Doug McCrae
Legend
With haste alone, in a party with at least 3 physical damage dealers, say fighter, rogue and cleric, the wizard will be outdamaging the rest of the party assuming they normally have 2 attacks per round. The haste attack is at full BAB so it's better than the iterative attack. That means that just the 3 haste attacks do more damage than a single party member because one of his attacks is iterative and therefore worse. And this only took a single round's action. Even if he twiddles his thumbs the whole rest of the fight, the wizard's out dpsing the fighter.
Battlefield control spells such as web and force wall win encounters by splitting opposition or giving the party a chance to flee. Glitterdust versus groups with a bad will save is practically an auto-win, and it doesn't even allow SR making it a golem killer. Fly is an auto-win against creatures that lack flight or ranged attacks, which is a lot of them. Fly is why the 3e tarrasque is a pussy.
Consider a fighter going up against a huge or bigger monstrous scorpion. If he melees it he's dead for sure, there's almost no way to avoid its improved grab, or make the save against its poison. To the wizard otoh it barely even counts as an encounter because it can't touch him. And the same is true of other big melee hitters such as giants. The fighter cannot afford to engage them but the swiss-army-knife wizard can target them with a will save. These are monsters where the fighter *should* shine. Big melee threats. But they are actually, like most everything else, jobs for the wizard.
Invisibility, spider climb and knock make the wizard a better rogue than the rogue.
And don't get me started on magic jar. I got very sick of that spell in the last game I ran. It's pretty much invincible unless the monsters have prot evil up the whole time, which is highly implausible (and only lasts 1min/level). It's one more example of how pervasive magic is in high level D&D. Everyone has to be a caster to be a threat but the way it works is extremely boring. It's totally binary. Either you win easily or have no chance. If the PCs have magic jar it's an easy win. If the baddies have prot evil it fails utterly. There's no middle ground.
In the last campaign in which I played a wizard our 8th level 3-man group was having a lot of trouble with a ragewalker, a powerful CR 14 monster. Spell resistance 28, Will DC 28 if you go near it or enter a berserker rage, many ranged attacks. Pretty much all it has to do is walk up to you and it wins. It had TPKed or near TPKed us twice (we got rezzed). Eventually it was killed by me, entirely on my own, once we levelled up to 9th with the combo of Fly, Evard's Black Tentacles and Cloudkill (the last two both ignore SR). I had eschewed fly up until now, regarding it as making fights too easy (which should tell you something about the power of a wizard). It shouldn't be this way. The wizard shouldn't be soloing monsters of level +5 CR. D&D should be a team game.
In closing - flying invisible summoner ftw.
Battlefield control spells such as web and force wall win encounters by splitting opposition or giving the party a chance to flee. Glitterdust versus groups with a bad will save is practically an auto-win, and it doesn't even allow SR making it a golem killer. Fly is an auto-win against creatures that lack flight or ranged attacks, which is a lot of them. Fly is why the 3e tarrasque is a pussy.
Consider a fighter going up against a huge or bigger monstrous scorpion. If he melees it he's dead for sure, there's almost no way to avoid its improved grab, or make the save against its poison. To the wizard otoh it barely even counts as an encounter because it can't touch him. And the same is true of other big melee hitters such as giants. The fighter cannot afford to engage them but the swiss-army-knife wizard can target them with a will save. These are monsters where the fighter *should* shine. Big melee threats. But they are actually, like most everything else, jobs for the wizard.
Invisibility, spider climb and knock make the wizard a better rogue than the rogue.
And don't get me started on magic jar. I got very sick of that spell in the last game I ran. It's pretty much invincible unless the monsters have prot evil up the whole time, which is highly implausible (and only lasts 1min/level). It's one more example of how pervasive magic is in high level D&D. Everyone has to be a caster to be a threat but the way it works is extremely boring. It's totally binary. Either you win easily or have no chance. If the PCs have magic jar it's an easy win. If the baddies have prot evil it fails utterly. There's no middle ground.
In the last campaign in which I played a wizard our 8th level 3-man group was having a lot of trouble with a ragewalker, a powerful CR 14 monster. Spell resistance 28, Will DC 28 if you go near it or enter a berserker rage, many ranged attacks. Pretty much all it has to do is walk up to you and it wins. It had TPKed or near TPKed us twice (we got rezzed). Eventually it was killed by me, entirely on my own, once we levelled up to 9th with the combo of Fly, Evard's Black Tentacles and Cloudkill (the last two both ignore SR). I had eschewed fly up until now, regarding it as making fights too easy (which should tell you something about the power of a wizard). It shouldn't be this way. The wizard shouldn't be soloing monsters of level +5 CR. D&D should be a team game.
In closing - flying invisible summoner ftw.
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. I've never seen wizards able to throw out tons of these spells every round (only one spell per round, and unless he is using a wand (low DC == even worse chance of effect) or staff (very expensive) the wizard didn't even have lots and lots of spells available. Certainly less than the sorcerer at levels 7 and up.
