Can the Fighter be Real and Equal to spellcasters?

[Doug McCrae]

he could always pick Wild Magic or even better Dead Magic area.

So the fighter could win provided magic doesn't work? This proves the point that magic is too powerful.

 

[apoptosis]

Vancian restrictions on magic aren't a good balance mechanism for two reasons:

1) The players can usually control how many encounters they have per day through a variety of means.
2) It greatly restricts the sorts of adventures a DM can run.

Unfortunately 4e retains the Vancian mechanism as there are still per day abilities. I'd like to see these done away with altogether and replaced with one or more of:

a) Per session or per adventure abilities rather than per day.
b) Drawbacks such as loss of actions, damage, disabilities or even loss of spellcasting for a time, as others have suggested above.
c) Increased casting time so some spells can't be used in combat. The end of flashbang Gygaxian magic. 4e will be going down this route to a large extent.

I definitely agree that a-e are better limitations for magic (or other powerful effects) than per day.

 

[Dronehound]

In my opinion, players can decide to rest up whenever they want is extremely bad DMing. Bad guys would kinda notice that like the first half of their lair is no longer responding during the 8 hours it takes the party to rest up, and prepare accordingly or go investigate and find the party sleeping in a room and coup de grace them all. Eight hours is a long time. And if I remember correctly, the 8 hours resting rule abytime was a variant back then, the base rule was memorizing spells once per day. I've played many dungeons that there were no opportunities to rest up because the wizard had casted to many spells. Magic-users and Clerics learned to be frugal and manage their spells, maybe throwing darts against the two ogres that the fighter and cleric were meleing succesfully to keep their fireballs or the few remaining charge of wand of lightning against the boss. For better or worse, with 3.5 resource management as been reduced with buyable expendable items and rest anytime policies. And it looks like 4E is removing even more of the resource management.

As for Fighters vs. Wizards, my point is that in 2nd Ed, Wizards were like Batman. They would almost always win with prep time and had a formidable arsenal in their batbelt, but they could still get their spine broken by Bane if they cannot prepare properly and their resources are expended.

 

[apoptosis]

In my opinion, players can decide to rest up whenever they want is extremely bad DMing. Bad guys would kinda notice that like the first half of their lair is no longer responding during the 8 hours it takes the party to rest up, and prepare accordingly or go investigate and find the party sleeping in a room and coup de grace them all. Eight hours is a long time. And if I remember correctly, the 8 hours resting rule abytime was a variant back then, the base rule was memorizing spells once per day. I've played many dungeons that there were no opportunities to rest up because the wizard had casted to many spells. Magic-users and Clerics learned to be frugal and manage their spells, maybe throwing darts against the two ogres that the fighter and cleric were meleing succesfully to keep their fireballs or the few remaining charge of wand of lightning against the boss. For better or worse, with 3.5 resource management as been reduced with buyable expendable items and rest anytime policies. And it looks like 4E is removing even more of the resource management.

As for Fighters vs. Wizards, my point is that in 2nd Ed, Wizards were like Batman. They would almost always win with prep time and had a formidable arsenal in their batbelt, but they could still get their spine broken by Bane if they cannot prepare properly and their resources are expended.

While i have always liked the Vancian system, the issue is more that if you don't want to play a dungeon then the system is harder to balance.

I think maybe if preparation took a week or a month (can only prepare on the nights of the full moon etc.) then it would be less of a problem and resource management is still viable.

Other possibilities is to keep Vancian (1/day preparation of effects) but still attach some form of risk or disability to casting (this way you can still have powerful spells but now have 2 limitations that the caster has to abide by)

 

[Son_of_Thunder]

Classes - Can the Fighter be Real and Equal to spellcasters?

Nope,

In the paradigm of the game as it is and will be in 4e the fighter needed huge boosts of power to balance it or make it equal to the spellcasters.

 

[Doug McCrae]

In my opinion, players can decide to rest up whenever they want is extremely bad DMing.

Party leaves the dungeon, and travels a couple of miles. It's typically DC 15 to follow them so it can only be attempted with the Track feat which very few monsters possess. Or they cast rope trick. Or a couple of dimension doors. Or teleport back to town.

Or the dungeon is inhabited by unintelligent monsters. Or is a trap-filled tomb. Or the DM, like my current one, who is excellent I should add, finds monster-filled dungeons a tad implausible and mostly presents one tough encounter per day.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Party leaves the dungeon, and travels a couple of miles. It's typically DC 15 to follow them so it can only be attempted with the Track feat which very few monsters possess. Or they cast rope trick. Or a couple of dimension doors. Or teleport back to town.

Or the dungeon is inhabited by unintelligent monsters. Or is a trap-filled tomb. Or the DM, like my current one, who is excellent I should add, finds monster-filled dungeons a tad implausible and mostly presents one tough encounter per day.

Not to derail this too much, but a great number of adventures do NOT permit PCs to rest up.
1) The opponent is intelligent or can track and will pursue them back to their base, possibly laying waste to the town. Many unintelligent monsters DO have Track, and many of these would be kept as pets, mounts (worgs) or brute muscle (minotaurs, trolls) by intelligent enemies. That's definitely something to keep in mind next time I run a version of KotB.
2) If it's a trap-filled tomb, they cannot leave the way they came in and must press on to the exit (e.g. Moria).
3) The adventure is not simply a dungeon crawl, but stopping some bad guy with some sort of time constraints. The lich is casting Apocalypse from the Sky -- you have 24 hours to stop him or the kingdom dies.
4) The enemies will add reinforcements as time goes on. The longer the PCs take to clear the dungeon, the tougher it will be.
5) Wandering monsters will disturb the PCs' rest. If the PCs barricade themselves in a room, the enemies will bar the doors from the other side and force the PCs to starve to death.

And there are many other possibilities.
In my mind ALL of these are better and more fun to play than "We can raid this dungeon at our leisure and rest as often as we like." I want to play in games where "Nova and then rest" is simply not possible -- especially if I'm playing a caster.

Teleport does thwart (1), (2), and (5), and 3E made teleport too safe and easy. I would bring back that failure chance (materialize in the ground = dead PC). Rope Trick is an entirely silly "Save Game" spell that should be removed, although I think it's possible for an intelligent foe to realize it's there, place some nasty traps (perhaps green slime) and Dispel it.

 

[ruleslawyer]

All that keeping teleport risky does is delay the problem until 13th level, when greater teleport becomes available, or cause PCs to use plane shift more often.

Unless the nature of a dungeon itself prevents the PCs from leaving it via teleportation or planar travel, it is possible (albeit unsporting) for the casters to follow the 15-minute adventuring day paradigm as they like, unless the adventure itself has a time limit or the threat of opponents regrouping is too great for the PCs to pursue that strategy. My 1e/2e players did this all the time; plane shift to Mount Celestia or the like, hang out with the angels and gods, and then return to the Material Plane for more butt-kicking once the spells refreshed.

As for Fighters vs. Wizards, my point is that in 2nd Ed, Wizards were like Batman. They would almost always win with prep time and had a formidable arsenal in their batbelt, but they could still get their spine broken by Bane if they cannot prepare properly and their resources are expended.

The problem is that the latter situation *never* occurred in 2e past 9th level; given the availability of long-duration spells, flight, and teleportation, a wizard will *never* be caught napping. The practical impact of restrictions like low hit points and limited spell slots on casters at high levels was close to zero. A design that adequately encompasses at-will, per-encounter, and per-day mechanics will probably do a better job of balancing casters at high levels than the pure per-day system, if only because the impact of x power will be more transparent without having to hypothesize the likelihood that said power will still be available to the caster in Encounter #4 as opposed to Encounter #1.

 

[small pumpkin man]

Not to derail this too much, but a great number of adventures do NOT permit PCs to rest up.
1) The opponent is intelligent or can track and will pursue them back to their base, possibly laying waste to the town. Many unintelligent monsters DO have Track, and many of these would be kept as pets, mounts (worgs) or brute muscle (minotaurs, trolls) by intelligent enemies. That's definitely something to keep in mind next time I run a version of KotB.
2) If it's a trap-filled tomb, they cannot leave the way they came in and must press on to the exit (e.g. Moria).
3) The adventure is not simply a dungeon crawl, but stopping some bad guy with some sort of time constraints. The lich is casting Apocalypse from the Sky -- you have 24 hours to stop him or the kingdom dies.
4) The enemies will add reinforcements as time goes on. The longer the PCs take to clear the dungeon, the tougher it will be.
5) Wandering monsters will disturb the PCs' rest. If the PCs barricade themselves in a room, the enemies will bar the doors from the other side and force the PCs to starve to death.

And there are many other possibilities.
In my mind ALL of these are better and more fun to play than "We can raid this dungeon at our leisure and rest as often as we like." I want to play in games where "Nova and then rest" is simply not possible -- especially if I'm playing a caster.

Teleport does thwart (1), (2), and (5), and 3E made teleport too safe and easy. I would bring back that failure chance (materialize in the ground = dead PC). Rope Trick is an entirely silly "Save Game" spell that should be removed, although I think it's possible for an intelligent foe to realize it's there, place some nasty traps (perhaps green slime) and Dispel it.

1, 2, and 5 can often be gotten around by intelligent players even without magic and, as you said are made completely unimportant by rope trick, teleport and dimension door. 3 and 4 are fine, except that if you have to set up every single dungeon like that, it gets annoying and breaks suspension of disbelief, which is the major point, it also ignores the problem that not all groups want to go dungeon delving in the first place. As a GM, you can do this, but at this point you're working against the system. I'd rather just run a system which didn't assume all my plots will be dictated by "4 encounters per day".

 

[Brother MacLaren]

All that keeping teleport risky does is delay the problem until 13th level, when greater teleport becomes available, or cause PCs to use plane shift more often.

Okay, but if it doesn't become a problem until 13th level, then it's not a problem at all for about 95% of all actual gameplay. That's a pretty good start, isn't it? And there are many other things you can do to about Teleport -- adding risk, raising the spell level, or changing the way it works. Yes, if you get to high-level 3E/3.5 D&D, some house rules are needed. I don't recall when Teleport Without Error showed up in earlier editions, or how many you could bring along when you used it. But then, my BECMI and 2E games back in the day never even saw simple Teleport, though each went on for years (it took a loooong time to level past 7th). Still, I do appreciate the fact that 4E is fixing Teleport.

Unless the nature of a dungeon itself prevents the PCs from leaving it via teleportation or planar travel, it is possible (albeit unsporting) for the casters to follow the 15-minute adventuring day paradigm as they like, unless the adventure itself has a time limit or the threat of opponents regrouping is too great for the PCs to pursue that strategy.

See, right there you note FOUR different conditions that prevent the flee-and-nap routine. The nature of the dungeon, the fact that it is unsporting (and in my experience not fun), a time limit, and the threat of opponents regrouping.

I'd add another factor. The real resource to manage is not HP, spells, or even actions per round -- it is gaming time. If retreating to Mount Celestia, regrouping, buffing again, and going back into the dungeon makes the adventure take 4 times as long to complete -- well, I'd rather do without all the retreating even it means my PC dies. I like my games to be a bit faster-paced and getting more cool stuff done in my four hours every other week. This is also why, as the player of a druid, I cut back on summoning spells and do without an animal companion. 1d4+1 Dire Bears with Improved Grab are almost always more effective than Finger of Death, but they just take too long to resolve.

3 and 4 are fine, except that if you have to set up every single dungeon like that, it gets annoying and breaks suspension of disbelief,

For you it might be annoying. For me, it would be more fun (especially if playing a caster) if the adventures were races against time or against enemies. You know, some kind of pressure, not just "we're raiding this dungeon at our leisure."
Indiana Jones races against Nazis, cultists, and his father's life running out. The sense of urgency means he can't just prod every square with a 10' pole. He has to hurry.
Star Wars has races against the Death Star coming into position, against the AT-ATs overrunning the base on Hoth, against the Death Star II destroying the rebel fleet, etc.
Rick O'Connell has to defeat the Scorpion King before Imhotep can.
Conan has to get in, grab the princess, and get out before Thulsa Doom can organize his forces.
Westley, Inigo, and Fezzik have to stop a wedding.

Many good fantasy stories have an element of a race against time or against competitors. It adds drama, and in a game it adds fun. I LOVE adventures like that. I would never find such a game as being annoying.