Spell Hatred & 4e: A question !

[satori01]

I see quite a bit of hatred against spells, and people that blame the magic system for what they do not like of 3.X. Likewise I see quite a few people state, (and seemingly restate at every opportunity) that the Wizard was the most powerful class in 3.X.

To put it bluntly I have to wonder what game these people were playing, it certainly was not any 3.5 game I played in.

The Wizard was the most powerful class in 1e, if you survived to 5th level that is. Hit points did not scale up as quickly, (and capped off as well) as 3E and thus a fireball was still a lethal spell at high levels, and frankly every Wizard need to have a Brooch of Shielding because Magic Missile was the prime Wizard on Wizard violence spell, ( 1 segement casting time meant quick initiative and 25 points of damage meant close to death for most Magic Users, and hurt many a Fighter as well). Look at the old Saving Throw charts for Save vs Death...ugly as well.

Now in 3.5 with always escalating HP from levels, huge Con bonuses to HP, Saving throws for half dmg/or no effect, and the fact that both of the major boss monsters: Dragons & Outsiders have ALL GOOD saving throws, and most spell casters are dealing significantly less
damage than the Power Attacking Fighter. Most people that have taken the time to look at our own rules forum, or the boards of WOTC, will see a common trend of advising people to not make the Blaster, for the lack of effectiveness, but for the battle field controller.
The power of the Orb line of spells, (and Conjuration magic in general) is because this type of magic does not allow for SR, or Saving Throws alot of the time.

BTW, what other class has some of the best Conjuration spells, and most wicked 1 for 1 kill spells in the game... Druid with Spell Compendium, (not to mention higher HP, and the ability thru Elemental shape, or Dragon Wild Shape to get free energy immunity). Druid is the best spell caster in the game, not Wizard.

Moreover, I will contend 3.5 is the edition of the Melee class, magic is good for getting your raging barbarians, of Divine Might, Smite Evil, Bless Weapon, Power Attacking Greatsword wielding Paladins.

In my high level campaign the record for damage goes to the Warmage using Sudden Empower & Sudden Maximize and a critical hit with a Disintegrate spell.
A sizable portion of the characters resources. Nor very far behind him though are the Paladin or Fighter wielding keen weapons and getting multiple critical hits on iterative attacks. 2 crits a round for 4-6 attacks are not that uncommon, bringing damage into the low 200's regularly. The thing about a warriors iterative attacks, is they are self renewing, it might suck to miss a swing or two, but no big deal. When your limited resource spell is resisted, and thus goes from killing someone, to a measly nothing or 3d6 dmg....pretty frustrating.
!
When I see vocal, almost rabid advocates for the new edition, spouting arguments, that I will for lack of tact and time, call just plain: Wrong....then part of me has to think, who is this redesign made for.

 

[Gansk]

When I see vocal, almost rabid advocates for the new edition, spouting arguments, that I will for lack of tact and time, call just plain: Wrong....then part of me has to think, who is this redesign made for.

I'm not a 4e cheerleader, but I can plainly see that you are making a false assumption.

Wizards are not the most powerful classes in the game, druids, clerics and wizards are the most powerful in that order. But they are all spellcasters, and that is the main complaint.

4e was written to address several issues, but they took the opportunity to even things out a bit by giving everybody powers. Now there should be less arguments about which class is best and more arguments over which power needs tweaking, nerfing, etc.

 

[GammaPaladin]

You obviously haven't seen the Batman wizard builds. If a Wizard is allowed to make heavy use of their class ability to scribe spells into their books from scrolls and other people's spellbooks, they can very quickly become a monstrosity.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

You obviously haven't seen the Batman wizard builds. If a Wizard is allowed to make heavy use of their class ability to scribe spells into their books from scrolls and other people's spellbooks, they can very quickly become a monstrosity.

No the wizard is not a monstrosity, even tricked out. It's strong yes, but distinctly second fiddle to the Druid and Cleric. In order to destroy game balance you really need to pull some out-there stuff like the Cheater of Mystra or White Sands. Mostly what wizards do is a combination of battlefield control and status/SoD effects and giving them more breadth of spells just makes them more versatile.

A lot of the complaints are just people who do not like the change in how the game plays at higher levels as a result of the availability of certain spells they either don't like or can't handle. I for one don't want to play a game that feels the same across all levels. If it were the case why bother leveling, there's no paradigm change to reflect the supposed awesomeness of high level characters.

 

[Felix]

Wizards are not the most powerful classes in the game, druids, clerics and wizards are the most powerful in that order. But they are all spellcasters, and that is the main complaint.

The Bard makes up for it.

If a Wizard is allowed to make heavy use of their class ability to scribe spells into their books from scrolls and other people's spellbooks, they can very quickly become a monstrosity.

You mean if they skirt around the intensional shackling of Wizards to their spellbook vis a vis their purse, you're right.

Wizards will either have a swollen spellbook and few magical do-dads to speak of, or a modest spellbook and more knick-nacks.

If the Wizard instead spends his time crafting to save (or make) money, he'll be out XP and therefore spell levels.

The only way around this is for the DM to blow his job of balancing one of the easiest self-balancing classes.

 

[WhatGravitas]

You obviously haven't seen the Batman wizard builds. If a Wizard is allowed to make heavy use of their class ability to scribe spells into their books from scrolls and other people's spellbooks, they can very quickly become a monstrosity.

For reference: This guide is one of the actually not totally broken ones, which shows the strengths of wizards pretty well (without resorting to totally outlandish stuff and splats).

Cheers, LT.

 

[delericho]

I'm inclined to agree with Monte Cook: 3e spellcasters (particularly Clerics) get precisely the wrong number of spells.

If primary spellcasters got fewer spells, then they would be forced to conserve them far more than is currently the case. There would be more place for the Rogue in high-level games, because the find traps spell is a very limited commodity. Clerics really wouldn't be able to apply a dozen buffs to each party member, because he'd have to be sure to keep back a few spells in case a cure critical wounds spell suddenly became necessary. Of course, the down-side to this approach is that a spellcaster without spells is rather dull, and especially harsh on the Wizard, who can't even serve as a credible backup melee character.

As things stand, however, casters are encouraged to blow through a significant number of their spells buffing the party, keeping back just a few good ones for one or two encounters. They then nova during those encounters, burning through almost their entire reserves, and then force a rest break since it would be madness to proceed in such a weakened state (not to mention no fun for a spell-less caster). The use of rope trick and the like go a long way to removing the risk of a broken rest, as does pointing out to the DM that they're not going to proceed without recovering their resources, so any encounter to prevent them from regaining spells, or to further drain the party, will just slow the game further - they'll just rest further, until they do recover those spells.

If the primary spellcasters got more (probably many more, or at-will) spells, then the problems with the "15 minute adventuring day" largely disappear. However, this of course gives a massive power-boost to casters, unless the individual spells are heavily nerfed. Which appears to be the way that 4e is going.

An alternative fix, I think, would be to give primary spellcasters the same number of spells, but to remove a whole lot of the buff and 'utility' spells from their lists. Similarly, get rid of rope trick and similar spells, so that undisturbed rest is harder to come by, and also limit the extent to which characters can recover in mid-adventure in any case. (For example, one could rule that the highest-level spells are not recovered after 8 hours rest, but rather require several days of inactivity to recover, essentially making them per-adventure resources.)

 

[AllisterH]

At first, I thought about cutting the number of spells castable in half, but that actually screws over the ENTIRE party.

While at first glance, rogues and fighters appear to have limitless abilities, this isn't true especially at mid to high levels. Non-spellcasters live and die by how many slots of healing a cleric has left.

Cut the number of slots in half a cleric gets and this also affects the ENTIRE partly. Similarly, it seems like the higher level you go, the more dependant on magic you become to defeat challenges.

Basically, encounters (monsters and environments) assume you have a spellcaster in your ranks thus, a party without spellcasters is just plain borked even if the rogue and fighter are at full health.

Magic is just that strong (why else would D&D require ANOTHER layer of magic nulllification in the form of Magic/Spell Resistance and things like Anti-magic areas)

 

[an_idol_mind]

I don't think wizards et al are too powerful. I do think that some of their specific spells are too powerful, or allow a PC to break an adventure with too much ease. Greater Teleport, Find the Path, and most scrying or plane-traveling spells are a good example. If some of these were cut down or made a little more difficult to cast, I don't think there would be much of a problem with spellcaster classes.

One particular thing I like, which seems to be out of style these days, is the limited number of spells casters get. I like that spellcasters have very powerful effects, but can only do them a few times a day, as opposed to the fighting classes that don't have as much immediate power, but are more effective over the long haul. The decision to move every class to the same model of resource management is one I would have preferred not to have been made, since I don't see the crossbow-wielding wizard as a problem.

 

[billd91]

An alternative fix, I think, would be to give primary spellcasters the same number of spells, but to remove a whole lot of the buff and 'utility' spells from their lists. Similarly, get rid of rope trick and similar spells, so that undisturbed rest is harder to come by, and also limit the extent to which characters can recover in mid-adventure in any case. (For example, one could rule that the highest-level spells are not recovered after 8 hours rest, but rather require several days of inactivity to recover, essentially making them per-adventure resources.)

I don't think the utility spells have ever been much of a problem. They aren't taken that often anyway. I'd get rid of lots of the buffs and give remaining ones a much longer duration so they don't get cast and recast for each encounter and burn through the list.

Burning through spells was always a potential problem in earlier editions but it seemed to occur less often (except possibly with healing spells). I think it's because there were relatively few general combat buffs. You had bless, chant, and prayer that were generally useful and, though they stacked, parties rarely cast more than one and almost never all three. By the time a second one would have been popping off, the cleric was probably off trying to heal someone or slowing poison. Wizards had very few general buffs - primarily strength, shield, and mage armor. Now, everyone has a bunch and casting them all and fully buffing up before each fight is a very strong strategy. It would have been plenty strong in 1e too if there were many more.