Casters Nerfed, Melee Ascendant (3.5)

[Tom Cashel]

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.

We had a 2e campaign going for years and years, the PCs of which were a pair of mages. That's it. Just two mages.

Where are you getting this information about "hardly ever" and "most people"?

 

[hong]

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.

Gez is trolling, as is his wont. Or perhaps his lack of social skills causes the rest of his group to take umbrage at his rolling lots of dice, I dunno.

That does not seem balanced to me.

So roll 20d6 and double it. Or 10d6 and quadruple it. Or something similar. As the player of someone with 20 Int, such fixes surely cannot be beyond your mental capacities.

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.

Why are you gimping yourself with 3rd level spells?

Empowered (x2) fireball/empowered (x2) fireball/quickened fireball.

Disintegrate/disintegrate/quickened fireball.

Or if you don't want to use 6th/7th level spell slots, phantasmal killer/phantasmal killer/quickened magic missile.

 

[Belen]

Buzz,

Half hp for you is death for a wizard. They have a reason to run away.

Tom,

It comes from 6 years playing 2e with 5 different groups and not one wizard. A lot of fighter mages, but no wizards.

Dave

 

[hong]

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.

Right. In the last few sessions, the barbarian in my game has been coming out of the big fights with something like 5-10 hit points left out of 90, if he's lucky. Being a melee tank is a thankless job in 3E, especially at high levels. All those lovely critters with energy drain, ability drain, improved grab, swallow whole, rend, and so on....

 

[Belen]

I do not play the wizard. I am the GM. My main worry is balance and I do not see the changes as having been balanced.

The party mage did not go for a lot of metemagic feats. He has a few but none such as empower etc. At 12th level, he could not even use those feats anyway!

The fighter still does 120 a round though. Funny that fighter feats don't take higher level slots though.....

Quicken spell is a joke. I think the mage preps one of those a day in case of surprise attack. That's it.

Dave

 

[hong]

I do not play the wizard. I am the GM. My main worry is balance and I do not see the changes as having been balanced.

The party mage did not go for a lot of metemagic feats. He has a few but none such as empower etc. At 12th level, he could not even use those feats anyway!

It appears that you may have a rather distorted picture of things due to a gimp player running the wizard, and a more canny player running the tank.

 

[Enkhidu]

The fighter still does 120 a round though. Funny that fighter feats don't take higher level slots though.....

I have to ask - can you throw some stats our way to show how he does this?

 

[Zappo]

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.

The chance to roll much far from the average when 40 dice are involved is, to all practical purposes, zero. It will always be around 135 damage.

 

[Arnwyn]

I give the original rant in this thread a big: "meh". I don't see any of it.

 

[hong]

I have to ask - can you throw some stats our way to show how he does this?

The only way I can see it happening is if criticals are taken into account.

Str 22
Greatsword +5, coupla energy enchantments
Weapon Spec

7 (weapon) + 5 (enhancement) + 9 (Str) + 2 (Spec) + 7 (energy) = 30 points on average

Assuming 3 attacks per round, all of which hit, that's 90 points on average per round. If one of the hits is a critical, that's 120 points.

Alternatively, he could mean 120 points total on a bunch of mooks via Whirlwind Attack or Great Cleave.