Martial vs Magic?

[Gamer Girl]

So I keep seeing this around and I think it's kinda odd. Why is there such a huge split and division between Martial characters and Magic characters?


Why do people somehow get the idea that a Martial character must have or use no magic? Or that Martial is anti-magical? Why is it so 'wrong' for a fighter to have a magic sword?

Why do people always give examples like ''well if this wizard took four feats and six spells and did this and that, then they could kill a fighter in three seconds''. While it's true, it does not make for a great character. And worse the wizard in the example can do only that....a one trick pony.

I'm still waiting to see an Uber spellcaster that can take out anything or go nova or whatever. Can anyone give me an example of a character like this?

[Eldan]

The thing is this with wizards: at high levels, they can literally do everything. Fighters, especially, get a handful of feats, which they have to focus on one thing. Wizards, on the other hand, not only can write as many spells as they want in their spellbooks, they can also cast spells that have literally infinite applications.

Compare:
When going up to level 18, the wizard gets, say, Gate. The fighter, at the same level ,gets one feat. What should he use that feat for? +2 to damage? Improved Trip? Melee weapon mastery? Meanwhile, the wizard learns to summon solars, which are full casting angelical clerics.

This gets worse with every spell you look at. How do you defeat a wizard who never leaves his private plane, except by Astral Projection? How do you defeat a wizard who knows the future and can stop time? How do you defeat spells that, literally, allow no defences?

[Volthawk]

Also, Wizards are never a one-trick pony. Even if, say, all their feats are orientated around blasting and damage, all their other spells still work just fine.

Also, when people say 'Martial', they mean melee. So they have their WBL and magic weapons/armour. Still won't close the gap, unless you go Giacomo-type stuff, but that's really just seen as being a crappy mimic of a wizard.

[AmberVael]

The Mailman.

It isn't the most versatile of builds, nor the iconic Wizard that most people talk about, but if something needs to be destroyed? It can do it, whether that something is the fighter, a pixie, or a giant purple people eater.
Mailman is a more blatant demonstration of spellcasting power.

I link this one simply because it is one of the more specific and more easily calculated examples. Much less complicated than some of the other builds and ideas, and generally more fleshed out.

[J.Gellert]

And worse the wizard in the example can do only that....a one trick pony.

I think you got your wizards mixed with your fighters

[Eldan]

Or look at it like this: even with only those they get for free, wizards get 38 spells from leveling, plus the free ones from level one. Fighters get 10 feats.

[Seerow]

Or look at it like this: even with only those they get for free, wizards get 38 spells from leveling, plus the free ones from level one. Fighters get 10 feats.

Excuse me sir. Fighters get 11 feats. Don't sell them short. One feat is easily worth 2 spells each, and full BAB all day every day is worth at least 4 spells. Let's not even get into what that d10 hit die is worth!

[Curious]

Excuse me sir. Fighters get 11 feats. Don't sell them short. One feat is easily worth 2 spells each, and full BAB all day every day is worth at least 4 spells. Let's not even get into what that d10 hit die is worth!

This describes (sarcastically) the situation perfectly. Wizards have an infinite number of spells with an infinite number of purposes, while the Fighter is limited to only those feats that he can choose when leveling up. This means that a wizard can do literally anything he sets his mind to, while the fighter is stuck with his one schtick; hitting things.

[Johel]

Just to say that, while I fully agree with Eldan and thank Vael for his handy example, Wizards are not always all-powerful.

Before level 6, fighters do have their chances and are in fact far more capable than an wizard of equivalent level.
The reason ? Wizards, at that point, have less spells per day and the spells they have offer much less versatility.

So sure, a 5th level Wizard can fly and be invisible for 5 minutes.
But he will run out of juice quickly.

Note : wands can then take over but then our fighter also has his own magic item to help him survive.

[Eldan]

Hmm. Change the fighter: give him a feat book. Whenever he sees someone use a feat, he can write that feat down in his book. Every morning, he prepares his feats for the day.

No, it's not ToB

[dsmiles]

Is this another Exponential Wizard/Linear Fighter debate? I thought those were on Wizard Wednesdays.

[Seerow]

I'm sorry, upon further evaluation, I seriously underestimated the value of full BAB.

Consider, Weapon Focus (an awesome feat made for Fighters who are masters of weapons), gives +1 to hit. Full BAB is +1 to hit every other level. So full BAB is worth 10 feats right there. Now on top of that, full BAB also grants you 2 extra attacks with a -5 penalty on each... since that's really close to slashing flurry (1 attack -5 penalty), I think we can call those bonus attacks worth 2 more feats.

Clearly this means that full BAB is worth a whopping 12 feats. Since we determined earlier that a feat is worth at least 2 spells, then the fighter is now up to 46 effective spells.

Now, I know I said I wasn't going to get into this, but it's really bugging me so here it goes. Fighter gets a d10 hit die. A d10! A wizard only gets a d4. That's an average of 3 hit points per level!. Consider, the toughness feat gives you 3 hit points. So that means the fighter with his d10 hit die is effectively gaining a full extra feat every level in hit points! That's right, that hit die is worth an additional 20 feats over the course of his career.

So our fighter? He doesn't have 10 feats. He effectively has 43 feats. That's the equivalent of 86 spells. Wizards? They only get 38 spells. Do you know how much new spells cost? Do you have any idea how much stuff my fighter can buy if your wizard even tries to buy the extra 48 spells needed to catch up with what my fighter gets for free?

And then those spells eventually run out. My fighter can swing his sword all day long and never tire out. Your wizard will run out after the 30th enemy or so. Yeah, Wizards suck dude. Don't underestimate the Fighter.

[Tvtyrant]

The funny part is the one caster they made that is actually balanced (shadowcaster) brought up cries of outrage because it wasn't quadratic in nature.

[AmberVael]

...and thank Vael for his handy example...

*cough cough*

I'm sorry, upon further evaluation, I seriously underestimated the value of full BAB.

Consider, Weapon Focus (an awesome feat made for Fighters who are masters of weapons), gives +1 to hit. Full BAB is +1 to hit every other level. So full BAB is worth 10 feats right there.

No way. Weapon Focus only gives +1 to hit with a single weapon. BAB adds to ALL attacks. You're still underselling it.

[Seerow]

*cough cough*



No way. Weapon Focus only gives +1 to hit with a single weapon. BAB adds to ALL attacks. You're still underselling it.

Good gods, you're right! How do we model that though? Do we have to count it as taking weapon focus with every weapon in the PHB? That could add up pretty quickly. Maybe just count it as triple, figuring you will have one weapon for each general type (a 1 hander, a 2 hander, and a range)?


edit: You know, this post reminded me, I totally forgot to account for weapon and armor proficiencies in my calculations. Proficiency with Heavy Armor and all shields (Even tower shields!) is already 5 more feats. Then proficiency with all martial weapons.... eegads, this is going to get ugly quick.

[Eldariel]

Why do people somehow get the idea that a Martial character must have or use no magic? Or that Martial is anti-magical? Why is it so 'wrong' for a fighter to have a magic sword?

Everyone (I know of) is fine with Fighter having a magic sword. Yours truly just finds it cheap that a Fighter needs to be a Christmas tree of magical equipment before he is actually proficient at fighting. This has less to do with Fighter not using magic and more with the idea that a class should be competent with its class features.

Fighter with just its class features is pretty much nothing and it's the magic items that actually allow it to do anything; if you give a class with inherent competency the same amount of magic items, he'll come out far ahead.

And while Martials Using No Magic isn't a prerequisite, many people enjoy having that one non-magical badass class for when they want to play that character. This mostly draws from the fact that fiction is generally filled to the brim with such characters. Few classic heroes are spellcasters; those are generally the villains while the hero is a perfectly mundane man who through ingenuity and skill manages to overcome magic. It's not rare for players to want to be that hero. Which leads to people wanting a class capable of being non-magical while still kicking ass right alongside the Wizard, with just the Excalibur.


So basically, the disconnect is here:
- People want the option to be a non-magical hero.
- People don't want to rely on magic items for the non-magical hero to do his thing.
- High magic systems rarely cater to non-magical heroes capable of shining without loads of magic items.

[Johel]

*cough cough*

Well... Right... My bad.

[Tvtyrant]

Well for the sword thing we could just graft the VoPs effects onto all martial characters so that their weapons become +5 anyways. It would reduce prices a little, and allow for more badass attachments like flaming/shocking/icy rather than just straight improvements.

[JonestheSpy]

How do you defeat a wizard who never leaves his private plane, except by Astral Projection?

Wrong question. The right question is: Why would a DM ever allow such nonsense in their game?

[Radar]

We're talking D&D here? Spells give options, that cannot be obtained any other way. Take Freezing Fog for example: immobilises a group of foes in two different ways, deals damage and doesn't allow any save. In most cases, you can solve a given problem with a single spell:
- need information? Contact Other Plane, Scry
- need to subjugate your enemies? Glitterdust, Grease, Solid Fog...
- need to get somewhere? Flight, Phantom Steed, Planeshift, Teleport
- need a helping hand? Summon line, Planar Binding, Gate
- need to be sneaky? Alter Self, Invisibility, Flight again
- need to open something? Knock, Desintegrate, Passwall
You don't get such options from any other source with such little effort.

[Johel]

Wrong question. The right question is: Why would a DM ever allow such nonsense in their game?

Because said wizard is an NPC and not a player ?

[Tvtyrant]

Wrong question. The right question is: Why would a DM ever allow such nonsense in their game?

Better nonsense; by using a trandimensional Widened Cloud Kill on the spot where the demiplane attaches to the Ethereal.

[Seerow]

Well for the sword thing we could just graft the VoPs effects onto all martial characters so that their weapons become +5 anyways. It would reduce prices a little, and allow for more badass attachments like flaming/shocking/icy rather than just straight improvements.

Spoiler

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Personally I've been contemplating a system where you get something similar to VoP (but beefed up, cause VoP pretty much sucks) for stat boosts/weapon damage boosts/AC boosts, for all characters. Possibly also in the VoP style stuff from levelup allow some of the more mundane magical enhancements (like as you level up you're able to make it so all attacks you make with a weapon are treated as wounding, or as if you have the speed property. Or you can increase your weapon damage by xd6, increasing to xd10 on a crit.)

Alternatively (or in addition to) make a broader weapon upgrade system replacing masterwork (something akin to the Shadowrun weapon upgrade system, where weapons have X max amount of upgrades, and various upgrades tweak things slightly), granting various minor bonuses to attacks with that weapon without it needing to be magical.

Then drastically limit magic items (ie since you're now guaranteed to have the numbers that CRs assume you have, you don't need that full wealth by level, magic items are now of the utilitarian variety). Magical Weapons are the special sorts of things that grant things like buffs on yourself, or auras for the party, or convert your +x damage into a specific element/alignment. Little utility things that are nice, but not really necessary to function. Most magic items are things more like boots of teleportation, wings of flying, horn of blasting. All the things that open up new options or utilities, all of the +x swords.

It seems to me like it would work, though it would take a while pruning through what is and is not fitting with the new system, but at the moment it's taking a back seat to a different project I want to finish first.

Spoilered because I started rambling in response to that. So now back to our feat breakdown of the Fighter.

As determined in my edit, the Fighter's BAB is actually valued 3 times higher than expected, due to working with various weapons. We also picked up 5 feats in armor proficiency, and 31 in weapon proficiencies.

BAB was previously valued as 12 feats, so we just added 60 feats in total to our evaluation of the fighter, making his total feat count 103. That is the equivalent of 206 spells. Yeah, no way the wizard keeps up with that.

[dsmiles]

Stuff about wanting to be a non-magical hero.

Have you checked out Monte Cook's Iron Heroes?

[Eldan]

Wrong question. The right question is: Why would a DM ever allow such nonsense in their game?

Everyone bans astral Projection? Probably not. It's a core spell.

[Tvtyrant]

Spoiler

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Personally I've been contemplating a system where you get something similar to VoP (but beefed up, cause VoP pretty much sucks) for stat boosts/weapon damage boosts/AC boosts, for all characters. Possibly also in the VoP style stuff from levelup allow some of the more mundane magical enhancements (like as you level up you're able to make it so all attacks you make with a weapon are treated as wounding, or as if you have the speed property. Or you can increase your weapon damage by xd6, increasing to xd10 on a crit.)

Alternatively (or in addition to) make a broader weapon upgrade system replacing masterwork (something akin to the Shadowrun weapon upgrade system, where weapons have X max amount of upgrades, and various upgrades tweak things slightly), granting various minor bonuses to attacks with that weapon without it needing to be magical.

Then drastically limit magic items (ie since you're now guaranteed to have the numbers that CRs assume you have, you don't need that full wealth by level, magic items are now of the utilitarian variety). Magical Weapons are the special sorts of things that grant things like buffs on yourself, or auras for the party, or convert your +x damage into a specific element/alignment. Little utility things that are nice, but not really necessary to function. Most magic items are things more like boots of teleportation, wings of flying, horn of blasting. All the things that open up new options or utilities, all of the +x swords.

It seems to me like it would work, though it would take a while pruning through what is and is not fitting with the new system, but at the moment it's taking a back seat to a different project I want to finish first.

Spoilered because I started rambling in response to that. So now back to our feat breakdown of the Fighter.

As determined in my edit, the Fighter's BAB is actually valued 3 times higher than expected, due to working with various weapons. We also picked up 5 feats in armor proficiency, and 31 in weapon proficiencies.

BAB was previously valued as 12 feats, so we just added 60 feats in total to our evaluation of the fighter, making his total feat count 103. That is the equivalent of 206 spells. Yeah, no way the wizard keeps up with that.

Spoiler

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I have been wavering between allowing Tier 4- free VoP benefits and setting up a more systematic, tier by tier system. Gestalt for 5-6 and VoP benefits, VoP benefits for 3-4, nothing but the lamp for tier 1-2. Other things like free LA reduction equal to your tier -1 and giving people blood lines/epic destinies correlating to their tier also have sprung up.

Major bloodline for tier 6, moderate bloodline for tier 5, minor bloodline for tier 4 gives a bunch of random bonuses that help add variety, but it seems a little weird that all the fighters would be dragon-blooded while the wizards are just people.

I become more and more convinced that WotC consistenly picked the worst spell per spell level and balanced the other characters against that. "Wizards using burning hands are weak! Remove the Fighters' ability to fly!"

[Seerow]

Spoiler

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I have been wavering between allowing Tier 4- free VoP benefits and setting up a more systematic, tier by tier system. Gestalt for 5-6 and VoP benefits, VoP benefits for 3-4, nothing but the lamp for tier 1-2. Other things like free LA reduction equal to your tier -1 and giving people blood lines/epic destinies correlating to their tier also have sprung up.

Major bloodline for tier 6, moderate bloodline for tier 5, minor bloodline for tier 4 gives a bunch of random bonuses that help add variety, but it seems a little weird that all the fighters would be dragon-blooded while the wizards are just people.

Spoiler

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Personally I'm against the idea of using things like gestalt, stats, or whatever else as a way to balance the tiers. Remember, the tiers are what they are not because of abject power level, but because of options. Two tier 5 classes meshed together still won't have half the options a caster has, and VoP does nothing to address that deficiency at all.

My reasoning for wanting a different system for magic items is I don't like the concept of everyone needing the same +stat items, +x weapons, and +x armor, not to mention the same +x animated shield. I want to see those eliminated in their entirety, for everyone, not just lower tiers, and make magic items actually special, as opposed to something that you need to be competitive. ie make it actually possible to run a low magic world without gimping martial types, and then if you prefer high magic, it's still more interesting because everyone is more likely to have more variety in their magic items, with lots of different items that do different cool things, rather than spending half their wealth on that magic sword they needed to keep up with enemies of their level

I become more and more convinced that WotC consistenly picked the worst spell per spell level and balanced the other characters against that. "Wizards using burning hands are weak! Remove the Fighters' ability to fly!"

I honestly wouldn't be surprised to learn this was the case. If you look at a blaster wizard and a healbot cleric in core, they're actually pretty balanced in a party with a fighter and a one weapon rogue. But it makes you wonder wtf wizards was thinking giving them all these other options if they didn't actually think the casters would use them.

[The Glyphstone]

The funny part is the one caster they made that is actually balanced (shadowcaster) brought up cries of outrage because it wasn't quadratic in nature.

The Shadowcaster is balanced? No, it's horribly weak - mainly because its abilities scale up appropriately, but it gets far too few uses per day.

The truly balanced casters are the focused casters - the Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and (almost) Warmage. T3, and people love them for it.

[Tvtyrant]

Spoiler

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Personally I'm against the idea of using things like gestalt, stats, or whatever else as a way to balance the tiers. Remember, the tiers are what they are not because of abject power level, but because of options. Two tier 5 classes meshed together still won't have half the options a caster has, and VoP does nothing to address that deficiency at all.

My reasoning for wanting a different system for magic items is I don't like the concept of everyone needing the same +stat items, +x weapons, and +x armor, not to mention the same +x animated shield. I want to see those eliminated in their entirety, for everyone, not just lower tiers, and make magic items actually special, as opposed to something that you need to be competitive. ie make it actually possible to run a low magic world without gimping martial types, and then if you prefer high magic, it's still more interesting because everyone is more likely to have more variety in their magic items, with lots of different items that do different cool things, rather than spending half their wealth on that magic sword they needed to keep up with enemies of their level

I honestly wouldn't be surprised to learn this was the case. If you look at a blaster wizard and a healbot cleric in core, they're actually pretty balanced in a party with a fighter and a one weapon rogue. But it makes you wonder wtf wizards was thinking giving them all these other options if they didn't actually think the casters would use them.

They were thinking "Gandalf" Seerow, they were thinking Gandalf. The reason Wizards get Tenser's Transformation, and there are gish Prcs? Gandalf was good at sword fighting. Why do they have a "close portal" spell? Because Gandalf did. And Gandalf being Merlin/Odin, wizards in our sub-culture harken back to a god to begin with.

[Jay R]

So I keep seeing this around and I think it's kinda odd. Why is there such a huge split and division between Martial characters and Magic characters?


Why do people somehow get the idea that a Martial character must have or use no magic? Or that Martial is anti-magical? Why is it so 'wrong' for a fighter to have a magic sword?

Because D&D started as an attempt at simulating fantasy, and there is a wide gulf between Sir Lancelot and Merlin, between Oddyseus and Circe, between Orlando and Atlantes, between Thor and Mimir, between Prince Charming and the Evil Queen, between Gwydion and Dallben.

And it's not limited to fantasy literature. The stereotypes of the uneducated jock and the skinny little wimp scholar are alive and well, because we've all known such people.

Arneson wanted rules that could allow simulations of the classic fantasy characters, and so D&D was written that way. But the idea of the gulf between wizards and warriors is far older than the game.

There are also examples of warrior / wizards in the literature, also nowhere near as many, but in original D&D this was restricted to elves, so both levels could be limited, supposedly for purposes of balance.

But I suspect the real reason is rooted in the desires of the people playing Arneson's first game in Blackmoor.