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

[joela]

You're thinking of the Belgariad and Belgarath's talk with Garion after Garion uses weather to dominate a battlefield (Sparhawk is the protaganist of Eddings other big series). The gist of the conversation is that there is cause and effect in magic (as presented in the Belgariad) but that once a sorcerer understands this he can account for it. The Belgariad is an intersting example though: in it, sorcerers, once they attain any level of mastery, are simply "better" because they can be good at sorcery and pretty much anything else - there is no talk at all of balance.

Never read that series.

 

[joela]

It was almost the opposite in gameplay. A wizard beats a warrior easily; cast Hold Monster, or Greater Invisibility followed by Lightning Bolt, etc, whereas a demon can probably resist half the wizard's spells. (A warrior might have the right weapon, or can just power through DR; given how weak monster ACs often were, Power Attack was a very powerful feat.)

Good point.

 

[Mort]

Never read that series.

Hmm - it just reminded me of the exact conversation.

You're talking about Eathsea then? Been meaning to reread the series.

 

[Beginning of the End]

And this misses the problem as well. Novas are a self-correcting issue with any sort of pressure. It isn't the nova spellcasting that breaks the game - it's the Batman Wizards. It's the ones who cast one or two spells like Glitterdust selected for their target's weaknesses then let the fighters handle the mop-up.

How does that break the game? The wizard contributed to the outcome and so did the other PCs.

...what was meant to be a really tough fight has just been made laughably easy

Ah. It's broken because the players did something that didn't conform to the GM's plan. Gotcha. I don't do a lot of railroading, so this isn't a problem I run into.

Sufficient to handle a nova-er. Possibly. But utterly insufficient to handle a Batman. The Batman owns the fight with just one or two spells (especially at high levels) meaning he can easily outlast the Barbarian.

So the wizard is completely dominating the encounters to the point where other characters aren't contributing, but the barbarian is still somehow losing all his hit points? How does that work?

Or the fighter unless you're handing out healing like water (or just allowing the cleric to make Wands of Cure Light Wounds).

So the Batman Wizard has a limitless supply of magic perfectly suited to every possible opponent but the cleric can't even make a wand of cure light wounds?

This is looking more and more like a giant spherical cow to me.

But, what if I want more traditional fantasy? In D&D, as soon as you start scratching beneath the surface, you realize how poorly D&D does traditional fantasy, at least out of the box. Sure, you can start making all sorts of changes to the ruleset to make it do that, but, that's kinda the point.

Your point is that you have to change the rule system in order to change the rule system?

To use the colloquial: "No , Sherlock."

If you want to say "I don't want PCs to be able to casually fly and D&D doesn't support that out of the box" or any variations on the same, I don't think anybody would disagree with you. But saying "D&D doesn't support space opera out of the box" shouldn't lead one to the conclusion that "D&D is broken".

With that being said, it's pretty trivial to mod D&D for low magic. Some quick options include:

(1) E6 or E8 games.

(2) Banning the spellcasting classes entirely. (You might want to speed natural healing or alchemical healing potions available on the cheap, depending on the exact effect you're looking for.)

(3) Allow characters to have a maximum of 4 class levels in a spellcasting class. (You might want to allow caster level to equal total character level, again depending on the effect you're looking for.)

These are all simple changes.

(And since I can anticipate the inevitable, "But there'll be knock-on effects!" litany, allow me to preemptively point out that both "I want to change the rules without changing the rules" and "if I change the rules, the rules will be changed!" constitute "No , Sherlock" moments.)

 

[joela]

You're talking about Eathsea then?

Yah

 

[Jeff Wilder]

You're thinking of the Belgariad and Belgarath's talk with Garion

No, he's thinking of Earthsea. Ged doesn't understand why Ogion is so slow at teaching him magic ... why Ogion just lets it rain on them, instead of casting a spell and making it go away.

 

[joela]

d20 Fantasy Europe

Sometimes the balancing factor for wizards is that they are very powerful against specific types of obstacles or foes (generally magical or supernatural ones), but have no more power over the rest of the universe than any other person. In other words you fight magic with magic and mundane with mundane.

A wizard can bind or banish a ghost or demon that others are powerless against. But he can't do much against a mundane evil warrior with a sword unless he's also a trained warrior himself and has good weapon at hand. If he has any power over mortals or the natural world it's either brief and minor or slow and insidious. Hexes, curses, potions, or hedge magic. And there are protections to be found from these by consulting another mage or sporting a charm or holy symbol.

Likewise, his buddy the fighter migh carve the evil warrior up handily, but against a raging demon, he'd be ineffective. All he can do is get in it's face and try do distract it so the wizard can hit it with magic. Or he needs a wizard to enchant his weapons and armor so he can stand toe to toe with a magical monster.

In D&D terms you might say that a demon or other supernatural creature has damge reduction (or even invulnerability) against normal attakcs, but vulnerability to magical ones. Hit it with an ordiary sword and it has little to no effect. Hit is with a magical sword or a spell of rebuke and it suffers - moreso than a mortal human being would.

I see this as the anser to "Gandalf was a 5th level magic user that soloed a Balor." In the setting, the Balor is particularly vulernable to magic, as was the Nazgul that Gandalf turned back at Pellenor Fields. Those methods were not useful against the orcs of Moria so he had to rely on his sword.

Also, the more powerful the magic, the more specific it's effects. The Witch King could not be harmed by any man, but the loophole in the magic that protected him made him totally vulnerable against a female warrior. You get that kind of powerful, specific protetion, or you get something minor like a +2 weapon that is more likely to hit and do more damage against just about anything, but isn't going to cleave through a castle gate or hew the peak off a mountaintop.

GameDoc, I uploaded your post over at the Paizo boards as well as rpg.net, with the following:

What if you built a game around such concept? The wizard's most powerful spells affecting the world maybe shield or magic missile or, basically, zero and first level spells. The bulk of their spells would then focus on, well, magic: read magic, antimagic field, arcane mark, banishment, reveal true shape, etc. Powerful spells that affect the mundane world (e.g., fireball) could be cast as either a ritual or "created" like a one-shot magic item (i.e., lots of time to prep, costly in terms of rare material components, etc.)

A Paizoian rightly pointed out such a game sounded similar to Ars Magica. I'm familiar with that game, and am going to look into developing a version based off the SRD.

Thanks for the idea!

 

[FireLance]

It's been awhile since I read the original trilogy, but wasn't there some sorta "balance" issue that restricted wizards? IIRC, Sparrowhawk was told that when he created rain in one place, it was dry somewhere else and vice versa.

Unfortunately, Earthsea is not a particularly good example of a setting where magic is balanced. Magical "balance" in Earthsea pretty much boils down to ... the wizards realize that bad things happen to the world if they mess with the balance, so they sort of have a gentleman's agreement not to do that. All it takes is for one wizard to be crazy enough to do that and, well, (spoiler)

Spoiler

you get the entire plot of the third book, The Farthest Shore

.

 

[Neonchameleon]

How does that break the game? The wizard contributed to the outcome and so did the other PCs.

It's Ars Magica. The wizard solved the encounter then sent the other PCs in with mop and bucket to be the cleanup crew after things were resolved. That's a hireling's job.

Ah. It's broken because the players did something that didn't conform to the GM's plan. Gotcha. I don't do a lot of railroading, so this isn't a problem I run into.

*eyeroll* No. That would be when the spellcasters deal with the dungeon with earthquake or teleport without error or scry (or a scry and fry) to fix problems.

So the wizard is completely dominating the encounters to the point where other characters aren't contributing, but the barbarian is still somehow losing all his hit points? How does that work?

The Barbarian has less longevity than the wizard. Not none. When he starts to take the lead he'll go down.

So the Batman Wizard has a limitless supply of magic perfectly suited to every possible opponent but the cleric can't even make a wand of cure light wounds?

Nice strawman. The cleric is about as strong as the wizard and the druid. It's the caster vs non-caster balance that's the problem in 3.x not the wizard vs cleric balance. And the Batman Wizard's magic is not perfectly suited to every possible opponent. He doesn't have Q backing him who is able to say "You will need these gadgets and no other." And for that matter he doesn't normally have a can of bat-shark repellant. What he has is spells that are useful against a broad spectrum of foes. There are four basic defences against magic. Fort, Ref, Will, and SR. Eyeball the foe to pick which defences will be high. Then pick from your prepared spells on that basis. Both spells I mentioned will ignore SR (conjurations normally do). Both have a wide range of targets (Glitterdust on anyone with a low will, Evard's on anyone medium sized who isn't a bodybuilder (it'll outgrapple a monk with Improved Grapple)) so claiming perfect prep doesn't hold water. And both are area effect Those are two prepared spells because they are useful in a wide range of circumstances. Not perfect - but good enough. As for your claim about unlimited magic, you don't. But you don't need much magic per fight - that took one 4th level spell and one second. At 9th level you have two fifth level spells , three fourth, and five second (including stat mods - and no specialisation). Scaling up that's four fights you could trivialise in a day quite easily.

This is looking more and more like a giant spherical cow to me.

If you can't tell a spherical cow from a kangaroo (may look wierd and sound strange but they exist and many people have witnessed them and there are photographs) then that's your affair.

Your point is that you have to change the rule system in order to change the rule system?

No. My point is that if you change the rule system you aren't playing the actual rules. And that you needed to change the rules system shows what the problem is.

If you want to say "I don't want PCs to be able to casually fly and D&D doesn't support that out of the box" or any variations on the same, I don't think anybody would disagree with you. But saying "D&D doesn't support space opera out of the box" shouldn't lead one to the conclusion that "D&D is broken".

Again, nice strawman. If you want to say "I don't want to have a party with BMX bandit and angel summoner" (literally in the second case) and that D&D supports this, that leads to the conclusion that D&D is broken. It's not about the casual flight. It's about the casual flight on one side and the sole ability being to swing a sharp piece of metal moderately hard on the other.

There is nothing wrong with Exalted as an RPG. There is nothing wrong with GURPS as an RPG. But mixing Exalted characters and 100 point (3e) GURPS characters is going to lead to an odd experience. 3.X goes beyond that. It not only mixes the two, it claims they are the same power level.

 

[triqui]

GameDoc, I uploaded your post over at the Paizo boards as well as rpg.net, with the following:

What if you built a game around such concept? The wizard's most powerful spells affecting the world maybe shield or magic missile or, basically, zero and first level spells. The bulk of their spells would then focus on, well, magic: read magic, antimagic field, arcane mark, banishment, reveal true shape, etc. Powerful spells that affect the mundane world (e.g., fireball) could be cast as either a ritual or "created" like a one-shot magic item (i.e., lots of time to prep, costly in terms of rare material components, etc.)

A Paizoian rightly pointed out such a game sounded similar to Ars Magica. I'm familiar with that game, and am going to look into developing a version based off the SRD.

Thanks for the idea!

Although the setting might not be of your interest (becouse of victorian age feel in some of their parts), you really should check "Arcanum: of steam work and magick obscura", a game where being "mundane" made you less vulnerable to magic, but being magical made you less vulnerable to mundane. It's quite a good sandbox game, and one where you could effectively play a charisma character and win, becouse most of the encounters could be "bluffed" or "persuaded", and your charisma score would give you followers to deal with the blunt encounters that couldnt be solved with charisma. (you could also take sneak approach, magic approach, tech -steampunk tech- approach, or just don heavy armor and a claymore and hack and slash).