Why is the Gish so popular with players?

[pawsplay]

But this is true across the board.

How many times have people argued about whether Merlin or Gandalf is really a wizard in D&D parlance? Conan is less of a D&D barbarian than he is a fighter. D&D has always had trouble approximating characters from other media, particularly in earlier editions.

I think we can generally agree that most fantasy literature does not use the D&D magic system. Heck, plenty of official D&D books don't seem to.

But Elric is not simply a fighter. He's one of the most capable sorcerers of his day.

 

[Theory of Games]

Why wouldn't you make the most capable character? You owe it to your gaming group especially with players who create STR 10 Fighters and INT 8 Wizards.

In the Githyanki tongue, "Gish" means "skilled".

 

[dbm]

What this discussion highlights to me is that games with strongly-typed class mechanisms mean that the archetypes offered can’t match the images in everyone’s heads, only some of them.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that, and I have come to accept that when I play D&D I pick from the available options and build my character around that.

My preference is for games which either have loosely-typed classes or no classes but there are other games that meet that criteria. I just put effort in getting those games to the table for my group.

 

[cbwjm]

In reference to the term Gish, I prefer Zerth but it's likely even more obscure than Gish.

 

[Theory of Games]

In reference to the term Gish, I prefer Zerth but it's likely even more obscure than Gish.

The Elvish "Vala" is my fav

 

[aco175]

I find there is a bit of comparison to making a poll on this site and you only have a yes or no answer to get people to make the hard choice. You do not include the squishy, middle maybe answer and then everyone is saying your poll sucks. So, in the end you do not get your yes/no answer to your poll, but you get 75% maybe.

Gish PCs are a bit like the maybe answer. People do not want to make the hard choice of being good here or there so they take the middle ground. The rules let them and it does not take away the overall power that much, or worse it lets them be more powerful with my action surge double-fireball and such.

 

[Corinnguard]

The Magus Class by laserllama

and

The Magus: Expanded by laserllama

The Magus: Expanded by laserllama - Created with GM Binder.

www.gmbinder.com

 

[Undrave]

I am confident that WotC thought they were nailing it with the arcane archer, eldritch knight and bladesinger, likely because those prestige/subclasses did match what the people in-house were looking for, only to run into the problem that there are so many, many different takes on this and people are extremely attached to each of them.

All three are functional subclasses but they all have issues.

The Arcane Archer feels undercooked: you only ever have 2 uses of your magic arrows so you might limit yourself to one use per combat, so you often don't feel very magical until 7th level, and you run into the Battlemaster Maneuver issue that once you picked your favorite options (Only 2 of them instead of the Battlemaster's 3 options, which is really dumb IMO) you're just picking from the ones you didn't care about at level 3. Not really exciting and it doesn't feel like you're progressing.

The Eldritch Knight has the issue that it often feels like a part time Wizard (the 'sword with one hand, spell with the other' issue) than truly integrating both swordery an sorcery, especially before we got the melee cantrips. The other problem is the school limit on what they can pick from (I also think there could be fun variants of it using different spell lists than Wizard) that means you can't just pick supporting spells to enhance your melee combat but instead get saddled with blasting powers. It's an effective subclass, but one that feels thematically constrained.

The Bladesinger is too good at Wizardry and it's much more optimal for them to keep away from melee entirely and just use their Bladesinger features as superior defensive options rather than an excuse to enter battle. There's also the issue of level 1 where you don't get your weapon proficiencies and you're just a regular Wizard.

 

[TwoSix]

The Magus Class by laserllama

and

The Magus: Expanded by laserllama

The Magus: Expanded by laserllama - Created with GM Binder.

www.gmbinder.com

Laserllama's Magus is really good, although my preference is Kibblestasty's Spellblade.

https://www.kthomebrew.com/s/Spellblade-v11.pdf

 

[TwoSix]

The Bladesinger is too good at Wizardry and it's much more optimal for them to keep away from melee entirely and just use their Bladesinger features as superior defensive options rather than an excuse to enter battle. There's also the issue of level 1 where you don't get your weapon proficiencies and you're just a regular Wizard.

Yea, that's the funny thing about the Bladesinger. It's definitely the best gish in official 5e if you play it as a gish, but it's still a good enough wizard to serve as a reminder that being a strong wizard is generally more valuable than being a good melee fighter.

Battlesmith Artificer is also a really fun gish.