u/Hyperlolman

Hello to all Caddicarus fan, and to the Caddicarus ventilators too.

So I just received the DVD... took waaaay more than it seemed to want to take but whatever. In anticipation for this, I took a dvd reader to read the disc on my PC and... it's... not reading it?

I tried both disc 1 and disc 2. Neither show any sign of being able of being read by it, which is weird. Even if it was actually a Playstation CD, it would still be able to be read by the DVD player.

Does anyone know what's going on? Is there an issue with the DVD? Did they ship the blue ray discs by accident... while including the DVD exclusive stuff like the covers?

Warning: due to how... uncertain gishes in 5e are in terms of what "is" a gish, this post will come off a bit more... freeform than my usual ones.

Gish. According to the info I gathered over my time knowing this game, it's a term first originated from a character who was "githyanki fighter/magic-user". This later became more generalized, being used to talk about anyone who perfectly mix magic and weapon usage... and in 5e, this later got changed for a good chunk of people to "anyone who focuses on both magic and weapons, in any shape or form"...

This leads to a question and issue: what IS a gish in 5e? By the above definition, a gish includes:

• an eldritch knight
• a paladin
• a Bladesinger

This leads to a ton of discussions about what a gish should be about, because... the various examples of a "gish" in 5e are very off to multiple degree.

An eldritch knight and Bladesinger are on opposite ends of the spectrum: one is majorly martial prowess and caster abilities (being far more capable of using martial prowess than spells), Bladesinger majorly focuses on caster abilities instead, and Paladin has the two majorly divided.

The gameplay loop of the three and how you can use magic with weapons also is far different:

• Eldritch knight has a small amount of resources, and can only mix weapon+cantrips early on to later grow into using a weapon attack+a spell... altho that's only late and utilizing ability scores that aren't compatible
• A Bladesinger can only mix weapons and cantrips together, and requires a turn of setup to boost those... and also has resources which can give much more power ignoring all of that
• a Paladin has divine smite, which is the smoothest combination of spell slots and active weapon usage, but still done in a way that may feel off (eating the entire bonus action economy in 2024).

These gameplays are all wildly different, and are all different to the point that none of these can feel fully satisfactory of gish gameplay.

The way 5e is setup, it's also quite improbable that they'll ever be able to do things proper to make a gish, because... Far too few abilities properly mix "spells" and "weapon usage" with the only ones doing so without a "setup" being:

• true strike+the other blade cantrips
• the paladin and ranger with their smite and "smite like" spells

which is a far too small amount of content and impact to properly feel like the gish archetype exist in a satisfying manner.

Another issue about the gish archetype is that there is a certain amount of aversion to having "martial prowess" and "spellcasting" share the same type of resources. This is also primarily why making it work seamlessly... doesn't work: we're trying to mix two completely separate types of systems, so attempts at mixing them up results in a variety of weirdness because they don't have an overlap in 5e.

... and for the record, all of these issues I brought up about gishes isn't even about the mechanical balance, because all of these issues exist even before the issue of the martial caster divide comes up, as that results in the fact that gish archetypes just... various times ignore the weapon side and focus on the spell side if they can because it's just stronger, which is a far harder issue to solve.