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

[FormerlyHemlock]

I agree with this for 4E. Almost every single fight, some PCs were bloodied and possibly unconscious and the foes were mostly ok. But with Healing Surges and healing spells, PCs became non-bloodied and attrition wins the day. Action Economy eventually shifts in favor of the PCs. It starts out against them because foes tend to use their encounter and daily powers immediately whereas PCs tend to start out with encounter powers (and only pull out Dailies if the encounter appears to warrant it).

In 5E, the typical story is different. In moderate fights, the PCs tend to have better AC, more spells/abilities, and similar hit points. So action economy shifts into their favor practically from the start of the fight. This is why healing is rarely used in combat except against tough or harder encounters. The fight is often over in 2 to 5 rounds (difficulty dependent) and PCs are not unconscious too often in hard or easier fights (although it can happen).

In order to get a near equal fight in 5E, the ACs have to be similar, the hit points have to be similar, the number of foes has to be similar, the damage has to be similar, and the to hit bonus has to be similar.

And the special abilities have to be similar or of similar value. If one side can teleport and fly and Web and Counterspell and the other can't, that's not going to be a 50/50 fight even if there's HP parity.

Count up the XP sometime for fighting your mirror image. The fight will be way beyond Deadly by DMG guidelines, because 5E tries really hard not to give you fights that have a 50% chance of total party annihilation, and by definition a mirror image fight is 50/50.

 

[Staffan]

Save or die is just flat out unappetizing. The real issue is that 3E style PWK just doesn't mesh well with 5E mechanics. 5E is about saving throws. PWK is not. Spells that do not have saves or have a single save in 5E have effects that are fairly easy to counter (Sleep, Color Spray, Hypnotic Pattern).

I think you're missing the common thread between power word: kill, sleep, and color spray: while they do not have saves, there is a defense against them: hit points.

Stuff like hold person and dominate are ways to take out someone without going through their hit points. Thus, they offer saves, and often more than one. PWK is "resisted" by hit points, so it does not need​ a save, anymore than the fighter's attacks need one.

 

[Celtavian]

I think you're overestimating the general utility of AoE spells. Let's say you're facing three Githyanki knights. They're very mobile, so assume they're 60 feet away from each other (still within mutual support range) unless they're in melee with the party. Wouldn't it be nice if you could subtract 1/3 of the enemy force from the equation and use it to neutralize another 1/3, letting you kill the final knight solo? Compared to Fireball, which will degrade the enemy by 1/10, or to Lightning Bolt which will degrade 2/10, degrading roughly 2/3 looks pretty good. (This observation based on actual 9th level fights with Dominated githyanki. Actual game fights, that is. Not actual actual. )

It certainly would be nice. In that one instance, it might work given they are humanoids. If they happen to riding Red Dragons, that plan just went out the window. I need to cast fly on my martials so they can engage. Hold Monster and dominate person are no longer an option. At least with a fireball I can do some damage to the githyanki, most likely I'll just fire bolt or scorching ray so they don't get a save. The main priority is getting the martials into battle.

If the githyanki are on the ground, I won't cast a thing other than my cantrips unless the martials can't slam them. I'm not going to waste a 5th level spell slot if the martial characters can defeat them with minimal resource expenditure. If I do cast hold monster or dominate person and they save, the slot is wasted. At with fireball or cone of cold, I'm guaranteed some damage.

As I said, in 16 levels as a wizard I never took hold monster or dominate person. I took bigby's hand. It had more versatile uses. It could accomplish a similar effect to hold monster if I needed it to with a similar chance of success. Spells with saves every round or multiple saves during the course of the spell are not very worthwhile choices in an edition with low DCs. One lucky save and your spell is wasted. Lucky saves seem to happen too often when you roll this many dice.

 

[KarinsDad]

And the special abilities have to be similar or of similar value. If one side can teleport and fly and Web and Counterspell and the other can't, that's not going to be a 50/50 fight even if there's HP parity.

Count up the XP sometime for fighting your mirror image. The fight will be way beyond Deadly by DMG guidelines, because 5E tries really hard not to give you fights that have a 50% chance of total party annihilation, and by definition a mirror image fight is 50/50.

True.

However, in my experience, fights with equal level foes (Mirror of Opposition, evil adventuring party) are not deadly. Tough, but not deadly. I throw a same level evil adventuring party at my players once or twice a year. The reason I like doing that is that it gives me a rationale for handing out multiple magic items, and it's fun to throw PC abilities and tactics at the PCs.

I've been doing this for a long time and I have never once seen the NPCs win. It's usually a tough fight, but not deadly. The reasons, IMO, are:

1) PCs do not die at zero hit points. This is number 1. The healers get unconscious PCs back up.
2) The DM is controlling multiple unfamiliar NPCs, the players are each controlling one very familiar PC. In other words, the players have had many encounters to find out what works and what does not work.
3) The NPCs almost always have a lot less magic items (I sometimes up the level of the NPCs a bit to handle this).
4) The NPCs are fairly well designed, but the PCs are often significantly optimized (even if that is just spell selection).
5) Over time, the players often fill in party weaknesses in some way whereas the DM has not necessarily done this for the NPCs. He might not be aware of some of the NPC weaknesses.

So the DMG might consider such an encounter deadly (the Druid in the MM is 450 XP, for a 4th level PC, that is 50 XP shy of deadly; the Mage in the MM is 2300 XP, for a 9th level PC, that is 100 XP shy of deadly), but in actual practice, the player advantages win out every single time (at least at my table). Now, someone might think that this is because I try to go easy on the PCs (which I really do not) or because as a DM, I suck at tactics (which may be true in some cases, but generally not). I typically do not, however, let either side have surprise because that's just too lopsided IMO. But my experience is that PCs win because they have these types of advantages. This is also the reason as a DM, I can throw tough or deadly encounters at players and I almost never get a TPK (the last one I remember is the first night with Irontooth in 4E when everyone was just learning the system, i.e. they did not have advantages 3, 4, or 5 and part of 2 above).

 

[KarinsDad]

I think you're missing the common thread between power word: kill, sleep, and color spray: while they do not have saves, there is a defense against them: hit points.

Obviously I knew the common thread, or I would not have mentioned those specific spells. The difference between the lower level spells and PWK is that the lower level spells can be considered inconveniences if they get past the hit points, but PWK is automatic death. That's a lot more then just inconvenient.

So in the low level case against low level foes, the no save spells affect action economy somewhat and are easy to counter.

In the high level case against high level foes, this particular no save spell outright kills a foe and is hard to counter.

That's a different game design paradigm. That's an "I win" button.

Stuff like hold person and dominate are ways to take out someone without going through their hit points. Thus, they offer saves, and often more than one. PWK is "resisted" by hit points, so it does not need​ a save, anymore than the fighter's attacks need one.

Fighter attacks have a save (i.e. a D20 roll). It's called hitting AC. Fighter attacks have damage mitigation. It's called damage resistance or immunity. Fighter attacks have NPC abilities which can counter weapon attacks.

Sorry, but apples and oranges.

 

[Staffan]

Obviously I knew the common thread, or I would not have mentioned those specific spells. The difference between the lower level spells and PWK is that the lower level spells can be considered inconveniences if they get past the hit points, but PWK is automatic death. That's a lot more then just inconvenient.

It's also a frelling 9th level spell. You get to do it once per day, even at 20th level.

Meteor swarm deals an average of 140 damage (save half) to potentially a very large number of opponents. Power word kill deals up to 100 points of damage to a single target, or no damage at all if that's not enough to kill it.

At the levels where you can cast power word kill, single opponents will likely have 300-400 hit points, or possibly more (I didn't check the MM because I can't be hedgehogged, I just looked at the expected CR stuff in the DMG). In order to succeed with a power word kill you already need to have brought the creature down by at least 2/3 of its hit points.

And here's a DMing secret: if you put a monster in front of the PCs, that monster's gonna die. It may or may not take a PC or two with it, but that's what happens in 99% or more of cases. Letting a 17th or higher-level wizard expedite the process by a round or two is not a big deal.

Also, what the frell are we doing debating power word kill in a thread about low-level wizards?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It certainly would be nice. In that one instance, it might work given they are humanoids. If they happen to riding Red Dragons, that plan just went out the window. I need to cast fly on my martials so they can engage. Hold Monster and dominate person are no longer an option. At least with a fireball I can do some damage to the githyanki, most likely I'll just fire bolt or scorching ray so they don't get a save. The main priority is getting the martials into battle.

If the githyanki are on the ground, I won't cast a thing other than my cantrips unless the martials can't slam them. I'm not going to waste a 5th level spell slot if the martial characters can defeat them with minimal resource expenditure. If I do cast hold monster or dominate person and they save, the slot is wasted. At with fireball or cone of cold, I'm guaranteed some damage.

As I said, in 16 levels as a wizard I never took hold monster or dominate person. I took bigby's hand. It had more versatile uses. It could accomplish a similar effect to hold monster if I needed it to with a similar chance of success. Spells with saves every round or multiple saves during the course of the spell are not very worthwhile choices in an edition with low DCs. One lucky save and your spell is wasted. Lucky saves seem to happen too often when you roll this many dice.

Everything is situational. Dominate Person is useless against Giants. Bigby's Hand is useless against githyanki (due to Misty Step). Wizards should of course do their best to plan their spells for the foes they will actually face in the near future. Sometimes you guess wrong, but you do the best you can (and when you're wrong, you iterate on your intel process to improve it).

As far as "I'm not going to waste a 5th level spell slot if the [9th level] martial characters can defeat them with minimal resource expenditure" goes, if you can do it, hey, that's great! Personally I'm skeptical. They're, they're mobile, and they hit hard. 150 HP of damage inflicted per turn at +9 to hit makes me think you can't afford to have any PCs sit out the battle flinging cantrips unless your martial DPR is in the 200 to 300 per round range (thus killing two or three knights before they can attack). One casting of Dominate Person could save you 300 to 400 HP in damage over the course of the fight.

N.b. I'm not arguing here that Dominate Person is a top pick. I wouldn't take it at 9th level or 10th level, because the opportunity cost is too high. I am arguing that if you happen to have it (e.g. from a looted spellbook, as one of my PCs does), there are scenarios where it shines. Edit: and it also shines more if you're using DMG spell points, as I do, because that system incentivizes using 5th level spells preferentially since they tend to be the most efficient.

 

[KarinsDad]

It's also a frelling 9th level spell. You get to do it once per day, even at 20th level.

Meteor swarm deals an average of 140 damage (save half) to potentially a very large number of opponents. Power word kill deals up to 100 points of damage to a single target, or no damage at all if that's not enough to kill it.

At the levels where you can cast power word kill, single opponents will likely have 300-400 hit points, or possibly more (I didn't check the MM because I can't be hedgehogged, I just looked at the expected CR stuff in the DMG). In order to succeed with a power word kill you already need to have brought the creature down by at least 2/3 of its hit points.

Not a demilich. It dies at max hit points of 90. Medusa at 127 hit points is not that much better protected. Or werebear, or lich, or a bunch of others that have less than 140 hit points. The Rogue hits it and the Wizard auto-kills it without the Wizard making any sort of dice roll in round one.

And most 20th hit dice creatures are in the ballpark of 200 hit points, usually less (except for Dragons, usually ancient, and a few others that have >= 20 CON). A Death Tyrant is a 25 hit dice creature with 187 hit points.

Out of about 35 17th and higher level monsters in the MM, something like 8 have between 300 and 400 (some of them just barely 300 and some of them 24th or higher level), and something like 7 have 400+. That's less than half.

That's a lot of types of high level foes that the wizard cannot auto-one shot, but it's only a round or so before he can.

And here's a DMing secret: if you put a monster in front of the PCs, that monster's gonna die. It may or may not take a PC or two with it, but that's what happens in 99% or more of cases. Letting a 17th or higher-level wizard expedite the process by a round or two is not a big deal.

Sometimes, it's how foes die that matters at tables (especially if those foes are PCs when the NPCs use PWK against them). Maybe not at your table.

Also, what the frell are we doing debating power word kill in a thread about low-level wizards?

The thread went off the wheels a long time ago, but people are having fun discussing, so that's ok.

 

[Staffan]

Not a demilich. It dies at max hit points of 90. Medusa at 127 hit points is not that much better protected. Or werebear, or lich, or a bunch of others that have less than 140 hit points. The Rogue hits it and the Wizard auto-kills it without the Wizard making any sort of dice roll in round one.

A wizard of 17th level or higher spending a 9th level slot to kill a challenge 6 creature like a medusa, or a challenge 5 creature like a werebear, is not a problem. The demi-lich is somewhat more problematic, but I'd argue that the problem lies with the design of the demi-lich, not with power word kill.

Just wondering, did you also find the domain power of the 3e Death domain broken? It was basically the same thing, except 1d6/level instead of a flat 100.

That's a lot of types of high level foes that the wizard cannot auto-one shot, but it's only a round or so before he can.

Fights are supposed to be over in 3-4 rounds anyway.

 

[pemerton]

this is why Healing Word is generally considered superior to Cure Wounds. Cure Wounds uses an action this round to gain one additional action next round (assuming the healed PC does not go unconscious again). Action economy for this round actually shifts towards the NPCs. Healing Word only uses a bonus action, so action economy for this round does not shift towards the NPCs.

Yes, the argument for HW over CW is quite clear, athough I can also see [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION]'s reasons for favouring CW in certain circumstances.