You ever seen a Wizard Dominat @ low LvL?

[DMKastmaria]

that's true, but an Hexcrawl also tend to have this "15' workday" appereance of "unleash all your grenades" fight.

That depends upon the nature of the hex. It's contents. It's size. And how many you're travelling, in a day.

 

[triqui]

At 3rd level, 5hd monsters are fairly common.

At 3rd level, Sleep is on the verge of obsolescence. Fortunatelly, you have a couple level 2 spells and several level 1 spells now, so not really a issue

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Tallifer:

I noticed in your XP comment that you said Pathfinder retains all this broken stuff. What are you referring to with that statement?

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I can tell you that in Pathfinder a 1st level two handed fighter will one shot practically everything.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I think most of you are forgetting about saves with regards to certain spells such as Color Spray. Color Spray has a short range and you run the risk of hitting your fellow players.

 

[GM Dave]

Now, while I did post that a Wizard could easily in 1e and 2e dominate at low levels with a couple of spells like Charm Person and Sleep; it usually didn't happen.

The reason?

The random spell book.

A wizard used to start with 3 first level random spells along with Read Magic.

The three spells came from three different tables labeled Offensive, Defensive, and Miscellaneous.

You could be the Great and Powerful Magic-User that started their career with Push or Light as their Offensive spell. You might have Affect Normal Fires or Feather Fall as your Defensive spell. You might have Erase or Mending as your Miscellaneous spell.

If you could pick your spell then their were clear differences in power (a mean DM could have you level 9 or 10 before you ever found a copy of sleep or charm person).

One of the advantages of 2e specialist was that at least you could sort of control the spell that you got because you were guaranteed to know one spell connected to your specialty.

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Now in 3e it was different in that you could choose which 1st level and Cantrip spells that you had been taught (You actually got All 0-level and 3+Int bonus level 1 spells).

You also started with Scribe Scroll as a feat.

A wizard that was not putting some of their beginning cash into having a few extra spells on scrolls was not working the system.

I also would make use of the rules on the time needed to study a spell in 3e. You needed 8 hours of rest and then separately you needed time to study and prepare. A wise wizard did not use up all their spell slots on prepared spells but kept one or two slots open for a lunch hour preparation period if it turned out a switch in the spell pool was a useful idea (like a little used utility spell or finding that you were in a dungeon full of plants and undead).

 

[WheresMyD20]

1E). Sucked to be a single class MU. 1 spell only. No Crossbow. 1D4 HP, and steep XP requirements. It was hard to live, frankly to even second level. Even at 12th level a MU being hit by a Magic Missle spell by a 1 Lvl MU would likely die or be near death.

A 12th level 1e MU has 11d4+1 hp (+/- any modifier for constitution). A magic missile cast by a 1st level MU does 1d4+1 points of damage. In 1e, a 12th level MU is in no danger of dying from a single magic missile cast by a 1st level MU (unless, of course, he was severely beaten up ahead of time and the magic missile just pushed him over the edge of 0hp).

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

IIRC, dominate is a 5th level spell ... so wizard's can't dominate until 9th level.

Case closed.

 

[Argyle King]

Given the discussion about Wizards dominating high level play, I wanted to invert the question, and look at Wizards/Magic- User at low level.

Like before, I think the play at Low Level is very edition dependent, with a general tren of the Wizard being on the weaker end of the spectrum at low level.

1E). Sucked to be a single class MU. 1 spell only. No Crossbow. 1D4 HP, and steep XP requirements. It was hard to live, frankly to even second level. Even at 12th level a MU being hit by a Magic Missle spell by a 1 Lvl MU would likely die or be near death.

2E) Still pretty rough at low level...general rule changes help, a little. Specialization Caster games begin...and helps a bit at low level. Bards can cast almost exactly on par with a MU, due to lower XP costs. Now you are not even the best arcane caster as the MU.

3E). Still pretty rough..but better Play as a Dwarf, and depending on how much of the kitchen sink of feats and spells that are allowed, and you will live to 2nd level.
The Beguilar, War Mage, The Dread Necromancer are better specialists.
The Druid is just plain better than you are, at any point.
You have a crossbow now. You are still running around in your underwear.

4e) 4E probably has the most hardy, and probably most powerful Wizard. Burning Sphere is great. Fireball Sucks. Visions of Avarice FTW.
Magic the requires Subjective DM and Player attention are gone...Phantasmal Force etc.

How often did you find the Wizard was just An after thought at low levels?

Actually, I have seen it.

One of my first 4E characters was an Orb Wizard. Sleep was pretty devastating.

My currently (and second) Pathfinder character is a sorcerer. For the first few levels, Sleep was my go-to spell. Being able to cast it multiple times per day without need for preparation was somewhat game breaking; especially considering that goblins tend to have a net penalty to their will saves. The party has leveled up since then, and, for the sake of the DM's sanity, I've chosen to skip over Deep Slumber for the time being.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Very old D&D and/or at low levels The L1 3.X wizard could easily have 3 spells.

Yep. Low level wizards dominating reminded me of our 2e days. Although, I found that most wizards in 3e used their extra slot for a non-combat spell of some sort, so it didn't often increase the amount of combats they could dominate. It just added one non-combat encounter to the list of things they could dominate in the day.

Or would throw a volley of darts.

Yep, darts or just used a staff or dagger to attack enemies...missing most of the time. And often getting themselves killed when they tried it. So they learned quickly to hide instead of drawing attention to themselves when they were out of spells.