Actually, I never brought it up. And, I probably want Identify in the long run anyway. As is, the ranger/wizard is almost total offense, so I picked up all of his first level spells that I did not have (MM, Burning Hands, etc.).
D&D 5E Sell me on Wizards
- Thread starter raleel
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Actually, I never brought it up. And, I probably want Identify in the long run anyway. As is, the ranger/wizard is almost total offense, so I picked up all of his first level spells that I did not have (MM, Burning Hands, etc.).
Well, 6 points of guaranteed damage.
Yeah, but Flurry of Blows often does the same damage or more damage, even if one of the attacks misses. And a two handed fighter with great weapon is averaging 11.33 on a successful hit (8 DPR against most foes).
Single foe-wise, wizards do tend to suck (shy of Hold Person and such if a PC gets lucky), even with Magic Missile.
Well, if it's working for you, it's working.
For my money, it just doesn't cut it. At low levels, except in desperate straits, I'd only cast thunderwave or burning hands if I could catch at least three enemies in the blast. If one of them saves and two fail, that means average 26 damage for burning hands, and 22 damage plus a push effect for thunderwave. A mere 10.5 isn't nearly good enough to waste one of my precious spell slots on. Better to cast a cantrip or shoot a crossbow, and wait for the opportune moment.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad
Which means you're 1) getting close to targets, as a low level wizard (not recommended), and 2) needing a situation where you will catch three foes, but zero allies, in a 15 foot blast (again, unless you have the evocation special ability). That is much more situational that a guaranteed hit from long range.
Of course it is. Like I said--wizards are situational. With so few spell slots, it's important to make the most of them, which means waiting till the opportune moment when your spell will have maximum effect.
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Here is why I feel the wizard is solid:
At-will cantrips let you attack for 1d10 damage compared to a 15 dex archer's 1d8+2. That's only one point of damage behind, on average.
With a 1d6 hit die, you're only 2 hit points per level behind a fighter with the same con. That's not too bad.
If you're human you can spend your bonus feat on light armor proficiency, or as someone mentioned earlier in the thread you get medium for free as a dwarf. With a decent dex, you can potentially have a decent AC. Preparing shield doesn't expend a spell slot until you actually need it, giving you situationally good survivability.
Since slots are separated from prepared spells, you can prepare one general purpose spell and the rest situational. That way you can maximize your chance of having the right spell at any given time and still have big guns available to you when you need them.
Arcane recovery substantially increases your effective spells per day when you take a short rest.
You can prepare spells that target different saves and use them against targets that are weak against them. You can make high AC enemies roll saves and roll spell attacks against enemies with low AC.
The specializations have a lot of good things going for them, like the evoker's ability to leave targets out of a blast or the diviner's portent dice.
Overall, if you play smart, I think the wizard can hang right with the other classes. You can't stack buffs any more, but you are free to prepare a much wider range of spells than in 3e because you can choose to spam a single prepped spell or cast each one once, depending on what your DM throws at you. You don't have to decide at the start of the day how many times you'll cast each spell, just prepare a wide range and use whichever ones fit.
At-will cantrips let you attack for 1d10 damage compared to a 15 dex archer's 1d8+2. That's only one point of damage behind, on average.
With a 1d6 hit die, you're only 2 hit points per level behind a fighter with the same con. That's not too bad.
If you're human you can spend your bonus feat on light armor proficiency, or as someone mentioned earlier in the thread you get medium for free as a dwarf. With a decent dex, you can potentially have a decent AC. Preparing shield doesn't expend a spell slot until you actually need it, giving you situationally good survivability.
Since slots are separated from prepared spells, you can prepare one general purpose spell and the rest situational. That way you can maximize your chance of having the right spell at any given time and still have big guns available to you when you need them.
Arcane recovery substantially increases your effective spells per day when you take a short rest.
You can prepare spells that target different saves and use them against targets that are weak against them. You can make high AC enemies roll saves and roll spell attacks against enemies with low AC.
The specializations have a lot of good things going for them, like the evoker's ability to leave targets out of a blast or the diviner's portent dice.
Overall, if you play smart, I think the wizard can hang right with the other classes. You can't stack buffs any more, but you are free to prepare a much wider range of spells than in 3e because you can choose to spam a single prepped spell or cast each one once, depending on what your DM throws at you. You don't have to decide at the start of the day how many times you'll cast each spell, just prepare a wide range and use whichever ones fit.
Most archer PCs in 5E have Dex of 16 (at least ones I have seen since by definition, Dex is their schtick) and some have +2 for fighting style. So while archers are typically doing 4 to 6 DPR (5 to 7 DPR with fighting style), wizards tend to do 3 to 4.5 DPR with Firebolt (2.5 to 4 DPR with D8 cantrips). The archers tend to average 35% more damage (55% with fighting style) which on successful hits is typically 2 more points of damage (and of course, the additional 1 time in 10 that a hit occurs due to fighting style).
Although this is a true statement that it could be done, I doubt it comes up in play that the player says "Ah ha, a vegepygmy. I'll target Wisdom.". For a vegepygmy, which is best: AC, Con, Dex or Wis? I suspect that except for a few iconic monsters, most players do not really know which is the best defense to target against. In 5E, by the time a few rounds have gone by and players start getting a feel (mostly about AC), the combat is nearly over.
Sure, if the DM gives out clues or has various skill rolls tell the players the answer, then it might happen more often.
If a wizard is not an evoker, you should not be judging his utility based on damage. So if damage is the only benchmark you care about, assume you're talking about an evoker.
That's actually why the 5e wizard is by far my favorite iteration of the class -- the subclasses make such a huge difference. Enchanters are amazing at control, illusionists are incredible at deception, diviners are great at both recon and luck manipulation, and no one protects like an abjurer. Taking each subclass on its own merits, its easy to see why you'd want to be a wizard. But specialization is key. If you want to be good at everything, you'll likely end up being great at nothing. If that's your play style, you're better off being a bard.
That's not to say each subclass is situational and worthless outside its niche. It just means you have to be creative sometimes and find ways to make the most of your strengths in ways that are not immediately obvious. To me, that's the best part of D&D.
That's actually why the 5e wizard is by far my favorite iteration of the class -- the subclasses make such a huge difference. Enchanters are amazing at control, illusionists are incredible at deception, diviners are great at both recon and luck manipulation, and no one protects like an abjurer. Taking each subclass on its own merits, its easy to see why you'd want to be a wizard. But specialization is key. If you want to be good at everything, you'll likely end up being great at nothing. If that's your play style, you're better off being a bard.
That's not to say each subclass is situational and worthless outside its niche. It just means you have to be creative sometimes and find ways to make the most of your strengths in ways that are not immediately obvious. To me, that's the best part of D&D.
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That's fair. You're definitely behind in at-will DPR, especially if the martial character builds for it specifically. The standard array only gives a 15 max, but racial bonuses can bring this up to 16 easily enough.
I think this is made up for mainly by the ability to strategically spike large damage to groups of enemies. The ability to cause large amounts of damage at the beginning of a fight can often clear the enemies before they get a chance to do much. Getting a burning hands off on a group of enemies at the start of a fight is far more useful than doing that damage over the course of several rounds, because doing your damage early means that many of them will drop quicker and get fewer actions off. A wizard will do less overall damage than other characters, but their damage will be dealt to the right targets at the right times in great big chunks.
Many times, guessing based on the description is pretty easy. Animals and brutes often have poor cha, spellcasters will be weaker in con, etc. If you face an enemy multiple times, which in many adventures is common, you can learn from past experience. Many DMs will also allow skill checks to figure out weaker saves.
More important, however, is the ability to bypass high AC enemies. High AC enemies can be a real pain in the butt for martial characters to deal with, but you can get in there and score consistent damage with poison spray at-will, or any of your other handy save-based spells.
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
I think it's more that they were so devastatingly overpowered in previous iterations (except maybe 4E), that now with them being brought down to a reasonable level long-time wizard players are pissed. It's not that they suck or are uninteresting or are underpowered, it's that they're no longer ridiculously and glaringly overpowered. And so, by comparison, they now look weak, therefore people have lost interest. To me, that's a good thing. Not that your favorite was needed, but that they're no longer quadratic nightmares who're better at fighting than fighters and better at thieving than thieves.
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