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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ruleslawyer" data-source="post: 3988390" data-attributes="member: 1757">Lordship is access to mooks, who are just bonus XP for the wizard once combat begins. Being able to generate allies is much, much better done with magic in 1e/2e, since you get *monsters*, not 0-level men-at-arms.Those are highly campaign-specific, and if you can pick the battlefield like *that*, the wizard could even more easily choose to fight underwater or a couple of thousand feet in the air than the fighter could choose a dead magic zone.*Were* a high-level wizard actually walking anywhere (and with phantom steed, teleport, polymorph, flight, shadow walk, etc., this is hugely unlikely), said wizard would be invisible (24-hour duration means it's always on from 3rd level onward), so the fighter would have rather a hard time *seeing* him in the first place. Then there's contingent dimension door or teleport, or better yet succor. The wizard simply goes home with no initiative rolled, and comes back later. Yes, the scenario *is* that one-sided. Nonetheless, fighter vs. wizard deathmatch power isn't the issue. The issue is that most important metric of class balance, spotlight time/ability to contribute meaningfully in a variety of situations. And by that metric, I imagine that the designers *could* bring the fighter to par with the spellcaster using quasi-realistic abilities... unless the campaign features the standard D&D tropes of flight, invisibility, et cetera, at which point the fighter's ability to participate drops off precipitously without some kind of pseudo-magical countering mechanism.Right now, the fighter's main protection against obsolescence is the Christmas tree, but that has allegedly been stripped out in 4e, and it was problematic in 3e in any event because of the fighter's vulnerability to disjunction et al. So something else may be needed unless magic has changed a lot in 4e.In any event, I don't think that the issues with the fighter are related to dealing or absorbing damage. They're more an issue of the number of end-runs available to the wizard that might not be available to the fighter or might make the fighter's role irrelevant. WotC seems to be addressing a number of these (flight vs. overcoming obstacles, charm vs. diplomacy, etc.) in 4e.</blockquote>

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