[L&L] Balancing the Wizards in D&D

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, I don't know how this compares to 4e casting, because I've never played 4e, and also I wasn't fond of the idea of 4e dumping Vancian magic in the first place. Anything that Mearls is working on comes from the experiences of 4e as well as prior editions, so there's elements I'm not aware of. Mearls is good at analyzing the game and how things work, but I don't always like his approaches to fixing things. It might be because sometime during 3e, the optimization approach started becoming popular and reduced a lot of the game to number-crunching. This is where wizards and CoDzilla were considered the absolute best classes, while everything else was being seen as increasingly worse. That's fine for something like a videogame, but in a tabletop setting, it shouldn't need to dominate, especially if the DM knows what he's doing and gives the non-optimized characters something to do.

It is the whole notion that the DM HAS to 'give the non-optimized characters' something to do, and that the only logical optimization path is to be a caster. This was true even in AD&D much beyond 3rd level.

4e wizards are really not as much different from pre-4e wizards as many people have tried to make out. They have generally weaker defenses, lower hit points, less surges, etc. While magic is not strictly 'Vancian' by pre-4e standards it is not really that much different. A level 1 4e wizard has one powerful daily (basically this works exactly like pre-4e spells), an encounter spell (you could still consider this 'Vancian' but just requires only a couple minutes to re-memorize). Beyond that you have 2 at-will powers and several cantrips (all at-will but none of them do any damage). Then you start with 2 rituals, which cost gold (components) to cast and mostly have 5-10 minute casting times. You also have Arcana replacing Identify and Detect Magic, so you can use those pretty much whenever but it requires passing a check for Detect Magic to work.

4e scrolls simply allow anyone to cast a ritual from the scroll (at 50% normal casting time). Any ritual caster can make them for a modest fee. Casting most rituals requires some sort of skill check, so any PC can try to use one, but in many cases won't get great results. Their main use is carting around a spare Raise Dead in case your ritual caster buys it.

4e wands can carry any at-will or encounter attack power, besides being an implement that grants a to-hit bonus if it is magical, which it almost always is. At-will powers become encounter item powers on a wand, and encounter powers become daily wand powers. There are also many other implement enchantments which are often better than a power, but a caster could invest in a couple. There's no real point in making a quiver full because the cost would be too high. You could do it, but the enhancement bonuses would be so low they wouldn't really be useful unless you're playing with a Monty Haul DM...

Other consumables in 4e are generally limited in utility. Alchemical stuff (oil flasks and such basically) have mediocre to-hit and don't do enough damage to be super options. Potions are quite handy and not hard to make, but they tend to all be defensive/protective in nature (no flying or invisibility, more like healing or resistance). Crafting items is fairly non-restrictive, but it is harder to make really exciting items and the idea is that the DM keeps it in check by not giving out a megaton of treasure as costs are relatively high.

Caster dominance doesn't bother me, but since wizard is my favored class, I could be a bit biased. That doesn't matter to me though. The issue here of course is of the quadratic wizard, and this has long been the case. It doesn't bother me because I remember the old school wizard (M-U or mage if you prefer) well. The wizard was a powerful class, but had to earn that power, it was weak at low levels, and had the slowest XP progression in early levels. The eventual payoff had to be earned. The good wizard players knew how to play at low levels, use oil or assist in non-combat ways, do what needed to be done while the fighters were fighting. Of course combat was shorter in the past, monsters had less hp without Con bonuses kicking in, and there weren't things like powers and AoOs and feats and stuff going off. That is when players risked combat, because the big xp payoff was in treasure, and not slain enemies. Then again, the game really only assumed about 10 levels of play while 3e upped it to 20, and really most of the complaints about 3e is how stuff starts to break down in the mid teens. Also, one bonus the fighter gained at high levels was the ability to attract followers. That was in 3e too, but shifted off to the optional Leadership feat, which I'm sure a lot of optimizing number crunchers considered a waste.

The problem, if you consider it one, is that "weak at low level, strong at high level" is a kind of a dorky way to do things. For instance we played AD&D for about 20 years. Our campaigns went up to high level a couple times, but the VAST majority of play was always in low to mid levels. The wizard is always in that "paying for what I'll never get" mode, or else in the mid levels where he's still really the most vital PC in the group (really, consider adventuring without a wizard, possible but highly unfavorable to the party). If you then DO happen to get to high level you're even better off and frankly a party of all casters is probably the best option past 6th level. An MC thief to cover those skills is quite handy, but you can live without it. The whole followers thing was dubious. Basically the fighter can PAY and work to build a stronghold and get a bunch of considerably lower level (mostly 0 level) followers. ANY PC can spend a few gold and get a henchman that is basically as good as the 'captain' you get. The 0 level guys are pretty useless to a level 9 fighter. On top of that clerics get better followers than fighters do!

At will cantrips sounds a bit over powered at first, but consider that 3e cantrips do only 1d3 damage. That is comparable to the damage wizards could do with what few simple ranged weapons they had in the past. Crossbows do better damage, but the wizard still has to make an attack roll. So this doesn't bother me too much I guess.

4e cantrips are at-will but can do no damage at all. It is hard to tell exactly what Mike is referring to when he talks about cantrips.

Keeping spells under control I think gives a bad example. Sure that cleric might be wearing full plate and have a big penalty to save against grease, but really at level 15 he should be able to dispel the effect anyway, so why is it a problem?

The problem is that you have a fighter who can admittedly do nice damage, but as soon as any situation is actually dangerous (IE when it really matters at all) the wizard steps in and poofs the threat out of existence or provides some spell to totally bypass it. This leaves the non-casters feeling like the ditch diggers. They do all the uninteresting minion slaying and the important stuff is handled by someone else. Also, there's really nothing clever about casting Grease or whatever. It is just all rote past a certain point.

Dangerous spell casting is a misnomer. This sounds a lot like how it's always been in the past. In Basic and AD&D, taking damage fizzled the spell and it was lost. In 3e it worked like this:

Oh look, it's fizzle and loss again, though any wizard who's built at all sensibly will have a decent chance to make the Concentration check. Here the spell fizzles, but it isn't lost, so really it's more generous than the game was in the past.

Yeah, but there's nothing WRONG with having spells fizzle. It certainly isn't 'dangerous' as described. I got the impression they were considering something more like a misfire chance, but he didn't delve into that.

Don't like the idea behind scrolls. Again, I can't say what things were like in 4e, but if 3e wizards were cranking out too many of them, then why not do something like up the XP cost? I remember that low level scrolls at least had a very trivial XP cost, like 1 XP for a first-level scroll. That's not a huge sacrifice at all even at first level. Wands sounds like it goes back to 2e and earlier wands, which weren't necessarily bad, but again I liked 3e wands. Again if things need control, then make them more expensive so that a wizard isn't just cranking them out at will but must consider the cost.

Because the XP cost thing was a royal PITA and made no sense. In 4e you just kept the amount of treasure in check and the monetary costs created the limitation. This allowed it to be fun to make items (vs the AD&D "walk through hell to make a potion, forget it" solution) and yet kept crafting them in check. Again, the 4e wand solution (once per encounter/day use, attack spells only) worked pretty well. OTOH consuming slots to cast from wands/scrolls sounds feasible to me.

It might also be because monsters have more hp in 3e (again the Con bonuses kicking in), so blasting is considered inefficient. A fireball in 1e and even 2e could clear out whole groups of monsters at once, particularly since 1e did not have a damage cap on it.

My experience in AD&D is that now and then a fireball or lightning bolt was pretty handy but they weren't the best use of a wizard's spell slots. By high level direct spell attacks were pretty hard to pull off. Half damage from attack spells wasn't really enough to justify them. My 14th level wizard had one fireball memorized. It could do pretty decent damage, but was mostly handy as an emergency way to clear out some mooks.

Creative use of spells I'm somewhat cautious about, but then I'm also seeing it from an older point of view. I remember how Skip Williams used to advise DMs heavily against this in Sage Advice and the High Level Campaigns book, because creative use of magic could easily lead to abuse.

Truly creative use of spells is nice, but most clever uses were pretty much rote by year 3 of AD&D (like 1981 basically). Outside of combat there were more interesting and creative uses of magic. Of course 4e's ritual magic is exactly designed to recreate that. You can whip out any of your rituals and use them whenever you need, but they aren't cheap to cast. So you aren't going to be constantly trotting them out for routine situations, but OTOH when you come up with a really clever use for one you don't have to lament the fact that you didn't happen to memorize it.

Depending on what else 5e's casting system has in it, it could be good. Seems to me that the whole thing can be reasonably pleasing to all.

 

[Steely_Dan]

The older editions had a simple system with tables and tables of options available. True class balance (specifically in combat) was not something the designers strived for. Their goals were different. You can see that from the books they put out.
They gave endless support for various options that players/DMs would be interested in. Realism, High Fantasy, Gritty, Loose, Stream-Lining, Low Magic, Supernatural, Enviromental, Dark, Horror. It seemed like they were more concerned with settings and styles of play than Class Balance.

Yes, never heard any of this balance/broken etc shenanigans in pre-3rd Ed, it seems like once the whole Magic the Gathering mindset immersed itself in much of the gaming community that this really became an issue (I did have my black lotus, 4 dark rituals, 4 juzam djinns deck and what-have-you, so I understand, but this strive for "balance", like many things, has gone too far).

 

[Doug McCrae]

The problem, if you consider it one, is that "weak at low level, strong at high level" is a kind of a dorky way to do things.

Yes. It makes game balance fragile, because it relies upon campaigns starting at 1st level, progressing up to 10th or so, and then stopping. If there is any deviation from this model, such as continuing to 20th, or stopping at 6th, or just playing short campaigns and oneoff sessions, then the game becomes unbalanced.

This is also the problem with D&D-style Vancian casting. There have to be many encounters over the course of a single day, as per the traditional D&D dungeon, in order to balance casters versus non-casters.

Take these two factors together and it's an extremely fragile game design.

Also, there's really nothing clever about casting Grease or whatever. It is just all rote past a certain point.

Agreed. The guy who first noticed its power twelve years ago was clever, but it's well known now.

 

[steeldragons]

One thing missed in the at will wizard talk.

At Will Utility

One thing that ALWAYS BUGGED ME was that a D&D wizard could not have a conversation while flaunting magic all over the place like a major show off. Floating your teacup in the air. Mage handing your kettle. Heating the tea while you magically flip pages of your spellbook nonchalantly while across brushing you familiar's fur and looting up biscuits. Oops, candle went out. Foom! Someone is at the door. Wave a hand and Open it. "Why hello there. Have a seat." Telekinesis a chair over. "Cheese?" Poof. Cheese. "It is too quiet in here. You, Violin. Play thyself." Zip zap. "I adore the violin. Don't you? No the cheese is good." Detect poison. "Nope. No poison. Eat up. Now what was the purpose of your visit? Oh Lady Sweetbuns. Should we oil that harlot tomorrow or not?"


But spell slots. And Prestidigitation is so limited.

While I've never seen a player use "magic" to such an extent, I've had a few NPCs do...just about everything (maybe not all at once! haha) you describe.

Those non-combat/flavor sorts of enchantments that don't really "do" anything than set/add to a scene...no problem. Not "at will" (least, not the system I play in), but easily doable.

I see no reason the "show off wizard" wouldn't be able to do just about everything you describe (maybe not the "Poof. Cheese", that seems to require a "Create Food") between Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, Open/Close, Produce Flame...even just a cantrip called "Cantrip" for those minor things that don't have a specific 0level spell of their own, this is all easily accomplished.

[I, personally did away with the litany of individual cantrips a long time ago and basically said, "If you want to do something minor, it uses one of your cantrip/0 level slots." easy peasy.]

And any mage, who wants to be a show off, worth their salt is going to have at least ONE Unseen Servant floating around the house to pull up those chairs and prepare/pour that tea for them...or bring them some cheese ...as opposed to conjure it.

So, for my games/two coppers, a 1st level wizard ought to be able to appear as this "master of magic" with a few cantrips and 1 1st level spell (unseen servant).

I don't know...or really think...that the game needs to be overly specific with [rules for] these kinds of flavorful effects.
--SD

 

[Mattachine]

Still, myself and my players find the fluff of "magic bolts" that may or may not hit much more satisfying than "wizard with a crossbow" (or, for AD&D, "wizard with darts"). The difference seems minor, but it matters greatly to a great many players.

There is also the implication that a caster will have a better chance to hit with "magic bolts" than with that crossbow.

 

[wrecan]

A couple comments

Noncasters using scrolls
I think it's unfair to make any conclusions about this from the article since the discussion of scrolls was a small part of a larger discussion about how scrolls would not constitute extra spell slots. There may be rules for a noncaster being able to use magic scrolls. It could be a Charisma check with a high DC. It could require the PC to sacrifice HP. Or it could be part of some 6th level Theme called "Spellthief" that lets the character invoke scrolls and wands without using spell slots, use items normally restricted to other classes, and perhaps even "steal" memorized spells from rival casters. But since that was beyond the scope of the article, we cant' make any conclusion from its absence.

Cantrips vs. Weapons
I don't see how cantrips will feel like reflavored weapons. First of all, damage-dealing spells almost always have a damage type like cold damage (ray of frost) or acid damage (acid splash). To the extent that a roll is required (whether an attack or saving throw) it will be modified by the spellcaster's primary ability (Int, Wis, or Cha), not his melee ability (Str or Dex). It won't feel like a weapon, even if it lacks unique mechanics like autohit (magic missile), area blast effects (burning hands), or extra damage against armored foes (shocking grasp) or undead (disrupt undead).

 

[billd91]

But they want to play the game with the PCs they've built.

The time the PCs all got trapped in a cage and had to do sneaky stuff to get their weapons back before they could then break out and trounce the goblins? Fun.

The two or three times the dwarf fighter has had to pull out his longbow to plink away rather futiley at a target too far away or too high up to charge to? Amusing.

I can see we're running into some serious style issues here. Yes, players want to play with the PCs they've built, but they can also push the issue too far in expecting everything to cater to how they've built their PCs. There's a balancing point between a GM adapting the campaign to his players and the player adapting to the challenges of the campaign. Different styles of play obviously put that balance points in different places. For example, from my perspective on style, any dwarf fighter who plinks away at a flying target with futility because he can't charge has overspecialized. Sucks to be him. Will he learn from the experience?

It being routine for a PC to have to engage the action resolution mechanics with some third-rate default option that is not part of the players' vision or schtick? A feature of no RPG that I'm aware of other than low-level MU play in classic D&D.

I think the question remains whether it really is a 3rd rate option. In 1e, when those magic-users were out of spells, they were often still fairly effective tossing darts at a high rate of speed. Their attack tables were pretty much right in the thick of things with every other class. As they leveled up and fell behind, they got more spells as well. So I wouldn't call that a third rate default option at all.

3e isn't really that much different, in part, because wizards have a better attack progression than in 1e and can invest in feats like PB shot and Precise shot, which also help their rays as well as firing with a crossbow. Again, I don't call that a 3rd rate default option. I've seen it used fairly effectively.

Granted, I think the mix Paizo took with PF is an even better one since you can use selected cantrips all day. They typically don't do as much damage as the crossbow, but they afford the PC more mobility since they don't have to keep reloading and they hit with a touch AC rather than full AC.

But with this in mind, I think Lanefan's observation is a good one. To balance magic, you can make it tough to cast and comparatively rare but powerful or you can make it more common and a lot weaker. Those are legitimate tradeoffs in the art of the game's design. I naturally prefer the former because the latter generally makes magic less, well, magic and intrinsically interesting as something different from the mundane ways of putting the hurt on your target. If there aren't potential encounter modifiers (including enders), just more hp attrition, what's the good of doing things magically in the first place? Every tool increasingly resembles a hammer.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Giving the wizard to fire a magic missile a round for 1D4+1 is no better then firing a crossbow.

Uh... yes it is. Because I'm doing MAGIC. And as I'm a magic-user... DOING MAGIC is preferable to NOT DOING MAGIC. If I wanted to fire a crossbow... I'd be a crossbowman. Why is throwing a vial of flaming oil in any way better than just being able to cast a small bursting fire spell? As far as I'm concerned... it ain't.

 

[steeldragons]

Uh... yes it is. Because I'm doing MAGIC. And as I'm a magic-user... DOING MAGIC is preferable to NOT DOING MAGIC. If I wanted to fire a crossbow... I'd be a crossbowman. Why is throwing a vial of flaming oil in any way better than just being able to cast a small bursting fire spell? As far as I'm concerned... it ain't.

Ok...I see that. I get that. That makes sense. The magic-user/wizard/mage SHOULD have magic available all (or most) of the time...but for a variety of situations.

At the same time, I think maybe it's a matter of preferred flavor and playstyle.

In other words, how specific can or should the system be that working "minor magics"[0 level/cantrips], that may not be effective in combat, is still flavorful and "doing magic", and should appeal to the player as such, while not being "as powerful as" 1st level spells that actually do damage?

You were casting Sleep you got interrupted. No worries, you didn't lose the spell...AND you can throw fire in his face anyway?

Is the ability to do "less damage" than a 1st level spell, at will/all the time, really all that wizards need to be/do...is that what/all playing a D&D mage has come to?...in a game that claims it is taking the focus off "combat only" and including exploration and interaction, as well?

I am inclined to say no. Being able to Detect Magic, provide Light, fool a foe or enhance an interactive encounter with some minor illusions...or Detect same...maybe Detect Poison or Cure Minor Wounds [for the non-arcane caster] can make one just as "magical", more flavorful (to my mind), and allow one to "contribute" just as much as (if not moreso) being able to throw "acid splashes" or "rays of frost" all day.

I get the "I'm a magic-user. If I can't use magic then I'm not contributing" mentality. But being able to/needing to use "attack magic" every round in any combat all day does not strike me as necessary for one to be a colorful/flavorful/interesting or mysterious magical/magic-using character.

Somehow, it seems to a large number of folks it has become/is synonymous with it...if not "necessary."

My knowledge/language/history skills should be able to make me useful. My -whatever feats- from my Theme should make me useful. And, push comes to shove, a stab of my dagger or thwap of my staff [gods save me from the "crossbow-wizard" ] makes me useful also...though potentially quite dangerous to my person.

Shouting "Take cover! She's casting a fireball" [assuming Spellcraft exists in some fashion] allowing my companions to attempt to protect themselves from the "incoming!", or make a last ditch attempt to interrupt it with a bow or charge or something, is useful. It didn't require my using magic...but a rogue or fighter in the party wouldn't have known that. That's "Arcana". That's my [the wizard's] shtick.

Seems I've floated over to the character contribution thread...lol. But I think the topics/debates occurring here (at least in the at-will/cantrip arena) are somewhat connected.

As JamesonCourage is so fond of saying, play what/as/how you like...I just think that the arguments for allowing...no, necessitating...damage-dealing cantrips (that do all of 1 or 2 hp less than first level spells) all day are not the end all be all of making a "good/flavorful" magic-user...and "duh rulz" ought not to mandate or even encourage that.

--SD

 

[DEFCON 1]

I just think that the arguments for allowing...no, necessitating...damage-dealing cantrips (that do all of 1 or 2 hp less than first level spells) all day are not the end all be all of making a "good/flavorful" magic-user...and "duh rulz" ought not to mandate or even encourage that.

Last we heard on the matter on how we acquire at-will attack cantrips was that they required you to spend a feat to get it. Nothing has been said since then that appears to have changed that rule (and I'm not saying that it hasn't changed... only that we have not been told yet if it did). So at least at this moment in time... it appears the game isn't necessitating damage-dealing cantrips for all wizards... only that they are available for those who want them.

And that's all I care about. That the option is there to take. Some players don't want the option available at all, because it seems as though they feel that anything that appears in the book is implied to have to be allowed. And rather than just say 'No' to their use... they instead don't want it to appear. The exact same argument some players have why they hyperbolically say they will never touch 5E if it dares to have dragonborn in the first book. And I say to them to learn a little bit of compromise.