Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)

Why is this called "Indie"? Is it just a reference to independent game companies, sort of like "alternative" music? If so, it needs a better name in my opinion.

Agreed. Storytelling and Wargaming are much more intuitive. Plus, Indie implies this approach could never possibly be in a mainstream game.

I also find it interesting that Pemerton's had his style described as "railroading" - in my opinion, railroading would require the tracks to be laid out in one direction. If the accusation is "you let us choose where to go, but we always find what you want there" - I can see people being bothered by that, but again, it should have a different name.

The term “railroading” gets overused, IMO. To some, they must be free to choose any actions they wish, and the GM is then required to make that into an adventure surrounding their wishes. If it is not possible to kill the king and take over the kingdom unopposed, that’s just railroading! At a lesser level, any expectation the players will actually follow an adventure hook means “Choo Choo! all aboard the Plot Train!”

To others, it means dictating the manner in which challenges must be resolved, for example there being no possible way of sneaking past the guard at the gates or persuading him to let us through he can be passed only if he is slain. Or, for that matter, he is too powerful for us to defeat, so he can only be passed if you can persuade him and combat won’t work.

Any real meaning it may once have had is long gone.
 

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An interesting question, perhaps. Is railroading restricted to the GM? If I, as a player, refuse to co-operate with the other players, insisting rather on pursuing my own agenda to the exclusion of all else, am I railroading the game?

For example, let’s assume I want to defeat the Dragon, and the Fighter wants to investigate something else. If I decide to Charm or Dominate the Fighter, am I not now railroading him? If the GM prevents me from doing so somehow, is he railroading me?

What if my character has no great in-game resources to accomplish this, but I as a player decide I want to go find that Dragon, and if the game deviates from that goal for even a minute, I’m leaving – you can call me when the game moves back to what I want to do? Am I as a player “railroading” the table?

Or is it only railroading if it is an abuse (actual or perceived) of the GM’s power, and not player or character power?
 

It's not even just wizards. An 11th level druid with a bead of karma can level a village with control winds, one 5th level spell.

We've kind of lost "spellcaster" in favour of "wizard". For that matter, we had a discussion earlier on how tough it would be for a L10 fighter to kill off the village's occupants (a tribe having a 4 - 10 HD leader, two 3-6 HD lieutenants and 3-60 2 HD tribesmen, with simple weapons (javelins and clubs, I think, in the statblocks).
 

Sure. But you are looking for a secluded area very close to the lizardfolk village, yet where lizardfolk are unlikely to wander by.
At least for a minute or so as the lizardfolk imprisons himself, then the wizard abducts him somehow.

A swarm of gnats parting neatly around an unseen object. Low hanging leaves, vines and branches moving out of the way as an invisible wizard passes through. I think you're pretty safe if you're floating in the air, though, especially as you're pretty quiet when your life force is elsewhere. My bigger concern would be something with a decent sense of smell (not Scent necessarily, but more typical of predator animals than that pathetic human olfactory sense) that can fly.
I believe prestidigitation could change the wizard's smell.

Thinking on it, Magic Jar forces the target to make a Will save to avoid an undesirable effect. Is that an "attack"? "an attack includes any spell targeting a foe or whose area or effect includes a foe" - it seems like you are targeting a Lizardfolk with the intent of imprisoning him. I'd call that an attack.

If you are referring to the fact that Invisibility ends if you attack someone, I would counter with the fact that the Wizard's soul is in the Magic Jar, and his body is reduced to comatose status. The Wizard is not attack from/in his invisible body, so the Invisibility spell would not know of the Wizard's actions in the Magic Jar

20 minutes sounds like plenty of time until 20 minutes turns out not to be enough time because complications arise. There are seldom any guarantees. I can see a GM deciding "no problem, you capture the Lizard", or I can see complications arising. Another lizard starts interacting with yours - can you bluff your way around a chat with a buddy (or mate)? That lizard was supposed to get back to guard duty after he Drained the Gecko where the heck is he?
"Gonna take a dump." ;)

Sure. At the same time, whispering (not speaking in a strong clear voice) is DC 15, where “People talking” is DC 0. An unarmored person trying to move quietly (so someone attempting stealth with Take 10, no bonus or penalty) is a DC 10. I say you are harder to hear than people talking (as you are one person briefly speaking), but not as hard to hear as someone being as quiet as they can while slowly moving.
Let's say DC 5?

Becomes DC 10 if I am 50 feet away, DC 15 if I am a hundred feet away, etc based on how scaling works.

If the lizardfolk do not have class levels, they're stuck with a +0 listen modifier.

Where does it say you can order the Steed to carry freight (such as an unconscious or gagged and bound humanoid) rather than a rider? For that matter, if the mount is created for a specific person, who can then ride it, who is in charge when that one person IS riding it. The mount’s communication skills aren’t really set out in the spell description, but “better than horse” seems a major assumption.
That is a good question, but the big D in the spell duration line indicates that the spellcaster can dismiss the spell, so the Wizard evidently retains, at the minimum, enough control over the Phantom Steed to dismiss it.

That’s also 10 minutes’ casting time 20 if you also want a steed) within a few hundred feet of the village (since you are still within Magic Jar range) speaking in a strong, clear voice all the way. Another risk.
Not if we're assuming the Polymorphed Wizard carried the lizardfolk away for a bit.


I think you are projecting your game style on everyone here. My players don’t take the attitude that, as they can probably kill the townsfolk, it is OK to bully them. In fact, they would more likely be the ones the town hires to deal with such marauding bandits and brigands.
In which case, the innkeeper should have no issue contributing to the success of the mission the town hired the PCs for.

Most adventures place characters in situations where combat is inevitable. However, xp is awarded for “overcoming an encounter”. Talking down a belligerent father or brother who thinks you are taking advantage of his beloved, innocent daughter/sister is just as much “overcoming the encounter” as chopping his head off (and leads to less ill will with the townsfolk, at least in most cases). Story awards are also suggested. That’s the Pathfinder SRD - I think WoTC kept xp out of theirs.
I agree that XP can be gained from non-combat encounters, but do you gain as much?

Emphasis added. Not “while possessing another creature”, while in the jar itself. While you are out being a LizardFolk, your body just lies there and, unless you can perceive it as a LizardFolk, you don’t know what, if anything, is going on around it.
Given that the time spent possessing the lizardfolk will be a few minutes, ideally, I would hope nothing pops up just as the possession is occurring.

To the gnat issue, you don’t have to possess the whole swarm. You can only sense relative power, with a minimum 4 HD differential to perceive any two as different. Having the Imp nearby probably helps by setting at least one baseline. Mind you, “gnat” and “standard lizardfolk” are within 4 HD of one another. I’m inclined to think nonsentients like vermin don’t count, though, as the alternative would render the spell pretty much impossible to make beneficial use of.
I wouldn't worry about it. I was just responding to Nezkrul's sarcasm with my own. Gnats are not a threat, except to vegetation.

Reasonable interpretation suggests you don’t pick at random between everything within your radius. Although technically nothing says you get info on distance to each target, much less how close together the targets are, practically there is reference to “a group of life forces. Hopefully, the thing you want to possess is 4+ HD different from your imp so you don’t accidentally possess him and have to start the process over. [He’s likely got the second best will save in the swamp, hasn’t he?]
Magic Jar lasts for hours, so a bit of trial and error isn't totally out of the question.

Can the wizard use magic to locate the dragon's lair? Almost certainly. If it could also have been done by a simple Gather Info roll and a couple days slog through the swamp, is it a big deal?
Well, as you yourself mentioned, timing may be of the essence.
 

It's not even just wizards. An 11th level druid with a bead of karma can level a village with control winds, one 5th level spell.
I don't get this whole line. Of course a caster in double-digit levels can destroy defenseless commoners/kobolds/lizardmen/etc. So can a noncaster. A fighter of this level can kill hundreds if not thousands of low-level opponents with virtually no risk; it just takes longer. If we believe the Legend Lore spell, such a character is "legendary". They should be able to lay waste to a village. Nothing particularly aberrant going on here.
 

Or is it only railroading if it is an abuse (actual or perceived) of the GM’s power, and not player or character power?
It doesn't usually get called out as railroading (maybe "hogging the spotlight"), but I agree it's a similar sort of behavior. The problem is the generally understood D&D social contract* grants the DM much more latitude to the DM to determine the flow of events than it grants to a player, so that player's behavior would be much more likely to be viewed as abusive at the vast majority of tables. The other issue is that a large amount of pre-written adventures from the 80s and 90s assumed that the DM can and would use that latitude to keep the players on the path of the adventure, to the point where there was a widespread assumption that "DM writes the plot" was the default mode of play.

*Understanding that everyone's table is different, but there are some broad threads of commonality within the bulk of the D&D community.
 

I don't get this whole line. Of course a caster in double-digit levels can destroy defenseless commoners/kobolds/lizardmen/etc. So can a noncaster. A fighter of this level can kill hundreds if not thousands of low-level opponents with virtually no risk; it just takes longer. If we believe the Legend Lore spell, such a character is "legendary". They should be able to lay waste to a village. Nothing particularly aberrant going on here.
Oh, I agree. Pretty much any class can wipe out hundreds of low CR opponents once they're 10+. I just think it's silly to focus on wizards in the undying "martials vs casters" war. You can find certain niche cases where the armor and hit points of a fighter provide a benefit over the squishy wizard. However, I can't think of a single reason to bring a fighter over a cleric or a druid. They're just flat out better at everything.
 

But what happens when one class can take over the role of another? A well built Cleric or Druid can fight as well as a Fighter, and do more besides..
I don't have a great knowledge of 3.5, but have played it. IF the base Cleric/Druid, without spell augmentation, can match a warrior's skill, the rules are indeed needing adjustment, as they usually are.
Otherwise, who does the priest rely on while casting? Who do they rely on to get the rest needed to replenish those spells? And who fights on after the spells' durations expire?
As for "having more to do", again I think looking beyond the character sheet, the mechanics, the "build", is where its at. I think too many players don't think to push the Orc off the cliff, because their attack bonus is a few points less if they do so, or because the character sheet doesn't say "Push" on it.
Case in point, the uproar I caused upthread by suggesting a dragon might be able to smell a PC. Slim chance to none in the scenario given, but the backlash was hilarious. Dragons don't have Scent(tm), flowers are red, and leaves are green!
I still say spellcasters are screwed without fighters. And an exceptionally inventive player of a fighter might well slay that dragon solo as well. Anything is possible if we take into account the x...
Bottom line is have fun. I realize I am swimming upstream in a 3.5 thread, but I think the basic game principles remain regardless of which engine we have popped in there.
 

I don't have a great knowledge of 3.5, but have played it. IF the base Cleric/Druid, without spell augmentation, can match a warrior's skill, the rules are indeed needing adjustment, as they usually are.
It's a very complicated question. The ability of clerics/druids to do that boils down to a variety of conditions being met such that they can cast the right spells and not, and the fighters being fairly marginal by comparison, and equipment being relatively weak. It's also largely about what level the characters are; this certainly isn't true at level 1, but by level 10 or so a cleric can catch up to a fairly banal fighter while still maintaining his other capabilities.

There are some rules that need adjustment, notably Divine Power and all those fighter dead levels.

The bottom line is that there's some truth to the statement but they're rather overstating it.
 

It's a very complicated question. The ability of clerics/druids to do that boils down to a variety of conditions being met such that they can cast the right spells and not, and the fighters being fairly marginal by comparison, and equipment being relatively weak. It's also largely about what level the characters are; this certainly isn't true at level 1, but by level 10 or so a cleric can catch up to a fairly banal fighter while still maintaining his other capabilities.

There are some rules that need adjustment, notably Divine Power and all those fighter dead levels.

The bottom line is that there's some truth to the statement but they're rather overstating it.
My simple argument is that the party as a whole would be more effective if the fighter were replaced with a cleric or druid at pretty much any point across the level spectrum. The fighter's slight DPR and HP advantage is more than negated by the versatility that the divine casters have innately, only one facet of which is the ability to become comparable melee fighters if they choose to leverage their spells in that manner.
 
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