Wizards still cast Enchantment, Illusions, Necromancy

[Rechan]

So the argument is that it was bad for a wizard, whose only notable ability was his ability with magic, was better at magic than other classes that didn't have a similarily narrow focus?

Try classes that had a narrow focus but the wizard stepped on their toes. Like the psion. The wizard cound enchant, do telekinesis, alter his body, do divinations and all the other stuff that's more associated with Psionics than with Arcane Magic.

And the generalist wizard was stronger than the specialist wizard, which really isn't right; a generalist should be weaker than a specialist at doing the specialist's job.

A wizard being better at summoning than a cleric was bad despite the wizard only focusing on magic and the cleric getting more HP, better weapon and armor training, and the ability to turn undead?

First, how is the generalist wizard better than the priest at summoning? They're both casting at the same number of spells. Clerics can take the same Summon feats that wizards can get.

Clerics can also rebuke or command undead, allowing the cleric to control more undead than a wizard. He also gets access to Animate Dead at 3rd level, rather than the wizard's 5th. Clerics can heal their undead spontaneously, Desecrate an area to make their undead stronger, in addition to getting those yummy d8 hit dice, armor, and simple weapons.

Plus, I don't see how that's going to change. When an illusionist class is released, it's a safe bet he'll be better at illusions than other classes. Same thing with summoners, enchanters, etc. So all that's been done to fix this "problem" is chop the wizard class up into a number of seperate classes.

It changes by making a specialist the specialist, as opposed to not as good as his thing.

 

[Traycor]

I can understand the desire to give illusionists specific illusion abilities, but it seems like a paragon path would be perfect for this.

I don't know about you, but if I wanted to play an Illusionist, I would hate to be forced to play until level 11 to get the class I wanted. In our games that's about a year of play. Bleh!

 

[Bishmon]

Exactly. The power that a wizard has had in magic basically covers just about everything. That class had so much power that they could outshine the fighter, rogue, etc... One class should not be able to overwhelm everything in the game and cover all abilities except healing. It was just too much for one class.

Chopping the wizard into lots of classes fixes this problem quite nicely.

No, it doesn't. In fact, it does nothing to address that problem.

You balance each of those seperate classes...

That fixes the problem. The wizard's problem was never the amount of spells he had access to. His problem was that the spells he had access to were simply better than a lot of the things other classes had access to.

It's the balancing of spells that fixes the problem, not the splitting of spells into a number of different classes.

 

[Bishmon]

Try classes that had a narrow focus but the wizard stepped on their toes. Like the psion. The wizard cound enchant, do telekinesis, alter his body, do divinations and all the other stuff that's more associated with Psionics than with Arcane Magic.

According to whom? A lot of people don't even recognize psionics in their fantasy games, so I think it's a tough sell to say these things are more associated with psionics than arcane magic.

But I'll certainly concede that the wizard stepped on the psion's toes in a lot of ways. Of course, I think that's obviously necessary because of the sheer amount of people who don't care for psionics in their game.

So instead of trying to find a good solution to how these two mind-controlling magicish users can coexist and still be different and interesting, they just got rid of the major releveant stuff from the wizard and gave it to the psion. How is that a good solution? If you're one of those people that don't like psionics, you're out of luck. At least until they release an arcane magic enchanter class, and then that defeats the whole purpose of trying to reduce crowding between psions and wizard-types in the first place.

 

[Bishmon]

I don't know about you, but if I wanted to play an Illusionist, I would hate to be forced to play until level 11 to get the class I wanted. In our games that's about a year of play. Bleh!

You wouldn't have to. Like I said, they could have some sort of semi-specialization thing. At first level, you could choose to be specialize in illusions and become known as an illusionist and you'd get a minor benefit for it. The beginnings of your career as an illusionist would still focus on really understanding the basics of magic and your specific illusions that you've chosen.

Then at 11th level, you'd take your paragon path to become a master illusionist. That's when you'd get all your mighty illusion-specific powers.

Again, this is pretty much exactly how it worked in 3E with wizard specialization and prestige classes, and I'm not sure I ever really heard any complaints about it.

 

[Traycor]

Personally, I'm curious to find out what spells they mean by, "classic illusions and classic necromancy spells"

Any suggestions on which spells will be considered "classic" from these catagories?

 

[small pumpkin man]

So the argument is that it was bad for a wizard, whose only notable ability was his ability with magic, was better at magic than other classes that didn't have a similarily narrow focus? A wizard being able to be a better enchanter than a bard was bad, despite the wizard only focusing on magic and the bard being a jack-of-all-trades? A wizard being better at summoning than a cleric was bad despite the wizard only focusing on magic and the cleric getting more HP, better weapon and armor training, and the ability to turn undead?

I don't get that.

"Magic" is not a niche, "Arcane Magic" describes how the class does what it does, not what it does, which is what has always been the problem, the definition of "can do everything magic can do" isn't a great starting point to attempt balance since, well, magic does whatever you say it does. Not to mention that with 3.x, there is a bunch of Arcane magic Wizards don't have access to. Saying Wizards should get access to all magic is like saying fighters should get access to all Fighting Powers, full rage, full sneak attack, full maneuvers, and be able have them all and swap them around daily, except for high levels, when you just have all of them at the same time.

You need to define what the Wizard class does, with "Arcane Magic" being merely the how.

 

[Mad Mac]

It's the balancing of spells that fixes the problem, not the splitting of spells into a number of different classes.

Both methods are useful. The advantage of having, say, a seperate "Summoner" class is that summoning is his main bag, and since he's not loaded down with the ability to turn people invisible and toss meteor swarms around, he can be balanced as being really awesome at summoning.

A Class that can cast really awesome summoning, enchantment, and evocation spells, is inherently stronger and more versatile than one that focuses mainly on a more narrow catagory of magic. To put it simply, breaking specialists into other classes allows the creation of specialist classes that aren't weak and lame. You can also play with archtypes more, and create stuff like an enchanter who also has lots of sleight of hand/manipulation type skills, or a Necromancer with a host of unique class abilities, instead of forcing every type of magic into the same restrictive class framework.

Granted, you can do similar things with Wizard paragon paths, but this will constrain design in creating effective specialists more than creating new classes. Paragon paths are, as far as we know, only designed to add benefits, not take away class features, so you can never create a balanced Wizard paragon path that can do as much cool stuff with illusions or Enchantment as a seperate Illusion based/Enchantment based class (Like the Bard) who pays for his specialized powers in part by not also being able to blow up mountains.

Again, this is pretty much exactly how it worked in 3E with wizard specialization and prestige classes, and I'm not sure I ever really heard any complaints about it.

Specialist Wizards have never been very interesting or effective, going all the way back to their debut in 2nd edition. Optimized Wizards were almost always generalists, except in 3.0 where you could make a Diviner with opposed school Necromancy and not take much of a hit.

 

[The Little Raven]

The wizard's problem was never the amount of spells he had access to. His problem was that the spells he had access to were simply better than a lot of the things other classes had access to.

It was the variety of spells. Since he could get (or create) spells to make him a better fighter than a fighter when he needs to be, or spells that make a rogue completely obsolete, he could completely overshadow other classes in their own role. The rogue can't step in and take over the wizard's role, or overshadow him, nor can the fighter. It's unfair and poor balance for one class to be able to outshine all others so easily.

In Vampire, Thaumaturgy had the exact same problem. In the initial description of the Discipline, they noted that it could, technically, duplicate the effects of any other vampire Discipline in the game, if the proper paths were research/created. So, what's the point of other Disciplines? In the new Vampire, they learned their lesson, so now the vampire blood magics are specifically themed to avoid that problem.

 

[Abstraction]

Invisibility, I'm sure, will be a "classic illusion" for the wizard.