2x(d8 + 7), min 16, max 30, average 23

This is aside from the fact that it hits less often due to the wizard generally taking more penalties and getting fewer bonuses on his to-hit rolls than melee characters.

Here is a realstic scenario. Duelist Fighter has a +1 sword, Wizard is shooting Firebolt, but the Fighter is in the way, or maybe another monster is, so he has a -2 penalty. Here are the "at least" damage curves.



Here's what happens if the Wizard is a bro and knocks the monster down with Grease:



And of course, Great Weapon fighters do even more damage. "But what about when nobody's in the way, and the Druid hits the monster with Faerie Fire?" Glad you asked. Fighter's still about 2x better.



Nothing wrong with Firebolt. But it's about half what a Fighter does in the best of times.

EDIT: Slightly off because I fucked up the crit code, fixed now.

 

[ZMOT]

If a fighter actually had abilities to force the attention to be on them(like threat mechanics in an MMO), it could work, but they don't.

pf2 kinda fixed that, fighter is the only one starting out with AoO and expert proficiency, with tools to get around fast.
you don't taunt the enemy and magically he sticks to you, you get close and he either deals with you (out of necessity) or gets fucked up.

 

[p1138]

Fighters out-damage evocation wizards on single targets, especially if one of the party casters is smart enough to realize how beneficial an Advantage-granting effects are for Fighters. Paladins even more so.



Firebolt is about half as powerful as a Fighter dual-attack:

Firebolt: 2d20, min 2, max 20, average 11
Duelist Fighter: 2x(d8 + 7), min 16, max 30, average 23

This is aside from the fact that it hits less often due to the wizard generally taking more penalties and getting fewer bonuses on his to-hit rolls than melee characters.

Here is a realstic scenario. Duelist Fighter has a +1 sword, Wizard is shooting Firebolt, but the Fighter is in the way, or maybe another monster is, so he has a -2 penalty. Here are the "at least" damage curves. Note that a third of the time, roughly, the Fighter does over 20 damage. The Wizard beats 20 damage less than 5% of the time.

View attachment 7065363

Here's what happens if the Wizard is a bro and knocks the monster down with Grease:

View attachment 7065377

And of course, Great Weapon fighters do even more damage. "But what about when nobody's in the way, and the Druid hits the monster with Faerie Fire?" Glad you asked. Fighter's still about 2x better.

View attachment 7065387

Nothing wrong with Firebolt. But it's about half what a Fighter does in the best of times.

Ok, but you're still forgetting something with this. First, I pointed out that the wizard has more available than firebolt(including running down a list of fairly common spells in a previous post). Second, it's still damage output from the party that can be stopped quicker than trying to kill the fighter if the NPC being attacked actually has any intellect and can use logic. Third, it goes out the window in a combat that isn't just against a single opponent. The wizard using their entire available arsenal is going to be doing more than the fighter using their action surge. The fact that you pointed out the wizard knocking down the opponent with grease is just more reason to want to take out the caster. And that's not even considering silly shit in 5e like a wizard running around with a horde of skeleton archers under their control(and still spamming firebolt).

pf2 kinda fixed that, fighter is the only one starting out with AoO and expert proficiency, with tools to get around fast.
you don't taunt the enemy and magically he sticks to you, you get close and he either deals with you (out of necessity) or gets fucked up.

Sure, but again only applies in a single opponent scenario and assumes that the enemy also has no movement options including even just the ability to weigh eating an AoO and moving to take out the back line(unless you're only ever playing in 5' corridors), or just stand there and deal with the fighter.

Damage output is not "tanking" unless the DM is treating all of the NPCs like idiots and most systems don't give a fighter the tools to actually do anything resembling tanking. It especially doesn't work when the NPC needs to consider that a party member can wiggle their fingers and warp the fabric of reality.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

I think a lot of DMs let their party rest way too often which only widens the gap between martials and casters.

The wizard should have to carefully ration his spell slots while the fighter can swing his swords all day.

 

[ZMOT]

Sure, but again only applies in a single opponent scenario and assumes that the enemy also has no movement options including even just the ability to weigh eating an AoO and moving to take out the back line(unless you're only ever playing in 5' corridors), or just stand there and deal with the fighter.

Damage output is not "tanking" unless the DM is treating all of the NPCs like idiots and most systems don't give a fighter the tools to actually do anything resembling tanking. It especially doesn't work when the NPC needs to consider that a party member can wiggle their fingers and warp the fabric of reality.

"eating an AoO" is a nice term for dying, since anything that's a move or manipulate (like attacking another char at range or trying to wiggle their fingers) means there's a good chance eating a crit, after level 5 with a funny crit effect on top. equip a shield and raise it on your third action and you're basically unkillable. meanwhile you can look at another guy funny and he'll shit his pants hard enough to get a penalty.
"tanking" just means having the enemy deal with you first, one way or another.

unless you're massively outnumbered there are usually other 3 blokes being able to deal with the rest, either stalling/killing some of them on their own or long enough for you to charge around and fuck things up, even on a completely flat area without any cover.

 

[p1138]

"eating an AoO" is a nice term for dying, since anything that's a move or manipulate (like attacking another char at range or trying to wiggle their fingers) means there's a good chance eating a crit, after level 5 with a funny crit effect on top. equip a shield and raise it on your third action and you're basically unkillable. meanwhile you can look at another guy funny and he'll shit his pants hard enough to get a penalty.
"tanking" just means having the enemy deal with you first, one way or another.

unless you're massively outnumbered there are usually other 3 blokes being able to deal with the rest, either stalling/killing some of them on their own or long enough for you to charge around and fuck things up, even on a completely flat area without any cover.

If it's an encounter with enemies actually dangerous enough to need to be controlled(held in place with a tank, magic, whatever), at that point they shouldn't be at risk of dying from one crit due to an AoO. If that were the case, then it sounds like a boring encounter that was going to end quickly no matter what anyway. Now we're down to be needing to "tank" for 1-2 round encounters? Come on...

 

[Brain Problems]

All good GMs save their players from the results of their retardation if the results of their retardation wouldn't be fun. Yeah okay, whatever, you get to find the Amulet of Funkytown in this other Funkytown instead because you were SO FUCKING DUMB you missed it where it was supposed to be.

No you see my group loves when they can't read my mind or don't understand things and miss a secret door or can't find a treasure and the game goes off the rails completely and they wander aimlessly while I chuckle smugly to myself and mutter, 'Consequences of your actions...' under my breath. By the way I'm in-between groups, coincidentally.

The counterpoint is if the active threat to the players simply has a goal of "hit them at their most vulnerable point in the next week, wherever that happens to be" the "quantum ogre" becomes a "quantum assault squad" which actually makes sense. If your villain has acquired certain information and intends to ambush the party at position A, if it is feasible that he learns that they adjusted course, he can change his own plans and have them ambushed at position B, which might be a more favorable, less favorable or equally favorable scenario from his point of view. If the villain is somehow aware that the players changed course, it makes sense that the hit squad would change course. But, at the end of the day, we are all guilty of a clandestine secret adjustment here and there.

My boss at location A might have a shield ring that I intend the players to acquire, but if they adjust course to location B, that shield ring might show up on a similarly powered boss at location B.

Vaguely related I guess but this is something I wish I could go back and do better in my CoS campaign of really laying into the "take care of certain problems at certain times or else deal with fallout related to it". Players (myself included) really enjoy feeling like the world is responding to their actions via knock-on effects from decisions, good and bad. I cannot recommend to DMs enough to let players feel like things have happened because of them but it's a matter of taste I guess, like most things.

Quests/plots in my games always have multiple solutions. Maybe the REAL Amulet of Funkytown were all the friends and sick dance moves you learned along the way and the real power to defeat Count Funkenstein, Lord of the Bat Dance was inside the party bard the whole time.

I think @Ghostse has written before a decent little multiple choice puzzle/problem solution thing that I can't remember/dig up but I liked. Everyone gets a chance to feel special and players don't end up stuck in one place because BLEEP BLOOP ERROR, INPUT NOT RECOGNISED.

 

[The Ugly One]

Ok, but you're still forgetting something with this. First, I pointed out that the wizard has more available than firebolt(including running down a list of fairly common spells in a previous post).

I'm not forgetting anything. You tried to compare Firebolt to an ability that's literally 2x as powerful. The reality is the Fighter, at will, wallops you twice as hard as the Wizard does (and you listed control spells, not damage spells). I'm quite aware the Wizard excels at AoE damage, control, and buff/debuff. For damage on a single target? Fighter's far and away superior.

The wizard using their entire available arsenal is going to be doing more than the fighter using their action surge.

No, even if he goes nova, he's still not, not on a single target.

Relative to a Duelist Fighter with a +1 sword, here's how some of the popular wizard damage spells stack up:

Lvl 0 Fire Bolt: 45%
Lvl 1 Magic Missile: 62%
Lvl 2 Scorching Ray: 86%
Lvl 3 Scorching Ray: 115%

Note that Lvl 3 Scorching Ray has single-target damage comparable to Fireball (up to 8d6). There is no way for the Wizard to keep up, let alone exceed the Fighter here. Fact is, the Fighter is almost like putting a Level 3 spell on a single target every round. The Wizard needs to focus on AoE, buff/debuff, and control to be useful, all the while reserving some spell slots for Shield and Mage Armor, while the Fighter remains too dangerous to ignore. Oh, and the Rogue is just as dangerous.

. The fact that you pointed out the wizard knocking down the opponent with grease is just more reason to want to take out the caster.

Grease isn't a Concentration spell. And by the time you've stood up and KO'd the wizard, the fighter and his rogue buddy have killed you.

 

[p1138]

I'm not forgetting anything. You tried to compare Firebolt to an ability that's literally 2x as powerful. The reality is the Fighter, at will, wallops you twice as hard as the Wizard does (and you listed control spells, not damage spells). I'm quite aware the Wizard excels at AoE damage, control, and buff/debuff. For damage on a single target? Fighter's far and away superior.

No, I didn't. I pointed out that the fighter has their action surge in addition to their normal attacks, and the wizard has their spells in addition to their cantrips. You simply chose to ignore that I was including the options the fighter and wizard both have.

As opposed to the evocation wizard that's likely doing as much or more damage, or the rogue backstabbing and getting sneak attack damage? It sure as hell isn't a fighter, a paladin with smite is going to be doing more than a fighter.

Just sticking with 5th edition, a fighter gets their 2nd attack at what, lvl 5 plus action surge once per rest? Even a firebolt from a wizard is doing 2d10 at that point and it can be spammed all day due to being a cantrip and still has the rest of their spell list to choose from for an aoe, area or monster control, etc. The fighter isn't kicking the shit out of anything unless your adventure consists of nothing but 5' wide hallways. Even at lvl 11 when a fighter can do 3 attacks plus 2 action surges before a rest(I think?) the wizard is now doing 3d10 single target with again just a cantrip and of course now has even more evocation spells available for damage, debuffs, or area/monster control.

Oh, and the Rogue is just as dangerous.

I mentioned the rogue in the first line.

I'll admit you have repeatedly mentioned single target, and I did as well for some scenarios because clearly having a wizard fireballing a horde of enemies shouldn't be a consideration. However, in what adventure is this party only ever facing a single opponent at a time? ZMOT mentioned pf2 and the fighter having an AoO, but a single AoO crit(which is definitely more likely in pf2) risking taking out this opponent means it also would have likely died the next round anyway so we're down to combats only lasting 2 rounds and like I asked, what combats ending that quickly need a "tank?"

The idea that a fighter is "tanking" anything relies entirely on the DM allowing the fighter to do so, because the opponent for some reason cannot observe or realize any other threats exist, and I guess is only ever a single opponent, and likely in a 5-10 foot wide corridor, and is seemingly just a sack of hitpoints but not a very large one. These sound like boring encounters considering discussion was just about extending encounters in creative ways(when appropriate) not too long ago that could keep things interesting. This "tanking" only seems to work with the opposite of that.

But back to my original point regarding the tanking that someone suggested a fighter do, shove an NPC, scream at an NPC, try to lure an NPC into a target location, grapple/trip/disarm an NPC, and so on are all still things that other classes can generally readily do better than a fighter and also don't rely on this corridor single target low HP scenario where the fighter is "tanking" for a round or two before the NPC dies. Now if we were talking about the fighter being the first into a room after the rogue has picked a lock and the door is kicked open rather than having a squishy character run in and immediately get KO'd, sure but that's a fairly specific(but not rare) scenario.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

Anyone who thinks in 5e wizard (or any other caster except Warlock) does shit for single target damage is delusional. Cantrip scaling is a joke. That said your DM basically has to agree that in general Fighter/Paladin/etc are more threatening then they are because objectively the correct move is to pick off the caster and then demolish the rest of the party without worrying about AoE/CC- unless they waste their turns by trying to do single target damage in which case they are by far less threatening than even badly built melee.

If you're going to talk about how bad fighter is at tanking at least assume they built into it enough to run battle master and polearm mastery/tunnel fighter + sentinel. Which is fair because you can memorize a totally toothless collection of spells as a caster and if we are comparing base fighter to poison spray+divination spells wizard I know who's the bigger threat.

At least half of discourse in 5e is dominated by PTSD over caster/martial balance in 3.5 and people who construct white room arguments that assume every caster is Batman and had a week to prep for the encounter and their DM handed them the stat blocks for them to study which has basically no bearing on how the game actually runs.

Also while I'm thinking about it one of the sneaky ways that PF2E makes melee "stickier" is that since move actions are part of the same action economy as attack is that finishing your turn next to a monster makes you both more vulnerable (you can be attacked with all 3 actions) and more threatening (if the creature does so your melee will inevitably dump all three actions into attacking it)

 

[Corn Flakes]

All this discussion about potential damage or damage curves is what led us to the MMO-style of thinking.

In-universe, the heavily armored warrior gets to keep enemies' attention because he's aggressive and in their face. Even intelligent creatures will focus on someone trying to hack them to pieces before going for the skinny guy in the back, unless said skinny guy gives them a very good reason for it. And unless you live in Forgotten Realms x10, where in every group of 5 people you'll statistically have two spellcasters and said spellcasters will be wearing pointy hats and World of Warcraft clown-suits, most living (and unliving) beings will go into a fight hitting whatever is closest to them. They may maneuver to attack an enemy that's unengaged but unless they know who the party are ahead of time (usually by scouting them ahead of time, or being contracted to stage an ambush), all the people in travel cloaks and adventuring gear are going to look more or less the same.

The ranged members of your average monster/NPC party should absolutely be pelting the unengaged casters and ranged martials, though. That's just good common sense.