You ever seen a Wizard Dominat @ low LvL?
- Thread starter satori01
- Start date
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
Yeah, that was my experience as well. Wizards could dominate 1, maybe 2 combats a day. Basically they cast one spell and it was over.As an experiment, do a campaign in which the PCs rest after every fight. There are any number of reasons it can make sense.
Let us know how the comparison looks then
But they only had those 2 spells. So, if you fought more than 2 combats a day, the Wizard spent most of his time hiding in the back and hoping not to get hit. This most often happened in dungeon crawls.
But in games where there were a lot of overland travel, I found that DMs rolled for random encounters every day of travel. Often their system didn't allow for more than one or two random encounters a day. So, an entire session could be traveling from one place to another with only random encounters. During those sessions, the low level Wizard would shine. A LOT.
It tended to look like this:
DM: "Ok, it'll take a month of travel to get to your destination....*roll* On the second day you encounter 8 Goblins."
Wizard: "I cast sleep"
DM: "They....all fall asleep."
Wizard: "Alright, we cut their throats in their sleep."
DM: "Fine...*roll* On the 5th day, you are attacked by 10 kobolds."
Wizard: "*sigh* I cast sleep. They all fall asleep and we kill them."
Then we'd get to the dungeon and the Wizard would hide in the back again hoping no one would notice he was there.
keterys
First Post
The best part is - many dungeons, especially in those days, really had no reason to be hyperfast in exploring them.
So if you take a more archaeological approach to it, the wizard really could rest every time it made even the slightest sense.
So if you take a more archaeological approach to it, the wizard really could rest every time it made even the slightest sense.
Neonchameleon
Legend
Very old D&D and/or at low levels
The L1 3.X wizard could easily have 3 spells.Or would throw a volley of darts.
Older D&D had wandering monster rolls deliberately to prevent restng in dungeons.
keterys
First Post
Why rest in the dungeon? Rest outside. Just tackle one room at a time, fortifying or scorched earthing as you go.
When did other rest options, like rope trick, show up?
And, let's be fair, after 1 or 2 levels, you can have enough "auto-wins" to do a few encounters then rest Though the random encounters for wilderness travel did highlight the problem more amusingly.
Though, yes, dart chucking (and was it staff slinging for clerics, I want to say?) was startlingly effective.
When did other rest options, like rope trick, show up?
And, let's be fair, after 1 or 2 levels, you can have enough "auto-wins" to do a few encounters then rest
Though the random encounters for wilderness travel did highlight the problem more amusingly.Though, yes, dart chucking (and was it staff slinging for clerics, I want to say?) was startlingly effective.
DMKastmaria
First Post
Yeah, in 1e its kinda hard to cast sleep in the midst of a melee. A restriction, IIRC, that was dropped in 3e. Never played 2e.
All these little scenarios look at things in a vacuum and when dealing with earlier editions, often ignore and misrepresent what the rules actually are.
At levels 1-3, you don't face monsters with 5HD that often. If they aren't bunched together, well, then you dominate only *half* the encounter while the entire party does fight the other *half*. When there are 8 kobolds, and the mage takes down 5, and the other 4 PC take down the other 3, then the mage is dominating the encounter regardless. If you take both the allies and the enemies... well, fortunatelly Sleep is not a Save or Die. You could sleep everybody, wake up your mates, and proceed to slaughter the NPC. Some monsters are resistant to Sleep, yes, just like some others are resistant to weapons (damage reduction, incorporeal, or inmune to non-magic weapons).
Sure, the Wizard does not dominate *all* the adventure. Only the encounter that matters.
DMKastmaria
First Post
That is an incredibly boring way to handle overland travel. You might as well bypass all that and get right to the dungeon.
Or, you can do an actual hexcrawl, with the possibility of interesting encounters (violent or non-violent,) exploration, adventure sites, ruins, side-treks, villages, flying witches, environmental hazards, etc., etc.
that's true, but an Hexcrawl also tend to have this "15' workday" appereance of "unleash all your grenades" fight.
DMKastmaria
First Post
At 3rd level, 5hd monsters are fairly common.
And yeah! You go ahead and put everything to sleep, including your party members. In desperation, sure. Otherwise, it's a foolish move and you might just get boned!
