>>94632383
The division was there from the beginning. Even before D&D was published, shaping RPGs as we know them forever, there were two classes.
>Fighting Man
>Magic-User
These were balanced out by the fighting man being the only guys who fought and the magic-users being the only guys who cast spells. Since magic was deemed to be extremely powerful, low-level magic-users couldn't cast many spells, but to counter-balance the high-level magic-users, fighting men who reached a similar level were expected to be lords and leaders of armies. Even then, this wasn't handed to them for free. The fighting man had to either earn. conquer, buy, or build his holdings and pay upkeep on his army, while the magic-user had to go out and find scrolls to copy into his spellbook.

You can blame D&D 3e, or anime, or whatever else, but from 2000 onward, there was a shift in class design and magic-users (now "casters") have a bunch of spells off the bat, can cast more spells, and even get free spells when they gain a level. The sheer power fantasy of "Oh, just cast this spell" is rooted in the idea of getting free spells. The fighting men (now "martials") have fuck-all to counter-balance this. The idea of holdings and followers for martials vanished about 20 years and no one really seemed to mind as most campaigns don't usually go for that long, so martials has less and casters have more.

So in answer to your first question, RPG design is skewed towards casters and the "versus" dichotomy is a symptom of this. How the shitposting about the disparity stopped being ironic and started being this petty is beyond me.

>inb4 cleric
Yes, clerics were introduced because disease, healing and undead were the main reasons for character deaths in Blackmoor and were created in direct response to those problems. While they are thrown in under the caster or martial umbrellas, people tend to default to wizards when thinking "caster" and swordsmen when thinking of "martials"

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Why is martials vs casters even a thing when both fight completely differently? What if a spell is so powerful or so effective it removes combat…