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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6657984" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, and to me it is a complete backsliding. I had absolutely no problems with the 4e wizard. I have no idea why people call it 'neutered'. The classic D&D wizard was an example of vastly too broad class design. It stepped all over every other character at each and every turn, and the little bit that was done to tone down its ridiculously over broad capabilities was like a bandaide applied to a sucking chest wound, and even the bandaide fell off in 3e.Now comes the 5e wizard, which in many respects even adds to the problems! Instead of being forced to at least pre-declare which of the vast array of wondrous class features you were going to pick from today you now get to spam the most appropriate one or two again and again, and even amp them up to better handle higher level situations if you want. Beyond that you can cast many key utility spells over and over as rituals without even needing to select them! I grant you, SOME of the spells are more limited in certain ways, but overall a 5e wizard IMHO is mostly a pretty nice power boost from a 2e wizard, which was already kinda game-breaking.I mean really, the 4e wizard had unlimited rituals (albeit they weren't all free to cast, but they covered a HUGE range of capabilities) and a pretty nice selection of powers, many of which were pretty handy outside combat situations (and a slew of which were utility powers that were often the equal of any 5e wizard's utilities). I will agree on one point. The original Vancian AD&D wizard's powers are more straightforwardly tied to fiction and each edition of the game up until 4e went out of its way to establish the nature of that fiction (it varied a bit across editions). 4e's wizard, while it does have a bunch of fluff, doesn't get its mechanics mapped in such an explicit way to a specific fictional interpretation. In 1e you have a book, a memorization procedure, and casting spells causes them to be forgotten. In 4e only a few spells can only be cast once, the book's mechanics don't exactly match up with 'a library of spells', and there's no attempt to explain in concrete terms how the process of memorizing and casting works narratively. If you interpreted it roughly like 1e does, at least for daily powers, you COULD find that the mechanics didn't quite support you, if you say decided to retrain one of those powers. Encounter spells didn't fit well at all with the central idea of Vancian magic, though at-wills could be passed off pretty easily (as were cantrips in 5e).</blockquote>

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