Wand Wizards

[evilbob]

So from a strictly rules perspective and not from a ability utility perspective, you think that the rules allow each player to use his Standard Action in the middle of his Move Action, and move before and after he attacks using the same original Move Action?

No, of course not.

Your rules interpretation is that actions which are not Opportunity Actions and not Interrupt Actions can be used mid-other actions.

Nope, that's not my interpretation.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the fundamental problem is that WotC changed course in midstream. From what I can see the original interpretation of the rules was supposed to be that a free action was essentially like an opportunity action which could be used at any time as opposed to actual opportunity actions, which have a trigger of some kind. And the difference between these and interrupts was supposed to be that an interrupt actually COULD be used during another action, assuming its triggering conditions were met.

Unfortunately they weren't very good at sorting out exactly what should be which and there turn out to be a bunch of corner cases and overlooked or awkward problems with the whole concept. Thus they obviously had to decree that an OA could happen DURING another action, a move, otherwise it was pretty much worthless. They also seem to have rather schizophrenically defined both 'free action' and 'no action' and never really clearly differentiated THOSE either. Then came along the fundamental worthlessness of things like the wand, orb, and staff feature actions unless THEY could also be in essence interrupts. It could probably all in theory be sorted out, if they wanted to issue 500 errata or something.

I think the long and short of it is that there are actions which need to be able to happen during other actions in order to make sense or be useful. Whatever they happen to be called it appears that the WotC line at this point is basically "you can take these actions during other actions". That doesn't extend to things like interrupting your move action to take your standard action, there is just no justification for that. Sure, it might be NICE, but it isn't the only way to sort out things, it would just be giving players new freebie capabilities, whereas the other type of rules reinterpretation is needed to make the rules WORK as intended.

Perhaps some day we'll get a 4.5e that fixes all this kind of thing, but until then it seems best to just relax the rules lawyering function a bit and work with it. Implement feature actions should be interpreted to operate in an interrupting manner. Of course if you find a situation where that can be abused, then just forbid that abuse by house rule. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that this is exactly what you are going to find happening in 'official' 4e events too.

 

[KarinsDad]

No, of course not.

Nope, that's not my interpretation.

So, you agree that RAW does not support actions (outside of OA or Interrupts) that can be used mid-other actions unless the action states that it can (like the Free Action Elven Accuracy)?

That was my only point. That RAW does not support using Wand of Accuracy mid-attack. I agree it should be done that way or WoA is lame, but I did not participate in a bizillion discussions on this and was going by RAW.

So going by RAW, Wand Wizards are weaker than the other two. Going by allowing WoA after the attack roll or even after the DM indicates whether WoA would work or not, it's still not that impressive.

Getting back to the OP's question, that's still less than one extra successful hit per encounter since there will still be encounters where it is not used.

If the Wizard attacks 15 times (i.e. 15 attack rolls, some of them probably area effect) in an encounter and his Dex bonus is +2, that's a 20.5% chance even with knowing exactly whether WoA works or not, that it cannot be used that encounter. At high levels with maybe a +5, this same 15 attacks results in almost a 99% chance that it can be used. But, this too is not guaranteed. The Wizard might not use it against a weaker foe, saving it for a greater foe or saving it for a Daily power and it might still never get used.

The real issue is whether it works when the Wizard needs it to work. Sure, it will damage a foe that would not have been damaged almost once per encounter. But, what if that is not the Daily Attack power? A few extra points of damage and possibly some control against a random foe (random being determined by whether it can work or not, the player does not decide, the dice decide) compared to an Orb Wizard where the Orb Wizard really decides whether the foe is worth using his Orb Power against (sure, he has to wait for a hit, but there are many hits in an encounter compared to just a few hits that WoA might work on). WoA still seems less useful.

 

[evilbob]

So, you agree

Nope.

I do agree that one good way to help fix the wand ability could be to houserule it so that it applies to every roll on one attack, as opposed to just a single roll. That would make it much more competitive, but honestly I'm still not sure I'd ever take it.

 

[KarinsDad]

Perhaps some day we'll get a 4.5e that fixes all this kind of thing

Doubtful.

It is surprising the sheer level of detail in the 4E rules in order to make adjudication unambiguous. They really did a fairly decent job of it. But, I doubt we will ever see totally unambiguous rules set. It's a rules interaction explosion problem. One cannot totally match each sentence for each rule with each other sentence for every other rule. Case in point, BVD totally ignored the minion rules.

 

[KarinsDad]

I do agree that one good way to help fix the wand ability could be to houserule it so that it applies to every roll on one attack, as opposed to just a single roll. That would make it much more competitive, but honestly I'm still not sure I'd ever take it.

That opens up a new can of worms.

Does the Wizard get to determine to use it after he rolls all of the to hit rolls? After the first to hit roll? After the damage roll?

 

[Storminator]

As the cleric, I'd rather we had a wand wizard than a staff wizard.

Our wizard is pretty durable. He's never really been in danger of going down for good. We've got a fighter to keep enemies off him, a sword mage to pop him out of danger, and I can heal him up pretty quick.

But there's lots of times we could use an extra hit.

Of course, it's not my character at risk...

PS

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, that is the main problem with 'range only' type characters that are supposed to avoid ever getting hit, they cannot take up their share of the damage being done to the party. In previous editions most of the reserve hit points of the party resided in the cleric, and he could dish them out to where they were needed. In 4e that is no longer the case, thus it is really imperative that all the party members take their turns getting in the way of enemy attacks if the party is going to maximize its chances of success. This actually militates AGAINST the wand wizard. The staff wizard at least has a bit more inherent AC, so he's going to be more able to move up and take his medicine. He's also got a weapon naturally to hand if he needs to melee. At worst at least he's capable of delivering an OA, while the wand wizard will need to have a weapon in his off hand to do that, and dagger is inferior to staff.

If you actually look at what the best tactics in general are going to be, especially at lower levels, once the wizard has burned his really useful spells he is often going to help the party more by acting as a flanker and "damage absorber" than by the marginal utility of using weak at-will attacks. He can still fire off spells if he really needs to and either take an OA to do it or shift away, etc.

The same issue presents itself with warlocks or some laser cleric builds. Though at least the clerics have the available weapon/armor proficiencies to be more credible when they do mix it up.