Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Quadratic Wizards Linear Warriors

"Your wizard is like Magikarp, except instead of Gyarados it evolves into Mewtwo."

—DivineDragoonKain, User on Gamefaqs Pencil and Paper RPG board

A quirk some Video Game and Tabletop RPG game systems share is that melee classes are more powerful or versatile at lower levels than casters or magic using classes. However, the trend reverses at higher levels, when the magic users gain a breadth of both versatility and sheer power over hack and slash heroes.

The divide is usually exacerbated by the ease with which a young warrior can go wading into combat compared to a novice mage. The fighter just needs decent armor and a weapon, and with their marvelous Meat Shield Hit Points they can get into the thick of things and do reasonably well. Magical weapons aren't required but can (usually) be used immediately and give amazing bonuses. Wizards on the other hand (especially young/low level ones) have no such easy shortcuts to massive magical power, they have to study, find or invent spells, and discover magic items that aren't so powerful they cause them to go into a Superpower Meltdown. In the meantime they are nearly defenseless in a fight.

Yet the trend reverses at higher levels. Much like the trope name references, the power of a warrior is linear, it grows at a steady and reasonable pace, but a wizards power is exponential, past a certain point they become the more powerful class. Not just dealing damage, but in versatility with a slew of spells with all sorts of direct and indirect practical and tactical uses. Whether it's the game designers intentionally "making up" for lots of frailty for many levels, or a quirk that comes up during play, the wizard simply outpaces all but the most Min Maxed and Munchkined out warriors.

This isn't just a Sour Grapes complaint against Squishy Wizards or a lack of Competitive Balance throughout the game, but can be a deliberate thematic choice. In such a setting there may be dozens if not hundreds of small time mystic dabblers, but they quickly thin in numbers only to resurface as potent adventuring wizards, culminating in the classic mystic powerhouse like Gandalf or Elminster, or the Evil Sorcerer in the Evil Tower Of Ominousness. Meanwhile the Conans and Beowulfs have the run of the place, being able to both solo and group. In essence, the mage players/character labor under the promise of a hard road with great rewards at the end.

However, if this results from a development mistake, or enough complaints convince the author/programmer to change things, there are ways to limit the awesomeness of wizards. These include restrictions on magic itself, the two classic examples being the Mana mechanic or the even more restrictive Vancian Magic. Both of these serve to cap how often a wizard can cast spells. Preventing casting spells whilst wearing armour is another, though this is often partially countered by providing a range of protective magics that work much like normal armour only better, but of course for a limited time. Other restrictions also exist; a common one is simply to make the wizard Squishy. Others involve sanity and corruption systems, or making the casting of a spell a tactically debilitating act.

As you can imagine, players who specifically chose wizards and worked hard to keep them alive with the promise of great power for their effort can be... upset by this game balancing Nerfing, unless (and sometimes especially because) it also beefs up wizards at low levels. The solution is rarely to power up warriors while only slightly depowering wizards generally because, at least in the West, there's an expectation that the warrior be a Badass Normal that you can more easily imagine that you could become with enough effort.

These fixes can result in or from some pretty strange logic and situations. Sure, the wizard can do more amazing and effective stuff than the warrior can, but the warrior can do his less impressive things indefinitely! That makes up for it, right?... Well, sometimes. A tough flurry of Random Encounters can suck a mage's supply of game breaking magic, which will force them to save a bit of juice for that final boss, and not waste their power. But if all you have to do to restore your magic and health is rest or use one of your 99 elixers... Those times, it doesn't do much. Still other times, you end up with the opposite problem, wizards whose capacity to fight is so restricted that you wonder why the warriors even bother to bring them along (when this makes sense, it's because of the Inverse Law Of Utility And Lethality being applied).

Attempts to keep warriors' capabilities "normal" are far less prevalent in works of Eastern origin, and so the trope has weakened slightly in the minds of the younger generation. The common result is Charles Atlas Superpower.

Examples

Anime and Manga

Played straight in the Nasuverse; anyone who can reasonably defend oneself will have: A) supernatural and possibly divine blood, or B) knowledge of magecraft. Of course, then you have absolute terrors like Cuchulainn who know magecraft, are divine, can move, fight, and kill, faster than human eyes can track, and may have a Superpowered Evil Side.
- As Archer points out early on in the visual novel, "Its fine if you think I can only use bows...". He actually uses a kind of magic that lets him use a whole lot of swords all at once, including Saber's sword that fires energy blasts.
- However, it also subverts this in that regular humans can become Badass Normal enough to take on the greatest of enemies. Shiki, both of them, are both regular humans with a single power that levels the playing field, and neither use magic. Kotomine Kirei is probably the biggest example, a priest with a useless magic talent (surgery) who can fight supernatural entities that are normally unfightable without high magic power... and win.
Inverted in Fist of the North Star: Hokuto Ryuuken is a variant style of Hokuto Shinken which heavily uses magic at the base of its style, as opposed to breath control and push-ups. And it's still stated to be explicitly inferior to Hokuto Shinken, to the point where Kenshiro doesn't even bother to copy techniques from the school.
Possibly lampshaded in MAR, where Kouga, one of the knights in the evil Chess Pieces, is incredibly tough, but his lack of magical power means that he's automatically the weakest of his rank. He is easily defeated and humiliated by The Lancer Alviss, whose has a high level of magical power (and competence).
Inverted in Bleach. Most soul reapers barely know how to handle a sword until trained, but can do a few minor tricks with their energy even as children. Kido, while powerful, is nowhere near as strong as a well-mastered bankai.
- Hachi may be the one instance where this is played straight. His kido is powerful enough to bring down a hollowified Captain, while several other Captains were unable to even dent him. He's even capable of using a 90s spell to full effect without the incantation, which is something Aizen can't even do properly.

Literature

Most mythology avoids the whole problem by making everyone magic; heroes like Hercules, Gilgamesh and Cuchulainn would have either supernatural origins, supernatural backing, or both. While they do exist, very, very few mythological heroes are genuine Badass Normals, and it was common (though frequently omitted or downplayed in later Christianized versions) for them to use what we could call 'magic' in one fashion or another. Greek heroes would routinely attempt to divine the future or call upon supernatural patrons, for instance. The modern conception of magic as something a few specific people go into a tower and learn is newer than you might think; by definition, the thinking of most mythological ages was that nearly everything was magical, with Hercules no less magical than most of the monsters he kills.
- One of the best examples is in the Elder Edda, the ancient and very much valor-oriented compilation of Viking oral traditions. During the Svipdagsmal, the hero Svipdag receives enchantments from his mother, Groa, one of which protects him from magic to the extent that "Yet never the curse of a Christian woman/From the dead shall do thee harm." From the perspective of the poem's original audience, a dead Christian woman was a Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot combination of all the attributes that would have made up the deadliest possible spellcaster (to the Vikings who feared Christians like Christians today fear Satanists or Neo-heathens themselves!) (Also it should be pointed out that Groa herself was dead when she gave him this magic, so it's not like this was all a theoretical situation)
Conan The Barbarian subverts this by having the titular barbarian outwit the wizards he faces... some might say mostly by act of author induced Villain Ball on the part of the wizards.
Drizzt Do'Urden, R.A. Salvatore's famous character, both subverts this and falls victim to it. Frequently, he or one of his companions completely thrashes a powerful but unprepared wizard, but there are rare occasions where Drizzt is nearly dispatched by wizards who have, as yet, posed no threat to him, exemplified by his being duped into stumbling into a realm populated entirely by demon lords by a Quadratic Wizard in The Pirate King.
Discworld wizards are not merely quadratic, they're most often cubic. Oh, wait! We aren't referring to body shape here? Well, then it remains to be said that a highly trained wizard has no problems with turning a trained warrior into a frog or just burning him, to say nothing about what a sourceror can do.
- Equal Rites, Sourcery, and later books make it clear that the reason wizards don't rule the world is not that their magic doesn't give them the power to do so, but that the widespread abuse of such power would quickly make the world stop making sense — and so the hierarchy of wizards exists mainly to encourage them to waste their energies plotting against each other. In later books Vimes explicitly talks about avoiding a "first use of magic" in a war, in other words comparing the outright use of magic to the use of nuclear weapons.
  - In the earlier books, before Vimes gets to it, the old wars between wizards are more or less explicitly likened to nuclear war, complete with high levels of residual magic (ie. nuclear fallout) in the present day.
- It doesn't help that Discworld wizards tend to fight among themselves anyway, and that the more magic they use the more likely they are to split up into factions. When wizards actually do try to take over the world in Sourcery, this is exactly what happens.
Played straight in Steven Brusts's Dragaera series, where the single most powerful non-god is the well beyond legendary undead mage Sethra Lavode, who is notorious for being able to wipe out armies. She's also probably nothing like what reading that sentence will make you assume her to be like.
- For instance, her favorite method of wiping out armies is with another army, but with better logistics.
- Also subverted in Stephen Brusts's Jhereg series with some degree of regularlity, as demonstrated by the signature quote: "No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style."

Live Action TV

Buffy The Vampire Slayer was a near-perfect demonstration of this trope in action. In the early seasons, the focus was firmly on Buffy, the warrior; Willow, the wizard, was limited to the occasional ritual spell cast from the safety of her own home. In a fight she was no more help than Xander, and sometimes less. As the seasons progressed, however, the balance of power began to shift. This shift became clear at the end of season five, when Buffy described Willow as her "big gun" - pointing out that while she, Buffy, had been unable to even slow Glory down, Willow had actually managed to inflict some damage. In season six, their relative status was no longer in question; Willow was the stronger of the two, and when it came to a showdown between Willow and Buffy in the season finale, Willow threw Buffy around like a rag doll. (The writers powered her down a little for season seven, bringing her back to the point where Buffy was at least relevant; but Willow was still solidly in the Quadratic camp.)
The spirit of this is invoked in the comedy sketch Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit.

MMORPG

The text based RPG Grendel's Revenge had a rather interesting relationship with this trope through it's history. At first it was inverted, Magical monsters were fairly balanced with young Fighter monster for the first 50 or so levels, but the Fighter monsters could get a host of passive, always on Status Buffs as well as timed ones from Leader monsters, whereas Magical monsters had very few ways to get a status buffs at all. This got progressively worse since Fighter monsters could wear better armor, get skills to boost their weapon skills (and the weapons gotten improves) while Magical monsters could only wear a small selection of non-armor magical gear. At the 200+ level mark, fights between equal level solo Magical and Fighter monsters would be very hard for the Magical monster's player since their attacks could not penetrate and they had no defense. Only by using sneak tactics like stunning, teleporting enemies into traps (which Builder clan mates had to prepare for the magical monster) and other means could they hold their own... all of which were not that effective against the fighter player to begin with, which still had very good resistances to these tactics. Add to this that the maximum number of skill/power/abilites was capped at 7 (so Magical's could not get that diverse a power set compared to Fighters), and only Level Grinding to 700 could get you that far, and Magical players got pretty upset. Player outcries got so loud and exceedingly deconstructive (The game forum was for many months full of dissertations and long arguments on exactly how and why Magical monsters had the raw end of the class system) that the designers made a series of wide ranging Nerfs, Buffs, and rebalances to fix the issue... which sometimes snowballed into creating other imbalances. It's worked mostly, but the current state of game balance is unknown at this time.
- And don't get us started on game balance issues involving the non-combat classes!
Played straight in Runescape. The cheapest and easiest to use form of combat is hand-to-hand, which can even be done completely unarmed. In order to cast spells, you need runes, and it's quite tedious to use spells often unless you have a magic staff (which are expensive). But magic spells are much more powerful than the equivalent level in hand-to-hand combat, and ranged. In addition, many common enemies are weak to magic.
- Invertedish: once rangers can wear dragonhide and warriors can wear rune, the wizards get very, very squishy. Then it gets better once the wizards can use freeze spells, but the warriors and rangers are still at an advantage when it comes to raw power. Wizards can still win, but it takes a LOT of practice and strategy. Mind you, this is player vs player; in player vs monster they're all about equal depending on what you're doing.
Almost completely averted in Mabinogi. The complete lack of player classes, non-exclusive-skill-based system, and zero restrictions on weapon and armour use means that there are few, if any, pure wizard builds, and no Squishy Wizards. "Almost", because the most useful and powerful melee skill is very difficult to level up; while magic skills are no more difficult than any other (although the really powerful ones are somewhat difficult to aquire).
Asherons Call... just... Asheron's Call.
City Of Heroes averts this completely by making the source of your superpowers irrelevant to what the power actually does. Literally, "Origin of Power" is selected separately from actual powers. The result is genuine wizards fighting with fire swords and protected by blocks of ice and acting like pure fighters while more "normal" characters can use a conventional bow to fire dozens of arrows at a time, decimating large groups of enemies. Everyone with the same set of powers, regardless of origin, will get stronger at pretty much the same rate.
- It also helps that your characters are all explicitly super powered in some way. Everyone gets equally extravagant (Even the most mundane power sets like Shield Defense can get over the top fairly quickly), they just do so in different ways.
- Applicable to certain Controller builds, however. Early in the game, Controllers can be extremely party-reliant, having the lowest damage and low hit points, but having very useful crowd control abilities. A starting Controller might only be able to keep an enemy from moving, but once they hit the late teens and early twenties, they can keep an entire crowd from taking any action at all. And then there's Fire Controllers, who go from being squishy support characters and then once they hit the late levels get the Fire Imps power. A group of buffable pets with great damage makes them quite soloable in comparison to some of their peers.

Tabletop Games

Some Tabletop RPGs suffer from this, such as Dungeons And Dragons. D&D in particular has the curious affectation that in a typical dungeon-crawling adventure, warriors are more effective than wizards at low levels, but the opposite holds true at high levels. The trope name refers to this in mathematical terms: warriors are linear (Level X 2) in terms of how their power grows, but mages are quadratic (Level X^2), meaning that before they reach a certain level (in this case 2) warriors are more powerful... but at every point afterwards, mages become quadratically stronger. The actual point at which Wizards overtake fighters is somewhere between level one (when they get color spray) and level five (when they get fireball and haste), depending on who you ask.
- The low-level "awesome spells" like Color Spray and Sleep often have limiters that make them useless at higher level. Fireball, in fact, due to HP inflation over the years, is not all that great anymore. Haste has always been a spell that everyone would use up until 3.5 edition.
- The original balancing act was supposed to be that Wizards have a limited number of spells per day, where Warriors can swing a sword all day long. It didn't work out too well ("Let's rest so the wizard gets more spells!")
  - There are plenty of monsters that are tactically effective against the wizard. Monsters that grapple and/or create areas of silence are prominent examples. Plus a good GM will find ways to make a wizard burn off his best spells and still have to keep fighting (if you're trapped in a large dungeon, resting is not always an option.)
  - That is, until the wizard realizes that he can create pocket dimensions pretty much whenever is needed. The DM seriously needs to rewrite the entire game in order to challenge a wizard.
  - The other balancing factor is the amount of work a wizard requires. At higher levels, the player has to prepare 40 or more spells per day (trying to anticipate what he will need) has to build his character to shore up his many frailties (and has to always be tactically aware of those frailties) and has to learn, often through trial and error what spells work best on what monsters.
  - Another balancing factor is random encounters. These are effectively a penalty for wasting time. A good DM will keep things moving, and will roll for random encounters if the party is resting incessantly even if he normally doesn't.
- Those cowards can run away too, with their haste spells, leaving the fighters to take the heat. If it was my choice, I would kill them all.
- In Order Of The Stick, Vaarsuvius complains when fighting an enemy who seems to be randomly resistant to magic. "It's almost as if the universe is trying to force some form of arbitrary equality between those of us who can reshape matter with our thoughts, and those who cannot."
- The supplement Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords caters to those who prefer their warrior-types more superhuman. The Tome of Battle classes have received a mixed reception, most players seem to think they're a step in the right direction, but a vocal minority see them as "Weeaboo Fightan Magic" or didn't see anything wrong with melee combatants' balance in comparison to CoDzilla or Wizards in the first place.
- In a further refining of the trope, 3rd Edition and 3.5 made it into Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards, Geometric Priests. Clerics and Druids in particular led to the coining of the phrase "Co Dzilla", as if a power gamer looks at the class the right way, they see class features more powerful than entire other classes.
  - One notable example would be the Holy Word cleric. It's a no save spell that allows you to paralyze anything that is five levels below your caster level, which is normally your class level, with no save (and kill anything ten levels below you, but paralyzation = death anyway). Just with the core books, a cleric can get +6 to his/her caster level, so anything that isn't more than two levels higher than them is going to be paralyzed more than long enough to die. With other books, you can specialize and get as much as +35 to caster level, which means that you can instantly kill anybody within earshot who doesn't happen to be 40 levels above you. Nothing would survive. (Luckily, the DM can get around this by making his enemies good aligned, but there is also a spell that is Holy Word, but for killing good aligned people.)
  - This is less an issue of a specific rule failure than a design decision. High-level spells often offer no chance to avoid. This was originally why Magic Resistance was introduced: special powerful creatures could then resist the new unresistable spells. Of course a spell to temporarily reduce a creature's Magic Resistance soon developed ...
  - Another strange design decision was giving Clerics access to heavy armor and most shields. This combined with two feats (Persist Spell and Divine Metamagic: Persist Spell) and one item (the Nightstick, usually in multiples) allows a Cleric to, at the cost of one spell slot per day, be every bit as effective as a Fighter in melee while ALSO being able to call on nearly unlimited divine power.
  - Druids are another example, able to combine the devastating Natural Spell feat with their animal forms, allowing them a melee presence on par with the strongest warriors while losing none of their casting power. Worse, at higher levels they can change form several times a day; morph into an eagle, rain lightning and fire on the enemy from safely out of reach, land, morph into a dire bear, wade into melee... and all while their animal companion is busy doing the fighter's job.
- Averted in 4th edition, which defines "martial powers" alongside "arcane powers" and "divine powers"—the warrior-types get more powerful abilities as they go up in level, too, and ~~homogeneity~~ balance was a key goal. A lot of complaints that the game is no longer D&D or has turned into a video game on paper. As shown in one of their cartoons, Wizards doesn't think much of the people who make complaints like this. As is routine, min/maxers did what they do best and found the Game Breakers.
  - One key part of this is that 4E provides a basic standard power progression through the levels for all classes and that all classes advance at the same rate (the last point already held true in 3rd edition, but it's worth re-emphasizing). Specific added class or racial feature powers aside, every fifth-level character for example will have two first-level at-will, a first- and a third-level per-encounter, a first- and a fifth-level daily, and a second-level utility power at its core, period. Moreover, the effects of most individual powers remain largely fixed now instead of growing automatically more powerful with increasing character level, as often used to be the case with spells in earlier editions; the exceptions are mainly some class abilities that can't be swapped out for other powers in the course of the character's career as 'standard' powers can, and the fact that the basic damage output of at-will attacks — which unlike encounter and daily powers don't come in levels higher than first — finally doubles upon reaching 21st (!) level in order to keep them competitive.
- The 2nd Edition Dark Sun setting managed this problem in an interesting way - high-level warriors attract followers in a similar manner to 3.5's "Leadership" feat, while wizards are feared and hated by just about everybody thanks to the fact that arcane magic in Dark Sun sucks the life out of everything around the spellcaster, and is the reason why the world is such a barren wasteland.
- Notably averted in the so-called Goldbox series (early 1990s AD&D-based computer games), with more and more insanely powerful equipment available for the warrior types and most magic powers, due to gameplay limitations, available only on a battlefield.
- Partially subverted in the (3e) Player's Handbook II where the introduction of the Duskblade created an "Arcane Paladin" that while not as powerful as a Wizard and a Fighter, is more versatile than either by itself.
Originally the intent of D&D was that the common man was a Fighter and he would be more powerful at low level, but someone who performed magic (a Cleric or Magic-User) would make sacrifices at low level to become more powerful at high level. But this was further balanced by Fighters getting the best followers at high level (and at the time, henchmen were quite valuable even if they were low-level) and because Fighters were the only ones who could use magic swords. The majority (60%+) of magic swords were intelligent and carried special spell-like powers. Since a Fighter was the only one who could wield one, those found in treasure would usually end up in his hands. This limited spell-like ability made up for the Fighter having no spells of his own.
- Not to mention, Fighting Men progressed at a faster rate than Magic Users, and the one-for-one treasure value to EXP mechanic. Also, It was generally accepted that utility magic items garnered an EXP value of about half their total worth.
Averted in Unknown Armies - certain forms of magic are explicitly more powerful than others, but in keeping with one of the game's main themes, the unbalanced powers are saddled with an equally unbalanced personality. This means that a "clued-in mundane" can be very effective - this is repeatedly pointed out in the sourcebooks, with many dangerous, powerful but entirely mundane NPCs, and borne out in the various restrictions and disadvantages magicians must contend with, ranging from all-consuming obsessions to a lack of access to "paradigm" skills that protect P Cs from going insane.
Hack Master' (based around the older second edition AD&D rules) slightly subverts this by pointing out that looking at the abilities of high level characters and comparing them to those offered in other classes was rather pointless, as there was a pretty good chance you'd be stone dead long before you got that far.
In the Legend Of The Five Rings, this trope falls in slightly murky waters. Wizards (shugenja) are most decidedly quadratic-a rank 2 Shugenja is immensely better than a rank 1 shugenja, and a rank 1 bushi is extremely likely to be able to carve either one of them into cat food. Among bushi (warriors), however, rank doesn't mean a whole lot-a higher rank means you have higher skills and stats, since rank is derived from skills and stats, but the only thing a bushi gets from rank-up is a new School Technique, which, while nice, is generally not as big of a power step as it is for shugenja. Why does the trope still apply? Because that same shugenja who didn't stand much of a chance before at rank 1 can now have elemental spirits char you into a skeleton by asking nicely, that's why.
- That's definitely overstated. The "Bushi" (or, Warrior) schools have some brutal abilities on their own - and not always limited to combat. Several of them are likely to sneer at the strongest magical attacks the game allows, while others are magic-resistant or would inevitably kill the wizard before he blinked twice. One favorite possibility in the system is to take several high-ranking Shiba Bushi, who can render each other functionally immortal and stop all damage dealt while being able to kill anything on the field. Legend of the Five Rings is a subversion if anything, because while high ranking spellcasters can devastate the land, a powerful Bushi can nearly carve up whole armies as well.
The original Rune Quest subverted this trope through healthy realism. Magic in this game was very weak, and you had to spend magic points to cast spells, and characters only had a very small number of magic points. Thus, sword-swingers with the ability to use physical attacks indefinitely could have had a huge advantage over spell-casters. However, if you think about it, nobody can swing a sword all day long: the more you use your muscles, the more tired you get, and sooner or later your arms feel so numb and heavy you can't even lift your weapon anymore. This is why, in the name of realism, the Rune Quest designers made it so that swinging your sword required that you spend stamina points, of which you had only a small number too. A warrior with no stamina points left, like a wizard out of mana, became exhausted and unable to fight.
- Also, just about everyone in a typical RQ game will have some minor magic spells. Dedicated priests or Rune Lords (servants of their gods, like D&D's Paladins) have access to significantly more powerful divine magic, without the usual limitations most people have on them. To balance it, they have to spend most of their time on religious duties, severely cutting into their adventuring time.
Ars Magica subverts this trope somewhat. On the one hand, magical progression is definitely quadratic and warrior progression is definitely linear - but firstly player character magi normally start play after a 15 year apprenticeship so they're already way ahead of even the most hardened warrior rather than starting weaker and having to catch up; and secondly each player normally controls two characters, playing both a mage and a Muggle, so there is no direct competition between the power levels of different types of characters.
In at least the original World Of Darkness, werewolves were the single most fearsome sort of player character (aside from the werebears in some of the suppliments) at lower levels. At the upper end, not so much.
A quirk of the system causes something like this in GURPS. Mages burn Fatigue Points rather than mana to cast spells. However the system also allows characters to burn fatigue in order to improve their physical abilities. This can result in mages that can toss an enemy across the room just as easily as they can kill him with a fireball.
Played straight in Dark Heresy as generally until 4th level a Psyker gets spells such as Cheat At Poker and Summon Local Vermin. Once a Psyker gets to Psychic level 3 (available at 4th level) such as Punch Through A Tank With Your Bare Hands, Warp Reality So That You Can Ricochet Your Bullet Off Of A Random Frying Pan And Kill The Enemy General From 5km Away and Telekinetically Pull the Pins Out Of Other People's Grenades While Still Attached To Them. Only subverted in that in casting those spells you have a greater chance of getting you soul eaten by daemons and killing the rest of your party because you got turned into a daemonhost.

Video Games

Sacred has its quadratic equation begin at level 1. Low-level mages are utter gods compared to fighters, with spells such as Gust of Wind, which propells multiple targets miles away for ungodly ammounts of damage, and poisons them. Firebolt (The starting spell) is akin to a sniper-rifle, easily reaching 1000 points of damage very early on. Fire Spiral is even worse, having no break between damage calculations, meaning anything that wanders into it will take damage every single second it remains in it. Even 30.000-HP dragons can die from a single Fire Spiral if they are lured through it at their slow pace.
Baldurs Gate 2 had the "Wizard Slayer" kit for fighters. They were supposed to specialize in killing magic users, so they got a modest amount of magical resistance — but they couldn't use any magical items except for melee weapons (in the unmodified game, that even included healing potions). Unsurprisingly, it's one of the worst classes in the game. Bizarrely enough, you can actually dual-class a wizard slayer to a wizard. After which you have to slay yourself, presumably.
- This restriction could be bypassed by dual-classing a wizard slayer to thief and taking the high level ability called "use any item". Not technically useful, but still there.
- There was also the significantly more badass "Inquisitor" kit for Paladins who was immune to a few common nasty spells, and was quite capable of dispelling magic. Ideally equipped with a special wizard-slaughtering Infinity Plus One Sword, just to make sure.
  - While Baldurs Gate 2 does play this trope straight, with Wizards (and other such spellcasters) being much more versatile and broken than anything else in the game, it also avoids taking it as far as some examples; strong fighters at high-levels can very quickly tear most mages apart after getting through their defenses, let alone Mooks, as well as shrugging off most attacks. So a balance of both is still very helpful later on.
  - Although the ultimate wizard-killer is still the druidic Insect Plague spell, which renders them incapable of concentrating, drains away their (limited) health, and generally renders them useless.
Inverted in the early years of World Of Warcraft, where spellcasters scaled linearly and Warriors scaled quadratically. Shiny new raid dungeon weapons massively boosted warrior damage, while a new staff gave casters... more mana. Stat increases from equipment also followed this pattern; strength boosted warrior damage, but intellect only increased caster longevity. The situation was eventually remedied by greatly increasing the amount of "spell damage" stat found on caster gear, and altering the allotment of item budget "stat points" for caster weapons to favor magic damage over useless weapon damage.
- However melee classes scale better in the arena mode pvp because they tend to get large amounts of armour penetration and because the melee weapons damage generally increases more between the different tiers of gear than spelldamage does.
- On the other hand, while everybody does more damage as they get better gear, they also get better defenses, which means that gear improvements don't increase melee lethality as much as you'd think. Casters, however, ignore armor, which means that while you can better survive a melee fight if you have good gear, casters will still punch through your armor.
- On yet a third hand, most melee classes have a function that makes them immune to magic for a period of time, usually exactly as long as it takes to squish an uppity caster-type. So basically, it's a question of brinksmanship, luck, reaction, and surprise.
Might And Magic 6 & 7 plays with this trope. Warriors tend to be better in the beginning until the mages get access to their stronger spells and enough mana to be able to use it reliable, at which point magic users outshines them. However at the end game you gain access to blasters which make both equals in damage dealing but the warriors come out on top again. Clerics and Sorcerers still have a fair few Game Breakers, however.
In the first half of Kingdom Hearts, Donald, the party mage, is all but useless because of his squishiness and the relative weakness of his spells (except Heal, everyone loves Heal), while Goofy, the party bruiser, is great at bashing stuff from the get go. Because of this, many players will just switch the duck out in favor of the Guest Star Party Member of whatever world you're on. Later in the game, though, because of Leaked Experience and the new spells you acquire, Donald becomes a force to be reckoned with, and becomes the preferred party member to keep on while Goofy winds up dying a lot. (But he still does have MP Gift)
- Somewhat averted in 358/2 Days. While magic strength is also dependent on weapons (gear) equipped, and unlike most Square-Enix games where "Fira" is simply an upgraded "Fire" and so on, the spells scale with levels and have different effects, (Cure heals you, Cura regenerates health over time, Curaga creates a field that heals everyone within it over time) the mage characters may often wind up attacking during Mission mode because there is no limitation on how many times you can do that and enemies resist magic. But there are still heartless who have massive weaknesses to certain spells, and guess who you'll want with you during the missions where they show up?
The Fire Emblem series averts this, because everyone's growth is technically linear. Because magic works almost identically to the way weapons work, the variety that any particular class has partially depends on what weapons it's allowed to use (along with stat caps, movement, and class skills. The advantage of Mages, though, are versatile in that they can attack from close-up or at range.
- Played straight in the sixth game (The Sword of Seals), though. To take out any mamkute, even the best berserker or swordmaster will need one of the divine weapons, but a decently leveled Lilina, Ray, or Lugh can destroy the weaker ones with no more than Elfire or Nosferatu.
- Played straight in most of the games, actually. Magic may work the same as weapons, but few characters have noteworthy magic defense, so magic generally ends up much more effective than weapons. The problem is that good magic is much rarer than good weapons, so the mages become Too Awesome To Use.
- Or all of you are overreacting, and they're standard Glass Cannons
Phantasy Star Online plays this straight overall, but it's a long road getting there. Forces start by being barely able to kill a room full of enemies before needing to go recharge their mana, while physical types have a far easier time of it. The forces quickly outgrow their warrior counterparts, playing the trope straight, but hit a brick wall in Ultimate difficulty where the enemies' magic resistance gets a huge boost, subverting the trope. However, if you keep playing that force and level up their high level area magic, you can easily find forces that can clear an entire room in seconds without suffering a single attack, where a warrior or ranger would be swamped by the sheer number of foes. Also a force with high level jellen and deband can put their defence so high and the enemies' attack so low, even a force is in no danger of falling to their attacks.
- Subverted in Phantasy Star IV. When for the first and second times he joins your party, Rune is of much higher level than the rest of your party, and he can wipe out entire screens of enemies with a single spell. As the game progresses and the rest of the characters catch up to him, the difference in damage output tends to even out.
Oddly enough, reversed in the original Final Fantasy. Black Mages are indeed capable of casting high-level magic to quickly wipe out the non-boss enemies, but Fighters, Black Belts, and Thieves can hit single enemies much harder in the late/end-game. In addition, because most bosses (read: Fiends and the Big Bad Chaos) have very high magic defense, Black Mages are generally reduced to casting Haste and Temper on the physical damage dealers, and then standing back while they have at it. White Mages don't even factor in here, except in, you know, keeping everyone else alive.
- They are actually better tanks than fighters. They have the ruse spell, which raises evade by 80. Use it twice or thrice, and almost no enemy can hit you. With careful leveling, they can do damage comparable to fighters.
  - Try giving the White Wizard the Infinity Plus One Sword Masumune and see how useless she is. It's like getting a 2nd Ninja-level fighter suddenly.
  - In all fairness, that's due to the Masamune's stats, not the White Mage's. She's invaluable keeping your crew alive.
- Played more or less straight in the GBA remake, though. Unless you get the Ultima Weapon, at which point Warriors become gods.
Inverted in Warcraft III, especially in custom maps. Early on, spellcaster heroes deal large amounts of damage with their spells, but as physical attack heroes gain stats, especially in maps where large stat gain items are available, physical attack heroes will eventually dominate, with large reserves of health and high DPS. That is not to say that spells become wholly worthless, though, as a good chain-stun will still halt any non-magic immune in its tracks. There are some maps that try to change this by using the trigger system to let stats affect damage, but this is a complex system that has not really caught on.
Final Fantasy III has a rather tiered class system, with everyone pretty much evening out in the end with Ninjas and Sages being the most powerful classes overall; although ninjas can attack all day long, Sages and Summoners only have a finite amount of spells. Of course, the Sages are Nerfed considerably in the DS remake, and they're rather generous with how much spells you can use...plus one can literally dual-wield staves.
- Oddly enough though, one of the most powerful classes mid-game (at least in the DS version) is actually a Geomancer...Despite how they were often a little unpredictable and worthless in most games. Despite that they attack with, of all things, BELLS, they actually can deal nice physical damage when being dual-wielded (mostly due to the fact that Dual-Wielding is utterly broken in that game) and their special attack (which literally has absolutely NO limits to how much you can use it) may be somewhat unpredictable, but they actually deal consistent magic damage and bypass magic defenses, along with not getting as much worthless status-inducing effects. It may actually not be that uncommon for a Geomancer to get lucky and be the first person to hit for damage in the Vegeta Level.
The weakest class in every Geneforge game has been the most physically-oriented one. On the plus side, it doesn't need to use canisters as much, so it tends to stay sane longer.
In Kingdom Of Loathing, this applies less to magic users (Mysticality classes) and more to rogues (Moxie classes). Because the Moxie stat determines your character's chance of dodging regular attacks, thieves may be the weakest characters offensively, but at moderately high levels, even the Big Bad can only deal damage when she lands a critical hit (about 1 in 22 rounds).
Half applies, but half averted in most Shadow Hearts games, primarily Covenant and From the New World. Mages may be able to inflict some physical damage that's not terrible (Be able to, Lucia and Gepetto have crappy attack power in Covenant) But often, magic will be pretty good, but in order to save on items, players may just have everyone attack. Especially Karin and Blanca, the two hybrids in Covenant.
- Actually pretty much inverted in Cov. Magic crests do not deal comparable damage to physical attacks. Anastasia (magic specialist) gets some use in the middle of the game, but then underperforms at the end. If anything, the game is Linear Mages Quadratic Warriors, as Joachim and Yuri just get better and better (and are already the top damage dealers when they join)
  - But Anastasia is still very useful in the end, since Crest Magic can make just about anyone a healer. (Except for Yuri and Kurando)
NetHack plays this trope extremely straight, with wizards arguably starting out the worst class at level one and quickly becoming the most powerful as it gains spells and all kinds of magical items.
- But then, you have the tourists...
Inverted in Xenogears. Physical combat has 3 different types of attack (light, medium, and heavy), and characters who specialize in fighting can later learn dozens of new ways to link those attacks into powerful combos. Magic, on the other hand, mostly consists of either defensive spells or fire-and-forget elemental attacks, and without a certain rare accessory, spells typically don't do any more damage than combos do, even into the late game.
Final Fantasy V. Mage type characters will eventually be able to turn the party immune physical attacks, give everyone reflect, reset the battle, take double turns, double cast, and so on. A physically oriented characters get maybe four abilities that don't suck, one of them (dual wield+sword magic+x hit) depends on use of magic.
- But one of the best abilities (considering how little one has to work to obtain it) is obtained by a melee class, the Samurai. It hits every enemy for damage near 7.5k damage...and considering you get it at a point where enemies may have a couple thousand...ouch. Expensive to use but the game throws Gil at you like candy on halloween...and you can just spam it without any thought of finances near the end of the game...they throw thousands of gil at you and there's nowhere to spend it.
Final Fantasy VI both averts and plays this straight at the end of the game. Magic is amazingly powerful, but the vast number of ways to break the game still makes fighter characters very useful (a favourite is the Genji Glove + Offering combo, which allows characters to attack eight times a turn, with weapons like the Atma Weapon, the Valiant Knife, and Setzer's dice). The best way to deal damage, however, remains Magic Box + Quick + Ultima.
Final Fantasy XI made a lot of effort to avert this to the point where elemental casters are nearly useless in a lot of fights. Also, due to the limiting nature of MP, partying with Black Mages fell out of style in favor of "TP Burn" parties where heavy melees simply unleash their awesome all over innocent (and not-so-innocent) monsters.
- Case in point: Black Mages received a serious Nerf when "Manaburn" parties became popular at high levels. These parties, consisting of five Black Mages and one Miscellaneous class (typically a bard or red mage for mana regen), would have the non-Mage member pull something and then all the Mages would rain holy hell down upon the monster before it could say "broken".
Played straight in Knights Of The Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords. At early levels, you really wanna play the soldier and max up their feats as Scoundrels and Jedi Consulars die easily, but a Sith Lord will take out an entire room with just one or two Force Storms. But let's also not forget the Jedi Weapon Master who can still learn force storm, and can take out a room by jumping back and forth from enemy-to-enemy after cleaning up the trash.
Sort of applies in most Tales of games, and some more than others. Both magic and physical techniques use the same Mana gague, so to speak, but Casters' magic will take more of their TP due to it not really being linkable and rarely instant like melee artes are, since the games' battle systems are all about linking together your party members' artes to combo an enemy before they hit you. Magic also will hit more than one enemy usually, whereas Physical artes will only hit multiple enemies if they so happen to be right there next to them and the Ao E physical artes are few and have a short range.
- But this is sort of remedied or balanced out later in the game. Mages and healers will almost always run out of TP before the melees do, provided the melee isn't an arte spammer. (Normal attacks regenerate TP, if a caster is running in and meleeing, then it's BAD) And an item traditionally awarded to the player at least half way through the game called the Emerald Ring reduces TP cost by 1/3. Sometimes you will get multiple copies of this, and not to mention, there's an even better version found much later on in the game (Usually after a Climax Boss) called the Faerie ring which reduces TP cost by 1/2! Definitely give that to the healer!
  - Again, it also depends per game. Characters will run out of TP in Tales Of Vesperia and Tales Of The Abyss, even with the Faerie rings. (But in these games, player characters will actually use items themselves) But if you give a Crystal Eres user (eg spellcaster) the Faerie ring in Tales Of Legendia, they will not run out of TP. Period.
- One case of this playing through would be Rita in Tales Of Vesperia due to the fact that when one put her in overlimit...you didn't even need her mystic or burst artes unless you wanted to look cool or inflict some burst damage, if you wanted to just combo..."Blablabla...TIDAL WAVE! Blablabla...TIDAL WAVE! Blablabla...TIDAL WAVE!"
- It's somewhat interesting how it turns out in the original game in the series, Tales Of Phantasia. Obviously the Mages are powerful in the universe (As it is mentioned that they need Magic to defeat Dhaos, hence Arche and Klarth being recruited), and it does hold true that the offensive magic users, Arche and Klarth, are rather quadratic while Chester and Cless appear linear, but they wind up being more or less Badass Normal enough to actually be just as quadratic as Klarth and Arche, as once you get Chester around the level of the rest of the party, he and Cless can actually be a very formidable opponent and more or less reduce any need for Arche and/or Klarth.
  - Things get interesting in the PS 1 remake. (And the GBA remake, which was based off of the PS 1 version anyhow) While Chester was still Badass Normal in the SNES version, in the Playstation version he is buffed considerably, and actually making him rather logarithmic compared to Klarth and Arche, due to his techniques that put him at a much higher level than before. Then, another character is added...Suzu. Many players do toss her to the side without realizing her true potential, the game is actually quite balanced when one considers that a high-level Suzu with all her attacks can be just as powerful as anyone else offensively. OF course it's less effort to just use Chester and keep either Arche or Klarth (Whichever one you like) since Suzu may join a little too far behind the group and is an optional character on top of that.
  - Also, Tales of Phantasia is a complete inversion of this trope. When you do get Klarth and Arche first (in Klarth's case, his summons too), they are pretty much the damage dealer of the party while Cress just meatshields for them pretty much. However, their spells do the same damage whether they're level 30 or 999, so their damage gets hopelessly outclassed in the end because once their ultimate spells are obtained, their power won't grow at all. Arche can still use her basic spells to link combos with Cress though, while Klarth is just kind of lost.
- Things also get interesting in the spinoff title Radiant Mythology 2, in which magic actually winds up not being that hot compared to melee, but melee pales in comparisons to...you're not going to believe this...Iria's guns. Yep, with a bit of practice, Iria can become the most powerful character in Radiant Mythology 2, while the mages are actually rather linear. Plus, her mystic arte Ringed Vein Wish not even giving the enemy a chance to breathe certainly doesn't help.
- Bottom line: Both are necessary. Casters can do great point damage, play to elemental weaknesses, and most importantly, break through enemy guards, at the cost of dealing with chanting time. Melee units can combo the enemy, damaging and tanking at once, and their fast attacks interrupt enemy casting, but they can be guarded and are subject to range (in games where some boss Hiougis can be an Instant Death Radius).
Star Ocean, at least the first two games (Primarily the PSP Enhanced Remakes, which are based off of the PSX Version of Second Evolution) averts this because the melee characters are able to surround a boss and just stun-lock them and kill them faster than the mages can fire off most of their spells, so a party would often consist of three melees and one healbot, or two melees, one healbot, and one ranged fighter. (Phia and to some extent Mavelle in First Departure, Earnest, opera, and to some extent Bowman and Chisato in Second Evolution) But despite this, offensive-mage-type characters have their uses...they can initiate a stun-lock sequence since the spells cause an enemy to stagger. Plenty of time to surround a tough boss and just beat them up.
- Also, the Healbot can be ordered to just use a one-hit weak-spell that does nothing but hit once and causes a stagger.
Valkyrie Profile Covenant Of The Plume has this: The mages are alright, but are mainly best for building up the charge meter...until that is you get a staff that will push a mage's spell power into the quadruple digits, and gives Great Magic. Immediate game-breaker when you consider your attack power unbuffed may be around 5-700 by the end of the game.
- The first game also has this, possibly to an even greater extent. Great Magic is usually enough on its own to completely demolish most enemies, up to and including bosses.
- Averted, though, in Valkyrie Profile Silmeria, where mages are nerfed considerably compared to the other installments.
In most Shin Megami Tensei games, magic attacks almost always outweigh melee attacks by the endgame. The Devil Summoner games, however, do a decent job of averting this - Raidou's sword will always be one of your best friends.
- The Persona games jump in and out of this. While the guns can be very powerful in the first Persona game, and weapons can sometimes be useful, the magic attacks often outclass them (Depending on the user and their compatibility with the persona). Persona 2, however, does this true and true, especially with how much team attacks were rewarded in both games. Persona 3, however, can actually wind up with physical attacks being more powerful than special attacks with enough work. Persona 4 meanwhile... players often don't even buy any weapon upgrades to their characters to save money, and what would be the point of telling them to attack? Just use your persona to buff your characters and do special attacks. it's better.
In Fable II, magic attacks start off as pathetically weak, doing virtually no damage and merely knock foes back a bit, if that. Guns and melee weapons are much more powerful at this point. By the time you learn level 5 spells though, you can nuke huge crowds of enemies with a single spell, while using physical attacks take far longer.
Being based on Dungeons And Dragons 3.0, Neverwinter Nights featured a lot of this, and the lack of a full party and the focus on combat made it incredibly apparent. When one class' ability is to be a Meat Shield and hack at people, while the other is capable of summoning a creature, making it a better meat shield than the fighter with a few spells, then blasting away for much more damage on all enemies than a fighter can hope for on a single target, the lack of balance becomes rather intrusive.
- Since the expansions and the introduction of Epic levels, this balance has shifted a little. With the proper equipment, a warrior is all but immune to magic, while a wizard still has precious little HP.
- I found it the other way around. In the original NWN it was pretty easy to have plate armour that made you (effectively) immune to fire, a belt that made you (effectively) immune to slashing damage and a necklace that made you immune to death magic and a ring of immune to mind magic. Since the vast majority of enemies attack you with swords/fire/instant death/mind spells the game became ridiculously easy. Even being attacked by two undead dragons -at the same time- just meant I'd take damage on a critical hit and nothing else. The hordes of the underdark epic expansion pack however was horrendously hard however, especially things like the Dracolich. The epic sorcerer? Timestop, missile storm, summon dragon. Repeat. Never took a hit.
In the first generation of Pokemon games, Psychic-types were disproportionately powerful and had no major weaknesses. However, later games reduced the power of Psychic types and added another type that could be used to counter them.
Inverted in Disgaea games (and most others Nippon Ichi makes). In the begining/middle of the game, Wizards' long range, large hit area, elemental attacks, and ability to equip whatever armor they feel like make them a lot better than warriors. Post game though, bonus bosses pretty much never have elemental weaknesses, come with one or two other enemies at most (so large it areas are useless), and warriors' end attacks simply deal more damage than wizards' omega spells. The most useful thing they can do is use Braveheart to make the physical attacks even stronger.
- Plus it's hard to farm Item world when all your characters have tiny move and throw stats.
- Except in Disgaea 2, where the Magic Knight class is a Game Breaker with it's spells simply doing more damage then anything else in the game.
It's tough to start as a wizard in Gothic 2. You don't even get any spells for the first third of the game, so get ready to use light swords and run very fast. But, if you stick with it, final boses become riddiculously easy, with the last dragon killed with 3 shots without him even attacking you.
Averted in Final Fantasy Tactics where the wizard and summoner classes are most potent in the early and mid game, but fall off a bit in the late game as you start to pick up increasingly powerful characters, most of whom are warrior types. The long charge times of magic, especially summons, also limit their usefulness. But if you've got a mage with Calculator skills...
A rare non-RPG example comes from the old Lucasarts Sim Hell game called Afterlife, in which the player runs Heaven and Hell at the same time. In the short team / early game, Heaven is a lot easier to run profitably, because Heaven perfers short travel distances and diverse reward-zoing. Later in the game as both Heaven and Hell expand and their road systems become more and more complex, Heaven's early profitability drops a bit while Hell's improves. With a large Afterlife with both Heaven and Hell being played, it's not uncommon to see your Angelic Helper screaming about a lot of unsolvable problems, where your Hellish Helper has nothing wrong to say at all.
Maple Story has this. Of the five classes, warriors might be the worst due to their severe lack of upgraded attacking skills until level 120 and their complete lack of movement buffs or skills. Mages get teleport, thieves get Haste and Flash Jump, Archers get passive speed buffs, and Pirates have their own unique movement skills. And all of these get new attacking skills nearly every job advancement. However, Warriors have far superior health. Not like that matters, much, though.
- They do get decent crowd control in the early days being the only class with a means to attack everything at once. But since they can't hit for beans...
Normally used in the Avernum series, where priests and mages tend to become demigods in the second half in the games, vastly overshadowing the warriors' usefulness. Averted, however, in Avernum 6, by having quadratic wizards and quadratic warriors. With the introduction of dual-wielding, a properly built fighter is the best source of single-target damage in the game.
Planescape: Torment takes this one step further than the typical D&D game. Not only are high-level Mage spells incredibly powerful, but your ability to get the best possible of the Multiple Endings is directly linked to your Willpower and Intelligence stats...the same ones a Mage would level up throughout the game, but a Fighter wouldn't. Luckily, the game provides a couple of Chekhov's Guns which, if you remembered to bring them, can help you get that ending anyway.
Happens in Castle Crashers, many people choose to use their first few levels where they get 4 skill points per level up to quickly increase the Magic stat. While "Warrior" knights will continually get new moves over their levels, Mages quickly ascend to God Tier Glass Cannons, especially the Red Knight whose lightning will hold victims in an unescapable hold until the magic meter runs out.
The Heroes Of Might And Magic series embraces this trope. Might-oriented heroes are good in short games or as scouts or garrison leaders, but heroes with a lot of Spell Power throwing level 5 spells tend to dominate the late game. This is reflected in the different types of town: Those associated with Mighty heroes like the Barbarian build up fast, but those associated with extreme magic users tend to take longer to build up but get the most powerful creatures like Titans or Black Dragons.

Web Comics

Order Of The Stick: Happens during the siege on Azure City, with Belkar merrily stabbing along. Later on, Vaarsuvius begins to regret the limitations of will-working, having "nightmares" about fleeing invisibly from battle as warriors died all around.
- Given that so much trouble in this comic is caused by high-level wizards, one can't help but suspect Rich Burlew has a beef with this trope.
- In the commentaries to one of the books, Rich admits that Vaarsuvius is, by this point (the party is around level 13 or 14) a living god, capable of single-handedly affecting the outcome of the battle. Having him/her get knocked off the wall and be unable to rejoin the others was an intentional plot to limit V's impact.