Mage Armor and Inertial Barrier would logically make you immune to attacks from middling Strength enemies who rely on Dexterity. If a magical barrier is covering all of you, then why would you have weak points?
Mage Armor and Inertial Barrier would logically make you immune to attacks from middling Strength enemies who rely on Dexterity.
Logically speaking, there would be no such thing as purely mundane fighters in a world where magic exists and has permeated the very plants, minerals, and animals of the world, and there would be more preventative measures against magic in place.
How?
If everything else in the setting is inherently magic in nature, why are not humans? If you can learn to use magic and all it takes is study, someone will have figured out simpler, less complex forms of magic that worked them into everyday life. This isn't to say that everyone int he world is a wizard, just that a simple farmer living in the woods still probably knows a trick their daddy taught them that lets him start a fire in the palm of his hand, and martial training often includes stances and disciplines that let you do shit like jump 10 feet into the air.
The idea that magic exist everywhere, and is common enough that random fricking animals use it by default, but for humans your only options are zero-magical mundane person or world shaking miniature god and there's no middle ground at all is stupid.
I don't need to know the full backlog of magical theory, I just need you to teach me the specific words and hand motions for my Rogue to cast Detect Poison. Its just a cantrip, it can't be that hard, and its very useful in my line of work.
In my opinion, any setting that fulfills the following:
>Magic exists and can be learned by anyone
>Magic is controllable or applied enough that it has direct, specific applications in combat (ie, it's the sort of magic that lets yoy cast fireballs and make magical barriers and heal as opposed to having to wait until a blue moon to craft a potion or casting bones to spout prophecies)
>There exist professional adventurers, soldiers, fighters or mercenaries of any sort
Then there is no justifiable reason for all adventurers/mercenaries/whatever not to learn magic. They're just gimping themselves.
In my opinion, any setting that fulfills the following:
>Engineering exists and can be learned by anyone
>Engineering is controllable or applied enough that it has direct, specific applications in combat (ie, it's the sort of engineering that lets you calculate structural weaknesses or construct barriers and repair engines as opposed to having to wait until a blue moon to receive sub-par steel shipments from China or casting math to spout prophecies)
>There exists professional service personnell, soldiers, fighters or mercenaries of any sort
Then there is no justifiable reason for all service personnell/mercenaries/whatever to not learn advanced differential mathematics, structural mechanics, and six-dimensional temporal physics. They're just gimping themselves.
>Engineering is controllable or applied enough that it has direct, specific applications in combat (ie, it's the sort of engineering that lets you calculate structural weaknesses or construct barriers and repair engines as opposed to having to wait until a blue moon to receive sub-par steel shipments from China or casting math to spout prophecies)
This is the false equivalency you're making. IRL engineering fails this test because it doesn't get to the expediency of "direct, specific applications in combat". The skillset is too high-level to staff all the boots on the ground with such people.
Combat engineers erecting fortifications and performing repair work under fire *do* exist, but they're scarce specialists heavily guarded because they are not easily replaced and only occasionally useful, not a constant feature in firefights. Importantly, a vehicle equivalent is hardly ever present in RPGs.
The problem is that the basics in spellcasting are still a giant qualitative leap. Shield means you don't have to carry one and can use a two-handed weapon, Magic Missile is *utterly guaranteed* small game, just 1st and 2nd level spells thoroughly transform how people fight more than enough.
Even with the drastic problems, three levels of Wizard or Sorcerer or whatever other high-rate caster tends to make a dramatically better Fighter than the last three levels of Fighter. Even Wizard 1/Fighter 4 is easily a better Fighter than a pure Fighter 5.
Addedum on further issues of this false equivalency:
We *do* give every last soldier basic technical training, as they are in fact expected to be able to do basic troubleshooting for any vehicle they operate or weapon they use, and perform simple remedial actions such as reconnecting drive belts (depending on accessibility) or clearing improperly ejected cartridges. They are rarely taught the underlying theory work, but they *do* know some more technical aspects of the operation.
Jets don't work this way due to the amount of infrastructure required for deployment, and ships have specialists inseparably on-staff, but they're outliers. Indeed, every last person on a nuclear submarine has fairly extensive training in the safe handling of the reactor to maximize redundancy in that sensitive critical system, and ship-side damage control has a lower level of similarly widespread damage control training.
Fundamentally, the problem is that even this much is totally absent from the Fighter's internal design. A really good magic weapon is just +numbers over what they do with shit iron, there are no remedial actions or transformative usage, despite barely-worth-mentioning apprentices picking up dramatically transformative spellcasting. At 20th level, the Fighter insisting on *still* not learning so much as Shield for a slight defensive bonus is nonsense.
Engineering is an application of a field of science, which is a study of nature.
Magic is often supernatural or removed from nature.
I can also cite many examples of creatures that can use magic without study, of minerals which exude magical effects without having to be interconnected with anything else, and plants which can produce effects that violate the very laws of conservation of mass and energy. Can you cite any examples of creatures born with a master's degree worth of engineering knowledge? Or any examples of minerals that don't need to be processed to any degree to work at full effectiveness and least risk to its machine and least harm to its surroundings? If you can, I bet such examples don't even come close to the number of inherently magical examples in fantasy.
Stuff your false equivalency up your ass.
For 'magic barrier covering all of you', you want things like Force Cages and the like, which actually are that. And actually do stop attacks, since there's an actual barrier there.
You're just talking about things that, roughly, replicate actual armor; people can still be damaged through such. It's kind of quite clear on what it does.
Mage Armor covers your body.
Evidently not all of it, since it provides a lower AC bonus than full plate.
So does any armor. To cover does not mean to completely and seamlessly encase. Mage Armor has always been a literal magic armor. It's a Conjuration (creation) spell for a reason.
>mage armor
wooo use a spell slot for chain shirt equivalent Ac
>inertial barrier
what?
They would logically be an extra HP buffer.
It's a reference to a game from before you were born, D&D3.5e
>Using D&D style rules
Frick that. You are going to need pure strength to get through that.
>Has never read a rulebook in his life
That would only be the case if you assume the dexgays only have mundane tools; what if one has like an unicorn horn rapier that cuts through magical barriers or something like that?
Weak points in the magical geometric structures, little gaps in the lattice that can be exploited. It's not like a solid barrier, but like a flexible, ethereal wall of diamond if that makes any sense.
A wall of diamond doesn't have that many weak points.
A) you don't get a wall of diamond with 1st level spell
B) an actual wall of diamond, while very hard, would shatter if you hit it just the right way
diamonds aren't used in armor or defensive structures for a very good reason, and besides I said it was like a diamond anyways, meaning that it's very strong in some aspects but is fatally fragile in others.
Have you tried not playing d&d
If it covers completely and stops physical motion then it's a bubble. Enjoy suffocating, homosexual.