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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 2610410" data-attributes="member: 3051">I'll agree that there's a realism gap in this game, and a spear in the guts should be fatal no matter how many bugbears you've slain.  However, that being said, it's not entirely unrealistic.  Don't overvalue that sort of support; if you were a special forces commando-type guy, you wouldn't want a hundred effectively untrained (level 1 commoner) guys as your "backup", even if they were given decent equipment.  Yes, historically many of the old Greek armies were made up of these sorts of half-trained men, but those that were tended to break and run pretty often.  Ever heard the phrase "with your shield, or on it"?  Soldiers who broke and ran would drop those big, heavy shields, so soldiers would be told to either come back with the shield (meaning you held your ground), or have it used as a stretcher to carry your corpse back.Now imagine how much worse it'd be in a fantasy campaign, when it's possible to run into an enemy that you simply can't deal with.  The classic phalanx only had to deal with swords, spears, javelins, and maybe arrows.  These are all things that can be dealt with using spears.  The flying, invisible guy lobbing fireballs?  The dragon?  The elemental who ignores your blows entirely?  Not quite the same thing.  So, no realistic depiction of level 1 fighters would have them holding their ground against those sorts of enemies, and the DM should rule that they broke and ran the first time they faced something unusual.Oh, and rules quibble: Wands are spell-trigger activation.  You have to be a class that has the spell on your list (which isn't possible for 1st-level NPC classes), or else be able to fake it with Use Magic Device (again, NPC classes, so only the Expert could try).  So that plan doesn't work, even ignoring the difficulty in finding half-used wands.</blockquote>

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