Yes, if a player wanted to multiclass and not play his PC as a straight up wizard, he could shoehorn the concept in. But, it is a PC concept that straight up wizards could perform in at least 3E. Sounds like a bug, not a feature.
D&D 5E Sell me on Wizards
- Thread starter raleel
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Yes, if a player wanted to multiclass and not play his PC as a straight up wizard, he could shoehorn the concept in. But, it is a PC concept that straight up wizards could perform in at least 3E. Sounds like a bug, not a feature.
Sounds mostly like an issue for those who only played wizards in 3e at their zenith of power. If you played wizards at low levels in 1e or 2e the 5e wizards seems awesome. If you played a 4e wizard you are already used to being in line with the other classes in terms of power level across tiers. Seems like a feature and a fix for a bug that only crept in during 3e.
Side note: not sure why you are taking Identify at low levels unless your DM is house ruling something. Just rest with the item and you know what it does in 5e. Save the spell known slot for something more useful.
The gnome wizard in our game may not do the most damage every round but Sleep can be an encounter ender. Mix in what others have said about illusions and area effect spells and he definitely pulls his weight. I guess I never bought into the front line wizard thing, we used to call that a fighter/magic-user in earlier editions (heck Wizards getting a d6 HP/level is something big). It is still possible though but takes some actual focus as opposed to being something any wizard can do on top of everything else.
Then again I would argue that Dex and Con are very important secondary stats for wizards depending on where they want to fight from.
It was a matter of not knowing all of the rules from the get go.
I do have a question on that. What do the PCs in your group do with the creatures that they sleep instead of kill? It's one thing to kill a fighting foe, it's another to kill a sleeping foe.
I'm asking this because this happened in our game and the majority of players decided to not kill helpless foes (but they couldn't just tie them up or let them wake up and escape either).
This sort of thing drives me crazy. Not just with the sleep spell, but even more so when subduing enemies to interrogate them.
So many players think it's a great idea to try to get information out of an enemy, but then they wring their hands and suddenly remember their pristine alignment when it comes time to decide what to do after the interrogation. Never mind that the interrogation process often involves blackmail or torture, or at least the threat of torture. I have come to hate taking prisoners, and I will sometimes "accidentally" kill the last monster standing just to avoid this intensely tiresome drama.
Similarly, with sleep, I feel like you shouldn't use the spell if you don't know what you want to do with a pile of so-called "helpless" foes. It's not like there's some fantasy police force you can turn them over to. When they wake up, they are going to do their best to kill you or get you killed, so the harsh reality is, the most "good" option available to you at this point is to grant them a quick and merciful death.
It takes a lot of fun out of the game when players of good-aligned characters agonize over the moral implications of every single situation. Being good means you try to do the right thing most of the time. It doesn't mean you have to whip out the WWJD playbook every five minutes.
[sblock="minor walking dead spoiler for 5.01 amidst discussion"]
Interestingly, this is an issue faced in the first episode of the latest season of Walking Dead, broadcast last week. There is a good conversation about why anyone would even bother to talk to a sentient enemy under any circumstances.
At the same time, the morally convenient thing is not necessarily the "good", as any philosopher worth her salt will tell you.
[/sblock]
I can see the Sleep spell being difficult for some groups. Need to be aware of what type of character others are playing and what the tone of the game the DM perfers to run is. Then again a little inter-party moral conflict is fun for some groups.
I guess if you are not willing or are unable to to kill them, tie/gag/bind them or take them along then Sleep can be dificult. Most of the time the creaturees involved were actively trying to kill the party 6 seconds earlier and the party was trying to do the same by any means necessary, it was not some honor duel, so they just finish them off quickly as opposed to hacking them to bits while they are awake. Definitely a combat as war sort of thing.
In the current campaign there have also been prisoners taken for interrogation and some have been returned to town to be imprisoned and to collect a bounty or reward. Sometimes the party will use them to lead them somewhere, which can go good or bad depending on how intimidated the target is and how far away they are traveling.
What did your group do in previous editions?
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad
Say what now? MM is superior (in terms of damage) whenever you are targeting just one target (and often when targeting something with a good save, even if multiple targets).
MM is 3d4+3 damage to one target, so 10.5 of guaranteed damage (auto-hit, no save).
Burning Hands is 3d6 damage to one target, or half on a successful save, so 10.5 or 5 damage (strictly worse to one target).
Thunderwave is 2d8 to one target, or half on a successful save, so 9 or 4 damage (strictly worse to one target).
Now the other two spread to additional targets easier, but they also hit your allies in that same range (baring a special ability). So that's quite situational. MM can also hit multiple targets with no risk to allies, though the damage goes down.
MM is a very high utility spell. Our caster has made a lot of good use out of it, up through 5th level. Auto-hit is pretty damn handy.
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I assume your DM would not let you make the change after everyone learned the rules? As a DM and player we usually allow such changes when coming to a new edition.
Honestly, I really do not remember (I hate getting old
). I know that it probably has happened, but then again, Sleep is one of those spells that is either great or sucky most versions/levels of the game. I suspect that we have often tied up single individuals that we have subdued, but I really do not have any clear memories of those events.In this case, the rogue killed all but one of them during the night while on guard duty, claiming that they had tried to escape. We then had a choice between two plans the next day a) cast suggestion on the remaining prisoner (with cutting words if necessary), load up the cheap stuff on our cart, and have him drive it to a certain destination, thereby getting the next group of NPCs to come along to follow the tracks of the cart (long story), or b) kill the prisoner and move on to the next bad guy location. In the end, we spent about 20 or 30 minutes trying to figure out which of the two plans we wanted to do when I suggested c) go to town and sell all of our stuff and hand the prisoner over to the authorities. Everybody jumped on this idea, even though it put our theoretical timetable behind.
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