D&D 5E What is REALLY wrong with the Wizard? (+)

[GMforPowergamers]

I'm a low level Wizard, lol. The Cleric is buying his plate mail with his share of our money, and I'm like "hm, my cut might just let me finish off the spells I've found to put into my book!".

yeah but that's the thing with 5e money, that cleric will find real quick that now that he has plate there isn't much to spend on.

At level 1-3 money has LOTS of uses. at levels 4-6 you saved up and bought the things you wanted (In my experence) after that you just get a number to track

 

[Micah Sweet]

I am divided on this... back in 2e we never gave wizards the free level up spells BUT we always made a promise as a DM to have enemy casters to get books from and libraries present. to do the research... over the last 23 years with more arcane casters (sorcerer, artificer, warlock and bards being a bit more castery) you are not guaranteed to run into enemy wizards with books... so I can see why the need to keep the free spells at level up

Oh sure, the DM has to be on board for this to work. But this is made clear in the games I favor anyway, and it's how I normally do things.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Sadly, no use debating you as you're a money guy.

okay that's good. I am glad that (for a change on the internet) you understand that I have a financial background and know it wont effect things

But I guarantee if you throw that much money around every thief/scammer/thug in a thousand miles will be trying to get at you.

OMG... a thousand miles... really, that is how far word of someone with moneey spreads in your world? how fast?
lets say there is a secret psychic or magic theives guild that sends out a magic email to everyone in 1,000 miles... now what? they are going to travel to the town I just left or the one before that?

what are they going to do "jump" my 9th level party? to what effect?

If a bandit jumped out with a knife I would take it from them, look it over then give them some gold to buy a better one.

Hope you hired the same muscle that Gates and Amazon dude hire.

I AM the muscle... Gates and the Amazon dude made money behind a desk... I make money killing monsters and delving into trap filled dungeons.

I guarantee that no one in the real world is as awesome at combat as my artificer/bladesinger of level 9 or my armor artificer of level 12 (the two campaigns I am currently in) In fact I have more in common with Ironman from the movies with the 2nd one then any 'hired goons'



by the way, since tyhe point of the game is for the DM to come up with challanges, us to face them, then level up with XP and treasure, I'm not even sure "This might bring a challenge to you" is even a matter to debate at all...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

it's how I normally do things.

yeah the first 6-10 years of gaming I ran mine that way too...

infact we used to make spell book lists and even at character creation the player didn't pick, they just took a random spell book from the DM.

 

[James Gasik]

yeah but that's the thing with 5e money, that cleric will find real quick that now that he has plate there isn't much to spend on.

At level 1-3 money has LOTS of uses. at levels 4-6 you saved up and bought the things you wanted (In my experence) after that you just get a number to track

I'm not arguing that point, I've just found that being a Wizard, you have a lot less money laying around. The DM is talking about letting us craft scrolls as well (he's also trying to keep money relevant) but I'm not 100% on board- while as a player, sure, it's great to have niche spells on tap if the need comes up, being able to circumvent spell slot limits could really be a problem down the line.

I mean, we're still in Tier 1, and we're really seeing some problems with our party. We're exploring a large dungeon complex (The Scarlet Citadel by Kobold Press) and some of the encounters have been fairly grueling. The Ranger doesn't get a lot to do other than attack things, the Monk is constantly out of Ki (when you find yourself facing a Huge Gelatinous Cube and four Mephits, saving Ki is really not an option), and the Cleric and I are mainly the reason the party is staying alive, while also getting to do occasional cool things (thanks to my Investigation, I'm basically the party Rogue, and I have Healer for more healing support).

The Monk keeps talking about their next character being a Rogue, and the Ranger said yesterday that he thinks he'd have been better off as a Barbarian, if all he's going to do is fight things (he's the least experienced player, and I guess he thought he'd be some kind of Fighter/Rogue hybrid).

Meanwhile I'm also thinking about making a backup Rogue in case my Wizard bites it, to get out of the spotlight, though I'm really having Cleric envy, which is odd, since my experiences being a Cleric in 5e were kind of miserable, but this guy is our all star!

 

[Micah Sweet]

yeah the first 6-10 years of gaming I ran mine that way too...

infact we used to make spell book lists and even at character creation the player didn't pick, they just took a random spell book from the DM.

Love it! That's my jam when I get my way.

 

[James Gasik]

As far as the 2 free spells/level that Wizards get...one of the 2e books, I think it was Forgotten Realms Adventures, divided spells into rarity. And I think this is really the way the game should go. Common spells should include everything the designers think Wizards should be able to do, like detecting magic, identifying things, and basic offensive spells like magic missile. And then just hand these spells out for free.

Then the more powerful spells, that can break encounters or grant great narrative power should be rarer, and need to be sought out. This makes them something that has to be earned, and gives new DM's a chance to talk with their players about campaign expectations- if you're worried about what they'll do with a spell, you can have that conversation before you give them an opportunity to learn it. It also makes it easier to ban spells; no DM can really be expected to pore over an entire spell list to make sure there's no mines ahead, and thus, most problems happen when an unsuspecting player goes "oh look, this spell is neat" and the game literally stops dead in it's tracks when they cast it and everyone is reaching for rulebooks going "it can't possibly be that good..."

(We had a moment like this yesterday, the DM allows us to acquire spells from Deep Magic by Kobold Press, and the Cleric found something....decidedly plus ultra to randomly prepare for the day that broke two encounters wide open).

 

[tetrasodium]

how? I would love to see how a church getting a huge donation destroys anything... they either hoard the money or spend it.
How about that tip to the bar owner... same thing.

this isn't 'printing more money' its just circulating money already there.

I am a money guy and I promise you if tomorrow a big celebraty comes to a small town in CT and buys a round of beers and tips the waitress $10,000 that will change her life but it wont effect the town.

If tomorrow bill gates or the amazon dude or the twitter guy come to CT and donate a million dollars to a local church they (the rich dude) wont notice it any more then you would throwing some pocket change, and that church may now have a lot to spend but it wont tank small town in CT economy

You are off by orders of magnitude though. In past editions we all had PCs & players walking around with the GDP of empires in their back pocket. At the time that was ok because PCs regularly needed to spend those kinds of sums on improving gear & consumables.* Now in 5e PCs still walk around with coin purses filled with the GDP of nations & empires but literally don't need to spend it on anything at all let alone regularly. PCs aren't doing the equivalent of a celebrity tipping a waitress 10,000$. They are doing something much closer to dirty harry or frank castle tipping every two bit crook & informant 10,000,000$ like they are giving out handshakes. Because the PCs don't need to spend that on anything the act of giving out 10,000,000$ has zero opportunity cost beyond the eraser needed to change their coins. Even if the NPCs refuse there's no cost to the group if a second or third player jumps in with another insane sum. I could give out less (or no) gold & treasure sure, but giving out too little of that comes with a high cost documented at least as early as the 2e dmg.

*among other things that varied from edition to edition

 

[GMforPowergamers]

You are off by orders of magnitude though. In past editions we all had PCs & players walking around with the GDP of empires in their back pocket. At the time that was ok because PCs regularly needed to spend those kinds of sums on improving gear & consumables.* Now in 5e PCs still walk around with coin purses filled with the GDP of nations & empires but literally don't need to spend it on anything at all let alone regularly. PCs aren't doing the equivalent of a celebrity tipping a waitress 10,000$. They are doing something much closer to dirty harry or frank castle tipping every two bit crook & informant 10,000,000$ like they are giving out handshakes. Because the PCs don't need to spend that on anything the act of giving out 10,000,000$ has zero opportunity cost beyond the eraser needed to change their coins. Even if the NPCs refuse there's no cost to the group if a second or third player jumps in with another insane sum. I could give out less (or no) gold & treasure sure, but giving out too little of that comes with a high cost documented at least as early as the 2e dmg.

*among other things that varied from edition to edition

okay so you told me that my example of 2 uses of throwing around money over 2 towns would destroy the econemy... you are not some how switching to it only happens if you do it at a much larger scale then I said...

 

[tetrasodium]

okay so you told me that my example of 2 uses of throwing around money over 2 towns would destroy the econemy... you are not some how switching to it only happens if you do it at a much larger scale then I said...

It's not about "the economy". The trouble is how PCs turn into a failed comic book character at no cost no themselves & the completely implausible results if the GM doesn't inflict a documented motivation problem on their campaign.