What Neonchameleon says is true for AD&D 1st ed. In Moldvay Basic, fighter started with better saves than thieves and magic-users, and (from memory) stayed pretty competitive as they levelled also.
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How is the Wizard vs Warrior Balance Problem Handled in Fantasy Literature?
- Thread starter Iota
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Fifth Element
Legend
Really, if you rely on things like water damage as DM to keep the number of scrolls in check, I suspect it will soon seem contrived and the players will tire of it. Which is related to Hussar's point I think, that one side or the other will finally give up and say "fine, you win".
You're probably better off saying "you can only have X scrolls at once" if you think it's something that needs to be controlled. If the wizard player asks why, tell him it's the same reason he can only use a dagger.
Raven Crowking
First Post
(Shrug)
That's a pretty hefty jump there. Item attrition, when appropriate, is hardly "relying on things like water damage to keep the number of scrolls in check".....or adversarial GMing that requires anyone to "throw in the towel". I guess your experiences with the game have included some...unpleasantness, shall we say?...that mine have not.
In addition, if you had a problem with the number of scrolls in pre-3e D&D, it was your own fault for handing them out. I agree that 3e made item creation too easy......although, if it becomes a problem in play, that is also at least partially a table problem. It doesn't necessarily have to become a problem (it never did for me), but if it does, at some point, I guess that one side or the other has to throw in the towel and accept things.
I don't tend to play games like that, though, so I'll bow to your expertise.
RC
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I guess it depends on the individuals involved and their expectations. If the DM is open about the fact that items saves etc. are included, right from the start of the game then it's no surprise. I told my players when they joined that I enforce item saves, I enforce encumbrance, needing to eat, and that if you don't gave the item in your inventory, you don't have it. Period. It was a matter of setting expectations from the beginning.
Some players like that and for others they're not interested.
Banshee
The Rogue is also intended as a broad class, covering pickpockets, burglars, thugs, scouts, rustlers, and con-men among others. Most of those roles don'r require a skill in Diplomacy, do they. Yet somehow it turns up on the Rogues skill list to cover the particular types that do use. So why doesn't that apply to Fighters?
There's no specific Charm save, just spells. So fighters save as well against fireball as they do against charm person. Fighters had better saves against spells than thieves and I think the same as Magic-users, and improved faster.
I think Magic users ended up with a single point better (at the end) although most classes would save on anything but a "one" at high levels (due to gear). The idea of scaling spell difficulty is 3E; in 1E and 2E you could only get bonuses to save (and the exceedingly rare fixed penalty associated with a specific trap or poison).
Fifth Element
Legend
Precisely. If a player expects to be able to have as many scrolls as his character can produce, because of the rules of the game, then it can seem adversarial for the DM to "target" the scrolls. That is, why does the wizard have to worry about his equipment while the other character don't?
But if the DM is up-front about it, then there's no worries.
Edit: I was under the impression the discussion of this has gone:
A: Wizards are very powerful because they have spells for everything.
B: But they only have limited spell slots, so they can't be prepared for everything at once.
A: But they can make scrolls very cheaply to have access to all their spells.
B: But scrolls can be damaged and destroyed, so that's not a problem.
A: But scrolls can be protected from damage in a trivial manner.
Is that not right?
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It's a valid point. I guess where I have difficulty, is that *in my campaigns*, fighters were *very* effective. Thus, I didn't really see the need to strengthen them.
But if it's a problem in your game, give them more class skills, or simply create feats like the ones I mentioned from Swashbuckling Adventures, that add new Class Skills to a character's skill list.
Banshee
I'd tend to agree.....except that the suggestions of manners of protecting scrolls etc. that have been suggested have been sometimes far fetched (in terms of medieval technology levels). Yes, I know fireballs are also far fetched. But one just has to decide what level of technology is acceptable.
People forget sometimes that things that seem simple to us now, like screw top lids and zippers may have seemed like magic 600 years ago.
So, some of the means of protecting scrolls might not work.
It's not like as DM you have to deliberately go after the party's items. I'm just open with my players that I enforce those saving throws.
Does it mean that every adventure the wizard is losing all his scrolls? No. Absolutely not. Does it mean that over an adventurer's career, as he loses saves vs. fireballs and lightning bolts and such, that he's going to suffer item attrition? Yes.
Robes, scrolls, books, and wooden staves are all highly flammable. And not nearly as robust as adamantine items.
It's surprising how often people forget about those rules in game. I find it makes a difference when you track that stuff every session.
Same thing with carrying stuff......when you start enforcing encumbrance, people stop carrying a sword for every occasion.
That's all I'm saying.
In my campaign, my players typically didn't have a lot of item creation feats. It just wasn't an aspect of the game they were interested in. Now, every wizard gets Scribe Scroll. But aside from that, most of their feats were metamagic casting feats, not item creation. And even when they had Scribe Scroll, they rarely used it.
Banshee
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Raven Crowking
First Post
Paper tends to be easier to damage than steel.
However, given a humid environment, a fighter needs to worry about his metal rusting. And given a shipboard environment, wearing plate mail can be a bad idea indeed.
Not at all. It's more like:
This problem can arise as the result of how your playstyle interacts with the ruleset you are using. AFAICT and IMHO, changes made in 3e make achieving balance between warriors and wizards more difficult to achieve for some (perhaps even for many), but certainly not for all.
Using scrolls, esp. in TSR-D&D, is less of a problem because (1) scrolls are much harder to come by (let alone the specific scrolls you want) and (2) there is always a strategic tension between keeping said scrolls handy and keeping them safe. I.e., the more you do to keep your scrolls safe, the less handy they are when needed quickly.
I fully accept that there are people who had problems with the warrior/magic-user divide in TSR-D&D, but I would also argue that (1) these were probably a smaller percentage of groups, because (2) TSR-D&D provided more tools to deal with the problem should it arise and/or prevent the problem from ever arising in the first place.
RC
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