The complement of yesterday's post questioning the feeble power of a 1st level magic-user would be to question the immense power of an 11th level magic-user. Are wizards really as powerful as we believe them to be?
In Men & Magic, an 11th level wizard has about the same hit points and combat ability as a superhero, and can cast spells of up to 5th level. How powerful is a 5th level spell? Contact Other Planes, Magic Jar, Conjure Elemental, and Teleport are the most powerful, but look at the limitations: Contact Other Planes can only be used once a week (and risks insanity,) Magic Jar requires a lot of set-up and puts the wizard at risk, Conjure Elemental requires continual concentration to avoid being killed by your own servant, and Teleport requires knowing the destination in detail, including the topography; teleporting to a location you've only seen in a crystal ball has a 75% chance of death. And remember: you only get to cast three of these per day, and you must plan ahead. For that matter, you'd better hope that you actually know those spells; depending on which interpretation of the rules you're using, you might not have any spells beyond 1st level unless you've found, purchased, or researched them yourself. Or, if using the Greyhawk Intelligence table, you might not be able to learn that Fireball spell, ever.
Wizards can get around the spell limit with magic items -- if they have spent money on a tower and laboratory. And if they have the time and money to make the item. That wizard who wants to be a master of fireballs could make a Wand of Fireballs for 10,000 gp and six months effort. Spells that the might be useful when not cast in combat could be turned into scrolls: a Pass-Wall scroll would cost 500 gp and take 5 weeks to prepare. Most magic items that a wizard found while get used up or given to someone else as payment or tribute. This explains why randomly discovered wizard towers in Underworld & Wilderness Adventures usually result in adventurers being placed under a geas to retrieve some item: wizards are too busy manufacturing magic items to go searching for others.
The thing about magic is: it requires preparation. Even when dealing with a random enemy who shows up at a wizard's tower unannounced. Sure, a Cloudkill could wipe out trespassers; but did the wizard know there were going to be trespassers? Did the wizard memorize Cloudkill this morning? Will the wind be blowing in the right direction?
What seems to happen in discussions about wizards being so powerful is that people imagine situations that the wizard just happens to have the right spells prepared for,and the opposition doesn't get the same benefit of preparation or just plain good luck. Yes, if a wizard's enemy happens to be in a location the wizard has visited and studied many times, and if the wizard has a crystal ball to confirm this, and if the wizard learned the Teleport spell, and if the wizard survives the teleport in without exploding or embedding himself in the floor, and if the wizard learned Fireball or Lightning Bolt or has a wand, and there's enough room to cast that spell, and if the enemy has no protection from those spells, and if the enemy doesn't hit the wizards with Feeblemind or Charm Person first, then a wizard can do a "scry and fry". But that's a lot of ifs, some of them rather unbelievable.
I'm of the opinion that a wizard that gets in a spot he hadn't prepared for isn't very good at his job.
ReplyDeleteThe average wizard can't survive a fight with the average wizard. Need more spells, another wizard has them...
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the Fighter is pretty much always ready to fight. Good point.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, reading this reminded me of the old 3E era CODzilla arguments. People would basically imagine an arena combat between a Cleric and a Fighter, and say that since the Cleric could cast spells V, W, X, Y and Z, they would outperform the Fighter in single combat. To which I countered, well, what's the Fighter doing during the 5 rounds the Cleric is getting all buffed up? Attacking? Using buffing potions or items? If the Fighter's standing around like an idiot letting the Cleric cast all that, he's a moron and deserves to be beaten. :) And in a dungeon situation, once the Cleric has outperformed the Fighter by casting all of those buffs for one combat, are they going to have the spells prepared to do it all again?
Any spellcaster looks overpowered if you imagine them ideally prepared for the challenges they are about to face. That's the trick of playing spellcasters - being able to anticipate the challenges so you can blow past them with spells.
Yeah, it's exactly that sort of nonsense I was thinking of. If you stack the deck in a character's favor, then of course that character is going to win.
DeleteA more convincing argument would be if there was a class that could never win, no matter how much you try to stack the deck in that character's favor. Or a class that always wins, without special treatment, against any other class, even when you stack the deck in the other class's favor.
The hardest part about being a Magic-user is role-playing that 13+ intelligence score.
ReplyDeleteEh. Only hard if you inflate the importance of Int, for example by think that a character's IQ = 10 x Int. I, for one, think a character's IQ = 90 + Int. Or maybe 80 + Int x 2. Not that hard to roleplay a wizard with IQ 106 to 116.
DeleteAs I understand it, "scry and fry" became a standard tactic in 3rd edition, where Teleport is far more reliable and the making or purchase of magical items (especially scrolls and some wands) is easier. It's often pointed out that, in removing some of the limitations on the low-level magic-user, 3e pumped up the high-level MU enormously. So, in a way, you're addressing a problem from one edition with solutions that don't apply to that edition, but you are also usefully reinforcing why the earlier editions did not have as huge a disparity between fighters and spellcasters as 3e developed.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, that expression, and probably many of the others, like "linear fighter, quadratic wizard" and the complaints about clerical buffing, started with 3e. However, I routinely see the issues raised in discussions that are clearly about OD&D or AD&D. For example, there were several vociferous threads on The RPGSite sparked by an influx of "4vengers" who tried to "prove" that the OSR shouldn't be trying to revive old school play, because it would bring back "scry and fry", "linear fighter/quadratic wizard", and other bugaboos.
DeleteA lot of that definitely developed from 3E. Or maybe it was headed that way in AD&D and continued with 3E.
DeleteBut a lot of Cleric spells, for example, were good for the whole party and lasted a fair while in Classic D&D (Bless, Protection from Cold, Haste).
By 3E, they were usually limited both to one or a small number of targets, and lasted maybe for an entire combat. Clerics became a lot more "selfish" in that edition due to the rules changes.