Too many of these wizards-do-it-all posts ignore the stupidity of the 5 minute workday. If the DM and the other party-members allow the 5-minute workday, then YES the wizard is overpowered. In reality, there should be no chance this happens. The DM should do everything in his power to prevent this from happening, and the other players should absolutely leave the wizard behind if he wants a nap after one room/battle in the dungeon/cavern/forest/etc.
This cannot be stopped. Not every adventure has some sort of time limit. In fact, most don't. I ran 3 or 4 different published adventures in a row in 3.5e, and not a single one of them had any sort of balancing factor for the 5 minute workday.
Well, one of them said that the dungeon should get reinforcements if the PCs leave them alone for a day. Which I had them get. But they could only hire 1 or 2 people a day, no where near enough to act as more than a road bump to the PCs. Even at 8th level. The adventure was written specifically so that no matter how much time the PCs get, the villains plans wouldn't be finished until they got to the end. Mainly because the villains plans involved the end of the world...and telling the PCs randomly on day 100 of their adventure that the world ended...little did they know wouldn't have been fulfilling for anyone.
One of the other ones was an exploration adventure into a dungeon populated by undead creatures who were there for 300 years, hiding away from the world and plotting things. But their plans would take another 5 or 10 years. They were hoping to go unnoticed. Still, there were few enough enemies in the dungeon that the PCs could teleport in, fight one encounter, then teleport out and rest over and over again without a problem.
Why should the player's leave the Wizard behind? They've seen how powerful his spells are. The last thing any group I've been in wants to do is leave their most powerful weapon behind. He's their star player. If he wants to rest after one combat...he gets his wish. Especially if he can pull out his big guns during the next combat. In fact, most of the groups I've been have encouraged the party to rest so that the Wizard could recover spells, even when the WIZARD didn't want to.
Most wizards I've played or played with haven't taken the replace-other-class spells, because they were a waste of resources if you already had a friend you traveled with who could perform the same function. As a matter of fact, it would be perfectly in character for a thief PC to watch a wizard cast Knock for the 3rd time in a week and shiv him in his sleep.
Or at the very least, to go find a different adventuring party. What kind of tool wizard selects spells that kill team morale?
It's not about killing team morale. Most of the time when I prepared knock, silence and invisibility it was because I either knew we were going on a stealth mission...and the Rogue may be stealthy, but generally no one else is. Or I took it as a backup in case we ran into anything the Rogue couldn't succeed on. OR I took it because we didn't have a Rogue and we could simply replace one with spells instead.
Most wizards I've seen have had to contend with one or more of anti-magic doohickeys, silence, lack of spellbook/spell component pouch, magic-is-evil cultures, lack of sleep, super-long workdays, decoy targets to draw out spells, surprise encounters that haven't been prepared for, and a ton of other things that can EASILY "balance" them well through 12-15th level at the very least.
It doesn't really balance them, however. Most Wizards have enough spells at high levels with a 30 Int to easily handle surprise encounters and at least 3 or 4 encounters before running out of spells. Most wizards carefully consider their targets before wasting their biggest spell. Silence isn't an issue for most Wizards as there are a number of spells with no verbal components whose purpose it is to get them out of silence. Plus, they have good saves so the spell doesn't work directly on them. You need to cast it on some object and bring it close.
Either way, the rest are roleplaying disadvantages. You CANNOT balance combat power with roleplaying disadvantages. It doesn't work. It was tried in 2e. That was one of the major guiding principles of 3e. A DM can not and should not be expected to shove role playing disadvantages down the Wizards throat simply to keep them balanced with the rest of the party.
I ran a game in Greyhawk. For the most part the world is friendly to Wizards, there are very few anti-magic zones or items. I'm not going to suddenly change that because it's needed to keep a Wizard from overwhelming my campaign.
And this isn't "the DM fixing things" as all of these things are specifically spelled out in the rulebooks. You CANNOT have a D&D game without a DM. Even if you're playing a videogame, the developer is the "invisible DM". The encounters do not exist without a DM and therefore asking the DM to balance them is a perfectly valid requirement.
I'd like you to point out to me in the book where it says the DM is required to throw out decoy encounters and steal the Wizard's spellbook and spell components. This isn't spelled out in the book at all. You have a DM, but a DM can't predict everything, nor should be be expected to. Nor do I want to, as the DM spend extra effort to make an encounter simply because there is a Wizard in the group. I want to be able to plan out an encounter without knowing what characters are playing at all. I want to be able to look at the book and say "This adventure takes place near a volcano, I bet a battle against 4 Fire Elementals would be fun" without then later finding out that the Wizard has the ability to make the entire party immune to fire and therefore immune to all the damage in the encounter.
I shouldn't have to think "Wait...Wizards can make people immune to these things. I'll give them all wands of Dispel Magic so they can take down their defenses. The monsters should be able to threaten ANY party of their CR or lower.
If they can't, then the system needs to be fixed so they can.
...no rogue ever whined when he encountered plants or undead because they are expected to be a semi-common occurrence.
You do realize that so many people complained that the Rogue's sneak attack didn't work against undead and plants so that any campaign where a DM chose those as the primary monster was no fun to play in that they changed it in 4e so that you could sneak attack plants and undead just fine.
I have a friend who after 3 sessions in a row of fighting undead immediately retired his character because he was tired of feeling useless and switched to a Wizard instead.
Class drawbacks are a part of the balance. And the nebulous idea that drawbacks aren't fun and that we should never not have have fun is one of the things that is killing gaming. (See various save-or-die threads or videogame threads for further details)
Drawbacks are fun when they add an interesting complication. They aren't fun when they are crippling. For instance, having your +2 sword stolen and having to rely on a non magical sword for a session can be an interesting diversion. In that the total change in your character is a +2 bonus to hit.
Having your wife kidnapped in the game and having to go rescue her is a fun roleplaying draw back. Removing your ability to use all spells and reducing you to a fighter with a bad BAB and only the ability to wield a dagger is downright insulting and mean.
This goes full circle back to balancing a class with role playing disadvantages. In 2e, there was a Swashbuckler kit for Thieves. It gave you the THAC0 of a fighter of your level. In exchange, the DM was encouraged to make "trouble find the character". Things like husbands of the swashbucklers lovers, people looking for a challenge, etc.
The ability was an advantage with basically no disadvantage. Because there was no guarantee your DM would be able to fit the prescribed "trouble" into an adventure. When your party goes underground into the Vault of the Drow for 2 or 3 weeks straight without ever returning to the surface and that takes a year of real time to play out....well, sometimes the "trouble" never finds you for an entire campaign. And even when it does....the DM is unlikely to throw a threat big enough to kill you off. So, you beat the threat, have fun with the roleplaying and move on. Probably with some extra XP.
It's a win-win situation.
