Re: (TFT) bias of game toward wizards

[John J Hyland <johnnyboytmm@juno.com>]

--------- "Cas and Lisa \(also Silvia, Max & Viveka\) Liber"  <casliber@ozemail.com.au> wrote:-------------------------------

My question is - I had always found the game to be slightly biased to
wizards.
[snip]
(a) did you find this too?
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Cas,
    One of the things I like about TFT is that the pro-wizard bias is not that bad.  As PvK suggests, at 32 pts they are pretty even, and as wizards improve, they start to be able to toast an equivalent point hero in an arena.  

But in a dungeon crawl, a wizard is reduced to a lousy staff wielding fighter who occasionally casts a useful spell until his fatigue runs out. (OK, I admit it, I still have a certain soft spot in my heart for dungeon crawls).

You want the wizard around to blast a big missile spell at the giant and then spend the rest of the day defending, while the heros beat up on the army of orcs and bugbears.

Also, heros can gear up easier.  If I buy better equipment I can improve my hero, but that doesn't work so well for a wizard.

I guess some (maybe a lot) of this is just the way I run my games, but I think the wizard advantage is pretty manageable.  After all, no matter how smart you are, an orc in the bushes with a crossbow can still drop you in a heartbeat.

All that having been said, I like the fact that Wizards power their spells with ST.  It keeps em honest.  In my games if a ST 10 wizard cast 8 st worth of spells and then takes 2 pts of damage from a thrown rock - he dies. I might someday consider just rendering him unconscious in that instance - indicating that fatigue does not make you easier to kill, just to knock out, but  I would not want to adopt any rule that lets him cast 8 st of spells, then take 6 pts of damage, and still be up and about to cast another spell.

In conclusion, I think the Wizard Bias in TFT is fairly manageable as written, it has never been an issue in my games.  But I take a pretty canon view of fatigue - it makes you easier to kill.


Incidentally, even though I've been playing TFT forever, I feel like a piker on this list, since I did not develop all sorts of house rules, I play it almost "right out of the box".

John


________________________________________________________________
The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand!
Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER!
Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today!
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"