Ah, but the caster feels like an idiot as he struggles up a rope while he's actually perfectly capable of flying; the martial feels like a hero! Plus, the martial has the advantage of having no useful knowledge/social class skills, meaning that they stick all their points in physical skills by default!
i would probably argue your point, but really it's just an opinion so i'm going to say that "better" probably isn't the best word.I consider mundane solutions to be intrinsically 'better' in most cases. Getting up a wall with a grappling hook is a cooler visual image than using magic to do it. Convincing someone to help you by demonstrating your good intentions is less creepy than magically brainwashing them. Riding or sneaking across Mordor is more dramatic than teleporting across Mordor.
Faster? No. Safer? No. Just 'better'.
Yeah, at the end of the day there's not much to discuss when someone says "I think X is more fun than Y." Because what people think is fun is almost entirely a matter of personal preference.
Though I would mention that wizards, being int-based guys, have tons of skill points to let them go for mundane solutions, plus they have magic as a fallback.
Anyway, back to the topic of the thread. My take at GMing RotRL definitely saw the Martial-Caster disparity showing up full force. Particularly once the enemy casters got high-enough level to start doing things like having Fly up at the start of an encounter or Dimension Door-ing out once things went bad (Lucretia got away from the party twice, after which the cleric made a point of dimensional anchor-ing any caster BBEG).
There were also two players who tried fighters over the course of the campaign. Both of them were unsatisfied with the fighter on account of only being able to stab things in the face, and swapped out for more casty characters (a Sorcerer and Summoner). Both these changes lead to substantially better party performance.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Yes, but if it's possible to do these things without magic, using magic is just showing off / wasting spells per day / skipping adventure content.
Well, that's often a pretty big "if", which is the problem that I tried to demonstrate in my post. Obstacles other than a locked door, willing-but-hesitant NPC or a ledge within throwing distance of a grappling hook tend to be (nearly, or sometimes literally) impossible to engage nonmagically. Other times it's doable nonmagically, but it's so much more dangerous or otherwise impractical that the caster would get dirty looks for NOT bypassing it with a scroll of obstacle removal.
Should I start listing all the real-actual-gameplay examples I've seen of obstacles that were unable or infeasible to engage nonmagically, where using magic was very far from "showing off" or "skipping adventure content"?
Should I start listing all the real-actual-gameplay examples I've seen of obstacles that were unable or infeasible to engage nonmagically?
Feel free to list a few - it would certainly be relevant to the thread.
In my experience most gameplay obstacles are either in Adventure Paths and are designed to be passable by any party, or are created by a GM with the specific group in mind - in which case they only exist because of the caster being there.(The only example I can think of off the top of my head was an AP door you were supposed to open by using negative energy damage. Which none of the casters were in a position to do either, so we tunnelled through the wall instead.)
Ah, but the caster feels like an idiot as he struggles up a rope while he's actually perfectly capable of flying; the martial feels like a hero! Plus, the martial has the advantage of having no useful knowledge/social class skills, meaning that they stick all their points in physical skills by default!
a wizard probably have 8 skill points per level...
Mea culpa. I thought we could actually have a friendly discussion on a issue, but apparently not. The same posters, the same arguments, the same antagonism and anger, leading to the inevitable thread lock down.
The issue of martial caster disparity is now clear to me, and it has little to do with the game system, and everything to do with the players.
Feel free to carry on.
I tried.
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Mea culpa. I thought we could actually have a friendly discussion on a issue, but apparently not. The same posters, the same arguments, the same antagonism and anger, leading to the inevitable thread lock down.
The issue of martial caster disparity is now clear to me, and it has little to do with the game system, and everything to do with the players.
Feel free to carry on.
I tried.
The Hypocrisy... It burns!
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Mea culpa. I thought we could actually have a friendly discussion on a issue, but apparently not. The same posters, the same arguments, the same antagonism and anger, leading to the inevitable thread lock down.
The issue of martial caster disparity is now clear to me, and it has little to do with the game system, and everything to do with the players.
Feel free to carry on.
I tried.
I think that if anyone reads the actual play examples all of which address actual situations and comes to the conclusion that martial-caster disparity, they have an agenda of denying the disparity exists. Because the stories told here are not player issues, they are system issues. And the explanations of why those happened are system issues not player issues. The same inevitable arguments will naturally occur even when discussing actual play because *surprise!* the issues these arguments are based around come from actual play.
I think you should reread the thread DrDeth and see if you come to a different conclusion.
Mea culpa. I thought we could actually have a friendly discussion on a issue, but apparently not. The same posters, the same arguments, the same antagonism and anger, leading to the inevitable thread lock down.
The issue of martial caster disparity is now clear to me, and it has little to do with the game system, and everything to do with the players.
Feel free to carry on.
I tried.
bruh, i posted anecdotal evidence like you asked and actually decided to not argue with someone who had na opinion differing than me, because he was stating an opinion.
chill.
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DrDeth is well known for being one of those "one true path" guys and any who disagree woth him are "playing it wrong.
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