D&D 5E (2024) Best Arcane Caster. Sorcerer VsWizard. Dungeon Dudes: Sorcerer "Won"

[Minigiant]

Its all about downtime and preparation.

The average table doesnt have enough downtime, exploration, and variable monster weaknesses to abuse Wizard's ritual and alternate attack spells.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Its all about downtime and preparation.

The average table doesnt have enough downtime, exploration, and variable monster weaknesses to abuse Wizard's ritual and alternate attack spells.

Can you please cite your sources. I want to read those statistics too.

 

[tombowings]

Don’t they have more spells prepared than wizards now when you count their subclass bonus spells?

Which are mostly just boring attack spells.

 

[Minigiant]

Can you please cite your sources. I want to read those statistics too.

5.5e.

Some of the shifts of 5.0e to 5.5e is due to WOTC research that groups dont use many of the out of combat rules and wing it.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

As I see it now:
wisdom save proficiency beats con save proficiency.
The reasons are manyfold:

• failed wisdom saves not only usually break your concentration.they take you out of the fight.
• usually you already have +2 on con saves and warcaster gives you advantage while raising your primary stat. And you basically can afford to take that feat early, as you need not take an arcana unleashed feat to get access to the best spells.

• taking con proficiency with resilient con also raises constitution, which is a better stat for both classes than wisdom.
• concentration saves can go up to 30. At that point you fail anyway.

And with all those really good int save spells from arcana unleashed, I'd even say int saving throw beats charisma. Although banishment is still great to take one out.

Having rituals prepared is a great benefit. Whenever I make a nom wizard character, I always wished I had more prepared slots for them. Rituals are just that great, even low level ones.

A lot of classes have good charisma. So usually someone else is a better face than the sorcerer anyway. But being an int class with even expertise on one skill makes the wizard special. Arcana is a great skill to have when your int is high.

Adding spells to your book is not that difficult. You can copy from scrolls. Creating spell scrolls is not that hard. You only need arcana OR calligraphy. So with a bit of downtime other characters can write scrolls to give you access to more spells. With a bit of planning, you are quite independent of loot.

Last but not least: wizard subclasses all have quite some good features, while sorcerer subclasses don't actually offer that much.

Abjurers can straight out negate damage, making concentrating easy. Diviner can cheat rolls and recycle spell slots. Illusionists have a very powerful ability in being able to use minor illusion as a bonus action with improved effect. And even the evoker, which is trying to be a sorcerer light has some nice features. Doing damage on a failed save or missed attack probably does nearly as much average damage than rolling with advantage or more than adding one to the DC*. Of course it is just minor damage, but doing no damage on a miss is what really makes cantrips suffer compared to slot spells.

*Calculation: Assuming 60% to hit rate and 40% save rate, we have following numbers at level 1 to 4:

Attack cantrips:
Sorcerer: (1-0.4^2) * cantrip damage= 0.86 * cantrip damage
Wizard: (0.6+0.4*0.45) * cantrip damage = 0.78 * cantrip damage
Note that while the wizard deals a little less on average, the wizard has a way higher chance of not doing 0 damage and thus is way more reliable. This is especially important when facing enemy spellcasters that are concentrating or trying to kill cr<1 monsters or monsters that are nearly dead. A sorcerer usually needs a spell slot to do some guaranteed damage.

For save cantrips:
Sorcerer: 0.65 * cantrip damage
Wizard: 0.78 * cantrip damage

Yeah. That is a straight win for the evoker. Especially when you consider that save spells often are area spells or have a high base die like toll the dead.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

5.5e.

Some of the shifts of 5.0e to 5.5e is due to WOTC research that groups dont use many of the out of combat rukes and wing it.

No. That are no statistics.
And even if you wing it, there still.might be rituals and skill checks involved. I guess arcana will come up a lot.

 

[FrogReaver]

As I see it now:
wisdom save proficiency beats con save proficiency.
The reasons are manyfold:

• failed wisdom saves not only usually break your concentration.they take you out of the fight.
• usually you already have +2 on con saves and warcaster gives you advantage while raising your primary stat. And you basically can afford to take that feat early, as you need not take an arcana unleashed feat to get access to the best spells.

• taking con proficiency with resilient con also raises constitution, which is a better stat for both classes than wisdom.
• concentration saves can go up to 30. At that point you fail anyway.

And with all those really good int save spells from arcana unleashed, I'd even say int saving throw beats charisma. Although banishment is still great to take one out.

Having rituals prepared is a great benefit. Whenever I make a nom wizard character, I always wished I had more prepared slots for them. Rituals are just that great, even low level ones.

A lot of classes have good charisma. So usually someone else is a better face than the sorcerer anyway. But being an int class with even expertise on one skill makes the wizard special. Arcana is a great skill to have when your int is high.

Adding spells to your book is not that difficult. You can copy from scrolls. Creating spell scrolls is not that hard. You only need arcana OR calligraphy. So with a bit of downtime other characters can write scrolls to give you access to more spells. With a bit of planning, you are quite independent of loot.

Last but not least: wizard subclasses all have quite some good features, while sorcerer subclasses don't actually offer that much.

Abjurers can straight out negate damage, making concentrating easy. Diviner can cheat rolls and recycle spell slots. Illusionists have a very powerful ability in being able to use minor illusion as a bonus action with improved effect. And even the evoker, which is trying to be a sorcerer light has some nice features. Doing damage on a failed save or missed attack probably does nearly as much average damage than rolling with advantage or more than adding one to the DC*. Of course it is just minor damage, but doing no damage on a miss is what really makes cantrips suffer compared to slot spells.

*Calculation: Assuming 60% to hit rate and 40% save rate, we have following numbers at level 1 to 4:

Attack cantrips:
Sorcerer: (1-0.4^2) * cantrip damage= 0.86 * cantrip damage
Wizard: (0.6+0.4*0.45) * cantrip damage = 0.78 * cantrip damage
Note that while the wizard deals a little less on average, the wizard has a way higher chance of not doing 0 damage and thus is way more reliable. This is especially important when facing enemy spellcasters that are concentrating or trying to kill cr<1 monsters or monsters that are nearly dead. A sorcerer usually needs a spell slot to do some guaranteed damage.

For save cantrips:
Sorcerer: 0.65 * cantrip damage
Wizard: 0.78 * cantrip damage

Yeah. That is a straight win for the evoker. Especially when you consider that save spells often are area spells or have a high base die like toll the dead.

You made out the case for saves well. One thing to note - failed concentration save often just means another concentration spell cast. And it’s not like either sorcerer or wizard get to the point of auto passing con saves. Wizard will likely only have a 35% chance of failure. A sorcerer 20-25% depending on prof bonus.

I think sorcerer has some good subclasses too. One criticism of you wizard subclass section is you almost make it sound like all subclasses features combine into one uber subclass. Or even that all wizards get bonus cantrip damage. You probably didn’t mean that but that’s the vibes it puts off.

I don’t think skills are clear cut either way. Int skills touch so many other areas. Knowledge is king in some real sense. You have to assume the dm gives the non wizard party the same knowledge to really compensate IMO. I agree comparitively the wizard will be relatively better at int skills than the sorcerer is at charisma skills than the other party members. I think that matters.

I also agree that rituals especially the knowledge rituals are really underrated.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

You may out the case for saves well. One thing to note - failed concentration save often just means another concentration spell cast. And it’s not like either sorcerer or wizard get to the point of auto passing con saves. Wizard will likely only have a 35% chance of failure. A sorcerer 20-25% depending on prof bonus.

I think sorcerer has some good subclasses too. One criticism of you wizard subclass section is you almost make it sound like all subclasses features combine into one uber subclass. Or even that all wizards get bonus cantrip damage. You probably didn’t mean that but that’s the vibes it puts off.

Sorry. No I did not mean it that way. I thik every wizard subclass, even the phb ones have significant abilities. Even the evoker who was compared to sorcerers the most as it is the closest to what the sorcerer does.

I don’t think skills are clear cut either way. Int skills touch so many other areas. Knowledge is king in some real sense. You have to assume the dm gives the non wizard party the same knowledge to really compensate IMO. I agree comparitively the wizard will be relatively better at int skills than the sorcerer is at charisma skills than the other party members. I think that matters.

I also agree that rituals especially the knowledge rituals are really underrated.

 

[Minigiant]

No. That are no statistics.
And even if you wing it, there still.might be rituals and skill checks involved. I guess arcana will come up a lot.

What i am saying is that the Wizard's strength is the extra.

You need the DM to give you extra time to use the short rest rituals.
You need the DM to give downtime to utilize the campaign rituals
You need to DM to give you scrolls to learn niche rituals
You need the DM to heavily vary foes so that carrying multiple attack spells of different damage or save matters.

I'm not saying rituals and having more spells to swap, and full swap on short rest doesnt matter.

It is that WOTC heavily shifted 5.5e to be more combat based and made it less mechanical in exploration and social. They polled and know 99% of the time combat matters mechanicallh. But for classes like ranger, rogue, and paladin, they shifted exploration, downtime, and social to truly be optionally and have various weight.

The weakest of the sorcerer was tgat they didnt have the spells known to have all the must haves.

Monty says that the right spells are
Invisibility, Suggestion, Hypnotic Pattern, Banishment, Fireball, Polymorph, Dimensions Door, Fly

Now Sorcerers can get the space that. Get bonus spells, And have subclass and metamagic tricks.

So the question becomes "Is the D&D requiring Water Breathing to continue without giving you a scroll for it or at low enough level that you or whale caster isnt already preparing it?".

WOTC would not take out those class features and deemphasize exploration, downtime, and social mechanics without polled data saying that is safe.

 

[tetrasodium]

What i am saying is that the Wizard's strength is the extra.

You need the DM to give you extra time to use the short rest rituals.
You need the DM to give downtime to utilize the campaign rituals
You need to DM to give you scrolls to learn niche rituals
You need the DM to heavily vary foes so that carrying multiple attack spells of different damage or save matters.

I'm not saying rituals and having more spells to swap, and full swap on short rest doesnt matter.

It is that WOTC heavily shifted 5.5e to be more combat based and made it less mechanical in exploration and social. They polled and know 99% of the time combat matters mechanicallh. But for classes like ranger, rogue, and paladin, they shifted exploration, downtime, and social to truly be optionally and have various weight.

The weakest of the sorcerer was tgat they didnt have the spells known to have all the must haves.

Monty says that the right spells are
Invisibility, Suggestion, Hypnotic Pattern, Banishment, Fireball, Polymorph, Dimensions Door, Fly

Now Sorcerers can get the space that. Get bonus spells, And have subclass and metamagic tricks.

So the question becomes "Is the D&D requiring Water Breathing to continue without giving you a scroll for it or at low enough level that you or whale caster isnt already preparing it?".

WOTC would not take out those class features and deemphasize exploration, downtime, and social mechanics without polled data saying that is safe.

Psst.... all of those things to listed as things the GM "needs" to do for the wizard are due to rules choices like 5e's safe explosive & difficult to fail resting rules& the shift from vancian prep with the old slot progression to neovancian prep with unified slot progression. Coincidentally those 5e rules choices all favor the sorcerer by removing weaknesses & the need for difficult choices that would face the sorcerer while granting the wizard room for the wizard's capabilities to shine.