Difference Between Fighters and Wizards?

#1

Would a spellcaster and warrior characters begin play with the exact amount of Hearts/HP, no differences?

#2

Correct. Both would have 10 hit points.

There are certainly other games that make a distinction, but ICRPG is not one of those.

#3

If there’s no mechanical advantage to being a warrior over a wizard type when it comes to survivability, why play a warrior that can’t cast spells?

#4

Because wizards are DUMB?

Hehehehe. Lots of people play all kinds of classes (or even mix and match!) without getting so micro-focused on something minor like hit points, and there are tons of reasons to play a cool fighter over a spell caster. Min-maxing (or, as someone once told me, system optimization) is a bit of a scar from other games. Free your mind, Quaid! The hit point equality doesn’t change a thing in terms of fun at the table with ICRPG.

That being said, if it matters a ton to you, just give your fighters an extra 5 hit points at character creation. Your table, your rules. Do what’s fun. But lots of folks have a blast with ICRPG and don’t change a thing about the hit point system.

#5

My rp group for the most part are well well-versed in Pathfinder. There will be blood if I can’t give the “fightery-type” pc a bit of an advantage over the spellslinging pc when it comes to taking punishment.

But the game is light enough it should be easy to house rule.

#6

A fighter also will typically favor survivability through other means, such as CON and better armour than a wizard!

#7

Instead of thinking in terms of HP, why not think of a cool feature that only warriors could have? Attacks of opportunities perhaps? Or a second wind ability?

#8

Spells and Feats serves that purpose admirably.

#9

Much of it is flavor, but also equipment plays a large role. Spells take equipment slots and other resources, based on your settings rules. They may be subject to spell burn. Spells are also less reliable and wild and harder to find. Sure, you can try to keep your spells in a singular slot using a Spell book, but then that is one vulnerable item with a lot of power. Swords and armor are cheap and finding a decent weapon is no issue. Finding and having the right spell gets trickier.

#10

Hey you mght find this as a useful resource for ICRPG

Thats also a link to a site thats dedicated to showing slot of the resourced made for Icrpg too.

I do recommend, as other have, to try the game as is first though. I playe melee, no magic characters all the time and have a blast. Stats play heavily into things so characters built for magic will miss out on physical stats alot because you cant have it all you know? Plus items in this game start scaling up ALOT. Theres all kinds of wild loot that can make any character even more interesting than what they already start with.
I also recommend using SPELL BURN rules if you feel magic is too OP
I wish you and your players luck, good rolls, and lots of fun.

#11

Alex, you deserve a hero coin for that Total Recall reference.

Blackadder, you might like the optional rules from the Magic book(or Magic section of the Master Edition). Using those, magic users will have to either spend their own HP to cast, or have stun points specifically for powering their magic.

If you want to stick with the basic roll-to-cast rules, remember that casters are 20 times more susceptible to crit fails than non-casters, and melee fighters benefit from Battle Fury and Dogpile dice. You could have casters automatically start with a spell burn die, maybe bumping it to a D6 if the D4 is too restrictive.

#12

I was thinking about the following house rule:

Warrior
Warriors gain additional Hit Points (not Hearts) equal to their CON modifier.

#13

Clean and easy to understand. Works for me.

I believe if you are playing the MASTER edition, CON already gives bonuses to DEF. Most casters would be lean to spending points in INT and Magical EFFORT anyway.

Another thing you can add to Warriors (that is very Original D&D Old School) is that they can use any and all magical weapon and armor, utilizing their highest effort bonus (example: Weapon Effort bonus on the Magical Effort die for that weapon). Mages need specific MAGE tagged items to use.

#14

I have used a system where each starting spell reduces starting HP by one. In the fiction this is justified as time researching, praying, etc to master spells took away from time training one body for combat. I often use a level up system of d8s for martial types, d8s for hybrids, d6s for full casters. Casters get more spells or spell upgrades as they progress.

#15

Be aware that characters do not gain a new Heart easily, so they will be stuck with 10 HP for a longer time.
This is not an issue, though, as there is no HP inflation in ICRPG.
It is a different mind set, I would suggest sticking with it for a while until you experience how it all works together, before changing anything.

#16

Not having this distinction is what made ICRPG better for me. I’ve never bought the artificial balancing rule of making mages have the endurance of a chocolate bunny in a hot summer day and on top of that don’t let them use armor or big weapons. It makes no sense for me. If I want to make my wizard do push-ups while reading his magic tome, so be it! :smiley:

Also the warrior incapable of using magic is another paradox. It’s cool with Conan but not with the other 800k fighters after him…

The spells occupying slots on equip is more than enough to balancing things out in our games.

#17

The video game Fae Tactics has a simple rule I enjoy plugin into any TTRPG with combat: Any melee attacker will attack an adjacent foe if said foe take damage from an active source (a character, not something like fire under its feets or poison).
So you keep your warrior in the middle of the fight while archer and mages are happy to do their own attacks and the warrior get tons of free attacks.

#18

This can have a balancing problem with so many attacks! I would take this rule and just have the warrior give support damage to other characters if they are engaged in melee.

Warrior is in the fray? Good! The Mage spits out fire to the enemy, and the fighter gives a bonus of +1 or +2 to that damage/effort!