Wizards, nerfed or not?

[Oni]

Burst 3 would be better in open terrain with large armies, no doubt about that, but in dungeon scenarios burst 2 would have been big enough to catch all the enemies without much trouble. Even against large armies a fireball doesn't hurt minions on a miss. If it killed minions on a miss, then I'd be a little happier with it.

Miss:Half is psychologically pretty poor ("Hey, I did 8 damage to each of the gnolls! They are all down 10% of their hp!").

The area of fireball is more often a drawback rather than a benefit unless the wizard manages to go first in a combat, and if the wizard is going first then Slow is often a better opener than Fireball from a tactical point of view.

In terms of killing minions and doing more damage to other targets then Stinking Cloud seems much better a lot of the time. By round 2 you've done more damage than a fireball, you've been guaranteed a kill against minions and you can still keep it going as a minor while doing other stuff too. For a wizard with +8 damage and a combat that lasts 8 rounds (all the combats I ran last Sunday lasted 12-15 rounds FWIW) he could do a fireball for 3d6+8 in burst 3, or he could do a stinking cloud which would do 8d10+64 in burst 2 over the course of the combat. Unless you're fighting something immune to poison, stinking cloud seems much, much better. It is on that basis that I particularly find fireball lacking.

Cheers!

Fireball just needs to have, Effect: The target takes ongoing 5 fire damage (save ends), tacked on the end. Then it would be reasonable cool again. I've always been disappointed that, even with previous editions, fireball didn't leave people running around with their heads on fire, plus it'll kill minions dead.

 

[Gort]

My opinion is that whatever the wizard loses at high levels compared to other editions, he gains at lower ones. He's more survivable than before - a decent AC is easily achievable, and he's not so far behind the other classes in HP any more. He never runs out of spells, which is awesome.

However, he has lost the ability to completely wreck the campaign and obsolete many types of adventure by casting a 6-second spell. I was kinda sad when I could no longer have a "travelling the wilderness" type of plot arc because my party all knew Teleport or Wind Walk or any number of other "travel nearly instantly with no real risk" spells. To do that I had to pretty arbitrarily limit the wizards powers.

Now, you can say that I'm a bad DM because I find it hard to keep up with a party that can go anywhere instantly, but I find 4e wizards a lot less stressful. At least a 4e wizard has to spend 10 minutes and some pocket change to teleport - he can't do it in combat, for instance!

I like the move to "themed" spellcasters, as well. Wizards never seemed to specialise in 3e when I played - it was far more profitable to be able to cherry-pick all the best spells from every list. It was pretty rare, and often rather experimental, to see a wizard without Fireball for instance.

So yeah, wizards have had their power curve flattened - they don't totally stink at low levels, and they're not the be-all and end-all at high ones (well, I say be-all and end-all, but that also applies to cleric and druid). As a DM and sometime player, I welcome the change.