Wall to stop your escape, ice block your counterattacks, slowing your movements so you can’t escape, really it’s a terrible idea for a warrior to fight a frost mage.
The power of casters? Well I can provide an example.
My character:
_-- Walking through Murder-Row, in Silvermoon whilst talking to myself – _
– Three Thugs Come Out, chuckling —
Thugs: “Well well, look who’s all alone? An easy kill, an easy treat.”
Me: “Who said … I was alone?”
Something moves swiftly from the shadows taking one of the thugs into the Abyss
– A pool of blood emerges into the light from the shadows –
“And then, there were two. My Shadowfiend has fed me enough with the sacrifice to show you True Power.” - - Hovers as Void Form Activates - -
– Large Nightmarish Bolts launch from hands, piecing their bodies; as they start to experience pain, searing fingerprints on their skin that seem to be vampirically leaching life from their vitality –
{One drops dead}
Me: Well, well well - Look who’s all alone? 
Now, that your body has been shown power - Time for your mind & soul too.
Thug: 
“YOU’LL PA-”
– Flays their mind, before they can scream I activate silence, removing their mouth to their horror –
Me: Shhhh , shhh – quiet now. They exiled our kind for using this kind of power. Let me show you … Why ! 
.
.
.
– Meanwhile in the throne room –
Grand Magister Rommath : Oof . Did anyone else just get a chill down their spine?
4 Likes
We have force fields made of fire. If things get real, we can surround ourselves with three feet of impenetrable ice. We can displace our bodies through time and space.
If you offend a magic user bad enough, your body will be sacrificed, and your life force or soul can be trapped and used as fuel, or consumed for fun. I feel like there isn’t much justification required.
By lore… most magi are stupidly powerful.
If anyone jumps anyone, they already have an advantage. However all that advantage goes out the window when suddenly the guy teleports away and a fireball is thrown at you that catches you on fire.
Things magi can do.
- Turn people into sheep.
- Magically summon fire.
- Magically summon a downpour of sharp ice spears.
- Make copies of themselves.
- Teleport.
- Summon elementals.
- WARP. TIME. (In some cases.)
- Turn invisible.
- Encase themselves in a protective layer of ice.
- BREATHE. FIRE.
- Create a nova of fire around themselves.
There was a saying that was supposed to be popular among humans during the first war. Something that kinda boils down to (this is paraphrased) “A peasant gets angry and he kicks a dog. A wizard gets angry and a town disappears.”
Then there are shaman which… if the elements are feeling particularly sadistic, can do any number of horrible things to you from making the ground swallow you up to making the air in your lungs go away.
If it’s a warlock then… you should probably just apologize. Given that they can drain the life out of you or lock your soul into a gemstone for X number of reasons.
Yeah. A lot of magi are fragile because they dedicate a lot of their time and effort to study… but it’s the study of manipulating reality.
1 Like
Its a strange way to look at it OP. For me its the other way around.
I fail to see what a warrior,rogue or monk would do when a giant rock with fire demon would fall on him like a meteor.
4 Likes
“How do you justify being a spellcaster?”
By selling the naysayers to petting zoos, dairy units, and glue factories.
3 Likes
This is an intresting topic and I can understand what you’re getting at.
Maybe this is part of the issue, warriors, monks, hunters, and probably even rouges and to a certain extent make exist in reality. Casters however are epitome of high fantasy. WoW fits that genre. For those of us that like to disconnect with rl and delve into a chatacter that can only exist in a world like Azeroth, a caster may be a good choice. Also some people may just like ranged. All of my toons are, I can’t seem to pick up melee.
As for the scenario you mentioned Kaileena could easily root the thieves in place before the got close enough and either drag them under the earth or call down lighting (lore ability) to deal with them. As caters we’ve got quite a few debilitating options to deal with multiple foes.
If only. 
1 Like
What you are referring to is the archetypical trope of the wizard in fantasy.
You are a squishy nerd who might get knocked out by a farmhand, or sprain your foot trying to do anything remotely athletic.
… but lord have mercy on the fool who makes fun of you from afar, as they’ll watch their house suddenly go up in a glorious fireball shortly afterwards.
When playing a quintessential mage archetype, try to imagine yourself as either an artillery piece or utility tool. No one is going to blame you for being crap at melee. Melee is what the expendable cannonfodder cough fighters cough are going to do; while you remain at a safe distance and; for lack of a better term; blow crap up.
But of course, that is the popular image. There are no hard and fast rules saying a spellcaster can’t be competent in melee combat.
There isn’t much stopping a wizard from practicing a martial tradition.
Even IRL, we have academians and PhD holders who are physically fit & well versed in martial arts as well. Historically, swordfighting was a popular sport for students.
Battle mages are a popular concept; mages who are physically fit & trained so as to hold their own even on the battlefield if need be.
But I think most importantly; powerful spellcasters often hold a degree of influence. As a mage, you will likely have henchmen, mercenaries, servants, familiars or demons to watch your back. As a Mage, you likely hold as much pull as a lesser noble/upper middle class, and as such you probably wouldn’t walk around alone in the bad part of town without a group or escort of some kind.
Look up at Western-Esotericism/Exotericism which basically is the real life of “magic” in the essence through philosophy, science, literature, mathematics and beyond. It is difficult to understand it as it encompasses a mix variety of thoughts and obscure understanding in which might take time to truly comprehend it. But eventually it might make some sense of it.
Look up Arcane mathematics which is an actual thing that sort of speaks of the diagrams and symbols within occult drawings that does has deep math variations.
Other than that its difficult to interpret WoW’s magic to our modern-real world as most things just cannot make sense. For instance, even if Fireball or teleportation were to be a thing, there are grounds of violations within society’s rules, norms etc and the risk of being seen as a potential threat by upper powers (government etc). In a way, magic can be seen as something psychologically that as closest that we can come up to might be the power of our minds, intuition, innovation and beyond, and not necessarily has to belong to be part of the Academic/Academia educated people.
After all, we still live in a world full of the unknown
PS: The “Placebo Effect” its something that still needs to be understood, difficult to explain and yet it exists. Power of the mind, willpower, or something else beyond it
Or instead of doing all of that, you could just… y’know, like… acknowledge it’s fantasy and that magic is real here.
4 Likes
You mean a warrior who jumps from a skyship and one shots a hundred foot fel reaver on his way down, doesn’t make the mark of high fantasy for you?
3 Likes
Obviously there are exceptions. My point is that the knight-warrior trope is something that may very well existed in reality but in fantasy they are amped up quite a bit though. Casters are completely fantasy/fiction. Magic and magic users are part of the classic fantasy trope.
Usually as villains for the sword-swinging hero to put down. Either that or as advisors who can scarcely offer anything more.
Judging by how long this thread is going, people really have a hard time figuring out the meaning of fiction or fantasy.
1 Like
it’s a literal game, and this is RP (by that of course I mean, that is the point of RPing - you assume a character unlike yourself)
1 Like
Uh, no? For every Morgan Le Fey there’s a Merlin.
1 Like
I think that one is a little too much into her RP today.
For every Merlin there are 3 Thulsa Dooms. And most Merlins turn out to be mortal versions of Gandalfs.
You don’t watch nearly enough anime.
1 Like
Oh come on people, we are talking about an RPG here. In game, if I set you on fire you will continue to try and stab me with your pointy stick. In real life, if I set you on fire…
And I wouldn’t need magic to do it.
2 Likes