Norfleet
First Post
Wizards, Pro:
1. Strategic flexibility: Can potentially have access to all possible spells.
2. Gains access to spells faster levelwise.
3. Extra Skills: Int provides more collateral benefits than Chr.
4. Free Feats: Scribe scroll at 1st, bonus feats every 5th.
Wizards, Con:
1. Spellbook represents sum total of all of wizard's knowledge and abilities: Many or all of wizard's advantages can vanish in puff of smoke, sometimes literally. Spell mastery can partially, but nowhere close to completely, offset this at high price of feat.
2. Tactically inflexibility: A wizard going into an unknown tactical situation is forced to either have spells prepared which may be of absolutely no use for the tactical situation, depleting the number of useful spell slots available, or do without them.
3. Operating costs very high: If DM operates on PHB costs, wizards go through cash faster than a fat man through candy.
Sorcerors, Pro:
1. Quantity: Sorcerors have more spells per day.
2. Tactical flexibility: A sorceror can choose from any of his known spells spontaneously: Combination of heavy attack spells with situation-specific utility spells can be very potent for sorcerors and provide a high degree of situational flexibility at little or no opportunity cost.
3. Magic is innate: Sorcerors have no external dependency capable of nullifying all class features.
Sorcerors, Con:
1. Strategic inflexibility: Sorcerors have little or no ability to pick up highly situational, infrequently used spells without high opportunity cost: Hard to deal with new strategic situations requiring use of obscure spells.
2. Slow progression of spellcasting: Wizards can potentially have access to all spells the moment they can cast spells of that level: Sorcerors gain access to a spell level one level later, and only with a few known.
3. Class skills do not cater to primary attribute: With the exception of Bluff, which was only added for sorcerors in 3.5, no sorc class skill benefits from Chr. Skill selection also very limited.
In summary, wizards are best in sedentary campaigns where characters operate out of a single area or base for an extended period of time: Wizards do well in urban environments where stable accomodations can be had, and backup spellbooks can be stashed in places where a wizard can expect to return, pre-teleport. Wizards function more effectively in campaigns where the character's kit is treated well and suffers from a low rate of attrition: Weapons and armor can be replaced far more easily than a spellbook, just as a CPU is more replaceable than a hard drive of equal(or even greater!) list cost. The wizard's spellbook is an extreme point of vulnerability: A fighter who loses his weapons and armor is like a computer who's CPU has fried: Replace it, and you're up and running. A wizard who loses his spellbook is like a computer who's hard drive has fried: You can replace the HD, but the data is likely gone forever, only worse: Backing up a spellbook is as expensive as getting a new one.
Sorcs do best in campaigns where the party is nomadic and not expected to return regularly to a base of operations, and in campaigns where characters' kit suffers from high rate of attrition: If your party is constantly losing and replacing stuff, you don't want a spellbook being one of those items.
1. Strategic flexibility: Can potentially have access to all possible spells.
2. Gains access to spells faster levelwise.
3. Extra Skills: Int provides more collateral benefits than Chr.
4. Free Feats: Scribe scroll at 1st, bonus feats every 5th.
Wizards, Con:
1. Spellbook represents sum total of all of wizard's knowledge and abilities: Many or all of wizard's advantages can vanish in puff of smoke, sometimes literally. Spell mastery can partially, but nowhere close to completely, offset this at high price of feat.
2. Tactically inflexibility: A wizard going into an unknown tactical situation is forced to either have spells prepared which may be of absolutely no use for the tactical situation, depleting the number of useful spell slots available, or do without them.
3. Operating costs very high: If DM operates on PHB costs, wizards go through cash faster than a fat man through candy.
Sorcerors, Pro:
1. Quantity: Sorcerors have more spells per day.
2. Tactical flexibility: A sorceror can choose from any of his known spells spontaneously: Combination of heavy attack spells with situation-specific utility spells can be very potent for sorcerors and provide a high degree of situational flexibility at little or no opportunity cost.
3. Magic is innate: Sorcerors have no external dependency capable of nullifying all class features.
Sorcerors, Con:
1. Strategic inflexibility: Sorcerors have little or no ability to pick up highly situational, infrequently used spells without high opportunity cost: Hard to deal with new strategic situations requiring use of obscure spells.
2. Slow progression of spellcasting: Wizards can potentially have access to all spells the moment they can cast spells of that level: Sorcerors gain access to a spell level one level later, and only with a few known.
3. Class skills do not cater to primary attribute: With the exception of Bluff, which was only added for sorcerors in 3.5, no sorc class skill benefits from Chr. Skill selection also very limited.
In summary, wizards are best in sedentary campaigns where characters operate out of a single area or base for an extended period of time: Wizards do well in urban environments where stable accomodations can be had, and backup spellbooks can be stashed in places where a wizard can expect to return, pre-teleport. Wizards function more effectively in campaigns where the character's kit is treated well and suffers from a low rate of attrition: Weapons and armor can be replaced far more easily than a spellbook, just as a CPU is more replaceable than a hard drive of equal(or even greater!) list cost. The wizard's spellbook is an extreme point of vulnerability: A fighter who loses his weapons and armor is like a computer who's CPU has fried: Replace it, and you're up and running. A wizard who loses his spellbook is like a computer who's hard drive has fried: You can replace the HD, but the data is likely gone forever, only worse: Backing up a spellbook is as expensive as getting a new one.
Sorcs do best in campaigns where the party is nomadic and not expected to return regularly to a base of operations, and in campaigns where characters' kit suffers from high rate of attrition: If your party is constantly losing and replacing stuff, you don't want a spellbook being one of those items.
