Wizards in 4E have been 'neutered' argument...

[Hussar]

Its been hinted at in other threads, but it hasn't been mentioned here, AFAIK.

In earlier editions of the game, Wizards didn't simply get their pick of spells when they leveled. They had to see if they successfully learned the spells they were looking at, and if they didn't, they kept trying to learn spells until they succeeded. They might not learn the spell they really wanted until they found a scroll or tome...or leveled again.

In 3.X, that seemingly insignificant speedbump was gone. I say "seemingly insignificant" because suddenly, you could make your spellcaster as lean and efficient as you cared to, and that changed the power balance in the game. Any oddities in your spell list reflected 1) PC concept, 2) player quirk, or 3) player inexperience.

IOW, the "sportscar" class of previous editions had suddenly become a top-fuel dragster.

Eeeehh. You're chance of learning a spell was pretty good by and large. Assuming an 16+ Int (and that's not a tough assumption IME) you had about a what, 60, 70% chance of learning a spell. If you ever hit 19 Int, that issue when away.

Now, the max spells per level could certainly be an issue though. You couldn't just keep adding spells to your spellbook forever. There was an upper limit. It was a pretty high upper limit, but, upper limit there was.

As far as

My point was that some players- both those who prefer arcanists and those who don't- don't think that a PC has to cast a spell or swing a weapon in order to "contribute" to combat. Observation, situational analysis, or simply guarding against the unexpected- flying, hidden, invisible, dimension-hopping or even mundanely ambushing foes are always a possibility- can be just as important as doing another 1d6 damage in a given round.

goes, well, again, sure, there are some players like this. I don't deny that. But, again, I don't think this should be the default. I think it should be the player's choice. If I as the player, choose to do that, it's because I want to, not because I have so few spells per day that I'm pretty much forced to by circumstance.

Again, there's no reason you can't play like that in 3e or 4e either.

But, something to be really aware of in all of this was the assumption of party size. It was perfectly okay for the wizard to sit back and watch in 1e and 2e because the party was assumed to be 6-8 rather than 4. Those extra 2-4 PC's make an ENORMOUS difference.

In 1e, you were assumed to have 3 frontline fighter types. Plus the cleric and you have 4 PC's that can form a nice wall for the wizard to hide behind. Because the monsters were quite a bit smaller hit point wise and damage potential wise, the three fighter types could put a serious pounding on pretty much any threat.

The wizard was just icing on the cake.

In 3e, the assumption is that there is no icing, there is only cake. The wizard HAS to pull his weight every round or the party is going to start losing PC's. The monsters are not only considerably tougher, but their damage potential is significantly higher. Sometimes to the tune of doubling their 1e damage. 1st to 10th level PC's aren't all that different in any system 1e-3e as far as hit points go.

Suddenly, you had only 1 fighter type in the front instead of 3 spreading out the damage and the monsters were doing possibly twice as much damage per round.

It's not an option for the wizard to not do damage. If the wizard is just watching the fight, the fighter is seriously going to get pummeled.

I think that's a point that gets lost in a lot of these comparisons. The biggest shift between pre-3e and 3ed is the assumed size of the party and the huge increase in monster hit points and damage output.

 

[Mouseferatu]

My point was that some players- both those who prefer arcanists and those who don't- don't think that a PC has to cast a spell or swing a weapon in order to "contribute" to combat. Observation, situational analysis, or simply guarding against the unexpected- flying, hidden, invisible, dimension-hopping or even mundanely ambushing foes are always a possibility- can be just as important as doing another 1d6 damage in a given round.

Sure, such players exist. But they're enough of an outlier that a core part of the system cannot afford to cater to them at the expense of other uses.

Now, that said, I'd love to see an optional system added to 4E that did include more nova-style wizards. It would be far more complex, and far more swingy, but I have no problem with that for what amounts to an Unearthed Arcana-style option.

But it would have to be just that: an optional add-on. Not a default assumption, and not the only way to play a wizard.

 

[pawsplay]

One thing people always forget about when talking about 1E/2E and 3E is the difference in pacing.

Forgotten in what way? I am quite familiar with AD&D.

3E is a much slower running game, both overall and in terms of combat than 1E/2E. In addition to having a few extra spells thanks to bonus spells for high stats, the 3E Wizard usually had to face fewer challenges between rest periods thanks to the slower pace of the game. The Wizard was theoretically balanced by assuming it would have to face X amount of combats between rests, but the slow pace of the game made a shorter day much more common. This powered up the Wizard as much as anything else.

I don't see how any differences in the editions would mandate this. AD&D was not, in my experience, a faster game. In fact, at low levels, high damage rolls often prompted a rest break. Potions of CLW were generally less common. If anything, 3e extended the work day by giving wizards half again as many spells in many cases.

What you speak of is a matter of perception. Its not what was added to Wizards, or that what they could do was changed. What changed about Wizards was the removal of the majority of their weaknesses and drawbacks. Its not as obvious to the eye as the additions to Fighters and Rogues, but it had a much greater impact on actual play.

Pshaw. I can think of no single playstyle difference between AD&D and 3e than the dual-wielding rogue sneak attacking an ogre to death in a single round.

I hear this excuse a lot, and it never really addresses the fact that 3E was unbalanced in practice to a greater degree than pretty much any commonly played system.

I make no excuses, just observations. And the only reason you are right about 3e is because it was the most commonly played system, and 4e is more rigorously balanced in most respects.

The solution is that there are other classes who can Ritual in the absence of the Wizard. The Wizard's presence is far from mandatory. As much as Rituals are necessary, the Bard, Artificer, Cleric, Druid, Invoker, Psion, or anyone with the feat can perform them. 4E frees you up to skip having a Wizard altogether.

Sure. But making the wizard unnecessary is in my mind a less important design goal than making them useful. 4e seems to agree with me; rituals make many characters potentially part-time spellcasters. It is not that there are no wizards any more, just that any fighter can be "part wizard" in previous edition terms.

Indeed. Its a shame that playstyle caused as much problems as it did and had to be set aside. At least people who prefer it that way still have the old edition.

Interesting choice of words. I don't think the playstyle "had to" be put aside; indeed, I view the 4e design as less desirable in most ways for my purposes. I think it is a tragedy that the playstyle was not given the same level of support as the central style supported by 4e: long endurarance encounters punctuated by the occasional daily. I think it is as much a tragedy as if 4e had decided mundane fighters were not a concept worth preserving and all paragon level fighters exuded magical energies to allow them to go toe to toe with dragons and such. Rogues have just about been dispensed with; "rogue rituals" (aka skills) are also readily available, leaving rogues mainly in the role "sneaky fighter," in effect making them fighters. Apart from legacy concerns, rogues and rangers could just about have been two builds of the same class, Scout or whatever you wanted to call it.

The Vancian wizard is not exinct, nor has he been proven cumbersome to play. He has merely been proven unpopular at this time. How far does a 4e party progress when it's dailies have been expended? 4e lends itself, if anything, to a shorter workday. The issue was, is, and will be, GM pacing of encounters.

 

[Mouseferatu]

But those are the two extremes as if that is all the wizard can do. Why not suit the risk with the reward: make your basic cantrips at will, your "normal" arsenal as per and the "big stuff" the ones that can be easily disrupted or that can incur other penalties?

And you still wind up with the same problem, although not to the same level. If the wizard "save up" all his good stuff until the opportune moment, and then--due to the penalties he incurs--it fails utterly, I think even the most patient of players is going to be frustrated.

Or you wind up with the wizard's companions handling all the "minor" fights, and the wizard hogging all the glory against the main villains.

As I said in my prior post, I'd be all for an optional sub-system to allow this sort of thing. But I truly believe there's no satisfactory way to make it work for the bulk of the audience as a core conceit.

 

[pawsplay]

But, do you think that should be the default stance in the game? That "Holding your action" should be the expectation I should have when playing a wizard?

What, for a round or two? Why not? I mean, seriously. I can grok the whole cinematic style thing, but there is a lot to be said for the literary style as well. It's perfectly possible to play your character without doing a few points of damage every round. Because 4e gives everyone at-Wills, the wizard is in the exact same stance of "nothing exciting to do," except zotting with this or that is substituted for nothing or taking a defensive action or whatever.

And personally, I would prefer less casual magic use. If I wanted to give wizards something to do every round, I'd let them use swords or inspire their allies or something. Not sit around zotting like a Gauntlet character. That is my preference, which may not be others' preference.

 

[pawsplay]

Or you wind up with the wizard's companions handling all the "minor" fights, and the wizard hogging all the glory against the main villains.

Whereas if you give all the characters the same powers, you end up with a different problem. Everyone will go nova on the main villain. Which means that when fully loaded, they will blow away lesser encounters too easily, or else their nova is necessarily underwhelming and main villains equally so. Variation is what characters interesting, not consistency. The more characters are alike, the less each PC contributes in terms of adding interest to the encounter.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In 3e, the assumption is that there is no icing, there is only cake. The wizard HAS to pull his weight every round or the party is going to start losing PC's. The monsters are not only considerably tougher, but their damage potential is significantly higher. Sometimes to the tune of doubling their 1e damage. 1st to 10th level PC's aren't all that different in any system 1e-3e as far as hit points go.

Suddenly, you had only 1 fighter type in the front instead of 3 spreading out the damage and the monsters were doing possibly twice as much damage per round.

It's not an option for the wizard to not do damage. If the wizard is just watching the fight, the fighter is seriously going to get pummeled.

I think that's a point that gets lost in a lot of these comparisons. The biggest shift between pre-3e and 3ed is the assumed size of the party and the huge increase in monster hit points and damage output.

If that assumption were true, then our groups shouldn't be able to survive. And yet they do.

Typically, our 3.X groups are built along the lines of earlier editions: There will probably be a rogue of some kind, there will be a healer, there will be an arcanist, and warriors of some kind outnumber any other archetype.

Oftentimes, there is no solo-class healer, and only one pure arcanist- almost everyone multiclasses (discounting PrCls).

And yet, we're doing just fine without the Wiz slinging spells every round.

2 campaigns ago, we were playing RttToEE, and my buddy was- as I described- playing his typical Wizard. I was playing a heavily multiclassed Specialist Diviner/Warrior type PC who had almost no offensive spell capability (he knew Lesser Orb of Electricity). We were the only arcane casters.

For campaign reasons, my PC approached the Wiz to see if he could arrange for a little cross-tutelage in the ways of magic. I'd teach him my divinations, he'd teach me some evocations and the like. Thus, the party would have a little bit more low-level firepower and detection ability. He refused (in character).

He also didn't change his playstyle.

Despite this, we still managed to finish off the campaign with only 1 PC death (the rogue).

 

[Echohawk]

he said that in the old days, you worked, struggled, and tried everything you could to survive as a low-level wizard....and the payoff for all of that was you reaped a power reward if you survived to higher levels.

he feels somewhat slighted that he never saw the real payoff as a Wizard in any of our campaigns. That is a different matter though.

These two statements seem rather contradictory. Either your friend liked "olden days" wizards because of the high-level rewards for surviving the lower levels, or he's bitter because he never got to see those rewards. But not both, surely?

 

[Mouseferatu]

Whereas if you give all the characters the same powers, you end up with a different problem. Everyone will go nova on the main villain. Which means that when fully loaded, they will blow away lesser encounters too easily, or else their nova is necessarily underwhelming and main villains equally so. Variation is what characters interesting, not consistency. The more characters are alike, the less each PC contributes in terms of adding interest to the encounter.

Variation does make characters interesting. I find the classes in 4E to be quite varied. Just because they use the same basic progression doesn't make them identical.

Now, would I like options for more variation? Sure. But if we never get them, I'm okay with most of what we have.

And you know what happens when 4E parties blow through early fights too early? They get their butts kicked later on, and have to learn to retreat. There's absolutely still a question as to when it's proper to bring out the big guns, and when they should be saved for later. And not everyone's going to agree on when those moments are. I've seen fights where one character is completely out of dailies, but other characters haven't used even one.

So... Different powers, different choices as to when those powers should be used, different contributions to combat. Seems interesting enough to me.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Forgotten in what way? I am quite familiar with AD&D.

I don't see how any differences in the editions would mandate this. AD&D was not, in my experience, a faster game. In fact, at low levels, high damage rolls often prompted a rest break. Potions of CLW were generally less common. If anything, 3e extended the work day by giving wizards half again as many spells in many cases.

I'm not talking about in-game time. Where 3E was slow was at the table, and resolving in-game events took more real life time at the table. The fact that things took longer to resolve tended to have an effect on adventure design, as you design adventures for both in game pacing, and at the table real time pacing. People tended to write adventures with fewer events to deal with simply because they took longer to resolve in real time.

Pshaw. I can think of no single playstyle difference between AD&D and 3e than the dual-wielding rogue sneak attacking an ogre to death in a single round.

I never saw Wizards or other spellcasters stand around and do nothing in 3E to the degree they did so in 1E/2E and was described earlier in this thread. Even at 1st level, a 3E Wizard could have three level 1 spells without breaking a sweat. By level 3, a Wizard could have 7 spells to cast in 3E.

I make no excuses, just observations. And the only reason you are right about 3e is because it was the most commonly played system, and 4e is more rigorously balanced in most respects.

The issues described for 3E didn't really exist for 1E/2E, and that has been discussed in this thread. Overpowered Wizards being a problem, while occasionally happening in earlier editions, came to the forefront in 3E. As for other systems, while I'm not familiar with Hero, I am familiar with Vampire. One can claim that from a system standpoint Vampire isn't a well balanced game, in practice its less of an issue. The game isn't focused on combat, or the system for that matter. Most of the Vampire games I've been involved with didn't utilize the system anywhere near the degree that occurs in D&D. When the game is as freeform as Vampire tends to be, you see the imbalances less. When you go three sessions without engaging in combat, the guy who twinked himself out into a killing machine falls into the background.

Sure. But making the wizard unnecessary is in my mind a less important design goal than making them useful. 4e seems to agree with me; rituals make many characters potentially part-time spellcasters. It is not that there are no wizards any more, just that any fighter can be "part wizard" in previous edition terms.

And what is the issue here?

Interesting choice of words. I don't think the playstyle "had to" be put aside; indeed, I view the 4e design as less desirable in most ways for my purposes. I think it is a tragedy that the playstyle was not given the same level of support as the central style supported by 4e: long endurarance encounters punctuated by the occasional daily. I think it is as much a tragedy as if 4e had decided mundane fighters were not a concept worth preserving and all paragon level fighters exuded magical energies to allow them to go toe to toe with dragons and such. Rogues have just about been dispensed with; "rogue rituals" (aka skills) are also readily available, leaving rogues mainly in the role "sneaky fighter," in effect making them fighters. Apart from legacy concerns, rogues and rangers could just about have been two builds of the same class, Scout or whatever you wanted to call it.

I don't see the previous editions Wizard as being an issue. Its specifically the 3E Wizard that was the problem. I played 2E for years, and have no beef with the 2E Wizard.

The Vancian wizard is not exinct, nor has he been proven cumbersome to play. He has merely been proven unpopular at this time. How far does a 4e party progress when it's dailies have been expended? 4e lends itself, if anything, to a shorter workday. The issue was, is, and will be, GM pacing of encounters.

Daily powers don't dictate the 4E workday. Healing Surges do. As long as you have surges, you can go on forever. Dailies don't mean squat.