Fighters are
currently in the best place in the history of the Realms.
-Practices are robust; there are a number of them
throughout the week. Practices see large numbers of attendance. Practices cover
different geographical areas that follows the area the Realms covers. Practices
range in skill level, providing learning atmospheres for beginners and the more
advanced fighters. Practices are in a good place.
-The Order of the List has changed the landscape of
fighters for the better. It creates goals for fighters; it gives them something
to achieve within a quantitative environment. This new level of competition and
testing has increased fighter participation at events drawing people to events
they would not normally have attended. This increased participation feeds on
itself causing more people to participate. The Order of the List has created an
overall greater interest in fighting.
Fighters are
currently in the worst place in the history of the Realms.
-The gap between beginning fighters and skilled fighters
has grown too wide. With the increased active participation of the more skilled
fighters, it means that the less skillful are being left behind. It can be
quite frustrating to continually be beaten. New fighters need to see a
progression of their skills or they will move away from fighting to other
aspects of the Realms, such as spellcasting. Sure, we can say that increased
practice on the part of newer players will eventually overcome this gap, but in
the mean time we are losing potential fighters to frustration. For some people,
getting continually beaten into the ground is not fun, certainly not when there
are other ways to play in this game.
-Fighter participation in quests has reached an all-time
low. Why is that? Part of the reason is because fighters are looking to
exercise their martial skills and they are not getting that at quest events. The
majority of quest events do not facilitate this. This is for several reasons…
-NPC abilities. Due to low NPC
counts EHs stack up their NPCs with special combat abilities, abilities that
negate martial skill. Being killed by a boulder, an armor-piercing attack or a
monster that is invulnerable to weapons requires little skill on the part of
the NPC. Superior martial skill can seldom counter such abilities. Martial skill becomes a non-factor in these types of encounters.
-Death has no meaning. A fighter
with superior martial skill can keep himself alive for extended combats, all
the while killing the enemy. An inferior fighter will die quicker. However, due
to the rampant proliferation of raise dead spells/mechanics an unskilled
fighter will return to a fight as quickly as a skilled fighter. While promoting
participation is a good thing, without consequences there is an erosion of fighter
skill and desire. Poor fighters do not have to gain martial skill because there
is little to no consequence of having poor skill. Skilled fighters see that
martial skill gains no benefit over an unskilled fighter and thus the desire to
excel diminishes; why exert yourself if you will just get back up in moments? There
is no reward for being skilled; the reward used to be the ability to stay alive
but spells have eroded that reward to where skill is no longer a factor as to
how much time a fighter spends dead or alive.
-Skill is not a factor in
quests. This one is similar to the above point. While most quests end up with a
fight between the heroes and the big bad guy, martial skill is not the
determining factor in winning the battle. All too often the final fight is
determined by the expenditure of raises, not by martial prowess. All too often
fighters are relegated to “protecting the casters” from the crunchies while the
casters win the final fight through a ritual. This includes other fights during
the day that are won by having more spells/raise deads than the number of
deaths the NPCs perpetuate on the heroes. Fighters want fighting to be relevant
to the outcome. If they lose a good fight but then a caster gets back up and
raises the site, it reinforces the fact that fighters are meaningless. Too
often a fighter will end an event wondering what they actually contributed.
This then leads to them wondering if they will go to another quest event.
What are some things we can possibly do to alleviate the
problems we are facing?
-We need to find a way to encourage newer fighters and
also those mid-level fighters that can still improve. Newbie tourneys are a
good start but perhaps we need to create a mid-level set of tournaments as
well. Perhaps we need to have specialized tournaments wherein only those who
have won a tournament before are allowed to enter and are removed from the
general tourneys. It would be creating an arena where the best fight the best
and the rest fight each other. We need to strike a balance between promoting
the best in fighters and allowing the newer fighters to progress without overwhelming
frustration.
-Event Holders need to realize the needs of fighters.
Fighters do not want to simply use weapons and fight. They want their martial
prowess to be tested and to be effective. They want to be rewarded for having
martial skill, which is entirely different than simply wielding a weapon. There
need to be more encounters that require martial skill and where the consequences
of the fight are tangible, whether the fight is won or lost.
The state of fighters can be improved but it will take a conscious effort to do so.
The state of fighters can be improved but it will take a conscious effort to do so.
