D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[TwoSix]

What is your source for warlords having been as popular as fighters in 4e?

Anecdotally, I don't think Warlord was more popular than Fighter, just because supportive healers aren't generally as popular as melee brutes. But all 4 of the Martial power classes were very popular, more so than any of the classes that they shared a role with across other power sources.

It also helped that the 4e Fighter was giant leap up from the 3e Fighter in terms of overall power. It went from near the bottom to right near the top. It hit hard, could defend the front lines, and had a ton of self-sufficiency.

 

[NotAYakk]

You're equating things that are not equal, here. We're talking about whether wizard is broken to the point that you can't enjoy playing a fighter. Millions of people enjoy playing a fighter - now, and for the past 40 years over all of the editions. Analysis of what? Whether the wizard is broken? If it is broken, it has to ruin the experience of playing other classes. The only objective fact that matters in this situation is whether it ruins the enjoyment of playing a fighter - and it clearly - through the numbers - does NOT. It also ignores that a 20th level fighter can deal 150 to 200 damage to a single target in a round very easily - every round. A wizard can't do it once.

That ... isn't true.

There are a myriad of wizard builds that put out insane damage in a single round.

There is the entire magic missile nuke trick - MM does damage simultaneously, so it is one damage roll, then you boost that damage roll and fire off a ... large ... number of magic missiles, each with a damage boost. Like 159.5 damage without an attack roll in a single round.

If we add in a modest resource expenditure the wizard gets better. Animate objects is 1 action that adds 65 DPR for 10 turns for a 5th level slot, which a 20th level wizard has a pile of, and stacks very well with a bunch of abilities that add to per-hit damage of creatures. The wizard can also have a bunch of skeleton archers, or (if you want to get silly) Tiny Servants with Wands of Magic Missile.

The SS XBE fighter with +3 hand crossbow and 20 dex does (1d6+18)*5. Toss in pre buffing -- potion of enlarge, hex on target -- and +1 bolts and we hit (1d6+1d4+1d6+19)*5 = 142.5. Add in action surge for (1d6+1d4+1d6+19)*9 of 256.5, all at 0'-120' range.

Of course, all of these are already in the high-optimization territory.

A 5th level wizard can drop a 28 damage fireball. A 5th level great weapon fighter can deal two or three attacks at 20 damage a piece - maybe more - to a single target.

That 5th level three attack fighter is a variant human GWF PAM fighter, a very specific build (and one of the higher optimization ones). They have 16 strength, so deal 1d10+13 (19.5ish)x2 and 1d4+13 (16ish) x1 in their attack routine, not 20 a piece, and have a +1 to hit (!) so very inaccurate; for that to hit reliably, you'll need someone to set up advantage, and probably find a specific magic item (an enchanted polearm, or a strength-boosting item).

Meanwhile, the wizard is any wizard who picked a specific 3rd level spell. And that 3rd level spell deals half damage on a miss and hits a huge chunk of the battlefield if you play on most published maps.

An 11th level wizard can disintegrate once for 75 damage. An 11th level fighter is attacking 3 or 4 times for 25 or so damage each every round.

Disintegrate isn't a top tier wizard spell. It is save-or-nothing. Its main use, I find, is the utility of preventing resurrection. Wizards have better ways to produce damage output -- animate objects, for example, puts out up to 65 damage per round every round for a lower level spell slot without using an action after the first round.

Drop a load of bolts on the ground, animate, and order them to shoot themselves at a set of targets.

Burn a 4th level slot each morning (plus some 3rd level when they are killed) and add in 6 boney archers for another 33 damage per round (bonus action to control).

The total HP you bring to the table is also insane. 78 undead, 200 from animated objects, on top of your own HP. Keep yourself in cover (as none of this requires line of effect), and keep your summon-shields between yourself and the enemy (if they charge through, that is a lot of opportunity attacks). If things go poorly, you have supernatural mobility to get out of dodge (burn an action on dimension door) high enough to allow your summons to finish off most foes before they can close.

Foes who engage your summons do drain your resources, but that means your summons are acting like very efficient heals. Foes who go after you, well, you can afford to burn actions and resources fleeing if they use the same chasing, while your summons (or the rest of the party) keep on plinking away.

And I'm not doing high optimization here. I'm literally picking some decent spells and using them on an arbitrary wizard build - none of the above even requires a good intelligence score on the PC, let alone a specific build.

The fighter role - when a damage dealing focused build - is to get in there and take on the big bad in a meaningful one on one combat. They deplete the hp of the enemy faster than the spellcasters.

Optimized fighters deplete the HP of big bads faster than unoptimized spellcasters.

However, optimization matters a lot here. A 16 dex dual short sword fighter at level 11 does (1d6+3)*4 = 26 damage if everything hits, with a mere +7 to hit.

"But" you say "why not 20 dex? Why not a PAM spear duelist?" - I've seen martial PCs without capped attack stats in actual play and without optimized gear choices. They picked feats that seemed fun, and never looked up how to optimize.

(The last time I was in a game with someone, it was a ranger whose damage output looked like that - they made a ranger beastmaster who mixed up dual wielding strength weapons with a bow, neither dex nor strength maxed. Meanwhile, other characters where doing 100+ damage in a round. Work was put into improving the ranger (and beasts) damage output by DM and players; but my point is these characters exist.)

And that is the direct competition to the distintegration or fireball wizard - the wizard who picks a direct damage spell with lots of dice in its description and casts it and expects to be efficient at killing things.

The range of character power caused by differences in optimization is larger than the difference between classes in 5e.

And spellcasters have a higher optimization ceiling, because their building blocks are "chunks of rules text" while fighters building blocks aren't.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Regardless of whether you take something personally, don't make personal attacks against your fellow posters or make the discussion personal, especially heated ones. The mods have been pretty clear to all of us at one point or another that it is that simple. Don't do it.

I think it's a reasonable position to take that if someone says they like a particular thing, and someone says that the thing is dumbed down and meant for the lowest common denominator, that the first person might take it personally because the second person is directly inferring that only dumbed down or the lowest common denominator kind of people would like it. I don't think that's a stretch. Especially since we have person after person who likes the thing directly telling us that's how they are feeling about those comments.

I'm also pointing out what certainly seems like a double standard. We have 15 years of 4e fans getting really upset every time someone makes a derogatory comment about 4e. "It's just an MMO" "It's not real D&D", etc. etc. I think it's a pretty big double standard to spend the last 15 years allowing those comments, but now suddenly tell 5e fans "Don't take it personally, I'm just taking about the game, not you." Especially when it's some of the same people who have been getting so upset at snide comments directed at 4e now telling 5e fans not to do what they've been doing for 15 years.

Maybe instead of dismissing people with "I'm talking about the game, not you.", we should look closer at what you're (general you) saying about the game. If you're calling it an apologist edition that is meant for the lowest common denominator, you're making a pejorative association with the people who like it. Dismissive hyperbolic attacks aren't criticisms. They are veiled personal attacks meant to rile up fans of that particular thing (regardless of what edition you're talking about).

 

[Oofta]

That ... isn't true.

There are a myriad of wizard builds that put out insane damage in a single round.

There is the entire magic missile nuke trick - MM does damage simultaneously, so it is one damage roll, then you boost that damage roll and fire off a ... large ... number of magic missiles, each with a damage boost. Like 159.5 damage without an attack roll in a single round.

There are always going to be exploits and "generous" interpretations of rules. I know of no way to boost the damage of each magic missile, although I don't pay attention to optimization rules either. Sounds like a Pun Pun problem to me. At 14th level you can empower to get max damage if you're an evoker, but do it more than once and you start taking necrotic damage.

If we add in a modest resource expenditure the wizard gets better. Animate objects is 1 action that adds 65 DPR for 10 turns for a 5th level slot, which a 20th level wizard has a pile of, and stacks very well with a bunch of abilities that add to per-hit damage of creatures. The wizard can also have a bunch of skeleton archers, or (if you want to get silly) Tiny Servants with Wands of Magic Missile.

Animate objects is a good spell, hope the creature you're fighting doesn't have a breath weapon or some other AOE to take them out. Also depends on size, they still take up a space, our group used simple ball bearings. Animate dead isn't bad either but again at higher levels they may as well be made out of tissue paper.

Oh, and add in that the objects and undead have a +8 and a +4 respectively to hit while a high level PC will likely have at least a +12 to hit and frequently higher. Suddenly your "amazing" amount of damage is easily countered and doesn't do nearly as much damage as you state.

The SS XBE fighter with +3 hand crossbow and 20 dex does (1d6+18)*5. Toss in pre buffing -- potion of enlarge, hex on target -- and +1 bolts and we hit (1d6+1d4+1d6+19)*5 = 142.5. Add in action surge for (1d6+1d4+1d6+19)*9 of 256.5, all at 0'-120' range.

Of course, all of these are already in the high-optimization territory.



That 5th level three attack fighter is a variant human GWF PAM fighter, a very specific build (and one of the higher optimization ones). They have 16 strength, so deal 1d10+13 (19.5ish)x2 and 1d4+13 (16ish) x1 in their attack routine, not 20 a piece, and have a +1 to hit (!) so very inaccurate; for that to hit reliably, you'll need someone to set up advantage, and probably find a specific magic item (an enchanted polearm, or a strength-boosting item).

Meanwhile, the wizard is any wizard who picked a specific 3rd level spell. And that 3rd level spell deals half damage on a miss and hits a huge chunk of the battlefield if you play on most published maps.


Disintegrate isn't a top tier wizard spell. It is save-or-nothing. Its main use, I find, is the utility of preventing resurrection. Wizards have better ways to produce damage output -- animate objects, for example, puts out up to 65 damage per round every round for a lower level spell slot without using an action after the first round.

Drop a load of bolts on the ground, animate, and order them to shoot themselves at a set of targets.

Burn a 4th level slot each morning (plus some 3rd level when they are killed) and add in 6 boney archers for another 33 damage per round (bonus action to control).

The total HP you bring to the table is also insane. 78 undead, 200 from animated objects, on top of your own HP. Keep yourself in cover (as none of this requires line of effect), and keep your summon-shields between yourself and the enemy (if they charge through, that is a lot of opportunity attacks). If things go poorly, you have supernatural mobility to get out of dodge (burn an action on dimension door) high enough to allow your summons to finish off most foes before they can close.

Foes who engage your summons do drain your resources, but that means your summons are acting like very efficient heals. Foes who go after you, well, you can afford to burn actions and resources fleeing if they use the same chasing, while your summons (or the rest of the party) keep on plinking away.

And I'm not doing high optimization here. I'm literally picking some decent spells and using them on an arbitrary wizard build - none of the above even requires a good intelligence score on the PC, let alone a specific build.



Optimized fighters deplete the HP of big bads faster than unoptimized spellcasters.

However, optimization matters a lot here. A 16 dex dual short sword fighter at level 11 does (1d6+3)*4 = 26 damage if everything hits, with a mere +7 to hit.

"But" you say "why not 20 dex? Why not a PAM spear duelist?" - I've seen martial PCs without capped attack stats in actual play and without optimized gear choices. They picked feats that seemed fun, and never looked up how to optimize.

(The last time I was in a game with someone, it was a ranger whose damage output looked like that - they made a ranger beastmaster who mixed up dual wielding strength weapons with a bow, neither dex nor strength maxed. Meanwhile, other characters where doing 100+ damage in a round. Work was put into improving the ranger (and beasts) damage output by DM and players; but my point is these characters exist.)

And that is the direct competition to the distintegration or fireball wizard - the wizard who picks a direct damage spell with lots of dice in its description and casts it and expects to be efficient at killing things.

The range of character power caused by differences in optimization is larger than the difference between classes in 5e.

And spellcasters have a higher optimization ceiling, because their building blocks are "chunks of rules text" while fighters building blocks aren't.

So yes the wizard can expend resources and occasionally do more damage. If they have the right spell prepared for the target. But different classes and builds have different roles to play in the game. In every game I've played to 20th, the wizard occasionally went nova and excelled while the fighter consistently dealt out death.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'm also pointing out what certainly seems like a double standard. We have 15 years of 4e fans getting really upset every time someone makes a derogatory comment about 4e. "It's just an MMO" "It's not real D&D", etc. etc. I think it's a pretty big double standard to spend the last 15 years allowing those comments, but now suddenly tell 5e fans "Don't take it personally, I'm just taking about the game, not you." Especially when it's some of the same people who have been getting so upset at snide comments directed at 4e now telling 5e fans not to do what they've been doing for 15 years.

You can get mad at attacks on the game without equating it to a personal attack and trying to use that terminology as a weapon.

 

[FrogReaver]

There are always going to be exploits and "generous" interpretations of rules. I know of no way to boost the damage of each magic missile, although I don't pay attention to optimization rules either. Sounds like a Pun Pun problem to me. At 14th level you can empower to get max damage if you're an evoker, but do it more than once and you start taking necrotic damage.

I agree the interpretation of magic missile damage scaling per missile with the level 10 evocation feature and hex blades curse is wrong. But if I recall there are dev tweets confirming it works that way so…

Animate objects is a good spell, hope the creature you're fighting doesn't have a breath weapon or some other AOE to take them out. Also depends on size, they still take up a space, our group used simple ball bearings. Animate dead isn't bad either but again at higher levels they may as well be made out of tissue paper.

Summons then cantrip spam typically bring a wizard on par with an optimized martial damage. No magic items involved other than maybe a +1 sword

But that’s not the only route to high damage.
1. Damage zones and a team with forced movement.
2. The magic missle evoker/hexblade curse trick if applicable to your game
3. Forget damage and just use forcecage and sickening radiance to kill anything that can’t escape - or with other Ally’s they can control and you can sickening radiance.
4. At higher levels simulacrum, crown of stars, both having summons out with cantrip or fireball spam trounces martial damage.
5. Also at higher levels casters can make semi permanent armies with things like planar binding.

Oh, and add in that the objects and undead have a +8 and a +4 respectively to hit while a high level PC will likely have at least a +12 to hit and frequently higher. Suddenly your "amazing" amount of damage is easily countered and doesn't do nearly as much damage as you state.

Sure, but it’s like 10 attacks vs 3 or 4?

Also don’t most highly optimized damage martials use -5 attack feats. Bringing this just about in line.

So yes the wizard can expend resources and occasionally do more damage. If they have the right spell prepared for the target. But different classes and builds have different roles to play in the game. In every game I've played to 20th, the wizard occasionally went nova and excelled while the fighter consistently dealt out death.

The wizards tactics we are talking about are mostly general purpose - a lot more so than swinging a melee weapon targeting AC. And it’s not like the wizard can’t have multiple approaches prepared - the melee str character doesn’t have that luxury.

 

[overgeeked]

That ... isn't true.

There are a myriad of wizard builds that put out insane damage in a single round.

There is the entire magic missile nuke trick - MM does damage simultaneously, so it is one damage roll, then you boost that damage roll and fire off a ... large ... number of magic missiles, each with a damage boost. Like 159.5 damage without an attack roll in a single round.

If we add in a modest resource expenditure the wizard gets better. Animate objects is 1 action that adds 65 DPR for 10 turns for a 5th level slot, which a 20th level wizard has a pile of, and stacks very well with a bunch of abilities that add to per-hit damage of creatures. The wizard can also have a bunch of skeleton archers, or (if you want to get silly) Tiny Servants with Wands of Magic Missile.

The SS XBE fighter with +3 hand crossbow and 20 dex does (1d6+18)*5. Toss in pre buffing -- potion of enlarge, hex on target -- and +1 bolts and we hit (1d6+1d4+1d6+19)*5 = 142.5. Add in action surge for (1d6+1d4+1d6+19)*9 of 256.5, all at 0'-120' range.

Of course, all of these are already in the high-optimization territory.



That 5th level three attack fighter is a variant human GWF PAM fighter, a very specific build (and one of the higher optimization ones). They have 16 strength, so deal 1d10+13 (19.5ish)x2 and 1d4+13 (16ish) x1 in their attack routine, not 20 a piece, and have a +1 to hit (!) so very inaccurate; for that to hit reliably, you'll need someone to set up advantage, and probably find a specific magic item (an enchanted polearm, or a strength-boosting item).

Meanwhile, the wizard is any wizard who picked a specific 3rd level spell. And that 3rd level spell deals half damage on a miss and hits a huge chunk of the battlefield if you play on most published maps.


Disintegrate isn't a top tier wizard spell. It is save-or-nothing. Its main use, I find, is the utility of preventing resurrection. Wizards have better ways to produce damage output -- animate objects, for example, puts out up to 65 damage per round every round for a lower level spell slot without using an action after the first round.

Drop a load of bolts on the ground, animate, and order them to shoot themselves at a set of targets.

Burn a 4th level slot each morning (plus some 3rd level when they are killed) and add in 6 boney archers for another 33 damage per round (bonus action to control).

The total HP you bring to the table is also insane. 78 undead, 200 from animated objects, on top of your own HP. Keep yourself in cover (as none of this requires line of effect), and keep your summon-shields between yourself and the enemy (if they charge through, that is a lot of opportunity attacks). If things go poorly, you have supernatural mobility to get out of dodge (burn an action on dimension door) high enough to allow your summons to finish off most foes before they can close.

Foes who engage your summons do drain your resources, but that means your summons are acting like very efficient heals. Foes who go after you, well, you can afford to burn actions and resources fleeing if they use the same chasing, while your summons (or the rest of the party) keep on plinking away.

And I'm not doing high optimization here. I'm literally picking some decent spells and using them on an arbitrary wizard build - none of the above even requires a good intelligence score on the PC, let alone a specific build.



Optimized fighters deplete the HP of big bads faster than unoptimized spellcasters.

However, optimization matters a lot here. A 16 dex dual short sword fighter at level 11 does (1d6+3)*4 = 26 damage if everything hits, with a mere +7 to hit.

"But" you say "why not 20 dex? Why not a PAM spear duelist?" - I've seen martial PCs without capped attack stats in actual play and without optimized gear choices. They picked feats that seemed fun, and never looked up how to optimize.

(The last time I was in a game with someone, it was a ranger whose damage output looked like that - they made a ranger beastmaster who mixed up dual wielding strength weapons with a bow, neither dex nor strength maxed. Meanwhile, other characters where doing 100+ damage in a round. Work was put into improving the ranger (and beasts) damage output by DM and players; but my point is these characters exist.)

And that is the direct competition to the distintegration or fireball wizard - the wizard who picks a direct damage spell with lots of dice in its description and casts it and expects to be efficient at killing things.

The range of character power caused by differences in optimization is larger than the difference between classes in 5e.

And spellcasters have a higher optimization ceiling, because their building blocks are "chunks of rules text" while fighters building blocks aren't.

It really is kinda hilarious.

To get good damage from a fighter you have to make a specific optimized build with all the right feats and white room away things like positioning, movement, etc.

To get good damage from a wizard you have to...pick one or two obvious spells...and that's it.

Then start talking about an optimized wizard and it's just over.

Yet still people argue there's no gap between wizards and fighters.

And this is just focusing on damage output while ignoring all the reality breaking shenanigans that wizards can do like wish.

 

[FrogReaver]

It really is kinda hilarious.

To get good damage from a fighter you have to make a specific optimized build with all the right feats and white room away things like positioning, movement, etc.

To get good damage from a wizard you have to...pick one or two obvious spells...and that's it.

Then start talking about an optimized wizard and it's just over.

Yet still people argue there's no gap between wizards and fighters.

And this is just focusing on damage output while ignoring all the reality breaking shenanigans that wizards can do like wish.

I mean damage is usually the worst thing for a wizard to do. So it’s even worse than that.

 

[NotAYakk]

There are always going to be exploits and "generous" interpretations of rules. I know of no way to boost the damage of each magic missile, although I don't pay attention to optimization rules either. Sounds like a Pun Pun problem to me. At 14th level you can empower to get max damage if you're an evoker, but do it more than once and you start taking necrotic damage.

I am just comparing optimization to optimization. My point is that more optimization is more damage.

Animate objects is a good spell, hope the creature you're fighting doesn't have a breath weapon or some other AOE to take them out. Also depends on size, they still take up a space, our group used simple ball bearings. Animate dead isn't bad either but again at higher levels they may as well be made out of tissue paper.

Oh, and add in that the objects and undead have a +8 and a +4 respectively to hit while a high level PC will likely have at least a +12 to hit and frequently higher. Suddenly your "amazing" amount of damage is easily countered and doesn't do nearly as much damage as you state.

+7 as the fighter is using SS/GWM to get those damage numbers.

And I am comparing nearly unoptimized (pick 1 or 2 spells) vs quite optimized (most of build and gear choices dedicated to it, and only a few specific builds match this).

Real minionmancy blows past these numbers.

My goal here isn't showing Wizard>Fighter. It is showing Optimized X>Unoptimized Y.

The fact that high end fighter optimization caps out at "do a bunch of damage", and wizards also have builds that "do a bunch of damage", is also important.

You can choose to ban the wizard high damage builds if you want. But they exist.

They usually aren't the wizards best option, because they cost a lot build wise, and they restrict you to "do a bunch of damage", and as noted the DM can simply veto the mechanism you use to do a bunch of damage (as it will be a specific spell or two usually) as OP.

Meanwhile, other wizard builds rely on "do everything", and do acceptable damage. Banning everthing a wizard can do is less palatable to most DMs, and as the resource costs are cheaper, the risks are as well.

So yes the wizard can expend resources and occasionally do more damage. If they have the right spell prepared for the target. But different classes and builds have different roles to play in the game. In every game I've played to 20th, the wizard occasionally went nova and excelled while the fighter consistently dealt out death.

The fighter has nothing else to do.

Making a foe the fighter can't hurt is trivial for an encounter, but as a fighter can't do anything else, it is rather mean spirited.

So every encounter by a non mean spirited DM has a foe rather optimally designed to be beat on by a fighter. Reachable AC, reachable range, no immunities, no retribution, no vetos.

Meanwhile, wizards don't need kid gloves. Their primary trick can be nerfed by DM choices, and they can fall back on 7 more tricks in their bag.

I played a batman bard to level 20, and avoided using the same trick in any two boss battles. It was more fun that way than repeating. Everyone still remembers the kracken dance party - but adter that, I never irresistable danced a single boss!

 

[FrogReaver]

I think for most wizards the extent of their damage optimization is magic missile and fireball. Which probably explains the ‘there is no issue vibes’.

Alternatively, in these discussions we act like wizards will also pick the perfect spell for the situation despite a player probably not knowing all the monster stat blocks. That’s an unreasonable assumption and it does make wizards appear a lot more powerful than they will be in actual play. IMO still stronger after a certain point, but not as strong as typically stated.