Why is the Gish so popular with players?

[cbwjm]

Because it's cool. I like the idea of a warrior-wizard flicking spells one moment and striking down an enemy with their sword the next.

 

[TiQuinn]

Because it's cool. I like the idea of a warrior-wizard flicking spells one moment and striking down an enemy with their sword the next.

This.

Also, can we just throw the most obvious reason out there? Because it’s an friggin option in the PHB going back to 1e! Like, why wouldn’t you want to try this if it’s an option?! Why would someone get all judgy about it?

 

[Distracted DM]

The folks saying "Elric" was an inspiration for gish... It's hard to picture any of the gish builds you'd see as trying to emulate Elric.

He has Stormbringer, and that's 99% of what he uses. Very rarely he'll have big ritual spells, or he'll call on an old debt that his bloodline has gained from some favor generations ago (like getting elemental help). He doesn't throw fireballs or lightning bolts or enchant his sword or blink here to there or anything of that nature.
He doesn't use battle magic, as we'd think of it.

So the inspiration might've been there, but as execution ... I don't see it.

 

[Riley]

To me, it's much less of "I'm always the star" and more "I'm never actively sidelined, and always have something to contribute."

Agreed. My love of Gish originated with low-level BD&D and AD&D. I really wanted to cast spells, but low-level 1e magic-users had just about nothing to contribute 90+% of the time.

A fighter/magic-user lagged behind a pure caster in spellcasting - and behind a pure fighter in everything else especially resilience - but at least they could always shoot an arrow at the problem.

 

[Undrave]

Realistically, the Valor Bard is a Gish. So is the Battlesmith Artificer. So is the Eldritch Knight and the Bladesinger. So is the Hexblade Warlock and the Arcane Trickster. Indeed, it's arguable that even Ranger, Paladin, and Cleric each have Gish subclasses. And you can play a Fighter 1/Wizard X, or a Warlock/Sorcerer, or a dozen other combinations. Quite simply Gish is the most universally represented class archetype in all of D&D. But, quite often, when you present these as a valid Gish they get rejected. People still complain... there's no Gish!

Well, what they want is character that's 1-2 levels behind the Fighter and 1-2 levels behind the Wizard at the same time. They want a God class.

Nah, we want a guy who fuses magic and sword skill, not just a guy who does sword stuff with one hand and the next turn uses magic on the other. We want Gish to have a battle style of their own.

The Bladelock has a magical construct as a sword and the Paladin with their Smites is the closest to a real Gish.

 

[Deset Gled]

As this thread is already demonstrating, the gish is also one of those things that "everyone" says they want, but there is very little consensus about what people actually want, and even less consensus of how to implement it. Which means that the gish gets argued about constantly. Across editions, across systems, across mechanics, across gameplay styles. There is never really agreement. At best, discussion. At worse, discord.

The net effect is that the gish is a perennial topic on message boards (and other social media like this). This gives the gish the appearance of being more "popular" than it actually is. Not that it's "unpopular", mind you. But between the perpetual dissatisfaction and the uniqueness of the term, it's a topic that is naturally Search Engine Optimized for attention in the TTRPG community.

 

[cbwjm]

As this thread is already demonstrating, the gish is also one of those things that "everyone" says they want, but there is very little consensus about what people actually want, and even less consensus of how to implement it. Which means that the gish gets argued about constantly. Across editions, across systems, across mechanics, across gameplay styles. There is never really agreement. At best, discussion. At worse, discord.

The net effect is that the gish is a perennial topic on message boards (and other social media like this). This gives the gish the appearance of being more "popular" than it actually is. Not that it's "unpopular", mind you. But between the perpetual dissatisfaction and the uniqueness of the term, it's a topic that is naturally Search Engine Optimized for attention in the TTRPG community.

Sounds a lot like many of the classes that did make it into 5e, and 4e, also 3e. Refer also to all other editions not mentioned.

 

[BigJackBrass]

I'm not so sure the Gish is all that popular with players?

This thread is certainly the first time I've heard of it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The folks saying "Elric" was an inspiration for gish... It's hard to picture any of the gish builds you'd see as trying to emulate Elric.

He has Stormbringer, and that's 99% of what he uses. Very rarely he'll have big ritual spells, or he'll call on an old debt that his bloodline has gained from some favor generations ago (like getting elemental help). He doesn't throw fireballs or lightning bolts or enchant his sword or blink here to there or anything of that nature.
He doesn't use battle magic, as we'd think of it.

So the inspiration might've been there, but as execution ... I don't see it.

Elric was a powerful summoner and binder who happened to have an artifact that was a demon in sword form. I think those who have pointed to Fritz Lieber’s characters are closer to the truth. That said, one could assert the nature of Eternal Champion itself makes it a kind of Gish, just not in the usual sense.

Personally, my taste for PCs that intermingle the mundane and the mystic- divine, arcane, psionic or what have you- is less about powergaming* and more about immersion in the setting. When the supernatural is a thing, I typically want to be able to play someone with a touch of the supernatural.

Within the various editions of D&D, that has translated into a wide variety of multiclassed characters, but also characters at either end of the continuum- like casters who are proficient with a single martial weapon to warriors with just a smattering of supernatural abilities.




* most of my FRPG characters are a mix, and few people have made credible accusations of powegaming in my direction.

 

[pawsplay]

Githyanki fighter/magic-users from the Fiend Folio are known as gish. It's not the first occurence of the archetype in D&D -- BD&D elves can use both magic and weapons -- but githyanki were a huge phenomenon when the Fiend Folio came out, and justly so. So the term stuck.

I'm aware of the etymology. I just remember there was a specific day on the WotC CharOps forum where someone said, "Hey, I have an idea! Let's start calling FMUs 'gishes'!" and I was like, "That's a terrible idea, please don't do that," but a significant number of people did it. I really hoped for a while the fashion had died out, but it makes a resurgence now and then. I'm not aware of it having a currency before that, but perhaps that poster got the idea from Usenet or something.

Reasons why it's a bad idea:

• Someone encountering the conversation for the first time is essentially clueless since the meaning is not obvious
• So you have to explain the term to newcomers, which is basically a form of gatekeeping
• Then someone wants to know the etymology of the term, which leads back to the discussion of the Fiend Folio, at which point it becomes obvious that using the term in this way makes it difficult to actually talk about githyanki lore.
• It's a D&D-ism, which means every time it escapes its own ecosystem and gets used in conversation about, say, Pathfinder, or any D&D clone game which doesn't include the WotC term "githyanki" there is an additional level of irrelevance.

On the other hand, fighter-mage, fighter/magic-user, spellsword, and the like require essentially no explanation, and don't cause any confusions at all except when talking about specific constructs that may differ between specific game editions.