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

[pawsplay]

This is my experience as well. In Living Greyhawk, there were lots of HARD encounters. Encounters specifically built using a combination of feats, classes, monsters, terrain, spells, and so on to defeat any party that wasn't built well.

A particular example always sticks out in my mind: 2 Dread Wraiths and 4 Spectres in an encounter for 12th level characters(EL 15). During this encounter, there was an "evil aura" that made it so no one could see further than 25 feet away from them no matter what light sources they had. The PCs were on a 10ft wide path with forest on both sides that was described as taking 3 squares of movement for each square you moved and doing damage to anyone who tried due to sharp branches and brambles warped and twisted by the evil aura.

Meanwhile, the Dread Wraiths have Spring Attack, a movement of 60 ft flight, were incorporeal, drained 1d8 con per hit, and life sense. This allows them to ignore all the terrain, "see" the PCs even while in the darkness, and move up to the PCs(with reach) and retreat into the dark woods each round. Since they used touch attacks, they hit almost everyone on a 2.

The Spectres are almost as bad. They drain 2 levels on a hit. In one round, it was possible for them to give someone 8 negative levels. They did need 7s to hit most people of this level though, instead of 2s.

This encounter without a cleric is basically impossible.

What, for a 12th level party? Let's imagine the party consists of a wizard, a sorcerer, a fighter, and a monk. As soon as the party figures out what's happening, the wizard casts repulsion. The fighter and rogue ready an action to shift 5 feet as soon as they are attacked, while the sorcerer readies a magic missile to blast anything that makes it past the repulsion. On the next round, the sorcerer readies a wall of force, trapping the next opponent as it tries to spring away. The wizard blasts the opponent with magic missile while the the fighter and monk now whale on the trapped opponent using their ghost touch weapons.

Naturally, if someone happens to know undeath to death, that will make the encounter substantially easier against the spectres.

For a party level +3 encounter, not too bad, really.

 

[Voadam]

If you honestly believe that an assumption of four specific classes and an assumption of four categories of classes are "the same variety", then I really don't think I can say anything to persuade you.

Still I may as well make a simply mathematical comparison. Assuming a four person party that adheres strictly to the "requirement" and a total of five classes for each 4E role... Under the 3E requirement, every party would have exactly the same class composition. Under the 4E requirement, there would be 625 different valid party combinations. Bending these requirements would give both editions a roughly equal amount of an increase to party variety, so the advantage always goes to 4E. I would never call that an equal amount of variety.

You think 3e really requires the party to have a fighter and not a barbarian or a paladin or a cleric taking a tank role? A wizard and not a sorcerer or psion? You see these as class requirements and not "roles" that other classes can fit?

I agree that restricting detecting traps with DCs over 20 to the rogue class is a bad and restrictive design (I've houseruled it away for years in my games), but I don't feel the trapspringer role is super important. I went through half the banewarrens module (trap filled super dungeon in 3.0) as a PC in a two person party, my ranger/wizard and a paladin and we handled things well.

I dislike the need for a healer in straight 3e but I felt it was an improvement over AD&D. In 3e about half the classes can fill a cleric/healer role well enough to do normal adventuring with the use of a cleric on a stick (cure wounds wand) starting at around 2nd level when the party will generally have more than enough gold to buy one. It doesn't get you 4th level death ward or freedom of movement, or super in combat healing for high level fights, but it gets you healing and there are items that duplicate those other spells. Lesser restoration is a 1st level paladin spell, second level cleric spell for poisons and attribute damage, easy to get in a wand or potion, etc.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

What, for a 12th level party? Let's imagine the party consists of a wizard, a sorcerer, a fighter, and a monk. As soon as the party figures out what's happening, the wizard casts repulsion. The fighter and rogue ready an action to shift 5 feet as soon as they are attacked, while the sorcerer readies a magic missile to blast anything that makes it past the repulsion. On the next round, the sorcerer readies a wall of force, trapping the next opponent as it tries to spring away. The wizard blasts the opponent with magic missile while the the fighter and monk now whale on the trapped opponent using their ghost touch weapons.

Naturally, if someone happens to know undeath to death, that will make the encounter substantially easier against the spectres.

For a party level +3 encounter, not too bad, really.

lets also thin of a non caster party...lets say a rouge, a ranger, a fighter, and a monk...and none have ghost touch weapons...then what???

How about the casters that are a wizard without force spells, a begailer, a bard, duskblade, and monk...yea same problem...

 

[pawsplay]

lets also thin of a non caster party...lets say a rouge, a ranger, a fighter, and a monk...and none have ghost touch weapons...then what???

Then evolution does its work. Hopefully, by 12th level, they've noticed they don't have a cleric and have taken some appropriate steps.

How about the casters that are a wizard without force spells, a begailer, a bard, duskblade, and monk...yea same problem...

The duskblade can use arcane strike to annihilate the spectres. As dread wraiths cannot see invisible, the beguiler's invisibility will grant them full concealment, causing a 50% miss chance. The monk can use ghost touch weapons, or use his monk attacks with a 50% chance of affecting incorporeal. The bard can use summon monster IV to summon 1d3 lantern archons, who do untyped damage, can ready a cure critical wounds spell to cause 4d8+12 damage to undead, can use greater invisibility as well, can use glitterdust to blind the undead, and has access to mirror image (a figment, effective against the undead).

 

[Banshee16]

I don't think you addressed Rituals in your post, so how do you think they fit in to your generalization that spells only blow stuff up or move things? Most common I think people find that they aren't powerful enough, which leads me to believe it's not about the 'feel' for most people, it's about the power that wizards have traditionally had.

Rituals can bring back some of the feel....but why can everyone do them? I mean, they're not just for Wizards or whatever......and they are significantly more involved to use...

I think that they do give some additional flexibility.....but my issue is that they take so much more time....it's almost like a dichotomy.....if I want to blow stuff up, well, it's easy....I've got a bunch of options for what I can do instantly. But if I'm a Wizard who specializes in enchantments, or shapechanging, or I want to fly, or make a hole through a wall, or identify an item or whatever, now I've got to cast a ritual. In previous editions these other kinds of effects were integral.....and could be used as easily as combat magic (with the exception of spells like Identify).

Banshee

 

[billd91]

Remember that this is RPGA we're talking about. It's not a good DM designing (or re-designing) around his oddball group. It's mass market. There's a lowest common denominator effect.

Unfortunately, because this was a Living Campaign, there was no common denominator at all. There was no way to expect one for your typical convention session.

And you have to remember part of the marketing angle of all this is to show off the content. If you throw out every monster that really, really screams for a cleric, you're not showing off lots of content. If you throw out every monster that would completely hose a rogue-heavy party, you're not showing more than half of the content If you throw out everything that requires a rogue... well you have no traps at all in your low level dungeons, which just doesn't even fit the milieu, wot?

It's not a question of throwing everything out that is best defeated by a particular class. It's a question of not overbuilding encounters with them, as in Majoru Oakheart's example of 2 dread wraiths and 4 spectres. A better encounter design would have mixed a dread wraith with something else to allow for more diversity of PC paths to success.

Part of 3e's encounter design advice includes encounters that are very difficult but become easier if you have a particular key to that encounter - some tactic available to the PCs that makes it a lot easier. But they're supposed to be a small proportion of the encounters. Using them too often, particularly because the event cannot control for the makeup of the table, should be considered bad encounter design.

 

[Victim]

Rituals can bring back some of the feel....but why can everyone do them? I mean, they're not just for Wizards or whatever......and they are significantly more involved to use...

I think that they do give some additional flexibility.....but my issue is that they take so much more time....it's almost like a dichotomy.....if I want to blow stuff up, well, it's easy....I've got a bunch of options for what I can do instantly. But if I'm a Wizard who specializes in enchantments, or shapechanging, or I want to fly, or make a hole through a wall, or identify an item or whatever, now I've got to cast a ritual. In previous editions these other kinds of effects were integral.....and could be used as easily as combat magic (with the exception of spells like Identify).

Banshee

Well, part of it is that the wizard is no longer the go to class for everything magical. Shapeshifting stuff tends to go to other classes, for instance. It really sucks for class design when additional spellcaster classes are more limited versions of wizards.

Compare this to something like trying to get past a Wall of Force in 3E. If you don't have a Wizard or Cleric (or equivalent), and you absolutely need to get past a Wall of Force, then you are totally helpless. There is literally nothing you can do except give up. A team of non-casters basically have to hope that their DM will take pity on them and not present them with such challenges, even though such a challenge may be trivial if there was a Wizard or Cleric in the party. It is only because 3E reveled in such absolutes of ineffectiveness that it had classes you could call "requirements", and 4E has nothing of the kind.

You can go around/under a Wall of Force, especially with Adamantine weapons. Just chip at objects on the periphery until there's enough room to squeeze around the wall.

 

[TwinBahamut]

You think 3e really requires the party to have a fighter and not a barbarian or a paladin or a cleric taking a tank role? A wizard and not a sorcerer or psion? You see these as class requirements and not "roles" that other classes can fit?

You really have not been reading my posts... I was only saying that classes like the Fighter had a "role" in 3e for the sake of that particular argument. As I've said just earlier in this thread, the only roles 3e had were the need for spellcasting, especially the Wizard and Cleric (because those two classes were basically the best at what they did), and maybe a Rogue in certain campaigns (though that can be replaced with the right spells). Of course the Fighter can be replaced. The 3e Fighter is trash. Almost any 3e party would be better off replacing any Fighter with a Cleric or Druid. There really isn't even a "tank" role in 3e, since no good weapon-using class really has abilities that can be used to protect allies.

3e doesn't have roles. It requires spellcasting and then basically lets spellcasters run wild while non-spellcasters play something of a different game.

As for the rest of your comments... I'll just disagree.

 

[Ariosto]

I have no problem with the idea of one class having different options than another. That's fine. But, why should casters get several times more options than non-casters?

Strictly speaking, they don't -- unless you've severely limited the options available to non-magical people (e.g., "The Model 3E comes in any color you like -- as long as it's combat.").

Setting aside such an arbitrary case of "several times", though, is not having more options what magic is fundamentally about?

How does adding the ability to fly or turn invisible remove a non-magical capability (any more than there's a trade-off in choosing to practice one mundane art instead of another)?

"It's a geas" gets old quickly. Rather than an absolute, "No, you can't wear armor or wield a sword", it's probably better to say, "Sure, you can -- but not very well (and it won't help your advancement as a magician)."

"Not very well" is more of a live option than the "not at all" that applies to casting a spell without special training (i.e., an appropriate class) in old D&D.

In 4e, everyone is a magically capable combatant. The wizard just happens to be a "controller" instead of a "striker", "defender" or "leader".

 

[Garthanos]

Rituals can bring back some of the feel....but why can everyone do them? I mean, they're not just for Wizards or whatever......and they are significantly more involved to use...

Wizards get rituals for free periodically throughout there career and even if everyone "can" ... most wont it costs them a feat and they need to know arcana or religion ...so unless being wizardly is part of there character concept they have better uses for the feats. There is a feat that makes all rituals based off an arcanists best skill. Wizards are THE go to guy for rituals.

In previous editions these other kinds of effects were integral.....and could be used as easily as combat magic (with the exception of spells like Identify).

Some of the nice rituals take a whopping 10 minutes....
If you aren't in the middle of combat that is a trivial amount of time. and some have 24 hour effects Comprehend Language and Tensers floating disk for instance. Affect normal fire I call Gaian Pyromantic Attunement lasts 8 hours.
others 6 and 4 hours... When you gain hours of effects the complaining about the 10 minute casting times you see on those examples seems kind of ...well I am not sure what exactly to call it.

A ritual is a cool thing.

picture courtesy of goodman games...
​

Ritual casters really can do massive things already, cheapening them by making them seem easy doesn't sound cool to me.

But some of the effects are not long term or large scale... what about those?

Here is a theory ....
One of the reasons they have limits is so you cant easily and completely over shadow roles from other classes, by grabbing the right three rituals (knock passwall ... whatever) you probably cannot do the rogues job better than a rogue ... you are slower than the rogue and it takes the right ingredients (aka money). But if you don't have a rogue in the party? those rituals are still very useful (the money is eventually inconsequential and the time is usually inconsequential but you aren't squatting all over another archetypes classic abilities quite as badly)... But.... you didn't have to spend the feat to take thievery - so you still have all your wizard awesome going on... and can spend it on say Expand Spell to increase the area of effect of your magics that feature a lot of the time in D&D.

I recommend house ruling things especially to make rituals flavor nice for your personal game world I recommend it massively but I recommend taking care.

I made raise the dead high enough level (16) and involve quests into a dangerous astral like grey realm by those who know the subject most so its intimidating.