Yeah, we were in Claw Ridge and staying at the house of one of High Chief Krathis Gron's agents/diplomats. We had captured the cultist leader, a Swordmaster named Saret Quickblade, after we counter-ambushed his ambush at a seedy bar. Stormbreaker personally duelled and killed him while fending off three of his goons. Then we brought him back to life and took him home for interrogation. The rest of the cult was rather keen on taking him back, so they came looking for us with the Nethermancer Serpent and her Wizard buddy, whom Saret had hired. Now the house was made of stone, and the lower windows had been barred, so we had a pretty good defensive position, but i figured unless we took out those casters, we were at a disadvantage, hence the deep strike. The rest of the group thinks it was reckless foolishness on my part, not the first time we've had that disagreement, but i'm convinced it won us the battle.
As the cultist-assassins retreated they took the unconscious Stormbreaker with them as a hostage. While i was really hoping the rest of the group wouldn't be able to rescue her right away, because it would be more fun that way, the Unbroken went tearing after her. She woke up in her bedroom with her wounds treated and no knowledge she'd even been captured. Though she was pretty unhappy when they told her they'd rescued her, "Passions, you guys have no sense of drama! You should have given them a head start until morning!"
It probably helps if you play it fast and loose with the spell durations. Like with Rank 3 Spellcasting Air Armour lasts a minimum of 8 turns, most combats are resolved within 5 turns in my experience, so 8 turns should do for the great majority of battles. But what about the time between when you cast and when you roll initiative? Well we just... kind of ignore it.I still think the numbers against the casters is harsh for little reason. I agree buff before u fight, or dont prat about doing it in combat much.... its very frustrating buffing before though, below 5th circle, when you have 2 casters...you can only weave one extra thread so if you cast extra targets they last less than a minute...or if u cast duration to minutes on everyone individually it takes forever rolling with failures.....at 5th when can weave 2 threads is much better.
You see with my group, we started playing with 3rd Edition then moved to 4th at 5th Circle, and in 3rd Edition Air Armour lasts Rank+5 Minutes by default. So when we switched editions, we'd gotten used to not caring about the duration of the spell, because it was always going to be "way longer than the fight will actually last". It also made it easier to cast if we even thought there was going to be trouble ahead. Though on the flip side, there was no option at the time to cast it on multiple targets, so we would in fact roll for every single character, sometimes multiple times. These days the Elementalist just weaves one extra thread for multiple targets, and doesn't bother with a second extra thread to extend the duration to minutes, because nobody is actualy keeping track of the turns. It always just lasts until the end of our next fight.
If your GM is unwilling to be loose like that, my recommendation is to weave the one thread to make the duration be minutes instead of turns, and then just roll for everybody. It doesn't take that long, just keep rolling until there's enough successful rolls to cover everyone. Like i said it's what we did in 3rd Ed.
It occurs to me that the size of the group may alter experience. The more frontline combatants you have the more viable it becomes to actually hold a line to protect the spellcasters. Consequently in my game casters are very rarely injured, because they hang back and let everyone else take the damage. So my experience is that if the casters are getting hit, something has gone terribly wrong. That said, you even with a small group you might get some milage out of letting your Warrior and Thief range a bit forward of the Elementalist and Wizard. Let the tankier characters tank more.I know air armour isnt unbelievable but at lower circles when a casters physical defense is about 7-8, and his phys armour 4-5...that +3 saves a lot of wounds...especially as most casters dont have massive toughness....so i hope u can see why i think its a bit silly its so much tougher for them to be able to get buff effects to work on them.
Another thing you can do is spend Karma, you recover the entire pool every Karma Ritual, so there's quite a lot to go around. Novice caster may have Spellcasting Step 12 and Mystic Defence 10, while a Novice Warrior is likely to have Mystic Defence 7 or 8. If the spellcaster self-buffs with Karma he'll succeed 87% of the time, while if he buffs the Warrior without karma he'll succeed 79% or 85% of the time. That's pretty close to equivalent. Additionally, if you use Karma and the extra thread for bonus targets, you're extremely likely to get everyone in one go.
Basically, everything out-moves them. At least in my experience, opening up more distance between the Obsidiman Warrior and The Squishies can be dangerous: any enemy that gets a mind to do so is easily going to move past the tank and have one or more turns of open season on the back line. Always depends on the environment, though.