D&D 4E 4e Wizards - No More Necromancers, Enchanters, Summoners???

[Wyrmshadows]

Bad, bad bad on all counts.

From what I read from WoTC is appears that necromancy, enchantment and summoning are going to be removed from mages making them essentially walking siege engines designed to control a battlefield with powerful spell effects. That's fine, but ALL 4e wizards are spell-blasting crusader mages?

It seems that enchatment (charms, domination, etc.) are going to be relegated to psionics (sweet baby jeebus!!!) so as to give psionics a niche. So out is the sexy mage who uses her feminine wiles and a healthy dose of magic to dominate those around her. Out is the powerful mage who enthralls the will of a king so as to be the power behind the throne. So now both of these two are going to have to be psionicists?

Summoning is gone, at least for PHB1 which removes another potent wizardly (and priestly) archetype, that of a mage who summons up beings of darkness and forces them to work his unholy will by power of his Art. Maybe in 2009 we'll see wizards (or priests) who are capable of summoning something.

Necromancy seems to be off the table for wizards as well. No more twisted necromancers summoning up hosts of undead. I can see priests of dark gods in this role as well, but the wizardly necromancer is certainly another fantasy archetype and it seems to be going the way of the dodo. Maybe PHB 2 or 3 will give rules on necromancers.

I never used D&D as a genre. D&D is a ruleset I used to homebrew or run pre-published settings of a variety of types as varied as FR or Darksun. D&D was flexible enough to allow a DM to run plenty of different genres without excessive difficulty. D&D is more than ever becoming something else, an alien genre all its own becoming completely unrecognizable as classic fantasy and if these new changes are any indication, less adaptable to simulating Conan, Tolkien, Lieber, Moorcock, or any other author for that matter and instead enforcing a iron-clad set of D&Disms that are further and further from fantasy fiction.

It looks like there is going to be a large niche for 3rd party publishers to fill in creating rules for wizardly necromancers, enchanters, illusionists, summoners, etc. With the PHB1, at least with the current mechanical changes I have seen previewed, there are going to be a very limited number of options in regards to the type of mage a player can choose to play.

Also, there are long standing settings in which there are wizards who do much more than blast things. Also, it seems beyond belief that a 20th level mage who has no skill in psionics cannot lay a enchantment on some goons and force them to his will.

_______________________________________________________

Wizard: "I am Maeglar the Unearthly and I am going to craft a spell that will bend the will of the king and his court so I can be the power behind the throne."

WoTC: "Um...we have some bad news."

Wizard: "Bad news, Maeglar fears nothing!"

WoTC: "Sorry, we realize that you can kill fifty men at a time with fire from you blazing wand but dominating the minds of others? That isn't in your job description."

Wizard: "What?!?! I am a master of the arcane arts and can travel the very planes of existance doing battle against the choirs of heaven and the hosts of hell as I so choose!"

WoTC: "Yeah but, that still isn't charming anyone....that stuff is still in your job description...at least for now. You have to know that there is something even you must fear. A power that even you cannot overcome"

Wizard: "Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha!!! Tell me little man in a Boba Fett T-Shirt, cutoff jean shorts and WOTC baseball cap what it is Maeglar has to fear."

WoTC: "Niche Protection."

Wizard: ...

________________________________________________________

Maybe it is too early for me to be concerned but by the way things are shaping up so far, I definately have some concerns.



Wyrmshadows

 

[Steely Dan]

WotC have stated that an illusionist and enchanter/beguiler type class will come down the pike at some point.

…I think necromancy as well…?

 

[Falling Icicle]

I too am very disappointed by this. It seems to me like 4e's answer to everything "problematic" is simply to remove it rather than fix it, and Wizards in particular are seen as a "problem." As Wizards are my favorite class, this troubles me greatly. Sure, I'll admit that some spells caused issues, but my greatest like about Wizards for me has always been their versitility. If I wanted to play a character whose only purpose is to blow things up, I'd play a Warmage or Warlock. From what we've been told about their design vision about Wizards in 4e, it seems that they have been stripped down to be little more than a Warlock variant. I really hope that won't be the case.

What also bothers me is that we will have to wait months, if not years before finally getting to play an enchanter, necromancer of summoner in 4e. Summoning elementals, demons and other creatures from beyond is a classic wizard power and the class won't be the same without it. Necromancers have also had their own niche, and who knows when we'll finally see necromancy in 4e. It's obvious to me what they're doing here. What do those 3 things have in common? Minions. They obviosly don't want anyone having minions in 4e, even though monsters are supposedly alot easier to handle in this edition.

 

[Deverash]

They aren't putting them into wizards, to save space to do necromancers right. Conjurers is going to same way. Wizards have the problem of being /too/ broad in what they can do now in some people's view(mine included), and this will help fix that. Note that not all of even enchantment is going away. Sleep, after all, is still in as a first level power for wizards. Are wizards going more toward evokers? Probably. But all of necromancer & enchantment isn't going to be taken away.

 

[Gloombunny]

I thought it was only clerics that are losing summoning.

 

[Wyrmshadows]

IMO its counterintuitive that a necromancer, illusionist, conjurer, enchanter is anything other than a different flavor of wizard. Fantasy fiction is full of this kind of thing. An enchanter is a wizard who does enchantment, a conjurer is a wizard who summons things, etc. Note, I thought the AD&D conceit of illusionists being their own class was silly.

If magic is well magic, I have a hard time wrapping my brain around why an archmage couldn't summon a demon, charm the hot young princess he's had his eye on or cast a powerful glamour over his tower creating the illusion of it not being there. I know that clerics/priests had niche protection in the form of their healing magic and raising the dead. However, I could easily and logically argue that the power over life and death outside of merely ending life (which anyone could do) was the province of the gods.

However, imagining an archmage who cannot charm powerful thralls to do his will is IMO ridiculous.

What I have been seeing is a gutting of the wizard class by making them all vanilla magic missle throwers or fighters in robes via the wham-bang combat magic focus. I don't understand what made the spell schools so bad. Some were more useful to adventuring than others, fine, but Jesus does everything have to be suited to kickin' ass and taking names?

And the very thought that we may have to wait years to see rules on how to play a conjurer, enchanter (probably a psionicist...belch) an illusionist or a necromancer. This is going to make it hard for DMs who have established worlds in which there are spellslingers who already do these things. What a pain in the ass.

And, to add, as a potential 3rd party publisher myself who is more a fluff/worldbuilder than a numbercruncher and rulemaker this is definately making me look toward Runequest and True20 to provide a set of base rules for the setting I am fleshing out.



Wyrmshadows

 

[Tantamo]

Actually if you think about it what Wizards is doing is pushing back the release of certain "Ideas" in games to create more coherent and working ones. Look at the 3.5E player's hand book. You'll notice the only "Spellcaster specific" feats and items deal with spell casting as a whole, not spell casting on a concept to concept basis. We had to wait for the complete books and a few monster and genre books to get real good flavor in necromancy, battle magic, ETC.

What 4E is doing is removing the really specific idea of Necromancy, Enchantment and Illusion so that they can later release full Necromancer, Enchanter and Illusion classes. Wizards will have access to some Necromancy, some (maybe very little) Enchantment, and some Illusion. I believe it was stated that "Wizards will still be able to go invisible, but illusionist will have a better version."

So yeah, we won't get full Necromancers right now, or full Enchanted right now, but I can Imagine we'll get quite a few things coming from these areas of magic I'd say as early as October, with full concepts done at about December, 08.

 

[Wyrmshadows]

Actually if you think about it what Wizards is doing is pushing back the release of certain "Ideas" in games to create more coherent and working ones. Look at the 3.5E player's hand book. You'll notice the only "Spellcaster specific" feats and items deal with spell casting as a whole, not spell casting on a concept to concept basis. We had to wait for the complete books and a few monster and genre books to get real good flavor in necromancy, battle magic, ETC.

What 4E is doing is removing the really specific idea of Necromancy, Enchantment and Illusion so that they can later release full Necromancer, Enchanter and Illusion classes. Wizards will have access to some Necromancy, some (maybe very little) Enchantment, and some Illusion. I believe it was stated that "Wizards will still be able to go invisible, but illusionist will have a better version."

So yeah, we won't get full Necromancers right now, or full Enchanted right now, but I can Imagine we'll get quite a few things coming from these areas of magic I'd say as early as October, with full concepts done at about December, 08.

I can't argue with delaying it in order to get it right. That's understandable. I guess as a DM with a long running world that has transcended D&D versions over the years (and even rule systems from time to time) I am bothered by the delay because winging this much stuff is a bit of a problem. Hopefully 4e contains these options sooner rather than later. Well this will only matter if I choose 4e as my ruleset of choice...we'll see.

My real gripe would be eliminating nearly entirely a wizard's ability to use necromancy, illusion, enchantment, etc. IMO a sensible system would be for the wizard in the PHB1 to be referred to as a battlemage while at the same time allowing enchanters, illusionists, necromancers and others to be different flavors of wizard and not completely different classes with very different assumptions. This way the wizards can be differentiated while at the same time allowing for magical specialities.

Weird....seems like the old schools of magic thing doesn't it. Looking back I think the old schools of magic are looking better and better. They certainly had an in game logic to them.



Wyrmshadows

 

[Lord Ernie]

And, pray tell, how well did a Necromancer, Illusionist, Conjurer, or Enchanter work in 3.x? Specialist wizards were not noticeably better at their specialty than others, the only relevant difference being the one bonus spell per level one was forced to spend on the specialization.

What's more, you can complain about niche protection all you want, but a class that's capable of doing basically everything is in general a Very Bad Thing (TM) when it comes to class balance. At high levels, any 3.x wizard - a general one, since they had no forbidden schools - could summon an army, scout ahead of the party invisible, handle any trap or lock that needed handling, charm and dominate his way in, and if he really needed to, blast the hell out of the enemy as well. Versatility is all well and fine, but any class as versatile as the 3.x wizard reeks of design problems.

Also, WotC has repeatedly stated that wizards still dabble in all kinds of magic, but that said dabbling will come forward alot more than it did in 3.x, and that the most powerful kinds of magic will be reserved for specialist classes. How is this a bad thing?

To address a few specific points:

Summoning is gone, at least for PHB1 which removes another potent wizardly (and priestly) archetype, that of a mage who summons up beings of darkness and forces them to work his unholy will by power of his Art. Maybe in 2009 we'll see wizards (or priests) who are capable of summoning something.

AFAIK, it's only been confirmed clerics lose their summoning powers. From what we've heard, it's very likely that summoning, if it's in, will be a ritual rather than a spell cast in mid-combat. Which, IMO, is only a good thing.

Necromancy seems to be off the table for wizards as well. No more twisted necromancers summoning up hosts of undead. I can see priests of dark gods in this role as well, but the wizardly necromancer is certainly another fantasy archetype and it seems to be going the way of the dodo. Maybe PHB 2 or 3 will give rules on necromancers.

Show me a 3.x Necromancer wizard who summons undead and I'll show you a Cleric who does what he does 10 times better. This is why classes like the True Necromancer were created in the first place - Necromancer specialist wizards excelled at one thing: save or die spells (and Horrid Wilting) at high levels. Their summons were not really all that great, and low-level necromancy was way underpowered anyway. And since save or die is going the way of the dodo, I reckon WotC is taking some more time to find a good way to define a Necromancer who does do well at what's he's supposed to be doing straight out of the box.

 

[Gold Roger]

You forget one important thing on conjuration and nekromany- the inclusion of rituals.

Calling on a dread demon? Ritual.

Summon a beast to fight for you? Ritual.

Call out an army of dead? Ritual.

Wizards will propably still be doing this stuff, but they won't be doing it mid combat.

And that's how I prefer it. Summonings and raising tthe dead are traditionally off screen activities


Also, this means the wizard isn't the "a spell for every stiuation" guy anymore, that can replace almost all skills and quite a few class features with a quick spell. Nor the "game-shanging spellslinger", that with almost every new spell level changed the complete game experience with access to scry (as we know, now a ritual) or teleport or some other wazoo.

These abilities where in addition to immense firepower mind you.

His problematic abilities couldn't be fixed, because the problem was never their execution, but their inherent nature. They could only be handled in three ways:

1) Accepting that the wizard is just far more influential and flexible than other classes, because he is the frikkin wizard. Which is fine for literature, but not exactly for a game.

2) Significantly reducing the wizards firepower and say he's an "arcane toolbox". Which means he still is problematic, not so fun to play, but at least theoretically balanced.

3) Relegate the problematic abilities to DM control and off screen activities and removing them from the guaranteed capabilities of the wizard. Which in D&D has been slinging fireballs for a very long time.

IMO, the only way they couldn't choose 3) is by saying "But wizards are the masters of the arcane arts!". Which is fine for fantasy literature, but not for a game that is suposed to include other archetypes.

Again, I'm not saying in the 3rd edition wizard was overpowered. But he was unalanced and problematic.