So I was having a perfectly reasonable conversation about something that wasn't stupid then a wild moron appeared to talk about Death at 0. This post isn't really about Death at 0, maybe I'll do one in the future:
Wild Moron: "Death at Zero primarily kills the classes whose main job is to fight or deal with hazards infinitely more than others, mainly fighters, clerics and rogues, because the only time a wizard is going to die is if the party is too dumb to put the wizard in the middle, or the DM goes out of their way to ambush the wizard."
This I would normally shirk off, but I had just had a session where the only PC killed was a 2nd level MU for doing something stupid that got themselves killed. So I explained that Wild Moron was making gross generalizations and needed to stop pretending D&D was a video game where "mobs" have "aggro". This is all based on the stupidity of the 3E-5E generation, which is the majority of gamers nowadays. It's hilarious because an average GM like me looks like a fucking super genius in comparison to any of their efforts about anything because of how little they know about... anything.
The Moron proceeded to be stupid. No play by play this time. Basically their position was that anyone can look like a lightly-armored idiot with throwing knives and successfully hide their abilities as a magic user in a fight, and thus not be targeted by anyone (or man or goblin) over the heavily armed and armored fighter.
The Moron didn't understand the next step in logical progression: That's not how Magic Users are played. Magic users.. CAST SPELLS. If they don't they are effectively not magic-users and are therefore entirely dead weight. Furthermore, they have the least amount of armor and HP, meaning they have to be the most aware of their position as a bag of feathers. Adventurers ALL face challenges, MUs WILL be targeted by monsters because it makes more sense to kill the guy hucking fireballs and lightning bolts than the fighter killing one or two enemies at a time. And any monster smart enough to wield weapons and have language/form groups will take the next step and have ACTUAL TACTICS.
Next comes in Contrarian Dickhead: "The fact that fighters face more chances to take damage and thus more chances to die goes without saying, it is a fundamental part of the game, its right there in their name, it is beyond argument."
Anytime you find yourself in the position of anti-thought, which is the position this person is in, it's the same as being in a position with no thought or argument. You're essentially pointing out you never actually thought about it, making your position fundamentally less grounded than anyone who ever has thought about it, by nature of how logic, arguments, sanity, and intelligence works. I laughed out loud by how dumb it was.
At this point I walked away from the conversation. Because educating morons and dickheads is not my stock and trade. So what's the correct position? One gained from decades of experience. Fuck your plea to expertise logic fallacy bullshit, all the time exp from play trumps theoretical wankery by armchair gaming theorist idiots.
You don't know this but Fighters and Thieves are very aware of their HPs. Wizards players use that brainpower to be aware of their spells. While they need to be aware of their HPs, they simply often AREN'T. No there aren't exceptions. My experience does trump yours if you think otherwise. Because you were never thinking about it. You are that second dickhead. Never thinking, just taking shit for granted. Also what happens if a Magic-User takes a hit but doesn't die and the Fighter gets down to low HP? The fighter gets healed. He and the party will get more out of him being on his feet longer, and likely the Magic-User is out of spells or very low in spells at this point. Why blow a heal spell or potion on somebody when there's a chance you'll run over their max and not get your full bang out of your buck anyway? By the resting rules, the MU will heal to full faster anyway. The game is stealth-designed in this manner, and newbs like the above don't realize it.
This means the fighter is LESS likely to die than the Magic-User by several orders of magnitude, even at early levels. Especially at early levels because the monsters only discriminate between Fighters and MUs if the DM sucks and is running D&D like it's Everquest. Monsters with weapons/tactics? Fuhgettaboutit. As soon as there's the slightest inkling that casters are casters, they are taking an arrow or dagger unless there is an actual logical reason for an enemy to not to do that. And if they hold off on casting spells to keep suspicions low? Well then they're a worthless member of the party anyway, not even as good as _Thieves_ in _combat_.
Speaking of which, early Thieves are generally actually the worst off, with the worst of both worlds (only marginally more protected by armor than a Magic User but HPs are considered even less worthy of heals). But they're most likely do die of a failed saving throw, not HP loss, simply because they're more likely to keep an eye on it than wizards and their jobs often involve saves rather than anything that causes them HP loss.
Anyway, that's the lesson for today. Don't be a Wild Moron or Contrarian Dickhead. Think about stuff before jumping to conclusions.
