D&D General Chris just said why I hate wizard/fighter dynamic

[GMforPowergamers]

Spoiler

The BBEG was a 20th level wizard with a simulacrum. The party consisted of the following:

Half-orc Fighter/Rogue 15/15
Dragonborn Barbarian/Fighter 15/15
Dragonborn Sorcerer/Druid 15/15
Human Paladin/Cleric 15/15
Human Monk/Druid/Wizard 12/12/12
Half-elf Bard/Monk 15/15
High Elf Cleric/Rogue/Wizard 12/12/12

We did a variant of old school multiclassing, so each PC had the experience required to be equal to a 19-20th level character. With our MC rules, each had 19-20 HD, not 15 or 12 as you might think.

The final "adventure" (worth about 600,000 xp) was being summoned to the wizard's island domain and defeating numerous powerful foes before assaulting the wizard's stronghold. They found and destroyed the wizard's clone before defeating his simulacrum, which they believed was actually him. The wizard toyed with them prior to all this, using his magic to restore to life to two of the PCs who died against some of the wizard's minions and traps. It took six sessions (8-10 hours each) to finish it.

Sadly, the game ended with them believing they had won. They never even fought the wizard, only his simulacrum. Little do they know the NPC warlock who was helping them was actually the wizard. By helping the PCs recover his love, the Elven noblewoman, from the vile "wizard" and "defeating" the wizard, the wizard has really positioned himself well to marry the noblewoman and eventually take over the Elven Court, solidifying his world power even more.

The entire quest for the PCs was a ruse for the wizard to gain even more power. The players believe they have won, but this twist leaves it open for me to bring those PCs back for some "epic" adventures...

my warlock/Sorcerer PC did something like this... she cast simulacrum from an item on herself. had her simulacrum use the item the next day to cast simulacrum on the barbarian... we went into the last 5 adventures (we were level 20+ boons by then) with 'not tasha' and 'not grahl' taking point.

what in game no one knew (out of game everyone did) was that I had my lover cast simulacrum on me too (useing the 3rd wish from the ring) and as such the 'real' tasha in the adventure wasn't me... I was back home in my tower.

now the 'real' me never died... but if she had boy would that have had some shocked faces in game.

back in 3e I had a villain that used Simulacrums, clones, and apprentices with illusions up so often that one of my players around the 4th or 5th time they killed him broke character and quoted a FF comic "I'm starting to suspect there is no real doctor doom, just doombots"

casters and non casters are bearly playing the same game at high level

 

[Oofta]

Even @Maxperson agreed that a branch from a tree would be valid. It was one of the examples he provided, which we ultimately agreed on. We simply disagreed as to whether a stone would be valid.

In any case, as @GMforPowergamers pointed out, the 25% chance of being off site isn't exactly a big deal. The only thing the object eliminates is a minor inconvenience.

Deny the GM? I AM a GM. I was literally describing how I would run it, and how I believe it should be run, based on RAW (as well as good GMing practices).

Unless of course the DM takes "random direction" literally and you end up 25 miles straight up.

 

[Oofta]

my warlock/Sorcerer PC did something like this... she cast simulacrum from an item on herself. had her simulacrum use the item the next day to cast simulacrum on the barbarian... we went into the last 5 adventures (we were level 20+ boons by then) with 'not tasha' and 'not grahl' taking point.

what in game no one knew (out of game everyone did) was that I had my lover cast simulacrum on me too (useing the 3rd wish from the ring) and as such the 'real' tasha in the adventure wasn't me... I was back home in my tower.

now the 'real' me never died... but if she had boy would that have had some shocked faces in game.

back in 3e I had a villain that used Simulacrums, clones, and apprentices with illusions up so often that one of my players around the 4th or 5th time they killed him broke character and quoted a FF comic "I'm starting to suspect there is no real doctor doom, just doombots"

casters and non casters are bearly playing the same game at high level

So a non caster couldn't use trickery, lies and misdirection to achieve a goal? We'll have to contact some politicians.

The means of achieving the goal may be different. The goal is the same, there are many ways that could have happened.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Unless of course the DM takes "random direction" literally and you end up 25 miles straight up.

Actually, no. The spell explicitly says that the off-target is in a randomly determined compass direction. Last I checked, a compass has no "straight up".

 

[Oofta]

Actually, no. The spell explicitly says that the off-target is in a randomly determined compass direction. Last I checked, a compass has no "straight up".

Good grief. I thought the emoji was enough. It was a joke.

EDIT: on the other hand, my campaign world isn't flat.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

So if it would take several weeks or months to get from A to B, how often would that come up in a campaign?

low level campaigns almost never... I find in games where teleport comes online going around the world or even to other planes becomes common and the casters are the only ones who have any say in it (that in and of it self causes a problem/complication though... ko the wizard and no way home)

Wouldn't that become most of the campaign?

yeah again if you are a group of 5 martial characters travel from gemrany to up state NY could be a 20 level campaign... a group of 5 casters at level 9+ it could be a day trip... having/not having reality warping magic is a big difference.

when I run/play in low/no magic campaigns travel REALLY changes level 9+

First, there's nothing wrong with that. I limit teleportation and planar travel for multiple reasons in my campaign.

I do sometimes... if it doesn't fit I don't want my wizard just 'poping over to the city of brass' or 'making a run to 7 kingdoms away' in an action unless that is the type of high magic campaign I am going to run.

I am lucky my players don't often gripe about rule exceptions.

But in game it doesn't really matter. It might come up as a nice get out of jail free card now and then, but if you're in a literal jail teleportation is probably been blocked anyway. Take away teleportation and the game changes slightly. Include it and make it useful? It's practically a spell tax.

that's my (and I think @HammerMan) point going back to his OP about shenanigans spells... at level 1 casters can pull small shenanigans, but every level of spell (so normally for full casters every other level) they get more and more shenanigans they can pull that non casters never can.

EDIT: I also have alternative means of fast(er) travel, but I always want going from point A to B to be interesting with decisions to make and possible danger if A and B are a significant distance apart. I just think teleportation is boring and knowing the sequence for random teleportation circles doesn't make sense either.

I spent a campaign copying (I want to say it started around 3rd level but maybe 2nd) teleportation sigils into my back up spell book. The DM had us constantly finding ruins of the ancient dragonborn empire that laid them everywhere. when I got 5th level spells I was the god of transportation. I constantly was reminding her "Hey you know there was a portal at XXX" and watching her go through her notes to confirm was amazing...

I wouldn't want every game to go that way, but the cleric got word of recall shortly there after and went and built a base inside an astroid orbiting the world with thin air (not real space magic space were air just thined) outside so it was super hard to breath and atmosphere inside... no doors and only we knew the teleport sigils and he made a consecrated room to recall too... it was insane how many things we popped from A to B to C in a given session... but hey the fighter also had a +5 lucky greatsword that granted him the halfling luck and 3 extra (he had lucky feat) luck pts, and instead of normal damage he could change the type (as an action) of damage from slashing to force. he had a 20 str (I had only an 18 int but the cleric did have a 21 wis) and was attacking with the best to hit in the game for 2d6+10 damage or only 1 or 2 pts behind the rest of us to attack for 2d6+20 damage and had 1 more attack then the cleric and 2 more then me (cleric was war and had a +1 brutal elven war sword so he was rolling 1d8+4 +1d8 radiant 2 attacks) and the fighter was only 1 AC behind my wizard and that was equal to the cleric... and the poor monk was so far behind on everything he might as well have been a minion.

 

[FrogReaver]

yeah, I had someone a few years ago (maybe 10) call control preempitve healing and calculated the damage the enemy could do in the missed action/actions as if it was healing.

Yea, it also let's you compare healing to control to damage. Essentially it creates a common currency to compare with.

I mean that depends on the save DC and the modifier of the save... some CR10+ till have 8 wis and are not prof... it is crazy (one reason I liked 4e everything scales).

If your point is that against certain specific enemies with very low wisdom saves that control is much better then sure, I agree. But that doesn't seem to be more than tangentially relevant to the discussion I thought we were having - which was about how such low level control spells 'typically' compare to the damage the Fighter is doing.

right and last night my level 7 armor artificer (yeah not a fighter but our front line combatant in this game) made 3 attacks per round (thunder punch, thunder punch, bonus action off hand thunder punch) 2 rounds in a row and missed all 6 attacks... it's rare for me with my 19 Int (head band of int... well crown but it's a long story) to miss all my attacks in 1 round let alone 2, but it still was 'do nothing' just as much as if the wizard threw 2 SoD/SoS spells and they made the saves.

Single Target Control spells completely fail orders of magnitude more often than a multi attack character fails to connect with any attacks. Making the point that attack actions can fail too completely misses that nuance.

this is a problem with spell levels and some getting legacy levels as well (maybe beyond @HammerMan thread) because why is a 1st level spell no better then a 2nd but no worse either... shouldn't the 2nd level spell automatically be better?

No. Spells are situationally strong or weak. One of the balancing factors to spell casting is that spells won't necessarily always work. That's part of why versatility and increasing spells known is also a path toward more combat power.

fighter makeing 3 attacks for 1d8+4 damage per hit (3d8+12 25 if all three hit) compaired to the wizard doing 3d12 necrotic 13 damage seems to me to be just at half... and the wizard only needs 1 roll to 'hit' (it's a save) the fighter needs 3

If you leave off everything else that increases the fighters damage then I fully agree. I just don't think it's fair to leave off those other things.

um... doesn't the wizard ALSO have subclass features/class features/ magic implments/ buffs/ feats ect that increase the damage? why count the fighter stuff and not the wizard...

There are fewer of those things for the wizard that increase cantrip damage. And the ones that do don't increase them in magnitude as much as those things increase the fighters.

I also notice we skipped the warlock part.

eldritch blast is 1 2 3 and 4 attacks and with 1/7th your invocations can add your cha to damage... at that point that caster at will has 1d10+magic+buff+stat and that is equal to a fighter with a d10 weapon (better then one with a d8 weapon but not as good as one with a d12 or 2d6 weapon...but real close)

warlocks still have 2-4 1st-5th level spell slots per short rest, and 0-4 6th+ slots (depending on level)

Indeed it was skipped as Warlocks are irrelevant when talking fighter damage vs wizard cantrip damage?

yeah, the fighter is cool with average damage. In a given round I am 70% sure that a fighter (especially after 3 attacks come online) can do more single target damage. that other 30% of the time the caster had to use a big resource to deal more damage.

no... the wizard can take a cr100 1,000,000,000 hp target out if they fail there save. is that likely (no), is it possible (yes)

You seem to be making points as if they fully support your conclusion. I agree with most of the points, but not what they mean in relation to your conclusion.

In practice, Hideous Laughter and Hold Person either take enemies out of combat very little on average OR they are used infrequently due to the circumstances where they could take enemies out many rounds coming up very rarely. In either event, their impact on the Fighter vs Wizard dynamic is extremely minor.

what is WAY more probable and likely is at level 1 the wizard can take out 1 target and the fighter can take out 1 target... the problem is at level 5+ monster hp goes up faster then fighter damage (outside of the most optimized builds) but that wizard still can in some fights 1 shot to a weak save.

What's most probable is that the wizard avoids using those level 1-2 spells as they take up his concentraion slot and almost any level 3+ spell is better for his concentration. We are talking high level wizards here right?

1st this is a team based game so the wizard control does work best when teamed with a damage dealer. However 2 casters can speck out 1 control 1 damage. 2 martial classes can not. there is no control.[/spoiler][/spoiler]

I don't disagree with this. I think control is damn good. I just think you are overselling it a bit compared to damage.

 

[Oofta]

low level campaigns almost never... I find in games where teleport comes online going around the world or even to other planes becomes common and the casters are the only ones who have any say in it (that in and of it self causes a problem/complication though... ko the wizard and no way home)

yeah again if you are a group of 5 martial characters travel from gemrany to up state NY could be a 20 level campaign... a group of 5 casters at level 9+ it could be a day trip... having/not having reality warping magic is a big difference.

when I run/play in low/no magic campaigns travel REALLY changes level 9+

I do sometimes... if it doesn't fit I don't want my wizard just 'poping over to the city of brass' or 'making a run to 7 kingdoms away' in an action unless that is the type of high magic campaign I am going to run.

I am lucky my players don't often gripe about rule exceptions.

that's my (and I think @HammerMan) point going back to his OP about shenanigans spells... at level 1 casters can pull small shenanigans, but every level of spell (so normally for full casters every other level) they get more and more shenanigans they can pull that non casters never can.

I spent a campaign copying (I want to say it started around 3rd level but maybe 2nd) teleportation sigils into my back up spell book. The DM had us constantly finding ruins of the ancient dragonborn empire that laid them everywhere. when I got 5th level spells I was the god of transportation. I constantly was reminding her "Hey you know there was a portal at XXX" and watching her go through her notes to confirm was amazing...

I wouldn't want every game to go that way, but the cleric got word of recall shortly there after and went and built a base inside an astroid orbiting the world with thin air (not real space magic space were air just thined) outside so it was super hard to breath and atmosphere inside... no doors and only we knew the teleport sigils and he made a consecrated room to recall too... it was insane how many things we popped from A to B to C in a given session... but hey the fighter also had a +5 lucky greatsword that granted him the halfling luck and 3 extra (he had lucky feat) luck pts, and instead of normal damage he could change the type (as an action) of damage from slashing to force. he had a 20 str (I had only an 18 int but the cleric did have a 21 wis) and was attacking with the best to hit in the game for 2d6+10 damage or only 1 or 2 pts behind the rest of us to attack for 2d6+20 damage and had 1 more attack then the cleric and 2 more then me (cleric was war and had a +1 brutal elven war sword so he was rolling 1d8+4 +1d8 radiant 2 attacks) and the fighter was only 1 AC behind my wizard and that was equal to the cleric... and the poor monk was so far behind on everything he might as well have been a minion.

But all any of that means that you are designing the campaign around a spell or two. If teleport wasn't an option, the stories and campaigns change slightly, that's all. It changes the set dressing and scenery, it doesn't change the nature of the game.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

So a non caster couldn't use trickery, lies and misdirection to achieve a goal? We'll have to contact some politicians.

where are you getting this from? All characters caster or not can use tricks lies and misdirection... casters just have an easier time and can do it more often.

The means of achieving the goal may be different. The goal is the same, there are many ways that could have happened.

if the means is get from A to B and 1 person can walk/ride for days then get on a boat travel for 3 months, then walk/ride for days and person 2 can say "I use my action to get there" that isn't the same.

if the goal is stop a charm/dominated/controlled barbarian friend from killing you and 1 person can fight trying to subdue then tie up until it wears off and the other can hold person (or what every save you need to target with a SoS non damage causeing spell) then dispel the charm/dominate/control that isn't the same.

if the goal is fortify a position in a mountain pass I would think the fighter (soldier) being the military guy and the multi class ranger/rouge being the skill expert this would be there moment to shine... you know whats coming right... until the wizard with mold earth starts making 5ft by 5ft pits 5ft deep as an action with his cantrip, or uses a wall spell, or ritual casts tiny pill box...I mean tiny hut so the archers can fire out but no one can see in or fire back in...
I know explosive ruins got mixed with another spell but that trap is WAY better then anything the rogue/ranger is cooking up...and agian goes up faster.

 

[FrogReaver]

@GMforPowergamers

Control Spell - Average Rounds Lost

This thread from a few years ago may be of interest to you.