Mages in Parties: Gandalf, or a Glorified Archer?

[Mr. Mask]

Mages are tricky to balance. Worse, there is the question: What SHOULD a mage be?

Is a Mage Gandalf? The angelic powerhouse of whom the only thing making him on equal terms with the rest of the party is abstract legal restraints? Gandalf is a skilled swordsmen, ageless, wise, strong, with magic that could wipe the floor with any other member of the Fellowship. The only thing making him a semi-equal travelling companion is he's under so many complicated restraints.

Is a Mage a Glorified Archer? That is, makes ranged attacks, but the arrows are glowing. Sometimes they take the archer role to a greater extreme, having less armour, less melee ability, and inflicting more damage at potentially greater range. At that extreme, particularly with longer cool-down times and less ammunition, the mage gets to be a humanoid glass-cannon, more close-range artillery than archer.

Is the Mage the Jack of All Trades? From Jedi mind trick powers, to opening doors, to finding stuff, to combat by various means at various ranges. This is more fitting to the Gandalf image of the mage. Sometimes the Mage is weaker in all these aspects than more specialized members of the party, sometimes they're stronger. If stronger, this is sometimes justified with the cost of limited spell slots, so they have to be prepared for the situation.

There is the possibility of a mage that can be any of these things, depending on their specialization.

Something sort of implied in early edition DnD was the multi-classing part-mage part something else, to ground them further in one of these roles. A Mage Fighter has that Gandalf feel of the skilled swordsmen with some spells. Mage Thief is more the trickster, and Mage Ranger is something like a druid. I do find some of this interesting, and would like to see it expanded upon.


HP comes into the equation of how you handle this. The more HP you have, the more a mage having higher DPR makes them unbalanced. If one good sword swing can fell a foe, then a spell of ten times the power that takes two rounds to cast is suddenly less appealing. It makes things an interesting game of cat and mouse with warrior and mage, with Conan vs. the wizard. Conan can cleave their skull in two, but only if he can get close enough and hit the mage before they melt his bones or something (and of course, the Mage might be a great physical fighter as well). Of course, if they're a DnD fighter, with little ability in stealth, cunning, and ambush, then they're pretty much toast however they slice it (because they won't get to). So a DnD won't stand a chance in such a contest, unless the wizard really fails at detecting shoddy ambushes.

[Mastikator]

Mages shouldn't step on anyone's toes, they should limited to the impossible like inscribing magic runes on walls, turning people into stone and communicating with the dead.
Direct attacks should be the domain of warriors, larceny should be the domain of rogues. If mages should be able to make direct attacks then frankly warriors should be able to do supernatural feats as well. If mages can do larceny then rogues should be allowed to do magic. And since rogues can fight, warriors should be allowed some larceny.
Either segregate the roles of the classes consistently or let them trespass on each others roles consistently.

Edit- also if mages are just glorified archers, why have mages?

[goto124]

Shouldn't/aren't mages split into different catergories themselves? Such as buffers, damage slingers, and controllers, to cover only combat roles?

[TheOOB]

Gandalf is a terrible example of a mage, 99% of the magic he uses comes from magic items, and even then he just plain doesn't use much(also he doesn't learn and cast spells like a mage). Gandalf is a god in fact.

What a mage is varies tremendously depending on setting/system. In almost all cases they can do things other players cannot in exchange for something(xp, health, danger, ect).

I've come to see magic in an RPG as a kind of way to steal the title of GM for a period. Magic Users are less powerful than normal characters normally, but a limited amount of the time they can do something amazing and special and redefines the course of events, they say something and it happens(within the bounds of their abilities of course).

[HammeredWharf]

I like it when mages are mostly utility characters that require some time and space to function. They should be able to do things that others can't, such as scrying and changing weather, but should have their weaknesses, such as terrible performance in CQC.

[TheCountAlucard]

Using a worker of magic as an archer is like using a cat as a dog. Which isn't to say one is better than the other (in some systems, it's true, but this is tangential to the point), but rather that the two are very different animals.

[Raimun]

As long as they are not just glorified archers. Sure, it's sometimes practical to use "pew-pew!"-spells like Magic Missile but there's more to the wizardry than that... even if you can do automatically over 200 points of damage.

Whenever I want to play a wizard or a mage of some sort, I look forward to using certain kinds of spells. A spell has to fulfill at least one of the following two criteria (or both):

1) The spell has to be fantastical.
a) Either you just can't duplicate the effect with mundane means. Example: Mass mind control aggressive enemy soldiers to throw their guns to the bottom of the harbor during combat. Good luck duplicating that with a parley. (Mob Mind in Shadowrun)
b) Or duplicating the effect with mundane means would require you to jump through hoops. Example: You could either buy an expensive flamethrower, which gives you movement speed and defense penalties, requires you to buy fuel all the time for a tank that doesn't hold that much of it and which might explode if hit by a stray bullet and to top it all off, a flamethrower isn't a proper accessory for the grand ball. Or you could be a Fire Sorcerer who doesn't share even one of the above concerns but can act as a flamethrower just as well... or even better if he goes balls to the wall. (Fire Sorcerers in Iron Kingdoms)

2) The spell has to be proactive and promote new kinds of solutions. Not just do old things harder, faster, better.
a) Even if it is extremely useful (seriously, it is), healing wounds after a slugfest with goblins is not proactive. Using Colorspray to knock out those goblins is.
b) Casting a strength increasing or a protective buff spell to make someone hit things better with a stick is not terribly proactive, only a little bit. Casting a buff spell that let's you fly or turn invisible? Neither is proactive itself but both allow you to act proactive in completely new ways.
c) Blasting a monster with a spell of fire or lightning is proactive but couldn't a mundane warrior also do hit point damage? Yes... but could he summon a monster out of thin air to be used as a pawn for suicidal combat tactics? I think not.

Edit: And if the summoned monster doesn't die for some reason? Hey, bonus!

[goto124]

he just plain doesn't use much(also he doesn't learn and cast spells like a mage). Gandalf is a god in fact.

I thought that was kinda the point :smalltongue:

[Anonymouswizard]

I think mages should have thematic utility powers. Unknown Armies is a great example:

-Avatars require no mojo for their powers, but are severely limited, to self-buffs of one form to another for most, with the most extravagant getting slight form changes (or party buffs for the MVP).
-Adepts have broader powers than Avatars, still in a theme, and generally their powers affect the real world in some way (but not always, see Bibliomancers and Cliomancers). They do, however, require mojo in the form of charges.
-Thaumaturgists have theoretical access to a lot of spells, but they take time to cast and are generally more indirect than Adepts. They only require mojo for big spells, in the form of Significant (or Major) charges.

The nice thing is, as magic sucks up a lot of skill points, mundanes are generally more versatile or more effective, especially if they go for combat.

[Spore]

I think mages should have thematic utility powers. Unknown Armies is a great example:


This!

The D&D Wizard is kind of like a movie scientist while wizards should be kind of like real scientists. The D&D Wizard has arcane knowledge about, can cast spells in the blink of an eye and decimate whole armies with one spell. While I prefer the highly specialized tunnel-visioned caster much much more.

Necromancers can only raise the dead. Pyromancers can set the place on fire. Healers can heal wounds. Seers can divine up information. Shamans rule over the elements. Mesmerists can play the mind of any mortal like a flute. But a standard wizard shouldn't be able to do everything mentioned above, plus be better in his field while shunning two other schools of magic.

Secondly casting should be much much harder. An archer can shoot arrows abound, a fighter can swing several times a turn but a wizard conjuring up the literal end of the fight should - aside from a few blasts - cast a lengthy time, preferable several rounds. A fireball shouldn't take long but Dominate spells? Cloudkill? Teleport? Everything's a standard action and it only worsens with time: Quicken spell speeds even that up.

[Hawkstar]

Edit- also if mages are just glorified archers, why have mages?

Because blasting people with UNLIMITED POWAH! is incredibly fun!

I prefer playing Blaster Casters over utility mages.

[Red Fel]

Admittedly, Mage-As-Archer is a good way to achieve better "balance" between casters and non-casters. When your mage is a "utility caster" who can make people fly, warp space and time, alter the battlefield and so forth, it's suitably cinematic, but also achieves things that no non-caster can do. That's one of the biggest sources of disparity in the D&D-clones; the idea that a powerful non-caster gets better at hitting things harder, while a powerful caster gets better at building mountains and ascending to the heavens.

In a lower-magic system, or one in which magic has a price, or even one where you don't want casters becoming tiny gods, Mage-As-Archer is a reasonable way to keep the concept feasible without making it overpowered.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I usually think of mages as the jack-of-all-trades variety. All they've got going for them is their spells, but in the words of a real-life wizard, "there's an app spell for that". Whereas the rogue/thief type are specialists in the variety of skills needed for infiltrations, I think of mages as more general than that...most of the time. It's always possible for them to specialize themselves into one of the wide variety of things that magic can do, such as Blowing Stuff Up, Summoning Minions, etc.

Basically, while the Gandalf mage Does Everything Well and the Archer Mage Does One Thing Well, for protagonists/player characters I like mages who Do Everything - including Surprising Things - Averagely through clever application of their spells.

[BWR]

Mages should be whatever the setting/game/GM needs them to be. It's as simple as that. There is no right answer beyond that.
Whether they are in any given game is another question.

[Honest Tiefling]

Somewhere between Pew Pew Pew and the Master of All Trades. I like systems where one can be a sword and spell type of guy, but gives up a bit of both to gish. Or a sneaky-mage who can do a bit of dabbling in the thief skills, but either cannot do them all or isn't as good. Admittedly, I play with people who like to blast, but I get really bored with it quickly. But, it does have its appeal to others and is quite easily to fit into the party.

What I'd really like to see are utility spells that complement, not supplant, mundane abilities. For instance, you can put fly onto anyone, but they still need some measure of agility to start zipping around the battlefield so slapping that onto a high dex character makes some sense. You can make forgeries with magic, but without the knowledge of what it should look like, you might as well just to use a piece of paper written in crayon. You can charm people, but it works better with a good deal of charisma and bluff. Some probably won't like that these applications require either a lot of investment or specialization or other party members, but that's just my own preference.

[Anonymouswizard]

I usually think of mages as the jack-of-all-trades variety. All they've got going for them is their spells, but in the words of a real-life wizard, "there's an app spell for that". Whereas the rogue/thief type are specialists in the variety of skills needed for infiltrations, I think of mages as more general than that...most of the time. It's always possible for them to specialize themselves into one of the wide variety of things that magic can do, such as Blowing Stuff Up, Summoning Minions, etc.

The problem with that is that, going by D&D, it's likening a mage to a Scientist with a good understanding of every field, enough to, with a few days studying the plans to build a machine and have it work perfectly every time, as long as you spent an hour checking your notes in the morning. Then when you get bored with researching the boundaries of magic you become an engineer and design some more machines.

Or for a better analogy, spells are apps. Magic items are devices with apps installed on them: anybody can use it, but it might take some training to learn exactly how. A generalist wizard can use these magic items, but he can also just write a working app to check Facebook, another to Browse the web, a third to take pictures, a fourth that represents Angry Birds, and so on. Despite the fact that turning lead into gold and sending information to your cousin should take completely different theories in separate fields.

So while the jack-of-all-trades mage may sound ideal, realistically they should be next to useless compared to specialist mages. How many people do you know in the real world who can design a car, a computer, a house, and a telephone network? Now apply this to magic, that at the higher levels does things just as complex. Specialist mages just a) make more sense and b) are more fun to play.

[DigoDragon]

Shouldn't/aren't mages split into different catergories themselves? Such as buffers, damage slingers, and controllers, to cover only combat roles?

They can be specialized into categories like that, yeah. The one time I got to be a PC wizard in 3.5, I enjoyed being the party's main buffer. Haste and Bull's Strength for everyone, I'm buying!

The mage I played in a more modern campaign, I specialized in stealth and illusions, making me the magical rogue! Pick locks? I got a spell for that! Steal the keys off the jailer's pocket? I got a spell for that!

[Bard1cKnowledge]

When I play mage (or rather warlock) I'm more or less the party face. In a group of fighters, barbarians and thieves, you need someone to help with all that overflowing testosterone.

That came out wrong. I meant that they need someone who can easily talk them out of situations where fighting can get us (a) locked up or (b) killed.

Charm person and suggest are amazing spells.

[MrConsideration]

I like there to be the option to be either kind of caster, which 5e serves quite well. I like being able to solve problems, but only a specific set of problems every so often, and the D&D spell system basically allows that.

Although I personally prefer casters with a distinct theme like the Arcane Trickster or with a strong fluff around their spellcasting like the Cleric or Warlock.

Mundane fighters should excel at scrapping though, and mages who aren't some kid of gish character should be squishies.

[goto124]

Do bards count as the jack-of-all-trades kind of mages?

[Eisenheim]

It depends completely on the fiction, but neither of the options in the title is good.
Mage as simple ranged damage is boring, as is any character whose only shtick is ranged damage.
Gandalf was a demigod in a party of mortals, bound by a set of complex rules from simply unleashing his full power for an instant win.

What 'mages' or any kind of magic user should be is a question about fiction. One you have the fiction, figure out mechanization and balance. In a Conan inspired sword and sorcery, sorcerers get dark, terrible powers from shadowy, cosmic entities, but can't face cold steel when things come to the final contest. In L5R, shugenja are priests magicians whose powers vary widely depending on clan and school. In 7th sea, sorcery runs in noble bloodlines, with (all nationalities analogous not official) french who teleport by ripping bloody holes in the universe, spanish fire mages, russian shapeshifters and italian fate-witches.

Magic becomes much easier to think about, both story and mechanics wise if you stop using D&D as your primary inspiration, since D&D magic only really models D&D magic, and not any other fiction I've come across.

[DigoDragon]

Do bards count as the jack-of-all-trades kind of mages?

Could depend on the system, but in general I would say yes.

[kestrel404]

Mages are whatever you need them to be for the setting you want, because magic is simply 'the stuff that makes this place different from the real world'. Without magic (and this includes 'space magic' and 'hypertechnology' and anything else which modern engineering principles cannot fully explain), then you're just playing in an 'alternate history' or 'modern day real world' setting - which is fine, but not terribly popular.

My personal preference is for mages to through well-defined magical principles. Magic that can do 'anything, without restriction, if you give it enough power' is what leads to the whole batman-wizard issue in D&D.

If you've got a magic system that's strongly grounded in, say, the Laws of Contagion and Similarity, then it becomes much more interesting for everyone (not just the mages) to interact with magic and mages in the world. A world where you've got to worry about leaving behind trace amounts of blood is a world where Warriors carry around bottles of acid or salt or something to throw on their own blood-spills. Worlds where a stolen piece of art can be tracked by using the wall where it has hung for fifty years is a world where the Rogue has anti-scrying runes on the walls of his safe-house.

Essentially, worlds in which magic is defined, known, has logical implications and limitations is a world that is fun and interesting to explore. Essentially, I think it's the limitations of magic which define what a wizard is - because magic is, essentially, the way the limits of the real world are broken.

[ExLibrisMortis]

A mage is someone who specializes in magic; it depends on the power level of magic in your campaign what a mage - magic specialist - ends up doing. Magic is just another technology, enabled by a variant cosmology with different laws of nature. In a low-magic world, magic may be an interference pattern in your quantum entanglement experiments (just pretend this is a real thing for now), where in a high-magic world, commoners mend clothes with magic and live in magic floating cities. In the first world, you expect a 'mage' to be a quantum scientist; in the second, you expect a 'mage' to be a demi-god.

[erikun]

Gandalf might be a particularly bad example, since Gandalf is mostly a scholar-archtype with a little magic equipment/abilities and quite a bit of heartiness. You could probably model Gandalf in D&D as a rogue or a bard fairly well.

Then again, perhaps Gandalf is a good example of what generally comes to mind with the "wizard" destription. When I think about wizards, I think about a character with considerable arcane and obscure knowledge who puts that to use to apply magic to situations. That is, while the party ranger might know the herbs and treatment (or "spell") to remove poison from a wound and while the party rogue might know the proper mixture of powders to make them seem invisible, the party wizard is specialized in knowing these things and so can create all that and more from the knowledge they've acquired.

Mages with a big bucket of MP and a large spell list are sort of an abstraction of that concept: rather than forcing the player to collect specific item lists or the DM to moderate what components are available when, the characters just have MP pools to make everything more simple. Mages as magi-archers seems kind of backwards to me, starting with the idea of "Mages have to be characters with large amount of MP and lots of spells" and then trying to balance it somehow from there. It is also kind of sad, because it pretty much eliminated the potential magi-archer character, which could otherwise be a cool idea.

[Anonymouswizard]

With regards to Gandalf's D&D class, my theory is:

BD&D: unique demihuman race with access to fighter, magic-user, and possibly cleric powers.
AD&D1e: from what I hear the Bard models him well, but he can't access it due to being nonhuman. Fighter/magic-user/thief?
AD&D2e: Bard, or possibly fighter/mage/thief.
D&D3.X: hard choice, probably Bard, a chance of a fighter/diviner eldritch knight (possibly sorcerer instead of specialist wizard).
D&D4e: I'd personally say he fits none of the roles. I don't own the books for them, but maybe Bard or Swordmage?
D&D5e: many ways to do it, although either type of Bard is good for single class.

[Prime32]

Gandalf might be a particularly bad example, since Gandalf is mostly a scholar-archtype with a little magic equipment/abilities and quite a bit of heartiness. You could probably model Gandalf in D&D as a rogue or a bard fairly well.Nah, he fights with martial weapons with great skill, his only innate magical abilities are related to light and healing, people become braver in his presence even if they don't know he's around, he's at his strongest when fighting demonic creatures, and he has an awesome mount he can summon from anywhere. Gandalf's a paladin.

[Hiro Protagonest]

My mind quickly went to F/SN Archer, because the Archer-class servants always seem to have extraordinarily large arsenals and ways to bend the rules. >_>

[Drynwyn]

If you ask me, Shadowrun has very well-placed magic (Excluding a Certain Specific Edition)- the primary purpose of a mage in Shadowrun is to address supernatural threats that can't be effectively countered by mundane means, but they still have enough mojo left over to do one or two mundane things pretty well- with the downside that these things can potentially be stopped by both mundane and supernatural countermeasures. (EG: You can cast Flamethrower rather than dragging one around, but when the enemy mage holds up a hand and diverts your spell, you're gonna be glad the street sam purchased some very, very nonstandard implanted weaponry.)

Of course, I've also been playing Ars Magica lately, which puts an interesting twist on things. Namely, it assumes from the very beginning that people who can alter the fundamental laws of the universe with sheer willpower are going to be more powerful than those who cannot. So it has the players take turns playing different mages, each of whom spends the time when they aren't being played doing magical research (like mages are nominally supposed to be doing in most systems, but never quite find the time with all the beasties that need killing and looting). Obviously, this solution isn't suitable everywhere (not all groups like Troupe style, not all players want to maintain multiple characters), but it's certainly an effective technique for "balancing" (for a given value of balance) mages.

[Psyren]

I think mages should be capable of both, but not necessarily at the same time. This I think is where 3.5 and PF messed up, it's too easy to make a mage that is all things to all parties with little investment other than picking the right spells to put in their many slots.

You should be able to make the archer mage (though I personally prefer the term "artillery mage") if you like, and you should be able to make an Awesome By Analysis controller if you like too. You should also be able to make the Gandalf "swordmage" (or "clawmage") if you want, or the Pokemon Master mage. What you should not be able to do, is switch between them easily during the day, or even by merely taking a night's rest. Building for one should make doing the others more difficult.

But mages that are only DPS-bot archers are not fun and belie the cunning that the archetype is meant to represent. Anyone who has watched Log Horizon knows what I'm talking about - the protagonist is a God Wizard who is very weak on his own, but gets his entire party to perform as a well-oiled killing machine through his mastery of the system.

[FeyLich]

Generally, to me, Mages are offensive casters, probably just glorified archers but with very impressive spells.
However, if you start calling them wizards, then that to me conjures up images of a very Jack of All Trades character who does lots of utility stuff.
I think that there are lots of different types of mages, filling different roles, but generally they should be specialised in one particular role or type of magic.

[Jay R]

Each character should carve out his or her own role. My last three wizards, Ornrandir, Pteppic, and Eilonwy, are all very different in character and goals, and this affects spell choice and party role.

And by the way, Gandalf was not a human with a spell-casting class. He was an angel (Maiar). Tolkien used "wizard" in its original sense of "wise one". When he refers to the wizards getting together, it's a council of the Wise, which he capitalizes. (Councils that include rulers like Elrond and Galadriel are the Wise and Great.)

[Quertus]

Depends on the wizard.

I like to play a wizard who can fill the role the party needs - just like I like to play a character who can fill the role the party needs. The ability to see and highlight invisible foes, the ability to grant buffs (including to magic up weapons so that the party can damage their foes), the ability to alter the flow of combat, the ability to magically gain skills (OK, this is more D&D Cleric than Mage), protecting/healing the party, etc.

But the mage is very *limited* in their spells per day / spell pool / whatever, so they would *prefer* if someone else would do most if not all of these things, so they can concentrate on whatever it is they *want* to do (animating the dead, blowing stuff up, divining the future, whatever).

Of course, playing the wizard who is completely inept at what the party lacks can also be fun.