Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
To AdAstra: I've read a lot of mythology and a lot of... everything I can get my hands on really. And pretty much the only tradition I can think of where wizards consistently beat warriors is modern western fantasy. Even eastern fantasy has pretty good odds of warriors being super-human enough to beat up the casters. So yeah, we might be in the one place where it the convention. And so its not wrong (I might of been harsh my last post) but to act like it is the only way that's wrong most definitely.
I should note that I said 'trained combatant' versus 'master of the mystic arts' not 'warrior' vs. 'wizard' which is important.

The thing is, in quasi-medieval fantasy worlds, 'warrior' tends to be defined as a 'trained combatant.' Meaning a guy (or occasionally girl) who is at best a really good fighter based on authorial understanding of medieval combat capabilities and fighting styles with perhaps some very small level of augmentation. This is very much not the same as the way warriors are presented in myth. This should not surprise us, because quasi-medieval worlds are deliberately not mythic in design, in part because mythic worlds present verisimilitude problems in world-building terms and because mythic settings are essentially superhero settings and there's a considerable aversion to that approach for a variety of reasons.

If you are doing a mythic setting - say Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive - then this particular balance issue disappears, but it simply becomes a superhero balance issue where you have to make sure the powers are equivalent in efficacy.

Different kinds of settings place different demands on party balance. D&D, unfortunately, is something of a worst of all possible worlds case because it's zero to hero kitchen-sink setup means that a D&D world is several different kinds of setting at once.