D&D 5E Are Wizards really all that?

[Bill Zebub]

One thing I have definitely learned from this thread is that posts don’t seem to have a character limit.

 

[Maxperson]

Actually probably more often considering things like invisibility, darkness and nimble escape.

You throw around a whole lot of spell in a whole lot of situations whenever an objection comes up. You simply do not have the slots to do everything you claim is being done.

Oh, and how does nimble escape, which has nothing to do with attacking, allow you to hit more often? Are you expecting to hide a lot with invisibility that you didn't cast because disguise self is still one per the below claim? Or is disguise self not on any longer because you are going invisible in combat? Or do you expect to hide from someone that can see you?

It moves at the exact same speed as a Rogue! If the Rogue can find those things why can't I do it with my Eye? This is aside from the fact you can slow it down a lot (by like 90%) and there is still plenty of time time to clear just about any dungeoun.

The rogue is moving slower, because you know, he's actually exploring. He's examining locks and floors looking for traps. He's looking behind things and for secret doors. He's not just running through the dungeon at full speed not seeing much like you want to do with the eye.

Becqause you are saying it can't find things if moving.

No. I said it can't find things the way the rogue can, which is true because it can't move things around and is moving at full speed, rather than examining the walls and floors for traps and secret doors. If you want to slow down greatly, you too can actually examine things as you move with the eye.

Let it move and search and it does it 10 minutes. Make it stop and spend 4 turns searching for every 30 feet moved and it still finishes long before an hour is complete.

It takes longer than 6 seconds to examine a 30 foot stretch of wall. Even a 6 second search of a 10 foot section isn't sufficient. You need to describe how you are searching and it takes time to go over a large section like that.

"In most cases, you need to describe where you are looking in order for the D M to determine you r chance of success. For example, a key is hidden beneath a set of folded clothes in the top d rawer of a bureau. I f you tell the DM that you pace around the room, looking at the walls and furniture for clues, you have no chance of finding the key, regardless of your Wisdom (Perception) check result. You would have to specify
that you were opening the drawers or searching the bureau in order to have any chance of success."

That sort of description and searching would be several minutes in length. And that's just for one 30 foot section. You have 4 to do.

I am not triggering any encounters if I don't cast knock.

Correct. Yet you keep saying you cast it and that casting it makes you a better rogue than the rogue. Which is it?

Moreover I can go back and cast knock on all the chests we failed on after we completely clear the dungeon and all the bad guys are dead. Without me we just leave all that treasure behind.

This is patently false. The rogue has already opened them and the useful treasure is with the party and perhaps helping with future encounters. Further, there's no guarantee that you guys aren't running your rears off to get out alive. If you follow your plan, you could lose everything in those chests, where you wouldn't with a rogue, because the treasure is running out with the party if the rogue is in the party.

You haven't explained how the Rogue is going to open the locks that he fails on. Maybe I open them, maybe they are too dangerous, but having that option makes me better not worse.

He can't fail. Like literally he can't. He has +5 for dex and +6 for proficiency and expertise. Since he gets re-rolls, he auto opens any lock with a DC of 31 or lower, except DCs cap at 30.

They are no match for spells.

You don't have spells. You've described in this conversation casting dozens of spells daily to exceed the rogue. Every time I come up with an objection it's, "Well he has half a dozen 2nd level slots to open the chests on the way out." and "He casts lots of shield spells" and "He casts disguise and charm monster multiple times each for social stuff" and on and on and on.

You.............don't.................have......................enough.....................slots.

Sure they can. But if I have 6-8 encounters adventuring between the short rests and then you send more encounters during the long rests just because you want encounters when my spells are not active then you are not using a standard adventuring day.

And if a giant purple people eater comes and eats a sloth, that isn't RAW, either. I mean, you're talking stuff I never said or suggested here. And unless the DM is trying to hand things to you on a silver platter and deliberately make the wizard super strong, you aren't having all 6-8 encounters in that short of a time period.

Also keep in mind thesse hour long spells will often be active for much of the time you are doing a short rest too. If I cast disguise self and spend 15 minutes clearing 3 rooms and having 3 fights and then we short rest, the spell is still active for most of that rest.

And you therefore did not cast invisibility during a fight in order to "Actually probably more often considering things like invisibility" and you didn't cast darkness during combat in order to, "Actually probably more often considering things like...darkness."

RAW it will be far, far less than an hour unless you are traveling great distances between encounters.

Not if you are actually exploring, rather than running through the dungeon at top speed. And if you actually spend time opening locks. And if you have to heal after a fight. And, and, and...

And you keep claiming that it's RAW, but while I keep quoting rules that back me up, you haven't offered up one bit of RAW to support your claims that YOU follow RAW, but I don't.

8 fights of 4 rounds each is less than 4 minutes. Add the travel time between encounters and the time searching (a 6-second action) and the time opening chests etc (again typically an action) and you have the total time.

No. This is not RAW, or even common sense. It's utter nonsense that places all monsters right next to you and in unlocked rooms and with no strategy, and with a DM who gives you cakewalk rulings, and...

I gave you an example above which included 10 battles, searching 50 rooms, untrapping and unlocking 100 chests and traveling a mile and all that took less than an hour of time.

No you didn't. You simply made a baseless claim and tried to call it RAW. In any case, even if it were under an hour, then you have less than 1 hour to cast a dozen or more concentration spells that you are claiming all last an entire 10 minutes or hour. You are not following RAW no matter which way you play it.

If you add short rests in here it looks like this:
Wake up from your long rest-
Explore 15 rooms, have 3 fights, untrap 30 chests, unlock 30 chests, walk 1800 feet total between rooms - 20 minute
Short rest - 1 hour
Explore 15 rooms, have 3 fights, untrap 30 chests, unlock 30 chests, walk 1800 feet total between rooms - 20 minutes
short rest - 1 hour
Explore 15 rooms, have 3 fights, untrarap 30 chests, unlock 30 chests, qalk 1800 feet between rooms - 20 minutes

And you've been killed by a dozen traps that you never searched for or disarmed, all of which take a lot of time to do.

Oh, I suppose your DM let's you do that, AND search through all the beds, dressers, closets, sarcophagi, piles of refuse, etc. AND look for secret doors, all in 6 seconds while jogging 60 feet and simultaneously chewing bubblegum.

No I have it all the time, but stealth and exploration are not relevant and social is often not relevant when that happens. Further if you are sticking to a standard adventuring day, this will pull encounters away from when you are exploring and sneaking.

Yep. It is definitely part of encounters not all happening in that mythical hour of encounters you mention. It's an adventuring DAY for a reason. If you were correct and it was RAW for it to take an hour, they would have called it the adventuring hour. They didn't.

And if you choose to spend more slots on exploring and sneaking, you will be less and less effective in combat.

We wake up a 6:00 AM and have all those 6-8 encounters in the first 4 hours by going the places we need to go and doing the things we need to do and taking 2 short rests during that time. Then by 1000 AM we are done for the day. We completed the 6-8 encounters and we will wait around somewhere until 1000 PM when we will start another long rest to get ready for the next adventuring day.

And then you wake up from your pipe dream and understand that you don't get to dictate the encounter times.

The DM's only has two choices here:
1. to overload us during that downtime after our adventuring day is over. This drives us over the 8 encounters a day and as you noted would break the game.
2. Eliminate set encounters so they don't happen and instead make the eoncuonters happen while we are resting. This would really hurt the story I think and it makes stealth and exploration irrelevant since there are no encounters during that time.

Or he can ditch that False Dichotomy and spread the encounters out over the adventuring day by following RAW and not allowing you to search everything in the room, look for traps and search for secret doors in 6 seconds with one roll. You're spending hours and hours looking over the rooms if you want to have any chance of finding the traps, secret doors and loot, and it will usually be more than 6 seconds to open a lock, and you will be surprised during most encounters since you didn't bother to try and listen at the door or use other means to see if a monster is behind it before you just unlocked and opened it, and...

Your group would TPK fast with your tactics if you were in my game. I don't go out of my way to make things super easy on the casters.

There are actually rules for this and to be honest with a Rogue you can even go faster than that. In a turn you get movement, an action, an interaction and potentially a bonus action and reaction.

No you don't. This isn't combat and those rules only apply to combat.

A Rogue can do ALL of the following in 6 seconds:
Move 30 feet (movement)
Open a door (interaction)
Search (action)
move 30 more feet (bonus action)

Nawp! Not by RAW he can't.

First off, since this isn't combat and the rogue is moving quickly, so he using passive perception and at a -5 penalty according to the travel pace rules. Second, he cannot search in the way you are trying to use it. Outside of combat the DM is well within his rights and RAW to tell the rogue that jogging down the passage isn't going to allow him a detailed search, and then ask him to roll a saving throw because he just set off a trap he missed with his perception penalty.

Even if the rogue were in combat and he searched, it would not be an entire section of wall or an entire room, it would be one small thing like searching inside the bag on the floor, because he only has 6 seconds and has to remain aware of the combat.

RAW doesn't support your claim to be able to search entire rooms for everything under the sun in 6 seconds while jogging.

My Wizard could do lots of things too:
Move 30 feet (movement)
Open door (interaction)
Cast minor illusion to distract or fool guards (action)
Go into bladesong (bonus action)
move 10 more feet (extra movement)

Dealing with monsters does take more time assuming you are either going to talk to them or fight them, but we are still talking minutes and seconds respectively, not hours. There is no way RAW you are going to spend hours exploring a dungeon (not counting resting)

Uh, huh. Except again, this is exploration and not combat.

So will the Rogue in that case. The eye triggering the traps is ideal as they will spring and hurt no one.

First, the rogue isn't, because he is actually searching, making him far superior to the eye that isn't. Second, the eye doesn't trigger traps. It triggers trap and then is destroyed as it has physicality, but not enough to provide even a single hit point. Third, why do you assume the traps don't reset?

RAW it hovers in the air for the duration, that is written in the spell description. You can't change that by damaging it. As long as the spell is active it is hovering there. This argument is like saying you can destroy a healing spirit or an arcane lock.

It is a physical object that by RAW is not indestructible or immune to damage, since RAW does not say that it is either of those things. You are free to rule for your game that it is indestructible, but I'm not going to house rule that in for mine. I will follow RAW that it is not indestructible and then make an appropriate ruling if it takes damage.

It depends if there is a 1-inch gap below the door. As I said 3 posts above the 1-inch gap is the limiting factor.

Unless it's a crappy door, it's not going to have a 1 inch gap.

1. You could explore everything not behind doors then go in and open the doors yourself.

So not much in a typical dungeon.

2. If you know the way is clear you or potentially your familiar could go in and open the door

You don't know it's clear, because you didn't search for traps.

3. You can wait for someone to come out, although that can drain the time the spell is active.

Unless you get exceedingly lucky, it's not "can," but "will" drain the time.

In any case blind doors are going to be a problem for a scouting rogue too. Hee can open them, but it is unlikely he can do it without being discovered if there are concious enemies on the other side.

He can also listen at them to see what he hears, unlike the eye. Because he's a better explorer than the eye. As such, he's FAR more likely to open the door without alerting anything(if anything is on the other side) and proceed forward than the eye that just sits there and stares at the door wishing it could do those things.

I am not sure if you understand the spell. Charm Monster works on all creatures. You can use it on humans or orcs or giants or dragons or try to use it on elves or anything else you are trying to talk to.

It is undoubtedly an edge to have this in your back pocket.

Except you've been using 4th levels slots exploring. More than one, since it's not possible to go an hour under your all 6-8 encounters happen in 10 minutes theory of things and you've been casting darkness, invisibility, disguise self and more, which got rid of the first eye, and the second eye, and...

Heck, even under my longer exploration reality, you're still losing that eye before the duration is up since your go to is a bunch of concentration spells whenever I suggest commonly encountered things in the dungeons.

Sure it is one monster, but that is one more than otherwise, and I will point out that in your last post you said there would be very few monsters to communicate with anyway. So if there is very few and I can use it on one of them, that is significant.

Why? You could be in a 10th level dungeon and the 1 guy you can talk to is the kobold servant or something. It CAN be significant, or it might not. I will grant that IF the monster fails the save it will often be significant, but it's also highly limited since you've cast probably two eyes at this point and are out of your 2 4th level slots plus now a 4th level slot for the charm monster that you got from your short rest.

I'm not claiming wizards can't be useful. I'm saying that they cannot be better than the rogue at all three pillars, or even really more than one. Which is absolutely fine. If you want to spend all of your slots to be better than the rogue in one pillar, then you are significantly worse in the other two pillars which more than evens out. And you did it while being a super crappy wizard, since wizards aren't supposed to be rogues.

You're far better off just being a wizard, which means using your spells to plug up skillset holes that the rest of the party leaves open and doing a good job in combat as a wizard. You'll help the group out much more that way.

I also have friends and suggestion both of which can also be used (friends an infinite number of times)

Which is an infinite number of failures if the MONSTERS in the DUNGEON are hostile towards you.

Sure and against the Rogue he is just going to attack as well. I will add though if I cast charm monster and then the ritual he won't attack (or at least won't attack me).

Okay. He's still hostile towards the group, so he's likely to be eating their heads while you are taking your 10 minutes, and they won't have you to help out, making it a much harder encounter than it was designed to be, since it was designed with 4 PCs in mind and you've taken yourself out of the combat.

Your arguement is the Rogue is better. What is the Rogue going to do in this situation when he can't communicate?

Mime stuff and hope. And if combat happens, it happens.

Yes they can, that is the way 5 e works. By the way the Arcane Eye spell even specifies this - " You mentally receive visual information from the eye, which has normal vision and darkvision out to 30 feet. The eye can look in every direction."

Nothing there says simultaneously. Yes the wizard can look up. Then he can have the eye look down. Then right. Then left. That's all directions. It's just by RAW sequential, not simultaneous. It can't be simultaneous, because it doesn't say so. The W is for written in case you've forgotten. If it doesn't (W)rite simultaneous, it isn't simultaneous by RAW.

Time is handled in 6 second increments and during that time you see everything around you. You turn your head to do this.

No you don't see everything around you. You are not guaranteed to see hidden things like traps and creatures. You are not guaranteed to see what is inside a sack, or even the sack if it's behind a chair, and so on. You only see basic stuff like, "There are four walls, a floor, a bed, a table and 3 chairs." If you want more detail, you need to take time to examine things.

This is like a Wizard doing an Obiwan move and putting a minor illusion of a sound down the hallway in another direction to get the guards to look that way while he sneaks by.

If your argument is true, that tactic is auto fail since the PC is simultaneously looking in every direction, so if he looks down the hallway at the sound, he's still looking up, down, left, right and behind him, seeing you.

That's why your argument fails so badly. It's patently clear that there is no such thing as simultaneous sight in all directions in RAW.

So then you explore the area with no doors, walk in and open the door and send the eye in that direction. You are talking about seconds here.

Or minutes, depending on how long it takes you to open the door. And you didn't actually thoroughly search the area, so you set off any traps that aren't triggered by motion.

There are no facing rules in 5E. If you play that a player can only see in a certain direction, how do you determine what that direction is?

You don't need facing rules in the way 3e had them in order to know that a PC is facing forward, left, right, etc. The facing rules were there to determine flanking, which by the way is a rule you can put into the game, since miniatures show facing very easily and which enemies you could attack, which is also an optional rule.

Just because you aren't using facing to determine enemies to attack or flanking, does not mean that you simultaneously see in all direction. RAW does not support the latter claim.

RAW an enemy attacking someone from behind does not get advantage and such an enemy would be "unseen" if players had limited vision.

No. It just means the game doesn't feel the need to have rules for flanking and such. Not that there is simultaneous vision which multiple rules describe as not being present. Again, the hiding situation you described above with the noise distraction would be impossible if you were correct, because you could fail to see behind you while focusing on a sound in front of you. Simultaneous is simultaneous.

A level 1 Dwarf Rogue wearing heavy armor has disadvantage on all skill checks and attacks.

I don't see anything in the rogue class that says that if you wear armor heavier than light you have disadvantage. Why would the mountain dwarf be affected that way?

So the biggest problems with your claims are 1) you are using literally dozens of slots daily to do everything at all times, handling all the situations encountered in a dungeon and 6-8 encounters and you simply don't have that many slots, and 2) you keep making claims of RAW without backing it up with quotes like I do.

You have failed miserably to prove that the wizard is a better rogue than rogue or any of your claims of what RAW is.

 

[Asisreo]

That is certainly a bold claim. Other than the base 4 skill proficiencies everyone gets, a lot of people have been saying that the fighter base class does not get many exploration or social capabilities.
Since you have proof that this is not the case, by all means, present it.

Remarkable Athlete is an exploration feature. It's used to make better ability checks (that don't rely on skills) and jump larger distances (like gaps).

Student of War is general non-combat, usually exploration.

Know Your Enemy is mostly social.

Clearly, they aren't wizard-like, but it's not like they're completely devoid of exploration-based features.

 

[Asisreo]

I've shown what a (wooden) portcullis looked like. Those bars did not bend. And even if they did you couldn't go through them.

A portcullis looks like what the DM says it looks like.

You know what you'd use instead of an "indoor portcullis" in any except the most secure locations? A door. A large, thick wooden door that can be barred from the inside. Or even a medium weight door with a lock.

There's official adventures with indoor portcullis'. Whether it's the optimal dungeon design in a realistic scenario doesn't matter.

In which case one of two things would happen:

1. The portcullises would get stuck and either not close or not open
2. They'd get rid of the portcullises entirely.

"Not maintaining" a portcullis means the winch breaks or you take them out and replace them with normal doors. It doesn't miraculously mean that half the weight of the thing evaporates.

It might. We can't invoke realistic historical portcullises in this game. Otherwise, we'll have to realize that torches don't simply emit bright light completely up until the 1 hour mark where it flicks off completely.

We have to take the game as it is. And as the game is, the fighter is more than sufficient enough to get through a portcullis.

 

[Undrave]

Remarkable Athlete is an exploration feature. It's used to make better ability checks (that don't rely on skills) and jump larger distances (like gaps).

This is the ONLY non-combat feature a Champion get. That's the definition of 'not many'

As an aside, it's pretty unremarkable... I feel like it should have been one of those 'reroll and take the second result' ability, on ANY STR/DEX ability check. Maybe CON too.

 

[Asisreo]

This is the ONLY non-combat feature a Champion get. That's the definition of 'not many'

I never claimed they had a lot, but people were claiming that they had none, which was false.

As an aside, it's pretty unremarkable... I feel like it should have been one of those 'reroll and take the second result' ability, on ANY STR/DEX ability check. Maybe CON too.

I agree it's not incredibly noteworthy, but considering the champion is designed to be the definition of "just keep swinging," it's more than I'd have figured design-wise.

Theoretically, they have the highest dexterity DC roll when skills/tools do not apply. Most stealth checks involve proficiency, but for certain checks that don't, the fighter beats out the rogue in dexterity-based checks.

 

[Undrave]

I never claimed they had a lot, but people were claiming that they had none, which was false.

I agree it's not incredibly noteworthy, but considering the champion is designed to be the definition of "just keep swinging," it's more than I'd have figured design-wise.

Theoretically, they have the highest dexterity DC roll when skills/tools do not apply. Most stealth checks involve proficiency, but for certain checks that don't, the fighter beats out the rogue in dexterity-based checks.

The Champion should also just simply get Athletics or Acrobatics training for free. Seems like the simplest thing to add, just free Skill proficiencies to the subclass.

 

[Garthanos]

I never claimed they had a lot, but people were claiming that they had none, which was false.

You were responding to someone who said specifically "not many" .... you proved them correct

 

[Asisreo]

You were responding to someone who said specifically "not many" .... you proved them correct

The reply thread was about fighters being "1s" in everything except combat. I disagreed with that notion. Then CapnKobold said they didn't have much outside of the 4 skill proficiencies. I simply reminded them of the other exploration-based abilities.

"Many" is subjective, but they certainly aren't filled to the brim.

 

[Aldarc]

Has anyone's opinion actually shifted one way or another as a result of discussion in this thread? Or have people simply entrenched their heels even deeper behind their lines in the sand?