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Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Difference between revisions

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*** Unfortunately this started breaking with Player's Handbook 3, which started to shear away from the standard level progression, and shattered with the "essentials" line, which returned to the older model of having unique progressions for every class and making martial classes "simpler" to play...which obviated one of the major points of 4th Edition to begin with.
** In 5E, a lot of fans of 4E are screaming [[Ruined FOREVER]] over the fact that this trope has reared its ugly head once more. Fans of 3E are [[And the Fandom Rejoiced|Rejoicing]], [[Broken Base|of course]].
** ''[[D20 Modern]]'' is another 3.X variant. It tried to balance casting by making it so that all but the most basic casting was limited to prestige classes which even then could only reach level 10 and 5th level spells. This fails on a few accounts. Firstly, magic is still very versatile even with the limited number of spells printed, indeed the spells that destroy evidence are often mandatory (corpses in and piles of blood tend to raise questions in a modern setting) and even then the base classes best suited to enter casting classes are the skill focused ones. Secondly, even magical d20 modern campaigns depend on humanoid monsters with class levels instead of more powerful monsters so spell resistance and energy resistance are much rarer (of the 1-8 adventure printed in the Urban Arcana book, a mere 4 foes resist some form of energy, three to ones the PCs will actually use). Beyond that, it just means most casters are some degree of [[Magic Knight]] instead of pure casters, which isn't that much of a nerf.
** [[Pathfinder]] has attempted to solve this problem by nerfing some of the more frequently abused powers, limiting how many rulebooks they spam out with new upgrades for characters, and making warriors quadratic as well with some good [[Magikarp Powers]] for all classes. A big problem with 3.5 was that Wizards would toss off new books so quickly, with so little playtesting, that a lot of rules interactions just weren't dreamed up before players abused the heck out of them. At times, more than one expansion has been released ''per month.'' Paizo, since 2008, has only added three books of new stuff for PC's in most campaigns (not counting their world) and only after releasing their "Betas" to their communities and asking for feedback. By having a massive playtest community and no rush to push product out the door, classes tend to be a lot more balanced and new rules tend not to have an unintended [[Game Breaker]] effect.
* ''[[Hackmaster]]''' (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.
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