[Playtest 2] Wizard and Rogue HD

[I'm A Banana]

Y'know, fighters in early e's had better saves as one of their features.

Perhaps a higher HP is 5e's way of saying, "Fighters are tough, and you're not going to just be able to zap one with magic and get rid of her. Rogues and wizards and other folks are dropping like flies, but the Fighter's way too tough for that. Fighter looks at your shiny magic, laughs a little, and puts a sword in ya."

I'm pretty OK with that. A hypothetical enemy enchanter probably SHOULDN'T be able to affect the fighter as easily as the other party members: fighters are grounded and tough. Wizards are not.

As for the wizard's d4, I think it's not so much ALWAYS a problem as it is a problem for some people. So, your wizard has a d4. Avoid combats, use magic smart, stay in the back, and get the Tough specialty if you're still concerned. I do think this causes the same issue the spell disruption causes: it forces the fighters to be a little more "protecter-y" than otherwise.

 

[triqui]

Y'know, fighters in early e's had better saves as one of their features.

Perhaps a higher HP is 5e's way of saying, "Fighters are tough, and you're not going to just be able to zap one with magic and get rid of her. Rogues and wizards and other folks are dropping like flies, but the Fighter's way too tough for that. Fighter looks at your shiny magic, laughs a little, and puts a sword in ya."

I'm pretty OK with that. A hypothetical enemy enchanter probably SHOULDN'T be able to affect the fighter as easily as the other party members: fighters are grounded and tough. Wizards are not.

In which edition had fighters better saving throws against *charm* spells? Against Finger of Death, sure, in some of them (speciallly at higher levels). But against Charm? Or dominate? I've been playing since AD&D, not the oldest one, admitedly. But they weren't harder to charm than mages in the editions I played.
A first level wizard had 12+ save vs magic, a Figher had 15+. At 16th level, the wizard had 6+, while warrior-type had 9+

 

[I'm A Banana]

In which edition had fighters better saving throws against *charm* spells? Against Finger of Death, sure, in some of them (speciallly at higher levels). But against Charm? Or dominate? I've been playing since AD&D, not the oldest one, admitedly. But they weren't harder to charm than mages in the editions I played.

The things that charm and charm-like effects required you to save against weren't always consistently spells, or saved against as such.

It's a good general point -- fighters weren't the best at every save always -- but given how vague and occasionally random what you were saving against for a given effect actually was, I'm not sure you can say that charms and dominates were always saves that fighters fell to.

I mostly agree that it's something that needs to be solved, I'm just not sure it invalidates the HP Threshold idea. As a quick addendum, I'd say that for this round of playtesting, this seems like an academic point. None of the monsters as far as I can see are capable of charming anything at the moment. The spellcasters' aggressive magic uses straight attack rolls in the instances where they don't automatically work, making Fighters still more able to resist them, what with their higher AC. The Charm spells in the docs aren't designed for use against PC's (yet).