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<blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 8758754" data-attributes="member: 53980">If you're going to load up the encounter with enough counterspells to shut down the wizard, you're designing that encounter to hard counter the wizard. To put it another way, you could have every major encounter take place in an anti-magic zone. I wouldn't take that as evidence that high level casters are useless. I would take that as evidence that you go out of your way to make high level casters useless. There's a massive distinction between the two.Good teamwork, sure. But that encounter would be a whole lot more dangerous and less certain if you replaced the wizard with a third martial. And that shouldn't be the case. Martials should also have potent features that can turn the tide of battle, rather than simply being meat shields for the wizard who clean up the battlefield after the wizard trivializes the encounter for them.Moreover, if their role really is to simply meat shield the wizard, they should at least be given the tools to do that job effectively. When I DM and the martials are blocking for the back line, unless I'm dealing with the Sentinel feat, I'm painfully aware of how easy it would be to just run past the martials, provoke a few OAs for trivial damage, and hammer the back line. I don't do it as often as I maybe ought to because I know it makes the martial players feel useless, and that's antithetical to my goals as a DM.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Fanaelialae, post: 8758754, member: 53980"] If you're going to load up the encounter with enough counterspells to shut down the wizard, you're designing that encounter to hard counter the wizard. To put it another way, you could have every major encounter take place in an anti-magic zone. I wouldn't take that as evidence that high level casters are useless. I would take that as evidence that you go out of your way to [I]make[/I] high level casters useless. There's a massive distinction between the two. Good teamwork, sure. But that encounter would be a whole lot more dangerous and less certain if you replaced the wizard with a third martial. And that shouldn't be the case. Martials should also have potent features that can turn the tide of battle, rather than simply being meat shields for the wizard who clean up the battlefield after the wizard trivializes the encounter for them. Moreover, if their role really is to simply meat shield the wizard, they should [I]at leas[/I]t be given the tools to do that job effectively. When I DM and the martials are blocking for the back line, unless I'm dealing with the Sentinel feat, I'm painfully aware of how easy it would be to just run past the martials, provoke a few OAs for trivial damage, and hammer the back line. I don't do it as often as I maybe ought to because I know it makes the martial players feel useless, and that's antithetical to my goals as a DM. [/QUOTE]

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