Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4572722" data-attributes="member: 54707">Ydars, I agree, to an extent (that I will explain below), but I said unreliable, and usually easily exhausted.Unreliable in the sense that most magic can fail or be thwarted, or countered by other magics. Easily exhausted by the examples I am about to give. (But I cannot address every different type of spell or magical effect in particular, I am speaking in generalities as to common conditions for purposes of explaining tactical advantages and disadvantages of reliance upon particular modes of attack and defense.)Say you are in combat with another guy. You stab, stab, stab, stab him. Assuming there is no real obstacle, such as he is invulnerable to your weapon then you can stab him as much as you like. You can use most magic one time (within the confines of a single engagement, and that is what we are discussing, tactical combat engagements), and it usually has a necessarily limited duration, then it becomes either exhausted, or you defeated it at the beginning (because it failed or was interrupted or disturbed, i.e., the spell was broken) and therefore its effect is limited. Such capabilities may very well be dramatic, even highly effective, but it is limited. By it's very nature. You throw a spell it does not go on forever, but you can fight as long as you can stand, or your opponent can stand against you.That is to say, you can stab as often as you like. (In game terms anyway, in real life stabbing gets exhausting after awhile. And of course you can also defeat physical, tactical combat attacks - but then you just change tactics, quickly, easily, and if you are well practiced, without any preparation or drawing resources away from your attacks to other endeavors - such as readying spells, etc.) Now in 4E you can more easily rely upon more innate magical effects, and you can possess a wider range of them, but their effects tend to be, generally speaking, one time effects, not repeatable in the same sense as stab, stab, stab, and spear, spear, spear. (I'm not interested in an editions war, that's probably a useless statement given other threads that just mention the subject, but it is true. But, for example, in AD&D you knew exactly what types of magical effects you could bring to bear because magic was so limited as to repeatability and tightly regulated by class, in 4th you know exactly what powers you can bring to bear because they are so varied and overlapping between character classes or professions. But in either case you know you can usually stab a lot faster and for longer than you can employ magic.) The spear thrust might not do as much damage as the fireball, but continuous spear thrusts will kill and such tactics never fail due to saving throws or spell failure, though they can be turned aside by good defenses. Something I will address later. Good combat tactics though, to use a real world example are like a rate of fire from a semi-automatic weapon - pop, pop, pop, pop, and they are easily repeatable, fluid, adaptable, and highly effective, and their effect is cumulative. Most magical spells, using this example, are something like a shotgun blast - boom! slower moving, more time to reload (or you may only get one shot), and they may be devastating, but then again maybe not, depending on the situation. In short good combat tactics for physical engagements tend to be fluid, easy to modify on the spot, and easily repeatable. But I did not say do not employ whatever combat resources and capabilities you possess, (you should, see Sections 2, 4, 5, and 7) I said do not rely upon your spectacular abilities to the exclusion of highly effective, easy to employ, easily repeatable, and well drilled combat tactics. If anyone is drawing the conclusion that I am saying disregard capabilities of any kind they are mistaking my point. I'm saying just the opposite, do not overlook, good, solid, reliable combat tactics and maneuvers and techniques in favor of magic, or reliance upon technology - do not in the rush to be flashy and spectacular, overlook, fail to use, or fail to improve your most basic combat capabilities, your tactical repertoire.As a matter of fact, using a modern analogy, magical powers (in fantasy type settings) might be considered unconventional warfare techniques, and standard hand-to-hand combat tactics might be considered as methods of conventional warfare. the very best method of conducting combat, given such circumstances, would be battle tactics and battle formations which seamlessly integrated both methods into a common combat form, in which both unconventional techniques and conventional techniques were applied in such a way as to balance and compliment each other in both tactical power and in overlapping fields of capabilities. I had already intended to discuss this idea of conventional-unconventional overlap and integration in another, later posting, and so I shall, but I didn't want to give the impression that I am saying, or was saying, don't use all your capabilities in the best way possible. I am saying don't rely upon unconventional methods and certainly do not divorce them from your standard battle tactics. Instead seamlessly and fully integrate them as combat tools into your already developed tactical repertoire so that when you do apply such methods they can compliment (rather than seem to operate separate, or isolated from) your more common combat tactics and maneuvers so thoroughly as to seem one consistent, coherent set of combat techniques. Indeed they should be. But if unconventional methods do fail then you will have steady, reliable methods to fall back upon which are not subject to failure unless the character himself fails, or dies.In other words your tactical methodologies should start first with what is most basic, with what everyone in your party can do (well or poorly), such as stab, stab, spear, spear, shoot, shoot. Then build ever more complex layers of combat capabilities atop those basic and fundamental aspects of combat techniques. Learn what is basic first, then build upon it, and improve upon it. It would be foolish to turn aside or eschew magical capabilities (in a fantasy game) when they could make you that much more effective, but it is equally foolish to rely upon such capabilities, or to skip straight to wanting to learn how to fire a phosphorous round from an Abrams if you can't even load and properly discharge your own sidearm. So I'm really saying, first things first. Don't let the fact that you can throw a fireball delude you into the mistaken idea that fireballs will solve every combat encounter (or non-combat encounter for that matter). If you learn the basics properly then you are prepared for anything, even if your tank gets stuck in the mud or runs out of gas, you can still jump out with your rifle and be ready to do your job.  I'm sorry Grodog. I've had a really tight working schedule now that the ho the Thanksgiving holidays are over. I plan on getting something out as soon as possible though.Thanks to everyone for their interest, comments, and ideas.</blockquote>

Verification