K's page

K wrote:

Ok, let's outline all your mistakes at one at a time:

Point by Point

1. As Aelryinth explained above, it makes no sense for a monster to take AoO to go around, when he gets a full round attack on the thing standing in front of him.

Sure it does. Why waste attacks on a heavily armored guy who MIGHT wound you when there are scary lightly armored Wizards who can steal your soul also attacking you? Do you want to waste attacks not hitting the heavy armor guy?

Anything smart enough to see "Wizard" is not taking out the impossible to hit guy first.

Most monsters are smart. I'm not even joking. There is a good chance your griffin is as smart as your fighter. I mean, the Griffon can understand Common even if it doesn't have a mouth to speak with. It could be a playable character.

I do understand your point though, and I'd expect animals or mindless creatures like vermin to respond to the nearest and not most dangerous threat... but then I'm not threatened by vermin or animals.

2. The monster has to go around the Fighter. It can not go through the fighter. This means AoO and no charging. Pull out some miniatures and game paper and see how having an obstacle that hits you for siginficant damage can be problematic.

Pull out your own minis, dude. Walking around a Fighter is easy and all it costs you is an AoO that might not hit (heck, you might not even get that if the monster has Acrobatics). Considering that preventing you from doing a Full attack is in it's best interest I think it might do that.

The monster can also Overrun you as part of a charge, and depending how far off the RNG it's CMD is that might be a better option.

3. The Damage while casting was in response to you saying you may not worry about the casting on the defensive penalties and just take the AoO. I may have misunderstood you, but that was how I read what you were saying you were going to do. Casting on the Defensive isn't easy in Pathfinder (15+level of the spell) until you get to high levels, and even then it isn't 100%. So you always risk doing absolutely nothing on your round but being vulnerable if you fail the check.

Casting on the Defensive? Have you ever seen someone play a spellcaster?

Seriously.

You move and cast. Always. You do that because casting defensively is a chance to lose the spell AND you might get AoOed AND you are in range of monsters who might full attack you. None of those are good and it's better to just take a potential AoO and definitely get a a spell off.

4. If sacrificing 4 feats means nothing to you, more power to you, sir. But you can't get there until 7th level, at the earliest. And if as a wizard you don't see the value or swift actions...well then again you've burned 4 feats on armor so maybe you don't have the feats to use on metamagic anyway.

At low level you can't use much metamagic and at medium to high level you have enough feats.

Seriously, have you even looked at spellcasters?

5. Yes, but there is still a max ranks per level, and Tumble rules changed to go off CMD, not a fixed number. So if you aren't getting the Dex bonus, you are going to be pouring Skill points in and still be behind. Not to mention not putting it into your knowledge skills like most casters so you know the resistances of what your fighting to avoid wasting spells that won't work.

Look, it works like this: you don't need a good check because failure simply means you take the AoO. Getting any check at all is a bonus, so if your Dex is only 12 or 14 it doesn't matter.

And as a Wizard you have a lot of skill points... far more than you can spend on useful things.

Anything I missed?

Yes, you missed the part where the Fighter can't prevent the monster from using spells or ranged attacks or special attacks. So like the main offensive abilities of like 80% of published monsters.

Yeh, Eschew Material Components ftw. Sorcerers even get it for free in Pathfinder.

K wrote:

Wrath wrote:

Negative levels and damage to stats drops caster effectiveness too. Must be the right level to cast those spells. Must also have high enough stats to learn them. If you're saying the dex guy loses their feats because of ability drain and neg levels, then your caster is losing spells too.

Given you keep telling everyone that a casters power is in their spells, then their effectiveness drops just as drastically,possibly more so since now they don't have the mighty versatility you keep espousing.

Cheers

I was replying to the myth that fighting guys can fight all day at 100% effectiveness as long as they have HPs. Clearly, even CR 1 enemies can drastically decrease their effectiveness.

It's obvious that casters lose effectiveness as they run out of spells. What was your point? Did you somehow think I was arguing otherwise?

If we remove the conditions that negatively impact on BOTH classes other than HP loss to the point of zero remaining, i.e. stat reduction, paralysis, etc as the examples you gave, then we have a Wizards main resource is spells and a Fighters main resource is HP's during a battle. If we then start removing the MAIN resource of each class, in only one, the Wizard, do we see a decrease in potential. That was my point, pure and simple. Exceptions can be put forward of course either for or against Wizards/Fighters.

S.

You've missed the point entirely.

The myth is: fighting guys can fight at 100% effectiveness as long as they have HPs.

I then proved this wrong. Ability damage and many other effects can reduce a fighter's effectiveness in combat. The only condition where the myth holds true is when the fighting guy is facing enemies with no abilities that grant any kind of condition.... so maybe CR 1 goblins with clean weapons (because weapons with poop on them might give the fighter filth fever and then he's taken ability damage).

It's not an argument that Wizards are innately better(though in other parts of the thread I've stated that too); it's an argument that fighting guys are equally subject to diminishing effectiveness as they face more combats.

People seem to think that in some idealized adventure they will have some super AC and have to deal with the occasional HP damage with a potion and just school everything. The truth is that even with a super AC someone is going to cast Bestow Curse on you or poison you or something and you'll need spellcasters to heal you because your fighting effectiveness is now crap.

The ten-minute workday applies to everyone.

I'm not disagreeing with those who say that a party of 4 wizards all working together would be a very tough party. Which again brings me to think that the latest rules give Wizards TOO many resources and make them TOO easy to use and recover. What has happened is that the rules have tried to enhance the melee classes when what would have been, in my opinion, smarter, to look at the issues of Wizard resources (i.e. spells). Only think I as a DM could think to do would be make sure that 'rest stops' were few and far between. Seems bad adventure writing when you need to start targeting a specific class to provide a challenging game.

S.

Less resting actually hurts fighting guys more because they can't heal and they burn through spellcaster buffs and healing faster.

It's a myth that fighting guys can fight all day. They fight for exactly as long as the healing holds up. A little ability damage or some negative levels and no Restorations and suddenly the fighting for the day is over.

Heck, once the spellcasters are out of good spells and the fighters start taking a lot more damage, even HP damage becomes a serious issue.

Kthulhu wrote:

K wrote:

Wizards are GODS!!! Fighters suck! If you aren't playing a wizard, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG!!!!

Except not all campaigns run on a strictly enforced 4 level appropriate encounters per day structure. What if there are a dozen encounters with lower level minion types (lets say goblins or kobolds) and then one level-appropriate "boss" monster encounter?

Your spellcaster-only group have more than likely blown their load on the goblins, and will be pretty g~!@%~n useless against the "boss" monsters...if the hordes of goblins don't drag them down before they even get that far.

Whereas the fighters, having hacked their way through wave after wave of goblin fodder, will still be at nearly 100% of their full fighting capacity.

HP are a finite resource. Your argument is invalid. So is your hyperbole.

Yeh, HP are a finite resource, meaning that a fighting guy can't "hack through wave after wave" without major support from spellcasters.

Also, its a fact that spellcasters do better with waves of enemies because they use AoE spells and AoE control spells. I mean, no DM sends a wave of underleveled goblins at a Wizard with Fireball or Wall of Fire because it's not even worth the time to place the minis because they get knocked down on round one.

That's not even mentioning the fact that the Wizards can fly, teleport, or just walk past those hordes while invisible. Remember, you don't have to kill things to count as defeating them, so charming a goblin to escort you into the enemy camp and past the various guards and straight to the BBEG nets you as much XP as hacking your way through them.

Spellcasters are better at combat, better at adventuring, and better at affecting the game world. It's not even a contest.

Sometimes, I don't think people realize how powerful a Wizard is. So here is a thread for people to put their best tactics for Wizards, as well as sample situations to use them.

1. Animate Dead, and other summons.
The ideal Wizard is a Neutral guy who is willing to make his most dangerous monster enemies into skeletons and zombies. This provides for a handy meatshield in combats that you rarely have to worry about healing (unlike a Fighter, who often soaks up healing like a bag of sponges).

At higher levels, planar binding is used to pull demons and other high value monsters from their planes to be used as ideal zombie fodder.

Other summons make ideal trap finding tools(they step on traps and explode, thus revealing said trap), couriers, meatshields when massed, chaff to absorb atacks, grapplers, or special ability users.

2. The ability to leave.
Having a tough combat? The Wizard has a number of ways to leave combats, from Teleport to Dimension Door, but in a "Fight Club" situation like duels, the Wizard can merely cast Magnificient Mansion and take a 5' step in for perfect protection from harm while he casts summons, buff spells, and drinks potions. Even spells like Resilient Sphere last long enough for that necessary breathing room in a hectic combat.

3. Contingency
Often, this spell is overlooked and is used a way to slap a quick buff onto the Wizard in an emergency; however, the spell is much more.

One of the easiest solutions is to set a spell that controls the battlefield in some way so that enemies can't harm him. Popping a Resilient Sphere on yourself is an easy way to avoid powerful attacks for a round while you cast buffs or summons.

So now we take these three tactics and do a sample situation: a duel between a Fighter and a Wizard.

Round 1: Someone wins initiative, but it doesn't matter because the Fighter gets delayed by a spell out of the Wizard's Contingency....maybe a Wall of some sort. The Wizard's Balor Skeleton attacks the Fighter, and the Wizard casts Magnificient Mansion and takes a 5' step in and is now immune to attack.

Round 2+: Wizard casts various summons, buffs, and then sends them after the Fighter, all from the perfect protection of the Magnificient Mansion. Potentially, they can step out for a round or two to cast debuffing and battlefield control spells under the cover of buffs like Improved Invisibility and Blink.

Conclusion: Winner is the Wizard!

K wrote:

Sure. The problem is that Fighter doesn't cover anything. He's amazingly bad at social encounters, terrible at solving encounters that adventurers face (like crossing lava rivers, disabling traps, investigation, etc.), and he can't fight level-appropriate enemies without heavy spellcasting support. Basically, he's the adventurer who's bad at adventuring and can easily be replaced by an NPC or henchmen.

That's not entirely true. The fighter has some great tools to solve all those things.

Social Encounters: Intimidate. While not useful in all situations, a fighter can easily browbeat his way through most social encounters he lacks the stats to otherwise handle. Not to mention the fact that with Intimidating Prowess and maybe a half-orc bonus, a fighter can easily be the character with "the best social roll" in the party. If he wants to go that route.

Investigation: Intimidate again! Fighters make great interrogators. This is also an activity that rarely involves many die rolls, and fighters are no worse off than any other class if this is the case. Not to mention their excellent ability to break arms and take hostages nonlethally.

Intimidate is a terrible skill. It can literally get you thrown in jail when it succeeds! Look it up.

Crossing Lava Rivers: Well, the rogue is probably going to cross first, let's be real. But somebody has to hold the rope/chain while he does so, and do you really want that to be the wizard? No. You want somebody with hit points and strength right there.

Err, what? Yeh, spellcasters shine here with any number of spells because anyone dumb enough to cross lava on a chain deserves to miss a Climb check and take 20d6 of auto-damage when they fall in. I literally am not allowed by character limits on this post to list all the ways that spellcasters are better.

Disabling Traps: My favorite method of disabling traps as a fighter is to find the biggest boulder I can carry and fill the trap with it. Heh. Of course, disabling traps IS traditionally an activity that occupies only the rogue, and leaves the wizard and fighter twiddling their thumbs (with the cleric prepping heal spells in case of failure).

Wizards and clerics have a 1st level spell that finds traps, and often disarms them. It's called Summon Monster. Then they use a ranged attack to destroy said trap. Done.

The Fighter can't even find traps until he falls into one, thus demonstrating the epic waste of resources that is his existence.

Can't Fight Level-Appropriate Enemies Without Spellcasting Support: Huh? The rest of that stuff, I understand and partially agree with, but this is just plain bananas. Fighters are awesome at fighting. I mean, they're fighters. It's what they do....

The name is meaningless. Put a party of fighters up against some level-appropriate enemies and they die. Badly. Even the most cheezed out with PrCs warrior guy turns into a henchman at around 8th level. The Wizard pulls out a scroll of Animate Dead and just gets someone more valuable in combat than the fighter.

As for Ride and Handle Animal, how exactly are they getting the skill points for that? They get 2/level, and they need CON and DEX and STR first so INT is one of their dump stats and chances are good they actually have 1/level. They can't even train dragons or demons, or anything that can survive a real combat encounter. They won't even have a good Cha! And all that is before we are forced to admit the DM has to give the Fighter the option for these monsters in game, making it no different than the DM handing out an artifact sword because the fighter is super-weak and he feels sorry for him.

At this point I have to ask if you have ever even seen a fighter being played in DnD? I know at like 4th level he seems super-impressive, but once the spellcasters get enough slots to cast spells in every round of every combat, the Fighter is a sad panda.

I know this is a flamebait topic, so I'll just bow out here.

People should remember that making the save on an illusion means you get to see through it like it was transparent. This means that you can make an illusion of a stone wall and have people put their hand through it, and if fail a save they still see a stone wall (though they could walk through it, if they wanted).

This means you could make something like a magic pink fog surround your foes, and they'd know it was magic, but they'd still be blinded while you could see perfectly (assuming they failed saves).

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That being said, here are some uses of silent image:

-Hunter's Blind. Planning an ambush? How about a perfect cover of an illusion? Simply make it as big as the party, hide inside, keep concentrating, and drop when you attack.

-make illusions of yourself like a poor man's Mirror Image, wasting enemy attacks.

-make illusions of you on your enemies so that their allies attack them.

-make illusions of common spells. Not many people are really going to test if that Wall of Fire is real or illusion. Perfect for barriers, cages, and general control. Illusions of fog are actually better than real fog or spells that create fog since you and your friends can see right through them. Make illusions of summons like shadows or ghosts or other quiet things, fake gates to other worlds, and give the illusion of life to statues or other inanimate objects.

-stationary disguise. Sure, this is no Disguise Self, but if you don't need to exit the area you can wear an illusion like an oversized suit.

-the bridge that isn't. Near a cliff, river, etc? Make an illusion of land or floor that isn't there, and lure enemies there. Heck, a little work with any number of spells and making tiger pits is super easy.

-the guy that isn't. Make an illusion of someone the target trusts, and have the illusion wave them over, flip them off, whatever. Perfect for leading people into traps.

-distractions. All the fun of burning barns without none of that nasty fire. Fights, dancing girls, enemy armies coming through the trees, etc.

Comes down to this to me. The villains have at their disposal whatever resources the game master deems necessary for the sake of the story. In effect their resources are limitless. The game master looks at the group and decides what is needed to make for an interesting adventure. The villains then receive this gratis. Keep in mind that often villains have had years if not decades or centuries to secure their base of operation and often their person against common threats such as scrying and teleportation. If someone cannot figure out how to counter their players for the sake of good story then they should not be running the game in my view.

If a villain of mine needs to be able to restrict scrying and teleportation, then he is going to be able to do so. Either through spells, items or class features.

Here's a question for you:

What's the difference between writing every villain so he can resist Scry and Die and creating an in-game limitation on the spells?

Answer: the amount of work you have to do as a DM.

The best part of my solution is that its easy. Rather than rewrite every villain to ignore one tactic, or come up with elaborate reasons why he didn't use his money to just hire an army instead of plating his whole complex in lead, you can just work on the story.

If I might...

I don't really agree that the lead sheeting is out of the quesion, or requires an industrialised society. Cathedrals and churches across medieval Europe had leaded roofs, presumably with lots of palaces and whatnot as well - that's a lot of lead. I fail to see why said BBEG should not have as much lead sheeting as he wants - hell, maybe his bath is lead.

If you are building cathedrals, your society is industrialized. It may not be the heavy industry of the Industrial Revolution, but somewhere there has to be lead mines, distribution networks, steady demand for lead so that people actually have a reason to mine and accumulate it....the list goes on.

And if your villain is a demon, or a dragon, or a superintelligent berry patch or something even more exotic, he can't go into town and spend the hundreds of thousands of GP necessary to outfit a whole cave complex in lead sheeting.

If your villain is a spellcaster, as Evil_Wizards shows in his example, then certainly you don't need any changes to scrying or teleportation since you have dozens of ways of foiling teleportation ambushes. But, even a Great Wyrm Dragon may not have the magical ju-ju to put up any kinds of protections and for a CR 20+ creature that is a bad deal.

I flat won't accept any answer of "but a good DM could fix that." That's not actually useful when talking in a New Rules playtest forum. Making a game that's easier to play actually involves fixing problems for DMs so that they can spend their creativity making engaging stories instead of figuring out work-arounds to design problems in the system itself. People complain that high-level adventures are hard to design, but they never figure out that it is because there are whole areas of high-level play that need rules.

And on another note, underground construction is not easy or cheap. That's why, in the history of the world, underground construction is a rarity and not a common thing (even in the mdern world with machineray and the like).

I don't know how you're going to prevent ambushes like this. Even if you banned Scrying completely, you could still use other divinations like Clairvoyance, or you could send in virtually undetectable scouts (an ethereal jann is possible starting with Summon Nature's Ally V), or se other sorts of magical shenanigans.

All of which have limitations. Jann can only use invisibility a few times a day for a few minutes each time so even ethereal ones would get spotted and provoke a response...Clairavoyance has a limited range and only works on places you know well, other divinations only provide clues...

Fixing Scry and Die requires fixing both teleport and scrying. Sure, fixing just teleporting would work too, and I'll take that if its all that's offered.

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My real question is "why there is so much resistance?" Hasn't anyone ever wondered why Star Trek sensors and transporters don't work underground?

They do it because its easier to tell stories that way.

Orion Anderson wrote:

D&D is first and foremost a combat game. A class that isn't good in combat... isn't good.

Compare the praise that "Prince of Redhand" received against the (non-comic book-related) feedback from "Graymalkin Academy." The former required almost NO combat (indeed, attacking the BBEG was suicide), and got a large outpouring of rave reviews. The latter was a standard room-to-room hackfest. Most people, as near as I can tell, didn't even play it.

If your idea of D&D is a bunch of combat, with skills unimportant in comparison, I'm REALLY glad I don't play with your group. If all I want a lot of fights and not much else, I can play "Space Invaders."

I'd say that people love combat, as shown by their love of Maure Castle. Its a hackfest with little to no plot and people love it.

I think the few "social" adventures have gotten high praise simply because they let you use your skills for once. Its not that people want it to be the norm, but it makes for nice variety.

That being said, I think every class should have a role both in combat and out of it. The Rogue and most spellcasters are perfect examples of this, and its the characters who don't do that who need help.

For example, the three fighting classes (Fighter, Paladin, Ranger) are embarrassing in both combat and out-of combat, and they need to be brought into line with the rest of the game on at least some of those points.

Ok, we all know what Scry and Die is: the PCs scry out the villain, cast a crap-ton of buffs, then teleport in while the villain is in the bath.

Various adventures take care of this problem in various ways, but here is a solution I really like.

Make Scry and Teleport fail when you try to go underground. They can still work if you have specially prepared magic circles (Spellcraft) that you have prepared (but, of course, unless you've been there you couldn't know that a magic circle was in that exact spot).

This means that there will be an in-game reason for people to make dungeons. Dungeons, despite the costs of excavation, will be the only nonmagical way to prevent Scrying and Teleporting so lots of heroes and villains will have a reason to live-in and build dungeons.

I like this because it solves a mechanical and a story problem.

Here's a simple proof of concept of the Conjurer as best adventurer.

Human Conjurer
+2 Int, Weapon Proficiency: Lance
Point buy system

1st level:
Feats: Combat Expertise, Armor Proficiency (Medium)
AC: 15-25

We'll assume that he puts the +2 stat into Int because he's a wizard and not a moron. Depending on your build, we'll assume a Dex 16 and Int 20, and the rest into Con (Str, Wis and Cha are dump stats).

This means we're looking at an AC of anywhere from 15 to 24-25. We have a +2 for the Conjurer, +3 for Dex, and on any round where we get a AoO he's getting a +5. He can also wear Scale mail or Chain Mail since in the later part of any adventure since his spell-like acid dart doesn't check ASF.

Note that the warrior types at this level don't have this kind of AC.

5th level
9K wealth
Feats:
2: Open
4: Arcane Armor Training
AC: 23-28

In general, with 9K recommended treasure rolling around in your pocket, you just afford a mithral breastplate +1(7K) and a +1 natural armor amulet(2K) a little into your adventures. Its OK to not be proficient in the armor use, since the armor check penalty is -1 for a mithral breastplate and you aren't doing a lot of attacks that aren't touch attacks. You have a 5% ASF, which is not great but you can cast your Conjurer spell-likes in a pinch and you can't risk a 1 out of 20 chance of failure.

The magic enhancement or the natural armor is not really necessary, so if you can't afford it you can avoid either its not a big hit.

10th level:
49K wealth
Feats:
6: Open
8: Arcane Armor Mastery
AC: 33-36

There is no ASF on the mithral buckler +3(9K), so its a good back-up for when you can't get AoOs on people (which is often considering the new Mobility or Tumble at this level, so you might not carry a lance at all). Your mithral breastplate is +3 right now(9K), and you can afford a Ring of Protection +2(8K) and a Amulet of natural armor +2(8k). This puts your total investment at 23K. leaving you 26K for other items (probably a +4 Int item and some odds and ends). You also haven't had ASP since 8th level.

This assuming you don't polymorph into something with decent natural armor like a troglodyte or an annis, sending your AC into the roof.

Overview:
Basically, with even a moderate build and the right equipment you can keep an AC high enough to put a fighter of your level to shame. That's not even counting that with your spells you can shoot up your AC and general protections (haste, blink, etc), and you can run around being a spellslinger of the first order.

Fighters only job is to soak damage and distract? thats like saying wizards job is to nuke and then die from the aggro, boring concepts form online gaming. leave the MMORPG to 4th ed and the actual MMORPGs. The Fighter is the archtypical master of the martial. swordsmen that battle the magical and mundane with just skill and will. its to bad that 3rd edition gave them nerf weapons and took all the caster flaws away. if there is a caster flaw, sure enough a feat or spell fills it up. good job wizards of the coast, you gave power gamer mutchkins a playground in the wizards and clerics, and fake awesomeness with the martial classes " yippee i can trip a dude!"

fix that and I'll give you a gold medal for genius (anyone? anybody?)

Oh, I agree.

The caster flaws were never really flaws, but Fighters have never had a role that can't be better done by summoned monsters, and thats sad.

Here's my challenge: give a Fighter an effect at least as powerful as a Wizard of the same level can cast each spell level, and make it completely mundane and happens when he hits things. No flashy effects or big AoEs, just the same base effects. For example, let him blind people at 3rd level with a Save (which is the level when a Wizard can blind and reveal invisible on whole areas).

Then run a Fighter against encounters at or below his EL. See how much more effective he is.

Nope, I'm not debating whether the SRD allows you to have armies. I'm pointing out that its a bad thing that it does - unless those armies are kept strictly "behind the scenes".
So, from my perspective, why do we need rules regarding armies that aren't behind the scenes when we shouldn't have armies that aren't behind the scenes?

Because henchmen and retainers and personal armies have been a part of DnD since the beginning, and changing it now would fundamentally not be DnD anymore.

Your solution of "make the game less interesting by cutting that part of the game out" would work, but it makes it less enjoyable.

Expect successful game designers to pick the "fun" solution of finding a way to give people what they want over the "easy" solution of not dealing with an basic issue.

The thing that people seem to forget is that "meatshield duty" is something that can be done with summoned, charmed, or animated monsters.

For a Fighter to be a viable character, he needs to be able to at least compete with the following things:

Level 1
Knock unconscious, blind, or stun 1d6 creatures
Get +20 to an attack
1d4+1 automatic damage at a range

Level 3
Do 4d6 damage as a ranged touch attack
Get DR/10 arrows vs magic
Daze a 6 HD creature
Gain 7 temp HPs after every battle

Level 5
Immune to mind effects
Make 50% spells and attacks miss him
Absorb 60 points of elemental damage with no effect

Level 7
Gain +11 natural armor
DR/10 adamantine (Which is DR/-- in all respects)
Gain complete immunity to spells and attacks in exchange for attacks

Level 9
Hurl creature 90 feet
inflict 1d4 negative levels
Fly 40ft all day

Level 11
Immune to all magic
Creatures can't approach you
See things as they truly are

Level 13
Become ethereal for 13 rounds
Reflect spells
Blind a creature with no save

Level 15
Gain DR/15 admantine and a pile of immunities
make a creature lose all attacks with no save
Pull certain creatures toward you

Level 17
Copy most good powers of any monster
Immune to surprise
Get 1d4+1 rounds of free actions

Ok, these are Wizard spells that might be martial in nature. I'm not even adding Area of Effect spells, utility spells, or awesome spells that give you armies(summons, charms, animates), or the fact that all of those abilities scale with level.

Show me a Fighter that can do any of these things, and I'll be happy because Fighters definitely don't have monopoly on "high HPs" or "high AC" or "raw damage" or "battlefield control."

That's if the wizard has those spells prepared. You're talking about a hypothetical situation there, which doesn't always play out in reality. The last time I saw an ogre attack a wizard (who happened to be 4th-level at the time) the ogre killed him with ease.

Actually, you're right in one sense. A 3rd-level wizard is more of a threat CR-wise than a 3rd-level fighter, but some would disagree with you that wizards are more powerful than fighters, including one of my gaming friends. To tell you the truth, I think both classes need a boost in power.

Thats true, some people do in fact make useless Wizards. They run around thinking that casting Shocking Grasp and Bull's Strength are actual combat actions.

By the same token some people play Fighters.

The CR system doesn't account for people who pick bad classes and make bad choices. Its does work for reasonably good choices with good classes. The fact that the non-spellcasting classes are vastly less able to fight at the point that the CR system says they should is not a flaw of the Cr system, but of the classes.

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To the proud meatshields:

Be happy that your Wizard hasn't chosen to use summons or illusions or walls or mind-control magic or necromancy or tactical control spells. Any one of these remove the need for a meatshield.

You job of "soaking damage and attacks" is just something they let you do so that you feel useful and pay for a share of the pizza.