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

[Votan]

I will create a party of 5 12th level Drow against your 15th level wizard. In open terrain.

Your wizard has to follow these rules: No monster summoning, no hirelings of any sort. And no golems. You have to do this completely alone without any help at all.

This will be in open terrain. With an encounter start of one hundred feet.

The caveats are you can't run away from the fight. You have to destroy the entire party, all by yourself. And you're limited in spell knowlege to the wizard spell tables in the PHB. That means you know:

4 4 4 4 4 4 3 2 1 spells per day. That's all you can cast.

And you can not use any help at all.

So the Drow are 14th level characters (12th level + 2 levels of LA)? In which there could be (just guessing) classes bard, cleric and wizard? Plus a ranger with just the right favored enemy and a bow? And there are 5 of them?

Does no running include opening distance?

What's odd is that (prepared) the wizard might make it a fight with a group of fighters and rogues, depending on their gear.

But the challenge seems to look like: can my 14th level wizard with 4 equal level buddies take on your 15th level wizard (who has a class of spells banned from her). What if 2 of the Drow are wizards?

And why is a high level wizard wandering around without help in an area with powerful Drow. How about Overland flight . . .

 

[Neonchameleon]

(1) Wizards are designed for some mixture of (a) blowing up a handful of encounters per day or (b) softening up a slightly larger number of encounters per day.

Corollary: As wizards get higher level they can either blow up or soften up many more encounters/day due to having many more spells.

(3) It will be perceived as more "problematic" from your POV if you consider softening up to be inherently more interesting than delivering the KO. (If this is your opinion, then you should definitely play wizards and not fighter. But not everybody agrees with you.)

Agreed.

(4) The speed at which the wizard burns through resources is, IMO, a feature, not a bug. It's not a spotlight problem and it varies encounter pacing.

Three points:
1: At higher levels wizards can take more encounters per day simply due to having more spells.
2: This can be markedly varied depending on play style.
3: Some low level spells remain useful for a lot longer than others.

#3 and #4 have nothing to do with the game system being "broken". The only "problem" here is that the game isn't catering itself to your taste. (Or, more accurately, certain sections of the game aren't catering to your taste.)

The trouble with 3 is not that the game doesn't cater to my taste. It's that it lays out an all you can eat buffet to my taste. It caters so far to my taste that I'm tempted to gorge myself sick. And that's bad. And my corollaries to 4 make it broken at higher levels - the obselescence curve of the wizard's lower level spells failing hard.

#2 is a problem, but it requires a very specific and very narrow style of play for this problem to exist. (Whereas, on the other hand, there are a multitude of playing styles in which it doesn't exist.)

I disagree emphatically. Once you hit the teens, you require a small range of specific and narrow playstyles for #2 to not exist - either a tight and extremely metagamy social contract or pressurising the PCs extremely heavily. Both of which are against the guidance given by the DMG (the four encounter adventuring day being what the game is "balanced" around indicating you shouldn't do things you do like toss wandering monsters in to pressure the PCs). Give the PCs the initiative and 2 runs rampant.

 

[Fifth Element]

I think there's a spectrum here that is not as black and white as you present. What's wrong with the middle ground? What's wrong with a mix of encounters that provide challenges as well as time to shine, as well as times for the entire team to have a field day? I thought this was DMing 101? Know your PCs strengths and weaknesses and look for the things in different encounters that emphasize both.

Of course, but in discussions you tend to have to focus on something to make your point.

The point being that the wizard, in some games, is so flexible and powerful that all encounters have to be designed with his strengths in mind so that he doesn't always overshadow the other characters.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the wizard sometimes dominating an encounter, so long as the other characters also get to do that at other times. But if the rules make it so that some people have to either intentionally gimp their own character, or the DM has to continually contrive to reduce that character's effectiveness, then that's a problem. Again, not a problem that everyone has, but it does exist.

 

[BryonD]

MrMyth's story doesn't sound to me like someone abusing game elements to "win" D&D. It sounds more like someone using a high level spell that hasn't been balanced either by mathematical calculation or by extensive playtesting. It's a problem in some other systems too (Rolemaster clerics, as written in the rulebooks, get access to far and away the best save-or-suck/die spells in the game, even though there is a whole other class - the sorcerer - that's meant to be about that.)

I've had plenty of fun with D&D. I've had heaps of fun with Rolemaster. It doesn't get in the way of me diagnosing poorly-designed rules elements, though. I mean, these rulesets were just written up by ordinary people. There's nothing sacrosanct about them. And there's no reason to think they're inherently the best that can be done for delivering the play experience that they're aimed at.

You can look at it as poorly designed rules. But it also can be poorly designed encounters.

If you WANT big magic with save or die/suck as part of the powers and threats that exist to be controlled, avoided, and overcome then first the nature of the adventures should take that into account.

At the very least encounter design should realize what makes an interesting activity for the level of power in question. Obviously you could get into a whole long discussion on this tangent. But, without getting hung up on "best", I think the Holy Word spell does a perfectly fine job of doing what it was aimed at. It may be that what it is aimed at and what this given set of players want are different, and it may be that the encounter designer failed to account for the implications of the power level.

It certainly still comes down to a bad overall play experience in the example, no doubt. And I'm not trying to claim your explanation is wrong. But depending on your tastes, completely different explanations may apply.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think both sides make good points, and (as is often the case) the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Somehow people manage to play D&D without running into these problems. I am not a "super DM" by any means, and yet I somehow avoid it without making any real effort to do so. And my players, like Neonchameleon, are encouraged to do their best.

Yet somehow this problem does seem to arise for some people. For more than it doesn't arise? No idea. But I suspect that there are real rules problems at the root of the issue. IMHO, it is probable that design elements have unintended knock-on effects that lead to this problem, such as a combat system that discourages "non-essential" combats (which in turn makes it easier for casters to go nuclear).

In fact, long before 4e was a twinkle in Mike Mearls' eye (or at least, long before it was announced), I discussed some of the same here on EN World. (Of course, when 3e was the game of the day, I was told by a few vocal people that, essentially, I didn't know what I was talking about.)

For those people who disagreed with me then, if you cast your mind back, you might understand why some disagree with you now. But, by the same light, I can certainly understand where you are coming from. IMHO, 3e added some real innovations and created some serious (but avoidable) problems by not thinking through the rammifications of change.

3e certainly isn't alone in that.

But then, no game is perfect.


RC

 

[TwoSix]

Yet somehow this problem does seem to arise for some people. For more than it doesn't arise? No idea. But I suspect that there are real rules problems at the root of the issue. IMHO, it is probable that design elements have unintended knock-on effects that lead to this problem, such as a combat system that discourages "non-essential" combats (which in turn makes it easier for casters to go nuclear).

Honestly, I think awareness of the "wizard problem" is much more prevalent among people who participate on internet sites such as the one we're on right now. I'm the only one of my regular game problem who is on sites like EN World, RPG.net, and especially sites like GitP, Brilliant Gameologists and the Char Op forum on the Wizards boards, where the amount of char-op fu among the regulars is quite high.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm the only one in the game group who thinks wizards are a problem. The rest of the players have no issue that the wizard in the party ends a tough fight with one Black Tentacles. To them, that's the expectation of how play should be, and they have fun with it.

So why is it an issue for me? I just don't like that level of swinginess, I guess. A tough fight became cleanup in one action. I want my game to be more like Final Fantasy Tactics, where every fight is against a large group of enemies, and each movement matters, and the sum of small, well-planned actions is what wins the day, not one decisive one. 3e feels more like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, where it's pretty, colorful, chaotic, fun, but I get really tired of Luigi jumping on my head.

 

[MrMyth]

Not necessarily. Maybe it's wrong of my GM not to provide opponents that can't be turned into "cakewalks" by the use of one spell.

The entire point of the GM is to provide interesting challenges for the players, and you keep saying, "Well, what if the GM doesn't provide a challenge? Isn't it a problem that the game isn't a challenge?"

You can look at it as poorly designed rules. But it also can be poorly designed encounters.

If you WANT big magic with save or die/suck as part of the powers and threats that exist to be controlled, avoided, and overcome then first the nature of the adventures should take that into account.

Yeah, I think both of these situations are ones that a good DM can, of course, avoid. But I think that can be a problem in and of itself - if the game requires a certain level of system mastery on behalf of the DM in order to be enjoyable.

Especially as you get higher level. At level 1, you've got one spell for the DM to worry about - Color Spray. Soon you add Glitterdust into the mix. And buff spells, and divinations, and more - and by higher level, in order to properly 'challenge' a high level wizard, the DM might need to spend hours of optimizing on their own. Or resort to blanket solutions like sticking the wizard in an Antimagic field - and while that might be interesting once, it could get real old, real fast.

Now, that isn't to say that every game will require that level of planning to avoid a caster overwhelming it. Nor is it to say that some groups won't enjoy that level of one-upmanship. But I think for many, that it is part of the problem.

At the very least encounter design should realize what makes an interesting activity for the level of power in question. Obviously you could get into a whole long discussion on this tangent. But, without getting hung up on "best", I think the Holy Word spell does a perfectly fine job of doing what it was aimed at. It may be that what it is aimed at and what this given set of players want are different, and it may be that the encounter designer failed to account for the implications of the power level.

It certainly still comes down to a bad overall play experience in the example, no doubt. And I'm not trying to claim your explanation is wrong. But depending on your tastes, completely different explanations may apply.

And just to be clear, again, I wasn't necessarily using that as an example of the imbalance in the system. It is something that could have been addressed with different encounters or characters. My main point there was that it was an example of the spells and powers presenting this sort of imbalance without any optimization or powergaming required.

The character was a Cleric, and took an appropriate Domain spell. In this situation, it trivialized another character's participation, and largely incidentally. This is a thing that could happen, and it could happen without anyone setting out to build the guy who always 'wins', as Jeff Wilder had suggested.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

At level 1, you've got one spell for the DM to worry about - Color Spray. Soon you add Glitterdust into the mix. And buff spells, and divinations, and more - and by higher level, in order to properly 'challenge' a high level wizard, the DM might need to spend hours of optimizing on their own.

And, once again, we see that the player simply has no choice in the matter. Because he must pick every broken spell and feat in the game. It's imperative. Poor player. Life is hard.

 

[BryonD]

And just to be clear, again, I wasn't necessarily using that as an example of the imbalance in the system.

That's cool. I was really just responding to Perm's point. But that was based on your example.....

 

[MrMyth]

And, once again, we see that the player simply has no choice in the matter. Because he must pick every broken spell and feat in the game. It's imperative. Poor player. Life is hard.

But, again, the player might not be taking these options for those reasons - they may not even realize how powerful they are. They want a wizard who confounds and dazzles his foes rather than blasting them with magic - one might even think (mechanics aside) that this would make for a less powerful wizard.

In the end, the issue is this - if you think there is a problem with a player choosing these spells (even if they do so without intending to take the 'best' spells available), isn't the problem with the system that makes those options available more than with the player who chooses them?