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Truly Understanding the Martials & Casters discussion (+)
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<blockquote data-quote="TheSword" data-source="post: 8546181" data-attributes="member: 6879661"><p>Here’s where I see a divide and it comes from different expectations of campaigns. There are three main reasons why many people don’t see a martial caster divide in terms of influence or power.</p><p></p><p>If you play Pathfinder style adventure path/D&D campaigns at high levels they tend to have relatively tight timescales, dungeons and threats. They are significantly weighted towards combat and have little opportunity to prepare for those combats. Combats are often against powerful single foes in bounded spaces. In these circumstances being able to contribute heavily in this kind of combat is the single most important contributor to success of the party.</p><p></p><p>Secondly outside of the combat pillar exploration challenges and roleplay changes just aren’t as difficult as combat challenges. Perhaps you might ask someone to make a skill check or come up with a solution but ‘failing’ explorations or roleplay usually mean the story still fails forward. Whereas in combat failure = death and the end of the game usually. Thus a wizards ability to cast charm person or suggestion is less impactful on the group, even though it creates an effect that the fighter might not be able to do.</p><p></p><p>Lastly many abilities that spellcaster have that martials don’t - teleport for instance - are still accomplishable by a fighter. Either because the story requires access be granted, or because the effect can be achieved through mundane means and the application of time/effort/resources. This is the single most important reason I don’t see the divide as meaningful. You can’t write an adventure (or shouldn’t) that requires a particular character ability or spell to be a success because that is dictating party make up. So by extension not having one of these powers is no barrier to play either.</p><p></p><p>- For instance, let’s say the enemy (an evil wizard) has a lair in the middle of a deadly wasteland. If the party has a wizard of their own they can teleport there which saves time. However travel time is easily handwaved. If the party doesn’t have access to teleport (because the wizard hasn’t taken it for instance) the party just walks. Other than perhaps the chance to surprise the evil wizard, Teleport access hasn’t granted the party any more narrative control (other than perhaps chance to surprise the enemy).</p><p></p><p>- If we take this a step further and the wizard is on a different plane of existence. The DM must write into the adventure a way to get there… portal… NpC wizard etc. Writing an adventure that forces a party to have a particular power is just poor writing… it’s a spell tax if you like… on a particular character. Forced to make an ability choice to keep the adventure moving. That’s actually a penalty not a benefit. Remember the DM has <strong>chosen</strong> to set the adventure up this way. The same applies to artificial time limits and the like, which force a party to use teleport to travel quickly or fail. It’s just bad writing… and almost never seen in published adventures.</p><p></p><p>- The same principles can apply to other ‘narrative control’ spells. They’re just indulging arbitrary restrictions that the DM has put in place - restrictions that in the absence of a wizard would have another solution. Fly, dispel magic, divination, scrying etc etc, they’re all the same.</p><p></p><p>Now if you run adventures where the DM writes challenges after knowing the capabilities of the party, or intimates to the party that they need these powers, then I can see why the above doesn’t apply. However remember - the DM has chosen and directed that style of play. Similarly, I can see this won’t apply if the DM has open ended campaigns where players have unlimited prep time, and the kind of resources that allow for unlimited simulacrum etc then I can also see how this won’t apply… that just isn’t how I play though, and not how most published campaigns are written.</p><p></p><p>Just my thoughts.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="TheSword, post: 8546181, member: 6879661"] Here’s where I see a divide and it comes from different expectations of campaigns. There are three main reasons why many people don’t see a martial caster divide in terms of influence or power. If you play Pathfinder style adventure path/D&D campaigns at high levels they tend to have relatively tight timescales, dungeons and threats. They are significantly weighted towards combat and have little opportunity to prepare for those combats. Combats are often against powerful single foes in bounded spaces. In these circumstances being able to contribute heavily in this kind of combat is the single most important contributor to success of the party. Secondly outside of the combat pillar exploration challenges and roleplay changes just aren’t as difficult as combat challenges. Perhaps you might ask someone to make a skill check or come up with a solution but ‘failing’ explorations or roleplay usually mean the story still fails forward. Whereas in combat failure = death and the end of the game usually. Thus a wizards ability to cast charm person or suggestion is less impactful on the group, even though it creates an effect that the fighter might not be able to do. Lastly many abilities that spellcaster have that martials don’t - teleport for instance - are still accomplishable by a fighter. Either because the story requires access be granted, or because the effect can be achieved through mundane means and the application of time/effort/resources. This is the single most important reason I don’t see the divide as meaningful. You can’t write an adventure (or shouldn’t) that requires a particular character ability or spell to be a success because that is dictating party make up. So by extension not having one of these powers is no barrier to play either. - For instance, let’s say the enemy (an evil wizard) has a lair in the middle of a deadly wasteland. If the party has a wizard of their own they can teleport there which saves time. However travel time is easily handwaved. If the party doesn’t have access to teleport (because the wizard hasn’t taken it for instance) the party just walks. Other than perhaps the chance to surprise the evil wizard, Teleport access hasn’t granted the party any more narrative control (other than perhaps chance to surprise the enemy). - If we take this a step further and the wizard is on a different plane of existence. The DM must write into the adventure a way to get there… portal… NpC wizard etc. Writing an adventure that forces a party to have a particular power is just poor writing… it’s a spell tax if you like… on a particular character. Forced to make an ability choice to keep the adventure moving. That’s actually a penalty not a benefit. Remember the DM has [B]chosen[/B] to set the adventure up this way. The same applies to artificial time limits and the like, which force a party to use teleport to travel quickly or fail. It’s just bad writing… and almost never seen in published adventures. - The same principles can apply to other ‘narrative control’ spells. They’re just indulging arbitrary restrictions that the DM has put in place - restrictions that in the absence of a wizard would have another solution. Fly, dispel magic, divination, scrying etc etc, they’re all the same. Now if you run adventures where the DM writes challenges after knowing the capabilities of the party, or intimates to the party that they need these powers, then I can see why the above doesn’t apply. However remember - the DM has chosen and directed that style of play. Similarly, I can see this won’t apply if the DM has open ended campaigns where players have unlimited prep time, and the kind of resources that allow for unlimited simulacrum etc then I can also see how this won’t apply… that just isn’t how I play though, and not how most published campaigns are written. Just my thoughts. [/QUOTE]
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