1) Having Wands isn’t a minor thing. The tone of your comment “the only thing they have over Earth is the ability to add damage” indicates it’s minor. It’s actually pretty major. It’s literally hundreds of damage per day that’s added when you get low-highbie status.
2) They also get exclusive access to Scrolls, which has the pre-req of Read Magic and X Celestial Level slot to use. Potions don’t have such a requirement, which means that an Earth caster is going to have less potions than the equivalent Celestial caster will have scrolls, all other things being equal.
I’ve seen Earth Casters left behind for mods because you only need so much healing, but you can -always- use more damage.
You make some interesting points. I can only speak from my experience for what I've seen from my chapter, which has many high proficiency fighters that are dealing out most of our damage in the fights i've been in and healers are always needed. In that type of environment I saw almost disappointment in some folks when a friend of mine revealed he was a Celestial Caster. People weren't mean about it and he definitely hasn't been excluded from anything to my knowledge, but healing is definitely of value for our environment and so I have the impression that earth casters are looked upon as the "smarter choice" if you're a caster.
I'm guessing that the Seattle chapter has an abundance of Earth Scholars if damage is really that much more demand from your perspective. Let me know if that's right or wrong so I can get a better understanding.
I never said that damage is a minor thing. As a fighter all i care about is damage
. I was only trying to make the point that the main thing a Celestial caster has in terms of being to help the fight is damage. It's pure DPS/DPR in MMO/Tabletop terms. Earth casters get the utility of healing that is unique to them, if they could do a bunch of damage as well, why would there even need to be Celestials?
My view of things when it comes to game design for RPGs is that they're about making choices. It's like when I chose to be a fighter, I chose dealing more damage and getting armor over the possibility of healing myself/others or backstabbing or making potions. Now I could do those things by building into them, but that's the hard choice cause now I do less damage.
Those hard choices are what the character building aspect are all about and part of the fun of RPGs, in my opinion at least.
There is the other unspoken thing that Earth casters have over being that if you have a group that ignores you doing the big bad evil you can do things like hit things for 60 body at level 8, and you get those deaths as well.
I do sympathize with Earth casters feeling forced to save their slots for life though. I'd support having relics be able to store those perhaps with the current minute timer that they have for the purifies.
