D&D 5E (2024) Mearls has some Interesting Ideals about how to fix high level wizards.

[Deekin]

In a recent free patron post, Mike muMearls rrells talks about high-level wizards, identifying the problems with playing them and how to fix them.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/148007088

I'll agree with him on one of the problems with high-level wizards is that they have too much to keep track of:

Looking at a wizard, by 11th level they have 5 cantrips, 16 prepared spells, and 16 spell slots. There is no hint of an organizational scheme, other than the hierarchy of slot levels. At 18th level, they have 5 cantrips, 23 prepared spells, and 20 spell slots. If we assumed that each spell was a quarter page, the spell descriptions they need to understand run about 7 pages. That's longer than the rulebook for many boardgames!
I think about 20% of players feel comfortable and have fun with this cognitive load. Even then, though, it comes at a price. We only have so much energy to put into the game. Spending this much time and effort on magic detracts from other parts of the game.

However, his solution is quite radical and eyebrow raising

To slim down the burden, we need to reduce the load and narrow the class by quite a bit. We'll do this by offering an alternative set of class features starting at level 11. This new progression, called the paragon wizard, allows you to hop over from the level 1 to 10 complexity progression to a new one that matches the core game's power growth but offers significantly streamlined play.

Here's what I propose for the paragon wizard:

Let's dump cantrips. At this level, they clutter the character sheet and rarely offer a good option. That's five spells you don't need to think about.

Let's keep spells and slots of levels 6 and higher. That tops out at six spells total, a reasonable slate. Plus, at high levels its fun to cast crazy spells like gate and wish. I don't want to create a version of epic play that dumps the stuff we're looking for. Remember, we want the game to be EPIC. We'll get people to play these levels by giving them something aspirational and exciting.

For each spell slot of level 6 or higher, the wizard can prepare one spell.

Spell slots of levels 5 and lower are replaced with a new advancement. Casters can now prepare any 5 spells of their choice (including cantrips, if one is a good fit for you) in addition to ones for level 6 and higher slots. They can spend 1 minute to study a spellbook and swap out one of those spells for another one.

A wizard gets five level 5 spell slots. They regain those slots when they take a 1 minute rest. Is that busted? It sounds powerful, but compared to what other characters can do I think it's reasonable. Fireball cast with a level 5 slot does 10d6 to everything in an encounter. That's 35 damage. At level 11, you can expect to fight CR 8 and higher creatures in numbers. Those monsters have well over 100 hit points. The fireball leaves a mark, but it is not much of one. As you'll see with the fighter, that output looks nice but falls short of classes throwing attacks down range. If we re-orientate epic level encounter building to big fights rather than a war of attrition, this should work.

Though he at least recognizes one of the major problems with 5e:

One more note about the paragon wizard - it gets proficiency with all saves and expertise in ones you already have. Epic tier play is when saving throws become your primary defense. Leaving characters rolling a raw stat mod and nothing else is asking for trouble. We'll bandage that issue by giving every paragon character proficiency in all saves.

 

[Zardnaar]

Its not a massive problem. You dont remember the spells just the name.

Actual wizard problems.

Mediocre low level performance vs other spellcasters.
Outclassed at control and blasting.

Theyre better at rituals and spell combos at higher level. They can spam low level stuff as well. Eg shield. Also good at summoning mostly higher lvls.

Low level help and nerf/remove the worst offenders at high level.

 

[DarkCrisis]

One of the reasons I stopped playing 5E mainly. It's bloated AF. Even level 1 characters have way to many abilities and powers etc. Get a few levels in and it's worse. I recall my players constantly forgetting abilities etc.

 

[TwoSix]

In the context of "we're focusing on one big fight, not an attrition model", does a high level wizard having 5 5th level slots with 5 known spells for each big encounter work? I would say yes. Are there plenty of spells that would need to redesigned? Absolutely.

This seems like a change for a major 5e revision, which I believe is the context of the Patreon post. This isn't a "patch this into your 5e game to fix wizards" change.

 

[mellored]

So.. Warlock.

And I've added + 1/2 proficiency on all saves for everyone a while ago.

 

[Li Shenron]

Generally I always thought that WotC should have delivered a low-complexity Wizard subclass since the 2014 PHB, but probably would not have prevented having lots of spells after level 10 anyway.

Then of course if too many spells is a problem, one can always play a Sorcerer instead...

 

[Yaarel]

Keep the cantrips! These are awesome to represent innate simple "easy" magic. There are only a handful, and no problem to remember.

To simplify the high level fullcaster, the solution is to switch to spell points. Discontinue designs that use spell slots, except in the sense to quantify spell level. So a "slot 3" Fireball costs 3 spell points to cast.

Then there is the number of prepared spells. These spells can be any slot. If there are 13 prepared spells total, then the player may or may not choose to include a slot 1 or 2 spell among them. Some low slot spells remain useful, such as Shield. But there would be no dedicated spell slots for slot 1. Everything is spell points. This spell-point fullcaster is very simple at the highest levels.

The only complexity is the spell descriptions themselves. But there are only thirteen or so prepared spells total worry about.

Spell points are the solution. Discontinue spell slots.

 

[Vael]

Cantrips are also ... assuming you're not starting at 10th level, your bread and butter spells for the previous 9 levels of adventuring. So I don't think their cognitive load is that high.

 

[zakael19]

I like his design here. It’s focused around small overheads to make swapping to face epic level changes in context something a Wizard can quickly do, instead of shuffling through a huge spell list. Cantrips are still pickable in the draft, you just need to actively grab them for a usage instead of your new at-will spells.

 

[Yaarel]

I like his design here. It’s focused around small overheads to make swapping to face epic level changes in context something a Wizard can quickly do, instead of shuffling through a huge spell list. Cantrips are still pickable in the draft, you just need to actively grab them for a usage instead of your new at-will spells.

A cantrip is a spell that costs zero spell points to cast.