I hate game balance!

[Jhulae]

There's a good point to remember when Ars Magica is brought up in a discussion of D&D game balance: the wizards in Ars Magica - who are the primary PCs - are balanced against each other.

And, if everybody played Wizards in D&D, they'd be balanced against each other too.

The point is that Ars Magica tells you right off that "Wizards wield more power than anyone else and if you're not a wizard, you're going to be noticeably weaker".

The same is true about wizards in D&D, but the game *implies* that any character class is going to be of equal power and use at any given level, when such is not the case at all.

 

[Fenes]

Peple would be much less crying about the fighter being as powerful as a wizard of equivalent level if they'd stop seeing fighters as gate guards with more hitpoints, and high-level rogues as some sort of pickpocket threat for city encounters

A high level fighter is not a minion, not a henchman in all but name, not some brute without a chance against magic. It's a hero, like Hercules, Achilles, Hector, King Arthur, Lancelot, etc. Capable of superhuman feats of endurance and bravery, laying waste to armies. It may be a martial artist master on a par with the best of the Wuxia movies.

Not some high-school bully with a sword.

A high-level rogue is a legendary trickster, someone capable to sneak into and out of the king's or even gods treasure chamber. Some able to charm a town, and sweet-talk gods, and dupe cities. Odysseus comes close.

Not some sleazy teenager trying to break into your locker.

If people bemoaning the loss of the wizards "unique position" or "speciality" would show a bit more imagination, and think of the Arthur to their Merlin, to think of the epic heroes of legend when they think of high-level non-casters, we'd not have this discussion.

We'd have had the discussion about how older editions failed to give those martial and rogue heroes their due long ago - at least until Bo9S.

 

[AllisterH]

Isn't that the old "Conan is only a level 6 character" argument we always get into.

Personally, I also think that while Edena_of_Neith hits some of the reason (Complete Book of elves I still consider the greatest munchkin book ever produced by TSR/WOTC), 3E itself actually got rid of some of the limiters.

Wizards were no longer limited by DM fiat and the lack of spell slots. In 1e/2e, wizard spell were totally under the control of the DM, thus, the Scry-Buff-Teleport combo was simply not valid as few DMs would give you access to ALL parts of the combo.

Furthermore, with magic item creation being relatively easy (at least for scrolls/wands), the wizard would actually have a greater likelihood of having JUST the right spell

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Reading about the "Wizard über alles"-stuff, I wonder if this wouldn't be an interesting approach to games.

You start as a mundane hero without magic, and gradually, you add supernatural abilities. Tiers would be more like "Mundane", "Arcane", "Divine" or something like that...
Advancing levels would be a more transformative experience - you turn from a sword & board fighter into a powerful magician. That would certainly not be everyones cup of tea, but it has a certain appeal to me.

(In a way, 4E is already doing this - the powers of paragon and epic characters are far from mundane. But the transition is not as profound as proposed above...)