Moggthegob
First Post
I was doing some thinking with my gaming group the other night and we decided to look at games mechanics. Elves have faored class wizard but none of us can figure out why, from an in game perspective. All of thier abilities and racial traits lend themselves to being either rangers or rogues.
+2 Dex -2 con - this is a primary reason I will not play elves as anything other than a ranged attacker,that con penalty kills, especially as a wizard. one well placed fireball or ray spell and you are toast, not to mention if something gets past your front line, even for one round. While I recognize this as being generally true of wizards, that con penalty only magnifies the class's weakness. The dex bonus is good for wizards I guess, Armor class and ranged touch/ray spells being somewhat dependent on it, I am just unsure whether it is worth losing constitution.
proficiency with swords and bows- completely wasted on a wizard, and I f you are going to be a gish you are likely going to pick up fighter levels thus making this racial feature useless, other than the somewhat cool imagery of wearing a sword around your belt
Immunity to magic sleep and +2 saving throw bonus vs, enchantment: both of these are good things except sleep spells are a very specific limited amount of spells and the enchantment bonus is nice except that as a wizard you already havea high will save so while its nice it is not as useful as it would be on say a rogue or ranger with a poor will save.and certainly not as useful as say + 2 to saves vs. poison or disease for a wizard with a low constitution( as forced by his elven penalty)
Low light vision- nice but hardly ever bcomes up, at least for me I cannot remember the last time a dm busted out the shadowy illumination rules or that lowlight vision came up. Darkvision is a horse of a different color but in my experience lowlight vision doesnt come up that much and even when it does its nto the wizard thats worried about it, its the rogue
+ 2 bonus to search spot and listen checks and an automatic search check to find secret doors- not useful for a wizard at all
so it just seems to me like everything they have is lending itself to being a ranger or a rogue. I guess this okay, as everyone knows elves are thieving weasels
. and the ability to be good rangers does lend itself to thier flavor well but i dunno i guessi think of elves as being good wizards and they just arent.
by comparison, gnomes and dwarves make much better wizards. The dwarf part kind of confuses me flavorwise as I recall dawrves being magic-phobic, but the gnomes make sense. They also do not have anything that lends to them being wizards in alot of thier abilities( the attack bonus vs. goblins and kobolds and the AC bonus vs Giants.
the illusion bonus at least gives them a flavorful reason for being a society of wizards and sorcerers and thier small size gives them all the benefits of having a dex bonus aside from +1 to reflex saves
and +2 to craft alchemy also lends itself to being a wizard, as you would expect them to be bewers of potions asnd other scholarl pursuits and his spell-likes are awesome for a sorceror but a decent boon for wizards as well.
they have favored class bard which really sucks becus i mean honeslt who wants to be a bard
Then of course humans with thier extra feat and skills are also incredible choice for wizards and allow me to in terms of rules as written make the follow list of suitableness to be a wizard:
1) Human
1.) Dwarf( they are naturally strong where wizards are naturally weak and give up almost nothing. Plus stonecunning + Knowledge skills = awesome and just as good as the ability to detect secret doors only better. Th appraise bonus fits well flavorfully for wizards, + 2 bonus on saves vs spells and spell-likes is incredible)
3.) Gnomes
4.) Elves
5.) halflings- just becus I couldnt bear to put another race ahead of elves -tho it really is a toss up
6.) Half-elves
7.) Half-orc
So how do you fix elves as wizards- even grey elves with their int bonus do not really seem to do the trick becus of how stacked against them rest of thier abilities are
+2 Dex -2 con - this is a primary reason I will not play elves as anything other than a ranged attacker,that con penalty kills, especially as a wizard. one well placed fireball or ray spell and you are toast, not to mention if something gets past your front line, even for one round. While I recognize this as being generally true of wizards, that con penalty only magnifies the class's weakness. The dex bonus is good for wizards I guess, Armor class and ranged touch/ray spells being somewhat dependent on it, I am just unsure whether it is worth losing constitution.
proficiency with swords and bows- completely wasted on a wizard, and I f you are going to be a gish you are likely going to pick up fighter levels thus making this racial feature useless, other than the somewhat cool imagery of wearing a sword around your belt
Immunity to magic sleep and +2 saving throw bonus vs, enchantment: both of these are good things except sleep spells are a very specific limited amount of spells and the enchantment bonus is nice except that as a wizard you already havea high will save so while its nice it is not as useful as it would be on say a rogue or ranger with a poor will save.and certainly not as useful as say + 2 to saves vs. poison or disease for a wizard with a low constitution( as forced by his elven penalty)
Low light vision- nice but hardly ever bcomes up, at least for me I cannot remember the last time a dm busted out the shadowy illumination rules or that lowlight vision came up. Darkvision is a horse of a different color but in my experience lowlight vision doesnt come up that much and even when it does its nto the wizard thats worried about it, its the rogue
+ 2 bonus to search spot and listen checks and an automatic search check to find secret doors- not useful for a wizard at all
so it just seems to me like everything they have is lending itself to being a ranger or a rogue. I guess this okay, as everyone knows elves are thieving weasels
. and the ability to be good rangers does lend itself to thier flavor well but i dunno i guessi think of elves as being good wizards and they just arent.by comparison, gnomes and dwarves make much better wizards. The dwarf part kind of confuses me flavorwise as I recall dawrves being magic-phobic, but the gnomes make sense. They also do not have anything that lends to them being wizards in alot of thier abilities( the attack bonus vs. goblins and kobolds and the AC bonus vs Giants.
the illusion bonus at least gives them a flavorful reason for being a society of wizards and sorcerers and thier small size gives them all the benefits of having a dex bonus aside from +1 to reflex saves
and +2 to craft alchemy also lends itself to being a wizard, as you would expect them to be bewers of potions asnd other scholarl pursuits and his spell-likes are awesome for a sorceror but a decent boon for wizards as well.
they have favored class bard which really sucks becus i mean honeslt who wants to be a bard
Then of course humans with thier extra feat and skills are also incredible choice for wizards and allow me to in terms of rules as written make the follow list of suitableness to be a wizard:
1) Human
1.) Dwarf( they are naturally strong where wizards are naturally weak and give up almost nothing. Plus stonecunning + Knowledge skills = awesome and just as good as the ability to detect secret doors only better. Th appraise bonus fits well flavorfully for wizards, + 2 bonus on saves vs spells and spell-likes is incredible)
3.) Gnomes
4.) Elves
5.) halflings- just becus I couldnt bear to put another race ahead of elves -tho it really is a toss up
6.) Half-elves
7.) Half-orc
So how do you fix elves as wizards- even grey elves with their int bonus do not really seem to do the trick becus of how stacked against them rest of thier abilities are
