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At this point you are claiming that LFQW is a thing in 5e because wizards and sorcerers aren't relegated to firing a crossbow most rounds and SR backed by dice has been replaced by "the gm says no actually it decides to save" legendary resistance.. tracking mundane components wasn't a significant thing even in 2e. Also dont forget that noncasters lost a lot of their own significant hurdles...
Those things make the wizard more fun to play. But they weren’t the things that made wizards quadratic. Those were - large numbers of spell slots, the ability to prepare in advance, buff, debuff, save or suck and massively escalating spell effects and spell DCs.
All those things have been tuned down to an advanced degree. To the point that we can’t see them as quadratic anymore.
It's not about damage, it's about effectiveness and being able to affect the world around you.
Wizards get spells that completely change the way groups adventure and their effectiveness in doing so.
Take just one example, Leomund's Tiny hut. It eliminates much of the danger of camping in a foreign environment.
Or take teleport (or teleportation circle), the nature of the game changes once the spell comes online. And it does so on the wizard's schedule.
As for the threads actual topic? Lightning bolt is harder to use than fireball.
I like an earlier suggestion of allowing the caster to slightly alter it's course during casting. Allowing you to hit targets withing 5 feet of the original line.
You’ve picked two spells there that are really interesting.
Leomunds Tiny Hut is a spell I banned in my games. Just erased it from existence. Yet do you know how many times in the last four years I’ve attacked my party as they camped? ... Never. Not once. It just doesn’t come up. They take sensible precautions to protect themselves and I’m not vindictive. We also don’t do much dungeon crawl. So banning the spell was effectively pointless.
Teleport is a 7th level spell. You’re well into tier 3 to get it. You can then cast it once per day, and that stops you casting another 7th level spell. Teleport has stopped being an effective tactic as Scry and Fry was in 3e. Mainly because you can’t get out once you get in. By the time you get to 7th level the game has shifted and who cares if the party can travel 1000 miles in an instant every so often. If this option isn’t there, don’t write an adventure that requires them to travel 1000 miles in an instant.
These spells weren’t what made a wizard quadratic in 3e. It was these in combination with excessive buffing, 50 charge wands, easy spell scrolls, bountiful spell slots, scry and fry etc etc. On their own they are flavor or utility spells only
Those things make the wizard more fun to play. But they weren’t the things that made wizards quadratic. Those were - large numbers of spell slots, the ability to prepare in advance, buff, debuff, save or suck and massively escalating spell effects and spell DCs.
All those things have been tuned down to an advanced degree. To the point that we can’t see them as quadratic anymore.
I agree that those changes made them more fun to play. They also removed restrictions that limited their power.
getting free spells meant that wizards were free to choose the best spells of each level rather than being restricted to what they could find;
changes to familiar means that wizards can dominate the exploration pillar with one spell that doesn’t cost a slot;
ritual spells also massively change the exploration pillar with sprlls that don’t cost slots;
removing prohibited schools increases their versatility at no cost;
changes to concentration and interrupting spells means that once their big spells go off, there is little monsters can do to shut them down;
elimination of Vancian casting makes it less likely that wizards will be caught out without a useful spell and means that a wizard with any 3rd level or higher spell slots can lay down the hurt.
As @Voadam said, what makes wizards quadratic is that as they increase in levels, not only do they get better at what they are already doing... they can also do more things.
Past 10th level, what does a fighter get? Well, the ability to reroll a save once per long rest increases to twice, then 3 times per long rest, they get a second use of action surge, their extra attack goes to 3 then 4 attacks per round, and they get two features from their subclass.
What about wizards? 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th level spells allow them to create clones, create a magnificent mansion, teleport, etc. Not to mention spell mastery snd signature spells. Note that a 20th level wizard casting Toll the Dead is already dealing 4d12 damage without using slots.
You’ve picked two spells there that are really interesting.
Leomunds Tiny Hut is a spell I banned in my games. Just erased it from existence. Yet do you know how many times in the last four years I’ve attacked my party as they camped? ... Never. Not once. It just doesn’t come up. They take sensible precautions to protect themselves and I’m not vindictive. We also don’t do much dungeon crawl. So banning the spell was effectively pointless.
Teleport is a 7th level spell. You’re well into tier 3 to get it. You can then cast it once per day, and that stops you casting another 7th level spell. Teleport has stopped being an effective tactic as Scry and Fry was in 3e. Mainly because you can’t get out once you get in. By the time you get to 7th level the game has shifted and who cares if the party can travel 1000 miles in an instant every so often. If this option isn’t there, don’t write an adventure that requires them to travel 1000 miles in an instant.
These spells weren’t what made a wizard quadratic in 3e. It was these in combination with excessive buffing, 50 charge wands, easy spell scrolls, bountiful spell slots, scry and fry etc etc. On their own they are flavor or utility spells only
theres a lot of spells that in 6E needed to be tweaked (many are inferior compared to other spells). I often find magic missile to be a superior spells to many of its counterparts
Same goes with Druids. Druids are powerful when they can turn into an animal etc but the spells in dungeons are not great
Given how badly so many wizard spells have been nerfed over the years and editions, I find this hard to believe; unless the at-wills they've picked up during the same time are overpowered.
My general experience has been that in combat, martials fare more comparably to wizards compared to 3e.
That said, casters tend to start more "cinematically dominating" at higher levels....aka consuming more attention. The wizard stops the party to cast a divination, the bard plays with their dominated person and now plays with two characters for a while, etc. The sorceror casts truesight and gets more information about the secret room they have found.
The utility aspect of casting is still very important in 5e at higher levels, so in the lead up to the fight, the casters gain more of the spotlight and DM attention in my experience, and then the martials do fine in the actual fight.
Also just noting on the subject that "damage doesn't scale automatically anymore". While that is true, spell DCs do now scale automatically, where they didn't used to before. We could argue whether DCs vs saves are now stronger or weaker compared to old editions, but the fact that a 1st level spell still is just as effectives save wise as an 6th level spell is a big deal.
It's not about damage, it's about effectiveness and being able to affect the world around you.
Wizards get spells that completely change the way groups adventure and their effectiveness in doing so.
Take just one example, Leomund's Tiny hut. It eliminates much of the danger of camping in a foreign environment.
Or take teleport (or teleportation circle), the nature of the game changes once the spell comes online. And it does so on the wizard's schedule.
As for the threads actual topic? Lightning bolt is harder to use than fireball.
I like an earlier suggestion of allowing the caster to slightly alter it's course during casting. Allowing you to hit targets withing 5 feet of the original line.
@TheSword already covered tiny hut & I'll go into extra detail on why this is a red herring.
In other words "Good thing the battle didn't last six hundred roundsso now we get back all our hit points second wind actionsurge rage oh yea spellslots too if anyone cares"
Back in the past when you got back a flat number of hp per day of rest Tiny Hut would have been a godsend sure, but that's not how tiny hut worked back then and not how 5e works"but tiny hut" ignores that inconvenient little set of details. Tiny hut being ritual & seeming so good is actually a negative for wizards because it's better than higher level rest spells that aren't ritual and they wind up forced by the party into taking it just as they are often forced into buying a 100gp pearl & learning identify so fighter Frank barbarian Beth Rob Rogue Pam paladin & Cindy Cleric can know what magic gear they just got to actually enhance their capabilities in meaningful mechanical ways. Finally there is the bunker problem... While the rest of the party is using ranged weapons & maybe stepping outside to cantrip before ducking back in Wally wizard has this on loop "I guess I'm going to stay inside the dome so it doesn't go away & not cast spells since it blocks my ability to cast through the barrier keeping everyone safe" or maybe "Hey guys, if I walk over to little ceasars while you guys finish this fight do you want to chip in?"*[/spoiler]
teleport This one is a complex array of issues that range from only being useful if the GM makes it so to depending on edition differences no longer present in 5e
First & foremost trying to teleport to an area you are "very familiar with" has a 24% chance of not getting where you want ranging from a mishap to going somewhere else. The odds quickly get worse from there.
Even if we assume that one can teleport without error every time it runs into a more significant problem. Specifically that there is no point unless the GM makes it a point. In past editions when you recovered hp slowly while resting in the field & slightly less slow while resting under the right conditions it was a serious benefit to simply teleporting back to town to rest . Firstly that was still a thing generally of dubious value in those older editions though because the person needing the heavy duty recovery was unlikely to be the squishy caster so the caster recovering faster than their crunchier allies is a meaningless hurry up & wait benefit. Secondly even if we assume there was some tangible benefit to doing it the caster still needs to somehow return & doing so is unlikely to be easy or worth the risk unless the gm places a teleport circle where the party is now
That might look familiar & it should because you ignored it & made no effort to even acknowledge those problems for teleport saving your claim of LFQW existing in 5e when I said it to you in post 94....
Teleportation circle You brought it up seperate from teleport so you must have a point, sure.... Making a permanent teleportation circle in the party's home base could be super useful to the party, but there's a problem amounting to 18,250 gp plus living expenses plus a year of uninterrupted daily ritual. *I've literally witnessed a player do that at another table while running AL games at a flgs a couple doors down from little ceasars
I disagree, damage/level was an issue with pre-4e QW, but a significantly secondary one. More significant was the escalation of options and powers.
Linear fighters as a class got to attack more incrementally and build up more hp per level but not really do new things at high levels.
Spellcasters increased their options and powers and power as they increased levels. They gained flexibility. A fighter can attack a giant's AC for damage against its big pile of hp. A wizard can throw a spell targeting a giant's AC or its weak wisdom save or another saving throw. A wizard can throw a spell for damage or a save for other effect spell (save or suck). Spells can target an area and multiple targets. A prepared spellcaster can target a weakness of an opponent while a warrior can do their normal attack. A spellcaster can do non attack abilities like prepare defenses to resist expected dragon fire attacks, or mobility things like climbing, levitating, flying, teleporting. A wizard can do environment control like create walls or barriers. A spellcaster can summon a creature as a bodyguard to suck up attacks/extra attacker/use special abilities the PCs don't/creature to do things so the PCs don't.
These dynamics remain in 5e.
Concentration and reduced spell slots and lower damage spells reduce the quadratic disparity of spellcasters, they did not eliminate them. If you want flexibility in power options you still go with a spellcaster in 5e.
Lets start with all the things your wrong about or just ignoring.
First off is that casters are literally linear in their scaling while fighters are not. Any mods or extra dice GWM etc on their weapon are multiplied across each attack and they get to add their strength or dex mod to those for free before even getting into class abilities like recharge on short rest action surge Fighters gain an extra attack at 5 11 & 20 then get to double that once per long or short rest & then twice per at 17... that is quadratic not linear
A caster does not benefit from having two or three ways of dealing less damage than the guy who doesn't even need a second way who coincidentally has a higher at will & higher spike damage output is not a boon when the damage types used by that caster are objectively worse than the fighter and balanced against an implausible downright unrealistic scenario where no magic weapons are available. There's also the fact that the caster can only do that if they have a spell useful to the situation and it targets what may or may not be a weaker save if the caster remembers right.
Lets look at that ac though, ac a8 immune to fire... already seeing an issue for your claims & it's not the immune to fire as the big one. To ht AC 18 with 20 strength & a +1 weapon on a roll of ten or better the fighter needs to be... level 5. If using the optional travesty in design known as flanking from dmg251 that drops to a 10 or better across 2d20 keep highest or statistically the fighter just gained +5 to an already easy roll. Obviously a fire giant is a terrible matchup for a group of level 5 players so it's only going to get easier to hit by the time they are fighting that fire giant.
"Preparing defenses to resist expected dragon fire attacks"... huh....?!?! What edition are you talking about here? in 5e those spells tend to be single target short lived concentration spells. Lucky for you it's easy to make claims when you just assert things without details & claim you were talking about something else when the claim is refuted, back up this claim on your own because it's looking quite false.
I'd hate to avoid showing just how significant the damage lead from that fighter is over the caster... maximizing the 6th level spell disintegrate is still behind the average damage of a level 11 fighter's greataxe+GWM if they pop action surge (honest, math's all here) & the at will has been dramatically behind pretty much from day one of play. A generic d12 cantrip also falls behind a fighter using their starting dagger & hield with no feats or class abilities to crank up the dagger as long as the fighter keeps up on strength or dex in this ridiculous matchup, things only get worse when you look at weapons & abilities people actually use when not looking for their gear n a prison break after finding a rusty knife & the more common cantrips not so commonly resisted as toll the dead & poison spray
I agree that those changes made them more fun to play. They also removed restrictions that limited their power.
getting free spells meant that wizards were free to choose the best spells of each level rather than being restricted to what they could find;
changes to familiar means that wizards can dominate the exploration pillar with one spell that doesn’t cost a slot;
ritual spells also massively change the exploration pillar with sprlls that don’t cost slots;
removing prohibited schools increases their versatility at no cost;
changes to concentration and interrupting spells means that once their big spells go off, there is little monsters can do to shut them down;
elimination of Vancian casting makes it less likely that wizards will be caught out without a useful spell and means that a wizard with any 3rd level or higher spell slots can lay down the hurt.
As @Voadam said, what makes wizards quadratic is that as they increase in levels, not only do they get better at what they are already doing... they can also do more things.
Past 10th level, what does a fighter get? Well, the ability to reroll a save once per long rest increases to twice, then 3 times per long rest, they get a second use of action surge, their extra attack goes to 3 then 4 attacks per round, and they get two features from their subclass.
What about wizards? 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th level spells allow them to create clones, create a magnificent mansion, teleport, etc. Not to mention spell mastery snd signature spells. Note that a 20th level wizard casting Toll the Dead is already dealing 4d12 damage without using slots.
Most of these points I've already addressed with @Mort but you raise a new one talking about how hey gained spells in 2e Frankly it's misleading at best. the 2e dmg page 60 & 61 include quite a bit of detail on ways a wizard can be given spells & the spirit is deeply into just letting the player pick of collaborating with them to let them be awesome. Here's a couple quotes "If you select the spells, be sure to give the player a fair mix, allowing him to do a variety of things. Try to ensure that the player has a few of the spells he really wants.
If the character is a specialist in a particular school of magic, you should allow him to know one spell of his school automatically"& "players tend to pick the spells they consider the most powerful. While this is not bad if you have only one or two wizards, a whole horde of the fellows, all with identical spells, gets pretty boring."
Monsters don' need to interrupt casters trying to cast "big" concentration spells because frankly they probably ge a free save with no action cost every single round or in rare cases can use ac action to save if not outright just choose to end the effect with some spells. Going to spontanious casting does help not being caught withouta useful spell(my that's a low bar you've set), however it ignores the fact that so many spells are deliberately barely useful without highky contrived situations
I'm so freaking glad you brought up a 20th level wizard casting toll the dead immediately complaining about what fighters get from 11 on...
You brought up the level 20 wizard, that leaves you little room to complain about 11-19 when the fighter's already generally been ahead of that level 20 cantrip since level five or 11 with nearly every sane weapon choice other than dagger with nothing buffing the prison break shiv
now you won't need to wonder "Past 10th level, what does a fighter get?"
"Has to travel along grid line thibg"?What are you talking about? The wights are lined up in a row so anything that hits the lot of them needs to put the caster in line with them
I even made a pretty combat gridded vtt illustration. Tge big guys with swords facing the same baddies as the caster or the dashing guy in a Cape who os obviously not a lich or ghast but I didn't think needed to be called out explicitly as allies. The yellow path would trivially put the caster in a square to zap a ghast and the lich vtt one of those two is lightning resistant and has legendary resistance to get a save fail and simply declare it saves. I guess the wizard could easily add a third target by blasting bob the fighter too but that's not really helpful
I assumed you didn't present a scenario where a target was specifically immune to lightning bolt to demonstrate targeting, because that would be a pretty disingenuous choice for such a random sample.
The wizard should be able to hit two of the wights in front and whatever the guy is in the back with a bolt without moving too much. That's my point. The bolt does not need to travel along a specific gridline. It travels in any desired direction, and as long as part of the 5 foot wide bolt is hitting part of that target's square that target is hit by it. So sure, you cannot hit all those wights without a faster move or, more likely, a mity step. But they can hit three targets in that scenario with their normal move and likely some move to spare to withdraw after they fire their bolt.
Here, I edited your photo with a crude example of how the bolt can go diagonal. Wizard moved 20 feet, will fire and hit three, and then move 10 feet back down to the party.
Though I will note the wizard could have just moved 30 to line up all the wights and hit them all. But then they're stuck out there to the left and could get swarmed if they don't have something like misty step.
