D&D 5E Why does Wizards of the Coast hate Wizards?

[Kurotowa]

It's also entirely irrelevant thanks to a 5gp/10 use item.

If the benefits of the healer feat were baked into the skill then it might be meaningful, but adding a feat tax to give any value to a skill proficiency is pretty absurd

Surely that's a question that comes down to the specific DM's style? At one table, Medicine never comes up aside from stabilization checks. At another, poisons and illnesses and lingering injuries are all topics of concern, or perhaps the party finds themselves needing to do CSI investigations to solve mysteries or track monsters. Just because your group ignores it doesn't mean everyone does.

 

[Undrave]

I'd like to see the 4e style impliment focused Wizards come back.

The Orb Wizard who inflicts penalty to some saving throws based on CHA, the Staff Wizard that is more solid and has better AC than regular Wizards and probably a feature that does some wthing with CON, and the Wand Wizard that is better at spells with attack rolls and has a bonus based on DEX.

Not so much a focus on specific school as it focus on different styles. Maybe call them 'Tower Traditions' or something, as opposed to the schools.

 

[Mistwell]

The same goes for all of the "but it doesn't matter that the int based knowledge skills are pretty washed out & could be taken by other classes in ways that meet or exceed a wizard in those skills because they can't take them all." Those skills range from barely meaningful for most games to having 1 maybe two of them being extremely important to a campaign "in certain types of campaigns".

Serious question - how much have you actually played a wizard, at a table, on a regular basis in 5e?

 

[Manbearcat]

It's expertise that's messed up. And it's messed up because its a band-aid solution to the whole skill system being messed up.

Bit difficult to really do anything about it now.

In any case it's not really likely to be a problem - knowledge skills are a poor use of expertise.

There mostly for uncovering plot info and, well...the DM has to get that to you somehow.

This post didn't seem to create a stir at all.

This probably deserves its own thread...but I'm curious if this (knowledge skills are for GMs to ration plot to players/expository dump) is either the general consensus (therefore non-controversial) or if it was just completely missed by folks.

 

[Todd Roybark]

If we play PHB only, there's nothing a first level sorcerer can do that a wizard cannot do ON TOP of doing many more additional things.

1st level is not a great place to compare, as Raging Barbarian FTW since DMG reduction is huge at that point and becomes increasingly obsolescent as one advances and Monster attacks become magic infused.

A 1st level dragon Sorc gets a free Mage Armor via scales and Extra HP, which a Wizard cannot do, which refutes your point above.

The new UA ability further gives the Sorc an at will, ( Sorcery points required), False Life, which exacerbates the 1st lvl Sorc survives, the Wizard dies and rolls a new character syndrome.
False Life as written, is not quite good enough to select as one of your 6 first level Wiz spells at character creation, especially not over a Ritual spell.

A 1st level Wild Magic Sorc gets easy Advantage on rolls, and with Bend Luck later the ability to make spells actually effective. (Especially with Heightened Spell Metamagic).
Bounded Math means spells get resisted, often, and frequently on the round cast, and very quickly thereafter if the 1st ability Check....or so called 5e ‘Saving Throw’ is made on the subsequent rounds.

The self directed ability to make spells ‘stick’, as it were, is rather potent, and not easy for the Wizard to do.

The Twinned Spell Metamagic allows a 3rd level Sorc with Charm Person to emulate the 10th level Enchanter ability of Split Enchantment for 1 Sorc point.

Also, let’s face it, at 3rd level a Twinned Ice Knife is like Richard Roundtree....sexy and a bad mofo!

Font of Magic, moreover, is already an ability, that can be used to convert unused spells into potentially more permanent forms like Glyphs of Warding....in a campaign setting where the player has a home base, (Say the Trollskull Tavern in the Waterdeep Adventures) this could easily justify a 2 level dip into Sorc.

A 5e Wizard uses magic, but a 5e Sorc is Magic....and the UA additions, while being cool and flavorful only drive that point home further. If being a Sage is not a Wizard trope, as some seem to be asserting in this thread, then surely a Wizard should be a master of magic.
Yet in 5e, Magic casting by classes with D8+ Hit Dice is just as good, with better class abilities added in.....why chose a lower hp class, when one can often do the same with a class that has more HP.

Ron, Harry, Hermione, Snape, Dumbledore, Tom Riddle....they were suckers going to Hogswarts and studying for OWLs......they should have Tuned in, Dropped out and became Sorcerers and cast Avada Kedavra Heightened or Twinned.

 

[Todd Roybark]

Mea Culpa double post.

One aside take a 8 INT, Cleric of Knowledge with one level of Ranger with Favored Enemy Fiends and run the character as a Fiend sage in Descent into Avernus....Advantage and Double Proficincey bonus on knowledge checks towards Fiends. Now compare against a Wizard made with the Standard Array. Iggwiliv don’t know shite about Fiends in comparison, baring a Feat choice like Prodigy ( Arcana).

 

[Fallen Rain]

Well the OP (@Tod Roybark) only brought the issue of wizards not getting enough love. So speaking on that should be fine too.

My points are:

a) Wizards don't need more love. They got too much of it during the edition creation.
b) Sorcerer & Warlock getting Spell Versatility doesn't take luster out of the wizard and don't step on its niche.
c) It's hard to give wizard anything without stepping on the Warlock and sorcerer

It's double standard. When warlcok/Sorcerer/Bard get Spell Versatility and Additional Spells, It's hard too say they not stepping on wizard niche. What advantage can wizard keep？

 

[neogod22]

I think there were two glaring omissions that the wizard class had in that UA.

The first is that there were no non-ritual spells that got the ritual tag. The wizard ritual caster is different from every other class granted ritual caster ability in that it only needs to be in the spellbook not prepared, this is great up ntil level 3 spells where a wizard could have pretty much every ritual spell available if they wanted. After third level spells they pretty much stop being ritual.That could be fixed by adding the ritual tag to some or adding a variant ritual tag like "greater ritual" or something that takes more time (ie hours instead of minutes)/possibly even resources.

There are plenty of spells that could easily be ritual under one of those two thoug... For example Darkvision, zone of truth, dispel magic, project image, astral projection, Knock, teleport, detect evil and good, sending, locate object, magic aura, scrying, find the path, create food and water, transport via plants, hallow, mighty fortress, magnificent mansion ,tongues, arcane eye. Yes some of those spells are also available to other classes & maing them ritual would be a boon for those classes too, but none of them are spells that are really balancing concern ones.

The second omission is more of an oddity & probably oversight rather than omission, unfortunately WotC continued with Scorrlock having most favored class "dating the GM" status by having the dramatically improved version. Multiple classes got "Whenever you gain a level in a class that has $feature, you can replace a $option of that $feature that you know with another spell/cantrip/fighting style available to your class. Classes with fighting styles can swap those, prepared spell classes (cleric/wizard) with cantrips can swap cantrips. The problem comes with sorcerer & warlock can replace a leveled spell during a long rest giving them limited access to the kind of versatility Grated by a wizard's spellbook; that is fine& reasonable since having their spells locked until level up was a bit too restrictive for inexperienced players & players subjected to dramatic gamestyle shifts. Bard Ranger & Pally got to replace a leveled spell during a long rest, also reasonable for reasons stated. Cleric got the ability to change a cantrip when they level, this is great as a divine caster who always has access to their entire spell list when preparing spells during a long rest. Wizards get the same thing as clerics but as a class that has the cost of scribing spells to their spellbook who already pretty much had a massively expensive & limited by treasure availability version of what everyone else is getting it's unreasonable to limit the wizard cantrip versatility to level rather than long rest like the scorlock spell versatility abilities.

Did you read the grey box under Spell versatility? "It says cantrips are spells, and all the options a spell caster has also applies to cantrips unless otherwise stated." Which means, when a wizard takes a long rest, they can change their cantrips prepared with unprepared ones in their spellbook. Now there's a reason to copy cantrips to your spellbook. When they level, they can switch out a cantrip to one they don't already have, which also means, every level they gain a new cantrip they can automatically copy to their spellbook.

 

[tetrasodium]

Did you read the grey box under Spell versatility? "It says cantrips are spells, and all the options a spell caster has also applies to cantrips unless otherwise stated." Which means, when a wizard takes a long rest, they can change their cantrips prepared with unprepared ones in their spellbook. Now there's a reason to copy cantrips to your spellbook. When they level, they can switch out a cantrip to one they don't already have, which also means, every level they gain a new cantrip they can automatically copy to their spellbook.

What UA are you reading?
wizard thing

Cantrip Versatility
1st-level wizard feature (enhances Spellcasting) Whenever you gain a level in this class, you can replace one cantrip you learned from this Spellcasting feature with another cantrip from the wizard spell list.

warlock thing

Spell Versatility
1st-level warlock feature (enhances Pact Magic)
Whenever you finish a long rest, you can replace
one spell you learned from this Pact Magicfeature with another spell from the warlock spelllist. The new spell must be the same level as the spell you replace.

sorcerer thing

Spell Versatility
1st-level sorcerer feature (enhances Spellcasting)
Whenever you finish a long rest, you can replace one spell you learned from this Spellcasting feature with another spell from the sorcerer spell list. The new spell must be the same level as the spell you replace.

[/quote]

 

[Mistwell]

nevermind