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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sunshadow21" data-source="post: 6588654" data-attributes="member: 6667193">After reading through various pages of this thread, I have reached the conclusion that the 5E wizard has the same fundamental problem that the 3rd edition rogue did, and that is that the player has virtually no control over how effective most of the truly cool stuff in his arsenal is going to be. Similar to how the 3rd edition rogue was heavily reliant on the party and the DM to setup ideal scenarios for the rogue to use sneak attack, the 5E wizard is heavily reliant on the DM and party setting up proper scenarios to get the most out of their spells, and the DM being pretty lenient on creative uses for spells not specifically called out in in the spell description. That, and what definitely seems to be an overusage of the concentration mechanic would make me very wary of even considering playing this class, and the wizard is usually one of the first classes I look at. I get that some loss of power was necessary, but between the concentration mechanics, the apparently high saves, cutting out that many spell slots, especially at higher levels, and the rewriting of the spells themselves, I am not convinced that a few cantrips and ritual spells (a tag that becomes virtually ignored at higher levels) is enough to keep the class interesting to a lot of people, even if it can still be entirely effective. That last point brings up another not so good comparison that keeps coming to mind. The usefulness of their low level spell list seems to come dangerously close to the 3rd edition cleric, where there is at most two or three spells per level even worth considering. This may not seem like a problem to a lot of people, but boredom is a very big issue for many. Few people argued that the 3rd edition cleric was ineffective, and it was considered one of the most powerful classes for a reason, but a significant number of people still played only because they had to, not because they wanted to, and the flavor of the class was the reason. It was effective, but drop dead boring the vast majority of the time. Based on everything I've read about the 5E wizard, it's in pretty much the same boat. It works really well for a narrow band of character concepts, but the class as a whole does not provide mechanical support for the the breadth of concepts the fluff around the class inspires. Most of the concerns in this thread have always been issues for full spell casters of all stripes, and especially wizards, at low level to a certain degree, but they were countered by the fact that the big stuff when it happened was reasonably reliable and, well, big. At least with magic, 5E definitely went all in on the concept of reliable or big, but never both, and it lost a lot of made magic interesting to me. Having to rely on the DM to be generous in their rulings and the party to setup the situations necessary for my spells to be useful doesn't really sound like a lot of fun to me; like with the cleric or rogue above, it reduces any sense of personal impact I might have as a player when so much of the character's abilities are completely reliant on others. I get that 3rd edition treated the team aspect too lightly, but I can't help but feel that 5E focused too much on it, at least when it came to casters. This is too bad, because I like the concepts of what they did, but the implementation of them just seems overly heavy handed.As far as the original premise of this thread, I don't think that low level wizards are as bad as some of the negative posts make it sound, but they definitely aren't as good as some of the positive posts make them sound. In the right group with the right DM, I would probably consider playing one, but I would have to have a very high level of confidence that the playing style of that group and DM meshed with my own in order to do so. Anything less than everyone being fully on the same page would almost certainly lead to a lackluster experience.</blockquote>

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