D&D 5E How would YOU nerf the wizard? +

[Quickleaf]

NOTE: If you wouldn't nerf the wizard... CONGRATULATIONS. But this may not be the thread for you. Also, we don't need to relitigate the question of martial versus caster supremacy. let's just take it as a given here, please.

Going with the presumption that in 5E D&D (of whatever particular flavor, 2014 or 2024 or ToV or A5E or whatever) and you wanted to bring thew wizard (and other full casters) down to ensure more parity with primarily martial characters, how would you personally, in your campaigns that you would actually play, do that?

There are a lot of potential options, from curating spell lists to instituting casting rolls to reducing the availability of cantrips and/or spell slots. So, what would you do.

For my part, my favorite implementation of most D&D tropes is actually Earthdawn from FASA in the early 90s, so I would take a page from that game. Spellcasting would require a check, with failure to cast exposes the wizard to potentially catastrophic attention by horrible entities from beyond space and time. It is important to note that this isn't just a "fumble chart" although that is a potential component. the real problem is that the wizard starts to collect corruption and attract the attention of the entities. There are lots of "horrors" in D&D that can play the part, depending on the flavor of magic. Magic is allowed to remain powerful, but wizards have to be careful. The more you cast, the more you roll, and the more you roll, the more likely you are to fail. Note that this system also allows the wizard to set up a small number of "safe" spell in matrices, which adds an element of important decision making regarding which spells to safely prepare.

What would you do?

I have changes that effectively nerf the Wizard (and a few other casters), but they are not attached to the class writeup:

1) Changing (nerfing) certain specific spells that are problematic or overpowered (e.g. removing the "force field" component of the new Leomund's Tiny Hut OR reintroducing the risk of "backdraft" from Fireball).

2) Including more situations specific to the adventure / scene / environment that make magic risky or difficult (e.g. stinging insects that disrupt Concentration OR city watch that is biased against spellcasters OR an elemental engine that causes all fire/lighting/radiant magic to conjure hostile elementals).

3) Revise monsters to greatly reduce "Resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing", and instead increase the prevalence of unique resistances...especially toward certain types of magic (e.g. charming the fey causes its charmed commoners to suffer psychic damage OR as a reaction the shadow spider can intercept teleporting casters, causing them to appear next to the shadow spider, and it makes a bite attack against them).

I've introduced Roll-to-Cast for my sorcerer variant, and while it's fun, the introduction of two points of failure – the Roll-to-Cast and the Attack or Save – is not the best design. That's a key difference between "Magic as Skill Check"/Roll-to-Cast in OSR games vs. in 5e – the greater amount of rolling in 5e can make this contribute to combat drag & can feel punitive to players. This is why I ended up revising my Roll-to-Cast sorcerer variant so that most of the results of the Roll-to-Cast are "you cast the spell, but this drawback also occurs..."

 

[Quickleaf]

• Tighten up spell balance.
• Rework spell schools from the ground up, with an eye to flavor and theme over rigid function, and distribute the "must-have" spells evenly across the lists.
• On character creation, you must choose 2 or 3 schools. You can only prepare wizard spells from those schools. You can put spells of other schools in your spellbook, but the only way you can cast them is with Arcane Insight -- see below.
• Replace Arcane Recovery with Arcane Insight, a 1/day ability to cast any spell in your spellbook without expending a spell slot.

This prevents wizards from all gravitating to the same set of top-tier spells, keeps them from being the "do-everything" class, and gives each individual wizard a clear and distinctive identity. Arcane Insight offers you a tiny bit of flex, so when you really need to pull out that one ultra-specialized spell from another school, you can; but you can't do it all day.

I imagine most players would have a huge backlash against this proposal, but personally I love it.

 

[mamba]

Wizards are dead, long live the Warlock, at least as a chassis for all casters (preferably the 2024 one that got canned). Roll spell checks with negative or positive impact (overall about neutral), remove some spells, nerf some others

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think the point is for magic to be less abusable, not less cool. If the spells are broken, no amount of fixing the wizard will solve the issue.

Disagree (mostly). You can nerf a few spells, but de-power too many and magic just becomes less fun. Better IMO to make the existing still powerful spells hard to cast successfully, and hard to get.

 

[ezo]

Boy, where to start...

Well, first thing is most of these changes I'd apply to all spellcasters (if appropriate), not just Wizards:

1. Roll to learn spells. Getting automatic spells of your choice is a huge issue. You can pick one spell to try to learn, if you fail, choose another, etc. until you get one. All other spells must be acquired through research, scrolls, barter, etc.
2. Prune the spell lists. Remove sameyness and overlap. Be more focused with more spells or less focused but fewer spells.
3. Vancian casting. You need to decide what you want to cast and with which spell slots.
4. Increase casting times. Allow spells to be interrupted again.
5. Remove spellcasting foci. Make components matter.
6. Remove at-will cantrips. No more pew pew pew. Have cantrips RECHARGE! You might have them next round, you might not...
7. Increase DC for spell concentration from 10 to 15. Or better yet, DC based on spell level, like 8 + SL or something.
8. Fix OP/broken spells like Leomund's Tiny Hut.

---

Changes I would NOT make or would make to "un-nerf" some of the above:
A. Reducing HP to d4. Damage amounts in 5E are greater than AD&D, so keep the d6--it isn't that much more anyway.
B. Make certain spells rituals, such as mage armor. It sucks to always have to have it prepared and use a slot on it every day.
C. Get rid of repeated saves (in general). Saves should be a one-and-done thing. Now, you can have failed saves take more time to complete the effects, etc. to allow people a chance to stop them.
D. Alternative to C. If a spell is concentration and has a repeated save (e.g. hold person), deny the repeated save as long as concentration is maintained. If the caster drops concentration, THEN you can repeat saves to break the spell.

There is probably more if I think about it... But that's a good start.

 

[Reynard]

Disagree (mostly). You can nerf a few spells, but de-power too many and magic just becomes less fun. Better IMO to make the existing still powerful spells hard to cast successfully, and hard to get.

I agree. I think magic should be powerful and fun, but magic user PCs shouldn't dominate play. Therefore, IMO, the solution can't be "nerf magic."

 

[jmartkdr2]

Trim down the universal spell list a lot and give access to the others through subclasses. Player characters could still hunt down the spells in other ways, but getting free access to them, including by leveling up, would be more tightly themed.

I really like this - especially because it also opens up what you can do with subclasses.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Make it take a lot longer to regain spells. If you need to spend four days replenishing everything after you've completely expended your spells available, that could (depending on the adventure in question) put the party in a bad position.

I'm probably the biggest hater of the class on these boards and even I don't want to just plain render them unplayable.

There's no sport in it.

 

[ECMO3]

Make it so Wizards are not special. I would give spells to all martials, and all intelligent enemies.

Make every monster have spell slots equal to a caster of the level of their CR. That would give CR5s access to counterspell and dispel magic and would severely nerf the combat effectiveness of Wizards.

On the PC side giving martials spells would give them the non-combat toolbox available to Wizards.

 

[Stoutstien]

Step one would be like five or six things that spells just cannot do. Those options should be the purview of those who don't cast spells. You can further pair it down by actually bringing back magic limitation based on the source.


Step two would be to go through and make the wording a little more Bay rather than try to bounce everything by having the perfect wording when cross-reference with every other possible combination. No more conveniently intangible effects that somehow still hit the enemy.

Not only with this tamed down some of the annoying side effects it would actually make magic feel magical rather than just a bunch of buttons.