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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5884187" data-attributes="member: 87792">And I'm saying that this isn't true. At 9th level or so they have to change the game and give the fighter a castle and followers simply because the wizard is too powerful and versatile. Even in 1e. And Gary has gone on record saying he made the apparently overpowered Unearthed Arcana classes like the Cavalier to try to balance them with casters. (Or more specifically he agreed with this when Raven Crowking stated it as his reason).  Me too.  The majority of the time, no they aren't. They aren't the 6 second re-writing of reality with trivial cost that old spells were. But with a creative player checking his ritual list they can be extremely useful. As a player I've avoided encounters and disrupted and forced a re-write of sessions using rituals. And as a DM I've had it done to me. But what this took was actual genuine creativity rather than the caster's fingers and using a spell for exactly what they are designed for. To me that's creativity far more than digging through your toolbox to find exactly the right tool.  I'm going to question your assertion. 4e has many of the spells on that list. Grease (and yes it doesn't give all the ramifications any more than B/X), several variants on Fly, and Wall of Force. And a decent although even less powerful silent image encounter spell (which is just as well as I broke silent image - although at least it wasn't Phantasmal Force). I'm pretty sure Fire Trap is a ritual. Which means that the only spells I can't think of an analogy for are reduce person and telekinetic sphere - and the latter is an 8th level spell.  Necromancy I agree with. However there is no orthodox build that says "you'll have a few watered-down tricks in combat". Every build that's officially supported (and this emphatically includes Illusionists and Enchanters - both in Essentials by name) is fully combat capable. And there are enough utility powers for both to be effective. That said the Mage presented in Essentials is a vastly superior implementation of the wizard concept to the Wizard presented in the PHB.  The only two spells on the list you presented that are left, however, are Delayed Blast Fireball, and Fire Trap. The rest are (with the arguable exception of Wall of Force) definitely top half.  As long as you allow rituals to build things for later (and sometimes shape the world), you can do every single one of those things in 4e. You have the flexibility you crave. You just don't have the raw power.  And the 3e caster was broken sideways. Silent Image is not just abusable but trivially so - think of the effect of a one-way fog cloud. But the basic illusion power you're looking for is presented in HoFK (i.e. the new replacement for the PHB) and is a second level encounter power, IIRC taking a minor action.  Within one theme and a set power level. "Can re-write reality however he wants" is a theme.  1e and 2e were barely passable to the point that EGG himself deliberately raised the power of non-casters. And wanted to break the wizard into pieces. Calling them "very good" is taking things far too far. 4e, especially post-essentials is much much better at this.  And that's one reason I believe Vancian should die. Either that or the flexibility and customisation of all non-casters needs to be massively raised.  The prosecution rests.  There's a difference between "figuring your way around" and "snapping your fingers and making the challenges irrelevant using things trivially presented to them by the game".  Me too. I like backlash systems like WFRP 2e and WFRP 3e where casting a spell is always a risk - just not a catastrophic one.  Yup. To me pre-4e D&D has always been about casters and sidekicks - just the pagecount and level of detail is enough to show this. And I don't think most people intentionally sign up to play sidekicks in D&D. In Ars Magica this isn't a problem as the game tells you what you are getting in for. But nowhere in D&D does it explicitely say that much more time, care, attention, and agency is given by the rules of the game to the players of spellcasters.  Agreed. The encounter model of D&D works in a dungeon. But precious few environments are as dangerous as the artificial nature of an adventuring dungeon. Having people preparing for the night and expecting a ninja assault because they've only had three major fights for their life in one day to me breaks settings. You can't run anything Lord of the Rings-esque outside Moria, Mordor, and the big battles. Any sane world just isn't that dangerous. Of course this is a problem with the recovery rate rather than the parts of casting that are called Vancian and a lot gets fixed if wizards only get to recover their spells in a lab or library, or priests in a temple.  If you need a few days of solid preparation you keep all the advantages of vancian casting while destroying this problem,</blockquote>

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