Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
Do you really need the FIghter for that, with all those save or die or save or suck spells around? Sometimes, you don't even need to kill anyone, since you can just entirely ignore him via the next travel spell.
D&D 5E The Door, Player Expectations, and why 5e can't unify the fanbase.
- Thread starter WarlockLord
- Start date
All I can say is fighter PCs are typically over-represented in my campaigns not under-represented.
Save-or-suck are very useful tactical components, but highly volatile by nature with saving throws and other resistances. Groups use them to great effect, but I noticed successful groups typically have multiple tactical solutions to fit multiple challenge types. Making something dead really quickly is one of the more common tactical solutions that 3.5e fighters can be extremely proficient at.
As for bypassing a particular threat, that depends more on mission objective / adventure design than anything else.
Fighters typically lack identifying/locating a threat, getting to said threat, and surviving the environment surrounding said threat more than anything else. This becomes problematic as levels rise as those challenges typically become more esoteric to take a group's abilites into account -- rather than tracking a kidnapper through the woods overnight ending in confrontation, the group divines the whereabout of the vanished villain, then plane shifts and greater teleports to confront the villain standing on his bronze ship floating on the elemental plane of fire.
Which was one of a handful of things that I felt 4e did right.
Must spread XP.
Neonchameleon
Legend
Exalted is an excellent comparison. Because a high level D&D wizard makes an Exalted sorceror look positively weak (a Pathfinder one can make permanent demiplanes). You have the wizard and CoDzilla playing Exalted, while the fighters are playing WFRP. The argument here is that they should not be playing two different games - either the high level fighters should be playing Exalted or the wizards should keep their power level down. One or the other - both work. But there should not be two separate games going on at once.
AD&D had a de facto level cap around 9 or 10 when the game turned into a domain management game, which meant that the the upper end of the scale was very different from the 3.X one, especially as wizards had fewer spells. But even a 1e 9th level wizard was outstripping a post Unearthed Arcana fighter (never mind a pre-UA fighter) to the point that the level caps needed to kick in.
This is a very interesting topic. It's making me evaluate things I'd never considered before.
I find I want a bit of both worlds.
I want mundane problems to be remain as they are in terms of DC, yet I want additional ways around them too.
Example: The first level fighter needs to break down a DC 17 door. It's difficult but he can do it.
The 30th level fighter sees a DC 17 door and laughs, because he has a hammer of disintegration which obliterates the door entirely. Yet later one, when he's been trapped by demons and his gear has been stolen, he is confronted with another DC 17 door. He's no mage, he's not supernatural. He's just a man who is very good at what he does. He's no stronger than he was at level 1 either. As a result the door is a challenge. He might be a bit better at it now - he's learned a few things along the way about bashing doors, but he can't just walk through it without effort. Say he's gained +2 or even +4 from learning about where to hit the door and how to best apply his strength. It's a challenge, but it's dropped from a hard challenge to a medium or an easy challenge.
I want epic levels to have a wider variety of challenges, with a wider variety of solutions. I do not want the challenges to disappear. Nor do I want the challenges to always be the same. I see no problem with the wider variety of solutions also being ways around the mundane challenges, so long as there are situations where the party can run out of additional solutions and be forced do so something the old fashioned way.
This incidentally is part of why I favour Vancian magic. Run out of spells? Time to let the fighters and rogues shine by doing mundane things that wizards could never hope to do without their magic. Got spells but picked the wrong ones for the situation? Same deal. 'Boring' classes can always do their thing. Wizards can't, but they balance that by being able to do things that the 'boring' classes can never hope to do.
I never had the pleasure of playing 1E, and my 2E experience was that of a 12 year old, so is subject to a lot of suspicion. What I do know is how the 1E 'goldbox' computer games worked. In a lot of cases you can get through a game with a party consisting entirely of fighters. You can't do that with wizards, even when they can cast meteor swarm etc. I can only imagine that the same would hold true for a lot of AD&D adventures.
I find I want a bit of both worlds.
I want mundane problems to be remain as they are in terms of DC, yet I want additional ways around them too.
Example: The first level fighter needs to break down a DC 17 door. It's difficult but he can do it.
The 30th level fighter sees a DC 17 door and laughs, because he has a hammer of disintegration which obliterates the door entirely. Yet later one, when he's been trapped by demons and his gear has been stolen, he is confronted with another DC 17 door. He's no mage, he's not supernatural. He's just a man who is very good at what he does. He's no stronger than he was at level 1 either. As a result the door is a challenge. He might be a bit better at it now - he's learned a few things along the way about bashing doors, but he can't just walk through it without effort. Say he's gained +2 or even +4 from learning about where to hit the door and how to best apply his strength. It's a challenge, but it's dropped from a hard challenge to a medium or an easy challenge.
I want epic levels to have a wider variety of challenges, with a wider variety of solutions. I do not want the challenges to disappear. Nor do I want the challenges to always be the same. I see no problem with the wider variety of solutions also being ways around the mundane challenges, so long as there are situations where the party can run out of additional solutions and be forced do so something the old fashioned way.
This incidentally is part of why I favour Vancian magic. Run out of spells? Time to let the fighters and rogues shine by doing mundane things that wizards could never hope to do without their magic. Got spells but picked the wrong ones for the situation? Same deal. 'Boring' classes can always do their thing. Wizards can't, but they balance that by being able to do things that the 'boring' classes can never hope to do.
And a 9th level had an average of how many hit points? 20? They may outstrip fighters, but in AD&D they certainly still required fighters to be around. People always seem to forget survivability when comparing fighters and wizards. When a fighter has 3 times the HP and better AC to boot there are marked differences.Neonchameleon said:
I never had the pleasure of playing 1E, and my 2E experience was that of a 12 year old, so is subject to a lot of suspicion. What I do know is how the 1E 'goldbox' computer games worked. In a lot of cases you can get through a game with a party consisting entirely of fighters. You can't do that with wizards, even when they can cast meteor swarm etc. I can only imagine that the same would hold true for a lot of AD&D adventures.
Neonchameleon
Legend
The big question here is why the wizard has given his sidekick the hammer of disintegration. Instead the cleric laughs at the door - and at wounds. And they cut the fighter out of the loot.
Fighters need to be more than magic item mules unless they can make their own magic items.
This incidently is why I despise the implementation of Gygaxo-Vancian casting present in Dungeons and Dragons. You're a 15th level wizard with an Int of 26 (including a +6 item) and specialised in conjuration. Not an implausible setup. You have:
3 8th level spells
4 7th level spells
5 6th level spells
6 5th level spells
and 7 spells of each lower level (ignoring cantrips).
You have fourty six spells prepared per day.
So please. Tell me how your high level wizard is going to run out of spells. More to the point tell me how he's going to run out of spells before the fighter runs out of hit points unless the fighter starts mainlining wands of Cure Light Wounds. (In 13th age as a wizard you get just less than 4+level spells, of which one will be an at will attack - and the highest possible level is 10th)
The running out of magic limitation on high level Vancian wizards is very much dependent on the implementation. And incredibly rare at high levels in D&D, especially 3.X.
Pre-Unearthed Arcana, the meatshield could be replaced by hirelings and attack dogs. Weapon Specialisation made the fighter into a mincing machine, however. And three times the hp? d10 avg = 5.5. d4 avg=2.5
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
This is basically replacing the PC fighter with NPC fighters. I'd call that a wash.
Because the wizard can't use it. Besides, hammer of disintegration was supposed to be an over-the-top example. Call it a longsword +5 if you find that easier.
Why? That depends on how you want the story to work doesn't it? For me, fighters are non-magical men who do what they do very well. They might gain magical allies, and magical equipment, but they're still mundane at the core. Take away the allies and the equipment, why on earth should they be able to do anything beyond the mundane? He's a MAN. He hasn't ascended, he hasn't become an outsider, he can't cast spells. Why should he be capable of something that is impossible in the real world?
Fair enough. I like the Vancian concept more than I like the exact numbers involved. Which is precisely why I'm considering a system where you lose low level slots as you gain high level slots. You can always chose to memorize a low level spell in a higher level slot, but your total number of spells is going to be reduced.
I wasn't assuming any given edition's mechanics. I was talking about the kind of stories I want to be able to tell. Imagine a system where spell casting still works on the Vancian paradigm, but the wizard never has more than 20 spells in total. Would you still think it impossible for him to run out? And even if he didn't actually run out, would he necessarily have the spell he requires on hand?
We've never considered hirelings, so I'll concede that point. Regarding the hit points, my 'three times' came from the fighter being more likely to have a constitution bonus. 9*d4 = 22.5 9*d10+1 = 58.5, or close to 3 times as much.
Let's take my example a few steps further.
Traditional party of 4
1 Fighter
1 Thief
1 Wizard
1 Cleric
They've been adventuring long enough to be 'down on resources' but not completely out. They have 1/4 HP, and about 1/4 of their spells available. The monsters have trapped them and taken them prisoner rather than kill them at this particular moment. All equipment has been removed. Each character is locked in a separate prison cell.
Assuming an edition without the imbalance between classes and where it is feasibly possible to run out of spells.
What would each of the characters do to escape at low level?
What would each of the characters do to escape at high level?
If you give a different answer to those two questions, then tell me WHY it should be different.
For my own part, I want the fighter's actions to remain the same. The rogues actions to remain the same. The wizards actions go to from 'I basically can't escape' to 'I can escape, but I'm going to have to find the others very quickly'. The cleric meanwhile should probably find it hard to escape, but at least be safe in the knowledge that he's got more HP remaining (by using up his remaining spells on healing).
*side note; If a wizard has no equipment, he can't memorize new spells, so resting isn't going to help much. The cleric should be faced with a similar problem in theory, but no edition so far imposes that. I'd like to hear ideas on how and why a cleric might face the same sort of problem.
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