My favorite heresy: mundane vs. mundane & magic vs. magic, please!

[GreyICE]

WotC has shown they're quite comfortable with setting fire to the established canon when they think it serves the best interests of the game. That smoke you smell is the smoldering ruins of the Great Wheel, for instance.

Yeah, but honestly like maybe 12 people truly liked the Great Wheel. It was shoddily presented, rarely referenced, and frequently overwritten by gods in other realms.

People love blaster Wizards. To the point where WotC had to introduce spells and powers to let Wizards blast harder, even though they introduced two classes designed to be 'blasty arcane casters' (Sorcerer and Warlock).

Keeping people happy is important. No one cries when the Great Wheel dies. People get angry if their wizard can't leave smoking craters in the landscape (even if it's like... the least effective thing a Wizard can do).

 

[Perspicacity]

... said the jock to the nerd while stuffing him in the trash can, long before he became a senator after a career as a great athlete.

There isn't a Senator in America who wouldn't sell their children into slavery to be Steve Jobs.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah, but honestly like maybe 12 people truly liked the Great Wheel.

You clearly weren't here when 4E was announced. You not liking the Great Wheel doesn't equate to it not being popular for 30+ years with lots of folks.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Usually this goes to pot once the wizard realizes the dunce with the sword can't hit him when he's 60 feet in the air.

Seriously, breaking the nature of reality > swinging a sharp stick.

Then that dunce pulls out his longbow and shoots your ass out of the sky.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Offensive post removed by admin. See note below, please. - Piratecat

 

[Incenjucar]

There isn't a Senator in America who wouldn't sell their children into slavery to be Steve Jobs.

There's a lot more power available in the world than just raw cash.

 

[Perspicacity]

That power doesn't lay in the hands of U.S. Senators—their power amounts to nothing more than the ability to legislate money from people who won't vote for them and give it to those who will. Also the entire time that they are doing it, they're slaves to their own manufactured image.

Steve Jobs would have been just as rich and powerful if he had been gay or atheist or had cheated on his wife.

 

[grimslade]

Ooh a ftr vs wiz Battle Royale!
Magical creatures are just plain tougher to kill. 3.x had the golf bag of weapons for every fighter to combat DR. There were many feats to diversify spells to overcome SR, energy immunity and plain old toughness. Fighters were no better at battling demons than wizards. No fighter can banish, force cage, or gate. Wizards could summon a tanaari or baatezu to fight for them.
The wizard -fighter dichotomy is a temporal problem, not power. As many posters have previously stated being able to buff up and then go out and blast better than a fighter is a problem easily fixed. Blast spells and fighter damage output should be level, sounds like 5e is going that route. Wizard buffs should be short lived or require long cast times. Do not take away the panorama of abilities that wizards have, especially the creative use of spells.
A properly prepared wizard will not fall to a fighter. A properly prepared fighter is in trouble unless there are mundane counters to spells. Rose quartz as a single use counter to a Dominate, a length of silver wire to defray damage from a lightning bolt, Hag's Eye to counter invisibility these should be horrifically expensive, but enable the questing warrior to attack the lich-king.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I think I can make a strong case that SR is an ugly band-aid to fix other kinds of issues. I am going further and suggesting that SR pushes up in the exact wrong direction flavorwise.

Really though, what I want is roughly the effective opposite of SR.

Does that mean knights in shining armor can shrug off Fireballs? Maybe. That is an implementation detail, not the goal.

We could think of it instead as equipping the Wizard with spells that are specifically powerful against heavily magically endowed creatures, and then dialing the Wizard power to the right overall level.

I know it doesn't quite fit what you want, but there is something to be said for making SR the inverse of magical power. Then give magical creatures some active but conditional defenses against all those nasty spells that can otherwise hit them so hard.

Or in other words, make SR (or its equivalent) a function of level. To the degree that you don't use magic yourself, you get it as a passive defense, all the time. The more you use magic, the more of your SR becomes only active defense, and thus requires your concentration. That fits the common trope where some powerful wizard is doing just fine resisting the magical attack until distracted by a knife in the back.

 

[M.L. Martin]

I agree with the premise - I think Gary intended Fighters to be weak against magic and Wizards weak against steel. Which is why wizards have a poor AC and HP while fighters had terrible saves.

Actually, poor fighter saves appears to be largely a 3E-ism. Looking at my Rules Cyclopedia, the fighter's saving throws are either always better than the wizards or at most a point or two below. In 2E, they start out worse, but pull ahead around name level.

Whether this is good game design is debatable. Most people nowadays seem to think that a fighter should be "tough" - i.e. resistant to magic. And wizards have always developed ways around swords.

True; part of the issue is that wizards have many more options in ensuring that AC, hp and saves never come into play in the first place.

As for the original topic, the OP's preferences are not only defensible, but have a solid precedent: The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf is the only one who can deal with the Balrog and Saruman, and has a better track record against the Nazgul, but the other heroes accomplish much more against wargs, orcs and trolls. It's not a hard and fast division, though--Gandalf can handle mundane foes, and we all know about the Witch-King. In addition, it's Aragorn, not Gandalf, who bests Sauron in a battle of wills.