D&D 5E Why does Wizards of the Coast hate Wizards?

[Ashrym]

Or, maybe that it shouldn't come at the same time as the second Action Surge? I mean, a fair bit of 5e class feature progression is prettymuch just shuffling to avoid dead levels, I guess. (And, I suppose that, since cantrips scaling wasn't put on any class progression chart - it's by character level - is why it's OK to get your 4th cantrip die at 17th, the same as 9th level spells.)
Really just table aesthetics, past a certain point.

Weapons don't multiply bonuses, Extra Attacks do. I get that it's just not 'quadratic,'... (not even jokingly "quadratic"), nor even geometric, it's still a linear progression.

Like the hypothetical, not exactly joking, Linear Wizard, above, who only ever gets 2 slots that just get higher level, and only ever swaps out spells for leveling, learning new ones only when his INT mod goes up.

I was saying extra attack multiplies damage. Gaining additional slots doesn't multiply anything out, however. Adding slots lets spell casters use spells more often. Concentration, action economy, and lack of auto-scaling outside of DC's prevents any additive or multiplicative effect. Twin spell does on a limited basis and eldritch blast does because it works like extra attack. That's not all spell casters or spell casting.

Extra attack is just a really good ability. That's all.

 

[Tony Vargas]

. Gaining additional slots doesn't multiply anything out, however.

Its beyond mere multiplication, because it's more slots, higher level slots, and a greater variety of spells.

I wasn't joking about the hypothetical 'linear' wizard just geting higher level spells.

All on top of the same, lower base-line linear progression, of cantrips & prificiency, of course.

Extra attack is just a really good ability.

It's straight-up superior to 3e iterative attacks, sure (of course full BAB was straight-up superior to same-proficiency-as-everyone-else), but it's just a robust linear progression of simple single-target DPR.

(Even so, multiple attacks can be problematic if you drop a lot of damage bonuses on one character. In 5e, that tends not to happen unless you opt into feats or give out magic items, so not an issue. If you do open up those wyrm-cans, though, you need to be careful that one multi-attacker doesn't overshadow another less fortunate in available feat choices or items found.)

 

[Hussar]

Let’s not forget that every iterative attack increases your miss chance. If you have a 70% hit chance then three attacks virtually guarantees one miss.

 

[Gladius Legis]

Not to mention that 5e Extra Attack works with full movement, whereas 3e's already vastly inferior iterative attacks only happened with 5 feet of movement.

3e casters had full movement + casting, and fighter-types had almost no movement if they wanted to do any significant damage at all. Talk about backwards.

 

[Hussar]

To be honest though, my beef with cantrips isn't that they overshadow fighter (or fighter types). There's a whole shopping list of things that overshadow fighters before you get to cantrips, so, IMO, it's a pretty minor thing.

No, my beef with cantrips is that they dominate the classes that have them. That's fine for Wizards, Sorcs, and Warlocks. They're supposed to be chucking fire from their hands - nearly every fantasy art piece and Harry Potter both tell me that's true.

But, since when are clerics and druids pew pew casters? Clerics are front line combatants - that's why they have heavy armor and good weapon selection. They aren't supposed to be standing beside the wizard chucking balls of fi... I mean.. radiance. They're supposed to be standing beside the fighter laying the beat down. Not quite as well as the fighter does, but, holding their own in their own right.

However, cantrips for clerics and druids are FAR better than whatever weapon they might want to use. They don't get iterative attacks like fighters, so, their weapon capabilities don't scale. Sure, you might get a few class bonuses to weapon attacks, but, at best those are just keeping up with cantrips.

I find it very off putting that the divine classes get pushed very hard to use cantrips instead of weapon attacks. If we're going to do that, stop giving them good weapons and armor and hit dice and just make them specialized wizards. Far simpler and a lot less contradictory.

 

[Ashrym]

Let’s not forget that every iterative attack increases your miss chance. If you have a 70% hit chance then three attacks virtually guarantees one miss.

It virtually guarantees hitting and doing some damage as opposed to the larger chance the cantrip has of doing no damage. More reliable damage is a perk over cantrips, although save-for-half spells always inflict damage if we want to make that comparison.

If some asked me the benefits of playing a spell caster then cantrip damage isn't going to make that list. They have a lot of benefits, however, so it's pretty hard to say WotC hates wizards.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If some asked me the benefits of playing a spell caster then cantrip damage isn't going to make that list.

It's better than throwing darts.
Excuse me, one dart, because Extra Attacks, not RoF, this ed.

And, y'know, it's displaying magic without having to manage limited resources. It's concept-establishing. Even if it were exactly as bad as throwing a dart, at least it'd be a purple "I'm magic" ribbon.

 

[Ashrym]

It's better than throwing darts.
Excuse me, one dart, because Extra Attacks, not RoF, this ed.

lol, that it is.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

To be honest though, my beef with cantrips isn't that they overshadow fighter (or fighter types). There's a whole shopping list of things that overshadow fighters before you get to cantrips, so, IMO, it's a pretty minor thing.

No, my beef with cantrips is that they dominate the classes that have them. That's fine for Wizards, Sorcs, and Warlocks. They're supposed to be chucking fire from their hands - nearly every fantasy art piece and Harry Potter both tell me that's true.

But, since when are clerics and druids pew pew casters? Clerics are front line combatants - that's why they have heavy armor and good weapon selection. They aren't supposed to be standing beside the wizard chucking balls of fi... I mean.. radiance. They're supposed to be standing beside the fighter laying the beat down. Not quite as well as the fighter does, but, holding their own in their own right.

However, cantrips for clerics and druids are FAR better than whatever weapon they might want to use. They don't get iterative attacks like fighters, so, their weapon capabilities don't scale. Sure, you might get a few class bonuses to weapon attacks, but, at best those are just keeping up with cantrips.

I find it very off putting that the divine classes get pushed very hard to use cantrips instead of weapon attacks. If we're going to do that, stop giving them good weapons and armor and hit dice and just make them specialized wizards. Far simpler and a lot less contradictory.

As much as I’d prefer to see them get less durability, and let Clerics be priests not full caster Paladins, it’d be pretty simple to just...add Melee cantrips to both classes. In fact, the Druid got one. Just needs one that involves a weapon attack.

 

[Hussar]

It virtually guarantees hitting and doing some damage as opposed to the larger chance the cantrip has of doing no damage. More reliable damage is a perk over cantrips, although save-for-half spells always inflict damage if we want to make that comparison.

If some asked me the benefits of playing a spell caster then cantrip damage isn't going to make that list. They have a lot of benefits, however, so it's pretty hard to say WotC hates wizards.

Agreed. But, people were saying that the iterative attacks mean that weapon attacks will consistently deal more damage than cantrips. I'm not sure if the math actually agrees with that since, while yes, you do lose all your damage if you miss with a cantrip, the flip side is, you rarely hit with all your attacks. So, if we're going to say that 3 weapon attacks is equal to a 3dX cantrip, then, well, we do have to take that into account.