StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I looked up from my mug and caught a look of myself in the bar's mirror. It wasn't that bad. Sure there's lines beginning around my mouth and eyes and there's some grey hairs among the black, but I'm still fit and tan. My belly's still flat and my eyes sharp. The barbed chrome steel bracelet on my left wrist and the runic tattoo patterns on my arms tell a sharp cutter that I can handle myself. Most of the time, its better not to fight if you don't have to. Wish I had learned that when I was younger.

I'm feeling a little restless. Maybe it's because I've been thinking of a misspent youth and maybe because I've gotten a little too safe. And maybe it's because the Smoldering Corpse Bar hasn't been the same since they lost its namesake. And maybe it's because I'm a little drunk.

I'm not drunk enough that I don't notice the two berks coming up behind me. I am sitting at the bar, that's not so strange but one of them's a githyanki and I hate githyanki. They're worse than drow. Too easy to slip into feeling sorry for their ancestors and appreciate the righteousness of their war on the illithids and too easy to forget for a crucial moment that they're monsters too.

He's pretty typical. Yellow skin, black eyes, dark hair. Elf lean and tall with serrated, pointed ears and a pinched, elongated skull. The gith is wearing a small fortune in body jewelry and a hauberk of rectangular scales wired together and riveted to a leather backing. It's not plate, but it's good armour and it leaves his arms free to wield that baroque monster sword slung over his back.

His companion is prettier. A tiefling girl with gold skin and a petite pair of horns on her forehead. She has shoulder length black hair and luminous blue eyes. She's wearing a boiled leather cuirass over a shirt and breeches. A short sword hangs on her belt. He's following her lead. Interesting.

She comes up on my left. She doesn't bother to pretend to order a drink, but sits down right beside me, eyes on me. I turn a little towards her, which makes it easy for me to draw the karach blade in my belt.

"You're Trennan Sevenfingers," she says. It isn't a question.

"That's right," I said, placing both hands on the bar. I've got all my fingers.

"Do you remember a Messatta Shadowburn?" she asks. There's an urgency in her voice. This question means something to her.

"I don't forget backstabbing bitches," I reply. "She dead?" I look at her closely. Yeah, there's a definite resemblance.

"No."

"A pity."

"But she is in trouble."

"Good."

"She said you were close once."

"We were. Then she stole from me and left me to die. You can understand that I'm not eager to go rescue your mother, even if I wasn't retired from the game."

The gith growled. If it went dirty, I'd knife him first, before he can get that gods' damned executioner blade clear of the scabbard. There's a secret to surviving a sword fight with a githyanki and that's not to get into a sword fight with a githyanki. Knife them, shoot them, blast them, drop a gods damned house on them but don't go sword to sword with those bastards.

"I need your help." He bottom lip quivered. This used to get to me.

"Tough."

"Please. I have money."

"No."

She reached for her last card. I knew this was coming. "You're my father."

"Me and half the Hive. Go scam someone else." I turned away.

"Vorholt's got her."

I turned back around, eyes blazing. "Say that again and you and your gith boyfriend will be flowing out of here in chunks on a river of your own blood."

"I can prove it," she said defiantly. She reached into her satchel and pulled out an object wrapped in a rag. She opened it up, revealing a charcoal hand. "Test it," she said. "He's alive and he's back. And he says that you have what is his and he will have it back."

I reached out and touched the hand and felt the power dormant within it. "Sit down and tell me the whole story," I said. I turned to the bartender and waggled my cup. "Get me another. There isn't enough wine in the whole Wheel to wash down what's coming next, but every bit helps."

I thought this was a planescape torment fic .
I iz dissapointed/sads...


Still looks good as usual though for you though .

DEATH wrote:I thought this was a planescape torment fic .
I iz dissapointed/sads...


Still looks good as usual though for you though .

*reaches out and smacks DEATH for being stupid*
The Cage's got more tales in it than just Torment, ya berk. It's got more stories in it than its got Doors. Now shut yer yap so's a Blood can hear this one.

"My mother doesn't talk much about the past," she began, "but I've known for a while that she carried scars on her soul from that time."

I snorted. "Scars on her soul? Some of us carry scars on our bodies from knowing Messatta Shadowburn. Did you know she used to be a knight of the post?"

"Knight of the post?" she asked.

"Powers, you're a clueless." The gith hissed at me. "Watch how you're waggling your bone-box gith. Knight of the post. Knight of the cross-trade. One who is involved in the cross-trade. A thief."

"I thought she might have been in something like that," she said. "She doesn't do that now. Mostly door trading."

I nodded and took a drink. I was in that business myself. You walk through a portal to a place and pick up something cheap and plentiful and then walk back through and take another portal to where it'll fetch a lot of jink. A lot of bloods end up in the business. You need to know places and portals to make it work and you need seed money and the willingness to take a few risks, but it's a lot safer than adventuring. "So you and mommy dearest are living life all peaceful and Vornholt shows up out of the blue?"

"Something like that. We were heading back to the portal and we found him there with a dozen men. He was, gods, his skin was black and his eyes were fire. He wore a soot stained winding sheet. He called out to my mother and she knew him when he spoke."

"What then?" I asked. It didn't surprise me that Vornholt was undead. Last I had seen him he was being burned alive and the charcoal hand was a big clue that he hadn't gotten much better.

"Mother threw magic at him, but he laughed it off. His men came at us. We fought. Yahaness took off his hand and nearly his head, but they outnumbered us and Vornholt was too powerful."

"Yahaness?" I asked.

"That would be me," said the githyanki. The bone rings in his braids rattled against each other and he made a deep throated growl. This would have intimidated most people with any sense. I wasn't one of them.

"So he let you go?"

"He took us to a place, some kind of ruined castle. It was very hot. He wanted something and he was sure mother had it."

"But she didn't," I said. "And he accepted that, eventually."

"Yes," she said. "He let us go. Sort of. He told us to find you and get the Lamael from you. We woke up in a flop house in Sigil. We found you, eventually. You aren't easy to find."

"I try not to be," I replied and took another drink. If this girl could find me then Vornholt's bashers could as well. Sooner or later they would find me, if they hadn't already. Would he have a shadow on them? I would. The Vornholt I remembered would. The Hive wasn't a place one could find much help when a gang of bashers came for you. I finished the wine and tossed a few coins at the bartender.

"Let's go," I said and got up.

"Where?" she asked.

"Away from here before we have trouble." I headed for the door, the girl and the gith trailing behind me. The light was dim outside, making it evening. Thieves, touts, thugs, and harlots were out in force. Honest citizens were few in number.

Sigil isn't like most other places. Imagine a giant ring, floating in the sky. Now imagine the inner surface of the ring was a city. A riot of a thousand different building styles all brought here by the inhabitants of hundreds of different planes. A city full of doors and portals to other places.

The Hive was poor and it showed. The Smoldering Corpse was big gourd shaped building in poor repair. It's neighbors were round, square, squat, tall, and all different combinations imaginable but they all could have been built better, all had seen better days, and they all had black razor vine growing on them. I caught the gaze of a black scaled cambion across the street and he straightened up and whistled. I was too late. His bashers stepped away from the shadows and the sides of building and alleys and made their presence plain.

There were seven of them, which made a total of nine unwanted visitors today. Nine is three times three. The Rule of Three. There was three of us. Rule of Three again. The Rule of Three is true more often than blind chance says it should be, but I don't know if that's because The Rule of Three is one of the foundations of the universe or because enough people believe it to be true. On the planes, belief has power.

They were lead by the cambion who was damn near the gith's height with black hair, scales, jagged teeth, and pointed ears. He wore spiked leathers and drew a thick bladed stabbing dagger that was damn near a shortsword in his left hand and hand axe in his right. There was a grey skin githzerai wearing a brown robe and holding a chain with a spiked weight on one end. A huge hairy bugbear, a foot taller than both gith and more than twice their mass wearing leathers and carrying a shield and a huge spiked club guarded the githzerai's flank. There were a pair of humans, one bigger than me wearing a steel plate over leather and carrying a two handed battle axe. The other human had a shaved head and wore blue robes marked with black rune symbols. The sixth basher I couldn't place. He was as tall as the gith but much more massive. Gold skin, huge muscles, and totally hairless. He wore plates of hardened leather or chitin as armour and was armed with two steel picks.

The last was the worst and being worse than a githzerai adept, a mage, and a cambion takes some doing. She was skinny and ugly with purple skin, a mouthful of fangs, and wild black hair. He fingers ended in talons and her eyes were blood red. She was seven feet tall and wore a high collared mail coat that fell to her knees. A piking night hag.

"Give it up cut-" said the cambion but I didn't let him finish. The undead aren't universally vicious, but this crew and the little miss's story both spelled trouble even if it was Vornholt in charge. Vornholt was the one that laid the name Sevenfingers on me. That's because when I cast, the somatic motions are too fast for most to keep track of. Vornholt said it was a blur, as if I had seven fingers on each hand. I spoke a two syllable initiator as I gestured. An orb of blazing orange light shot from my hand and burned through the chest of the huge gold skinned man. He was an unknown quantity and I wanted him down first. I struck him right in the heart. He toppled with a smoking crater in his chest.

The rest burst into action. The githzerai was first, smashing me with a mind blast that was intended to knock me out cold. But my mind was disciplined and hardened by studying the Art and I was warded. I was woozy for a moment and then I had my bearings back. Then all hell broke loose.

The bugbear was faster off the draw than humans. The big goblinoids are quick, sneaky and bloodthirsty; which is a nasty combination. He closed on us first. The githyanki was also quick. He whipped out the sword he was carrying on his back. It was a huge, five foot long blade. The sword resembled a reversed flattened S shape with a single edge. It was a bit top heavy, but that was the point. Gith are fast and those long arms are strong. They can recover the blade quickly and they train fanatically. They're proud that they value their swords more than their wives, which tells you all you really need to know about githyanki.

The top heavy bit means that when they hit you, it's more like getting hit with and axe than a sword. One moment the bugbear was charging the next the stump of his elbow was spurting blood and his right forearm was on the ground. Yahaness followed through with a lunge that punched the tip through the bugbear's heart and spine. He whipped the blade out in time to confront the human in plate.

The human mage cast a spell of blindness on me, but the ward tattooed on my back discharged, eating his spell. All my tattoos are by Fell and that's part of the reason I didn't try and take him out first. The cambion lunged toward me, which was going to be a problem, but the girl rushed his flank. He turned toward her. I used the time. I got my next spell off faster than the mage.

A barbed headed axe of blue force left my hand and struck the mage in the chest with power drawn from Cania, the Eighth Circle of Baator. Blood exploded from the wound and froze into the air, coming down as icy sleet on the dirt. The frost covered corpse fell.

The githyanki hacked through the human warrior's chest, his enchanted blade opening him from his collar bone to his navel. He fell, his life spilling all over the cobbles. Idiot. Don't cross swords with a githyanki. The githzerai circled him, swinging his chain. See? The githzerai hate the githyanki worse than I do and they're one of the few people who have a chance to match them with swords and most are smart enough not to try.

The cambion danced away from the girl's lunge. He was going to be a hard bastard to deal with. I drew the karach and stepped into a slice at the cambion. It elongated from a long knife to a slender, slightly curved blade that was three feet long, sharper than a razor, and impossibly strong. The cambion parried with his axe and stepped forward to stab me with the broad bladed dagger.

There was a flash of grey-green steel and the girl put her short sword into his lung. It was Baatorian steel and literally sharper than sin. His half demon heritage was no protection from that blade. His blood was as red as any man's. He's knees buckled and I took his head off.

The githyanki managed not to get his head staved in by the spiked weight at the end of the chain, but the githzerai managed to wrap it around his blade. They were struggling over it when the githzerai tripped the githyanki with the free end and sent him down on to the ground. The githzerai leapt at him, barehanded.

There are all kinds of fighting arts all over the planes. Some of them profess to allow a practitioner to take on armed and armoured men bare handed and win. If you believe that, you're a fool. It's possible to do so, but it's hard. Now the dark on those tales is that their is a truth to them, but it's not just about fighting. As the gith say, steel is stronger than flesh. Power, however, is power. If you're tapping into it with spells or psionic disciplines or from years of training and meditation and calling it ki, it is still power. The githzerai know all three methods of channeling power. When one of their monks hits you, he hits you with more than just muscle and body mass. He has power flowing through him and into you in the most unpleasant of ways.

The girl's sword slipped from her fingers and she fell to the ground. The night hag cackled and stepped towards me. She had taken her sweet time, but that was probably to size us up so she could run away if she needed to and to thin out the number of people she would have to share the reward with. They're greedy bitches, make no mistake about that. She pointed at me and a grey ray shot from her finger. I felt the strength leach away from my body. I hate night hags worse than githyanki.

Night hags are very resistant to magic and she was making sure that I wasn't going to be able to fight her physically. I didn't try either. I was casting again.

Yahaness rolled away from the githzerai's attack, leaving his sword behind in the dirt. He had a long slim dagger of his own in his hand and had thrown light into the githzerai's eyes, momentarily stopping his attack, but he was in a bad way. The wall of the Smoldering Corpse was behind him and he was facing a githzerai adept with only a dagger. So my spell went toward him.

Five scarlet stars ignited around my hand and swooped towards the githzerai. He was quick, I'll give you that, and not willing to trust his racial resistance to sorcery to protect him. He dived out of their flight path. Three missiles stuck the ground. One blew a hole in his thigh and the other into his abdomen. Yahaness dived forward and came up with his sword. The night hag lunged at me.

I gestured, spoke two words and stepped back into the blue portal I conjured behind me and reappeared on the roof of the Smoldering Corpse. The hag snarled and looked around and then caught sight of me. Yahaness got to his feet and swung his blade. Having holes in your leg and belly will slow down most people, even monastic adepts. The githzerai lost most of his left arm and had the githyanki's blade buried in his lung. Yahaness yanked the blade out and spun around, shouting a spell. Darts of fire flew from his hand and fizzled into smoke where they struck the night hag. She didn't even bother to look at him.

That was a mistake and I helped her continue to make it by casting another volley of missiles, this time at her. Night hags are much more resistant to magic than gith and they're supernaturally tough to boot. The blazing red stars opened wounds in her flesh, but they didn't kill or cripple her. She snarled and sent another grey ray my way, but I dodged it by falling backwards and rolling down the domed of the Smoldering Corpse's roof. At the edge I twisted and fell, landing lightly on my feet. I'm no longer a knight of the cross-trade, but those skills remain.

The hag must have been furious, but in throwing magic my way she had forgotten about the gith and that's never smart. He didn't have magic was worth much against her, but he had his sword and like a lot of gith blades it was full of magic and he had a githyanki's skills to go with it. While she was ignoring him he split the back of her head open. She fell down stone dead.

I managed to get around back to the front of the bar just in enough time to see him drop his sword in the dirt and gently pick the girl up. He was stroking her face softly and calling out a name. "Vanna."

I've been to nearly a hundred planes. I've seen Baator, Mount Celestia, sailed on the Styx and Oceanus. I've climbed parts of the Yggdrasil and the Mountains of Gehenna. I've been to Prime worlds and the Elemental Planes. I've seen the corpses of dead gods in the Astral and ghosts on the Ethereal. I've never seen that before.

*gets a bit misty eyed* You know, i ran with Rip van Wormer for a season once. He tried to teach me, in his way. I learned some of the darks, forgot others, never learned the best one he tried to teach me. How to spin a tale to take a person, to make them really Believe.

Tell your tale cutter. I remember darks and cant, berks and Baator. I've seen the Friendly Fiend and the fallen dabus. Show me something new. Show me something to believe in.

As Normal Reader: Very nice set up so far. I'm interested to know the racial make-up of the 'father' and mother to have a tiefling. Are they tieflings themselves, or are we talking dormant ancestory?

As a D&D player (mechanic) - You going with a rule system for this, or just 'story telling'

As a Blood that's put down a few leather headed bashers; "Nice Chant so far. Can't wait to get to the dark of it. Just make sure not to piss off the Maiden, and I don't mean your blooded daughter!"

Solauren wrote:As Normal Reader: Very nice set up so far. I'm interested to know the racial make-up of the 'father' and mother to have a tiefling. Are they tieflings themselves, or are we talking dormant ancestory?

Either or both.

As a D&D player (mechanic) - You going with a rule system for this, or just 'story telling'

Game mechanics should be attempts to simulate the universe. When storytelling I avoid them whenever possible because I don't need them.

Vanna stirred and stretched. "Where am I?" she asked. It was a fair question.

"My couch, my house, the city of Trellhome, Macara Province, The Eternal and Boundless Empire of Grand Ictar, Meora, Prime Material Plane," I replied. "Would you like some water? Juice?"

"Water would be nice, thank you," she replied. I walked into the kitchen and drew some water from the decanter in the ice chest before returning to my sitting room. My house, like most in the neighborhood, is three stories with a sharply angled roof. Trellhome gets a lot of rain in spring and a lot of snow in winter. The furnishings are comfortable and well made, but not extravagant. A prosperous burgher or a dour merchant might live in such a house and in some respects, that's just what I am.

I handed her the glass. She pushed off the blankets and sat up, taking a large gulp of water. "Even if he finds the portal, he still has to have the portal key, find me in a city of half a million people, and have his minions not attract attention in an overwhelmingly human city. We should be safe for a while."

"Will you trade the Lamael for mother?" she asked.

"I can't," I said. "I don't have it anymore." I wouldn't have even if I could have. First, pike Messatta Shadowburn. Second, pike the bastard who burned Vornholt and raised him as an undead slave. "Traded it away for a lot of jink a long time back."

"Can you get it back?"

I laughed. "Girl, the buyer wanted a gift for an efreeti sultan. It's gone."

"So what do we do know?" she asked. The gith stirred in the corner. He had been watching silently.

"The thing pulling Vornholt's strings can afford a lot of good muscle," I said. "Eventually, he'll catch up with us. So we get him first."

"How?" she asked. "We don't even know which plane he's on?"

"Oh, you've already told me that. That ruined castle? Ten to one that's where your sainted mother left me and Vornholt to burn. The tough question is what in the name of Baator's Hells is that thing and how can it be killed, since everything we tried last time didn't work."

"You never found out?"

"I wasn't going back and my anger had a different focus. Namely the bitch who stranded me and left me to burn. I already knew how to kill her."

"Alright," said Vanna, standing up. "You must know some wizards, yes? Someone who might know what that was? We should leave immediately."

"In the morning," I said.

"Now would-"

"-would mean me and tall, dark, and gruesome haven't gotten any spells back. Morning. You and the gith can argue over who gets the couch and who gets the rug. There's food in the ice chest and the cupboards if you're hungry." I headed upstairs.

Gods and powers, it had been a long day. Haggling with customers, nearly getting knifed on the way to The Smoldering Corpse, gith, long lost pseudo-daughters, and the closest I've come to dying in nearly fifteen years. How could it get any worse?

Scratch that last thought. It always can get worse.

Sol: writing based on D&D mechanics really doesn't work out. Especially since at high levels, D&D loses all semblance of balance. Drizzit would die horribly if you tried to play him against the foes he faces by the game mechanics. He's a melee character who tackles mages and fiends, for crying out loud. Try that solo in the game and you'll die, every time.. past level 5 or so anyway. And yes i know, that's no longer true in 4.0, but last i hear, FR has been jacked up again for 4.0, and no more drizzit.

My alarm clock woke me early next morning. I slapped it, killing the bell, got up, and walked over to the shower. Hot water poured down from the faucet. Good plumbing is something most cities don't have and once you've experienced life with it, life's just not the same without it. It's one of the reasons I chose to set up house in this city. I dried myself with a towel and changed into some old adventuring clothes. A light white shirt, tough breaches, and heavy leather boots. A sleeveless leather tunic went over the shirt. There was a layer of enchanted mithril chain in between the leather. The final pieces of the ensemble were a basilisk hide belt and the karach.

I went downstairs and found that the Gith was already up. He was sitting cross legged in some kind of meditative trance. I raided the ice chest for some sausage, cheese, and olives. A half loaf of bread went with it and clear, crisp, cool tap water washed the meal down. Not being a dwarf or a glutton that still left most of the food. I brought the plate into my living room. "Help yourselves," I said and headed back upstairs.

I unlocked the library door and walked in. The room is small and contains only a window, a small table, bookshelves, and a very comfortable chair. Nine out of ten of my books have little or nothing to do with magic or spellcraft, but I own hundreds of books. I have plucked them from the lairs of monsters, besides, libraries, bookshops, backpacks, fences, and loot swaps. I began the process of imprinting spells upon my brain.

When that arduous task was completed I unfolded a small square of silk and wrapped it around three of the books. I then folded the silk back down to the same small square shape, despite the fact that it contained three weighty tomes, and placed the silk withing a hidden pocket of my belt. I then headed back downstairs.

Vanna and Yahaness had finished breakfast by then. "Ready to go?" I asked. Yahaness nodded slightly.

"Yes," Vanna replied, reaching for her sword belt.

"Good," I replied and headed out the door. They followed and I locked it behind them. The streets were busy with midmorning traffic, mostly prosperous ladies and servants going out shopping or running errands. Overhead an Emerald Guard aerofloat cruised at low altitude. Vanna stopped and stared at it for a moment.

"Don't be a clueless," I said as a grabbed her arm and propelled her forward.

"What magic does it use to fly?" asked Yahaness.

"Alchemy," I replied. "It has to do with the behavior of gasses and the contents of the gasbag."

"Ah," said Yahaness. "Our ships are superior."

"I'm not surprised that you would think that," I replied, "although in this case it's even true."

We were attracting a lot of stares. They don't get many gith in Trellhome. Hells, they don't get many gith in any place on Meora for that matter. The big sword didn't help either. "Are we in trouble?" Vanna asked.

"No," I replied, "but the Emerald Guard might decide that they should question us." I turned the corner and they followed. Ahead was more houses, most with a shop on the first level and living quarters on the second. "Keep moving."

We walked through the shoppers and headed down the street. At the next intersection there was a memorial arch, dedicated to the ancient and indomitable hero Qui-Lein of whom nothing is known other than at some point in the distant path he did something that resulted in a modest memorial arch of wrought iron being dedicated to him and his unknown deeds.

Four men in green ceramic plate were sliding down ropes from the aerofloat's gondola. Yahaness's right hand went to the hilt of his sword and his left twitched. "Don't even think about it," I replied. I pulled him toward the arch.

It was a portal, of course, but one with an unusual portal key. How many people keep devil's teeth and an angel's feather together? In most places, not many; in Sigil anyone who has just bought high end spell components. The air in front of me shimmered and we walked through.

We emerged in between two leaning tenements. One was round and crowned with spikes, the other was a wooden box. Both were half covered in razor vine. "The Hive," said Vanna, looking around.

"Yes. Why do you think I drink at the Smoldering Corpse, on the rare occasion I do drink when I'm in the Cagel? It's the only decent drinking establishment within an easy walk of this place. Let's go." I started off. They followed.

It was busy, of course. The streets were full of the regulars: harlots, touts, street venders, the poor going about their business, gang toughs in packs and clutches, the occasional lone fiend, and a lost clueless or two. "Where are we going?" Vanna asked.

"Clerk's Ward," I reply.

"What's there?" she asked.

"Lots of things, but specifically a portal to the Elemental Plane of Air."

Satori wrote:Sol: writing based on D&D mechanics really doesn't work out. Especially since at high levels, D&D loses all semblance of balance. Drizzit would die horribly if you tried to play him against the foes he faces by the game mechanics. He's a melee character who tackles mages and fiends, for crying out loud. Try that solo in the game and you'll die, every time.. past level 5 or so anyway. And yes i know, that's no longer true in 4.0, but last i hear, FR has been jacked up again for 4.0, and no more drizzit.

I tend to disagree. Writing based on D&D mechanics works just fine, because real life(or any fictional semblance thereof) isn't particularly balanced either. It's true that if you're a fighter without spell resistance that scales with your level, at high levels you're nothing but meat, but I don't consider that an incredible downside. Incredible cosmic powers should trump merely superhuman prowess with a blade.

As far as the story goes, I await updates with interest, but await updates to Nalifan, the Becoming, and Malidar more(in that exact order).

Oh, I agree, consequences. The quote from OOtS about artificial equality between those who can bend reality to their wills and those who cannot comes to mind.

But people want to read stories about the Big Damn Hero with the Big Damn Sword..... and if you want him to be relevant at all, you either have to have BDH's that are level 5 or less, or screw the mechanics. Because Big Damn Swords start to lose out to magic by level 5/6 and do so completely by level 11.

D&D 3.5 has breakpoints at levels 6, 11, and 17 (Interestingly these are also the break points for Incarnum capacity, which goes to show that unlike the idiots who wrote some D&D books, the authors of Magic of Incarnum have actually played D&D) You can have Big Damn Hero's with Big Damn Swords relevant between 6 and 11, but they're relevant only because casters are buffing them. Between 11 and 17, caster can just hire random street thugs and control the battlefield enough to make them win. Level 17 and up, casters just flat win.... duels between high level casters basically come down to initiative rolls and fortitude saves.. which is realistic, but incredibly boring.

Joe reacted faster than bob and thus bob died does not make for good literature. We like the volleying back and forth in stories. Even if it doesn't work that way by real life or game mechanics.