gambler1650
Explorer
So, this is an age old topic (if there had been online forums back in OD&D it probably would have been one of the first threads). In a nutshell, wizards' power increases quadratically while fighters' power increases linearly.
I admit however, that I have little experience in this because most games I've played rarely get into the middle, let alone high levels, so this has never seemed much of a problem. There have been new RPG systems that attempt to fix the problem and from some accounts, have done a pretty good job at it (Adventurer, Conqueror, Kings; Dungeon Crawl Classics). But I wonder if we aren't looking at the wrong aspects of balance, which appears to be "How much damage can my character dish out?"
Since I haven't done much with mid to higher levels as a player, I'm curious about one major question.. Let's assume a party of 4. Would 4 wizard types be able to handle most encounters by themselves, as opposed to having a couple of fighter types in the party to protect them? It's obvious that they need fighters to protect them early in the game, otherwise they never get to be powerful...
How about over a long term period (such as a deep dungeon delve - y'know, the original type of gameplay)? It seems to me, that perhaps much of the balance in the earlier versions of the games might have been as much due to the type of game style. If your party goes into a dungeon and STAYS there for any length of time, your wizards will probably find themselves depleted of spells at some point and need to rely on the fighters for protection until they can find a safe place to rest. Sure, the party could do the safe thing and retreat back to town when the wizard runs out of spells.. but this assumes a static dungeon setting which doesn't change. One thing I love about Anomalous Subsurface Environment and other living dungeons, is that if the party lollygags and takes it slow, they will lose out to other NPC adventuring parties. This pushes them to be a bit more aggressive, and presumably stay in the dungeon when the Wizards might be depleted.
And of course, there could be dungeon elements that confuse, teleport, block exits, so that the party is forced to stay down longer than they would like to. I'm a big fan of those.
I guess my main thesis is: Wizards are unbalanced compared to Fighters in many of today's games because the style of gameplay has changed to permit slow, methodical, piecemeal exploration of dungeons where PCs get to rest and recover spells whenever they feel they need to - and dungeons may not necessarily be the main gameplay style at all for some groups.
While writing this, and thinking of how time pressures might even things up a bit... What would be a really cool way to do this would be to have one campaign with two different adventuring groups set in the same area. Nothing would make an adventuring party explore a dungeon just a little longer than seeing another (PC) party come back to town with some cool swag that they could have had instead... or be getting more acclaim... etc.
Thoughts?
I admit however, that I have little experience in this because most games I've played rarely get into the middle, let alone high levels, so this has never seemed much of a problem. There have been new RPG systems that attempt to fix the problem and from some accounts, have done a pretty good job at it (Adventurer, Conqueror, Kings; Dungeon Crawl Classics). But I wonder if we aren't looking at the wrong aspects of balance, which appears to be "How much damage can my character dish out?"
Since I haven't done much with mid to higher levels as a player, I'm curious about one major question.. Let's assume a party of 4. Would 4 wizard types be able to handle most encounters by themselves, as opposed to having a couple of fighter types in the party to protect them? It's obvious that they need fighters to protect them early in the game, otherwise they never get to be powerful...
How about over a long term period (such as a deep dungeon delve - y'know, the original type of gameplay)? It seems to me, that perhaps much of the balance in the earlier versions of the games might have been as much due to the type of game style. If your party goes into a dungeon and STAYS there for any length of time, your wizards will probably find themselves depleted of spells at some point and need to rely on the fighters for protection until they can find a safe place to rest. Sure, the party could do the safe thing and retreat back to town when the wizard runs out of spells.. but this assumes a static dungeon setting which doesn't change. One thing I love about Anomalous Subsurface Environment and other living dungeons, is that if the party lollygags and takes it slow, they will lose out to other NPC adventuring parties. This pushes them to be a bit more aggressive, and presumably stay in the dungeon when the Wizards might be depleted.
And of course, there could be dungeon elements that confuse, teleport, block exits, so that the party is forced to stay down longer than they would like to. I'm a big fan of those.
I guess my main thesis is: Wizards are unbalanced compared to Fighters in many of today's games because the style of gameplay has changed to permit slow, methodical, piecemeal exploration of dungeons where PCs get to rest and recover spells whenever they feel they need to - and dungeons may not necessarily be the main gameplay style at all for some groups.
While writing this, and thinking of how time pressures might even things up a bit... What would be a really cool way to do this would be to have one campaign with two different adventuring groups set in the same area. Nothing would make an adventuring party explore a dungeon just a little longer than seeing another (PC) party come back to town with some cool swag that they could have had instead... or be getting more acclaim... etc.
Thoughts?
