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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 8746627" data-attributes="member: 53980">A decent wizard will enable the party to inflict dead status with far fewer resources expended than without that wizard, for example by allowing the party to engage the enemies in serial rather than in parallel. In one instance at my table, a high level wizard decided to turn against the rest of the party (a fighter, rogue, druid, and warlock). Granted, he had the element of surprise, but this really ticked me off, so while I was endeavoring to run the encounter in a neutral manner, my rulings were almost certainly biased in favor of the party. The wizard nevertheless very nearly TPK'd the entire party. They only survived because they used two wishes (from a Ring of Wishes) and retreated into a Staff of Sanctuary, after 3 or 4 rounds of trying to take the wizard down.Now, I'll grant you that PVP is a very poor metric by which to be comparing classes in D&D. That said, can you imagine any scenario whereby a fighter could do the same? I can't. Again, this is not to say that classes should be balanced around PVP. But they ought to be equivalent in effectiveness within the game. I've never seen a scenario where a fighter even comes close to being able to take down an entire party. At best, the fighter might manage to kill one or two, but four? Not a chance. And this illustrates the power disparity between the two. Which doesn't even get into a comparison of utility, where the gap is exponentially greater.Can a fighter and wizard both contribute meaningfully at the same table? Absolutely. Particularly if the wizard player is willing to share the spotlight. Are wizards all that? Most definitely. A wizard who doesn't want to share the spotlight can hog it with far greater effectiveness than most other classes can. Is that fundamentally a player problem? Yes. However, the classes should nonetheless be balanced such that if you have a problem player, one class doesn't pose an exponentially larger problem at the table than another. If not, it clearly demonstrates an issue of class balance.</blockquote>

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