TheRedPriest wrote:It's not so much that the fighter is under-powered compared to the magic-user, so much, as low-level fighters are under-powered compared to low leveled-clerics.
I think AD&D -- despite the spells at 1st level and the bonus spells -- pretty well addressed that, although what UA giveth unto the C may be one reason to give more to the F. Although the cleric's capacity for independent operation is remarkable, in the usual course of things the class is much more of a
supporting character than the fighting man.
With strategies built around the success of
the party, the fighter typically gets plenty of opportunity to display its fighting prowess.
However, here is another example of how the "game balance" in old D&D is not the same as the "game balance" in certain other RPGs. Whereas the m-u starts with little distinctive and becomes extremely versatile if it survives a very risky career, the cleric starts with a boost and proceeds with notable reliability toward a sort of "last big blow out" around Name level, after which the fighter and m-u become more spectacular assets.
The classes really are not equivalents by level in combat power or probably anything else, and -- a BIG part of the arrangement -- there is
no guarantee of survival and success at the same rate as any other given character.
There are different approaches one can take, in a milieu in which characters' states cover the full spectrum from permanently dead 30th-level almost-liches to comfortably retired 4th-level hobbits.
The great drawback of a magic-user at
any level is high average mortality due to multiple factors including low average hit points. By
assuming survival to level X, and
assuming acquisition of spells and magic items, we bypass the actual game-balancing mechanisms.
By putting everyone in the whole campaign in lockstep and effectively "ending the game" at Level X, we bypass the expected development of the campaign in terms of clerics, non-human characters, and other factors.
Thus, I think it is pretty fairly claimed, by promoters of "balance by level" schemes (and "balance on combat power" to boot) that their preferred approach is more flexibly adaptable -- in the sense that one can still run a game that allows imbalances to arise, but it is easier to set up a game,
at any level, with characters in balance.
In my current AD&D group, which has been doing the (now widely standard) "monolithic party" thing, players have noted that the group has become basically "the mage and his helpers" by 6th level. Certainly some DM "house rules" have exacerbated the issue, and grants to clerics have been very much to the end of curbing not just character mortality but down time. However, the whole nine yards fundamentally come down to accommodations for a particular large-scale structure.
Logistical factors (such as playing but once a month) contribute to the appeal of that structure. I am made keenly aware, though, of ways in which it is at odds with the default assumptions around which Gygax had designed OD&D, and continued to design well into the AD&D line.
Ok....will stop and go watch Eiger Sanction.
