D&D General Why Do You Think Wizards Are Boring?

Sparky McDibben said:

That's an interesting take! When a wizard's spells are done, don't they still have cantrips? I know that's generally not what you want to rely on (especially if you want a ton of options), but they're hardly commoner level. Can you talk to me about the times you've seen wizards run out of spell slots, especially what assumptions about level ranges and encounters per day they were operating under?

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Others have answered these questions better already but to summarize my position:

1. Because spell slots are so precious and are a wizard's raison d'etre, the player is incentivized to hoard them for combat. The wizard I'm playing now (Lv7 Runecrafter from the Giants UA -- RIP) knows Detect Magic but never uses it because the slots are better reserved for Mage Armor and Magic Missile, the go-to attack for breaking a spellcaster's concentration.

2. Because Wizards (capital W) is stuck on the Merlin model from the 1970s but haven't really developed the overall game outside of combat and RP, there's little that's unique to the class. The lack of an alchemist or witch archetype in the game is much bemoaned but you can't replicate them in 5e because there's no meaningful way to craft resources, unless you homebrew something or use 3PP content (which I've done). The artificer is a better wizard than a wizard.

(This bleeds into a bigger issue with 5e. Wizards wants so very badly to break into the Gen Z demographic but they don't understand them at all. I play a family game with four Gen Zers at the table -- or as I call them, Generation Minecraft. All they want to do in their downtime is craft stuff. Potions, equipment, one player wants to buy a farm and generate passive income. If there were crafting and stronghold rules (imagine a technology tree to develop a wizard's library or an alchemist's lab) in the game, that would unlock activities and abilities that distinguish the wizard from other classes.)

My solution is to add utility to wizards that isn't connected to spell slots. Give them more cantrips known (why does a third-year Hogwarts student know more cantrips than I do?) and add more non-combat cantrips to the game; and give wizard subclasses more utilitarian abilities that don't use slots (eg, Runecrafter can cast Comprehend Languages at will). Offset this with a more restricted set of available spells that are thematically tied to their subclass. Create subclasses that move beyond Merlin or the eight schools: Gandalf swung Glamdring, and Le Guin's Earthsea books featured mages who sailed and navigated and knew weather magic (so wizards with some ranger skills). The bladesinger is a step in the right direction.

Everyone bemoaning the lack of non-combat spells in 5E, check out the Ennie-nominated Incantations, which is nothing but spells that do stuff other than "kill that guy," many of them incredibly flavorful.

Dannyalcatraz said:

Yes, that much was immediately apparent. But they did so without the Reserve Feats’ demand for resource management (both in character design and in gameplay).

Worse (IMHO) 4Ed At-wills existed for virtually every character in the game, so that the unique challenges of choosing & using a RF were no longer a spellcaster-only thing.

Yes, exactly.

Not sure I’m following your point.

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The point is that the strictly old-school way of doing things, where you only get a tiny quantity of spells, no reliable fallback options, and high risk of simply wasting the few things you do get, discourages any use of the quirky and quixotic spells of the past. The only thing that pushes in that direction is the fact that you have no choice--if you get stuck with weird quirky spells, you have to hope and pray you can find some way to make them useful.

Conversely, when you have solid at-wills and reliable always-on options (like the substitution stuff from the Heritage feats), suddenly all those weird and quirky spells cease to be an "oh no...hope I can figure out a way to make bubble bath do...literally anything...." and instead become, "Hey, I've got some spell slots I don't need. Bubble bath sounds fun."

4e doesn't do slot-based stuff anyway, so it's working on a different paradigm to begin with; I was simply saying that at-wills (which, IMO lamentably,( got restricted to casters only) and 5e cantrips clearly derive from a source you have said is good...and all three are clearly in defiance of the old-school hyper-limited model.

*Not really sure why you think it's a bad thing that non-casters got at-wills. They represent solid fallbacks. That's the whole point. They provide a floor. Powers can thus always be designed with that floor in mind--they should always be better than at-wills. This is, of course, not always perfectly uniform--Ranger's twin strike being the prime outlier--but as a general rule it holds true pretty well.

KoolMoDaddy-O said:

(This bleeds into a bigger issue with 5e. Wizards wants so very badly to break into the Gen Z demographic but they don't understand them at all. I play a family game with four Gen Zers at the table -- or as I call them, Generation Minecraft. All they want to do in their downtime is craft stuff. Potions, equipment, one player wants to buy a farm and generate passive income. If there were crafting and stronghold rules (imagine a technology tree to develop a wizard's library or an alchemist's lab) in the game, that would unlock activities and abilities that distinguish the wizard from other classes.)

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Yeah, sadly you need to look to past editions or 3pp for a lot of this stuff. I mean, 5e does have some crafting rules and they do work, but they aren't a very robust system.

2e, for instance, had a system to develop a wizard's lab and library in spells & magic (so quite late in the edition) with a library worth certain amounts needed to research spells of certain levels. 3e had the various crafting feats and I'm pretty sure there were a prestige classes based around crafting, at least I can recall an alchemist. 4e I think was all about rituals for crafting or moving enchantments around, can't remember the specifics though.

I'm playing now in a 5e game. A fighter.

I kerp saying "Nobody has Hold Portal? Knock? Web? Beueller?"

EzekielRaiden said:

The point is that the strictly old-school way of doing things, where you only get a tiny quantity of spells, no reliable fallback options, and high risk of simply wasting the few things you do get, discourages any use of the quirky and quixotic spells of the past.

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Staves, daggers, darts, etc. are pretty reliable. Then there’s magical gear, which some of them can make. And once they start doing so, their flexibility & power REALLY increases, in ways that Reserve, Heritage and similar mechanics simply can’t match as written. Hence their abandonment.

EzekielRaiden said:

The only thing that pushes in that direction is the fact that you have no choice--if you get stuck with weird quirky spells, you have to hope and pray you can find some way to make them useful.

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Some see a bug, others see an opportunity.

EzekielRaiden said:

Conversely, when you have solid at-wills and reliable always-on options (like the substitution stuff from the Heritage feats), suddenly all those weird and quirky spells cease to be an "oh no...hope I can figure out a way to make bubble bath do...literally anything...." and instead become, "Hey, I've got some spell slots I don't need. Bubble bath sounds fun."

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I haven’t seen the Bubble Bath spell (if it exists), but as I noted previously, I have played specialist Diviners. (One was even focused as a Diviner.) It’s an enjoyable challenge (to me) to work with a caster whose spell list demands memorizing spells that don’t have obvious combat utility.

Is it for everyone? No.

EzekielRaiden said:

4e doesn't do slot-based stuff anyway, so it's working on a different paradigm to begin with; I was simply saying that at-wills (which, IMO lamentably,( got restricted to casters only) and 5e cantrips clearly derive from a source you have said is good...and all three are clearly in defiance of the old-school hyper-limited model.

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As you probably realize by now, I’m not averse at all to the limitations you’re clearly not a fan of.

EzekielRaiden said:

*Not really sure why you think it's a bad thing that non-casters got at-wills. They represent solid fallbacks. That's the whole point. They provide a floor. Powers can thus always be designed with that floor in mind--they should always be better than at-wills. This is, of course, not always perfectly uniform--Ranger's twin strike being the prime outlier--but as a general rule it holds true pretty well.

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Didn’t say it was bad, just different, and not what I’m looking for in D&D. Ditto martial abilities that are of limited use in the AEDU mechanics.

FWIW, I’m on record on this website many times over championing 4Ed’s system for a toolbox system, free of D&Disms.

Dannyalcatraz said:

Staves, daggers, darts, etc. are pretty reliable. Then there’s magical gear, which some of them can make. And once they start doing so, their flexibility & power REALLY increases, in ways that Reserve, Heritage and similar mechanics simply can’t match as written. Hence their abandonment.


Some see a bug, others see an opportunity.


I haven’t seen the Bubble Bath spell (if it exists), but as I noted previously, I have played specialist Diviners. (One was even focused as a Diviner.) It’s an enjoyable challenge (to me) to work with a caster whose spell list demands memorizing spells that don’t have obvious combat utility.

Is it for everyone? No.

As you probably realize by now, I’m not averse at all to the limitations you’re clearly not a fan of.


Didn’t say it was bad, just different, and not what I’m looking for in D&D. Ditto martial abilities that are of limited use in the AEDU mechanics.

FWIW, I’m on record on this website many times over championing 4Ed’s system for a toolbox system, free of D&Disms.

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Aunties Bath was the bubble bath spell iirc.

Zardnaar said:

Aunties Bath was the bubble bath spell iirc.

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Rings no bells, I’m afraid.

Dannyalcatraz said:

Rings no bells, I’m afraid.

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I remember it from those spell compendium books they did.

Power Word liquefy was also used from these books on one of our PCs.

Zardnaar said:

I remember it from those spell compendium books they did.

Power Word liquefy was also used from these books on one of our PCs.

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