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Another perspective is, yes, my 4E is wizard is equal to Merlin, as long as I can accept that the fighter is equal to Hercules, the paladin, to Arthur, the rogue, Gray Mouser. A wizard is only "mundane" because the player wants him to outshine his peers.
No, a wizard is mundane because he can't turn someone into a toad. The idea that complaints about the wizard are based only on inter-PC envy is mistaken and frankly insulting. Rather than psychologizing our fellow players, how about we talk about what is different about the class?
I just want to point out that according to 4e players on ENworld who bother to participate in votes, the Wizard is the third most popular class (out of all 16 or however many there are in the PHB1 + PHB2 + FRPG + EPG), despite this nerf.
I disagree with this. The wizard is the third least hated class according to that poll, not the third most popular.
As for the evolution of the 3e wizard to the 4e wizard, their once majestic power was reduced to the same playing field as all the other characters. The power of the wizard needed to be reduced but I would have preferred a different route than the homogenization of power.
The biggest issue with the 3e wizard is that they always got their spell off. 5ft. steps, casting on the defensive (with a typically maxed out concentration) and an under-utilization of techniques against them (such as readied actions to attack or silence) meant that wizards always got their spells off with little fear of losing them. Combine this with how outrageously wizards could defy a uniform economy of action (summoning a legion of individual creatures to control) and you had a recipe for over-powered wizards at higher levels. If these had have been addressed in a different way while maintaining balance, then I think the wizard could maintain their "wizardlyness" without being compressed into the same gamespace of hit points, keywords, conditions and position as everyone else. The ratio of dailies to others gives a little extra colour but not enough to make up the lack. In the end, I'm most likely on the same side as your friend. The 4E wizard is the diet lite, stripped down, bargain basement, unleaded version rather than what went before - and for some people, this is just disappointing.
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Nerfed, yes. Neutered, no. The wizard can no longer reliably steal the show from the other PCs, and that's deliberate.
As for rituals and buffing: Most rituals don't provide combat buffs. The ones that do, you're not supposed to cast every day! They're for use when you know what you're going up against and need the extra oomph.
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Another perspective is, yes, my 4E is wizard is equal to Merlin, as long as I can accept that the fighter is equal to Hercules, the paladin, to Arthur, the rogue, Gray Mouser. A wizard is only "mundane" because the player wants him to outshine his peers.
But this is the thing, the fighter is not equal to Hercules, Conan or even Duck Dodgers! The wizard has been demoted; not everyone else upgraded. As for the player wanting to outshine his or her peers - I can buy that to a point for certain players but to tar all wizard players with this same broad brush is incorrect. What is wrong with wizards doing wizardly things? Are we so scared of save or suck that everything now has to be in terms of attrition and grinding away? Wouldn't it be better to have a happy medium?
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Herremann the Wise
__________________ Want to see through my crystal ball and what's in store for 5E? Take a glance at my Dreams of 5th Edition
He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder. Tad Williams
Flavour this, flavour that...how many spells did Gandalf cast in LotR? Didn't someone calculated that he was pretty much a lv 5 wizard using 3e rules?
The whole appeal to literature/mythology argument that wizards should be all powerful reality warpers is flawed. Wizards in stories are only allowed to be reality warpers because they don't use their reality warping powers in those stories. The only reason they don't take over and dominate the narrative by solving every problem is because of plot. Plot reasons that doesn't exist in a normal D&D game.
Wizards in literature and mythology are all infected with a serious case of Holding Back The Phlebotinum. Wizards in D&D aren't.
Last edited by nightwyrm; 27th October 2009 at 01:35 AM..
But this is the thing, the fighter is not equal to Hercules, Conan or even Duck Dodgers!
But he IS equal to Hercules. Maybe not at first level. But if you take a 21st level Fighter, they are able to do almost everything Hercules can. Even at first level though, he's more akin to Aragorn at the beginning of the first book than he is a peasant who just picked up a sword like 1st level fighters were in 1e/2e.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Herremann the Wise
The wizard has been demoted; not everyone else upgraded. As for the player wanting to outshine his or her peers - I can buy that to a point for certain players but to tar all wizard players with this same broad brush is incorrect. What is wrong with wizards doing wizardly things? Are we so scared of save or suck that everything now has to be in terms of attrition and grinding away?
Everyone got an upgrade. They just got a smaller upgrade than the Wizard got a downgrade. The average 1st level fighter can take on a bunch of lowly goblins and possible a goblin "leader"(read, non-minion. In 3e it would have been a bunch of normal goblins with a couple level 1-3 classed goblins) or two by himself. This group would kill him for sure in any other edition of D&D purely due to lucky rolls.
I don't believe it has to do with being much more powerful than everyone else for everyone. For a lot of people, it's just the ability to wield EXTREME power. I understand that. I miss it sometimes myself. But I understand, intellectually that the kind of power they used to have is no good for a game where I play with 4-6 other people.
What people want out of a Wizard is the ability to wave their hands and have all their enemies turn to stone or into frogs. No way to stop it, because their enemies are not Wizards...and only those who have magic can protect against it.
They want the ability to jump out a window at any time and fly to their destination in no time flat. They want the ability to wave their hand and turn all of their allies invisible for as long as they want.
And people were willing to compromise with the 1e-3e system. They couldn't fly WHENEVER they wanted, only as often as they had the spells prepared. They needed to be high enough level to cast those spells...but they'd get there eventually if they just waited long enough.
But even with all those restrictions in place, it is a far cry from being a 10th level Fighter to being a 10th level Wizard. The Fighter(without magic items) can....use a sword well. The same Wizard is flying, turning invisible, throwing fireballs that do more damage than the sword does to 8 enemies at the same time with no attack roll, while having skin that reflects all blows, force armor, and a force shield. All of which makes the Wizard even tougher than the Fighter is. And if he gets into trouble, he can instantly teleport anywhere he wants in the world.
The Wizard can also use spells to detect traps, trigger them remotely, walk through walls...and any number of a thousand other things.
The next effect is that it is pretty easy to feel useless when you are the one playing the Fighter and to have your fun ruined because of the "anything you can do, I can do better" effect of the Wizard.
From the DM side, it's also difficult to plan adventures around that kind of power. Unless you absolutely don't care where your adventures head, you're always playing a balancing act of "carefully lead the PCs where you want them to go without letting them realize you are leading them." That is easily destroyed when the PCs have hundreds of abilities at their disposal that you might not even expect. I've seen a game destroyed and a DM get really annoyed simply by a well prepared 2e spellcaster.
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I'm just learning the 4E system, and have never seen a character over 3rd Level in play....
And apparently your friend has never seen an earlier edition wizard before 3rd (or 6th) level of play. "I cast sleep, and hide" or "I cast magic missile, and run".
But this is the thing, the fighter is not equal to Hercules, Conan or even Duck Dodgers! The wizard has been demoted; not everyone else upgraded.
My elven fighter would like a word with you . I guess you haven't played one, but have you ever seen a well-built fighter in action? My DM learned the hard way that monsters shouldn't try to get away from me. Nevermind that our party is still in the heroic tier (lvl 7).
The 4e fighter is one of the most powerful classes, both IMO and in the opinions of many 4e players on the WotC boards.
I do agree that the wizard has been demoted, but nearly everyone else has been upgraded. (The druid has been demoted for probably the same reason as the wizard.)
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He loves D&D, but is really skeptical about 4E, and says that his main sticking point (other than the fact that he feels it's too much like an MMORPG) is that Wizards and other spellcasters have been 'neutered' by the new system.
I'm not going to argue with the Wizard in 4e with the new game mechanics, since a lot of 3er's might not remember 1/2 edition version where you had a hp cap and you also would fail automatically if you took a single point of damage. Obviously, so many people think Wizards were "broken", even though we have 35 years without a reboot--I'm not gonna try to convince 4e fans who think that.
Where I do think WoTC dropped the ball is to make rituals an "afterthought". I only have the PHB to go on here--but I think 2 things should have happened.
1) Give Wizards exclusivity or Rituals, or at least "spell-casting" characters. (Arcana and Divine), and give them access to only certain things. Saying "everybody can do everything" is poor and I don't think every character should have the ability to do that.
2) Give Rituals more space. I mean, c'mon. I would say over half of the original spells in the PHB were "ritual" types. That was part of the fun. One of the things that inspired me to like the game was reading all the detailed descriptions of the old spells. To see rituals given only a few pages as opposed to the tactical stuff is just shameful to me. It also emphasizes D&D as primarily tactical combat instead of strategy and problem-solving.
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Wizards are one of the most powerful classes in 4E. A Wizard class feature(Orb of Imposition) has stood the test of time and is still among the most powerful/broken things you can do in 4E. People say that you can't destroy something in one turn, but the Epic Orb Wizard would argue with that statement. One of the first controversies in 4E was the Orb Wizard beating Orcus in one turn, and after all this time its only gotten worse. When they finally printed stats for Gods, they had to give Gods a way to dodge the Orb Wizard bullet! In addition, when you get used to playing higher level Wizards, you really start to see how much more powerful their spells are. Helping people build Druids, Seekers, and other controllers, I get struck with the thought "If I was playing a Wizard, I wouldn't choose any of these powers in a million years". The Wizard gets better stuff, particularly for Daily powers and Paragon/Epic Encounter powers.
The difference is that the power of the Wizard is no longer obvious. He doesn't have spells that are blatantly beyond the capabilities of everyone else. It now requires tactics and most importantly timing, instead of just having the right spells.
2. Rituals
Only beef I have with Rituals is that 10 minutes for almost all of them is too much. It kind of breaks the story pacing, as some people can't imagine their characters standing around for 10 minutes while the Wizard does his stuff. A 1 minute casting time would still serve to keep Rituals out of combat, and greatly lessen this flavor problem. This is an easy houserule. People complain about Rituals costing money, but that's a player problem. Money is cheap in 4E, and your wealth isn't as closely tied to your gear or power level as it was in 3E. This is the one aspect of 3E I see people having trouble letting go of as time passes, the thought that money was precious and needed to be hoarded to spend on magic items. Casting Rituals frequently should use less than half of what the DMG gives you, and it shouldn't have more than a minimal effect on your gear. The other player issue with Rituals is player creativity. If you don't put the Rituals in the hands of a creative problem solving player, they tend to be ignored. Some groups are without such a player, and a lot of the time the sort of player who is good at this isn't playing the Ritual caster in the party. What people should realize is that Ritual Casting isn't a player resource, but a party resource. The entire table should be involved in procuring Rituals and their use, and the list of Rituals and what they can do should be something the creative problem solvers in the party should be familiar with, even if they aren't playing the Ritual Caster.
I'm not going to argue with the Wizard in 4e with the new game mechanics, since a lot of 3er's might not remember 1/2 edition version where you had a hp cap and you also would fail automatically if you took a single point of damage.
I do remember wizards having a longer build to power, but theyalways got way out of hand sooner or later (I mean 1 and 2e...ok mostly 2e)
Infact I remember after 8th level as a wizard going something like this:
DM: I hit, 45pts of damage
Me: no ping, it's one off my stone skin...
at lower level we had ablative armor...and...shoot I know there was one inbetween them...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Remathilis
Planescape
It should be given special award to Die Vecna, Die: a module that manages to trash no less than THREE different settings (Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Planescape) in the course of one module.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Remathilis
Those of you who fretted that monsters have too many hp and fights take too long: meet the barbarian. The ULTIMATE "Lets speed this combat up, I need to whiz" class!
I'm not going to argue with the Wizard in 4e with the new game mechanics, since a lot of 3er's might not remember 1/2 edition version where you had a hp cap and you also would fail automatically if you took a single point of damage. Obviously, so many people think Wizards were "broken", even though we have 35 years without a reboot--I'm not gonna try to convince 4e fans who think that.
Where I do think WoTC dropped the ball is to make rituals an "afterthought". I only have the PHB to go on here--but I think 2 things should have happened.
1) Give Wizards exclusivity or Rituals, or at least "spell-casting" characters. (Arcana and Divine), and give them access to only certain things. Saying "everybody can do everything" is poor and I don't think every character should have the ability to do that.
2) Give Rituals more space. I mean, c'mon. I would say over half of the original spells in the PHB were "ritual" types. That was part of the fun. One of the things that inspired me to like the game was reading all the detailed descriptions of the old spells. To see rituals given only a few pages as opposed to the tactical stuff is just shameful to me. It also emphasizes D&D as primarily tactical combat instead of strategy and problem-solving.
I disagree.
1) Not every character can do it. Characters who take the ritual caster feat can do it. If you don't want your character to use rituals, don't take the feat. If you don't like seeing less magical classes using magic in a ritual fashion, tough. The literature of fantasy is filled with examples of heros performing magical rituals without also casting spells in combat.
2) So many times, a non-combat spell or a ritual is little more than "Solve Problem X". You only use it to solve problem X, and if you have it, and problem X shows up, guess what you're using? I think problem solving takes much more of the center-stage when you don't have magic tailor-made to solve specific problems.
i do agree that the current edition could have used more color behind many of the powers, but that's not a problem of the game mechanics, which I think are just fine.
What people want out of a Wizard is the ability to wave their hands and have all their enemies turn to stone or into frogs. No way to stop it, because their enemies are not Wizards...and only those who have magic can protect against it.
They want the ability to jump out a window at any time and fly to their destination in no time flat. They want the ability to wave their hand and turn all of their allies invisible for as long as they want.
And people were willing to compromise with the 1e-3e system. They couldn't fly WHENEVER they wanted, only as often as they had the spells prepared. They needed to be high enough level to cast those spells...but they'd get there eventually if they just waited long enough.
But even with all those restrictions in place, it is a far cry from being a 10th level Fighter to being a 10th level Wizard. The Fighter(without magic items) can....use a sword well. The same Wizard is flying, turning invisible, throwing fireballs that do more damage than the sword does to 8 enemies at the same time with no attack roll, while having skin that reflects all blows, force armor, and a force shield. All of which makes the Wizard even tougher than the Fighter is. And if he gets into trouble, he can instantly teleport anywhere he wants in the world.
The Wizard can also use spells to detect traps, trigger them remotely, walk through walls...and any number of a thousand other things.
The next effect is that it is pretty easy to feel useless when you are the one playing the Fighter and to have your fun ruined because of the "anything you can do, I can do better" effect of the Wizard.
Wow. Who were all of these players who played completely overpowered and selfish wizards who stepped on everyone else's fun?
I have never in 30 years of gaming had an experience like that--just lucky, I guess.
The wizards I play in 3.5 and Pathfinder don't do everything--they do what needs to be done. If there's a rogue in the party, you can be damn sure I'm not going to waste precious spell slots on finding traps and unlocking doors.
And during battles, I don't want my wizard to turn every enemy to stone--I want him to be a vital part of the team and pull his weight, just like everyone else. Preferably, doing things that play to his strengths, leaving the back stabbing to the rogues and the sword swinging to the fighters.
To the OP: I agree with your friend. If he still wants to give 4e a good try, though, the powers and spells should probably stay as is mechanically, just so things don't get unbalanced in comparison to the other characters. You can refluff them as you want, though, and you could add the versatility back to the class by letting him have a proper spell book, and spell slots, and the ability to memorize the same spell multiple times. (Cue protestations! But really--firing off two of the same spell in the same encounter won't unbalance the whole game.)
Anyway, if its important to you guys to play together, just think of ways to reach a happy medium.
1) Give Wizards exclusivity or Rituals, or at least "spell-casting" characters. (Arcana and Divine), and give them access to only certain things. Saying "everybody can do everything" is poor and I don't think every character should have the ability to do that.
Wizards are currently the only class in the game that automatically gains rituals as they level up. They'll get 13 rituals for "free" by 25th level, plus their high Intelligence often gives them an edge when it comes to rituals with the Arcana and Religion key skill. Even though anyone could theoretically become a ritual caster, wizards are definitely the kings of the ritual casters.
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Wow. Who were all of these players who played completely overpowered and selfish wizards who stepped on everyone else's fun?
oh those would be chris and jare (I only really know one of them) who played enough of those types of wizards for any 30 groups of friends
Quote:
I have never in 30 years of gaming had an experience like that--just lucky, I guess.
I am very glade, I have had more of your experiance then the ones of the problems, but the problem players were there...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Remathilis
Planescape
It should be given special award to Die Vecna, Die: a module that manages to trash no less than THREE different settings (Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Planescape) in the course of one module.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Remathilis
Those of you who fretted that monsters have too many hp and fights take too long: meet the barbarian. The ULTIMATE "Lets speed this combat up, I need to whiz" class!
For many players, the old style was a feature, not a bug. If the goal was to play Merlin, Gandalf or whatever, then the player at some point wanted to wield phenomenal cosmic power. For these players, 4e is entirely unsuited to their gaming goals because a wizard can do nothing that isn't fundamentally mundane. Sure, they can do damage, attack something other than AC, apply conditions, move the target, and move themselves and some of this impressive and perhaps can't be explained easily in mundane terms, but every other class can do all the same things and sometimes these things can't easily be explained in mundane terms either. While it creates a level playing field, it isn't paying much attention to simulating either fantasy source material or, as is probably more important in the case of your friend, the flavor of the play experience he's used to for the last 20 years or more.
I don't think this is a crossable gulf.
There's wisdom here. This (especially that final sentence) might well be true. Not for everybody, but for a lot of folks.
The tactic of getting up in the morning and buffing yourself seems to be a 3.x tactic which I don't really remember in 1e/2e.
1e/2e wizards were HARD to play. Seriously, with the restriction on magic items (can't buy them, pretty much an adventure in of itself to make one thus you had to get by with what slots you had) AND the rules of magic in combat (1 pt of damage and your spell is lost AND high level spells being relatively slow in combat) AND the rules for spells themselves (many spells being dangerous to the caster AND spell acquisition being more subject to the whims of the DM AND non-damage spells being less useful as you level)
I personally never really thought that the 3e wizard was a D&D wizard since all of the underlying mechanics of what made a D&D wizard got changed. Looks the same, but in practice, but a 3e wizard is vastly different than a pre 3e wizard.
re: Realm-shattering power
Isn't Conan and the tales of the round table major inspiration for D&D? Both and Conan especially, have pretty weak wizards (hell the ritual system for 4e matches pretty well with the more ritualistic style of magic in Conan IMO)
The thing is, I don't believe we could ever go back to the pre 3e mechanics of spellcasting. The biggest issue is that people EXPECT to have more control of their own character thus choice of spells (which was always the real limitation in pre 3e) can no longer be expected to be under the control of the DM.
In 3E(and before), Wizards(and spellcasters in general) could break the world if they wanted to. Spells fundamentally changed reality, and there's a lot of power in that. In 4E, the world has rules, and magic has to exist within those rules. If you want to wield the power to break the world, in 4E you're out of luck. It bears saying that the desire to be able to break the world doesn't necessarily mean you want to lord your power over everyone else at the table.
We lost one of our group when we switched to 4E because of this, though getting married and moving 45 minutes away contributed as well. We see him occasionally, and this is what he complains about in terms of 4E, not being able to wield ultimate power.
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