Random rolling + actual mortality took care of wizards pretty much in earlier versions.

The assumption that the Big Four Heroes won't die causes a lot of this issue, as well.

Quote from: robiswrong;759823Random rolling + actual mortality took care of wizards pretty much in earlier versions.

The assumption that the Big Four Heroes won't die causes a lot of this issue, as well.

up to a certain level yes but as I said a wizard has to be playing either dumb or in line with a very rigid paradigm to die after 6th or 7th level usless they are specifically targeted for assassination or similar which is a risk upto about 12th or 13th level.

A key issue of balance of course is that there is a concept that in old school games balance is a factor of the level process so fighters are tough at first but then wizards overtake.
The result of this of course is that at any point in play along that level curve none of the classes are balanced you can almost never have a party where everyone has a well matched niche of powers etc etc

Now I repeat I don't D&D was ever meant to be a balanced game. with most of the rules no thought was given to them at all they emerged through play and the ones that worked for a fast moving adventure game that was fun were kept and others discarded and that is totally fine but looking at the emergent rules and claiming they were a conscious set of options even let alone a well balanced system is obviously ludicrous.

And when some folks decry the travesty of balance that D&D became in 4e and claim balance is not required but then go one to explain through a series of underused, oft times ignored and ill considered rules that the classes in 1e are all balanced is difficult for me to get my head round.

Why its the sort of thing the OSR Taliban might say.....

Quote from: jibbajibba;759821In theory you are right but in actual play D&D is nothing like that.


The description of the default game world in no way matches the reality of the game as played.
Now if we had some more rigorous entry requirements, give wizards entry requirements more like paladins, min 17 intelligence say or you have to roll your class randomly and casters were one in 50 PCs or something then you would have a position as it stands casters are 2 a penny.
You can't compare casters to say savants at medieval courts because the regularity with with they appear makes them close to a skilled craftsman, a mason, metal worker or carpenter, or more like an artist you offer patronage to.

I view actual play D&D has being skewed to the viewpoint of the PCs. They encounter the above more often because that is the social circle they are part of. They don't deal with the seething masses of peasantry on a day to day basis.

Again because of the modern day we are used to dealing with and knowing about strangers from across the globe. The situation for the D&D setting is one of where a day's travel in any direction is the practical limit for 80% of the populace. With once in a year week long journey. And a once in a decade month long journey.

PCs are the exception because they travel far and encounter at lot of variety.

As far as entry requirement, you could roleplay that like in Ars Magica or Harnmaster Magic but in D&D it can be abstracted by the virtue that you created a character of that class. A wizard PC has had a master, had the connections or luck to become an apprentice, spent the time learning and is now on his own for the first time.

He is part of a loose but privileged class that includes other adventuring types.

And I will stress that the above is only for when the referee wants an explanation, or has a interesting idea that dovetails nicely with the above.

As for me, the social background for the Majestic Wilderlands is two decades worth of extrapolation and actual play based on the premise of the last two posts.  It mostly background noise but I had observant players pick up on it and use it to their advantage. It also served as a source of complications that led to adventures.

It has also checked more industrious players who attempted to ignite the industrial revolution on their own. The main source of frustration is the lack of anybody they can rely on to make industrial revolution happen. The inhabitants just don't GET it. They have little concept of being on time other than sunrise, noon, etc. Or working steady for hours on hours throughout the year. They are burst workers for the most part. They work hard during say harvest or during an emergency. But afterwards it is back to the slow rhythms of the agricultural year. In our history this was overcome by sheer brutality.

In most D&D Settings somebody trying this would be quickly be consider an evil overlord and bring down the ire of the established powers and the interest of adventuring parties.

Yes eventually the magical industrial revolution will happen and it will work exactly like the distractors say it would with unlimited iron and all that. But the typical D&D setting is set in the time before that with centuries to go before circumstances are right and the intellectual foundation is in place to make it happen.

Along with the fact the player is not willing (or finds it boring) to make his character part of an industrial assembly line.

How does "wizards are actually super rare people in the setting" square up as being from the same grognard mindset that spawns the "any player who wants to play something rare suffers from special snowflake syndrome."

Quote from: Emperor Norton;759835How does "wizards are actually super rare people in the setting" square up as being from the same grognard mindset that spawns the "any player who wants to play something rare suffers from special snowflake syndrome."

I think those are two different things.  IMO anyway.  I'm OK with players wanting to play that rare mage because PCs are rare by definition anyway.  But just because the PC happens to be a mage, doesn't mean that there should be mages in every town.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;759835How does "wizards are actually super rare people in the setting" square up as being from the same grognard mindset that spawns the "any player who wants to play something rare suffers from special snowflake syndrome."

In 1/2e wizard is easy to qualify for, it's the Paladin or Bard that would be the special snowflake. Jibba has a point that if wizards were so rare they should have much stiffer entry requirements like a paladin. If you were never taking in things like the actual setting or other realistic factors.

Like adventurers in of themselves are a rare breed and that Dnd itself is centered on the player point of view because it has to be to actually work. Now in 2e if you wanted to be any good at being a wizard you really should have an INT of 14 or higher you can play that INT 9 wizard but realistically they're pretty boned from the start. The older the version of Dnd the less the stats actually matter if at all.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;759835How does "wizards are actually super rare people in the setting" square up as being from the same grognard mindset that spawns the "any player who wants to play something rare suffers from special snowflake syndrome."

Wizards are clearly pretty common as adventurers.  A wizard isn't awesome just *because* he's a wizard.  It's because of what they *do*.

And that's the real annoyance of "special snowflake syndrome".  Wanting to be special because of what your character *is*, not what your character *does*.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;759836I think those are two different things.  IMO anyway.  I'm OK with players wanting to play that rare mage because PCs are rare by definition anyway.  But just because the PC happens to be a mage, doesn't mean that there should be mages in every town.

Yeah. I was mostly just yanking peoples chains on that one. I should know better, but sometimes its fun.

(Though I do laugh at some of the more extreme "special snowflake" accusations I see sometimes)

Just make special snowflake a class. The guy can have a book-length backstory at level one, hold his pinky out when he drinks his espresso and wear a beret and a Che shirt. Done!

Quote from: Sacrosanct;759794D&D has always had "world breaking" spells as you describe from day 1.  However, there was also always the assumption that PCs were pretty rare, and if you did ever run into that high level mage, he had a lot better things to do than go around creating walls of iron.

Quote from: estar;759832I view actual play D&D has being skewed to the viewpoint of the PCs. They encounter the above more often because that is the social circle they are part of. They don't deal with the seething masses of peasantry on a day to day basis.

Yep. In my campaigns, one in a hundred people have a level. The vast majority of those are fighters. Next most common is thieves. Wizards are in the neighbourhood of one in a thousand. Most of those are level 1-2 apprentices and dabblers. A duchy with 5,000 inhabitants might have one wizard over level 4. He's probably an eccentric weirdo who lives in a cave or a tower researching the arcane writings of Mergo the Cabalist, not a mid-level bureaucrat in the Department of Civic Infrastructure at Castle Fairweather.

Same with clerics. Most are 0-level lay priests. Clerics with a level are dedicated warrior-priests. Since most don't do crazily dangerous adventuring stuff, there are half as many 2nd level clerics as 1st level clerics. And half as many 3rd level as 2nd level. A 5th level cleric is likely a renowned, fanatical warrior-priest. He doesn't spend all day sitting on his ass in a temple in a city curing people with gout - he's going on perilous quests to the Mountains of Shadow to destroys nests of ghouls.

Basically, only adventurers have and gain levels. For the most parts, adventurers are weird, obsessive outcasts. Ergo, people with levels don't play a big part in the mundane management of cities and kingdoms.

The collision happens not so much over special snowflake but over "PCs can't die" + "everyone levels up at the same rate" + "replacement characters start at party level" + ignore INT limits on spells known + ignore chance to know spell + magic users can freely pick their spells instead of having to discover/research/learn from a willing teacher.

As Robiswrong said upthread, balance isn't just the wizard sucking at low level, it's also the attrition of PC wizards.

Quote from: Skywalker;758707The term OSR Taliban is being applied to those who just disagree with any element of 5e,

I've explicitly stated, several times, that not everyone who has a problem with 5e or is distrustful of WoTC is "OSR Taliban".  There are many people who have legitimate and honest reasons not to like 5e, or who felt sufficiently burnt by Wizards in the past (trust me, I can totally relate) that they're just not ready to trust anything they say until they  have the product in their hands.
And of course, there's also a lot of people displaying irrational hatred of 5e who have nothing to do with the OSR.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;759799ITT: People who have said 5e is fundamentally broken because of things that would be small things to change at the table (at will cantrips), tell someone who thinks 3e is broken for things that would be large things to change at the table (revamping high level magic, crafting rules) how the game isn't fundamentally broken because they can change things.

Oh, the hypocrisy.

(Not to say I agree with Gnomeworks. I think the SGT is just as wonky as a lot of other tests, but high level magic + 3.x crafting rules do break 3.x play, from experience at the table)

See, I don't have a problem with people saying 3.5 has issues.  Of course it does.  It has gigantic issues, and the fact that I can change them all doesn't change that fact that it does indeed have them.  

Where I draw the line is people saying that "1e was just the same thing" when they either didn't play 1e at all, or they played 2e with half the rules and are commenting on 1e.  That's bullshit.

2e, 3e, 3.5e made successive changes to the Magic-User that fundamentally altered the structure of the class from the 1e version.  The 1e version of the class that I actually played for years and GM'd for longer is not the fake version people have floating in their head.

3e's problem was the Butterfly Effect, Death of a Thousand Cuts, whatever you want to call it.  A series of isolated, minor changes that created a fundamental difference in the paradigm of gameplay compared to previous versions.

So, now I see a supposedly minor change in 5e, a supposedly more old school game, Wizards having at-will cantrips, I say the exact same thing, I think it's one of those small isolated changes that fundamentally changes the Wizard class (guaranteed low damage output) which can snowball into massive differences in the game as a whole.  Time will tell.

In any case, the Rule 0 fallacy does not apply to any game, and I've commented many times on the Denner's ability to find true holes in math, which is important in determining if a class can indeed do what the numbers say it is supposed to do.

Quote from: jibbajibba;759821In theory you are right but in actual play D&D is nothing like that.

A bloke walks into a random tavern on the road to blah blah and he expects to find a couple of fighting men, a wizard or two and a holy man capable of miracles. When those guys die looting some tomb or other the survivors expect to stumble across another couple of like minded adventurers. There appears to be a constant unending supply of wizards available at every hostlery and injured adventurers expect to be able to walk into the local temple and receive miraculous healing.

It's obvious some 1e players touched you in a very bad place indeed.

Quote from: CRKrueger;759865It's obvious some 1e players touched you in a very bad place indeed.

You know it's funny. I have given a ton of shit to people here because they are still pissed off about 4e, but, man, no game keeps people mad longer than 1e.
That's  a hell of a thing.