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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Al" data-source="post: 108027" data-attributes="member: 2486">The wizards win a marginal victory.We have to ask why?Three reasons: Battle Strategies, Logistics and Defenses.Battle StrategiesBecause given field battles, direct-damage spells are infinitely more powerful than healing spells.Option A: The warriors all fight in a tight formation, as medieval armies and all troops up to the late 19th century did.  The wizards blast them with area-effect spells.  The wizards win.Option B: The cleric's troops form skirmish formation.  The wizards' fighters go in and slice them to ribbons: IN ALL historical scenarios where an organised regular formation has encountered a skirmish group, the regular formation has the incredible advantage.  The wizards win.LogisticsWizards have greater access to Knowledge skills, so one assume that their economy and resource management is better structured, especially combined with wizards' inclination towards law.Wizards have more bonus feats and hence are more likely to craft magical items for their followers.DefensesWizards can both create and destroy defenses better than clerics.  Wizards can undermine and break key fortresses with spells like Transmute Rock to Mud and Disintegrate.  They can circumvent defenses with spells like Teleport and Fly.  This means that they can effectively eliminate clerical high command with a few well-placed, hyped-up Teleporting mage-assassins (not wizard/assassins necessarily).As for creating defenses, they have spells such as Move Earth, and the various Creation spells.  They can perform this relatively easily and create defenses at a far greater pace.I haven't time for any more reasons, but there are others- mobility (Expeditious Retreat), better at long-range targeted guaranteed spells (100 Magic Missiles vs. the enemy general), stronger defensive spells etc. etc. etc.Healing and raise dead doesn't really matter: in a full-scale war, there is no way you can raise enough to make a key difference.</blockquote>

Verification