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

[Dannyalcatraz]

In the 1e DMG there is an assumption - clearly spelled out on p.35 - that

1 character in 100 is eligible for level advancement

And given that the very same DMG said it was perfectly OK to have NPCs from all walks of life with PC levels, we can only assume either:

1) When they used the term "level advancement", they meant beyond a certain point- say, Lvls1-3, but not that class levels were barred from ordinary people,

OR

2) They plucked the "1 in 100" number out of the air and then ignored for the rest of the book and subsequent products

As to this:

The goalposts have been shifted so many times by so many different people in this thread that I can no longer keep up.

The position RC, pawsplay and I (and others I may be forgetting) have been espousing has been consistent: one level of a PC class doesn't make you anything particularly or inherently special in the world, whether NPC or PC, at least pre-4Ed.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

And given that the very same DMG said it was perfectly OK to have NPCs from all walks of life with PC levels

I cannot find this quote, or its context. Perhaps you can help me.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm on my way to Church & won't be back for hours- as I recall, it was mentioned in this thread right when someone called me "flippant". The relevant section in the DMG, to the best of my recollection, somewhere about pgs 103-112.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

I'm on my way to Church & won't be back for hours- as I recall, it was mentioned in this thread right when someone called me "flippant". The relevant section in the DMG, to the best of my recollection, somewhere about pgs 103-112.

You may be misremembering "flippant." I remarked that it was glib to suggest that 1E was consistent in its understanding of the significance of PC class levels.

I think I have found what you mean, though:

The host of merchants, shopkeepers, guardsmen, soldiers, clerics, magic users, fighters, thieves assassins etc. are likewise all yours to play. Again, this is simply a matter of assuming the station of the NPC and creating characteristics -- formally or informally according to the importance of the non-player character.

Which says nothing to me of the incidence of PC-Class characters in the campaign at all.

Perhaps you are thinking of a different quote?

 

[pawsplay]

The goalposts have been shifted so many times by so many different people in this thread that I can no longer keep up.

I think everyone has a notion - based on their own preferences and expectations - of how the game world should look with regard to class and level.

What is happening is that a few of us are trying to settle, once and for all, that previous editions of D&D spelled out the presence of quite average individuals, while other people seem intent on moving the goalposts. Based on what you have just posted, you are unwilling to condede that quotations from three or more editions of D&D are sufficient to settle the matter. To me this is not a question of my own "preferences and expectations" but about settling a misprepresentation of the rules.

I also think that notions of level and class are inseparable in this regard: the status of a Ftr 1 in a world where most people are Com 1s is different to one where most people are Com 2s or Com 3s.

Only to a degree. In no version of D&D, at least prior to 4e, did he have a "PC glow" by virtue of being classed.

In the 1e DMG there is an assumption - clearly spelled out on p.35 - that

1 character in 100 is eligible for level advancement

This ratio is sufficient for me to characterize PC classes as "unusual". The extent to which one regards them as "exceptional" or "extraordinary" is largely a semantic quibble. But 99% of people don't have classes at all.

In 1e, only 1% of humans even have the potential to become übermenschen and gain class levels. Perhaps the elitism implied by this is what makes some people uncomfortable.

That is under the paragraph "Number of Prospective Henchmen." Clearly, not all classed individuals are available for hire. You are stripping away the context. The quote does not "clearly spell out" anything that furthers your argument; it is only a spitball estimate of how many adventurers are "in the business." Further, being eligible for "level advancement" only says that they are not given a fixed number of HD; as clearly spelled out in many places, many martial NPCs are members of the fighter class. The Noble's squire is not an "ubermensch," he's a dangidy-dong squire, and he's a 2nd level fighter.

Members of PC classes are simply skilled and uncommon, not ubermenschen. They are not living legends. A 1st level fighter is just a guy with weapon proficiencies. In 3e, he is distinguished from his Warrior peers by having a truly professional level of ability, comparable to a working constable, a full-time soldier, or a vocational knight. You can claim how it "should" be or how you would like it to be... you can argue your "personal perferences and expectations"... but by the RAW, what you are saying is not true. Not slightly. Not in bad lighting on a Wednesday is it true.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The goalposts have been shifted so many times by so many different people in this thread that I can no longer keep up.

I think it's pretty simple to keep up. A claim was made that a Ftr 1 could be a regular guy just off the turnip wagon, and a counter-claim was made that it could not be so, in any edition.

Everything else is an exploration of that counter-claim.

I think, personally, that, because characters start more powerful in 4e than in earlier editions, it was taken as some form of dire insult to suggest (or admit) that some editions might do "turnip-farmer-turned-PC" better (where better is defined only as statistically closer to a turnip farmer).

At this point, rather than say, "Yeah, X is focused on Y, whereas Z was focused on B", all rationality went out the window, and we had more than one claim that a Ftr 1 must be superhuman (or words to that effect).

And, AFAICT, that must be is the only point of contention.

Therefore, you have people putting forth various counter-examples, and putting forth a counter-example (even if it differs from other counter-examples) isn't shifting the goalposts.

And you have various other people simply ignoring whatever counter-example doesn't fit the framework that must be.

I think everyone has a notion - based on their own preferences and expectations - of how the game world should look with regard to class and level.

Nah.

I have no expectation of how things should look. In most games that I play, PCs are exceptional simply by being PCs. In RCFG, I even came up with a term to describe this: "Champion Class Creature".

But I know that things do not have to be this way. And even the Champion Class Creature nomenclature wouldn't prevent a GM from framing a game in RCFG where the PCs were ex-farmers with mundane abilities just off the turnip truck.

Heck, as many have pointed out on EN World in the past, even abilities that seem clearly supernatural to me (either in their execution or implications, such as Come and Get It) don't require that the people playing the game think of their characters as superhuman. They are quite capable of making what might seem a supernatural ability instead conform to the fantasy reality of the campaign setting.

What you prefer should have nothing to do with what you concede to be possible.


RC

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Which says nothing to me of the incidence of PC-Class characters in the campaign at all.

That's the quote.

And reading the entire section on NPCs, you find them talking about classed characters in all walks of life- more than would make sense at a 1% of the populace.

Adventurers may be 1 in 100, but classed individuals are not.

 

[GSHamster]

I haven't read the entire thread, only up to page 20 or so. But the discussion kind of reminds me of a quote from The Matrix:

Morpheus: I've seen an agent punch through a concrete wall. Men have emptied entire clips at them and hit nothing but air. Yet their strength and their speed are still based in a world that is built on rules. Because of that, they will never be as strong or as fast as you can be.
Neo: What are you trying to tell me, that I can dodge bullets?
Morpheus: No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to.

Agents = warriors. Neo = wizard.

The world or setting has physical rules. Only magic can break those rules. So by definition, a character without magic is bound by those rules.

In literature, the countering force to this is the Narrative. Warriors defeat wizards because the story demands that they do.

In a game, you really have four options if you want to keep Warriors on par with Wizards. Otherwise, the wizards end up like Neo: untouchable gods.

1. Give warriors some direct control over the Narrative. This greatly annoys the "simulationist" audience, because for the simulationists, the Narrative falls out of the interaction between rules, player choices, and dice, and should not be controlled directly by the players.

2. Restrict magic greatly. For example, imagine a setting where the only magic is enchantment or illusion. In such a setting, it is easy to imagine that warriors can defeat wizards, if only through sheer force of will. Downside of this is that wizard players greatly dislike being restricted in such a manner, and it goes against the wizard archetype that the game is used to.

3. Give wizards a significant weakness. I.e. they can be killed by a single weapon blow. Or maybe there is an element which nullifies magic. (For example, a'dam in Wheel of Time.) But this is sometimes hard to balance. If the weakness is in play, the wizard is too weak. If the weakness is not in play, the wizard is too powerful. So encounters have the potential to be very swingy for the wizard, as the example of a'dam in WoT illustrates.

4. Give the warriors magic. For example, I think it's much easier for us to imagine a paladin taking down a wizard. The paladin is imbued with the might of her god, and that "magic" allows her to break the physical rules when necessary. But the problem with this is that a lot of people are attracted to warriors and rogues because they specifically do not have magic, and obviously giving them magic would make those players unhappy.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

If you've never claimed that you can't have turnip farmer as a background, then how is it you got into this tangent? No one's claimed that D&D is about turnip farming.

Frankly, it seems like you guys are arguing over the definition of normal rather than who is normal.

While I'm at it...

Hey KM, something occurred to me in while reading your last post. Fantasy hero's are often captured and put into death traps that they only escape because the villain doesn't kill them in an efficient manner. In fact, such villains are often named after one of the heroes often cited in this discussion: Bond villains. Batman is also famous for getting captured and being stuck in death traps. Of course, most of Batman's villains are insane.

Conan, who started all this, has fallen prey to this a couple of times. In the crucifixion scene mentioned by Hussar a while back, Conan was being crucified because he had been captured by the villains and put out die a rather horrible death. Seriously, if you can nail a guy to cross, you can run a sword through him. In early Hour of the Dragon, Conan is captured and survives only because the villain thinks Conan might be useful later (or as blackmail). It doesn't work. Lastly, there's a story where Conan admits that if the bad guy hadn't taken the time to gloat, he'd be dead.

If town guards, army regulars, and the militia never poses a threat, even at early levels, then how does this tope of fantasy literature work? The whole point is that the mooks take out the hero and the big bad finishes them off with the death trap.

I am going to jump in here, because this is germane to the original discussion but capturing the party is pretty problematic in rpgs in the first place and more likely to end in TPK and pissed off players.

Death traps are pretty much as problematical, given that the players are not really likely to be smart enough to solve it or if they are then it is not likely to come across as a real deathtrap.

That kind of stuff works better in stories, where the author has full authority and complete control of all the variables.

To be honest, in literature the issue of balance is irrelevant, the protagonists drive the story and if they are warriors they use warrior stuff and if wizards they use magic and some are good at both and use both.

Finally, whiile I am pretty sure I could pull off the capture even with minions in 4e, I am not sure I could pull off a convincing deathtrap.

One thing about deathtrtaps, we know how stories work. If we are watching/reading heroic fiction then the protagonist win for a certain value of win. At the very minimun the bad guy is thwarted. So a deattrap that allows the bad guy to win is one that we expect to see overcome. The interested from the reader/viewer is that we do not know how this is going to be accomplished (at least if it is really well done).

Getting that in a game is, I think, impossible. An rpg campaign does not, normally, create a particular type of story from the get go. We may be aiming for heroic fantasy but we could get tragedy, comedy or farce or some unfinished work and we do not know what we have until the campaign is over.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

I haven't read the entire thread, only up to page 20 or so. But the discussion kind of reminds me of a quote from The Matrix:


Agents = warriors. Neo = wizard.

The world or setting has physical rules. Only magic can break those rules. So by definition, a character without magic is bound by those rules.

That's a bit wrong. Using some mostly 4e terms: Neo, Trinity and Morpheus started out in the Heroic power tier. The Agents were Paragon tier. After the Lobby battle, in the fight on the roof Neo was also Paragon. In the final confrontation with Smith and the other agents Neo entered the Epic power tier.

In literature, the countering force to this is the Narrative. Warriors defeat wizards because the story demands that they do.

Nope. Narrative only says that the protagonist overcomes the antagonist unless narrative conventions are being subverted. If an overwhelmingly powerful warrior was the antagonist facing a lowly wizard protagonist, narrative conventions would have the wizard win in the end. The computer game Zork: Grand Inquisitor is a good example of this.

In a game, you really have four options if you want to keep Warriors on par with Wizards. Otherwise, the wizards end up like Neo: untouchable gods.

Each of these have problems and are not really answers.

1. Give warriors some direct control over the Narrative. This greatly annoys the "simulationist" audience, because for the simulationists, the Narrative falls out of the interaction between rules, player choices, and dice, and should not be controlled directly by the players.

The problem with this is that by giving warriors control over the narrative of the campaign you effectively makes players playing warriors sub-GMs.

2. Restrict magic greatly. For example, imagine a setting where the only magic is enchantment or illusion. In such a setting, it is easy to imagine that warriors can defeat wizards, if only through sheer force of will. Downside of this is that wizard players greatly dislike being restricted in such a manner, and it goes against the wizard archetype that the game is used to.

Restricting what types of magic are available does not change anything. What is important is how powerful magic is. If a wizard can charm a thousand men at a time and can do so 10 times a day and a warrior can only cut trough 100 men in an hour, its not balanced.

3. Give wizards a significant weakness. I.e. they can be killed by a single weapon blow. Or maybe there is an element which nullifies magic. (For example, a'dam in Wheel of Time.) But this is sometimes hard to balance. If the weakness is in play, the wizard is too weak. If the weakness is not in play, the wizard is too powerful. So encounters have the potential to be very swingy for the wizard, as the example of a'dam in WoT illustrates.

This doesn't really help either. If the weakness is in play: warrior eats wizard and wizard player is not happy. If the weakness is not in play: wizard eats warrior and warrior player isn't happy.

4. Give the warriors magic. For example, I think it's much easier for us to imagine a paladin taking down a wizard. The paladin is imbued with the might of her god, and that "magic" allows her to break the physical rules when necessary. But the problem with this is that a lot of people are attracted to warriors and rogues because they specifically do not have magic, and obviously giving them magic would make those players unhappy.

Having "magic" and "not having magic" isn't the problem. Its in the balance of power. If a wizard can blow up 5 guys once an encounter and a warrior can carve through 1 guy a round at will then if an encounter last ~5 rounds things are balanced. If a wizard can blow up only 2 guys a round once per encounter and a warrior can carve through 1 guy a round at will and encounters last ~5 rounds then its imbalanced in the warrior's favor.

It basically comes down to the two having roughly equal in power. If a wizard can create demiplanes then warriors should be able to cut mountains in half with their ability alone.