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

[Herremann the Wise]

Rolemaster has rules a little like this. So does HARP.

But they don't work all that well, in my view, for the reasons that triqui has given in his/her recent posts upthread: it's not a very effective balancing mechanism to have one player have access to great power at the risk of losing his/her PC. If the player doesn't use the power, then it may as well not be there. If the player uses the power and gets away with it, then that player's PC is over strong (and hence unbalanced). If the player tries to use the power and suffers the backlash then the game for that player (and perhaps the rest of the players also, depending on the details of the backlash rules in question) is disrupted in a serious way.

Would we think it was a good game if the player of the fighter, in a hard combat, said to the GM "Let me toss a coin - heads I win the fight, tails I lose, my PCs dies and I sit out the rest of the session"? Doesn't sound very good to me. But this is what magic backlash rules approximate to.

A question then: how would you design "backlash rules" that were more enjoyable for all concerned? What regular and mild backlash effects would you think reasonable (on let's say a 30% - 6 or below on a d20 - chance of miscasting and suffering)?

I think your fighter coin-tossing question a good one but there is a very important dynamic there that I think would be interesting to vary and ponder. If it is a coin toss, then the player is still thinking in their mind that they have an average chance of success. In other words, they have a reasonable incentive to give it a go if the chips are down (and thus 50% of the time that they are encouraged by the situation to give it a go, they lose their character).

However, what if you reduced the chance of success quite dramatically to let's say 10% (19+ on a d20)? And then you reduced the chance of death down a little but so it was still significant at let's say 25% (5 or below on a d20)***. In between these you might have one of the mild backlash effects such as needing a round to gather back the power to cast or perhaps more severely fatiguing the caster for the encounter. In other words, you are reducing the incentive to cast the spell based upon chance of success. Reducing the incentive means that the overall chance of losing the character is significantly reduced (to perhaps an acceptable level play-wise) but in the mind of the player and his or her caster the danger of the situation is still very much there and this spell will thus be used very much as a last resort. It becomes the classic piece of dark and mysterious arcane knowledge that an upstanding wizard would never trifle with, but the more curious wizard might weaken and study and eventually cast like a moth to a flame. The decision to cast such a spell would be a very interesting piece of role-playing I think within that context.

Just a thought.

I would very much appreciate your thoughts though on a workable backlash mechanic even if it is to repeat that it could not work effectively. You seem to have a very astute eye for such things.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

*** I think this Double DC mechanic would be an interesting step in a more advanced form of D&D opening up a vast array of interesting options. I've been wanting to start a thread on it but the full concept is still incomplete. I have been working away at it here and there to make a more interesting and complete presentation.

 

[Raven Crowking]

But the game has now turned from an investigative one (who did it?) to a social/political one (how do we persuade XYZ of the truth?). That's a non-trivial impact of the magic right there.

No one is arguing that magic is trivial.

There is nothing wrong with going from investigation to social/political. The only person who may have reason to be miffed here is the GM, and then only if the GM has a strong feeling about how the adventure "should go".

If the players choose not to avail themselves of some kind of magic, because it damages the type of adventures/characters they want to play in/run, then they are perfectly capable of so choosing.

They go to the king and say the count did it because their god told them so. The king turns to his three top clerics and they all cast Divinition and get the same result. Count is convicted and suffers the punishments.

You don't follow politics much, do you?

If you get a chance, I'd recommend reading The Three Musketeers.

I hate to break it to you, but there are lots of reasons that those three top clerics might lie. If you doubt that people in positions of power have reasons to lie, I suggest you obtain and read any newspaper anywhere in the world.

On top of which, unless the Count happens to be randomly homicidal, the murder was committed with a purpose, and that purpose probably involves others in some way. And if the Count is a maniac, and has been doing this for some time, it is odd that (1) no one has caught him yet, while (2) he has taken no precautions related to divination spells. Or perhaps the Count doesn't understand the workings of the courts, or of the aristocracy to which he belongs?

If the Count is well enough connected, and the victim is not, then the PCs discovering that the Count did it might get them tossed into the darkest dungeons the King can find. Imagine going to the Godfather to tell him that you learned that his made man murdered, say, one of the Godfather's enemies. And you are intent on blabbing that.

Who do you think ends up in the concrete boots?

The problem here isn't the divination spell, the problem is that the scenario is not well enough thought out to consider the ramifications of both (1) the resources that the PCs have available, and (far more importantly) (2) what the "big picture" is that puts the events into context.

It is only when an "adventure" is visualized as a series of events that are "supposed to" happen that you run into this sort of problem. When you see an adventure as a situation for the players to interact with as they desire, then it doesn't matter how they do so. Of course, you have to understand the situation you are presenting quite well yourself to run adventures in this way.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Interestingly, I found myself at something of a loss in a 4e game when a mystery came up and we couldn't just hit the magic buttons. There was a doppleganger sabateour hidden in our midst before an invading force came to lay siege to the fortress we were holed up in. We discovered the sabotage and deduced the existence of the doppleganger (not terribly difficult, the adventure had featured dopplegangers before) and set about trying to track him down.

Guess what? Suddenly not having things like Detect Evil, True Seeing, and various other spells meant that we had to actually engage the setting rather than turn to the cleric/wizard to solve the problem. Turned into a rather interesting skill challenge that we failed. The doppleganger escaped.

I guess you should have "engaged the setting" by making X skill checks before you failed Y.

The standard procedure is to get the person who can roll highest on the allowed checks to roll. It is even easier than pushing the "magic buttons".

Unfortunately, your DM chose to go the Skill Challenge route. My understanding of the math, as it was broken down in another thread some time ago, is that you suffer a far greater chance of failure in a Skill Challenge than you do if you are allowed to engage the setting by, you know, just engaging the setting. If you had role-played it out, without the Skill Challenge roll-playing involved, you may well have succeeded.

Of course, people fail when they just push the magic buttons, too. That's something that happens when interaction with the setting becomes "pushing buttons" rather than having to think about what you are doing.

I have psionic PCs in my game who can read minds and steal memories, let alone cast a few paltry divination spells. And, yet, even when they manage to get all the information their captives know, they still have things to wonder about and interact with. Even divination spells don't solve all of their problems. There is no "I win" button. Or skill check.

But, to each his own.



RC

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The king turns to his three top clerics and they all cast Divinition and get the same result. Count is convicted and suffers the punishments.

Again, it depends upon if the court considers Divination spells to be evidence or merely investigative- 4 people saying the same thing doesn't make it so. Any or all of them could be lying. What is the guarantee that the diviners in question are impartial. Where is the guarantee that one or more are not frauds? If they're the King's men, might they not lie for their Liege if he has an interest in the case? (Before you answer that, consider the tumultuous relationships some powerful RW clerics have had with the rulers of their countries...and also how in some others, one side "owns" the other.)

See, even though DNA alone isn't enough to convict, I'm fairly certain that conviction rates went up after DNA evidence came into the toolbox.

So did exonerations- IOW, overturned convictions- esp. from death row.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

You don't follow politics much, do you?

RC,

Superb musketeer post. Can't XP you enough. A campaign predicated on human deviousness, mendacity, inconstancy and empty allegiance is necessarily the most convincing: it is, rather unfortunately, who we are.

 

[Hussar]

A question then: how would you design "backlash rules" that were more enjoyable for all concerned? What regular and mild backlash effects would you think reasonable (on let's say a 30% - 6 or below on a d20 - chance of miscasting and suffering)?

I think your fighter coin-tossing question a good one but there is a very important dynamic there that I think would be interesting to vary and ponder. If it is a coin toss, then the player is still thinking in their mind that they have an average chance of success. In other words, they have a reasonable incentive to give it a go if the chips are down (and thus 50% of the time that they are encouraged by the situation to give it a go, they lose their character).

However, what if you reduced the chance of success quite dramatically to let's say 10% (19+ on a d20)? And then you reduced the chance of death down a little but so it was still significant at let's say 25% (5 or below on a d20)***. In between these you might have one of the mild backlash effects such as needing a round to gather back the power to cast or perhaps more severely fatiguing the caster for the encounter. In other words, you are reducing the incentive to cast the spell based upon chance of success. Reducing the incentive means that the overall chance of losing the character is significantly reduced (to perhaps an acceptable level play-wise) but in the mind of the player and his or her caster the danger of the situation is still very much there and this spell will thus be used very much as a last resort. It becomes the classic piece of dark and mysterious arcane knowledge that an upstanding wizard would never trifle with, but the more curious wizard might weaken and study and eventually cast like a moth to a flame. The decision to cast such a spell would be a very interesting piece of role-playing I think within that context.

Just a thought.

I would very much appreciate your thoughts though on a workable backlash mechanic even if it is to repeat that it could not work effectively. You seem to have a very astute eye for such things.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

*** I think this Double DC mechanic would be an interesting step in a more advanced form of D&D opening up a vast array of interesting options. I've been wanting to start a thread on it but the full concept is still incomplete. I have been working away at it here and there to make a more interesting and complete presentation.

I think this is a good idea. Doesn't Paranoia have something like this where your mutant powers (or whatever it's called, it's been a REALLY long time since I played Paranoia) have a chance of doing very bad things?

The problem with this sort of thing though is the same as having critical hits in an RPG. The NPC's don't suffer any of the consequences by and large. Sure, an individual bad guy might die that much quicker to a crit, but, he was really supposed to die anyway, it just happend on round X instead of round Y.

But, eventually, the bad guys are going to crit the PC's and suddenly the PC goes from full health to dead through no real fault of his own. It's a bit ... anticlimactic.

The same sort of thing could apply here. The NPC's can blast away with spells all day long, because the odds of this particular NPC suffering some sort of backlash are so small. The PC's, OTOH, will pretty much always suffer the backlash.

It's tricky.

------------

I guess you should have "engaged the setting" by making X skill checks before you failed Y.

The standard procedure is to get the person who can roll highest on the allowed checks to roll. It is even easier than pushing the "magic buttons".

Unfortunately, your DM chose to go the Skill Challenge route. My understanding of the math, as it was broken down in another thread some time ago, is that you suffer a far greater chance of failure in a Skill Challenge than you do if you are allowed to engage the setting by, you know, just engaging the setting. If you had role-played it out, without the Skill Challenge roll-playing involved, you may well have succeeded.

Of course, people fail when they just push the magic buttons, too. That's something that happens when interaction with the setting becomes "pushing buttons" rather than having to think about what you are doing.

I have psionic PCs in my game who can read minds and steal memories, let alone cast a few paltry divination spells. And, yet, even when they manage to get all the information their captives know, they still have things to wonder about and interact with. Even divination spells don't solve all of their problems. There is no "I win" button. Or skill check.

But, to each his own.



RC

Umm, doing a skill challenge is "playing it out" actually. I know that you insist on a strict, by the book, the DM has had half his brains scooped out interpretation of skill challenges, but, really, that's not how they work. But, you're also missing the point. In earlier editions, I'd simply turn to the cleric and cast Detect Evil and the problem is solved. I don't have to engage in the setting in any way, shape or form.

But, I have a feeling that you're also playing silly buggers with the idea of "I win". "I win" doesn't have to be 100% success 100% of the time. It's simply an easy shorthand way of saying I can gain a measure of success without any effort on my part.

Want to find the murder weapon? Locate Object. King wants to know who the murderer is? ESP, Mind Reading, Zone of Truth etc.

Sure, real world and fiction based on the real world, this wouldn't work. But, unlike the world of the Three Musketeers, when a cleric steps out of line, he stops being a cleric. His god stops giving him spells. A LG cleric has a code of conduct just as strict as a paladin's. Lie to the king to protect a murderer? Good luck getting that past Pelor or Heironeous.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

RC,

Superb musketeer post. Can't XP you enough. A campaign predicated on human deviousness, mendacity, inconstancy and empty allegiance is necessarily the most convincing: it is, rather unfortunately, who we are.

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."

 

[Raven Crowking]

Umm, doing a skill challenge is "playing it out" actually.

Funny, because so is casting a divination spell. I don't know about your table, but everyone wants input at my table before the spell gets cast (to help formulate the questions) and after (to decide not only what the answers mean, but, far more importantly, what to do with them).

And the problem is that you are missing the point. The doppleganger may be your problem right now, but that hardly means that the doppleganger is the only one in the room who will ping to your Detect Evil.

Frankly, I think you'd have a hard time trying the solutions you propose in any game that I was running. For that matter, in any game that I would enjoy playing in.

Not necessarily all of the time, but certainly enough that the idea of an ESP spell identifying who the murder is would no longer seem like such an "I Win" button.

(But, then, I suspect this is similar to how you thought Sleep was an "I Win" button in 1e, until we went through the T1 moathouse encounters and discovered how many there were that left our poor magic-user folded, spindled, and mutilated after he supposedly "won".)


RC

 

[Banshee16]

First, let me get something clear: wizards SHOULD be more powerful, imo. Otherwise, what's the point? But with that power should come some kind of vulnerability or a special quality for non-spellcasters.

In Scott Bakker's "Prince of Nothing" series, the sorcerers (known as schoolmen) are quite powerful. They're known to be quite deadly...to the point that armies keep their own units of schoolmen to use against each other. However, they're also somewhat fragile and delicate......so typically, they're kind of like nukes. The armies have them, but try to avoid putting them in harm's way. They'll try to take out the opposing army's sorcerers, and then, if they do, their own sorcerers then massacre the opposing army.

The mechanism he uses is that sorcerers traffic in forbidden powers....even the good ones. Basically, they're working with evil knowledge, even if they are good people. That traffic in darkness stains their souls, and as a result, they are vulnerable to the effect of items called "Chorae". It's some kind of mystic rock. When held by a non-spellcaster, it makes him invulnerable to incantations. If it touches a schoolman, it turns him into a statue of salt (thus killing him).

The stuff is very valuable, so it's not like it's everywhere...but kinds and nobles tend to have it, and they'll have it on arrowheads held by groups of archers, etc.

It's an interesting way to control the power of the spellcasters, while allowing them to be lethal. If a schoolman encounters a bunch of warriors, and they have no chorae, they're dead. But if they encounter him and have chorae with him, all they have to do is make a touch attack and he's petrified.

Banshee

 

[pemerton]

Again, it depends upon if the court considers Divination spells to be evidence or merely investigative- 4 people saying the same thing doesn't make it so. Any or all of them could be lying. What is the guarantee that the diviners in question are impartial. Where is the guarantee that one or more are not frauds?

I hate to break it to you, but there are lots of reasons that those three top clerics might lie. If you doubt that people in positions of power have reasons to lie, I suggest you obtain and read any newspaper anywhere in the world.

I agree with Hussar - this is tending to push the game out of the "heroic fantasy" genre and into something slightly different. Which is fine in and of itself, but I think that D&D is well served by also supporting heroic fantasy play. And at least in my experience the alternative genre - grim and gritty musketeers or swords & sorcerry - also isn't harmed by dialing down the "mega-magic".

There is nothing wrong with going from investigation to social/political. The only person who may have reason to be miffed here is the GM, and then only if the GM has a strong feeling about how the adventure "should go".

If the players choose not to avail themselves of some kind of magic, because it damages the type of adventures/characters they want to play in/run, then they are perfectly capable of so choosing.

<snip>

It is only when an "adventure" is visualized as a series of events that are "supposed to" happen that you run into this sort of problem. When you see an adventure as a situation for the players to interact with as they desire, then it doesn't matter how they do so.

I tend to think that there is a tension between these two paragraphs. Part of the issue, as I've indicated in previous posts, is that the presence of "mega-magic" means that the players, in interacting with the situation, have to choose between gimping their PCs and preserving the genre/story/flavour/whatever-label-you-want-to-give-to-walking-to-Gondor-rather-than-teleporting.

That is why, in my Rolemaster games, after a certain point the players decided that we would exclude teleport and a good chunk of divination from the game.

Now that is a modest mechanical tweak. Probably even a rookie GM and/or players can reflect and think of doing it. But the more the "mega-magic" - or, as KM and Prof Cirno are describing it, narrative-controlling magic - is embedded into the game system, the harder this sort of tweaking gets and the more one might be looking for fundamental changes to the magic system.

If you compare HARP to Rolemaster you can see that a lot of this was done (although, while they got invis and save-or-die, they missed fly and teleport). 4e is another example, obviously. It's an open question, of course, who prefers which game on either side of the "mega-magic" divide, but I think it's pretty obvious that there's a singificant issue here, of what sort of mechanics support what sort of play. I don't think the designers of HARP and 4e are just jumping at shadows!