Wizard Spellcasting vs. Clerical Spellcasting...which is better?

[green slime]

Hi green slime mate!



Some interesting points there. Incidently would I be right in guessing that your party has more than one Sorceror/Wizard in the party?

I am also curious how you would outline the two types of spellcasting contrasted by spell school (the idea I previously postulated)?

Actually the party composition is:

1 Paladin
1 Fighter
1 Barbarian/Fighter/Psychic Warrior/Rogue (Yes, the guy is a munchkin)
2 Clerics
1 Rogue/Fighter (archer)
1 Wizard

So they actually need 2 clerics just to keep up with all the healing. The wizard doesn't do much except when absolutely neccessary. I don't think he has ever run out of spells. Being a gnome with 3.0 Toad he has enough hp to survive a sneak attack.

Breaking the spellcasting down by school is an interesting question, but is somewhat irrelevant for the question at hand. As the schools themselves are not on par with each other, nor can they ever be, as certain schools provide more utility, others more bang. Comparing then the access granted by each class, and the relative importance of each school for each, will just include more personal bias not less, IMO.

The reason clerics on a whole are "more powerful" isn't the fact that they can overshadow a fighter in a single combat (they can't do a repeat performance), nor that they have the largest unhindered spell selection (full access + Domains), it is the fact that they are the most likely to survive. Their pure survivability. Their flexibility if well played. They can melee with the fighter (for a short while), they can fill the role of artillery dude together with the wizard (for a shot while).

They are hindered in comparision to the wizard by a lack of feat selection, lack of skills (tend to have lower Int), and slightly weaker spells. They are hindered compared to the fighter by a lack of BAB, lack of stat focus, lack of decent weaponry, and the need to spend their class ability on keeping everyone's head above the -10 mark.

Look over their most powerful attack spells at 1st level:
1st:
Bane, (Will negates, 50 ft. -1 to hit and saves)
Command, (Will negates, Close range, opponent loses two rounds if they flee)
Divine Favour, (personal, +1/3 levels to attack and dam, 1 min)
Doom, (Will negates, Shaken, 1 min/level)
Inflict Light Wounds, (melee touch attack, Will half (1d8(+1/level)))


Compare to
Grease, (Reflex save, forces Balance checks, Close range, 1 round/level)
True Strike, (personal, +20 to one attack roll)
Charm Person, (Will negates, Close range, 1 hour/level)
Sleep, (Will negates, Medium range, 1 minute/level)
Burning Hands, (Reflex half, 1d4/2 levels)
Magic Missile, (No save, 1d4+1/((level+1)/2))
Shocking Grasp (touch attack, NO save, 1d6/level)
Colour Spray, (15ft Cone, Will negates, Stunned 1 round or worse)
Cause Fear, (Close range, Will partial, shaken or worse)
Chill Touch, (melee touch attacks, Fortitude partial, 1d6 damage, 1 Str)
Ray of Enfeeblement, (ranged touch attack, NO save, 1d6Str damage, +1/two caster levels, 1 min/level)
Enlarge Person, (+2 Str, -2 Dex, double size, -1 to hit and AC)

Magic Weapon is on both lists.

In duration, range, variety of saves required,the wizard has more and better choices available. In short, the ease at which the focal point of the battle can be affected to the favour of the party, the wizard wins hands down.

Review the 5th level "offensive" Spell list:
Clerics have:
Greater Command,
Disrupting Weapon,
Flame Strike,
Mass Inflict Light Wounds,
Insect Plague,
Plane Shift,
Righteous Might,
Slay Living,

And the Wizards have:
Cloudkill,
Dominate Person,
Feeblemind,
Hold Monster,
Cone of Cold,
Interposing Hand
Shadow Evocation,
Mind Fog,
Blight,
Magic Jar,
Waves of Fatigue,
Baleful Polymorph,
Transmute Rock to Mud

And we still see a greater variety of effects, without considering the extra metamagical feats available to the wizard, if they so choose.

I could do this for all the spell levels, but the very thought of doing so numbs my mind with the tediousness of the task.

Of course the wizard spells are better/more powerful, and can attend to a greater variety of problems/threats/dangers with their spells, because that is basically all that the arcanist can do.

 

[WizarDru]

Am I that transparent.

No, no. Well, OK, yes.

Presumably the enabling/enacting difference is governed through their choice of spells.

If you mean that they are forced into that role by their available selection of spells, then I would agree with that, in part. If you mean that it's a result of choices on the part of the cleric players, I would disagree.

But is this deficit merely perceived or tangible I wonder?

Well, it's based on WotC's fairly extensive playtesting and market research for 3.0, so I'd assume it to be somewhat substantiated, at worst. I know that 'being forced to play the cleric' is something I've heard bandied about more than once, IME.

Is Elminster sexier than Fzoul Chembryl?

Since I'm not familiar with the latter, I couldn't say...but the fact that I, as a non-FR fan, only know the former name and not the latter should be fairly telling in and off itself. I can name powerful wizards from virtually every D&D setting...but I couldn't tell you the names of the most powerful clerics.

So we have to analyze which spells are enablers and which are enacters. In fact we could perhaps do this by spell school could we not?

What do you think?

I think that analysis is too simple and ignores too many proximate factors, which will skew all your numbers, and defeat what you're trying to do.

Let's take a quick analysis of 1st level spells, for a start.
Cleric: 24+2 Spells Wizard: 40 spells

Of these spells (ignore domain spells for a moment), we have 6 duplicates: Cause Fear, Detect Undead, Endure Elements, Magic Weapon, Obscurring Mist and Summon Monster I. The spells Curse Water and Bless Water are diametrically opposed, so technically you could say 23+2 spells. This trend continues at higher levels.

Let's examine the spells the cleric has:
Bless and Doom are protective enchantments that offer much to the group, but little to the individual. Useful to have around, but little personal glory or thrills to be had from them.
Hide from Undead and Sanctuary are purely defensive spells that offer limited value beyond hiding.
Protection from Evil/Good/Chaos/Law, Endure Elements, Divine Favor, Entropic Shield, Obscurring Mist, Shield of Faith are all excellent buffs...but also purely defensive.
Here we are, halfway through the list and we haven't encounterd a single non-protective or offensive spell.
Next up: curatives. Cure Light Wounds and Remove Fear.
Then, item buffs: Magic Stone, Magic Weapon. Both good, but the first is rarely used, and the second is equally likely to go to the main melee character as the cleric.
Now, divinations: Detect Undead, Deathwatch, Detect Evil/Good/Chaos/Law are all useful, but fairly limited in scope and applications, and usually only used when a situation is known about in advance.
Comprehend Languages and Bless/Cure Water are very limited utility spells, but there really all the cleric has.

Now we're 21 spells in, and we're still looking at passive spells. What remains? The 'big four' of offensive spells for our poor cleric:
Cause Fear, Command, Inflict Wounds and Summon Monster I. The first is merely a 'run away' spell, essentially an agressive Sanctuary. Command is even more limited in scope, but gives more options in controlling the enemy. Inflict Wounds is our only direct damage spell...and it requries a ranged touch attack, meaning you're putting yourself in danger to do it. Lastly, we have summon monster I, a great spell that lasts very little time and requires a full-round action.

Compare this with the varied and interesting list the sor/wiz gets to choose from, and you'll immediately see the difference. There's the classic Magic Missle: it never misses, and can be delivered at range...and gets better over time. Inflict doesn't scale nearly as well. A 5th level MM is 3 missles doing 1d4+1 (avg. 10.5 damage), while Inflict is still doing 1d8+5 (avg. 9.5) and requires an attack roll. At 11th level, MM is doing an average of 17.5 damage, while Inflict is still only doing 9.5....and MM can be set at up to 5 targets at once, if they're close together.

Compare Command with Color Spray, Shield of Faith with Shield or Bless Water with Unseen Servant.

The wizard has more utility, more selection and more direct interaction spells. In actual play, he has more to do than the cleric, who spends time preparing, surviving and gathering limited information. And all of this assumes he doesn't suffer under certain restricitions that some dieties require, such as no healing for clerics of Wee Jas, for example. The cleric is forced into either the role of the selfish and self-interested self-buffer or the party power-up guy, who keeps the party running like a stage manager does a play, but who doesn't actually get to perform.

It's not merely the colleges that the cleric gets to choose from, it's the nature of the spells within those colleges. The cleric's spells are geared towards a certain purpose, and that effects how he actually plays in the game proper.

 

[Thanee]

But is this versatility simply due to a greater number of typically available spells (approx. 369 vs. 220) or are arcane spells inherantly just 'better'?

Depends. Clerics have better spells in some areas (most notably healing and protection against certain effects), but Wizards have better spells (and more choice of better spells) in most areas.

As a rough estimate, I'd say that 3/4 of the possible spells are better for Wizards with 1/4 left for the Clerics.

Bye
Thanee

 

[jasamcarl]

And again, i have to dispel the 'cleric is a better fighter than a fighter myth'. Most of the buffs some have mentioned as making this possible are of short duration, especially as of the revision. This means that they will tend to be activated in combat. Now, while a fighter is dishing out the damage for the two or three rounds the cleric is buffing himself, the cleric is essentially useless to the party. So the only fair way of comparing their damage is to take the damage both deal from the round the cleric starts buff straight through to the end of combat; i think the fighter will come out well in such comparison, not to mention the fact that he can do this over multiple combats while the cleric can do it once or twice, max.

And I think its pretty much indesputable that most buffs have more of an effect when given to the fighter rather than the cleric. There simply isn't a great enough synergy between many of the cleric's abilities.

So if you have a cleric who likes to play the fighter or wizard role often, you are better off with another fighter or wizard. The increase in offensive power will probably offset some of the need for incombat healing, and healing becomes comparitivly cheap as one rises in levels regardless, though the lack of a cheap True Res might be a problem..That is the cleric's major advantage, being a convenient healer and thus money saver.

 

[Voadam]

Divination

Hardly. Whilst Commune is superficially better than Contact Other Plane, its restriction to yes-or-no answers pales in comparison with the one-word answers of COP. Other than that, there is no contest. Indeed, what few useful divinations the cleric has (Scrying, Discern Location, True Seeing) are duplicated on the arcane caster. The myriad of useful (particularly low level) divinations that the arcanist possesses- Clairvoyance, Comprehend Languages and Detect Thoughts, to name but three, have no equal on the clerical list.

As a player of a wizard loremaster character, I deliberately avoided spending my resources on learning scrying etc. that the divine spellcasters I knew would learn for free. The fact that they are on both lists but the cleric learns them for free means that the cleric is more likely to be the one to actually have them.

 

[Spatula]

As a player of a wizard loremaster character, I deliberately avoided spending my resources on learning scrying etc. that the divine spellcasters I knew would learn for free. The fact that they are on both lists but the cleric learns them for free means that the cleric is more likely to be the one to actually have them.

Not to mention that for Scry (and other shared divination spells), the cleric avoids the costly material component/focus. OTOH, the cleric generally gets access to those spells after the wizard/sorcerer does.

 

[Thanee]

... for the two or three rounds the cleric is buffing himself, the cleric is essentially useless to the party.

Ever heard of Metamagic?

..., not to mention the fact that he can do this over multiple combats while the cleric can do it once or twice, max.

Yeah, that's the biggest benefit of the fighter, the consistency!

Bye
Thanee

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi all!

I have ran all the details through my neural net and arrived at the following.

Firstly (if we take Sorceror/Wizard spellcasting as 100%) Cleric spellcasting is approximately 86%; Druidic spellcasting 64%; Bard Spellcasting 34%; Paladin/Ranger Spellcasting 4%.

Remember these are average ratings taken over 20 levels.

Determined in terms of feats over 20 levels:

Sorceror/Wizard Spellcasting = 44
Clerical = 38
Druidical = 28
Bardic = 15
Ranger/Paladin = 2

I broke down all the classes in terms of feats and arrived at the following (over 20 levels) it should be noted that 20 of each total is given for PC equipment:

Cleric 131.3
Druid: 126.9
Wizard: 122.1
Sorceror: 116.7
Barbarian: 115.6
Ranger: 114
Bard: 113.3
Paladin: 131.1
Monk: 109.1
Fighter: 108.8
Rogue: 107.7

Any comments on any of my above ramblings?

 

[WizarDru]

Ever heard of Metamagic?

Quicken spell increases the spell 4 levels. Yeah, they've heard of it, all right. Doesn't change anything, though. I've never met a person who's quickened more than one 'Get out of Dodge' spell for emergencies, or possibly a 'hit-him-before-he-moves' pre-emptive magic missle.

By and large, clerics benefit less from metamagic spells than their arcane counterparts. Many of their root spells simply don't gain as great a benefit as many arcane spells do from the resultant metamagic application.

Yeah, that's the biggest benefit of the fighter, the consistency!

Not the biggest, but certainly a benefit. IME, spellcasters tend to hold back unless they know they won't need the firepower or special powers later. A fighter doesn't need to do that: he can swing his sword until the cows come home and start watching Tivo. And if a group goes five or six combats between resting, you'll see that. Moreso for more combats, as the spellcasters get more and more cautious about wasting their precious resources.

 

[Thanee]

That's how it should be!

Oh, and what you describe is what I meant with consistency actually.

But once you get to levels where Teleport is available, resting becomes no problem, unless your time is running short.

And I meant Persistant Spell more than Quicken Spell above.

Clerics with Persistant Spell can outshine fighters all day long (or until dispelled).

Bye
Thanee