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View Full Version : Wizard (or caster) vs Fighter (or mundane) In gameplay



Frog Dragon
2009-10-30, 02:03 PM
Recently there's been this onflux of Wizard vs Fighter threads, but I'm interested in what actually happens in a game since that is, after all the best measure for power so I thought people recounting their own experiences would be more productive that theory.

I've been DM:ing a game with four players which started at level 2 and is now level 6

We have
Half Elf Rogue/Factotum
Half Elf Ranger/Swordsage
Halfling Fighter/Warblade (Formerly Elf Cleric)
and an Elf Sorcerer
The players are pretty much newbs as I introduced them to D&D though the sorc player has played 1ed in the past and seems to be the most canny player in general and is developing a good grasp of the system. The Rogue and the Ranger players don't grasp the rules that well, but they are both learning at a good speed. The Fighter player doesn't get the system and is basically the least D&D savvy player in our group. He contributes pretty well though since his build is effective with pretty simple tactics.
Some house rules are in place. They mostly help mundanes and weaken casters but not much.

At the start, the sorc was ending encounters with sleep pretty consistently. The ranger was pretty effective at this point, essentially one shotting most enemies (goblins here). The cleric was meh though that is because he wasn't played very well.
Continuing (lvl 3-4) they were mostly fighting animated with everyone contributing basically the same amount though a lot more could have been squeesed out of the cleric by actually casting a bit. The rogue was trapmonkeying and the ranger+sorc were dealing most of the damage with the help of a little cleric buff here or there after which the cleric stabbed statues with a longsword. The sorcerer was also summoning a lot at this point which was decently effective. They then fought a sorc/monk who was defeated with repeated pushing out of the window and magic missiles from a wand.
In town the cleric managed to accomplish a lot with the help of the sorcerers invisiblity and clever use of Spiritual Weapon.
They then fought a lot of low level mages while trying to avoid the (very tough) golem running around. They get pounded by the guild head mage and the cleric dies. They go through a portal.
Now they fight (medium sized) red dragons (this is lvl 5). They do pretty well with the sorcerer contributing with a summon which manages to con poison the dragon (that's the scorpion). The ranger does quite (now with a swordsage level) a lot, dealing most of the damage especially when the sorcerers prefferred damage spell is Kelgore's Fire Bolt (Fat help that is against red dragons). The rogue (now with a side order of Factotum) frankly sucked here. Couldn't line up a sneak attack with the bow and failed the initiative. He did some damage with cunning strike though. Now after a bigger dragon (which they just ran from) and an underwater adventure in submarines they went to an island town where they ran into the Halfling Fighter/Warblade. Here they were attacked by bounty hunters. One halfling Rogue/Swordsage and a Half-Fiend Orc Fighter/Warblade. (It was in a tavern) The Half-Orc was a significan't. The halfling the pwned by the rogue's and the sorcerer's collaborative effort to set him on fire with whiskey and fire spells. The halfling was forced to dive to the ground to douse the flames and promptly got ganked by the scorpion, the ranger and the fighter and proceeded to die. None were able (except maybe the halfling, but event that was a risky proposition) to melee the Half-Fiend alone, but ganking him with the same triplet they got rid of him pretty soon.
They also fought another bounty hunter, (without the ranger), but this one wasn't too hard. They all did about an equal part.
Then the invisible factotum. They had no way to get him visible but, the factotum had to turn visible to attack and got SA:ed. He turned invisible again and repeat, but now he was also ganked by the meleers and immobilised by the web of the spider the sorc had summoned. Then quickly killed. They leveled up

All in all. While I do not deny that the caster (sorc) had some encounter enders (sleep) the forums seem to be exaturating this. The meleers were mostly about as good in fights (though the sorc hardly had buff spells) and the rogue had time to shine out of combat. It never seemed like the sorcerer was actually dominating the game. This is only low levels though and the set-up may change later on in the game. Still it has been toted that casters overshadow mundanes at low levels (with level 5 being a breaking point) and this just didn't seem to happen. So while ridiculous cheese is easier with caster it looks like caster is optimization is quadratic too. With the basic optimization level, they arent actually that much above the mundanes.

That was what my game has told anyway. But tell your own experiences on the subject matter.

Flayerman
2009-10-30, 02:06 PM
You're only at level 6.

Wait until the wizard can cast six or seven fireballs a day, and the bigger, more game-ending things (Shadow Evocation, Shadow Conjuration, anyone?) that give him super-versatility begin to show up.

But yes, it's very possible to play a straight fighter alongside a straight wizard and *gasp* enjoy it.

I know, I know, it's crazy!

Tyndmyr
2009-10-30, 02:07 PM
You're missing the slight difference between a wizard and a sorc perhaps?

Sorc compared to fighter/warblade is a much closer deal than wizard compared to straight fighter, and the fact that you've added house rules to boost melee changes things further.

Plus, this is at low levels. At low levels, casters are much weaker in comparison. Not truly weak, but the total amount of spells is quite low, so managing spell volume is still a concern.

Myrmex
2009-10-30, 02:14 PM
Prepared casters are definitely weak at low levels. They don't have enough spells to last 4 encounters, and if they get 7 encounters, they're hosed. They get to choose either utility spells, offensive spells, or defensive spells, but not all 3. A wizard who has to face the same problem more than once who decided to go for versatility will be screwed, while a wizard who prepared for the same problem more than once won't be able to do much.

They also will have a problem that, if their SoD fails, they often won't have another one to back it up.

Before anyone says anything about fighter HP- wand of lesser vigor. 750 gp for 550 HP. You could heal a great wyrm with one of those suckers. You're only going to need a couple charges after each fight to heal the meatshield up. It's affordable, potentially, at level 1, if everyone chips in to get one. By level 2, it is definitely affordable between two characters.

Gnaeus
2009-10-30, 02:16 PM
When you add ToB into the mix, most people will agree ToB melee is at least equal, and may have an advantage at very low levels. You could spark fierce debate in determining exactly where that level break ends.

The other factor is that Tier 3 classes (swordsage, Warblade, factotum) are easier for new players than Tier 1 and 2s. It is easy to frack up a sorcerer build, and hard to fix him in play once you have. It is hard to mess up a warblade without doing really wierd things with your stats. They do not improve equally as you improve optimization across the board.

Frog Dragon
2009-10-30, 03:20 PM
The difference between a wizard and sorcerer isn't all that big in low levels. The sorcerer can have a decent spell list for his purposes at low levels and the wizard is not getting that many spells anyway and just putting whatever spells in the book and paying th xp cost doesn't happen that way in most campaing.
ToB admittedly shakes things up though.
Anyway, I never claimed to have a perfect example. All that is from an actual game. And that is why I asked for other peoples experiences, to get a middle ground between them. My post doesn't resolve Fighter vs Wizard and it's not supposed to.

Tyndmyr
2009-10-30, 03:30 PM
I've played both fighter and wizard extensively. I find it much easier to optimize the wizard in all roles other than "Stab it till it dies".

Yukitsu
2009-10-30, 04:32 PM
In my group, capability is determined almost entirely by personal optimization abilities and personal preparedness. There is a marked difference in the abilities when the person in question is in the top of our group though, in that the best players do dramatically and notably better as some form of caster than they do as some form of non-caster.

arguskos
2009-10-30, 05:06 PM
Usually, in the games I've been running for the last two years, I've found that most casters don't outshine the martial characters. This is partially because I'm a fairly rough DM (learning on 2e under a Gygaxian [used in a pejorative manner] DM will do that to you), partially because my players tend to take the "light it on fire" approach not the "lock it down" approach, and partially because the difference is somewhat exaggerated.

I'm not denying that wizards >>> fighters. Hell, I tell my party that all the time! What I AM claiming is that this is true if and only if played to their best ability, which doesn't really happen ever, in my experience. We're all only human, after all.

FMArthur
2009-10-30, 05:53 PM
Assertion: By the game's rules, casters are potentially much more powerful than noncasters in the hands of skilled players.

Observation: In a game whose rules have been altered to slightly favor noncasters, the casters were not much more powerful than noncasters in the hands of players still learning the game.

Conclusion: :smallconfused:

ex cathedra
2009-10-30, 06:22 PM
It vastly depends on the characters and players in each campaign. I'm currently in a level 5 campaign, and the class interactions have been quite varied so far.

We started with the following party:
Human Focused Immediate Conjurer 2
Human Shapeshift Druid 3
Human Archivist 2
Human Rogue 2
Human Fighter 1 / Barbarian 1
Human Swashbuckler 1 / Rogue 1 / Swordsage 1

First encounter: Skeletons in a long, crowded 15-ft wide passage. Generally weak skeletons. The Wizard and Druid dominated the encounter with grease, produce flame, enlarge person, and similar tactics. The barbarian was also extremely effective, but it was a simplified charger with whirling rage and similar effects. The Archivist provided support, for the most part, and handled a few undead on his own. The the rogue and the swordsage were less than effective. The rogue was... chaotic stupid, and died. The player didn't join us again. Replacement: Human Fighter 2

Second encounter: Gnolls along a forested trail.
Web and color spray neutered the threat. The barbarian, once again, did very well. After a few rounds, skeletons joined the battle. There was slight in-fighting between the gnolls and undead, naturally, but it didn't significantly impact the difficulty. As we were cleaning up, more enemies. This time? Shadows. We fled. The wizard, swordsage, and barbarian succumbed to strength damage. The wizard was replaced by a factotum. The other two were something of temporarily player-run NPCs, and therefore needed no replacements. The fighter died after the battle, and he didn't join us again.

Third: More Gnolls, in various settings. The druid and factotum stealthily handled several encounters alone. The warblade wasn't available, so the party was very, very small. Eventually we were joined by a human barbarian 3 in time for a very large encounter. The factotum and barbarian quickly took down a CR6 alone, while the druid and archivist laid ice slicks/briarwebs/other BC around the mooks. The druid, again, was probably the most useful party member, even with the shapeshift variant.

Even at low levels, the casters outperformed various melee classes. The gap only widens with experience.

Doc Roc
2009-10-30, 06:32 PM
I am considered to have a good amount of CO/PO/TO experience, as well as a ton of GMing experience. I find that in actual practice, while the gap is less wide than most of my comrades claim, it's definitely real. In fact, most of my players refuse to play a fighter* due to standing negative experiences involving intra-party imbalance. Those who want to play a non-caster play ToB classes, factotum, or use PD classes.


*monk, paladin, and all their useless kin are included in this.

penbed400
2009-10-30, 07:28 PM
Even with some optimization the melee classes don't really have a chance.

I played a 10 wizard in a party with a 5 sorc/5 mindbender, 5 rogue/5 assassin, skullcrushing ogre fighter 3/homebrewed DUNGEONF***ER 4 (we know his ECL is 18 in an ECL 10 party), and a 20 commoner. We all ran into the BBEG room, two justificators come down. I win initiative and take out the BBEG with Phantom Assailants, everybody closes with the justificators while I popped spell after spell at them. The battle was over in 4 rounds...because that's how long it took for me to get off all the available spells. The rest of the party really didn't do much damage.

Wizards become exponentially more powerful than melee classes in the higher levels to a point where its ridiculous.

Dimers
2009-10-30, 08:31 PM
The "party line" for D&D basically says that you should have a healer, a trapmonkey, an artillerist, and as many meatshields as there are remaining players. My experience shows that meatshields are wholly unnecessary to party functioning; with nobody in the party optimized to maintain a 'front line', the combats are still won every bit as easily.

Insofar as that's true ... well, who would want to play a character who seems useless? Sure, the character can still be great fluff-wise, but when combat rolls around and the guy with the d4s is the star of the show, it can get pretty boring and frustrating. What does it matter which feat you pick at 9th level, considering that the wizard's 5th-level spells will be more impressive no matter what?

Casters "overshadowing" warriors at low levels may be due to that impressiveness, rather than actual ability. You note that the melee classes were doing plenty of the work. But it's not impressive work -- every class has the ability to poke things with sticks, so doing a better job of poking-with-sticks is no biggie. A single action that effectively takes multiple enemies out of the battle (even a sleep spell) seems more awesome than accumulated hit point damage from weapon attacks. So the difference may well be just a difference of perception.

At higher levels, of course, the casters really are more effective, practically regardless of build. They get to re-write reality, and that's just plain better than having become super-duper-excellent at poking things with sticks.

Emmerask
2009-10-30, 08:32 PM
Even with some optimization the melee classes don't really have a chance.

I played a 10 wizard in a party with a 5 sorc/5 mindbender, 5 rogue/5 assassin, skullcrushing ogre fighter 3/homebrewed DUNGEONF***ER 4 (we know his ECL is 18 in an ECL 10 party), and a 20 commoner. We all ran into the BBEG room, two justificators come down. I win initiative and take out the BBEG with Phantom Assailants, everybody closes with the justificators while I popped spell after spell at them. The battle was over in 4 rounds...because that's how long it took for me to get off all the available spells. The rest of the party really didn't do much damage.

Wizards become exponentially more powerful than melee classes in the higher levels to a point where its ridiculous.

This is a very good example why casters are perceived as completly overpowered machines of ultimate destruction.
Sorry to say this but the BBEG! fight seemed to be pretty poorly designed. A 10th level BBEG will nearly always have some form of spellcaster support. Which would have counterspelled you every time (reactive counterspell, celerity spellline) or the BBEG would have some items to counter spellcaster (ring of counterspells for example)..

Point is that the higher the party level the more thought the dm has to put into his fights especially those BBEG fights (who cares about random monster fights anyways) and if he does the dm can achieve a fairly good balance between "fighters" and spellcasters and let everyone feel important if he does not the caster will end it in x turns.
On the other hand if he does overdo it the caster will feel like a commoner with more hitpoints (2 or more casters constantly counterspelling everything he does or declaring the area as a dead magic zone for example would do that trick quite good ;)).

Hm that was a bit long for point is another try xD
Point is casters are only that overpowered if your dm lets them be
if he wants to maintain balance there are lots of ways (all within the rules).

Tyndmyr
2009-10-30, 09:38 PM
Having dedicated counterspellers is just going out of your way to cripple the casters, and isn't likely to be a very fun or challenging fight, since there's not a ton to be done about it.

The assumption that he would realistically have some magical support is reasonable. The assumption that they are a specialized counterspeller is not. If you intend to use counterspells, actually draw up a list of the spells they would thematically have, and only counter what they can legally counter by standard rules. Also, there's no particular reason to assume that NPC casters always have all spells available. No doubt they have other duties as well.

Doc Roc
2009-10-30, 10:47 PM
And how many of these legal ways will leave the frontline more than a smoking puddle? Or provide any degree of interactivity? You are the GM, of COURSE you can carefully plan encounters to screw a demographic within the party. Why are you consistently in a position where you need to?

Bad game design.

Emmerask
2009-10-30, 11:34 PM
Having dedicated counterspellers is just going out of your way to cripple the casters, and isn't likely to be a very fun or challenging fight, since there's not a ton to be done about it.

The assumption that he would realistically have some magical support is reasonable. The assumption that they are a specialized counterspeller is not. If you intend to use counterspells, actually draw up a list of the spells they would thematically have, and only counter what they can legally counter by standard rules. Also, there's no particular reason to assume that NPC casters always have all spells available. No doubt they have other duties as well.

Well the main function of those BBEG guards would be of course to protect him so I as the Big evil guy would use specialised counterspellers for my protection and they would prepare lots of (greater)dispel magic and it makes sense from a campaign point of view too if you donīt have those why didnīt spellcaster x come by and usurp your post as evil overlord?

Iīm not suggesting to have xy counterspellers in every encounter but sometimes its a nice change of pace and especially a BBEG fight should be something more then just "lets watch the caster kill him".

As for the challange part Iīm pretty sure it would be much more of a challenge then the 4 round BBEG fight I used for my quote ;)
The group would have to work as a team the "fighters" (whatever melee classes they may be) would need to disrupt the casters or force them to cast other stuff so that they canīt counterspell your caster... giving them usefull things to do aside from watching 4 rounds how the caster kills the big evil guy.

Some Archers (or any other ranged attacker) could do the trick too readying actions to interrupt the caster (although not as effective due to buffs)
There is no reason why the evil guys shouldnīt use tactics and if they do casters are much more reasonably balanced.

As for the bad gamedesign yes maybe but streamlining everything so that you achieve a good balance tends to result in very similar feeling characters with not much variety.