The Barbarian and other Fighter subclasses

[Rob]

Does anyone else here find the Barbarian rediculously over powered? I mean, I can understand some of the added abilities, but the bonuses for Con. and Dex. are just rediculous (and I'm just getting warmed up!). I also have a problem with the attack progression charts from UA, as the fighter is no longer the "King of Combat". At one point I had done up a revised attack progression chart for the fighters, but I can't find it at the moment. If anyone would care to see it, or has tried something similar, let me know.

[Jerry Mapes]

Overpowered is just one of my beefs. Mayeb its just me and my groups but i have yet to have a barbarian in a PC Party that didnt just overpower the rest of the group or simply not fit in. The only time I have had any luck whatsoever with the barbarian is when i was running a saide campaign for two buddies of mine. It was a Fafherd & the Grey Mouser type thing and it worked out ok.

One thing that i never could figure out is after the lengths that is gone to to say Barbarians HATE - LOATHE - DETEST Magic... by 5th level they can use ANY magical Armour, Weapon, or Potion! I mean come on. 2 levels of "ooooo magic is taboo, bad bad mojo" then bango its 2nd level and "uh hey Groo, forget the cheese dip... wheres that potion of strength!"

As for attack progression it had to change. Gary put that ball into motion when he released the Cavalier to Dragon Mag. Once you've introduced weapon specialization and more atks/lvl, something had to give by decree of munchkin land. If the Cavalier can do it why cant everyone else!

Now I love the Cavalier, when it was first released in Dragon I was taking a class on Mallory and since no one was interested in playing Pendragon... well connect the dots. I dont like that the Cav is a sublcass of FTR, although i understand the reasoning. I really dont like that Paladins are a sublcass of CAV, that makes zero sense to me.

I think all FTR types should use the same 1e attack progression with to hit/to dam bonuses applying for the specialization if its used.

BUT all of this really IMO isnt the root of the problems. The problems lays smack dab in the lap of the DM that lets players use 26 dice to roll each stat or just lets them fudge the numbers to fit. Paladins, cavaliers, and Barbarians are supposed to be uncommon, just this side of rare, based on their minimum scores. When these classes/subsclasses were introduced starting with the Paladin, it was never expected that EVERY party would have at least one of these characters. Sure, as a DM I can say ok, I would like to see a Cavalier in this campaign, so you missed it by 2 points, go ahead and bump the stat to minimum, maybe even two stats. But once this becomes expected then why even roll the dice? Just fill in the numbers and go.

Its like the magic item discussion. These things should be treated a extra special when it happens. Not a mandatory default because it guarantees better ac, or hp, atks. Still though unless the game is just so, the barbarian is not an option in my games and Paladins and Cavaliers must be straight rolled... or it just aint happening.

Jerry

[foster1941]

I think for a 1 or 2 player sub-campaign that the barbarian is just about the perfect character -- he's tough as heck so he's not likely to get killed, and he's super-versatile so he can fill all kinds of roles by himself -- he fights as well as a fighter, has thief skills as good as (if not better than) a thief, has some acrobat skills, has some healing skills, and even has anti-magic abilities. These guys can do ANYTHING! I ran such a sub-campaign for one of my players back in the 80s; it was just him as "Bubba the Barbarian" and me as DM and his NPC halfling thief companion (no longer remember his name, but I'm sure it was a joke -- probably something like Dildo Daggins) and it was tremendous fun, probably some of the funnest sessions we ever had.

But, what makes them ideal for 1 player campaigns also makes them entirely inappropriate for traditional group-based play. Stick a barbarian into a standard group of characters and he's always going to dominate, and the steep XP chart doesn't really help. I'd never allow a barbarian character into a standard multiplayer group.

More on the cavalier later...

[Rob]

Still can't find those charts, but I'm going to keep looking.

I liked the basic idea for the Cavalier class, and it's a completely playable class with a few modifications (like getting rid of the stat increase, and weapon of choice). However, I keep the Paladin as a subclass of Fighter; the social attitudes of the Cavalier and Paladin seem almost diametrically opposed to one another.

[Jerry Mapes]

The stat increase is something i have went round and round about. As per the DMG, everyone gets stat increases and decreases due to ageing, but nothing was ever done for training increases aside from a misc magic item or two. Why would a Cavalier specifically be able to increase his stats up to %20 per level and not a Fighter or a Thief or any other character? It says in the UA this is due to the consant training a Cavalier will do when not adventuring. Is it assumed that all characters aside form the Cavalier blow off physical training when not adventuring? Is not Strength and Dexterity training something all classes could do, and then have it also reflect in thier Con and therefore get the +%2 to %20 increase every level? if given the option, I woould have every one of my magic-users and thieves out there Dex training every chance they had.

Sure EGG was going for the Elite of the Elite here, thats why the bonus. And to be honest the stat increase out of all the foibles of the Cavalier has probbaly caused the least arguments around the table. But i do think stat increase could be taken or left. The cavalier wont break without it. Same could be said about weapon of choice. Although I think weapon restrictions/of choice make a good trade off for the Cavalier.

The Cavalier is a powerful fighter, the weapon of choice limits them. The down side of course is if you dont incorporate weapon profeciency/specialization for Ftrs and Rngrs then they are left in the dust and the Ftr and Rngr are pushed aside a second class warriors (at best).

I think if you are going to use the Cavalier as is, you really need to use weapon spec. for Ftrs and Rngrs. Otherwise you have to take weapon spec. away from the Cav., The weapon of choice is still a viable option if you do this, they just dont get all the extra bonuses attached. BUt i would still toss them a bone in that of the Lance and what they can do with it. Besides a Cavalier in a dungeon hall that is 5'x10' is gonna be slaughtered if he insists on carrying that lance along and using it as a pike. Otherwise he is still a good fighter in nice armour but he doesnt make the Ranger and moreso the straight Fighter less desirable to play.

But what about those codes of honor and who and what a Cavalier MUST do in situation A, B, or C. Now those have caused some of the biggest arguments i have ever seen at the table and away from it. When i started playing the Cav, i accepted those as a foible of the class like a Paladin has to be LG. But i have heard the line "who the hell does gygax think he is telling me how to play my frickin character... no one is going to play my character by proxy from Lake Geneva!" in every argument over the Cavalier.

Jerry

[foster1941]

I've got 2 problems with the cavalier class. The first is that they more than any other class (even the cleric and barbarian) seem to exacerbate the mental disconnect people have between character class as "profession" and character class as "archetype" -- just as not every priest is a Cleric and not everybody raised in a primitive environment is a Barbarian, not every knight or mounted warrior is a Cavalier. Not all NPC knights are members of the Cavalier class -- the vast majority are "fighter-equivalents" in the same way sergeants, lieutentants, and captains are described in the DMG (function as a fighter of x level but incapable of gaining XP or increasing in level), and only the very exceptional creme de la creme heroes are members of the cavalier class -- which is why the class has such stringent stat requirements. Unfortunately all too many people don't understand this and make the cavalier class something all too common (and then compound the error by not decreasing the class' stat requirements and special abilities but rather giving those stats and abilities to everybody's whose "profession" says they should be a cavalier). This is more a problem with ignorant players than the class itself (though Gygax bears perhaps some responsibility for not clearly enough explaining the difference between adventuring PCs who have archetypal "classes" and non-adventuring NPCs who have "professions" that bear some similarities but are not identical to the equivalent classes).

The second problem I have with the cavalier class is the way Gygax seemed to use it as a way of 'trying out' various new rules ideas that run contrary to the previously established spirit and letter of the game-rules: cavaliers and cavaliers alone are able to spend their off-time 'training' in such a method to gradually increase their stats (if they can do this, why can't everybody?); cavaliers and cavaliers alone are able to keep functioning with hit point totals below zero (which makes 0 hp meaningless; why not just give them more hp?); cavaliers and cavaliers alone (effectively) have armor that not only makes hits less likely but also absorbs damage (which throws the entire AD&D combat system our of whack; why not just give them a better AC?); cavaliers and cavaliers alone do not start at 1st level with 0 xp but rather start as apprentices and have to work their way up to first level (which both makes the concepts of both "1st level" and "0 experience" meaningless but also begs the question of why make this the rule for cavaliers only and not everybody else -- thus allowing apprentice magic-users and clerics and thieves and so on). Thus when all of these are combined, cavaliers almost seem to be operating under an entirely different set of game-rules than every other class, as if they've just dropped in from RuneQuest or Rolemaster or some other game altogether. This makes the cavalier class both "not feel like D&D" (at least to me), and also makes them (like the barbarian) likely to completely dominate any mixed party of which they are a member. Thus while I could see a place for the cavalier class in a specicifcally-focused "cavalier sub-campaign" (where instead of traditional D&D-style dungeon adventres the focus of the game is instead on quests, battles, romance, etc. -- essentially turning D&D into a version of Chaosium's King Arthur Pendragon) IMO they don't fit and shouldn't be used in "traditonal-style" D&D campaigns.

[Jerry Mapes]

As for the second problem, I have to agree as well. Which begs the question, at least for me, when did EGG begin working on his 2nd Ed.?

Many of the "other classes/professions" he introduced via Dragon did this as well. Its the differences we see in the UA material and Dragon that makes one realize to some extent just how far EGG was going to take his 2e.

Jerry

[foster1941]

Yup. And did you ever see the Hunter class from Gygax's post-TSR New Infinities newsletter (I posted it at DF a couple years back and I think it was copied & pasted to a couple other boards)? There are all kinds of "new rules" hidden away in there as well -- their hit dice are averaged (they roll d12 but a 1 counts as a 4, a 2 as a 5, and a 12 as a 6), they do max. damage on "to hit" rolls of natural 20, and there's a full-fledged skill system tacked onto the end, with a table for chance of success by level (it's a weird irregular progression starting at (IIRC) 19% at 1st level). It makes you wonder what Gygax's 2E would've really looked like. I've heard people suspect that had EGG stayed in charge AD&D would've eventually begun to look a lot like MYTHUS, and perhaps they're not that far off...

[foster1941]

Also, when I played with EGG at a Con in 1988 we used "joss factors" in the game (the same thing as "hero points" or "fate points" from various other games -- the player can use them to overturn bad die-rolls (failed save becomes a success, turn an opponent's hit into a miss, etc.)), something else that eventually turned up in MYTHUS. Perhaps this was an exception because of the ridiculously tough adventure we were playing ("Necropolis"), or perhaps he was playtesting ideas for what would eventually become MYTHUS (since he had already been ejected from TSR by 1988), but I also wonder if this wasn't something he might have added to 2E AD&D...

(The other "house" rules used in that game, for those who are curious: the "BUC" currency system (as also seen in MYTHUS, Lejendary Adventures, and the Gord novels); "to hit" roll of natural 20 = max. damage.)

[PapersAndPaychecks]

It's time for me to confess something. I hang my head in shame as I type this.

I possess a copy of the Dragonlance Adventures rulebook. Yes indeed, gentlemen, in a moment of weakness I bought that book and I haven't thrown it away.

*pause while I dodge the hail of rotten tomatoes from indignant grognards*

Anyway, DL Adventures includes a whole bunch of high-powered custom character classes, including the Knight of Solamnia (which is like a cavalier, but with weapon specialization, 2d10 hit points at first level, the ability to learn cleric spells starting at about level 4, and various other totally overpowered nonsense) and a bunch of high-powered races that combine with traditional classes as well (my favourite is probably the Minotaur Barbarian which can start with 20 CON, although the Irda are pretty funny too.)

I experimented, and I've found that you can in fact make a perfectly playable game out of these classes. You need to at least double the monster hp's and muck with their AC's and other stats to achieve that, but it's surprisingly easy. The main impact on party balance is that lowbie magic-users get even more useless and the party needs extra clerics to keep up with the healing.

The effect of permitting these high-powered custom classes into the game is to make it less random. The probability of a character being killed by a fluke die roll goes down, as does the probability of a high-powered monster dying in the first round.

I think that this may have been what Gygax was moving towards.

AD&D offered more hit points and more spells and more powerful classes than OD&D, but didn't break the game. UA further inflated player power relative to the monsters. The main problem with UA is that the Barbarian (and, to a lesser extent, the Cavalier) make the rest of the character classes pretty useless.

As an experiment, in my forum RPG everyone is playing a high-powered custom class. They all sent me a character outline, and I created a unique character class to suit what they wrote. The result is that the characters are fairly sure of themselves in a fight (too sure, the only fight they've been in resulted in two of the five players going below 0hp) - but they aren't totally sure of one another's capabilities.

All the feedback I've received about that has been positive.

Anyway, what I'm saying (in a roundabout way) is that these overpowered classes can work well. They're only a problem if they're mixed with PHB classes.

[Rob]

You make some excellent points, P&P, but I don't know anyone who doesn't use the PHB classes. I agree that they Cavalier, and even the Barbarian can be playable, but they have to be tweaked in order to fit with the PHB classes. I lowered the number of attacks/round for both, putting the Fighter ahead of them (at a max of 3/1 when double specialized), as well as making the NP penalty only -1 for the Fighter, and -2 to -3 for the other fighting classes. Weapon Proficiencies were also modified, along with a few other things, but you get the idea.

Personally, one of the things I enjoy most about AD&D is the mortality of the characters; there's none of this super overpowered crap that you get in 3e which makes it virtually impossible to kill a character permanently. Knowing that your character can go down after taking only one or two fluky hits makes you think a little more, and strategize before rushing off into battle. Call me crazy, but I always found that making up a crazy-ass plan in order to overcome rediculous odds was the most fun, especially on those rare occasions where you rolled that natural 20 you needed, or what have you.

[foster1941]

Following up on what P&P says above, the 'powering up' of characters from OD&D to AD&D to UA (to Mythus, where 'starting' characters are seemingly equivalent in ability to AD&D characters of about 10th level -- going by equivalent combat toughness, available spell choice and power, etc.) in addition to downplaying the 'random element' as P&P described this also seems to have been a deliberate response to smaller average player-groups and decreased reliance on NPCs (men-at-arms, henchmen, followers, etc.).

EGG admitted this in one of the recent EN World Q&A threads when I asked him why he started the players in his new OD&D campaign at 3rd level instead of 1st -- in the OD&D paradigm it was assumed that adventuring parties (especially at low level) would typically consist of a dozen or more characters, some PCs some NPCs, and thus individual character versatility and survivability isn't as important -- it doesn't matter as much that the character can only cast one spell, or take one hit in combat, because there are so many other characters that each individual one isn't as important.

By AD&D the expected size of player-groups had already begun to shrink (from a 12+ to 6-9) and the rules responded by making characters tougher and more versatile -- clerics get more spells, fighters get more hp, magic-users get more spell-choices (even though they can still only use one at a time), and so on (and don't forget the "-10 hp" rule, which has a huge impact on character survivability).

UA (which I think should more properly be seen as a prototype version of Gygax's planned 2E moreso than as an addition to 1E) continued this trend, both by increasing fighter effectiveness with weapon specialization, increasing thief survivability by allowing them to wear extra armor, (clerics seem to mostly get the shaft in UA, but when you look at the Deities in the 1983 World of Greyhawk set, most of which give their followers extra abilities, you can see a bit of what was probably in store for that class in Gygax's 2E), increasing general character toughness through Method V stat-generation and the minimum hp rule, and presenting 2 character types (cavaliers and barbarians) that are tough enough that they're essentially self-sufficient (the barbarian is literally self-sufficient, and a cavalier with 'full retinue' can easily be the only PC, even if the party itself is still quite large). Thus a party of 3-4 'UA enhanced' (i.e. proto-2E) characters can probably bring about the same amount of force to bear as 6-9 baseline AD&D characters, and a dozen or more OD&D characters.

[Jerry Mapes]

I think that is the missing link in this puzzle.
You guys have nailed it I believe.

I had never carried it out that far but seeing it laid out like so... it makes perfect sense.

Jerry

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Actually priests (in my experience) fit in well with the UA+ "uberclasses." Clerics and druids were certainly the most powerful PHB classes at low to mid levels - particularly clerics, who have nearly the melee of a fighter (bar an average of 1hp less per level) plus three times the spell capacity of a magic-user plus four times the number of spell choices of a magic-user plus better saves than either.

I think that what UA did was to weaken magic-users and totally invalidate thieves (why would anyone ever be a thief if they could be a barbarian?)

Anyway, if you're playing a UA-enabled party, I really don't see why anyone would play a PHB class that wasn't a cleric or magic-user archetype. Fighters and thieves are totally replaced in terms of ability scores, and thanks to the infamous Method V, you're guaranteed to be able to play a Cavalier-class-enhanced Paladin if you want to.

[Rob]

Yup, which is why I do not allow the Barbarian as a PC class, and have placed restrictions on the Cavalier. I've also beefed the Fighter up, in terms of attack progression, just to make sure they retain their title as of the "King of Combat".