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

[Jeff Wilder]

My objection is to someone posting "3E doesn't work for me because of this, and therefore to play 3E I would change it to that way" and getting the response "You only have that problem because you're not playing 3E right" and "If your DM was any good you wouldn't have that problem."

Which did, in fact, happen earlier in this thread.

It's happening right now in this thread, because it's true.

It's true in basketball if, when you dribble, you use your face, too. (Which is, AFAIK, not disallowed by the rules.)

If you play a game in a way that is unintended, and you get unsatisfactory results, it's pretty ridiculous to assume the problem is the game. If you know (or suspect) that you're playing it in an unintended way -- such as if many, many people play the game and just plain don't have the problem you have, for example -- and still assume the problem is the game, your issue goes beyond "pretty ridiculous."

 

[Neonchameleon]

At what, exactly? His Intimidate likely isn't as good (since he probably won't take Skill Focus)

He has Skill Focus because that is apparently what you think Blackbeard wants. It's not what I'd have picked. But the Level 9 Barbarian has five fewer feats than the fighter. I have named those feats. Blackbeard the Barbarian has every other feat you gave Blackbeard the Fighter. So yes, he has skill focus (Intimidate).

and his other skills are only slightly better,

But they are all either equal or better. It's a slight edge, but it's an edge.

and against largely static DCs. I just don't seit.

You don't see that when person A has a list of things and person B has precisely that list plus a few more, person B is strictly better.

The lower effectiveness of black powder is somewhat compensated for by the larger mass of musket balls and their tendency to deform in the wound. It could go either way, depending on the weapon.

It could indeed go either way.

But not feats.

Indeed. Such a pity you had to give 60% of them up for your version of Blackbeard. Feats make specialisation.

Blackbeard is kind of the mack daddy of ice water in the veins. He certainly didn't have lots of opportunities to unleash any sort of "rage," since his blockades were usually successful, his boarding actions were usually successful, and his Intimidate checks were usually successful. I really do not see Barbarian there.

You're saying he didn't fight. So how do you know how he fought? And that's not ice water in the veins. That's just watching with popcorn. Ice water is required to keep your head when everything is going wrong.

Bosh. One glitterdust and the Barbarian loses every advantage they might have had.

One glitterdust and the allies had better win the fight. Both fighter and barbarian are out for the duration of almost all fights.

They could use bucklers, but yeah, in any case, they are probably both fighting two-handed and the Barbarian has a -2. That's a pretty low AC place to live.

In which case hit points and killing people fast are going to matter more than AC. The barbarian wins at both.

Feat for feat? Does that mean the Barbarian has Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot? If so, doesn't that make him a "worse" Barbarian?

Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Skill Focus (Intimidate). I'm matching your Blackbeard here and having a bit to spare.

Does he take ranged combat feats?

Yours did so mine did.

Or wanting to use a skill other than Balance or Intimidate,

Or climb or jump or swim or listen or...

or obstacles that slow movement and provide cover, etc.

Who said you couldn't use obstacles? Absolutely nothing in the rules. You've obviously never seen someone go white with rage.

That's absurd. Over on the old CharOp board, it was demonstrated time and again that the fighter was usually more effective.

The fighter is more effective at the narrowly defined skill of fighting. He is good at using weapons. He is, as I said, the highly dedicated specialist who eats with his sword, sleeps with his sword, and does everything else with it too. Or his spiked chain.

The barbarian's advantage is principally that he is a hybrid skill-monkey.

And that is needed for almost all the roles you think the fighter should cover. When you spent three feats on skills it should have been a big clue that you wanted a hybrid skill monkey rather than a straight fighter. You are quite literally giving up 60% of your fighter class features (i.e. three out of five feats*) in an attempt to make him a hybrid skill monkey so he can be Blackbeard. This should tell you that going for the hybrid skill monkey class would be the better play. Which is why my Blackbeard can be better than yours at just about everything - melee, ranged combat, skills, hit points. And I'm not even trying. You're using the wrong class.

* Skill Focus (Intimidate) is specialising rather than shoring up weaknesses so it doesn't count as being given up.

 

[I'm A Banana]

You know, I would truly like to accept that as a "normal man" standard, except, under that paradigm, the average person lacks the skills to actually do their job. Especially as the game evolved, and the "Wahoo!" element got out of control.

How do you figure? The DC's for basic things presented in the PHB didn't magically shoot up later in 3e's life. Climbing a rough wall or earning a wage as a sailor are still the same DC as they were on Day 1.

Also, I think that 3e started the problem of "The guards in the town scale based on the level of the PCs; here's some guidelines" that, for my tastes, 4e is mired in. This also makes it difficult to accept the 3e DMG demographics as being accurate.

That problem was introduced in 4e, as far as I can tell. 3e gives you some pretty explicit demographic instructions, a very clear baseline, an obvious role for a "normal person" in the world. 4e has this whole "everything is party appropriate always!" balance concept.

If the world scales in the way the 3e DMG suggests, then Pawsplay's Blackbeard suddenly becomes a great pirate captain. He is clearly well above the average man bar. But that bar seems to shift, doesn't it, so that suddenly we hear that Blackbeard is simply not good enough to hold his own.

Does it? I think he's a pretty great pirate captain. I think any creature that has made it to 9th level in 3e would be a pretty great anything, simply because such characters are already rare in the extreme.

Being a "great pirate captain" (the fantasy hero archetype) is relative to what a "normal pirate captain" looks like, and a "normal pirate captain" in 3e is pretty explicitly a 3rd level NPC classed sailor of some fashion, so that any player who cares to be can be a "great pirate captain" without fitting one particular class or ability score spread.

The 3e demographics are not compatable with the 3e "This is what you are expected to encounter at your level". Something has to give. That's what comes of saying, "This is an average guy", then not assuming that this average remains viable throughout game play.

Well, they are, in that you aren't expected to encounter normal pirate captains (except at low level). You're expected to encounter Krakens and Sea Monsters and Water Elementals and demons and undead and various other monsters.

You can also encounter other NPC pirate captains -- the basic demographics imply that they could certainly exist. Just that they are very rare. A 20th level pirate captain is one of only a handful of 20th level characters in the world. As you get lower levels, you get slightly more NPC pirate captains for you to encounter. By the time you're 20th level, though, you're not just killing Blackbeard, you're battling a mythical Pirate King, the greatest Pirate that has ever lived, perhaps a Githyanki Astral Pirate, or a half-fiend captain aboard a skiff that sails the River Styx and waylays Balors to demand tribute. Unique -- and very powerful -- individuals.

The default assumptions seem to be, "If you want to fight pirates, they're good low-level enemies, and if you want to be a good pirate, you can do this without a lot of effort, and if you want to make a piratical theme for your entire campaign, you're going to need to fight awesome, epic, supernatural, wahoo, gonzo-style pirates when you gain that level of power, too, because some dude on a boat with his cannons isn't going to be able to hurt your epic level badass, since you are beyond the impossible when you reach that level."

3e doesn't serve the purposes of battling Blackbeard for 20 levels all that well (E6 does this in spades, though!). It gives you a clear baseline for "normal folks," and then rockets you past that baseline from the very moment you roll 4d6-and-drop for ability scores, since 3e is concerned with heroic fantasy, which means your protagonist is better than a militia member.

 

[Votan]

"Relative to a normal person" is, I agree, an issue. The lack of a clear "normal man" standard in 3e makes it difficult to determine exactly how many ranks are normal, are better than average, are good, represent a field expert, and exceed a field expert.

One should not have to be hyper-competent to be competent.

(My system allows you to choose where you advance your skills, your saves, and weapon skills -- effectively controlling your BAB. It works in part because of a clear "normal man" standard.)


RC

Yeah, normal is odd in a CR scaling game. One of the interesting things about early D&D was how 3rd level characters could run into a 10 HD vampire on the first level of the dungeon or how an 8th level mage could find herself battling kobolds. This type of power mismatch is less common in 3E and 4E (although it can be done: the Alexandrian web page has a nice discussion of alternate ways to balance 3E than a series of level appropriate encounters).

The RC system sounds like one of the logical evolutions of the more free form 3E system. Is it still in beta?

 

[pawsplay]

He has Skill Focus because that is apparently what you think Blackbeard wants. It's not what I'd have picked. But the Level 9 Barbarian has five fewer feats than the fighter. I have named those feats. Blackbeard the Barbarian has every other feat you gave Blackbeard the Fighter. So yes, he has skill focus (Intimidate).

So basically, you have a guy who trades +1 to hit and some extra hit points, for -2 AC and the inability to use most skills. Unless the combat runs long, in which case you also lose the hit points and fall behind in to-hit and damage, plus a further penalty for fatigue. Your Blackbeard sucks. Further, as you have re-iterated several times, I didn't even bother to diversity with combat feats, but instead chose to shore up some skill bonuses because I preferred to do so for conceptual reasons. Your Blackbeard can't even beat my Blackbeard, who is not even built competitively against yours.

Unless you choose to actually replace several of Blackbeard's feats with greatsword-centric choices, your Barbarian is generally inferior, and if you choose to do so, you give ground in either ranged combat or skills. And it is because Barbarian is not the best choice for a well-rounded pirate. Even with 3e's serious issues with skills distribution for Fighters. Blackbeard only cares about maxing out one skill: Intimidate. The only other skills he really cares about are Profession (Sailor) and Survival, and only up to the point of being able to beat DCs of 10-15, plus a few ranks here and there to outshine the rubes and to be trained.

If skills were really where it's at, his first level should definitely be Rogue. That would definitely help Fighter Blackbeard more than Barbarian Blackbeard, but I still choose not to do it, because the loss in skills is trivial. I'd rather spend a couple of feats shoring up low skill ratings than give up full BAB or having to base my combat effectiveness around rage.

Now, if we want to compare greatsword-wielding Power Attackers, the Barbarian becomes competitive, but that is entirely another issue.

Blackbeard = Fighter. And no, I did not claim he never fought at all, just that he wasn't in the habit of throwing himself bloodily into melees with little regard for his own safety.

 

[pemerton]

You know, I would truly like to accept that as a "normal man" standard, except, under that paradigm, the average person lacks the skills to actually do their job. Especially as the game evolved, and the "Wahoo!" element got out of control.

Also, I think that 3e started the problem of "The guards in the town scale based on the level of the PCs; here's some guidelines" that, for my tastes, 4e is mired in. This also makes it difficult to accept the 3e DMG demographics as being accurate.

If the world scales in the way the 3e DMG suggests, then Pawsplay's Blackbeard suddenly becomes a great pirate captain. He is clearly well above the average man bar. But that bar seems to shift, doesn't it, so that suddenly we hear that Blackbeard is simply not good enough to hold his own.

The 3e demographics are not compatable with the 3e "This is what you are expected to encounter at your level". Something has to give. That's what comes of saying, "This is an average guy", then not assuming that this average remains viable throughout game play.

This is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind when I said that 3E, in its encounter-building guidelines, suffers from a failure of integration between the combat and non-combat/skill-based components.

My system allows you to choose where you advance your skills, your saves, and weapon skills -- effectively controlling your BAB.

In this respect, then, your system resembles Rolemaster or HERO. Which, as I noted in my earlier post upthread, don't suffer from the same problem as 3E in their relationship between combat and non-combat. (Which is not to say that they're perfect. At least in my experience, this sort of system tends to put a lot of pressure on the GM when it comes to challenge/encounter design, because the variation in skill bonuses/attack bonuses/etc across the party can be very varied.)

 

[pawsplay]

This is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind when I said that 3E, in its encounter-building guidelines, suffers from a failure of integration between the combat and non-combat/skill-based components.

In this respect, then, your system resembles Rolemaster or HERO. Which, as I noted in my earlier post upthread, don't suffer from the same problem as 3E in their relationship between combat and non-combat. (Which is not to say that they're perfect. At least in my experience, this sort of system tends to put a lot of pressure on the GM when it comes to challenge/encounter design, because the variation in skill bonuses/attack bonuses/etc across the party can be very varied.)

BESM d20 and SAS d20 are examples of other d20 games that skillify combat abilities.

 

[pemerton]

I'm still perplexed by this. Some people are faulting 3E for not giving fighters the skill points they need to be as good a pirate as the player imagines the PC should be.

I have a parallel problem. I fault 4E for not giving wizards the powers they need to be as versatile a spellcaster as I imagine the PC should be.

Whether or not it's true that fighters can be optimal pirate PCs is an *unintentional* side-effect or artifact of 3E mechanics, and (as I've argued above) is largely irrelevant to most D&D adventures.

Conversely, the 4E wizard rebalanced to be nothing more than a push-and-pull combat controller is an *intentional* product of the 4E paradigm, and the consequences are far more extensive.

Well, in my view the changes to the 4e wizard (which are, as you say, intentional) are part of an attempt - successful or not, desirable or not - to achieve mechanical balance in respect of one part of the character build and action resolution mechanics. It's an integral part of the game.

On the other hand, the inability of a 3E fighter to be built to fill the same variety of roles that an AD&D fighter could fill seems to be an unintended (perhaps noticed but disregarded) consequence of the 3E skill rules. Which the latest iteration of 3E, namely Pathfinder, has (as far as I understand it) corrected. Rather than an integral part of the game, the current flagbearers for 3E themselves seem to have regarded it as a mistake - an unintended consequence of the skill rules - which they have since rectified. Whereas, if you formed the view that the design of 4e wizards was a mistake, then you'd probably have no reason even to consider playing 4e.

So I don't see the two cases as symmetrical. To dislike 4e wizards is to dislike 4e per se. To dislike 3E fighter skill options is to call for just the sorts of reforms that Paizo seem to have implemented.

 

[pemerton]

If you play a game in a way that is unintended, and you get unsatisfactory results, it's pretty ridiculous to assume the problem is the game.

The point is - in what way is playing 3E as a teleport/ropetrick/find-the-path/contact-other-plane/knock-on-scrolls/etc game playing as not intended?

If it was intended for the wizard to use these various options, why were they included?

One suggested answer to that question that I recall seeing on this thread is that the wizard has knock for when there is no rogue in the party - but this then gives rise to a different question, namely, why is it always the wizard who steps into the empty role?

 

[Neonchameleon]

So basically, you have a guy who trades +1 to hit and some extra hit points, for -2 AC

Where some extra hit points = 28 - or more than a third of your 81. My guy is tougher. And has DR. And Uncanny dodge.

and the inability to use most skills.

And let's have a look at the restriction raging imposes, shall we?

While raging, a barbarian cannot use any Charisma-, Dexterity-, or Intelligence-based skills (except for Balance, Escape Artist, Intimidate, and Ride)
​

The skills you have for your Blackbeard are:
Skils: Appraise +2, Balance +3, Climb +4, Diplomacy +4, Intimidate +16, Knowledge (Geography) +2, Listen +3, Profession (Sailor) +5, Sense Motive +3, Spot +3, Survival +4, Swim +4

Off the top of my head the only three skills you can't use from that list while raging are Appraise +2, Diplomacy +4, and Knowledge (geography) +2

"Inability to use most skills." Right. Appraising, combat diplomacy (as opposed to combat intimidate), and knowledge (geography). Some restriction given you are fighting for your life.

Further, as you have re-iterated several times, I didn't even bother to diversity with combat feats, but instead chose to shore up some skill bonuses because I preferred to do so for conceptual reasons.

And I didn't take good feats. I took feats to match your conceptual build. You don't have any advantage here.

Your Blackbeard can't even beat my Blackbeard, who is not even built competitively against yours.

My Blackbeard is built as a knock-off of yours. Same concept - just better implemented.

Toughness? Mine can almost take those 120hp damage - and has DR. Yours isn't close. Skills? Mine beats yours. Ranged combat? Mine beats yours. Melee? Apparently you think 33% of your hit points are worth 2 points of AC. Right. And an edge case iof combat more than eight rounds after the melee starts is worth a lot.

Unless you choose to actually replace several of Blackbeard's feats with greatsword-centric choices, your Barbarian is generally inferior,

At what? He's better with skills. He's better with ranged combat. He's better in melee combat that doesn't go beyond 8 rounds. And he's a lot tougher.

Blackbeard = Fighter. And no, I did not claim he never fought at all, just that he wasn't in the habit of throwing himself bloodily into melees with little regard for his own safety.

And barbarians don't have to be. They can wait until the critical moment then hit as hard and brutally as possible to turn the tide.

Anyway, this serves no further purpose.