Quote Originally Posted by noparlpf View Post
I really disliked Tome of Battle. Especially because it's explicitly called "Blade Magic", and yet people claim it's the fix for mundane classes.
Yes, I think you've got it now!

In my opinion, the solution is to power down the Wizard. If Fighter's can't keep up while staying mundane, then slow down the Wizard's advancement. Make them a little stronger at low levels, when Fighters tend to win out, but slow down their advancement.
All this can possibly do is make high levels play exactly like low levels but with bigger numbers being traded back and forth. The Fighter 20 is still only adept at melee-ing big, fleshy monsters, that's literally all he can do. That's exactly what he was doing at level 1.

The Wizard is flying, traveling between dimensions, going invisible, transforming, creating walls of stone or steel, summoning other beings, communing with deities, seeing the future and re-writing matter, let alone what he can do in combat. The Wizard's game expands into a whole different beast by mid levels, and then again at high levels. And if you're going to have 20 levels, that's honestly as it should be.

If the answer is to reign in the Wizard to the Fighter's pace, then the game needs to stop at level 6, tops, because any advancement at the Fighter's pace is largely meaningless numeric bonuses which are just off-set by the new CR's AC and saves, anyway.

Advancement that doesn't bring new options is not advancement.