Wizards still cast Enchantment, Illusions, Necromancy

[Reynard]

The wizard has always been broken because of his ability to outshine people at their roles, which is rooted in his huge flexibility. Slice him up, I say. I always preferred the subclasses anyway. Generalist wizards leave me uninterested.

Sure, but doing so is a waste of resources that can be used in places where there isn't another role to fill a need. Who else can create a wall of stone or teleport the party or create illusions or turn of the BBEG's magic? Why cast invisibility on yourself when casting it on the rogue makes him a cuisinart? Why cast stoneskin and tensers transformation on yourself when casting stoneskin on the fighter or barbarian lets him go nuts on the enemy.

I am going to go ahead and say with confidence that if you've sat at a table with a player whose wizard stole your fighter's or rogues thunder every time, you were all doing it wrong.

 

[Conjurer]

Conjuror/Summoner: Warlock
Originally I was thinking there would be a summoner class, but after thinking about it, I realize that the classic archtype of a summer usually has ties to demons. And we've been told (very loosely) that warlocks will summon demons or at least have pacts with them. This may be our "specialist" summoner class.

Now, this is an idea I could get behind.

Anything that goes closer to the Planar Binding big guys and away from the Fiendish Rodent pokemon-like summons gets my vote.

(Not that the pokemon-like Fiendish Rodents don't have their uses, but the Bindings have a more interesting flavor, IMO)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If you want to make illusions and such, be a bard.

Bards have nowhere near the range of illusions available to an illusionist.

 

[Traycor]

Bards have nowhere near the range of illusions available to an illusionist.

But they might in 4E

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But they might in 4E

Since they've trimmed back illusions from the wizard, and are explicitly working on an Illusionist core class, I wouldn't count on it.

 

[Rechan]

Since they've trimmed back illusions from the wizard, and are explicitly working on an Illusionist core class, I wouldn't count on it.

Assuming bards aren't THE illusionist class.

 

[JohnSnow]

Why cast invisibility on yourself when casting it on the rogue makes him a cuisinart? Why cast stoneskin and tensers transformation on yourself when casting stoneskin on the fighter or barbarian lets him go nuts on the enemy.

I am going to go ahead and say with confidence that if you've sat at a table with a player whose wizard stole your fighter's or rogues thunder every time, you were all doing it wrong.

If that's what the wizard's supposed to be doing with those spells, it stands to reason to make them "Range: one creature touched." That way, the spells that are intended to buff others are actually used to buff others.

I look forward to seeing exactly how 4th Edition keeps wizards within reasonable levels. Should be VERY interesting. Off the top of my head, I'm going to guess that Time Stop is just gone.

 

[FourthBear]

Sure, but doing so is a waste of resources that can be used in places where there isn't another role to fill a need.

So the Wizard *can* out-do you in your speciality, but he's got better, more important things to do? Sorry, that doesn't help much either. The Wizard could and likely would use magic to make your character obsolete, but he'll only do so when it's on the line. In the meantime, you can do the grunt work until the class feels it's important enough to spend spells on. Bleah.

OK, that's a bit much, but I do feel that the ability of arcane magic to "do everything" leads to godawful stepping on every other classes toes. I definitely look forward to honest-to-goodness magical specialists that can actually be distinguished from a generalist by more than a bonus spell per level.

 

[Warbringer]

I always bought a good amount, but I've never seen a wizard buy enough to be the ,"best at everything." I'm honestly wondering if people actually saw this in there games or if its just an exaggerated example.

Yep Eberron with Artificers... OMG

 

[Ahglock]

So the Wizard *can* out-do you in your speciality, but he's got better, more important things to do? Sorry, that doesn't help much either. The Wizard could and likely would use magic to make your character obsolete, but he'll only do so when it's on the line. In the meantime, you can do the grunt work until the class feels it's important enough to spend spells on. Bleah.

OK, that's a bit much, but I do feel that the ability of arcane magic to "do everything" leads to godawful stepping on every other classes toes. I definitely look forward to honest-to-goodness magical specialists that can actually be distinguished from a generalist by more than a bonus spell per level.

Thing is a wizard really can't out-do people in there specialties if the DM runs the number of encounters as designed for and he runs the rules under the assumption people are aware of magic and do things to counter it. You got a wizard taking over peoples roles, you really have a DM who doesn't know how to deal with magic and just lets it get away with stuff it shouldn't, or a campaign style that doesn't limit resource management classes. It is probably the hardest area of the rules to deal with considering its scope, and if you have a campaign where you do like 1 encounter per day just forget about a spell caster looking remotely balanced, but without cheating you can easily run a game where the wizard doesn't outshine anyone.(well except for maybe like the monk and bard who just suck) I look forward to a wizard balanced around the assumption of per encounter abilities for all classes since it should allow spell casters to be balanced in a wider range of play styles.