Wizards, need your input.

[Mistwell]

The 4e wizard is poorly designed and play-tested. Full Stop. As proof: Orb of Imposition. The Orb of Imposition ability is that problematic and that obviously problematic.

Care to tell us how it is problematic, or is this a guessing game?

How much does that matter? It remains a topic of debate. I can't suggest you play a wizard in a campaign that goes past the Heroic Tier though.

I can. Again, what is your concern, as opposed to assuming everyone knows what you are talking about.

 

[Mistwell]

Screw it, I've decided on the first character I wanna play.

I want to be a wizard with multi-class feats into fighter. I'll try to play him as much like a fighter as possible including buying armor and weapon feats. But when the situation gets dire he opens up with his spells to his unsuspecting foes!

Inefficient? Definitely.

Fluff-wise it sounds awesome to me. I don't know why.

You might try this thread:

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1042101

 

[cdrcjsn]

Care to tell us how it is problematic, or is this a guessing game?

It has been shown that:
If the wizard had high wisdom
If the wizard took the Spell Focus feat
If the foe doesn't have a bonus to saves
Then when you hit with a spell, you can basicaly keep an effect on an opponent with small chance of making a saving throw. An effect like Sleep shuts down one monster for instance.

It requires a lot of If's and is not quite as exciting as Blade Cascade or Seal of Binding...but it's there.

 

[Mistwell]

It has been shown that:
If the wizard had high wisdom
If the wizard took the Spell Focus feat
If the foe doesn't have a bonus to saves
Then when you hit with a spell, you can basicaly keep an effect on an opponent with small chance of making a saving throw. An effect like Sleep shuts down one monster for instance.

It requires a lot of If's and is not quite as exciting as Blade Cascade or Seal of Binding...but it's there.

Yes, if you focus your character towards that one spell, and you hit with the spell, and the target doesn't have a bonus to saves, then once a day you have a decent chance of knocking something out. It's far from 100%, but it's a decent chance.

This is hardly so problematic that you should go around telling people they shouldn't play a wizard beyond heroic levels. In fact, if that is what Kraydak is suggesting, then I think he's greatly exaggerating, and silly.

 

[On Puget Sound]

abilties vs roleplaying

Yes, But in trade, I don't prefer wisdom as a stat, I personally think that mental resolve and common sense often conflict with academic and intellectual geniuses, i.e. an engineer I know who is a card carrying member of Mensa, but wears velcro shoes because he can't tie them, and got arrested for breaking into his own house when he lockedhimself out/set the alarm. but can design a skyscraper in his sleep. that whole genius and insanity line. Makes for some fun there. Just wish they had given a set of 3 or 4 attributes in the secondary/tertiary group and said pick 2 that will sort of complement each other, eg charismavs wisdom, or dex vs strength. Yes spell focus is evil, Yes, I have a 15 cha, and already qualigy, I traded for a 10 wisdom, making my orb modifiers a 0. But still I like extending effects like ray of frost. I btw refuse to raise wisdom any higher, as it is in the character concept, Genius, but no clue as far as common sense goes.

There are thousands of aspects to a human personality (let alone an elven one...) and only SIX abilities. Wisdom covers a whole range of things, from whether you are nearsighted to whether you have the common sense not to begin a fight you can't finish (role-playing; no rules). So the item or feat you want requires a high wisdom, but you want to play a clueless character? Fine.

"When I have a task at hand, such as attuning myself to this nifty magical device, I can concentrate and focus wonderfully. And it works well for me in combat too; I don't know why. I think maybe it's sentient and it likes me. I've named it Ollie... Ollie Orb. I talk to it sometimes. But in matters not related to the orb, I do tend to act in haste rather than taking a moment to think about the wisest course of action."

Just play your character as YOU envision the character. No rule forces you to play wisely because you have high Wisdom, any more than it requires you to throw the dice harder if your STR is 18. Of course, you can't help the fact that you have decent passive senses...but if that really bothers you, you can choose to be so distracted that you spot or hear the problem, but decide it's not important enough to bother anyone about.

 

[Particle_Man]

It seems that the wizard is the one that treats the game board the most like a "Chess" board, or even a "Go" board. Use spells to move "pieces" and control where they can go or how fast they can go. Minions can (and should) be destroyed, but don't worry about the BBEG too much (except for that sleep bit, if you can pull it off). The wizard's job is to keep the rest of the bad guys out of your allies' hair for a while so they can have strikers concentrate fire on the BBEG, the defenders draw the BBEG's attention, and the Leader buffing/healing the first two.

Ideally you then funnel the remaining bad guys to your defenders/strikers in nice manageable chunks.

All 5 of the at will powers have their good points. It is hard to choose between them and if their were feats that gave me more of them I would take those feats.

Another point for wizards: It is easy to get the knowledge skills, which means monster knowledge, which means finding out the monsters' weaknesses at the start of combat. That is pretty useful.

 

[Henry]

You know, clean, things like that. I even miss eagles splendor and charm person.

Don't forget you have that, and in spades, now -- Prestidigitation is an all the time thing for Wizards now. The stat buffing spells I don't miss, because their sole purpose was keeping up with the people who had stat boosting items, and those are pretty much gone, replaced by a LOT of permanent ability score increases. The Charm person thing I agree - I would have at least liked to have seen a version that lasted for 5 minutes (encounter) or something.

Granted I think that it´s lousy that WOTC confirming Dump stat mentality, Depending on the concept of the character, all stats are potentially useful, I liked that in chapter 1 of the PHB, then I get to chapter 4 and personally I will never be lower than a cha 14, I like orb mastery, and I am a constitution person. First level, I am being penalized for being something other than a cookie cutter? WOW talk about taking the entire D&D as well as MMO world back to the DOOM days. Can't use the BFG effectively don't play. Working with the DM to allow an attribute swap CHA for WIS on the orb powers, since both represent aspects of the characters will, I just don't play shy little book worm wizards. Hopefully people understand why that is important to me.

Maybe it's just me, but I REALLY don't think system mastery for every little bonus is going to be as important in a party as it was for 3E, even if you have anyone in your group who wrings every last "+1" out of a character.

 

[Ahglock]

They may not suck, but you wont need a controller on the team. The wizard has some decent effects, but lots of other classes have controlling effects and area of effects, so its not that impressive. Heck I think the cleric is the best AoE specialist in the game, the areas may be a bit smaller. But, with it automatically only hurting enemies its a awesome choice.

The one area where I think they flat out failed in balance for the wizard was in the utility power section. I think they over-responded there by making virtually all there abilities, even fairly unimpressive ones dailys.

The warlock is in a similar situation, but most classes have a decent spread of per encounter and daily utility effects throughout the levels. Wizards with the exception of displacement stop getting encounter utility effects at level 6. This is partly made up for with the beginning at will cantrips, but end of the day it does not cut it when your higher level utility powers are on the suck side due to it being a daily.

It is fine when things like cloud chariot is a daily, because its a powerful effect. Flight + cover, and it lasts all day. Mass fly is just flight, no cover, and it only lasts an encounter ability, and still a daily.

I think they may be the weakest class in the game, but the difference between weakest and strongest is much smaller in this edition than in 3e.

 

[ravenight]

The Charm person thing I agree - I would have at least liked to have seen a version that lasted for 5 minutes (encounter) or something.

Curse of the Dark Delirium (for warlocks) lets you sustain it until you fail an attack roll. Honestly, a long-lasting charm spell is a pretty problematic power to be able to use without having to make multiple attack rolls. They may add some more "domination" effects to the psionics-based characters, but I actually hope they don't give a power that lets you make one attack roll to completely take over a target's actions (even restricted by not being able to make the target do something it wouldn't normally do).

It is fine when things like cloud chariot is a daily, because its a powerful effect. Flight + cover, and it lasts all day. Mass fly is just flight, no cover, and it only lasts an encounter ability, and still a daily.

What are the powerful encounter abilities you are comparing Mass Fly to? You're saying that because you can only do it once per day, being able to have every ally near you fly for the whole encounter is worse than being able to shift twice your speed (Dazzling Acrobatics)?

I think in general, the thing with Wizards is that people compare them to 3.x wizards, not to other 4e classes. Wizards used to have a ridiculous amount of things they could do, many of which were monstrously over-powered. 10d6 to everyone in a room is completely ridiculous at 15th level, let alone 10th. People look at 3d6 + Int and say it is much weaker, but a) the previous one was insanely over-powered, and b) compare it to 5th lvl dailies of other 4e guys, not a 3.x spell. When you do that, you realize that it does slightly less damage than a comparable single-target spell, but it hits several targets, which is worth a lot.

 

[Najo]

My two cents on wizards in 4e is is this:

The wizard is not as much damage dealing and uber powerful as in previous editions, but:

1) Their cantrips are awesome and reward creative players

2) The at will spells have subtle benefits other at will powers don't (i.e. magic missle is 2d4, and hench has a bell curve for damage, other powers push, slow, do bursts wtc.). Since these are at-will, wizards can do them over and over making wizards very adaptable.

3) Spells books are awesome. Wizards basically get twice as many dailies and utilities to choose from. This allows wizards to still feel very D&D-ish and makes them even more adaptable.

4) Built in ritual casting feat and 3 rituals. This is where the non-combat spells are (aside from the utilities). There is enough of them in the PHB to give a decent selection and new books are going to have more. These rituals add alot to the wizard's power.

5) Utility effects still include feather fall, invisibilty, shield, mirror image, resistance, dispel magic, dimension door and other wizard staples. Wizards are much more than ranged damage.

6) Most of the wizard dailies are some of teh most powerful effects in the game and their encounter powers are good too.


Our main wizard just became level 3. Between creative use of cantrips, scorching burst, magic missile, acid arrow, sleep, expeditious retreat, shield, fire shroud and burning hands, he is now cleaning up in encounters. We had a fight with 10 minions, 4 level 3 goblins and 1 level 4 hobgoblin and the wizard took out 7 of the minions, 2 of the goblins and the hobgoblin all on his own when he got seperated from the party and attacked the main portion of the enemies on his own with area effects.

The enemies were spread out, the wizard got a surprise action, and had an action point. He used his surprise to move into the middle of them and used his action point to get started with a fire shroud. Then he scorching burst another pocket of minions. Got ganged up on and used expeditious retreat to escape, started dropping the goblins with burning hands and magic missiles. Then acid arrow took out the hobgoblin. Altough he spent his action point and daily, it was impressive. No other class can pull off the wave after wave of area effect damage and carnage he did. It was awesome.

Wizards reward smart and creative players who figue out how to be resourceful with them, which is exactly how a good wizard should play, challenging and rewarding.