Wizards: Squishy or All Powerful?

[Puggins]

so your telling me in 3.5 or great editions that crafting magical gear and scribing scrolls makes you dumber. That if i sat down and wrote 10 scrolls in my down time that i get to be a worse. that when i create a flaming sword and installed mirror image on it as a side ability that my magical skills get worse? I dont buy it.
build stuff for a living i don't get crappier with each desk i make.i get faster and smart about it.

Logic and D&D rules don't always mix, unfortunately. It's there for balance.

Imagine if you could take a feat like this:

I Can Has +INT

Choose a wondrous item. You may spend half the cost of the item in order to obtain it. You gain an amount of experience equal to the cost of the item divided by 25.

If a single feat doubles the buying power for wondrous items AND gives the wizard xp, every wizard would likely take craft wondrous item at 5th level, start crafting his entire party's +stat gear load-out and gain a level on them by the time he reaches the teens.

 

[Victim]

so your telling me in 3.5 or great editions that crafting magical gear and scribing scrolls makes you dumber. That if i sat down and wrote 10 scrolls in my down time that i get to be a worse. that when i create a flaming sword and installed mirror image on it as a side ability that my magical skills get worse? I dont buy it.
build stuff for a living i don't get crappier with each desk i make.i get faster and smart about it.

Well, you aren't ripping out bits of your soul and using them to empower the desks, are you?

 

[MerricB]

so your telling me in 3.5 or great editions that crafting magical gear and scribing scrolls makes you dumber.

In 3e and 3.5e, creating magic items takes a part of your life force, represented by XP. (In 1e-3e, energy drain from undead effectively did XP damage).

In 1e and 2e, your DM was probably making it impossible for you to create magic items. If you managed to make one, you may have lost a constitution point in the process. In 2e, you gained XP for making an item, not so in 1e.

In 4e, you need gold and a feat, but with Essentials, you can't make many items at all.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

It seems (and I certainly have no firsthand knowledge of this) that it was built in primarily (exclusively) as a balancing factor to keep the wizard from going completely item crazy.

My feeling is that it is partly a legacy from 1e & 2e, although in those editions it was Constitution you risked when making magic items.

Cheers!

 

[Noctos]

Logic and D&D rules don't always mix, unfortunately. It's there for balance.

Imagine if you could take a feat like this:

I Can Has +INT

Choose a wondrous item. You may spend half the cost of the item in order to obtain it. You gain an amount of experience equal to the cost of the item divided by 25.

If a single feat doubles the buying power for wondrous items AND gives the wizard xp, every wizard would likely take craft wondrous item at 5th level, start crafting his entire party's +stat gear load-out and gain a level on them by the time he reaches the teens.

(2nd edition rules here)
well considering it took months and years to craft an item and could even take decades of what they called uninterrupted research. (eat sleep lab) i don't think the mage would ever grow enough to out rank a party that was questing. as a heavy enough dungeon could easily beworth the up words or 10,000 xp and they finish clearing the enemys in what 24-40 hours in game time.

on top of that a mage had to beable cast the spells and be 2 lvl's above spell to enchant an item with it so to place fireball charge on a ring the mage had to be able to cast 5th lvl spells.

what stopped players from sitting down and doing nothing but crafting in the old game was the time it took. and the cost of gold. it was becuase it took weeks months and years to make the product was the reason you recieved xp for doing It. the time also was harsh because players couldn't just stop and chill for that time just cause they felt like it. Dm's made the adventuring fantasy world constantly moving after all. if a wizard was interrupted they would how to restart from the be gaining. If they changed that in future modules or editions i'll never use those guild lines as they seem wrong to my logical brain and form of game playing. The old system seems far more balanced of slowing or stopping players from the creations overly powerful gear.

XP value is the number of experience points the player gets for making the item

straight out of the dnd dm manual right as the start the magical item tables.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I'll post more when I'm in a computer rather than a phone, but there are a couple of observations.

1. Allowing spells outside Phb accentuates brokenness'. Far too many poorly designed uberspells.

Fortunately my PCs stuck to the PH1.

2. I'm seeing a lot of responses here that seem to assume the wizard is only in 1-3 encounters per day.

3 encounters is pretty standard. It's hard to put more into a day unless the PCs are dungeon crawling, and even then they could leave the dungeon when they want to rest. I'm not sure when Broken Secret Hut becomes available; I never learned that spell as a mage.

And never gets caught by surprise.

I'll tell you what happened to my "invincible" wizard character when he got caught by surprise. It hurt.

He was a 9th or 10th level halfling wizard, probably 10th, and had taken Skill Focus (Concentration) and Silent Spell. (Other feats too, of course, but they weren't relevant in this encounter.) This was Eberron, and we were doing the Xen'drik adventure.* I forget what it's called. Before the attack, his only defensive spell on him was False Life, because ... well, I wasn't a gnome. The only defensive spell he could cast this battle was Silent Dimension Door.

We were on a small boat on a jungle river. The river was really narrow, more like a stream. Narrow enough that the local wildlife (which were riled up by some vague magic effect) could jump on the boat! Well, if they were a dire tiger.

Both tigers jumped on the boat, and one clawed me twice but missed on the bite. Being a small creature, it could easily grapple me if it bit me, and could then jump into the jungle again with me. I'd be far from friends! Confident in my Concentration score, I started to declare that I would cast Silent Dimension Door... except where would I go? By myself into the jungle?

I had to take two full-round attacks from the tiger (it missed with both bites, good thing it didn't have Multiattack) before I had to be rescued. The reason I wasn't rescued in one round? Because another PC was in dire straights too!

I don't know how I survived both rounds, but I vaguely recall either someone cast a healing spell at me, or I pulled off a defense spell -- it couldn't have been Mirror Image or Greater Invisibility, as dire tigers have scent, and it was a core spell, and not an Eberron one since I didn't use those.

Said wizard got into more trouble when, in the dungeon itself, enemies intelligently "flanked" the party (not the +2 to hit maneuver, but attacking from both sides) and I didn't get the customary one round of buffing while hiding behind the fighter before dishing out the offensive magic on the grounds that the fighter was engaged fighting someone else. There was a clear path to me which two opponents could take.

So I just one-shot-stopped one of the attackers with a save-or-suffer spell (I think it was Baleful Polymorph or Hold Monster) while another PC (I think a cleric or paladin) tangled with the other back-attacker. Tactics turned out to be more important than having decent Hide skills, it seems.

It would have gone very badly if the attackers had "artillery". Having said that, unless they all deliberately focused fire on the wizard, he would have lived, gotten healed, and gotten off a good defense spell like Mirror Image. (A single "artillery" couldn't have dropped me, and with my Concentration check, if one had readied an action to interrupt my spellcasting, I would have taken the damage and cast a good spell anyway.)

I even deliberately nerfed my own mage sometimes, although by nerf I meant "not metagamed". For instance, being attacked by some creatures that I (as a player) knew had tremorsense, I didn't make any skill checks and cast Mirror Image anyway, since that's what he would normally do. The monsters were melee attackers though, which meant the presence of the other PCs helped a lot. While there were close calls, I didn't get ganked.

*The DM had upped levels for the whole adventure, and had probably rewritten much of it too.

And never has to wrestle with the opportunity cost of casting spell x vs y in combat.

Proper spell selection. Maybe you could give some examples. I was pretty good at picking a selection of spells for all situations though.

For instance, running into a golem in said dungeon. Good thing I had prepped Glitterdust. Twice. (This was standard; I had no idea a golem would be there.) One was heightened too, since that spell was probably a little too good for 2nd-level. My wizard's use of Protection from Elements (acid, IIRC) turned out to be more important than his ability to screw over blinded golems

FWIW I think the wizard in 3e was always lower on the power curve than Druid, Cleric and Psion.

On this I agree.

Druids and clerics are just tougher. Catch one by surprise and they tend to have higher AC, hit points and good Fort saves. However, their array of defensive spells were weaker (because they didn't really need them). Psions are complicated, but they generally had more "offense" in 3.5. Their buffing spells were more like those of clerics, which meant they weren't that great for d4 hp/level characters. I don't want to touch 3.0 psions with a 10-foot pole; there were so many horrid issues there.

To some extent, wizards got "overpowered" defense spells because of their low hit points/AC. You'd never see a cleric with Mirror Image... or at least I hope not! On the other hand, the pendulum swung too far with spells like Greater Invisibility, IMO. Now the wizard enjoys a 50% miss chance (good, but can be dealt with without magic) and can't be seen or targeted (bad, no one had high enough Listen checks, needs magic to solve).

 

[Diamond Cross]

Remember, multiclassing would allow for a Cleric Wizard, so it's conceivable to have a Cleric cast Mirror image.

But remember, there's a spell failure chance for armor, and it's much higher for heavy armors.

But yeah, that's one of the reason why Wizards do have a low hp. And why a good fighter would win against a Wizard when up close.

But getting there is half the battle. And that's why fighters have lots of hit points.

At tenth level, a fighter can have up to 140 hp maximum, assuming an 18 Con.

At tenth level, assuming a Wizard has an 18 Con, which is not likely, the Wizard would have a maximum hp of 80. A 140 hp is a huge difference.

And even with a lowly non magical long sword, a fighter can still dish a good 30hp of damage a round. This assumes that a Fighter would have maxed out his Strength, which would be at least a 20 at tenth level. That would be a d8 plus five points of damage twice a round, or 6 to 13 for one attack, without a critical hit. So that would be 12 to 26 hp per round, for a tenth level fighter, since they get two attacks per round. With critical hits that would be 24 to 52 points of damage. Which is a lot of damage.

This not weak by any stretch of the imagination.

With the right magical weapon a fighter can dish out almost 120hp of damage a round.

But then again, a Wizard's useless without their spellbook. They can not cast magic without it.

A Wizard and a Sorcerer even with 80 hp would get taken down pretty easily.

This is for 3.5e, of course.

But a Wizard at 10th level is not likely to have 80hp and would more than likely have around 40hp.

And Wizards do not get critical hits with their spells.


Well, in Rolemaster, they do, but this is D&D.

 

[nightwyrm]

And Wizards do not get critical hits with their spells.

A bit of nitpick, but that's not quite true. Spells that requires an attack roll can crit. Complete Arcane pg. 85. Heck, they can get sneak attack damages with weapon-like spells.

 

[MarkB]

I had the same initial reaction. But if you look at the numbers relative to your level, it really isn't painful if you stay within reason.

Let's say you're a tenth level wizard and you want to make a teleport scroll. Since the beginning of the game, you've made 10 1st level scrolls, 8 2nd level, 6 3rd level, 4 4th level, and 2 5th level scrolls, all at minimum caster level for that level. Total xp cost for making 30 scrolls: 350xp. You need to get 10,000xp to get to 11th level. The xp cost might SEEM to be painful at the time, but 350 is not an extra monster at that level. And that's for a LOT of back-up spells.

Things change if you want to start smithing tons of cool, high-level items, but even then the cost is'nt beyond horrible, especially if the choice is between making it and not having it at all (which is not generally the case, but sometimes it is).

An int+6 item costs you either 36,000gp to buy (if the DM allows you to buy it) or 18,000 and 1,440xp. 18,000gp at 10th level is serious money: if you made your int+6 item, you'd have enough to also buy an amulet of health +4 and have 2,000gp left over. So would you rather level one or two fights later and have an extra 20hp or would you rather risk the fighting with less hit points? It's not a no-brainer either way.

There's also the factor that, in 3.5e, XP gain is scaled to current level - so a lower level character gains more XP from a particular encounter than his higher-level companions. So even if you do use up enough XP to lag behind the rest of the group at one point, you'll earn extra XP for the next few encounters and quickly catch up.

 

[nightwyrm]

There's also the factor that, in 3.5e, XP gain is scaled to current level - so a lower level character gains more XP from a particular encounter than his higher-level companions. So even if you do use up enough XP to lag behind the rest of the group at one point, you'll earn extra XP for the next few encounters and quickly catch up.

Quite right. More importantly, a crafter who decides to stay a level behind other PCs can accumulate quite a bit of XP to go towards making items at a cheaper price than buying them and thus let the whole party get ahead of the expected wealth curve. Look up "Experience is a river" from the 3.5 char-op boards.