D&D 5E Are Wizards really all that?

[FrozenNorth]

I think in tier 1 and 2 there are significant restrictions on spells prepared, known and slots. I think it’s fair to ask how a wizard does even half of what is claimed at those levels. But at a certain point wizards have plenty of slots, spells known and prepared. They can’t do everything all at once but they can do a lot when needed.

I would agree with this. Reasonable people can disagree where the line is drawn and wizards start to pull ahead. But at a certain point, even on 6-8 encounter days, neither spells prepared nor available spell slots are a strong constraint on wizards.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm not sure I could disagree much more. If you choose to take out a hornet nest, you don't just kick it and ask them to pretty please settle down while you take a nap.

Every once in a while PCs end run around obstacles. Sometimes magic is involved, sometimes not. If it happens I just adjust and the game goes on.

That's not disagreement, that's really completely orthogonal to what I'm talking about.

I'll politely bow out since we're talking at cross purposes.

 

[Maxperson]

With a minimum of 13 in Strength, Dex, Wis, and Cha just to do it and oh you need Con too for hp and saves..along with some pretty incompatible class features..this..is a challenging build to pull off.

"Way ahead of the game" seems like a pretty significant exaggeration under most circumstances.

Hope you rolled stats like a freaking boss.

It can be done if you roll. But really, I don't know why monk was there in the first place, so we can ditch that. Fighter/Paladin is pretty good.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Show me with starting wizard spells, plus 2 new spells per level, how you can have the proper mix of spells memorized to beat the rogue at stealth, exploration and social, the cleric at cleric stuff, the fighter in combat, all in the same day. Lay out which slots are used for which spells and how they defeat all those other classes at their specialties, because I'm not seeing it.

I think this is a telling post. For you, for a wizard to be overpowered, a single wizard needs to be able to replace the rest of the party single-handed.

This seems to be an unreasonably high bar for overpoweredness. No wonder that you don’t consider wizards overpowered!

I consider a wizard overpowered if a party of 3 wizards finds it easier to complete a 9th to 20th level adventure than a party consisting of a fighter, a cleric, a rogue and a wizard.

Note: I freely admit that while 5e gives wizards many options for buffing, debuffing, multi-damage, single damage and utility, it does not give them many options for in-combat healing.

 

[TwoSix]

I consider a wizard overpowered if a party of 3 wizards finds it easier to complete a 9th to 20th level adventure than a party consisting of a fighter, a cleric, a rogue and a wizard.

For me, it's even simpler. If one class can only do A, and the second class can do a comparable version of A or also do B if the situation calls for it, then the second class is too strong.

No matter what the remainder of the party comp is, I'd rather add a wizard to it than a fighter. I'd rather add a second wizard before I add the first fighter.

 

[TwoSix]

For me, it's even simpler. If one class can only do A, and the second class can do a comparable version of A or also do B if the situation calls for it, then the second class is too strong.

No matter what the remainder of the party comp is, I'd rather add a wizard to it than a fighter. I'd rather add a second wizard before I add the first fighter.

I will caveat this by saying wizards are much closer to balanced in 5e than in either 1e, 2e, or 3e. (Granted, this is not a hard bar to clear.) They totally go off the rails by Tier 4, and Tier 3 has some problems, but in Tiers 1 and 2 I'd probably take a paladin or a barbarian before a second wizard. Not a fighter, though.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, I don't think anyone is arguing that Wizards have superiority over the rest of the party at the same time in all fields. The argument I've seen made goes more in the vein of this: I'm looking at party composition for a party I'm looking to join. They don't have a Rogue or anyone who can effectively scout. I could go with a Rogue, -or- I could go with a Wizard. I could still have proficiency in thieves tools, but if a lock can't be opened non-magically, I have knock to fall back on. I still have proficiency in stealth, but I also have invisibility to fall back on. I have the same options they do, plus options they do not have access to.

So the wizard is going to take thieves tool proficiency and stealth, rather than things like Arcana, investigation, history and other skills that the wizard is much better at and the party need as much or more?

Plus, then I can help the party teleport / plane shift / whatever when needed.

Right, because THAT'S going to be true for most of the campaign. 90 something% of games don't make it past level 10. And even if you are in one of those very rare games that do, you aren't getting etherealness until level 13, plane shift until level 13 and teleport to level 13. With two level 7 slots, you certainly aren't doing all of those today, and those are given as the solutions to a lot of common things that come up.

In a fight, I might be doing less damage than a Rogue would (Maybe, big if) but I'll also be contributing with stuff like Tasha's taking things out of a fight entirely, which a Rogue could never hope to do, because the rules do not support them doing so with any means other than HP damage. Thus, taking a Wizard would be a superior choice over taking a Rogue.

By the time you are casting plane shift(before actually), everything and its mother have magic resistance and/or good saves and/or legendary resistance. You could get lucky with Tasha's, but the reality is that a lot of the time you're just wasting your round at that point.

Rinse and repeat for the other classes. Not that they can replace the whole party at once, but that for a given party member, they could serve the same roles they serve as or more effectively if they are full casters instead of whatever else. A Wizard wouldn't normally be the face. But a Bard sure could be, and would likely do the job far more effectively than a Paladin would. So on and so forth.

No. They can serve effectively. They cannot serve more effectively. They do not have the expertise of rogues, dodge traps hit while scouting like rogues, avoid damage like rogues and on and on. They do not have damage ability of paladins, or the ability to grant huge save bonuses to all saves, magic resistance to all saves vs magic, cure diseases, neutralize poisons and heal with a touch, and on and on.

A wizard can be a wizard and be okay at other roles, but it can't replace any other class that specializes in those roles.

Sure, Mansions can be dispelled, if something is capable of seeing invisible objects, finds wherever it was stashed away, and does so successfully. But what rational beings would do so, having blind faith they can totally still take whatever pops out, after expending spell slots or abilities to achieve the above? How does it make sense from the perspective of the creature doing the dispelling?

you specified high level(which 90something percent of people never see), which means creatures capable of things like that. As for the rationale, is it better to dispel the mansion and prevent the rest, or fight a fully rested whatever it is? I'm going to go with disturbing the rest.

And again with the scouting, you continue to argue that "using other means to stay out of sight" is better than doing the exact same thing while also being invisible, which is just factually inaccurate.

How often do the invisible people in your game say that they are hiding behind the couch, or making sure to stay low to the ground and behind things?

Rogues -are- sturdier than Wizards, slightly.

Majorly. Evasion, Uncanny Dodge, better hit points, and since you are using high levels Blind Sense, Slippery Mind, Elusive are all designed to keep rogues alive while scouting. And that doesn't include subclass abilities that could help.

On average, with similar setups, they'll have 1 more HP per level, and often 1 more AC as well. But they can't misty step or otherwise bamf out of there if something does notice them, so I disagree that it's less likely they will be knocked out by something which notices them.

Why not? Arcane Trickster is a rogue subclass and can pick spells from any school at 8th, 14th and 20th level. Misty Step and Dimension Door are available to rogues. Not that the rogue needs that magic to be a better scout than the wizard.

 

[Maxperson]

Question: Why give a level 10 character as your example?

I didn't. Whoever I was responding to did.

 

[Undrave]

But a bladesinger is a Wizard.

You are really stuck on this idea of "wizard stuff", a Bladesinger wielding a sword is a wizard.

Why though? Why is it a Wizard subclass? It's a bloke with a sword that put the magic on the sword. Why is a Paladin a separate class from the Fighter but somehow there's not enough ideas for a whole class based on Bladesigners?

Why not? The player playing a fighter can play a wizard instead if he wants to!

IF people want to play the best then the entire party can be Wizards if they want to be and the game would not suffer at all, so I don't see the issue.

WE DON'T WANT TO PLAY WIZARD! That's the issue! The Wizard is a BORING class that has no story whatsoever and no personality. It's a pile of BS spells and uninteresting features that just result in MOAR SPELLS.

I'v played Cleric, I've played Druid, I've played Bard... found all of them BORING. You pour over the giant spell section and write up your little list and then you just use the same spell over and over again, pressing the same button the same way again and again and it never actually changes. There's always an obviously optimal spell to play so you can't really add any sort of interesting flavour.

If a player CHOOSES to play a vestigial class, that is their choice and unless they are a new player they are usually ok with it, because if they weren't they would play a Wizard or at least something on the more powerful side.

It's not really an informed choice if the game lies to you. All classes are presented as a proper option and it says nowhere that the Ranger and Monk suck, the Fighter doesn't get anything nice and the Casters are overpowered. If they were honest about it we'd be having a different conversation where we'd argue if it's good or bad game design (it's bad) and not wether the imbalance was real or not (it is).

That doesn't make any position dispensible, it doesn't mean the other players don't contribute just as much, if not more, to the team's overall success. It just means some roles on the team are not as visible. When I play a fighter, I'm okay with that because I care more about the team than glory.

Oh, for sure. I play support roles because I don’t really care for the glory… but I still want to perceive that I make a difference you know? When I played a Protection Fighter in AL, I had a thrill every time I could tell the DM ‘that attack got disadvantage’ and they would actually miss. When I played my shadow monk, the only thing I felt good at was stealth and infiltration and I felt superfluous in most situations.

When I played a Druid, I could dominate battles and get glory with my summons, but it got old real fast because it always felt like the same tedious process and that doing anything else with that level of spell slot felt like a waste. On the other hand, I always enjoyed dropping the Bear Spirit around my friends to give them temp HP, but I also wished I could have reason to use the other ones but no opportunity ever arose.

Maybe a part of it is just me being unable to do a clearly suboptimal action just for roleplay reason when I can clearly see the more optimal move... and it’s usually easy to see the optimal move with a Caster… so I find them boring?

 

[Maxperson]

I think this is a telling post. For you, for a wizard to be overpowered, a single wizard needs to be able to replace the rest of the party single-handed.

What? No. These aren't my requirements.

The answer to everything put forward by myself and others on my side of the debate has been, "The wizard has spells to do this." And at least one person gave an example of the wizard ending 8 encounters by using 8 spells where the enemies missed all of their saves. And of course all of that is predicated on the wizard always having the exact right spell for every situation memorized and with a slot available. It's a bunch of poppycock, so I want to see this mythical wizard actually constructed.

I consider a wizard overpowered if a party of 3 wizards finds it easier to complete a 9th to 20th level adventure than a party consisting of a fighter, a cleric, a rogue and a wizard.

Note: I freely admit that while 5e gives wizards many options for buffing, debuffing, multi-damage, single damage and utility, it does not give them many options for in-combat healing.

Which is huge. Wizards are squishy and easy to hit, and high level things save a lot and do lots of damage. I'd love a party of 3 wizards. Right now the party I DM for is 1 wizard(Scribe), 1 sorcerer, 1 warlock and 1 bard. The wizard and sorcerer get knocked out routinely. If it wasn't for the bard and his healing, they wouldn't get back up again. The warlock goes down less often, but it's still fairly common. The bard is what has kept the group from TPKing multiple times.