Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 5873444" data-attributes="member: 6688937">IME, the &quot;fun&quot; of playing a caster in the earlier editions was highly DM dependent. In a game where you rarely run into other casters (and thus don't get their spellbooks as loot) and where all the magic items are swords and all the monsters just piles of HP with an occasional ability, playing a caster was a real drag. A DM I had in college for a while (using 2e) was like that. I think I saw 1 &quot;wizardy&quot; magic item in the months of that game...but I had 2 magic scimitars of differing special characteristics. In his mind, wizards only begrudgingly existed to rationalize a source for all the cool toys fighters should get.The same, in reverse, was true for plain-Jane Fighters, as well. A DM who is a &quot;Magic is awesome!&quot; type will often disallow any of those fancy heroic maneuvers. Whenever I hear Old-Schoolers say &quot;I do it through roleplaying without all the 4e or Bo9S stuff!&quot; or something similar, I'm reminded of my High School DM. He punished any creative thinking on the fighters' part with foregone attacks and &quot;free attacks&quot; from the badguys &quot;because you have to disengage to do that.&quot; In his mind, Fighters only existed to stand in ranks and protect the Wonderful Wizards who were doing all the real work.While I dearly appreciate the variety of campaigns and playstyles that earlier editions supported, I'd prefer to avoid going back to the old &quot;DM surprise!&quot; era. I'm not saying that parity amongst all classes absolutely has to be hardwired in. (I'm not even sure that's possible, as close as 4e might have come.) However, DMs need to be made aware of the idea as a concept. At the very least, I hope 5e gives us some kind of language so that you had a clue about what kind of characters would be playable in different campaigns.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ratskinner, post: 5873444, member: 6688937"] IME, the "fun" of playing a caster in the earlier editions was highly DM dependent. In a game where you rarely run into other casters (and thus don't get their spellbooks as loot) and where all the magic items are swords and all the monsters just piles of HP with an occasional ability, playing a caster was a real drag. A DM I had in college for a while (using 2e) was like that. I think I saw 1 "wizardy" magic item in the months of that game...but I had 2 magic [I]scimitars[/I] of differing special characteristics. In his mind, wizards only begrudgingly existed to rationalize a source for all the cool toys fighters should get. The same, in reverse, was true for plain-Jane Fighters, as well. A DM who is a "Magic is awesome!" type will often disallow any of those fancy heroic maneuvers. Whenever I hear Old-Schoolers say "I do it through [I]roleplaying[/I] without all the 4e or Bo9S stuff!" or something similar, I'm reminded of my High School DM. He punished any creative thinking on the fighters' part with foregone attacks and "free attacks" from the badguys "because you have to disengage to do that." In his mind, Fighters only existed to stand in ranks and protect the Wonderful Wizards who were doing all the real work. While I dearly appreciate the variety of campaigns and playstyles that earlier editions supported, I'd prefer to avoid going back to the old "DM surprise!" era. I'm not saying that parity amongst all classes absolutely has to be hardwired in. (I'm not even sure that's possible, as close as 4e might have come.) However, DMs need to be made aware of the idea as a concept. At the very least, I hope 5e gives us some kind of language so that you had a clue about what kind of characters would be playable in different campaigns. [/QUOTE]

Verification