Wizards in 4E have been 'neutered' argument...

[Majoru Oakheart]

After playing D&D for over 25 years with hundreds of people I have yet to meet anyone that felt they were not having fun because they were "only" a fighter.

I've met people who were annoyed that they were only a fighter. Our experiences differ. I've met a number of them. Often, the people in question didn't speak up to let their opinions be known. But we used to discuss the game in between sessions a lot. We had no lives to speak of.

So, often the talk was about "I feel like I'm not useful to the party. I'm just there to be the meat shield and hold off the enemy until the Wizard fireballs them all and kills them. Then, I'm supposed to roleplay my low intelligence so that the Wizard who is roleplaying his high intelligence can figure out the answer to all the riddles and puzzles. Then I have to roleplay my low charisma and be dumb and not very friendly...so I avoid talking to people in social situations. Meanwhile, the Bard or the Cleric does all the talking. What do I do that is useful and recognized better than everyone else other than have more hitpoints?"

The answer given was normally, "Well, we need a fighter. Otherwise the rest of us would die. So, you can't switch characters."

If a DM has proper system mastery, the well prepared caster is never a problem.

As for "proper system mastery"....I have no idea what that is anymore. One person's complete mastery is another's "Not yet ready to DM."

One of the examples I always use to demonstrate this was a time where the DM decided to create an ongoing villain for the group in a combination 1e/2e game we had. It was a female Wizard. We were supposed to meet this Wizard when she used Projected Image to create an image of herself while hiding in a well hidden secret chamber nearby. The Wizard was supposed to threaten us, attack us with spells through the image and then teleport out if we lived.

What ACTUALLY happened was that the player who was playing OUR Wizard immediately guessed that it was a Projected Image. The rest of the party ran up to her in order to attack. He hung back. The enemy created an illusion of falling rocks on us and most of us were pinned, believing the illusion. He, on the other hand, looked for secret passages.

The DM got a really worried look on her face and said "Why?". He said "Because the range on Projected Image is short. She has to be around here somewhere. Like in a secret room connected to this one."

She told him that he couldn't see any secret doors because this one was really hard to detect. He cast some spells to detect secret door, I can't remember which one. There was a brief argument over whether the spell could detect it. The description of the spell was consulted. He found the secret room, opened it and surprised the enemy who had no idea she would be found. She then pointed a Rod of Disintegration at our Wizard, figuring she could finish him off and teach the player a lesson for being a little TOO crafty. The Wizard said "I use my ring of telekinesis to grab the rod out of her hand." The DM insisted he couldn't do that...the description of the ring was looked up...It was decided that it DID work that way...The player won initiative and then used the ring to grab the rod. Then the DM said, "Fine, you get a rod. But she's high enough level to just teleport away and nothing you can do will kill her in one round." The player considered this and said "You're right. Does the wand at least have the command word written on it?" She said yes. Then he used the rod to disintegrate the enemy. He won initiative because the time to activate a Rod is much faster than casting a 5th level spell.

Then the DM complained that we needed to end the game there because she didn't have anything else planned out. Her entire adventure hinged on that Wizard surviving. And to add insult to injury, the player asked where the Wizard's spellbook was and the DM said "Not here, she left it elsewhere" and the player went on a tirade about how "No Wizard leaves their spellbook out of reach, besides, we had evidence that she'd been here for multiple days and she had been casting spells during that time. She needed her spellbook to rememorize the spells." Until the DM was forced to agree, that yes...the spellbook was in the room. Which he then promptly picked up and due to the XP for GP rule from 1e gained 4 levels just by picking it up(he convinced the DM that each spell in the book should be assigned the GP value of a scroll of that spell, since they essentially WERE scrolls).

And that was a problem that a simple Ring of Telekinesis and a spell to detect secret doors caused. One could say that the DM didn't have proper system mastery in that she didn't expect someone to figure out that the Wizard was hidden nearby, have a spell to detect secret doors, followed by the ability to disarm a powerful magic item and make plans accordingly. But she had no real reason to think that those combination of things would happen. Plus, she had enough system mastery to think of using a Projected Image instead of putting the enemy in the same room with us.

 

[Herschel]

What ACTUALLY happened was that the player who was playing OUR Wizard immediately guessed that it was a Projected Image. The rest of the party ran up to her in order to attack. He hung back. The enemy created an illusion of falling rocks on us and most of us were pinned, believing the illusion. He, on the other hand, looked for secret passages.

The DM got a really worried look on her face and said "Why?". He said "Because the range on Projected Image is short. She has to be around here somewhere. Like in a secret room connected to this one."

She told him that he couldn't see any secret doors because this one was really hard to detect. He cast some spells to detect secret door, I can't remember which one. There was a brief argument over whether the spell could detect it. The description of the spell was consulted. He found the secret room, opened it and surprised the enemy who had no idea she would be found. She then pointed a Rod of Disintegration at our Wizard, figuring she could finish him off and teach the player a lesson for being a little TOO crafty. The Wizard said "I use my ring of telekinesis to grab the rod out of her hand." The DM insisted he couldn't do that...the description of the ring was looked up...It was decided that it DID work that way...The player won initiative and then used the ring to grab the rod. Then the DM said, "Fine, you get a rod. But she's high enough level to just teleport away and nothing you can do will kill her in one round." The player considered this and said "You're right. Does the wand at least have the command word written on it?" She said yes. Then he used the rod to disintegrate the enemy. He won initiative because the time to activate a Rod is much faster than casting a 5th level spell.

Then the DM complained that we needed to end the game there because she didn't have anything else planned out. Her entire adventure hinged on that Wizard surviving. And to add insult to injury, the player asked where the Wizard's spellbook was and the DM said "Not here, she left it elsewhere" and the player went on a tirade about how "No Wizard leaves their spellbook out of reach, besides, we had evidence that she'd been here for multiple days and she had been casting spells during that time. She needed her spellbook to rememorize the spells." Until the DM was forced to agree, that yes...the spellbook was in the room. Which he then promptly picked up and due to the XP for GP rule from 1e gained 4 levels just by picking it up(he convinced the DM that each spell in the book should be assigned the GP value of a scroll of that spell, since they essentially WERE scrolls).

And that was a problem that a simple Ring of Telekinesis and a spell to detect secret doors caused. One could say that the DM didn't have proper system mastery in that she didn't expect someone to figure out that the Wizard was hidden nearby, have a spell to detect secret doors, followed by the ability to disarm a powerful magic item and make plans accordingly. But she had no real reason to think that those combination of things would happen. Plus, she had enough system mastery to think of using a Projected Image instead of putting the enemy in the same room with us.

But it could have been avoided by the DM simply placing a "lock" on the secret door at any time. When the Knock spell was cast, the Wizard teleports out. A 3 silver dead bolt could have saved the adventure. Safety first, kids.

 

[Akaiku]

gameplay excerpt

Ironically, that kind of thing is why all epic wizards are liches as well. Plus, well prepared wizard always wins. The gm did a slight fail in not using infinite gm powers to counter well prepared wizard. Just as planned is rather good. Perhaps an explosive runes hidden on the secret door trigger? That way the other wiz would have warning to pull the rod and ready an action, ignore init and omgpwning the other one?

 

[Stoat]

The real lesson to be learned is this:

Never assume that any NPC will survive any contact, however tenuous, with the PC's.

It should be printed on the inside cover of the DMG.

 

[Nifft]

Never assume that any NPC will survive any contact, however tenuous, with the PC's.

Conversely, never assume PCs will use force of arms to overcome foes who obviously showed up just to fight.

Some of my player's most liked NPCs started as throw-away random encounters.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Holy Bovine]

It is not necessarily stubborness though. When my friends went for stints playing Blood Bowl I sat out. I just did not want to invest time in games I tried and did not like.

.

I can understand not liking 4E (or 3E or 2E or any XE really) but not liking Blood Bowl is like not liking oxygen. That's just crazy man!

 

[Voadam]

It is true that you can do a lot to customize monsters to avoid some of these issues. But I was curious how the basic SRD creatures did and it is amazing how poorly they do.

If we go beyond the PHB, there is a 4th level spell that is a swift action that gives +10 to penetrate spell resistance: Assay Spell Resistance (Sor/Wiz 4). It lasts one round/level so you cast it once and your target is reduced in defenses for the rest of the combat.

Our Marilith has a spell resistance of 25; after Assay Spell Resistance it is 15 and a 16th level caster will pierce it on a 2+. Even the mighty Balor, at SR 28, needs only a 2+ from a 16th level caster using this spell.

Even within the PHB, the wizard goes through on a 9+, less if she invested in spell penetration, greater spell penetration and a robe of the archmagi.

The best a Mohrg can do is 28 HD by the SRD, with a weak Fort Save that is
a +9 (no con bonus) and he needs a mircale to save. If we did allow a 44 HD Mohrg (as CR 16 monster) it'd have a +15 Fort Save (needs an 11+ to save) and 286 hit points. Save or die still looks awful tempting . . .

3.5 disintegrate does what, 32d6 on a failed fort save at 16th level. About 16x7=112 hp damage. Failing that 11+ weak save means the monster loses a lot of hp, but still less than half its hp.

 

[Henry]

Sounds like the DM above was railroaded by the player, not the other way around.

Finding the projected image/secret door? Clever.
Rules-lawyering the ring/rod/disintegrate? Discourteous.
Badgering the DM into the spellbook and extra XP? Jerkish.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I think I figured out why your play experience is so different from that of some other players: It seems, most of your fights had a low EL for your APL/party size. In other words, you were making things challenging by having many encounters in a day, rather than doing a few encounters that have an EL of party level +3 or more (after adjusting for party size).

This is the key to why it works differently. Most encounters of EL=Average Party Level or lower are actually so easy that they don't use up significant resources. The book says that EL=APL should use up 20% resources. In a good group they don't use up anywhere near that amount.

Most EL=APL encounters can be defeated entirely by non-casters without using any magic items. The worst that happens is that the party is forced to use a couple of charges of their Wand of Cure Light Wounds at the end of the combat. 4 charges from one of 3 Wands the party is carrying is less than 1% of the party's resources.

It's only due to slight variations on luck and the difficulty of individual monsters that parties have to cast any spells at all against encounters of this difficulty. It gives the Wizards the freedom to just stand there was delay for the entire encounter without worry.

While I think that your way of playing is the most fun way to play 3.5 (as long as you keep munchkins under control), this is not how most adventures were designed (Paizo is the worst culprit here). In the typical Paizo adventure, meaningful fights are EL=APL+3 and up. And IME, the PCs have a high chance of TPKing in these fights unless every character goes "all in".

Some people feel like encounters at the EL=APL level are a little too easy. If you don't have to cast any spells at all, where is the difficulty? You might as well not bother spending the 30 minutes running the combat because it's easier to mark 20 damage on the fighter and say you win. At least, that's how a lot of players feel. My friends included.

You need to use EL=APL+3 or higher encounters for it to feel like you needed to use a real amount of resources to survive. It feels like a fight for your life if you needed to cast 2 disintegration spells and 3 fireballs in the same combat while at the same time the Cleric needed to cast a Heal, 2 Cure Critical Wounds and a Cure Serious.

This is when we have the most fun...it feels like we ALL need to pull together and use our abilities or we'll lose. Which is why fighting more than 2 or 3 combats of that difficulty a day were next to impossible. Sometimes more than 1 was next to impossible.

 

[Votan]

3.5 disintegrate does what, 32d6 on a failed fort save at 16th level. About 16x7=112 hp damage. Failing that 11+ weak save means the monster loses a lot of hp, but still less than half its hp.

It's true that Disintegrate is not an instant kill in this situation. But it's notable that it's still really effective despite deliberate attempts to pick creatures that are hard to drop (and don't exist in the core rules). Allow the wizard a couple of other options out of core too and matters don't necessarily improve.

There are other spell choices (reverse gravity followed by pincushioning) but disintegrate is so universally useful I feel safe assuming it's a prepared spell at these levels.

But I'll gladly concede that, if the DM really focuses on avoiding "save or die" spells, it is possible to create encounters and creatures that are hard. But it's concerning that the core material out of the book fares so poorly.