One of the more contentious issues coming out of the fireworks surrounding the announcement of the Next Edition is what the designers are planning on doing about the Linear Fighter/Quadratic Wizard problem.

For those of you unfamiliar with the issue, it goes something like this: “In all editions prior to 4th, a Fighter pretty much hits things with a sword, and a Wizard pretty much casts spells. At low-levels, both of these are roughly equal in how much effect they have on a given combat (barring some outliers like Sleep and Prismatic Spray, obviously). As the Fighter goes up in levels, he gets better at hitting things with his sword, but he never really branches out from there, and thus his ability to impact the combat is more or less the same as it was when he was low level. The Wizard, on the other hand, continues to cast spells, but his spells have a much wider array of things they can do as he goes up in casting ability, and thus his ability to impact the combat is exponentially greater than it was at lower levels, both in terms of what spells he can cast, and how many of them he can cast during any given combat situation. While the Fighter may be able to kill one monster with one action at high levels, the Wizard can effectively end the combat entirely. Thus, a Fighter’s progression is Linear, while a Wizard’s progression is Quadratic.”

Among the gamer community, the impression is that this was really only a big issue in 3rd Edition, and I recently got to thinking about why that is. In 1st and 2nd Edition, the Wizard was getting roughly the same number of spells as they had in 3rd, and most of the big culprits that really let the wizard flex their magical muscles (fly, teleport, invisibility, cloudkill, Evard’s black tentacles, etc.) were old classics. There seemed to be no difference between a AD&D Magic-User straight from my dad’s barracks game in 1983 and a 2nd Edition Mage from my after-school campaign in 1992 and a 3rd Edition Wizard from my kitchen table in 2003. But then I looked at what spells they had available to them, and it became clear.

In 3rd Edition, Wizards gain two spells of their choice from any levels they can cast whenever they gain a new level. In previous editions, characters only got new spells when they found them in the game. It doesn’t seem like much, on the surface, but it’s a tectonic shift in game balance terms. In essence, instead of having a random grab-bag of spells determined by random die roll, they could tailor their spells to actively select ones that gave the most bang for the buck, and quickly outstrip other classes not so gifted in that department. Instead of relying on the Dungeon Master to feed them magic, the Wizard player simply walked up to the buffet of spells and ate what they wanted.

Add to this the stated assumption of magic shops in the default 3rd Edition setting, a lack of truly random dice checks to learn magical knowledge, no hard cap on the number of spells of each level a wizard can know, and you end up with a situation in which players are making what they feel is the best possible choice, and it just so happens that they’re disenfranchising other players by doing so. This could happen in previous editions with some clever play and the luck of the dice, but it was much less likely to occur simply because of the role probability plays in learning spells for the magic-using types in the various editions. In 1st/2nd, there was always a chance of failure when it came to learning new spells, and there were never any freebies (save for 2nd Ed specialist wizards, who got one spell per level). In 3rd, not only do you get two free spells per level, the math is such that a player is never really in doubt about their chances of a success when it comes to learning new spells. Unlike the random vagaries of a percentile check, the smooth bell-curve of the d20, the addition of a skill (Spellcraft), additional modifiers to the roll (Intelligence mod, situational bonuses, and ‘Take 10’) against a set difficulty (15 plus spell level) makes it also painfully easy for a Wizard in 3rd Edition to learn any spell they want and become the Quadratic monster that has so haunted the game for the last ten or so years.

With the Next Edition of Dungeons and Dragons being right around the corner, and the designers stated intention of making an edition that can encompass the play-styles of all previous editions within it, this issue is one that needs to be looked at good and hard. Not just from the side of preventing the Quadratic Wizard from dominating play and making the Fighter superfluous, but also from the aspect of making stabbing monsters with a sword a valid choice for a character. I think the designers should take a lesson from how it was done in the past, and reign in the excesses of the dedicated spell-caster with a return to a more ‘hard core’ method of acquiring magical knowledge, but that must done in concert with taking the best that the current edition has offered us in making the Fighter an exciting and valid choice at the play table.

Will they be able to solve this problem? If they can’t, the gamer community certainly can, and ModuleCraft will be a part of it.