Oh, I get it now, Fighters /should/ have spells.

[Red_Rob]

Which is why the Wizard cannot choose to be a Storm Lord/Force Potentate/SnowSoul.

Your argument would be relevant if it could.

That is why the Wizard can't be a snowmage as well as a snow mage, a stormmage as well as a stormmage, ect.

You have recently made the argument a few times that breadth of ability is not a problem, only specifically abilities too powerful for your level. I was showing that in fact too much flexibility is a problem, just like too much raw power.

People advocate classes that have shit the Wizard cannot have, or they have shit the Wizard can have at will or for actually level appropriate damage, or both.

Having less or less powerful abilities at will has been shown to be worse than having more or more powerful abilities less often. This is not always a good way to balance things.

Just to be clear, I am making a point against the "do anything" wizard here, not the Storm Lord or Snowshaper type classes. In my 3.X I would take out the Wizard for exactly the reasons I have described. They are able to mimic most other classes abilities too well with the right spell selection.

[Kaelik]

You have recently made the argument a few times that breadth of ability is not a problem, only specifically abilities too powerful for your level. I was showing that in fact too much flexibility is a problem, just like too much raw power.

No, I recently made the argument that the Wizard's current breadth of ability is not a problem. Not that any hypothetical amount of breadth is not a problem. That is why I said, "Nope. They are subject to the limit that they can only have X spells prepared a day, and when they prepare 1 Black Tentacles, and then face two encounters where it would be the best, they can only cast it once."

Having less or less powerful abilities at will has been shown to be worse than having more or more powerful abilities less often. This is not always a good way to balance things.

1) You are wrong. Trivially so. Having Fireball once per day is not better than having a fireball that does CLd6-1 damage at will. StormLords are not less powerful than a Wizard who may use each of the Storm Lords powers 1/day and also use Wall of Force 1/day.

2) I am not advocating that Wizards spells be more powerful than other peoples abilities, but limited in number. If anything, I am arguing that they be less powerful. Where the Wizard gets Telekinesis, the Storm Lord gets Telekinesis as a swift action. Where the Wizard gets Solid Fog, the Storm Lord gets a Solid Fog that does damage, ect.

3) I am advocating that the person who takes class D and tries to mimic class C will be weaker than a class C, and therefore, people who take class D will do things like mix n match, so they are not as good as a C when Cs are most useful, but they are usually generally useful.

4) I am advocating under the assumption that the Wizards limited spell slots will cause him to have limited versatility, and sometimes to use slightly weaker powers, but will never cause him to run out.

IE, 4 encounters. In one encounter, the enemy is vulnerable to lightning damage, and the Storm Lord wins instantly. In the next, he kites the archer using wind effects to limit attacks on him. In the third, he is no more or less useful than anyone else in the party. In the forth, something is immune to lightning, and not bothered by the Wind, so he has to use TK, which doesn't really bother it that much, and he contributes less than everyone else.

Meanwhile, the Wizard uses Black Tentacles against a Minion fight as is more useful than the party average, and then he uses Fleshshiver on something with less HD, and he owns it's face, and then he is running out of versatility, so he has to use Orb of Fire even though it's not that great, and then in the last fight, he has to scale down to lower level shit because he's out of his higher end stuff that would help, and he's using Glitterdust and Slow instead of the cool stuff.

Just to be clear, I am making a point against the "do anything" wizard here, not the Storm Lord or Snowshaper type classes. In my 3.X I would take out the Wizard for exactly the reasons I have described. They are able to mimic most other classes abilities too well with the right spell selection.

And what I am saying is that Wizard is not "do anything" and everyone who says he is is not actually playing a Wizard and making the hard spell memorization choices on a daily basis.

[NineInchNall]

You could use Guild Wars 2 as an example of a system where each character class is capable of doing all the various things that characters do. The key is that each class does these things in different ways and not all simultaneously, which leads them to play, feel, and contribute differently.

However, I still take offense with how many things a spellcaster does in D&D. The wizard and the cleric have toolboxes right now that allows them to fill a "Solve Problems" niche that's just too general. Travel? Managing difficult terrain? Investigation? Exploration? Mook Fights? Boss Fights? Countermeasures? All covered with spells already. With classes like this existing, any other classes will necessarily feel small in the pants.

All this ends up meaning is that the Wizard can contribute in any given encounter or situation. You know what that is? Exactly what we want to happen. The only problem is that there are classes that can't contribute in every encounter or situation. Those are the problem classes, because they are the ones that make non-standard parties unworkable by being unable to contribute to particular types of encounters.

Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, Cleric. This is the iconic party construction, but we should be able to deviate from that in any way and still have a functional party that is capable of handling any given adventure. If my group wants to play with four Wizards, that should be fine. The same goes with four Rogues, Clerics, Fighters, Swashbucklers, Warlocks, Paladins, Rangers, Bards, or indeed any fucking class ever.

This can only be achieved if any character, no matter his class, can contribute to overcoming any sort of obstacle.

In other words, the idea that there are certain enemies that the Fighter needs the Wizard to overcome and certain enemies that the Wizard needs the Fighter to overcome is un-fucking-tenable before we even get to implementation.

[Red_Rob]

No, I recently made the argument that the Wizard's current breadth of ability is not a problem.

I will agree that Wizard flexibility is DM and campaign dependent. It depends on spell/scroll availability and time to prepare. I have seen it be a problem when any situation that could be solved by another party member could be solved by the Wizard, plus there were several that only the Wizard could solve.

4) I am advocating under the assumption that the Wizards limited spell slots will cause him to have limited versatility, and sometimes to use slightly weaker powers, but will never cause him to run out.

I don't want to focus just on combat encounters here. Honestly, every class can and does contribute to the combat game if you build them right / use Tome martial classes. Wizards use staffs/wands/scrolls if they are worried about burning too many slots. My issue is that whatever obstacle you want to overcome, there is a spell for it. This is not true of the class features of other classes. Maybe it should be?

And what I am saying is that Wizard is not "do anything" and everyone who says he is is not actually playing a Wizard and making the hard spell memorization choices on a daily basis.

Take every "puzzle beater" spell you would memorise (Shrink item etc.), and leave the slot open, to be filled with a 15 minute ritual. See how much easier and more flexible spell memorisation is.

[Kaelik]

I don't want to focus just on combat encounters here. Honestly, every class can and does contribute to the combat game if you build them right / use Tome martial classes. Wizards use staffs/wands/scrolls if they are worried about burning too many slots. My issue is that whatever obstacle you want to overcome, there is a spell for it. This is not true of the class features of other classes. Maybe it should be?

A specific Wizard cannot solve every problem. A specific Wizard can solve some problems, just like a SnowSoul. The difference is where a Wizard can solve a variety of problems with a variety of spells, and can therefore choose to trade out "Build Bridge" for "Shrink Item" the snowsoul can always solve every problem that can be solved by "making a bunch of ice objects."

Take every "puzzle beater" spell you would memorise (Shrink item etc.), and leave the slot open, to be filled with a 15 minute ritual. See how much easier and more flexible spell memorisation is.

And see what happens when you solve the puzzle that can be solved by Shrink Item, and then the next puzzle requires:

1) Shrink Item
2) True Seeing
3) Teleport

And you can't cast any of those, because you thought that one open slot would solve all your problems, and prepared combat spells in all the other slots, and now you used up that one open slot, and you have no more puzzle solving.

[virgil]

For my wizards, I had like one or two pure combat slots, the rest were either puzzle solving or dual-use spells that could see use in combat or noncombat. Rare was the time I couldn't contribute in some fashion. Granted, I had backup items/abilities to use for filler rounds in combat, so one real spell was usually all that was needed in fights unless it was huge, and still contribute more than the fighter types.

[Kaelik]

For my wizards, I had like one or two pure combat slots, the rest were either puzzle solving or dual-use spells that could see use in combat or noncombat. Rare was the time I couldn't contribute in some fashion.

Frankly, most people DM monsters on easy mode for everyone, and maybe they need to if some members of the party are shitty fighters or something, but in general, I bet you would need a lot more spells in general in combat to actually meaningfully contribute to victory in my games.

so one real spell was usually all that was needed in fights unless it was huge, and still contribute more than the fighter types.

This isn't about contributing more than fighting types, because as previously outlined, fuck them.

This is about contributing more than a Storm Lord, Force Potentate, SnowSoul.

[virgil]

This isn't about contributing more than fighting types, because as previously outlined, fuck them.

This is about contributing more than a Storm Lord, Force Potentate, SnowSoul.

That seems unlikely to happen. As variable and adaptable as the wizard is, that's over the span of hypothetical encounters. The moment the day begins, the wizard is locked down into one direction as decided by memorization. Sure, they can switch it out for something else later, but at any specific snapshot, they're finite and limited to something that doesn't not exceed the Storm Lord.

[virgil]

The only way I could see the wizard as a "do anything class" is in the situation where the wizard is given a day's warning of an upcoming encounter; which can include any number of situations that aren't time-sensitive.

[Kaelik]

This isn't about contributing more than fighting types, because as previously outlined, fuck them.

This is about contributing more than a Storm Lord, Force Potentate, SnowSoul.

That seems unlikely to happen. As variable and adaptable as the wizard is, that's over the span of hypothetical encounters. The moment the day begins, the wizard is locked down into one direction as decided by memorization. Sure, they can switch it out for something else later, but at any specific snapshot, they're finite and limited to something that doesn't not exceed the Storm Lord.

Indeed, and that is my point. Except the weird double negative.

[NineInchNall]

And you can't cast any of those, because you thought that one open slot would solve all your problems, and prepared combat spells in all the other slots, and now you used up that one open slot, and you have no more puzzle solving.

But every Wizard always has the right spells memorized, because divination tells you everything that you need to plan perfectly!

---

I wasn't aware that the Den hated the Tier theory. In retrospect, it's kind of obvious.

The problem most Denners have with "tier theory" *snigger* is that it is based on thinking like this:

In fact, I would argue that the Beguiler and the Dread Necromancer are the two best balanced full casters. They're roughly equal in power to the three ToB classes, the Bard, the Binder, and the Wildshape Varient Ranger, in my opinion, just a bit behind the Sorcerer and Favoured Soul, and ahead of the Warmage and Warlock.

Ya see that? That's some serious stupid there. Beguiler on the same level as the ... Bard? Really? The Wildshape Ranger? ORLY?

But regardless, he's going off on a tangent about Artificers and Beguilers which really doesn't make a lot of sense. Mostly because he seems to be making assumptions that are to my mind indefensible. Beguilers exist in a weird place: they don't have access to a lot of the Wizard brokety broken power loops (that many games don't allow people to use anyway), but other than that they are massively better than Wizards. Assuming that your DM isn't going to let you chain bind no matter what class you are, the Beguiler is straight up the most powerful class. He's just like a Wizard except that he gets to spontaneously cast from all the "good" spells. And he gets more skills, better hit points, and so on and so forth.

Artificers are on completely the other end of the field. They can use literally any game breaking trick (and even have their own Skill Dance for infinite caster levels out of staves), but other than that they suck. In fact, at low levels Artificers can't really manage to pull off any cheese whether the DM will ultimately allow it or not, and they really stink up the place with their intense crapiness. A first level Artificer is a drain on party resources and honestly little better than an aristocrat. I get better casting out of a Ranger, because at least a first level Ranger can automatically activate a Wand of CLW.

So by putting crap like the Artificer at the top, he's as much as saying that he expects players to be allowed to use stuff like The Shadow Over the Sun; Chain Binding, and More Wishes. Furthermore, he's pretty much penciling in that he only cares about levels 8-20, and maybe only 12-20. I find that mystifying.

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=48958

[Stubbazubba]

You could use Guild Wars 2 as an example of a system where each character class is capable of doing all the various things that characters do. The key is that each class does these things in different ways and not all simultaneously, which leads them to play, feel, and contribute differently.

Agreed, I've often thought that GW2's approach to classes is a workable idea. In GW2, people can change up what role they're good at at-will, however, and while that works really well in a real-time game, that would be the equivalent of letting the Wizard re-pick spells at-will, which is obviously undesirable.

You could instead make different archetypes or themes for each class which determine your role , granting appropriate in- and out-of-combat powers. This would be a permanent choice, but allow you to play a ranger who is a charming scoundrel (diplomancer and buffer/debuffer, possibly) or a master of lore (researcher, UMD guy, healer), which would obviously fulfill different roles.

Another route to go is more like GW2, and do it by weapon choice. When a Fighter has a sword and shield, he has powers which use those, which define him as a certain role, but when he switches it out to dual-wielding axes, that's a whole new role, and his powers change with it. Similarly, a ranger who fights with two blades is a different role than when he pulls out a bow, and a wizard who uses fire is a different role than when he pulls out his other spellbook and starts to raise Undead minions.

This is actually a way to give players lots of options, but package them nicely, so you only have 5-8 to choose from at a time. This way a Fighter with a Spear could be the tank, the Wizard can be the controller, the cleric is the dps guy, and the ranger could be support. But when the cleric falls, the Wizard switches out (full-round action) to be the dps guy while the Fighter switches to be a controller. That's a lot of flexibility for a party to have, and it might be considered a threat to role protection on this board. But I'd love to play a game like that and see how it went.

[Duke Flauros]

Agreed, I've often thought that GW2's approach to classes is a workable idea. In GW2, people can change up what role they're good at at-will, however, and while that works really well in a real-time game, that would be the equivalent of letting the Wizard re-pick spells at-will, which is obviously undesirable.
You could instead make different archetypes or themes for each class which determine your role , granting appropriate in- and out-of-combat powers. This would be a permanent choice, but allow you to play a ranger who is a charming scoundrel (diplomancer and buffer/debuffer, possibly) or a master of lore (researcher, UMD guy, healer), which would obviously fulfill different roles.
Another route to go is more like GW2, and do it by weapon choice. When a Fighter has a sword and shield, he has powers which use those, which define him as a certain role, but when he switches it out to dual-wielding axes, that's a whole new role, and his powers change with it. Similarly, a ranger who fights with two blades is a different role than when he pulls out a bow, and a wizard who uses fire is a different role than when he pulls out his other spellbook and starts to raise Undead minions.
This is actually a way to give players lots of options, but package them nicely, so you only have 5-8 to choose from at a time. This way a Fighter with a Spear could be the tank, the Wizard can be the controller, the cleric is the dps guy, and the ranger could be support. But when the cleric falls, the Wizard switches out (full-round action) to be the dps guy while the Fighter switches to be a controller. That's a lot of flexibility for a party to have, and it might be considered a threat to role protection on this board. But I'd love to play a game like that and see how it went.

If fourth addition taught us anything, it is that the players should pick their role in the party- not have it decided for them.

In any case, the guy who can hit things really hard and the guy who can rewrite reality just aren't playing the same game.

[NineInchNall]

Unless hitting things really hard lets you rewrite reality. You know, like in nWoD, where you punch things really hard and get enough xp to pump your backgrounds up enough that your father retroactively becomes CEO of Microsoft.

[Duke Flauros]

Unless hitting things really hard lets you rewrite reality. You know, like in nWoD, where you punch things really hard and get enough xp to pump your backgrounds up enough that your father retroactively becomes CEO of Microsoft.

That does sound awesome in a silly kind of way.

That being said, it seems like there are four options for fighters now.
A)Chuchulain- level powers: hitting things hard enough lets you shoot laser beams/warp spasm/go super sayan.
B)Charles atlas- level power: hitting things hard lets you hit things very hard.
C)3.0/4e essentials fighter: serve as a footstool for useful classes.
D)4.0 fighter: since you have to suck, so will everyone else.

[NineInchNall]

Agreed, I've often thought that GW2's approach to classes is a workable idea. In GW2, people can change up what role they're good at at-will, however, and while that works really well in a real-time game, that would be the equivalent of letting the Wizard re-pick spells at-will, which is obviously undesirable.

...

This is actually a way to give players lots of options, but package them nicely, so you only have 5-8 to choose from at a time. This way a Fighter with a Spear could be the tank, the Wizard can be the controller, the cleric is the dps guy, and the ranger could be support. But when the cleric falls, the Wizard switches out (full-round action) to be the dps guy while the Fighter switches to be a controller. That's a lot of flexibility for a party to have, and it might be considered a threat to role protection on this board. But I'd love to play a game like that and see how it went.

I don't know if there's any real need to go that far toward mimicking the GW2 model of near-instant, on-demand mutability. The prepped casters already have a decent mechanic for being mutable on a per-day or per-rest basis, methinks, as do the ToB classes (Warblade, et al). The situation where someone goes down in the middle of combat is one where I'd want the party either to retreat or to resurrect their fallen comrade.

Role protection can basically go suck a dick under this model, but there is still room for mechanic or shtick protection. It may be that everyone has a way to effect fast travel, but outright teleportation is the domain of the Wizard.

[Seerow]

Role protection can basically go suck a dick under this model, but there is still room for mechanic or shtick protection. It may be that everyone has a way to effect fast travel, but outright teleportation is the domain of the Wizard.

I'm curious as to what sorts of other fast travel methods you have in mind. I mean, how do you make something that keeps up with the speed and scope of teleportation without being teleportation? I mean, short of turning fighters into the Flash that is.

[NineInchNall]

Well, if you're talking about travel, there's a spectrum that ranges from walking at one end to retroactively being where you were supposed to be at the other. Obviously there's room for one or more classes to be able to ignore physical barriers while still leaving the possibility for supersonic/FTL travel that actually has to give a shit about such things.

[Duke Flauros]

Well, if you're talking about travel, there's a spectrum that ranges from walking at one end to retroactively being where you were supposed to be at the other. Obviously there's room for one or more classes to be able to ignore physical barriers while still leaving the possibility for supersonic/FTL travel that actually has to give a shit about such things.

And again, you are still left with the problem "how do we plausibly balance the guy who can hit things really hard with the guy who can rewrite reality?"

[Username17]

Well, if you're talking about travel, there's a spectrum that ranges from walking at one end to retroactively being where you were supposed to be at the other. Obviously there's room for one or more classes to be able to ignore physical barriers while still leaving the possibility for supersonic/FTL travel that actually has to give a shit about such things.

And again, you are still left with the problem "how do we plausibly balance the guy who can hit things really hard with the guy who can rewrite reality?"

The fact that someone can manipulate reality is not the problem. The problem is that "manipulating reality" is something that scales indefinitely, while "is Conan" does not scale at all.

You can easily present a character whose manipulations of reality are not as world affecting as normal, mundane actions. If you can conjure gold, that's very impressive. But if the amount of gold you can conjure in a day is less than or equal to the amount of gold you can charge for your services working in administration or shipbuilding or something - who gives a shit? Structurally, anything you can do with a mystic ritual that you could also do in a similar time frame by working for a wage and then hiring day laborers with the proceeds is not overpowered or even particularly meaningful.

Now this runs into balance problems, because people keep flipping their shit when fighters get nice things. But if a Wizard teleports the party to the Mountainous Maw of Mortah that saves the party 12 days travel time and bypasses a couple of random encounters. It is entirely possible for a Rogue to save the party 12 days and bypass some random encounters with information gathering abilities. A character who is good at legwork and spying could easily (and completely nonmagically) provide comparable total benefit to an overland teleport (as long as that overland teleport was a Might & Magic style "teleport to the dungeon" rather than a 3e Teleport Ambush "teleport to the end of the dungeon with all your buffs running"). There is a lot of pushback against this sort of thing, largely because of the sword-classes, only the Rogue, Paladin, and Ranger have historically had the kinds of out-of-combat abilities that could plausibly compete with even the most basic of spells. And in any case, as previously noticed "is Conan" is a concept that doesn't scale up at all - let alone to that particular level of utiltiy.

The balance cutoff comes when the magic scales up enough that it cannot be replicated by mundane means. Traveling to other dimensions, other planets, cloud castles, and underwater cities, for example. Raising the dead. That kind of thing. And once magic starts doing that stuff, the non-casters need to grow up to the point that they can also break the mundanity barrier.

-Username17

[RobG]

So... there you go, the fighters weapons gain XP when he fights with them, as does his armors, bit by bit. This is represented by a pool of nice things that do the same shit that mjolnir, menginjora, and jarngriepr could do. Though instead of getting shitty static bonuses like the Belt of Giants strength, and gauntlets of ogre power... you get:
Nice things
Choose your "Nice things" bonus from a pool of nice things that come on at a level appropriate level.
This is not complex or new, you now staple nice things onto what ever the hell you build and put the name "Fighter" on. Tome, Warblade, or phb fighter. You get whatever that class gets at level 1 and a weapon with a nice thing, aprorpo to level 1. You never stop getting to chose these things as you level, and make sure that we do the smart thing like mtg, and ensure that you can never use them to circumvent "cost".
Longwinded I know but... "thoughts"?

Plus fucking one

I love it when someone takes time out from bitching about stuff that doesn't work and proposes something that DOES work.

This works. Write us up some sample weapons please.

[Aryxbez]

So... there you go, the fighters weapons gain XP when he fights with them, as does his armors, bit by bit. This is represented by a pool of nice things that do the same shit that mjolnir, menginjora, and jarngriepr could do. Though instead of getting shitty static bonuses like the Belt of Giants strength, and gauntlets of ogre power... you get:
Nice things
Choose your "Nice things" bonus from a pool of nice things that come on at a level appropriate level.
This is not complex or new, you now staple nice things onto what ever the hell you build and put the name "Fighter" on. Tome, Warblade, or phb fighter. You get whatever that class gets at level 1 and a weapon with a nice thing, aprorpo to level 1. You never stop getting to chose these things as you level, and make sure that we do the smart thing like mtg, and ensure that you can never use them to circumvent "cost".
Longwinded I know but... "thoughts"?

Plus fucking one

I love it when someone takes time out from bitching about stuff that doesn't work and proposes something that DOES work.

This works. Write us up some sample weapons please.

A character who becomes all about their Swag sounds more like a "Gadgeteer/Gadgetknight" class, as what I'd put people like Iron Man, Green Lantern or Stargirl & S.T.R.I.P.E. While that's fine, rather not a fighter's only abilities come from his items, that's not really that self empowering. I see no reason why a Fighter type doesn't simply get Fuggin SUPERPOWERS at the levels he's supposed to respectively. Even the "Is-Conan" character don't think would be defied by this. As what is Conan anyway, a stealthy buff warrior with some cunning and charisma, but ultimately slays a bunch of dudes, does tough guy things (climbs a mountain for days straight) while wrestling Giant monsters (apes). As Frank/K Tome said, he pretty much is a Rogue, a more str/con based one, but yeah. Can totally have it where he's wrestling yeti's, tiger apes and intelligent ape here: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SYN7jjeenf0/T ... an_Ape.jpg

Then Giganto ones like King Kong: http://andreirublev.files.wordpress.com ... kiobg1.jpg

All the way culminating perhaps one of the greatest "apes" of all: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/alumn ... on_fc1.jpg
Cyronax could also do: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4DY4qEcFs9w/T ... onax-1.jpg

[Duke Flauros]

Well, if you're talking about travel, there's a spectrum that ranges from walking at one end to retroactively being where you were supposed to be at the other. Obviously there's room for one or more classes to be able to ignore physical barriers while still leaving the possibility for supersonic/FTL travel that actually has to give a shit about such things.

And again, you are still left with the problem "how do we plausibly balance the guy who can hit things really hard with the guy who can rewrite reality?"

The fact that someone can manipulate reality is not the problem. The problem is that "manipulating reality" is something that scales indefinitely, while "is Conan" does not scale at all.

You can easily present a character whose manipulations of reality are not as world affecting as normal, mundane actions. If you can conjure gold, that's very impressive. But if the amount of gold you can conjure in a day is less than or equal to the amount of gold you can charge for your services working in administration or shipbuilding or something - who gives a shit? Structurally, anything you can do with a mystic ritual that you could also do in a similar time frame by working for a wage and then hiring day laborers with the proceeds is not overpowered or even particularly meaningful.

Now this runs into balance problems, because people keep flipping their shit when fighters get nice things. But if a Wizard teleports the party to the Mountainous Maw of Mortah that saves the party 12 days travel time and bypasses a couple of random encounters. It is entirely possible for a Rogue to save the party 12 days and bypass some random encounters with information gathering abilities. A character who is good at legwork and spying could easily (and completely nonmagically) provide comparable total benefit to an overland teleport (as long as that overland teleport was a Might & Magic style "teleport to the dungeon" rather than a 3e Teleport Ambush "teleport to the end of the dungeon with all your buffs running"). There is a lot of pushback against this sort of thing, largely because of the sword-classes, only the Rogue, Paladin, and Ranger have historically had the kinds of out-of-combat abilities that could plausibly compete with even the most basic of spells. And in any case, as previously noticed "is Conan" is a concept that doesn't scale up at all - let alone to that particular level of utiltiy.

The balance cutoff comes when the magic scales up enough that it cannot be replicated by mundane means. Traveling to other dimensions, other planets, cloud castles, and underwater cities, for example. Raising the dead. That kind of thing. And once magic starts doing that stuff, the non-casters need to grow up to the point that they can also break the mundanity barrier.

-Username17

In all fairness, Might and Magic stopped being Might and Magic once they introduced the machine guns, robots, and aliens.

[Whipstitch]

If by that you mean knights got along OK because they were the logical choice to be manning the laser blasters, sure.

[Username17]

In all fairness, Might and Magic stopped being Might and Magic once they introduced the machine guns, robots, and aliens.

So... Might & Magic I then? The very first Might & Magic game has a crashed alien spaceship with disintegrator rays and even the whole "world" is built by a different group of aliens who have a robot army. This sort of thing was pretty common in the 70s and 80s. Science Fiction and Fantasy were considered the same genre, and a lot of fantasy stories were set on Earth either in a forgotten age or in an age yet to come. So the Dying Earth nominally happened in the far future, as did Creatures of Light and Darkness. And D&D picked up on that, Oerth (Greyhawk) was nominally Earth in the far future and you can find relic technology and crashed spaceships with disintegrator rays and shit.

In the 90s, people put their feet down on that kind of thing more and more. Science Fiction and Fantasy diverged more and more (Stargate not withstanding), and stories like Beastmaster 2 were less accepted.

-Username17