You ever seen a Wizard Dominat @ low LvL?

[GM Dave]

1e M-U not able to dominate at level 1?

You're not doing it the right way then.

Charm Person at level 1 lasts 3 weeks or more on someone with Int 10 to 12. It lasts longer on lower Int opponents.

It was not hard for a M-U with a small bag of gold to go through a few of the citizens of town (usually Guards that were coming out of the bar drunk on the way home) and offer them a better job opportunity.

Modifiers from being drunk and offering an incentive could usually recruit some good Men at Arms or even a Sargent or two.

Later, you find your first Oger (like charm the one in Caves of Chaos) and you've got your front line filled out.

Treat them reasonably well and give a bit of gold and even if they later make a save to break the spell (Men at Arms need a 19+ and they only get that check usually once every 3 weeks giving on average 15 weeks of charmed service ~ almost 4 months and slightly lower int troops will serve even longer) and they'll stick around.

Give a wizard a few days and he'll parasite off a large guard detatchment to help clear out a few goblins and kobolds.

Bolster that with say, Sleep which took out 4d4 goblins or kobolds or 2d4 orcs in a single cast with no save for any touched by the spell. Any person that is asleep can be dispatched at the rate on 1 per round per slicer. Slice several and bind up the rest for later Charm Person.

Goblins, Kobolds, and Orcs after being charmed are full of information on the surrounding area and dungeon. They are also helpful and again take only a small reward to keep loyal for weeks at a time.

A single wizard can be an army in 1e and multiples working together can be a terror.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

I've never ever seen a low level wizard dominate an adventure at low levels.

I've seen them dominate some encounters (e.g. sleep spell) but NEVER were they in the top half of the party for adventure domination.

MVP is usually fighter.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Yes, in 4E. I think it's the edition where Wizards start stronger, but are balanced all the way.

The balance part is okay, but the problem for me is the wizard feels a bit too much like a variant of every other non-E 4th Ed class, and vice versa.

I guess it's every class at 1st level feeling way too similar, imo.

But I definitely do like to have at-wills/cantrips (no crossbow reliance...) and no encounter ruining spells (murderous mist wounded my soul in 3rd Ed...).

 

[Goonalan]

I/we kept a stats journal- every attack, every damage, every roll for about 2 years with various groups- basically recorded everything and then stuck it in spreadsheets. Just to be clear, I was the DM for all of this and did the maths, generally the recording of data was down to someone's son/daughter aged early teens and grinning like a chimp to be left in charge of the laptop.

Anyway...

In three campaigns 4e, one of which got to 11th level, one to 8th and the other only to 5th- the Wizard's hit% and damage output beat the crap out of everyone else.

Level 1-2 Strikers, approx Level 3 onwards the Wizard FTW- mainly due to all Wizards in the mix favouring area effect damaging spells.

Actually from an anecdotal POV the wizard PC most often than not got the MVP on a session by session basis, generally for being smart, saving the day and turning the enemies into smush.

Cheers PDR

 

[Mattachine]

I've never seen a wizard in editions 1-3 be very important to the party until level 3, unless there was a non-combat encounter that required something like comprehend languages (and the wizard happened to have it). Otherwise, the wizard was usually a liability.

In mid-levels (editions 1-3), the wizard was useful, and occasionally the most powerful in an encounter (based on the match between memorized spells and the particular enemy). Still, they frequently ran out of spells before being able to rest again, and had to save a key spell in case the party ran into a tough opponent.

That's my experience.

 

[triqui]

Depending on what you call "dominant". They weren't dominant in the full adventure, but they dominated the key encounter(s). Sleep was autowin.

 

[Stormonu]

Back in 1E, no one would play the wizard. I had to entice the only player who did play a wizard in that version by also allowing him to play a fighter companion.

No problem with 2E either. A wizard who got cocky thinking they'd dominate an encounter by themselves usually ended up dead - if not in that encounter, then within about 2 encounters down the road. And I am not a killer DM, I just vary encounters a lot.

No problems with 3E or Pathfinder, but I don't follow the wealth-by-level guidelines, tending to shoot low so wizards don't often have wands or scrolls to greatly augment their power. I also am very rigorous on the costs of scribing new spells into a spellbook. Also, having a wide variety of encounters I think has helped to keep wizards from spamming autowins.

Overall, I haven't run a game higher than 12th level, and have no desire to do so. That may have had a huge factor in not seeing problems with spellcaster PC's.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Back in 1E, no one would play the wizard. I had to entice the only player who did play a wizard in that version by also allowing him to play a fighter companion.

We used to 'farm out' the wizard by having an NPC along. The one campaign we were allowed to start at 3rd level though and i jumped at the chance to play a wizard (3d4+6 (of course I had a 16 CON) hps?!?!? My gawd - the power! lol). He did pretty good but never dominated. We only got to about 9th level though.

No problem with 2E either. A wizard who got cocky thinking they'd dominate an encounter by themselves usually ended up dead - if not in that encounter, then within about 2 encounters down the road. And I am not a killer DM, I just vary encounters a lot.

Save me from the loner PC player! I *hate* players who can't seem to grasp the fact that they are not the only player at the table (or even the most important). This kind of 'cocky' attitude gets stomped on quick in any game I've run or been in in the last 10 years.

No problems with 3E or Pathfinder, but I don't follow the wealth-by-level guidelines, tending to shoot low so wizards don't often have wands or scrolls to greatly augment their power. I also am very rigorous on the costs of scribing new spells into a spellbook. Also, having a wide variety of encounters I think has helped to keep wizards from spamming autowins.

Overall, I haven't run a game higher than 12th level, and have no desire to do so. That may have had a huge factor in not seeing problems with spellcaster PC's.

It definitely is. Past 12th you get into 'wish' territory and that isn't even the worse thing. Games I've played past 15th have ground to near stand still when there were full casters of any stripe in them.

 

[Stormonu]

Depending on what you call "dominant". They weren't dominant in the full adventure, but they dominated the key encounter(s). Sleep was autowin.

Did you not use oozes/slimes, plants, undead or animated objects?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yes. 3e at level 1.

And 4e at quite low levels, mostly due to a DM that didn't know enough about 4e. To the point where the first encounter was meant to be tough due to positioning - three snipers on the first floor of a dark building, a mostly melee party, and no stairs. Would have worked in older editions - but the 4e response was simple: Wizard casts light then scouts with familiar. Assault Swordmage marks target. Eladrin teleports up to the first floor and pushes one of the archers over the edge where the stairs were. Marked archer stabs Eladrin - at which point the swordmage teleports up. The big wizard-dominant (as opposed to wizard-MVP) fight was later when we were trying to defend a fairly narrow mountain pass against an invading company of troops. Flaming Sphere + Orb Expertise + Freezing burst + narrow path with plenty of difficult terrain and a sheer drop to one side + plenty of targets who couldn't fly. (It wasn't intended to work that way. We were meant to be forced to retreat I think). And then there were the narrow corridors that meant that storm pillar could block an entire column of reinforcements...

The thing people forget is that in 1e, fighters were pretty crap. Weapon Specialisation only showed up in Unearthed Arcana - meaning that before that fighters were barely better with weapons than clerics at low level - and wizards were most likely to be found using the monstrosities that were darts. 1e pretty much had clerics having full-spectrum dominance over the fighter, and a lot of rules in UA (including the "overpowered" fighter variants) were stated by Gygax to have been to boost the fighters against the magic users.

I think a better way of looking at it is looking at what level you get equivalence - with the LFQW issue wizards always gain more from gaining levels. My back of the envelope numbers come out at:

1e: 3rd level. The fighter has very little to recommend it, and clerics get almost full spectrum dominance over the fighter. But low level wizards are weak as well.

1e with UA: 5th level - fighters are much nastier here. And also get serious boosts as the wizard is starting to overtake. This was when fighters became good at something rather than clerics without spells.

2e: Back to 3rd level - the wizard gets two pretty huge boosts with specialisation (an extra spell/spell level is massive) and much more subtly with the destruction of the illusionist class to bring spells like phantasmal forces to the old illusionist level.

3.X: 1st level (!). The wizard gets yet another extra spell slot, and the fighter is hurting badly with the loss of exclusive access to specialisation's extra attacks. It's back to the near-complete cleric dominance over the fighter pre-UA

4e: N/A.

Also a huge change between editions is the 'Lost Endgame' of D&D. pre-3e by the book, D&D changed somewhere round level 9 and the fighter got armies to play with. Which means that with a basic level range of 1-9 if you balance somewhere round levels 3-5 (to account for "thinning out" with more deaths and more group breakups), things just about work. 3.X was meant to have 20 playable levels. Which should mean that with one gaining power faster than the other you want the balance point to be somewhere round L6-9 and below that it's unbalanced towards the Linear and after to the Quadratic.