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6 years ago ::
Sep 13, 2007 - 10:59PM
#51
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Date Joined:
Aug 17, 2007
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The conundrum that Wizards faces is one that has vexed the bullies of the world since humans became human. That conundrum is simply this.
Brains > Brawn
Spellcasters (most of them anyway) have far more options open to them than non-spellcasters simply by virtue of having hundreds of spells they can choose from. These options make for more opportunities to come up with clever ways of doing things that the game designers didn't anticipate. So unless they drop the number of spells in the game down to, oh, 10 or so, the end result will still be that Brains > Brawn.
That isn't to say that brawn has no role, it has a very important role. It's just not a role that has near the flexibility and opportunity as brain. That's why human beings are the dominant species on this planet instead of gorillas.
I haven't read Robert Jordan's books in a long time, but one thing I do remember from them was his "my sword against your sword, my magic against your magic" (or something like that). That's how it typically works out in D&D campaigns I've been in. The classic encounter between two parties ends up with the melee characters trying to get past each other to engage the spellcasters, while simultaneously attempting to stop the opposing melee characters from reaching THEIR spellcasters. I've never had a problem with this. Arguing which is "better" is like arguing that the Air Force is "better" than the army. You may be able to say the Air Force is more flexible and has more options, but if you want to hold ground, you better bring an army. And if you expect to tackle an evil wizard in his sanctum, you better bring a tank, unless you think your wizard can absorb a couple dozen hit points lost per round.
Wizards may try to "balance" the classes. But they are fooling themselves if they think they can. The nature of the classes themselves are unbalanced in terms of pure power per second. But that's not the only way to measure the value of a character. They should focus on making each class "relevant" and "critical" instead of "balanced." Because if they succeed in total, absolute balance, then by definition it really doesn't matter what your party is made of, because they all are interchangeable. So just form a party of five wizards and go adventuring!
I somehow doubt it will come to that.
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6 years ago ::
Sep 14, 2007 - 4:55AM
#52
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Date Joined:
Jan 16, 2006
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Brains > Brawn
When someone is playing the game "Brains" comes from the player. Not all players have "Brains". Therefore "Brawn", or class power, matters a great deal in ensuring that the less brainy people can still contribute. (And I am one of these people, so I'm not bashing.)
Wizards may try to "balance" the classes. But they are fooling themselves if they think they can. The nature of the classes themselves are unbalanced in terms of pure power per second. But that's not the only way to measure the value of a character. They should focus on making each class "relevant" and "critical" instead of "balanced." Because if they succeed in total, absolute balance, then by definition it really doesn't matter what your party is made of, because they all are interchangeable. So just form a party of five wizards and go adventuring!
That's part of the point of balance: if someone doesn't take a choice it's possible to still play the game. It's getting rid of the age old "Awww, man, I've gotta be the heal-bot".
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6 years ago ::
Sep 14, 2007 - 6:42AM
#53
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The problem is simple. At low levels, a good sword blow will kill almost any character. At high levels, a good sword blow is just a scratch.
At low levels, a wizard can kill two characters with a single spell (using charm person - charm one and have it turn on another). At high levels, a wizard can kill an army (send a gated Balor againt your standard legion of soldiers and you've got a blood bath).
The difference is that at low levels, a fighter can swing his sword all day long. At low levels, the wizard can cast charm person only a few times. At high levels, a fighter can swing his sword all day long, but the wizard can cast spells (through scrolls, wands, staves, etc.) almost just as often.
In 4e, though, the number of times a wizard can cast spells per day is being greatly changed. How is that going to affect balance?
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6 years ago ::
Sep 14, 2007 - 6:55AM
#54
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Date Joined:
Jan 16, 2006
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In 4e, though, the number of times a wizard can cast spells per day is being greatly changed. How is that going to affect balance?
Reduced power per spell + less need to make magic items.
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6 years ago ::
Sep 14, 2007 - 7:12AM
#55
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Date Joined:
Jan 28, 2004
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But like I said, how are you going to balance it without it being ridiculous? Either you take versatile, powerful magic away from the wizard so that the wizard is roughly as useful as a sword-swinging meatsack, or you make the fighter basically another wizard able to hadouken a building with a single "hiiiiiyo". Either option is crappy, so I'm not sure how this can jive, really.
I think Friendlyfish is one of the people that really gets where we're headed to, although I disagree with their assessment.
In 3rd edition, what can a 20th level fighter do? They might have a few tricks up their sleeve, but in the end it will always break down to a full attack.
.... yeah ....
.... that's fun ....
I argue that our 20th level fighters never really were 20th level fighters. They were 6th-8th level fighters at best with inflated statistics. As others have pointed out, they just didn't have the options to hack their job. Fighter bonus feats weren't good enough.
D&D worlds are magical...at least the ones where a discussion about Wizards is relevant. Wizards and their ilk shouldn't be the only ones that actually get to be magical in a sense at high level.
I won't pretend to know what Wizards intends to do. I'm not in a playtest group. I think it's fair to say, however, that knocking a building down with one punch is beneath a 30th level Fighter. It certainly ought to be. They're epic and have surpassed what the rest of us perceive as the physical limits of the body.
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6 years ago ::
Sep 14, 2007 - 7:43AM
#56
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Date Joined:
Sep 12, 2007
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D&D worlds are magical...at least the ones where a discussion about Wizards is relevant. Wizards and their ilk shouldn't be the only ones that actually get to be magical in a sense at high level.
Well, I definitely think they are trying to incorporate this into 4e. Levels 1-9 are the heroic levels, more grounded in reality. Characters at levels 11-19 are paragons. And living paragons > people in real life. Some people have said that doesn't make sense for the fighter, but I'd sort of see the parity to make sense, like this:
Levels Type Example(s)
1-9 Hero Conan
11-19 Paragon Achilles, Heracules
20-30 Epic Finn McCool I mean, these sort of characters do exist in myths and fantasy tales. Comparing the world-shaking archmage (the epic wizard) to a heroic warrior seems a bit apples to oranges to me. Plenty of characters in stories that don't cover the whole span - heroes that don't become paragons and others innately epic. But it doesn't make sense to me to throw up excessive divisions and turn a blind eye to the archetypical characters that are up above Conan.
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6 years ago ::
Sep 14, 2007 - 7:52AM
#57
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Date Joined:
Jan 28, 2004
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Exactly. What we've seen throughout the whole history of D&D and what we're used to seeing is Fighters that never got above the Heroic power level.
It's time we at least let them be the power level that their level represents.
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6 years ago ::
Sep 14, 2007 - 9:22AM
#58
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Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
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agreed. fighter type characters never have gotten past that stage. why not look towards some of the extra supernatural like anime and the such. in there the fighter type characters still rely on their weapons but they are able to do things that are beyond the relm of the natural with them. in addition i would like to see some thing like the tomb of battle the book of nine swords in this fourth edition because i think that bye using this book they finally restored balance to the fighter type characters with in reasonablity. either that or give the fighter type characters something other than "a +1 bonus to attack rolls" and "a +2 bonus to weapon damage rolls":headexplo more like (this is way out there but  ...) a dimensional attack that allows them to move and make a (what would equal a full attack or something to inflict heavy damage) along that area. or heck even look towards games like final fantasy with limit breaks. fighter type characters could use that kind of improvement as well (although they will prolly never get that high powered like omni slash and lion heart to name a couple)
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6 years ago ::
Sep 14, 2007 - 9:26AM
#59
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Date Joined:
Aug 10, 2009
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why not look towards some of the extra supernatural like anime and the such.
Because this is D&D and not the Dragonball Z RPG, if that means anything to you.
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6 years ago ::
Sep 14, 2007 - 9:30AM
#60
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Date Joined:
Jun 19, 2005
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Wizards may try to "balance" the classes. But they are fooling themselves if they think they can. The nature of the classes themselves are unbalanced in terms of pure power per second. But that's not the only way to measure the value of a character. They should focus on making each class "relevant" and "critical" instead of "balanced." Because if they succeed in total, absolute balance, then by definition it really doesn't matter what your party is made of, because they all are interchangeable. So just form a party of five wizards and go adventuring!
I somehow doubt it will come to that.
Actually it sounds like WotC is equating "relevant" with "balanced". It doesnt sound at all like they are trying to make everyone do everything equally well, quite the opposite in fact. It sounds like they are trying to make sure everyone has something they are good at so they can contribute.
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