Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DSRilk" data-source="post: 4241017" data-attributes="member: 35212">It's not a myth - it's a byproduct of spell slots.  Wizards had a few spell slots (1 more per spell level if they specialized).  Take a 4th level wizard (a pretty optimal level for them as they gain 2 spells) with an 18 in his primary stat and place him in 3 battles during one day, each with an expected duration of 6 rounds.  That's a total of 18 actions.  The wizard has 4 1st level spells and 3 2nd.  A reasonable assumption is that the wizard expects to need at least two utility spells at some point during the day, so you end up with a max of 5 total spells.  So the wizard can cast a spell each round in the first combat and do nothing in the next two or he could split up his spells and spend 2/3rds of his day firing a crossbow.  Combat classes can do their schtick all 18 rounds.  One could argue that you could get an extra 3 combat-based cantrips in there at some point and perhaps an extra regular combat spell if you specialized, but cantrips don't scale so you might as well have a crossbow, and even with those cantrips and an extra spell or even two, you're still spending over half the combat doing nothing magical.As a general rule (and yes, there are exceptions of course), people who play wizards want to do something resembling spell casting during most of their combats.  So the option was to spend 2/3rds of the combats not casting spells or rest after one combat.Yes, there are groups that rested after each encounter simply to be at max strength, but the real problem that truly does exist in 3.x (and it was faaaar worse in previous versions) is that certain players didn't really get to "play" the class at all the way they envisioned it unless they rested after each combat.The main issue stemmed from the original concept of D&D.  It was a tactical game in its inception, and the wizard was the class that sucked rocks at low levels, but ruled the game if you managed to keep him alive to later levels.  So from a tactical game sense, choosing a wizard was a short term sacrifice for long term gain.  The game has changed since then, as have the expectations, and one of those expectations is that wizards cast spells -- all the time.  You may not agree that a wizard should be able to cast a spell every round, but enough people thought so that it created a major drive to fight and rest, which is solved by 4e.  People who fought and rested to be at constant maximum efficiency will do so, but people who felt like they had to do it so that their characters could continue to do something interesting will no longer have to.  And that's all good.</blockquote>

Verification