Are Wizards overpowered and why?

[bendking]

So me and my friends got into an arguement (none of us are extremely veteran to D&D), in which one friend said that the PHB Classes are regularly powered (like Ranger, Rogue, Fighter, Bard) and everything else which is stronger is overpowered, I said that the PHB classes (like Ranger, Rogue, Fighter, Bard) are simply underpowered, and stronger classes (not including other PHB classes) are regularly powered.
Also, my friend suggested that Wizards aren't overpowered what so ever, in which I reacted "You have no idea what you're saying"
As a result, im coming to you - what do you think, is Wizard an OP class, and why, and are the classes I mentioned underpowered or is just everything else which is stronger overpowered?
Also, if you will, you can share your thoughts on wether a Druid is OP, and why.

[Eldariel]

Depends on the bar of power. Also, Rogues and Bards are pretty average in terms of power, as is Barbarian. Ranger can be but it's a bit leery (mostly 'cause the best Ranger variants turn it into something else entirely). Fighter and Monk are the real problem childs in Core.

Paladin is a really weird case between having great support for its casting but having kinda bad casting, and having either the, or the second worst MAD in the game (possibly ahead of the Monk).


Honestly, I feel no need to rehash all the Tier discussions; they should sufficiently cover the question of casters.

[JeminiZero]

Firstly go read up the Tier theory.

Sadly, the original site is down, but there is the google cache (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2qgVi6kTtwAJ:brilliantgameologists. com/boards/index.php%3Ftopic%3D5293.0%3Bwap2+brilliantgametol ogist+tiers&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=sg)


So me and my friends got into an arguement (none of us are extremely veteran to D&D), in which one friend said that the PHB Classes are regularly powered (like Ranger, Rogue, Fighter, Bard) and everything else which is stronger is overpowered, I said that the PHB classes (like Ranger, Rogue, Fighter, Bard) are simply underpowered, and stronger classes (not including other PHB classes) are regularly powered.

I once had 2 people arguing. One said there were plenty of rich people, the other said there were not that many rich people. I asked the important question: What was their definition of rich? It turns out, one thought that rich was $1 million and higher. And the other thought that rich was $10 million and higher.

Over/Under Power is like that. Both terms assume that there is some "ideal" power level, that all classes should aspire to, and anything higher/lower is over/under powered. But each person can have a different idea on what this "ideal" power level is.

[Story]

OP is relative, but they're definitely one of the strongest classes in the game.

Anyway, this is an argument that has been done to death. Just look up the D&D Class Tiers for details.

[bendking]

Firstly go read up the Tier theory.

Sadly, the original site is down, but there is the google cache (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2qgVi6kTtwAJ:brilliantgameologists. com/boards/index.php%3Ftopic%3D5293.0%3Bwap2+brilliantgametol ogist+tiers&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=sg)



I once had 2 people arguing. One said there were plenty of rich people, the other said there were not that many rich people. I asked the important question: What was their definition of rich? It turns out, one thought that rich was $1 million and higher. And the other thought that rich was $10 million and higher.

Over/Under Power is like that. Both terms assume that there is some "ideal" power level, that all classes should aspire to, and anything higher/lower is over/under powered. But each person can have a different idea on what this "ideal" power level is.

My friend's idea of Overpowered is Swordsage, and regular power is Wizard/Fighter or any PHB class.
He doesn't think any class is underpowered.
My idea of underpowered is Fighter/Ranger/Bard and regular power Swordsage and Overpowered Wizard/Druid.

[Eldariel]

Just point out the relative combat capability of spellcasters compared to non-casters and then bring up the whole world of non-combat utility in which non-casters have a hard time of contributing while casters have a spell for everything.

Put your mind to it and I'm fairly sure you'll able to formulate and relay the information of why you believe each class matches up against each other the way they do forward.

[falloutimperial]

This seems simple enough to resolve. Make a level 20 wizard and invite your friend to make a level 20 monk. Have a duel. Repeat as needed with other core classes. If your friend still disagrees, the conflict is with your not agreeing on what an overpowering class can do, and therefore is much more difficult to reconcile.

[yougi]

My friend's idea of Overpowered is Swordsage, and regular power is Wizard/Fighter or any PHB class.
He doesn't think any class is underpowered.
My idea of underpowered is Fighter/Ranger/Bard and regular power Swordsage and Overpowered Wizard/Druid.

The fact that he believes a Wizard and a Fighter are as powerful is quite interesting.

However, I don't see why you'd say a Bard is underpowered. Good spellcaster, good skillmonkey, good class features. They're jack of all trades, yes, but while a solo bard is worthless, a bard in a party is a good things to have.

[MrRigger]

Well, Overpowered really depends on your level of optimization and the general level of play in your group. You can build a wizard that's completely useless in actual play. However, this useless wizard still has the option of scribing new spells in his spellbook and thus making himself useful. You could make a focused specialist enchanter who gave up conjuration, necromancy, and transmutation in an undead focused campaign, and you still wouldn't be useless. Not as useful as you could be, but still useful.

But for the most part, yes, wizards are overpowered. They have access to some of the most devastating spells in the game, and if they build right, every spell in the game, bar none. Through these spells, wizards have an "I Win" button for every sort of common scenario a D&D party will face.

Getting a local noble to give you more money for your reward? Charm/Dominate Person.
Navigating a maze? Disintegrate.
Stymied by a locked door? Knock.
BBEG protected by myriad traps? Summon Monster I/Unseen Servant/Dominate Monster (use one of the BBEG's minions to set off the traps).
Need to create defenses for a city that's about to be attacked? Wall of Stone.
Defeating a Red Dragon that's been attacking the town? Spectral Hand+Shivering Touch (3d6 Dex Damage against a monster that only has 10 Dex to begin with? Devastating).

The list goes on, but you get my point. Now, as for the other classes you mentioned.

Fighter is generally underpowered, it can usually be made to one thing very well (fight/deal HP damage), but it rarely has any other options. If all you want to do is deal more HP damage than any monster in the Monster Manual has HP, you can do it. But that doesn't mean you'll be very useful in social encounters, or other situations where "Hit it with a big stick" isn't the best solution.

Rogue is in a better situation than Fighter, but he still has his deficiencies. If he's denied his Sneak Attack (and there are many, many ways to deny a Rogue SA), he's not particularly useful in combat. He can do social encounters due to his high skill points, he can deal with traps, he can deal with combat, but it's hard to do all of those things at once. Overall, not bad, but nowhere near the potential of the wizard.

Ranger is about on par with the Rogue. I've never played one personally, but they generally have the potential of the Rogue. They can do different things, but they can't really do all of them at once, and if he tries to do all of them at once, he's not really going to succeed at them.

Bard is right where I think the sweet spot is. You have some really fun casting, you are one of the best buffers in combat around, and you can dominate social situations without a whole lot of trouble (+30 to Bluff is insane). A very solid Jack of All Trades (also a great feat to take with your Bard). You can focus on one section of the Bard's abilities, but no matter what you pick, he's still got the potential to seriously contribute in other situations where his main focus doesn't work.

Druid is overpowered, right alongside Wizard (and Cleric, and Archivist, and Artificer). Druids have full casting with a great spell list, wildshaping to make them melee monsters, and an animal companion that can act as a second Fighter for the group. In OotS, when Leaky Windstaff says "I'm a druid, I have class features more powerful than your entire class!", that wasn't an exaggeration. They really are that powerful.

Now, are all wizards and druids overpowered monsters that will destroy your campaign? No, especially if the player using them isn't aware of what they can really do. However, the potential is there.

MrRigger

[galan]

This seems simple enough to resolve. Make a level 20 wizard and invite your friend to make a level 20 monk. Have a duel. Repeat as needed with other core classes. If your friend still disagrees, the conflict is with your not agreeing on what an overpowering class can do, and therefore is much more difficult to reconcile.

i agree that wizard>monk in almost every aspect in the game, but pvp is the wrong way the prove this. the monk abilitys work all day long, while the wizard's spells per day have a limit. to prove that wizard is better, you need to show that in a party, you prefer the last player will play a wizard and not a monk (well, you can also create a party of wizards only, but that is'nt fun at all)

[Flickerdart]

A duel doesn't really solve much. Instead, pick some CR20 encounters out of a hat and have each character fight them (if you can't find a DM, the other player runs the NPCs). That's closer to resembling a real game.


i agree that wizard>monk in almost every aspect in the game, but pvp is the wrong way the prove this. the monk abilitys work all day long, while the wizard's spells per day have a limit. to prove that wizard is better, you need to show that in a party, you prefer the last player will play a wizard and not a monk (well, you can also create a party of wizards only, but that is'nt fun at all)
Lolno. Especially by the high levels, a wizard should never run out of spells in a standard 4-encounter day (and probably not even double that). The Monk, on the other hand, will run out of HP and daily abilities soon enough.

[Amphetryon]

This seems simple enough to resolve. Make a level 20 wizard and invite your friend to make a level 20 monk. Have a duel. Repeat as needed with other core classes. If your friend still disagrees, the conflict is with your not agreeing on what an overpowering class can do, and therefore is much more difficult to reconcile.

We've done a bunch of these on GitP, and other D&D forums have also seen more than their fair share. While the concept should work in theory, in practice all that happens is one particular build, in the hands of one particular Player, is better than another build in the hands of a different Player.

[NichG]

This kind of thing is why people have started looking at multi-dimensional Tier grids and such. If I define something like ECR as 'the CR of an encounter that consumes 25% of the daily resources of a party of 4 of this class', then there are various factors which contribute to the ECR of a given class, some of which are player dependent.

- The skill level of the player. Lets call this S.
- The character level of the party in question. Lets call this Lv.
- The party's wealth/WBL ratio. Lets call this W.

There are others I could suggest but these are probably the three biggest considerations.

Generally speaking, the ECR disparity gets bigger with higher Lv across the board. On the other hand, player skill matters a lot more for some classes than others. The wealth requirements of classes also different, but wealth never fully makes up the difference (since the other class gets the same boost).

Based on this I'd suggest some kind of basic model of the form:

ECR = Lv*(A+B*S)*(1+C*W/(1+W))/(1+C)

Its probably better to consider A,B, and C to be level dependent constants but I think there's barely enough data to consider an ECR at this point, let alone try to back out those curves.

Basically A, B, and C parameterize the intrinsic power, potential, and wealth-dependence of the class. Something like a Fighter would have small A, low B, and large C. A Warblade on the other hand has a large A, low/moderate B, and large C. A Wizard has almost zero A, but B is huge, and C is small. Furthermore there's an argument (linear fighters, quadratic wizards) that the Lv prefactor should have a different exponent in the case of something like a wizard (probably not actually quadratic honestly)

Someone who has no clue what they're doing can really run a wizard into the ground - they can waste their spells by casting one at every opportunity while they still only get 4 or 5 a day, they can pick spells too broadly rather than specializing their loadout for the task at hand, and they can misunderstand how their stuff works. The player of a fighter just has to get a shiny sword and say 'I hit things' for the first 5 levels - they won't be too effective doing it, but there's not as much to screw up. Even better for the Warblade - they have a few more choices, but few of those choices are particularly bad.

In the hands of someone who knows the system well though, a Wizard (and even more so a Cleric and Druid) can expand to become much more powerful. There just isn't as much space for a Fighter or Warblade to grow based on skill.

[Darius Kane]

"Are Wizards overpowered and why?"
Yes. Because Magic.

[Story]

Just point them to the Tier List. If they still have questions, tell them to ask here.

[Piggy Knowles]

Here's my best way of explaining why wizards are about as high powered as it comes:

Think of any encounter or situation. Look up the same game test for some examples, or just think some up on your own. Really include anything - trap encounters , combat, social encounters, puzzles, the whole gamut.

Chances are, there is a wizard spell or combination of spells that will completely trivialize the encounter. If you can't think of one, bring it up here. I'm not even just talking high level spells, either.

Now, I'm not into schroedinger's wizard - I know that the average wizard won't have the perfect spell at his fingertips at all times. But a wizard has a chance of completely bypassing or trivializing anything the DM throws at her. A poorly played wizard might not have the right tools most of the time, while a well played wizard might have the perfect tool 60% of the time and a decent option all other times, and a high op wizard taking advantage of things like CoP, Uncanny Forethougt and spontaneous divination will basically always have the perfect tool. But the tools exist, regardless of how well it's played.

[Norin]

Hahaha, another of these threads? :smallsigh: