Why is the Gish so popular with players?

[TiQuinn]

Frankly, I don't remember. I think my point is "People say the Gish fans just want an OP character but nobody say anything when the Ranger saunters on the scene and that guy mixes weapon with Magic".

I am a notorious gish player and my first 5e character was a Horizon Walker because, well, it's a very cool gish.

 

[Undrave]

I am a notorious gish player and my first 5e character was a Horizon Walker because, well, it's a very cool gish.

It sure looks like it is!

 

[Willie the Duck]

I think people have mentioned the basics. People who want to play 'Gishes'* are not universally doing so for some kind of desire to be all-powerful -- and in many instances across the versions of the games the implementation(s) of the concept generally underperformed. Many people play them because they don't want parts of the game where they do not participate, or because they are attempting a specific theme**.
*and yes this is pointless gatekeeping jargon.
**including from the many inspirational fantasy instances, but also from within-D&D inspiration like the Fighter-MU or Elf classes of old or the red mage of AD&D-adjacent Final Fantasy

Two other things I'll note that haven't seen enough mention here are these:

1. Even on the purely mechanical side, there's reason to pick a gish even if you aren't looking for pure power, and that is complexity and complex gameplay. D&D has (often) relegated a lot of complex play loops to spells and similar. If you like messing around with these things, even as a sword-swinger, then doing so as a magical-sword-swinger has been a consistently viable way to do so. It's noteworthy that when sword-swinging has had the same complexity as spells (such as the Book of 9 Swords classes in 3.5), those have been popular as well.
2. In all honesty, everyone plays (or certainly did, in many-to-most editions) played hybrid characters. That's because, even if the character class didn't have spells, the magic items they carried generally did. Or did the same things as spells did. Barring the odd AD&D barbarian or 3e Vow of Poverty monk, characters have layered spells and spell-like effects all over their martial characters. If your visions of a warrior is success without the aid of magic, D&D has not been the game for you pretty much from the jump.

 

[Staffan]

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.

The edition that could best accommodate Elric would probably be 4e, where he could be a fighter with Ritual Casting. Give him a flaw that without Stormbringer or potions, his Strength and Con falls down to like 6 or so.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

In fact, FWIW, my mains in WoW were the traditional hybrids: i.e., Paladin, Druid, and Shaman. These are still probably my favorite classes though I only play WoW seldomly now.

I enjoy playing gishes. I usually play gishes with healing spells as their "oh $#!+" buttons since I often play more defensively, so things like paladins and even clerics. (Also why I usually played the above WoW classes.)

It's nice to have martial skills to fall back on when I don't want to use magic. It's nice to have magic skills to fall back on when I don't or can't use magic. It's nice not being quite as "squishy" as mages often are.

Also, there is something aesthetically fun about about a gish.

But being the most overpowered character who can do everything? Yeah, I think that Colville is flat-out wrong with his assessment.

I usually play spellsword tanks in video games-- I think its because I ended up falling in love with the tank role, but was very much obsessed with wizards as a kid so spellswords present a happy medium.

Magic has undergone something of a populist revolution over the years-- the means of casting have been seized, leading to a world where magic has been integrated into a much wider variety of skillsets. I think its because fantasy an ongoing medium has marched on from magic being inherently 'other.' We still have explicit mages, but its about what a specialist can do who devotes themselves to the art, rather than magic simply being for a unique class of person that just isn't a part of daily life.

You do still have certain things like World of Warcraft/FFXIV/Guild Wars Warriors, which cling to nonmagical identity (nevermind the thunder aoe thing they've always had) but like, all Guild Wars 2 Thieves use some shadow magic in their kit, all Rangers in that game incorporate primal magic, World of Warcraft Brewmasters are clearly employing magic both in their brews and in random abilities they have, and Demon Hunter/Death Knight/Paladin/Druid are all just spellswords for a particular power source (Fel/Death/Holy/Nature respectively.)

Explicit non-magic has become a very specific niche, maybe a little less so in the TTRPG space, but inroads have been made on even that with growing options for either gish fighter subclasses in 5e (like the echo thing).

 

[Laurefindel]

Warrior-wizards are pretty common in (fantasy) littérature and media; I’m not surprised the concept is popular with players. I mean, one of my earliest hero was Luke Skywalker. So I’ve been wanting to play a gish since I was four.

 

[GMMichael]

In a recent Matt Colville livestream...

Off to a rough start, but...

EDIT: In other words, "I don't find the Gish concept compelling and because I personally can't think of reasons to find it compelling except ones I find distasteful, I think players that find the Gish concept compelling are lame. I'm not asking you to convince me Gishes are cool - that's a matter of taste. What I DO want is to provide me some reasons that OTHERS may find it compelling that are different than what I modeled above so that I can pick some that I don't find distasteful and thus overcome my bias against players that like playing Gishes."

Nostalgia could be a reason to find gishes compelling. To gif:

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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.

The problem with those, unfortunately, is that, as we can see in this thread, that a hybrid arcane spellcaster/melee fighter encompasses a lot of different archetypes. Many of them play very differently.

And since none of them has a distinct name, anyone who comes up with a solution that works for them is immediately told by a bunch of people that they've completely failed to capture their concept, because there really isn't a vocabulary to differentiate all these takes beyond, I guess, "I want to play Elric," "I want to play a Dying Earth character," "I want to play some anime character that Whizbang will use the wrong name for," etc.

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.

Both with psionics and gish, I don't think WotC can really win, since they're up against hundreds of thousands of perfect versions of the concepts in hundreds of thousands of different heads.

 

[James Gasik]

Warrior with magic is a pretty common concept in fiction to emulate, it looks cool, and spells can be overpowered compared to the martial systems, so getting some can make your character far more effective.

This, I mean, Elric was a swordsman and a wizard. The Grey Mouser dabbled in magic. Corwin of Amber knew magic, and despite being labeled a Sorcerer, his son Merlin could hold his own in fights. Belgarion carries around a giant two-handed sword on top of being the most powerful magic user in his setting. Rand Al-Thor says hi. Sparhawk is a Church Knight but is more of a Fighter/Warlock than a Paladin (but ironically, not a Hexblade).

We also have Paladins and Rangers and the original Elf class (not to mention the Bard from 2e on) to remind us that the seeds of the hero who uses whichever weapon is better at the moment (be it sword or spell) just makes sense when you live in a dangerous fantasy world.

Then there's those players who want a true synergy between sword and spell, using one to enhance the other, but the D&D magic system isn't really built for such- you tend to have to make some serious sacrifices to be able to overcome the action economy that generally lets you use magic or swing weapons around, but not both.

So aspiring to this archetype has little to do with aspirations of twinkhood, IMO. It's just something a player might feel is logical to do, and they may be emulating a lot of fictional characters who mix magic and sorcery- how about them "Space Wizards" from a galaxy far, far away?

And in fact, if you're really trying to game the system, you're usually better off sticking to one or the other, since D&D has rarely rewarded a split focus- you'd think being a versatile character is the way to go, but you tend to be mediocre at a lot of things instead of being stellar at one or two things.

 

[Staffan]

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.

The Arcane Archer is, on a conceptual level, the closest to what I want in what I'll call a swordmage*. It's not a traditional spellcaster, but instead a warrior who laces their attacks with magic power to create magical effects. My beefs with it is (a) that it's archery-focused instead of melee-focused, and (b) that I'd prefer the slider a bit more toward the magic side of things (which means you probably can't make it as a fighter subclass, because the fighter has too much martial in the core class).

* I find it useful to use "gish" for the traditional fighter/wizard-style character who sometimes fights and sometimes casts, but generally doesn't mix them up, and "swordmage" for the kind of character that uses magic as an inherent part of their combat abilities.