Are all the characters you play epic mages??? Are all the games you play in broken and allows you the freedom to choose your terms? Sounds like your campaigns are a little well, weak.
I play in Derek's game, and his campaigns are far from weak. What we've all clearly noted is that the combat rules of 3.0/3.5/3.PF lend themselves to shifting imbalances at different levels:
He's talking about archmages because it's ONLY at high levels that fighters become useless. If you play from 1st - 13th, you probably wouldn't even notice that trend. By the time your party is 17th level, though, it's really hard to miss. At high levels, the wizard can almost ALWAYS choose his terms, because of spells like contingency and teleport: if the odds aren't perfectly in his favor, and he doesn't have just the right spells ready, he can always vanish and come back later, when he's better prepared. Melee guys can't prevent that -- if you houserule feats that allow them a full move as an immediate action, and another one that allows any hit to cause a dimensional anchor effect, THEN they can prevent that sort of thing. But without those types of abilities, they can't cope at high levels.
I'd advocate for this too.I almost forgot in my above post . . . I read someone propose this, and I'm wholeheartedly in favor of this, but I can't find what thread it was in, but I think that fighters should get, as part of their armor training, the ability to move at full speed in armor.
Yeah, it won't be as useful to dwarven fighters, but that's a trade off of them being slow and steady (and it wouldn't kick in until the fighter got his armor training bonus, so the dwarf would enjoy some benefit until then). But if the fighter is suppose to intercept the damage dealers and hold them off while the party does what its suppose to do, it really should be able to move into place, and if the only thing he is getting is moving at his full normal speed, than its not stepping on the barbarian or the monk's toes.
I can understand why they don't get their full speed, after all armor is bulky and not very well made for ease of movement traditionally (and historically, here on Earth). But some reduction of how much speed they lose would make sense, as they're used to the discomfort and the limits of their motion and probably learn how to walk in the armor while lessening the ways it inhibits their movement.
But seeing as this is just a game and not a "real recreation" of what medieval combat was like, I can see the argument for a Fighter not losing his/her movement speed (or having a lighter movement penalty instead of the full penalty) while in armor would have some merits to it. It wouldn't imbalance the game at all, even compared to other classes in armor (like the Cleric) but would make them the undisputed masters of the melee combat world...
Maybe they could suffer a 5 foot decrease in speed, instead of 10, at some fairly low level (3, 4, or 5) and then, some number of levels later, gain back an additional 5 feet (effectively negating the movement speed penalty) so that they get better in their armor as they advance in level and gain more combat experience in it... Or start with -5 instead of -10 and move to -10 at level 5, or 6 or whatever. Alternately they could gain the ability to negate the speed penalty for medium armor at some level and then later, at a higher level, gain the ability to negate it for heavy/all armor too... There's a range of simple fixes that make sense with the idea of getting better at something by gaining experience in doing the activity.
Low level, apprentice mage needs babysitting, fighter kills armies.
Mid-level, everyone happy. Fighter guards wizard, who supports fighter. Good interdependence all around.
High-level, archmage can run through adventure solo. Fighter really doesn't have much to contribute that another wizard couldn't do better.
Clerics are indispensible at all levels. He's talking about archmages because it's ONLY at high levels that fighters become useless. If you play from 1st - 13th, you probably wouldn't even notice that trend. By the time your party is 17th level, though, it's really hard to miss. At high levels, the wizard can almost ALWAYS choose his terms, because of spells like contingency and teleport: if the odds aren't perfectly in his favor, and he doesn't have just the right spells ready, he can always vanish and come back later, when he's better prepared. Melee guys can't prevent that -- if you houserule feats that allow them a full move as an immediate action, and another one that allows any hit to cause a dimensional anchor effect, THEN they can prevent that sort of thing. But without those types of abilities, they can't cope at high levels.
I don't think that's true at all. If a nasty creature/monster rolls up on a Wizard and gets one or two hits on them, even at high level, there's a good chance that they're going to go down (or be very near it, anyway). The fighter can hold their own against a heck of a lot more in combat than practically all other classes (Barbarian and Paladins are in that "fighter-type" classification too). And their wealth of feats gives them the potential to be very very good at several things, or good at a few melee talents. Those kinds of intangible abilities more than level the playing field.
As for mages... Yeah, some high level spells really rock, but the mages are limited in how many they can cast (and if they're long casting times to them they risk having them interrupted and lost, too) and once they're done with them, they're done. You can always swing your sword, hammer, axe, etc. as long as you're alive and kicking!
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I don't think that's true at all. If a nasty creature/monster rolls up on a Wizard and gets one or two hits on them, even at high level, there's a good chance that they're going to go down (or be very near it, anyway). The fighter can hold their own against a heck of a lot more in combat than practically all other classes (Barbarian and Paladins are in that "fighter-type" classification too). And their wealth of feats gives them the potential to be very very good at several things, or good at a few melee talents. Those kinds of intangible abilities more than level the playing field.
As for mages... Yeah, some high level spells really rock, but the mages are limited in how many they can cast (and if they're long casting times to them they risk having them interrupted and lost, too) and once...
The problem with that is the wizard is very unlikely to be hit. They have enough options to have an effective defense up before a monster can get anywhere near them. Melees have HP and AC, neither of which stand up to high level monsters, either because they aren't attacking those stats, or because they simply overpower them.
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Are all the characters you play epic mages??? Are all the games you play in broken and allows you the freedom to choose your terms? Sounds like your campaigns are a little well, weak.
Sounds like maybe your DM plays high level wizards made of foam.
I have played fighters at high level, and, frankly, I liked them MUCH better, oh, thirty years ago. Sword and Board in 1e? Kick a**. Sword and Board in 3x? As the kids these day say: "Made of Fail" and "Full of Suck". Or something like that.
I shouldn't have to be a spiked chain weilding, wuxia infused, anime built fighter (a la Bo9S) to survive at 17th level. I should be able to use armor, a (non-animated) shield and a longsword. But, as d20 breaks down at high levels (it seriously doesn't scale well the way the round/initiative/combat structure works in 3x - 1e didn't scale all that great either, but the cracks were less noticeable, thanks to staggered class level progression...), I cannot make the "regular" fighter archetype relevant unless I use a LOT of splatbook rules.
Well, not even then, since the splats only seem to allow something from Dragonball Z or a Jet Li movie...
As for mages... Yeah, (1) some high level spells really rock, but the mages are limited in how many they can cast (2) and if they're long casting times to them they risk having them interrupted and lost, too, (3) and once they're done with them, they're done. You can always swing your sword, hammer, axe, etc. (4) as long as you're alive and kicking!
(1) Thanks to Pathfinder's feat nerfs, feats are about equal to cantrips, or for the better feats, 1st level spells (+1 to AC, or -5 to hit and +5 damage, etc.) -- in short, fighters have NOTHING that compares with those few high-level spells.
(2) Thanks to 3e rules for Concentration (which Pathfinder Spellcraft hasn't really changed), there's almost no possible way to lose a spell, no matter how many people are whaling on you with swords. At least in 1e you automatically lost a spell if you were hit any time in the same round! Also, thanks to 3e, a wizard can cast and take a full move (and cast a quickened spell as well), but a fighter is always limited to a 5-ft. step if he makes a full attack. This issue alone is a big deal at higher levels.
(3) See 1, above, and remember that wizards can now cast cantrips all day. They are NEVER out of low-level spells, just as the fighter's feats never run out. And they can make wands for half price (or a staff for 1/4 price if it's a bonded item), so they really don't run much risk of running out of mid-level spells, either.
(4) High-level NPC wizards have Int scores through the roof. The onus is on the DM to play them that way: i.e., not stand around undefended, with no means of escape; and not duking it out to the death with worthless blasting spells when a single hold person takes any fighter off the count.
Fighters at higher levels have magic too. It sounds like people forget that fighter can commission items to be tailored made.
And casters can make their own at half price. So, the caster has spells; the fighter tries to use items to keep up; the wizard has twice as much value worth of items (or more, if he wisely selects a bonded item instead of a familiar), and STILL has all his spells, which he can change at will (whereas you're stuck with your gear). And unless you somehow get an item that renders you immune to enchantments, your weak Will save means that he can take you out of the fight any time he feels like it with a single 2nd level spell.
And God forbid you end up with a DM who disallows "magic Wal-Marts," or, in core rules, you do your adventuring in a place where the max gp value is less than the item you want.
Look, I love fighters. In 1e they were awesome. But 3.0 was designed from the ground up so that they'd be pathetically unable to keep up at high levels. That's not the situation I want, but it is, no matter how you slice things, the situation that exists.
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Fighters at higher levels have magic too. It sounds like people forget that fighter can commission items to be tailored made.And casters can make their own at half price. So, the caster has spells; the fighter tries to use items to keep up; the wizard has twice as much value worth of items (or more, if he wisely selects a bonded item instead of a familiar), and STILL has all his spells, which he can change at will (whereas you're stuck with your gear). And unless you somehow get an item that renders you immune to enchantments, your weak Will save means that he can take you out of the fight any time he feels like it with a single 2nd level spell.
And God forbid you end up with a DM who disallows "magic Wal-Marts," or, in core rules, you do your adventuring in a place where the max gp value is less than the item you want.
Look, I love fighters. In 1e they were awesome. But 3.0 was designed from the ground up so that they'd be pathetically unable to keep up at high levels. That's not the situation I want, but it is, no matter how you slice things, the situation that exists.
+1 to these statements, Sneaksy Dragon approves this message.
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+1 to these statements, Sneaksy Dragon approves this message.Fighters at higher levels have magic too. It sounds like people forget that fighter can commission items to be tailored made.And casters can make their own at half price. So, the caster has spells; the fighter tries to use items to keep up; the wizard has twice as much value worth of items (or more, if he wisely selects a bonded item instead of a familiar), and STILL has all his spells, which he can change at will (whereas you're stuck with your gear). And unless you somehow get an item that renders you immune to enchantments, your weak Will save means that he can take you out of the fight any time he feels like it with a single 2nd level spell.
And God forbid you end up with a DM who disallows "magic Wal-Marts," or, in core rules, you do your adventuring in a place where the max gp value is less than the item you want.
Look, I love fighters. In 1e they were awesome. But 3.0 was designed from the ground up so that they'd be pathetically unable to keep up at high levels. That's not the situation I want, but it is, no matter how you slice things, the situation that exists.
You'd love the house rules Kirth and I were discussing at our game tonight...
Oodles of fightery goodness.
My issue with Bo9S isn't with the anime stuff -- I can just select maneuvers that avoid that, rename them, and be fine -- but what annoyed me was the fact that, instead of following a simple Vancian spell-like mechanic, they required all kinds of variant rules systems with readied maneuvers, and of the ones readied, the usable ones change randomly from round to round, and then there's some kind of recharge mechanism... it's a whole different game after all that.
What I would have really liked is if, instead of armor training, et al., Pathfinder had just given fighters "spells" like a paladin's, but they'd all be Extraordinary abilities. And instead of spells like invisibility and fireball, the fighter list would have things like swift expeditious retreat, personal haste, and true seeing.
The problem with that is the wizard is very unlikely to be hit. They have enough options to have an effective defense up before a monster can get anywhere near them. Melees have HP and AC, neither of which stand up to high level monsters, either because they aren't attacking those stats, or because they simply overpower them.
Any good ranged attack, or area effect, will hit them just as it would anyone else. And a Wizard casting a spell is hardly able to "leap out of the way" of an area effect spell (or anything requiring a Reflex save)...
High level monsters aren't intended to stand up toe-to-toe with high level PC's... They ARE intended to crush them! A dragon of nearly any age/size should ALWAYS crush a high level PC in comparison... Let's face it, these higher level threats are monsters that NEED to be attacked "en masse" as a party against them... That's the whole idea!
And I disagree that AC doesn't stand up against many of these monsters... You can get a fairy high AC relatively easily as a fighter and be relatively safe in combat against monsters that don't have a lot of "touch attack" abilities. *and for the record, I see "touch attacks" (including ranged touch attacks) to be a very "broken" aspect of the game in general - far too easy to hit, and far too many things make this WAY too exploitable!*
Take the Gray Slaad... CR 10, BAB +10, standard claw attack +15... A CR10 means approximately 4 10th level characters are meant to fight this thing... Yeah, he'll hit a lot against even 18-24 AC... But those fighter types have the HP to handle this (for some length of time, at least - plus there should be someone in the party that can heal them too), but they'll also be able to this the creature's AC of 24 fairly often too... If a Fighter of 10th level, with a strength of 14 is fighting this thing, they has about 40% chance of hitting on any given first attack (a roll of 12 or better) - and that's not including any combat bonuses, magical weapon bonuses, etc. And if the caster casts things to support their fighters (Ray of Enfeeblement is always a nice one) they can lessen the threat of the monster against their comrade(s) in the front line and be more valuable than just as a "blaster" with "otherwise useless destructive power."
And don't underestimate the power of the infinite number of times that the fighter can swim their sword - a caster IS limited in the number of spells they can cast per day - and even more so with each progressive spell level they can cast!
Why I'm Banning the Dwarf
To Generic. Ugly and stout with beards. Hey I wanna play a handsome Dwarf. A female paladin with no beard.
To weak. Yes Humans get a bonus feat and elves get lot of cool stuf. And Dwarf have a 20 feet move. It suck.
The name. Why call them Dwarfs? "The term as related to human beings (the major subject of this article) is often used to refer specifically to those forms of extreme shortness characterized by disproportion of body parts, typically due to an inheritable disorder in bone or cartilage development." So If I play a dwarf it's a character with a inheritable disorder?
Hey get serious. Fighter have never been as powerful or versitile as they are now. Bravery, Armor training, Weapon training and the removal of cross class skills. What's the problem?
Actually in many articles Ive read about dwarves, they aren't dwarf as in small humans, they are dwarf as in small giants.
Ever seen a pic of a frost giant? Now put it next to apic of the dwarf...hmmmmm family resemblance?
awww anyway, Ive always liked the idea of "dwarf giants" vs "dwarf humans"
I don't think that's true at all. If a nasty creature/monster rolls up on a Wizard and gets one or two hits on them, even at high level, there's a good chance that they're going to go down (or be very near it, anyway).
First, you seem to operate under a mistaken assumption, that high-level wizards have low HP. It is not so. They can easily afford best Con-boosting items, and most of them have Con as their second best stat. Second, "getting one or two hits" on high-level spellcaster is a major freaking problem. If you don't have at least True Seeing and flight, you're highly unlikely to even get a chance to try against any wizard that is not a moron.
The fighter can hold their own against a heck of a lot more in combat than practically all other classes (Barbarian and Paladins are in that "fighter-type" classification too).
Wrong. The fighters, and, to a lesser extent, other combatants are the most fragile and vulnerable classes in the game, once we get in the two-digits level range. (Rogues and bards avoid this dubious honor by (ab)using UMD.) Without spells you must spend a fortune just to get basic defences against common (at these levels) save-or-lose effects. Which aggravates the problem of falling behind the level-appropriate monsters. The problem, that, I must remind, kicks in the moment your fighter meets his first dire wolf, or even ogre, at level 3. You must really optimize your warrior types to not be wholly dependent on buffs against anything from MM that actually melees.
I don't think that's true at all. If a nasty creature/monster rolls up on a Wizard and gets one or two hits on them, even at high level, there's a good chance that they're going to go down (or be very near it, anyway).First, you seem to operate under a mistaken assumption, that high-level wizards have low HP. It is not so. They can easily afford best Con-boosting items, and most of them have Con as their second best stat. Second, "getting one or two hits" on high-level spellcaster is a major freaking problem. If you don't have at least True Seeing and flight, you're highly unlikely to even get a chance to try against any wizard that is not a moron.
This is where alot of meta gaming comes in.
My wizard is always invisible and this and that.
People dont wander around invisible unless your character is paranoid.
Random encounters, suprise attacks, midnight raids on the parties camp all spell doom for the unprotected unsuspecting wizard.
True if a party goes into a planned encounter the wizard is ready.
But having this stack wad of already active spells ALL day long only means one thing.
The spells have a duration and they will eventually expire.What if the "we rest so the wizard can regain his spells" isnt always possible.
Smarter enemies in a dungeon will know the spellcaster is trying to do this and will try to stop it. Even banging on the barricaded door ALL NIGHT LONG could prevent it.With a good DM escaping to a safe place to replentish spells shouldnt always be an option.
We once had a figher that always wore guantlets of ogre power, this arguement came up because of a midnight battle where assassins tried to jump the party sleeping in the inn, the fighter wanted her bonuses from using the guantlets of ogre power without taking time to put them on, arguing she ALWAYS wore them.
The DM secretly planned an encounter where a cleric beat on her with a staff of withering and there was "no effect" ( in the old rules the guantlets gave you a permanent 18/00 strength) and the party memebers never knew it was a staff of withering.Several months passed and the charater secretly had a 3 str (reduced by the staff) but never knew it because of the guantlets she never took off. Well the party was captured and all their possessions taken from them. And she was stuck with that 3 str instead of having her 16 she was "born" with which meant she probably could have tried a bend bars/lift gates on the cell to try to get out.
The next best (as in strong character) only had 12 str (the ranger).The point of that short story, is a good dm will find whens to penalize meta gamers who "always have things active"
Fighters are always fighters, spellcasters are only that way when the spell is active.
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The point of that short story, is a good dm will find whens to penalize meta gamers who "always have things active"
Sorry, the rules lawyer in me kicked in. I find this to be a dickmove by a DM.
Staff of Withering ages the target 10 years. I think that effect would have been noticeable. Unless this is from a different edition than the Encylopedia Arcane I was gifted by a friend.
Penalizing a metagamer is one thing, giving him no chance to even realize he is endangered is 'rocks fall, everyone dies'.
This is where alot of meta gaming comes in.
My wizard is always invisible and this and that.
People dont wander around invisible unless your character is paranoid.
Random encounters, suprise attacks, midnight raids on the parties camp all spell doom for the unprotected unsuspecting wizard.
True if a party goes into a planned encounter the wizard is ready.
But having this stack wad of already active spells ALL day long only means one thing.
The spells have a duration and they will eventually expire.What if the "we rest so the wizard can regain his spells" isnt always possible.
Smarter enemies in a dungeon will know the spellcaster is trying to do this and will try to stop it. Even banging on the barricaded door ALL NIGHT LONG could prevent it.With a good DM escaping to a safe place to replentish spells shouldnt always be an option.
Who in D&D land isn't paranoid? Everytime you turn around, someone/something is trying to kill/eat/conquer/harass you. If you are an adventuring wizard heading off into danger, why the hell wouldn't you have invisibility and the like set up? I don't leave my body armor back at the base when I go out on mission, do you?
At higher levels, having these spells up all day is not that hard. And resting is even easier. Rope Trick. MK's Magnificent Mansion. Plane Shift to a timeless plane. None of this is metagaming. It's reasonable thought processes for a genius hero, of which all wizards are by requirement. Even a good DM is going to have trouble depleting such a characters resources without resorting to cheap, metagamed responses.
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Any good ranged attack, or area effect, will hit them just as it would anyone else. And a Wizard casting a spell is hardly able to "leap out of the way" of an area effect spell (or anything requiring a Reflex save)...
High level monsters aren't intended to stand up toe-to-toe with high level PC's... They ARE intended to crush them! A dragon of nearly any age/size should ALWAYS crush a high level PC in comparison... Let's face it, these higher level threats are monsters that NEED to be attacked "en masse" as a party against them... That's the whole idea!
And I disagree that AC doesn't stand up against many of these monsters... You can get a fairy high AC relatively easily as a fighter and be relatively safe in combat against monsters that don't have a lot of "touch attack" abilities. *and for the record, I see "touch attacks" (including ranged touch attacks) to be a very "broken" aspect of the game in general - far too easy to hit, and far too many things make this WAY too exploitable!*
I will concede lack of evidence on the melee problem at the moment. Most of my gameplay has been with adventure paths, known to be TPKfests, and a very killer DM throwing pouncing dire tigers on my 5th level Scout. However, in the endgame of my SCAP, I had to limit Moltenwing to one attack per round and STILL nearly killed my party. I take affront to the fact that my crew of newbie friends did not even have an even chance of winning because they were not optimised. It happened there at 17th and it happened before at 6th with Aushanna. Both times they literally could not miss the party.
On your point of wizards and ranged and area attacks. Mirror Image, Displacement, Wind Wall, Shield, Cat's Grace, etc. A ranged attack is not likely to hit a properly defended mage. Area affects are not enough to trouble a wizard. The damage is too little to take him out, and will just give him the round he needs to prevent any more damage.
We agree on the touch AC problem. I believe it should be slightly higher to make it less of a 'yes/no' question. But it is also there precisely because there needs to be that option. Most things with low touch are difficult to affect any other way. I have been in a situation where I thanked the warlock player for his infinite touch attack because my meleer could not touch the enemy. So while this needs tweaking, it still needs to be a viable tactic or else we end up with MMO auto-attacking.
The point of that short story, is a good dm will find whens to penalize meta gamers who "always have things active"Sorry, the rules lawyer in me kicked in. I find this to be a dickmove by a DM.
Staff of Withering ages the target 10 years. I think that effect would have been noticeable. Unless this is from a different edition than the Encylopedia Arcane I was gifted by a friend.
Penalizing a metagamer is one thing, giving him no chance to even realize he is endangered is 'rocks fall, everyone dies'.
This is where alot of meta gaming comes in.
My wizard is always invisible and this and that.
People dont wander around invisible unless your character is paranoid.
Random encounters, suprise attacks, midnight raids on the parties camp all spell doom for the unprotected unsuspecting wizard.
True if a party goes into a planned encounter the wizard is ready.
But having this stack wad of already active spells ALL day long only means one thing.
The spells have a duration and they will eventually expire.What if the "we rest so the wizard can regain his spells" isnt always possible.
Smarter enemies in a dungeon will know the spellcaster is trying to do this and will try to stop it. Even banging on the barricaded door ALL NIGHT LONG could prevent it.With a good DM escaping to a safe place to replentish spells shouldnt always be an option.
Who in D&D land isn't paranoid? Everytime you turn around, someone/something is trying to kill/eat/conquer/harass you. If you are an adventuring wizard heading off into danger, why the hell wouldn't you have invisibility and the like set up? I don't leave my body armor back at the base when I go out on mission, do you?
At higher levels, having these spells up all day is not that hard. And resting is even easier. Rope Trick. MK's Magnificent Mansion. Plane Shift to a timeless plane. None of this is metagaming. It's reasonable thought processes for a genius hero, of which all wizards are by...
aging and elf ten years isnt very noticeable.
Also you miss the point of the game, ROLE playing, NOT BLIZZARD gaming.
Too many people play this game now-a-days like its an PC game not a RP Game.
you going to set off from town with you fellow cleric, rogue and fighter, invisible?
You are going to eat your dinner, invisible.
You are going to fly everywhere and at all times and only be places that dont prevent your cieling hieght?
thats like the rogue who always hides no matter what (so basically he just darts from bush to rock to shadow)
Or the fighter who sleeps with his +5 battle axe under his pillow.
if you ask me, I dont think Id hang out with a guy like the wizard you are describing. It would be unnerving. Maybe this is why you always find high level wizards living in towers in the middle of a waste land by themselves all the time?
Rocks fall everyone dies? that sounds like DMs tossing dire tigers out at you at 5th level, thats why your characters are so paranoid.
abusing a magic item (or spells) should always (no execptions) have dire consequences that hurt your character in the long run.
Heres some examples I can think of. Flying 24/7? Leg muscles atrophy after about of week of non use, you loose the ability to support yourself and even stand.
Invisible 24/7? without exposure to the sun, your skin eventually gets so pale that after 7 advancement levels of staying constantly invisible, you now have the drows negative reactions to sunlight penalites.
Not to mention you could have some werid arcane side effects from being under the effect of a spell ALL the time. Thats something a DM could just invent.
It all falls in line with your mom saying "quit making faces, or youll get stuck like that"
Ever see middleaged people that have been unhappy and crabby for 25 years? yes their faces ARE stuck in frown.
I would easily rule that if you were under a spells effect ALL the time there would be several de abilitating effects.
Personally, I cant think of anyone who would WANT to be under a spells effect that often.
Even superman doesn't "always fly" although there is nothing preventing him from doing so.
also getting back on topic. How does that spellcaster GET to those kinds of power levels, he essentially has to survive enough encounters where he can be in enough danger to get decnt expereince, which means he has to be protected by fighters.
So by the time the wizard is powerful, it would be safe to assume he has had a pretty good relationship with the fighter by now. Wandering around invisible constantly or flying around out of reach doesnt give characters much time (or comfort) to get bonded or tight.
What reasons does the fighter have to protect or even adventure with such an odd acting individual?
See there is a certain meta gaming activity that takes place with wizards. The characters in the game put with the wizard at low levels because in real life, he is part of the group, when in reality, the wizard would probably be left at the pub, or if he did die at low levels no one would bother to get him raised from the dead.
There would be a massive attrition rate for wizards gaining many levels at all.
But people who play wizards play off this assumption that players will support them at their 1-8 level progression and then pop out at 10 or 12 level talking about how much better their character is than the others.
Truth is the rogue would have knifed you at 3rd level when you started acting weird with the spell you were learning. And the fighter probably would have not agreed to take you anymore after the first adventure you spent staying invisible ad flying for the majority of the time.
PLAY the wizard, dont meta game him and maximize all his best possiblities.
the group is supposed to a TEAM.
Not a collection of super hereos.
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aging and elf ten years isnt very noticeable.
Also you miss the point of the game, ROLE playing, NOT BLIZZARD gaming.
Too many people play this game now-a-days like its an PC game not a RP Game.
you going to set off from town with you fellow cleric, rogue and fighter, invisible?
You are going to eat your dinner, invisible.
You are going to fly everywhere and at all times and only be places that dont prevent your cieling hieght?thats like the rogue who always hides no matter what (so basically he just darts from bush to rock to shadow)
Or the fighter who sleeps with his +5 battle axe under his pillow.
if you ask me, I dont think Id hang out with a guy like the wizard you are describing. It would be unnerving. Maybe this is why you always find high level wizards living in towers in the middle of a waste land by themselves all the time?
Rocks fall everyone dies? that sounds like DMs tossing dire tigers out at you at 5th level, thats why your characters are so paranoid.
abusing a magic item (or spells) should always (no execptions) have dire consequences that hurt your character in the long run.
Aging enough to drop 13 points of STR is very noticeable.
I apologize if my point was unclear. A wizard traveling on a quest would be flying and invisible. A wizard relaxing for a meal at home would not. A warrior camped in the forest is going to sleep with his hand on his axe. A warrior at home is going to sleep with his hand on his wife.
We can talk all we want about the social and physiological effects of spell use in game. I don't care. They do not matter. There are no rules for it. This is a ruleset. I want a ruleset to facilitate a game with a reasonable chance of success. As it stands, a melee character does not have a reasonable chance of success in higher level play.
Yes, the wizard is supposed to be part of a family group that has protected him in his early, weak formative stages, therefore having a emotional reason to support them as they did him. This does not matter to the case. The rules for high level leave the melee types at best minor contributors, at worst detrimental. I want to be able to play a warrior type and feel like my actions make a difference mechanically. Fluff is the responsibility of the player, crunch the responsibility of the designer.
This is where alot of meta gaming comes in.
My wizard is always invisible and this and that.
Being protected is not metagaming. Not being protected is. Because, your characters knows that he is in dangerous environment.
People dont wander around invisible unless your character is paranoid.
If your adventurers are not paranoid, then you're coddling them. This is DnD. Danger can be everywhere.
Random encounters, suprise attacks, midnight raids on the parties camp all spell doom for the unprotected unsuspecting wizard.
They all spell doom... for the unprotected unsuspecting fighter, who needs minutes instead of rounds to prepare for battle. The party with primary casters does not care, it rests in extradimensional spaces, or teleports to their secret hideout/plane shifts to heaven whenever it is time to rest. Since level 9 at the latest. It also uses alternative forms of movement to get straight to wherever they want to be. And can have buffs 24/7. Suprise attacks can be a danger to casters, except that they kill most fighy types even harder, because the latter have less chance to notice and, often, no way to meaningfully react.
True if a party goes into a planned encounter the wizard is ready.
But having this stack wad of already active spells ALL day long only means one thing.
The spells have a duration and they will eventually expire.
Then the party goes to rest. Also, by level 9 you can have several key spells running pretty much all adventuring day.
What if the "we rest so the wizard can regain his spells" isnt always possible.
Then the party dies, because, clearly, it is the situation, when they cannot avoid or fight off some significant threat that stalks them.
There are some situations, when pressing on is more reasonable than attempting to rest, but they are limited to low levels.The point of that short story,
...is that the described DM liked to put the fear of Dungeon Master into the party, screwing them, but not to death, and that the party was too dumb to cast Identify.
Fighters are always fighters, spellcasters are only that way when the spell is active.
Except that fighters suck. Always sucking is not in any way preferable to kicking ass part of the time (or always, at level 9 and after). Fighters are ones who need active spells on them to avoid being crushed. Also, you seem to forget, that spellcasters include druids, which have a class feature that is better than the entire fighter class. To make fighters more than marginally useful at medium-to-high levels in 3.X, you needed non-core feats and stringent optimization. And "useful" doesn't mean "on truly equal footing with clerics or druids", it means "contributing enough to justify buffing them". And PBeta nerfed the main options that were employed to make fighters useful.
In such cases, either casters are competent enough to keep everyone going, or the party dies. Pure melee party just dies. Fighter's ability to get out and deal damage is limited by his ability to take damage, and he can take only 2-3 rounds of combat against a level-appropriate opponent worth of damage.
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You want to see how "useless" fighters are run a game session where you have 4 or 5 combats in a row without the chance to rest. That meteor swarm wa sgreat 3 fights ago but who can still go out and deal damage and who needs to rest.
Meteor Swarm isn't great, anymore. That's not how Wizards win fights nowadays, as a rule.
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You want to see how "useless" fighters are run a game session where you have 4 or 5 combats in a row without the chance to rest. That meteor swarm wa sgreat 3 fights ago but who can still go out and deal damage and who needs to rest.
A wizard that can cast Meteor Swarm that runs out of (or doesn't have)consumables (scrolls, wands, etc...) has a player that doesn't know why wizards have item creation feats, apparently. High level wizards shouldn't be running out of magic at the beginning (or in the middle, for that matter) of an adventure.
Seriously.
You see, this is funny. The fighters in my games consistently overshadow the wizards in combat. They do more damage and are frequently the target of buff after buff from the wizards.
I don't see the problem you're having and suspect it has more to do with game theory then game practice.
To put in perspective at 6th level the groups fighter was doing something like 2d6+25 damage on a swing, and swinging three times a round thanks to the haste the wizard dropped at the start of any major combat - a haste he got only a +1 bonus to AC, to hit, and on reflex saves out of.
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Yet again you seem to be missing our point. The fighter and other melee types are fine in the early levels. We are not trying to argue that. But once you start climbing the teens, things breakdown.
I played a campaign starting at 15th level. I played a variant monk. Other characters were warlock, fighter/rogue, fighter/monk. This moved steadily up in levels over the months. It was a combatfest. The DM threw monsters at us, we killed them. All was fine.
Then another guy jumped in with a cleric. We got ambushed in the inn, cleric summoned two elder earth elementals and collapsed the building. We survived thanks the the elementals earth glide.
Cleric leaves, we go back to jumping around and killing.
We've got magic gear out the wazoo, mowing enemies down. Nothing can touch us.
Then we get hit with a Brachyurus. CR 23, I think we were maybe a level or two over. It eats our face. Warlock wouldn't go near it, fighter/rogue played dead so it wouldn't instakill him. I couldn't do enough to slow it down.
I forget how we survived it. DM fiat I think.
Another battle. An invisible BARD gets my monk with a spell turning me against the party. TWICE. Thankfully the enemy night hag was stupid enough to use Disjunction, canceling that mindcontrol on me.
Another battle. Three-headed Sirrush, about our level yet again. We can't hit it. All the magic toys we've been given, we still can't hit it enough times to dent it. Even with DR 7/- and an ac around 80, I'm still getting autohit. Once again, DM fiat allowed us to survive.
It was then that I realized we were coddled. All the enemies were groundbound, melee mooks. Most were templated lesser creatures that didn't really reach their supposed CR. We never went up against flying enemies, hardly ever faced spellcasters. And when he threw appropriate melee challenges, we died.
That is the fact that we all want to fix. At high levels, melee characters have no ability to stand up to challenges supposedly on their level.
You see, this is funny. The fighters in my games consistently overshadow the wizards in combat. They do more damage and are frequently the target of buff after buff from the wizards.
I don't see the problem you're having and suspect it has more to do with game theory then game practice.
To put in perspective at 6th level the groups fighter was doing something like 2d6+25 damage on a swing, and swinging three times a round thanks to the haste the wizard dropped at the start of any major combat - a haste he got only a +1 bonus to AC, to hit, and on reflex saves out of.
This basic damage is not possible for a 3.X core fighter. Period. Even counting typical bonuses from inspire courage, prayer, etc., you need, like, Str 30 and +5 weapon (+4 weapon in PBeta) for that (neither is available at 6th level) and you can't achieve that even if casters put a serious effort into buffing you. No, you can't usually power attack even bog-standard MM I monsters before significantly impacting your chances to hit, particularly with second attack (by your desrciption, I guess that this wasn't an ubercharger), unless your stats are still as unreasonable as described. Even in non-core, you need to be best of the best (dragonborn water orc, likely with feral template) to get these stats at 6th level as a straight fighter. Similarly optimized wizard can easily disable the vast majority of encounters the party meets and you have exactly one level of being useful before he starts abusing polymorph/planar binding and makes you an XP sink (any one of these spells suffices, so no luck for PBeta fighters).
In summary, do not bring up your houserules or mega-bonuses given to someone's character by DM or cases of extremely optimized fighters vs. non-optimized spellcasters. They only hinder the proper mechanical analysis.
ok so it sounds like we all agree, the fighter doesnt suck. the combat rules do. Thats in a whole different part of posting.
But basically if fighters were able to move and fight like spell casters can cast and move. it would go far.
One of the major issues is with the sequencing of actions and what can happen in a round and what cant.
3e action/combat was made to basically solve a problem with the caster.
The problem being any goblin could run in and beat on 20th level wizard, interupting his spells and draining his meager hit points.
the wizard had to get lucky and beat his intiative (old rules there was no init bonuses it was all random chance) OR use a dagger on him then go back to casting.
So it did solve the caster problem,but crushed the fighter in the process.
While it didnt necessarily crush the fighter, it made him less significant.
Now having been a person involved in combat and having been ambused while sleeping (mind you we were elite paratroopers with years of training and far above regular infantry)
Did i sleep with my hand on my SAW? yep, but extra ammo, canteens,etc on my LBV (which would be like kit and armor) No.
So finding that in the dark makes for almost luck rather than skill and in the middle of the fight,means for a limited time you have tofight back.
While trying to shoot,move and communicate. you get separated from your spot where you were sleeping quickly and you dont just get back to everything in a round (6 seconds) you fight with what you have.
In our context that would also mean casters being spearated from their components as well.
Midnight sleepy combat is confusing and chaotic and as rule goes nothing like combat you are at least awake dressed and somewhat expecting.
For the RPG purposes its just to shake things up, not to wipe people out. Its just a role playing opportunity that some players like to ruin by stating things like "I always sleep with my guantlets of oger power on" or " my spell components are sewn into my underware" (personally I hate spell components and rush to eschew materials the second I can get it....kudos to the sorc, who gets it auto now.)
With the right feats ( and some new ones now) a fighter can be kickin at high levels if you just fixe the move/attack issue in combat rules.
I think, personally the armor training class feature is good, but needs to have higher bonuses per level after say 10th.
Armor still needs to be relevant for him at higher levels.
Then the fighter would be fine.
Personally, I think in alot of ways the fighter is better than he was at least in 1e, where his damage could never get above: weapon+str+magic bonus.
Also im not so sure arcane casters should have gotten as many extra attacks as they eventually do.
But hinestly I do get bored with the game around 12-14th level. Guess I dont like high level campaings...hard to keep things intersting with out arm wrestling with demon lords and gods.
Haste is, by any measure, a far more effective spell than any 3rd level spell in 3.5 - if you're in a party and aren't stuck in a "solo mage" mindset.
It's terribly amusing to me to see how players will argue that the mage is dominant, overwhelming, far more powerful than the lowly fighter - under just the right circumstances ("all my defenses are up, always!"), and at the right times ("No more than four fights a day! And no night ambushes!") Lord help such master mages if a goblin adept with a wand of dispel magic ever shows up...
Night ambushes are far more terrifying for fighters, than for spellcasters. At low levels a fighter without armor is screwed (check again, how long it takes to don it). At high levels, if you're ambushed, you need something like Contingency to avoid dying in a single round (unless you're a caster with a ton of active buffs).
But that's beside the point. And the point is, even a lowly 1-st level mage can control circumstances and times of his fights better that a fighter of his (or even of much higher) level (Expeditious Retreat, then Invisibility, then Fly, etc...). A wizard has options to avoid most unfavorable fights, unless DM throws unfair opposition at him. So it is only natural that solo mage fights only in right circumstances and right time - he has both reason and means to do it. On the opposite, a fighter has no way to control the situation or to extract oneself if conditions are stacked against him, barring expensive, high-level magic items. He is pretty much automatically screwed by any level-appropriate opponent, that refuses to openly attack him in melee. As well as by opponents that can outattack him in melee, which is most of the monsters. Playing a solo mage at low level might be not fun, because you must be very cautious and invest much of your resources at simply staying alive, but a solo fighter is automatically dead meat. As about playing them in the party, about the only realistic setup that is not very specifically geared to screw casters, but still affect casters worse than fighters is attrition attacks - at about levels 1-5, because after that enemies are pretty much assured of regularly hitting fighters' AC and therefore no amount of luck can save melees from being quickly chewed up.|
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If you're going to argue that the fighter isn't as strong a class from levels 15-20, that's one thing. But to my way of thinking, that means that the fighter's a strong class 75% of the time. And if you're playing D&D "properly", starting at level 1, odds are very high that the fighter will never be suboptimal in your game ever.
Again, how is this "suck"?
A class sucking for 1 level out of 20 is too much to me. And as I stated, melees are for 10 of the 20. And if you're playing adventures and your game "properly", you will reach 15-20th, as the adventure paths and megamodules go to 20th.
If you're not going to make sure the second half of the game works viably from the moment the player picks up the game, why even publish that half?
Call 11+ epic and forget about it, the same way WotC forgot about 21+. Or +11 and up. Oops.
So, in other words, the fighter is a class as good as - or better than, at low level - the wizard for more than half of the character's possible progression?How is this "suck"?
If you're going to argue that the fighter isn't as strong a class from levels 15-20, that's one thing. But to my way of thinking, that means that the fighter's a strong class 75% of the time. And if you're playing D&D "properly", starting at level 1, odds are very high that the fighter will never be suboptimal in your game ever.
Again, how is this "suck"?
Except that at levels 15-20 the fighter (barring a few builds that mostly lie in the realm of theoretical optimization) is not "isn't as strong", he is so completely freaking useless, that no one can possibly ignore that, because at this point his presence actively and significantly drops the party's chances of survival compared to splitting his share of XP and loot between other PCs and not even the efforts of casters can completely mitigate that anymore. Realistically, he is obviously behind every full caster from level 9, when the cleric grows into a full-blown Clerzilla. The wizard can make him wholly unnecessary at level 7 (most don't do so, simply because most players don't want to be a%*&#!*s to other players or to provoke DM's wrath and don't use the best, cheesiest stuff). The druid overshadows the fighter from about level one, totally so from level five.
I can guarantee you it's a shorter amount of time than it takes for a wizard to memorize your spells.
Night ambushes are far more terrifying for fighters, than for spellcasters. At low levels a fighter without armor is screwed (check again, how long it takes to don it).
Except if there is any danger of ambush, you either a)do not press on until you're dry or b)save a metric ton of scrolls and other consumables for emergencies (scrolls are dirt cheap and you get the feat for free). Likely b). Also, high-level spellcasters simply do not need to sleep in places where they can be ambushed (by anything short of other high-level spellcasters), ever.