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

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I don't know if that is true. As I raised in my note about Knock - the spellcasters have to have spells prepared. Having theoretical access to a spell, and having practical access in the middle of the dungeon is not the same thing, by a long shot.

Does your wizard know in the morning how many monsters of what type he'll fight, and now many walls he'll need to climb, and now many locks will need to be opened? What happens when the number of tasks he needs to perform exceeds the number of spells he gets per day?

In theory, theory is the same as practice. In practice, it isn't.

But more helpfully, no, you generally won't know exactly how many locks you'll need to pick, or how many walls you'll need to climb. The possibility of running out of resources certainly exists.

On the other hand, in my vasty years of gaming experience, I've never really come across a situation where there are multiple dozens of either. Generally, there's 2 or 3 key (by which I mean important) locks, and maybe one or two walls. Oftentimes, however, there aren't any of either.

This is why scrolls - and, for a wizard, a scroll of Knock only costs 75gp per charge [or you can get it in wand form for 2,250gp (or 45gp per charge)], and Spider Climb is the same price for 30 minutes of free climbing - are so important. And once 5th-level spells are available, Overland Flight becomes an option, and you'll never need to climb anything ever again (excepting 5'x5' chimneys, I suppose).

Pearls of Power are also fantastically helpful, since they let you recast your combat spells, saving a spell slot for something more broadly applicable.

Yes, at low levels those costs are prohibitive. This is why, at low levels, spellcasters do not run roughshod over mundanes. At higher levels, however, those costs aren't nearly so much in relative terms, and it also coincides with the time when spellcasters start having enough spellslots that they aren't routinely running dry (see also Mort's point about leaving slots open once you get enough).

EDIT: While it is possible that a GM could, in response to his wand of knock-carrying wizard, start putting anything and everything behind multiple dozens of locks, to me that's just 1) being adversarial, which is not likely to lead to a particularly happy table,* 2) lacking in verisimilitude ("Man - ever since we figured out how to magically open things, everything's locked!", and 3) is a pretty blatant job for Aquaman in order to make the rogue seem useful.**

Moreover, there is a huge upside in being able to, through the use of divinations and rapid transport spells, start dictating the answers to your questions: "I will fight no-one today because I'll be teleporting back to my tower to make three extra scrolls of whatever (or maybe just picking them up from my storage cache) and I'll come back shortly to obliterate the enemy commanders (who I know are all vulnerable to cold damage, thanks to my fantastic Knowledge rolls and some invisible, flying scouting)."

* Note: the wizard "winning" everything is also not likely to lead to a happy table (unless they're all wizards, I guess). Which is why, as posted before, I've intentionally played wizards to less than full capability for quite some time now.

** Yes, this has been linked before. I just wanted to waste a couple hours of peoples' lives as they get sucked into TVTropes.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't know if that is true. As I raised in my note about Knock - the spellcasters have to have spells prepared. Having theoretical access to a spell, and having practical access in the middle of the dungeon is not the same thing, by a long shot.

Does your wizard know in the morning how many monsters of what type he'll fight, and now many walls he'll need to climb, and now many locks will need to be opened? What happens when the number of tasks he needs to perform exceeds the number of spells he gets per day?

Easy. He goes home with teleport and tries again tomorrow. And of course he knows what he's facing, he's already scried the portions he's interested in. And scrolls and wands are cheap.

When I mean solo, I don't mean "Start at the first door of the Tomb of Horrors and get to the end." I mean more of "I'm tenth level. I want to achieve my personal character goals, which are to achieve the highest mastery of arcane power possible, gain immortality, and establish a legacy which will endure for centuries, if not millenia." Divinations and teleports to gain money and levels. Bind planar allies to your will to help. Eventually astral project from your genesis created demiplane.

This is all stuff that's been around for years now. You simply have to play extremely proactively, which is why for so many people, these issues aren't really issues. It doesn't change the fact that if you substitute your 10th level fighter for a 10th druid or cleric or wizard, your party will be able to face many more encounters of higher Challenge rating with less risk. There's simply nothing a fighter does that's better.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, I can see that. And, to be fair, we certainly played that way. By and large, most of these things were just handwaved away as much as possible.

However, I do find it rather refreshing to play a version of D&D where I don't have to do that quite so much.

As I hope my posts on this, but moreso on other, threads have made clear, I'm a huge fan of 4e's approach to setting - especially as elaborated in Worlds and Monsters (one of the better GM books for 4e, a lot of which, in my view, should have been included in the DMG).

One thing that I like about it - certainly not the only thing, or even the primary thing - is that it's deliberately crafted to serve as an evocative backdrop for fantasy adventure, rather than an incipient source of game elements to be manipulated alongside the game mechanics. (Most NPCs not having stats is just one aspect of this. The magic item "economy" is another.)

So for me it's not that it makes the handwaving easier because it's got rid of permanent spells (everburning torches are still on the equipment list, for example) but rather that it's been designed from the ground up to be used as this sort of backdrop. And the game mechanics on the whole support this, by not encouraging players to make that backdrop part of the (quasi-)mechanical techniques of play (no domain rules of the classic sort, no crafting skills to create an economics or trading minigame, no animal breeding rules that push things in a similar direction, etc etc).

And just to avoid any unintended inferences being drawn - a world that is a backdrop is not a world that is unimportant or shallow, or merely colour. I take it the LotR is sufficient proof of this. It's rather that the game is about heroics which engage the gameworld as a source of theme and value and stakes for adventure - not as a matter for demography and sociology and economics and calculating the optimal tax rate to set in order to maximise production of heavy cavalry from my horse-breeding villages.

On the basis of a lot of posts, from a lot of posters (yourself included), I would argue that you still aren't playing a version where less handwaving is required. Instead, you are playing a version where the onus of the handwaving has changed from handwaving the effects of magic to handwaving the causes of supposedly non-magical effects.

Well I think handwaving of all sorts is required. Though in the case of everburning torches, it's the sort of handwaving where we just don't ask why they aren't on the corner of every city intersection. Whereas in the case of non-magic effects it's the sort of handwaving where reaching consenus at the table as to what happened in the fiction is part (if only one small part) of the fun of playing the game.

 

[pemerton]

Knock only handles, at most, 2 impediments. Put in a third, and the knock spell doesn't open the door. You ever see one of those NYC apartment doors with a bazillion locks on them?

Reading strictly - just tie the darned door shut, as Knock affects chains, but not ropes. A pair of cleats and a stout string will defeat Knock, but not stop a rogue with that really slim knife in his toolkit...

I haven't played a lot of 3E - in part for the sorts of reasons that those like TwoSix, Patryn of Elvenshae and others are giving - but I wouldn't think of knock as the most egregious issue. It's one issue, sure, but to me it pales in comparison to fly and teleport (I would put invisibility somewhere in the middle). This could in part be because I tend to use fewer dungeon/"behind-locked-door" type adventures than seems to be typical in D&D play (at least judging from published adventures).

But I still think knock is an issue, even if not egregious. It's just one example of the wizard's superior mobility in comparison to non-spellusers. And in a game that is based so heavily on geography and travel and exotic locations as is the fantasy genre, this is a huge strength, and (in my experience) a huge disincentive for players to play non-magical PCs.

And there's something just wrong, to my mind, about the solution to knock being rope. I just don't feel the attraction of a fantasy world in which everyone ropes as well as locks and bars their doors, because magic can disregard locks and bars, but almighty rope defeats them, and require a non-spell user who can make a Rope Use check or whip out a knife.

 

[pemerton]

what is a lone Wizard or Cleric going to do when he faces a party of five Drow of equal level?

Try soloing that and you'll see how far you get.

First, I don't think this really answers the point. Because if the answer is "bring along a few cleric, wizard and druid henchmen" then we haven't really shown that the fighter is as viable a PC class.

Second, isn't the answer "Cast Quickened Glitterdust and Evard's Black Tentacles and then walk around the blinded, grappled drow to see what they were guarding"?

 

[steeldragons]

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

995 replies, 67 pages of thread later...have we figured it out yet? Huh? Have we?

Honestly people...the point of the original post...Remember...THAT question? ...is there an answer yet? That's all I care to know.

Fer cryin out sakes.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well I think handwaving of all sorts is required. Though in the case of everburning torches, it's the sort of handwaving where we just don't ask why they aren't on the corner of every city intersection.

Nah, that's trivial. First off, it isn't even a question that arises before 3e, and secondly, the only reason it arises in 3e is because (1) the GM hasn't considered the ramifications of magic on the setting, (2) the GM has decided to allow magic item to be available/purchased (he controls all NPC casters, as well as what Feats they have for creating said items), and (3) the group hasn't accepted that ideas themselves are a form of technology....Simply because a modern mind thinks in terms of "X is a problem, therefore Y", it doesn't follow that the campaign world denizens believe either X is a problem or Y is a good solution.

Besides which, one only has to look at the real world to realize that it requires no handwaving at all to answer the question "Why don't people just do what I think they logically should do?" The reality is that the outlay for those everburning torches, although relatively minor over the long haul, has to come out of somebody's pocket to be purchased in the first place.

Or, to put it another way, no player I've ever known has spent his gold on public works of that nature, and, as a result, the players should hardly be surprised that no NPC did, either. After all, any NPC so generous will find more immediate needs closer at hand.

Whereas in the case of non-magic effects it's the sort of handwaving where reaching consenus at the table as to what happened in the fiction is part (if only one small part) of the fun of playing the game.

Not in my case. Having to play what some have called "pop quiz" role-playing is not at all fun to me, except in small doses and corner cases. Having the "Why did X happen? How can we make sense of result Y?" so integral to the game leaves me utterly cold.

But, as I said in the post you quoted, it is a good thing that different games place handwaving in different contexts. It gives everyone a chance at finding something they like.

(And, for the record, in no version of D&D from 1e to 3e did I have problems with the fighters feeling outclassed. In RCFG, right now the fighter is by far the preferred class of the playtesters, followed by rogue and psionic adept.

I do not like the 4e solution of balancing the fighter and wizard by turning the fighter into more of a wizard, and the wizard into more of a fighter. Some do. More power to them! Like I said with handwaving, it gives everyone a chance at finding something they like!)


RC

 

[pawsplay]

Second, isn't the answer "Cast Quickened Glitterdust and Evard's Black Tentacles and then walk around the blinded, grappled drow to see what they were guarding"?

The area of effect for Tentacles is too big for that. Unless you're in a very large area, you have to pick one or the other, usually. Also, there's a good chance high level Drow can cast spells or have a good Escape Artist bonus.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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

995 replies, 67 pages of thread later...have we figured it out yet? Huh? Have we?

Honestly people...the point of the original post...Remember...THAT question? ...is there an answer yet? That's all I care to know.

Fer cryin out sakes.

In those first 5 pages, there are many posts which address the original question- I personally posted a dozen different methods used in literature in post #7, and subsequently added others.

One that seems to crop up repeatedly is: "The writer didn't address balance at all."

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Nope. All we're going to get is more of this --^^

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

995 replies, 67 pages of thread later...have we figured it out yet? Huh? Have we?

Honestly people...the point of the original post...Remember...THAT question? ...is there an answer yet? That's all I care to know.
Fer cryin out sakes.

............................................................\/-- and some more of that --\/