This is extremely important. As I was reading through this thread, this thought was running through my mind a lot. (I won't take sides on the main crux of the argument, yet. I'm still trying to decide where I stand on it, and whether or not that's colored by my primary being a martial.) Anyway, in the d20 days, most adventures seemed to scale their TNs (or DCs at the case may be) with APL. As you played at higher and higher APLs, the DCs got bigger to keep it challenging. I've always been of the belief that this should have been unacceptable. I understand that it was a common practice, and was not limited to LA. I also understand that 18th level PCs could easily get skill checks that would blow away the "amazing" DC level, and it was, to a certain extent, necessary. But PCI can avoid that arms race and is no longer beholden to a rules set that encouraged such behavior. If a lock is incredibly well made and takes a TN of 30 to pick it, then it should always take a TN of 30, no matter who is trying to pick it. The tier 5 PC with maxed out Larcceny should have an easier time of it than the tier 3 PC. If you are writing an adventure and you're introducing the lock in order to make a challenge for a PC to overcome, then you're going to need to think a little harder. The lock should be there to facilitate the story, not to to be a skill challenge. Appropriate TNs are spelled out in the book. We, as adventure authors, need to be cognizant of this. And campaign staff and editors need to also keep an eye out for this. Stop the arms race before it begins.

Second point... Several people have pointed out how there are more Martial PCs in the campaign than Arcane or Divine. I don't think that's at all evidence of the Archetype being stronger or weaker than any other. It think it has much more to do with player preferences, character concepts and a general idea that spell casting is more complicated and new players can more easily play "big dumb fighters". So I wouldn't take that as evidence for either side. (Not to mention that the sample size is too small to be of any real use. The margin for error would be way too high.)


Scott

I'm usually pretty good at finding *something* to argue against - not just because I can be an ass, but because I'm very good at being the Devil's Advocate... With this post and the bit John posted, I can find no fault with. I am 100% agreed. There are better, more interesting ways to challenge players and their characters.

I wholeheartedly agree that keeping the TNs the TNs as stated in the book should be maintained. It allows for everyone who's not a specialist but has invested some time to be useful should be able to handle things. If they're going to inflate then it will pretty much require people to hyper specialize in skills. Right now with my primary I've only got 2 skills I expect to get 3 ranks in per tier, even though he gets 6 on his skill advances. It would be nice to be mentally prepped for only really being useful if I get a lucky roll in the future.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

How about Defense targeting.
Are Martial characters more limited in choosing which Defense to attack by comparison?

Val'Holryn: but at what opportunity cost? What investment buys that Martial character parity in those non-Archetype skills? Possible variety means a lot less then plausible variety.
Yeah, anything could happen -but if your keyboard didn't turn to platinum wafers when you read this sentence then it probably doesn't.

I don't really understand your question. Of course there are always costs of opportunity... if I took this then I didn't take that ... But I don't yet see how that is any worse for the a martial archetype than anything else.

Tukufu is an expert archetype, has taken the advancement where he got 2 more skills at 2 ranks each and STILL doesn't have all the skills I think he should have (getting there). But it's absolutely vital to me that he manifests psionics and shoots (and can use a sword if forced into melee). He's a tomb raider too so I need to keep larceny and perception high. Athletics, Persuasion, lore & Mettle? Not all of them are going to get raised even 2 points a level.

My suspicion is that many people built martial characters that are cracked out for melee and now find them either boring to run or over specialized. Maybe not. But I built Eisner to go through a door eat three crossbow bolts and then proceed to tears the attackers arms out of their sockets... and with the exceptions of BI or a few killer combats that's pretty much what he does. He also has 2 ranks of persuasion. If the DCs are in the 15-20 range he can string together a few polite sentences and make a point. And persuasion will continue to go up 1 or 2 ranks per tier. He won't ever make arguments that make a DC 35. Do you need to have maxed out ranks to be useful? I hope not.

I agree, 100%.
I'm concerned because over the rounds at Gamestorm I found I wasn't hitting anything very consistently.
Given a TN of 21 with flat +4 to hit with a d10 Prowess die that's 16.5 on 3d10, and so around 50% to hit. Now, I'm not sure what the baseline "expected" level of success is supposed to be, and that's kind of the sticky wicket. The stat for a d10 die is pretty well into the exceptional range as attributes go and 4 ranks (or 3 and Weapon Master) is about as good as starting gets. So is my ~50% accuracy good enough?
I can tell you I can count the number of times I was missed with a 20 Avoidance on both hands, and rarely more then 3 times per mod. Part of that was the BI, so presumably everything was harder to hit and more accurate itself on account of being a BI. But ouch, those cats. Not only were the damage dice hot, but they didn't miss either.
So am I the avatar of mediocrity? Am I succeeding about as often as I should? Is it an Arms Race, and I'm just collateral damage? I can't tell you why, but I can tell you what looks like it should be solidly "B" strength often works out to being a "C-" instead. My kvetching about armor has that factor as well -I'm taking a savaging through as much DR as I can get off the rack; if I were a Caster and could mince around in back for 80% of the fights would I be any less successful? Or would the increased control and destructiveness be effective compensation?

You know me. I'm rarely obsessed with being the best. I'm fine with being comfortably proficient. As long as I can do what I want without being a burden on the table I'm happy. But I'm trying to figure out what's going on, and looking for reasons why. Was I just outclassed being a 1.3 in a 1.5 mod?
As for being bored, ask Ludwig. He's pretty damn mono-tasked, but seems to keep busy all the same. Or Slak'karr. I've yet to hear "I'm sick and tired of constantly succeeding at the standards I set for myself" out of anyone's mouth.

So, based on Zac's post, I looked up how many martial techniques attack which defense. Here's what I found:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xz9jimbr2ds3wl8/Capture.PNG
The top table is from A:RPG, the 2nd is from CoH.
Between the two references there are 42 maneuvers that attack avoidance, one that attacks fortitude, 4 that attack Discipline and 4 that are "special".

So I suppose that this adds more fuel to the Martial types are not as versatile side of the argument.

Now... I think I've formed an opinion. I play a Martial Arcchetype as my primary character. And I enjoy playing him. He's fun. I've also never felt inadequate in a combat. Outside of combat, he doesn't have a lot of skills where he would excel, except (like the stereotype) for his physical skills and stealth. I've also made an effort to put some ranks in Empathy and Persuasion (totalling 3 and 2 ranks, respectively at tier 2.4.) As long as I'm not expected to "max out" those skills, it should end up being adequate to put 2 ranks per tier into each, if I can manage that.

Now, I can't reasonably expect to succeed at most skill checkss outside of those, except on occasion. I think that Experts shine more in that area, and they should. And I can't expect to manipulate the nature of the universe to my will like the casters can. What I can expect to excel in is physical combat versatility. And as long as Experts, Casters and "combat casters" can't be just as good at it as a dedicated Martial, I'm fine with it. And looking at the discussions about limiting the cherry-picking of martial techniques, I think that some safeguards are being put into place to protect the Martial Archetype from becoming obsolete (so to speak.)

With that in mind, though, I would like to see some additional martial techniques that target Discipline or Fortitude. Realistically, those should be fewer in number. But we all know that Avoidance is generally the hardest defense to hit. (Well, while that's true for PCs, that's less true for "monsters." This would be due to the way that threats are created vs. the way the PCs are created.) But having some additional, viable options would go a long way, I think.

Scott

OK, I'm going to talk about him, because he's right over there. See him, the elephant in the room with us?

I too play a martial as my primary, and like most others who do, he is also a spell caster. You can play a non spell caster as a martial, but in general he is weaker. And the reason why is simple. It is because of the very nature of the spellcasting talent. When you take it. you get access to 5 spells and a bonus unique spell at tier 1. Each spell is, in it's own right, the equivalent of a talent in power and versatility, and most SCALE in power as you advance (adaptions). Plus, you get prestidigitation, which is another 5 spells.

There are few things that a STRAIGHT martial character (with no casting) has access to that scale as they advance. (Some maneuvers, that's about it.) If you want to fix the problem and make straight fighters viable, address this issue.

Some possible suggestions,

Split the spellcasting talent into two talents, one for the primary spells and one for the secondary spell. That will make arcane and divine archtypes more of what they are supposed to be, and the expert and martial casters will be more of the dabblers they are supposed to be, or they will have to focus much more on their casting.

Make Advanced Armor Training an optional talent and add it to list of talents that you can choose from as well as adding an additional choice and add a third choice and additional options.

This might result in a change like this in the martial template.

Weapon and Armor Talents: You gain Armor Proficiency
in ALL armor and shields common to your starting nation. You
also gain Weapon Training with ALL of your nation’s common
weapons. For a complete list of weapons and armor common
to each starting nation, see pg. 234.

Martial Talents: Choose three Talents from the following list:
Any non limited Combat Talent that you meet the requirements for, Leadership or Advanced Armor Training.

Also, to be fair, expert should then get a third skill talent. This way all three would start with three archtype talents. Yes, martial characters would get more weapon and armor talents, but then divine and arcane get extra talents in their primary talents they start with. (5 spells, 2 spells and 4 spells respectively for the prestidigitation, secondary casting and primary casting talents. (3 you choose and the one FREE unique spell) and experts get versitility. Or if you really want to be fair, the third talent for expert could be an "Any non limited talent that you would qualify for.)

I think these changes would bring a lot more balance to the archtypes and to the game.

The elephant changes size by Tier. Yes, its pretty easy to build a Gish character (fighter caster) at Tier 1 who can hit with a sword and a spell. That changes as you go up in Tiers. By Tier 5 you can only really do it either as an Expert or through the various (apparently unpopular) versions of Sword and Spell.

That's because you can generally hit things at Tier 1 with 4-5 ranks in some form of arcanum ... but shouldn't hit squat with 12-13 ranks at Tier 5. Since martial archetypes can't advance their arcanum 3 times per tier they can't keep up. Similarly the Arcane and Divine Archetypes only can only advance their melee\ranged skills 2 times per tier...so they increasingly loose ground to the Martial characters.

Paths, combat advantage and some talents can recover some or all of this ground. But then your whole build is centered on doing two things well rather than being awesome at one thing.

Nope, he's no illusion, he's still right over there and big as ever. OK, I did not make it clear what the problems that I see are. Let me try again.

1. That the tallents that grant magic are shorthand for what would be, for almost all other instances of talent discription, five or more different and distinct tallents. (The Learn spell tallent multiple times.) For al intents and purposes SPELLS = TALENTS.

2. That most magical talents (that is, spells) can grow in power and effectiveness as one advances, where martial talents generally do not.

Even to answer your point directly, that martial characters that are spell casters are not evective at the higher tiers because the defenses of opponents are so high that they can't be reliably effected, that makes two rather large assumptions that are frequently not the case.

The first is that offensive spells are not effective unless they can beat the defenses of the toughest foes that you face. As anyone who has faced minions or even common foes should be able to attest, you don't need high defenses to be a threat, and these foes frequently don't have top line defenses and can often be taken out by a Gish caster, even at high tiers.

Second, and much more importantly, is the assumption that only attack spells are effective. For a gish spell caster, and inertial shield is much more devistating thatn a direct attack spell. If you choose spells that augment, they are more effective frequently than talents that do because spells and talents stack where talents and talents don't. You don't have to beat a defense, just hit a CTN, and even an average Gish can hit a CTN at tier 5 with just getting 2 ranks per tier. Spells are almost the same as talents (slower because of strain, but still offering customizable advantages) but casters get 11 to start with and 6 per tier (with the 2 talent advancement, casters get the spell casting tallent which gives 5 spells which should be seend as 5 talents, and then the second arcane or devout talent you take) compared to the 2 talents to start and 2 talents per tier that martial characters get per tier. This is why you see so many casters.

I hope that shine some light on out big 'ol grey friend over there. Spell = Talents as far as poer goes.