4e Magic in practice

[mmadsen]

They have a spellbook to switch out daily spells with, and their powers are the penultimate in battlefield control.

So, who or what is the ultimate in battlefield control?

 

[Khairn]

So, my 3.5 campaign is still running and we've only had one trial run of 4e. I speak very little from experience.

One of the main concerns -- probably the biggest, actually -- my group has with moving to 4e is wizards and the way magic works. I don't think any cares about clerics, but wizards are a big deal.

The grognards are really concerned about the limited number of "cast it now" spells in 4e. After the playtest, the player who picked up the wizard was pretty ticked about it. Actually, I think he spent the last half of the session stewing. His isn't the only complaint I've heard, either.

My take on it is that the magic system reads a lot like I think magic works in the Harry Dresden novels. Harry has a few tricks that he can pull out at will. Everything else is a time-consuming ritual. This doesn't bother me. In fact, I've always hated that there was nothing a wizard could do that he couldn't do quickly or that identify was treated just like magic missle in terms of whether you could cast it.

There are also concerns about "gimping" wizards in 4e, but I think that's more wizard-centric players than anything else. I've said before that I think they may have gone too far with invisibility effects, but I won't miss the teleporting and flying.

So, who's got some actual play experience? Is there anything to these concerns?

Wizards went from the most flexible and arguably most powerful class in earlier editions of D&D to filling the "arcane crowd control" role in 4E. In addition to this change to the wizard's identity, magic as a unique element and mechanic within the game has been eliminated. In its place are generic "powers" that include melee attacks, magic missles, sneak attacks and everything in between.

So is there a valid reason for the concern of your party members? I would say yes, in that this edition of D&D does not follow many of the paradigm's from earlier editions, and that may indeed have a dramatic impact on you and your players enjoyment of the game depending on how attached you are to the design features of earlier D&D.

None of us here can give you a definitive answer on whether the new edition will work for your group. But I would give it another shot and listen to both the good and bad points that your players raise. Mix the players around. Have that 3E wizard play a Paladin, and that skill monkey rogue play a warlock. Only then would I make a decision.

 

[Mort]

Also keep in mind that 3 of the 4 Wizard Paragon paths allow you to recover encounter spells at some other cost (action point, healing surge, or simply once per day). The Archmage epic path allows for use of 1 extra daily (spell recall), 1 extra encounter (shape magic) and treat a daily as an encounter (Archspell) so you can add 2-4 spells to your chart between 12-30th level. By your chart this can actually pull the 4e wizard just about even to the 3e wizard.

So, I ran some numbers, just to see how things fell. I decided to see how 3.5 and 4e compare in raw "spells per day". I'm not really a wizard player -- rogue is more my style -- so the assumptions may be a bit off.

Basic assumptions:
- Hit points scale differently. This means comparing damage output is irrelevant. That's why I'm comparing number of spells.

3e assumptions:
- Wizards start with an 18 int and max it out as possible. This means all stat gains go into INT and wizards attempt to gain Tomes of Clear Thought.
- Corollary: INT increases +2 every four levels. This may not be entirely accurate, but linear scaling works well.
- Epic feats are used to gain higher level slots. Again, not necessarily perfect, but a reasonable average.
- Rings of Wizardry, feats, etc. are not counted because they represent an explicit opportunity cost in other areas that would not be reflected here.

3e results:

Level        Daily Spells
   1                2
  10               23
  20               51
  30               59

4e assumptions:
- Encounter, utility, and at-will spells count for more than one slot each day. Some utility spells are daily, but this is balanced by at-wills being, well, at-will.
- Corollary: Encounter, utility, and at-will spells are counted twice at heroic tiers and thrice at paragon/epic tiers.
- The availability of rituals is equivalent to roughly half as many "slots" as the number of powers otherwise available.

4e results:

Level         Powers           Ritual "slots"         Effective Spells
   1               4                   2                         9
  10               9                   5                         24
  20              14                   7                         44
  30              17                   8                         51

So, I'd say the 4e wizard doesn't fair that poorly.

 

[TheSleepyKing]

Snip...

So, I'd say the 4e wizard doesn't fair that poorly.

Wow, way to fudge the math there!

Actually, in my group, it's not the power that players are missing, but the versatility. Good riddance to save-and-dies and polymorph -- but they're missing creative spells like illusions and conjurations. Now wizards are just artillery.

 

[Jonathan Drain]

So far, my main concern is that you can't cast stuff like silent image in combat any more. Sure, illusions and such are hard to adjudicate, meaning that the effectiveness is very hard to judge objectively, but you lose some flexibility.

I can see it pretty easy to create new Wizard spells of the Illusion school, though. It's simply a matter of writing powers which have fixed effects, even if the thematics vary.

I think it was the Book of Eldritch Might that had something similar; a spell which created an illusory creature that destroyed other illusions. It didn't matter what form your illusory creature took; the statistics and effect were the same.

 

[Mort]

Wow, way to fudge the math there!

Actually, in my group, it's not the power that players are missing, but the versatility. Good riddance to save-and-dies and polymorph -- but they're missing creative spells like illusions and conjurations. Now wizards are just artillery.

There are quite a few non-artillery spells in the arsenal (Fly, levitate, disguise self, arcane gate and others) the new Dragon article has several illusion offerings - and I'm sure within a year conjurations will make an appearance (I for one will certainly allow any wizard player to modify their spell selection to include new spells if they wish - whatever fits their concept). Rituals can fill in some of the gaps, and I'm sure will also be expanded significantly eventually.

That said, I'm glad some of the versatility was lost - mages 3.5 and before had too much versatility more than enough to infringe on and even marginalize other classes.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The problem with wizard versatility is that all combat is now "Kill the enemy." There's no illusions to draw the enemy away or subdue them or whatnot. Hell, Maze does damage and lasts seconds.

 

[Henry]

I for one will certainly allow any wizard player to modify their spell selection to include new spells if they wish - whatever fits their concept...

Actually, if you use the retraining rules as-is in the book, you won't even need to. That is one nifty thing about 4e, that they developed from the 3e concept -- though it's a bit less "believable," the ability to retrain means that new sourcebooks etc. will already have a mechanism for players to swap out stuff at a gradual level, instead of dramatically respecifying their character.

 

[Mort]

Actually, if you use the retraining rules as-is in the book, you won't even need to. That is one nifty thing about 4e, that they developed from the 3e concept -- though it's a bit less "believable," the ability to retrain means that new sourcebooks etc. will already have a mechanism for players to swap out stuff at a gradual level, instead of dramatically respecifying their character.

True - but technically it only allows swapping 1 thing per level - I'm talking about something a bit more drastic if necessary (such as a book or article coming out that just perfectly fits a concept).

 

[Mort]

The problem with wizard versatility is that all combat is now "Kill the enemy." There's no illusions to draw the enemy away or subdue them or whatnot. Hell, Maze does damage and lasts seconds.

Actually all damage can be subdual damage per the player's choice (like it or not). There are still illusions such as ghost sound, disguise self to draw out enemies and there are still several spells that restrain or knock out an enemy.

But yes there are less than there were in 3.5 - though I'm sure that will lessen with splat book publishing.

That said, again, I'm glad that there are somewhat less options; people actually having to think of real creative solutions as opposed to finding the right spell for the job is a good thing in my book.