Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
Um... the player has to accept "all of the above", even the ones that conflict with each other?

That sounds more like the fourth one -- "falls apart under the slightest scrutiny".




See sig below.




AD&D... where the spellcaster gets Wish, Meteor Swarm, and a host of other such spells.. and an absolutely-no-fantastic-no-supernatural-no-magic "martial character" gets... a sword, and determination, and mighty thews?

If the "martial character" is actually on par with that spellcaster at higher levels... then that's either option 3 or option 4 on my list.
In my experiance AD&D disproves all of the points you raised in the quoted post, and has never broken my versimilitude as long as I accept that certain things (like HP) are gamist abstractions.

In combat high level fighters get 3 plus attacks per round that are likely to hit on anything but a one, and make all of their saving throws on anything but a one. The wizard is likely to go last and automatically loses their spell if they are hit (not damaged) by an attack.

Out of combat, wizards simply don't have the infinite spells to change the world that they do in 3.X. All of the things that break the economy or the nature of space time wide open were added in 3.X.

The, ideal party is a balanced one. Its like fighting a war against one enemy who has a lot of bombs but nothing to drop them, one enemy who has a lot of planes but nothing to drop out of the , and one guy who has a mix of bombs and planes.


Also, as for your last point, fighters in every edition of D&D have magic items. Nobody ever objected to it, and it didn't fix 3.X balance, so the whole idea that people reject a fighter with any magic whatsoever or that giving a figter "super powers" will fix the 3.X CMD is pretty much nonsense imo.