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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 8587142" data-attributes="member: 6988941">Look, you're debating an edition I never played so I don't know a whole lot, but you seem to be using "quadratic" to just mean more powerful than other classes, whereas my understanding is that it specifically refers to the trajectory of progression with wizards being very weak at low levels and comparatively stronger than other classes (with more linear progressions) at high levels. The one has a progression that would be graphed more like a linear function, the other more like a quadratic function (note that both mathematical terms are being somewhat misapplied, but anyone who would care to read about the details of that could explain it better than I could). It has nothing to do with absolute power level, but with the trajectory of the power progression. It has developed associations with high power at high levels, but that's not what makes a wizard "quadratic".And I think it's worth being pedantic about because the idea that classes can be "balanced" with each other in a broad, whole progression sense, while following different trajectories of progression along the way and not being of comparable power at particular levels, seems to underlie the balance of all these editions, and particularly the older ones. Whether or not that should be accepted as a form of class balance is an open question that one has to answer before one can meaningfully compare the balance of editions. Using "quadratic" to just mean "very powerful" or "unbalancing" obfuscates that question.So I think what you're trying to say is that high level Wizards were less powerful by RAW then they are portrayed in folk memory and at the tables of uncautious or overindulgent DMs, and that they did not intrinsically unbalance the high level play of the editions in question as much as most of us think. I have no idea if that's true or not, but it seems a fair argument. It is not the same as wizards being or not being quadratic.</blockquote>

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