That's a bit of a pet peeve of mine.
A lot of people agree that D&D has historically heavily favored spellcasters after about a third of the way thru leveling and the classes we drastically unbalanced at the endgame. I'm trying to brainstorm an approach to correcting this inbalance in a way that maybe makes more sense than the 4e "make everyone a Vancian caster" approach. So, I'm thinking of look at fantasy source material: the novels and epic tales that inspired fantasy roleplaying games in the first place.
So, since I don't have the time to read all the great fantasy literature in one setting, I thought I'd ask everyone here:
How have you seen warior characters in fantasy books overcome spellcasters?
I recently read a Conan story where Conan's encounter with a wizard was a bit anticlimatic - he just threw a dagger at him and killed him in one shot while the wizard was trying to cast a spell. So, in that case, spellcasting probably took more than the typical "Standard Action" and the wizard had *very* low Hit Points and no protective magic in place (even though he was anticipating the encounter).
Usually the problem isn't dealt with. Lots of fantasy novels have really bad writing this way.
Wizards usually come in two flavors: very weak, and very strong.
I'll use the Warcraft novel series as an example, but this applies to nearly any fantasy literature you care to read.
Very weak wizards can maybe toss three magic darts a day. For instance, in The Last Guardian, Khadgar could just barely pull that off. When he and "warrior" (assassin) Garona went wandering, she had to do all the work. Khadgar once managed to bluff an orc shaman or warlock with his weak tricks (his opponent was similarly pathetic). I don't even remember how effective his magic dart was, but since he never killed anything with it, I think not. He did manage to kill one opponent... with a sword.
Very strong wizards can cast one powerful spell a day, and their allies get frustrated with their inability to not pull their weight the rest of the day.
In Tides of Darkness, Khadgar summoned a powerful storm when his army was facing an orc army. Sure, it was effective, but when more orcs came, he was "tapped out". (Seriously, using all his mana at once?)
In one of the Warcraft comics, a mage was taking his time casting a spell. When his allies complained, he pointed out (correctly) that it takes a lot of energy to pull lightning out of a cloudless sky. (He did, in fact, kill a lot of enemies.) None of his allies pointed out that he could have cast spells that actually made sense in that situation!
In a recent non-Chosen (thank heavens!) novel I read by Ed Greenwood, the heroes were an adventuring party of five or six. They had a mage who probably only cast four spells over four hundred pages. Making matters worse, I swear the book only took place over two adventuring days, so the mage could only recharge once, and despite casting mid-level spells seemed to have only three or four spell slots.
And in the first book of the Kingless Land series, Greenwood's female mage, while seemingly quite powerful, was found and recruited by the other heroes while low on magic and
never got to recharge. I think the one time she actually got some rest, she got drunk, laid, or both. Whatever she was doing, it wasn't restful sleep.
This is the author who writes Chosen novels, like Elminster in Myth Drannor, where some of the combat scenes were actually
really cool to read, but you knew Elminster would always overpower his opponent. Guess he couldn't adapt to either side of the scale. But then, he's not alone.
In a non-Greenwood novel I read (I don't even recall if it was FR or Eberron) one of the villains was a wizard, but
not a combat mage. Apparently he didn't have the Concentration skill. Fair enough. However, that doesn't excuse not going inside his house before casting Teleport to escape. He tried to cast it twice, and each time took an arrow which spoiled his spellcasting. (The wizard was fairly intelligent; the obvious tactical advantages of cover shouldn't have escaped him.) I could go on. And on. And on. And kind of did, actually.
So in short, even powerful wizards seem to get nerfed in fantasy. The powerful ones just act stupidly. There are very few, if any, moderately-powered wizards.
I wonder how much influence Gandalf has. Even today there are DMs who don't want wizards to cast spells often for fear of being attacked by "dark things". So Gandalf generally use only weak magic, but sometimes could really dish it out. (No, he didn't summon the wave at Rivendell, he just touched it up.) He was more of a ritual-using heroic sage, really.
A counter-example or two, both from anime: Record of Lodoss War, which is actually based on a DnD campaign. The wizard and cleric both cast spells frequently, and neither totally rock their opponents either... and Slayers, where wizards cast
very powerful spells very frequently. (In fact, other than "boss battles", no battle is any real challenge since Lina's fireballs are strong enough to destroy clock towers.)
