Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards

[Scott Anderson]

A lot is made in new-edition game forums about how high-level wizards are operating on a different power scale from high-level fighters. Somewhere around level seven (level 4 spells), wizards' power level jumps and keeps jumping.

Starting pretty early on in the hobby, you handed the fighter to the less experienced player because the fighter didn't have as many things he could screw up. (I love the fighters btw.) wizards were what the cool kids got to play.

In 3.0 to 4.0 and in Pathfinder the power disparity seems self evident. But when we look at the kludgy stat inflation fighters got in Greyhawk, it must have been something you guys were noticing even then. Percentile strength is statistically vanishingly rare. But the extra damage was there for a reason. it's in there and I can't help but think it's a way to help fighter-types compete with wizards.

Michael: was there a significant power difference? Did you all notice it? Did you discuss or implement fixes?

[Deleted]

The biggest change in 3+ is that the restrictions and limitations and tradeoffs in playing a magic user got taken away. On purpose. This happened when poor players got put in charge of the game.

Take away the limits on magic users, and gee whiz, magic users have no limits.

Fighters were more popular as PCs than magic users in Greyhawk. Even a wizard will get shredded in melee combat. Sure, they have good spells available, but one failed surprise roll and a solo magic user is dead.

We didn't need to talk about "fixes" because neither Gary Gygax nor Dave Arneson were blithering idiots. OD&D is quite well balanced.

[Scott Anderson]

That's fair. Why *did* fighters get a boost in GH?

[howandwhy99]

New games are built like combat gauntlets. True D&D is actually the biggest tabletop strategy game of all time. Of course combat is an element you can seek out, but you could also try and avoid it. Typically Fighters seek the former, while wizards the latter.

Also, Fighters had stuff like hit points and fatigue to limit their daily desire for combat. With skillful and lucky play Fighters could continue to face dangerous adventure all day long. Wizards are very weak fighters. As a class they are not designed to excel combat. Their spells are not round-by-round resources. Instead, Wizards use spell to engage in exploring and mastering magic. And they plan daily their spell preparation accordingly.

Sure, Fighters might swap out their armor and weapons for each fight (and even that is limited by encumbrance, location, etc.), but Wizards are more constrained. If they leave open spell slots they have greater flexibility, but are also putting themselves at greater risk if combat cannot be avoided.

The truth is: D&D is not balanced class to class, and much less character to character. Each class is a radically different game. D&D is player balanced by character and party to the game environment. Like Dungeon! boardgame, it's up to the players to choose how difficult a game they want to face each excursion. Quadratic/Linear is a nonsensical confusion when you have a party of including a 10th level magic-user, two 3rd level clerics, 5th and 7th level fighting-men, a 1st level thief, a half-dozen varying retainers, and a mercenary platoon of 30 medium footmen.

[Deleted]

Aug 29, 2017 10:50:40 GMT -6 Scott Anderson said:

That's fair. Why *did* fighters get a boost in GH?

Beats me. But I've gone back to OD&D in terms of hit points and damage and stats.

[Scott Anderson]

Yeah. There's nothing wrong with running the LBB game.