Casters Nerfed, Melee Ascendant (3.5)

[Belen]

Valient,

Thank you for your comments! You're right on the money. A melee type can have a 12 strength and still fight. A wizard has a 12 int and they are stuck with first level spells.

That is a great point. Whereas a melee person can spread stats around to have a more even make-up a caster must keep a main stat high or they cannot even use their abilities!

Therefore a melee type can concentrate on balancing many more stats than casters.

Dave

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Huzzah Hooray!

No more 'every-high-level-character-in-the-world-must-be-a-spellslinger-hotshot'.

Has the endless reign of wizards ended?

No, wait, 3.5 isn't out yet, false alarm...

 

[hong]

The only part of comba in which the wizard is really efficient is artillery -- long range blasting of hordes of meek opponents through fireballs and other area-of-effect spells.

You poor thing.

And even then, great cleave + whirlwind attack (or great cleave + reach weapon + combat reflex) has proved more efficient.

Rubbish. Try playing a melee tank one day.

They did have some insta-kill spells, but those are no more insta-kill. Now they are "roll lots of dice, so much dice you'll take two or three minutes rolling them and computing the total, and the other players will be angry at you and give you the order to never cast this spell again" spells.

The concept of the "average" has been around for at least 400 years, probably more. You should give it a go, if adding up numbers proves too taxing.

 

[Storminator]

Actually, I started with 2e. You hardly ever saw wizards in 2e do to the fact that leveling took forever and most people did not want to sit on the back burner for the year it took to gain mid-level.

In my experiences, 2e fighters rules the roost. Very rarely did I ever play a 2e game that went past 10th. Usually the melee types would whine about how boring the game got because their abilities were so nasty. Anyone playing a mage constantly got gipped. No high level play meant that they could never shine.
<SNIP>

Dave

There must be something about the way your groups play. We've discussed this in the other thread, and I really don't see your experience as the norm.

I know in my regular games it's all about the spell casting. Our regular wizard bowed out of the group for personal reasons, and our party has never been the same.

PS

 

[Belen]

Umbran,

The flaw in the argument is not exactly there. A arcane caster ONLY has spells. Take away the spells and a mage is nothing but a intelligent commoner. The other classes have other abilities to fall back upon.

And the mage in my game does have a high charisma. He purposely took low stats in everything but int and cha in order to have more rp opportunity.

Dave

 

[MarauderX]

I don't like the idea of having the casters reined in from doing extraordinary things, and having a pure arcane caster seems more of a limitation in 3E throughout all levels than just having a pure cleric. I hate it when even the power gamers won't take a wizard or sorcerer at low levels because they know there is no firepower there, and if I DM a game anytime soon I will change things to make it more balanced towards casters.

I used to play OD&D waaay back when, and keeping the game balance was rather difficult for casters at high levels, but they paid for it at the lower levels with minimal spells, little damage, and basically no versitility. I think it even said something to that effect in the old red basic set.

When I first read through 3E, I was kinda stunned at how much power there was, and was glad the monsters were also well defined to offset the new feats and skills that the PCs now had. In play, I was surprised to see players starting at 1st lvl had already mapped out their PCs for the next 10 levels, and had the PrC requirements figured out to get there the quickest. It made perfect sense to max out everything as soon as you can, but was sad, and I realized that unless you did so, you were inferior to your fellow players, and they expected you to max out or else you became the weakest link. That weakest link has always seemed to be the casters in each campaign I have been in.

I could go into detail about how I have seen character development and abilities of the wizard vs. every other class, but there is no need here. IMO, the wizards needed help in pumping to 3.5, but we can only wait and see what the actual results are.

 

[hong]

That is a great point. Whereas a melee person can spread stats around to have a more even make-up a caster must keep a main stat high or they cannot even use their abilities!

You cannot seriously be complaining about only needing one primary stat.

 

[BryonD]

Now they are "roll lots of dice, so much dice you'll take two or three minutes rolling them and computing the total, and the other players will be angry at you and give you the order to never cast this spell again" spells.

Jeez Gez,

I'm sorry your gaming group is so unfriendly. Maybe you'll get lucky and find some less angry gamers in the near future.

Good Luck

 

[Belen]

Hong,

Averages stink, dude. So melee types get to roll with the chance to do mega-damage, but a caster has to take the average to avoid people getting angry due to taking time to roll a bunch of dice.

That does not seem balanced to me.

And the melee tank in my game does an average of 40 points a hit or 120/rd. The mage with haste can do about 80....on a good day, if there is no SR, magic immunities etc.

Dave

 

[buzzard]

Hong,

Averages stink, dude. So melee types get to roll with the chance to do mega-damage, but a caster has to take the average to avoid people getting angry due to taking time to roll a bunch of dice.

That does not seem balanced to me.

And the melee tank in my game does an average of 40 points a hit or 120/rd. The mage with haste can do about 80....on a good day, if there is no SR, magic immunities etc.

Dave

If you have that big a beef with rolling lots of dice either use a computer or a programmable calculator to do the tons-o-dice stuff. Either exercise is trivial.

One important thing to keep in mind when thinking about the toughness of the melee types is that the name "meat shield" did not appear from nowhere. The people up front are going to take all the punishment. I play a 1/2 Ogre fighter, and he is constantly getting thrashed. He does a lot of damage, but he rarely emerges from a combat with over 1/2 HP left. He protects the wizard, as things are meant to be.

buzzard