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

[Crazy Jerome]

A possibility: Magic items just don't work well for casters.

Either:
A) magic items draw on your magic potential, and, well, Conan isn't using his, but that wizard is, so the wizard has none left to power a magic sword
or
B) Magic items disrupt magic spells. If you have a magic sword, you'd better be prepared for that fireball to actually end up coming out of the hilt, instead of where you wanted....

Like that one! How about even stronger? Magic disrupts magic--gradually. The more magic in the area, and the closer it is, the less effective it is. This applies equally to items, spells, innate powers, etc.

You can get some interesting dynamics with this. For example, your classical Sidhe-type is extremely potent around a bunch of mundane human peasants. But back at home, another Sidhe can stick a knife in him and kill him easily. Or on the extreme end, this is why Zeus is more than a little afraid of Hera.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

As far as why not copy literature, there is another drawback besides protagonist script protection and having a group of people involved: The mechanics for the magic system must be manageable.

You can do (and authors have) all kinds of fantasy stories with something like "ley lines," where magic is much more powerful on the lines, and has to be stored away from the lines. Perhaps you even have different kinds of lines. But in a game system, unless you abstract heavily or put a lot of work into a world-simulation, concrete type system, that gets unwieldy rather rapidly.

If you abstract heavily, you can easily lose the uniqueness of the ley lines--or it is just fluff layered over something that could be readily explained with some other magic power source. Nothing wrong with that, but if you wanted ley lines to inform magic, you have now lost that aspect. Likewise, if you go with concrete, you better have a very particular idea in mind and a good handle on it. If I do Robert Aspirin's myth series ley lines, I'm going to do them differently than Harry Turtledove's "WWII in a magic parallel universe" version.

It is not unlike systems where casting varies on the current zodiac--either you abstract it out to barely matter, or you embrace the details. You don't want the details, it gets tedius. You try to compromise in the middle, and the whole thing falls apart.

I can have a system that checks strength of nearest ley line, distance to it, and perhaps affinity for that particular ley line. Whether I want to answer that question consistenly as a DM every time a player wants his PC to cast a spell is another question.

 

[Dausuul]

As a yet unpublished fantasy writer, my main tool for keeping wizards in check relative to warriors is simply to define what the wizard can and cannot do.

For instance, one of my characters is a sorceror who has the power to animate the dead. He can use this power more or less at will, on any corpse within hearing that isn't protected by a divine blessing. The resulting undead last indefinitely and serve without question. He also knows how to summon demons, although this is a long and highly dangerous process taking minutes to hours, and he's got three familiars--minor demons that don't require a summoning ritual and can do a few parlor tricks.

Crazy powerful? Absolutely. Give him a few months and he can raise up an army like the world has never seen. But if you put him face to face with a swordsman, none of it helps him much. He can't throw fireballs or turn invisible or create force fields. One of his familiars can blind a foe for a short time, but that's the only combat magic he's got. His answer to enemy warriors is a big tough snarky bodyguard.

The "Batman wizard" is what leads to invincibility. Get rid of that and everything becomes a lot easier.

 

[pawsplay]

I don't know. As the expanded universe has continued going, it seems like dozens of powerful Jedi are running around (ranging from Starkiller to Darth Krayt before his fall).

Which still leaves no more than six or so on any given "world." Dathomir is a different situation; it's also not active during the Rebellion era. During the Rebellion erea, whether you're talking about the EU or not, Jedi are still extremely rare.

Amber, on the other hand, is a great example of a setting where the PCs are supernatural but not necessarily spell casters. [/quote]

I don't see any meaningful distinction. A magician is somehow who does something supernatural. Whether it requires bat guano or not is a literary choice.

 

[pawsplay]

I'm surprised I haven't seen a mention of Raymond Feist's Riftwar series. In those books, magic is far and away the stronger method. If you're a warrior like say, Tomas, you could stand up to Pug, but not too many below his level. Then again, pretty much any other warrior is below Tomas's level heh.

That demonstrates one important notion: magicians are rarely mooks. "Being the best swordsman in the realm" and "being a magician" (of any useful ability whatsoever) are in many literary settings equivalent in terms of exceptionality.

 

[pawsplay]

And died in the process. So the GM resurrected him and gave him a half-celestial template as a reward.

Let's see Boromir do that.

 

[Diamond Cross]

I know the secret to true balance.

But I can't tell anybody until my parents are dead.

 

[kenjib]

There is no balance problem in fantasy literature because you have to look at how conflict is framed and how narrative is constructed. Ultimately, magic will do whatever the author needs it to do, so the real question is not how power is balanced, but rather what authors have needed magic to do.

The wizard of pre-modern fiction is often an archetype of otherworldly power and knowledge and is usually a religious figure too. His role is a mentor, guide, king-maker, and/or facilitator. The reason for this is that conflict and drama are heightened by human fallibility. When a wizard can solve anything at once then there is no story. Furthermore, when trying to reflect on the human condition, a person who is more human tells us more about ourselves than someone who can do things we could never do does.

So, to address these needs, the wizard is rarely the protagonist. Merlin has power, but only Arthur has the bloodline and destiny to unite the kingdom. The greek gods and their magical agents have power, but ultimately it is the mortals (or superhuman demigods) who reside in the world and are given the ability to shape it (which is a very interesting type of power-reversal), simply because they are defined as the protagonists and the gods are not.

You can also think about it from a Campbellian Hero's Journey direction to help clarify: It is the role of the hero to journey into the otherworld and return with a boon. The wizard plays the role of facilitating the journey or granting the boon because the wizard represents that otherworld's intrusion into the real world, rather than an agent of the real world. By this very role he plays he is excluded from being the hero.

So that has to do with roles, but there is also conflict framing. What is at stake and what are people struggling to overcome? When it comes down to this factor, power does not solve all problems. Frodo must carry the ring because of his humility and the ring's power of temptation. This is something Gandalf simply can not do. Similarly Aragorn is the lost king of Gondor, and not Gandalf. It is a role he can not play. All of his magical power can do nothing to replace those assets that the other characters have. He can only help them to achieve their respective destinies in his role as facilitator.

So, it's not a matter of who has the most power, but rather a matter of character motivation, role, and plot, that defines "balance" in fiction. In fiction what needs to be balanced is not the amount of kick-butt that each character has (which tends to be how people think of balance in D&D), but rather how important they are to the events in the plot and the ways in which each character overcomes his or her own personal challenges.

 

[Plane Sailing]

So that has to do with roles, but there is also conflict framing. What is at stake and what are people struggling to overcome? When it comes down to this factor, power does not solve all problems. Frodo must carry the ring because of his humility and the ring's power of temptation. This is something Gandalf simply can not do. Similarly Aragorn is the lost king of Gondor, and not Gandalf. It is a role he can not play. All of his magical power can do nothing to replace those assets that the other characters have. He can only help them to achieve their respective destinies in his role as facilitator.

So, it's not a matter of who has the most power, but rather a matter of character motivation, role, and plot, that defines "balance" in fiction. In fiction what needs to be balanced is not the amount of kick-butt that each character has (which tends to be how people think of balance in D&D), but rather how important they are to the events in the plot and the ways in which each character overcomes his or her own personal challenges.

Very interesting and important point.

I dare say that for the many people for whom there isn't much of an issue between different classes in D&D, they already use this kind of framing.

In reductionist D&D which is all about a series of combat encounters or noncombat puzzle situations, differences in raw capabilities of classes can become more of an issue, and might be difficult to legislate for in game rules. But in campaigns skillfully run by a good GM, with full player buy-in, 'balance' between classes is not an issue. But you knew that anyway

 

[JacktheRabbit]

I'm surprised I haven't seen a mention of Raymond Feist's Riftwar series. In those books, magic is far and away the stronger method. If you're a warrior like say, Tomas, you could stand up to Pug, but not too many below his level. Then again, pretty much any other warrior is below Tomas's level heh.

Nakor, just about the coolest character in Feists books explains once why wizards do not dominate everyone else.

Wizard casts spell.
Second wizard counterspells first wizard.
Third wizard counterspells second wizards counterspell.

Fighter walks up and chops first wizard (or second or third) wizard in half with sword.