I know it''s not an RPG... but those mages in WarCraft II sure did own knights, among other things.

Necromancer do you make all these spealleng mustayks on purrpusss ?
Or did you forget to go to skoul ?

*grin* Anyone who''s ever run a fantasy kingdom knows that warriors are just the cheap way to dispatch annoying wizards .

Ps. Necro - you are suffering the "But I want to play the allpowerful wizard" syndrome. A game must be balanced, a wizard is NOT a killing machine, and there should be situations where a wizard cannot beat a warrior. A warrior at whatever level should be as powerful as a wizard at the same level, even if that power is in a different area.


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
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I couldn''t have put it better myself MadKeithV

quote:
a wizard is NOT a killing machine,

I wizard is also not comparable to a warrior. They are two completely different things. It''s like comparing a window to a door or a football to a tennisball. It all comes down to how YOU use them not which one can be kick or thrown further (fight better).

Although i do argue that if a wizard isn''t given any versitility then they might as well be a warrior since this is where the fun of playing a wizard comes from initially from my experiences.

"So your the one that designed that game are you?"
*Gulp* "Umm, yeah"

To limit a warrior''s attack, just chuck some endurace requirements to swing a sword - when the warrior swings, it reduces his endurance. However, you must also consider that a warrior has the chance of missing, and 99% of the time, the wizard does not. You just need to balance the expenditures of endurance and magic so that an equal ammount of damage dealt using an equal number of successful hits and misses works out to be equal for each character.

In my mind the problem with wizzzards is that they can become almost godlike at high levels. You have to put severe restrictions on the use of magic else, there is no fun playing. Gandalf could tear mountains, eradicate whole armies but he can''t, not because he isn''t powerfull enough but because it would draw Sauron''s attention...
I think you can give tremendous powers to magician players, but you have to limit the use of magic. Perhaps it makes some sort of "noise", perhaps you are vulnerable while casting... This way the use of magic become more strategy than just raw power thrown in all directions.
Anyhow, I don''t think that players should become that powerfull because they should always find a challenge in their opponents, and if you give them too much power you are obliged to give that more power to their opponents.
Finally, is it really fun to kill dozens of dragons with fireballs or sword ? Perhaps ten minutes, but you always end bored of this kind of game. Whereas solving problems with intelligence seems much more interesting...
Possibly it eliminates the powermaxers from the possible audience, but it seems quite hard to conciliate both kind of playing in one game.

If any of you ever have read Dragon magazine you will see that this kind of discussion appears regularly and somebody claims that some "class" is better than another. The funny thing is that it is a different class every time that is claimed the most powerful.

However, the *intension* with most RPGs is to provide a balance such that one class is no more powerful than any other. If one was superior to the others all would play that type. For instance, in the paper-and-pencil RPG Ars Magica (I think it is spelled that way) the mages are vastly superior to all other classes so all players play mages all the time. You might want to look at this one, Necromancer. However things can easily get repititive when there is no real variation between what player characters can do.
The point of having several classes is to require the players to depend on each other such that they and supplement each other to become more poerful than the sum of their individual strengths. A mage behind a fighter is a potent combination and both has their strengths and weaknesses when left alone but together they are strong. This forces the players to cooperate with each other.

Jacob Marner

quote: Original post by DungeonMaster

In my mind the problem with wizzzards is that they can become almost godlike at high levels. You have to put severe restrictions on the use of magic else, there is no fun playing. Gandalf could tear mountains, eradicate whole armies but he can''t, not because he isn''t powerfull enough but because it would draw Sauron''s attention...

Funny you should mention that, but Gandalf is by no means just a "wizard". He is a maia - and he''s good at EVERYTHING ( including not dying, after the fight with the balrog ).
So comparing a wizard character to gandalf is a bit pointless




People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

Dungeon Master Q: "You have to put severe restrictions on the use of magic else, there is no fun playing. Gandalf could tear mountains, eradicate whole armies"


How about resource based Magic, like in Magic: the Gathering ytou have to play land cards to use creatures / spells etc.

But what if the power came not just from controlling something (Dungeon Keeper - Bullfrog), but from HOW MANY EXIST ! So if you had a good Orc killing spell, the more Orcs that you kill with it the Weaker it gets, because there are less Orcs. Or a mountain tearing spell wouldn''t work if there weren''t anymore mountains.
A bit like levelling down though.

(Annoying?).

- Heh-heh-heh-heh . . . . . - Lubb

-Regis mocks you-