At what point did you realize wizard=god, fighter=suck?

[crizh]

It was only quite recently that I became consciously aware of it.

My Psion (technically Druid/Erudite/Thrallherd but that's just details) started to become virtually untouchable around about level 9. By the time we hit 15 I had realized that I was pulling punches and keeping my best abilities under wraps because it had just become embarrassing.

I only rolled out the fully buffed Pyro-hydra form a couple of times and only when we were heading for a virtual TPK.

When the rest of the party are merely spectators you have a problem.

[TOZ]

Epic-level 3.5 game. Party consisted of Warlock, Fighter/Rogue, Fighter/Monk, and my 3PP Monk. We thought we were good, fighting the good fight, going toe-to-toe with the enemy, handling things.

One battle, my monk got dominated. By a Bard. Twice.

Another battle, we went up against a Brachyurus or whatever it was, the epic level wolf beast. Fighter/Rogue had to play dead to avoid the huge free action special ability it had that would kill him.

Another battle against a three-headed sirrush whatever, no one could hit it reliably or deal much damage.

It was then I realized that the previous battles were pretty much thrown in our favor. We had no options beyond spamming our melee attacks or the Warlock's few SLAs.

And it sucked. Hard.

Edit: Forgot the encounter when the party stayed at an inn. Extra player with a cleric had jumped in. ECL 21 or so, after a +4 LA race.

He summoned two elder earth elementals to take care of the enemies as a 17th level caster. The DM ruled that the weight of them on the second floor caused the building to collapse. The cleric ordered the elementals to earth glide through the falling rock, collect everyone, and deposit them outside. None of the party died and the cleric convinced the guards our enemies were responsible for the damages.

[Murtak]

I was aware of fighters sucking for quite a while, but it really only hit me how fucking good wizards are when I realized that only picking one spell per level from the PHB and not using any feats, class features or prestige classes you could still pull your weight.

Just pick something among the lines of Silent Image, Charm Person, Glitterdust, Command Undead, Clairaudience/Clairvoyance, Fly, Solid Fog, Resilient Sphere, Wall of Stone, Magic Jar, Disintegrate, True Seeing, Greater Teleport, Vision, Limited Wish, Maze, Discern Location, Wail of the Banshee, Shades. You can attack all saves, have unresistable spells, can summon physical creatures, have illusions, you name it. Right there that already looks quite decent compared to a fighter, who can really only do damage. But on top of that you also get scouting, travel, stealth and social abilities. That is using only half of your automatically known spells, PHB only, no problematic spells (Simulacrum, Polymorph, Clone and Gate come to mind), not using anything except your spellcasting. And it still looks good compared to even the most optimized fighter builds. Really the only way to not show up a fighter is to gimp yourself, voluntarily or otherwise.

[Midnight_v]

There were a few things but the thing that kept the wool over my eyes for so long about it was the table I was playing at. My first dm's idiosyncracies enforced the propaganda about the classes, and that totally sold. Mostly cause of 1 things
1. He'd monty haul the treasure and we'd have things as fighters that belonged in the hands of higer level characters.
2. Unbeknowngst to us, he'd totally cheat which is to say sucess of failure of saving throws for monsters were often decided totally arbitrarily behind the screen.
This gave us the impression that magic didn't work. Why? Every monster made thier saves. Though I do remeber lots of times people saying I can't wait till 5th level so I can get "REAL MAGIC LIKE FIREBALL".
Since we were low level, and a greatsword is a SoD there people didn't notice.
We played a 12th level game and managed to never get into combat with anything of our level and got the ... to be continued.

So I went to see online what options I might have other than another strength boost. . .
... and ran across "K".
It was like 2003 I think and he managed to convince me that Fighters even in THEORY had a worse deal that casters, and I argued with him, made some theoreticall builds like the Wall of Chihuahua's, etc... and damned if I didn't get some nearby friends and a my brother to come over and test this shit out.

I made a Elvish(Something I would never normally play) Level 4 (so he was really a generalist but had a scroll of animate dead) Necromancer, and started soloing a dungeon till my friends showed up that night. They played regularly (a diffferent group of course) and I made a level 10 druid for thier game. . .

My brother said "Wow, that necromance was never challegned not once"; I said "No I found it challenging"; he responds maybe managing your minions but not ONCE was he in mortal peril.

The druid game... I let my wolf companion die (because I didn't feel like rolling its saves, and then I realized I could summon another in 24 hours)
and spent the rest of the game casting entagle and wall of fire, as a Large Monster (can't remember was it a bear, ape, or soemthing I pulled from another book), and beating the hell out of anything that got through...
It still didn't dispell all my illustions BUT, it totally let me know:
Somethings NOT right here... why should these chars be so much more powerful that the melee guy AT MELEE.
The other Dm and I eventually had a row, as I'd stopped playing with him for a while but came back to his game as cleric using divine power/favor to fight with. Something about graplling his bbeg on an AoO, he didn't like that even rewound time to let the guy get some extra rerolls but in the end he was grappled and the rogues did thier thing.
All in all though... the eureka moment I wouldn't have caught because my circle of gamers were full of shit, playing the game ONLY as it was told to them.

[Blasted]

1E, the first seeds of doubt were laid playing the magic user for the first time.
'Sleep' made a couple of encounters non events.
Sometime later it was my turn to DM and I realized that there had been no one playing martial classes for quite some time. It was an unspoken realization held by the entire group.

[Vebyast]

Subconsciously, the first time I picked up my dad's AD&D book. I couldn't even read at that point, but I sure noticed that the wizards were throwing lightning bolts at the spiders that were busy pulling all the fighters' heads off. That impression was only reinforced when I noticed that 75% of the book was dedicated to "things casters do that fighters can't". It didn't go much further than that for a long time because I only ever played full casters.

Consciously, the first time I built a backup character for myself. It was a high-mortality campaign with not very many players, so everybody kept a pile of always-updated characters that they could switch to instantly. I noticed that my wizards were universally more badass than my fighters, and then went and figured out why.

[Judging__Eagle]

In my first 2e game, I rolled a fighter b/c we already had someone who was gung-ho on being a reality-bending soul-trapping wizard; and I wanted to make sure that there was something in the way of an easy path to the artillery that was wearing more than light or no armour. Which was pointed out after the 1 hp wizard got scratched by a giant rat in our first fight ever; and then proceeded to never again melee enemies while only having 1 hp; or at all.

My group always sort of knew that the fighters were going to get the short end of the stick; and as a group we had no problem when the Fighter bought 100 war-dogs to go "Dragon-Hunting!"; or when the Samurai got a War-Elephant for the same Dragon-hunt. Throwing most of the treasure the non-casters way, and letting them be able to upgrade to +5 weapons and armour by level 10 also helped to keep up with the Wizard tossing Level-d6 fireballs.

[Smeelbo]

Honestly, before I even played my first game, just beating my head against the original three OD&D books, it was clear to me that Cleric was the bomb. Armor, Melee, and spells: nothing the fighter could offer came close, and the Cleric, even then, was decent enough in melee.

It was clear enough to the authors of Warlock, the early CalTech/MIT house D&D rules. Their solution to the fighter-caster disparity was first, to give most weapons three attacks per round (even at first level), and second, make it so casters had to wait 5 rounds between casting spells. A wizard would open combat with a prepared spell, and the rest of the party would have to keep him safe, rather like linebackers protecting a quarterback, until he could cast a second spell, which usually broke the combat in our favor.

Back then, we rolled stats 3D6 in order, and all the character classes (and races, for that matter) had stat minimums, so by default, you were going to play a fighter. Even so, those casters that survived the Darwinian culling of the first few levels came to dominate the game, and the super-sword became the default patch.

It's always been this way.

Smeelbo

[tussock]

Oh, and Gary Gygax thought AD&D Fighters needed at least

• another +3 to hit and damage
• more attacks
• free physical stat increases, about +1/2 levels, until they had strait 18(/00)
• more hit points, 5+1d5 per level

ontop of the 60' move in full plate, pounce-charges, and crazy powerful longbow attacks they already had. With greatswords and other fighter-only weapons getting +2 or +3 to hit all the time as well (and doing 3d6 base damage).

In context, he thought Trolls should have around 57 hit points (6d6+36) to better save them from the d6 per level fireball. Remembering that casters should not normally be able to cast spells when not protected by Fighters, especially the higher level spells, really big monsters should save on a 6+ or better anyway (14+ for our poor troll), and the best spells should randomly murder the caster up to 5% of the time, or only be cast a few times in your life.

Oh, and he thought Wizards should have much reduced access to spells, as part of a plan to let them rule the world while still giving other PCs something to do.


Then 2nd edition ignored the Fighter and gave the Wizard more spells, while Monte let them cast two spells a round all day even in a melee, so 4th had to kill magic to compensate. Which is a shame.

[OgreBattle]

Oh, and Gary Gygax thought AD&D Fighters needed at least

• another +3 to hit and damage
• more attacks
• free physical stat increases, about +1/2 levels, until they had strait 18(/00)
• more hit points, 5+1d5 per level

ontop of the 60' move in full plate, pounce-charges, and crazy powerful longbow attacks they already had. With greatswords and other fighter-only weapons getting +2 or +3 to hit all the time as well (and doing 3d6 base damage).

In context, he thought Trolls should have around 57 hit points (6d6+36) to better save them from the d6 per level fireball. Remembering that casters should not normally be able to cast spells when not protected by Fighters, especially the higher level spells, really big monsters should save on a 6+ or better anyway (14+ for our poor troll), and the best spells should randomly murder the caster up to 5% of the time, or only be cast a few times in your life.

Oh, and he thought Wizards should have much reduced access to spells, as part of a plan to let them rule the world while still giving other PCs something to do.

That sounds like an ideal way to play, but where can I quote gygax on this? An interview somewhere?

[tussock]

Notes I've made from long reading of that dragonsfoot thread and a few others, and the people who've quote-mined him from there. Basically, Unearthed Arcana had half the job done on PC's side (usually with different ways of trying the same idea split up by class), but he wanted to tidy up all the mechanics with a complete rewrite and then got booted out.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22333214/1e/1.htm

Has most of the 1st edition rules with appended EGG quotes about how he played it and how he was changing it in his home and office games. Most of which was to ignore all the complex bits and work with whatever was memorable.


There's a couple of people putting together "what might have been" versions of 2nd edition, somewhere, but from what I've found they skip over the basic mechanical changes and just add in new classes and skills.


I'm sure I've read a summary somewhere. Ah! This bit.

http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.co.nz/ ... ition.html

Should find it all in there somewhere, though he doesn't attribute well.

[OgreBattle]

It must have been translated into Japanese at some point, I always wondered why Dragon Quest had jesters.

but from what I've found they skip over the basic mechanical changes and just add in new classes and skills.

are they covered by your previous posts and this link? Now I'm curious to see "Gygax's D&D that could have been"

It is hoped that sometime soon we can begin on another version of the AD&D game system which is based on Sino-Japanese culture. While such a work will be aimed principally for sale in the Far East, you may rest assured that an English-language version will be available to all interested players, so that a complete and meaningful campaign based on Oriental tradition and myth can be run. That means Ninja, Samurai, Ronin, Yakusa, Monks, and possibly Taoist clerics. Naturally, they will be in a setting which is relative to their powers and interrelationships, with appropriate monsters and deities, arms and armor. The possible meeting between these two separate cultures will be difficult to handle, and so some special rules will probably be required. That remains to be seen, so let’s leave it at that for now.

Interesting, he was planning on entering the Japanese market with an East Asia themed set.

[K]

Red Box.

ODnD versions of Sleep, ESP, Phantasmal Force, and Invisibility made everything every other character did look really sucky, even though I desperately wanted to be the badass fighter on the cover fighting a red dragon.

This began years of me trying to be various fighter/mage combos (and sometimes fighter/mage/thief combos), but mage was always the key component.

I mean, if elves weren't mages who used swords in all the early systems, I never would have done them for so many years.

[Daztur]

Bizarrely never had an issue with overpowered casters, I think that the Wizards > Fighter power divide was overshadowed by the much more massive People Who Do Understand How 3ed Multiclassing Works > People Who Don't Understand How 3ed Multiclassing Works yawning chasm, it's hard to be overshadowed by a Wizard in 3ed when the party Wizard has taken a few levels of rogue for the skill points.

[Ted the Flayer]

i realized it right away. thats why i started playing dnd in the first place, because then i could get sweet, sweet revenge on all the jocks.

now that im not 14, i realize that sucks.

[tussock]

@Ogrebattle: 1st edition Oriental Adventures was that latter idea in print. The second link above covers the quotes out of Dragon about what classes Gary wanted to add and remove, book organisation and such.

Seen him quoted saying Castles & Crusades has what he thought the skill system should have looked like, and that Lejendary Adventures has all of the classes done (though in a skill-based system, and only in the very-hard-to-find full version). All his notes for AD&D on them (no real mechanical work finished) remained property of TSR, now WotC.

Unfortunately his later RPG works like LA are really fucking hard to read. Every stupid little thing has a different name to stop TSR suing him over nothing again.