Another claim I want to debunk is that not needing to spend resources to act and having greater base defence + HP, means that when spellcasters are low on HP and running low or out of slots the martial classes will carry the day. NO, that is when the adventuring day ends unless the DM has to add reasons to force continuation and when the DM has to add in such contrivances to cover design decisions problems will add up further.
This isn't even really a spellcaster vs. warrior issue either. It's a fundamental dramatic flaw in the attrition-based model: people are fascinated by fair fights, not attrition. Nobody wants to hear the story of how Conan killed the mighty Heracles because Heracles had already been poisoned by a hydra and lost his weapons to a rust monster and blinded by a hag's curse. I mean, Combat As War players will accept the victory, but even they won't exult in it and retell the story like they would if they'd managed to beat Heracles "at full strength". It feels kind of cheap, and likewise if you're playing Heracles it feels like a bit of an anticlimactic way to lose too. It's not unrealistic, just... gritty rather than dramatic.
If you mostly give up on attrition as a model, for instance by modeling Heracles' fighting skills by a 95% probability of dodging incoming blows instead of through with a pile of 200 ablative HP (and by giving wizards just enough energy to cast one large spell every few minutes instead of several huge spells and many large spells per day), then either:
1.) Heracles dies (5% of the time or whatever) to a hydra or hag or whatever before he ever meets Conan, which means those fights are all dramatically interesting: there's a chance the answer to "Will Heracles survive?" is "No!" which is a better dramatic question than "Will Heracles suffer some attrition?"
2.) Heracles suffers a SERIOUS setback like losing an arm or his weapons, before meeting up with Conan. Conan has him at a qualitative tactical disadvantage here, not just a simple numerical HP disadvantage, and Heracles is the underdog now.
3.) Heracles comes through the prior fights unscathed and Conan dramatically fights him "at full power".
Overall that's a big improvement in potential dramatic stakes relative to the attrition model. Since I switched from 5E to DFRPG I've found that I now very rarely feel bored as a GM and want to fast forward through meaningless trashfights with mooks, because now they're not meaningless! There are always dramatic stakes, even though as GM I still know that it's my job to lose over and over, because there's still something the bad guys
could accomplish that has a lasting impact, as opposed to just using up HP and spell points.
TL;DR "Who'd win, James Bond or Gandalf?" interests more people than "Who'd win, James Bond in the middle of Casino Royale (2007) or Gandalf after fighting the Balrog?"
