Sleep spell....overpowered?

[FadedC]

I had thought about ways to abuse this with sleep as soon as I read orb mastery. Still though I'm not sure if it's that bad, at least at low level.

Going for a 20 wisdom seems insane. You end up with a 14 int and a 10 con. Your sleep spell does have the potential to maybe end a solo fight (but not very often) but you suck in every other way. At level 1 you will have 12 AC, 20 hitpoints and be +2 to hit and damage. Even with action surge your sleep misses about half the time, and your -5 on saves only cancels the bosses +5 so he wakes up 55% of time. Once your sleep has been cast your completely useless. You will also be easily hit by almost anything and go down very fast.

The more reasonable 18 int, 16 wis build is far stronger. You are actually still quite effective when your not casting sleep and your sleep is still quite brutal. Still only -3 on saves though (spel focus is a paragon feat) so your unlikely to take down a solo.

The main issue I can see is that sleep scales a bit too well and may be a little too good when cast by say a demi-god with orb focus. This is something I will worry about if iI ever play in a campaign with demi-gods.

 

[Kishin]

How are they failing when they already find such build before the official release date?

Because its not that good of a build?

Call me when they've found the next Cheater of Mystra. A daily spell that they can't even recur until much higher levels (where it seems from previous information that wizards have some ability to recover expended spell slots) is a small fry.

 

[The Shadow]

Once your sleep has been cast your completely useless.

Look at the bright side! This build does a great job of simulating a 1e 1st level Magic-User!

 

[Regicide]

Once your sleep has been cast your completely useless.

Having 2 less int bonus does not magically make you useless. Your magic missles will still be fine. Your 5 ongoing damage spells however... are going to be ludicrous. Round 1, stick a 5 ongoing damage on a mob with -10 to it's save. Round 2 dimension door away. Round 15, collect loot.

 

[chaotix42]

You can only affect one creature per encounter with the orb's special ability.

 

[Vaeron]

The wizard we're tooling around with for our first non-pregen game is a human 18/16/12/10/10/10 int/wis/cha build with Initiate of Faith (use of Healing Word) and Orb Mastery. (The 12 in Cha allows Spell Focus once the ability is boosted to 13, but Spell Focus is a paragon feat so there's time).

I'm sure this could be optimized further in some way, but we're not that kind of gaming group. I think the idea (tentative) is for this wizard to continue pursuing a multiclass cleric path followed by the Spellstorm Paragon Path, with an eye out for fear and other will-effecting type effects from the cleric powers.

Since we're just familiarizing ourselves with the rules, as we become more familar that might change.

 

[FadedC]

Having 2 less int bonus does not magically make you useless. Your magic missles will still be fine. Your 5 ongoing damage spells however... are going to be ludicrous. Round 1, stick a 5 ongoing damage on a mob with -10 to it's save. Round 2 dimension door away. Round 15, collect loot.

You can't have -10 to saves until level 20 even fully "optimized". I think your party might be a bit grumpy if your sole contribution to the fight was to hit somebody with ongoing damage and then teleport away. Plus they'd often make the save before they died. On the plus side if they do die there is a good chance you could collect loot not just from them but from the entire rest of your party who just go killed because you abandoned them.....

And only having +2 to hit and damage does make you pretty feeble compared to a wizard with +4. You might be able to damage a sinlge target pretty effectively with cloud of daggers (because of high wis) but your pirpose is to use AoEs which will be missing a ton and doing much less damage particularly at lower levels.

 

[chaotix42]

The wizard we're tooling around with for our first non-pregen game is a human 18/16/12/10/10/10 int/wis/cha build with Initiate of Faith (use of Healing Word) and Orb Mastery. (The 12 in Cha allows Spell Focus once the ability is boosted to 13, but Spell Focus is a paragon feat so there's time).

I'm sure this could be optimized further in some way, but we're not that kind of gaming group. I think the idea (tentative) is for this wizard to continue pursuing a multiclass cleric path followed by the Spellstorm Paragon Path, with an eye out for fear and other will-effecting type effects from the cleric powers.

Since we're just familiarizing ourselves with the rules, as we become more familar that might change.

Sounds like fun! I never had a problem with building the most feeble mages around. : ) And since carrying capacity is Str. score x 10 you'll be able to lug around a respectable amount of gear without penalty.