Wizards still cast Enchantment, Illusions, Necromancy

[Xethreau]

I always found wizard specializations to be silly, personally. If you want to be a "blaster," go warmage. If you want to be a necromancer, go [Dread] Necromancer. If you want to make illusions and such, be a bard. If you want to be a generalist, be a wizard! 4e, it seems, is bringing this to fruition (with the possible exception of the Warmage, but whatever.)

 

[Rechan]

And the rogue blasts with a knife Seriously, one of the main functions of the curses seem to be increasing damage to the target from Eldritch ->BLAST<-. And "Your Scary New Friend", IIRC, mentions the summoning as "disembodied jaws" chewing on people, which sounds to me like very slightly refluffed blasting. But sure, they do other stuff as well, as do wizards.

Could you define what you mean by Blaster, then? How can a Wizard be a blaster, and a rogue be a blaster with a knife?

I assumed that by "Blaster" you meant "Does area effect damage". Very rarely do I hear Blaster in the same place as 'kills one target at a time'. Because if your only qualifier for "Blasting" is doing damage, then everyone's a blaster.

The point of a striker is to do stupid amounts of damage to one target. Though during the "Tell me about your character" Podcast, the warlock player said that he's not getting enough opportunities to do extra damage, because the situation to do his extra damage isn't coming p a lot; apparently, they changed the "Do extra damage to curse dude."

 

[Rechan]

Since their most powerful ability was the ability to have just THE right spell for any occasion, it would be a foolish wizard who preferred magic items over unlimited spell choice, IMO.

Of course "THE right spell for any occasoin" usually came from Scrolls, because for a wizard to have THE spell for the right occasion, he had to be aware of what they're dealing with that morning so he can prepare his spells.

The strength of the wizard comes from being prepared. Going into a dungeon not knowing even half of what's in there does not make a prepared wizard with THE spell for the occasion. And that's not the Wizard's fault if the DM doesn't throw him a bone.

That's the part of playing any preparation-based caster I hate. I love being the tactics guy, the "I have the solution for this problem" guy, but it's very hard to do that when you don't know what you're dealing with. An example I gave in another thread illustrates this:

Cleric: "We are going into the Swamp of Ickiness. Swamps are full of poisonous creatures. I shall prepare Delay Poison and Lesser Restoration.

DM: You fight Trolls and Lizardfolk.

Cleric: &#*$! Guess I'll hit him them with my blunt stick and heal the party.

 

[Ahglock]

Since their most powerful ability was the ability to have just THE right spell for any occasion, it would be a foolish wizard who preferred magic items over unlimited spell choice, IMO.

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.

I have never as a DM ran into a wizard who totally overshadowed the party members like it seems the wizard did in a lot of other games. We would usually run a full game from levels 1-20, and until level 15 or so the wizard didn't even slightly outclass the rest of the party and only in a couple specific encounters might outclass someone in there ability due to some penalties the other class was facing that didn't effect magic. I keep seeing people say at level 5 the wizard is better than the rest of the party and I'm having a disconnect with it. I get how it could happen, especially in games with few encounters per day, I just never saw it.

With the new design on per encounter abilities the wizard obviously needs a re-balancing since the balance of limited resources keeping you from wasting slots on knock when you have a good rogue and other issues that came from his resource management balance will be gone. I'd prefer they just re-balance the spells and not the options though.

I just never saw the wizard is better than everyone at everything issue in game

 

[Ahglock]

Could you define what you mean by Blaster, then? How can a Wizard be a blaster, and a rogue be a blaster with a knife?

I assumed that by "Blaster" you meant "Does area effect damage". Very rarely do I hear Blaster in the same place as 'kills one target at a time'. Because if your only qualifier for "Blasting" is doing damage, then everyone's a blaster.

The point of a striker is to do stupid amounts of damage to one target. Though during the "Tell me about your character" Podcast, the warlock player said that he's not getting enough opportunities to do extra damage, because the situation to do his extra damage isn't coming p a lot; apparently, they changed the "Do extra damage to curse dude."

I'm curious to see how big the gap in damage is on single targets for strikers and non-strikers. No-one remembers who killed the minions but everyone remembers who killed the BBEG. Want to talk unfun, give one role the designated BBEG slayer/hero role and everyone else the sidekick role.

 

[glass]

This is one of the greatest design flaws of 4E, I think (and, of course, others will say it is one of the greatest design strengths). "Party role" is only useful for whatever default playstyle the game assumes, and the stricter the role, the narrower the default playstyle and more difficult it is to deviate from that playstyle without house-ruling. I think we have all known enough gamers and/or read enough message boards to know that playstyle varies widely from group to group (and even within groups) and enforcing any one particulr playstyle to the most basic game mechanics reduces the accessibility of the game, particularly to those that have been playing a long time and are used to their playstyle.

3E actually broadened the assumed playstyle quite a bit by giving both players and DMs a lot of flexibility through feats, skills and other choices. Fighters didn't have to be tanks. Rogues didn't have to be thieves. The idea that class=role (primarily combat role) is a bug, not a feature of 4E.

Most of the classes had roles in 3e too, it was just that you had to work out for yourself what they were. CoDzilla was the exception, of course.


glass.

 

[Wulfram]

Well, WotC will want to sell a few more books the just the core books.

Sure. I just don't see why we should collude in their attempts to take more of our cash.

If we're going to accept things published in subsequent books as a panacea for any weaknesses in the core books, then we might as well all just write WotC a blank check and be done with it.

 

[TPK]

Could you define what you mean by Blaster, then? How can a Wizard be a blaster, and a rogue be a blaster with a knife?

I assumed that by "Blaster" you meant "Does area effect damage". Very rarely do I hear Blaster in the same place as 'kills one target at a time'. Because if your only qualifier for "Blasting" is doing damage, then everyone's a blaster.

By "blasting", I mean magic with direct damage as the primary focus. Imposing status conditions, stealth and movement, reshaping the battlefield, and doing non-hp mind stuff are all fine examples of interesting and powerful non-blasty stuff to do. I don't mind having blasty stuff in the wizard, just having that necessarily be the meat and potatoes and everything else seasoning.

Oh, and the bit with the rogue was a joke, smiley and all. Sorry for the confusion.

The point of a striker is to do stupid amounts of damage to one target. Though during the "Tell me about your character" Podcast, the warlock player said that he's not getting enough opportunities to do extra damage, because the situation to do his extra damage isn't coming p a lot; apparently, they changed the "Do extra damage to curse dude."

Hey, that's great news! How great naturally depends on what the conditions are now.

 

[Rechan]

I'm curious to see how big the gap in damage is on single targets for strikers and non-strikers. No-one remembers who killed the minions but everyone remembers who killed the BBEG. Want to talk unfun, give one role the designated BBEG slayer/hero role and everyone else the sidekick role.

The shift to 4e is 1 pc = 1 monster in a standard encounter. (or 2 monsters and an elite, or whatever).

Wizards will likely obliterate minions, but in a 4 PC vs. 4 Monster fight, the Warlock and Striker will likely be more influential.

 

[Abstraction]

The problem with the wizard was, one: he could more or less change his "class" every day by changing his options. The fighter sure couldn't do that. Two: if he wants to expend all his might in one encounter, it could make that encounter trivial starting at mid-levels. Three: without a lot of pressure from the DM, there was little reason for a wizard to not expend it all and have the party rest.

Last night, I watched my wife's wizard take out an entire group of 3 creatures and their flying mounts with a fireball. It isn't even her highest level spell! It ended the combat.

A wizard class that is balanced. A wizard that can specialize in anything. Clear class roles that don't step on each other. Pick any two.