Yes they get less benefit. If I have a car and drive it every day to work and you drive it once a month to go to the office because you usually work from home I get more benefit from the car than you do.
No, you use your car more than me. We get the same benefit, getting to work.
This is a question of primary abilities and secondary abilities. A fighters primary abilities - attacking with weapons and absorbing damage are both increased substantially by magic weapons. A casters primary abilities aren’t. At best magic items are giving more but similar and mutually exclusive primary abilities to casters (a staff of fire) but not improving the ones they have already. That wizard can’t do more with the actions they take but a fighter can (unless you’re giving out staffs of fire below 6th level in which case I have no sympathy for you).
A fighter isn't doing more with their action, what are you talking about? A +3 weapon doesn't give more attacks or more abilities on those attacks, it just increases the numbers.
And sure, a wizard with a staff of fire is not, on a turn by turn analysis, doing better. But on an adventuring day analysis, they are essentially getting, what? Three more spells per day? That is very good, because remember, the entire supposed conceit is that the wizard's spells are better than the fighter's actions, but the wizard has a limited number of spells. Giving them three more spells per day means they are getting three more actions better than anything the fighter could possibly do, meaning the fighter (with their limited hp) would need to fight more battles to catch up. It also, by giving spells you don't need to prepare, assists in the whole "always prepared" trope. A wizard who doesn't need to prepare fireball because it is in their staff now has a free slot to prepare something else to solve a situation fireball couldn't have.
The wizard is not benefiting from the Armour class +2 because +2 to the AC of a wizard makes very little difference to whether they get hit. Whereas +2 to an already good AC is a much bigger benefit. I’m sure there will be a thread here comparing how the probability changes going from AC 15 to AC 17 and going from AC 20 to AC 22.
You’re argument for saying wizards can benefit seems to be that a tiny subset of wizards can attempt to emulate fighters. But even those wizards will occasionally be using spells in combat… if they aren’t then they aren’t really casters for the purpose of this discussion and they’re the exception that proves the rule.
Interesting. So, you realize the wizard is going to 22, right? Just because you have a +2 cloak doesn't mean you don't have shield. You seriously underestimate how easily a wizard can get high AC. Heck, the bladesinger? They can have 19 AC and jump to 24 when they are actually attacked.
And even if it is just a subset of wizards, they are still a group of wizards who can do the fighter's job, and you are completely ignoring the clerics, the druids, and the bards as well.
Well I’m not interested in white room theorizing but how the game is actually played in reality. Perhaps a lot of characters do increase ASI but fighters can do that and pick some pretty specific combat enhancing powers. By level 8 they can have 4 feats. Enough to do both at the core levels the game is usually played at, but this continues into higher levels too.
And by level 8 the wizard can have three feats. Do you really think that a single feat is enough to off-set all the advantages of spellcasting we've laid out?
Oh, and "how the game is played in reality"? According to WoTC their data (which should be pretty good and accurate data) is that 50% of games are featless. So... in reality, a significant number of people are playing as the game was designed.
And, again, you seem to be ignoring things. If you have sharpshooter, how does Sentinel increase your combat ability? Or Polearm master? Or Shield Master? They don't. Again, once a fighter picks a path... that's generally it. There are only an incredibly small number of combat feats that synergize.
A fighter can benefit from spell like abilities as much as anyone else. But let’s say they don’t. Getting an extra 3 spells in your spellbook and being able to cast a spell for free once a day doesn’t make a wizard more powerful in any given round. The question isn’t whether the feat is exclusive to fighters. It’s whether the fighter benefits the most from it: which means you need to take their action choices into account.
Name me a feat that gives a wizard an extra thing they can do in a round that they couldn’t already and I’ll then name you a ton for a fighter.
I’m genuinely surprised. I thought at this point it was generally accepted that fighters benefited more from feats and magic items.
Right, you are looking round per round, but power isn't only generated round per round. A wizard who can cast three more spells, and have a 30% increase in their spells known is more capable of solving more problems, longer. And you don't seem to understand that spellcaster feats tend to stack. A spellcaster with Warcaster, Spell Sniper, Elemental Adept, and Fey-Touched can benefit from all four of those in a single combat without losing any effiency. A fighter with Sharp-shooter, Great Weapon Master, Shield Master and Tavern Brawler... can't. Those are all exclusive abilities that don't stack.