D&D 5E Are Wizards really all that?

[Reynard]

Remember that A LOT of those 2e spells were corner case utility spells and spells of very specific flavor. 5e doesn't really care about introducing spells used by the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Remember that A LOT of those 2e spells were corner case utility spells and spells of very specific flavor. 5e doesn't really care about introducing spells used by the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker.

That's true. They're generally more interested in finding the D&D party niches not currently addressed through spellcasting and then making multiple spells to try and cover that niche in triplicate.

A la..
Booming blade
Greenflame blade
Sword burst
Shadow blade
Skill empowerment
Steel wind strike
Tensers Transformation
Blade of disaster

Not all of these spells do the job particularly well, but it's not for lack of trying.

 

[Garthanos]

There seems a trend towards fewer 4e Wizards eventually had 790 total : 430 powers and 360 rituals.

 

[Gammadoodler]

That's true. They're generally more interested in finding the D&D party niches not currently addressed through spellcasting and then making multiple spells to try and cover that niche in triplicate.

A la..
Booming blade
Greenflame blade
Sword burst
Shadow blade
Skill empowerment
Steel wind strike
Tensers Transformation
Blade of disaster

Not all of these spells do the job particularly well, but it's not for lack of trying.

Replying to myself here.. I know that a great many of the spells were created to help make the bladesinger more viable.

But hear me out..the bladesinger is the perfect illustration for the problem with WoTCs priorities

It was:

• an elf-specific (because they don't get enough attention I guess)
• wizard subclass (phb had 8 already)
• for which they created brand new spells (phb had 90 pages of spells already)
• to allow them to better replace melee damage dealers (none of which had more than 3 subclasses or 90 pages of additional rule support)

It's a full freaking bingo card of stuff we didn't need.

Edit: To contrast this, in the same book, they created the battlerager:

• dwarf-specific
• barbarian subclass
• non-scaling abilities
• tied to a piece of non-scaling armor
• which conflicts with another barbarian class feature (unarmed defense)

<chef's kiss>

 

[Bill Zebub]

The Wizard is MAD too.

Yeah. I’ve heard that they are subtle, and quick to anger.

 

[Maxperson]

I can't speak for 3E since I didn't play it much, but in 2E wizards have a little over 300 spells, and have just shy of 300 spells in 5E (maybe more now if anything new is in newer books?).

AD&D 2e wizards had like 407 spells just in levels 1 and 2. They had 1610 spells total.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition - Wizard Spell Listings

More certainly, but I wouldn't call that "a lot more spells", certainly not "one order of magnitude more".

What about 1610 spells?

 

[Maxperson]

Regardless, it is NOT an order of magnitude more, which would require something like 3000 spells.

FWIW, the CWH added less than 50 spells and ToM less than 100.

So, you're "wrong" about that.

Yes, order of magnitude is an exaggeration, but 2e still dwarfed 5e in number of spells.

 

[Maxperson]

2e had a 20ish year run, iirc? That's around 240 issues of Dragon Magazine alone (not counting Dungeon or Polyhedron). Spells regularly appeared in those magazines, so if there were 10 spells on average between the three mags each month, that's already 2400.

Now, I don't actually think it was that high. Probably more like half that, maybe even a third. But 2e was also the time of the great campaign supplement glut. There were an absurd number of supplements released. And a lot of them would each contain a few spells. Sure, three spells here and five spells there might not seem like a lot in seclusion, but when you realize that a great many dozens of these supplements were published...

Not 2400, but more than half.

 

[DND_Reborn]

AD&D 2e wizards had like 407 spells just in levels 1 and 2. They had 1610 spells total.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition - Wizard Spell Listings

What about 1610 spells?

A lot more, ok, but no not an order of magnitude.

But as others have said, so many of those were in random publications and such that many players (less than a handful in all I knew) ever even had access to all those extra spells. So, of the 1610 you found on that list, I would guess far less than 500 saw even remotely regular play, if ever.

Even then few games got much above 5th or 6th level spells IME. Some did, of course, but that bulk of them didn't.

What is the point of having so many spell which people hardly ever use? It was just bloat to make money (don't blame TSR for that, nor do I blame WotC, either!).

 

[Undrave]

Replying to myself here.. I know that a great many of the spells were created to help make the bladesinger more viable.

But hear me out..the bladesinger is the perfect illustration for the problem with WoTCs priorities

It was an elf-specific wizard subclass for which they created brand new spells to allow them to better replace melee damage dealers. It's full freaking bingo card of stuff we don't need.

Edit: To contrast this, they created a dwarf-specific barbarian and tied non-scaling abilities to a piece of non-scaling equipment that conflicts with another barbarian class feature.<chef's kiss>

Bladesinger should just have been its own Gish class, then the Wizard wouldn't have gotten so many new spells to do something it shouldn't.