The problem lies in how much more powerful magic has been in solving problems compared to a fighter's sword.
A fireball does a large amount of damage to a large group of foes in a very short period of time. The fighter cannot match that damage output except over time (lets say 1 round per foe). Every round the foes are alive is potentially a round one gets a crit and downs the fighter. The Doctrine of Overwhelming Force comes into play; the longer you fight a foe, the more time he has to surprise you and mount a comeback.
4e tried to reconcile this by making a fighter's sword and a wizard's spells separate but equal. Sure, I might harm a group of foes with a fireball, but my fighter's got an close-burst 2[w] attack that deals roughly the same amount of damage. Same mechanic, different appearance.
My proposal was to re-create the daylight between these ideas; a wizard's fireball has more kick than a fighter's power, but a fighter is certainly still able to strike at multiple foes.
That is narrowing everything down to combat only. There is more to the game than combat, even if the rules are hinged on it. When in combat you shouldn't worry about who does more damage and try to compete, but be thankful that someone was able to keep the party alive. There is no need to compete for bragging rights between the players. The characters can still claim bragging rights within the party, but only the players see any power shifts in combat as more often than not the PC POV would be that of fighting and not have time to pay attention or care, and just be thankful to be alive. It isn't all about Gimli trying to outdo Legolas.
There is a difference in power, but I liked playing both classes eqaully. The fighter because his abilities were consistent, and the wizard because he could do things the others normally could not and in interesting new ways outside of just damage output.
This isn't to say that the way combat happens is all the games fault or the players, but you have to look at how people are playing the game to see why the "15 minute workday" happens. It wasn't meant to be played like that ever, but players decided to do so, to put it on easy mode, which did cause DMs to throw more at them and harder all the same.
I would wonder which came first, the accidental hard encounter by a DM, or the overuse of powerful magic early on that forced DMs to make harder encounters...which probably bred the killer DMs.
So the system can be used if the mindset of the players and DM is turned back to the games intent. Lethal possible encounters that will drain your resources, but not intended to do so from the start of the day. The waste of resources is the fault of the players and DM from the years of people trying to rush through things with those quick powerful spells.
I think it would be interesting to find out the history of spells, and what was the average spell list for each edition including the new 4th system and see what the focus is on. I would wager that more and more combat related spells came to use for many people, the question would become why was it so?
Were the combats that tough, or was the report from the magic just the only thing loud enough to impress the onlookers?
Because it's the system's fault. If divergent resource-management paradigms exist within the same system, it will favor one extreme and punish the others accordingly.
There's no need to build rules into the system that make your character suck, all the while making those rules seem like valid options.
Since the fighter was never an extreme but a constant and had little to worry about before but could always keep going, then the fighter is moot in the discussion of extreme, and can only serve as the control. Or the fighter needs to become an extreme to compensate for the wizards faults.
Everyone can't be good at everything, and the extremes will exist so long as there are classes. Unitaskers are what makes the classes stand apart, otherwise you don't really have a need for any specific class if everyone is just as effective as the next guy.
The fighter never sucked. He functioned as intended in the proper hands.
Wizards had no armor, no HP, and no good weapons. Please explain to me how they were useful when they weren't using magic.
A quarterstaff is not a good weapon? Your statement seems about like saying what good is the horse without a cart.
I think the problem lies in what people want to do. Previous editions were not all about combat effectiveness, and the wizard had tons of spells to perform his part of the game. Someone else mentioned somewhere about the roles of the classes with fighter being the melee, rogue, being something else, cleric being the healer, and wizard being the toolbox. Each class had its uses in the entire game, and not just combat, so trying to compete with each other in combat seems a bit silly.
Hopefully 4th should be encouraging people to work together more, but it seems that they are competing with each other in the party even more.
To explain it in logical, technical terms...
...because it's totally freaking horribly LAME!
Heroes in fantasy literature and movies don't stop to sleep for the night after every room full of a half-dozen orcs they clear. If you actually saw protagonists doing that in a story, you'd be like, "WTF kind of heroes are these?"
That's why it matters, in my opinion.
Then don't try to emulate those things with a system not built for it?
Wait for a game built on simulating blockbuster action movies and such. I recall the Conan movies having a wizard and he didn't do very much to need to slow him down, but the action was good. Likewise Beastmaster had no wizard on his side, yet beat wizards and clerics.
These were big movies. What exact movie would you be trying to reproduce in the game, and why can it not be done through any other system? It seems all those things trying to be done as parts of the narrative. Like those movies I mention, the wizard shouldn't be expending everything he has within an hour of waking up knowing he will run out. We are talking about the character with the highest intelligence here, and they can't add?
Now with the at-wills, they have even more strengths to keep going without expending those other spells as they now have less spells to use than any previous addition, so should rely more on using what they have wisely rather than haphazardly.
I think it would be the wizards own fault to burn himself out, and after so many times that party just might leave the dead weight behind and carry on without them.
