In D&D, a 20th level Fighter can't really do anything that a 1st level Fighter can't do, he can just do it a hell of a lot better. By contrast, a 20th level Wizard can do many more things than a 1st level Wizard. In theory, these classes are balanced against one another at both level extremes, and all points in between (the reality, of course, is somewhat different, but let's not worry about that for now).
The point being that high level Wizards are more interesting to play than high level Fighters.
Similarly, we could consider the disciplines of Celerity and Dominate in Vampire, only the latter of which gets more interesting as it gains ranks. The other just does the same things better.
So, given that we want players to remain interested in playing their characters over the course of a campaign (averaging months), shouldn't an effort be made to ensure that all characters get access to cool toys? (Not necessarily the same toys, of course.)
We need a good topic for a nice rules argument...
Archived comment from Mort:
ReplyDeleteYes, the fighter is very much a point and click character, please leave brain behind before engaging sword.
But... the fighter gets to roll so many dice! Five attacks, that's like five d20's, 10 d6's (assuming greatsword) and perhaps 5-10 extra dice depending on how kickass your weapons elemental attacks are. That's one big fistfull of dice right there. For some people that seems to be well enough for them to happily play their fighters to level 20 and beyond.
So what toys would you give a high level fighter that wouldn't just be things that makes him hit harder or better? To be honest I havn't thought much about it, and I'm not too familiar with all the strange magic items available, so I can't really give any suggestions.
Archived comment from me:
ReplyDeleteI was thinking perhaps that the base classes should be limited to level 10, this representing the limits of human achievement. Thereafter, in order to advance you'd have to pick up some sort of super-human characteristics that would give additional kewl powerz.
Of course, even by level 10, characters are well into the realms of the superhuman. Besides, if people are happy playing Fighters to level 20, in their current form, who am I to say they can't?
On the topic of magic items, though: I have no idea what they should get. Perhaps there should be more powerful elemental-style enhancements (sort of flaming burst writ large). Or perhaps they should make intelligent items more common. I'm not sure.
This little thought came about a while back, when I was putting together a moderately high level game together. I had three characters, which were going to be a Wizard, Cleric and Fighter. However, this rapidly became a Ranger, because the Fighter started to look very dull without any sort of spell-casting. In the end, I never had to run the game, so that ceased being an issue. (Of course, I could also have solved it by using Prestige Classes, but I don't like them.)