D&D 5E Sell me on Wizards

[aramis erak]

For me, starting wizard would be:
Cantrips: Mending, prestidigitation, and one of Ray of Frost, Fire Bolt, Acid Splash, or Blade Ward
1st Level: Alarm, Sleep, Mage Armor, Charm Person, Feather Fall, False Life.

Boy howdy has the Sorcerer been making use of False Life.... It's a better sorcerer spell, but it rocks even for wizards.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Never mind that the interrogation process often involves blackmail or torture, or at least the threat of torture.

When they wake up, they are going to do their best to kill you or get you killed...

I'm not singling you out as playing "wrong". I know there are instances where this is valid and I've encountered these in my gaming experiences. But in my experience with such instances the GMs presumed a zealous devotion by their NPCs for their cause, which seems like an unrealistic portrayals.

Police routinely question and interrogate criminals and (presumably) don't have to resort to torture or the threat of torture to get information. Being defeated and questioned must be scary and many enemies would give up information to save their own hide.

Likewise, I think most creatures have a big enough sense of self-preservation to not lightly re-engage a group of adventurers who already defeated them. I'm not saying there's no reason for a group to seek revenge but I think there's a strong possibility of that group to see how narrowly they missed death and not rush back and tempt fate.

TL,DR: I think there's room for GMs to consider their NPC's motivations and self-preservation before making them tight-lipped revengeseekers.

 

[Dausuul]

I'm not singling you out as playing "wrong". I know there are instances where this is valid and I've encountered these in my gaming experiences. But in my experience with such instances the GMs presumed a zealous devotion by their NPCs for their cause, which seems like an unrealistic portrayals.

Police routinely question and interrogate criminals and (presumably) don't have to resort to torture or the threat of torture to get information. Being defeated and questioned must be scary and many enemies would give up information to save their own hide.

Somewhat off-topic, simple torture isn't very effective, mostly because the victim's goal is to make the pain stop rather than to provide true information. The best interrogation techniques involve psychological tricks to get the subject to want to tell the truth. You get the subject feeling like you're on his/her side, or boasting about accomplishments, etc.

Of course, in a world with charm person and no due process, this is a lot easier.

 

[Celtavian]

Come on now... you're misrepresenting that man. That's 6 attacks for one round per short rest. Otherwise it's 3 attacks per round, or 4 if you want to take a DPS hit and go TWF. Don't get me wrong, that's still pretty significant but again its single target damage and fighters never get AoE abilities, whereas casters have them for Africa.

Yes, meteor swarm might "only" do 65 dmg (which is about 15 more than my tank fighters average damage at 20 on a single target per round btw) but you can potentially apply it to dozens of monsters. That's a damage spike that my fighter can't hope to match, even if you can only do it once per long rest.

If you could cast it more than once... yikes.

Casters do need to marshal their slots and choose carefully but I think this is preferable to the old 1e days where it wasn't worth your time to cast a spell below 6th level because you had so many spell slots.

With haste a fighter could get 7 attacks and a possible bonus action attack for 8 in a round after every short rest. At the moment the only think making this option superior is Great Weapon Mastery. Without the feat being as effective as it is, the option wouldn't be so bad. Right now there isn't much reason to do anything but Great Weapon Mastery. I'm disappointed that two-hander fighting is superior to everything else like it was in 3E. Makes the game less fun when a single fighting option provides an advantage that makes choosing any other option heavily inferior. Given bounded accuracy, the only way to differentiate yourself is damage. So any melee not taking Great Weapon Mastery will be vastly inferior to one that does. That is one major oversight I see so far.

 

[Kai Wren]

That doesn't really follow, does it?

Bounded accuracy means that every point of AC is commensurately more valuable because lower level creatures will be hitting you that much more often. With two handed fighting, you're pumping out damage at the expense of your defences; that's fine, but it isn't the only valid build and you'll be taking many more hits than a sword/shield fighter, and will be hitting your full potential far less easily than an archer fighter.

Not sure two weapons grants much differentiation, but perhaps magic weapons will be the answer there, letting you gain the advantages of two awesome magic toys rather than one.

 

[Gadget]

I hear ya, I would probably not blow a 9th slot for FB. I was just comparing to older editions, there are now in 5e two pressures on your 1 and only 7th-9th slot: 1) you are reduced to 1/4 of these slots now and 2) your lower spells no longer 'level-up' for free and may compete for these slots in 'epic' encounters.

True. But it is also true that the wizard no longer needs to prepare spells in specific slots. This gives a lot of flexibility, as the wizard gets to choose at casting time whether to use a 'jumped up' lower level spell or the higher level base spell. That is something they have not had before and allows them to tailor the right spell to the right moment as never before. But, as you say, the proof will be in the playing.

 

[KarinsDad]

True. But it is also true that the wizard no longer needs to prepare spells in specific slots. This gives a lot of flexibility, as the wizard gets to choose at casting time whether to use a 'jumped up' lower level spell or the higher level base spell. That is something they have not had before and allows them to tailor the right spell to the right moment as never before. But, as you say, the proof will be in the playing.

I like both of these two elements of 5E: fewer higher level spells, no prepped spells in specific slots. One element of Forgotten Realms that I always liked was the War Wizards of Cormyr. I think that I can now play a 5E Wizard PC with a small handful of wands that just goes around mostly using wands in combat with the occasional spell and many of his spells are used each day for utility stuff out of combat. Earlier editions really did not have the option for a lot of utility magic (wands eventually ran out of charges and were not super versatile, hence, many slots always had to be saved for combat magic) and I find out of combat utility magic one of the more enjoyable aspects of playing a wizard.

For me personally, I find the 5E wizard to be the best wizard so far to play (except for the fact that I roll crappy to hit and damage dice often ).

 

[mcintma]

Come on now... you're misrepresenting that man. That's 6 attacks for one round per short rest. Otherwise it's 3 attacks per round, or 4 if you want to take a DPS hit and go TWF. Don't get me wrong, that's still pretty significant but again its single target damage and fighters never get AoE abilities, whereas casters have them for Africa.

Yes, meteor swarm might "only" do 65 dmg (which is about 15 more than my tank fighters average damage at 20 on a single target per round btw) but you can potentially apply it to dozens of monsters. That's a damage spike that my fighter can't hope to match, even if you can only do it once per long rest.

If you could cast it more than once... yikes.

Casters do need to marshal their slots and choose carefully but I think this is preferable to the old 1e days where it wasn't worth your time to cast a spell below 6th level because you had so many spell slots.

I misrepresented nothing - in what you quoted I said "once per short rest" clearly

My issue is not whether Meteor swarm is good, it's whether the caster who used that 1 slot can keep up for the rest of the day against the 'epic' foes at these levels. Want to see some volume high-level playtesting.

 

[sithramir]

Is higher level of play still expected to be 8 combats a day?

Having to use a lot of lower slots just feels like it puts more strain on melee pc's when monster HP goes up consistently in CR now. Either you end the fight with a spell or conserve and not contribute quite as much.

In my games we use a lot of non combat spells so its hard to also do combat. Wands may be a great answer to this. Sucks in a low magic campaign

 

[Joe Liker]

Police routinely question and interrogate criminals and (presumably) don't have to resort to torture or the threat of torture to get information. Being defeated and questioned must be scary and many enemies would give up information to save their own hide.

So instead of the threat of torture, we're just threatening to kill them.

I'll also mention again that the modern police have an entire judicial and corrections system to back them up. Fantasy adventurers don't have those luxuries.

Even if you aren't completely sure a freed prisoner is going to seek revenge, it's probably not worth putting the hypothesis to the test.

Like I said, it's not optimal from a moral standpoint, but sometimes self-preservation is going to win out over morals. If we were 100 percent perfect paragons of goodness, we'd never kill anything and always go for the knockout strike on all 12 goblins, not just the last goblin standing. I find it pretty hypocritical to stand in a river of the blood of that last goblin's friends and worry about how killing the prisoner is going to stain our fragile souls.