D&D 5E Are Wizards really all that?

[Fanaelialae]

I can't speak for 3E since I didn't play it much, but in 2E wizards have a little over 300 spells, and have just shy of 300 spells in 5E (maybe more now if anything new is in newer books?).

More certainly, but I wouldn't call that "a lot more spells", certainly not "one order of magnitude more".

FWIW, a bit issue IMO is how much overlap there is between spellcasting lists, especially on the Wizard's part! So, our revised spell list removed a lot of the sameyness and cut Wizard spells down by nearly 100 spells.

Sorry, but I'm pretty sure you're flat out wrong regarding 2e. There was The Complete Wizards Handbook and the Tome of Magic which introduced a lot of new spells. I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting a bunch of books on top of those. To say nothing of all the spells published in Dungeon and Dragon over the years.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Sorry, but I'm pretty sure you're flat out wrong regarding 2e. There was The Complete Wizards Handbook and the Tome of Magic which introduced a lot of new spells. I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting a bunch of books on top of those. To say nothing of all the spells published in Dungeon and Dragon over the years.

Regardless, it is NOT an order of magnitude more, which would require something like 3000 spells.

FWIW, the CWH added less than 50 spells and ToM less than 100.

So, you're "wrong" about that.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Regardless, it is NOT an order of magnitude more, which would require something like 3000 spells.

FWIW, the CWH added less than 50 spells and ToM less than 100.

So, you're "wrong" about that.

Except that those are hardly the only spells. Spells and Magic added a bunch more. There were also spells scattered throughout the hundreds of supplements that were released over the years, like the Glantri campaign supplement. Not to mention, as I said, Dungeon and Dragon magazine for the entirety of 2e's run. It would not remotely surprise me if one dug through all of the various 2e supplements if you could easily come up with 3000 spells.

 

[DND_Reborn]

It would not remotely surprise me if one dug through all of the various 2e supplements if you could easily come up with 3000 spells.

It sure as hell would surprise me since you are talking nearly another 2500 spells! Spells and Magic added less than 50 Wizards spells, for example.

Either way, another issue is well over half the spells never saw any use, and the vast majority of players IME never bothered with spells beyond the "best" spells anyway.

You could easily create a Wizard spell list with less than 100 of the best, most common spells and 90%+ of players would be happy with it IMO.

 

[Fanaelialae]

It sure as hell would surprise me since you are talking nearly another 2500 spells! Spells and Magic added less than 50 Wizards spells, for example.

Either way, another issue is well over half the spells never saw any use, and the vast majority of players IME never bothered with spells beyond the "best" spells anyway.

You could easily create a Wizard spell list with less than 100 of the best, most common spells and 90%+ of players would be happy with it IMO.

2e had a 20ish year run, iirc? That's around 240 issues of Dragon Magazine alone (not counting Dungeon or Polyhedron). Spells regularly appeared in those magazines, so if there were 10 spells on average between the three mags each month, that's already 2400.

Now, I don't actually think it was that high. Probably more like half that, maybe even a third. But 2e was also the time of the great campaign supplement glut. There were an absurd number of supplements released. And a lot of them would each contain a few spells. Sure, three spells here and five spells there might not seem like a lot in seclusion, but when you realize that a great many dozens of these supplements were published...

That said, keep in mind that all I claimed was that 2e and 3e had more spells than 5e. I said it wouldn't surprise me if it was by an order of magnitude more, but I'm perfectly willing to admit that I could be wrong about that. I'm extremely confident that 2e and 3e each have significantly more spells than 5e by a significant margin, but if it's not by an order of magnitude then so be it. Doesn't really change the facts.

 

[ECMO3]

It sure as hell would surprise me since you are talking nearly another 2500 spells! Spells and Magic added less than 50 Wizards spells, for example.

Blackstaff's book of spells has 1000 spells by itself.

 

[James Gasik]

Well, according to the 2e Priest's spell compendium, over 400 priest spells were added just between 1995 and 1997, which is more than the amount of Wizard spells in the PHB. Sadly, neither it nor the Wizard's spell compendium has a comprehensive number that's easy to find, but the INDEX of the Priest compendium (all three books of it) is 19 pages long, and the Wizard spell compendium is comprised of four books, so Fanaelialae's claims are quite credible.

However, while 5e doesn't have nearly this kind of amount of spells, the truth is, when you consider that 2e and 3e had a very different kind of production format, with tons of books coming out every year, not to mention Dragon magazine coming out monthly, WotC still cranks out way more spells than anything else- races, subclasses, feats, magic items, backgrounds, or equipment. Hence my comment that, despite their conservative production of new player facing material, there's still a whole heap of spells, and more being printed all the time.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Blackstaff's book of spells has 1000 spells by itself.

Never heard of it. Were those all for Wizard, though???

 

[DND_Reborn]

Regardless, all this shows is how ridiculous the splat history of 2E became, which IME is why a lot of people got turned off by that.

Anyway, back to the Wizards are all that in 5E, which is the actual purpose of the thread-- which they are.

 

[James Gasik]

I did find a link to a discussion about 3.5, where this claim is made:

"1017 spells, as of 2005. This significantly does not include spell compendium updates or the latter complete books."

How many sorcerer and wizard spells are in 3.5?