D&D 5E Are Wizards really all that?

[Gammadoodler]

Are you really goina down duct tape?

No problem my dad can't "fix" with enough duct tape.

 

[Undrave]

They share the responsibility, though. Like it or not, the DMG gives a perfectly viable alternative rules for resting that pretty much fix the issue. If you choose not to use those rules and stick with the bad design as is, then the fault is at least partially yours. The solution is not to then "fix" casters for everyone, since a lot of us are using those optional DMG rules and have no problems with casters.

If the alternative OPTIONAL rule actually fixes an issue then it should be the actual rule and not the optional one!

 

[FrozenNorth]

That sounds suspiciously like, "Suck it up and just let it be easy." which is not an option for a lot of us. The focus shouldn't be mitigating DM screw-ups by allowing less than 6-8 encounters per day by altering spellcasters. The focus should be figure out a way to have 6-8 encounters in-between long rests.

So having less than 6-8 combat encounters per day is a GM screw-up?

That does not seem to be Wizards of the Coast’s position, as most of the anthology adventures seem to have fewer than 6-8 combat encounters.

 

[Undrave]

No problem my dad can't "fix" with enough duct tape.

The Handyman’s secret weapon! Duct tape!

 

[TwoSix]

I agree that it's bad design, but the fix isn't to mess with casters. The fix is to extend the time between rests to allow for the 6-8 encounters to happen. Messing with casters doesn't fix the issue at all. Encounters will still be waaaay too easy if you don't make the adjustment in time, or just give in and have lots of encounters in a 24 hour period.

To be fair, I'd much rather simply have the game be unbalanced and no one play martials rather than try to force 6-8 encounters between every long rest. It's just too restrictive for most narratives outside of site-based crawls.

 

[FrogReaver]

To be fair, I'd much rather simply have the game be unbalanced and no one play martials rather than try to force 6-8 encounters between every long rest. It's just too restrictive for most narratives outside of site-based crawls.

IMO. One must go the 4e route of making resource structures the same and having the game focus more on a single battle than resource management to get away from caring about the adventure day structure for balance.

That said 6-8 encounters per day is a crazy number. 3-4 would feel about right sand most adventures could be adapted to that format. IMO.

 

[haakon1]

There is either consensus here that the Wizard, at high levels, is vastly superior to martials, or the people who believe so are just the most strident and incessant in their opinions, but either way I don't see much pushback against that narrative.

However, I'm not so sure.

Interesting. I have a game history perspective on this.

I haven’t played 5e beyond Tier I, but this same issue existed in all earlier editions: a strident “Wizards rule” assumption, when actual play doesn’t always seem that way.

Where Wizards shine (speaking generally, across generations of editions) is crowd control/mass fighting and their many unique abilities.

Where Fighters shine is in long strings of fight without rest … durability and not needing to recharge their abilities … which with Short Rest in 4e and 5e is not as big a deal.

Even if Wizards rule (perhaps?), the game began as literally a wargame (Chainmail) with Heroes and Wizards added to regular units. It never intentionally dissed or disliked Fighters.

AD&D 1e assumed Fighter was the most common class (on various tables), and it balanced “Wizards rule” in two ways that were later dropped:
1) XP tables were different by class. It was easier than the default of Fighter to advance as a Thief (later Rogue), but harder as an Magic-User (later Wizard, Sorcerer, etc.).
2) Squishiness, lethality, and starting super weak, at level 1. Tradition was, at least in groups I played with, every PC started at level 1. For an MU, that meant 1d4 HP, AC10, and 1 spell a day. An MU character survivor who reached 5th level - Fireball capable - was rare and celebrated.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Is your logic that any fix made to the core systems would break your implementation of that system?

I do not understand why this needs to be true.

To be fair, that might be an actual possibility. Suppose OneD&D comes out, and the classes are balanced around a 4-5 combats a day, with 1 short rest.

Now, under the variant rule, the short rest classes are relatively stronger, since their abilities recharge every day, and the long rest classes are relatively weaker, since they are stretching abilities meant for 4-5 combats across all combats in the entire week.

 

[Maxperson]

One might say spells are the wizards class abilities.


Besides expertise and reliable talent what class abilities are you talking about?

Evasion which helps the rogue survive many traps which would wreck a wizard doing the same exploration. Blind Sense to discover threats that the wizard won't know about until too late. Slippery Mind for certain traps or encounters while exploring. Elusive which also affects trap survival since traps make attack rolls. And that's just in the base class. Subclasses also give abilities that help.

Less often than the others. It has drawbacks but it also only needs to be used when picking the lock failed.

Picking locks will never fail unless there's a time limit of some sort. You can retry the checks and at level one with a 16 dex and proficiency, the rogue gets through up to a DC 25 pretty much automatically. With expertise and a 20 dex the rogue can get through any DC lock at all by level 5.

I was mostly trying to stay in tier 2 since you complained about tier 3 earlier.

Tier 1 and 2 the wizard doesn't have enough slots to match the rogue. If he tries he's screwed in combat. Tier 3 and 4 and the rogue gets some nice abilities that I listed above that come into play. Wizards can do well, but they can't match or exceed a rogue's skill + rogue abilities.

 

[Maxperson]

I really don't get the last bit.

Is your logic that any fix made to the core systems would break your implementation of that system?

Any fix to wizards doesn't do anything to fix the game(which can't be fixed I don't think). Suppose you weaken wizards and other casters, well you still have the game balanced around 6-8 encounters so either you do that, or you do fewer encounters and the party still walks all over the encounters with a nova or three. The balance issue has nothing to do with what wizards can do. All classes are capable of dishing out high sustained damage if they don't have to conserve resources for 6-8 encounters.

So what you've done is gimp wizards for no good reason as the game is still broken as hell. To unbreak it you have to run 6-8 encounters in-between long rests, which means that you've gimped wizards and made them worse than every other class, since they aren't "superior" at 6-8 encounters.

Further, if you "fix" spellcasters the way you suggest, anyone who runs the game the way it's supposed to be run is screwed and has to now modify spellcasters to make them more powerful in order to balance them against the game. All so you can run the game incorrectly by using fewer encounters.

The solution is not to placate those who refused to run 6-8 encounters by nerfing casters. It's to run 6-8 encounters in-between long rests like you're supposed to. And if you choose not to, you can fix the issue yourself and hope(like I do) that 6e doesn't balance this way again.