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General Tabletop Discussion
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Worlds of Design: Who Needs Spellcasters Anyway?
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<blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7793131" data-attributes="member: 6873517"><p>That was true in fairly low levels but once magic users got Web (3rd level) and then Fireball (5th level) things started to change, at least with good timing. However, they were vulnerable and had limited resources. Look out if they got wands or the like, though. Magic users were the artillery piece. </p><p></p><p>Unfortunately one of the weaknesses of 1E and the general D&D design more broadly was that when the casters were out of spell the game often stopped. The problem of the "Five Minute Workday" has been there all along. Much of the design of AD&D tried to boost up the fighter, for instance via Exceptional Strength and later weapon specialization, but that had the pernicious effect of making any non-caster character without those, including fighters, much less useful in a fight. The super high strength fighter pretty much always owned every other character in a fight except perhaps the high level wizard. </p><p></p><p>Still, the issue of "linear fighters" vs. "quadratic magic users" was always there. It was used in reference to their growth but the original idea came from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester's_laws" target="_blank">Lanchester's laws of combat</a>, with which many of the wargamers of the early hobby would be familiar. Fighters were linear in that they could only engage a small number at a time whereas the area effect spells of the wizard did broad-based damage. </p><p></p><p>You can really see it in the 5E-based <em>Adventures in Middle Earth</em>, where area effect attacks are essentially non-existent and thus nearly everyone is "linear". About the only really "quadratic" abilities are things that induce the enemy's morale to break, which was very much how things worked in real life combat back in the day. Really big casualties in battle weren't typically created by the fighting itself but by a rout.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jay Verkuilen, post: 7793131, member: 6873517"] That was true in fairly low levels but once magic users got Web (3rd level) and then Fireball (5th level) things started to change, at least with good timing. However, they were vulnerable and had limited resources. Look out if they got wands or the like, though. Magic users were the artillery piece. Unfortunately one of the weaknesses of 1E and the general D&D design more broadly was that when the casters were out of spell the game often stopped. The problem of the "Five Minute Workday" has been there all along. Much of the design of AD&D tried to boost up the fighter, for instance via Exceptional Strength and later weapon specialization, but that had the pernicious effect of making any non-caster character without those, including fighters, much less useful in a fight. The super high strength fighter pretty much always owned every other character in a fight except perhaps the high level wizard. Still, the issue of "linear fighters" vs. "quadratic magic users" was always there. It was used in reference to their growth but the original idea came from [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester's_laws"]Lanchester's laws of combat[/URL], with which many of the wargamers of the early hobby would be familiar. Fighters were linear in that they could only engage a small number at a time whereas the area effect spells of the wizard did broad-based damage. You can really see it in the 5E-based [I]Adventures in Middle Earth[/I], where area effect attacks are essentially non-existent and thus nearly everyone is "linear". About the only really "quadratic" abilities are things that induce the enemy's morale to break, which was very much how things worked in real life combat back in the day. Really big casualties in battle weren't typically created by the fighting itself but by a rout. [/QUOTE]
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