Hey you darn kids get off my edition!

[goto124]

It's just that "restrictions" are a bad way to try to shoehorn Rand al'Thor and Jorg Ancrath into the same party.

and Jon Snow in an adventure where no one has teleport and no restrictions on teleport are necessary, and have Rand adventure with Anomander Rake, Doctor Strange, and Urza in an adventure where no one cares if you have teleport.

You can have restrictions on teleport. forbiddance is fine, having teleport take a longer time is fine. The problem is expecting those restrictions to balance magic and mundane, and having those restrictions warp the kinds of adventures that are possible.

So there're only two types of acceptable games, no-magic or full-force-god-level magic?

Many many systems have restrictions on magic. They all work rather fine, and nowhere near as clumsily as DnD does.

If your issue is "restrictions on magic for magic-mundane balance", what do you think restrictions on magic should be for? What result should magic restrictions be looking at?

[Cosi]

And I can think of some high-fantasy stories where travel and the challenges associated with it are major parts of the story, Lord of the Rings, Belgarid, a couple of the chronicles of Narnia and so on.

Sure, but I can also think of stories where travel is basically unimportant. For example, Lord of Light. There are also instances where travel is a challenge that are compatible with teleport. For example, needing to move an army around doesn't benefit from teleport. Or cases where the challenge is calibrated to people with teleport.

In fact the whole reason this came up is because it a wizard's power makes it harder to tell a story where "the guy who swings a sword" and "the guy who memorizes from a book" are equal members of a party at a high level. Which is one of the archetypical stories in Dungeons & Dragons.

Not really. Anomander Rake has a sword, and he is totally capable of engaging in any story you might want to tell in D&D. Having a character with a sword is easy. Rake has a sword, Rand has a sword, Harry Potter has a sword, Gandalf has a sword. I don't know if Dresden has a sword, but at least some wizards in that story do. Really, from a genre perspective, the weird thing is that the people with swords don't have magic and the people with magic don't have swords.

For instance if you travel up the coast for a few days you can get to Port Peter which has a cave that leads to Oceaciana (a plane) and from there you can catch a bone-ship to the boiling sea and get to hell. To me that is almost a more interesting adventure than "the wizard spends an hour preparing plain shift".

That's because the adventure in that case is going to hell rather than doing something in hell. And frankly, it's like a 1st level adventure. Nothing is stopping you from walking over to a plot-device cave at 1st level, because your abilities don't matter to the progress of the adventure "find the right plot device".

So there're only two types of acceptable games, no-magic or full-force-god-level magic?

I just don't see the point of having those kinds of restrictions on magic in D&D. Restricting when you can use teleport doesn't do much to help mundane/caster balance, and it warps any game with teleport around whatever use restrictions you have. That's good if you're doing a setting specific game (for example, in Mistborn, magic should be restricted to require metal), but it's not at all clear to me that D&D is that kind of game. That doesn't mean that you have to go from Conan directly to Rand. There are definitely intermediate stages. But for D&D (or similar games) "teleport" or "teleport, but with warning on the other side" are going to be a better fit than "teleport to an area under an open sky".

[Beheld]

A bunch of cheap magic tricks are far from Real Ultimate Power. Magic jar is dishonorable; you should face your enemies in open combat, not try to possess them from hiding. With animate dead, well maybe the fighter could use a skeleton to hold his cloak or something while he kills the BBEG.

You possess something with the ability to kill things in open combat, or you possess something that allows you to stand around laughing while your skeletons do it.

A Necromancers skeletons are infinity times better than a Fighter at actually killing the BBEG. A Necromancer's skeletons can kill things that the Fighter could never ever kill. That means they are better than him at it, so if he really wanted to be good at fighting, he should have been a Necromancer.

Wizards still have a lot of versatility (although I prefer conjurers or illusionists), but this is the version where fighters are actually the best at fighting.

Except that thing where the Necromancer is much better than him at fighting.

But more to the point, since this exchange started with asking why the fighter would be the best party member to get magic items, are you really going to try and argue that the Belt of Giant Strength from my example should go to the necromancer?

Yes, obviously the Belt of Giant Strength should go to the guy who can possess a Werewolf and be immune to weapons instead of the guy who dies to a hail of arrows before ever even reaching the enemies.

[Mordar]

There's nothing mechanically wrong with the Fighter getting his powers from magic items. That said, there are obvious conceptual issues. Most notably, why don't you just give the items the Fighter has to the Cleric and add another Wizard (or whatever) to the party? For "items" to be a reasonable power source for the Fighter, there needs to be some compelling reason he's uniquely effective with them.

I'm not sure what describing casters as "easy mode" is supposed to imply other than them being overpowered.

You agree that casters are more powerful than non-casters, so much so that they are the only viable option in high-character-level games. Thus non-casters are less powerful and less flexible, and thus it is more difficult to play through similar challenges with those characters. It is easier to complete generic challenges in mid-level or higher games with pure casters than non-pure casters. Thus, Easy Mode. If the casters trivialize all generic challenges, then that is overpowered...but that's not what I am saying. You can still lose games on "easy mode" and you can still fail to overcome challenges in Easy Mode.

1. Whenever someone says "I'm not X, but..." I immediately suspect that they're lying to themselves (and the rest of us). "I'm not racist, but..." is the classic example, but it seems potentially valid here.
2. I've played D&D, in multiple editions, and I've rarely felt that fighters (and whatnot) were all that outclassed in practice. It came down to a combination of player etiquette (mainly how none of the players being skilled or inclined to break the system) and how player skill often overshadowed any differences in character power. I can't help but suspect that your experiences might have been driven by differences in out-of-character forces rather than any rules differences.

Generally a reasonable suspicion. In this case, not so much. I just wanted to go back to a time point when to my recollection there wasn't such a power gap between pure casters and non-casters. I didn't play 2e, so AD&D was the available option. Haven't played AD&D in...26 years? So that might exclude me from fanboy status.

Your point #2 highlights something I mentioned earlier...player etiquette/choice is all that keeps the non-casters from dominating games. The system is easily breakable (to use your term), and given players with equitable skills above say "advanced novice" some of the breaks are pretty clear. In the first game my group really witnessed caster dominance it was actually one of the less-experienced players who showed the major power gap (Cleric, for the record, so a bit easier to discover the power organically than Batman Wizard). Social compacts did come into play along with a bit more cleaving to characterization over capability.

I do freely admit that my experience may not be the same as everyone's, but I think there's pretty strong evidence of class tiers and overshadowing.

- M

[JoeJ]

A Necromancers skeletons are infinity times better than a Fighter at actually killing the BBEG. A Necromancer's skeletons can kill things that the Fighter could never ever kill. That means they are better than him at it, so if he really wanted to be good at fighting, he should have been a Necromancer.

No they're not. Not even close.

Except that thing where the Necromancer is much better than him at fighting.

That might have been the case in previous editions, but in this one it's not even close to true.

Yes, obviously the Belt of Giant Strength should go to the guy who can possess a Werewolf and be immune to weapons instead of the guy who dies to a hail of arrows before ever even reaching the enemies.

You carry around a werewolf in your backpack? And even if you do, giving the belt to a CR3 werewolf over an 11th level fighter would be incredibly sub-par.

[Cluedrew]

So I was writing away a post and was almost done when I realized something.

Spoiler: Which you can read the old post if you want, consider it non-cannon.

Show

Sure, but I can also think of stories where travel is basically unimportant. For example, Lord of Light. There are also instances where travel is a challenge that are compatible with teleport. For example, needing to move an army around doesn't benefit from teleport. Or cases where the challenge is calibrated to people with teleport.

Yes. But in the first case you can gloss over the travel (or not travel at all, many stories stay in one place even), in the second the existence of teleport doesn't effect it either way then. In the third case, usually the situation was scaled up just because teleport existed or the teleport is much weaker than the D&D teleport. There may be some cases where neither apply.

Really, from a genre perspective, the weird thing is that the people with swords don't have magic and the people with magic don't have swords.

... What do you mean when you say high-fantasy? I would not describe Harry Potter as high-fantasy, nor all settings of D&D for that matter.

That's because the adventure in that case is going to hell rather than doing something in hell. And frankly, it's like a 1st level adventure. Nothing is stopping you from walking over to a plot-device cave at 1st level, because your abilities don't matter to the progress of the adventure "find the right plot device".

1. In this case (plane shift allowing adventures in different planes) abilities are plot devices.
2. Who said getting to that cave was easy? ... OK that part was insinuated to be easy, but the last leg of the journey across the boiling sea sounds brutal.
3. So what if it is a low level adventure. Still a planar one that doesn't use plane shift.

But for D&D (or similar games) "teleport" or "teleport, but with warning on the other side" are going to be a better fit than "teleport to an area under an open sky".

I think this is the ultimate issue, and it sort of is a non issue. You like the god-wizard who through study and knowledge can bend reality with a flick of his mind... ... ... {A realization has occurred.}

When I realized what this is all about.

This has morphed into "Hey you darn kids get off my play style!"

Let me explain why I think this:

On one side we have the "god-wizard" group. They want to play and tell stories about god-wizards who bend reality at a whim. Not necessarily to the exclusion of everything else but if something gets in the way of that sort of story, such as limiting the wizards power, it will have to go.

On the other side we have the "ultimate mundane" group. They want to play and tell stories about people who have climbed to the top while still being, at their core, regular "normal" people. Similarly to the above, things that get in the way, such as mundane characters getting over shadowed by casters, has to go.

Note: I am not attributing either of these exact positions to anybody, I'm just trying to highlight how these to general play styles play against each other, as a lot of people in this debate have shown roughly one or the other.

Now the problem is we can't really reconcile these two play styles in the same system. The current model... sort of works but has some serious problems that have been discussed and I will skip repeating them. Adjusting the fighter's (a.k.a. the mundane archetype) power up will eventually rob it of the feel of a mundane (particularly (as I have discovered) for people with a stricter definition of mundane then I). Adjusting the wizards power down gets rid of the whole got wizard thing. Playing at different levels doesn't work either because level 6 is not the top. 4e tiers may help by creating cut offs so you can say "the top of mortals" or something similar, or they may not.

So if we can't reconcile the two stories, we will have to get rid of one, but which one? A lot of these arguments have these undercurrents in them but there is no right answer. Plus D&D's answer seems to be accommodate as much as possible just well enough. (Sometimes you need to tweak something to make it work.) So we got all of these stories stepping on each others toes.

I guess I should say where I fall in this scale. I fall into the "ultimate mundane" camp but I have a more liberal definition of what a mundane is (maybe I should just say martial, as in powered by the body, not "as in real life"). I'm also willing to play with the god-wizard story, but D&D's variant of it bores me because magic is bland and doesn't make sense to me.

Finally I should admit I just made all this up and could be wrong, but there you go.

[JAL_1138]

Waaaay back on the thread's original topic, then:

Dagnabbed whippersnappers nowadays getting so attached to their special snowflake characters that they need to have three failed saves before the character dies, and they take max HP at first and average after that, and they keep gaining by their HD after 10th, and save-or-die effects are nearly gone.

Back in my day we died like flies and we liked it, dagnabbit! I've lost first-level characters to nonsense like a couple-three squirrels, a housecat, a barnyard goat, or falling down the stairs at the inn we were all meeting at! We rolled for our HP at first level, and we died instantly at 0HP, and just about everything could kill us! We brought stacks of spare character sheets, stacks of 'em, dadgummit! Characters were hapless fools to feed to the meat-grinder until one lucky and paranoid sonofab*** actually managed to live long enough to earn his glory! Characters didn't survive because we thought they were cool, we thought they were cool because they survived! These consarned young'uns nowadays don't even know what a 10ft pole is for, and would flip the table and whine about how bad the DM is at the entrance to the Tomb of Horrors.

Now git off my edition, dagnabbit!

[soldersbushwack]

Other Character Types: There is no reason that players cannot be
allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively
weak and work up to the top, ie.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon
would have to begin as let us say, a "young" one and progress upwards
in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign
referee.

The RAW of it.

[2D8HP]

Waaaay back on the thread's original topic, then:

Dagnabbed whippersnappers nowadays getting so attached to their special snowflake characters
-snip-
Now git off my edition, dagnabbit!

JAL_1138,
I want a frame of your post, as it just maybe
THE BEST POST EVER!

[JoeJ]

On one side we have the "god-wizard" group. They want to play and tell stories about god-wizards who bend reality at a whim. Not necessarily to the exclusion of everything else but if something gets in the way of that sort of story, such as limiting the wizards power, it will have to go.

On the other side we have the "ultimate mundane" group. They want to play and tell stories about people who have climbed to the top while still being, at their core, regular "normal" people. Similarly to the above, things that get in the way, such as mundane characters getting over shadowed by casters, has to go.

Note: I am not attributing either of these exact positions to anybody, I'm just trying to highlight how these to general play styles play against each other, as a lot of people in this debate have shown roughly one or the other.

That's a good insight, and I think the disconnect between the two is exacerbated by the fact that the D&D Zero-to-Hero pattern means that both sides start at about the same level. So you have people who expect to advance from the dude next door to the A Team, and other people who expect to go from the dude next door to the Justice League.

In most other games the PCs start much closer to where they end up, power wise, so the disconnect doesn't show up: the A Team group and the JLA group simply play at different tables (and probably different games, too).

[Cosi]

... What do you mean when you say high-fantasy? I would not describe Harry Potter as high-fantasy, nor all settings of D&D for that matter.

Honestly, I wasn't confining myself to anything tighter than "fantasy". Sorry if that wasn't obvious, or if I put a word in there I didn't mean to.

In this case (plane shift allowing adventures in different planes) abilities are plot devices.

Not really, or at least not to such a degree. The key difference in my mind is that plane shift is an ability the Wizard has, while a cave that leads to the Abyss is a resource the DM provides. It's the difference between the DM having to say yes and the DM having to say no. Obviously, there's some degree of sliding scale, but I think there's an obvious difference.

Who said getting to that cave was easy? ... OK that part was insinuated to be easy, but the last leg of the journey across the boiling sea sounds brutal.

I think that weakens the case for the two abilities being the same. If you use plane shift to get to the Abyss, or heaven, or the Elemental Plane of Fire, you don't have to rely on finding a gate (which is DM fiat) and you don't have to do the travel adventure. If you need a gate, the opposite is true.

So what if it is a low level adventure. Still a planar one that doesn't use plane shift.

But it still uses magic. It's not your magic, but it is magic. Compare it to, say, bringing someone back from the dead. You need magic to do that. You can do it before you have the magic to do so, but you achieve that by relying on someone else's magic, not by doing it without magic.

On one side we have the "god-wizard" group. They want to play and tell stories about god-wizards who bend reality at a whim. Not necessarily to the exclusion of everything else but if something gets in the way of that sort of story, such as limiting the wizards power, it will have to go.

I don't think that's quite correct (also, the term "god-wizard" is, IMHO, kind of dismissive). It's that I don't see the benefit of reducing the power of high level characters to make the period where low level characters can be mundane longer, and that I don't think the proposed tactics are efficient at achieving that goal. I don't feel particularly strongly either way about the power-level of characters. There are stories I like that are low-level (Broken Empire, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones), stories I like that are mid level (Mistborn, Codex Alera, Shadow Ops), and stories I like that are high level (Creatures of Light and Darkness, Malazan, MTG). I tend to be more vocal about my support for high level options, because I don't really see a constituency for gutting the parts of the game that allow you to do Conan.

Now the problem is we can't really reconcile these two play styles in the same system.

You can and you can't. D&D 3e supports Conan and it supports Mistborn and it supports (with some house-rules and/or gentleman's agreements) Malazan. But it doesn't support those things as well as a dedicated system would. Because it makes sacrifices to tell other stories. You could certainly clean some things up both mechanically (Fighters) and conceptually (have Tiers), but at some level having one system do all of those things can't work perfectly. You're going to make some sacrifices (for example, low level play wants a grid more than high level), but you also get some things (for example, you can do Wheel of Time or other zero-to-hero stories).

Also, D&D is (at least in theory), the industry leader. While a smaller outfit can afford to produce Exalted or the GoT RPG for one-true-wayers of high power or low power or eastern or grimdark fantasy, D&D needs to be a bigger tent.

[Arbane]

Yes, obviously the Belt of Giant Strength should go to the guy who can possess a Werewolf and be immune to weapons instead of the guy who dies to a hail of arrows before ever even reaching the enemies.

And here we have (one of) the other problems with D&D magic: Wizards are good at TOO MANY DIFFERENT THINGS. Very few fantasy spellcasters can do as many different magic tricks as a level 10+ wizard in 3.5 D&D.

Including some GODS.

[Gettles]

I don't think that's quite correct (also, the term "god-wizard" is, IMHO, kind of dismissive). It's that I don't see the benefit of reducing the power of high level characters to make the period where low level characters can be mundane longer, and that I don't think the proposed tactics are efficient at achieving that goal. I don't feel particularly strongly either way about the power-level of characters. There are stories I like that are low-level (Broken Empire, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones), stories I like that are mid level (Mistborn, Codex Alera, Shadow Ops), and stories I like that are high level (Creatures of Light and Darkness, Malazan, MTG). I tend to be more vocal about my support for high level options, because I don't really see a constituency for gutting the parts of the game that allow you to do Conan.


You can and you can't. D&D 3e supports Conan and it supports Mistborn and it supports (with some house-rules and/or gentleman's agreements) Malazan. But it doesn't support those things as well as a dedicated system would. Because it makes sacrifices to tell other stories. You could certainly clean some things up both mechanically (Fighters) and conceptually (have Tiers), but at some level having one system do all of those things can't work perfectly. You're going to make some sacrifices (for example, low level play wants a grid more than high level), but you also get some things (for example, you can do Wheel of Time or other zero-to-hero stories).

Also, D&D is (at least in theory), the industry leader. While a smaller outfit can afford to produce Exalted or the GoT RPG for one-true-wayers of high power or low power or eastern or grimdark fantasy, D&D needs to be a bigger tent.

You are confusing me here. You keep referring to magic users and "high level" and warriors as "low level" the problem is in these scenarios we are talking about, they are both the exact same level(as far as in game mechanics go no one is comparing a level 20 wizard to a level 5 fighter) and if both classes are at the same level common sense should dictate that they should be able to handle similar challenges in game. The fact that this is almost never the case is while these arguments constantly spring up.

What is the point of both classes ending at the same numerical level if by all measurement their actual power levels are no where near each other?

[Cluedrew]

Honestly, I wasn't confining myself to anything tighter than "fantasy". Sorry if that wasn't obvious, or if I put a word in there I didn't mean to.

OK, I don't think that really changes the much but it makes a few things clearer in my head. Thank-you for the clarification.

Not really, or at least not to such a degree. The key difference in my mind is that plane shift is an ability the Wizard has, while a cave that leads to the Abyss is a resource the DM provides. It's the difference between the DM having to say yes and the DM having to say no. Obviously, there's some degree of sliding scale, but I think there's an obvious difference.

Yes there is an obvious difference between a plot device ability and a plot device location (and a plot device item and a plot device character). But often all of them can be used to tell the same sorts of stories. And no I'm not saying it will be the exact same story every time.

I don't think that's quite correct (also, the term "god-wizard" is, IMHO, kind of dismissive).

From the rest of your paragraph I think you mean I was misrepresenting your position. I'm not trying to represent anyone's position exactly, just highlight the two camps that have formed around this issue. As for god-wizard, to me that is just the most straight forward way to describe a wizard with powers on the level of a god. I describe some of my own characters that way.

[JAL_1138]

JAL_1138,
I want a frame of your post, as it just maybe
THE BEST POST EVER!

Thanks. I'm mostly kidding with the vitriol (but not kidding about the horrible character deaths from things like a lone goat or a few squirrels; those happened), hence the bluetext...but I must admit to really kind of feeling that way when I hear anyone complain about character death (assuming that it wasn't caused by something blatantly unfair, or because of a rules dispute, anyway--there are times it makes sense to be annoyed over it, even to me).

[LibraryOgre]

So? Either the enemy's plan advances constantly (in which case you don't pull 5 minute work-days in 3e, and why do I care?) or it doesn't (so there's no penalty for resting in AD&D, and why do I care?). Or maybe you actually need that firepower, and you rest regardless of penalties. If you want PCs to rest less you need to put them on a clock or give them abilities that can be recharged during the day.

Because of that advancing clock. A 3.x wizard can blow his load every day, and come back with a full set of spells the next day. A high-level AD&D wizard might need to spend days recovering his spent spells... 23 hours, 10 minutes, to recover all of his spells.

When your abilities recharge far more slowly, the 10 minute work day becomes less viable, because you can't go back to work tomorrow... you might not be able to go back to work until Thursday, by which time you've fallen WAY behind.

[Knaight]

Because of that advancing clock. A 3.x wizard can blow his load every day, and come back with a full set of spells the next day. A high-level AD&D wizard might need to spend days recovering his spent spells... 23 hours, 10 minutes, to recover all of his spells.

When your abilities recharge far more slowly, the 10 minute work day becomes less viable, because you can't go back to work tomorrow... you might not be able to go back to work until Thursday, by which time you've fallen WAY behind.

This still breaks down for anything where fighting every day is unlikely, and there's all sorts of totally valid narratives that don't have that pacing.

[Cosi]

You are confusing me here. You keep referring to magic users and "high level" and warriors as "low level" the problem is in these scenarios we are talking about, they are both the exact same level(as far as in game mechanics go no one is comparing a level 20 wizard to a level 5 fighter) and if both classes are at the same level common sense should dictate that they should be able to handle similar challenges in game.

Common sense dictates the exact opposite of that. The Warrior's skill set is that he is good with a sword. The Wizard's skill set is that he controls the fabric of reality. Obviously the Wizard is going to be more powerful than the Warrior, because he has abilities that scale into a high level environment. What is "mundane guy" supposed to do to be competitive with someone who has plane shift, teleport, or planar binding?

The reason I describe "sword guy" as low level, is because it is low level conceptually. Sword guy never develops a solution set that deals with high level problems, because his abilities are low level.

Yes there is an obvious difference between a plot device ability and a plot device location (and a plot device item and a plot device character). But often all of them can be used to tell the same sorts of stories. And no I'm not saying it will be the exact same story every time.

Sure, on a surface level, at least sort of. But the effect in the game is radically different, because it moves narrative power from the DM to the PCs, which is sort of the point of playing a TTRPG rather than watching a movie.

Because of that advancing clock. A 3.x wizard can blow his load every day, and come back with a full set of spells the next day. A high-level AD&D wizard might need to spend days recovering his spent spells... 23 hours, 10 minutes, to recover all of his spells.

When your abilities recharge far more slowly, the 10 minute work day becomes less viable, because you can't go back to work tomorrow... you might not be able to go back to work until Thursday, by which time you've fallen WAY behind.

As Knaight has pointed out, that only works if you assume that the enemy has some evil plan that is consistently progressing. If the enemy is, for example, a tomb full of traps and bound fiends, it probably won't have made any particular progress by tomorrow or even a week from now. The set-up where characters are balanced at the level of individual encounters is a better set-up, because it doesn't require you to warp the story.

It's also worth noting that if abilities recharge faster in general, the abilities of villains recharge faster as well, so in a set-up like 3e, those villains with active plans will be (roughly speaking) able to accomplish the same amount of evil plan in the 3e party's downtime as their 1e equivalents could in a 1e party's downtime.

[Knaight]

As Knaight has pointed out, that only works if you assume that the enemy has some evil plan that is consistently progressing. If the enemy is, for example, a tomb full of traps and bound fiends, it probably won't have made any particular progress by tomorrow or even a week from now. The set-up where characters are balanced at the level of individual encounters is a better set-up, because it doesn't require you to warp the story.

They can have some evil plan that is consistently progressing and still not hit the pacing of multiple encounters per day.

[Cosi]

They can have some evil plan that is consistently progressing and still not hit the pacing of multiple encounters per day.

True, but I think it's a weaker case. If the enemy makes progress every X time units, you could theoretically get the effect Mark wants by setting spell refresh times to X+N time units, even if both AD&D and 3e fall short of doing so.

[Cluedrew]

What are we talking about? I'm serious I scanned quickly through the thread and as far as I can tell this whole sub-topic starting in post 96 when it was stated:

Casters with 9 spell levels are not a bug, they are a feature.

That evolved into a topic about amping up martials. Then the topic slowly changed into something... related to caster/martial disparity but I'm not sure what anymore. (I've been focusing too much on the point-by-point.)

[LibraryOgre]

Honestly, I don't think they're talking about what I'm talking about. My point is simply that some of the changes made by d20 enabled a "five minute adventuring day" by removing restrictions on mages.

[Knaight]

Honestly, I don't think they're talking about what I'm talking about. My point is simply that some of the changes made by d20 enabled a "five minute adventuring day" by removing restrictions on mages.

Sure, and my point is that the restrictions don't actually mean anything unless the pace is really high. If the encounters work out to something like once per week on average (which is still pretty fast by literary standards), then the magic user isn't meaningfully restricted by earlier editions.

[digiman619]

Common sense dictates the exact opposite of that. The Warrior's skill set is that he is good with a sword. The Wizard's skill set is that he controls the fabric of reality. Obviously the Wizard is going to be more powerful than the Warrior, because he has abilities that scale into a high level environment. What is "mundane guy" supposed to do to be competitive with someone who has plane shift, teleport, or planar binding? The reason I describe "sword guy" as low level, is because it is low level conceptually. Sword guy never develops a solution set that deals with high level problems, because his abilities are low level.

By being the whirlwind of death and determination pre-D&D book had warriors be. Yes. Baron von Evil and his Cultists of Doom can have their rituals armies of skeletons, but the 'sword guy' in these contexts were masters of combat to such a degree that slicing through the dozens of monsters should only be a slight challenge. In fact, they were so good in combat that magic needed to catch up to them.

[Arbane]

Common sense dictates the exact opposite of that. The Warrior's skill set is that he is good with a sword. The Wizard's skill set is that he controls the fabric of reality. Obviously the Wizard is going to be more powerful than the Warrior, because he has abilities that scale into a high level environment.

I can think of at least a dozen hypothetical magic systems (and quite a few actual published ones) where the capability gap between spellcasters and snivelling peasants martials is anywhere from 'narrow' to 'nonexistent'. (For example, in some systems, there's actually things magic can't do!)

There's a lot of possible fixes, but most of them would require redoing D&D magic from the ground up to avoid just breaking it completely.

[oxybe]

By being the whirlwind of death and determination pre-D&D book had warriors be. Yes. Baron von Evil and his Cultists of Doom can have their rituals armies of skeletons, but the 'sword guy' in these contexts were masters of combat to such a degree that slicing through the dozens of monsters should only be a slight challenge. In fact, they were so good in combat that magic needed to catch up to them.

a few things of note:

magic is a catch-all term we can use to emcompass "phenomenon we don't understand" and "correlation = causation"

as such if you were "cursed" by someone and something bad happens, then you were obviously the target of black magic.

on the flipside if there is a drought and you kill a lamb in the name of demeter and two days later "BAM! RAIN!" it's obviously because you did the ritual right, right? magic was often used to explain phenomenon we didn't understand and serve as a warning against certain actions.

This is often why many mages in yore aren't mortal or often have traces of divine or supernatural blood, note that i'm talking more in the mythological sense then a literary one.

Circe the Enchantress was the daughter of Helios, the sun god

Merlin was a cambion, a half demon: the son of a mortal woman and an incubus.

Baba Yaga simply is. She isn't a human, just a unique supernatural creature.

Japanese lore has mages who are more akin to contractors: they make requests and pay offerings to powerful beings that serve them in return. the mage is entirely human and has little to no power his own, his skill being more akin to diplomacy with supernatural creatures

Algonquin Shamans could be considered a sort of manitou, the spiritual energy in everything, chemist: they knew the order of things and how to align the energy to get the desired effect from healing the sick to warding off malevolent spirits.

even then in litterature most mages were more akin to a force of nature given a face then a character you were meant to relate to.

the modern wizard, the man who can fire mystical rockets from his fingers and speak to people leagues away, is a modern invention. then again, if you told someone 100 years ago we would conquer the sky and put men on the moon, an international database accessible by pretty much anyone with more knowledge on any topics then ever with no centralized hub, the ability to talk to someone across the world and see their face in live, etc... they would call you a lunatic.

You'll also notice that it's around the same time we started putting men on the moon and developing the technologies that would become the internet that we began seeing a more human wizard, one who's mythical power came from himself rather then simply harnessing the forces around him or being born of a god or demon.

the modern human is basically a wizard, only instead of "message" we use "skype" and instead of "fireball" we use "grenade". "Legend Lore" is basically just a Google or Wikipedia Search and Reddit is basically the current version of the "Identify" spell (and if you use the 4chan variant, that glass of wine might be required!).

for the most part we simply don't identify with the farmer/everyman hero since his way of life is pretty alien to us and "guy who gets by on his wits and charm alone" is more akin of a romantic ideal then someone you closely identify with.

the main reason there is such a gap is that we simply haven't been at a technology level where the wizard is relateable for as long as the fighter was.

to put it in 3.5 terms, pre-1900's were akin to level 1-4. the early 1900's were 5-7. We've now hit full swing and the fighter starting to lose steam and wizard is picking up the pace.

[Cluedrew]

On the Modern Wizard: {Claps} No, really, I found myself clapping as I read that.

For me it comes down to how flavorless the wizard is. Because there is no internal justification on how the wizard works anything flies and the wizards ends sub with power surpassing gods. Of course internally the reasoning is that they "bend reality" so that the end result could be anything, but how do they do this? Memorization, that is all it is. Random gestures and words that can be crammed into 6 seconds memorized from a book and then reality just breaks. That doesn't make sense to me.

Actually I have an easier time at believing in the one who gets by on wits and charms, because I have met real people who are better at that then me, so for me it is easier to see someone better at it still.

[LibraryOgre]

Because Wizards are defined so broadly (really, for most of D&D they're "Can do anything but heal"), it's hard to put caps on them.

But, take a look at Birthright. You have regular wizards, but you also have Magicians. Magicians don't have any divine or elven blood, meaning they can cast 1st and 2nd level spells from any school, and illusions and divinations from all levels. When so limited, warriors (even without magical abilities) become far more on par, simply because the wizard is denied the unlimited power that he's otherwise given.

So, if the problem is that martials can't hang with spellcasters, remember that you have a mod of a mod of a mod of a system designed to work pretty well for about 3-5 levels, and ok until about 9th level. And you're wanting to start at 12th.

[Bohandas]

Grod's Law: You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use.

BTW, Are there any existing threads on the forum specifically for discussing Grod's Law; because that's an important design tip. I've seen lots of otherwise really good games crippled by not following it (the way the inventory system works in Dungeons of Dredmor for exampl)

[Bohandas]

the modern wizard, the man who can fire mystical rockets from his fingers and speak to people leagues away, is a modern invention. then again, if you told someone 100 years ago we would conquer the sky and put men on the moon, an international database accessible by pretty much anyone with more knowledge on any topics then ever with no centralized hub, the ability to talk to someone across the world and see their face in live, etc... they would call you a lunatic.

Hell, those little thumb drives would have been pretty implausible as recently as the 1990's