How is the Wizard vs Warrior Balance Problem Handled in Fantasy Literature?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, let's put it this way: when you look at the true superhumans of legend, they're doing things that were deemed not improbable, but impossible. Hercules as a child was stronger than the strongest mere mortal. Odysseus' bow was unstringable by anyone save him.

Their peers were not measured by the millions, or even thousands but in scores. Worldwide.

So, unless your PCs are starting out with attributes far beyond the ken of men, they are but men. Men with potential, yes, but just men.

 

[pawsplay]

The idea that your 1st level character was some guy just off the turnip truck is not really supported by the rules in any edition.

But that's not what I said. We need only separate out the traits that distinguish a fighter from a magic-user, not a PC from a non-PC. Since a magic-user's melee capability is easily outclassed by a normal 1 HD warrior, we have a benchmark.

What I was saying was with fairly modest training, you could turn a 1st level Commoner of reasonable mental and physical attributes into a 1st level Warrior inside of a few months. Which raises the question why magic-users don't gain those skills by and by.

 

[Hussar]

The problem is Pawsplay, a 1st level warrior is still weaker than a 1st level PC class.

In every quantifiable way a PC is better than everyone else in the world at the same level. He's got access to abilities that the NPC doesn't, has more wealth, has more hit points, the list is as long as my arm.

Sure, a 1st level fighter might not be Superman, but, does being Green Arrow suddenly make me Joe Commoner?

The problem I think is that we're simply defining what it means to be super differently. I think the fact that a PC starts head and shoulders above any NPC makes him super right out of the chute. It certainly puts him several rungs up the ladder from Joe Commoner, which is what DannyA is claiming a Fighter 1 is.

Never mind that in very, very short order, that Fighter 1 is now Fighter 2 and is several TIMES more durable than Joe Commoner with his 3 hit points.

D&D PC's have never been some guy just off the farm. Of course they haven't. D&D PC's are based heavily in Pulps and pulp heroes are not just some guy off the farm.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well, let's put it this way: when you look at the true superhumans of legend, they're doing things that were deemed not improbable, but impossible.

See, that's the core of the problem.

D&D spellcasters can do things that are impossible, baked right there into the spell system. Grant wishes. Create alternate realities. Travel faster than light. Fly without wings or artifice. Even create raw energy from nothing and use it as a weapon. Those things aren't just improbable, they're impossible.

D&D warriors don't have the ability to do any of that, unless the DM happens to drop a magic item on them, or uses the plot magic of Fiat to make it so.

In order to balance out the narrative control offered by the ability to do the impossible, D&D warriors should have the ability to do the impossible as well, baked right into their rules.

Perhaps they are awarded flying mounts and impenetrable armors by smitten gods. Perhaps they eat the heart of a dragon and gain immortality. Perhaps they reshape the world by cutting down mountains and hewing forests into tinder with a sweep of the axe. Perhaps they learn how to ride tornadoes like horses.

And from Level 1, when spellcasters are mending sucking chest wounds and creating energy from nothing, a D&D warrior needs to be able to do the impossible, too, even if it's just making a +1 sword from a hunk of meteor she found.

Alternately, you can rule that wizards have to work more in subtlety and cunning (a more literary version of magic that's not as weaponized), but that's a really big diversion from core D&D assumptions about magic, and would probably change the tenor of the game dramatically.

Either everyone can do the impossible, or no one can. Being able to do the impossible just because you gain access to spells is going to leave those without access to spells feeling kind of bilked, by and large.

 

[JoeGKushner]

It appears to me that in many works of modern fiction, that the warrior and the wizard are the same character.

Morlock from the various books by James Enge starting with Blood of Ambrosia.

Rand from Wheel of Time.

Elric from Stormbringer and other books.

etc...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

D&D PC's have never been some guy just off the farm.

In YOUR campaigns. Others obviously have different experiences.

D&D PC's are based heavily in Pulps and pulp heroes are not just some guy off the farm.

Many pulp heroes started off as regular joes- possibly with a small advantage here or there- who fell into extraordinary circumstances.

Buck Rodgers was a gas inspector who was overcome in a coal mine and woke up hundreds of years later. Nothing in his origins shows him as being destined for greatness.

Flash Gordon went to Yale and played polo. Unusual, but not superhuman. And whether he was a son of privilege or a scholarship student is unanswered.

Conan was the son of a blacksmith in a barbarian tribe and a warrior by age 15...which is not unusual. In the past, Maasai would start doing solo lion hunts in their teens to prove their manhood (due to falling lion populations, solo hunts are now discouraged).

The original Phantom- as in, the one who initially swore the Oath of The Skull- was a cabin boy on a ship. Subsequent Phantoms were no more extraordinary in origin- all very athletic, but not superhuman...just well trained.

Batman and Tarzan were orphans who were driven to succeed.

Batman and Zorro used their wealth to gain the advantages of special training. Being rich is no super power; it is not a guarantee of greatness. All that set them apart was their ethical drive to help others. To right wrongs. They could just as easily have been hedonistic wastrels.

Most pulp heroes, however, have their origins shrouded in mystery; we only know them through their exploits as establish characters. IOW, we have no idea whether they were average joes or hidden demigods.

The Shadow, Kent Allard (alias "Lamont Cranston" was a fighter pilot turned vigilante. What he was before being a fighter pilot, we don't know.

Solomon Kane's origins are, AFAIK, never revealed.

 

[Dioltach]

And getting back on topic, instead of endlessly arguing whether or not PCs are better than normal people or not (which might be better discussed in a thread of its own) ...

I agree with JoeGK, a lot of heroes are a mix of fighter and wizard (or thief and wizard). Sometimes, though, the wizardly abilities are acquired through items. So this might be another way to look at this discussion: do a fighter's abilities (martial and item-based magical powers) put him on an equal level with a wizard, whose abilities, let's not forget, are also sometimes item-based?

In The Rose of the Prophet by Weiss & Hickman, for example, the main protagonist is a wizard. In that setting, however, wizards can only use magic if channelled through scrolls, wands and other items. This makes the protagonist substantially weaker than most other characters in the books most of the time.

Gandalf has Glamdring and his Elven Ring, Ged has his staff, Harry Dresden uses a range of paraphernelia. Essentially, many fantasy characters draw their powers from items. It's simply that fighter types have other options and their magical powers tend to have a different focus then those of wizard characters.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So this might be another way to look at this discussion: do a fighter's abilities (martial and item-based magical powers) put him on an equal level with a wizard, whose abilities, let's not forget, are also sometimes item-based?

As has been pointed out a few times, it depends upon the setting.

In Niven's "Magic" series, if the mages can't find any mana, they can't do anything a RW college professor couldn't. So unless they learned some Indiana Jones-esque fighting skills along the way, the warrior will be all over them...and it will be all over.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

A wizard can fly, give himself skin that bullets cannot penetrate, move faster then a speeding bullet, give himself X-ray vision, and shoot out ice (perhaps from their breath?)

They are literally superheros.

 

[Hussar]

DannyA - just a nitpick, but, Conan was the last son of Atlantis and most certainly NOT a "normal Joe". But, then again, if you define Conan as a Normal Joe, then, yeah, we're not going to have any point of comparison. Particularly when you count Batman/Bruce Wayne as a "Normal Joe" as well.

Just on a side note, since it's come up a few times, let's do a side by side comparison of character capabilities between editions. After all, there's been a couple of comments that 4e is what has changed the equation and that now, in 4e suddenly fighters are no longer "Normal Joes".

We'll use the same baseline in every edition - Fighter 1 with an 18 (possibly percentile - /01) strength.

1e - Our fighter using a longsword is doing 11 points of damage on a hit (7 on average). Which means he is killing outright any 1 HD creature and quite possibly killing 2 HD creatures in a single shot. Considering that 1HD and 2HD creatures (or less) make up the bulk of encounters at this level, he can pretty much one shot most things he meets. Note, a standard warrior in this edition is a 0 level Man at Arms and actually does about half as much damage on a hit and cannot possibly survive a max damage attack by any of the creatures that a Fighter 1 can.

Fighter is well above the norm.

Second Edition. It's ironic that the edition that purported to be the most about "role play" gives us the most powerful iteration of fighter. F1 with Longsword and specialization is doing 13 points of damage in the first round and 26 in the second. He's outright killing anything with 1 HD, most likely killing anything with 2 HD and in the second round, outright killing anything with less than 3 HD.

Interestingly, if you use an Ogre, the F1 is now doing 17 and 34 points of damage, meaning he's likely to kill an average ogre in the first round and any ogre in the second.

Again, standard warrior is a 0 level Man at Arms capable of doing a maximum of 8 points of damage with a longsword.

Fighter is still well above the norm.

Third Edition. Things start to go a bit south at this point. We'll give our fighter a greatsword and Power Attack (nothing out of the ordinary here) and he's doing 18 points of damage on a single hit. Looking through the CR 1 and CR 2 creatures, he's one shotting pretty much anything in the SRD. Although, to be fair, he's not doing in an Ogre at this point.

Normal warrior is a 1st level Warrior, again, this time doing 10 points of damage (assuming also using a greatsword).

Fighter is still well ahead of the curve.

Fourth Edition. I'm actually not as well versed in 4e mechanics, but, F1 using greatsword is doing 14 points of damage. Other than minions, he cannot kill anything in a single hit. Nothing that our F1 typically faces at this level can be killed outright by the F1.

There is no real baseline warrior though here. The MM does give a town guard statblock, but, that's not really applicable. But, it is interesting to note that our F1 is now the weakest of any edition.

Yet, people keep telling me that 4e characters are superhuman. Very strange.