Aldarc
Legend
If they went back to wizards sucking at low levels it would help. But that's against their design ethos.
IMO, wizards don't need to suck at low level to balance things out. When I look at some OSR games like Beyond the Wall & Other Adventures or Worlds Without Number, I think that these games have a pretty good grasp on mages. Though they handle magic differently, a key feature is that magic is limited but potent. BtWaOA relegates cantrips to being at-will utilities requiring ability checks, spells (no spell level!) being potent but limited in casting (number of castings limited to mage level), and even more potent spells being put into rituals. So in the case of BtWaOA, the wizard can still try using cantrips and rituals when they are out of spells.I think they could make wizards suck more at low levels without making them suck as much as they did in OD&D. I think part of the problem is the rhetoric around the issue is very all or nothing.
I also think that a wizard/mage should be better at recalling lore (as per literature) than is often emphasized, particularly by the "spells go BOOM!" school of thought when it comes to mages.
Probably the thread about why people find wizards boring. I do think that the warrior/fighter should be the best at combat.I don't remember what thread I saw it in so I am going to put it here:
I am really warming up to the idea of wizards that are very powerful but with very limited resources and absolutely NO combat spells.
It's not necessarily the thread for this or maybe even the right reply. But I think that part of the problem is hanging nearly all the magic on the wizard. IMHO, it might be better to start from the ground up and design classes based around playstyle, possibly something modeled loosely on Magic the Gathering: i.e., play the White Mage if you want to focus on support magic. Play the Red Mage if you want to focus on offensive magic. Play the Blue Mage if you want to focus on mind magic. Play the Green Mage if you want to focus on nature magic. Play the Black Mage if you want to focus on edge lord magic.

Now that IS an unpopular opinion!The forum goes around and around about this. No point rehashing the whole "what precise percentage is D&D about combat" argument here.
No, it reflects what's important to the game. You can have combat rules that are simple and easy to parse. The devs chose not to do that. Not because simple, streamlined combat is impossible, rather because D&D is a game about combat and the fans would not accept simple, clean, and easy rules. They want crunchy invovled combat. That every class is combat focused, the vast majority of spells are combat focused, the vast majority of feats are combat focused, that there have been four 280-350 page books dedicated to monster statblocks, etc are all clues. Where you focus the rules is what's important to the game. The rules literally tell you what the game is about. Which is why wargames have rules for war and no rules for harvesting or romance, for example. How can you tell a game is about the zombie apocalypse? Because it has rules pointing directly to a zombie apocalypse.

Too many people underseason and undersalt their food when cooking and then complain that their cooking doesn't taste as good as it does in restaurants.I have a relatively high spice tolerance, but I don’t really brag about it. I’m also not a heat-seeker, trying to sample hotter and hotter peppers. I’m more about having food that is well seasoned, not spicy hot. If I don’t like something’s flavor, I say do and won’t eat it.