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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hafrogman" data-source="post: 5911555" data-attributes="member: 8858">Different people have different views?  There aren't two sides to this issue, there are many sides.  *shrug*  But as pointed out by others, they're also talking about different parts of the game.  In OD&D this was a clearly stated design goal.  Wizards were impossible to level, but gods once they did.  But from the descriptions I've read of Gygax's early sessions, they also had a very different approach to game play.  It was (ironically) much more like a modern MMORPG with a persistent world.  You played a fighter and dragged your friend's wizard through a few levels.  Then you rolled up a mage, and your friend did the same for you.  Then you soloed high level dungeons as a magic-user, acquiring wealth and fame in the world.It wasn't a campaign, your old fighter wasn't dead or retired, he was just on a shelf for when you felt like pulling him out.  Balance wasn't a design goal because the idea of sustained campaigns with one character per player came much later.  So moving forward, gaming changed, the game changed, but wizards, by and large didn't.  So personally I can reconcile the two seemingly contradictory ideas you mention above.  I want a wizard that functions well with a party at every level of play.  There could be a lot of different ways to accomplish this.  But Libramarian was actually onto something with his soldier analogy.  Adventurers are adventurers, not commoners with hand grenades.  I could play in a game where wizards could only cast one or two or whatever spells per day, but then I would want that wizard to be more competent when not spell casting, an adventurer who happens to know some magic.  Oddly enough, 4e put at-will magic in core, but also did the most to make wizards competent when they couldn't cast.But if a wizard is only magic, the older wizened scholar who has wasted away his youth devoted to studying magic and nothing else, 1d4 hp, no armor, then magic should be their thing.  They should not feel like a commoner, because nobody takes commoners into dungeons.  Instead they should feel like they live, eat and breathe magic.  *shrug* So yeah, I want my characters to be competent, either because they're well rounded or because they're focused and skilled.  And as they level I'd like a well rounded character to become more focused, and a skilled character to become more well rounded, so at the end you aren't left with any gods deigning to walk among mortals.But in the end, what I most want is a system that can work with lots of different solutions.  Because if I want a character who knows cantrips, and someone else decides to play a character who doesn't, that won't actually bother me, or ruin my immersion, or make me storm away in disgust.</blockquote>

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