D&D 5E Low Level Wizards Really Do Suck in 5E

[Evhelm]

(Sorry to derail the thread, OP! Not my intent )

Keterys, that's my fault; using imprecise language. You are correct and that's the way we've been using it (for the most part--those first few levels I was not paying enough attention to the wizard's castings). In the first case (with the stirges, because they were flying) the wizard centered it on her location. In the other case with the zombies I believe it was slightly off-center (as per a more usual cast).

 

[KarinsDad]

Cherry-pick much? And misconstrue data much? Combine the ridiculous 21 listings for various dragons, and you have 20 creatures left, making it 4/20, or 20%. Now lets take out all of the Appendix B listings, since you later dont want to seriously count them. Now down to 17. There's two dinosaurs listed, combine them, now down to 16. Two awakened plants? Now down to 15 unique races in A's. Thus 4/15.

I don't consider 27% to be "very tiny", does anyone else?



Completely false. There are 17 listings for humanoids within the main section of the MM. This does not include additional types within a listing (ie Orc War Chief). So that is just 4 less than Appendix B. Ditching appendix A&B, and combining all of the types into a single listing (ie all dragons count as 1, all orcs count as 1) I think you will find humanoids aren't "very tiny."



Might want to check again. And you think 10-15% is "very tiny"? Don't tell me to prove your made up numbers wrong, the onus is on you to provide proof of facts if you are going to claim them as such.

Best I can tell, there are 445 stat blocks in the Monster Manual. 70 of those are ones that are humanoids, including the 21 in the NPC appendix that are not actual races, but are still stat blocks.

So, that is 70 out of 445 or 15.7%. Much closer to my 10% to 15% estimate than your 27% cherry picking by dropping stat blocks estimate.


Out of those 70, 24 are 4 HD or less (i.e. about 5 to 22 hit points), creatures that most player will not target by the time Hold Person shows up at third level. That leaves 46 or 10.3% of humanoid monsters with 27 or more hit points in the MM that might be worth casting Hold Person on at various levels.

I stand by my statements. Humanoids worth casting the spell on are relatively rare (and the spell averages one round that it lasts, so wasting it on a mook is stupid, regardless of how many humanoid mooks are in the MM). 1 foe in 10 from the MM is not common. There are a lot more beasts in the MM than humanoids.

 

[KarinsDad]

That's not a bad idea; in truth this ruling of one-roll-for-all was developed in earlier editions, and I am starting to re-think it for 5e. In 4e, there were a million "kinds" of mobs, and there it wasn't usually an issue because I was still rolling for four or five kinds of mob per AoE spell. In 3e, the likelihood of there being that many mobs that all got a saving throw at the same time was also somewhat slim (unless they were so weak that the saving throw wouldn't matter for them--they died anyway).

Here in 5e with its bounded accuracy, I will probably need new ways to keep the game speedy while still having some additional accuracy.

One dice per every two creatures might work.

Alternatively, if you know what the monsters have to roll ahead of time (i.e. DC 13 wizard, +1 for the monsters, they need a 12), you can roll all 8 and just count up the number of 12s or higher and ignore which monster was hit and which was not. If 5 fail and 3 save, randomly do the 9 points of damage to 5 and randomly do 4 points of damage to 3.

 

[Kaychsea]

I stand by my statements. Humanoids worth casting the spell on are relatively rare (and the spell averages one round that it lasts, so wasting it on a mook is stupid, regardless of how many humanoid mooks are in the MM).

Unless the mook is in a doorway blocking others getting past him? How rare are doors?
Or running to raise the alarm. Or trying to activate something you really don't want him to. Or is a second kobold on a fighter. Or is the one who spotted the rogue sneaking past. Or is standing over a fallen party member preparing to gut him.
There are lots of situations where it works. It's always been a utility spell and now you have more access to it.

 

[KarinsDad]

Unless the mook is in a doorway blocking others getting past him? How rare are doors?
Or running to raise the alarm. Or trying to activate something you really don't want him to. Or is a second kobold on a fighter. Or is the one who spotted the rogue sneaking past. Or is standing over a fallen party member preparing to gut him.
There are lots of situations where it works. It's always been a utility spell and now you have more access to it.

Yeah, but in many of these corner cases, a Magic Missile spell will serve the same purpose without casting a second level spell.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Lastly, you completely ignored my variety versus number argument. Dragons take up a full 10% of the MM pages, yet they won't even scratch out a single percent of the number of creatures a party will encounter over their careers. When was the last time a group of bandit oozes attacked a caravan? Who ever heard of a group of basilisk slavers? A thieves guild made up of hook horrors? A cult of dragon worshiping cockatrice? The great tribes of phase spiders trying to conquer vast areas. No one, cause it is humanoids that make those up, and those are all common adventure dealings. .

I'm going to quote this because it bears repeating, and seems to be ignored. Add to that that you left this part out of your response KD (ignoring it twice) and doubled down on your initial claim, makes me extremely dubious of the integrity of your particular argument in this case.

To ignore the very real fact that something like an ogre is going to be encountered more often than an aboleth seems very disingenuous to me.

 

[Umbran]

Cherry-pick much? And misconstrue data much?

So, that is 70 out of 445 or 15.7%. Much closer to my 10% to 15% estimate than your 27% cherry picking by dropping stat blocks estimate.

Gentlemen (and at the moment I'm using that term loosely),

Are you quite through with trying to accuse each other of intellectual malfeasance? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that, having done so, neither one of you is actually going to pay any attention to what the other wrote, except to find ways to take more potshots.

RESPECT, gentlemen. Show it, or keep your thoughts to yourself.

To ignore the very real fact that something like an ogre is going to be encountered more often than an aboleth seems very disingenuous to me.

While I agree that a typical party is going to run into more ogres than aboleths, you could have made your point by noting that frequency of a critter in the world is not determined by the frequency of listings in the Monster Manual. You could even have referred to the fact that frequency in the world was listed in older MOnster Manuals (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Unique, and such)

But, trying to address the poster and suggesting something short of honesty from them, again, is going to make absolutely sure you two are no longer going to communicate.

Again, RESPECT. Even in disagreement. Or just walk away.

Continue like this, and we'll see if someone earns themselves a vacation, hm?

That's all. Carry on. With civility, please and thank you.

 

[fuindordm]

Oddly enough, this conversation makes me want to play a wizard.

In all editions, sometimes your big spell didn't do anything when its target made its saving throw (distressingly often in AD&D). In all editions but 4th, the wizard PC didn't have a lot of oomph at low levels.

This edition definitely inherits from 3rd edition the tactical requirement of choosing spells that target the correct saving throw.

 

[transtemporal]

Is it possible that the other classes are "more useful" in 5E

Thats certainly part of it. The other classes have been beefed up a LOT over the various editions which I think is probably a good thing.

Granted, my memory is weak with age, but even so, I remember having a lot of fun with wizards. It has always been my favorite class until now. Maybe I should have taken the Sleep spell.

Same, I played a wizard in pretty much every edition until 4e at which point I dropped it in disgust. Even sleep was tougher in previous editions! Lol

Granted, he is in melee, but still. I do something that for my PC is amazing and for his PC is fairly pedestrian with minor resource use. It happens many times a day for him day in and day out, I'm lucky if I roll great and it happens once per day for my PC out of 4 attempts. And the Rogue does this level of damage in two rounds about half of the time without using up any resources.

Somewhere along the line, someone decided that melee should do more damage, more consistently because they are in melee. And I can kinda see the logic in that because you don't want people to come to the conclusion that playing a melee is a waste of time when casters pump out as good, if not better DPR, while staying relatively safe.

But at the moment, even DPR-specced sorcerors don't seem that great.

Dunno, maybe theres some amazing artillery caster build we haven't discovered yet. I just don't see many maximise/empower type powers.

 

[Zardnaar]

OP you were using a lot of the crappy spells in 5E. Witch Bolt for example is pants, sleep is very good. This is compounded by the abjurer which IDK if the class is any good or not but you have to use one of your precious spell slots to use its class ability. Wizard spells are not really good for damage until level 5 or so. Spell like sleep, hold person etc are better than burning hands or whatever.

Forumites also tend to over value shield which while decent on occasion does tend to burn through your spell slots and unlike older D&D shield only lasts 1 round.