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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6643768" data-attributes="member: 6790260">You know, I'm seeing a bit of a disconnect here.On the one hand, the Fighter is responsible for being unable to contribute to combat if she doesn't intentionally pick up optional resources and cleverly leverage every universal (albeit more frequent) element she has. On the other, the Wizard (or other caster, but it's most extreme with the Wizard) is not, and in fact is expected to severely pigeonhole himself with spells that are only useful specifically in his area of expertise and nowhere else. He's also supposed to go full-bore, completely preparing for the day before he's even left the bedroom/tent.One of these things is not like the other. Particularly because non-combat cantrips get almost no attention either, despite the fact that I've had people specifically argue that it is completely normal, even common, for casters to intentionally avoid taking a single offensive spell or cantrip.At 2nd level, a Wizard has eight spells known (you get six 1st-level spells from Wiz 1, and an additional two spells of up to the highest spell slot you have for every level thereafter.) The list for first-level spells is full of nice non-combat goodies, and (somewhat to my surprise, actually) doesn't contain THAT many combat spells. If you limit it only to spells which cause damage, you're going to run out of possible spells before you run out of spells you can learn. That is, the list of "damage-dealing spells" appears to be Burning Hands, Chromatic Orb, Magic Missile, Ray of Sickness, Thunderwave, and Witch Bolt--and several of these would be somewhat redundant, e.g. Magic Missile, Ray of Sickness, and Witch Bolt all achieve pretty similar ends so it would be an odd choice to take all three. Just grabbing Chromatic Orb (which lets you choose a damage type, making it a VERY flexible combat spell) and Magic Missile, and *maybe* Thunderwave, should be enough to sate any Evoker, and there's only a couple defensive spells too (Shield and Mage Armor). Plus, Mage Armor and Witch Bolt are frequently derided as not being worth the slot to cast them, though the former becomes better...once your 1st-level slots aren't needed for anything but utility!So even with a well-equipped combat mage (Chromatic Orb, *one* of Magic Missile/Ray of Sickness/Burning Hands, Thunderwave, Shield, Mage Armor), we're still left with one spell to learn just from the initial 6, and we get two more after that. A Wizard genuinely trying to be able to do a little of everything could easily have gone Chrom Orb, MM, Mage Armor, Shield, and then pick up *four* non-combat spells, presumably picking spells that don't all cover very similar situations, e.g. not picking only spells which apply to physical challenges, but say Jump, Tenser's Floating Disk, Find Familiar, and Disguise Self ~or~ Charm Person. This makes a Wizard who can majorly contribute to (say) 3 combats, two physical challenges, and a social interaction issue all with spells. And because you don't have to prepare Find Familiar once you've got the familiar, this Wizard almost CAN cast every single one of these spells--7 spells, able to prepare 5 of them. Maybe prepare Chrom Orb, Disk, Shield, and Disguise Self, and leave the fifth slot open to adapt to unforseen circumstances.Oh, and this Wizard also has 3 cantrips (or four, if the right kind of elf). Which could easily be Fire Bolt, Prestidigitation, and Mage Hand--giving an incredible amount of utility while providing a solid, reliable damage source (that will scale with level to out-do first-level spells, eventually). The enormous potential of the non-combat cantrips always seems to get lost in this debate, and I'm not really sure why.So, I ask you: why is it okay to blame the Fighter for not picking up feats, but it's not okay to blame the Wizard for failing to learn useful non-combat spells? And that doesn't even get into the Cleric and Druid, who can prepare anything on their class list, in addition to having 2 free prepared spells for every odd spell level they can cast (+2 to +10 prepared spells). (I will note, however, that the Bard, Sorcerer, and Warlock aren't quite as well-off; there's a reason I haven't mentioned them, because their varyingly-limited spell selection does make it harder to pull this off, though Warlock in particular has ways to get around this.)</blockquote>

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