D&D 5E Are Wizards really all that?

[ECMO3]

I disagree that chaotic alignments are about breaking the law. They are more about individuals, rather than group. That said, if someone with say a criminal background engages in criminal activity as an adventurer, they can and likely will run afoul of the law.

Sure and many adventures are specifically about breaking the law. So they need to fracture a few laws. As for alignment, the chaotic alignments are the opposite of the Lawful alignments .... which have lawful in their name.

I mean breking into the tower to save the princess is illegal, breaking into the Necromancer's tower to recover the artifact is illegal, using your slight of hand ability to life a purse is illegal. So in your world charming someone is illegal .... big deal.

Overlooked by the DM more like it. There's nothing rational about a country or city allowing mind control magic to be used on its citizens, law enforcement and nobility.

Drow cities literally sacrifice their male children and rape (real rape not mind rape) non-Elves .... and it is legal there.

But what I was talking about in context is that 1) in the middle of nowhere you aren't going to get reported, and 2) often the middle of nowhere is outside of any country and no laws apply.

Who cares if you are reported?

A friendly acquaintance probably isn't going to loan you money or comp you a meal, either. A friendly acquaintance is just some guy you see every few months at a friend's party and talk to for a bit. You don't hang out. You don't do favors for each other. You're just acquainted with one another and get along at the party. I say probably, because certain personalities and alignments would be likely to do something like that, but then they're also the ones that give charity meals to people and volunteer to help the poor, so they'd likely do it for a stranger, too.

They often will. If you tell a friendly acquaintence - I got to pee, just let me run in and use the latirne, he probably is going to.

I have bought rounds IRL for friendly acquaintances - exactly the people you say - someone I see every few months, plenty of times.

Done is done. The authorities are now after you. It makes no matter to me if it's 8 hours later.

Yeah, so they are after you whether you cast the charm or not.

This just isn't true. People don['t have access to Google, massive libraries or networks of sages to figure out if you were lying. Depending on the circumstances it's possible, but most of the time you aren't going to be caught. And if you are, well lying ISN'T illegal the vast majority of the time. Defrauding someone would be different.

So is it the spell or the deception that is illegal? If I cast the charm at our elven cleric (advantage and proficiency) and then the Ranger uses beguiling twist to twist it on to the guy we are talking to is that illegal? I mean we did nto cast a spell on him. How about if an enchantment Wizard uses hypnotic gaze instead of charm person?

Is just conning them illegal?

Yes, I know. But you aren't getting advantage on that and wizards as a general rule, are not stealthy. They take arcana, investigation and other skills that they are actually good at. Exceptions exist, but it's not a wizard thing to be stealthy. 39 years of playing D&D and never once have I heard, "You can add wizard to the list of stealthy classes."

If it is dim light you would.

Also I generally will try to get stealth or perception before Arcana. The only time I would take Arcana is if it was a campaign where I thought I would have downtime to make scrolls, and that is rare. Arcana is not often used and when it is I have a good ability.

I do get Investigation quite a bit.

Your 39 years do ot include a lot of 5E, in 5E any class can be stealthy. A wizard has an advantage over most in that he can use spells to augment it.

There are no predefined roles in 5E. I know a lot of people play that way but the system allows a wide variation in builds

Which generally isn't hard, especially in dim light where creatures can easily miss you while you are just standing out in the open.

This is not normal. Further if anyone could hide while partially obscured then the wood elf ability and the skulker feat would be useless.

JC talked about stealth several years ago and it basically boils down to no you can't hide unless you are obscured but the DM can make exceptions.

I never had a DM that allowed hiding in the open when enemies can see you, even in dim light.

Okay. The rogue can hide 24 hours a day. The wizard gets what? 1-4 hours depending on level? That's massively worse than 24/7 like the rogue can do.

Only while they are obscured during that time. IF you are talking about "day" that implies daylight.

Dim light creates a lightly obscured area. Obscurement puts seeing something or someone in doubt.

No they don't. If you can see something, you can see something. As I said above there would be no point to the feat or the Wood Elf ability if this was the case.

Enough. Every slot wasted reduces your ability to try and match another class.

Not really because it is rare you will use all your slots in 1 day after level 5 or so, especially since you get some back through Arcane recovery on a short rest.

Moreover the extra points on your abilities that have slkills associated (like dexterity) increase your ability to match another class 24-7.

Not often. I keep telling people who try and say that you need an 18 or 20 that, but very few listen.

At 20 vs 10, a +5 difference it will still be much less than 3 times a day it matters.

A whole hour? It's a good thing that the 6-8 encounters are balanced around the adventuring hour.

Absolutely, because they go away after you are hit. You only need them within 1 hour of the first time you get hit to get their use.

The 6-8 encounters, on the rare occasion that actually happens, are typically in dungeon crawls that take around 3-4 hours of game time. The primary time spent between that is the 2 short rests, the rest of the time goes slowly in game time. Consider a party with Dwarfs or halflings covers 15,000 feet in one hour. It is very rare you will find a dugeon that would take more than 2 hours to clear, add in the short rests you take and that should be your adventuring day.

If you spend an entire 16 hours adventuring, usually that is on some sort of overland travel where you will have far less than 6 encounters.

I'd rather have the 6 hit points 24/7, which do make a difference much more often than the +1 to concentration.

Sure and that is one of the reason (of several) why your Wizards not good at anything other than combat.

The odds of all or even most of the encounters happening in the hour or two that you cast the spell once or twice are slim.

Hit points are a well. Only the first damage totaling that amount needs to happen in the first hour and you can usually predict when that will be.

There are times that will not be the case, but it generally will be.

Hell, you could end up with most or all of the encounters happening without you being able to prep in advance, so you could be wasting the spell entirely.

For a few fights. If you want it in all 6-8 fights it will be significantly more slots.

Not really.

With 2 short rests you cast it to start, then after the first short rest and after the second and you have more hps to burn between short rests than the guy with 1 point more of con. That is 3 slots if you do a whole 3-short rest day.

Now it is possible to go more than an hour between short rests on a 6+ encounter day, but that is rare.

 

[Yaarel]

I disagree. Phasing is virtually guaranteed to work. Kicking down a reinforced steel door? Not so much. It's a rather large difference. Same applies to wizard locked.

How often could they phase like that? If it was at will, that's waaaaaay too strong for a level 1 PC.

It may well be, a low level spell that grants ethereal phasing might not be automatic. Perhaps the wall gets an item saving throw.

A spell like phasing at low level would be once per day or so.

At the same time, a low level phasing spell enters the game at the same time as ways to block it does.

But there are many spells that need an easy way to block, that makes sense within the narrative. Holy salt is an example of a familiar concept, relating to keeping at bay vampires and demons and so on.

 

[Yaarel]

The routine use of Protection from Planar (Evil and Good) and holy salt, would also, thankfully, eliminate the annoying and ubiquitous spell description verbiage about "1 inch thick lead" etcetera.

 

[Oofta]

Glad it hasn't been a problem for you. Wish it hadn't been a problem for my newbie player who retired a great ranger character so that he could play a druid.

People switch characters for different reasons all the time. My wife wants to swap characters because her rogue is too good at what she does and doesn't feel like she can fail at any skill checks. That aspect of the game has gotten boring to her.

But again, nobody on this forum has any idea of how popular the different classes are. Best info we have is that wizards aren't top of the list, fighters are. Is that correct? Shifted over time?

WOTC will likely have a decent idea with DDB data. If there's a huge discrepancy I'm sure we'll see changes in one of the upcoming UA playtests.

Until then all I can say is that I don't see the same issues we had in older versions of the game.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure and many adventures are specifically about breaking the law. So they need to fracture a few laws. As for alignment, the chaotic alignments are the opposite of the Lawful alignments .... which have lawful in their name.

Lawful is about group and order. Chaotic is about individual and chaos. Neither are truly about the laws of man, though the lawful person being orderly and about the group is very probably also going to follow laws. Chaotic, though, isn't necessarily going to break them, but is more likely to than a lawful person.

I mean breking into the tower to save the princess is illegal, breaking into the Necromancer's tower to recover the artifact is illegal, using your slight of hand ability to life a purse is illegal. So in your world charming someone is illegal .... big deal.

Sure. The difference is that one, you likely aren't going to be reported for breaking into the necromancer's tower and the king is very probably going to forgive you for the breaking and entering to save his daughter. No such luck with charming. Also, many of the non-magical crimes aren't even going to be found out, unlike charm which will always result in the victim knowing he was charmed.

Drow cities literally sacrifice their male children and rape (real rape not mind rape) non-Elves .... and it is legal there.

I don't consider the drow to be civilized society, but hey, if your PC charms someone there, good chance you will be assassinated in revenge by CE drow rather than be reported as it's probably not illegal, but then so is assassination if you don't get caught. Nasty places.

Who cares if you are reported?

If you don't mind wanted posters and not being able to go into cities and towns without looking over your shoulder, and you don't mind being arrested if caught or killing the guards, then you don't have to care. Evil folks don't care about that sort of stuff. And make no mistake, mind control is almost always evil.

They often will. If you tell a friendly acquaintence - I got to pee, just let me run in and use the latirne, he probably is going to.

Sure. I've had strangers let me use their bathrooms in an emergency as well. That sort of thing is easy.

I have bought rounds IRL for friendly acquaintances - exactly the people you say - someone I see every few months, plenty of times.

Whereas if a friendly acquaintance came to me and asked me to buy the drinks, I'd look at him funny and say no. If I offer that's one thing. Asking is beyond rude.

Yeah, so they are after you whether you cast the charm or not.

Why would they be after you if you don't cast charm. No charm cast ---> no victim that knows you charmed him ---> no report ---> nobody coming after you. That response makes no sense.

So is it the spell or the deception that is illegal?

It's the magic. It's mind control. Deception isn't illegal unless it's something like fraud.

If I cast the charm at our elven cleric (advantage and proficiency) and then the Ranger uses beguiling twist to twist it on to the guy we are talking to is that illegal? I mean we did nto cast a spell on him. How about if an enchantment Wizard uses hypnotic gaze instead of charm person?

If you are mind controlling someone who isn't willing, it will be illegal. Moving the charm onto someone is semantics that the court will not be amused by.

PC: "Your honor sir. I didn't cast no charm on him. I cast it on my ranger friend who just MOVED it onto him. That makes the mind rape okay!"

Is just conning them illegal?

Of course. It's a form of theft.

Also I generally will try to get stealth or perception before Arcana. The only time I would take Arcana is if it was a campaign where I thought I would have downtime to make scrolls, and that is rare. Arcana is not often used and when it is I have a good ability.

Arcana is one of the most widely used skills. It's literally the skill you use to identify spells, identify magical effects, understand the meaning of strange arcane runes, knowledge about planes and planar creatures, magic items, magic traditions and on and on. If it's magic, you're rolling arcana to know what it is or does. And magic is everywhere in the vast majority of D&D games.

I do get Investigation quite a bit.

That's not going to tell you what the arcane runes do, or what the strange effect the trap just released that didn't seem to do anything is.

Your 39 years do ot include a lot of 5E, in 5E any class can be stealthy. A wizard has an advantage over most in that he can use spells to augment it.

Sooo, an individual of a class can be stealthy =/= stealthy class. Rangers are stealth. Rogues are stealth. Monks are stealthy. Fighters are not stealthy. Wizards are not stealthy. Clerics are not stealthy.

5e is no exception to my 39 year experience.

This is not normal. Further if anyone could hide while partially obscured then the wood elf ability and the skulker feat would be useless.

I already pointed out how you are wrong. You can hide while seen with abilities like that. That's very useful.

JC talked about stealth several years ago and it basically boils down to no you can't hide unless you are obscured but the DM can make exceptions.

Light obscurement is obscured. It's just lightly. Hiding would be harder, but not impossible.

I never had a DM that allowed hiding in the open when enemies can see you, even in dim light.

They can't automatically see you. The rules don't say that you can, and you've provided no rule that says you are automatically seen in dim light where it's hard to see.

Not really because it is rare you will use all your slots in 1 day after level 5 or so, especially since you get some back through Arcane recovery on a short rest.

If you have 6-8 encounters you will. 6-8 fights + exploration = a lot of slots gone unless you want to suck in combat and just use cantrips. On an 8 fight day if the 5th wizard uses just one slot a fight, he has 1 left over slot plus an additional 3 spell levels for all of his exploration and any additional rounds beyond one that he actually wants to do something in a fight. And that one slot a fight includes defensive spells, but doesn't include pre-combat defensive spells like mage armor. Cast mage armor and you only have your short rest 3 spell levels to do everything else with.

You must play with someone who doesn't use the full 6-8 fights and that's probably why you think wizards are so strong. The DM is creating the problem.

At 20 vs 10, a +5 difference it will still be much less than 3 times a day it matters.

Not if you get into a fight. In a typical fight pretty much everyone who rolls attacks misses by 1-5 at least once, and usually multiple times. And that's per fight. So the difference between 10 and 20 is large enough to notice. The difference between 16 and 20, not so much.

Absolutely, because they go away after you are hit. You only need them within 1 hour of the first time you get hit to get their use.

How do you know? What if the next encounter after you cast it is 1 hour and 24 minutes later?

The 6-8 encounters, on the rare occasion that actually happens, are typically in dungeon crawls that take around 3-4 hours of game time. The primary time spent between that is the 2 short rests, the rest of the time goes slowly in game time.

Aha! So it is your DM's fault that wizards are so powerful. That explains a lot. If he's not doing 6-8 encounters, he is throwing off the balance and creating the wizard disparity.

If you spend an entire 16 hours adventuring, usually that is on some sort of overland travel where you will have far less than 6 encounters.

Sure, which is why it's necessary to use the alternate rest rules in the DMG to avoid throwing off game balance. That are have a very unrealistic 6-8 encounters while you walk overland.

Sure and that is one of the reason (of several) why your Wizards not good at anything other than combat.

Nah. Your wizards are just OP because they fight so in so few encounters.

Hit points are a well. Only the first damage totaling that amount needs to happen in the first hour and you can usually predict when that will be.

You must have a really nice DM who lets you know when things are going to happen. I mean, sometimes you know in advance, but often you don't.

With 2 short rests you cast it to start, then after the first short rest and after the second and you have more hps to burn between short rests than the guy with 1 point more of con. That is 3 slots if you do a whole 3-short rest day.

Now it is possible to go more than an hour between short rests on a 6+ encounter day, but that is rare.

Seriously? An encounter is typically over in less than 30 seconds. That's 3-4 minutes(and probably less) of fighting in total that day. You can have multiple hours in between each one.

 

[Maxperson]

It may well be, a low level spell that grants ethereal phasing might not be automatic. Perhaps the wall gets an item saving throw.

A spell like phasing at low level would be once per day or so.

I don't have a problem with that. You phase through the door and then the monster you didn't know about on the other side eats your face as neither you or the party can get through that door in time to save you.

Once a day at low levels would be fine by me. I wouldn't even make you roll at that point.

 

[Undrave]

I don't think the PHB ever says or suggests all classes are equal and I for one have never assumed they were. When I first started playing D&D (1980) I assumed spell casters were the most powerful, I was obviously wrong back then, but I don't think there is any reason to believe all classes are equal.

they are all presented in the same way in basic alphabetical order with the same pomp. All of them are an equivalent opportunity cost, with the same Proficiency bonus progression and XP progression and they all have 20 levels. You'd have to be reaching REALLY far to, as a newbie coming to this game for the first time, think "Oh there must be more powerful classes". WE know which ones are more powerful because WE are obsessed nerds who argue about numbers on the internet, but a casual first timer? He's not gonna know the Ranger is badly designed and the Monk is a MAD nightmare and the Wizard spells are busted just as a glance.

And the book sure as hell isn't saying that some are more powerful. Nothing in the presentation hints at this discrepency being a dsign goal (though we know the team is filled with bloody Wizard fans with a bias) If what you're saying is true, that the Wizard is meant to be more powerful then any other option is a trap and a waste of ink. That's a dumb design.

Nope. More like one of the powerful heroes of Marvel that can't fly. Say Spiderman(without webslinging) or She Hulk

Spider-man can hold up a mountain, dude's insanely strong and generally has to pull his punches or he'll render his foes paralyzed with one hit (or worse). Call me when a Fighter can break an Olympic record.

 

[Maxperson]

Spider-man can hold up a mountain, dude's insanely strong and generally has to pull his punches or he'll render his foes paralyzed with one hit (or worse). Call me when a Fighter can break an Olympic record.

Again, it's a comparative power analogy, not a direct implication that fighter's can bench 10 tons.

 

[Archlogus]

There is either consensus here that the Wizard, at high levels, is vastly superior to martials, or the people who believe so are just the most strident and incessant in expressing their opinions, but either way I don't see much pushback against that narrative.

However, I'm not so sure.

Some caveats for the following:
1) I recognize this doesn't address the complaint that casters get to do "cool things" while martials just get to make attack rolls. This is about the supposed difference in actual power/effectiveness in combat.
2) I have literally zero experience above level 15, so this only addresses tiers I to III
3) In the absence of magic items my argument would change, but while a goal of 5e was supposed to be that magic items are optional, I've never actually seen in played that way.

Here are my observations:
- First, the most powerful spells use saving throws, not attack rolls
- Monsters tend to make saving throws much more easily than they dodge weapon attacks (that is, than PC's miss with their weapon attacks)
- Far more magic items give bonuses to weapon attack rolls than to saving throw DCs
- More magic items boost Strength than Intelligence above 20
- Martials get advantage on attack far more frequently than monsters get disadvantage on saves
- Concentration prevents many of the best spells from being used simultaneously
- Casters have concentration broken fairly easily
- Two words: "legendary resistance".
- While many creatures have resistance/immunity to mundane weapons, resistance/immunity to magic weapons is very rare. Meanwhile, resistance/immunity to magical damage types is at least as common, if not more so, but can't be negated by picking up a magic wand (maybe it should).

What all this adds up to (again, in my experience, below tier IV) is that monsters too frequently make their saving throws, and casters end up contributing very little. And when they do contribute a lot it is not by themselves, but in synergy with a martial. For example, they banish the boss while the martials kill the minions. Or they haste the martial who then novas on the boss.

I asked myself: would I rather have a group of all martials, or a group of all casters? And except for some edge cases, in most battles I would rather have all martials. If you get extremely lucky on dice rolls a group of casters could win a tough fight, but it's far more likely that a couple monsters make their saving throws, they attack the casters who are trying to concentrate, and the whole thing turns into a rout. A group of martials is going to take a lot of damage, but they are also going to pump out a lot of damage, and overall have a better chance of winning. (Once again, my opinion.)

But of course what I really want is a mix of the two. Which kind of suggests the game is working as intended.

 

[Archlogus]

Edit: mistake srh