We immediately joined him for dinner and our cleric shot a guiding bolt at him, he turned into bats and flew away laughing while gargoyles animated and attacked us and the harpsichord played by itself
It honestly kind of improved my opinion of him, I can't say I wouldn't do the same if a cleric shot a guiding bolt at me after I brought them over for dinner
Later he murdered the cleric, mutilated her, and impaled her on a spike in the center of Vallaki with a sign nailed to her chest reading (iirc) "No heroes will save you". The guards panicked, I accidentally killed one of them, the bard took the opportunity when nobody was looking to assassinate the Burgermeister and successfully blamed Watchter's cultists (getting us in good with Viktor when we brought them down), it was marvelous
Edit: it wasn't really the cleric, he had murdered the evil druid we had convinced to abandon Strahd, that he wasn't the true power here, he merely glamoured the dead druid to appear to be our cleric to break our spirits. The real cleric we found in Ravenloft, a vampire. We locked her in a crypt and let her out of Barovia after Strahd was dead, still a vampire, probably a bad call. She sped away towards the nearest city in the night, I'm sure its fine.
I picked up Curse of Strahd and it is dense. The actual castle looks like it’ll be a lot of work to present.
The isometric view, whole cool, is a pain in the as when actually running it.
A word of advice: read the whole book before session 1, they squirrel away info about several things in multiple page locations, so you want to have at least a gist before the players get there.
The intro recommended that too. I’m a few chapters in already.
Not sure I’ll be completely done by this weekend but the first session will be more geared towards character intro and how they arrive in Barovia anyway.
I'd also do a card reading for yourself to seed the items in case the characters choose to never participate in one. Then overwrite the results of they do.
There is also a couple of open ended opportunities for the DM to do whatever:
The vineyard is missing 3 gems, the book spells out where two of them are. DM decided the third. I went with it being embedded in the Argunvost skull in the castle larder, leading to a zombie dragon fight when the characters went to get the skull. It's breath weapon was a spew of zombie parts don't bludgeoning and slashing dmg. He could also vomit out whole Strahd zombies as legendary actions.
There is also the cracked open sarcophagus in Amber Temple, book says do with it what you want. I put in a (downscaled) demon for them to fight further up the mountain in the village i made up where the druids and barbarians of the land live.
oh yeah our first shot at Curse of Strahd was trash because of a bad card reading. Stack the deck so you get what you want. You don't want to ever get no ally or no item
I also recommended and our DM used this supplement. It makes even the little girl a valuable ally by giving her portent dice the players can collectively use to save their bacon, should you draw her
I picked up Curse of Strahd and it is dense. The actual castle looks like it’ll be a lot of work to present.
The isometric view, whole cool, is a pain in the as when actually running it.
A word of advice: read the whole book before session 1, they squirrel away info about several things in multiple page locations, so you want to have at least a gist before the players get there.
The intro recommended that too. I’m a few chapters in already.
Not sure I’ll be completely done by this weekend but the first session will be more geared towards character intro and how they arrive in Barovia anyway.
I'd also do a card reading for yourself to seed the items in case the characters choose to never participate in one. Then overwrite the results of they do.
There is also a couple of open ended opportunities for the DM to do whatever:
The vineyard is missing 3 gems, the book spells out where two of them are. DM decided the third. I went with it being embedded in the Argunvost skull in the castle larder, leading to a zombie dragon fight when the characters went to get the skull. It's breath weapon was a spew of zombie parts don't bludgeoning and slashing dmg. He could also vomit out whole Strahd zombies as legendary actions.
There is also the cracked open sarcophagus in Amber Temple, book says do with it what you want. I put in a (downscaled) demon for them to fight further up the mountain in the village i made up where the druids and barbarians of the land live.
oh yeah our first shot at Curse of Strahd was trash because of a bad card reading. Stack the deck so you get what you want. You don't want to ever get no ally or no item
I also recommended and our DM used this supplement. It makes even the little girl a valuable ally by giving her portent dice the players can collectively use to save their bacon, should you draw her
I drew honestly (see my post further up the thread). Keep in mind the clues are vague enough that you can do some adjustments in the fly, like when i made the classroom at be a very sad and angry Ismark instead of the grocer boy in Village of Barovia.
I'll be sending my players to Ravenloft soon and instead of drawing from a physical deck, since all of my players have a phone or laptop with them, I'll be sending them images of the cards that the seer NPC draws. I'm not following the exact tarokka rules, but they should get the info they need anyway.
I'd love to run the whole Strahd campaign from the beginning, but I don't have the time. Instead my players are taking a detour from my Dragonlance campaign to spend some time in Sithicus. One of my characters knows what's coming and I keep assuring her that the vampire kender only want to 'borrow' her blood. She doesn't seem comforted by that.
This is my intro I posted to our FB group for Day 0 in the Strahd campaign.
In the town of Daggerfall the mercenary and security company Lasting Solutions has received a request to deal with Vistani bandits attacking traveling merchants nearby.
This isn't the first time the nomadic Vistani and their camps have passed through the area and they're a common sight in taverns. Usually the biggest trouble they cause is petty theft or tricking people out of their money. Those that are down on their luck however will take more drastic measures.
Having proven competent agents in the past, the three of you have been chosen to go investigate the issue and resolve it as necessary.
My plan is to (hopefully) get them to the first village and on to the Vistani camp with madame Eva so I can get the card reading done before we have to take a three week break.
I don't like it but part of that may be because i heavily dislike archers in fantasy. The ostensible main reason is that Eldrich Knights fit the archetype better. The other other main reason is that they're kidna shit mechanically.
Mechanically it's pretty much a worse battle master. You only get arrows, half as often or less as maneuvers, for between 2x and the same damage, and the effects kinda suck (except brute bane which is really, really, wayyyy too good)
A few of its abilities are kinda pointless. Being able to summon more arrows as an action is nice but like... who tracks arrows? Even if you are tracking arrows its not even all that many and it costs an action and only lasts 10 minutes. So you burn an entire action at the start or middle of a fight in order to not have to worry about this. Which is bad.
The fact that creating the arrow is a bonus action is also a big downside. Battlemasters get to do their thing when they hit and don't waste a bonus action on it. They can burst harder because they can use multiple maneuvers in the same turn. They can utility harder for the same reason. They can use the vast majority of their maneuvers with ranged weapons too. The Arcane Archer is limited to 1/round and it eats their bonus action. Which conflicts with second wind, plenty of good multi-class options etc.
Eldrich Knights, ironically, don't have as many worries about ammo. Not because they have a way to make them pointless but because they will quickly get to a point where they are likely to only use 1/round. They will be casting a spell or a cantrip and then be able to make a weapon attack as a bonus action. The combination of war magic(bonus action attack when you cantrip) and eldrich strike(enemies have disadvantage on saves vs next spell after you hit) seems more "arcane archery" than any of the arcane archer features in and of themselves. Not only do they lend themselves to interesting combinations (Acid Splash is low damage but it can target two people and is a save...). Blade Ward lets you be an off tank. (I really like the Mage Slayer/Sentinel Blade Ward construction). Etc etc.
Eldrich Knights fit better with feats. Elemental Adept doesn't work on force and requires you to be casting a spell. Magic Initiate lets you expand your cantrip selection (which you will be using a decent amount of due to War Magic). Spell Sniper expands your cantrip selection and doubles your range. War Caster lets you legitimately threaten on opportunity attacks (due to Poison Spray, Shocking Grasp, Acid Splash, or if you've got non-wizard spells, Thorn Whip, Vicious Mockery, Sacred Flame*)... some of which might even have disadvantage imposed on the save because of eldrich strike..
Eldrich Knights have better combos with other fighter features like Action Surge. You can attack a bunch of people at range on your turn, proccing eldrich strike, and then action surge and hit with with a spell they're all disadvantaged against...
*Not all of these are all that great because of MAD. But not all of them are particularly terrible either.
why would they have a bow/crossbow or whatever in a world with magic? I know the answer of killing the wizard with an arrow but why would they discover the bow if they had a level of magic? If one person could cast arcane missiles why build a bow?
I know but if during the time of discovery {ie caveman} if one figured out magic missile and the bow can take down the same creature after 5 hits what would be the point of continuing the bow?
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Working on a new map for a homebrew setting I'm figuring out. The Kingdom of Easterness. It's kind of a mix of northern California on the coasts and the Oregon high desert on the plateau.
I know but if during the time of discovery {ie caveman} if one figured out magic missile and the bow can take down the same creature after 5 hits what would be the point of continuing the bow?
like, we have cars--but that doesn't mean as a civilization we stopped breeding / riding horses, or building bicycles
as others have pointed out, it's not like being able to throw a magic missile is something everyone can learn how to do, whereas anyone can learn how to shoot a bow
That being said, it is fun to wonder what humanity would look like if there was reliable, regular access to actual magic. What would medicine look like if every clinic had a staff of clerics? What would agriculture look like if the National Association of Druids could make any piece of land supernaturally bountiful? How much of the labor force could be replaced by Unseen Servants? What would the cosmetic or fashion industries be like if anyone could buy a scroll and just make themselves look exactly how they want? How would.governments function if spies could literally read your mind?
Either way, there are answers that can make sense. Magic can be a limited resource. Caste Systems and other types of class structures might explicitly prohibit magic among lower classes for various reasons. Magic might require innate abilities that not everyone posses. Magic could be particularly hard to learn. Physical attributes might be selected for due to sport or other reasons.
Archery is a peeve of mine not really because it doesn't make sense for it to exist in the world but because it doesn't make sense for adventurers or other highly skilled people to utilize it. The value in archery is that peasants can train in their spare time. The downside of archery is the intense practice it requires. (Hence why crossbows tended to push bows out of military use). This makes archery great for regimented militia but not so great for 1 dude in a group of four. Swords have a bit of the same issue with the exception that you still need a guy in the front getting in the way when dealing with monsters and melee weapons are actually good at that.
When DM'ing eberron as an example i heavily discourage use of bows and generally provide wands that make attack spell cantrips.
Given that what makes melee in D&D useful might as well be called magic I don't see why you'd draw a line in the sand with archery. An actual melee person with no magic ability in a world of magic would either end up a smoking crater or a wet smear. No amount of physical skill will save you from a giant boulder hitting you, or a dragon stepping on you, or breathing on you. The stats and inherent abilities that make that possible in D&D are magic as far as realism is concerned.
Is this just the D&D version of shitting on Hawkeye?
I mean. No. Hawkeyes power is hella strong and doesnt work with guns (because you cannot variable draw a gun)... but if he could have trained to be a sorcerer instead then yea he would be pretty dumb. Because hawkeye with fireball and other magic would be better than hawkeye with a bow.
The problem is not “well dnd archers are regular dudes and wizards are magic” its that the thing that makes archers mystically good also makes wizards mystically better. The magically awesome gal who is magically awesome at bows would be magically better at magic. And since magic and archey do the same thing in dnd (ranged damage) but magic does that and also utility...well you can see why there are some thematic problems.
Edit: as an example. People here said “magic takes spell slots” and well... bows do to if you use the RAW... they take ammo. And spell slots are really just ammo by another name.
But then you say how many arrows can you carry and again some pretty hard limits. Quivers hold 20 unless you are lucky enough to get a magical one (that requires attunement!) and then there is carry weight...
Has anyone else been disappointed when bugbears are in a game and they’re not bear-sized beetles?
It’s me, I’m the GM that statted up and used bug-bears. They were made by a power couple of corrupted druid and mad wizard that brought the world owl-bears.
I know but if during the time of discovery {ie caveman} if one figured out magic missile and the bow can take down the same creature after 5 hits what would be the point of continuing the bow?
Is this a bit? Am I missing something here?
Anyway as others said:
- magic missile cost a spell slot.
- magic missile requires extensive study or is only accessible to a limited amount of people.
- Cavemage can kill 1 big creature or 3 little ones, then needs to lie down for a bit. Cavearcher can take out many more creatures in the same time.
But then you say how many arrows can you carry and again some pretty hard limits. Quivers hold 20 unless you are lucky enough to get a magical one (that requires attunement!) and then there is carry weight...
You can always carry more ammo with you, you don't need to carry it on your person at all times. And most spellcasters cannot simply get all of their slots back at the end of a combat encounter, unlike archers.
I don't personally care that much for archery characters (the part that appeals to me about Rangers is the pet portion, the archery portion is just boring point&click), but purely mechanically if an archer can pull off the same effectiveness in combat as a caster then being able to do so every combat encounter might very well be a good reason to skip out on the utility of magic outside of combat.
Either way, there are answers that can make sense. Magic can be a limited resource. Caste Systems and other types of class structures might explicitly prohibit magic among lower classes for various reasons. Magic might require innate abilities that not everyone posses. Magic could be particularly hard to learn. Physical attributes might be selected for due to sport or other reasons.
Archery is a peeve of mine not really because it doesn't make sense for it to exist in the world but because it doesn't make sense for adventurers or other highly skilled people to utilize it. The value in archery is that peasants can train in their spare time. The downside of archery is the intense practice it requires. (Hence why crossbows tended to push bows out of military use). This makes archery great for regimented militia but not so great for 1 dude in a group of four. Swords have a bit of the same issue with the exception that you still need a guy in the front getting in the way when dealing with monsters and melee weapons are actually good at that.
When DM'ing eberron as an example i heavily discourage use of bows and generally provide wands that make attack spell cantrips.
The two main ways of getting Magic Missile are Sorcerer and Wizard. A Sorcerer is by definition super rare, probably <<1% of people. Wizards must spend years in cloistered study and need to be literate in order to produce even a cantrip. Neither of those things are common in a Neolithic society.
As for why you might prefer archery to magic in a small elite group, I consider the stories of contact between Native Americans and European colonists. Specifically, that a Native American could fire something like 15 arrows in the time it took for a colonist to fire and reload a musket once. Magic is powerful but a skilled archer can drop a lot of hot lead in the time it takes to cast a spell. Add to this that some creatures may be resilient to magic, that magic bows exist that make archers inherently more powerful than those in our world, some of the arbitrary limitations on magic (that magic missile can only target creatures, for example), and I see enough utility in an archer to justify it to myself.
Legolas seemed to do quite alright as the sole archer in his high level adventuring party.
Sure, massed ranks of longbows on the battlefield are the most effective way to utilize archers IRL, but a couple of bowmen in a hunting party in "cavemen times" would probably have really helped the poor bastards trying to take down a wooly mammoth or sabretooth tiger or giant tree sloth with pointy sticks.
Harry Potter does have a few wonderful answers for that!
They don't answer the question though of how modern day wizards learn things like Math. Or how to use a wrench. And I don't care how powerful a wizard you are, a cellphone would still beat an owl hands down in the communications department.
Also, point of order, there weren't cavemen in Faerun, or most magical rpg worlds. The gods created the sentient races, leaving no need for evolution to power on through.
As a very (very) amateur archer, I think bows are hella cool and I like playing archers. Well, okay both of those things were true before I got a bow for my birthday, and it's not really relevant anyway, but still.
D&D combat is basically all magic and about as unrealistic as you can get - which is one of the reasons 4E is so good, but that's a different 30-post argument - so having a person who can reshape reality several times a day before needing a nap be on a somewhat even playing field with a person who can shoot several arrows before needing to go pick them up is fine by me.
I love playing archers in RPGs and video games. The Rogue/Ranger I play in my monthly game deals out a ridiculous amount of damage. With his speed and mobility he is usually the least hurt of the group too. Our last session was an endurance run of encounters with no rests in between, I was happy to not have to worry about spell slots.
Harry Potter does have a few wonderful answers for that!
They don't answer the question though of how modern day wizards learn things like Math. Or how to use a wrench. And I don't care how powerful a wizard you are, a cellphone would still beat an owl hands down in the communications department.
There must be some kind of schooling that wizard kids get before Hogwarts starts at age 11, everybody get there knowing how to read and stuff. It stands to reason that this education would include arithmetic and basic geometry.
Algebra and calculus could probably be skipped by most wizards, and Arithmancy might cover some of that for the inclined; we never saw much of what it actually was.
Using a wrench probably doesn't require formal schooling for.the amateur, and magic would probably work better for the expert.
Cellphones are indeed awesome, but were relatively new when the story was set, and would probably take time to be adopted.
Harry Potter does have a few wonderful answers for that!
They don't answer the question though of how modern day wizards learn things like Math. Or how to use a wrench. And I don't care how powerful a wizard you are, a cellphone would still beat an owl hands down in the communications department.
There must be some kind of schooling that wizard kids get before Hogwarts starts at age 11, everybody get there knowing how to read and stuff. It stands to reason that this education would include arithmetic and basic geometry.
Algebra and calculus could probably be skipped by most wizards, and Arithmancy might cover some of that for the inclined; we never saw much of what it actually was.
Using a wrench probably doesn't require formal schooling for.the amateur, and magic would probably work better for the expert.
Cellphones are indeed awesome, but were relatively new when the story was set, and would probably take time to be adopted.
So the magic itself knows engineering, and not the wizard who uses magic to build a house? I don't know if I want to live in a house where the builder's basic mathimatics education stopped at a 6th grade elementary school level.
Its best not to think to hard on these things, I find, and just enjoy the story.
I mean, remember The Burrow? Wizard's houses don't need structural integrity, magic makes sure they don't fall down.
If there's something that actually does require higher math, Arithmancy exists.
I remember the Burrow being a lovely family home with wonderful wizard quirkiness that welcomes a poor orphan hero boy-wizard with open arms. I also remember that the Burrow was a piece of shit house that was held together with love more than anything else.
The Potter-verse exemplifies "a wizard did it" much more so than D&D does, IMO.
Edit: I also remember Hogwarts being a damn fine Castle, all properly constructed and everything.
That being said, it is fun to wonder what humanity would look like if there was reliable, regular access to actual magic. What would medicine look like if every clinic had a staff of clerics? What would agriculture look like if the National Association of Druids could make any piece of land supernaturally bountiful? How much of the labor force could be replaced by Unseen Servants? What would the cosmetic or fashion industries be like if anyone could buy a scroll and just make themselves look exactly how they want? How would.governments function if spies could literally read your mind?
It is a struggle in my world building to find a sweet spot where magic is rare enough that it doesn't upend a medieval society but common enough people don't freak out when they see it.
I mean both of those sound cool but one seems like a pain to craft and the other a pain for magic users to play.
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It honestly kind of improved my opinion of him, I can't say I wouldn't do the same if a cleric shot a guiding bolt at me after I brought them over for dinner
Later he murdered the cleric, mutilated her, and impaled her on a spike in the center of Vallaki with a sign nailed to her chest reading (iirc) "No heroes will save you". The guards panicked, I accidentally killed one of them, the bard took the opportunity when nobody was looking to assassinate the Burgermeister and successfully blamed Watchter's cultists (getting us in good with Viktor when we brought them down), it was marvelous
Edit: it wasn't really the cleric, he had murdered the evil druid we had convinced to abandon Strahd, that he wasn't the true power here, he merely glamoured the dead druid to appear to be our cleric to break our spirits. The real cleric we found in Ravenloft, a vampire. We locked her in a crypt and let her out of Barovia after Strahd was dead, still a vampire, probably a bad call. She sped away towards the nearest city in the night, I'm sure its fine.
oh yeah our first shot at Curse of Strahd was trash because of a bad card reading. Stack the deck so you get what you want. You don't want to ever get no ally or no item
I also recommended and our DM used this supplement. It makes even the little girl a valuable ally by giving her portent dice the players can collectively use to save their bacon, should you draw her
I drew honestly (see my post further up the thread). Keep in mind the clues are vague enough that you can do some adjustments in the fly, like when i made the classroom at be a very sad and angry Ismark instead of the grocer boy in Village of Barovia.
I'd love to run the whole Strahd campaign from the beginning, but I don't have the time. Instead my players are taking a detour from my Dragonlance campaign to spend some time in Sithicus. One of my characters knows what's coming and I keep assuring her that the vampire kender only want to 'borrow' her blood. She doesn't seem comforted by that.
I like the idea, but feel the lack of spell casting is weird from a lore perspective.
My plan is to (hopefully) get them to the first village and on to the Vistani camp with madame Eva so I can get the card reading done before we have to take a three week break.
Mechanically it's pretty much a worse battle master. You only get arrows, half as often or less as maneuvers, for between 2x and the same damage, and the effects kinda suck (except brute bane which is really, really, wayyyy too good)
A few of its abilities are kinda pointless. Being able to summon more arrows as an action is nice but like... who tracks arrows? Even if you are tracking arrows its not even all that many and it costs an action and only lasts 10 minutes. So you burn an entire action at the start or middle of a fight in order to not have to worry about this. Which is bad.
The fact that creating the arrow is a bonus action is also a big downside. Battlemasters get to do their thing when they hit and don't waste a bonus action on it. They can burst harder because they can use multiple maneuvers in the same turn. They can utility harder for the same reason. They can use the vast majority of their maneuvers with ranged weapons too. The Arcane Archer is limited to 1/round and it eats their bonus action. Which conflicts with second wind, plenty of good multi-class options etc.
Eldrich Knights, ironically, don't have as many worries about ammo. Not because they have a way to make them pointless but because they will quickly get to a point where they are likely to only use 1/round. They will be casting a spell or a cantrip and then be able to make a weapon attack as a bonus action. The combination of war magic(bonus action attack when you cantrip) and eldrich strike(enemies have disadvantage on saves vs next spell after you hit) seems more "arcane archery" than any of the arcane archer features in and of themselves. Not only do they lend themselves to interesting combinations (Acid Splash is low damage but it can target two people and is a save...). Blade Ward lets you be an off tank. (I really like the Mage Slayer/Sentinel Blade Ward construction). Etc etc.
Eldrich Knights fit better with feats. Elemental Adept doesn't work on force and requires you to be casting a spell. Magic Initiate lets you expand your cantrip selection (which you will be using a decent amount of due to War Magic). Spell Sniper expands your cantrip selection and doubles your range. War Caster lets you legitimately threaten on opportunity attacks (due to Poison Spray, Shocking Grasp, Acid Splash, or if you've got non-wizard spells, Thorn Whip, Vicious Mockery, Sacred Flame*)... some of which might even have disadvantage imposed on the save because of eldrich strike..
Eldrich Knights have better combos with other fighter features like Action Surge. You can attack a bunch of people at range on your turn, proccing eldrich strike, and then action surge and hit with with a spell they're all disadvantaged against...
*Not all of these are all that great because of MAD. But not all of them are particularly terrible either.
Edit: So "nay; play an Eldrich Knight instead"
I am saying why create the bow when your fellow cavemen figured out magic missile
I know but if during the time of discovery {ie caveman} if one figured out magic missile and the bow can take down the same creature after 5 hits what would be the point of continuing the bow?
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
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Because not everyone can use magic.
And bows don't eat up a spell slot.
like, we have cars--but that doesn't mean as a civilization we stopped breeding / riding horses, or building bicycles
as others have pointed out, it's not like being able to throw a magic missile is something everyone can learn how to do, whereas anyone can learn how to shoot a bow
Has anyone else been disappointed when bugbears are in a game and they’re not bear-sized beetles?
Nor do cantrips or rituals.
Either way, there are answers that can make sense. Magic can be a limited resource. Caste Systems and other types of class structures might explicitly prohibit magic among lower classes for various reasons. Magic might require innate abilities that not everyone posses. Magic could be particularly hard to learn. Physical attributes might be selected for due to sport or other reasons.
Archery is a peeve of mine not really because it doesn't make sense for it to exist in the world but because it doesn't make sense for adventurers or other highly skilled people to utilize it. The value in archery is that peasants can train in their spare time. The downside of archery is the intense practice it requires. (Hence why crossbows tended to push bows out of military use). This makes archery great for regimented militia but not so great for 1 dude in a group of four. Swords have a bit of the same issue with the exception that you still need a guy in the front getting in the way when dealing with monsters and melee weapons are actually good at that.
When DM'ing eberron as an example i heavily discourage use of bows and generally provide wands that make attack spell cantrips.
Is this just the D&D version of shitting on Hawkeye?
The problem is not “well dnd archers are regular dudes and wizards are magic” its that the thing that makes archers mystically good also makes wizards mystically better. The magically awesome gal who is magically awesome at bows would be magically better at magic. And since magic and archey do the same thing in dnd (ranged damage) but magic does that and also utility...well you can see why there are some thematic problems.
Edit: as an example. People here said “magic takes spell slots” and well... bows do to if you use the RAW... they take ammo. And spell slots are really just ammo by another name.
But then you say how many arrows can you carry and again some pretty hard limits. Quivers hold 20 unless you are lucky enough to get a magical one (that requires attunement!) and then there is carry weight...
It’s me, I’m the GM that statted up and used bug-bears. They were made by a power couple of corrupted druid and mad wizard that brought the world owl-bears.
Is this a bit? Am I missing something here?
Anyway as others said:
- magic missile cost a spell slot.
- magic missile requires extensive study or is only accessible to a limited amount of people.
- Cavemage can kill 1 big creature or 3 little ones, then needs to lie down for a bit. Cavearcher can take out many more creatures in the same time.
I don't personally care that much for archery characters (the part that appeals to me about Rangers is the pet portion, the archery portion is just boring point&click), but purely mechanically if an archer can pull off the same effectiveness in combat as a caster then being able to do so every combat encounter might very well be a good reason to skip out on the utility of magic outside of combat.
Magic missile is neither a cantrip nor a ritual.
As for why you might prefer archery to magic in a small elite group, I consider the stories of contact between Native Americans and European colonists. Specifically, that a Native American could fire something like 15 arrows in the time it took for a colonist to fire and reload a musket once. Magic is powerful but a skilled archer can drop a lot of hot lead in the time it takes to cast a spell. Add to this that some creatures may be resilient to magic, that magic bows exist that make archers inherently more powerful than those in our world, some of the arbitrary limitations on magic (that magic missile can only target creatures, for example), and I see enough utility in an archer to justify it to myself.
Sure, massed ranks of longbows on the battlefield are the most effective way to utilize archers IRL, but a couple of bowmen in a hunting party in "cavemen times" would probably have really helped the poor bastards trying to take down a wooly mammoth or sabretooth tiger or giant tree sloth with pointy sticks.
Harry Potter does have a few wonderful answers for that!
They don't answer the question though of how modern day wizards learn things like Math. Or how to use a wrench. And I don't care how powerful a wizard you are, a cellphone would still beat an owl hands down in the communications department.
D&D combat is basically all magic and about as unrealistic as you can get - which is one of the reasons 4E is so good, but that's a different 30-post argument - so having a person who can reshape reality several times a day before needing a nap be on a somewhat even playing field with a person who can shoot several arrows before needing to go pick them up is fine by me.
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There must be some kind of schooling that wizard kids get before Hogwarts starts at age 11, everybody get there knowing how to read and stuff. It stands to reason that this education would include arithmetic and basic geometry.
Algebra and calculus could probably be skipped by most wizards, and Arithmancy might cover some of that for the inclined; we never saw much of what it actually was.
Using a wrench probably doesn't require formal schooling for.the amateur, and magic would probably work better for the expert.
Cellphones are indeed awesome, but were relatively new when the story was set, and would probably take time to be adopted.
So the magic itself knows engineering, and not the wizard who uses magic to build a house? I don't know if I want to live in a house where the builder's basic mathimatics education stopped at a 6th grade elementary school level.
Its best not to think to hard on these things, I find, and just enjoy the story.
If there's something that actually does require higher math, Arithmancy exists.
I remember the Burrow being a lovely family home with wonderful wizard quirkiness that welcomes a poor orphan hero boy-wizard with open arms. I also remember that the Burrow was a piece of shit house that was held together with love more than anything else.
The Potter-verse exemplifies "a wizard did it" much more so than D&D does, IMO.
Edit: I also remember Hogwarts being a damn fine Castle, all properly constructed and everything.
It is a struggle in my world building to find a sweet spot where magic is rare enough that it doesn't upend a medieval society but common enough people don't freak out when they see it.
I mean both of those sound cool but one seems like a pain to craft and the other a pain for magic users to play.