You just argued for why martials shouldn't have mythic abilities. They are not gods. Characters like Odysseus, Perseus, and Jason exhibited very mundane martial powers because they weren't gods. Casters in stories do not exhibit the same mundane powers.
And Hercules? Who was an explicit demigod?
Also you are missing one huge thing about such stories. The casters are almost invariably
NPCs. Saying that "The fighters in these stories couldn't do this but the casters could" is no more appropriate than saying "The warriors can't fly in that story but the dragon can fly and breathe fire."
There are plenty of mythological stories where the heroes are Hercules, Beowulf, CuChulain, or even Thor. These are the equivalent stories to the ones where you have the spellcasters as protagonists; most spellcasters are demigods.
If you want to use demigods for your source material for wizards, why do you rule it out for fighters?
A 5th level wizard still exhibits capabilities no martial can accomplish because the caster-martial disparity has existed in D&D since way back in the day. Even a 5th level caster casting a fireball was far more powerful than what a martial could accomplish with this weapons.
Let's put this into perspective. 1E.
The wizard learns
no spells for free. Every single spell they can cast is something that they have picked up as treasure from somewhere. Their spell list is almost entirely under the control of the GM.
Let's assume the GM gave them the fireball spell. They also gave the fighter a +3 sword and some armour. (Look at all the old treasure tables - they are weighted towards swords and quite deliberately so. The fighter gets the lion's share of the loot, and the cleric can't wield the most common loot type).
The wizard has about 13 hit points (5d4, rolled. Unlucky for some). And generally an AC somewhere around 8. Casting if a street thug walks up to the wizard is a nightmare - and two to three thugs can bring that wizard down.
On the other hand the Fighter probably has an AC of -2. They get five attacks per round against Level 0 opponents. And with their +3 sword are going to tear through those goblins
fast.
For taking on a street gang single handedly, the wizard needs to win initiative to fireball or the wizard is going down. The fighter? Our thugs can probably only hit the fighter on a natural 20.
The caster-martial disparity isn't just a high level reality. It's a reality from level 1 when the caster can cast charm person and the martial is swinging a weapon. Even at level 1 the wizard has more power to affect the world in a broad way than the martial.
This on the other hand is balanced out by exactly how terrible at combat the wizard is at low levels. No armour. Almost no hit points. If one single thing goes wrong for the classic wizard then they die.
There isn't combat balance here. In combat the fighter kicks ass and takes names - and the wizard is a liability most of the time. The wizard is the NPC in an escort mission and the fighter is the best there is at what they do - which is critical even if it is more limited than the wizard.
And he new hundreds of ways to open doors. knock, wizard lock, and hold portal.
No. You're playing Schrodinger's Wizard here.
The wizard only learned spells as treasure. While the fighter was upgrading their weapons and armour the wizard was getting a tiny handful of new tricks. It was unlikely that the wizard would have more than one way to open doors.
3.0 broke the wizard wide open. Unearthed Arcana Specialist Wizards meant that a wizard couldn't be left entirely in the cold by bad rolls on the treasure table and having Identify as the only spell they knew at level 5. This was IMO a good thing. One single spell per level from your specialist school. 3.0 changed that to two spells per level of which at least one could be from
any school.
I'm sure you can see how vast a change this is.
At every level a caster is more powerful than a martial in breadth. Even a 3rd or 5th level wizard can do more than a 10th level or higher martial in terms of scope. Damage wise martials have always done more single target damage.
You're missing three things here.
Firstly, 3.0 giving the wizard a vast number of extra spells they get to choose. A level 5 wizard in 1e would only know spells they'd found as treasure plus one first level spell. (IMO too little). A level 5 specialist wizard in 2e would know one spell from their school per level - we've some breadth here but it's not overwhelming. A level 5 3.X wizard would know around 15 spells, not counting cantrips, plus any spells they'd found as treasure, plus anything they'd learned from scrolls they had bought. In short in terms of breadth, the gap between the 3.0 wizard and the 2e wizard is greater than that between the 2e wizard and the fighter.
Secondly, 3.0 screwed up the saving throw system (and 3.5 made it even worse by nerfing magic immunity). The single target damage you do doesn't matter anything like as much when you can simply throw a save or suck spell at someone.
- In AD&D your saves get easier to make at high level. In 3.0 "high" saves can barely keep pace with the increased saving throw DC for spell level, and the caster is going to spend more points on their primary stat than the non-casters are on their defensive ones. It's easier to send high level spells through, all else being equal.
- In AD&D your saves work by what you are trying to do. A save-or-lose spell would be rolling on either the Death/Paralysis/Poison column or the Petrification/Polymorph column. The net effect of this is that everyone gets about a +3 to save against save-or-lose spells as opposed to direct damage spells. Meaning that Save-or-Lose spells are a resort of the desperate.
- In 3.0 your spells work against Fort, Ref, or Will - determined by spell. A properly prepared wizard (and remember the vast number more spells they have) has some save or suck prepared from each column - and picking the right one can be a ridiculous swing in favour of the wizard.
In short due to 3.0 messing up the saving throw system
the fact the fighter can do a lot of damage is almost irrelevant.
The third change is one of survivability. More hp for the wizard. More spells per day (Int bonus), and much easier access to the defensive spells (because you know so many more spells.) Wizards used to have to hide lots rather than rely on their spells.
They lose because it would be unsatisfying to have them win. It wasn't quite a 1 for all saves, but for quite a few. It depended on the class. 1E casters were still more powerful than martials in nearly every area other than damage. We're not arguing damage here.
No. No they weren't. They were more powerful with certain utility tricks handed to them by the DM. The best way in through a door most of the time was the crowbar. The wizard
gained no free spells in 1e.
Or because magic use usually has some debilitating effect which D&D decided not to incorporate. Gandalf felt drained after using magic.
Gandalf was also a DMPC.
3E left a bunch of this stuff out and went too far empowering casters. I feel 4E went too far disempowering casters.
And yet the only 4e character I have retired from a game for being too much for the DM to cope with was a wizard. Any given 4e wizard is, before the effects of treasure are included, far more flexible than a 1e wizard - the 1e wizard's key ability was the ability to use one type of treasure. But 4e wizards are subtle and quick to anger.
Depends on the book. Sometimes a much weaker wizard travels with a much stronger martial. Sometimes a much stronger wizard travels with and protects a much weaker martial. Sometimes they are relative equals. It varies from book to book. Always the martial brings a caster that can do some extremely powerful things he cannot do.
And the second case is of course a DMPC. Which seemingly you want to play. oD&D was based round the much-weaker-wizard paradigm until very high levels. Because the wizard cold also hold their end up.
Once again this isn't argument about damage. It's about breadth of power. Martials in every edition have had immense killing power. 3E martials make 4E martials look like children playing with sticks. Yet this is forgotten in the caster-martial disparity argument. People unhappy with the disparity always bring up all the nasty spell combinations casters did in 3E that made them so strong. Yet they never bring up the 300 plus hit point rounds of damage by martials critting like crazy.
That's because all the hit point damage in the world on a single target is worth approximately as much as one single save-or-lose spell.
Seriously. Reducing someone's hit points turns them from a threat to not-a-threat. That's all it does. It doesn't matter much if you've turned them into not-a-threat because you've cost them all their hit points or you've
Nauseated them, turning them into a punch bag for long enough either for them to surrender or you to kill them.
Fix the saving throw rules back to something approaching the AD&D standard (i.e. give everyone a half-hit-dice bonus to all saves, and then +3 vs Save-or-Lose) and cutting through hit points will be back to the most effective method of combat.
It's been that way in quite a few editions. Casters survive by not letting martials get to them or using magic to mitigate their attacks.
The problem is that in 3.X, martials survive by not letting casters spellcast on them. Due to the screwed up saving throws the contest becomes a "Fastest draw wins". Which means that a wizard is the equal of a fighter in combat - the question is whether the wizard can cast spell on the fighter before the fighter can turn them into sushi.
And if it's a quick draw contest, this means that the wizard is as good as the fighter at combat. The area the fighter is meant to excel at. The fighter takes out the wizard by chopping through their HP - the wizard takes out the fighter by forcing them to save or lose. Either way the one who strikes first probably wins.
Fix the saving throws that the 3.0 designers broke and this changes.
And you're just further illustrating the caster-martial disparity. A 5th level wizard can accomplish what Merlin and Gandalf can, it is still far more powerful than what any martial in the story did. Launcelot and Arthur were definitely higher than 5th level fighters.
Exactly. A 5th level 3.X wizard is more powerful than the author's deus-ex-machina/DMPC.
This is a problem.
Gandalf was not a part of the adventuring party. He was the patron and DMPC. There were two actual parties that came together briefly in LoTR - the Hobbits, and Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli/Boromir. Gandalf and Merlin were not player characters.
You'll never win the caster-martial disparity argument as far as fantasy goes. It is very much there and not just defined by levels. Even low level casters as you have so clearly attempt to illustrate with Merlin and Gandalf are some of the most powerful beings in the entire world exceeding what martials can accomplish.
This is because Gandalf is one of the Maiar and Merlin's ancestry depends on the source. In short both of them are demigod patrons of parties. If you want to play Gandalf as a PC it should be in a group of Maiar rather than one of Hobbits. And if you want to play Merlin, it should be alongside other legendary demigods such as CuChulain or Hercules at his most extreme.
The fact that Merlin or Gandalf about equivalent to a fifth level wizard doesn't mean that you should be able to play him. It means that the D&D level structure is screwed up. Both of them should be nearer
fifteenth level PCs.
It would follow that even higher level casters would be even more powerful.
Indeed. No one disputes that level 20 casters should be really powerful. What is under dispute is whether given that they are so powerful, 5th level is a fair and accurate reflection of Gandalf and Merlin or whether it underscores the fact that wizards are massively under-levelled and magic is overpowered for the level you get it at.
Authors, and game designers it seems, can't imagine a world where magic is on the same level as martial weapons in areas other than damage.
Because
of course the Celtic myths don't exist and CuChulain didn't go round cutting the tops off mountains. I'm too old to have read modern fantasy like Orlando Furioso and Outlaws at the Water Margin. Beowulf and the Ramayana? Never happened. The Justice League and the Avengers are both run by wizards. And the Thor-and-Loki stories of Norse Myth don't have Thor as a martial type and Loki as a caster-type.
Being serious for a second, your claim is complete rubbish.
I can't either. Not sure why you can.
Because I have an imagination that isn't centred round D&D casting and can imagine lots of types of magic.
There are stories where the wizard is the protagonist and the non-casters are the sidekicks. D&D does not present itself as one of these.
There are stories like Harry Potter where everyone casts spells.
There are stories where magic has set and defined limits (for example only illusions - or all magic takes dribbly incense and ten minutes per spell). These work well becuase they allow for powerful magic while leaving entire swathes of territory open to non-casters.
There are stories where magic is limited by money and really expensive ingredients. D&D 4e tried to go this route for long term magic - and messed it up when they forgot about their exponential wealth making financial costs become irrelevant.
There are stories where magic has an actual cost - either in terms of your soul (limiting a lot of magic to evil NPCs) or your body (crippling spellcasters). Or where wizards can't go near and can't cast magic on or through cold iron (i.e. most weapons and much armour).
There are stories where you are required to be a demigod (or other supernatural being) to be a spellcaster - and in these stories magic is powerful, but so is everyone else because they are demigods.
There are stories where, like in oD&D, magic is extremely rare and even the most learned of sages have very little magic. What they have is powerful - and specific. D&D started this way before 3.0 threw any sort of rarity for spells right out of the window.
What you seem to be asking for is a hybrid - the gritty fighters who are paired with conjurers with one, maybe two tricks, alongside the demigod wizards who are normally paired with other demigod special snowflakes. But you want only casters to be special snowflakes, possibly following the ideas of the villain in The Incredibles.
Magic should be something amazing, far more amazing than picking up a sword and swinging it. I don't see why you think they should be comparable for any other reason than game balance similar to what you see in MMORPG. The main reason it is necessary in an MMORPG is because of PVP. D&D is not a PVP game. It shouldn't be designed as such.
What I believe is that any world full of dunces is the result of bad worldbuilding and undermines all the storytelling. If only some people are spellcasters
there must be a reason why. Why doesn't anyone with any sort of opportunity to learn to cast spells do so? My suspension of disbelief doesn't even slow down for zombies or dragons, but it stops cold when you are telling me even implicitly that magic is this spectacular thing
and most people don't want it. Because then your people are not behaving like people.
There are plenty of possible answers to this - and oD&D had a mix of two. Scarcity and cost. oD&D magic was scarce. And most wizards only ever got one spell after years of education. So yes, I can see how for most people it simply wasn't worth it.
However by 3.0
all that was done away with. There was no good reason for everyone to not want to be a spellcaster. And yet wizards made up officially a minority of the world. In short people weren't behaving like people.
I've no objection to magic being special
if all the other paths are special as well. I've no objection to magic being special
if there is a serious cost paid for it. But if magic is easy (and in 3.X it is) why isn't it ubiquitous? This is never answered and undermines the plausibility of the people who live there.
I always boggle a little when someone talks about AD&D like it was rules-lite.
...
Maybe I'm being overly pedantic in pointing out the difference between actually rules lite, and can give a rules-lite experience if the DM forces it? Sorry if that's the case.
This has confused me too. What I've found when I've checked is that most people who claim to still play AD&D 1E are actually playing red box with AD&D raided liberally for house rules. And most people who claim to play 2e have hacked that to pieces because you are told to fudge.
less than limiting. 
