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

[Herremann the Wise]

I have many, many times seen a spellcaster dominate a situation. In my experience your examples, with context removed, are perfectly valid. But once they are placed into context, they become features, not bugs.

I've seen many times when the fighter/barbarian player turns to the wizard players and goes "Hell YEAH!!!! That was awesome!!". If the wizard was trampling the warriors contributions, that would not be the reaction. It certainly would not be a reaction seen over and over for year after year.

But the thing is, I see the wizard character go "Hell Yeah!!!!" to the warrior player just as often.

I'm not at all interested in the idea that everyone needs to contribute equally at every given moment. The wizard shines; the warrior shines; the rogue shines.

I think this last point is very important and in context of the entire response cogent. As long as everyone gets their chance to shine (some will obviously debate whether any particular system including 3e achieves this at all levels), then everyone's having a whole heap of fun. A good DM/GM will have a good mix of encounters that achieves this. However, I can also see a pretty strong argument put forward that at high level, the magic-user generally has more and varied ways of contributing in a combat. I think all posters here are making good points that are truly applicable at some stage of the level tree. However some arguments are perhaps more true at different levels (and thus why two opposing arguments can be true but just not across all levels). I think this is why 3e has a real nice sweetspot between levels 6 and 11 with some goodness bleeding out above and below those limits (and for some groups broaching the entire spectrum of play).

In 4e the focus is on teamwork (through a one action gives two results - one dealing damage but the other normally something that helps the rest of the party). I think if you could combine the two (in a future 5e let's say), then you will have a truly ideal level of play (for me at least anyway).

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Kasoroth]

One thing that I've noticed in high/epic level 3.x D&D games is that often the melee fighting types could easily out-damage any of the casters on an individual target, even if the casters were using epic spells like hellball. The casters still had the area-effect advantage, but the fighter and monk could easily deal more damage to a single target in a round.

In most of the epic games I've played, the spell casters mostly tended to end up in a battlefield control and enemy neutralizing role because their raw damage output couldn't compete.

A monk with flurry of blows or a fighter with a double-ended weapon could easily deal tons of damage at epic levels with a bunch of elemental damage effects stacked on weapons or gloves, and feats and/or magic items to maximise the number of attacks. Throw in some power attack for good measure and you could have some insane damage machines.

This may have been partly due to the fact that the DM was extremely generous with powerful magic items at epic levels. This gave the fighters a big boost to hit and damage (and that hit bonus allowed them to pour on more power attack). Stat boosting tomes and equipment were quite common so ability scores were often boosted to absurd levels.

It was not a particularly remarkable event to see either the monk or the fighter deal over 1000 damage in a round by the time the game got to about 25th level. The casters got lots of items as well, but caster items didn't generally tend to provide much damage increase. Save DCs got quite hard for many enemies to match, but magic damage is much less effected by equipment and absurdly high stats than melee damage is.

I have to strongly agree with the earlier comment that the creative "batman" utility casters can be much more devastating to combat balance than a pure damage caster (particularly at high levels). In the epic game I was in, some of the enemies were extremely powerful (they had to be to pose any challenge), and many battles involved both sides' casters trying to neutralize as much of the opposing force as they could in order to turn the melee slaughterfest in their favor.

I played a wizard and I really loved the "greater anticipate teleportation" (I think that's the right name) spell that would take anyone trying to teleport anywhere near me out of the battle for a few rounds (and possibly give me a chance to prepare a nasty surprise for them when they finally reached their destination). Many battles only lasted 3 or 4 rounds, but they often took hours to play out with all the stuff happening.

-Kasoroth

 

[Argyle King]

Instead of trying to change the game you might want to try finding the game that has the right system for you.

Most of the times the rules are actually fine as is. Sometimes there's a real error that needs to be fixed, but usually any argument about changing the rules is because "that's the way i prefer it". There is a big difference between fixing an error than just arbitrarily changing the rules just because a person can't play the class right.

I think there's some truth here.

It's actually what prompted me to look outside of D&D. While I do enjoy D&D, there were a lot of things I wanted to do with encounters which were poorly done using 4E. That's not really a fault with the rules; the rules are simply built upon a set of assumptions about play style which sometimes clashed with my own. This lead to a lot of frustration on my parts.

So, not surprisingly, there are probably plenty of old posts I made on the WoTC forum which started to veer toward 'h4ter' territory. I kept trying to tweak the rules and get what I wanted, and I kept feeling as though the game was letting me down. It wasn't; I was just trying to use them to do some things they weren't -from what I can tell- made to do.

I tried a few other games, and found some that were better equipped to tell some of the stories I wanted to tell. Since then, I'm better able to enjoy 4E when I play it because I've come to accept that it does what it is meant to do. Instead of trying to work against the system, I've accepted that I need to temper some of my ideas and work with it. I still do make a lot of tweaks to how skill challenges work, but that's a topic worthy of its own thread.

 

[Hussar]

Instead of trying to change the game you might want to try finding the game that has the right system for you.

Most of the times the rules are actually fine as is. Sometimes there's a real error that needs to be fixed, but usually any argument about changing the rules is because "that's the way i prefer it". There is a big difference between fixing an error than just arbitrarily changing the rules just because a person can't play the class right.

But, see, there's the problem. D&D, as it's presented is not this high magic, magic solves all game.

Looking at various settings - Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, etc. the settings are presented as medieval Europe with a veneer of magic layered on top. The problem comes when you scratch below the surface, it's not hard to start seeing some really glaring incongruities.

For example, DannyA talks about fantasy armies looking a lot like modern specialist armies. And I agree, that's what they probably should look like. But, that's not how it's presented in the settings. You have medieval castles, feudal lords and whatnot.

Yes, you could certainly look for a different system. Or, you could change the system so that it actually fits the setting its trying to present.

D&D, up to 4e, is based on the idea that you are going to go to dungeons, kill the creatures and come back and then go to the next dungeon. (By dungeon here, I mean adventure of some form - not necessarily a hole in the ground) But, it also tried to incorporate all these ideas on how to build the larger world as well. But, the magic system gets in the way in very large ways.

Take something as simple as continual light/continual flame (depending on edition). Access to PERMANENT light sources would have an enormous impact on a setting. But, why do we have these spells? Well, because our adventurers go down into dungeons and carrying a sack full of torches is a PITA. So, we have Continual Light. Makes dungeon crawling that much easier. The broader effects of cheap, permanent magics are simply hand waved away.

One of the largest changes in 4e is the removal of nearly all permanent effects. You don't have cities lit with continual light because there isn't any continual light to cast. You don't have explosive rune arrow grenades (a favorite trick of our groups). You don't have Item spelled barrels of burning oil bombs.

Upthread I talked about how the setting has to take magic into account and someone talked about how a government would likely have some sort of Inquisition style group to stop wizards from getting too powerful. But, that's still the problem. The magic system is dictating my setting. I can't ignore the issue if I want a believable setting.

 

[joela]

usually:

Warrior = protagonist

wizard = plot device

so balance isn't really an issue. I think d&d stories are more a sub-genre of the game than "fantasy literature" per se, so they have their own rules.

+1!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One of the largest changes in 4e is the removal of nearly all permanent effects. You don't have cities lit with continual light because there isn't any continual light to cast. You don't have explosive rune arrow grenades (a favorite trick of our groups). You don't have Item spelled barrels of burning oil bombs.

Side note on this: the fleeting effectiveness of magic was another thing I really disliked about 4Ed. Most other RPGs have magical effects of various duration, but in 4Ed, everything is so...evanescant.

 

[joela]

It's been awhile since I read the original trilogy, but wasn't there some sorta "balance" issue that restricted wizards? IIRC, Sparrowhawk was told that when he created rain in one place, it was dry somewhere else and vice versa.

 

[Mort]

It's been awhile since I read the original trilogy, but wasn't there some sorta "balance" issue that restricted wizards? IIRC, Sparrowhawk was told that when he created rain in one place, it was dry somewhere else and vice versa.

You're thinking of the Belgariad and Belgarath's talk with Garion after Garion uses weather to dominate a battlefield (Sparhawk is the protaganist of Eddings other big series). The gist of the conversation is that there is cause and effect in magic (as presented in the Belgariad) but that once a sorcerer understands this he can account for it. The Belgariad is an intersting example though: in it, sorcerers, once they attain any level of mastery, are simply "better" because they can be good at sorcery and pretty much anything else - there is no talk at all of balance.

 

[Mort]

Side note on this: the fleeting effectiveness of magic was another thing I really disliked about 4Ed. Most other RPGs have magical effects of various duration, but in 4Ed, everything is so...evanescant.

Not rituals! (at least when they were supporting rituals, grr.) I like the fact that most magic is fleeting - if you want something to last you need quite a bit more oomph - as in use a ritual (much longer casting time and likely more expensive).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Point.

(I wish they'd done a better job with rituals...)