Interview Josh Sawyer Interview Roundup: On grognards, illiterates, and murdering dudes

[deuxhero]

Problem is that most "fantasy" settings still use tight formations, charging knights on horseback and longbowmen, despite a single casting of a common spells being able to fuck them up.

 

[Shadenuat]

A shot from ballista, catapult or use of some sort of greek fire can also fuck formation up, but even after cannons and gunpowder became common formations were still used I believe.
Wizards are not that common in fantasy settings and can't cast spells too far or too often. There was that chosen of mystra from Forgotten Realms series who rode a flying chariot and did all the spells, just how effective you think she is compared to, say, a mortar squad? Can she lob hundreds of shells far as horizon non stop turning landscape into a moon surface? I doubt that.

Also, spell effects aren't consistent. How does exactly, say, a fireball behave? Can it be blocked? Or does it pass through and explodes inside a squad of enemies? If it's a piece of elemental fire, why does it behave like that? Does it have a knockback effect? These things change from one game to another, and you have to think them through before digging trenches.

Then take into account armies, thousands of soldiers, squads and flanks and all the logistics, and a handful of mages does not look that scary anymore.
Now I'm all for "there's magic in your world, deal with it already", but having a bunch of heroes running around casting fireballs does not equal to WW1 in my book.

I like how they do it in Warhammer, sort of. Wizards are few and on field of battle spell behaviour which can affect it can be erratic (which is represented by random spells and spell dice). Generally both armies field wizards to cancel each other out, with exceptions of "heavy casters" like elves. Then throw in artifacts and banners created by most powerful wizards in the world which cancel enemy spells and which you can stick to a squad, and you're kinda protected (depending on edition and metagame, of course).
But then again wizards there are special characters and commanders, and don't run around in squads of 20.
...er, last time I checked on Matt Ward they did not... yet.

 

[GarfunkeL]

But that would make sense! And not fit into the plot of "WIZARDS AWUSUME! FITGJHERES SUX00R!" theatre that certain posters have a massive hardon for.

 

[Volourn]

"There's no conceptual reason why mages should "have options" where fighters should have none, though. This was the great insight of D&D 4E. They should have different kind of options. Because otherwise all fighters do is hit things with their swords."

But, fighters do have options. Lots of them. Problem is that many RPGs doesn't vive them them. there's called shots, trip/knockdown, and tons of others. Don't blame Dnd for issues with CRPGs.


"A multiclass fighter mage elf is decent, but far from the best. Level limits mean that they will never get 9th level spells, for even high attributes can't help multiclassed demi-humans (also, I think elfs can't get to level 17th as an MU even with high int)."

2nd edition has no level limits for races or multi class IIRC. That's 1E and original.

And, thank god for that change. then again, original DnD had races ACTING like classes. I mean there was no elven mages. They were elves. Period. L A M E


"Daze is a 50/50 shot if you hit touch AC (very low) at the worst and completely removes someone from a fight for the round (nothing else at level 1, short of death, can do that)."

Sleep can do that. And, in 2E it was no save. In 3E I think it gave a save though but no touch attack needed. Way more powerful than grease or daze. And, it is a will save anyways which makes it perfect against warriors. In 2E, you could literally take out 16 goblins (2d4 HD of creatures and gobs are 1/2HD). It could even take out 4HD creatures so even tougher enemies for low level parties could be taken out.