Class being penalized for doing its thing?

[Aus_Snow]

Playing a wizard with no magic in D&D is like playing Call of Cthulhu while everyone else is playing anime heroes, you die quickly from contact with monsters while everyone else is doing heroic combat.

Then, perhaps, one can elect to manage one's resources more effectively in future.

 

[Voadam]

Yes. Or daggers. Or longbows, even.

No, I am not kidding.

And no, it's not (IMO) a bad thing, necessarily.

Gandalf used a magic sword.

Raistlin used a knife with a cunning wrist strap. (But he's a D&D Magic User).

Who uses bows in fantasy genre fiction? Or daggers in combat?

In the Feist Riftwar stuff the mages use magic.

In Conan stories the mages use mesmerism or wand blasts and other forms of magic.

In Wheel of Time Rand Al'Thor was good with a bow before he learned magic and later studied sword and martial arts stuff and made his black tower mages do so as well so this is one example. The Aes Sedai all use their magic in combat that I can see though.

Other examples?

 

[Aus_Snow]

Who uses bows in fantasy genre fiction? Or daggers in combat?

What, I have to actually remember something now? I suppose I should've managed my resources better!

Hang on a sec, I'll see what I can recall / dig up.


edit --- All I can think of at the moment is Simon from Tad Williams's first fantasy series. But, IIRC, he trained with sword, then bow. Then magic. So I'm not sure that counts. But maybe. :\ I felt so sure before. Oh well, I'll keep looking.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

The wizards in Barbara Hambly's first couple of series were master swordsmen, but once she got past her Octogenerian Ubermensch phase, she pretty much dropped that conceit - though wizards still trained in combat to learn to think clearly under pressure. The concept of magic being something you can do a set number of times per day without apriciable effort and then you can't do more magic regardless of the effort you put into it is completely against any fantasy I have encountered. Pithy "manage my resources better" comments aside, a magic user who can no longer manage to cast any spells should not be using a crossbow instead imo, they should be collapsed with the worst migraine of their life, drained of physical and spiritual strength from the overuse of their abilities.

Not that I have a problem with magic users managing their resources - but it should be because the time or effort of using magic for a given task is greater than that to accomplish it by mundane means, not because they can cast EXACTLY 3 spells of that level in this 2 hour period.

 

[heirodule]

When 3.0 came out, I thought one of the most significant "feel" issues that 3.0 brought over 1e and 2e was replacing 60' continual light with 20' continual flame. It made dungeons dark and mysterious again.

I wonder if teleport will be/should be replaced (at least until epic) with seven league boots or shadow walk. You can get in the vicinity of a distant place, but you can't show up to the monster's immediate lair.

As evidence, I note that the "forgotten grimoire" highlighted shadow walk recently, which I've NEVER seen in play through 8 years of LG gaming.

 

[heirodule]

Wizards have a long history of sitting certain combats out, in my experience. They often hang at the back of the battle and say "Okay guys, you take care of it."

They should give them archivist abilities.

"You take care of it! Its an al-mi-raj, and you hit it in the jewel weak point for MASSIVE DAMAGE"

 

[RFisher]

I've never seen wizards use a crossbow in any fantasy genre stuff outside of 3e D&D. I much prefer a wizard use a ray of frost as his multi-use back up attack option rather than a crossbow in my games.

Here's the thing: We're only talking about crossbows due to quirks of D&D. The crossbow is merely a symbol for the mundane. The issue is: Do D&D Wizards too often have to resort to mundane methods because they have run out of or need to conserve magic?

When I look at myth, legends, & literature; I find enough wizardly characters who often enough do mundane things to answer, "No".

I could probably assemble quite a bit of evidence to support a "yes" answer, though. I don't know if a thorough cataloging would turn up more of one or the other--nor exactly what the measures would be--but neither am I sure such an exercise would really mean anything. It comes down to a matter of taste. Whatever evidence might be offered, I don't think I could ever say one way or the other is right for everyone. Heck, I can't even say one or the other is right for every game of mine.

It'd be nice if D&D gave us a dial with which we could change this aspect of the game to suit our tastes. But that's probably overkill. That's why God gave us house rules. Let the designers do what they feel is best. Choose the system/edition that is closest to what you want, & house rule the rest.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Mechanically the high int and (in 3e) knowledge skills are not that big a deal on adventures outside of spellcasting.

The high Int SHOULD be a big deal. It seems to me that many gamers I know are very bright people. Let's say that a gamer has scored in the 90th percentile of various tests of intellect. That's a 15 Int. If he's playing anything OTHER than a wizard, he likely has to dumb himself down in any sort of problem-solving environment, and hold back on what he as a player could figure out. Riddles, puzzles, logic, and so on. His character just isn't that smart. So yeah, as a pretty smart guy I like playing smart characters because then I can use the full range of my abilities. Playing an Expert with the "non-elite array," I'd have to dumb myself down unless they were quite elderly.

Then besides raw Intelligence, the Knowledge skills SHOULD come up in all kinds of challenges -- that's why I said *good* DMs make them useful. In literature and folklore, a wizard's primary role is Knower of Stuff. Good dungeons are full of many challenges besides combat, challenges where the solution is to know something or other. Watch "Doctor Who" for an EXCELLENT example of an adventurer who solves many problems with his knowledge. That's such a fantastic concept of how to play a wizard.

Look at the description of the wizard's role in the Basic Set (Moldvay, 1981, p. B19): "Magic-users are good thinkers and problem solvers and have powerful spells."

I'd LOVE to see this aspect of a wizard's role emphasized more in 4e. Heirodule's point about archivist abilities is one way to go -- good adventure design where Knowledge checks matter is another.

 

[SSquirrel]

I wonder if teleport will be/should be replaced (at least until epic) with seven league boots or shadow walk. You can get in the vicinity of a distant place, but you can't show up to the monster's immediate lair.

Well, there should be a very high percentage of failure if they have never been in said lair, so teleporting into the room, killing the monster and BAMFing out, shouldn't be an option anyway In a Greyhawk game I played in, our DM had us adventuring 2 weeks away from Greyhawk City but we had to report back w/our progress, so he basically gave us Scroll of Town Portal ala the Diablo series. For some reason, my friends and I started claling that Scroll of Town Turtle. I think someone misspoke during a Diablo game once

 

[pawsplay]

Wizards who fight:
Gandalf (LOTR) -sword, plus staff and 3.0 Monkey Grip in the movie
White Witch (Narnia) - sword
Various cultists (Conan stories) - dagger or kukri
Grey Mouser (Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories) - rapier
Cugel and Rhialto (Dying Earth) - rapiers
Lythande (Thieves Word) - sword
Elminster - yes, bloody Elminster, so who's left?
Harry Potter - magic sword

I think it's actually the rarity to find a fantasy milieu in which wizards do not fight.