[L&L] Balancing the Wizards in D&D

[Minigiant]

Why? In the end, a wizard is someone who

a) focuses on their intelligence
b) casts Arcane magic
b) learned to cast magic through study as opposed to an inborn talent or diabolic bargain.

If he can cast light once, five times or a thousand, it doesn't change those things. If you're talking to a non-gamer, or someone who doesn't play 5e, then one word is enough to fill their mind with pretty much what your character is.

You are talking to a non-D&D gamer, of course you will have to describe the wizard a bit as they could use the stereotype. Or they could pick visions like Potter, Dresden, Ixidor etc.

But I predict in a 5E discussion, you might not be able to just say the the phase as there will be some many modules and houserules as a base assumption.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

While I've never seen a player use "magic" to such an extent, I've had a few NPCs do...just about everything (maybe not all at once! haha) you describe.

Those non-combat/flavor sorts of enchantments that don't really "do" anything than set/add to a scene...no problem. Not "at will" (least, not the system I play in), but easily doable.

I see no reason the "show off wizard" wouldn't be able to do just about everything you describe (maybe not the "Poof. Cheese", that seems to require a "Create Food") between Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, Open/Close, Produce Flame...even just a cantrip called "Cantrip" for those minor things that don't have a specific 0level spell of their own, this is all easily accomplished.

[I, personally did away with the litany of individual cantrips a long time ago and basically said, "If you want to do something minor, it uses one of your cantrip/0 level slots." easy peasy.]

And any mage, who wants to be a show off, worth their salt is going to have at least ONE Unseen Servant floating around the house to pull up those chairs and prepare/pour that tea for them...or bring them some cheese ...as opposed to conjure it.

So, for my games/two coppers, a 1st level wizard ought to be able to appear as this "master of magic" with a few cantrips and 1 1st level spell (unseen servant).

I don't know...or really think...that the game needs to be overly specific with [rules for] these kinds of flavorful effects.
--SD

You mean like "Make an Arcana Check to do that" Maybe you offer a feat that lets people do this kind of stuff. Heck, it doesn't have to be restricted to wizards. If you feel like training Arcana then you can acquire this sort of minor casting. All wizards would probably have access to it as a class feature in that case. The main use would be making it possible to say use Arcana to impress someone, etc. While 4e has cantrips I never thought they were really all THAT needed.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

You mean like "Make an Arcana Check to do that" Maybe you offer a feat that lets people do this kind of stuff. Heck, it doesn't have to be restricted to wizards. If you feel like training Arcana then you can acquire this sort of minor casting. All wizards would probably have access to it as a class feature in that case. The main use would be making it possible to say use Arcana to impress someone, etc. While 4e has cantrips I never thought they were really all THAT needed.

Back in 2e there was a dragon article on non weap prof one for each school with int-2 or so and each had a cantrip like effect

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But with this in mind, I think Lanefan's observation is a good one. To balance magic, you can make it tough to cast and comparatively rare but powerful or you can make it more common and a lot weaker. Those are legitimate tradeoffs in the art of the game's design. I naturally prefer the former because the latter generally makes magic less, well, magic and intrinsically interesting as something different from the mundane ways of putting the hurt on your target. If there aren't potential encounter modifiers (including enders), just more hp attrition, what's the good of doing things magically in the first place? Every tool increasingly resembles a hammer.

Eh, not really so much. IME with designing games 'powerful but hard to use' or 'powerful but limited availability' don't work that well. The wizard with one awesome spell will be the go-to guy in the critical situation. He'll be the one pulling the fat out of the fire and putting paid to the BBEG. He's a scene stealing AND he gets to sit on his hands the rest of the time. It isn't really the best solution in either direction.

As others have said it is also a real constraint on adventure structure because the wizard is way powerful in a one encounter day. The players have a strong incentive to have 5 minute days and are demotivated from pressing on.

For all these reasons the design isn't that great, AND then there's the inevitable pressure to simply break it down. The wizard is bored? OK, lets give him some more 'medium strength' spells, and all of a sudden he's 90% as good all the time and 300% as good the other 10% of the time. Alternatively 'hard to use' gets eroded either by player inventiveness (which is OK until the whole thrust of the game turns to 'make it easy for the wizard' and the DM's whole thrust turns to "make it hard for the wizard"). Otherwise the system itself eventually creates ways around the difficulty because certainly any player will see such an option as highly desirable.

As for the 'every thing is a hammer', well, that already existed. It will always exist. Why is it ok for a fighter to have nothing but a hammer but if the wizard has a hammer it is bad just because it is a magic hammer? Magic means different things to different people anyway. It just isn't really a very strong position for a game designer.

 

[drothgery]

Removing spell interruption takes away one of the balance mechanisms working against not just wizards but all casters. And as the focus seems to be on in one way or another reining them all in, why would you do this?

Because it's not a good balancing mechanism. It makes the wizard's turn take longer (when with pre-4e style spells, it already is taking a long time), and means that the wizard has to succeed on multiple checks to do what he does, while the fighter has to succeed at one (for much the same reason, I hate the 3.x SR mechanic, or as I call it, making a saving throw to be able to make a saving throw). Generally, I don't think 'able to do more cool stuff, but be far less reliable' is how wizards should work.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Because it's not a good balancing mechanism. It makes the wizard's turn take longer (when with pre-4e style spells, it already is taking a long time), and means that the wizard has to succeed on multiple checks to do what he does, while the fighter has to succeed at one (for much the same reason, I hate the 3.x SR mechanic, or as I call it, making a saving throw to be able to make a saving throw). Generally, I don't think 'able to do more cool stuff, but be far less reliable' is how wizards should work.

I still think the key is the action economy. And thus their recent suggestion that taking damage stops the big guns without costing them is on the right track, but clunky, as I believe Lanefan indicated when he talked about the wizard dredging up all that magic energy to cast, but if hit he ... starts over.

The only real cost that matters all the time once the fight starts is actions. All the stuff about gold and danger and limited slots and so forth helps around the edges, but it doesn't solve the ultimate issue. So if we want to let the wizard hit hard, make him take multiple actions to do so, but neither overly nail him nor boost him via circumstance.

This has the not inconsiderable side effect of heightening excitement while making the rest of the party feel more important. In round 4, the wizard finally got off his mega fireball of death, toasting half the remaining elite orcs completely and giving the rest pause. Into this hesitation charged the fighter and cleric, which sent the rest of the orcs running, their morale broken. By round 4 or so, that's fine.

I think such a system can be designed to acknowledge a fairly decent balance (not perfect, but enough so that gold, danger, etc. can handle the rest well enough), while still handling the flavor objection. A powerful spell builds over time. Attacking or hitting the wizard doesn't kill it, but it does cost him actions. He doesn't drop the spell and start over, but suspends it while he dodges the worst of that axe blow. Maybe you need a 3E-style concentration check (with the mods not allowed to go berserk) in order to not lose an action when hit.

Or some better variation on that. All we really need is that powerful magic can't be cast in less than 2 rounds, and if monsters are allowed to get in the wizard's face, no one knows exactly how long the powerful magic will take. It's eventually going to go off and do something spectacular, but not knowing when, we don't know the shape of the fight until we get there. If the fight is essentially won by the time the wizard finally gets the spell out, it's still gone--released in frustation or allowed to fizzle away.

 

[Tortoise]

Ultimately I house-ruled so much stuff to make my game suitable for complete newcomers to the game that I had a whole new system by the time I was done. It would be nice if 5e precluded that necessity.

Based on the stated goals of 5e, until we see the final version, it should be considered to preclude the necessity.

We have the open playtest coming up on the 24th of this month, 8 days from now. While that really will not tell us what the final version will look like, it will give participants a chance to give input and maybe influence the outcome.

 

[Dour-n-Taciturn]

I still think the key is the action economy. And thus their recent suggestion that taking damage stops the big guns without costing them is on the right track, but clunky, as I believe Lanefan indicated when he talked about the wizard dredging up all that magic energy to cast, but if hit he ... starts over.

This is an interesting notion, but would be limited to the more potent spells. Another thing, Dispel Magic for older editions was too potent, the 3rd Ed version could target a single caster and potentially knock off several buffs; perhaps it could function more like an interrupt versus 1 spell.

Moreover, divinations that work automatically, such as Detect Alignment or Detect Magic, would better served if they tied into skills (such as Perception or Insight) rather than supercede them.

 

[DMKastmaria]

But as a fellow DM, how would you handle my situation where I've moved to a new country, made new friends who never played D&D in their lives, but want to give it a shot? Do you just disallow the MU? Hope that whoever gets stuck with the MU enjoys the challenge of being the weakest character? Start at mid level where it's more balanced, but multiply the complexity and time required of character creation by 5? I recall my own first time playing, being stuck with the magic user, and not liking it at all that I could only cast an offensive spell twice in a whole day. If the DM had not taken pity on me and given me a panther familiar that could fight pretty well I'd probably have quit after 1 session.

Somehow, we all managed, for decades, to play D&D without this grinding the game to a halt.

Someone always wants to play the MU. Just like someone always wants to play the Fighter. Someone always wants to play a thief. Someone always...

Allright, the Cleric can be a tough sell.

Once upon a time, in the late 90's and near the end of 2e's reign, rpg boards would be rife with ridicule, at the suggestion that anyone, but anyone approach PC creation from a min/max, powergaming, optimization perspective.

"How dare you not put roleplaying first!"

Now, I've never had an issue with someone being a little powergamey. And my gaming aesthetics are far and away closer to 1e than 2e.

But, thanks to 3.x, Character Optimization is Game #1, for many people. And heaven help their group, if someone 's PC isn't as Baaaaaaad as their buddies'.

For most of the gamers I've met and played with, from my own age group, this whole "single spell" thing was never an issue. It's a game. This is part of the game and part of the challenge. It makes for some interesting, intriguing situations. Handicaps, by their nature, make things more difficult. But they exist for a reason and skilled players don't shirk from a handicap in any game, merely because it exists.

Arguably, the weakest AD&D class is the Thief. Yet, I've had players who'll play nothing else. Because they enjoy it. Because they bloody well know how to play the class and play it effectively!

And this is why so-called "Old Schoolers" tend not to get all in a tizzy about "balance." Because in the face of player skill, that balance just doesn't mean as much as it does in other versions of the game.

Now, I'm sure that WotC will address as many 3.x and 4e players' concerns about the Wizard, as they can. I suspect they'll put out a game that at least some 3.x and 4e players like. As each L&L column makes clearer and clearer, it's highly unlikely to be a game I want to run. Which, is what I expected and which, is perfectly ok by me.

As I've said on more than one occasion, I think WotC should stick with 4e and not shove their fan-base under the bus.

Again!

 

[Plane Sailing]

I wonder if the issue here could be resolved by considering wizards, sorcerers and warlocks not in terms of the flavour of the magical source, but the style in which they cast?

Limited spells but some big show stoppers? You're a wizard. Cast magic all the time! You're a warlock. Something in between? You're a sorcerer.

In other words, could frequency of casting be a job demarcation thing

Also, I wonder how people here who will find a wizard casting magic spells "at will" bad, feel about a sorcerer or warlock?

Genuinely curious whether it is a "wizard" thing and those classes are OK or a "campaign" thing and those classes would be disallowed.

Cheers