How is the Wizard vs Warrior Balance Problem Handled in Fantasy Literature?

[GSHamster]

I have to say I agree that Blackbeard is a poor example of a fighter - rogue (at least muticlassed) does seem much more appropriate. This would certainly alleviate any the lack of skills associated with a fighter.

The issue is that this same gestalt process seems to be happening for *every* remotely three-dimensional character. One or two literary physical characters being fighter/X is okay, but all of them?

I think for a fighter class to be solid, at the very least you should be able to create a knight character (Arthur, Gawain, Lancelot) without resorting to a special "noble" class to fill in the non-combat aspects.

 

[TwoSix]

The issue is that this same gestalt process seems to be happening for *every* remotely three-dimensional character. One or two literary physical characters being fighter/X is okay, but all of them?

I think for a fighter class to be solid, at the very least you should be able to create a knight character (Arthur, Gawain, Lancelot) without resorting to a special "noble" class to fill in the non-combat aspects.

Well, I have seen it argued that 3e classes should carry little to no archetypal weight because of the ease of multiclassing and the preponderance of PrCs.

Not 100% sure I agree, but it's a good talking point.

Fighter might be a particularly bad class to judge by, because mechanically, it's a steaming pile of vanilla. It's hard to look at a purely mechanical construct like the fighter and see actually interesting heroes in there without a lot of tweaking.

And specifically, and importantly, and still being goddamned ignored, about adventuring wizards and adventuring warriors adventuring together.

Well, if it's about them together, I still submit that

Caster + Caster > Caster + Non-Caster >> Non-Caster + Non-Caster.

Apropos of nothing, I love your class in the Expanded Psionics Handbook!

 

[Raven Crowking]

He can be a multiclass fighter. But Fighters do not have the profession skill on their class list. Which means they need to buy ranks in Profession at half speed. To reach the 7 required ranks they need to be level (2*7)-3=11. A fighter can not qualify as a Stormwrack captain before level 11. So for all the fluff allows it, the rules do not. This is because the skills cripple the fighter's attempts to be what a fighter should be.

Now if you were to tell me a 4e fighter or a 1e fighter was a captain I wouldn't be at all surprised. It's just that the 3e fighter class is buggy.

Okay, a couple of things:

(1) Absurd real-world levels: I'm with you there. 3e suffers from a clear "average man" standard from which to compare characters, which leaves us in the problem we now face -- if you cannot determine what the average (competent) man is, how do you begin to decide where extraordinary starts?

(2) Stormwrack tells you what skills most captains have, and what ranks they have in them. AFAICT, Stormwrack does not say, "variations on these guidelines = BAD CAPTAIN!"

(3) Stormwrack specifies that fighters are among the common classes from which ship's captains come.

(4) Since we have leapt out of the Core Rules anyway, alternate ideas of what is required can be found in Experts, Seascape, and Everyone Else. If you want to make the case that (some of) the official supplemental rules cause problems that (some of) the 3pp supplements do not, then I will agree with you. Like it or not, though, 3e is (much!) bigger than WotC-3e, and the prospective DM has a plethora of options to choose from.

EDIT:

Oh, yeah (5) I'll also be happy to agree that there are problems with the class design of 3e. I certainly think that my own ruleset does a better job with fighters! But, even so, that doesn't mean that you cannot create a fighter that represents a historical, literary, or folkloric fighting man in 3e. Just that RCFG is better!


RC

 

[pawsplay]

Care to justify that? Teach wasn't on the list of great pirates. Or great warriors. Yes, he was big and imposing. But level 9 is pretty massive.

Ah, but this is one of those rare occasions when we can benchmark a historical figure's hit points. With Con 16, he would have about 81 hit points. Five pistols shots at 2d6 and twenty saber cuts at 1d6+1 averages about 125 hit points, so if anything, I've lowballed him. Plus, level 9 is when he can take Leadership.

Skill Focus (twice), Negotiator, Alertness. As a L9 fighter you get five bonus feats. And you've just spent four (!) on boosting your skills. The only one of these that isn't forced on you by choosing a class that doesn't fit and forces you to bend over backwards is your Intimidate. Assume you want to keep the massive intimidate.

None of them are forced. I'm simply building to concept. A rogue or barbarian would simply have five less feats. This is simply a compromise between combat and skills to eak out some specific skill bonuses. In the end, he's still a fighter.

That means you've gained two feats (weapon focus/spec) from your class and poured three feats into shoring up the problems of picking a very bad class for the job - for an effective 22 skill points at cross class rates. Sounds like a lot? A level 9 Barbarian would have 24 more skill points (never mind that one of the skills you want, Listen, isn't cross class for Barbarians). 2 more skill points makes the Barbarian literate. And in exchange for weapon focus and specialisation you gain: 10 Hit points (+18 when raging), Improved Uncanny Dodge, Fast Movement, DR 1, and three rages/day. All round better for the guy who takes a lot of killing than your version especially as your excuse for picking fighter is the BAB and hit points. In short despite your bending over backwards, the barbarian makes a better version of your version of Teach than the fighter.

Barbarian is not a bad second choice. In fact, in Unorthodox Barbarians I wrote up a Corsair variant barbarian. However, I don't think it really applies to Blackbeard. This version is still at least two feats ahead, and the lower Listen bonus... is quite okay, seriously. The barbarian pirate is probably one of Blackbeard's sturdier crew members.

And why is this? It's because the fighter isn't a general big burly guy who's good at beating things up. That would be the barbarian. The fighter is the monomaniac weapons specialist who eats with his sword and sleeps with his sword and is dedicated to tricks with his weapons to the exclusion of all else. This is a 3.X issue rather than a D&D issue. (The lack of plot power for non casters is a general issue and one that's been noticed for apparently longer than I've been alive).

Like a guy who can wield a cutlass effectively, shot a pistol at close range without picking off his own guys, and quick draw one of his bracers of pistols.

And for the record, Pawsplay is right. Knowledge (Geography) isn't the mapreading skill. It's the skill to not need to read a map. Regrettably, apparently Stormwrack changed this and Paizo kept it on as quoted by Fifth Element. So if you're using the full 3.X rules, Hussar is right.

Weapons of Legacy also misuses Knowledge as a research skill without stating any changes to the rules, such that as written, there are no retries for unlocking legacies!

Anyway. Time for a summary. IMO, in 3e, Blackbeard is probably a fighter, even though 3e steals about 20 or so skill ranks from him to which he would be otherwise entitled. But that's okay, because piracy really isn't about being a skill-monkey. Pathfinder basically gives those ranks back to a great extent. Previous versions of D&D had no problem at all with Fighter pirates. Depending on concept, rogues and/or barbarians may also be good pirates.
Using the Rules Cyclopedia, a pirate is just a fighter or thief with Profession (sailor), Pilot (favored type of vessel), Pilot (longboat), and one other General Skill of relevance. AD&D, same thing; maybe you can throw a Kit in there, too, if you want.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Asked and answered about 100 pages back.

Normally wizards take time to cast spells. Warriors win once they get to sword range. The rest of the time you're playing Ars Magica with Wizars winning - these cases almost always have wizard protagonists.

No, it really hasn't been. And the fact that you continue to talk in terms of warriors "winning" or wizards "winning" is just evidence that you still don't get it.

 

[Stormonu]

I'll have to agree with Hussar on one thing; the fighter got the shaft on skills in 3E - the fighter's skill list is frankly embarassing (What idiot doesn't give Profession to EVERY class as a class skill, and use rope should have probably never been a skill)

Overall, I think the Blackbeard Pawsplay presented isn't horrible, it just isn't the best captain the world's ever seen.

Fleeced selling his cargo? Possibly, if a semidescent smoothtalker comes up with a con. Otherwise he ought to be able to walk around town for ten minutes (taking 20 on appraise) and have an idea how much his wares would normally sell for (note, he doesn't have appraise for any expensive/unusual items). Also, he might have a quartermaster who purchases/sells cargo for him.

Navigating - do items such as sextants and such provide equipment bonuses or are they considered "standard fare" for making the check? Again, most likely he'll have to depend on a navigator if he can't take 10 on his checks.

Part of this I put forward because I recently came away from a D&D campaign where the party wizard was the captain. Despite his character's Intelligence, he did not have many of the skills you mentioned as required - he depended on several other crew members to handle piloting, gathering/selling supplies and such (the leadership feat was used to help fill out these jobs, and not by the cohort either. A couple of the other PCs also lent their skills as well [no, the party rogue was not a help, and was in fact skimming sales of some of the cargo])

 

[BryonD]

Yes, I know, pesky things like actually reading the rules are such huge flaws in the argument.

Look, it's been shown pretty well that a fighter makes a really, really poor Pirate Captain. I didn't do that, Pawsplay put it up. We have a pirate captain that can't sail, can't navigate, can't tell when other pirates are lying to him and can barely convince his own grandmother to piddle on him if he was on fire.

This is a REALLY bad pirate captain.

Whether or not that is a bad pirate isn't even the point anymore.

Now, your argument boils down to a one true scotsman fallacy where a "good" DM faced with mechanics that do not resolve any of the issues put forth here would simply magically create the mechanics needed and everything would come up roses. If that works for you, then great. Fantastic.

To be honest, that's pretty much exactly what I did do when I ran naval campaigns- expand the Profession skill to cover a number of the issues brough up here and then give all classes Profession as a class skill. But, again, we're not discussing my game or your game, we're discussing what the game ACTUALLY says.

It's funny, I frequently get told that one of the great things about 4E is all the advice that is provided for how to run a good game.

And yet when this kind of advice is applied to 3E it is somehow a house rule. shrug

If you think the game "ACTUALLY says" that Prof skills generate revenue with no applicable ability, then you are missing a great deal of context. And if you think it is intended to be interpreted that way, then you are just wrong.

Sigh, I must be tired. I'll be unsubscribing from this one now because I refuse to get sucked back into a dead end conversation that I know will not go anywhere.

Your call. But, frankly, if your view is that Prof skill make SP appear from nothing, then you have forced the conversation into dead end right there.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My take: a captain doesn't need all of the skills we think of as part of the package if he does a good job of unifying and motivating his crew.

Now, while that sounds like Leadership, in a piratical society, the leader may be the one who fights best in battle (in leadership challenges or taking a ship), the one with the best political connections (getting them letters of marque from some nation so they can operate freely and openly), a man with a good eye for talent assembling a crew (finding a good cook, good navigator, and a good quartermaster), someone with deep pockets (for bribe, booze, keeping them equipped and the ship in fighting trim), and a host of other factors.

 

[Bluenose]

You are the first person I have ever heard suggest that he was able to breathe water. The assumption that he simply held his breath a really, really long time is pretty standard.

Not that a 1-20 fighter can hold his breath that long. But that isn't really relevant because one could very easily argue that Beowulf is the icon of "epic" fighter.

Anyone can hold their breath. Beowulf does something anyone can do, just to epic proportions.

And, really, I don't think that adds anything to the wizard / warrior debate. He just certainly doesn't need to be assumed to have a water breathing ability.

I also really liked the 13th warrior spin on it in which he swims down to a cave and holding his breath was just the impression the story teller gets from the sideline.

So your basic proposal is to disregard the story in favour of something that fits what you want to believe. Well, that's a perfectly defensible position.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'll have to agree with Hussar on one thing; the fighter got the shaft on skills in 3E - the fighter's skill list is frankly embarassing (What idiot doesn't give Profession to EVERY class as a class skill, and use rope should have probably never been a skill)

Well, there I'll agree as well. The whole "class skill" thing works better in theory than in practice, IMHO and IME. Class and cross-class feats might have worked better. In creating RCFG, I made some fighter abilities things that only fighters can choose from. Likewise rogues and sorcerers.

Overall, I think the Blackbeard Pawsplay presented isn't horrible, it just isn't the best captain the world's ever seen.

Agreed.



RC