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So there's a lot of talk about 3e and 4e and AD&D and Basic and even some OD&D, and IT'S A LOAD OF FUN!  But I wanted to talk a bit about one of the defining bits that separated 3e and 4e, and to a smaller degree 3e and previous editions.  We've all heard the phrase "Caster Supremecy" or "Caster Superiority."  There's other stuff we've heard too, like "Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard."  I thought I'd nerd the hell out and write a bit - ok, a lot - on what it means, how it's created, and how it can change a game.  And maybe - hopefully - how it can be avoided, or at least how certain parts of it can be avoided.

I'm sorta limited on where I post stuff so if you go to other forums and think this is way keen you are totally free to post this there and get some other discussion going or, hell, I'll even say you totes should post it elsewhere if you like it.  Go on.  You only live once.

So CASTER SUPREMIRIORITY.

NUMBER ONE.  MATH WIZARDS, LESS MATH FIGHTERS.

So most of the time when almighty spellcasters come up, "linear fighter quadratic wizard" is not far behind, but what the heck does this even mean?  Well, simply put, as fighters level up, they typically gain a +1 to one of their previous abilities, or sometimes the option to choose a new ability.  In AD&D this was shown by fighters gaining a linear line of power through their THAC0; each level made them hit better and really that was about it.  But wizards gain new options, and all their old options get better.  This is what makes them quadratic - not only does their power grow with each level, but the more powerful they are, the faster their power grows.  Sometimes this is literal - in AD&D wizards had a slow XP track for the first few levels but, right as they started to gain their amazing power of fireballs and lightning bolts, their XP track shot up like a rocket and became faster then the fighter's.  They literally became better at growing powerful as they grew powerful.  But sometimes it's not so clear cut, and this is where THE MAGIC OF JACK VANCE comes into play.

See the issue with Vancian Magic previously is how so many different things were dependent on your level.  Your damage, your range, your number of targets, it's damn well near everything!  The potency of almost EVERY SPELL was built on your level, so they were weak when you were weak, and they were godly when you were higher level.  But you didn't only have four or five options that grew in power and that was it - Every other level with a few skips, you gained access to a new "circle" of magic.  And EVERY level you gained more spells you could memorize.  That means you were gaining new options and new powers even while ALL your powers grew in level.

So that's linearrrraaah.  So this sorta belongs extra important on these forums because this is something the 5e developers HAVE pointed at towards fixing, which is a good thing.  In theory.  The idea being, that a spell's level is connected to it's spell slot, not your level.  If you want a high level fireball it's gotta go in a high level slot.  This is very similar to how 3.x psionics worked, and hey I'm a fan of those so GREAT!

NUMBER TWO.  FICTIONAL SPACE.

Wizards in D&D have always held a very awkward place, because they don't really exist outside of D&D, or D&D based materials if you wanna be a joker about it.  The idea of a single person who has all the powers a wizard has is nearly unheard of.  Wizards in fiction tend to know a drastically small number of spells and are pretty great at those rather then being masters of everything!  But the real problem in this isn't with the wizards at all - it lies in the fictional space of magic itself.

So a lot of mythology and fiction and fantasy and even sci-fi doesn't have a sorta clear cut dividing line between most stuff.  I mean the Greek heroes were ALL pretty much amazing characters doing amazing things and some were gods and others were the sons of gods and some weren't related to the gods at all but were just really cool and etc.  They had power because that's what heroes have - something that makes them rise above the rest of humanity.

But in D&D this doesn't hold true.  D&D has this weird split mind where it's separated everything into sections that must NE'ER TOUCH ANOTHER.  Divine magic and arcane magic are held to be entirely separate things that do not relate to each other in the fluff regardless of their similarities in mechanics, but this is a strange separation that doesn't really exist elsewhere, and the reason for this is balance.  Yes, I'm talking about OD&D having parts of "balance" written in, what, you think it was a four letter word back then?  No, the separation was simple - wizards don't heal.  There, that's why it exists.  But it isn't the only separation, is there?  Let's talk supernatural.

Now D&D flirted a bit with giving non-magical things extranormal powers.  There was the occasional 2e kit that got something nifty that didn't really have a non-magical explination other then "IT'S KINDA COOL."  And it was generally accepted that all classes, even the fighter, weren't "normal men."  But for the most part there was this strange hard line - normal stuff is nonmagic, not normal stuff is magic.  And only magic!  In other words, and I'm bolding this not for humorous reasons but because it's important, the supernatural was a form of magic.  It got really weird because you could people trying to stretch out and make the characters D&D was ostentiably designed to emulate, but really couldn't.  Conan was once statted out in AD&D and had psionic powers for crying out loud, because only by giving him MIND MAGIC could they properly emulate him.  I mean damn, even supernatural monsters were called "Magical beasts."  Do you think of a wizard when you think of Medusa or the Hydra?  Well apparently you should!

So here's the thing, and I'm gonna go ahead and state this as a objective fact.  And keep in mind this is legitimately important.  Magic is a form of the supernatural.  That means every cool supernatural thing a fighter could potentially do is supernatural, not magic.

A-whaaaaaaa?

This was toyed around with in Tome of Battle and really came to a head in 4e.  See fighters in 4e don't use magic.  They don't teleport, they don't throw fireballs, they don't summon pixies, they don't control plant matter.  They do mundane things - but SUPERNATURALLY!  I'm not talking heroic fighters mind you, but paragon and much more epic ones, fighters who could cheat death or bust down gates without rolling a vs doors or bend vs bars strength check.  Shrugging off wounds that could fell a lesser man, doing incredibly feats of acrobatics, that sorta thing.  Dudes who were "normal" in capability but not in scope.

So this is where 5e needs to step up and decide how it's gonna be.  Is there room for the supernatural outside of magic?  Or are we confined to wizards playing a game of superheroes while fighters have to be Their Pal Jimmy Olson?

NUMBER THREE.  VERSATILITY.

So now that we know WHY magic is so pervasive, what does that mean?  Well, simply put, it means that everything is magical.  After all, if magic is the sum total of all supernatural acts, then all potentially supernatural acts must fall under magic - which means the people who utilize magic can in turn do anything.  Every problem must by default have a magical solution - hell even anti-magic was in of itself a magical field!  This was one of the key problems with wizards in particular over clerics and druids in 3e; there was a spell for anything.  Wanted to be a fighter?  Pick a lock?  Skulk around?  Climb a cliff?  Bypass a guard through wicked cunning and wordplay?  Disguise and sneak into a fancy ball?  It didn't matter!  There was a spell for every occasion, and usually several spells at that.  Perhaps humorously, a wizard could do literally everything...except heal.  And the only reason for that was because of the weird arcane/divine divide created in OD&D.

So hey, I'll square with you.  Personally, I have a big issue with this not for reasons of balance, but because I find it really freaking boring.  I don't enjoy superman, because superman is the guy who's power is often times "Has all the powers."  And wizards are supermen.  Come on, they run faster then a speeding bullet, they fly around without any need of a magical item or otherworldly assistance, shoot cones of cold from their breath and fire X-ray vision eyes.  It's just...really dull, having a class who's class feature is "CAN DO EVERYTHING."

NUMBER FOUR.  BYPASSING THE RULES.

One of the BIG reasons for caster superiorimremacy isn't just that it does everything, it's that it does everything better.  And the reason for this is because they just don't follow the rules.  I don't mean "they don't obey physics" because hey, it's magic, I get that they aren't meant to.  It's that they don't follow the rules of the game.  Like take lock picking.  How do you pick a lock in D&D?  You roll your appropriate skill, be it 4e thievery, 3e lockpicking, AD&D...lockpicking again, or what have you.  If you succeed, the lock opens.  But what this implies is that you have a skill, one that you devout points into.  A rogue needs to continue to put points into lockpicking in AD&D in order to get better at it, and a 4e rogue needs to take it as one of their learned skills.

But screw that.  I cast knock.  I ignore all of that and the door opens, voila!

It hits in combat, too.  How does a non-wizard beat an enemy?  You attack them, attempting to bypass their AC and other defenses, and, if you hit, do HP damage, and if you do enough HP damage the baddie dies, but wait no the wizard just throw out a save vs hah hah spell and the entire combat system is negated.  How do you protect yourself?  You build up your dexterity and wear the best armor you can find and try to find magical items and all of this is tested against the enemy's attack bonus or THAC0 and depending on the difference wait no I cast a spell that ignores all of that and gives me a straight 20% chance to be missed.  Doesn't matter.  Doesn't freaking matter who the enemy is.  It could be a god, literally the god of war and weaponry, and he's going to miss 20% of the time.

See, the spells don't just do everything, they do it while ignoring all other potential outcomes.  How do you climb a cliff?  Well, YOU can put points into "climb" if you want, but I just cast levitate and ignore everything involved in a climbing challenge.  You need to make a disguise and forge documents well I just throw a spell at the problem until it goes away!  We have to very carefully sneak past these set of barracks and it's perfect for the thief who spent all his percentage points in hide and move silently but BZAP INVISIBILITY!

There's no freaking reason not to ever use a spell!  It's fast, it's easy, it's efficient, it's the STRONGEST OPTION IN THE GAME.  I mean imagine if you were building a game with the full knowledge that one character could turn invisible, fly, and throw out SoDs or fireballs; you'd never make someone as redundant as a sneaking guy or a fighter.  The game would probably just be all about the casty invisible guy, and that's exactly how 3e turned out.  Magic doesn't even obey its own rules!  If you get hit you lose your spell unless you cast this other spell!  if an enemy has magic resistance then you have a chance to fizzle out unless you cast this spell to negate it!  Magic doesn't play by any rules, not even the system's internal ones, and the end result is a mess.

NUMBER FIVE.  THE METAGAME.

Spells in D&D were essentially the meta.  You needed to know what challenges you were going to face and build your spells accordingly.  And the spells themselves had no distinct anchor in the setting or world - it was essentially the wizard telling the DM "This happens."  You wanted a big wall of fire, you cast Wall of Fire, and boom, you have a wall of fire.  No asking the DM required.  Spells were a "Get out of talking to your DM free" card.  They were narrative abilities, a phrase that will no doubt drive some to suicide just on hearing it.  But there's nothing about learning Charm Person that was "simulationist," and indeed if you wanted an "immersion style" game then D&D wizards are your anathema.  You'd want a freeform system where magic is exceedingly loosely defined, not a long list of meta-effects.  The biggest chunk of space in any spell, and I don't care what edition, is devoted to it's mechanical effects.  It's a pure meta concept from start to finish.

But in 4e, access to narrative abilities - to the metagame - was spread out.  Now all classes had powers that let them dictate something.  Now there was a lot of complaining about "magic" but let's be clear - "Come And Get It" has exactly as much meaning in the game world as fireball or charm person does.  It's a narrative ability - the fighter saying "the baddies all rush towards me as a waggle my eyebrows at them daringly" is no different from the wizard saying "the baddies all rush towards me as I waggle my fingers at them magically."  Batman just so happening to have shark-repellant on him is no different from Superman just so happening to be able to throw the S on his shirt and make it really large.  The usage of "magic" is not a reason, it's a narrative excuse, and one that has far fallen aside as time has marched on.

So, 5e.  We have a metagame that already exists.  Heck, we all know wizards are in there.  Will they once more be the only ones allowed to metagame?

NUMBER SIX.  CHARACTER ROLES.

We often hear that D&D has "character roles."  Why, you have the Stabby Man, the Sneaky Man, the Healy Man, and the Casty Man.  But that last one stands out.  What does the casty man do.  We know he casts spells, but what do the spells do?  The wizard above all classes never truly had a role.  We talk about the "fifth member of the party" in reference to those "classic four" but I put this to you - isn't that exactly what the wizard is?  He's the "fifth member," the one who can change his class and character to spackle any open spots.

So the wizard doesn't have a role, and he ends up getting everything as his role.  My end point here is that "casts spells" isn't enough to go on.

NUMBER SEVEN.  ANNOYING WEAKNESSES

So we all know spellcasters in 3e were a bit extreme but they weren't always that way - not entirely.  It's been bandied about on these forums how AD&D wizards had a number of other weaknesses.  But this defense has a problem - most of those weaknesses were really annoying.  I mean sure you could "balance" a wizard by just making his spell fail half the time, just poof, but are you really adding something interesting to the table?  Or are you just hoping that if you annoy players enough, they won't play a bad class?  See 3e took a lot of the former "balances" for wizards off the table, and I'm gonna go ahead and say it was the right decision.  A lot of those balances were just really boring.  They didn't add excitement, they took it away.  Getting a scroll to scribe into your spellbook should be exciting, you shouldn't have a "roll to see if it's actually boring" check.

Let me throw this out now - the "annoying weaknesses" approach doesn't work.  People are still going to make wizards and be gods of the universe, they're just going to feel more annoyed about it.  Proper balance is something that occurs on the game level, not the player level.

THE EPILOGUE: FFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Look I just think this stuff should be examined.  I'm a pretty big nerd and I've played D&D a good long while now and this has always sorta bugged me.  The tipping point was realizing that the Balor, a massive demon characterized by being made of fire and driving a flaming whip and titanic sword, was best played in 3e as a wizard, teleporting out of range and throwing dumb spells at the party.  I want fighters to feel like heroes, not caddies.  And I want wizards to feel like heroes, not gods.  And really, I think that's the biggest problem - that so much of what I've listed here hasn't been examined, not all put together.  It's taken for granted, or at least for "tradition."  So hey, give it a read.  Comment!  Spread it around.  Comment some more!  And at least consider it.

While a few of your points individually I might agree with, I think overall I wouldn't want the game you would design in place of traditional D&D.  

Quadratic/Linear - I think 5e's idea of making you take a higher level of spell is good.

Fictional Space - I disagree here a lot.  It sounds good but my experience differs.  My high level fighters in all previous editions felt like gods.
 
Versatility - that is the wizards shtick.  More in the next section.  I'd prefer they do even less damage than lose their hard magic fun.

Bypassing the Rules - not really.  I agree that if you got a knock spell that almost always works it should not be something you can cast all the time.  Taking knock when you have a good Rogue should be a questionable act.  I'm also for it being a spell that grants some high level of open locks ability.  Not super high but high.  Without 50 charge wands and endless scrolls this really isn't a problem.

Metagame - I couldn't say no to this fast enough.  There is a very big difference between fireball and a fighter daily.  It may not be a problem for a lot of people but it is a problem for a lot of others.  We can judge these things pretty consistently too.

Character Roles - I rarely saw a wizard do close up combat.  He was control and artillery that was his roll.  

Annoying Weaknesses - I loved them.  It's one thing about 3e that I disliked.  I also though liked a lot of other "annoying" things that many disliked from earlier editions.  Level drain, rust monsters, and medusea's turning to stone are all examples of magic lost in 3e.

Epilogue - I agree here that it should be examined.  It's key to making a game we all like.  I appreciate the mostly friendly and clear explanation of your position.  It is often hard when you are passionate to stay dispassionate.  To be honest though I don't want the game you want.  I hope 5e is flexible enough to support both of our styles and others too.



 

I believe the trick to keep casters and martial characters in the same playing field is to limit the scope of magic, in reference to duration, range, etc. GURPS did this very well, while keeping magic users varied and interesting. But GUPRS also suffered from martial types falling behind because of the versatility of spells. So if they introduce an equivalent for martial characters in 5E, like styles, poisons, maneuvers, fletching, armorer, etc. and allow martial characters to pick and choose similar to spells, you should be able to keep both camps happy as long as they are varied (since alot of people can not accept a power system from 4E).

This biggest effect I see from magic, is everyone waiting for the wizard to prepare a spell that is auto-success, versus relying on a skill roll, or something similar that may fail. Areas that get abused are movement based (teleport, fly, invisibility, etc.), or knowledge based (divination), or the enchancements (mage armor, shield, etc.). It also drives the martial characters to mulit-class to gain some of these benefits.

The common ground between all classes are ability scores, defenses, saves, hit points and skills, so martial abilities and/or spells should be extensions of those whenever possible. Versus creating new effects that create unique sub-systems that conflict with the core rules.

Apr 14, 2012 -- 3:33PM, Emerikol wrote:

Fictional Space - I disagree here a lot.  It sounds good but my experience differs.  My high level fighters in all previous editions felt like gods.

Emerikol, this isn't about your previous edition fighters.  I know you liked them, I did too.  I'm a chump that way, I'll play anything you label "Fighter" even if the mechanics are a steaming pile pressed against a page.  But this isn't about fighters.  It's about wizards being everything, and getting away with it because arcane magic in D&D only has one limit: Don't touch the heals.  

The dark necromancer with an army of undead.  The fickle enchantress spinning a web of lies and glamours.  The wise oracle divining the future.  The shapeshifting master.  The summoner with a pack of enslaved creatures at his beck and call.  The blaster with the forces of nature crackling at his fingertips.  The grand trickster with his illusions.  The warder, with his counterspells and alarms and wards.  These are wildly different characters, each one has enough fictional space(as Cirno put it) for an entire class.  But they aren't eight classes.  They're one class.  Wizard mixes all these together and can go between them from day to day.

Try to put that in fighter terms for a moment.  It would be like if I presented you with one class, we'll call it "Hero".  Hero can:

- Be the best defended guy in heavy armor.
- Be the best defended guy in no armor.
- Be the best(most accuracy, damage and amount of tricks) with melee weapons
- And with Ranged weapons.
- And with no weapons.
- Be the strongest in terms of feats of strength like breaking down doors or lifting boulders.
- Be the stealthiest
- Pick locks
- Find tracks
- Survive the wilderness
- Have an animal companion
- Brew and use poisons
- Get a hefty bonus for attacking an unaware or distracted foe
- Scale walls
- Be as swift as the coursing river
- With all the force of a great typhoon
- With all the strength of a raging fire
- Mysterious as the dark side of the moon
- Be the master of social situations
- Act as an expert scholar
- Create alchemical items that can put people to sleep, stick them in gunk, or blow them up
- And anything else cool we can ever, ever think of, and print in a supplement.

It'd be flat out ridiculous.  No one would be cool with it, ever.  You'd turn your nose up in disgust, and I wouldn't even be able to blame you.  But that is what Wizard does, and the only difference is that when we're talking about the Wizard, well, it's magic.  That trumps any other concern, apparently.