My favorite heresy: mundane vs. mundane & magic vs. magic, please!

[Perspicacity]

Magic is a tool like a sword is a tool. But you don't use a sword to paint a house, and you don't use a wizard to kill a man. I mean, you could drown someone with paint, but the sword is much more efficient.

I'd love to run a campaign where all the spellcasters get tricky spells, and no attack spells. I would worry, though, about the fighter players not being able to show off their ingenuity.

Magic, being a completely fictional concept, is whatever we feel that it should be. D&D has an established canon in regards to magic which includes a whole lot of destruction.

 

[Daven]

My idea of a fantasy fighter is one that takes a wizard lighting, then with a smile says: "Just this?", and then charge.
Not a real fighter, a fantasy fighter.

If we can have magic, we can have very tough people.

Think at Avengers: we have our wizard Iron Man, our barbarian Hulk, and our fighter Cap. Iron Man is surely more awesome, but if Cap or Hulk would like to let Iron Man have a lesson of morality (Cap) or just to enjoy beating things without destroying them too much (Hulk), we all expect that Iron Man would survive but with a lot of repairs to his "wizardry" armor.

 

[GreyICE]

Fighters and even monsters can have bows. But part of the problem is that Wizards have too easy a time figuring out how to avoid the swords. It is one of the reasons I am against Generalist Wizards as a sacred cow -- certain reliable tactics are too obvious and (almost) always accessible.

Ooh, invisibility. Now I'm somewhere within 100 ft of you, in the air, invisible. Shoot me now!

I think one of the sacred cows that needs to be killed, TBH, is that magic can do anything, AND DO IT IN 6 SECONDS. Some things just need to be off limits without minutes, hours, days, or weeks of prep time.

 

[Minigiant]

Like the idea but it would involve weakening base strength of the spells so that the wizard can't really blast the enemy caster efficiently.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Ooh, invisibility. Now I'm somewhere within 100 ft of you, in the air, invisible. Shoot me now!

I think one of the sacred cows that needs to be killed, TBH, is that magic can do anything, AND DO IT IN 6 SECONDS. Some things just need to be off limits without minutes, hours, days, or weeks of prep time.

On Gitpg a few years ago someone had a great post on this (3.5 rules used) It went like this (although I may be messing up a bit)



It made up a hypothaticle adventureing group of 1 10th level fighter with leadership, and 6 18's for stats, his cohort was a 7th level Fighter/Ranger/Rouge, and a bunch of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level warriors as followers, and a 10th level wizard made with point buy and a 16 Int.



The fighter had a +5 keen shocking weapon, +3 armor, and belt of giant str +4 plus the normal magic items for a 10th level character. His cohort had a +3 long bow and two +3 scimitars plus items of his level. every follower had +1 swords, +1 armor, and 2 potions of cure light.



The wizard was only allowed 1 wand of 3rd level or lower, and scrolls he himself could pen, and no more the 4 of them, and 2 potions of cure light.



two armies are approching the town the PCs are in, from the east agroup of orc, 100 MM orcs lead by a level 5 barbarian Orc, and a level 5 Adept orc. from the west comes 100 book stat hobgoblins, with 50 goblins, lead by a 6th level fighter hobgoblin, and 10 bugbears.



The wizard heads west, the fighter and group head east, this should be easy, the fighter should have a massive advantage, but he does not. You see the wizard uses overland flight, protection from normal missles, stone skin, and mage armor before leaveing the town, then Invisability when close to the enemy. He then summons a few creatures well flying invisable, to fight the bugbears, then starts raining fireballs from his wand on the hobgodlins and goblins(from outside of bow range)

when the wizard wins he can double back to help the fighter and crew.

Replace the wizard with a 10th level druid and it gets worse.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

As I see it, it is not fundamentally a question of the overall power of the Wizard, but rather the relative efficiency of spells against very different kinds of threats and how this creates the "texture" of wizardry in the game.

As a design challenge, this sort of boils down to completely removing Spell Resistance from the game. The question is how to make this reasonable balance-wise.

I think I can make a strong case that SR is an ugly band-aid to fix other kinds of issues. I am going further and suggesting that SR pushes up in the exact wrong direction flavorwise.

Really though, what I want is roughly the effective opposite of SR.

Does that mean knights in shining armor can shrug off Fireballs? Maybe. That is an implementation detail, not the goal.

We could think of it instead as equipping the Wizard with spells that are specifically powerful against heavily magically endowed creatures, and then dialing the Wizard power to the right overall level.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Magic, being a completely fictional concept, is whatever we feel that it should be. D&D has an established canon in regards to magic which includes a whole lot of destruction.

WotC has shown they're quite comfortable with setting fire to the established canon when they think it serves the best interests of the game. That smoke you smell is the smoldering ruins of the Great Wheel, for instance.

 

[Starman]

Magic is a tool like a sword is a tool. But you don't use a sword to paint a house, and you don't use a wizard to kill a man. I mean, you could drown someone with paint, but the sword is much more efficient.

I'd love to run a campaign where all the spellcasters get tricky spells, and no attack spells. I would worry, though, about the fighter players not being able to show off their ingenuity.

That reminds me of this bit from Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

"Can a magician kill a man by magic?" Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. "I suppose a magician might," he admitted, "but a gentleman never could."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That reminds me of this bit from Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

"Can a magician kill a man by magic?" Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. "I suppose a magician might," he admitted, "but a gentleman never could."

I would play the crap out of a Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell game. Of course, it'd probably be run with Ars Magica rules, not any flavor of D&D ...

 

[TheFindus]

Wizards should be more powerful than warriors, because wizards represent the superiority of intellect over mundane strength.

... said the jock to the nerd while stuffing him in the trash can, long before he became a senator after a career as a great athlete.