In what difficulty 'mode' do you play Death Test?

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by Skarg

When it's wizards in melee with fighters, I'd rather hope the fighters would have advantages over wizards. Where else are fighters going to have an advantage?

That is something of a generalization, and reminds me why I never really liked calling non-wizards "fighters" (but still do so to facilitate discussion). Not to offend with a digression into semantics, but I really think wizards (in the context of melee turns) are fighters using a different menu of "weapons" than non-wizards use, and while that happens to be ideal for them under some circumstances, it can be a disaster under different circumstances. And that's just how it should be. I prefer to think circumstances (and Attribute Point totals) dictate advantages, and not the character class itself. To me, that's a really well balanced system.

So while I would expect two "fighters" to regularly defeat one wizard, I'd like to expect two wizards to defeat one fighter just as often under otherwise identical circumstances. Not more often, not less often.

Originally Posted by Skarg

Wizards are much more powerful than fighters in many ways.

And fighters are much more powerful than wizards in many ways as well. Examples being the fighters lose no ST for picking Charge Attack no matter how often they use the option, but a wizard loses at least 1 ST for Cast Spell, hit or miss. At the same time as choosing those respective options, the fighter gets to move up to 1/2 MA while the wizard can only move 1 hex.

Originally Posted by Skarg

Unless, of course, you use [wizards] in ways that don't work. Modifying the ways [wizards] don't work, to make those also work, seems like an odd way to go.

That is, unless people want wizards to just be all-around better than fighters, and/or more powerful, etc, just because they want that, which is fine.

Moderation is critical here, at least for those who value the mechanics and overall balance of the game as is, which I indeed do.

To avoid the chance of making wizards all-around more powerful than non-wizards, any tweaks need to be very, very small. And that of course is a choice. Small, and I believe targeted to starting wizards, which is where I think there's imbalance evident.

I suspect a party of all 40 point wizards would march through DT as readily as a party of all 40 point fighters. 40 point wizards don't need more advantages than they already have. But I can't imagine a party of all 32 point wizards could ever make it out alive. I'm not saying that's wrong, DT is a particular set of circumstances that calls for that outcome.

But starting, 32 point wizards also have a higher mortality rate than 32 point fighters outside of DT and under a pretty wide range of (combat) circumstances. Modifying that, but only that, wouldn't seem too odd I hope.