Wizards should be better than fighters.

[magicalmagicman]

Makes the game more realistic.

Real life wizards make robots. Robots are better soldiers than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make Power Armor. Wizard in Power Armor is better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards make tanks, gunships, battleships, and fully automate them with drone or ai technology. They're better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards use genetic augmentations to turn themselves into super soldiers. Mutant super soldiers are better than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make automated mass production complexes manned by drones and robots that lets him build and churn out machinery of epic proportions quickly and by himself. Human soldiers have no idea where to even start.

In case you didn't notice, real life wizards are anyone in the intellectual fields, mainly technology and science. And a human soldier is someone who spends his life increasing his muscle mass or reflexes through training.

So why are people arguing that once a wizard hits high levels and have enough gold to buy a country, he should still be on par with a human soldier? Makes no sense. Wizards should be stronger than fighters. Because human bodies are fragile, weak, and inferior to even animals. Bears beat humans. Tigers beat humans. So people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through training even fully knowing that they will never be able to beat a bear in strength should be weaker than people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through anything but training like studying biology, chemistry, physics, robotics, etc.

[NigelWalmsley]

So why are people arguing that once a wizard hits high levels and have enough gold to buy a country, he should still be on par with a human soldier?

People aren't arguing that. People, broadly, make one of two arguments about Wizards and Fighters.

1. The Wizard should not be allowed to become high level. If doing something would make the efforts of Conan or Aragorn irrelevant, that is not a thing you should be allowed to do.
2. High level Fighters should become more powerful than human soldiers. If the Wizard is going to become Dr. Strange, the Barbarian should become Thor.

Either solution is workable. I personally favor the latter, in no small part because I think Thor is cool and would like to be able to play a character that does Thor stuff without having to be some manner of caster (which Thor is obviously not).

[Kalkra]

High level Fighters are quite a bit more powerful than human soldiers. Also, I don't think super-soldiers exist in real life. I get your point, though. That being said, the real-life wizards you're talking about really more like WBL-mancers. I mean, designing something doesn't make you more powerful, owning it does.

[Ramza00]

This feels like a Thermian Argument



How do you kill a Vampire? Well Vampires are not real and thus an appeal to realism does not work. Instead you appeal to some form of external meaning, some form of framework another person is semi familiar with. Even though there is all these new internal meaning combinations of something unique that is a mixture of external things you picked up over a lifetime of experiences.

This mixture of internal and external means you have a tension where no matter what you someone else will have criticisms, suggestions, etc while simultaneously sharing their appreciation and thanks. All of this is balanced with an internal voice that chooses and a legitimate choice is I do not care.

—————

Thus if a person wants to make an Achilles or Thor the game system should be friendly to that. Likewise if a person wants to make a Mage the game system should be friendly to that.

[AvatarVecna]

This feels like a Thermian Argument



How do you kill a Vampire? Well Vampires are not real and thus an appeal to realism does not work. Instead you appeal to some form of external meaning, some form of framework another person is semi familiar with. Even though there is all these new internal meaning combinations of something unique that is a mixture of external things you picked up over a lifetime of experiences.

This mixture of internal and external means you have a tension where no matter what you someone else will have criticisms, suggestions, etc while simultaneously sharing their appreciation and thanks. All of this is balanced with an internal voice that chooses and a legitimate choice is I do not care.

—————

Thus if a person wants to make an Achilles or Thor the game system should be friendly to that. Likewise if a person wants to make a Mage the game system should be friendly to that.

I sorta agree with the last part and sorta don't. A point of clarification: if the system is built around the idea that options are balanced against each other, then the ability to build concepts of similar levels of general capabilities should be equal. 4e doesn't have this problem because fluff has little bearing on the balance of mechanics - indeed, the balance is probably the strongest part of 4e design. You see the same in systems like M&M, where most paths to your goal will have similar costs for similar effect, and the ones that don't are obviously too cheap/expensive. Put another way:

If the Wizard is going to become Dr. Strange, the Barbarian should become Thor.

[tiercel]

From even a rough game balance point of view, something like "linear fighter quadratic wizard" is more palatable if the y-intercept and slope of the fighter are calibrated so that fighter > squishy wizard at low levels, hulky fighter = glass cannon wizard at mid levels, BDF < God wizard at high levels -- assuming that gameplay is spread over all levels even roughly equally. If wizard stomps all over fighter at most or even all levels (e.g. Abrupt Jaunt and scroll-scribing WBL-mancy at level 1), then it feels like it invalidates an entire playstyle.

A second approach to this is to make fighter less linear, hence the fandom by some for Tome of Battle, so that you have more quadratic fighter quadratic wizard... or, at least, more x^1.5 fighter, quadratic wizard, i.e. wizards don't so completely outpace fighter-types that the playstyle still feels valid/useful/fun at the same table.

Basically, I also agree with the Thor / Dr Strange remark above.

Also, "realistic" and "D&D" is... yeah. It's a game. See, for instance, too many instances of physics vs. D&D or economics vs. D&D -- you can import more of those elements into your game if you really want to, but at the end of the day that's not really the focus of the game system as written.

And, sometimes (to generalize) D&D nerds who have Int > Str, as much as they might want to roleplay a high-Int character outplanning, out-optioning, and out-gaming the game itself, also might want to HULK SMASH and.. that should probably work in what is basically a sword-and-sorcery "kill orcs, save the prince/ss, turn back the undead horde, and take their stuff" kinda game.

[Psyren]

While I agree that wizards should generally be better, there's a lot of daylight between "better than fighter" and "can solo archfiends and do every role in the game simultaneously." Put another way, you can nerf a 3.5 wizard's ceiling substantially and still have them be better than a fighter.

Thus if a person wants to make an Achilles or Thor the game system should be friendly to that. Likewise if a person wants to make a Mage the game system should be friendly to that.

The game system IS friendly to that. Achilles and Thor are not ordinary fighters - one is a templated or Mythic human, and the other is a deity. You have all the tools you need to build them in this game system.

[Rynjin]

2. High level Fighters should become more powerful than human soldiers. If the Wizard is going to become Dr. Strange, the Barbarian should become Thor.

Either solution is workable. I personally favor the latter, in no small part because I think Thor is cool and would like to be able to play a character that does Thor stuff without having to be some manner of caster (which Thor is obviously not).

No huge input on the thread, I just find it amusing that despite our disagreements on this same subject as to whether or not Wizards are OP, we definitely 100% agree on the end goal for balance.

Fantasy characters should be fantastical, no matter their "class".

[Lord Raziere]

The game system IS friendly to that. Achilles and Thor are not ordinary fighters - one is a templated or Mythic human, and the other is a deity. You have all the tools you need to build them in this game system.

I think thats being overly literal about that sort of thing. A class should not need a race to pull a classes weight.

[Psyren]

I think thats being overly literal about that sort of thing. A class should not need a race to pull a classes weight.

You don't need to be a mythological figure to pull your weight though. A fighter who is not Achilles or Thor can still take on anything level-appropriate in the Monster Manual, is my point. But if you want to be Achilles or Thor, you aren't a normal human anymore, and there are rules for that.

[Lord Raziere]

You don't need to be a mythological figure to pull your weight though. A fighter who is not Achilles or Thor can still take on anything level-appropriate in the Monster Manual, is my point. But if you want to be Achilles or Thor, you aren't a normal human anymore, and there are rules for that.

Thats still overly literal. you seem keep doing this thing where you think that people using these examples want to literally being them in every single aspect, when that is generally not the case. generally when people say this sort of thing they meant to take inspiration from that character they are talking about, not literally copying them one to one. when you play batman wizard builds, do you literally make all your wizards humans who dress up in the costume and fluff your book as a utility belt? and if you don't, would you?

[Rynjin]

You don't need to be a mythological figure to pull your weight though. A fighter who is not Achilles or Thor can still take on anything level-appropriate in the Monster Manual, is my point. But if you want to be Achilles or Thor, you aren't a normal human anymore, and there are rules for that.

That's...debatable, honestly. There's a lot of things Fighters can't effectively deal with on their own. They're particularly vulnerable to Ref or Will based save or lose effects, as an example.

Flight is also another simple one. Yes, yes, magic items can solve the issue...but that's just involving another person in it in a roundabout way.

[Ignimortis]

*snip*

There are no real life wizards. People you claim to be "real life wizards" are people who use laws of our reality to achieve these things, the laws that govern everyone and everything. Wizards, on the other hand, usually manipulate their mana or magic energy or whatever to break the rules of their reality, to create effects that circumvent any actual rules of the world. Sure, magic usually has its' own rules, but they are generally not exactly bound to normal physics, biology or geometry, it's a special set of rules for special finger-wagglers who are (often) the only ones who can even interact with them anyway.

Thus, if there's a special set of rules for magicians, why wouldn't there be a special set of rules for warriors? Why do they have to follow "realism" in a magical world where there's more than normal Earth-type physics and biology at play?

[Psyren]

Thats still overly literal. you seem keep doing this thing where you think that people using these examples want to literally being them in every single aspect, when that is generally not the case. generally when people say this sort of thing they meant to take inspiration from that character they are talking about, not literally copying them one to one. when you play batman wizard builds, do you literally make all your wizards humans who dress up in the costume and fluff your book as a utility belt? and if you don't, would you?

Ramza said he wanted to make Achilles or Thor. I took the request at face value when I replied; it's not as though you or I can read minds to figure out which aspects of those characters he wanted literally vs. metaphorically.

And I don't play "batman" wizard builds at all.

That's...debatable, honestly. There's a lot of things Fighters can't effectively deal with on their own. They're particularly vulnerable to Ref or Will based save or lose effects, as an example.

Flight is also another simple one. Yes, yes, magic items can solve the issue...but that's just involving another person in it in a roundabout way.

WBL is an expected part of the game. If you deny it at your table, fine, but you're not exactly playing the game as it was designed to be played - WBL is in the core books for a reason.

And if you demand that the Fighter must be able to make his own gear, well, in Pathfinder they can, and that's what I play.

[Rynjin]

WBL is an expected part of the game. If you deny it at your table, fine, but you're not exactly playing the game as it was designed to be played - WBL is in the core books for a reason.

And if you demand that the Fighter must be able to make his own gear, well, in Pathfinder they can, and that's what I play.

This is getting off into the weeds again, as this argument always does. "This character can be tricked out with a single specific build or selection of items to solve XYZ problem" does not make that character good, and at that point it's not really the character solving problems, it's the items.

Yes, every character gets WBL. That doesn't mean that, as some people would try to make the argument, that a Rogue is OP because they can Use Magic Device any spell a Wizard can.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I think thats being overly literal about that sort of thing. A class should not need a race to pull a classes weight.

All classes need a race to pull their weight. We don't play classes. We play characters that may or may not be of a given class and, typically, seek to select a race that is as compatible as possible with our preferred class. Nobody that wants to play a wizard is gonna pick a feral half-orc for their race just like nobody that wants to go barbarian is gonna pick a venerable grey elf.

That's ultimately the crux of this whole, neverending disagreement; class is only a fragment of the whole picture but that's the only fragment that anyone wants to look at because of some notion that it's the only part of your character that you can be reasonably sure the GM won't usurp. That notion is simply not valid and forums like this abound with examples of GMs nerfing classes on both side of the magic divide, both blatantly and "stealthily."

FFS, look at the whole picture, folks. You get a race, class(es), and WBL unless the GM interferes. If the only part of "fighter" you're looking at is the class itself, of course it's not going to look as good as the wizard class. The latter completely dominates the character's identity and abilities while the former is much more evenly divided between those three build elements.

Now, that said, there -is- something to be said for having direct access to magic in a world where survival is so heavily dependent on it. A wizard is certainly able to deal with more types of challenge than a fighter but he'll never be as good at solving the challenge of directly fighting a foe, if we presume equal degrees of optimization of the entire character and not just its class.

Seriously though, if you want to look at these things in a clean room then don't pretend that other elements of the system aren't there just because it's (ostensibly) more common for them to be altered or restricted.

[Psyren]

This is getting off into the weeds again, as this argument always does. "This character can be tricked out with a single specific build or selection of items to solve XYZ problem" does not make that character good, and at that point it's not really the character solving problems, it's the items.

Yes, every character gets WBL. That doesn't mean that, as some people would try to make the argument, that a Rogue is OP because they can Use Magic Device any spell a Wizard can.

"UMD every spell a wizard can" is a strawman, and nothing that I actually said. You specifically mentioned flight and reflex/will saves, which are pretty basic holes that items can and should plug. I'm not expecting fighters to copy every wizard trick, and go running around binding efreeti or creating demiplanes or raising the dead.

FFS, look at the whole picture, folks. You get a race, class(es), and WBL unless the GM interferes. If the only part of "fighter" you're looking at is the class itself, of course it's not going to look as good as the wizard class. The latter completely dominates the character's identity and abilities while the former is much more evenly divided between those three build elements.

Agreed, and honestly I'd say that being "as good as the wizard class" is a silly goal for a fighter to have anyway. "Good enough to fight CR-appropriate monsters in the monster manual" is the metric we should be using, for Fighters or any other PC class.

[FaerieGodfather]

{scrubbed}

Every single argument I have ever seen from "realism" in D&D boils down to either blatantly applied double standards (such as The Guy at the Gym Fallacy) or someone assuming that one of the game's blatantly unrealistic abstractions (such as weapon damage or hit points) is a functional model of real-life phenomena when it interacts strangely with the rule they're complaining about.

[Mordaedil]

What are these real life wizards that they are talking about here? Office-workers, programmers, engineers, construction workers, machines assemblers or factory workers?

[magicalmagicman]

People have seemed to have missed my point so I'll be a little more explicit.

In real life, brain beats brawn. By lightyears. Brawn cannot even hope to compare to brains. Brains create fully automated heavy firearms using explosive ammo. Brains create thermonuclear weapons. Brains create super viruses. Brains create super soldiers either robotically, cybernetically (not yet but will), genetically (not yet but will), or a mix of all three.

Brawn just stimulates his body in a way it develops more muscle mass as he consumes more protein and has no hope in hell of beating a bear in a fist fight. And even then it is the Brains that develop performance enhancing drugs.

And in d&d this is remarkably implemented. The wizard does everything what a Brain is supposed to do. Which is everything. And the fighter does what a Brawn is supposed to do. Which is having no hope in hell of challenging the Brain in anyway at all. Just like in real life.

So it's only natural that fighters drop off after the wizard gets his doctorate in magic, just like how bullies drop off after graduating school.

So some people have mentioned since wizards are fantastically competent in all fields of study, so fighters should also be fantastically have super strength. That's fine, but that doesn't change the fact that wizards can create or enslave an army of fantasy creatures who are innately superior to humans in every way, which means nothing changes unless Humans are in fact biologically the most powerful race in the setting, which they are not.

High level Fighters are quite a bit more powerful than human soldiers. Also, I don't think super-soldiers exist in real life. I get your point, though. That being said, the real-life wizards you're talking about really more like WBL-mancers. I mean, designing something doesn't make you more powerful, owning it does.

You can't own what doesn't exist. It's the designers that invent the stuff.

I'll get to everyone's posts later. Don't have a lot of time. Great points are made by all.

[Mystral]

Makes the game more realistic.

Real life wizards make robots. Robots are better soldiers than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make Power Armor. Wizard in Power Armor is better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards make tanks, gunships, battleships, and fully automate them with drone or ai technology. They're better than a human soldier.
Real life wizards use genetic augmentations to turn themselves into super soldiers. Mutant super soldiers are better than human soldiers.
Real life wizards make automated mass production complexes manned by drones and robots that lets him build and churn out machinery of epic proportions quickly and by himself. Human soldiers have no idea where to even start.

In case you didn't notice, real life wizards are anyone in the intellectual fields, mainly technology and science. And a human soldier is someone who spends his life increasing his muscle mass or reflexes through training.

So why are people arguing that once a wizard hits high levels and have enough gold to buy a country, he should still be on par with a human soldier? Makes no sense. Wizards should be stronger than fighters. Because human bodies are fragile, weak, and inferior to even animals. Bears beat humans. Tigers beat humans. So people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through training even fully knowing that they will never be able to beat a bear in strength should be weaker than people who dedicate their lives making their bodies stronger through anything but training like studying biology, chemistry, physics, robotics, etc.

You talk about making things more realistic and then start citing sci-fi. I can't tell if you're joking.

[Gruftzwerg]

Makes the game more realistic.

k, lets have some realistic fun^^

Real life wizards make robots. Robots are better soldiers than human soldiers.

Ehh what? Nope. We can build drones, but not automated fighting robots. That's still sci-fi as far as I know.

Real life wizards make Power Armor. Wizard in Power Armor is better than a human soldier.

I wanna see how the Wizard in a Power Armor should win against a combat trained soldier? How is the Armor gonna help at all against ambush, sniping, traps, hand to hand combat or anything without actual combat experience and knowledge? the wizard will try to hide in his armor like a coward until the soldier finds his track and kills him. Or he will die just from starvation..^^

Real life wizards make tanks, gunships, battleships, and fully automate them with drone or ai technology. They're better than a human soldier.

Not fully automated AI.. That sci-fi too. For everything else mentioned you still need a trained soldier with actual skill to use em. And wizards are never as good as soldiers in that regards. Compare it with video games. How many video game developers are Progamer (top 1%)? Like zero?

Real life wizards use genetic augmentations to turn themselves into super soldiers. Mutant super soldiers are better than human soldiers.

I like comics and manga's too ;)

Real life wizards make automated mass production complexes manned by drones and robots that lets him build and churn out machinery of epic proportions quickly and by himself. Human soldiers have no idea where to even start.

Again, our robots are still not that far. We still need some humans here and there. And especially when it comes to defend and counquer resources.


Thx god that we still have some time until some greedy evil genius will take over the world. Maybe not much time, but yeah..^^

[Rynjin]

"UMD every spell a wizard can" is a strawman, and nothing that I actually said. You specifically mentioned flight and reflex/will saves, which are pretty basic holes that items can and should plug. I'm not expecting fighters to copy every wizard trick, and go running around binding efreeti or creating demiplanes or raising the dead.

I said it's an argument I HAVE seen, not one I've seen you making.

Agreed, and honestly I'd say that being "as good as the wizard class" is a silly goal for a fighter to have anyway. "Good enough to fight CR-appropriate monsters in the monster manual" is the metric we should be using, for Fighters or any other PC class.

That's a really poor metric IMO.

When it comes down to it, every class fights. "Fighting" is not a class defining thing. That, ultimately, is why Fighters suck. Even if you take the statement "Fighters are good enough to fight CR appropriate monsters" at face value...so? So can every other PC class. It's a meaningless metric.

There are roughly 4 pillars of play to D&D, and while fighting is the biggest one, it's still only about 60% of the total game.

[Psyren]

I said it's an argument I HAVE seen, not one I've seen you making.

Ok, good, we're on the same page then.

That's a really poor metric IMO.

When it comes down to it, every class fights. "Fighting" is not a class defining thing. That, ultimately, is why Fighters suck. Even if you take the statement "Fighters are good enough to fight CR appropriate monsters" at face value...so? So can every other PC class. It's a meaningless metric.

There are roughly 4 pillars of play to D&D, and while fighting is the biggest one, it's still only about 60% of the total game.

(I only know exploration, social interaction and combat - what's the 4th pillar?)

I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Should every class be equally good at all the pillars? That's another problem entirely, the "why have a rogue" problem.

And yes, wizards can succeed at all three of the pillars - but the solution there is to make it very costly for them to do so, thus making it much more efficient for them to step back and let other classes shine. 3.5 failed at that, but 5e got a lot closer to succeeding.

(Also - maybe the person who sat down and picked the fighter class did so because they only care about that pillar.)

[Rynjin]

(I only know exploration, social interaction and combat - what's the 4th pillar?)

At least in a lot of games I've played, Investigation/Information gathering.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Should every class be equally good at all the pillars? That's another problem entirely, the "why have a rogue" problem.

And yes, wizards can succeed at all three of the pillars - but the solution there is to make it very costly for them to do so, thus making it much more efficient for them to step back and let other classes shine. 3.5 failed at that, but 5e got a lot closer to succeeding.

(Also - maybe the person who sat down and picked the fighter class did so because they only care about that pillar.)

Equally good? No. But the ability to have a base level of competence at it within the class's features should be available.

IMO every class should interact with every pillar in a unique fashion. Not necessarily to the same level of efficacy, but have the ability to bring something unique to the table.

As a quick example, if the Fighter had the ability to size up the combat prowess of people he sees, that would give him some level of in-class interaction with Social Interaction and Investigation. It is valuable information to know that, ex., the Grand Vizier is hiding the fact that they are a very deadly combatant.

For a class that can already kind of do it all, look at Bard. Bards contribute in combat by buffing and being a secondary combatant; they make passable archers or fencers. They contribute in social interaction by having class features that aid their social skills, and by naturally having a bent towards being Cha based. They contribute in exploration by having a lot of skill points and a bit of magic; this is their weakest pillar, but they still bring something interesting to the table with features like Inspire Competence. They bring something in the pillar of Investigation by, usually, having Diplomacy for Gather Info at the least, and higher level cool options like Legend Lore.

I think every class should have some kind of tiered level of interaction with the pillars. Bard is basically Social Interaction = Combat > Investigation > Exploration.

Fighter IMO should be Combat >= Exploration >Social interaction > Investigation.

Unfortunately they basically bring nothing unique to the table in ANY of the last three.

[Kelb_Panthera]

That's a really poor metric IMO.

Not so much poor as incomplete. A warrior archetype character should be able to competently* fight a foe of his own challenge rating just as a skillful skirmisher archetype character should be able to use his skills to deal with traps, obstacles, and people of his challenge rating and a caster archetype can deal with esoteric magical challenges of his level.

When it comes down to it, every class fights. "Fighting" is not a class defining thing.

I would say that every class participates in combat. The skirmishers don't actually fight much on their own. Casters, unless they've gone gish, don't really fight at all so much a they offer auxiliary support to the other two.

A character of any archetype can build such that they can (poorly) cover the roles of the others or offer them support in turn and probably should, to a certain extent. You can even build characters of one archetype that use class(es) designed for one of the others to a fairly competent degree but they'll actually become -less- capable in the role their classes were intended for.

That is: you can build a face-shredder rogue or a gish but the former won't be as good at the skill game as he otherwise could be and the latter will have trouble with his magic lagging behind where it ought to be, for example.

That, ultimately, is why Fighters suck. Even if you take the statement "Fighters are good enough to fight CR appropriate monsters" at face value...so? So can every other PC class. It's a meaningless metric.

That's not actually true though. A skirmisher rogue or ninja will get abolutely ROFL-stomped by a beater enemy of his own CR and even a caster could find himself in dire straights in a hurry if he aims at the wrong defenses or needs a few rounds of buffing time he's not gonna get. The warriors' advantage is that, unless you come at them while they sleep, they're pretty much always ready for the fight at CR appropriate levels.

This is precisely why "fighting" very much -can- be a character defining thing. As for class defining, it's the archetype that defines the -most- classes in the game. There are more classes and prestige classes dedicated to being warriors than there are of either of the other archetypes, possibly combined.

There are roughly 4 pillars of play to D&D, and while fighting is the biggest one, it's still only about 60% of the total game.

I gotta ask the same thing as psyren here: fighting, puzzle solving/ exploration, social, and.... ??? Unless you're considering exploration and puzzle-solving to be separate things?

That aside, not everyone likes or wants to participate in every aspect of the game. If someone chooses to play a warrior archetype character and puts -zero- effort into being able to interact with NPCs or deal with mundane environmental concerns beyond keeping himself alive and fed, he's sending a very clear signal to the GM that either he's not interested in those other aspects of the game or he has no idea what he's doing in the CharGen minigame. The former should be respected and the latter offered aid by more experienced members of the group.

[Rynjin]

See above, I answered your question while you were writing. =)

[Kelb_Panthera]

See above, I answered your question while you were writing. =)

To put it as succintly as possible, since I'd be largely rehashing what I've already said in this thread; what you've described is already possible within the system as-is. It's just not all pinned exclusively to class and, IMO, doesn't need to be.

If the GM hates christmas* that's an entirely separate problem to what the system allows you to build.




*The magic item christmas tree and special snowflake characters

[PoeticallyPsyco]

I'm sure others have already covered this (and probably better than my sleep deprived brain is currently capable of doing), but what the heck.

Realism as an ideal can work for designing a lot of games; D&D should not be one of them.

That's not to say that there shouldn't be consistency. Of course the rules of the universe should be relatively consistent; that's important for immersion as well as making it possible to improvise and extrapolate. But in a universe where chimerae can eat you, giants laugh at the square cube law, and suggesting conservation of energy would get you laughed out of most schools, constraining martial characters to what a human is capable of on Earth - to what is realistic - is actually detrimental to consistency. As such, 'realism' should take a (distant) back seat to fun game-play, balance, consistency, and making interesting choices available.

What's more, that's already pretty much the case in several areas. AntiAuthority wrote an excellent post a while back (Critiquing the "Guy at the Gym" Fallacy) detailing how realistic human capabilities are already incompatible with gameplay aspects like being able to successfully fight large predators in melee at any skill level (Tyrannosaurus is only CR 8; a level 14 fighter should be able to take on two of them without much trouble). Even ignoring the fact that studying runes can let you shoot lasers from your teeth, the fact that martials' capabilities are way beyond human in some areas but are still arbitrarily kept within human capabilties in others has always been extremely weird to me.

There is an argument to be made that "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" exists not due to realism, but because that's how the fantasy archetypes the game is supposed to simulate work in fiction. Of course wizards are stronger at high level; you wouldn't expect Aragorn to have access to more raw power and utility than Gandalf, no matter how much experience he got. I think that's fair (and suspect that that is the reason for the discrepancy in the first place), but I still disagree with it strenuously, because to me that should still be less important than fun, and being unable to significantly contribute outside of combat (and often having limited options even in combat) has a lot of room for improvement in the fun department. Yes you can always add fun by roleplaying, but you could do the same with a character that also had fun mechanical options, so that's a moot point. One interesting idea I've seen before is that one of the few non-divisive things about 4E is dividing the level 1-30 career into Heroic, Paragon, and Epic, with the relatively realistic mundane martial archetypes existing entirely in Heroic Tier (the first 10 levels); the archetypes exist, and are just as playable as any other archetype, but once you hit 11th level you start going beyond the limits of an ordinary human and never stop, transitioning into more superhuman/magical/mythical archetypes.


EDIT: Having gone through the thread, I'll heartily second the idea of every base class being able to mechanically contribute in every pillar of game-play by default. If at any point you have to say "Okay we're doing social stuff now, I'll just work on my homework" and it's not because you specifically and intentionally sacrificed/traded away those abilities, something has gone wrong at the game design level. Once again, I don't count role-playing, because literally every class is equally capable of role-playing; adding the same amount to each class's total capabilities won't change who's better at it. This wouldn't be a problem if role-play was the main way of dealing with non-combat pillars, but there are literally hundreds of ways to mechanically interact with the noncombat pillars, and they aren't fairly distributed.

Tangent time: 3.5's skill system theoretically does a pretty good job of this, but has some problems. The distribution of skill points for each class doesn't take into the utility they get from class features or the main stat of the class; see Wizards generally having far more skills than Fighters in addition to hundreds of utility spells to learn and then spend 15 minutes preparing in an empty slot. And of course, the mundane skills generally (there are notable exceptions) pale in comparison to magical options at higher levels for problem solving. I'd like to see more epic options for skills, available sooner, and martial classes as a rule having better access to them than magical classes.

Regarding the idea that Brain should always trump Brawn, and thus wizards should be stronger than fighters. I don't have a problem with that per say, but there are a lot more types of brain than book-smart (wizards): the street smart bruiser savvy enough to quickly size up a situation and know how to react, the diplomat who weighs broad implications and subtle nuances, the martial artist who has studied their art to the point of being a science and can size up opponents and run odds at a glance, the tactician who can predict their allies and direct their opponents... I could go on. The Fighter archetype could easily accommodate any or all of these, but in actuality a PC class in the PHB that's typically considered a core party member is (without a lot of investment that actively hinders their fighting prowess) a pure Brawn destined to be, like you say, outclassed by high level. That's weird to me.

[Mordante]

People aren't arguing that. People, broadly, make one of two arguments about Wizards and Fighters.

1. The Wizard should not be allowed to become high level. If doing something would make the efforts of Conan or Aragorn irrelevant, that is not a thing you should be allowed to do.
2. High level Fighters should become more powerful than human soldiers. If the Wizard is going to become Dr. Strange, the Barbarian should become Thor.

Either solution is workable. I personally favor the latter, in no small part because I think Thor is cool and would like to be able to play a character that does Thor stuff without having to be some manner of caster (which Thor is obviously not).

{Scrubbed}