Which feels more natural to you?

>forcing a story where being able to use magic means nigh omnipotence and not being able to means utterly useless

A U T I S M
U
T
I
S
M

In a vacuum, without context? Of course I don't lean either way. What are you, retarded?

>implying flying is going to help
There's a reason the commander of the guard in a lot of cities was called "captain of the archers"

Also let's be honest, you probably are going to bumble since you rolled a wizard and physical stats are for chads.

Oh, I didn't realize you were the ornery sort. Carry on them.

Honestly, if we were being realistic, mage would beat everyone from afar with fireballs and shit.

But given what you provided... the second feels more natural.

>forcing a story where dudebro alpha warriors and handsome silver-tongued rogues can do everything, while silly old nerdypants wizards just tag along

Found the projecting beta. I bet you fap to Frazetta.

>forcing a story where the captain can shoot an invisible flying wizard

Nice fanfic, kid. :^)

Realisitcally, the wizard would be very upset because he's probably just like Nostradamus or Rasputin and has no actual magic.

But, with all things equal, thieves tend to be able to dodge/avoid fireballs, while warriors can sometimes just walk right through them.

>maintaining invisibility and flight at the same time
>implying you took skill in stealth for that invisibility to be worth a damn

Not him but what makes you think invisibility and flight take anything to maintain?

You ever played D&D?

First

>he only played 3rd edition

I don't like rock-paper-scissors gameplay, but if you insist, it'd be the first, literally because of rock-paper-scissors.

Mage is paper, Warrior is rock, Rogue is scissors.
>Paper is flimsy, but easily overwhelms rock with magic.
>Rock is too hard for scissors to cut, then smashes them while they're close.
>Scissors can sneak up on paper and cut through the flimsy defenses.

In 5e, most spells that last longer than a round require concentration, and you can only concentrate on one spell at a time.
While its a simple and thematic way of preventing the excessive buff stacking you'd find in previous editions, there's also something mildly disappointing about not being able to just suddenly explode in power.

mage beats warrior and thief at the same time.

what is the source of this gif, I must watch it

Literally image search the thumbnail

First

What not have this
>story where dudebro alpha warriors and handsome silver-tongued rogues and egotistical, but loyal wizards beating the shit out of everything in their way.

Warrior beats mage with thief as a bludgeon.

How about:

Warrior beats everyone if solo on simmilar "level", but has hard time against multiple enemies and little utilities - but at least they need no preparation or resources
Mage is best against multiple foes and has many utilities but they usually need preparation and/or resources
Rogue has lot of utilities most of which need no resources or preparation, and is able to beat any class if he manages to set up a fight on his own conditions AND he has means to achieve such conditions much easier than others, but has no chance with anyone in "fair" fight.

Also within the warrior trope balance of light vs heavy - they're on par when dueling each other but heavy is less vunerable in fight against multiple foes (still WORSE than mage) and is better against rogues while light has better utilities thanks to no encumberance and is better against mages

...

I could go for some of this

Normally the first, unless it's Conan esque low magic, then I'd go with the second.

youtube.com/watch?v=NXX8URSUWm0

No user. It is impossible for people with different physical and social characteristics to be friends. One must dominate the other. There have never, ever been any fantasy stories where the wizard and the warrior are pals and both useful in different areas. Nor, indeed, can intellectuals and athletes get along in real life.

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but I'm actually having trouble thinking of any duos where at one point one didn't completely fuck over the other one.

I've been on Veeky Forums for too long user. Are you being sarcastic or serious?

I just want to point out I read the title as
>which feels more natural, mage breasts -etc

Evidently I'm as mature as a middle schooler.

>captcha :riflebutts
hehe butts

Low fantasy:
Mage beats Warrior (curses and enchantments can't be punched away)
Warrior beats Thief (keen instincts and battle-honed reflexes)
Thief beats Mage (just stab him when he's asleep)

As it moves towards high-powered fantasy, it inverts:
Warrior beats Mage (Ki/Will/etc punches through magic)
Thief beats Warrior (be the shadows, steal his kidneys, he can't punch what he doesn't know is there)
Mage beats Thief (Any automated defenses, scrying, plane shifting)

My 'ideal' world is almost exactly in the middle, with no inherent advantage to any classes thet haven't specifically worked for.

Chip and Dale, Rescue Rangers.

Arthur Dent + Ford Prefect

Mario and Luigi

The Three (Four) Musketeers

Han Solo + Chewbacca

Mage beats [insert list of class names here]*********

Archetype triangles are silly.

Circumstances determine a battle's conclusion.

>Mage [beats] Warrior [beats] Thief [beats] Mage
This feels the most natural to me.

A mage masters magic, and should not be beatable through conventional combat. Thus the mage beats the warrior.

The warrior has dedicated himself to physical combat, and should be unmatched in that field. Anyone who crosses swords with him is dead, and no "my speed will beat him!" anime bullshit applies because being a good warrior also demands speed. Thus the warrior beats the thief.

Now comes the part where the thief beats the mage. Remember how I said conventional combat is ineffective against mages? In my eyes, thieves should be all but conventional. If we want to balance these three archetypes, I believe the thief should be the guy with all kinds of dirty tricks up his sleeve and tools in his many, many pockets. He'd use everything at his disposal to disrupt the mage's casting (a few examples that may not be very good would be things like using smoke bombs to disrupt verbal casting, being able to target the hands of a mage with throwing daggers (perhaps he even gets an attack of opportunity as soon as a spell with somatic components is casted within his range?) et cetera). I think this would also help end the dominance of mages in such games, as there are guys who are experts in fighting mages without magic of their own.

As for the unconventional nature of the thief, I also believe that this should mean a thief can defeat a warrior if, and only if, he manages to get the drop on the warrior. If not then... well, it's a skinny dude vs a buff goremachine. There are only two ways this can end: death or /ss/

But the Captain of the Guard is himself a warrior, so technically warriors are still useful...

Only they aren't because the Warrior is objectively worse than the Fighter in every way and is a useless bloat class.

You should naturally be beaten.

A solid and well-phrased response. Nice. +1 for explaining the "classical" triangle of death.

I don't think I could respect anyone who believes the latter.

Well said.

lewd

Speaking as someone who mostly plays Warriors, I feel like

Theif [beats] Mage [beats] Warrior who is also [beaten] by Theif

As a general rule of thumb, there are always going to be exceptions. But the point of a theif is that they would kill someone without that person being aware of it. I tend to believe that whoever strikes first wins, and the whole point of a thief or assassin or whatever is striking before the other person is aware they're being attacked. If either the Warrior or Mage catches onto the Thief's actions though, they [beat] Thief.

As for Mage vs Warrior, well Mages are just overpowered. The best way to deal with that is to just have Mage's be very specialized, so that Warriors are more well rounded. Yeah a Mage might be specialized in combat magic and the like, in which case they'd easily beat the Warrior, but that doesn't mean they'd have the spells and abilities to survive in the wild or in dangerous environments as well as the Warrior. Or maybe they have a lot of magic focused on travel and survival but not anything really combat focused, and the Warrior could kick their shit in.

Whatever the Mage isn't focused in they're not good at, and need the skill, muscle, and tact of Warriors, Rangers, Bards, Theives etcs to get by. Or if they're just a jack of all trades type Mage, then maybe the Warrior does beat them, if they move fast enough. It's a question of who lands a blow first.

>My 'ideal' world is almost exactly in the middle, with no inherent advantage to any classes thet haven't specifically worked for.>>

this

mage beats warrior of he keeps his distance or does voodoo magic that poisons him
mage beats thief if he knows assassins are after him because he sets up exploding glyphs and summons golems and shit to defend him in his sleep

warrior beats mage because he just strongdicks his way through the fireballs and already steeled his mind against the evil wizards mind powers
warrior beats thief because the thief is a little girly man who turns into a thick paste as soon as beefcurl mcbicep punches him in the mouth

thief beats mage and warrior because both times he carefully planned his ambush and picked apart their defenses because they didn't know he was there in the first place.

>Conan cuts Gandalf in half
i have bad news for conan

First
Mages are more powerful than warriors and thieves when they have sufficient time to prepare for and manipulate a situation that they have a clear understanding of, but thieves have the element of surprise and can catch mages off-guard, and they're experts at deception so they can make a mage think that a situation is something other than what it is, squandering all of the time and effort that they put into their preparation. Thieves are slippery and elusive, and difficult to understand, and understanding is a mage's only weapon.

Thieves can outsmart warriors too, but they don't have enough firepower to actually do anything to hurt those warriors, and the warrior will most likely survive their tricks, turn around and defeat the thief with brute force.

Mage beats warrior because the warrior most likely won't catch the mage off-guard, and warriors are generally easy to understand and manipulate.

Warrior beats anyone he's trained himself to beat, in truth, it should be soldier, but nothing in this universe means shit when the Warrior pops out THAT FUCKING TORNADO SPINNY MOVE

YOU KNOW THE FUCKING ONE

EVEN KHORNE PROBABLY HAS IT.

MINMAXXERS REEEEEEEE

WarriorMage beats WarriorThief beats ThiefMage beats WarriorMage

What feels most natural to me is how anything beats anything else based on circumstances and situations.

OP is an idiot.

If the Wizard is prepared he beats Warrior and Thief. If Wizard is unprepared he beats nobody.

If the Warrior is unprepared he can possibly beat Thief, if he is unprepared himself. If warrior is prepared he can beat thief and Wizard, if he is unprepared.

If prepared, a Thief always beats an unprepared opponent. A Thief can make a single prepared opponent unprepared as a free action.

That mage beats my dick
>swn beat your dick

Why is there this perception that magic = can do anything? There's no reason that magic couldn't be difficult and often inconvenient to the point that if you could do it by hand it's actually easier to do by hand than by magic. I.e, magic CAN be used to create a massive stone structure but would require hundreds of mages chanting in unison for weeks at a time while performing thousands of animal sacrifices. It might then be easier to hire a bunch of guys to just build the thing. Magic should be the way you accomplish things you CAN'T accomplish with brain or brawn.

>Why is there this perception that magic = can do anything?
Because in many (shitty) fantasy settings magic stands in for science (I think some fantasy or sci-fi author even stated that sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic). Science, at least in its most broad sense, is what we as a species have been doing ever since we figured out that throwing rocks at wild animals is a more efficient way to kill them than running up to them and beating them with our fists.

That's why magic can do everything, because in its broadest definition science is everything we have been doing as intelligent beings. I do agree that for balance a game should ideally have low magic and have magic & science existing as separate entities. Not every scholar should be a mage, and not even every mage should be a scholar. If we really need to draw a real world analogy, a mage should be something akin to an artillery officer. Someone who does take an academic approach to things, but focuses entirely on how to effectively make things go boom.

I assume you are referring to a general rule as opposed to a specific setting. I also assume you are referring specifically to combat as opposed to just comparing general usefulness. In which case my answer is that the warrior should beat both in anything approaching a 'fair' fight because that's what a warrior does, wins combat. Thieves and mages should have utility.

My reasoning is that in any world where mages beat warriors in combat then you won't have warriors, anyone who wanted to fight would learn magic instead. Anyone who couldn't learn magic wouldn't fight for the same reasons that weak people in the real world don't tend to become soldiers.

I sure someone is gearing up to explain how a mage can just fly and cast fire balls but that would be making a big assumption about what exactly mages can do in a given setting. If a mage can beat a warrior in a fight then a setting wouldn't have warriors. They would just have utility mages and combat mages.

Thieves are essentially in the same boat. A thief is, by game definition, a person who learned other skills besides combat.

No, no, no. It goes like this.

Lancer beats wizard beats barbarian beats ninja beast swordsman beats archer beats lancer.

>Because in many (shitty) fantasy settings magic stands in for science
Fair enough, but even if that is the reference point that's not how science in the real world works. Brilliant scientists don't gain superpowers that let them beat up there high school bullies, they just make way more money.

I don't have any Magics in my settings, so neither. :^)

But they do gain "superpowers" that let them manipulate the world around them in ways that would seem magical. The weapons that soldiers use are invented by scientists, just like how magic armor is enchanted by an enchanter.

I, personally, like the idea of mages all around sucking in combat but being great for advancing plotlines and doing "weird shit", but that's not very feasible in combat heavy settings where killing things with magic is often more important than doing cool things with magic.

According to Pokemon, it's the former.

Except the thief is clearly given a much better skillset that also allows it to negate it's weaknesses to the warrior and end up stupidly shilled to hell and back.

>Brilliant scientists don't gain superpowers that let them beat up there high school bullies
WMD's are basically gigantic anti-bully weapons thought up by a group of dorks in their nerd rings. I will admit this is incredibly reductionist, but this reductionist thinking is precisely what made wizards the de facto mortal gods they are in a lot of RPGs.

>there high school bullies
>there

>he doesn't fap to Frazetta
faggot

>Conan cuts Gandalf in half,
>Jack Sparrow tricks Conan.
Have you never read any of Howard's books?
Conan the Cimmerian is a Thief, not a Fighting-Man.

If you've read the books, you'd recognize that he is in fact very much a fighting-man. Though he does have skills like a thief, and used them rather frequently in his youth, he was first and foremost a guy who could fight.

Mage kills thief who kills warrior who dies

cant we have rouge, wizard, fighter as equal brother-in-arms?

Thieves advance THAC0 almost as fast as Fighting-Men.
The lag behind, but aren't left behind until you reach unreasonable levels.
A 10th level Thief has the same THAC0 as a 10th level Fighting-Man, etc.
Thieves fall behind on hp, but any bonus from CON brings them to 'average Fighter' hp.
Conan reasonably has 18CON and 18CON Thieves have *more* up than an 'average Fighter.'

>Gygax's writeup for Conan
You forgot your two pages of snowflake powers, also
>psionics

Dude, it's in the inspiration for D&D. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. I mean, there were occasions where they almost fucked each other over, but they got over it and became friends again.

The Gray Mouser raped the woman Fafhrd loved at one point.

Just saying.

just some good practical joke fun between friends hahaha, don't you and your friends do a bit of raping once and a while too?

haha but seriously, user, how's your sister doing anyway?

I like her better as a warrior.

10/10 post.