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<blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9217102" data-attributes="member: 6877472">So one thing of note is that there are a lot of fantasy spellcasters who wield what D&amp;D would call &quot;martial weapons&quot; (with Gandalf likely being the ur-example, but there are others, such as Lythande, Rand al'Thor, Belgarion, Richard Cypher, Corwin of Amber, Merle Corey/Merlin, Harry Dresden...a .44 magnum counts, right?...et. al.).Most of them don't wear armor, but that often has less to do with the limitations of their magic, and more to do with the fact that people don't, generally, wear armor all the time for various reasons.&nbsp; That not wearing armor is considered a weakness in battle is a D&amp;D-ism- different types of battles require different types of gear. D'artagnan and Miyamoto Mushashi have little use for armor in the battles they typically face, but if faced with heavy cavalry, they might consider it!But they can and do use magic in combat conditions, and are trained (to varying degrees) combatants.&nbsp; So regardless of how you feel about casting in battlefield conditions, there are fantasy precedents for doing so aplenty.So let's not make any bones about &quot;realism&quot; here.&nbsp; We're talking about wielding magical forces, something there is no real-world analogue to, and is beholden only to it's own rules.&nbsp; This is a discussion about making a balance houserule, and one that might not actually favor martials as much as it purports to.What I've mostly heard feels more like &quot;casters focus on defense more and less on using their spells to help the party&quot; and &quot;give martials more work to do babysitting their casters&quot;.&nbsp; You could accomplish both tasks by cutting caster hit points just as readily.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="James Gasik, post: 9217102, member: 6877472"] So one thing of note is that there are a lot of fantasy spellcasters who wield what D&D would call "martial weapons" (with Gandalf likely being the ur-example, but there are others, such as Lythande, Rand al'Thor, Belgarion, Richard Cypher, Corwin of Amber, Merle Corey/Merlin, Harry Dresden...a .44 magnum counts, right?...et. al.). Most of them don't wear armor, but that often has less to do with the limitations of their magic, and more to do with the fact that people don't, generally, wear armor all the time for various reasons. That not wearing armor is considered a weakness in battle is a D&D-ism- different types of battles require different types of gear. D'artagnan and Miyamoto Mushashi have little use for armor in the battles they typically face, but if faced with heavy cavalry, they might consider it! But they can and do use magic in combat conditions, and are trained (to varying degrees) combatants. So regardless of how you feel about casting in battlefield conditions, there are fantasy precedents for doing so aplenty. So let's not make any bones about "realism" here. We're talking about wielding magical forces, something there is no real-world analogue to, and is beholden only to it's own rules. This is a discussion about making a balance houserule, and one that might not actually favor martials as much as it purports to. What I've mostly heard feels more like "casters focus on defense more and less on using their spells to help the party" and "give martials more work to do babysitting their casters". You could accomplish both tasks by cutting caster hit points just as readily. [/QUOTE]

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