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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6261491" data-attributes="member: 37579">I got into a “boring fighter” debate elsewhere recently and began to wonder how many options the wizard really has, and what happens at higher levels.At first level a wizard will know four spells, can prepare 2, and cast 2. For space this is written 4<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/2.gif"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":2:" title="Two    :2:" data-shortname=":2:" />2 (a 2<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/1.gif"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":1:" title="One    :1:" data-shortname=":1:" />1 ratio).At fifth level this becomes 6x 1st-level, 4x 2nd-level, and 2x 3rd-level spells known. They can prepare 6 spells cast 4/3/2. Or 12<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/6.gif"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":6:" title="Six    :6:" data-shortname=":6:" />9, reducible to 4<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/2.gif"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":2:" title="Two    :2:" data-shortname=":2:" />3 highlighting that the ratio of spells known to castable hasn’t changed much. At tenth level this becomes 6x 1st-level, 4x 2nd-level, 3rd-level, 4th-level, and 5th-level spells known. They can prepare 11 spells casting 4/3/3/3/2. Or 22:11:15, which isn’t reducible to whole numbers but becomes 2.2:1.1:1.5 so, again, the ratio of spells known to prepared to castable hasn’t really changed. At fifteenth level this becomes  6x 1st-level, 4x 2nd-level, 3rd-level, 4th-level, 5th-level, 6th-level, 7th-level, and 2x 8th-level spells known. They can prepare 16 spells casting 4/3/3/3/2/1/1/1. Or reducible to 2<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/1.gif"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":1:" title="One    :1:" data-shortname=":1:" />1.125.  And lastly at twentieth level this becomes  6x 1st-level, 4x 2nd-level, 3rd-level, 4th-level, 5th-level, 6th-level, 7th-level, 4x 8th-level, and 6x 9th-level spells known. They can prepare 21 spells casting 4/3/3/3/2/1/1/1/1. Or 40:21:19, or reducible to 2:1.05:0.95.  So while wizards get new spells every level the number of spells they know compared to the number of spells they can prepare & cast is always *really* close to two-to-one. So wizards really only have two completely different sets of options. This is a nice set of options but somewhat limited as you can only ever prepare half the powers you know, compared to having fewer options but always having them available. Really though, having played a couple spellcasters, you have fewer options than the above implies. While you know twice as many spells as you can cast, you typically have a couple fallbacks that are always prepared. Signature spells or the baseline combat spells. Fireball for example. So you have more spells competing for fewer slots. This is balanced by having situational spells: options that are handy to have but don’t regularly come up. Again, this can be balanced with fewer powers that are more consistently useful. And one of the nice things about 5e casters is low level spells do not increase in potency as the caster levels, so they have a limited number of spells that function at maximum efficiency. If the level 15 mage casts a fireball as an 8th-level spell they’ve used up all their 8th-level spells for the day and future fireballs will only be as potent as a 7th-level or 6th-level spell. A level 20 mage can has four rounds of high level spell combat before they’re barely as effective as a level 10 mage.</blockquote>

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