(06-09-2017, 03:57 PM)Iron Wrote: Very true. 5e is the closest I've played so far and wizards are still beastly.
There are a few systems I've played which have tried to balance the inherent discrepancy.
Savage Worlds manages as a system by keeping Magic very understated. Dragon Age and any of the Warhammer 40,000 based RPGs punished you upside the head for trying to get overly flashy with their magic equivalents (Then again, Warhammer 40,000 just punished you upside the head on principle for existing).
If you wanted something light, understated and whimsical and almost Ghibliesque, Kotodama Heavy Industry's "Ryuutama: Natural Fantasy RPG" does the job very well.
Most fun I've had with a Magic User in a D20 was playing a 3rd party setting called Amethyst which positioned science and magic as two diametrically opposed forces meaning that the two were liable to foul up in the presence of the other, which in turn made spellcasters a lot more unreliable and therefore dependent on party support. And also, fireball and cloudkill lose a lot of oomph if the other party members are lobbing chem grenades and firing frag rounds. I remember there was something similar with the Iron Kingdoms D20 setting as well before Privateer Press went with a proprietary system where spellcasters took some amount of non-lethal damage every time they cast, making them less likely to break out the big guns.
That said, I've actually seldom seen the supposed 'Problem Mage'.
Not because the local groups can't pull it off, but because the social contract in the culture locally is strong enough that while it's funny once or twice, being THAT guy who basically solos entire adventures while telling the rest hit the showers eventually leads to people tacitly not being invited back after a while.
