D&D 5E What's a wizard to do?

[EroGaki]

So, I've been playing a human wizard (diviner) in my DM's homebrew setting. Thus far, we've been having a lot of fun with 5e, but I'm growing a bit concerned as we level up and I become more familiar with the rules and spells. I'm honestly at a lose as to what wizards are good for.

In past editions, I've played the "god" wizard; battlefield control, debuffs, as well as a support role. I tend to avoid direct damage unless absolutely required; it's a play style I very much enjoy, but I've found it to be difficult to do in this edition of the game. As I've studied the spell section, I've noticed that most of the classics have been altered or nerfed to the point of being fairly pointless; many of the save or suck spells allow a new save each round, and every time I've used them, the opponents either make their initial saving throw, or the next one after being effected for that first round. It's kind of irritating to have my precious few spell slots wasted after a single round.

Due to the concentration rule, I can't really augment my teammates anymore. Only having one buff available at a time makes since to counter all the buff stacking back in past editions, but now it feels like it has swung too far in the other direction.

And then there's direct damage, which has also taken a hit. The damage spells start out strong, but over time are less effective then their past edition counter parts; since you need to use higher level slots to augment them, and you stop getting more than one per spell level past 5th, over time you have weaker fireballs and the like.

So now I'm sort of frustrated with my character; all of his options kind of stink now. He's not good at battlefield control, debuffs will be shrugged off, buffs only affect one person in the group, and damage is less than it used to be. Am I missing something, or is magic pointless in the edition?

Overall, I'm enjoying myself. I like this version of the game a lot. But with magic being the way it is now, should I just scrap my character and role a new one?

 

[Thank Dog]

What you do, is increase your Intelligence score ASAP.

I don't know the math, but I'm finding that save spells tend to work a lot less often than attack spells. So you could always use more attack spells. Also, there are often spells that don't even allow a save. Colour Spray and Sleep are good examples.

All in all, I'm finding 5e is highly reliant on a huge degree of randomness. I've rolled an 11 on 7d8 for a Sleep spell. I've also rolled a 39. I've seen much the same with other classes as well. It's an extremely swingy edition. The same goes for saves and attacks. So unfortunately there's not much else you can do about it other than embrace the random. Personally, I don't mind it. I like the thrill of knowing that I could either annihilate things or utterly suck. Too much reliability is kinda boring.

 

[Nebulous]

So, I've been playing a human wizard (diviner) in my DM's homebrew setting. Thus far, we've been having a lot of fun with 5e, but I'm growing a bit concerned as we level up and I become more familiar with the rules and spells. I'm honestly at a lose as to what wizards are good for.


Overall, I'm enjoying myself. I like this version of the game a lot. But with magic being the way it is now, should I just scrap my character and role a new one?

I don't have a perfectly good answer, because the things you're disliking were design goals by the team. One thing I would suggest is take a look at Frog God's Book of Lost Spells which will introduce hundreds of new ones. Now, if they follow the implicit template of the core spells, I guess you'll just have more of the same. If they differ slightly, you might find some gems that can "redefine" your wizard.

Alternatively, work with your DM to create a special wizard Feat that gives an enemy a window of time before he can save vs. spell. If he fails the initial save, then, for example he can't make ANOTHER save for 1d4 rounds, something like that. It keeps the inherent swinginess of 5e but keeps it fun too. Heck, could even say that a supercharged (much higher cast slot) spell is so strong that an enemy can't make a save for the full minute.

The awesome thing about this edition is that you can patch it a thousand different ways to suit each group of players.

Edit: I'm running an NPC wild mage with rules adapted from Dungeon Crawl Classics, I mostly just ported it over with some tweaks, and it is pretty cool so far. Not everyone's cup of tea, but it has more flavor than you can shake a stick at (whatever that means).

 

[EroGaki]

I don't have a perfectly good answer, because the things you're disliking were design goals by the team.

I get that. I mean, I understand why they did it that way, but it still leaves me with one important question: if the wizards main function is to cast spells, and all of those spells are not very effective at fulfilling whatever purpose they were designed for, then what exactly is the wizard good for?

Understand, I'm not trying to whine about having my toys taken away, I'm just mostly curious. Is the wizard in this edition supposed to be like the bard was in previous editions? A Jack of all trades, but only decent at everything?

 

[Thank Dog]

I get that. I mean, I understand why they did it that way, but it still leaves me with one important question: if the wizards main function is to cast spells, and all of those spells are not very effective at fulfilling whatever purpose they were designed for, then what exactly is the wizard good for?

I think you're missing what's being said. It's not ineffective at all. It's simply highly variable as to its effectiveness. The wizard has spells that can end a combat on the first round or take out entire groups of enemies in one fell swoop. But it mostly depends on the rolls. You roll well, you're amazingly powerful. You roll badly, you kinda suck. In the end, the averages of the rolls are very decent and make the wizard quite powerful, but at the same time, spells are unreliable and that's just the nature of magic.

 

[KarinsDad]

When you cast your first Fireball at level 5 and are doing 28 points of damage (14 on a save) against 4 or 5 foes, yeah, you'll think that your wizard is ok.

My wizard has cast Fog Cloud to good effect. Web to good effect. I consider my PC to be support. As a matter of fact, I took very few damaging spells for my PC and when a different PC playing a Ranger / Wizard got his first Wizard level, he took almost all damaging spells. It worked out well because we were able to swap spells (which was pretty darn costly GP-wise).

But his wizard just goes out and fires away. My wizard does battlefield control. He does feel a bit lame when casting cantrips (mostly because I often roll like crap), but my wizard has saved the bacon of the entire party on two separate occasions with Fog Cloud and Web. I'm talking really deadly encounters that were still extremely costly, but would have been TPKs without those temporary reprieves by the wizard. A lot of it depends on which spells the wizard brings to the table.

I've also found Suggestion to be a fairly useful spell. It allows the PCs to strongly influence an NPC and change the outcome of a (typically non-combat) situation. I did not take any offensive second level spells, just suggestion and web.

It really depends on which spells one takes.

 

[EroGaki]

I think you're missing what's being said. It's not ineffective at all. It's simply highly variable as to its effectiveness. The wizard has spells that can end a combat on the first round or take out entire groups of enemies in one fell swoop. But it mostly depends on the rolls. You roll well, you're amazingly powerful. You roll badly, you kinda suck. In the end, the averages of the rolls are very decent and make the wizard quite powerful, but at the same time, spells are unreliable and that's just the nature of magic.

Hmmm, perhaps I just have awful luck. Because thus far, most of my spells have been in the "you kinda suck" range.

Between low roles for effects like sleep and burning hands, to constant successful saves from enemies, I feel that the wizard is...bad. But then, I'm sure it's probably different for individuals with more luck.

 

[fuindordm]

My impression is that the Wizard is not designed to be a "strong" character in the sense of regularly being able to swing battles, take down foes, and so forth. The wizard's trump card is flexibility. They're the only class in the game that can know dozens of different spells, and they have class abilities that support that flexibility in play, with arcane recovery and ritual casting. So you play a wizard if you want your PC to be a know-it-all of the arcane.

In contrast, the sorcerer's spells have considerably more oomph when the PC spends sorcery points on them, and they can do this pretty often. Did you notice the metamagic power that gives disadvantage on saving throws? Or the one that lets them reroll damage dice?

The warlock also has more oomph, but they're designed to be doing more stable damage per round with cantrips or their pact blade.

So if you're wishing your wizard had more potent spells, you could consider reworking it as a sorcerer or a wizard/sorcerer multiclass. Otherwise, maybe a feat that gives limited access to sorcery metamagic would be to your taste (kind of like the Martial Adept feat--gives you 1 sorcery point and knowledge of two metamagic effects).

 

[KarinsDad]

Between low roles for effects like sleep and burning hands, to constant successful saves from enemies, I feel that the wizard is...bad. But then, I'm sure it's probably different for individuals with more luck.

Actually, the save once per round spells do seem to fail a lot. Web does a double dip on this in that the NPC can both make a Dex save to not be affected, and use a Str check to break out. Web needs clear errata that the Dex save is only on the first time so that NPCs do not get two chances a round to get out every round.

But, you are not mistaken. The thing about wizards is that they are pretty darn sucky at low level. Even when they are great, they are not that much better than their fellow PCs (Sleep and possibly Burning Hands being an exception). But at higher levels when the caster has 8 or 10 spells per day, the spell cast in round one sucks because of unlucky saves, but the spell cast in round two kicks butt.

 

[Nebulous]

I get that. I mean, I understand why they did it that way, but it still leaves me with one important question: if the wizards main function is to cast spells, and all of those spells are not very effective at fulfilling whatever purpose they were designed for, then what exactly is the wizard good for?

Well, I do think it's an unfair assumption to say ALL spells are not very effective at fulfilling their purpose. I think most of them fulfill their function extremely well. I think the main issue is that they're not functioning exactly the way they used to, and that's causing a disjunction in your play style. Which is understandable. Again, if you and your DM can come to a common agreement, use the inherent flexibility of 5th edition and modify the rules more to your liking.