Complex fighter pitfalls

[Neonchameleon]

I took a couple days away from this thread to think and calm down. It is funny how all these replies came from a simple premise on my part. That Hercules is a fighter but not all fighters are Hercules.

And if you stick in low single digit levels, I don't think anyone is going to agree with you. But even when you hit fifth level (pre-4e) the wizard gains so much strategic and tactical power that you need to significantly surpass human limits to keep up. Seventh level and you do need to be Hercules - and at 9th level even Hercules is struggling.

If level means anything it is a measure of power. By saying that the Fighter shouldn't be Hercules, you are saying that there is a level of power the fighter shouldn't reach. And that level is really low by wizard or CoDzilla standard.

Similarly, when dragons are supposed to be invulnerable to fire but suddenly melt from a random magical fire then this is true too.

Who said the dragon was immune to fire? And why?

See my above comments on feature vs bug about 3rd degree burns. The point I'm still making is that simple fighters and complex ones are both (or both should I guess) be as capable as each other when fighting a dragon. You seem to equate complex with more power, where I don't think that necessarily tracks.

I equate
1: More complex with more options unless the designer has screwed up.
2: More options with a less boring experience.
3: More options with more ways round any weaknesses.

Second is that things should be immune to certain attacks.

Possibly. But very few things should be. A fire elemental should be no more immune to fire than a flesh elemental should be to getting punched in the face. The late-4e approach to this one is IMO the right one - if you hit a Volcanic Dragon or Fire Elemental with fire, he takes the damage but his own fire gets hotter. And he becomes more dangerous to the PCs for a little. Making things more intense rather than more tedious and annoying.

And 3e immunities were ridiculous. All undead immune to precision damage and critical hits? Please! You can't decapitate a zombie. That is ridiculous. Skeletons, liches, and mummies still have weak points in their anatomy. Even an ooze would have weak points while flowing. Places where it stretched thin.

You can't hit the incorporeal? Fine. Then it can not hit you. Half damage unless forced to corporate is a high penalty in its own right.

Next, yes there are immune creatures in 4e - got that a couple days ago - but few creatures seem to be immune to forced shifting of squares, and far too many creatures are affected by abilities that (prior to 4e) they wouldn't have been effected by in the past.

Good! This is a vast improvement! A game where a skeleton has no discernable anatomy or weak points in its bone structure is IMO silly. A game where you can't decapitate a zombie with a critical hit is ... outside genre. Unless you are wholely and absolutely certain that there is no physical way something can happen then you should allow it. Allow fire elementals to be hurt by fire but get hotter.

(mostly matrix 2 now that I think about it)

Wash your mouth out! There was no matrix 2.

But if you want something more in line with LotR then 4e fails to provide,

You have watched what Legolas does in the films? As someone who's played LoTR in multiple editions, 4e provides much better than AD&D or 3.X. Film and book. We've just knocked out most of the power sources and gone with all martial characters (and not much forced movement between us).

If all classes do super-human stuff, which class do I play if I want to be bat-human?

A Rogue with alternatives of Lazy Warlord, Assassin, and Artificer given the way Batman works on the JLA (and I'd suggest Bard for Nightwing and Oracle). When you have a superhuman battle line, you need to be superhuman to go toe to toe with it.

Is Batman's job to take Solomon Grundy on head to head? He's gonna get pounded. Certainly not the Fighter in the JLA. And the concept of him tanking for Superman is laughable. Superman is a fighter. Batman is the squishy along side him who the bad guys would have an easy time taking out if only they could lay a hand on him - but they can't either because they have Superman in their face or Batman isn't where they are looking.

That is to say if all classes are "magical" what class do I play if I want to be non-magic? Fighter is the class for me because he is just a guy swinging a sword and not a guy throwing fireballs. Why do you want to take that away from me?

Because you're going to be dragon-chow if you're pretending to be Bruce Lee. You are effectively proposing a level cap for fighters.

Now I want to see the Rogue given a lot more love. I want to see them get to a level of mundane skill where the Master of Disguise talent from Spirit of the Century and Legends of Anglerre (the Fantasy version) is plausible (or preferably open as a specialty).

✪ Master of Disguise [Deceit]Requires Clever Disguise and Mimicry.
The character can convincingly pass himself off as nearly anyone with a little time and preparation. To use this ability, the player pays a fate point and temporarily stops playing. His character is presumed to have donned a disguise and gone “off camera”. At any subsequent point during play the player may choose any nameless, filler character (a villain’s minion, a bellboy in the hotel, the cop who just pulled you over) in a scene and reveal that that character is actually the PC in disguise!
The character may remain in this state for as long as the player chooses, but if anyone is tipped off that he might be nearby, an investigator may spend a fate point and roll Investigate against the disguised character’s Deceit. If the investigator wins, his player (which may be the GM) gets to decide which filler character is actually the disguised PC (“Wait a minute – you’re the Emerald Emancipator!”).
​

But that is how you hang with a seriously powerful group with no powers yourself. You need to fight both incredibly smart and incredibly dirty. Either that or, come to think of it, be Iron Man - but at that point you might as well put a wizard in the armour.

To be taken seriously when battling a dragon they need a polearm capable of reaching the dragons chest, or maybe a bow if the dragon is flying.

The problem is that they also need to be able to survive the Dragon's breath weapon. The rogue does it by not being there in the first place. But the fighter is front and centre in the battle line.

How does any of this equate to needing the power to punch mountain tops off?

It doesn't. It just means you can't ever fight anything that can punch mountain tops off.

All I propose is that we reduce wizards.

No. What you are proposing is a level cap. That fighters can never exceed a certain level of power - and because fighters can't that's where we should stop wizards.

What I'm wondering is why you can't play your level capped game and let other people play with a higher level cap. One where wizards are more powerful and fighters become Hercules.

The fighter is able to bully the wizard, because we actually ran the math and unless the wizard goes first and/or has a trick up his sleeve he is going to run out of HP before the fighter does in a straight up fight.

Oh, possibly. If the wizard is stupid enough to fight fair against the fighter then the wizard might lose, depending on the level. And note your first condition "unless the wizard goes first". If the fighter goes first the wizard loses - if the wizard goes first the fighter loses. And the wizard has so many ways to go first or to negate the fighter going first.

So remind me, why is the fighter bullying the wizard? Because the wizard lets him.

Why fighters suddenly have a martial power source, draw their powers from there, like wizards have an arcane source? Was it always there or is this just a new level of different to get accustomed to. Where does it come from, what IS the source except something the martial characters tap into?

It's in the PHB on P54. And defines the martial power source as strength, training, dedication, and willpower. I understood this even before I read the rulebook.

something that was poorly explained and executed throughout the 4e run.

I'm not disputing that the team communicating 4e often was ... not good.

Essentials completely changed how fighters worked to address this problem, or so I've heard. (I refuse to shell out more money on products I won't use.)

Fighters get stances and no daily powers. Their only encounter power is Power Strike - +1[W] damage after rolling.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I don't know about your experience, but my experience with classic D&D was that you /never/ got something like an heroic fantasy story out of it. What you got was a D&D story. One of contrasting forces of fear and greed tugging on your character, kinda like the stock market or a game show, but with greed being about power as well as simple wealth. If your DM got bit by the 'storytelling' bug, he might change or ignore rules and conventions, try to enable a story - or go outright into a 'story mode' where the game was suspended while stuff happened (including stuff you were doing) to move the plot along and resolve things that the rules just couldn't be trusted with.

Sorry this didn't happen for you. Sorry you were stuck in story-free dungeon crawls (from the sounds of it). It's not universal.

Those are nice examples of how you changed or added to the rules to get a little something going, and riffed off the random stuff to build a story. Not an heroic fantasy story maybe, but a story. It's still random, though. If a player wants his character to be a Zatoichi, getting blinded is cool, but being blind from the start (for instance, in Hero System, taking it as a Disadvantage) is probably a little better, giving more of the narrative control over his character to the player.

I have disadvantages you can take at character creation (blind is one of the examples). Keep in mind, too, that some of my examples are in 3.5, and others are in my RPG. Also keep in mind, that you said "fantasy story" and not "heroic fantasy story" in the quote I replied to. I don't always want "heroic fantasy" when I want a "fantasy story" to emerge from play.

A more 'narrative' or story-modeling game - and 4e is just a bit in that direction from classic D&D, not dedicatedly-narrativist - has the advantage that both the players and the DMs have some control of the narrative. It's not just the DM running a simulation of a world and the players reacting to it in-character, everyone has some of the plot-power an author of the story. 'Cooperative storytelling' they started calling it in the 90's. 4e didn't go very far in that direction, it lets players describe their powers, so they can interpret a use of a daily or encounter power as having some meaning beyond the character deciding to do something, then succeeding or failing.

I agree about 4e being closer to a more narrative game than past editions, but I really don't think that is has a ton of player control of the narrative unless it's player-given (which isn't inherent to the system). You can have powers be described by the GM, or simply used as gamist constructs for some tactical fun. On the other hand, you can let players reflavor their powers, giving them limited but meaningful control in combat situations (or more, if you let them take control of successes on skill challenges, too, though I hear about this less often). It's definitely compatible with 4e play, but I wouldn't say that the rules emphasize it, and they definitely don't make for inherently interesting stories, much less interesting fantasy stories.

Everyone's experiences are different.

True enough, and I respect that. I quite like the wording you've used in this post compared to what I quoted.

Like I said, I have liked those sorts of games. 5e is supposedly going to try to support multiple styles of play, that means supporting both (somehow!?!). Picking one isn't part of 5e's goal. Understanding the appeal of each can only be productive.

Yes, I agree. I was taking issue with how you represented "the other side" from what seems to be your preferred style. I've had plenty of interesting fantasy stories emerge from my time with the rules (though I find many more emerge now that I use my RPG). Many others have as well. I didn't like the way that you described one side in a positive light, and the other as a bad at achieving the result it strives for. Saying "this doesn't work for me" is one thing; saying "this doesn't work" is another thing entirely. As always, play what you like

 

[Kraydak]

And if you stick in low single digit levels, I don't think anyone is going to agree with you. But even when you hit fifth level (pre-4e) the wizard gains so much strategic and tactical power that you need to significantly surpass human limits to keep up. Seventh level and you do need to be Hercules - and at 9th level even Hercules is struggling.

Um, please. Yes, wizards did scale nicely. No, they did not outstrip Hercules by 9th level. Not even close. They had great utility and ok combat effectiveness (3e Fighters had no combat effectiveness, so meh). I've played in extensive 1e campaigns, getting my Fighter to 10th, alongside a wizard who got to 9th. Before a party split, the core was looking like 8th level fighters X3, 8th level wizard, 8th level druid, 8th cleric, 7 or 8th cleric, 7th? Illusionist. The spellcasters were not in a league of there own. They were the strategic movers, while the fighters were the tactical movers.

Wizards have never (with the sole exception of Wish) had anything that vaguely looked like Narrative power. If they wanted to, say, reroute a river, they'd have to dig a new channel. At that point, a Mattock of the Titans would do just as well if not better (make em fighter only again, if I'm right, and they were class-resisticted in 1e).

 

[Vikingkingq]

Um, please. Yes, wizards did scale nicely. No, they did not outstrip Hercules by 9th level. Not even close.

Cloudkill?
Dismissal?
Teleport?
Lesser Planar Binding?
Dominate Person?
Hold Monster?
Magic Jar?
Baleful Polymorph?
Mud to Rock/Rock to Mud combo?

Wizards get access to these at 9th level. And these are just PHB1 spells that can directly influence combat - I left out the utility spells.

And they blow the Fighter out of the water.

 

[Vikingkingq]

Base on what I just said, it kind of does. Think about fantasy shows, or movies, or (certain) games. When magic suddenly works alternate to how it is supposed to then it breaks the suspension, when races act contrary to how they are established to act, the same.

Similarly, when dragons are supposed to be invulnerable to fire but suddenly melt from a random magical fire then this is true too. When someone falls off a cliff, is in free-fall without anything to break his landing, without a vision of his elven girlfriend and without any form of healing - he should probably die. Unfortunately in DnD these last two examples happen all too often.

Erm...if the D&D game is built around a ruleset that says that the Fighter isn't going to die from falling off the cliff, how it contrary to how it's supposed to happen?

 

[Kraydak]

Cloudkill?
Dismissal?
Teleport?
Lesser Planar Binding?
Dominate Person?
Hold Monster?
Magic Jar?
Baleful Polymorph?
Mud to Rock/Rock to Mud combo?

Wizards get access to these at 9th level. And these are just PHB1 spells that can directly influence combat - I left out the utility spells.

And they blow the Fighter out of the water.

It is kind of sad that I'm the guy saying that fighters didn't actually have it all that bad, given that I'm a fighter advocate. But anyways.

You see, you are thinking about 3e. Don't. 3e caster/noncaster balance was an atrocity. (the rest of the game was a great improvement over 1/2e, mind).

In 1/2e:
Cloudkill? What Cloudkill (it had a fairly low target HD limit)
Dismissal? Why? Let the fighter kill it.
Teleport *is* good, but it eats up a high level spell slot...
Lesser Planar Binding? Enh? Just kill whatever he brought over.
Dominate Person? Well, if the target rolls a 4 on his save, maybe you can dominate someone worth dominating. Before it gets dispelled. Same with Hold Person/Hold Monster/Polymorph.

Spell casters were facing the problem of small number of high level spell slots, rarely failed Saves and a target rich environment.
Something to remember is that the Fighter offense relative to the other classes (and the monsters) was several times that of max-self-buffed Druidzilla. Which is something that completely did not exist. Also, 20 HD monsters meant 20d8. No con modifier. 90hp evaporates when faced against a high level 1/2e fighter, in a way that 3e high con monsters don't.

A conversion of 3e fighter to 1e effectiveness with respect to the game world/other classes would be something like
doubling his hp (and healing received)
doubling his damage done
allowing a full attack action with a standard action (non-fighters getting NO extra attacks or combat self buffs)
+level to all saves (on top of the normal progression)

In a world where fighters get that, they do ok. Not great, but ok.

 

[Vikingkingq]

It is kind of sad that I'm the guy saying that fighters didn't actually have it all that bad, given that I'm a fighter advocate. But anyways.

You see, you are thinking about 3e. Don't. 3e caster/noncaster balance was an atrocity. (the rest of the game was a great improvement over 1/2e, mind).

Why shouldn't I? It's the most recent 4e predecessor, it's the basis for Pathfinder, and it's what we're actively trying to avoid when building a game where the Fighter and Wizard are balanced, no?

 

[Campbell]

I play a 6th level Dwarven Fighter in a biweekly AD&D game. Honestly he feels like a superhero. A boring superhero - kind of like the hulk, but a superhero nonetheless. Last session he took out a Fire Giant by himself (being a dwarf in magical plate with sword and board specialization helps). AD&D fighters are boring in play, but they don't lack power. From a pure power standpoint 4e fighters look at AD&D fighters with envy. Hell. There are a lot of comic book superheros that look upon AD&D fighters with envy. Especially dwarven fighters.

 

[Kraydak]

Why shouldn't I? It's the most recent 4e predecessor, it's the basis for Pathfinder, and it's what we're actively trying to avoid when building a game where the Fighter and Wizard are balanced, no?

But the 1e (post UA, only post UA of course) experience is *very* different than the 3e/Pathfinder. It also mostly worked. That means that we aren't faced with an existential crisis, but only a balancing act, and there is prior work that gets it reasonably close. Focus on the stuff that worked, paying attention to the stuff that didn't only to learn what went wrong.

There are some possibly difficult to accept conclusions. Fighting- (not Fighter-) Clerics can't exist. If you want spell-casting, you can't also have Melee. So sorry. Play a Paladin instead. So weak/no self-buffing. Spells can't completely dominate combat, which mean that rounds-to-kill have to be low enough that Save-or-Sucks aren't the be-all and end-all. Accordingly, monster hp have to be low, or Fighter damage output has to be high, choose a split. Spells have to fail more than they succeed (either that or not do very much in the first place). Saves have to increase faster than the save DCs, so design in not-too-effective-but-effective-enough-that-the-wizard-doesn't-go-crazy effects for when (not if) the target saves.

In addition, if at all possible, find *some* out-of-combat utility for the Fighter. In 3e terms, that would be giving the Fighter the second-best skill points and the second best class skill list. The Ranger and the Barbarian after all get some utility from Class abilities.

It is a simple list of prescriptions.

 

[Tovec]

Just thought I'd clarify a few points with which you seem to be confused.

Similarly, when dragons are supposed to be invulnerable to fire but suddenly melt from a random magical fire then this is true too.

Who said the dragon was immune to fire? And why?

If dragons are supposed to be invulnerable to fire but suddenly start melting with random magical fire (for no reason) then it is an issue. If they aren't then it is a non-issue. The problem arises when we get into conversations about creatures that should be immune to one thing or another and are suddenly getting hurt because the power says so without any explanation of why. I could of course come up with an explanation but I don't feel the game should require me to come up with a reason to explain the mechanic.

I equate
1: More complex with more options unless the designer has screwed up.
2: More options with a less boring experience.
3: More options with more ways round any weaknesses.

Complexity doesn't necessarily scale with power. I have seen this to be true but I have seen equally simplistic characters to be just as powerful.
Compare this to 3e wizards. They could search high and low to find the perfect arrange of spells from a dozen different books. They'll be more complex, but they may not necessarily be more fun (less boring). In drawing from so many sources they will likely have a spell to bypass any and all resistances should they come up. But that also means they may have 4 forms of the same spell to bypass everything necessary. They could instead use those same slots to diversify from the PHB or even take a simple, pregen character who will be equally as effective Most of the time. They may not have that perfect spell needed to defeat the exact situation but it is unlikely they won't have something they can do. All of the following is the same with fighters, though fighters start at a lower power level.

Possibly. But very few things should be. A fire elemental should be no more immune to fire than a flesh elemental should be to getting punched in the face. The late-4e approach to this one is IMO the right one - if you hit a Volcanic Dragon or Fire Elemental with fire, he takes the damage but his own fire gets hotter. And he becomes more dangerous to the PCs for a little. Making things more intense rather than more tedious and annoying.

Interesting but not routinely supported by the rules of any edition that I am familiar with. 3e handed out resistances like candy, which was a mistake but 4e took all but the most direly needed resistances out which is equally a problem. At least 3e's were reasonably easy to get around with foreknowledge they were coming. Or even without knowledge - golfbag of weapons anyone?

And 3e immunities were ridiculous. All undead immune to precision damage and critical hits? Please! You can't decapitate a zombie. That is ridiculous. Skeletons, liches, and mummies still have weak points in their anatomy. Even an ooze would have weak points while flowing. Places where it stretched thin.

How does a simple rule saying "zombies can be decapitated but are otherwise immune to crits and precision damage" not solve that problem?

You can't hit the incorporeal? Fine. Then it can not hit you. Half damage unless forced to corporate is a high penalty in its own right.

Actually this is where I partially disagree with you, because it is a fringe case. I have read and seen any number of stories where ghosts can touch and affect the world of the living, without the living being able to do the same to ghosts. Typically it requires a level of focus or rage to achieve it - some form of training - but that is fine the basic assumption is there. If 4e allows them to be struck by common means too easily then this breaks immersion. That might not be a problem for you but it is one for me. Not even 3e satisfied me on this count, by the way.

Good! This is a vast improvement! A game where a skeleton has no discernable anatomy or weak points in its bone structure is IMO silly. A game where you can't decapitate a zombie with a critical hit is ... outside genre. Unless you are wholely and absolutely certain that there is no physical way something can happen then you should allow it. Allow fire elementals to be hurt by fire but get hotter.

Again, fringe case for the zombie, which can be easily remedied with the existing framework so I do not see what your point is.
And to my knowledge the fire elemental thing with fire has not really occurred either. Though I can be wrong on this count, I am not widely read on all of DnD. Oh fire elemental would have been better for the whole fire immunity thing from above, but not so well on the attacking it as I can find remarkably few good examples of fire elementals from wider fiction - unlike dragons.

Wash your mouth out! There was no matrix 2.

No, I liked matrix 2, matrix 3 was terrible but that existed too. Friends of mine will tell you exactly which movie I refuse to acknowledge was ever made. I would tell you myself but that would violate my previous comment.

You have watched what Legolas does in the films? As someone who's played LoTR in multiple editions, 4e provides much better than AD&D or 3.X. Film and book. We've just knocked out most of the power sources and gone with all martial characters (and not much forced movement between us).

Okay, here we moved onto a completely different part of the post. I was talking about the feel of the game and about play-preferences. I think 3e does not do a particularly good job at reproducing LotR but from my actual experiences - 4e is worse.

A Rogue with alternatives of Lazy Warlord, Assassin, and Artificer given the way Batman works on the JLA (and I'd suggest Bard for Nightwing and Oracle). When you have a superhuman battle line, you need to be superhuman to go toe to toe with it.

Is Batman's job to take Solomon Grundy on head to head? He's gonna get pounded. Certainly not the Fighter in the JLA. And the concept of him tanking for Superman is laughable. Superman is a fighter. Batman is the squishy along side him who the bad guys would have an easy time taking out if only they could lay a hand on him - but they can't either because they have Superman in their face or Batman isn't where they are looking.

Funny, I do not recall saying Batman, Superman or JLA in my post. I was very careful NOT to use any of those terms because they did not represent what I meant. I used bat only to point out that I want something a little less magicy instead of the magic only options, as Tony seemed to suggest.

That is to say if all classes are "magical" what class do I play if I want to be non-magic? Fighter is the class for me because he is just a guy swinging a sword and not a guy throwing fireballs. Why do you want to take that away from me?

Because you're going to be dragon-chow if you're pretending to be Bruce Lee. You are effectively proposing a level cap for fighters.

So you are going to take non-magic fighters away from me... because they are unrealistic? Because they are underpowered (or rather underpowered compared to the over powered wizard)?

To the first - who do I see about unrealisticness in DnD?
To the second - who do I see about OP wizards?

I know you are not trying to tell me again that I am proposing only low powered fighters or that I am propsing a level cap for them. I gave outlines of exactly how I would handle high powered fighters. I gave examples of how I would have high powered EVERYONE.

Now I want to see the Rogue given a lot more love. I want to see them get to a level of mundane skill where the Master of Disguise talent from Spirit of the Century and Legends of Anglerre (the Fantasy version) is plausible (or preferably open as a specialty).

✪ Master of Disguise [Deceit]Requires Clever Disguise and Mimicry.
The character can convincingly pass himself off as nearly anyone with a little time and preparation. To use this ability, the player pays a fate point and temporarily stops playing. His character is presumed to have donned a disguise and gone “off camera”. At any subsequent point during play the player may choose any nameless, filler character (a villain’s minion, a bellboy in the hotel, the cop who just pulled you over) in a scene and reveal that that character is actually the PC in disguise!
The character may remain in this state for as long as the player chooses, but if anyone is tipped off that he might be nearby, an investigator may spend a fate point and roll Investigate against the disguised character’s Deceit. If the investigator wins, his player (which may be the GM) gets to decide which filler character is actually the disguised PC (“Wait a minute – you’re the Emerald Emancipator!”).
​

But that is how you hang with a seriously powerful group with no powers yourself. You need to fight both incredibly smart and incredibly dirty. Either that or, come to think of it, be Iron Man - but at that point you might as well put a wizard in the armour.

A. I would love to see more options like this for all classes. Especially in order to make up that power gap that is talked about.
B. When I talk about fighters vs. wizards I am usually talking about martial vs. casters, so rogues would of course get some love too.
C. Iron man is a number of things, and we can discuss which superheroes from marvel and DC are made by which classes all day if you want - on another thread.

The problem is that they also need to be able to survive the Dragon's breath weapon. The rogue does it by not being there in the first place. But the fighter is front and centre in the battle line.

At least here we can get together on something. I certainly want some way for the fighter to be able to survive battling a dragon on the front lines. I think a minor power boost to defense along with a major power boost to attack and damage would probably get me there. What would you need?

It doesn't. It just means you can't ever fight anything that can punch mountain tops off.

What in DnD routinely punches the tops off of mountains? What in DnD is even capable of doing that?

No. What you are proposing is a level cap. That fighters can never exceed a certain level of power - and because fighters can't that's where we should stop wizards.

What I'm wondering is why you can't play your level capped game and let other people play with a higher level cap. One where wizards are more powerful and fighters become Hercules.

I told you, I am not going to do this Hercules stuff again.

I am NOT proposing a level cap. I am proposing more sane limits on wizards. How are those the same to you? I am also giving avenues to get MORE power but setting the foundation that such power is extra. Extra as in not necessarily needed, as in bonus on top of, as in what 5e says they are trying to do.

Oh, possibly. If the wizard is stupid enough to fight fair against the fighter then the wizard might lose, depending on the level. And note your first condition "unless the wizard goes first". If the fighter goes first the wizard loses - if the wizard goes first the fighter loses. And the wizard has so many ways to go first or to negate the fighter going first.

So remind me, why is the fighter bullying the wizard? Because the wizard lets him.

Sigh, this was me talking about how I was able to level the playing field and the consequences of what happened. The mindsets of the players and the mindsets of the characters involved. It has nothing to do with 3e or 4e or any E.

The wizard going first does not pertain to winning due to the opening round of combat. It has to do with who is going to get more rounds in the combat before the other side falls. In the calculation the fight was over between 3-6 rounds depending on rolls and damage. At low levels the wizard had a chance if they had a trick up their sleeve and(or) if they went first. At higher levels this was reversed. I apologize I did not actually say there was more than one round. I DID say it had to do with my rules and system so that is entirely on you.

The fighters is and was bullying the wizard because of power. The fighter has more right now and is throwing his weight around. The wizard will have more (options and power) later. When it will reverse I cannot say but with my rules (and the assumptions I posed earlier) the gap will be the difference of a couple levels not the difference of quadratic levels.

Haters gunna hate, but my system is working well and you can not tell me otherwise. Nor are you going to convince me I am wrong on this count or what I have seen it not happening. Good luck.