D&D 4E 4e Wizards - No More Necromancers, Enchanters, Summoners???

[Klaus]

The only way I do specialists is to make the Unearthed Arcana variants mandatory.

I think 4e will still have Necromancers, Illusionists and Enchanters (change the name and the Psion becomes an Enchanter... after all, Bruce "Psionics" Cordell is playtesting a "psion" right now, only the class is "Wizard"). I just wish they'd arrive sooner rather than later.

With all the builds that people want waiting in the wings, I think the "yearly PHB" format will not cover them fast enough.

 

[perchy]

This change is mostly due to the loss of Vancian casting.

A huge chunk of spells are now at will or per encounter, so they now have to reduce wizard varibilty in other ways or they'b be doing everything, all the time, really well.

As it is i'm worried about how fire ball at will is going to work

also enchantment and necromancy is not gone, it's just reduced. So you'll get a round of full controll, or you could enchant a monster to not attack you, but maybe he could still attack another party memeber. And for necromancy, well no more insta death spells or level drains, so it'll just suck more.

 

[Firevalkyrie]

"Guy who makes the rest of the party superfluous by level 10" might be a niche for a character, but it's an awfully crappy one if you're not the person filling it. I support scaling back the wizard's power set.

 

[Hairfoot]

I'm not too bothered. I played Rolemaster for several years, and grew to like the framework of magic it presented:

- Channeling characters conduct the power of faith to weave magic in the name of their cause

- Essence users artfully mould the raw energy of the universe (the Force) to create spell effects

- Mentalists focus the essence through their own mind and will to create magic (psionics, essentially)


Within those disciplines, casters can tailor their spell lists to define themselves as "illusionists" or "evokers" (or whatever).

In RM, the different types of magic co-exist just fine. I've never quite understood why D&D was so rigid, and banished psionics to the optional/sci-fi/badwrongfun basket.

 

[Traycor]

So out is the sexy mage who uses her feminine wiles and a healthy dose of magic to dominate those around her. Out is the powerful mage who enthralls the will of a king so as to be the power behind the throne.

You forget that NPC's aren't constrained to classes now in 4e. You can easily create these NPCs by giving them some appropriate powers. The powers don't even need to be spells in the PHB. They can just be per encounter or per day abilities the NPC has. All this change really means is that players can't pick these classes yet.

Maybe in 2009 we'll see wizards (or priests) who are capable of summoning something.

Again, NPCs (especially with minion rules) could easily have summoning powers and be in your campaign. The only restriction is that your players can't do these things with the wizard class. If you are a summoner or conjurer, you are now something different from a wizard.

No more twisted necromancers summoning up hosts of undead.

It's quite easy to say that an NPC has a 1/encounter power. Raise Undead: standard action, creates 5 undead minions that claw up from the ground and fight for you... Or make a 1/day power that gives your Necro NPC some permanent undead... Or maybe even a ritual that gives the necro an undead army... No matter what way you slice it, NPCs that do not have classes and are not limited to "spells" are easy to use. Just whip up whatever you need on the spot.

 

[WayneLigon]

Hopefully this will simply spur the dismissal of the arcane/divine divide in a later edition. I was hoping it would go away in this one.

I can see your point, but in all my years of playing D&D I could probably count less than 40 times I've seen a wizard use a summoning, charm or illusion spell. Usually they're blasters, pure and simple. Defense spell, Fireball, lightning bolt, scorching ray, magic missle in that order, really. Sometimes they whip up a wall or something, but really I could cut out about 80% of the spells in the PHB and they'd never be missed. Sure, in the beginning you might get someone throw out a Knock or Darkness spell, but once they get access to the mass damage spells they never look back.

At the same time, we simply don't know what those encounter powers are vs. spells, or what rituals look like.

 

[Umbran]

... That's fine, but ALL 4e wizards are spell-blasting crusader mages?

It seems that enchatment (charms, domination, etc.) are going to be relegated to psionics (sweet baby jeebus!!!) so as to give psionics a niche. So out is the sexy mage who uses her feminine wiles and a healthy dose of magic to dominate those around her. Out is the powerful mage who enthralls the will of a king so as to be the power behind the throne. So now both of these two are going to have to be psionicists?

Yes, but so what?

"Wizard" as a class name, is a meta-game concept. Whether or not a "mage" or "wizard" can do a thing is largely irrelevant. The question is whether your character can do the thing, and the answer is "yes".

Given open multiclassing, and a reasonable expectation that spellcasters who do so won't stink, which class has a given ability does not matter much, as you can always choose to have the ability if you want it. Stop thinking about "I want to build a <member of particular class> who can do X", and start thinking about "I want to build a character who can do X" and the issue will likely cease to be an issue.

The levels in particular classes are building blocks. Build to fit the concept.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

This issue is one that's narking me off :/ I love playing a caster who doesn't have to kill things, jeesh. I do nto want to play WOW or Everquest, for pity's sake! I love playing casters who're more than artillery, it's part of the entire reason TO play a wizard is that you are more than just a killing machine.

Removing enchantment to keep it for psions is, sorry, retarded, because it's metagaming to fix a non-existant problem that breaks the millieu itself. They are removing/messing with enchantment to let psion be good, rather than do anything positive with wizards....very bad.

A wizard is a wizard is a wizard, there's no need for an "enchanter, necromancer" or any other type of "class", they are all WIZARDS! By chosing feats/styles of play, they become an "enchanter" or whatever. Yes wizards are a jack of all trades, so what? Duh. Rather than this bad kludge fix, why not make it that those who take specialist routes get more benefits in their line?

Adding more damned classes just to be a "conjuror "etc is lousy for the game, yes it may sell more books for WOTC but it's bad for us gamers because it means MORE classes, more books mroe hassels to keep track of which si what 4th ed is supposed to avoid!

Instead, make books with more feats, traits or whatever is being used in 4th ed, to flesh out the wizard into whatever avenue they player wants.

Way I've always house ruled psionics vs magic, is that psionics is better on small, precise things and individual mind control, in a contest, psionics wins those kind of things. But, magic uses vast, almos tlimitless external forces, so always wins area of effect, raw power type of things. I'm sure that could be put in as a mechanism in 4th ed, like +5 on opposed roles in the appropriate conflict?

If WOTC doesn't allow wizards to be more than stupid blasters, I foresee a lot of folk giving WOTC stuff a "heave ho" and looking for other companies ot produce more friendly OGL books with arcane stuf. Sigh

Silverblade The Enchanter

 

[Aust Diamondew]

...but once they get access to the mass damage spells they never look back.

Genearlly speaking damage dealing spells are less effective than other spells in 3.X, because dealing Xd6 damage really isn't that much when your typical monster will have 2xd8+2xcon. Meaning fireball is only particuarly useful against mopping up large groups of lackeys, who generally weren't much a threat to begin with.
I'd take any of the following spells over blasting spells of the same level: Sleep, Web, Stinking Cloud, Evard's Black Tentacles, Dominate Person, Planar Binding, Force Cage, Otto's Irrisistable Dance, Gate.

To sum up, I've seen fewer blaster types the longer I've played 3e.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

A wizard is a wizard is a wizard, there's no need for an "enchanter, necromancer" or any other type of "class", they are all WIZARDS! By chosing feats/styles of play, they become an "enchanter" or whatever. Yes wizards are a jack of all trades, so what? Duh. Rather than this bad kludge fix, why not make it that those who take specialist routes get more benefits in their line?

The problem is most players don't take the time to step back and think about the problem with this method. Since the beginning of D&D, wizards(and probably clerics especially in 3rd edition) have been the most powerful class. The reason for this is because they were able to do anything they wanted to. Even specialists had a solution to nearly everything. They might sacrifice their ability to defend against 1 situation in 10 by choosing to specialize, but overall it wasn't a big deal.

Wizards were balanced with other classes PURELY based on the fact that they had limited spells that they had to prepare in advance and low hit points. However, they could get around nearly ALL of their disadvantages without losing their advantages.

Low hitpoints? Put points into Con, get magic items to increase your hitpoints, spells and magic items to increase your ac and saves and protect yourself from energy. And if all that fails, stay at the back of the party and allow the fighter to stand between you and the enemies.

Have to prepare spells in advance? Get scrolls of spells you don't use very often knowing you'll never need more than 1 or 2 of them during an entire adventure and write new ones before the next adventure. Most times you didn't need more than one of the same spell in any given day.

Limited number of spells per day? Simply rest after every fight so that you're always at full power. If that fails use wands and scrolls to get you through the extra fight or two if you run out of spells.

So, you end up with a class that has no specialty(their specialty is "anything magic can do") and whose disadvantages can be negated a good 80% of the time.

Contrast that with Fighter whose specialty is "hitting enemies with weapons" and the ranger whose specialty is "tracking and living in the woods", and the monk "move fast and hit people with my fists", and the rogue "disarm traps and find secret doors", the second edition cleric "heal people". Then we have wizard: "Solve all problems".

Of course, most people don't see a problem with this because they aren't looking at it from a game balance point of view, they are looking at it from a logic point of view. Their concept is "Wizards can fly all the time in books, of course wizards can fly. Wizards charm people in movies all the time, of course they can charm people. Wizards open locks with a spell in other games, why should they be weaker in D&D?" If you follow that logic to its conclusion, however, wizard will stay the most powerful class forever since there is almost nothing wizard should not be able to do. And every reason why the fighter needs to be restricted to its limited role and never become any better.