Does Caster > Fighter in Other systems?

[TarlSS]

Tangental to my other thread, I've been thinking that the Caster> Fighter problem doesn't just apply to D&D. Often times spellcasters take primacy in plot and combat in other systems as well, to a much greater degree. Some systems come to mind.

GURPS
Alternity
D20 Modern
Shadowrun
Star Wars

The primary reason for this is that oftentimes, Magic> Technology and there is little precedence in technology> Magic.
The sheer factor of being able to break the laws of physics allows magic-users to function on an entirely different plane of balance.
Often times, the mundane classes or roles are restricted to doing what seems to be feasibly 'realistic', and without much compensation. IE, Navy Seals are probably the highest level of competency you'll come up against in terms of Star Wars and Alternity, but the highest range of acheivement for Jedi or Magi are uh... Universal personal power.

And they're scaled that way too, in terms of leveling/skill point schemes.

What do you think?

[Catharz]

In d20 Modern, technology tends to kick magic in the face. Unfortunately for balance, you can have both.

Of course, 'fighters' still tend to not be as good as spellcasters with awesome fighting abilities or technosavants with awesome fighting abilities.

[User3]

This is a basic conceptual problem that many RPG designers have: they don't define a consistent set of rules for their magic, and so magic doesn't have any limitations. Meanwhile, "mundane" things face limitations, both up front in the system based on the designer's notions of realism and in individual games based on the GM's. When some characters don't even have any theoretical limitations on their power while other characters do, do you expect to find balance? No, and in practice, you don't. The magical characters can do everything the mundane characters can, but the reverse is not true.

In systems where the designers are smart enough to make everyone magical, this isn't even a problem. Mage: the Ascension deals with it upfront by observing that because mages can alter reality with their wills, they can do more or less anything they damn well please; but because everyone is a mage, even the people using technology, it's not a balance issue. (The system has other balance issues, but the magical vs. mundane problem isn't one of them.) Lots of systems try to hybridize "realistic" with "magical" characters, though, and do it in ways that suck.

In a magical world, this distinction doesn't even belong, because there's no difference between magic and nonmagic. An "antimagic field" makes about as much sense as an "antielectromagnetic field" does in our physics, which is to say none at all. People who live in a magical world don't have any basis for comparing it with the physics we're familiar with, so magic is just going to be part of everything else and no one will bat eyelash about it.

The only consistent way to deal with the idea that magic is somehow different is to make a whole new set of rules for it to follow, and try to balance the limitations on it with the explicit and implicit "realism" limitations on mundane phenomena. I don't think I've ever seen anyone succeed at this, but it's at least theoretically possible.

[TarlSS]

Exactly. There are many interactions between Magic-Technology (IE, Technomancy) but very few Technology-Magic.
Those few Technology-Magic interactions tend to be extremely difficult to acheive plot device technologies. (Umak Leth's Force Cages? err. PsiBeacons from Starcraft? )

About the best system for magic I've seen, isn't even in an RPG, it was in Gargoyles where Owen/Puck clearly laid out Science==Magic. Energy is energy.

But that's certainly not true for RPG systems. There are many ways for the magical world to affect the physical, but little recourse viceversa.

The best way would be to scale mundane effects to magical effects on a one to one basis. Your average fireball == flamethrower or missle launcher, why not make that spell as difficult to access and use as the above weaponry? You need to spend about 20,000 to fly long distance with a cessna, 1 million for a decent helicopter- why not make access to flight spells similiar?

Most systems simply don't include a consumate cost for breaking the laws of physics, and they in turn penalize mundane characters by A) making laws of physics unbreakable B) not allowing increased advancement in 'mundane' skills' like shooting, driving, research, etc.

Additionally, the way damage is done in many systems also has this effect. D20 is to blame in particular- your mundane damager just deals damage without much effect; magickers can deal nasty penalizing effects along with damage.

The real life reverse just isn't true- getting hurt is one of the penalties to abilities you can get.

So what's the deal with this bias, and how can you get around it, and further more, encourage others to get around it?

[RandomCasualty]

Magic always has the edge in the theoretical because magic breaks the rules and everything else follows the rules. After all, that's what "magic" is. It's the supernatural and the fantastic. Everything that doesn't follow the basic laws of reality as people know it is classified as magic.

From a game standpoint, magic doesn't have to be unbalanced. While the flavor of magic is that it breaks the laws of reality, magic in the RPG sense is just another game mechanic, and can be balanced by what it does, just like any other mechanic. The main problem that designers get into is that you get some fucktard designer who wants wizards to be able to do everything and then they come up with spells that let them do pretty much anything in the game that anyone else can and more.

Magic just isn't given sufficient limitations really. Someone creates one or two generalized caster classes that are supposed to fit every wizard concept out there, and people just have way too many options. So every single mechanic is available to you.

Designers need to go one of two routes:

-High Power (effectively everyone uses magic. Fighters have sword magic, wizards have spells, rogues have stealth magic, etc.) This is a crazy go nuts style of game, where everyone is doing fantastic things all the time. This is anime style where weird shit just happens and isn't explained.

-Low Magic (magic is special and breaks the rules but there's stuff magic can't do, such that it's often more practical to use a sword than blow someone up wtih a fireball.) This one is more down to earth, where characters tend to do cinematic but realistic things, the kinds of things you'd expect out of most action movies.

[Username17]

In d20 Modern, technology tends to kick magic in the face. Unfortunately for balance, you can have both.

That's the take home message of a lot of games, even oneswhere magic is given strict limitations.

For example in Shadowrun, technology can give you a car. It can take you at 100 KPH and you probably won't even get a ticket. A spirit can be conjured and make you move 5 times as fast. That's great, it means you can walk down that road at 25 KPH - about 1/4th of the speed the car would take you if you gave it a little bit of methane.

But you can also just get in the car, start driving, and make that move five times as fast. Now you're going 500 KPH and that's not even reasonable. The technology is providing a bigger speed multiplier, but once you add both together it's the Crazytown Express.

Magic in Shadowrun has rules. It has limitations. It does things in extremely proscribed ways. But those ways are strictly outside the normal laws of physics, and you can just use technological devices that do things right up to that point and then use Magic to kick yourself up to 11.

Even though the vast majority of magic isn't all that impressive, the mere fact that it doesn't keep you from using computers or microwire or explosives makes the magic user totally awesome.

-Username17

[shau]

I hate to bring this up as an example of balance, but the mages in Rifts never seemed to be all that hot. Of course, in Rifts you could have the most powerful power armor in the whole system at level one.

[Crissa]

The problem with magic as 'breaks rules' is that it does...

In the 'real world' while we don't have 'anti-magnetic fields', we can make a magnetic field in which virtually all electronics fail, or a specific type of magnet is 'broken' and turned to the greater field. (This is one reason we're not hot on sending astronauts very far in space, there's no big magnetic field (the earth) to hide in out there)

But yeah, the biggest problem is that people forget to let the 'non-magical' methods still break the rules, or make real limits to what magic can do.

If it's going to make you run 25mph - why will that multiplier work on a car or robot? If the spirit can only go 25mph, stapling it on a car that goes 100mph isn't going to do anything (unless you run out of gas).

-Crissa

[Catharz]

One idea I like was almost used with the D&D Wu Jen, but without the appropriate balancing mechanics: Using magic involves being able to break the normal rules, but it also involves not breaking a set of abnormal rules.

Then some smart game designer goes and says that wizards can't drive, but that they can cast Overland Flight which is in all ways superior, or says that druids can't use metal armor and then gives them Wild Dragonhide full platemail AND Wild shape.

The is more or less a 'seperate but equal' policy, and therefore probably hard to balance in practice. However, it has plenty of precident. The reason I think that most games don't go for this sort of thing (or if they do, do half-heartedly) is mundane rules are faurly intuitive. You know about how fast a human can run, about how fast a car cane drive. You know that people can't walk through walls, and elepants don't fly unless they're in jumbo jets.
Unfortunately you have not Idea what a Mambo can't do, and you probably also don't know why pregnant women can't make sandpaintings.



Bottom line: You can let mages do the impossible as long as the 'mundanes' can still do the unpossible (for mages), with the caveat that you have to find some way of keeping things balanced, logical, and not too disruptive.

This method would still work best with exclusively magic-using PCs, due to the extreme balance issues. Just saying that everything is 'magic' and worrying only about balance is probably the easier route.

[RandomCasualty]

You honestly don't even need to have "magic" as a whole have limits, just each individual magic user. You can have some wizards who can control minds, some who can levitate stuff, others who throw fireballs, others who conjure and so on. You just can't have one guy who does it all.

And that's the problem with D&D, their magic classes do it all.

But really, that applies to anything in a game balance sense. No one class should be doing it all, regardless of what's magic or not magic. It's just that most of the time the designers are reluctant to break up magic users abilities into "summoner", "blaster", etc. because there's precedent for wizards to do all sorts of stuff and some people want merlin and other guys want Harry Potter and some people want Circe, and so on. The problem is that the D&D wizard isn't just one of those, when you make a D&D wizard you're all of those combined.

[User3]

Shadowrun has the unspoken but persistent theme of elitism in its works however.

Anyone can become a cyborg. Only a tiny minority can become mages.

Mages can increase their magic to infinity. There's a finite limit to how much of a cyborg you can become.

So in a way, caster is > fighter there and nothing can change that short of becoming some sort of weird AI.

This is before getting into problems like magic and technology stacking.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Am I the only person that read this:

1167672065[/unixtime]]So in a way, caster is > fighter there and nothing can change that short of becoming some sort of weird AI.

as


"So in a way, caster is > fighter there and nothing can change that short of becoming some sort of Weird Al."

[fbmf]

No.

Game On,
fbmf

[Fwib]

1167705467[/unixtime]]
Am I the only person that read this:

1167672065[/unixtime]]So in a way, caster is > fighter there and nothing can change that short of becoming some sort of weird AI.

as


"So in a way, caster is > fighter there and nothing can change that short of becoming some sort of Weird Al."

The thought did occur to me.

[edit] What was the name of that cyberpunk-future sort of game where one of the character archetypes was 'semi-famous musician' ?

[Judging__Eagle]

So, the best way to deal with this is to either have everyone use magic, or have magic not be the be all and end all for a game system.

That sounds reasonable.

I think that the alternate casters that K and Frank wrote up for their supplements is a step in the right direction regarding 3.5 D&D though; create casters with an archetype in mind, and then make that character the best at their archetype.

I think that 'generalists' would still be around, but if there are already set-up archetypes that are robust in and of themselves, you'll get less likihood of generalists showing up.


Alternatively, just have a game where everyone is suggested to be a caster in some form or an other or no 'full' casters perhaps.

[Catharz]

1167754575[/unixtime]]

1167705467[/unixtime]]
Am I the only person that read this:

1167672065[/unixtime]]So in a way, caster is > fighter there and nothing can change that short of becoming some sort of weird AI.

as


"So in a way, caster is > fighter there and nothing can change that short of becoming some sort of Weird Al."

The thought did occur to me.

[edit] What was the name of that cyberpunk-future sort of game where one of the character archetypes was 'semi-famous musician' ?

Isn't that the "Rocker" lifepath from CP2020? I hate their class system...

[Fwib]

Yes, I think so - a friend had the book, but I don't recall that we ever got around to playing.

[Endovior]

Well, it depends.

In GURPS, mages get magic the same way everyone gets skills... you pay character points. There's no restriction of 'spell levels', but all spells have prerequisites... which helps seperate mages into archetypes, as a given mage will only pay for the spells he likes; there's a real incentive for not picking up all the crappy low-level spells, because if you don't, you can spend those points getting better spells... although comparatively, the best spells in GURPS < the best spells in D&D... for example, GURPS's equivalent to D&D's Wish is "Great Wish"... which is basically a ritual that requires INSANE stats and 2000 Epic-Mage days to cast, and does much what Wish does in D&D. It's improbable that the PCs will ever actually get to use it, but if they do, and use it for powering up, it completely breaks the game, because it's benefits are permanent and stack without limit, and it essentially adds 4-8 gaming sessions worth of power per casting.

So far as general combat goes, it's relatively easy for a mage to study enough magic to be able to kill people reliably... but then again, anyone can do that; the average HP of ANYTHING is 10. Generally, combat in GURPS averages around the level of an old west shootout; if you get a good hit on your opponent, he'll probably die whether you're using a gun or a fireball. Twinked out, it approaches rocket-launcher tag; unless the characters invest considerable effort in making their characters immortal.

Technology tends to overshadow magic; at any tech level over modern, it costs relatively few points to buy weapons more powerful then any spell, and a creative gadgeteer can do so even at lower tech levels. That's not even addressing the fact that in the new core setting (infinite worlds), magic only works in about half the places... everywhere else, it simply doesn't work, and your mage character is useless.

Overall, balance strongly favors the ranged attacker (unless the technology sucks).