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Author Topic: Raising Up WARRIORS and Breaking the Wizard Down!  (Read 3842 times)

Slambo

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Re: Raising Up WARRIORS and Breaking the Wizard Down!
« Reply #60 on: May 07, 2021, 03:32:56 PM »
It's worth remembering that just as most PC wizards don't start out as Merlin or Malagigi, most PC warriors don't start out as Achilles or Lancelot either. For every type of character of X general power/effectiveness level, there is a point where a different character type of Y general power/effectiveness level can give them a fair fight, and a point at which that character of Y+5 power level can squash them; that's an inevitability in any game with significant power progression in its PCs.

Balanced against this is the idea that the whole point of characters with significantly different operating modes is that attempting to confront them in the manner where they're strongest, and you're not, will always work to your disadvantage. Trying to face a wizard's magic when you don't have any magic yourself is supposed to get you turned into a frog, just as trying to pick up a sword and kill a seasoned, armoured warrior with it when you're a scrawny git in an oversized purple robe is supposed to wind up increasing your familiarity with the colour of your bowels. This is why adventuring parties are encouraged to have multiple character types, so they can combine dissimilar assets for best effect. (Hat tip to Brian Gleichman for that note.)

From this perspective the idea of giving the warrior the abilities and items he needs to "go toe to toe" with wizards on a regular basis is kind of missing the point, because that's really just a way of making the high-level warrior into another kind of wizard.

The problem is most pc warriors never become lancelot or achilles and pc wizards would fold merlin 4x over.

Also tge example is kinda flawed as, while a wizard shouldnt be trying to take on a fighter woth swords, when both use their strengths to their advantage the wizard wins.

Stephen Tannhauser

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Re: Raising Up WARRIORS and Breaking the Wizard Down!
« Reply #61 on: May 07, 2021, 08:00:36 PM »
Also the example is kinda flawed as, while a wizard shouldn't be trying to take on a fighter with swords, when both use their strengths to their advantage the wizard wins.

Again, that's my point. The warrior using his strengths to his advantage equals not facing a fully-prepared wizard head on and giving him any kind of warning -- because one of the warrior's strengths is that he doesn't need hours of preparation to bring his abilities up to full speed.
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robertliguori

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Re: Raising Up WARRIORS and Breaking the Wizard Down!
« Reply #62 on: May 07, 2021, 08:09:03 PM »
Also the example is kinda flawed as, while a wizard shouldn't be trying to take on a fighter with swords, when both use their strengths to their advantage the wizard wins.

Again, that's my point. The warrior using his strengths to his advantage equals not facing a fully-prepared wizard head on and giving him any kind of warning -- because one of the warrior's strengths is that he doesn't need hours of preparation to bring his abilities up to full speed.

Not giving a paranoid wizard warning is much easier said than done.  Wizards get the Alarm spell from level 1; every creature moving through a prepared area of considerable radius can give them a mental ping, and at mid-levels, the spell can easily last all day, for a few first-level spell slots.  A wizard that Alarms the ground floor of their tower simply can't be ambushed by mundane forces; there's no way for nonmagical people to remove the alarm, or bypass it unless they're the size of a dormouse.

And that's literally the simplest warning spell there is.  If you want martial folks to be comparable with casters, you need to peel off layers of what casters can do.

SHARK

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Re: Raising Up WARRIORS and Breaking the Wizard Down!
« Reply #63 on: May 07, 2021, 09:16:04 PM »
Greetings!

You know, I actually have always liked Wizards and such. I just have never understood so many people handwringing about how Warriors are nerfed and helpless.

I have played Paladins, Barbarians, and Fighters, for example, in AD&D, 3E, and 5E. Whether such characters have been level 10 or 20, they have always kicked ass and been great fun to play. Besides whatever mechanical abilities such warrior characters have contributed to the party, unleashing raw combat abilities and weapon skills--the warrior characters have always been vitally important to the party as a whole, and have forged social, military, and political dynamics that have been very influential in the campaign, and have never taken a back seat to Wizards or their ilk.

It just makes me wonder how the hell these kind of people have played their warrior characters in the campaign, and what they expect? Warriors are different from Wizards, just as they are both different from Rogues and Clerics.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
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BoxCrayonTales

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Shasarak

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Re: Raising Up WARRIORS and Breaking the Wizard Down!
« Reply #65 on: May 07, 2021, 10:01:49 PM »
If you really wanted to do pvp rankings then you should probably aim for something like:

Warrior <  Wizard  <  Thief  <  Warrior

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