D&D 5E Niche protection: the wizard’s niche

[Scribe]

Yeah I'm sorry, but wizards just don't work that way outside of 4e. Is that what this is about?

Not my post, I can assure you.

I think that Utility/Control should be the Wizard role, with Damage being Sorc, and "Sage"/Librarian being Bard.

Warlock is just a weird thing that has the niche of "Fill any Caster Role".

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fair. I think it also shows that people aren't reading the OP and just voting based on what they assume the categories are. I defined utility caster in the OP, and most people commenting that they voted for utility caster seem to think it means the status quo of "step on everyone's toes all the time."

I also think the base class can have a singular niche while the subclasses can lean into other niches. Like the fighter. The main niche is damage dealing, but it can lean into other areas with subclasses and builds. The point was to find out what people wanted the core niche to be. Taking into account the bad utility caster assumption it's clear the main niche is battlefield control.

Or it's clear the niche protection argument you're making just isn't as popular as you hoped.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not my post, I can assure you.

I think that Utility/Control should be the Wizard role, with Damage being Sorc, and "Sage"/Librarian being Bard.

Warlock is just a weird thing that has the niche of "Fill any Caster Role".

I was referring to the OP, wondering if this was some sort of backdoor 4e support.

 

[schneeland]

Utility caster spells to me are all the ones that deal with 'environmental' problems and obstacles, stuff like feather fall, alarm, unseen servant, leomunds tiny hut, invisibility, knock, spider climb, water breathing and water walk, fly, sending, speak with dead, dimension door, fabricate, stoneshape.

I picked "party sage", because I understood the OP's definition of "utility spells" to be narrower; also, if we speak about carving a particular niche for wizards, to me they are primarily sagely/scholarly characters. However, I tend to agree with your definition and if we speak about what spells a more focused wizard class should have, solutions to environmental problems and obstacles would feel most fitting to me.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I'm trying to find a way to make my answer useful to the OP, but I'm not sure how well I'll succeed.

I don't think any D&D class that could only do one of those qualifies as a D&D wizard.

You could probably give up one or two of those and still have something you could call a wizard, but not all except one.

That's also not my understanding of class niches and niche protection. As I have always viewed it, having a niche in D&D means the class is either the only one who can do something (generally an unnecessary extreme), or being the acknowledged best at doing something (the more common meaning). To protect that niche that simply has to be true. Don't make a class heal better than the Healer, hit harder than the Hitter, summon better than the Summoner (D&D classes are complicated, so I made up examples instead). Niche protection is not about a class being unable to do anything but their niche. That would be some sort of non-niche exclusion principle.

 

[James Gasik]

Ideally, this should be done on subclass lines. You have one Subclass for each niche you expect a Wizard to be able to occupy and thus they have to specialize. You could redefine the Schools of Magic to each have a specialty.

The problem is, what is left for the base class to do, if roles are defined by subclass? I guess you could say that spells of say, levels 1-3 can be used by anyone, and spells of level 4+ are subclass locked.

This will leave some of the more oddball subclasses out in the cold, but there's a fair argument to be made that they shouldn't exist anyways (I'm looking at you, Bladesinger!).

The Wizard's problem is the Wizard spell list, with it's breadth and depth. But WotC apparently sees it as an integral part of the brand, an element that makes D&D "feel" like D&D. So it's not going anywhere. And slicing it apart, as I proposed, just showcases how many niches the Wizard covers- if we had one class with 7 subclasses to let it cover 7 different niches (looking to the poll options), there's obviously something borked with it's design.

Pruning and powering down the spells was tried once upon a time, many people rejected that, so we obviously can't go down that road with D&D at this time. Making other classes cover multiple niches has been rejected by players who don't want that complexity. So I'm not sure what the end result will be, other than continued flanderization of the classes.

 

[CleverNickName]

I wonder what the poll would look like if it had been multiple choice, or if "any of the above" had been the final option.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Forcing people to pick a lane is a good exercise though.

 

[Tonguez]

Noticing that no votes have been cast for "buff/debuff"- does this mean that people feel a spell like, say, Slow, shouldn't be a Wizard spell, or does everyone think of that as "battlefield control"?

Because it affects "up to six creatures of your choice in a 40-foot cube slow" I'd classify Slow as a Control spell (instead of time dilation it could even be reimagined as creating difficult terrain, causing freezing temperatures so muscles seize up or binding the target in glue)

 

[James Gasik]

Because it affects "up to six creatures of your choice in a 40-foot cube slow" I'd classify Slow as a Control spell (instead of time dilation it could even be reimagined as creating difficult terrain, or binding the target in glue)

I guess it shows how the spell works in practice is more important than the precise mechanics.