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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 5901510" data-attributes="member: 5143">It was meant as an example of the worst parts of all editions with a bit of exaggeration for effect.  But if you want to go over the details, lets.The average on 10d6 is 35, 39 is a whole 4 points above that.  I'm fairly certain that falls squarely in the "average" of rolls on 10d6.  It would be a moderately lucky roll for someone with an 8d6 fireball, which is more what I was going for.  But even if you assume the caster had 10d6, it still proves my point.  The spell when it affects a large number of creatures does easily 10 times more damage than a fighter could ever output.  And in 3e, this spell is considered to be one of the WORST spells for Wizards.My example was more meant as a 2e example, however.  Where you are often fighting against hordes of smaller hitdice creatures.  This happens in some 3e games and applies equally in those games.Depends, in 1e and 2e things with 18hp could be missed by fighters all the time.  It's likely the only bonus you had was from stat and your THAC0 was small enough that you had a chance to miss them, maybe it was only a 30% chance, but my point is the Wizard has a 0% chance to miss.  Also, a 0% chance to do anything but kill every enemy in the area of effect.  This is often the case.  Spells with no saving throw exist in all editions(even a couple in 4e), people will find the spells with the most likely chance to hit and use them.  In 3e, people tended to use the Orb spells because there was no save for half and since they were touch attacks, they often hit on a 2.  Which meant there was a 95% chance of hitting and doing full damage.  The fighter often had to worry about having a 30%+ chance of hitting and had to deal with damage resistance and a number of special abilities(immunity to non-magic weapons, immunity to less than +3 weapons, etc).Force Orb in particular didn't allow Magic Resistance, so it was guaranteed damage.True, we don't know how many hitpoints the fighter started at or what edition this took place in.  I was thinking of an 8th level fighter from 2e who rolled poorly on his Con.  Average hitpoints for that character are 44.  If they rolled even slightly poorly, 40 damage would kill them outright.  If this was a 8th level fighter from 3.5 edition who also had a 10 con, then they've have 50 hitpoints.  If this wasn't the first round of combat, it could have dropped them as well.  Heck, if this wasn't the first round of combat, it could have dropped a fighter with 100 hitpoints.They can change into such things with the right paragon paths and feats(and a certain reading of the rules).  I know, I've played a game with the guy who was in ooze form for the entire adventure.  It was a slight exaggeration and that particular combination is likely impossible.  It was meant to be kind of funny.However, they can change into all sorts of forms that increase their AC to much, much higher than the fighter.  The point was supposed to illustrate this without having to come up with a new monster.  If you've ever been in the group with a Druid who has a Ape animal companion who wears magic armor and wields a magic weapon who had more hitpoints, bonuses to hit, and AC than the fighter, you'll know what I'm talking about.I should note that 40 damage to 8 creatures is a total of 320 points of damage.  Nearly 3 times the damage the fighter did in the round.  You may not have felt overshadowed....but I certainly would.Also, if both of these things are happening in the same game and the same level, then something is really wrong.  By the time our fighter was doing 120 damage in a round, our Wizard was throwing around much worse than that.In 3e, our average encounter was against 1 or 2 opponents.  Area of effect spells suck in those situations.  So, instead the ability to hit an enemy with a spell that prevented them from fighting back or killed them outright in one round was the best.  Also, when fighting against 1 opponent, they tend to have way more AC than enemies you fight 40 at a time.  It reduced the damage of the fighter dramatically while leaving the Wizard's unchanged.I've seen this argument before, and I disagree.  Even if they buff the Fighter, the Fighter is only doing well because of them.  Balance shouldn't depend on the group composition as much as it does.  If classes are balanced, then a group of 3 Fighters should be able to take on just as difficult enemies as a group of a Fighter, a Wizard, and a Cleric.  That just isn't the case at all.All buffing the fighter does is change perception, not actual power.  I played a cleric for years in 3.5e.  I'd buff every Fighter and melee based class at the table(it was Living Greyhawk, so I never knew what my party composition would be like from game to game).  We kicked butt.  However, I knew the entire time we kicked butt mostly because of my buffs.  It made the fighters feel better about themselves though to think they did it all.  So, I'd rarely say anything about it.A couple times when we had a really poor Fighter who was extremely unoptimized at a table, I'd use all my buffs on me instead, and I'd shine so badly that almost everyone at the table agreed that Clerics were horribly broken.  I remember this one time a group of 5 people from another city visited who played together all the time.  Their group had no cleric or healer of any kind and they were almost all Sorcerers and Wizards to make up for the lack of healing.  In fact, they had almost never seen a Cleric, certainly not a high level one.  They played one game with me where my buffs made it so they didn't take damage for an entire 5 hour session.  They were extremely surprised at how much better their group did with a cleric.</blockquote>

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