The Role of the Wizard, or "How Come Billy Gets to Create a Demiplane?"

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Matthew L. Martin said:
Can we at least try to cut D&D down to size so something better can take its place as the default intro game and 800-lb. gorilla of the hobby?
Oh, I reckon the Wizards of the Coast are doing that just fine.

I wonder how many among us, fans and detractors alike, would have cared (or even heard) so much about 3e and 4e, if AD&D were still on the market and these newcomers were billed as, say,
Magic Era: Third Age from Atlas Games
and
Heroes of Brightrealm from Alderac Entertainment Group.

Yes, I know that is in the event an imponderable.

However, the most visible results of the actual scheme look to me rather like something other than consolidating the brand's position in the market. "How about some D&D" is now not very useful for a lot of folks. "Which edition?" is on par with the choice between RoleMaster and Tunnels & Trolls, or some other two sort-of-D&D-ish games.

Whatever the proportions, there's a faction devoted to TSR-D&D (or "retro-clones"), one devoted to 3e (or Pathfinder), and one devoted to 4e -- only one of which WotC is actually selling. Unless 5e is just a total flop, it should be as fractious again.

Is there some great influx of new players? I don't know, but I'm not seeing any reason to think so.
 

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Consider this-with slots per day, at some point the wiz inevitable has at LEAST 4 spells in everyslot. Instead, make higher level spells cost more points. So if he uses up a bunch of little stuff he might not be able to get off any big stuff at all, and if he uses big stuff he might only get off 1 or 2 leaving him with only low stuff and no middle spells. Using 1 *BIG spell in this case means losing MORE than ONLY the big spell because you dont have as many/any points for many middle ranks spells left over. Now it becomes resource management, and how you want to splurge or conserve your points.

Any spells that provide significant so called "narrative control" would still exist, they would just be bumped up in point value accordingly.
This describes Rolemaster. Spell users still dominate mid-to-high level play.

HARP (a Rolemaster variant) has some mechanical features to try and obviate this, but I haven't played enough to know if it works (also, HARP takes out the extreme narrative control effects - like disintegrate, powerful creations, etc - altogether).
 

Barastrondo said:
It's adding more choices: a good thing, as you say.
That is not so. How do you figure there would be fewer choices in the scenario I mentioned above? As far as I can see, there would have been nothing to "lose" except the edition wars that would not have come into existence in the first place.

However, since you think it is so, then here's a solution to please us both:

All the "your game must be my game" crowd can go bother White Wolf instead!

"Waah! Vampire needs to be redesigned from the ground up to accommodate my Zamboni fetish!"

Oh, ye gods, if you would send blessings unto us, then this would do for a poetic start.
 

Well, it is worth noting that Heracles, Thor, and Hanuman are all gods.
Two of them are Demigods, technically, but I don't think that changes much. All three are fairly typical "heroes" from ancient myth. Most heroes from myth and legend had varying degrees of divine lineage as justification for their power. So did the monsters they fought, which are now used as normal D&D monsters (the original Hydra was Heracles' cousin twice removed, or something like that). Thor in particular had adventures very similar to what a high-level D&D character might experience. There is also the fact that high-level D&D heroes can fight gods, or become demi-gods or gods themselves. The idea of a strict boundary between god and mortal is more the product of monotheistic thinking anyways, and doesn't have much bearing on polytheistic myths.

I'm not at all opposed to the idea of high level fighters doing superhuman things, but don't think you need to draw the lines so far out as Thor and Hanuman. At 20th level, not that my campaign ever goes there, your average (average?) fighter under my rules would probably be able to out run a horse, leap over a small building, climb a wall of ice, leap from a 200' precipice and survive the fall, and smash a stone (or a wall of force) with his bare hands. He can inspire a small army to fight with a fearless passion. His hands may well be lethal magic weapons. He can quite possibly win a bare knuckle brawl with a 3 ton giant, and drink an ogre under the table and that isn't even to begin to discuss the powers of the heirlooms and artifacts in his possession. He's no longer merely mundane; he's a superhero. That's the expectation.

None of that would give him narrative power necessarily. I'm inclined to see 'narrative power' as something of a red herring here.
I think the best way to think about this is in terms of non-combat problem-solving ability, and the ability to create new situations. Let's look at the Fifth Labor Heracles faced (which I referenced earlier): cleaning out the Augean stables in a day. This is the kind of task that can either be solved by weeks or months of mundane labor (rendered impossible by the time limit), or can be solved through clever thinking and special abilities.

In D&D, the Wizard could solve this problem in a number of different ways using various high-level spells. A few move earth spells and walls could redirect the river like Heracles did, or the Wizard could try summoning up a large volume of water directly.

On the other hand, a high-level Fighter isn't really given many options. Traditionally, D&D doesn't really give them any tools. Performing superhuman feats of strength, such as digging canals to redirect a river in a couple of hours, generally falls outside of the reach of skills in D&D. It could be done with a complex skill check, but D&D hasn't ever encouraged people to allow superhuman feats, and gives little advice for doing so. Furthermore, such things would exist entirely outside of the Fighter's inherent abilities.

So there is a lot of problem solving that a Wizard can do as a Wizard, but very little that a Fighter can do as a Fighter. Anything a fighter can do is classless and generally available, while Wizards can do things only they can do (and those things are generally better than the classless alternatives). Since various similar non-combat problems can crop up quite regularly in a D&D campaign, this can become an issue.
 

If that's a rule in 2e, then there's another problem (there are a few, IMO) with 2e. It is most definitely not the rule in 1st ed. Advanced D&D.

If you're new to D&D, then you should get the same chance as your "elders" to play the low levels and have the fun of discovering things for yourself. If you're an old hand, and you still find it fun to cover that familiar ground, then more power to you.

Integrating experienced players -- even if, for whatever reason, they are not bringing in higher-level characters from prior play -- is another matter.

That may well be. However, there is nothing whatsoever to the point when -- as you admit -- you do not know what you are talking about. ("can't comment on 1e, only played from 2e forward")

Your guesses as to most things in the world will tend to be more accurate if they are reasonably derived from actual evidence.

I didn't realize this discussion was only 1e... weird that even the thread title has 3e in it... So in 1e when you died you came back as a same level PC? Didn't know that. Why do people say that ToH is so badass then if you can just respawn as a new level 7 MU?

So if you're newer to D&D and the group is level 6+ then you get the "privilege" of being little more than a henchman to the higher level PC's? Yeah, I think I get it.

Another example is in my own group we had a guy who could only make about 60% of the sessions for personal reasons. He was a lot of fun and a great player so we had no problem supporting his schedule. This was back even in 2e days, and we had no problem with him getting the same xp as us as he'd be around half our level as we move up. Nothing less fun than being so far behind the rest of the group. Again, YMMV.
 

Sorrowdusk said:
On a side note-has anyone notice that Magicians often end up being Big Bad Evil Guys?
Yes. For instance, Gygax and Kuntz, when they provided for just such with the added spell levels (7th-9th) that found their way into Supplement I and on.

If people want a different game, then they can go for a different game. What the hell is so bad about actually using or making a set of rules that actually does by design what you want?

Why this fetish for the equivalent of trying to eat soup with a fork and drive nails with a cell phone -- and then bitching and moaning about how badly that works and how it's the designers' fault?
 

renau1g said:
I didn't realize this discussion was only 1e...
Please, at least read your own posts, okay?

So in 1e when you died you came back as a same level PC?
That is the case if raise dead is successful. I think it is the same in 2e.

So if you're newer to D&D and the group is level 6+ then you get the "privilege" of being little more than a henchman to the higher level PC's? Yeah, I think I get it.
I see that you do not. You are welcome to read DMG p. 110. You are welcome at any time to stop trying to tell other people all about what we think, and all about the contents of books you have not read, and ignoring the facts of which we actually inform you.

It is very simply the fact that the D&D magic-user was designed to fit with the rest of the D&D game. If you find that it is troublesome when you shoehorn it into a different context -- especially one with fundamentally different structure, as means to different ends in the first place -- then the fault is not the designer's!

Why don't you go complain that the magicians are too powerful in Ars Magica because the game doesn't work so well when you decide to go at every turn completely against how Tweet and Rein*Hagen say they meant the game to work?

That's 100% phony baloney, and just as much when it comes to Dungeons & Dragons. Use some common sense.
 

It is very simply the fact that the D&D magic-user was designed to fit with the rest of the D&D game. If you find that it is troublesome when you shoehorn it into a different context -- especially one with fundamentally different structure, as means to different ends in the first place -- then the fault is not the designer's!

On the other hand, it would be nice if the designers had made the 'right' mode of play clearer, instead of relying so heavily on their own gaming groups' context and the broader wargaming hobby that the game expanded beyond so quickly. (This is a complaint about the game echoed by some of the people who were there at the beginning--Gygax assumed a lot of things that never made it into the text.)

Of course, blame lies with the authors and the marketing team for trying to portray the game as something it's not--a broad fantasy adventuring game instead of a tightly focused game of amoral swords & sorcery characters scheming against, bluffing, bullying, and betraying the enemies, the Dungeon Master, and each other for wealth and power. ;)

As for the specific complaints started by ProfessorCirno, I'm inclined to blame a lot of it on the fact that the spell list both grew like a tumor and was never dramatically restructured in 3E like the rest of the game was, resulting in things going more dramatically off-kilter than they had been before. (I also suspect that Aaron Allston saw the first glimmerings of CoDzilla and tried to correct for it in the Complete Priest's Handbook, but the design philosophy there didn't take.)
 

As for the specific complaints started by ProfessorCirno, I'm inclined to blame a lot of it on the fact that the spell list both grew like a tumor and was never dramatically restructured in 3E like the rest of the game was, resulting in things going more dramatically off-kilter than they had been before. (I also suspect that Aaron Allston saw the first glimmerings of CoDzilla and tried to correct for it in the Complete Priest's Handbook, but the design philosophy there didn't take.)

I think the core spell lists were ok. The addition of cheap/plentiful wands, scrolls and and the turn based initiative system which largely removed the risks of casting in the thick of combat were larger contributors to the power perception problem than the spell effects themselves.
 

How many NPC spellcasters do your PCs kill over the course of a typical campaign?

How much narrative authority did they have?

Far too much, generally speaking. Antagonistic (and occasionally friendly) spellcasters can and have done things in 3e campaigns I played ranging from placing the party under magical compulsions to achieve their goals to sending them involuntarily to locations ranging from "the other end of the dungeon" up to "a world on a completely different plane".

And when you do finally turn the tables and start hunting them down, they're slippery beggars, always ready with a quick exit, whether it's Gaseous Form or Teleport or Plane Shift or just dying and waking up in a Clone half a continent away. I remember in the mid-teens game we played, it got so frustrating that we were buying up wands of Dimensional Anchor and firing off Forcecages and Walls of Stone first thing in combat, just to try and nail them down.

And if you do manage to finish one off, you'd better be supernaturally thorough about it, or some other spellcaster will wander by and Raise or Resurrect or Animate them the moment your back's turned.
 

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