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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hautamaki" data-source="post: 5482545" data-attributes="member: 42219">It's very rare that wizards and warriors are 'balanced' in fantasy ime.  Some of the series I've read:Wheel of Time: Casters completely run this world; non-caster characters are given things to do of course, but in actuality all non-caster characters are completely at the mercy of casters.  One non-caster even gets a 'wish'--he uses it to 'be free of [magic users]' and he gets a medallion which absorbs magic.  He thinks he's safe now and gets a little cocky with magic users in his party; so they use magic to drop turds on his head and tell him next time it could be a boulder or a house.  His medallion is useless after all lol.  A single decent magic user is worth at least 100 good warriors.Song of Ice and Fire: supremely low-magic world which IMO is one of the main reasons it's considered 'better' than WoT (if the author ever finishes it that is).  To date there is only 2 magic users in the world that we know of (a priest of priestess of a strange foreign god), and one of them has the power to kill literally anyone at any time; the other has the power to resurrect the dead; even beheaded people.  Obviously these are two of the most dangerous and powerful characters, but since their competition are kings, lords, and other individuals with literally thousands under their command, it's about even I guess.Sword of Truth: Magic owns, period.  Almost every plotline revolves around the power of the few spellcasters of the world.Malazan Book of the Fallen: Perhaps the closest to being 'balanced' of any of the series, and also perhaps my favourite of the lot.  Magic users are fairly common (maybe 20-30 in an army of 5,000) but most would be considered low-level and are roughly even with a soldier in a fair fight (and considering how common and dangerous crossbows are they'd probably mostly just get shot and killed that way) but even low level magic users are highly valuable because of the greater tactical options they bring to a unit, and also of course because of healing magic.  High level magic users (an army might have 1 or 2) can take out hundreds or even thousands of enemy troops (at one point a high-magic race takes out a whole empire with basically their magic users only after gaining the power of a dark god) but often times high level magic users from the other side will cancel them out.  On an individual level, very high level warrior-types have massive spell resistance and oftentimes seem to be able to power through or 'make their saves' against high level magic, making them very dangerous even to high level magic users.The trend I've noticed though in fiction is that even high level fictional casters are not as potentially powerful as 3.x casters.  Fictional magic users may often have very powerful evocation type magic--fireballs, lightning bolts, clouds of acid, earthquake type stuff, etc) but even the most powerful fictional magic users don't usually have the kind of 'game breaking' spells that D&D magic users can get.  Things like wish, polymorph, time travel, resurrection, etc.  Characters that DO have them are generally only, as has been said, plot points.  Usage of that kind of spell is not mundane, but may happen only once in a whole book, and become a central plot point the whole story revolves around.So in the final analysis, giving PCs access to that kind of magic seems a little 'broken' or at least not fun imo.  Not even the greatest fantasy writers seem to be able to make stories work if magic users are as omnipotent as they can be in D&D, so it seems a little much to expect your average DM to be able to pull it off.</blockquote>

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