D&D 5E Are Wizards really all that?

[James Gasik]

Wouldn't a Wizard be better at Investigation to find traps and the like, given that they are about the only class that is going to invest in high Intelligence?

 

[Fanaelialae]

Sure.

So the claim was that the fighter gets 8 things to do over 8 fights and the wizard gets 16 things to do, which is silly since the 3rd level Battle Master had 15, but okay.

Since this is about resources spent and basic attacks and cantrips are not resources spent, and are roughly equal, those will be eliminated from both classes.

The wizard has 21 total spell slots for the day. He can get back 10 spell levels of 6th or lower. I'll give him 2 5th level spells. So 23 total slots. He needs to use 16 of them in the 8 combats, so with the 2 bonus 5th level spells, and spending his highest slots, he uses up every 4th-9th level slots plus 2 of his 3 3rd level slots. That leaves him with 4 1st, 3 2nd and 1 3rd level spell to dominate the rogue with in exploration(ain't happening).

Now the Diviner is a popular subclass, so I'll use that. Diviner adds 3 uses of Portent.

So 16 spells and 3 uses of portent for 19 things to do in 8 encounters.

Now the 20th level Battle Master. 6 Action Surges per day. 7 maneuvers known. 18 superiority dice(if we put him on Krynn he'd have like 30 dice, but...). He gets 3 uses Indomitable. 3 uses of Second Wind. He also has Relentless. Since he has 4 attacks, this isn't optimal, but I'm showing just how many possible things he can do in 8 encounters, so I'm using a superiority die on every attack.

I will assume 3 out of 4 attacks hit, because hitting is easy at high levels. I'm also going to assume 3 round combats. So all 6 dice are used up in 2 rounds, and he gets 1 extra superiority die in round 3. So combat #1 he uses 7 dice. Combat #2 he uses 7 dice. Combat #3 he uses 7 dice. Now he's out for the day, so he only get 3 dice for encounters #4-8. Total superiority dice used 33.

So 33 superiority dice, 6 action surges, 3 second winds, 3 indomitable for 45 things to do over 8 encounters.

So we have the Battle Master still have more than double the resources to use over 8 encounters than the 20th level Wizard. Now of course the Wizard might have some combat spells chosen for Signature Spells or Spell Mastery, but I see more non-combat stuff chosen there.

2 leveled spells in every encounter? I've played plenty of casters, and seen plenty played, and in a great many encounters they only needed to use one spell (or even none). I'd say 10-12 spells over 6-8 encounters is much more realistic. At 6-8 encounters per day, several will be easy. Moreover, you don't necessarily need to use your highest level spells. Plenty of mid level spells (3-5) are highly effective even at higher levels.

Moreover, as has been pointed out, the fighter's abilities are largely equivalent to low level spells. Just because they have a relatively large number of uses over a full encounter day, doesn't mean that those abilities have a large impact.

Finally, all of this only applies to the Battlemaster. What about other fighter archetypes? It seems to me that the Champion fighter gets 6 action surges, 3 second winds, and 3 indomitable uses, for a total of 12 whopping ability uses over 8 encounters.

 

[Maxperson]

Only if they have a lower dexterity, and not all theives tools checks are dexterity, a lot of traps in particular are intelligence.

9 times out of 10 they will have a lower dex. Many rogues will similarly have a 14 intelligence, which when combined with the expertise they likely have, still makes them as good or better at the int traps than the wizard.

Orcs? Goblins? Kobolds? Drow?

So yes, monsters for the most part. I'm talking about civilized society. That said, some places allow orcs, goblins, kobolds and/or drow to live there. Those would be protected.

Like I said I have seen charms used in plenty of streaming games and those characters did not get locked up and I have seen them used plenty of times in D&D novels, to include by protagonists, without them getting locked up. I think you are the one playing an outler game.

I don't know why you keep bringing up streaming like it means something. First, from what I saw of the first season of critical role, Mercer doesn't seem to put realism very high on his list. I'm not surprised he is ignoring the logical result of mind raping people in civilized society. Second, Mercer and others can still get things wrong. They aren't perfect.

IF you can't use charm person or friends then why are they even in the game?

You can, just at appropriate times. Perhaps on the goblin you are interrogating in the ruins.

The point is Friends is going to generally work as well or better than expertise in the same skill. If it is impossible, it is impossible and it does not matter if you use Friends, or expertise or try to do it with an 8 charisma and disadvantage.

The benefit of advantage is the highest when the DC is in the middle, like a 10. At DC 15 or so it's not going to be quite as good as expertise plus decent charisma. At 20-30 the expertise and charisma is going to blow advantage out of the water.

1. It is completely impossible, even for a friendly acquaintance, in which case there is no difference between the Wizard doing it and the face doing it. The Face is equally bad at it.

2. It is possible without charming him in which case the wizard gets advantage on the roll and is better than the face would be at it (assuming a decent charisma and proficiency)

3. It is not possible normally, but if the guy was a friendly acquaintance it would be possible, in which case the wizard is better.

There is no case where the wizard is worse at this (assuming a decent charimsa and proficiency)

I provided it above. There's no case where at a DC of like 10 the rogue is better. But if the DC is 10 you're wasting time by even casting the spell.

And if you lie to him he is going to realize you lied to him. He realizes, he comes to talk to you about it and you charm him again.

Why do you assume he's going to realize the rogue is lying? He's guaranteed to know about the charm and report it to the authorities, but against a rogue is unlikely to know he was lied to.

And sight is both the most common way to find a hidden person and breaking sight is the only requirement for even trying to hide.

Not true. To be hidden you must be both unseen AND unheard, per RAW. If you are seen it's just flat out impossible to hide, so quiet doesn't matter.

In ANY room that is not completely dark (or any room with enemies with darkvision). I'm not sure you understand how hide works, you must be fully obscured to even TRY to hide unless you are a wood elf in natural terrain, a lightfoot halfling hiding behind a person or you have the skukler feat. Those are the only 3 ways to

I don't know why you keep assuming a completely empty room.

You go into a dimly lit tavern and the Rogue can't hide in the room - period. He can't even try to hide because he is only partially obscured by the dim light. He has to go behind the bar, turn over a table and get behind it, snuff out all the candles or go into another room to even attempt hiding (and snuffing out the candles won't work if the guy you are hiding from has darkvision)

Walk behind a pillar, crouch behind a table with chairs... There are lots of possible hiding places in a crowded full room.

If the enemy has darkvision and you are in a completely dark room and want to hide in the corner over there - automatic failure!

If seen. That's just the thing. The enemy with darkvision might miss him standing out in the open because dim light = perception check at disadvantage and it's hard to see in dim light.

Your argument is the wizard can't be better, that is fundamentally a different argument than saying another chassis better supports this.

As a whole, no. In corner cases, sure he can be better.

Doesn't matter. I could have built a wizard to do it. Your point is you can't make a wizard that can do those things. Yes you can.

Not with just wizard things. To be superior as a wizard, you need to only consider wizard specific abilities. Feats, other classes and such mean that you've failed to show WIZARD superiority.

The Forgotten Realms is the most popular D&D setting and mind probing spells are used often in that setting in the novels, to include by the law.

Of course the law can use them. You can't lock me up without being charged with kidnapping, but the cops can.

Sure, but if you are not building for combat then getting hit does not matter a lot.

It does if you want to live. Combat is a major part of the game.

People will scream "concentration", but building so as not to take damage is more effective than improving your concentration save. When you fail concentration it is usually not the end of the world you can just recast the spell. If it is going to be the end of the world (that dragon is banished but his allies are attacking) then other characters are probably buffing you with things like sanctuary and you are probably taking the dodge action or taking cover to avoid damage at all costs.

So you're wasting slots casting more spells, or just plain getting knocked out and losing concentration that way.

You have this backwards - it is a corner cases where the Rogue can hide without getting behind something - either a completely black room with enemies that do not have darkvision or wood elf, halfling or skulker feat affording the limited options that expand that.

Things to hide behind are not corner case.

 

[ECMO3]

It is targeting people with certain preferences and is an artifact of the rules. So it is more like banning everyone with certain hair length from crossing the halfway line. Sure, you can perform OK on your side of the line, but you're not allowed to reach your max potential if you stick to your personal preferences.

No you can reach your max potential, it is just that your potential is not as high as someone elses.

If we were having a competition to see how long we could grow hair people with long hair would be better.

So you have to make the choice of sticking to the image that you identify with and not being allowed to contribute as much as you could, or knuckling under and cutting those dreadlocks or whatever, to be something that you don't want to be just to perform better.

No you can contribute as much as you can, it is just perhaps not as much as another character can contribute or as much as you could contribute if you chose a different class.

Why would Rogues being improved lessen your enjoyment of them?

By some silly rules to make them of equal power with wizards? Rogues are pretty awesome as is.

Look at all the people who had a comeapart when Tasha's made the Ranger more magical. That was done to "balance" the Ranger and I love it, but a lot of people hate it and I think a move to "balance" the Rogue would hurt my enjoyment of that class.

Also 5E is the most "balanced" edition there is, it is not like this has not always been a part of D&D. In 1E fighters, paladins and Rangers were WAY more powerful than other classes and Rogues were woefully weak.

We're not. And we're sure that since you don't mind a power discrepancy, you would be fine if that wizard who is aping being a martial hero doesn't do it as well as an actual martial hero.

I think he should do it better because he is a wizard. It makes sense for me for a Wizard to be the most powerful class. It makes no sense that fighters should be just as powerful or versatile.

It is a social contract thing. You know, showing consideration to the friends that you are playing with. If one wants to play a character with a certain area of expertise then outperforming them at their chosen niche is going to make them feel marginalised, unable to contribute and likely upset.

The social contract is set up front. If we say we are playing 5E RAW then part of that contract is certain classes are more powerful. If we say we are playing a homebrew rules or eliminating certain subclasses or buffing others to balance them then that is part of the contract, but the key here is that is made before you start the game.

I have never seen a player think he was being marginalised because another player was doing "his thing" better. I have seen them marginlized because players are selfish and when that happens it has nothing to do with power dynamics or niche. The Warlock "face" who is marginalized by another character is usually marginalized because that character insists on talking to everyone or dominating the social interactions and as often as not the character is actually bad at it and the player is still doing this.

This is not something that you should be doing to your friends.

What am I doing to my friends? They can play any class they want regardless of what I play. I am just asking for the same consideration.

Like I said, some of the players I play with like to choose their class based on what others play. I don't like to do that and neither do several other players at the table. One of the guys we play with ALWAYS plays a strength fighter. Occasionally with Barbarian subclass but it is basically the same brute in every game. He picks a background based on skills. He likes doing that and it is his decision, nothing wrong with it. I like to think of a specific character for a specific adventure .... most commonly primarily a Rogue, Wizard, Ranger or Cleric (in that order) with a background to suit the story I want to tell. There is nothing wrong with that.

The fact that more people play wizards than fighters would seem to indicate that, assuming the concepts are equally popular, some of those people are going with wizard for the power even though they might prefer the fighter concept.

I said that backwards, what I meant was more people play fighters than wizards, a lot more. Fighters are more popular despite being less powerful.

As of 2020 Wizard was tied with Barbarian for the 4th most commonly played class. Fighters, Rogues and Warlocks, in that order, are more popular, the rest are less popular. Logic would indicate of we gave fighters more power this would unbalance it further with even more people playing fighters.

If we really wanted to balance the classes we would nerf fighters and Rogues so less people played them while buffing Rangers and Druids to entice more people to play them. This is despite that Fighters and Rogues are two of the weaker classes and Rangers are pretty powerful.

Not everyone has access to those builds, and I for one would question dwarves and goblins being of similar general power to humans and custom lineage. Niche builds perhaps. Other people find different races better depending on what they value.
The overall power of race however is significantly less than that of class.

Mountain Dwarves have the ability to wear heavy armor effectively with an 8 strength and get +2 bonus to two abilities. This can be a very big buff, in particular for a ranged fighter or a cleric with heavy armor proficiency. They also have medium armor proficiency which is a big buff to any character that does not already have it, wizards in particular

The Goblin Nimble Escape is a huge benefit to almost any class other than a Rogue and it also works great on a 1-level Rogue dip where you can get the expertise, and a sneak attack dice without having to go a second level for cunning action.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Not disagreeing, but say for the sake of argument you ditch a prescribed number of encounters per day. It seems to me that if you do this, you need to standardize resource recovery across classes.

As long as you have some no resource recharge, some short resource recharge and some long resource recharge classes, the total number of encounters per day will have an impact on game balance.

That seems to have been a bridge too far back in 4e days, though personally, I didn’t have a problem with it.

I think your right on standard resourse recover as the only perfect way, but there are probably ways to mitigate the effect so it's not as bad as today.

- if the top level spells were not as powerful then they are not as bad if you can use them all at once. Or you could limit highest levels of spells to one per enounter with some kind of "can't channel that kind of power again without waiting" or whatever reason you want
-- if there were less spells per day that assumed more of a 4 encounter per long rest as default then when there were 1-2 enounters per day or 6-7 it wouldn't be quite as dramatic
-- if short rest features were balanced as encounter powers that you always had instead of also depending on narrative cadence

I'm sure there are more.

Not perfect, but seems like you could still have this different ways of recharging without it being as bad as it is.

 

[DND_Reborn]

- if the top level spells were not as powerful then they are not as bad if you can use them all at once. Or you could limit highest levels of spells to one per enounter with some kind of "can't channel that kind of power again without waiting" or whatever reason you want

In this light our Mod limits "high magic" (spells of 6th level and above) to 1 per long rest. Getting higher level simply allows you access to more powerful high magic, but you still only get one.

Now, this will lead to that "one use" always being upcast. So, you wouldn't bother with a 6th-level disintegrate in tier 4, it would be a 9th-level disintegrate.

We did this because part of the power issue I have with high-level casters is when they can use 1 or more high magic spells in an encounter. The one per long rest has worked for us, in the rare times we play at that level.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

In this light our Mod limits "high magic" (spells of 6th level and above) to 1 per long rest. Getting higher level simply allows you access to more powerful high magic, but you still only get one.

Now, this will lead to that "one use" always being upcast. So, you wouldn't bother with a 6th-level disintegrate in tier 4, it would be a 9th-level disintegrate.

We did this because part of the power issue I have with high-level casters is when they can use 1 or more high magic spells in an encounter. The one per long rest has worked for us, in the rare times we play at that level.

Neat. And you could dial that to recharge after a short rest or even recharge after a 5 min short rest (1 per enounter) if you wanted to increase the power a little with the same concept.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Neat. And you could dial that to recharge after a short rest or even recharge after a 5 min short rest (1 per enounter) if you wanted to increase the power a little with the same concept.

Yep. As DM, I personally like it at 1/long rest, but you could adjust it to fit your tastes.

 

[Minigiant]

That is nonsense, and if I have a party with 4 faces and no healers that just means the "face" challenges are going to be easier and the challanges that require healing are going to be more difficult, but in a good game many challenges have more than one way through them

I have been in parties, to include on published adventures with more than 2 faces and with 4 explorers.

I am playing in a Icewind Dale campaign right now and we have 3 faces - A Paladin, a Warlock and my scout Rogue with a 14 charisma and expertise in Deception and Persuasion. Our 4th player is a divination wizard .... with proficiency in lock picking (encroaching on me!)

With reliable talent and expertise, my Rogue is generally a better face than the Warlock even though he has a 22 charisma and proficiency. I am sure at times he feels "overshadowed" about this but the game is still perfectly playable. What we lack to be honest is healing.

Moreover circumstances often dictate checks, so while you may have a great "face" it may not always be that guy making the charisma checks. Things like turn order and story get in the way of that all the time and you have your 8 charisma fighter trying to bluff his way in to the BBEG's compound because he is the one they spotted, or your Drow might be making a check because he is the only one who speaks undercommon.

My int is that D&D's social and exploration mechanics are not as complex as their combat ones.

So don't support 2 PCs both playing Face and feeling like theiy are the Party Face without optional rules or a change of style.

Or in simple terms

Who gets to be the Face if there are 2 Charisma checks per session and 4 PC running a Faces?

There are no offical socal roles. No advice to separate the experience and gameplay of Deception, Intimidation, Performance, and Persuasion,

Just1 or 2 Cha checks. Not enough for 2 Faces to feel lke Faces like how you can have 2 Damage Dealers.

And most of the noncombat roles like that. The only real exception is scout. Because it's a group check and failure often leads to combat.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

I think he should do it better because he is a wizard. It makes sense for me for a Wizard to be the most powerful class. It makes no sense that fighters should be just as powerful or versatile.

As of 2020 Wizard was tied with Barbarian for the 4th most commonly played class. Fighters, Rogues and Warlocks, in that order, are more popular, the rest are less popular. Logic would indicate of we gave fighters more power this would unbalance it further with even more people playing fighters.

If we really wanted to balance the classes we would nerf fighters and Rogues so less people played them while buffing Rangers and Druids to entice more people to play them. This is despite that Fighters and Rogues are two of the weaker classes and Rangers are pretty powerful.

This isn't really a given. What if a lot of those players play Fighter because it's simpler and by making it more powerful and complex they no longer want to play it as much?

But I don't think the goal of balance is to make people play the classes at roughly the same amount anyway. The goal is to give players the opportunity to play roughly equal power levels with different concepts if they choose to do so.

That's why I've given up on trying to erase the current style Fighter. I believe there are people that really like this concept along side the current Wizard -- either make it work with table rules, don't care about gap, or even like the gap. Fine, keep it in.

Just ALSO make the mythic martial that is closer in power and versaility to the Wizard for those players that want a martial concept and closer power/versatility.