>>98520138
make them anime. ezpz

>>98520138
>wizard flies the party over the moutain
>fighter cuts the mountain in half
>wizard raises a wall of stone
fighter smashes the ground, causing jagged slabs of fractured bedrock to stand up on end
>wizard reads people's minds
>rogue deduces what people are thinking
>wizard turns invisible to sneak into a fortress
>rogue just sneaks in, no problem
>wizard summons army of the dead
>rogue uses bushin no jutsus and moves around so fast it looks like there's an army of him

>Get rid of classes in general, use skills, all player-facing magic is consumable items.
There, I fixed your dungeon crawling fantasy.

File: 1779479579335117.jpg (77 KB, 697x516)

77 KB JPG

behold:
>wizard is a social class
>wizard's main power is to call up demons on the orb and beg for favors
>demons make disposition rolls to determine whether or not they help

>>98520197
>word salad but occult

>>98520147
>have to spend multiple rounds explaining all their moves and powering up
I'm not sure this is an improvement

>>98520138
HAVE YOU TRIED NOT PLAYING DNDOGSHIT ?

>>98520138
Can you accept magic classes paying for increased breadth with rate-limits? Because if you can, then Thief's skills aren't THAT hard to inflate into meaningful competition, but if you can't then you're going to have to completely scrap the spells-as-widgets paradigm by playing something other than D&D.

>>98520165
This is reminiscent of the video game Fear & Hunger, any character can unlock most skills but you start with a few depending on what choices you made in the intro, and you need specific items to unlock more (and finding these items is independent of your character), and casting spells usually consumes your health or sanity.

File: 55e91bc59abb9286439c2bae7(...).jpg (108 KB, 1080x1080)

108 KB JPG

By fucking definition, magic is doing stuff that normally shouldn't happen, something that breaks the nature of things, something supernatural that reflects the will of the caster. If a guy with a sword can do the same thing, then isn't magic. In a medieval setting, looking at a piece of glass and talk in real time with someone in the other side of the country would be called witchcraft. In our world, we call it video call.

Now, I'm not saying wizards should use unlimited magic freely. I think pic related has the right idea. Using magic imposes a heavy toll in the body that inhabilites the user completely. Thus, using magic is more complex than the videogame experience of how much damage it causes, but demanding an equal sacrifice. Supernatural effects require supernatural costs.

>>98520186
You basically reinvented the concept of magical fumbles or uncertainty, which I approve of. If you look at AD&D spell lists or even 3.5 (in comparison to 5e), there are much more stipulations that the spell can go wrong, or has randomization used for something other than a pass/fail d20 test or damage (for example, duration, what gets summoned, the direction of certain effects, and rolling to see what exactly happens even if the spell takes effect). It's this uncertainty which makes magical classes more than just superheroes, and it can be implemented in either a warhammer-esque way (having a chance of catastrophe regardless of what spell you are casting) or an AD&D/OD&D way (individual spells are not guaranteed to have the most preferable effect). Since the revealed preferences of the modern player are to be a superhero rather than an adventurer, this would only be implemented in a mother-may-i way in a gimmick game, rather than in a simulationist system that takes itself seriously.

>>98520155
Some players seem to have consumed so much "cinematic" and balancefaggy media that they are incapable of drawing a line between necessary suspension of disbelief (such as magic in a fantasy setting, or antimatter containment in a sci-fi setting) and complete fighting-game/4e/MMO retardation that makes both wizards and fighters look incredibly gay and performative instead of someone actually trying to win a fight.

>>98520579
This guy knows what's up. There should be more settings where magic is considered evil (and the god of magic is evil, etc) rather than "magic" being synonymous with abstract good (such as in a typical urban fantasy/cosmopolitan dungeonpunk setting).

>>98520138
The ability to gain bonuses to melee and ranged combat, which everyone is completely untrained in by default, as well as increased ability to dodge and parry in combat (HP stays the same regardless of level, but evasion increases and is separate from armor, which is damage reduction). Also, increased rates of critical hits and decreased rates of fumbles. The same applies to hiding/climbing/"thief skills", which are very likely to fail.

Mages will be limited (Sanderson's law) not through PF2/4e faggotry that makes them just magical artillery, but by adding setting-relevant and/or simulationist consequences to magic which are not arbitrary punishments.
>Casting spells requires concentration which can be interrupted
>"Elemental magic" does not exist, spells which would previously be called such now modify pre-existing parts of the environment, such as accelerating the combustion of a burning object to turn it into a deflagrating fireball, or draining temperature from an object/creature
>Conjuration of solid objects is rare
>Guaranteed safe buffs are potion-exclusive
>Summoning a creature typically requires a ritual and the resulting creature may be uncontrolled, or the wrong type of creature may be summoned
>Any spell may fumble with consequences proportional to the energy spent on it, because of this magic is viewed like nuclear is IRL (but worse because the rumors are true)

As a result, fighters and mages represent completely different types of characters (not just battlefield roles), and are "naturally balanced" by filling different unforced niches that would naturally exist in a fantasy setting that frequently features combat. Gaining a level in fighter means you get good at fighting, gaining a level in mage means that you train to use magic more effectively, rather than a level in either of them being insufficiently distinct from a "cultivation level" (D&D 5e especially is effectively a western cultivation game that doesn't advertise itself as such).

File: 1579573002622.jpg (297 KB, 1485x1101)

297 KB JPG

I already solved this alone over 8 years ago. The fact you haven't already is a moral failing on your part.

>>98520138
aggro manipulation

>>98520593
whats wrong with being cinematic?
and whats wrong with being balanced?

is hercules diverting a river really that different from a wizard throwing as fireball?

>>98520762
Are you the same shitposter as >>98520155?

I do think that intimidation or taunting would be a good mechanic which combat-focused classes would be better at than studious classes, but this would be represented by bonuses to such rolls rather than "powers". And anything which directly modifies an enemy's behavior in a way other than inflicting fright on it in the same way as regular intimidation would be a psychic power, not something you do by waving a sword around.

>Mentalists/Psions/Enchanters: Directly override the actions of a chosen target using a magical or otherwise supernatural effect
>Barbarians/Fighters/Rogues: Have significantly increased chances to succeed on intimidation/feinting attempts which anyone can do but most are untrained in, and which do not directly force their enemies to target them but could give them significant penalties to attacks in other directions combined with the threat of an opportunity attack backstab, and intimidation does not give the user any control of *how* the enemy attempts to escape, only that it is inclined to do so in the way which is most immediate for it.

Being able to tell the difference between the two is a test for if you are worthy to play any game more mechanically complex than improv.

File: 7944542883065888768_n.png (135 KB, 437x498)

135 KB PNG

>>98520138
>classes

>>98520790
whats wrong with classes?

File: 169814814797.png (604 KB, 957x538)

604 KB PNG

>>98520793
Nothing per se in theory, it's just that, as op implied, some specific game does that in such of an asinine manner, like having generic archetypes alongside very specific ones and some classes monopolizing features that should be more evenly distributed in order to make for role protection, that you start second guessing the very design choice. Moving to classless allows for focusing on game specific narrative templates without shitting on the ability of the player in developing its character horizontally to fit the game dynamics rather than being squashed in some contrived and sort of perpetual caricature of an archetype.

>>98520138
i liked when fighters just became lords with their own armies by default once they got high level enough because conan became a king and that was considered a core part of the fighter fantasy

>>98520859
you would basically never see even a portion of your retinue outside maybe a handful of hirelings
they mostly just existed to handwave away where you kept your junk and why no one stole it

actually using a swarm of men in tactical combat required using special subclasses like 4Es warlord but they were never popular for the same reason the necromancer was never popular
controlling 20 hirelings in combat slowed the game to a crawl and they could barely put a dent in things that you actually wanted dead

>>98520863
>actually using a swarm of men in tactical combat required using special subclasses like 4Es warlord
lol

>>98520593
How about you try to argue that anyone who CAN'T do those things can stand up for even a second against the shit a 15th or 20th level DND party is expected to face. How about you go get up some armor and weapons and fight a 20 feet tall humanoid clad in plate armor with a sword. Huh?

Well in reality a physical class's benefit is that he can be relatively young where a wizard needs decades of training so his bones creak because he's not in Harry Potter universe where kids get to be magic.

>>98520138
a wizard has access to everything, but they cant GET everything. you want area damage AND a single-target nuke? sure, but you pay twice. you want survivability or mobility on top of that? two more slots you cant spend on anything else.

a fighter is good at all four baseline, then starts edging into utility with whatever points he has left over

>>98520863
man i don't care about practical considerations, this is a core part of the fluff of the fighter that's missing and when people talk about why figher is so bland they start suggesting anime instead, it's sad

>>98520971
>they start suggesting anime instead, it's sad
warriors being able to cleave mountains and slice steel is not unique to anime or even japan

>>98520975
or i guess sometimes they start playing semantic games instead of engaging with the subject, that's sad too

>>98520165
This is objectively correct.

>>98520976
>or i guess sometimes they start playing semantic games
you argued its too much like anime
but theres nothing specifically anime about having super warriors who can fight wizards evenly

>>98520995
no i didn't, i used anime as shorhand for weeaboo fightan magic, which is itself a general trope and not specific to japan

>>98521012
>no i didn't
> they start suggesting anime instead, it's sad
mean what you say

>>98521025
i did, i just assumed the person i'm talking to is smart enough to pick things up from context

>>98521123
>i did
>says something that means something different from their words

>i just assumed the person i'm talking to is smart enough to pick things up from context
skill issue
mean what you say

>>98521137
autism issue

especially since you still preferred to argue over semantics after you knew what was actually being communicated

>>98521169
because you are so defensive of your poor choice of words for no real reason and just refuse to admit you did not actually mean anime when you said anime

>>98520138
Personally, I like it when non-magic classes get social benefits for not slinging around the arcane. A well spoken fighter should have an easier time convincing someone to not cause problems than a mage who uses dubious powers.

Otherwise? Create opportunities for strength to actually matter. Doesn't have to be full on anime, but I remember one time I played a beowulf-esque character and very often the solution included brute force. Door is locked via some arcane? break it open anyways. big bad is hidden away underground? start digging. need a scale a sheer cliff and don't want to cast fly? just jump up with rope.

>>98520138
>Magic classes get all healing and utility stuff, and damage
>>Physical classes get damage
>Okay, smart guy, what abilities do you give "thief" or "fighter" that are as broad and useful as what mages and clerics can do?
1st magic exlusive classses (forge gandalf he is not a mortal) get no increases in to hit capacity or more attacks per round or anything like that. They stay at a zero combat skill all their lives. It does not go from +0 to +10 or +anything, it stays zero and the attacks are 1. They cannot learn new weapons and their skill with weapons is trash, and they have double or triple the penalties with weapons and cannot inflict critical hits with them or equivalents. Hit points? They get the minimum per level, 1 per level from the hit die and nothing from constitution and cannot increase them by any means that are not magical in nature. They also cannot get any skills that are acrobatic or physical in any way from their mage class choice.

And in general the first thing you do is remove all partial or half capacity for physical combat from the exclusive mage classes. And then you will consider how to fix the physical warrior type classes and the adjacent ones.

Make mages into actual mages and then you can make warriors into warriors.

>>98521261
>forge
forget

>>98520138
>what abilities do you give "thief" or "fighter" that are as broad and useful
physical mundanne skilled classes must dominate their physicality and mundane applications of it
>mages and clerics can do
these will be extremely to totally limited in their physicality and mundane applications of it

but you want more stuff for the warriors and rogues to do.

Since you will limit the caster classes in the physical capacities, then you will increase the capacities of the physical classes.

And you will great many skills to the warriors and keep the rogue skills as high as they usually are.

The physical classes have been weakened alot as the editions progressed.

Another problem is sneak attack, which is an attack that is an opportunistic flanking attack which all warriors should be able to do and much better than any rogue class. If the rogue/thief/bard/other can inflict XD10 damage with it than how much can the warriors inflict? XD20?

This must be fixed, so its best to get rid of the sneak attack from the rogues and give the flanking bonus attack to the warriors only.

Rogues are either sneaky fellas or fighter/"rogues" and not ninjas, as the sneak attack has made them ninjas in all but name.

The rogue classes ahve to be remade and merged with the warrior classes.

>>98520138
>"thief"
an actual only thief classes can only be a henchman or npc class, it cannot exist in a proper role as a party member. A thief sneaks and steals and that is it. Even the hobbits in lotr are fighter/thieves if anything and more like fighters with hobbit racial skills and nothing more.

>>98521322
which is why thieves are combined with backstab classes to make rogues, to make them useful both in and out of combat

>>98520138
>Magic classes
the distortion and horrid design has made the bards into full mages in 5e with 9th level spells at 17th level. So this is like a fighter/thief/mage class. Fuck bards. They are an npc class and have no place in the game. Anyone can be a bard; that is knows poetry song etc but has another class like a fighter. Bard has to go.

>>98521328
backstab made sense and urged one to use his stealth capacities i liked it, but was not enough to make the class a complete one. if the class it to be kept it needs some more thought on what it could be.

>>98520138
Traps are the domain of the ranger and the fighter and not of any thief/rogue/bard unless he is an actual l5r or such setting NINJA

locks are the domain of anyone with the skill and of dwarves

>>98520138
>what abilities do you give
first you take away abilities from the mono-caster classes and make them fully and only and properly casters (druids and clerics will have something more but limited) and then you can utterly totally and completely fix the mono-physical classes.

>>98520138
your 20th level mage will have 20 hp and 0 attack skills and no weapon skill/proficiency and only 1 attack per round and so on and other limitations. But he will have magic and then his magic and his power in it will matter even more. ACTUAL MAGE.

if you do not do this than you have a partial fighter/mage of sorts but not named so.

Your 20th level fighter will be even tougher than before, more attack, more damage, more mundane skills, trap stuff even and lock etc and will be an ACTUAL WARRIOR.

>>98520138
>Magic classes
the druid lunacy of "Wild shape; any Small or Medium animal and so on" will be solved by having him choose permanently a single animal every few levels so in the end he can have 3-5 forms or something and that will be it. And not "all creatures with the animal type" and things of the sort. The list of form will be specific some for utility some for combat but they will according what kind of druid he will be. Forest has these 5 forms, Arctic these 5 and so on. Weak and utility type at low levels.

no "assume the shape of a beast (THIS MEANS ANY) that you have seen before. You can use this feature twice. You regain expended uses when you finish a short or long rest."

no short or long rest bullshit as well and no "i was at the spa 1 hour, what do i get?"

>>98520138
>"thief" or "fighter"
pretty much almost all thief/rogue skills and abilities are warrior skills and abilities. Traps, locks, climbing and other stuff.

And casters will get zero, not even by spending more points to buy one.

>>98520138
>>Magic
no infinite magic cantrips or low level spells for casters of course

>>98520138
>Magic classes
remove all detect traps etc other equivalents form the magic classes and anything like that. Remove "make me a fighter now" from the magic classes and similar things. They stay or become glass cannons or similar sort of cannons and cannot replace the physical ones like the above "make me a fighter now" bullshit .

>>98520138
>>Magic classes get all healing
Not in my games. You heal during rests, there are no healing spells.

>>98520138
It's simple but grogs will scream and cry and shit themselves because "it's too videogamey, you should play mother may I with your DM for anything more complex than stabbing!!!!" but just take common video game actions. Gapclosers, Installs, Command Grabs, Stance Dancing, basic shitty ranged attack for when you're too far away, AoE spin attacks, Taunt/Shirk/aggro manipulating skills. And most importantly make all these actions cheap and common. If I wanted to shoot a crossbow all day while keeping encounter ending actions in my back pocket I'd play a caster

Also make Cantrips limited again. I miss the scrappyness of being a wizard with a shitty crossbow and 14 dex

>>98520859
>the fighter fantasy is not fighting
Cool.

>>98521762
>leading armies into battle is not fighting
cool

>>98521783
>lords and kings are field commanders
c o o l

>>98521815
they are when they have fighter levels and are following stories that always did that as part of their core fantasy

>>98521762
>get a free house and goons
>"Well I guess I need to hang up my sword and armour and play Civilization"
Do you retire your Wizards as soon as they learn Rope Trick?

>>98521838
an army commander should be its own class, because controlling a small army is complex enough to warrant being seperate from someone who hits things with sword good
the standard warrior should just become good enough at hand to hand fighting to kill 1000 enemies single handedly using the jawbone of an ass
which is different enough from leading an army to warrant having seperate classes

>>98522040
anon you're talking about a game that had 5 classes and civilians, not pathfinder with 749 classes

>>98522055
and a split is warranted because controlling hirelings is essentially a sub-game that drastically changes the utility of your character
a fighter just not actually fighting at a certain point means that all their early class features become useless past that point resulting in their minion powers having to be heavily backloaded to compensate

>>98522086
a class split is not warranted for the same reason you don't need a wizard to split classes just to be a conjurer

>>98522112
a commander is a different fantasy from a warrior at a fundamental level
one of them wants to lead a bunch of dudes around and buff them while the other wants to just run at the enemy and hit them with a sword

a commander as a sub-class would be limited to just keeping one or two hirelings and use them as an accessory to running at things to stab them
but playing as the stabby guy until you get a castle as part of your class level and then cease the stabbing in favor of leading is just bad

>>98520138
MERP rules from the 80s treated the mage classes with inteligence, and balanced them greatly. A wizard from MERP is far from your D&D casters pumping fireballs from their asses.

>>98522134
my man it worked fine when it was a thing, i don't know why this bothers you so much but i think you're just inventing problems

>classes
woof.

>>98520165
lmao YIKES

>>98520579
this is false btw

>>98520138
>Magic classes get all healing and utility stuff, and damage
You don't give Magic Classes all of those options. They can either have healing, utility, or damage but not all three.
>Physical classes get damage
Give them even better damage, give them the best chance to avoid negative effects in the game if not an ability to become immune for a short time, give them AoEs like what 4e D&D did instead of just a flat damage bonus, give them better rolls with skills, tools, or whatever your system has, make them more durable than casters, make them faster than casters, make them stronger than casters.

For example, when I did my overhauled 2024 classes, I took Jack of all trades away from bard and gave it to Rogue. Fighter and Barbarian get Indomitable which now serves as a similar feature for saving throws, fixing their innate weakness to mental saves somewhat, and all martials got extra ASIs, with all classes getting the ASI feat + another feat (and all other feats lost any ASI increase they offered, most of them being reworked to compensate).

For my own Modern Fantasy RPG, I opted to give martials the most stat and skill increases in the game, access to passive abilities called Talents which range from being able to ignore falling damage to faster movement to a boost to defense checks to different movement types as well as Strikes (the AoEs I mentioned above, new ways to attack that increase the damage output of martials), and Manevuers (similar but not the same as 5e/2024's battlemaster stuff, it's a bonus die of damage that also adds a secondary effect to an attack), and Martial Arts (Anime-style powers they can use that enhance attacks, ignore resistances, or allow access to damage types that martials might not innately have that they can use by spending their smaller pools of Mana Points compared to casters). I also limited what casters could do based on class.

>>98520138
Couple options:
>Give everyone magic/go classless
By not limiting magic to classes, it just becomes a character option.
>Make choosing magic a choice between it and utility
You can see it in maneuvers and other class options in 5e, basically things everyone could do in real life become class options. This only works if the things you get scale as you would get more powerful spells, something 5e doesn't do.
>Make spells have a greater upfront cost
Make spells require stamina or lifeforce, spells all have a casting time beyond instant, spells are unpredictable, etc. This should be the realistic action, but it takes the power fantasy of magic and makes players complain endlessly that the fighter can bonk things while they have to play strategically.

>>98521815
Yes.
Leading from the front and being capable in battle is important. Being able to step back and command is good too but in no way excludes the other, especially in a fantastical dnd sort of setup. The nobles and knights and kings and whatever have to be able to fight and lead. They learn both.

>>98520138
Just an old one-two to the noggin and they are down. Or dead, the skinny wizards.

>>98522363
>YIKES

>>98522187
>my man it worked fine when it was a thing
obviously not, since the fighters actual ability to control men was just attracting them to his castle and he didnt have any explicit control over them in a tactical sense
so this makes it a poor replacement for actual combat abilities
people who just wanted the control abilities had to level up hand to hand combat to get to that point and ended up having only a bare bones set of command abilities
people who wanted to play a hack and slash guy were just attracting men they would never actually use when instead they could get more hack and slash powers

so a split in function was both necessary and inevitable

>>98521452
You see I tried that with my system but it just made casters underpowered. They have a finite resource to cast spells with (Mana Points, using a priced spell tag system with compounding costs) and not giving them a free damage option means they get maybe one good fight and then everyone has to stop to let them take a nap or else they literally do nothing.

>>98523966
the argument about cantrips just boils as to whether you want the wizard to pull out a crossbow or a crappy firebolt at low levels

the only actually questionable thing about cantrips is that their auto-scaling damage makes level 1 spells obsolete after level 10, where the 2d10 fire bolt starts to outperform half your early spells for no cost
but at level 10, you have enough level 2 spell slots to never have to worry about casting a level 1 again

cantrips are not really something that drastically affects the wizard except for making their trash cleaning ability better, since they can firebolt weaker goblins away
but this doesnt really tip their character in any mechanical way unless you really like 100-room slogs with no rests

>>98523966
>>98523998
There is one other consideration, which is utility. Being able to consistently conjure fire/acid/etc. can be quite helpful when it comes to trying to destroy certain objects when outside of a fight.

There are ways to retain cantrips while addressing that, but as you said, it doesn't make a big difference for spellcasters at low levels to rely on a crossbow. And at higher levels, it's not like spellcasters are particularly weak and in need of the damage boost.

>>98520138
>what abilities do you give "fighter"
Kill stuff
Run faster than anyone
Lift more than anyone
Faster reflexes than anyone
Survive anything
Kill stuff harder and faster
Capable of satisfying even your extremely sexually jaded mother

>>98520138
None. Not everyone needs to have similarly broad skillsets, and that is fine.

>>98521665
>And most importantly make all these actions cheap and common
I also hate when things are videogamey, but I think an ideal system would be similar to 3.5e/pf1e's alternate combat actions (trip, disarm, charge, sunder, feint, etc) combined with a called shot system, and implemented in a way such that fighters can use them without centering their build around a single maneuver, but they are still unreliable for non-fighters. If it was just made very clear that these are all things which a good fighter should be expected to be able to attempt an unlimited number of times a day in the actual setting (not just as a rules abstraction), and which are not supernatural feats that use any metacurrency, the videogamey factors would mostly disappear as long as the game itself didn't blur the difference between magic and tricks that are possible IRL but very difficult when untrained (another example of failure to establish this difference is the many feats in 3.x which suddenly allow you to do something you should have already been able to do, rather than making you better at it).

>>98522357
/thread.