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

[Hussar]

Ranger Wickett beat me to it. Harry Potter is a very good example. There is no balance. Warriors (re Muggles) are flat out outclassed by wizards in all possible ways. Wizards rule the world to the point where the wizards are telling the Prime Minister of England what to do.

A lot of the Urban Fantasy stuff tends to deal with this a bit better than perhaps traditional fantasy. But, like Harry Potter, many of the Urban Fantasy protagonists are wizards of one sort or another.

Essentially it's handled in the same way that you have Batman in the Justice League. Batman's power is unlimited wealth. For some reason, the guys that can stand toe to toe with Superman just never take the time to squash Bats like a bug. The advantages of having a writer protecting you.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Another one: someone's magical talent may or may not be powerful, but it is always highly specialized.

 

[Tuft]

IMHO, fantasy literature handles it by simply *not* being reduced to merely "killing things and taking their stuff". Combat is used now and then as plot points, but it is rarely the main theme in the stories.

Just watched some of the "Oh my Goddess" anime and read some of the manga. There you have three goddesses (who can summon one just as powerful angel each), and a guy that is good at riding motorbikes and his friends. Now, does anyone else get reminded about a certain overused and rather trite strawman video? How does this story handle it? By not being about fighting. There are fights, true - some plain motorcycle races, some earth-shaking power battles - but when it comes down to it, it's all about moral choices; recognizing the right thing to do, and having the strength of will to do it.

"Harry Potter" was mentioned. I've not read them all, but to me they are more about learning than fighting. It's about describing the day-to-day life at the magic school, inter-pupil intrigues, and the basic, surprisingly mundane, legwork in discovering this volume's dark secret.

In the "Belgariad", we have a wizard protagonist with two wizardly advisors, accompanied by a bodyguard party of various archetypes (the Knight, the Viking, the Thief, the Bratty Princess...), traveling across the world in order to fulfill an (unbearably chatty and annoying) prophecy. It's all about discovery - discovering the world, discovering the history, and the protagonist discovering his powers. When various challenges appear, one person that is amazingly uniquely suited to handle that one steps up and handles it, and it is seldom the protagonist.) And that suitability is just as likely to be because of that character's connections or place in the world, as it is about pure power.

Another anime/manga combo I've recently watched/read is "To Love-Ru". There you have a cast of half amazing aliens (a genius galactic empire princess who can invent incredible things, an assassin that can turn any part of her body into a weapon T2000 style) and half regular students... and the plot works by concentrating on mundane, everyday challenges (and your regular ecchi moments). You have fight scenes now and then as foils to highlight the various persons, but they are not the main thrust of the story. The "Tenchi Muyo" anime is similar, but has a larger percentage of cosmic-scale battles.

In the "Dresden Files" book series we have a wizard protagonist who fancies himself a hard-boiled detective. He is surrounded by allies both mundane and fantastic, who usually joins him for his battles. The battles are rather frequent, but still the major plot is about the uncovering of the mystery, not the battles as such. It has had an interesting development - in the beginning the Protagonist was rather condescending and not informing his mundane allies "for their own good", but those very persons have pulled more and more weight as the series has progressed.

In Glen Cook's "Garret" series we have another hard-boiled detective in a fantasy setting. Here the protagonist is mundane, but has a very peculiar ally - a genius mind-reader telekinetic undead fey elephant man. It handles it by nicking the whole setup from Rex Stout's "Nero Wolfe" mysteries: the legman and the amazing armchair detective.

In the "Zero no Tsukaima" ("Zero's familiar") anime we have a mundane protagonist dropped into a Harry Potter-like magical school, and bonded to a bumbling mage as the only human familiar in that school's history. It's a world where magic talent is a requirement for being nobility, and basically mages rule the world. The protagonist is given an instant crash-course in fighting Matrix-style (You know, "wow, I know kung-fu") due to his bond, but he fights mundane style, and does that victoriously du to being both faster and more durable than the mage opponents. A musketeer-style "Queen's Guard" are similarly mundanely bad-ass. But, as in the other examples, the fighting is not the main point; world discovery, evolving inter-person relations, gathering allies, and uncovering conspiracies and mysteries are instead.

I think I can go on and on forever - I love books/anime/manga with fantastical and/or magical protagonists - but I'm afraid I'll turn this into a TL;DR, so I better stop...

 

[samursus]

For a good representation of 4e magic in fiction check out the IDW D&D comics... this is also how I prefer it.

Being heavily into fantasy lit for around 30 years I have read and enjoyed many of the authors and series you have all mentioned. Despite the fact that the literature almost always portrays magic/magic users as more powerful than non, you must remember that D&D is a co-operative experience.

Magic is generally portrayed in lit as all-powerful for 2 reasons. Either to make the protagonist special (Riftwar, Earthsea, Recluce, Thomas Covenant) or provide an epic foil for the protagonist(s) to overcome (LotR, Black Company).

In the first instance, to provide the "fantasy protagonist" experience, everyone would need to be magic-users. In the second, no one should be (or if they are, balanced in power with the rest of the group).

Reading fantasy literature is a solo experience. Its passive and can't truly be shared. Every person reads a book through their own personal filters... and the plots and such are constructed in such a way as to project the reader into the role of the protagonist (generally).

D&D is a (generally) cooperative game. Even with intense RP and a Storytelling/Narrative component, it is still a cooperative process.

I understand some groups say they like the imbalance, but I suspect, deep down, everyone would like to feel equally as useful to the group. And thats why I prefer a magic=martial=whatever. If I wanted to play a magic is all powerful genre, I would either have all PC's be magic, or none of them.

Just my opinion and YMMV etc.

 

[pemerton]

Ranger Wickett beat me to it. Harry Potter is a very good example. There is no balance.

I don't know Harry Potter, but the Wizard of Earthsea provides an interesting variant on this.

Earthsea wizards are extremely powerful magical generalists. Sparrohawk, as a newly-minted sorceror, is able to take down multiple young dragons in a very short space of time by binding their wings with his magic (a literary example, by the way, of dragon minions). As well as this pretty good battle magic he can summon the weather, transform into a bird, hold a boat together by magic, suppress the power of evil spirits, etc. At least a mid-to-high level AD&D spell user (but without fireball or disintegrate).

However, for various reasons that are a bit obscure in the original trilogy, but are introduced with a degree of retconning in the very different fourth book (Tehanu?), wizards have a very limited worldly role and hence only exercise limited worldly power.

So a game modelled on Earthsea might work well if something like HeroWars/Quest was used as the system - wizards would be low on relationships, whereas warriors (who in Earthsea would be heroic nobles like the prince in the third book) would have lots of relationships and similar worldly connections on which to draw. Part of a warrior's strength would be his/her embeddedness in the community.

On the other hand, in a game modelled heavily on personal action-adventure heroism (like D&D), and hence in which the community tends to be a backdrop rather than a central feature of the situation, then I don't think Earthsea would work. You'd have to go to something like Conan, using metagame mechanics (in the form of AD&D hit points, or 4e powers, or whatever . . .) to achieve balance.

Which takes me to:

I posited that spellcasters should be more powerful, but non-spellcasters should be able to twist the threads of fate in some way.

<snip>

In terms of story, I think the difference boils down to the Heroic Act. Spellcasters wield raw power - they cast bolts of lightning or divine strikes from above to devastating effect, or they use their magic to strange and powerful effects or healings. But they don't, or rarely, make a Heroic Act - which is exemplified by Conan tossing that dagger

Arguably, this is the 4e approach - arcane PCs use powers that are more-or-less simulationist or "fiction first" in interpretation (ie the mechanical features of the power is a model of the ingame command of arcane forces) whereas martial PCs use powers that have a heavy metagame or "rules first" aspect (ie the mechanical features of the power are not just a model of the ingame sword stroke or dagger throw, but also of there occuring a constellation of luck, heroism etc that means taht the sword stroke or dagger throw is a crucially telling one).

all strikers are basically the same, just with different fluff

Not my experience (eg elf ranger plays differently from half elf feylock plays differently from drow sorcerer). YMMV, and apparently does.

 

[pemerton]

IMHO, fantasy literature handles it by simply *not* being reduced to merely "killing things and taking their stuff".

This sums up well my point about Earthsea.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I understand some groups say they like the imbalance, but I suspect, deep down, everyone would like to feel equally as useful to the group.

1) You really shouldn't project your feelings about the game to others

2) "Usefulness" is subjective.

3) Some people want to play a particular PC concept within a campaign world, whether or not others deem that PC "useful."

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Just what I said: unless you surprise such a powerful spellcaster, you are highly unlikely to defeat him. IOW, you essentially virtually need to defeat him before he realizes he's being attacked to stand a chance of succeeding.

 

[Orius]

The thing is that books don't have to worry about the balance problem at all.

As others have said, magic is a plot device and can be as powerful as the plot dictates.

Second, a book isn't running a game, so it doesn't need to worry about balance. It doesn't need to be concerned about how useful the wizard and warrior are to the party respectively. It doesn't even need to have a party, it can just do the equivalent of solo adventures, since you don't have to have a role for every player at the table. It doesn't need to balance out combat so the wizard doesn't get one-shotted all the time or be nigh-unstoppable.

The reason that the balance issues exist in D&D and some extent video games is that some of the tropes common to magic in stories doesn't always make for a fun gaming experience.

 

[Thanael]

I have noticed that even in various novels based on DnD settings, magic users tend to either simply not be present as a main character, or only ever cast very weak spells (Level three spells at the highest, this is in 3.X terms).

Even Raistlin did not do much other than ping enemies with magic missiles and cast a fireball or two. He did cast the time travel spell, which is Ninth level, but he does not often use powerful offensive magic. Although, to be fair, Raistlin usually seems to prefer being subtle unless he has no choice.

Well there are various D&D novels that do it better. Annihilation for example is almost entirely about a wizard duel between two high level drow wizards with no punches pulled.