Re: (TFT) FW: How do you Balance Magic vs. Melee? (on behalf of Marty Brown)

[pvk@oz.net]

There are plenty of ways to do it, depending on what kind of activities
and balance you want. Different players will have different ideas about
what is fun, interesting, and balanced. I think the real difficulty is
finding players who all agree on what sort of game world they want to play
in. The best way to do that is to have a great GM who makes players want
to play in the gameworld even if it isn't arranged exactly how they want
it.

For the GM or game designer that knows what they want, creating the system
to do it isn't all that hard.

I could suggest some specific ideas, but knowing more about how you
personally want a system to work is the hard part of solving your problem.

For instance, to follow your suggestion, if you don't over-use the TFT
Reverse Missiles spell, then you already have a game system where an
archer can take out most mages in one or two shots, when they get the
opportunity to hit first. As we just mentioned, while a wizard might be
able to do more flamboyant damage all at once when fully rested, in many
situations, the total amount of damage a wizard can do over a few hours'
encounters is much less, because they only have so much strength to put
into spells. A 40-point human tank can massacre many more hobgoblin
patrols than a 40-point wizard over the course of a few hours, for
example.

If you want to duplicate specific fictional contests, look at what happens
in the fiction. Frequently, fictional wizards have more long-term spells
that let them generate minions and achieve large-scale tasks, rather than
spells that are useful in direct and immediate one-on-one combat. Also,
the hero often avoids conflict for a long time until they come up with a
good plan, ambush, countermeasure, or whatever, to make the evil wizard's
powers impotent.

PvK
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