Empirical thread. One of the more popular contemporary criticisms against older D&D editions, and particularly 3e, has been that Wizards, or single-classed spellcasters in general, completely overshadow Fighters in play, to the degree of making them useless in play and depriving them of their niches. This is sometimes referred to as "caster supremacy". The expression of the argument ranges from the sensible to the, well, hysterically resentful. What I find interesting is that this phenomenon is described as self-evident, and very common in pre-4e D&D. But going back a few years, I do not remember the argument cropping up all too often (if at all), or being mentioned as a fundamental flaw of A/D&D's design. There was a lot of criticism, of both the game as a whole (classes! levels! alignments! random chargen!) and specific editions (THAC0! alignment breaking penalties! spiky dungeonpunk hair!), but this didn't seem to be a common one.

My hypothesis has been that it is

• a product of "spherical cow" fallacies (as advocated by Justin Alexander);
  
• and rooted in specific play styles (e.g. heavy charop, strongly balanced organised play, the "15 minute adventuring day") that have seeped into D&D's basic assumptions and player expectations (as mentioned in my previous, sometimes inflammatory posts on the relevance of game culture).
  

However, I may as well be mistaken, and it may be that this is a relevant and serious flaw in D&D design, and I have just not been aware of it due to sample bias. So, I am asking for your input in the following questions:

• If you have played Fighters (or similar characters) in pre-4e D&D (especially 3.x), have you commonly experienced the loss of player agency, disempowerment, or a significant intrusion on your class niche, due to spellcasting player characters?
• If you have experienced it, have you been able to remedy the problem in your group? How?
• In your experience, are there significant (campaign-damaging) power disparities between spellcasting and non-spellcasting classes?
• In your opinion, if we can consider "caster supremacy" a design problem in D&D, is it a problem that has always existed (and been potentially made worse by 3.x), or is it one that has only gained prominence recently? Why?

***I cannot stop anyone from offering a purely theoretical perspective, but I would appreciate if you posted experiences (or lack thereof) you have seen (or not seen) in actual play.*** I will post mine later.

In 3e they added spells per day to the wizards limit and introduced several new rules (5' step, concentration checks, limits on when a spell can be disrupted) that when taken together with the fact that fewer and fewer people play in the dungeon with enough encounters per day up exhaust the wizard, nor scare him with stupid black swan events, wizards are now able to nova with more spells than before, practically from the front line, without fear.

The only job the fighter has is to protect the wizard but turn based movement makes that impossible sense the bad guys get to move their 6-8 spaces and "walk around."

Caster Supremacy isn't a problem in the D&Ds I play.  It was a problem in the 3.0/3.5 and like games I played.

I'm assuming you're talking about mid-high to high level D&D here (what those levels are vary by edition; in Original, Basic and AD&D1 those would be 6-9 and onward).

In high-level AD&D (for the sake of this discussion I do not include 2e in that, since I have only played 2nd edition a few times and am not entirely familiar with it), casting times are a factor.  The magic-user wants to employ a Spell of Pretty Much Instant Death, Forever?  If initiative is lost and the Big Bad also has magic (almost a given in high-level AD&D) then the Big Bad can either summon hordes of minions, or lay down a pattern of area-effect damage that will foil the hero's spells.  In those cases, the fighters shine.

Even assuming a win, let us take the reliable magic-user's standby spell, the fireball.  In AD&D, our hypothetical high-level magic user of say 12th level can lob up to 4, for 12d6 damage.  12d6 damage is 72 points, on average though it's going to be 35.  This isn't enough to fell a single high level fighter who makes his saving throw (and the odds diminish precipitously if that opponent is a dwarf with a high CON score, or an enemy monk, etc.).  It is entirely ineffective against the HARD (Huge Ancient Red Dragon).  In return, the HARD can breathe for 88 points of damage.  This will kill a 12th level magic user, even one with an 18 CON and maximum HP per level, period, who fails their save.  An average HPed magic user who makes their save is still going to die.  Against supernatural beings like demi-gods, demons and the like, those creatures get a saving throw - after they check for magic resistance!  Consider fighting even a lowly Type II (Hezrou) summoned up by an evil magic-user:
55% magic resistance, 9 HD.  The Type II may then employ psionic blast to crush the magic-user on the spot.

Meanwhile, the fighters (and thieves, and clerics!) in this high-level party (who are all 13th level or better - they to a one level faster than the magic-user)...well, the Type II doesn't have "Sword resistance, 50%", and by this point nearly everyone will be carrying an ensorcled weapon of adequate power to damage the creature.

But soft...!  Let us consider another level appropriate encounter of the more mundane type: the 36 HD Brontosaur.  Average hit points: 162.  With 36HD it is almost guaranteed to make its save v. spells against whatever the magic-user has to throw at it.  So the magic user has to bring at least three to four spells to bear against it (assuming the beast is provoked to attack; to be fair they are fairly docile...we hope), and this assumes a single creature.  Meanwhile, the aforementioned fighters must still be in the fray - the magic-user confronted with the creature can't simply stand in front of it hoping not to get trampled.

How about the typical horde of lowly orcs, or hobgoblins?  They come in bunches of up to 300-400, and if you're fighting them in a dungeon and the DM is doing his job they're fighting back smart.  Net traps to drop on the back of the party, murder holes for boiling oil, even volleys of arrows fired over the skirmish line into the rear of the party...a single sling-stone can stop the heartiest spell.

While Basic and Original D&D didn't have spell casting times (Swords & Spells sorta-kinda introduced them for OD&D), there's still ample bad things that can happen to high level casters before they can get their spells off.  Nothing (but death) interrupts the swinging mace, dagger or longsword, or loosed arrow.  Period.  Is it easy for the Dungeon Master to "manage" adventures so closely?  Not particularly - but under any circumstances, and not pertaining exclusively to high-level magic user, the high-level campaign isn't a super easy thing to manage.  Ultimately magic-users will run out of spells.  Fighters (and thieves, and monks, and clerics) won't run out of sword/dagger/mace/bare arms.

Now...again, I can't speak for 2e.  In 3e, I guess the designers said "it needs to be MORE FANTASTICAL!!!111" and started dumping more and more power into the hands of magic-users, to the point that only an idiot wouldn't "take a level or three" of spellcasting ability then add feats to extend and improve the spells they had.  But that's their problem.  One which 3.5 only worsened, in my opinion.

Caster supremacy is totally a thing at higher levels. If you don't play at the higher levels, you won't notice it. It was always an issue, just in the AD&D days, Gygax used to respond to it with "Yeah, and that's the way it should be! Get off my dick!" Or words to that effect. Greyhawk was kicked around by the Circle of Eight, who were all Magic Users. Robillar was highly unusual for their high level protagonists.

3e made this thing a lot more noticeable and a lot more people thought it was therefore a problem. This happened for several reasons:

• Expected level gain in 3e is much faster than it is in previous versions. When was the last time you heard an AD&D player describe 11th level characters as "mid level"?
  
  
• Low level fighters used to lord it over Magic Users. Weak hit points and one spell per day compared with weapon specialization and exceptional strength. People who noticed the Fighter/Wizard imbalance at high levels would generally retort that at low levels the upper hand was on the other foot. People described that a balanced over the campaign. In 3e, a Wizard has three spells per day and is potentially quite resilient with his toad familiar and his light crossbow. So no one really has a leg to stand on when they say that low level wizards experience comparable balance issues the other way at low levels.
  
  
• Hit Point Inflation, Monster Attributes, and to-hit penalties for iterative attacks make 3e Fighters degrade with respect to their environment much faster than they did in AD&D times.
  
  
• The 3e suggested Wealth by Level is a major kick in the dick to equipment dependent characters. There is a serious flaw with that chart, where costs are quadratic and expected wealth is logarithmic, and the equipment you are supposed to have falls behind the curve quite severely between 5th and 14th level. This puts the hurt on Fighters in that level range (because they need equipment to function), but not on Wizards (because they don't).

But yes, having the Wizard piss all over the Dwarven Warrior at high levels was totally part of the game in original D&D. Hell, Gygax straight up told the Dwarves that they weren't even allowed to gain levels once the Magic User started hitting the high level spells. It's just that the concept of what was acceptable table balance was different then and people were OK with it.

-Frank

Wizards didn't deprotagonize anyone, they did it to themselves.  CharOp, 15-minute day, supremacy of rules over GMing etc. Is what led to the problem.  I haven't had problems with fighters in any version of D&D up to 3.5, provided the GM knows what the hell he is doing.

You can't solve the problem of bad GMing through game design, no matter how hard WotC and the Forgeites keep trying.

One of the 3.5 games several of my circle of friends were playing around two or so years ago featured a sorcerer who at the start of every fight transformed into a blue dragon.* Everybody else in the game was a low-to-mid level fighter type. Most encounters seemed to run at 'a Pit Fiend to fight the dragon and his minions to fight the other PCs'.

*Apparently he used the create magic item feat to make some Staff of transforming into Dragonkind he had picked up from a 3rd party supplement, If I had been the GM it would not have happened.

I understand it is fairly common in 3.x D&D, but I've never really seen it in earlier editions (although I've never used the 2e Player's Option material). In fact, high level fighters usually dominate because of their great saving throws and hit points. They can charge a powerful mage and not worry much about taking a spell or two in the face.

I think the three main mechanical contributors to this in earlier editions are:

1) Savings throws vary only by the level of the target. The target has the same chance to save if the caster is 1st level or 30th level. This has the effect of limiting the power of higher level spell casters.

2) There was no "concentration" -- if a spell-caster took even a point of damage in the round before he got his spell off, the spell fizzled (could not be cast but disappeared from the caster's mind as if he had cast it).

3) Magic items were less common and certainly could not be easily created by PCs. Even powerful items like a wand of fireballs were not all that great as the fireballs created were cast as if by a mere 6th level caster (6d6 fireballs). They also were generally hard to recharge.

QuoteHave you ever been deprotagonised by Wizards?

Nope.  Because I used to play as a wizard in 3e.  I didn't even have to do any charop.

Quote from: CRKruegerprovided the GM knows what the hell he is doing.

Re-writes the classes?  I always wanted to make casting far more dangerous, harder to get spells, etc.  I like that sort of stuff, especially when I'm playing a caster, because it creates all sorts of cool situations and whatnot.  1e had a lot of weird restrictions on casters, but they're not so weird when taken in context (Haste aging the caster, system shock checks, super-long spell prep times for big spell lists, etc.).

Mike Mearls once ran into a game of A|State I was in, shredded my character sheet, and told the GM that he was taking my spot in the game.

I'd have went home to mope about it and post on the Livejournals, but he also stole my bus fare.

Mike. Bloody. Mearls.

I was totally deprotagonized by a wizard in the Forgotten Lands once, the bastard! The elf got him with an arrow through the throat. Too late for me, but served him right!

-clash

In pre-3x D&D, low-level fighters (1-4) were substantially more powerful than magic-users; mid-level (5-6) they were about equal; and then by about lvl 7 magic-users tended to dominate.

We always saw the magic-user dominance at high levels as the reward for their weakness and fragility at low levels.

Was it a problem? Well, some players never wanted to play magic-users because they didn't enjoy that low-level fragility. And most of our D&D was level 1-6. And I don't know that I'd call it resentment, but the players of non-magic-users would get a bit demoralized from level 7 on when the spellcasters took centre stage and dominated.

On the other hand, the players who took fighters did so because they didn't want to learn rules (spells), and the guys who played spellcasters enjoyed learning that stuff. So different kinds of players were attracted to different classes from the outset.

Regardless, I don't have a problem with efforts to make spellcasters a bit stronger at low levels, and fighters a bit tougher at higher levels. But 3x was so focused on mechanical balance and power synergies, and the power ranges different groups enjoy are so diverse, that you were never going to make everybody happy.

It's only ever happened in my main group once.  I was playing a Druid and a buddy of mine was a monk.  The look on his face when my Druid and his Animal Companion totally made the rest of the party irrelevant was so sad that I reigned it in after that.

At other times I've taken statements of "Wizards suck!" as a challenge and relished the opportunity to humble the ignorant.

The few times I played in some high level AD&D/D&D games, it essentially degenerated into a complete joke.  (ie. Levels 20, 30, 40+, etc ... in 1E AD&D, and above level 20 in 3E/3.5E using the crappy epic level handbook).  The players almost always chose spellcaster classes, at such ridiculous high levels.

Short of using powerful gods, the monsters were no match for the players.  It felt like the players were playing in "god mode" in a first person shooter video game.

At times I wonder whether high level stuff was just thrown in to the game as an afterthought back in 1970's.  Sorta similar to automobile speedometers which displayed speeds way greater than 100 mph, but in the end most drivers will rarely ever drive significantly over 100 mph.

If the group you play with, and the DM, know what they're doing, it's not a problem.

My highest level d&d characters were MUs. Yet, i played a support role most of the time, besides getting rid of 3d12 Goblins.

I was, but it is was in prison, so that doesn't count...





...right?

Seanchai