Why are wizards always getting nerfed?

[mmu1]

Case study, say a 12th level Wiz using fireball on 12th-level Ftr (with 14 Con). 1st Edition: damage 12d6 (avg. 42, note no upward limit on dice in 1st Ed.) versus Ftr average 68 hp = 62% of Ftr hp. 3rd Edition: damage 10d6 (avg. 35) versus Ftr average 113 hp = 31% of Ftr hp. That's reduced the effective damage by exactly half, and this is repeated all up-and-down the line for every one of the wizard's damaging spells. Meanwhile, say, the starting one-handed bastard sword damage for a 1st-level fighter has doubled from 3.5 to 7.5 points on average. Total damage by proportion is, in very broad terms, that the wizard has had his output about quartered compared to the fighter from 1st-3rd edition. There's very little case to be made that the wizard has gotten anything but much weaker from previous editions.

In short, the hugely improved ability bonuses and hit points for all classes, with wizard spell effects overall capped or reduced, is much, much more important than the entire list of minor benefits that was posted above.

Wanna do a case study on how that 12th level fighter would have fared against a spell with a Will save then and now? Let's make him a Dwarven fighter with high Con, to make this as fair and unbiased as possible.

Who cares about how much damage Fireball does? The whole spell system changed.

 

[green slime]

Both, of course. The fighter gains no benefit to attacking you even if such an act does distract you, not that looking for an invisible opponent is a distraction: Since the fighter lacks any capability to actually inflict significantly more damage than anyone else of his corresponding stats and armament, unless you've caught him at an iterative attack breakpoint, he represents a hardened target with average to only slightly above-average threat. Rogues, on the other hand, represent an EXTREME level of threat if ignored, and clerics run pretty high on the list, too. Both are softer, yet more threatening targets which rate a higher priority. Fighter isn't liable to go down no matter how much punishment you can pile on him on short notice, anyway. No reasonable amount of beating is going to take him out, so you're best off waiting for your own side to bust out with a helpful save-or-die on him, whereupon he pretty much automatically fails and becomes either already dead, or a much more attractive target for CdG.

The experience of the rogues in our game is that if they get too close to the action, they get whacked once and have to flee to get patched up. So they might get in to flank once... but then they have been burnt. They have neither the hp or armour to get involved. Clerics on the other hand are self-sustaining in that a well-played cleric can stay standing for some time in the combat arena, due to their excellent armour and healing abilities.

The Fighters go down all the time to copious amounts of damage being dealt to them by monsters. Several monsters deal readily 70 hp damage with a full round attack. That is a considerable part of any character's hp total, no matter what the level.

In order to attack the soft targets, they must be seen first. But these "soft" targets are the very ones most likely to be hidden, invisible, ethereal, so what is left to attack but the fighters? It is part of the dynamic of the game. Not every fight contains spell-casting humanoid opponents able to counter these special effects.

 

[Darklone]

I just have to take a look at my group where noone wants to play a fighter anymore...

Could someone dig out some old threads where someone whines about how his fighter always dies?

 

[Bauglir]

Firstly I'd like to mention that I don't think SR is AC for spells. That's saves. A better analogy for SR might be incorporeality - it's a second miss chance that sits on top of AC..

Now SR to me represents the underlying flaw in the arcane spellcaster, which makes their placement within a group structure such a difficult thing to balance. Spellcasters' power is (as has been mentioned) far too all or nothing. Either the spell lands and is devastating, or it fails and the wizard does nothing at all for that entire round. DMs are unhappy about spells devastating their carefully planned encounters and so we find that in many cases the spells are far more likely to simply fail. This is reflected in the system through high saves and SR, and it leads to an 'arms race' between the wizard player and the DM, where the player starts picking up spell focus (3.0), archmage, red wizard levels, etc. to raise the DCs of his spells, and the DM in turn boosts the NPCs' resistances to these effects. Blaster spells are an option that allow a partial success (ie half damage on a successful save) but blaster spells have been rendered a less attractive choice by the disproprtionate increase in hps as has been detailed in this thread. At higher levels energy resistances make this even worse. At epic levels we have the ring of universal elemental immunity....

Now compare this to the challenges the fighter faces. A fighter is rarely likely to miss with their primary attack, and even if they do they still have other attacks to make (iterative, TWF, RS etc). Now while the fighter, if they manage to apply their full potential is (arguably) less devastating than a wizard, they will almost always be making some contribution to the encounter. Even if all their attacks fail due to bad rolls, they will still threaten an area of the battlefield, restricting enemy movements. SR as we know is an all or nothing mechanic. DR on the other hand is an 'all or partial' mechanic. If a fighter encounters a DR they cannot penetrate they can at least power through it doing some of their damage, and once again they provide battlefield control, and of course 'meat shield' support. Someone has to take the beating the monster deals out, and the fighter type is best suited to this role.

Incorporeal creatures are an all-or-nothing mechanic for fighters but at least ghost touch weapons go some way to counter this (note that the wizard has no such counter to SR). Also, particularly at high levels, incorporeality is not nearly as common as SR...

So while you could (if you wanted to) weaken a fighter so they do less, if you attempt to reduce the wizard's power, all you can really do is push them over the cliff from all to nothing, and that's not a great option.

The solution IMO is not to attack the wizard class, but to try and deal with the underlying problem of the all or nothing mechanic on which the wizard must rely. Making the blaster concept more attractive would be a step in the right direction for this. The change to disintegrate in 3.5e, as well as the introduction of the new ray spells (as well as the various no-save debuffs) are a good start on this, but I feel that more needs to be done.

 

[gfunk]

I just have to take a look at my group where noone wants to play a fighter anymore...

Could someone dig out some old threads where someone whines about how his fighter always dies?

Your wish is my command,

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41479

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Wanna do a case study on how that 12th level fighter would have fared against a spell with a Will save then and now? Let's make him a Dwarven fighter with high Con, to make this as fair and unbiased as possible.

12th level Fighter. 4 (base Will) + 2 (12 Wis + 2 enhancement item) + 2 (Iron Will feat) +3 (Cloak of Resistance +3) = +10 Will.

A 12th level Wizard might cast Hold Monster at 10 + 5 (spell level) + 6 (~23 Int) = DC 21 for the spell.

50% chance of saving for the Fighter getting targetted on his weak save. If it is a Dwarf, it becomes 60%. Note that the same Dwarf if 90% likely to fend off a similar Fort based spell. He is practically immune to many Refl spells on hit points alone.

Note that some CR ~12 monsters have better Will saves than our Fighter friend, especially intelligent item using ones.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Your wish is my command,

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41479

Nice thread, but that was one person who had that problem and 90% people pointing out that the 3.0 Wizard was already borderline weak. And you wonder why people think the 3.5 Wizards got the shaft. As for why they got nerfed this time aroung can we say Andy Collins house rules.

 

[Havoc]

My 2 cents (or pennies)

I also find that wizards and sorcerers should be more powerfull, even if it means "unbalancing" the classes.
Balance is, however, an ideal never to be reached, depending on the campaign and the GM; how do more skill points balance with more BAB, for instance? In a combat heavy game, a high BAB is "unbalancing" but worth nothing in a game centered on diplomacy and social dealings.
Hum, that was my rant about balance.
Anyway, if someone feels that wizards and sorcerers are nerfed, then these classes can always be modified; for example, I always found it hard to swallow that, stats and feats nonwhistanding, a 1st level spell cast by a 20th lvl wizard is no harder to resist than when cast by a 1st lvl.
My own fix is to compute the dc to resist differently: 10+half caster level+stat mod.
Such a rule "fix", however, do not suffice to give the spellcaster that aura of mystery and power that they have in litterature; especially when the power of the spellcaster is even less, like in the Midnight setting for instance, it becomes extremely hard to simulate the aura spellcasters from litterature have, even though d&d wizards and sorcerers versatility exceed these available to their litteray counterparts.

 

[LordAO]

Why are Wizards always getting nerfed?

Because the people who make D&D have a shameless bias towards Clerics.

 

[mmu1]

12th level Fighter. 4 (base Will) + 2 (12 Wis + 2 enhancement item) + 2 (Iron Will feat) +3 (Cloak of Resistance +3) = +10 Will.

A 12th level Wizard might cast Hold Monster at 10 + 5 (spell level) + 6 (~23 Int) = DC 21 for the spell.

50% chance of saving for the Fighter getting targetted on his weak save. If it is a Dwarf, it becomes 60%. Note that the same Dwarf if 90% likely to fend off a similar Fort based spell. He is practically immune to many Refl spells on hit points alone.

Note that some CR ~12 monsters have better Will saves than our Fighter friend, especially intelligent item using ones.

Yeah, thanks... Unfortunately, you seem to have missed the point of my post, or at least forgot to compare this guy with a 12th level 2nd edition Dwarven fighter with 14+ Con and a ring of protection +2 who saves vs. spells on a 4+.

Strangely enough, the fighter in your example also has a Wisdom boosting item and Iron Will, while the wizard doesn't even have Spell Focus.

It proves my point about the worth of thse "wizards got nerfed" comparisons, though...