While we wait for everyone to arrive my gaming group often has interesting conversations. This week's topic was: Wizards vs Fighters. In a duel , who would win?
Now before we can actually fight this out we need some rules. I think we agreed it would be a 3 vs 3 battle. But I'm not sure what else was agreed to. Did they have to be straight up fighters vs straight up wizards (no sorcerers, multi-classing, etc. Are they fighters or did we want rangers)? What is the starting distance apart? I'm pretty sure we agree this would be a flat open area with no obstacles.
What levels do we run this at? I think at lower levels the fighter would destroy the wizard, mid levels it is roughly even and upper levels it would be no contest for the wizard. Derobane disagrees about the last part so we should run the battle twice. Once at level 12 and once at level 17.
Assumptions when creating the duelists:
1. Fighters know they are facing arcane casters. Wizards know they are facing fighter types.
2. They are starting less then 100' apart, no cover, no obstacles
3. If the Fighters can acquire it, Antimagic is fair game.
4. Standard wealth by level rules apply. No more than 25% or total wealth my be spent on a single (magic or otherwise) item.
5. No Leadership Feat
Anyone want to add any further conditions or assumptions? Once we have the ground rules set I'll see what I can whip together. I suspect this could come down to who wins initiative but it should be fun to play out.
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Legal classes allowed: Wizard, sorcerer, fighter, ranger or paladin. No mixing classes. Pure all the way. No presitige classes.
Only source available: Players Core Rule book.
25% max for spending on any single item. Only items from the core rulebook. No self constructed stuff.
No followers, animal companions,familiars or cohorts.
No flying with spells or magic items. (could get really tough to adjudicate in 3D)
No rolling for hps. Averages only.
Levels 12 and 20.
Thoughts?
I would just go with Fighters vs. Wizards. Keep it simple.
Also, no flying really screws over wizards and doesn't allow for a realistic assessment of the two classes. To have any meaning, you have to allow flying.
ok. Flying is in. Won't matter at level 20 but may make a difference at 12.
Do all the fighters and wizards have to be closes of each other? Does each combatant have his own initiative or is it one side vs the other?
At high levels, everyone can fly, regardless of wizard status. Flying just makes a more complex battle, but that's fine. Now we need to determine a ceiling for the now 3 dimensional space. Maybe the ceiling could be as tall as the cube is wide.
I would strongly recommend individual initiative. More initiatives will make for a more fair play test.
I would also recommend a six way equal distribution of the combatants around the playing field. Maybe the playing field could be all the boxes on one of the battle mats that we use for gaming.
Not to make things more complex, but who shall six people be making six play-test characters? Will six people be playing each of the PCs? Who plays who?
Thoughts?
Oh, Im good with fighters vs wizards.
The thing about flying is that fighters will have to commit more of their resources to it. Also, Fly is a class skill for wizards and given their high Int, they are more likely to have ranks in it. So even though both fighters and wizards can fly at high levels, wizards will likely be better at it and will have the ability pretty much for free.
ok I whipped up a first draft of both 20th level characters last night.
There were some interesting results. Even if the Wizards go Diviner the initiative bonus difference between the two classes is not that large (5 points I think). There is no guarantee the wizards will go first. Also, the wizards have 200+ hp. Any single Fighter will have to be lucky to one round kill a wizard.
In any case it won't matter and here's why: There is a first level spell in one of the books called Emergency Force Field. It casts as an immediate action so even if the wizard lose initiative they can throw this up before the first arrow leave a bow.
No matter what this gives the initiave to the wizards and the fighters will always be one round behind and trying to react as the wizards Gate in nasty shit, hit them with Maze spells, Slow spells, and Persistent Save or Die spells. I managed to really pump up the fighters save to quite respectable levels where they have a 60% chance to make their weakest save, but in the long run its not going to be enough.
We can play it out but I still think the wizards are going to take it. Without the Emergency Force Field spell it could easily go either way.
Which book contains this spell?
Never mind, I found it. It's actually called Emergency Force Sphere and it's in Pathfinder Companion: Cheliax, Empire of Devils. Since one of our criteria was to limit the sources to the corebooks, this is not admissible.
Also, not that it matters, but Emergency Force Sphere is actually a 4th level spell.
So it is a 4th level spell. I always thought it was pretty awesome for a 1st level spell. I guess I should let HeroLab know there's a bug in their software.
Anyway, I missed the bit about Core only. That makes the wizards significantly less scary - No Persistent Spell Metamagic, no Spell Perfection. And the Foresight sub-school I think is in Ultimate Magic. Let me do a rebuild and I'll post them for you guys to pick at.
I think UC and UM should be included. Everything in the Pathfinder reference document should be admissible.
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