D&D 5E Low Level Wizards Really Do Suck in 5E

[keterys]

I think there are a few things at work here:
1) Wizards are very swingy, due to variableness. Sometimes Sleep will affect 10 hp, sometimes it'll affect 30+. Dealing 1d10+0 damage may be 5.5 average but if something has 5 hp, you're going to drop it 60% of the time while your friend dealing 1d8+4 drops it 100% of the time. Ditto with saving throws.
2) The spells at low levels are not particularly balanced. Witch Bolt is a terrible trap. Sleep is quite good. Burning Hands and Thunderwave are unfortunately sized AEs that will see tremendous variance by table.
3) Low level cantrips suck. They're actually subpar at almost all levels, but at higher levels they're at least not outclassed by, as a friend of mine referred to it, his mightiest and most effective spell: Ye Olde Crossbow.
4) The best and most interesting parts of the wizard do not come out under a mechanical spotlight, and may even not be allowed depending on the DM.
5) Many other classes that get full spell lists get other things that seem to outclass the wizard at low level. Clerics, druids, and bards are all far more functional outside of their spell pyramid.
6) The low-level wizards' niche for specialness is easily drowned in a large group with multiple spellcasters.

Personally, I agree that the wizard underperforms at low level, such that I think you almost have to select certain spells and schools to avoid being subpar. I've been at several different tables that have independently concluded that a Tempest Cleric makes a better "boom mage" than an invoker at low levels, for example.

That said, a diviner with sleep, can really be a tremendous combat solver. Just for every one of those, how many witch bolt hurling wizards are there? Or wizards who need to get into very specific squares to use the tiny AE of Burning Hands, then get dropped by monsters for exposing themselves?

Anyhow, I think things start to turn around after a few levels, and 5th+ start looking _much_ better. Fireballing slinging invokers? Yeah, we want that! As with half the discussions of 5E that I've seen, one great solution remains: don't start at 1st level. Start at 4th level. The system has low level issues.

 

[Dausuul]

I thought I'd crunch the numbers at level 3 and see how it looks for the blasting mage. As a point of reference, assuming enemies with AC 12 and +0 on saves, a typical 3rd-level greatsword fighter's DPR is 8.77, with the option to Action Surge once every short rest for double damage. A typical 3rd-level shortsword rogue's DPR is 8.4 if using Cunning Action. (In either case, dual wielding will drastically boost the fighter or rogue's damage output, but that isn't a case for the wizard being weak--it's a case for dual wielding being OMGBROKEN from levels 1-4.) The wizard at this level has 5 first-level slots (4 basic, plus 1 from Arcane Recovery), 2 second-level, and cantrips.

Looking at the best direct-damage options in the Basic Rules:

Light Crossbow: Not to be neglected as an option for lowbie wizards, a Dex 14 wizard has DPR 4.775 with a light crossbow.
Cantrips: Fire bolt deals 4.125 damage. You're better off with a crossbow unless you need to set something on fire.
Level 1: Burning hands deals 8.4 per target. (Magic missile is a flat 10.5... don't even bother.)
Level 2: Shatter deals 10.8 per target. (Flaming sphere is potentially more effective, but it depends heavily on how effectively you can maneuver it and whether your concentration gets broken, so I'm leaving it out.)

So, how's it all look? Well, say there are 7 encounters in a day, 5 rounds per encounter, and 2 short rests. The comparison depends on how many average targets you can get in your AoE spells:

2 TARGETS
Wizard: 260.9 damage, using 2 shatters (43.2), 5 burning hands (84), and 28 light crossbow attacks (133.7)
Fighter: 333.26 damage, including 35 attacks (306.95) and 3 Action Surges (26.31)

3 TARGETS
Wizard: 324.5 damage, using 2 shatters (64.8), 5 burning hands (126), and 28 light crossbow attacks (133.7)
Fighter: 333.26 damage, including 35 attacks (306.95) and 3 Action Surges (26.31)

4 TARGETS
Wizard: 388.1 damage, using 2 shatters (86.4), 5 burning hands (168), and 28 light crossbow attacks (133.7)
Fighter: 333.26 damage, including 35 attacks (306.95) and 3 Action Surges (26.31)

So, the fighter and wizard break even when the wizard is able to average about 3 targets per spell. Of course, much of the wizard's damage can be dealt at range, which is a perk--but burning hands requires you to get in close, and the fighter is a lot tougher. In out-of-combat utility, the wizard has cantrips like mage hand and minor illusion, while the fighter has a high Athletics skill. Advantage clearly goes to the wizard on that, but not crushingly--Athletics is very, very useful.

I'd say it's unusual to average 3 targets in the smallish AoEs of burning hands and shatter, so I give the overall edge to the fighter here. Yes, the wizard has spells like sleep, but an evoker should be able to make a living blasting things.

 

[keterys]

In my experience, it's generally more reliable to use magic missile and scorching ray as your baselines, because they automatically cope with multiple targets and don't require exposing the wizard to counterattack.

They're also sadly more effective against enemies that tend to matter: again, IME. Mileage will vary a bit there, of course.

 

[Dausuul]

In my experience, it's generally more reliable to use magic missile and scorching ray as your baselines, because they automatically cope with multiple targets and don't require exposing the wizard to counterattack.

I don't have my PHB with me right now, so can't look up scorching ray. As for magic missile--to put it bluntly, magic missile sucks far too much to use as a baseline. Burning hands deals 60% more damage against two targets, 140% more against three. At these levels, with so few spell slots, you really, really want to save them for when you can get the most bang for your spellcasting buck.

Magic missile is not completely worthless, but its niche in 5E is very narrow. It is not a bread-and-butter damage spell any more. It's the spell you bust out for the boss fight, when there's only one monster, it's wreaking havoc on the party, and you have to take it down even if it means burning everything you have left in the tank. That scenario is the exception, not the rule.

 

[Joe Liker]

Anyone who even considers judging wizards on the basis of damage output ... just doesn't understand the point of wizards.

 

[Dausuul]

Anyone who even considers judging wizards on the basis of damage output ... just doesn't understand the point of wizards.

I'm judging evokers on the basis of damage output. That is the point of evokers. Blasting is what they do.

Not too fond of 'em myself, I prefer the tricksier schools like illusion and transmutation, but if you're going to play an evoker, you should be able to pull your weight using primarily blasting magic. As such, it's the easiest school to do class comparisons on. It's a lot harder to evaluate the effectiveness of disguise self against a rogue's Deception skill.

 

[Emka]

"Correctly" here is subjective. Most of what you describe isn't actually using the spell, but playing with a DM that is very amendable to the use of stunts in game. "Stunts" are when you do something creative to obtain advantages outside of the rules. Some DMs disallow stunts at all. Some DMs treat stunts as color that have no mechanical effect. Some DMs allow stunts, but only if you pass some sort of additional hurdle that makes the stunt risky. Some DMs, like yours, allow stunts off all sorts because they like the effect they have on the narrative. But claiming that the above is playing the wizard correctly, is like claiming that jumping on a barrel and rolling it down the stairs while balancing on it, and then jumping up and grabbing the chandelier to launch a swinging kick before back flipping off of it use your weight to thrust your rapier down into the neck of the ogre is playing your rogue properly.

Personally, I like stunts, but I'm more of the assume risk to again advantage style of DM. The stunts you describe would generally be allowed, but would require you passing some sort of additional check with failure indicating your action wasted.

In other words, you Ice Blasted the stairs you'd just dumped the bucket of water on with magic hand, but the cold was insufficient to form ice over a large area or at all, or the being wet and standing in the puddle meant that instead of grounding through the body of the kobold leader (the default situation is not that the leader is ungrounded entirely!) the electricity grounded through his clothing reducing the damage he took instead of increasing it, or that you tried to dump the boiling water on the leader but misjudged the distance and timing in the melee and dumped it instead on the floor, and so forth. Some of your stunts strike me as really difficult to pull off consistently, and notably I suspect that if this was the DM using NPC wizards to pull them off on PCs, you'd be less impressed by the fairness of the rulings.

A similar post like yours was made slightly after my initial one. I concur that the word "correctly" was a misnomer here.
Still though, like I said in my retort if you cross those two instances off that list the remainder is still nothing to sneeze at.

I personally feel the heart of 5E is "story over rules", so if a stunt like that - or the Rogue stunt you described though somewhat toned down - is believable and within the constraints of the situation it's all good.
In my experience living by every rule in the book as written will bog down each and every game: The party enters a tavern and goes gossip hunting. WAIT everybody roll 1d4 and multiply that by the price of an ale, cause that's how much drinking you needed to do with the patrons on average. What's the price of an ale again let me get the PHB. But I have a background that says I get every third drink for free so I need to get that into the equation. 45mins later and all we know is how much money we spent this night. Good thing we don't have to set up a camp 'cause I didn't keep track of how many pegs I broke last time I tried to pitch a tent!
Story over RAW any day, and 5E seems to champion that more than ever.

 

[Joe Liker]

I'm judging evokers on the basis of damage output. That is the point of evokers. Blasting is what they do.

Not too fond of 'em myself, I prefer the tricksier schools like illusion and transmutation, but if you're going to play an evoker, you should be able to pull your weight using primarily blasting magic.

It's where they choose to specialize, but it's not their raison d'être.

You are a wizard first, and an evoker second. No matter what your specialty, your most important strengths are those of the wizard: versatility, rituals, support, and magical solutions to otherwise difficult problems.

If you want to be a primarily damage-dealing spellcaster, you are better served by the sorcerer class. In fact, if you are playing an evoker instead of a sorcerer, ask yourself why. If the answer is fluff, a charops discussion is not one you should be having. If the answer is rituals, more spells known, or the broader spell list, then you've stumbled across the true, unquantifiable strength in the wizard class.

 

[KarinsDad]

When you start casting it or when you're done with the casting part of it and it enters its duration? The PH doesn't make those distinctions, so it doesn't really make any more sense to say you lose previous concentration when you start to cast the follow-up spell than you lose previous concentration when you finish casting it. So, what seems to make the most sense? It certainly works for me, as a DM, to consider the concentration for the true strike to lead right up to when it must shift over to maintain the witch bolt - so I don't have a problem with the true strike applying to the witch bolt's attack roll.

There are very few "when the spell starts to get cast, or when the damage starts, or when the attack roll is rolled before the damage, or when the spell is finally cast, etc." in the 5E like in some earlier editions.


There are a few sentences in the rules that seem to disagree with your interpretation:

1) You lose concentration on a spell if you cast another spell that requires concentration.

2) On your next turn, you gain advantage on your first attack roll against the target, provided that this spell hasn't ended.

3) You can't concentrate on two spells at once.

4) The effects of different spells add together while the durations of those spells overlap.


Your argument is that the first concentration spell still works until the second spell is completely 100% cast. But that implies an overlap that #3 and #4 above seems to indicate doesn't occur. There really appears to be a either you are concentrating on this spell, or on the other spell, but not both RAI and RAW in 5E.

 

[Zardnaar]

Actually, although I learned Witch Bolt when I designed my PC, I only prepped it the first day (after which I found out here on the forums how crappy it really is ).

And in 20 encounters, I've only used Shield once or twice. Mostly, I let foes take down my Arcane Ward and then use Shield to get part of it back. But since my PC does not get attacked a lot, that hasn't happened a lot.

Until encounters 17-20, my PC had not even learned Burning Hands or Scorching Ray. We had just made level 4, so I added Scorching Ray to my list and my ally PC ranger / wizard added Burning Hands, so since I had extra materials for scribing new spells, I added Burning Hands. First day I had those two spells. I tried them both out.

I have been using Web and Fog Cloud more. An occasional Chromatic Orb to do some damage. Mage Armor once per day to get my AC up and my Arcane Ward up.

I took Suggestion. Never had a chance to use it. I could have taken Sleep, but the Bard already had it.

I took Detect Magic. I took Identify (not knowing the rules about short rest which I cannot find anywhere except in the DMG .pdf). I took mostly utility spells and only a few offensive ones.

And, I've cast a boatload of cantrips which tend to do 1 to 4 points of damage if I can manage to roll well enough to even hit. I have not even critted once with a cantrip. 4 times, a cantrip has done more than 4 points of damage. It's been a party joke since day one that the wizard is just along for the scenery.


But yes, I could have taken Color Spray. But I'm not too worried about a gang of mooks. The other PCs are VERY capable. I would want Color Spray for a room full of Bugbears, but it might take out a single Bugbear. I might be able to get two Orcs with it, but even there, a crappy set of rolls and the wizard is standing in a room full of Orcs and used his action to give disadvantage to one foe. Sounds like a subpar tactic.

The spell is a level one Kobold delayer. I don't really see us fighting rooms full of Kobolds too often, at least that's not very awesome sounding to me. I also didn't see us staying at level one for long. In 2E and 3E, Color Spray was a fairly decent spell until about level 6 or so. It actually did something real. Here, it's a minion delayer at best.

Sorry, but anyone who argues that 5E Color Spray is better in 5E than it was in 2E or 3E just isn't reading the old spells.


And as my Hold Person math above, it tends to work for a single round if it works at all. Also as per my dungeon experience above, it was worth casting on 2 creatures out of 60. And the funny thing about that is that the party was split up when those two creatures were faced. So as it turned out, my PC wasn't even in that fight. It ended up being 0 creatures where Hold Person was worthwhile in that particular dungeon because the DM ended up splitting up the party (long story).


WotC, while beefing up the abilities of other low level classes, has nerfed the Wizard pretty significantly in 5E. One just has to compare the spells with their former incarnations.

We had a bard with sleep as well, the wizard still took it. That is 4 encounters at level 1 you can ruin for the DM.