D&D 5E Are Wizards really all that?

[Zubatcarteira]

Yeah, I know, but even when I run some official material I tone it down a lot for my games.

"Carnival" type entertainer magicians is plausible, but assuming a magic-common world breaks things down a lot.

For example, I am a 1st-level caster with the light cantrip. Consider the simple torch, 1 cp, burns for 1 hour (same as the cantrip's duration). Instead of adventuring, I find some local taverns or inns and offer my services to go around their premises touching sconces with the light cantrip. If each establishment has 10 torches, that is 30 an hour, or assuming 8 hours 240 torches. Even at 25% off the cost of a torch, that is 180 cp or 1.8 gp per night. Maintaining a modest lifestyle is 1 gp per day, leaving me a profit of 8 sp per night or about 288 gp per year in net profit.

Why bother adventuring?

Now, if you want to play in a world were your lantern-lighters are going around casting light for hours on end, or have an old city where the taxes paid for continual flame hundreds or thousands of time to light the streets, that's fine but not what I would want to play in.

(I know you said you prefer the sort of low-magic game I described, the above point was "you" in general.)

The effects of the Light cantrip end if you cast it again, so you could only have one active at a time.

 

[ECMO3]

@ECMO3 said that every time the familiar tries to scout it ends up dead. I'm not sure if that was hyperbole or not, but if not it doesn't exactly make a lot of sense unless either he is being careless with that familiar (it doesn't try to sneak), or the DM is hard blocking a character ability. Maybe there's a third possibility I'm not seeing?

As a DM there are several things driving this which usually result in dead familiars indoors:

1. A beast that is a predator will usually kill a familiar on sight if it can, and that is most of the significant beasts you are going to find in a dungeon.

2. An intelligent enemy will normally recognize a familiar for what it is indoors, this is especially true when the vast majority of familiars are birds (and most of them are owls) - why did this Owl randomly fly 100 yards into this cave? .... Why is an owl in the princesses' room? If you summoned a spider or rat you probably would not raise any eyebrows, but not a lot of people do that and there would be another dynamic in play as a lot of people will kill rats and spiders as pests.

As a DM I look at the situation and specifics every time, but indoors it is a rare situation that someone/something would not kill a familiar on sight considering the types of familiars typically used and the situations. Outside it is a different story and I said so in my post.

A familiar is not as good a scout as the rogue, but far less risky (I'd rather have a dead familiar than a dead rogue). So it becomes a risk/reward assessment about which to use. Or you can combine them and have the familiar ride on the rogue's shoulder in order to mitigate some of the rogue's risk (real time video vs "I'll be back in 5 minutes").

It depends how you evaluate risk. A familiar has no ability to stop an enemy who recognizes it from raising the alarm and a familiar that dies disappears, which makes it obvious that it is not a normal animal and again will result in an alarm being raised.

So your players are at less physical risk, but you are typically at higher risk of alerting enemies indoors.

IMO an invisible Wizard using spells is typically the best physical scout as he is good at being stealthy and has powerful spells to stop enemies or escape if he is discovered. An Arcane Trickster is really good too, but I would put other Rogues behind wizards. Arcane Eye is better than either though.

That said, I think that if the familiar dies every time you send it to scout then either you're having a really bad streak of luck or the DM really is out to get you.

No it is a situational thing, as mentioned above.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Again, I’m all for low magic worlds. But in 5e you need magic to counter magic. So if your world building involves RAW PC wizards but low magic everywhere else…well, those PC wizards are going to be hard to stop.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yeah, I have no issues with Faerun or Eberron existing, but I prefer PC-style magic be much rarer than that.

Otherwise you lose the ability to tell lots of different stories. It doesn't make much sense for a plague to be threatening the kingdom if there's a high level cleric on every corner who can cast Lesser Restoration. You end up having to justify it with, well, this plague is immune to magic!

If on the other hand you have village priests, yes they can keep a few people safe - but there are only one or two of them to a hundred people. And then there are reinfections. The priests try but get overwhelmed - and then in the cities you have the kingdom rulers talking about burning the slums with everyone in them.

Having medical care doesn't entirely prevent plagues - look at Coronavirus.

 

[Fanaelialae]

If on the other hand you have village priests, yes they can keep a few people safe - but there are only one or two of them to a hundred people. And then there are reinfections. The priests try but get overwhelmed - and then in the cities you have the kingdom rulers talking about burning the slums with everyone in them.

Having medical care doesn't entirely prevent plagues - look at Coronavirus.

We didn't have a cure for coronavirus. Whereas Lesser Restoration is a cure. Even if we assume you didn't have enough spells to go around, by simply using Lesser Restoration on the most ill patients, you would have reduced the mortality rate dramatically. Not only are you curing a mortally sick person, you're also easing the strain on the non-magical healers ,because the very sick people are the ones needing the most attention, and therefore they have more time and energy to prevent less sick patients from becoming as seriously ill.

I don't really think it's an apt comparison.

 

[DND_Reborn]

The effects of the Light cantrip end if you cast it again, so you could only have one active at a time.

LOL good catch, but the point still remains:

If you have a magic-common world, why would caster PCs bother adventuring when with most spells they could "work" easily for decent to great pay?

 

[Fanaelialae]

As a DM there are several things driving this which usually result in dead familiars indoors:

1. A beast that is a predator will usually kill a familiar on sight if it can, and that is most of the significant beasts you are going to find in a dungeon.

2. An intelligent enemy will normally recognize a familiar for what it is indoors, this is especially true when the vast majority of familiars are birds (and most of them are owls) - why did this Owl randomly fly 100 yards into this cave? .... Why is an owl in the princesses' room? If you summoned a spider or rat you probably would not raise any eyebrows, but not a lot of people do that and there would be another dynamic in play as a lot of people will kill rats and spiders as pests.

As a DM I look at the situation and specifics every time, but indoors it is a rare situation that someone/something would not kill a familiar on sight considering the types of familiars typically used and the situations. Outside it is a different story and I said so in my post.



It depends how you evaluate risk. A familiar has no ability to stop an enemy who recognizes it from raising the alarm and a familiar that dies disappears, which makes it obvious that it is not a normal animal and again will result in an alarm being raised.

So your players are at less physical risk, but you are typically at higher risk of alerting enemies indoors.

IMO an invisible Wizard using spells is typically the best physical scout as he is good at being stealthy and has powerful spells to stop enemies or escape if he is discovered. An Arcane Trickster is really good too, but I would put other Rogues behind wizards. Arcane Eye is better than either though.


No it is a situational thing, as mentioned above.

A beast might kill a familiar if it sees one. Again, why isn't the familiar sneaking? Moreover, there are some familiars that many beasts won't tangle with. A typical domestic cat is not going to attack an owl, for example. The owl is too big to be appropriate prey, and the risk of injury is high. Don't let their appearance fool you, owls can be surprisingly vicious.

Intelligent creatures might kill an owl. Also only if the detect it. Why is the familiar not sneaking? If this is the issue, however, why not use a less conspicuous form? A rat or spider would hardly be out of place in a dungeon. If the dungeon denizens plan to keep their dungeon 100% pest free, they've got their work cut out for them. Also, the familiar only disappears if killed. Does the familiar not try to flee when detected? I would think that the familiar would win initiative at least some of the time. An owl familiar, in particular, has flyby attack and a fast movement rate, so it should have a good chance to escape even if it is detected.

Again, a lot of the issues you bring up with the familiar would also be a problem for the rogue. Larger beasts will attack him. Enemies who spot him will attack him and/or raise the alarm. Heck, the rogue is at least as out of place in the dungeon as an owl, and significantly more so than a spider or a rat.

It doesn't make much sense to me that (even indoors) the familiar would always die when scouting.

 

[Bill Zebub]

LOL good catch, but the point still remains:

If you have a magic-common world, why would caster PCs bother adventuring when with most spells they could "work" easily for decent to great pay?

The implied economic system of D&D makes no sense at all, especially in a world that has magic. If you use it as the starting point to argue that something else doesn't make sense, you will succeed.

 

[Neonchameleon]

We didn't have a cure for coronavirus. Whereas Lesser Restoration is a cure.

We have something better. There's an old saying "prevention is better than cure". And the thing about a cure is that it does not prevent re-infection. With luck there will be some reinfections prevented as the immune system has learned - but every single person in the community is going to need Lesser Restoration.

Even if we assume you didn't have enough spells to go around, by simply using Lesser Restoration on the most ill patients, you would have reduced the mortality rate dramatically. Not only are you curing a mortally sick person, you're also easing the strain on the non-magical healers ,because the very sick people are the ones needing the most attention, and therefore they have more time and energy to prevent less sick patients from becoming as seriously ill.

But with Lesser Restoration so easily cast there will be far fewer non-magical healers and they won't be infectious disease specialists.

I don't really think it's an apt comparison.

Indeed. Magical plagues would be a thing - the fantasy equivalent of bioweapons, but effective

 

[DND_Reborn]

The implied economic system of D&D makes no sense at all, especially in a world that has magic. If you use it as the starting point to argue that something else doesn't make sense, you will succeed.

Huh?