D&D 5E What is the "Simple" Full Casting Class?

[Maxperson]

Yeah, the are. When you level, you get two spells from the LARGEST BY FAR spell list if you are a wizard.

You are conflating laborious with complexity. Having to take a long time to pick 2 spells once, is not complex. It's just laborious. It's a once and done selection.

The cleric on the other hand has to go through their entire spell selection far more often to adjust to changing in-fiction circumstances. That's laborious AND complexity, since they need to decide those spells on their ability to identify current and potential issues based on what is going on in the game and clues as to what might come up soon.

Even at 1st level, you pick 6 out of something like 40+ 1st level spells!?! Still more than double the cleric list even if you are only using the PHB. Meanwhile, the cleric picks 4 or 5 out of 15.

Except that it's one and done. You do it before play begins and you have your 6 spells to pick from. The cleric has to do it on day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4...........day 118......day 137317. It never ends for the cleric. They are frequently going through their entire spell list to see what might apply to current or potentially up coming in-fiction circumstances.

But wizards are known for utility as well as buffs, direct damage, and AoE damage. A well-equipped wizard has to think long and hard about what spells to gain when they level up because they cannot just replace a bad choice on a long rest.

Which again is laborious, but not complexity.

If you can't agree with that still, fine, but you aren't going to convince me that wizards have it easier when it comes to spell selection over clerics.

Fair enough. We aren't going to agree.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Here's something I think of as an interesting litmus test.

Imagine you have a 5e class that's a full caster. d6 HD, 2 skills, light armor, simple weapons, spell slot progression just like all the other full casters. As basic a chassis as you can get.

At 1st level, it gets 3 cantrips, and 4 1st level spells. Every level after that, it can pick 2 more spells. It doesn't have any spell list, it can pick from every spell that's available in the game. That is its only class feature.

Is a character of this class simple to build, or complex?

I'd say not too complex to build. The access to all spells does nudge it little higher than other classes in that regard.

Super simple to play.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

It occurs to me that we aren't all talking about the same thing.

Some of us are talking about how simple it is for a new/casual player to play the class without getting confused or forgetting to use class features.

Others are talking about how simple it is for a new optimizer in the making to figure out how to play the class optimally.

These are likely going to have very different answers.

 

[TwoSix]

It occurs to me that we aren't all talking about the same thing.

Some of us are talking about how simple it is for a new/casual player to play the class without getting confused or forgetting to use class features.

Others are talking about how simple it is for a new optimizer in the making to figure out how to play the class optimally.

These are likely going to have very different answers.

There's a lot of semantic traps, too. There are several axes of play, in terms of in-game decision making and character building, that could be placed on a spectrum from "simple" to "complex".

And it doesn't help that "complex" is often used casually as a synonym for anything intellectually challenging.

 

[Clint_L]

It occurs to me that we aren't all talking about the same thing.

Some of us are talking about how simple it is for a new/casual player to play the class without getting confused or forgetting to use class features.

Others are talking about how simple it is for a new optimizer in the making to figure out how to play the class optimally.

These are likely going to have very different answers.

I can speak to the former: it's wizards. Everyone understands the concept, spell selection is very straightforward for a newbie, and there aren't a lot of extra mechanics to deal with on bonus actions and so forth.

Warlocks are much more conceptually challenging and building an effective warlock requires some understanding of how combat works. So new players always require quite a bit of help getting an effective character set up. Once they wrap their heads around it, their turns become pretty simple, it's true, but warlocks are not great for starting a new player.

Clerics and bards are the runners-up. Don't get me started on druids and sorcerers.

Keep in mind that I am dealing with a lot of NEW players; as in, some don't have any concept of what a TTRPG even is when they show up.

 

[Zardnaar]

It occurs to me that we aren't all talking about the same thing.

Some of us are talking about how simple it is for a new/casual player to play the class without getting confused or forgetting to use class features.

Others are talking about how simple it is for a new optimizer in the making to figure out how to play the class optimally.

These are likely going to have very different answers.

Yup that's why I put Warlock*. Asterisk means if you know what you're doing/experienced player.

It's also easy to bollocks the warlock up.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I'm assuming the OP is talking about a new player starting at level 1 - not level 5 or 10 or whatever. I'm also assuming that, with every spellcasting class, you're going to pour over the various 1st level spells to pick the best ones. So, regardless of class, you're stuck reading up on spells and cantrips.

So with that said, I'm not sure about Warlock being simplest but I wouldn't know because I've never played a Warlock - and here's why:

I read through all the invocations, with all their prerequisites and trying to figure out which invocation 'tree' is best. My eyes glaze over....Then choosing a Patron etc, etc. Like other people have said, there's too many sub-systems.

1st level Wizard: Pick 6 spells and some cantrips. That's it.

Sure the Warlock spellcasting in play is, like, two spells/short rest but, a wizard has 6 spells at 1st. 3 or 4 of which are studied and 2 of which are rituals. So the analysis paralysis is picking one of your 3 or 4 studied wizard spells vs one of your two Warlock spells. It's, literally, one or two extra options.

So you pew, pew your cantrips until a situation arises that you can use one of your 4 spells and you use it. When enough situations arise and you run out of spells slots, you just pew, pew until you rest.

At higher levels, it's way more complicated to play a wizard because of the sheer amount of spells you could potentially have but, for a new player, you only get 2 spells/level + what the DM gives you so the learning curve is very gradual.

If you're talking about a new player starting a character at higher levels then, probably, Warlocks are easier than wizards. But, once again, I wouldn't really know.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm assuming the OP is talking about a new player starting at level 1 - not level 5 or 10 or whatever. I'm also assuming that, with every spellcasting class, you're going to pour over the various 1st level spells to pick the best ones. So, regardless of class, you're stuck reading up on spells and cantrips.

So with that said, I'm not sure about Warlock being simplest but I wouldn't know because I've never played a Warlock - and here's why:

I read through all the invocations, with all their prerequisites and trying to figure out which invocation 'tree' is best. My eyes glaze over....Then choosing a Patron etc, etc. Like other people have said, there's too many sub-systems.

1st level Wizard: Pick 6 spells and some cantrips. That's it.

Sure the Warlock spellcasting in play is, like, two spells/short rest but, a wizard has 6 spells at 1st. 3 or 4 of which are studied and 2 of which are rituals. So the analysis paralysis is picking one of your 3 or 4 studied wizard spells vs one of your two Warlock spells. It's, literally, one or two extra options.

So you pew, pew your cantrips until a situation arises that you can use one of your 4 spells and you use it. When enough situations arise and you run out of spells slots, you just pew, pew until you rest.

At higher levels, it's way more complicated to play a wizard because of the sheer amount of spells you could potentially have but, for a new player, you only get 2 spells/level + what the DM gives you so the learning curve is very gradual.

If you're talking about a new player starting a character at higher levels then, probably, Warlocks are easier than wizards. But, once again, I wouldn't really know.

This. I don't think any of the starter sets have a warlock in them. Complex to build simple to play imho.

 

[Ashrym]

I think any of these classes can be complex in building beyond the basics, especially when adding in multi-classing, but what happens when we multi-class the Champion in crit-fishing builds? Seems very complex to optimize.

I voted based on my impression of average play, not double thinking build optimization.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's really interesting to see why people rate classes as complex or not. To me the cleric is a lot more complex than the wizard for the very reason you say it's simple. You have 10x the decision points when trying to figure out which limited set of spells you will memorize. The wizard is a lot easier for me because it has a much more limited pool of spells to pick from.

I always presume that the DM is going to not openly say, "Screw you Wizard, you don't get to use your obvious, core class feature that is the only thing even vaguely like 'being a person who does occult, hermetic research.'"

As soon as you allow Wizards to do anything more than pick 2 spells per new level gained, the floodgates open tremendously. Clerics always have one and only one list. Yes, if you're literally a brand-new player who has never seen a character sheet before, it's going to be complex because absolutely every spellcaster is complex.

But think of it this way: The Wizard still has to review every spell on that list in order to pick the six they start with and the two they get every level thereafter (plus cantrips). Even with every supplement made for 5.0, Clerics have 13 spells to choose from. Wizards have 42. You can't tell me that reading through 13 spells and picking a handful of them is harder than reading through 42 and picking a handful of them. It's even worse with level 2 spells: 20 for Clerics, 60 for Wizards. For at least the first 10 character levels, you almost always have Wizards with double to quadruple the number of possible spells (3rd level spells just barely get over that line, with 26 Cleric spells and "only" 51 Wizard spells.) Overall, there are about two and a half times as many Wizard spells (347) as Cleric spells (132).

Clerics never prepare more spells than Wizards with an equivalent casting stat, and the Cleric list almost never changes (seriously, they've gained all of 20 spells over the decade that 5.0 was published). I can't see any argument for how it isn't just straight-up easier (NOT easy, just easier) to get a handle on that.