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

I'm not going to argue with the Wizard in 4e with the new game mechanics, since a lot of 3er's might not remember 1/2 edition version where you had a hp cap and you also would fail automatically if you took a single point of damage. Obviously, so many people think Wizards were "broken", even though we have 35 years without a reboot--I'm not gonna try to convince 4e fans who think that.

Where I do think WoTC dropped the ball is to make rituals an "afterthought". I only have the PHB to go on here--but I think 2 things should have happened.

1) Give Wizards exclusivity or Rituals, or at least "spell-casting" characters. (Arcana and Divine), and give them access to only certain things. Saying "everybody can do everything" is poor and I don't think every character should have the ability to do that.

2) Give Rituals more space. I mean, c'mon. I would say over half of the original spells in the PHB were "ritual" types. That was part of the fun. One of the things that inspired me to like the game was reading all the detailed descriptions of the old spells. To see rituals given only a few pages as opposed to the tactical stuff is just shameful to me. It also emphasizes D&D as primarily tactical combat instead of strategy and problem-solving.
 

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1. Wizards

Wizards are one of the most powerful classes in 4E. A Wizard class feature(Orb of Imposition) has stood the test of time and is still among the most powerful/broken things you can do in 4E. People say that you can't destroy something in one turn, but the Epic Orb Wizard would argue with that statement. One of the first controversies in 4E was the Orb Wizard beating Orcus in one turn, and after all this time its only gotten worse. When they finally printed stats for Gods, they had to give Gods a way to dodge the Orb Wizard bullet! In addition, when you get used to playing higher level Wizards, you really start to see how much more powerful their spells are. Helping people build Druids, Seekers, and other controllers, I get struck with the thought "If I was playing a Wizard, I wouldn't choose any of these powers in a million years". The Wizard gets better stuff, particularly for Daily powers and Paragon/Epic Encounter powers.

The difference is that the power of the Wizard is no longer obvious. He doesn't have spells that are blatantly beyond the capabilities of everyone else. It now requires tactics and most importantly timing, instead of just having the right spells.

2. Rituals

Only beef I have with Rituals is that 10 minutes for almost all of them is too much. It kind of breaks the story pacing, as some people can't imagine their characters standing around for 10 minutes while the Wizard does his stuff. A 1 minute casting time would still serve to keep Rituals out of combat, and greatly lessen this flavor problem. This is an easy houserule. People complain about Rituals costing money, but that's a player problem. Money is cheap in 4E, and your wealth isn't as closely tied to your gear or power level as it was in 3E. This is the one aspect of 3E I see people having trouble letting go of as time passes, the thought that money was precious and needed to be hoarded to spend on magic items. Casting Rituals frequently should use less than half of what the DMG gives you, and it shouldn't have more than a minimal effect on your gear. The other player issue with Rituals is player creativity. If you don't put the Rituals in the hands of a creative problem solving player, they tend to be ignored. Some groups are without such a player, and a lot of the time the sort of player who is good at this isn't playing the Ritual caster in the party. What people should realize is that Ritual Casting isn't a player resource, but a party resource. The entire table should be involved in procuring Rituals and their use, and the list of Rituals and what they can do should be something the creative problem solvers in the party should be familiar with, even if they aren't playing the Ritual Caster.
 

I'm not going to argue with the Wizard in 4e with the new game mechanics, since a lot of 3er's might not remember 1/2 edition version where you had a hp cap and you also would fail automatically if you took a single point of damage.

I do remember wizards having a longer build to power, but theyalways got way out of hand sooner or later (I mean 1 and 2e...ok mostly 2e)

Infact I remember after 8th level as a wizard going something like this:

DM: I hit, 45pts of damage
Me: no ping, it's one off my stone skin...

at lower level we had ablative armor...and...shoot I know there was one inbetween them...
 

I'm not going to argue with the Wizard in 4e with the new game mechanics, since a lot of 3er's might not remember 1/2 edition version where you had a hp cap and you also would fail automatically if you took a single point of damage. Obviously, so many people think Wizards were "broken", even though we have 35 years without a reboot--I'm not gonna try to convince 4e fans who think that.

Where I do think WoTC dropped the ball is to make rituals an "afterthought". I only have the PHB to go on here--but I think 2 things should have happened.

1) Give Wizards exclusivity or Rituals, or at least "spell-casting" characters. (Arcana and Divine), and give them access to only certain things. Saying "everybody can do everything" is poor and I don't think every character should have the ability to do that.

2) Give Rituals more space. I mean, c'mon. I would say over half of the original spells in the PHB were "ritual" types. That was part of the fun. One of the things that inspired me to like the game was reading all the detailed descriptions of the old spells. To see rituals given only a few pages as opposed to the tactical stuff is just shameful to me. It also emphasizes D&D as primarily tactical combat instead of strategy and problem-solving.

I disagree.

1) Not every character can do it. Characters who take the ritual caster feat can do it. If you don't want your character to use rituals, don't take the feat. If you don't like seeing less magical classes using magic in a ritual fashion, tough. The literature of fantasy is filled with examples of heros performing magical rituals without also casting spells in combat.

2) So many times, a non-combat spell or a ritual is little more than "Solve Problem X". You only use it to solve problem X, and if you have it, and problem X shows up, guess what you're using? I think problem solving takes much more of the center-stage when you don't have magic tailor-made to solve specific problems.

i do agree that the current edition could have used more color behind many of the powers, but that's not a problem of the game mechanics, which I think are just fine.
 

What people want out of a Wizard is the ability to wave their hands and have all their enemies turn to stone or into frogs. No way to stop it, because their enemies are not Wizards...and only those who have magic can protect against it.

They want the ability to jump out a window at any time and fly to their destination in no time flat. They want the ability to wave their hand and turn all of their allies invisible for as long as they want.

And people were willing to compromise with the 1e-3e system. They couldn't fly WHENEVER they wanted, only as often as they had the spells prepared. They needed to be high enough level to cast those spells...but they'd get there eventually if they just waited long enough.

But even with all those restrictions in place, it is a far cry from being a 10th level Fighter to being a 10th level Wizard. The Fighter(without magic items) can....use a sword well. The same Wizard is flying, turning invisible, throwing fireballs that do more damage than the sword does to 8 enemies at the same time with no attack roll, while having skin that reflects all blows, force armor, and a force shield. All of which makes the Wizard even tougher than the Fighter is. And if he gets into trouble, he can instantly teleport anywhere he wants in the world.

The Wizard can also use spells to detect traps, trigger them remotely, walk through walls...and any number of a thousand other things.

The next effect is that it is pretty easy to feel useless when you are the one playing the Fighter and to have your fun ruined because of the "anything you can do, I can do better" effect of the Wizard.


Wow. Who were all of these players who played completely overpowered and selfish wizards who stepped on everyone else's fun?

I have never in 30 years of gaming had an experience like that--just lucky, I guess.

The wizards I play in 3.5 and Pathfinder don't do everything--they do what needs to be done. If there's a rogue in the party, you can be damn sure I'm not going to waste precious spell slots on finding traps and unlocking doors.

And during battles, I don't want my wizard to turn every enemy to stone--I want him to be a vital part of the team and pull his weight, just like everyone else. Preferably, doing things that play to his strengths, leaving the back stabbing to the rogues and the sword swinging to the fighters.


To the OP: I agree with your friend. If he still wants to give 4e a good try, though, the powers and spells should probably stay as is mechanically, just so things don't get unbalanced in comparison to the other characters. You can refluff them as you want, though, and you could add the versatility back to the class by letting him have a proper spell book, and spell slots, and the ability to memorize the same spell multiple times. (Cue protestations! But really--firing off two of the same spell in the same encounter won't unbalance the whole game.)

Anyway, if its important to you guys to play together, just think of ways to reach a happy medium.
 

1) Give Wizards exclusivity or Rituals, or at least "spell-casting" characters. (Arcana and Divine), and give them access to only certain things. Saying "everybody can do everything" is poor and I don't think every character should have the ability to do that.

Wizards are currently the only class in the game that automatically gains rituals as they level up. They'll get 13 rituals for "free" by 25th level, plus their high Intelligence often gives them an edge when it comes to rituals with the Arcana and Religion key skill. Even though anyone could theoretically become a ritual caster, wizards are definitely the kings of the ritual casters.
 

Wow. Who were all of these players who played completely overpowered and selfish wizards who stepped on everyone else's fun?
oh those would be chris and jare (I only really know one of them) who played enough of those types of wizards for any 30 groups of friends

I have never in 30 years of gaming had an experience like that--just lucky, I guess.
I am very glade, I have had more of your experiance then the ones of the problems, but the problem players were there...
 

For many players, the old style was a feature, not a bug. If the goal was to play Merlin, Gandalf or whatever, then the player at some point wanted to wield phenomenal cosmic power. For these players, 4e is entirely unsuited to their gaming goals because a wizard can do nothing that isn't fundamentally mundane. Sure, they can do damage, attack something other than AC, apply conditions, move the target, and move themselves and some of this impressive and perhaps can't be explained easily in mundane terms, but every other class can do all the same things and sometimes these things can't easily be explained in mundane terms either. While it creates a level playing field, it isn't paying much attention to simulating either fantasy source material or, as is probably more important in the case of your friend, the flavor of the play experience he's used to for the last 20 years or more.

I don't think this is a crossable gulf.

There's wisdom here. This (especially that final sentence) might well be true. Not for everybody, but for a lot of folks.

Too bad, really.
 

Um, did nobody play a pre 3e wizard?

The tactic of getting up in the morning and buffing yourself seems to be a 3.x tactic which I don't really remember in 1e/2e.

1e/2e wizards were HARD to play. Seriously, with the restriction on magic items (can't buy them, pretty much an adventure in of itself to make one thus you had to get by with what slots you had) AND the rules of magic in combat (1 pt of damage and your spell is lost AND high level spells being relatively slow in combat) AND the rules for spells themselves (many spells being dangerous to the caster AND spell acquisition being more subject to the whims of the DM AND non-damage spells being less useful as you level)

I personally never really thought that the 3e wizard was a D&D wizard since all of the underlying mechanics of what made a D&D wizard got changed. Looks the same, but in practice, but a 3e wizard is vastly different than a pre 3e wizard.

re: Realm-shattering power
Isn't Conan and the tales of the round table major inspiration for D&D? Both and Conan especially, have pretty weak wizards (hell the ritual system for 4e matches pretty well with the more ritualistic style of magic in Conan IMO)

The thing is, I don't believe we could ever go back to the pre 3e mechanics of spellcasting. The biggest issue is that people EXPECT to have more control of their own character thus choice of spells (which was always the real limitation in pre 3e) can no longer be expected to be under the control of the DM.
 

In 3E(and before), Wizards(and spellcasters in general) could break the world if they wanted to. Spells fundamentally changed reality, and there's a lot of power in that. In 4E, the world has rules, and magic has to exist within those rules. If you want to wield the power to break the world, in 4E you're out of luck. It bears saying that the desire to be able to break the world doesn't necessarily mean you want to lord your power over everyone else at the table.

We lost one of our group when we switched to 4E because of this, though getting married and moving 45 minutes away contributed as well. We see him occasionally, and this is what he complains about in terms of 4E, not being able to wield ultimate power.
 

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