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

[FormerlyHemlock]

That's in your mind. Zero hit points means the new aid is the more potent effect. Combine means something completely different than replace in any dictionary I've read. The aid spells are not being combined, one is replacing the other.

This would be a better argument if, for instance, two Blesses let you roll both dice and take the higher one. However, the PHB explicitly calls out that you would only get the one die in that scenario.

 

[Celtavian]

Our Cleric did use Spiritual Weapon quite a bit at levels 3 and 4. But what she found out is that many tougher combats are spread out ones against multiple foes. That's one of the reasons that they are tougher encounters. If we have an encounter with 2 or 3 separate groups of foes, Spiritual Weapon can easily have 1 or more rounds just being moved and not being used. At level 5, she used it at first, ran into the encounter with the Dragon (trying to add more damage) and the Dragon was all over the place. SW was used for a single round because the dragon was never close to it again. At that point, she stopped prepping it. Course, that was only "yesterday" in game time (2 sessions ago), so it's possible she'll use it again. But in her mind, I think it has lost a lot of its luster.

My encounters are not often smaller rooms where front lines can be formed and groups of foes can be AoEed (alternatively, the last fight the group was in was a maze of 5 foot wide corridors where PCs had to shoot ranged weapons past each other; in our game, that means a cover bonus and a chance to hit any intervening creatures).

So certain tactics that might work well cannot be done often. Sometimes they can, sometimes they cannot.

But healing in combat is something that rarely happens except for the tough fights. Even if a PC goes unconscious, they might not be healed with a spell if the fight is basically over.


As for Aid, we have many casters in our group. We have a Paladin (who often casts a second level Aid) and a Cleric (who often casts a third level Aid). Currently, we have something like 40 spells per day. Casting 2 spells at the beginning of the day is white noise. ~5% of the possible spells and it minimizes wasting actions for in combat healing. Definitely worth it. The more powerful Aid tends to go to the PCs who get damaged the most often / easiest, not necessarily the front line guys (who are rarely hit and have damage mitigation).

At higher levels, it makes even more sense to cast Aid when it becomes an even lower percentage of overall spells per day.

When it comes to Action Economy, I think that wasting full actions (as opposed to bonus actions) healing in combat is often a subpar tactic. Even using Aid as a third level spell (heal 10 for 3 PCs, total 30) is way subpar to Mass Healing Word (heal 4 to 9 for 6 PCs, total 24 to 54). In a big fight where everyone is injured and 2 PCs just went down, Mass Healing Word is just superior to the same level slot of Aid.

Aid is a low level cheat. At higher we level we use mass cure wounds as well. We don't heal very much at higher level save in the BBEG encounters. Regular stuff is like a speed bump. Our warlock/fighter just activated his darkness/devil sight combination that allows him to tank multiple creatures with minimum danger. A truly nasty combination. He has this at level 4. It's only going to get worse.

We're not so different it seems. Cure wounds is a low level solution. We only use healing for really tough encounters. We usually do fewer, harder encounters per day. The recommended six to eight weaker encounters isn't challenging, even a single CR+4 encounter included. PCs have such a great advantage over NPCs.

Action Economy is a huge advantage against single powerful creature. Action variation also sets the PCs far apart from the NPCs. The PCs have so many options at their disposal (at least the casters) that only carefully crafted NPC groups can match them. Once the PCs figure out the monster's trick (special attack), they can usually neutralize it. That's one of the reasons I'm glad Knowledge checks are optional. I was so tired for the PCs scouting ahead and using a knowledge check to figure out what the monster did, then setting up all the counters to make the fight an exercise in rolling dice and bookkeeping.

 

[Celtavian]

This would be a better argument if, for instance, two Blesses let you roll both dice and take the higher one. However, the PHB explicitly calls out that you would only get the one die in that scenario.

A die is different than a static effect. Not sure how it applies to aid. Rolling two dice and taking the higher would still be combining the effects rather than replacing. You would be adding the equivalent of advantage to bless. That is still combining.

And it's irrelevant since I don't pre-buff aid. It works just as well that way. If you need more than one ranged heal, you're probably going to lose.

 

[Goemoe]

Yesterday two of my players tried to roll a Wizard. We checked this, we read that, we checked and read again. Most Wizard schools and their spells are not worth considering. One player continued to ask, why a Wizard over a Sorcerer? You can pimp a Sorcerer in many ways (we do play with feats). Combat is a major part of the game and both players have been afraid to suck at combat rounds, when choosing a Wizard.

I am sorry, I would have liked to have at least one Wizard in my group, I couldn't convince them even houseruling some class features (pimping them slightly up) didn't help.

I don't know about higher levels, but level 1-5/6 the 5E Wizard looks vastly underpowered. Many spell are so weak...

 

[Celtavian]

Yesterday two of my players tried to roll a Wizard. We checked this, we read that, we checked and read again. Most Wizard schools and their spells are not worth considering. One player continued to ask, why a Wizard over a Sorcerer? You can pimp a Sorcerer in many ways (we do play with feats). Combat is a major part of the game and both players have been afraid to suck at combat rounds, when choosing a Wizard.

I am sorry, I would have liked to have at least one Wizard in my group, I couldn't convince them even houseruling some class features (pimping them slightly up) didn't help.

I don't know about higher levels, but level 1-5/6 the 5E Wizard looks vastly underpowered. Many spell are so weak...

That's unfortunate. Wizards really start to shine at higher level when being able to switch out spells and having a huge mix is extremely helpful. And wizards have the largest, most diverse spell list of any of the casters.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Yesterday two of my players tried to roll a Wizard. We checked this, we read that, we checked and read again. Most Wizard schools and their spells are not worth considering. One player continued to ask, why a Wizard over a Sorcerer? You can pimp a Sorcerer in many ways (we do play with feats). Combat is a major part of the game and both players have been afraid to suck at combat rounds, when choosing a Wizard.

That's great! I've been afraid that no one would ever play a Sorcerer. Good to see that some people like them better than wizards.

 

[houser2112]

That's great! I've been afraid that no one would ever play a Sorcerer. Good to see that some people like them better than wizards.

I played a sorc to 30 back in 3.0 and loved it. I want to like them in 5E, but I can't. The other full casters beat him up and stole his lunch money. The raison d'être for playing one (spontaneously casting instead of the prepared casting I always hated) has now been given to all the full casters. The lesser reason for playing one (increased spell capacity) has now been removed entirely. His most typical role, the blaster, is better fulfilled by the Evoker. At least he no longer has delayed spell access, that always bugged me. The only thing he has that I would want is Metamagic, and that's not enough to carry the class, at least from what I can see on paper. If I ever play a full caster, I'd consider a 3 level dip somewhere to grab that feature.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I played a sorc to 30 back in 3.0 and loved it. I want to like them in 5E, but I can't. The other full casters beat him up and stole his lunch money. The raison d'être for playing one (spontaneously casting instead of the prepared casting I always hated) has now been given to all the full casters. The lesser reason for playing one (increased spell capacity) has now been removed entirely. His most typical role, the blaster, is better fulfilled by the Evoker. At least he no longer has delayed spell access, that always bugged me. The only thing he has that I would want is Metamagic, and that's not enough to carry the class, at least from what I can see on paper. If I ever play a full caster, I'd consider a 3 level dip somewhere to grab that feature.

Hmmm. I wonder what would happen if I houseruled the sorcerer to have one extra spell slot per spell level...

 

[Staffan]

I played a sorc to 30 back in 3.0 and loved it. I want to like them in 5E, but I can't. The other full casters beat him up and stole his lunch money. The raison d'être for playing one (spontaneously casting instead of the prepared casting I always hated) has now been given to all the full casters. The lesser reason for playing one (increased spell capacity) has now been removed entirely. His most typical role, the blaster, is better fulfilled by the Evoker. At least he no longer has delayed spell access, that always bugged me. The only thing he has that I would want is Metamagic, and that's not enough to carry the class, at least from what I can see on paper. If I ever play a full caster, I'd consider a 3 level dip somewhere to grab that feature.

The sorcerer does have a bit more spells via sorcery points, which can be traded in for spell slots. They also allow her to swap out higher-level spells for multiple lower-level, or vice versa. That's not nothing.

 

[Zander]

Yesterday two of my players tried to roll a Wizard. We checked this, we read that, we checked and read again. Most Wizard schools and their spells are not worth considering. One player continued to ask, why a Wizard over a Sorcerer? You can pimp a Sorcerer in many ways (we do play with feats). Combat is a major part of the game and both players have been afraid to suck at combat rounds, when choosing a Wizard.

I am sorry, I would have liked to have at least one Wizard in my group, I couldn't convince them even houseruling some class features (pimping them slightly up) didn't help.

I don't know about higher levels, but level 1-5/6 the 5E Wizard looks vastly underpowered. Many spell are so weak...

My PC is a 6th level evoker. Another character in the party is a 5th level sorcerer. The game tends to be fairly combat intensive and his sorcerer makes my wizard look pretty pathetic. I really can't blame your players for choosing not to play the wizard dump class.

I'm not helped by the fact that both the game's designers and my DM think wizards are too powerful - which is bizarre. If the designers wanted to balance out wizards, they would have made scrolls less costly and time-consuming for wizards to produce. As it is, one-shot items such as scrolls are as expensive and long to create as permanent ones. My DM has compounded the problem by ruling that the headband of intellect is a rare item, not an uncommon one, so pretty much impossible for a low- to mid-level wizard to produce.