Help with balancing fighters with magic users

[Guest Champsguy]

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users

 

Buy more Strength.

Get a bigger sword.

Buy penalty levels and the Rapid Attack skill so you can attack several times a round.

Buy the Deadly Strike talent (effectively, you hit harder than normal).

Steal the wizard's spell components while he's asleep.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users

 

Buy more Strength.

Get a bigger sword.

Buy penalty levels and the Rapid Attack skill so you can attack several times a round.

Buy the Deadly Strike talent (effectively, you hit harder than normal).

Steal the wizard's spell components while he's asleep.

 

You missed penalty skill levels vs hit location. Rapid Attack + 8 PSL's for hit locations + 4 PSL's for Rapid Attack penalties = 3 head hits per attack. OUCH!

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users

 

Something of an aside, has anyone ever used the ubiquitous "Dispel Magic" combined with a ready warrior to become a mageslayer combo? Most FH force fields are pretty low AP, so (ideally in a segment where Enemy Wizard has taken an action), Dispel his force field (shuts down) then Warrior clocks him while he has little/no resistant defenses.

 

If he has taken an action, he can't abort. If he hasn't, it's still a DEX roll-off, and the wizard loses his next phase even if he wins.

[dstarfire]

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users

 

that's the problem with buying a weapon with points. It becomes a unique/magical weapon, and is incredibly difficult to replace (often involving a special quest of its own). This is a feature of the 'independent' limitation, and part of the reason why that limitation is worth so much.

 

With a bit of creativity and thinking, you can easily come up with -4 to -5 worth of limitations that are appropriate for a weapon. Independent and oaf alone give you -3. check out the section in the Fred about building weapons. should give you some good ideas.

 

the other way to increase damage without paying pts for a weapon it so .... well, everybody else has covered that aspect pretty thorughly, so there's no need for me to repeat it.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users

 

To continue the train of thought:

 

Lightning Reflexes: This talent adds to your characters Dex score for purposes of initiative only. Even if your characters are limited to Normal Characteristic Maxima, this can push a warriors initiative significantly higher. Then you get what I call The Conan Effect where the warrior always gets to swing his sword before the mage can get off any spells...

 

Deadly Blow: As many mentioned, this is a Talent found in the Fantasy Hero book (if you aren't using it, get it! it will open your eyes to the possibilities inherent in the system) and adds base damage to your warriors weapon attacks. Great stuff, but can overpower a campaign if used too fragrently.

 

Martial Arts: Many people consider the use of Martial Arts maneuvers the realm of Easter-influenced fantasy games only. This is a misnomer. The term Martial Arts represents any form of combat that has a well-documented regimine of training handed down from teacher to student. There are many western weapons forms that existed and would fit quite nicely into a traditional fantasy milieu. Hell, any experienced mercenary or swordmaster would posses significant amount of martial maneuvers. These will significantly increase the effectiveness of your warriors attacks and defenses. Just check the Weapons Combat martial artform in the UMA for an example of such a style.

 

Two Weapon Combat or Sweep: Sweep is an Optional Combat Maneuver, so your GM needs to okay it, but there's not really any reason for him to disallow it, if you have Mages with hugely damaging fireball spells in the game. It allows your characters to attack multiple times with melee weapons or unarmed attacks. You can attack a single target multiple times, or engage multiple targets at once. Careful though, it takes a full-phase to perform, so no fancy maneuvering in the same phase, and it drops your characters DCV by half, but if you are facing unimportant ruffians, its a great way to make your character look quite impressive. Two Weapon Combat is a variation on Sweep that allows a character to attack with a weapon in each hand. It costs 10pts for the skill (ouch) which removes the off-hand penalty to attack and removes the penalty for the extra attack generated by using Sweep normally. (additional attacks after the second accrue penalties as usual) A great skill for Swordmaster type characters to posses.

 

Rapid Attack: This skill allows use of the Sweep (or Rapid Fire...the ranged equivalent to Sweep) as a 1/2 phase action instead of the normal full-phase action. This means your character could move 1/2 his movement and still attack multiple times in a single phase. This is great for those who use Acrobatic attack styles...your character can use an Acrobatic half-move to gain a Surprise maneuver bonus while engaging multiple opponents!

 

Defense Maneuver: This skill allows the warrior to maneuver so as to not give any opponent a clear shot at his back. This effectively negates surprise attacks (within a combat situation, at least) and reduces the effectiveness of such abilities as a Rouges Backstab-type abilities. This works well with Sweep and Rapid Attack to make a warrior who is capable of fighting enemies on all sides with absolutely no difficulty.

 

Find Weakness: This power gives the warrior the ability to bypass opponents armor and defenses. This will make your warrior capable of hurting even the toughest of creatures, including Dragons and their ilk (unless of course, your GM is like me and gives their Dragons a healthy dose of Lack of Weakness!). A warrior with Find Weakness and healthy success with the Sweep maneuver will leave a mass of bodies in his wake....

 

Last but not least,

Skill Levels: Remember this: Skill Levels are the warrior's best friend!. A warrior-type character without several skill levels in his favored weapons is like a Sniper without bullets. A fish without scales. A library without books. Its an incomplete work. It needs to be finished. No Swordmaster would show his face if he had less than 5 skill levels to bring to the table in a fight. The more the better. Don't go overboard though, as they can get quite nasty. Don't forget that not only can melee skill levels add to both OCV and DCV, but they can also be traded on a 2/1 basis to increase the damage the warrior does! This means a Warrior with 6 skill levels with his Great Axe can add +3DC (a full extra 1D6K!) to its already impressive 2D6+1K and absolutely devastate his opponents. Skill levels rock!

[hypnotica]

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users

 

Maybe im not understanding it or not asking the right questions but i dont see how you would balance out a fighter and a mage with this? If for example a mage has a 6d6 attack and for a few more points they can keep raising the dice to an 8d6, 10d6,etc.... It looks to me that my fighter is getting whimpier and whimpier

[Curufea]

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users

 

What NuSoardGraphite was mentioning about skill levels is basically the same thing.

 

If you buy skill levels, you can also increase the damage done with weapons. You can raise the damage done in much the same manner as a magic user can increase the effect of their spells.

[Kristopher]

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users

 

Maybe im not understanding it or not asking the right questions but i dont see how you would balance out a fighter and a mage with this? If for example a mage has a 6d6 attack and for a few more points they can keep raising the dice to an 8d6' date=' 10d6,etc.... It looks to me that my fighter is getting whimpier and whimpier[/quote']

 

Maybe this has already come up, but you could cap damage dice or active points, or something like that.

[GamePhil]

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users

 

Maybe im not understanding it or not asking the right questions but i dont see how you would balance out a fighter and a mage with this? If for example a mage has a 6d6 attack and for a few more points they can keep raising the dice to an 8d6' date=' 10d6,etc.... It looks to me that my fighter is getting whimpier and whimpier[/quote']

 

Well, if the mage in question is able to just put a few points into the spell without difficulties and get two or four more dice, something is wrong. What Limitations are on the mage's powers? As Kristopher mentioned, are there any Damage Class limits in the game?

 

Are the Turakian Age rules being used for buying spells (where you divide the cost by 3)?

 

It is true that the warrior doesn't get as much of a cost break for buying his abilities, but they always work, and he gets the base equipment for free. The mage's abilities are usually easier to take away or interfere with. Is the GM actually playing the Limitations? Do Gestures and Incantations get interrupted, are Activation and Skill Rolls being made, are Foci being taken away?

[Gunrunner]

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users

 

Another thing you can do is make spell components much more expensive or rare. This will reduce the consistency of the wizard, as he may not always be able to cast his most powerful spells.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users

 

Maybe im not understanding it or not asking the right questions but i dont see how you would balance out a fighter and a mage with this? If for example a mage has a 6d6 attack and for a few more points they can keep raising the dice to an 8d6' date=' 10d6,etc.... It looks to me that my fighter is getting whimpier and whimpier[/quote']

 

Lets look at the numbers and see who has the better deal:

 

The campaign's Mage character has a Firebolt spell that is an Energy Blast that does 6D6N damage (6DC) He paid 10pts for this spell.

 

The campaign's Warrior has a Two Handed sword that does 2D6K damage (6DC) which he paid 750 silver for, but 0 character points.

 

After several game sessions, the characters have both earned 10xp.

 

The Mage adds another 6D6 damage to his firebolt spell for a total of 12D6 damage. He's dangerous now! (12DC)

 

The Warrior decides to purchase Two Weapon Combat for 10pts and starts weilding twin Battle-Axes. Battle-Axe does 2D6K, but he can attack twice per phase with them, for a potential of 24 body.

 

The difference? The mage can do high amounts of damage to a single opponent, once per phase*

However, the warrior can do his damage twice per phase to a single opponent (potentially equalling the damage of the Mages spell, provided defenses allow) or the Warrior can do his damage to two seperate targets in a single phase. If the opponents aren't particularly tough, this is superior in that the warrior can kill/KO two opponents per phase to the Mages 1 per phase. Sure, the Mage will obliterate his opponent, but the warrior will kill more enemies, faster.

 

* note: this is not considering the possibility of Sweep or Rapid Fire in the campaign.

 

There are a lot of little things the warrior can do to even things out between himself and the campaign Mage.

 

Is the warrior going to be as versatile as the mage? Of course not! The whole point of a Mage is to be able to do things other can't do ordinarily.

 

The main thing to remember here is that is not D&D! Mages don't have to concentrate only on learning spells. They can learn to fight. They can buy knowledge skills or Perks. And Warriors can learn magic if they want also! Maybe they learn Rune Magic that allows them to scribe spells on their weapons to increase their effectiveness. Or perhaps they train under a Chi-Master and learn to channel magic into their attacks. (Autofire HKA anyone?) If you quite thinking of these things in old D&D stereotypes, a lot of these little niggling worries will melt away, I garuntee it.

[Woodside Kid]

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users

 

I'm part of this campaign as well, and there's one or two things Hypnotica didn't mention. When we started the game, although we had the 5th edition book, the program we used (and still use) to build our characters was Creator. We're therefore stuck with a hybrid of 4th and 5th edition rules. This does, I admit, make for some interesting adjustments. From what I've seen in this thread, most of the suggestions given (and they are good ones, BTW) assume the GM is running a 5th edition campaign. What our GM was trying to come up with was a way to balance the costs of killing attacks so that our party didn't devolve into uberpowerful mages and wimpy fighters, using the rules loaded into Creator. Hope that makes things a little clearer.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users

 

It does.

 

My suggestion:

 

Stop using creator until you get a 5th Ed update.