Flying Fighters and Other Stories of Dependence, Independence and Interdependence

[Kraydak]

Experience with the playtest characters? The Fighter can be pretty superfluous in that group, which doesn't suggest that the class is going to be particularly necessary.

Yeah, the playtest fighter is outshone pretty hard, I'll grant you that.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

Yeah, the playtest fighter is outshone pretty hard, I'll grant you that.

And yet, you believe they will get class "balance" right featuring Vancian casting.

I have to admire your outright positive way in which you believe in WotCs ability to finetune things. I simply have to.

 

[Kraydak]

And yet, you believe they will get class "balance" right featuring Vancian casting.

I have to admire your outright positive way in which you believe in WotCs ability to finetune things. I simply have to.

It is one hell of a lot easier than coming up with a new Vancian Fighter that doesn't blow up peoples suspension of disbelief and fits in the PHB wordcount limit. It certainly isn't as if pretending the option doesn't exist helps anything, that just leads to people throwing up their hands and admitting defeat.

 

[TwoSix]

I am also baffled by this. Also, the wizard may be versatile but is squishy, and can easily die if no fighters are engaging opponents at the forefront. The wizard is dependent on others' defensive and attritional capabilities.

Also, at least in this thread, I feel alienated from the concern about rules that allow "outclassing" or "stepping on each other's toes". This implies that you're upset with your fellow player/PC because they do something that you should be in charge of. I think that's the opposite of interdependency, in which you're watcing each others' backs. It may be a subtle difference but an important one.

In one case, it's a superhero team of alpha males/females teamed together for the sake of convenience and beating the odds. In the other, heroes are humanly imperfectly incomplete parts that complement each other to make an awesome fighting/exploring/socializing machine.

I have no problem accepting that the Fighter and the Rogue are dependent on the Cleric and Wizard. I have no problem accepting that the Wizard (and Cleric) have weaknesses that can be mitigated by bringing another character.

The problem is that the superhero team of alpha males/females (to use your terminology), is Wizard/Wizard/Cleric/Druid. If you want humanly imperfect, you're better off going Fighter/Rogue/Warmage/Dragon Shaman.

 

[Underman]

The problem is that the superhero team of alpha males/females (to use your terminology), is Wizard/Wizard/Cleric/Druid.

Interesting. Is that true for 3E or 2E or 4E, and at what levels? I'm not sure what scope various people are talking about. I haven't been in one like that, as there were always players who wanted to be fighters and rogues and (to a lesser extent) paladins, bards, etc.

So how common are 'superhero' teams like Wizard/Wizard/Cleric/Druid? How relevant would that problem be in D&D Next? Should adventure modules be designed with a certain party makeup in mind? What if the team is Fighter/Fighter/Fighter/Rogue -- what onus do the players take on to mitigate dependency on non-existent spellcasters? What if the party is Wizard/Wizard/Cleric/Druid -- what onus does the DM take on to challenge this party or necessitate a fighter?

 

[Black Knight Irios]

Interesting. Is that true for 3E or 2E or 4E, and at what levels? I'm not sure what scope various people are talking about. I haven't been in one like that, as there were always players who wanted to be fighters and rogues and (to a lesser extent) paladins, bards, etc.

So how common are 'superhero' teams like Wizard/Wizard/Cleric/Druid? How relevant would that problem be in D&D Next? Should adventure modules be designed with a certain party makeup in mind? What if the team is Fighter/Fighter/Fighter/Rogue -- what onus do the players take on to mitigate dependency on non-existent spellcasters? What if the party is Wizard/Wizard/Cleric/Druid -- what onus does the DM take on to challenge this party or necessitate a fighter?

I can't say much about 2E but for 3.x the disparity starts to get greater with every level past 9, I'm probably rather generous with my estimation of level 9, might be as soon as level 7.

For 4E that problem has been largely toned down b/c a Wizard (CLR/DRD) has not all spells that exist at his disposal but a select few and due to the removal of long term buffs and the reduction of the duration of the remaining utility spells.

Back to 3E:
The group setup WIZ+WIZ+CLR+DRD (or any other combination) was not an issue of imbalance among the players but a direct challenge to the DM.

A group lacking all those classes was severly disadvantaged if the DM ran a standard adventure b/c they were lacking utility, protection and healing. A differnt kind of challenge for the DM.

A group consisting of the aforementioned casters and non-casters was imbalanced regarding power levels among the players. A DM might be able alleviate the power disparity but I don't think that could be achieved within the rules by RAW.


Fast foreward 5E:
I hope that the wizard (other Vancian casters) regain some of their utility but at the same time I hope that all non-Vancian casters are buffed so that they can contribute more to the campaign not just combats than I swing my sword described in 318 different ways.

 

[Hussar]

I remain completely baffled by many peoples' complete inability/refusal to so much as contemplate the possibility of DnD Next's Wizard's offense and defense being outclassed by DnD Next's Fighter/Barbarian's offense and defense. Can someone explain why normally reasonable posters like Hussar fall into this trap?

Well, I wasn't specifically talking about 5e, simply talking about how things had been in the past. So, it's possible that 5e might reverse the past twenty or twenty-five years of D&D (see below for that particular period of time).

Yes. People have experience in 3e that suggests otherwise. Any vaguely competently made 3e Cleric or Wizard (or Druid, or Sorcerer etc...) would outclass a Fighter. But that wasn't the case in 1e/2e. Why do you insist on assuming that if DnD Next's Fighter is non-Vancian, then we must have a return to 3e's (as opposed to 1e's) power structure? Even if you simply refuse to consider that 3e's power structure may not accurately represent that of the previous editions, why do you still simply refuse to consider that the power structure could be changed? It certainly is possible. After all, we could simply remove all combat spells from the spell lists. I wouldn't suggest such an extreme measure, but it shows that something is possible.

If you weren't crushing the non-caster characters in 2e, you weren't trying very hard. It's not like 3e was the first splat book heaven edition. There were a bajillion ways to make casters that didn't really need the non-casters. Heck, 2e even introduced ways to have casters add to each other's powers in spells (CF the 2e Tome of Magic for more of that).

In 2e, you had unified spell lists, and the only casting advantage that a 3e wizard got was Int bonus. 2e allowed specialist wizards that automatically got new spells in their spell book (2/level IIRC) AND got bonus spells.

 

[Remathilis]

So what happens when you get a bunch of guys together and they say "Fighters are cool. Let's all be Fighters?"

And it's not just wizards. It's a large cross-section of high-level monsters such as dragons and outsiders.

If you want to say that PCs should need each other, that's fine...but then we go back to the "well, we need a healer. Someone's got to play a cleric." Or, for your example in the other thread:

"The sorrowsworn are just going to drop giant rocks on us, we need a wizard to cast fly."

Its called "let the dice fall where they may" OR you tailor the game to the group. Pick one.

 

[Remathilis]

The problem is not inherent to the way mages and priests are built; its inherent to the spell lists they are given.

Wizards should be glass cannons. They might spend a spell slot for some defensive magic (like shield, invisibility or fly) but they shouldn't have decent ACs or weapon immunity. Yet Mage Armor, Stoneskin, Improved Invisibility, all remove that limitation. Those spells need to to nerfed.

Clerics have a reverse problem; they got too many good combat spells. Cleric spells should be boring: defensive, buffs, and healing. They shouldn't have awesome attack spells like Radiant Lance or Searing Light. If they want to fight; they should slap on some armor and grab a mace.

We have easy restrictions on fighters and rogues, we need to reinstate the ones on clerics and wizards.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Yeah, I'm of the mind that limiting spell lists is a good thing. Either keep the lists focused, so that what the wizard does isn't what the cleric does, or limited what an individual PC gets access to.

For example: bring back "spells known". You can know (10 - spell level) spells total, maximum, per level (assuming 9 spell levels here). That way as you go up in power, the power of spells increases, but your range of spells decreases, making it harder for the caster to both "do everything" (replicate other class roles) and "beat everything" (win with one spell). Apply that to all classes -- no more clerics with infinitely-expanding spell lists.

I believe that the approach outlined above may help retain "interdependence" between classes at higher levels.