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

[pawsplay]

In literature, the countering force to this is the Narrative. Warriors defeat wizards because the story demands that they do.

Why does the story demand anything? It's not a person with an agenda of its own. It's not "story" that causes warriors to defeat wizards, it's what happens within that story, events that lead up to the necessary and logical defeat of the wizard. Your premise seems to suggest that without favoritism from the author, it would not happen. Yet in most stories, magic is dangerous, difficult, and often time-consuming. As a baseline assumption, you feel the wizard will outstrip any warrior if unchecked. Many wizards in stories seem to believe this as well, yet time and time again they are proven wrong. There is no reason, inherently, you have to put a series of checks on wizards, any more than you need to write a treatise to stop warriors from dominating wizards.

The relative dominance of magic and melee depends entirely on the basic assumptions with regard to magic. "Unlimited godlike power, without a cost," is not a standard feature of magic, any more than "easily defeats all casters with a quick sword thrust" is a characteristic of all fighters.

 

[pemerton]

The problem with this is that by giving warriors control over the narrative of the campaign you effectively makes players playing warriors sub-GMs.

Why is this a problem?

 

[pemerton]

Of course, while he says that it doesn't have to be that way, he then says that it is. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but whatever.

Well, it can be true that P without it being true that necessarily P.

For example, it is true that I am typing this right now, but (assuming that no sort of very strong determinist hypothesis is true) it is also possible, although not actual, that I'm doing something else. Which is to say, it is not necessary that I be typing this right now. Which is to say, even though it is that way, it doesn't have to be.

 

[pemerton]

Is anyone seriously suggesting that my 1st level fighter, with relatively average stats and 6 hp, and a secondary skill of farmer/gardener, cannot have "turnip farmer" as a background?

I don't believe so.

It may be fluffed away as a choice in the background story information, but by the time the story opens, they're already different.

<snip>

A PC isn't just some grunt trooper. They are a fantasy hero.

<snip>

Early D&D varied in this, because early D&D largely didn't really try to emulate a genre, it just tried to give you interesting things to put in a dungeon, to kill PC's in droves.

I think the problem is actually that if your turnip farmers (or militia members or even town guards) have fighter stats, your fighter doesn't feel like a Fantasy Hero, he feels like a turnip farmer (or a militia member or a town guard).

<snip>

Fighter levels are a lousy mechanic to model NPC commoners, which is why mechanics like the commoner NPC class were invented, and why 4e advises you not to bother statting up NPC commoners at all, and gives you rules like Minions for when you do.

These points continue to be very sound ones. It's a pity that a discussion that is mostly about game design and the meta-game has got sucked into a tangent about who is what within the ingame fiction, which furthermore presupposes the soundness of the rules in earlier editions that you are trying to critique.

Isn't that why they created the NPC classes warrior, commoner, aristocrat, expert, and adept? To create NPCs that can have some ability, but at the same time aren't on par with PCs.

Would you consider an "average" farmer in 3.x something like a Com 3 or a Com 5?

Can someone tell me what a level 20 commoner actually means in the gameworld?

This well known blog post argues that Einstein, Aragorn etc are 5th level 3E characters, and that higher levels in D&D represent superhuman characters.

What is the ingame meaning, then of a commoner (or any other NPC class, for that matter) higher than 5th level?

 

[GSHamster]

The relative dominance of magic and melee depends entirely on the basic assumptions with regard to magic. "Unlimited godlike power, without a cost," is not a standard feature of magic, any more than "easily defeats all casters with a quick sword thrust" is a characteristic of all fighters.

Exactly! That is Option 3 of mine. Restrictive magic.

But D&D magic is much closer to Neo-Matrix style magic than it is to the other extremes. And do you honestly see someone who is bound by the rules of the physical world being able to defeat Neo in the Matrix?

Or say Rand Al'Thor in the Wheel of Time. Without a'dam or Mat's fox amulet, can any non-magical individual possibly challenge him or any of the (competent) Aes Sedai?

In D&D, magic, especially at high-levels, is closer to the high-magic extreme than the other. I'm not saying that you can't change that, but it is a deliberate change, and a lot of people who currently like playing magic users might not be too happy with change of that magnitude.

 

[GSHamster]

It basically comes down to the two having roughly equal in power. If a wizard can create demiplanes then warriors should be able to cut mountains in half with their ability alone.

Let me outline the opposing argument.

The world has physical rules.
Only someone with magic can break those rules.
Therefore, someone without magic cannot break those rules.

Cutting a mountain in half violates the physical rules of the world.
Therefore, someone without magic cannot cut a mountain in half.

It's not a question of balance. It's a question of verisimilitude. Only magic is allowed to break verisimilitude. That is why people insist that non-magical warriors should not be able to do things like cut mountains in half, even if it leads to an unbalanced game. Their desire for balance conflicts with the desire for verisimilitude, and for some people the latter is more important than the former.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Let me outline the opposing argument.

The world has physical rules.
Only someone with magic can break those rules..

Whoh! Stop there. Here's the problem.

There is where the logic train derails and loses sight of Fantasy Station. At this point you are no longer playing a fantasy game - you are playing a magic game. Which is great for something like Ars Magica, but that's not what D&D is. This isn't a verisimilitude argument, and god have I grown to hate how that word is slung around.

Here's the thing: the idea of secularized magic is an incredibly modern phenomenon. Magic was the supernatural throughout most of human history and mythology. And not the other way around - there was far more supernatural then just "guy casting a spell," but that guy casting a spell was tied directly to divine or otherworldly power.

Fantasy up until the secularization of mythology was almost entirely about the divine. Both "wizard" types and "warrior" types were heavily intertwined with otherworldly power and figures. Wizards weren't wizards, they were clerics. Even the name wizard has it's origins in the Zoroastrian Magi, the "priests" of a specific religion.

When you say "only magic can alter the rules" you aren't upholding any verisimilitude. You're only upholding an incredibly bizarre idea that only one specific group of supernatural power can change the rules and the others can't for arbitrary and undefined reasons. If there are wizards in your game - figures who by definition are imbued with supernatural power - and they are PCs, then you either the non-wizards should also be supernatural, or you should just play Ars Magica, because that's what you want.

I'm not slamming on Ars Magica, either! But that's precisely the style of gameplay you seem to want - where wizards rule the world and non-wizards aren't really PCs.

 

[GSHamster]

I'm using "magic" as short-form for "clerical, divine, or arcane magic, or other supernatural power". To me, you can substitute cleric for wizard in the entire argument and get the same results.

To be honest, it's a little bit of a tautology. What is magic? Magic is anything that allows you to break the normal physical rules.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

Let me outline the opposing argument.

The world has physical rules.
Only someone with magic can break those rules.
Therefore, someone without magic cannot break those rules.

So you are saying that a world's Physics determine what a power source like 4e's Martial can do, and a world's Chemistry determines what something like Alchemy can do. Well in many stories "magic" has its own sets of rules.

Cutting a mountain in half violates the physical rules of the world.
Therefore, someone without magic cannot cut a mountain in half.

Funny thing is that the rules of the real world do allow me to cut mountains in half. Circumstances are what prevent me from doing so. All I need is a blade (or a way to create a blade for a limited time) long enough and sharp enough to cut through all that rock and dirt and a way to accelerate the blade so that it traverses through the mountain. Heck get a big enough blade and you can cut planets, stars and even galaxies.

It's not a question of balance. It's a question of verisimilitude. Only magic is allowed to break verisimilitude. That is why people insist that non-magical warriors should not be able to do things like cut mountains in half, even if it leads to an unbalanced game. Their desire for balance conflicts with the desire for verisimilitude, and for some people the latter is more important than the former.

Verisimilitude is dependent on a lot of things, genre is a big one. Magic does not break verisimilitude in fantasy but it does in other genres. If I had a gritty real world nior detective mystery and the solution at the end of the book was a demon did it, it would break my sense of verisimilitude.

The only thing that makes most Fighters unable to perform fantastic feats when Wizards can do things like kill everyone in 100 feet by saying a single word is a bunch of tropes that have been in the game for 30+ years.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Published materials are full of NPC fighters and thieves who are distinguished by only one criterion: they have competencies your average Normal Man does not

So, by your own admission, NPC fighters are outright better than a Normal Man, or, dare I say it, Bob the Turnip Farmer.

Unless, of course, the majority of Turnip Farmers in your world are F1's, then I guess the distinction would be moot.

I think it's pretty simple to keep up. A claim was made that a Ftr 1 could be a regular guy just off the turnip wagon, and a counter-claim was made that it could not be so, in any edition.

And, as Pawsplay has just point out, it's not true. The F1 is distinguished from the normal guy just off the turnip wagon. End of story. It doesn't matter how much, just that he is.