Sure, except that expending those resources is generally met with overcompensations combating problems of past editions. You & a few others are quick to dismiss the damage disparity as something fighters should excel at but it applies to rogues as well they just make a more difficult to compare set of numbers due to scaling & other issues. I'm more than happy to admit that damage is not the wizard's crown & never said it should be. What I'm sating is that the damage disparity does not justify the lack of greatness elsewhere that you & others keep asserting must exist somewhere you can't be bothered to go into. Detail where you think that greatness is that justifies things like the overuse of concentration generally weakened spells monster design targeting LFQW of past editions where it was a problem & damage disparity in combat. Sure it might exist, show where.
You have based your complaints on the wizard by comparing the at-will single-target damage of a cantrip, to the martial attacks of a martial character. You have not only picked the most slanted possible metric, you have also ignored actual spellcasting - the class feature of the wizard. Even just adding the damage of one of the martial's attacks to the wizard's cantrip damage (haste spell) would have been a better representation.
If you wanted a fair comparison, even with just comparing damage numbers (since control/debuffs are hard to quantify), you have not been going about it correctly.
If you have a metric that we can use to evaluate and compare the use of utility spells, that would be extremely cool. I am not aware of one however since they are generally too situational.
You allude to utility spells able to do things no skill check no matter how high can accomplish yet noted not a single spell. Can you be specific? Does this require contrived situations & situations that only require those spells because the gm by fiat said no other abilities are an option? In my experience those situations are too niche & coincidental to matter if they come up in a campaign at all. You didn't list any so we can't discuss that though
I can give examples. I didn't want to get bogged down in a "well what if that situation just doesn't come up in the campaign?" situation.
The point is not "Wizards are way better than Fighters because they get this spell."
It is "A wizard with a generalised loadout can bypass some challenges that would otherwise give the mundane classes a chance to shine, particularly with the way many groups (and some WotC adventures) play."
But for example, there are multiple spells allowing bypass of a physical obstacle that would otherwise require athletics checks: Levitate, Spider climb, Fly, assorted teleports.
Likewise social obstacles can be overcome by a number of different spells, either by achieving the aim without needing to go through the obstacle in the first place, or spells like Disguise self, charm person, suggestion, alter self, invisibility etc.
buffing debuffing & control are all hindered by overuse of concentration overuse of magic resist & overuse of legendary resist on top of the undertuned spells themselves that fail to make up the diasparity even if you ignore the overcompensation. Since you &
@ph0rk seem to think that's the real gold exploration & utility if you want to include those go for it. Whatever you do be more specific than vague allusions that shove the work of proving your position onto others before discussion can even begin.
OK. What do you think would be needed to be done to buffing, debuffing and control spells to bring them up to scratch?
Spells like Web, Hold Person, Hypnotic pattern, Banishment, wall spells etc are already thought of as pretty good.
Concentration is a mechanic designed to "throttle" spell slot usage a little and prevent the 5MWday that caused so many issues in 3.5 for example. What would be a better alternative? Or just keep the mechanic but remove it from selected spells?
I'm saying the disparity is too great and because WotC is all in on combating the problems of past editions it's difficult to address without massive sweeping changes. You & a few others keep saying that there is no need to address anything because somewhere is a niche where all the true greatness lies, unfortunately I can't agree or disagree because thus far it's pretty much been described as "find familiar" as the beginning and end of that niche & that spell in no way provides the oomph being demanded of it to support the disparity as justified
Fine, post a build & associated spell list you feel shows their strength. From the sounds of things that should result in self evident greatness.
Think of it like this. I can look at different cars & compare things like gas mileage pickup cargo capacity safety ratings MSRP & many others. classes should be an even easier comparisonto gauge where they are on the three pillars. martial classes are dramatically ahead of casters like wizard & the claim is that is because wizard is so far ahead elsewhere but there's nothing being added to support that claim.
But you aren't. You've just picked a single metric (single target damage) to compare, despite the fact that it is the area where the wizard is second weakest (after healing) and the fighter is one of the best. If you had picked almost
any other metric, the wizard would have come out significantly ahead of the fighter.
Its like deciding what vehicle would be best for your family, and using only the max speed as a metric to decide between an estate and a motorcycle.
What is important is if those utility spells and rituals are providing a significant enough effect to justify the state of things or not & . A few of us are saying they do not given the niche uses of those spells being too niche given limitations like spells available while you & a few others are saying it does but not actually willing to demonstrate with a build or spell list not hiding behind the quantum ogre
OK. What level is this party that your wizard is so underperforming in, what are the other characters, and what sort of length adventuring day is the usual for your group? What is your group's/DM's preferred style of play?
You sound pretty certain there, why the reluctance to show a build or even example spellbook/spells prepped list that supports it?
For that particular statement, I don't need to: its right there in the base class features. Even
without any of their spells, rituals, etc, the base starting wizard has an array of ability scores, four proficiencies, and a background feature. That is what the base starting fighter has
all the time.
What kind of effect? Because if the effect is just to be convenient, I still don't see how they're necessarily some kind of paragon of utility.
But you know what, if you think having a massive selection of features with an opportunity cost of combat effectiveness as a means to demonstrate that they are great at the "exploration pillar" then I'll leave that to you.
Because on days with no/little combat, (for example city investigation and intrigue or travel through safer areas) with a little ingenuity and a varied spell list, you can generally find some way to be useful. The fighter doesn't get to swap their extra attack out for expertise in a few skills on a daily basis.
And when its time to go down into the dungeon, the wizard just switches to their combat-heavy loadout.
But consider that not every player considers a long list of features to bog them down as a boon of utility but more like a drag of bookkeeping. If you think going through pages of spell descriptions to squeeze every spell/ritual's usefulness from your list is fun, that's fine. But its not so black and white that "Wizard has more feature makes Fighter worse than Wizard."
I can't stand playing Wizards and Bards for the exact reason that the burden of pages of utility and complex spells bog the game down since I have to track my 24 spells, my background, my personality, my items (mundane and otherwise), the lore, and have vague understandings of other characters. If I could turn those 24 spells with complex and intricate details into 11-12 spells with effects like "deal damage" and "paralyze enemy" then I'm much happier playing that character.
That is entirely fair, but denigrating a class because you don't like playing to its strengths really isn't.
If it helps, I've found spell cards quite useful rather that just a list according to spell level. That way you can have smaller, separate piles for out of combat spells, concentration spells, and combat spells. - There can be some crossover but it really reduces the potential information/option overload.
And the baseline for what a character can do in exploration, class notwithstanding, is so vast that any additional features created precisely for the give-and-take pillars are almost superfluous. I don't need a teleportation spell to go from one place to another, why sacrifice my 7th level slot to do so?
That's my opinion, though. And I feel like too mant people refuse to respect the opinions of people who don't like having a large list of features.
But you're not expressing your opinion of the class (until now). You're claiming that it is an objectively bad class because it can't match the Fighter in single-target damage and does not have much better utility.
"I don't like Wizards because I find them too fiddly" is an opinion, and a perfectly valid one.
"Wizards are bad at utility and their rituals are almost useless" is a statement that conflicts with a lot of our experiences, and so people are going to expect you to be able to back that up with actual facts.
