Wizards: Squishy or All Powerful?

[Puggins]

If that's the case, I'm trying to figure where other classes in these campaigns wouldn't have their own little bits that allow similiar surviability since in 3e, most spells of... 3rd level or lower can also be... potions.
....
But this may get back to the whole dungeon crawling environment as opposed to the "if mages know what'sw coming they can prpeare for everything with unlimited scrolls and potions crowd" vibe I'm somewhat seeing here.

Wizards come equipped with the Scribe Scroll feat for free. By definition they can leverage scrolls better than other characters can leverage potions. Pulling equal to the wizard means sacrificing a precious feat.

Aside from that, I think some posters painted themselves into a big of a corner. No, the wizard is not ultra-survivable at 5th level. But at that level, you're unlikely to encounter creatures with SR, serious resistances, or significant ranged spell power, with the exception of NPC spellcasters. At that level, the wizard relies more on player skill to survive, which is a good thing.

But that doesn't last very long. Likely by 7th level, certainly by 9th level, the wizard's spell selection drastically improves his survival in virtually any setting. Look at the wizard's 7th level spell load out:

4 + 1 (Int) + 1 (School) = 6 1st level spells
3 + 1 + 1 = 5 2nd level spells
2 + 1 + 1 = 4 3rd level spells
1 + 1 + 1 = 3 4th level spells

that's 18 non-cantrip spells. The last time I played a wizard, I figured that I would devote about a third of my slots to defense and utility and two-thirds to offense (which, given proper spell selection, also doubles as defense).

For defense:
Dimensional Portal (2nd level) to get out of grapples and move to better positions
Mirror Image (2nd level) for encounters I know are coming
Greater Mirror Image (3rd or 4th level) for surprises
Armor (1st level) for persistent defense
Shield (1st level) for defense for specific encounters

For offense:
Grease (1st level) prevents monsters from moving into advantageous positions and gives me time to get away from those who've penetrated the line
Glitterdust (2nd level) crashes the offensive ability of any monster, making it child's play to get away from it.
Hideous Laughter (2nd level) completely shuts a monster down
Hold Person (3rd level) does the same thing
Evard's Black Tentacles (4th level)
Confusion (4th level)

I left out a couple of good choices from necromancy, which I took as a barred school due to role-playing reasons.

You can probably get the general idea- shut the opponents down and let the rest of the party handle the damage-dealing, which in many cases is the only thing they are good at in combat. By eliminating offense, you inherently make yourself harder to kill. And who better to shut down than the creatures that have made it past the fighters and are parked right next to you?

In this campaign, I played an elf wizard- a horrible choice compared to a dwarf due to a significant difference in hit points. Up to around 7th level I relied on a couple of well-timed defensive spells and play skill to survive, and I never got knocked unconscious. After achieving 7th level I became much, much harder to kill, even surviving an ambush by a couple of advanced trolls that managed to sneak up on us and got past our melee characters (Greater Mirror Image is amazing).

We stopped the campaign at 10th level. By that time I simply didn't feel at all fragile. I had spells that could respond to practically any situation (feather fall becomes an easy take for a 1st level spell at that point, incidentally- no more pit issues). I could certainly be taken out by bad luck or a very concerted effort on the part of the monsters, but the melee characters were much more vulnerable- the barbarian and the warblade in the party were both knocked unconscious multiple times, I can't recall every going unconscious during that campaign.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Let the rest of the party handle the damage dealing eh?

Man, it's one of the reasons I enjoy these conversations. Different venues and opinions.

Most of the wizards in the games I've been in or run have been basically, 'battle' wizards. The thought of letting the other characters deal out the damage while they did control would have been alien to 'em.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Let the rest of the party handle the damage dealing eh?

Man, it's one of the reasons I enjoy these conversations. Different venues and opinions.

Most of the wizards in the games I've been in or run have been basically, 'battle' wizards. The thought of letting the other characters deal out the damage while they did control would have been alien to 'em.

Yeah - as mentioned, "doing damage" is usually a suboptimal choice for 3.X wizards.* Rather than a spell which removes, say, a quarter to a half of an enemy's hit points (like a MM against a low-level target), it is far, far better to completely shut that enemy down: Sleep, Color Spray, Grease, etc.

In a game where the action economy is so important, removing a significant portion of your enemies' actions tends to almost always be a stronger choice. For example, in a standard dungeon room fight, it is far better to put a wall (even a temporary one) in between half of the opponents and your party than it is to fireball the majority of bad guys (or, alternatively, put half of them to sleep). This essentially uses one spell to create two mini-encounters, and if the entire encounter was designed to be a balanced challenge, each individual mini-encounter will be a cakewalk.

Also, this isn't really limited to wizards - clerics and druids are also just as much benefactors of the "magic makes me hard to kill" rules; they just don't start out with Scribe Scroll or get bonus item creation feats as they advance.

* See also my Pathfinder Magus playtest notes in the PF forum, wherein I rather quickly sub out my Burning Hands spell for another Shield and my Ray of Frost for Daze.

 

[Zhaleskra]

As I have had experience with several RPGs, I have decided that your profession determining how hardy you are is silly. Even so, I have also decided that if you are going to do a system like that, no class should have anything lower than a d6 for hit points, ever.

I understand the idea of different environments leading to hardier or more sickly characters. My opinion is that a better place to reflect that is in Con penalties and bonuses. Then again, I remind you that I think your class determining how hard you are to hurt is silly.

 

[Diamond Cross]

Charm Person, Sleep and Monster Summoning 1 are first level spells, not 0 level spells.

And look at all the penis envy in this thread. <= see, this is the kind of thing that earns someone an infraction. Both threadcrap and insult in one. Plane Sailing, ENworld admin

 

[Noctos]

In terms of scrolls, they are awesome. The only negative is the downtime to make them, the gold cost to do so, and the xp cost to do so. Minor stuff and I know a lot of groups that ignored it.

experience cost? wow not sure if i'm stupid and miss read the older books but i always seen the experience next to scrolls and magical items states as what you gained for making them.
as for the gold yeah but thats not like your gold magical disappears while you write a scroll it's more the cost the materials required to scribe it.
how ever the time factor is a big one but i personally find increaablly hard my self to believe that if a mage lvl1-5 is leveling his teacher to go out and make a name for him selfd that he wouldn't have spent at least some of the last say 6 or so years it require to master the art of magic scribing scrolls. (but thats just me)

The spells automatically gained are free.

What a? free? how? Where do they come from? Some nice person wonder in to camp in the middle of the night and write it in the pages of the mages book? I personally don't by that. never have. Just because you gain the power at lvl 5 to memorize and write in to your spell book a lvl 3 spells. don't make them free or instantaneously in your possession. these are just my opinions how ever.
i personally made the players work for everything. Wanted new spells you either must find them, buy them, or convince some one to help them. If you found or stole some one elses book you could transscribe some in to your own. I made player seek out mages in hope to allow access in to there labs or library when new spells were wanted. and then often the mage would only agree if they located something for them they needed for there own project.

Same way with new feats, or improving skills, or proficiencies.You earned the points you can spend them were you wanted but before i said it was so you have to locate a place to practice it. Spend a set amount of time doing it or even (rarly) depending on complications of it find some people so willing to teach you.

I forced my players to spend more time away from slaughtering enemy creatures. So there was a lot more to the game than wondering from stronghold, to cave, to tower, another stronghold, Enchanted evil forest Killing and looting as they pleased.

all this was just how i see it everyone like diffrent things for diffrent uses.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Greater Mirror Image (3rd or 4th level) for surprises


After achieving 7th level I became much, much harder to kill, even surviving an ambush by a couple of advanced trolls that managed to sneak up on us and got past our melee characters (Greater Mirror Image is amazing).

As I said, post PHB spells were far from balanced - from the uberdamage conjuration orbs (full damage ignoring spell resistance yay), assay resistance to eliminate spell resistance yay. swift/free action defensive spells (presumably greater mirror image is one of these?).

I bet most of the 'wizards are too uber' people had games which allowed more than just the PHB spell list.

 

[Diamond Cross]

experience cost? wow not sure if i'm stupid and miss read the older books but i always seen the experience next to scrolls and magical items states as what you gained for making them.

In 3.5 it costs xp to make magic items as well as gold.

But you didn't actually lose it, it was just a measure of how much you could make.

From the SRD:

You can create a scroll of any spell that you know. Scribing a scroll takes one day for each 1,000 gp in its base price. The base price of a scroll is its spell level × its caster level × 25 gp. To scribe a scroll, you must spend 1/25 of this base price in XP and use up raw materials costing one-half of this base price.

In other words, you can't make unlimited amounts of items in 3.5e. Basically, you have a number of points you can spend and then when they're gone you can't make any more.

You see, that's the thing about these manly manhood envy arguments, the people who want to trim the manly mans' manhood always use generalizations and don't really talk specifics and ignore what they want to ignore.

 

[Plane Sailing]

experience cost? wow not sure if i'm stupid and miss read the older books but i always seen the experience next to scrolls and magical items states as what you gained for making them.


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how ever the time factor is a big one but i personally find increaablly hard my self to believe that if a mage lvl1-5 is leveling his teacher to go out and make a name for him selfd that he wouldn't have spent at least some of the last say 6 or so years it require to master the art of magic scribing scrolls. (but thats just me)



What a? free? how? Where do they come from? Some nice person wonder in to camp in the middle of the night and write it in the pages of the mages book?

They are talking about scrolls in 3e which cost xp and gold to scribe.

The base assumption in D&D is that when the PC starts adventuring at 1st level he has left whatever apprenticeship he may have been in. Anything done while he was an apprentice belongs to his former master. He starts with xdy * z gp to purchase ALL his starting equipment. I guess he might be able to use some of that to have scribed some scrolls?

The 'free' spells represent spells which the wizard has been thinking about and researching in this spare time (before bedtime?) and gradually scribing into his book over the course of the level.

Cheers

 

[JoeGKushner]

Wizards perform a certain amount of spell research between adventurers. Each time a character attains a new wizard level, she gains two-spells of her choice to add to her spellbook. These spells represent the results of her research. pg. 178

Now we can argue that it doesn't work that way in your campaign 3.5 no problem. I know a lot of people that don't use things like spell components either or only use them when they're expensive like the 250 gp it cost every time you cast Stoneskin.