Why is there such a wank on Wizards in D&D...

No one said anything about direct damage

Yeah, this.

It's a game based on the illusion of choice of which mtg card descriptions you can bash against each other. Wizard's the only character with the ability to actually build a deck.

Only if the GM is an asshole who allows obvious bullshit powergaming builds, in normal games the Wizard still comes on top.

This is true, but there are games that are a HELL of alot better than DnD out there.

Unfortunately nobody plays them unless you have an IRL group and the clout to force them try something else. For the rest of us Roll20 plebs we're stuck with Dumpsters and Dumpster Fires.

How about we just declare a notD&D Day on Roll20?

Yeah pretty much what you said. Multiclassing is already a thing, no reason it can't be applied.

But user it's hard enough getting people to show up to an R20 session without saying "we're not playing DnD"

>Wizard learns more spells than any other class in the game, and is the ONLY class that can learn additional spells outside of level ups.

This part is of particular note, since spells are somewhat analogous to class features in the increased options and versatility they give a character.

Now think about what this means.

THE WIZARD CAN BUY CLASS FEATURES. FOR MONEY.

No other class in the game can do this.

Fuck, DnD's game design is such garbage. The creators have a Wizard fetish harder than most of Veeky Forums does for elf-waifus.

I still can't get it.
Isn't every prepared caster can add spells from outside?

No other caster can copy more spells into the spellbook for money.

Furthermore, most other cast spell lists in the game are thematic and focused around a particular role or niche. This is why Clerics are tolerable despite "knowing" their entire spell list, essentially, because their spell list only does a few things. You don't see clerics throwing fireballs AND shapeshifting AND turning invisible AND teleporting AND mind-controlling people ect.

Wizard's spell list is the most versatile, unfocused, non-thematic, and the class can just effectively learn infinite spells from it as long as they have the money and a source to copy from. I like the idea behind wizards, but giving Warlocks, Sorcerers, Bards ect a Intelligence based option and playing them like wizards is alot more healthy for the game balance than actual wizards are.

No.
Clerics and druids have limited spell lists, and wizards get the most varied spells, but are limited in that they have to buy those spells.

The way clerics and druids cheese being overpowered is by using that limited spell selection to become physical powerhouses, and also be able to sling very diverse spells around. Or use methods to get spells from the wizard's spell list.

The most damming thing about wizards always has been that if you unfuck spells and make them scale properly you could build a whole class around many spells, and instead a wizard gets a giant grab bag of them.

Charm X spells? Could be a whole goddamn class of people that mind control foes and monsters.

Fireball? A ranged/area damage dealer that gains more powerful options as they level and can wipe out weak enemy swarms or damage tougher foes would make a perfectly valid class.

Shapeshifting? Duh. This power could easily become an entire classes's focus.

Shapeshifting is already done by Druids. But yes, each and every school of magic in DnD could be it's own class. Nobody should have access to all them with no restrictions.

Shame WotC has a blatantly obviously caster fetish and every expansion they ever release is going to have a ton of new super powerful shit for casters (read: Wizards) and only the token forgettable lip-service to everyone else.

>Charm X spells
They did make a class out of it, the Beguiler, which is a wizard with mostly only charm spells. It's a solid tier 2 class, able to act in a lot of situations in its niche but not able to do everything.

Blame Monte Cock

You sound like a faggot, honestly.

Clerics and Druids are actually more busted than Wizards in 3.5.

>, sorcerers are just innately magical,
Sorcerer's aren't even innately magical outside of 5e. Pre 5e the only innately magical beings were monsters, Monks, and Psionic classes. Sorcerer's are just born with knowledge of spells Wizards need to study for.

3.5 was such garbage that people actually preferred to play Pathfinder over it, so that's not much of an argument.

Is this bait, or are you just retarded? I seriously can't tell? But it's 100% wrong. Like, blatantly so.

I mean, they're still stronger in Pathfinder. Wizards are least need to fucking PAY for their shit. Clerics and Druids get their entire spell list whenever the fuck they want.
No, I actually read the text. If Sorcerer abilities were truly innate, they wouldn't require verbal or somatic components. They would just be SLA's.

A Sorcerer casting a spell is like a bird building a nest. He or She is just born with the knowledge and doesn't need to be taught it.
> But it's 100% wrong. Like, blatantly so.
It's not. Sorcerer abilities are not innate. They still draw from the Weave like WIzards. They just KNOW how to do so without opening up a book but they still need the rituals to do it.

ALL magic draws from the weave if you wana split hairs like that, but Sorcerers blatantly had magical bloodlines up until 5e, and even 5e generally sticks to using bloodlines or magical events to explain a sorcerers INNATE abilities. Just knowing how to DO something makes it pretty innate, or are you saying the act of breathing isn't innate because we still have to move our lungs to do it and get the air from the atmosphere?

>ALL magic draws from the weave if you wana split hairs like that, but Sorcerers blatantly had magical bloodlines up until 5e
They had magical bloodlines. This didn't make their spell casting an innate power
> Just knowing how to DO something makes it pretty innate, or are you saying the act of breathing isn't innate because we still have to move our lungs to do it and get the air from the atmosphere?
Our ability to systematize air into oxygen or whatever is innate, not the air itself. They aren't producing the magic.
>ALL magic draws from the weave if you wana split hairs like that
Ki, Psionics, and Monster SLA's do not actually. 3.5 books have some bestiaries that refer to certain monsters like beholders having organs responsible for SLA abilities. Those things are extensions of a monsters/creatures body, unlike Sorcerer. Hence the need for Spell Slots/Somatics/Verbals. They need a ritual. If you needed a machine to breath(Somatic/Verbal) and process something I would say you can't breath innately. Humans can breath innately. Humans can't write innately.

Let me put it like this, since I was being as claer as mud. Sorcerer's are still using the same pre-programmed Spells that Wizards develop and come up with instead of a series of flexible abilities/powers like innately magical/supernatural beings use.

>not just playing with everyone being a different variety of wizard

This is some fucking autism, and completely irrelevant to the topic. Please Stop.

That feel when a party of wizards will feel more samey than a party of warlocks 9/10 times.

Also Megumin is clearly a warlock. Demon Blood. Most spells she's ever cast in a day is 2. 100% warlock.

>Also Megumin is clearly a warlock. Demon Blood. Most spells she's ever cast in a day is 2. 100% warlock.
She was the first consider the following pic I saw in my folder. So I didnt mean she was a wizard

>They still draw from the Weave like Wizards
>implying 3.5 or pathfinder has consistent fluff instead of being variable from setting to setting

depends on the setting

Other crimson demons can cast plenty of spells.

Megumin's a Spheres of Power incanter specialising in destruction magic.

The beguiler isn't an official class.
And if you mean the one in Xanathar's Lost Notes to Everything Else, I frankly found most classes in it to be pretty poorly designed or way too good when compared to the official ones.

I think the wizard/martial power discrepancy comes from a misunderstanding of the way the wizard was balanced in early editions by the writers of later editions, who ended up negating the wizard's main drawback (extreme fragility) when they made characters as a rule far harder to kill. In OD&D, a high level wizard is powerful, but getting a wizard to a high level is a challenge - especially since, if it gets killed off, there's no guarantee your next character will have the intelligence to be a wizard, and they'll probably have to start back at level 1. Nowadays there's a more than reasonable chance your level 1 wizard will survive until they start seriously outclassing martials at the mid-level range, and if you play for long enough there's no reason why they won't get to level 20. And even if you do bite the dust, your DM will probably let you make another caster with perfectly tuned ability scores at the same level as the rest of the party anyway, so there's no real risk to running a caster.

Actually, the drawback for wizards was slow experience progression, the fact that their spells took actual game time to cast any spell (it increased your initiative count and could be interrupted during the game by any attack doing any amount of damage, and this is a critical issue when monsters have multiple attacks and your casting time could easily take you into the next round of combat instead of going off instantly), and the fact that invisibility and spells were negated by creatures in a percentage change - every creature had a chance to ignore invisibility and spells outright.

Fragility is meaningless compared to being unable to cast spells instantly.

While I agree that Wizards versatility is strong, in 5e at least, druid and cleric know their entire spell list, they all prepare and cast the same amount of spells though.

The entire druid and cleric spell lists are all focused and fill a niche though. Their entire spell lists are less versatile than HALF a wizard's spell list, by a huge margin.

Clerics and Druids are also limited as far as what they can actually cast and they all generally fit a specific niche.

Clerics generally focus on buffing allies, dealing radiant damage, negating disease/curse/debuffs, and healing people in the off chance that shit gets too bad.

Druids generally deal with elemental spells, buffing allies, and speaking with animals/plants for information that wouldn't necessarily be available normally.

Wizards on the other hand can give themselves access to spells that do all that shit without sacrificing anything in return for having such a wide array of versatility.

>playing WoTC editions
>not having spells be automatically interrupted by damage
>not having 1d4 hit die, shit AC and poor THACO for casters
>not having an army of 100 followers to simply overwhelm virgin wizards

>No other caster can copy more spells into the spellbook for money.

well there is the Archivist

which depending on the DM, is Overpowered as Fuck or useless

>THE WIZARD CAN BUY CLASS FEATURES. FOR MONEY.
Meanwhile the cleric and druid literally get all of them for F R E E

Wizards only get access to two spells/level up and the spells YOU the DM hand him. Don't want him getting access to every spell under the sun? Don't fucking hand out every spell under the sun

No, other way around. They have access to their full spell list, spontaneous casting, don't have to prep spells, and better ability in non-magic situations.

There's only so much you can do without straying into DM fiat territory. Like if you're in a major city, there aren't a whole lot of ways that you can explain why scrolls aren't available to copy into your spell book while the martials can still find shops to buy magic items/weapons/armor at.

That and the existence of enemy Wizards who likely would have spellbooks that could be copied after the party is finished killing them.

>min-maxing = versatility
>not sacrificing lesser aspects to improve your greatest aspects

>Why is there such a wank on Wizards in D&D
Nobody will read this post but whatever

Back in the day when wizards rolled 1d4 for hit points and actually had to roll a d4 and use that number as their HP, they had to be a lot more conservative with their powers. Sure, the wizard could cast Knock and be guaranteed to open that locked door, but now the wizard can't cast that spell again until he's had hours to prepare it again, while the thief (even though he doesn't have a 100% chance of success) can make attempts against locked doors all the way through the dungeon. Other methods of keeping the wizards in check with the other classes involved things like limiting the availability of spell components so the DM could allow the party to acquire a powerful spell without letting them spam it repeatedly. If a rare component was required and its existence hinged on the DM's decision, then the DM could give them enough for one casting and let them decide when they wanted to use it, instead of having to rescale the campaign to account for this new power.

When 3rd Edition came along, the developers saw these restrictions to the wizard as things that sapped the fun out of playing wizards, because in the developers' minds, the wizard should be able to cast a spell every round in combat for an unlimited number of rounds, just like how the fighter was able to attempt an unlimited number of attacks per day or the thief was able to make an unlimited number of Hide In Shadows attempts per day. Unfortunately, what the devs DIDN'T consider was that while the fighter and thief had to roll to see if they could succeed at their attempts, the wizard just had to cast the spell and the effect would happen with a 100% chance of success.

Now you've got a game where:
>The fighter has a chance to fail to hurt his opponent in combat
>The wizard will not fail to hurt his opponent in combat
>The thief has a chance to fail to open the lock
>The wizard will not fail to open the lock

>The beguiler isn't an official class.
>And if you mean the one in Xanathar's Lost Notes to Everything Else, I frankly found most classes in it to be pretty poorly designed or way too good when compared to the official ones.
The Beguiler's an official 3.5 class that came out in one of the splatbooks, it's not a pathfinder official class.

>>Nobody will read this post but whatever
stopped reading here

They shops may have magic scrolls and the enemy wizards may drop spell books but that doesn't mean that those things are going to contain anything useful or new. The reason why Wizards do the most with spells is because they are literally "spells: the class".

Give me a logical explanation for why a magic shop would have access to a Level 3 or lower spell scroll.

Hard Mode: Explain to me how a magic shop lacks a scroll yet has access to magic items that perform similar functions.

In 5e no spell caster really manages to keep up in damage with martials. Spells can sometimes provide better base damage and can wind up dealing lots of damage across multiple targets, but lots of later enemies have good saving throws across the board and your fireball probably isn't going to do as much damage single target than a fighter or paladin going hard.

Just saying there's no guarantee that you'll find something you're looking for when it comes to magic items sounds about right.

Unless you're playing Eberron or something. Also, think of it like this. The more spells they cast to solve out of combat situations the less spells they're going to have to solve combat situations. That means your martials will still have a niche to fill.

To be fair, casters were never that good at dealing direct damage, it was their versatility that made them sought after in any major party.

Sure, but I feel like this complaint gets made a lot because people feel like Wizards do everything better, which isn't really true. This type of shit posting was spammed a lot year or so ago in /5eg/.

>The more spells they cast to solve out of combat situations the less spells they're going to have to solve combat situations.
Believe me, the martial will be long dead before every caster in a given party has expended every single spell slot in their inventory past level 5.

That and unless you're on a serious time crunch and/or giving the players jackshit in terms of wealth, there's nothing stopping the Wizard from going "okay, I'm going to make a few scrolls just in case, and make a wand of this spell since I use it a lot."

Thing is, direct damage as a whole doesn't really matter, especially when there's a plethora of SoL/SoD spells that can end combat in one turn.

This post is mostly talking about 5e, which is a little more strict with it's magic items. In my experience, even when I rolled extremely well for stats my HP is weak, to say the least. If anybody is going to die fast, it's me.

Also, Wizards don't get a second level 6th and 7th slot until like level...18 or something. That's 3 turns of casting, if I don't have to use my slots for something else (like teleportation).

Strictly talking about 5e, there is one save or die in the game, and it's on a martial class. Spellcasters have very few high level slots where the really debilitating debuffs are, are limited by concentration, and must contend with legendary resistance and creatures with strong legendary saving throws. Not that martials don't have their own problems, but damage is absolutely important.

Their spell lists are much worse than a Wizard's though, mostly focusing on buffs and summoning while a Wizard can just cast a spell that ends the combat or solves whatever else the problem is instantly.

Wizards are te fantasy nerds. They’re smart cause they learned how to use magic and how to study. It represents the average nerd players fantasy of what happens when they hit thirty and still haven’t lost their virginity

They actually had the right idea in 3.5 with the Beguiler and Dread Necromancer, they just needed to make more such specialists and get rid of do-anything god wizards. Instead 4e just turned wizards into flashier archers and then in 5e they went back to being gods again.

For all its faults, at least 4th edition made Martials on the same level as Wizards