Have run and/or played in a 3e/3.5 game with no wizard? List thoughts/experiences

[Mort]

Ok this subject has really piqued my interest today so:

As the thread title asks. How did this go? Were there any siginificant problems. If you were the DM did you modify things significantly (rules and or scenarios)? If a player was it just fine, frustrating, something else?

 

[Psion]

I'm playing a psion in a wizardless game and my longstanding 3.0 game had a sorcerer.

All is going/went well, though I can see some treasure won't get full value in the game I am in now.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I only did this once, and it went OK.

But in the interests of full disclosure, the 50% of the party had Cleric levels...2 of those were not multiclassed. That means there was still a lot of spellpower in the party.

And believe me, enemy Wizards HATED the rain of arrows & bolts with Silence on them.

 

[FireLance]

Yes, I've done it several times. Of course, there was usually someone to fill the magic artillery role, such as a sorcerer or a warmage.

 

[CleverNickName]

We've never had a wizard, at least not in 3.x Edition.

Back in 2001-2003, we had a sorcerer. But once the sorc learned the fireball spell, she multiclassed with monk and never looked back.

When that campaign ended and we started up another game, not a single person rolled up an arcane spellcaster of any sort. We did have a rogue who kept his Use Magic Device skill maxed, so I guess you could say he was a "poor man's wizard."

Right now, I've got a fighter, a rogue, a cleric, and a monk, all 2nd level. The cleric has his eye on the Mystic Theurge prestige class, so I suspect he'll be taking a level or three of sorcerer soon.

 

[Ourph]

I've run a Sword & Sorcery-esque campaign with low magic where the only arcane casters available were Warlocks. It worked fine. In fact, the CR system worked a lot better after mid-level without the high-powered arcane casters around and several people playing martial characters commented on how the party depended so much more on their sword arms than usual after 5th level.

 

[billd91]

I've played and DMed substantial chunks of various campaigns where the wizard player has been absent (he has a funky work schedule) and didn't have any major problems. There have been times when being mobbed by giants has been dicey without the fireballs and wands, but the party has been able to persevere, even if the wizard's (technically, sorcerer's) absence has led to more healing being expended.

 

[Crothian]

My current camapiugn the characters are just third level and there are no wizards (or spellcasters for that matter) in the party. So far so good.

 

[Ifni]

Sure, I've played in a lot of games where the only arcane was a sorcerer. They normally work just fine - they don't always work well if the sorc player is incompetent or very specialized, but that's true of wizards as well. I've played a much smaller number of games where the arcane was a warmage, or where we had no arcane at all - those can be scary at mid-high level, if you run into the wrong sort of challenge. Druids and clerics are good, but don't have quite the same array of mobility magic and battlefield control that sorcerers and wizards do, at least in Core.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I've played a game with and/or without every character type there is. It's all possible.