D&D has often had issues with magic users. They often are stronger than non magic users at all levels. For example, use of the spell sleep allows you to disable a group of enemies with no save allowed. Exploitation is common.

In games you can generally gain a huge amount of power by researching the right choices and doing them.

In the real world that's a lot trickier because people in the past have researched the right choices and heavily exploited and monopolized existing power resources, and any publicly known power resources will likely be heavily exploited. Competition makes it harder than when you're playing with three or four people.