Balancing wizards and warriors

[Arkandel]

Hello folks,

I was thinking about the troubles we had a long time ago running a Wheel of Time MU* so I wanted to open the topic for debate here. It could be fun.

So here's the thing: Assume players can play both 'magic' users and warriors (anyone without magic!) in the same setting. It could be that you're basing your game on books or a TV show, like we did, maybe it's an original work, but ultimately you have a girl who can throw fireballs from her fingertips and a guy who wields sharp pieces of metal in his hand.

How do you balance these different characters? Do you balance them out?

What are the consequences either way? For example if (which is not necessarily a true assumption) most players gravitate towards 'wizards' because of their relative power levels you may end up with skewed demographics, assuming they're supposed to be rare for your setting. On the other hand hand-picking players eligible to play those rare types might lead to allegations of favoritism.

Thoughts?

[Derp]

So, really, it's a question of Power vs. Resistance.

Warriors are strong. They are muscular and can endure almost any kind of physical hardship. They have a lot of physical power and bodily resistances.

Wizards, too, are strong. They are strong willed, and can bend reality to their whims. They're capable of seeing through most bullshit that tries to fool the mind.

Either sort can be charming, or not. Either sort can be naive, or not.

It becomes a question of deciding which things you want to be good at, and which things you want to be bad at. You can't be good at everything. You must be bad at something. And then you set up the system so that the powers and resistances work in opposition to each other. Mental power ignores physical resistance. Physical power doesn't give a damn how strong your mind is.

Etc.

Don't let them double dip. If you wanna play a reality-twisting wizard, don't let them have fireballs. Or create a reason that conjuring a fireball works against you. Sure, you can conjure up a big ball of flaming something, but it has a lot of weight and it has to be thrown like a baseball, which requires the beefy muscles you ain't got. Let them have charms and divinations and things that would typically be considered 'utility' type things.

Anyway, that's the beginnings of how I would do it.

[Arkandel]

@derp Thanks for answering! It sounds like you're in the school of balancing PCs.

Aside of the how that would work, do you care to comment on the why? Do the pros of wizards and warriors being roughly equal in power outweigh the cons?

[Derp]

@arkandel

Well, the fact that we have a thread about this at all would suggest that some kind of balance is necessary. Generally speaking (with yes some obvious and notable historical and philosophical exceptions), players will not choose a position that is objectively inferior in every way to other players with the same level of resources. They will seek to mostly maximize their advantages within the realms of what seems amusing to play, maybe sacrificing mechanical advantage for story coolness.

If you have this Ruling Class of Magical Badasses and this subclass of filthy stick-swinging peasants, why would anyone choose to play the peasant? Why wouldn't everyone want to play the magical badass?

And why would you, as the gamerunner, want to set up a situation where the Magical Badass Ruling Class is only in the hands of a few players while all the rest of them have to play stick-swinging peasants just to conform to the numbers game you set up in your theme document?

Hell, for that matter, if the Uberwizards are so powerful in the first place, how come they haven't just outbred all the plebes and now everyone is an Uberwizard in the same way we ate fucked pressed Neanderthal into relative oblivion outside of a few lines of DNA?

In some way, there has to be a way for those two forces to keep each other in check. The system of tradeoffs has to be the core conceit of any fair game, assuming you care about fairness. Players should be relatively equally effective at the things they choose to give a damn about, if they've put equal resources into it.

[Misadventure]

There are also several sources of balance to consider:

• how much damage you can do or special abilities you have
• how the world will treat you socially
• how well you face what the world offers in opposition (it might be that wizards are easily screwed when facing say lots of archers, or metal armor, OR that all major threats require magic to even try to face)

The "obvious answer" is make everyone wizards, but warriors just describe their spells as attacks. That never miss magic missile spell becomes perfect aim charm with a thrown weapon that counts as magic and we never run out of.

Really I'd just look at the challenges you want to offer and see if Wizards or Warriors just wont work out. Or go the Ars Magica route, and everyone has a wizard and everyone has a warrior, but each mission features only 1-2 wizards.

[Sunny]

Balance and letting everyone play what they want > disparate power levels w/ restricted slots

[GreenFlashlight]

@arkandel said in Balancing wizards and warriors:

How do you balance these different characters?

How does magic work in this setting? What are its rules? If it has rules, then it has exploits. Presumably something about the way magic works makes it infeasible to turn all your enemies into lawn chairs, so what is that something?

[Arkandel]

@greenflashlight Those are valid questions.

While obviously it's a case by case basis, the original issue all those years ago which prompted me to start a thread now was that in the Wheel of Time the power gap between channelers (the 'wizards' of the setting) and the 'warriors' was very significant. And that included some augmented types of 'warriors' who had special tricks up their sleeves, not just regular well-trained combatants.

When it comes to its magic, in the WoT setting the canonical checks and balances are either very much on a macro-scale (a relatively small group of women wouldn't last long against entire nations launching constant attacks against them) so that they had to self-restrain or too long term; male channelers became mad and rotted or burned out, but that wouldn't easily happen within the scope of playing a PC.

So the issue we had was that entire factions who were supposed to have the upper hand and be feared by channelers were not, so if you played a character among those you'd get a different experience than what would be expected from the setting.

Demographics were similarly skewed; at some point a friend of my PC had joked IC that he was starting to assume every woman he met could channel since it was happening to him so often, even though they were supposed to be very rare indeed.

However outside of that example I'd urge us to consider more common scenarios in current MU*. For example in comic book games are people not choosing to play Robin/Hawkeye as opposed to Superboy/Thor? In Star Wars games are other types of characters than Jedi or Sith popular and successful as archetypes?

[GreenFlashlight]

@arkandel Well, if you're wanting things balanced on an individual level, there are generally two factors that make magic no more appealing than a sword: wind-up time (all else being equal, a spell takes longer to cast than it takes to shank a bitch) and/or cost (all else being equal, the danger of casting a spell is higher than the danger of trying to shank a bitch). I can't be more specific because the only thing I remember about WoT is how very weird it was about women.

[Derp]

@greenflashlight said in Balancing wizards and warriors:

I can't be more specific because the only thing I remember about WoT is how very weird it was about women.

It was weird about women.

And weird about men.

And indigenous people.

And poor people.

And rich people.

WoT is just weird about people.

[Arkandel]

<braid tugging intensifies>

[Tinuviel]

In terms of mechanical balance, I've got no advice. I try to avoid digging deep into the minutiae of mathematics as it gives me indigestion.

In terms of story balance, however, that's far easier. If you want people to play an equal number of warriors to wizards, then you must give both things to do that only they can do. We all know the stories of Mages in WoD coming in and messing everything up by being universally capable. If you're designing a setting from the ground up, give story elements to warriors that only warriors can do, and the same for the wizards.

While doing this, also create things that they can only do together if you want them to work in concert.

[Carma]

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[Coin]

@carma said in Balancing wizards and warriors:

Avatar seemed to do it fine most of the time. You have plenty of characters like Jet without bending power who can go toe-to-toe with many benders. Physical projectile weapons seem to be pretty handy against benders, in particular.

If you're trying to balance numbers, that's going to depend on what numbers you want to take into account.

If you're trying to balance freeform play, I'm sure that Avatar core rulebook will be pretty handy.

I'm not sure why Avatar is the first thing I think of. But this would be the same discussion if you were balancing ghosts versus fairies, demolitions experts versus vampires, or pirates versus cats. It's all a matter of making flavor match balance.

And if you have too many people picking cats and not enough pirates, why are you making classes equate to factions in the first place? Let the cats join the pirates to be part of the seafaring faction and let the pirates find solace amongst the sewer cats, sailing the unseen seas.

The problem with Avatar as an example is that Avatar's characters can go toe-to-toe with each other based on narrative need. Sokka can hold his own against a bender because it's necessary for the narrative; while Aang can take on twenty trained soldiers who've been specifically trained to battle benders because it's necessary for the narrative, etc.

That doesn't apply to game balance when you're using stats and dice rolls. Not unless you're okay with the GM fudging pretty much everything.

[Tinuviel]

The only way to really determine what works for you personally, your game, and your players is to do extensive testing, and be willing to alter mechanics as you go - and have players willing to accept that.

[Jennkryst]

Smart ass answer is 'define wizard and define warrior'

...

More reasonable answer is give each their own cool thing. AD&D gave the warrior classes Followers. The wizard got high level spells, the warrior got an army to lead. FFG L5R gives Shugenja spells and rituals, and gives Bushi martial arts Kata that let them do things no Shugenja can dream of. In Shadowrun, the mage gets Metamagic... so just HR that something something magical interference, Magic Attribite does not let you have Alpha, Beta, or Deltaware. Or maybe give the Samurai access to their own metamagic stuff... like Otaku/Technomancers get access to MatrixMagic.

Ooooor redefine everything, D&D 4e style. This will piss everyone off, so fair warning.

Edit because spelling is hard

[Carma]

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[Ominous]

Ars Magica method: Mages are the main characters and are overpowered compared to everyone else. Martial characters are trusted sidekicks. Don't worry about balance.

Classless method: Why can't martial characters also dabble in magic and vice versa?

Magic Item method: Magic can only be cast through magic items with each magical item carrying only one spell that it can cast, so they're more like special abilities that anyone can get. See Errant RPG's use of grimoires.

Magic Is Draining method: Magic spells cost magic points to cast (say 1 to 5 out of 10 to 20 total points a character could have). Magic points recover very slowly (say 1 point per day). When you cast a spell, you better mean it.

Magic Is Hard method: It takes a long time to learn how to cast any given spell, so the only people who know more than X are old. X being 2 or 5 or whatever works.

Magic Is Dangerous method: Mages risk flubbing their spell and Bad Things Happen (TM) when they roll poorly. See Warhammer Fantasy RPG, a lot of OSR retroclones (Dungeon Crawl Classics comes to mind), and a slew of other pen & paper RPGs.

Magic Is Evil method: Magic corrupts you when you use it. Only evil people cast it or casting too much risks you becoming an evil NPC or something like that. See Symbaroum.

Magic Is Weak method: Magic does very minor cantrip-like things only.

Magic Is Chaos method: When you cast a spell, you're not quite sure what's going to happen. More dangerous than Magic Is Dangerous, in that with MID, when you do things right, the results are always the same. With this method, there are no standard results, so who the fuck knows whether that flame spell you're casting will light a candle, light a fireplace, light a fireball, or light the whole city?

Magic Is Inhuman method: Is yous an elf or dragon in a human-only PCs game? No? No magics for you!

Magic Is Slow method: All magic is ritual magic - brewing potions, crafting magic items, performing long rituals, etc. No casting a fireball in the heat of battle. If you want to kill someone, it will be quicker and easier just to stab them than it is to spend the three days casting "Slay That Dude" after collecting all the requisite ingredients, not to mention having to learn That Dude's true name.

[il-volpe]

Balanced character types on a MU don't mean the same thing as in a table-top, unless you do not allow character advancement, or you give every player the same amount of XP and let newcomers have that same amount out of the gate.

You might think of 'not balanced, but balances out over time' methods, like letting people start as either a mediocre fighter or a really shitty wizard. Mediocre fighter becomes Kinda Good Fighter, Really Shitty Wizard becomes Shitty Wizard, by the time he becomes Pretty Good Wizard the other guy could be Excellent Fighter. Even an Obscenely Splendid Fighter is kinda hosed taking on a Really Good Wizard, but for the first handful of levels the fighter's got it in the bag.

[Devrex]

@arkandel As a fellow enthusiast of this specific theme (though it does strike me as being way weirder about gender and a dozen other things than it did in the 90s) I'd say one thing I notice about WoT games is that they don't typically enforce the drawbacks of being Aes Sedai very well.

These women are not supposed to use the power as a weapon save in the very last defense of their lives or against Darkfriends or whatever else. Moiraine literally hid her face and let Lan handle most things because people would come out with pitchforks and torches if they knew an Aes Sedai was among them. This consequence almost never shows up in these games; it's almost never emphasized by storytellers, and half the time game runners have ignored the fact that canonically, Aes Sedai received no weapons training whatsoever. Seeing AS wear pants is pretty common on these games. Seeing them carrying swords is equally common. You could enforce some by not letting them take brawl or melee or ranged; yes of course the Green Ajah fights but they fight with the One Power and they train to fight Dreadlords and Shadowspawn, not the rank and file.

This makes the warders helpful and relevant again.

If you're not in Tar Valon they should definitely be rare; I only have seen a handful of games where they aren't, and if you're trying to focus on the day to day lives of people in Andor or the Borderlands or something then you probably have to just make them an NPC-only role so that when Plotrelevant Sedai shows up it's meaningful and important and oh she needs the PCs to do a thing (or is bad news bears and the PCs need to find a way to arrow her in the dark or whatever).

If you just go out into some part of the world where they're not relevant and you wanna go Aiel or something then being very clear about the social rules, norms, and mores and only approving concepts that fall within those could help.

And maybe even just saying in your documentation: "Hey guys, we want people to actually want to play warders (or whatever else you want played) so can you please consider RPing your character in ways that doesn't render them utterly irrelevant, here's some examples...could help. Nobody's making those choices maliciously, they're making them cause they seem really cool at the time and because they're being allowed to make them.