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

[triqui]

Clearly, both you and triqui (and, I am sure, others) have had problems with these issues. I (and, I am sure, others) have not. Your problems are real. Changing the ruleset to remove them is not only a good solution, it is the best solution I know of. I change rulesets to make them more comfortable to my playstyle, too.

But just as your problems are real, the lack of problems others experience is also real. It depends on both the material, and your approach to the material.

Sure, we can agree on that. Magic overshadowing everything else is mostly a thing about the players. Probably I wont have a problem DMing your players, and probably you would DMing mine (specially some magic-lover power-gamer sorceror that loves to sink pirate ships with half a dozen spells on him to start with). I DMed 3.0 and 3.5 for a long time, and lot of times, we didn't have a problem (although, to be fair, lot of times we played in "Conan style" worlds, were magic was inexistant, or controlled by plot. But a couple standard high fantasy as well, including in "world of warcraft world", and mainly without issues that you can notice). However, some other times, the problems arised. So I chosed to move to a system that control that by default, instead of needing myself twisting everything so Magic does not disrupt the game (I'm morally against heavy handweaving and DM whim. If players get a good idea that get my guard low, they deserve victory, and not a simple "no that does not work, becouse I don't like it".)

And there is no such thing as an objectively better approach (although some material may be objectively better for your approach than other material).

Agree. I jumped into this thread becouse of the tittle. While there is no such thing as "wrong fun", and your approach is absolutelly valid as soon as all (and not only the ones that cast spells) agree with it and have fun, everything s fine. However, to answer to the OP, in fiction, there is no such thing as "magic is better". Most of time, magic is not what we see in D&D or other high fantasy RPG (as Rolemaster or Runequest).. In most fiction, Magic is part of the plot, not the characters (as Gandalf), is part of the evil problem (Thulsa Doom), or is "on par" with Martial Characters (Achilles, Beowulf, Hercules...), or, even the main character is a powerful caster (like Elric), it doesn't have a lot of "shortcutting" spells. So, in my opinion, 4e serves better than 3e to *simulate* fantasy fiction. 0e to 3e serves better to simulate "D&D fiction" -such as Forgotten Realms novels-, mainly becouse D&D fiction is based on it.

 

[Mort]

I daresay a typical D&D fighter is not immune to the effects of magic. Fighters don't get spell resistance as they level. That would be a very significant benefit that puts him beyond the typical fighter in the game.

Couple that with the fact that everyone relies on magic for everything - including hurting others - and it's hugely significant. And it's not just magic resistance it is 100% magic immunity to harmful magic (with a godlike entity deciding harmful from not so it is very difficult to fool).

For an intersting take on a magicless man in a land where everyone relies on magic there is the Darksword Trilogy by Weiss and Hickman. Gets weird at the end but good reading until then.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I daresay a typical D&D fighter is not immune to the effects of magic. Fighters don't get spell resistance as they level. That would be a very significant benefit that puts him beyond the typical fighter in the game.

You did note that parenthetical about his immunity, right? That means I was excepting that from the comparison.

Even including it, it still doesn't help him defeat a dragon if he doesn't have anything else to partner with it, it just keeps him alive longer. Perhaps as long as another 6 seconds as the drake realizes he's immune and decides to try a more direct approach (like biting or clawing). Or if its put on guard because he shrugs off magical effects and it doesn't want to get close, it can still drop big-ass rocks on him from the air- seagull style- and that magic immunity will be useless.

 

[Fifth Element]

You did note that parenthetical about his immunity, right? That means I was excepting that from the comparison.

Oh I know, it just struck me as strange to say "Other than some really powerful magic (effectively), he has no magic."

 

[I'm A Banana]

Actually the martial classes in 4e do have a limited form of narrative control. Many of the fighter, ranger, rogue dayllies are just extensions of their at-wills that do more damage (or extension of an at-will with a special effect). Brute stirke, for example, is just an at will but "I hit it much harder" and split the tree is twin strike that does more damage. The easiest way to explain that is by saying the player is excersising some narrative control over the combat as to when more damage and/or effects can be done. It's one reason I have no problem with martial daylies (it's basically just an alternative to giving the player tokens, fate points etc.)

Kind of a quibble, but I wasn't using "narrative control" in the sense of "explain the ability to do this by story."

I was using it in the sense of "ability to control the narrative." That is that things like Teleportation, Scrying, Divination, Flight, even Raise Dead to a certain degree, give spellcasters control over what happens in the game world and how the party goes about its business of killing things and taking their stuff.

When a party's spellcaster gains these spells they are frequently (but not always) "game-changers," effects that change how the game's pace and information is structured. This potency to grab control of the game and run with it (unless the DM builds in pre-emptive magical protections) is something that no warrior in D&D has ever really had.

4e's solution was (mostly) to ditch those effects. Now the only one who controls the narrative is the DM.

As an improv-heavy DM, this actually makes me work a lot harder to run a game in 4e than I did in 3e, since I don't have the ability to rely on the party to do whatever they want.

 

[Argyle King]

Kind of a quibble, but I wasn't using "narrative control" in the sense of "explain the ability to do this by story."

I was using it in the sense of "ability to control the narrative." That is that things like Teleportation, Scrying, Divination, Flight, even Raise Dead to a certain degree, give spellcasters control over what happens in the game world and how the party goes about its business of killing things and taking their stuff.

When a party's spellcaster gains these spells they are frequently (but not always) "game-changers," effects that change how the game's pace and information is structured. This potency to grab control of the game and run with it (unless the DM builds in pre-emptive magical protections) is something that no warrior in D&D has ever really had.

4e's solution was (mostly) to ditch those effects. Now the only one who controls the narrative is the DM.

As an improv-heavy DM, this actually makes me work a lot harder to run a game in 4e than I did in 3e, since I don't have the ability to rely on the party to do whatever they want.

minor nitpick...

All of those things are still available with rituals. You need not even be a spellcaster to do them.

 

[pemerton]

I wasn't using "narrative control" in the sense of "explain the ability to do this by story."

I was using it in the sense of "ability to control the narrative." That is that things like Teleportation, Scrying, Divination, Flight, even Raise Dead to a certain degree, give spellcasters control over what happens in the game world and how the party goes about its business of killing things and taking their stuff.

When a party's spellcaster gains these spells they are frequently (but not always) "game-changers," effects that change how the game's pace and information is structured. This potency to grab control of the game and run with it (unless the DM builds in pre-emptive magical protections) is something that no warrior in D&D has ever really had.

4e's solution was (mostly) to ditch those effects. Now the only one who controls the narrative is the DM.

A quibble to your quibble: I disagree that in 4e the only one who controls the narrative is the GM. I would say that the one who frames the scenes is the GM - because without teleport, etc the players can't - but the resolution of those scenes, and hence the shape and consequences of the unfolding narrative, are in the hands of the players as well as the GM (in my preferred approach the players should be taking the lead, with the GM adjudicating within the parameters of the game mechanics).

All of those things are still available with rituals. You need not even be a spellcaster to do them.

A nitpick to your nitpick - once you've taken the Ritual Caster feat I think you count as a spellcaster.

On the substantial point, true, but . . . True Portal (which allows teleport to a destination other than a permanent circle) is level 28, and Consult Oracle (which would be needed to learn the identity of a stealthy murderer) is level 16. I think this is quite a difference from earlier versions of D&D, in which Commune, Teleport and Contact Other Plane are all available at level 9, and alignment detection from level 1, with Know Alignment and ESP available at level 3. Discern Lies is a low-level ritual, but it gives a (significant) bonus to Insight checks rather than automatically detecing lies.

 

[Argyle King]

Those are farm from the only rituals which can hijack 'narrative control' though.

I do semi-agree with what you're saying; I do agree that -generally speaking- magic was more flexible in 3rd Edition. However, I would disagree that it's not possible to take control of the narrative in 4th Edition; doing so just isn't something which is unique to using magic... or even rituals really.

 

[pemerton]

In a realm in which Divinarions were known to be completely reliable, casting one ends the mystery (your setting). In realms in which it was known or believed that Divinations were occasionally wrong, there would be reason to doubt them as absolute proof, but may still view them as strong investigative tools (RC's setting).

my beef at the moment is that Pemerton's setting is the default for 3e. That's how the game is written. RC's setting is a homebrew that has started whacking the wizard with a nerf bat to limit what the wizard can do.

BTW, in your examples of the "real Dark Ages": In the feudal system, the Count is the vassal of the King, and owes him both allegiance and military duty.

<snip>

Unless the Count is a problem to the King, though, it is never in the King's interests to take him out.

<snip>

Conversely, if the Count is a problem to the King, it doesn't matter that he is guilty.

This setting stuff is tricky.

I think that D&D - especially post-OD&D and pre-4e - is fundamentally confused as to what it's setting is.

AD&D 1st ed is written in places as if the setting is a Conan-esque one - faux history intended to serve not as a genuine game element, but rather as a backdrop to escapades. (And LotR, although it has a very different faux history, is actually comparable in this regard. If a person's response to LotR is "But how does a small, mostly autarkic population of hobbits maintain a living standard comparable to that of one of the centres of world production and trade in the 18th and early 19th centuries?" they have probably missed the point.)

But then we get discussions of peasant revolts, taxation, social structures, etc all of which suggest that we are meant to take the sociology and economy of the setting seriously - even though it is a historically impossible setting (in part because of the magic, in part because of the anachronisms).

In my view this issue is only compounded in 2nd ed AD&D and 3E, because of the great proliferation of settings (and yes, I know FR started in 1st ed but it's peak came later) which are presented not as backdrop but as serious elements in the game, which are meant to shape and constrain the way the fiction unfolds.

One thing I like about 4e's approach - to an extent articulated in the DMG, but even more strongly articulated in Worlds & Monsters - is that it explicitly returns to the world as backdrop.

I think it is possible to take some steps towards making quasi-mediaeval/feudal D&D semi-plausible - one of the most important steps (in my view) is to emphasise a culture among wizards and priests of such extreme conservatism that the idea of innovating by using magic as technology just never comes up (as sociology, this is more plausible if you're a Weberian than if you're a Marxist!). But the plausibility will, nevertheless, in my view be only a veneer. Feudal society is the upshot of a particular confluence of social, religious, technological, etc factors in Western and Central Europe that are simply not replicated in the typical D&D gameworld, and probably can't be given the difference that magic makes.

That's why these days I tend to prefer a D&D game where the setting is a backdrop, and where the default assumption about priests and knights of Pelor or Bahamut is that they are good guys whose word can be relied upon. That is, I prefer an approach that is genre (heroic fantasy) first, and sociology a distant second.

 

[pemerton]

Those are farm from the only rituals which can hijack 'narrative control' though.

I do semi-agree with what you're saying; I do agree that -generally speaking- magic was more flexible in 3rd Edition. However, I would disagree that it's not possible to take control of the narrative in 4th Edition; doing so just isn't something which is unique to using magic... or even rituals really.

Picking up just on your last sentence - this may relate to my quibble with KM - I see 4e as a game in which the GM frames the scenes, but the players then take control of the resolution of those scenes.

And in that sense, yes, definitely, players can take control of the narrative - whether via rituals, skill checks, etc. But (at the risk of raising RC's ire) this is, to my mind, closer to what Hussar described a little upthread as "engaging the gameworld" - rather than sidestepping it.

To try to elaborate just a little on that controversial way of putting things: one function teleport has in classic fantasy RPG play (at least as I've experienced it) is to skip over the boring bits. But if the GM is framing scenes well, then there won't be boring bits - and skipping over the interesting bits is what creates the sort of anticlimax triqui is talking about.

When the players drive the scene forward by "engaging the gameworld" in the sense of actually interacting with the interesting bits, rather than skipping over them to an anticlimax, then we have good RPGing.

Now as RC and DannyA have pointed out, it is possible to run a murder scenario (for example) in which the interesting bits come after the murderer has been identified. But as I and triqui and Hussar have pointed out, this is perhaps not true of all murder scenarios. The overall issue, then, in my view (and I think on this I agree with RC and Hussar) is making sure that the sorts of tools the players are given for engaging the gameworld are going to mesh well with the sorts of situations the GM will be presenting, so that they encourage engaging with, rather than skipping over, the interesting bits.

Where I think I disagree with RC is that 4e is probably the first version of D&D to really address this issue in a self-conscious fashion. Earlier editions introduced spells not by thinking of them as player tools, but by thinking of them simply in terms of fictional plausibility. As a result, play in earlier versions of D&D has (I believe) tended to shape itself to the spells taken as given. (Monte Cook had a column probably close to 10 years ago now where he emphasised very strongly that D&D GM's should be framing situations and designing scenarios to accord with the spell capabilities the system presents - even where this might be a little surprising/counterintuitive in the results it leads to. There was no suggestion that we might first think of the sorts of situations/scenarios we are interested in - by reference to genre, etc - and then design and limit the tools to achieve this goal.)

Whereas the 4e designers had a certain conception of what sort of play the game should involve, and then did their best to introduce spells (thought of as player tools) that would facilitate that play. (And to go back to the rituals and their levels - part of this is a much more self-conscious conception of what it means to play the game with Heroic, Paragon and Epic PCs.)