Drolyt
2014-05-02, 01:22 PM
Introduction
Even though the 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons came out 14 years ago now various forums still frequently host discussions (not necessarily friendly) about issues of class balance or how to deal with magic tactics such as scry and die. This is not another one of those discussions. What I hope to do here is start a discussion of what D&D spellcasters actually do in the game world. What should we be imagining when a Wizard casts a spell? This is an important question, because we can't really talk about class balance or high level adventures if we aren't clear on what the characters are actually doing. I'm going to focus on 3.5, but this discussion mostly applies to any version of the game prior to 4th edition. So without further ado, here are some of the things a 20th level Wizard can do:
Transportation
Greater Teleport allows a Wizard travel anywhere in the world within seconds. You might need some divination to set it up, but not if you are familiar with the location. Plane Shift allows the Wizard to explore other planes of existence. Overland Flight allows them to fly all day long. Haste gives Wizards limited super speed. It is hard to overstate how powerful these spells are. Many many challenges cease to be challenges when faced with flight and teleportation. That said, barring teleportation Wizards aren't incredibly fast (although much faster than normal humans). Their flight spells are significantly slower than real world aircraft or even cars, and Haste doesn't let a human Wizard run nearly as fast as a superhero with super-speed. In many ways teleportation more than makes up for this, but teleportation is usually a standard action.
Summoning
Summon Monster IX lets you summon a giant demonic spider several times larger than any living creature in the real world and most buildings (fiendish colossal monstrous spider) or a giant angelic bird of prey that isn't quite that big but is big enough to carry off elephants (celestial roc). That's still much smaller than Godzilla (as is the Tarrasque) but it's certainly nothing to sneeze at. Gate and the various Planar Binding spells allow the calling of much more powerful creatures such as planetars and pit fiends though this can be dangerous. Spell Compendium includes spells that summon small armies of outsiders, such as Heavenly Host, Abyssal Army and Hellish Horde.
Evocation
Fireball is low level but actually pretty awesome. The range is incredible (over a thousand feet at 20th level), the area is about the size of a house, it sets anything flammable on fire and melts metals with low melting points such as gold, copper, lead, and bronze (this sets the temperature of the blast at at least 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, probably much hotter since it melts them instantaneously). In other words a pretty nasty explosion. Oddly however it doesn't get much better from there. Meteor Swarm should be awesome but isn't. I suppose we could just ignore the description and imagine our Wizard firing a swarm of meteors at his enemies but as it stands magical explosions aren't very large scale in D&D. It also isn't clear how powerful higher level spells should be since unlike Fireball most of them don't have real world reference points.
While Disintegrate isn't technically evocation it falls into the "blast" category. It only affects 10 cubic feet of material or one creature, but it completely disintegrates them and for objects it doesn't matter how strong the material is, it can even destroy a Wall of Force. It also has pretty good range, 300 feet at 20th level.
Transformation
With Shapechange a Wizard can take the form of a young adult red or gold dragon (your choice), or in other words a flying reptile approximately the size of an elephant that breathes fire. Or a titan, a human shaped outsider about that size with a heavy load of approximately 18 tons. Or the aforementioned giant angelic bird of prey (though not the giant demonic spider). Or an abyssal greater basilisk. Or most other things you might think of. They can also change their shape once every six seconds or so without interrupting their other actions. And the spell lasts over 3 hours. And they can continue casting other spells in many forms. Also they can cast it on their pet cat for some reason. Polymorph isn't as awesome but can be cast on other people and takes up a lower level spell slot.
Weather
Control Weather is a 7th level spell that allows a Wizard to... control the weather. It is somewhat limited (though this varies considerably depending on which edition you are using) and takes a while to cast but it allows you to either cause or prevent small scale natural disasters. Various other spells have weather themed effects as well.
Invisibility
Invisibility allows a Wizard to become invisible. That's it really. Invisibility is another one of those things that renders many challenges into non-challenges and is just awesome in general. Higher level spells (such as Superior Invisibility from Spell Compendium) make this even better.
Defensive Magic
Wizards have access to a large number of defensive buffs such as Mage Armor, Stoneskin, Protection from Arrows, Protection From Energy, Mind Blank, and Protection from Spells that make them effectively immune to all but the most powerful foes.
Divination
Wizards have access to almost any information they want. Discern Location makes it very hard to hide anything from them. Greater Scrying makes them excellent spies. Analyze Dweomer tells you all about magical effects and items. Contact Other Plane and Legend Lore can get you all kinds of information. So on and so forth.
Necromancy
Animate Dead doesn't give Wizards very large armies, but it can give them fairly big and powerful minions like cloud giant skeletons or zombie dragons (pretty good if using the Draconomicon rules). Create Undead is similar. Obviously Finger of Death allows you to kill someone by pointing at them while Power Word Kill kills with a word and Wail of the Banshee kills up to 20 people at once.
Barriers
Wall of Stone is very useful, either to create or enhance fortifications or to trap enemies (try hacking your way through almost 2 feet of stone sometime). Wall of Force cannot be broken by nonmagical means, which makes Forcecage an excellent spell. Prismatic Wall and Prismatic Sphere are virtually impenetrable. Most spells of this sort are permanent or can be made so.
How fast can Wizards cast?
A Wizard casts a spell every six seconds, more under specific circumstances. Six seconds is not a long amount of time. Go watch a video of a spellcaster from TV or film, count the seconds as they cast spells. Most of them don't cast a spell every six seconds, much less 2 as high level D&D Wizards often do. Another question we might ask is how fast a quickened spell is cast? If a Wizard casts a regular spell in the same round as a quickened spell we can assume the regular spell still takes about six seconds to cast, so the quickened spell must be cast virtually instantaneously. Of course Wizards also have access to spells like Contingency, Celerity, Simbul's Spell Matrix, and freaking Time Stop to further enhance the speed of their casting.
Hit Points
A 20th level Wizard likely has about as many hit points as an Orca Whale. It isn't clear what that means in world, but between all those hit points, various defensive magics, and a bunch of protective magic items Wizards are very hard to kill.
Conclusion
I'll cover more awesome magic in a follow up post, but I think this is enough to begin with. A couple takeaways. First, many iconic characters (Beowulf, Conan, Elric, Gandalf, Aragorn, King Arthur, Robin Hood, etc.) are nowhere near 20th level. This cannot be said enough, but high level D&D characters are much more comparable to mythic heroes, deities, and superheroes than your typical hero from sword and sorcery. Remember that the Queen of the Demonweb Pits module had you storm Lolth's (goddess of the drow) stronghold on the abyss and slay her as low as 10th level! Sure Lolth is a minor deity and for some reason 3e got rid of god slaying as an acceptable adventure but still.
Second is that for a martial character to keep up he has to be pretty awesome. For the most part they aren't. Without magical assistance a 20th level Fighter can't really do much. In AD&D they were at least ridiculously tough and did a ton of damage, but 3e took that away.
Thoughts?
Even though the 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons came out 14 years ago now various forums still frequently host discussions (not necessarily friendly) about issues of class balance or how to deal with magic tactics such as scry and die. This is not another one of those discussions. What I hope to do here is start a discussion of what D&D spellcasters actually do in the game world. What should we be imagining when a Wizard casts a spell? This is an important question, because we can't really talk about class balance or high level adventures if we aren't clear on what the characters are actually doing. I'm going to focus on 3.5, but this discussion mostly applies to any version of the game prior to 4th edition. So without further ado, here are some of the things a 20th level Wizard can do:
Transportation
Greater Teleport allows a Wizard travel anywhere in the world within seconds. You might need some divination to set it up, but not if you are familiar with the location. Plane Shift allows the Wizard to explore other planes of existence. Overland Flight allows them to fly all day long. Haste gives Wizards limited super speed. It is hard to overstate how powerful these spells are. Many many challenges cease to be challenges when faced with flight and teleportation. That said, barring teleportation Wizards aren't incredibly fast (although much faster than normal humans). Their flight spells are significantly slower than real world aircraft or even cars, and Haste doesn't let a human Wizard run nearly as fast as a superhero with super-speed. In many ways teleportation more than makes up for this, but teleportation is usually a standard action.
Summoning
Summon Monster IX lets you summon a giant demonic spider several times larger than any living creature in the real world and most buildings (fiendish colossal monstrous spider) or a giant angelic bird of prey that isn't quite that big but is big enough to carry off elephants (celestial roc). That's still much smaller than Godzilla (as is the Tarrasque) but it's certainly nothing to sneeze at. Gate and the various Planar Binding spells allow the calling of much more powerful creatures such as planetars and pit fiends though this can be dangerous. Spell Compendium includes spells that summon small armies of outsiders, such as Heavenly Host, Abyssal Army and Hellish Horde.
Evocation
Fireball is low level but actually pretty awesome. The range is incredible (over a thousand feet at 20th level), the area is about the size of a house, it sets anything flammable on fire and melts metals with low melting points such as gold, copper, lead, and bronze (this sets the temperature of the blast at at least 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, probably much hotter since it melts them instantaneously). In other words a pretty nasty explosion. Oddly however it doesn't get much better from there. Meteor Swarm should be awesome but isn't. I suppose we could just ignore the description and imagine our Wizard firing a swarm of meteors at his enemies but as it stands magical explosions aren't very large scale in D&D. It also isn't clear how powerful higher level spells should be since unlike Fireball most of them don't have real world reference points.
While Disintegrate isn't technically evocation it falls into the "blast" category. It only affects 10 cubic feet of material or one creature, but it completely disintegrates them and for objects it doesn't matter how strong the material is, it can even destroy a Wall of Force. It also has pretty good range, 300 feet at 20th level.
Transformation
With Shapechange a Wizard can take the form of a young adult red or gold dragon (your choice), or in other words a flying reptile approximately the size of an elephant that breathes fire. Or a titan, a human shaped outsider about that size with a heavy load of approximately 18 tons. Or the aforementioned giant angelic bird of prey (though not the giant demonic spider). Or an abyssal greater basilisk. Or most other things you might think of. They can also change their shape once every six seconds or so without interrupting their other actions. And the spell lasts over 3 hours. And they can continue casting other spells in many forms. Also they can cast it on their pet cat for some reason. Polymorph isn't as awesome but can be cast on other people and takes up a lower level spell slot.
Weather
Control Weather is a 7th level spell that allows a Wizard to... control the weather. It is somewhat limited (though this varies considerably depending on which edition you are using) and takes a while to cast but it allows you to either cause or prevent small scale natural disasters. Various other spells have weather themed effects as well.
Invisibility
Invisibility allows a Wizard to become invisible. That's it really. Invisibility is another one of those things that renders many challenges into non-challenges and is just awesome in general. Higher level spells (such as Superior Invisibility from Spell Compendium) make this even better.
Defensive Magic
Wizards have access to a large number of defensive buffs such as Mage Armor, Stoneskin, Protection from Arrows, Protection From Energy, Mind Blank, and Protection from Spells that make them effectively immune to all but the most powerful foes.
Divination
Wizards have access to almost any information they want. Discern Location makes it very hard to hide anything from them. Greater Scrying makes them excellent spies. Analyze Dweomer tells you all about magical effects and items. Contact Other Plane and Legend Lore can get you all kinds of information. So on and so forth.
Necromancy
Animate Dead doesn't give Wizards very large armies, but it can give them fairly big and powerful minions like cloud giant skeletons or zombie dragons (pretty good if using the Draconomicon rules). Create Undead is similar. Obviously Finger of Death allows you to kill someone by pointing at them while Power Word Kill kills with a word and Wail of the Banshee kills up to 20 people at once.
Barriers
Wall of Stone is very useful, either to create or enhance fortifications or to trap enemies (try hacking your way through almost 2 feet of stone sometime). Wall of Force cannot be broken by nonmagical means, which makes Forcecage an excellent spell. Prismatic Wall and Prismatic Sphere are virtually impenetrable. Most spells of this sort are permanent or can be made so.
How fast can Wizards cast?
A Wizard casts a spell every six seconds, more under specific circumstances. Six seconds is not a long amount of time. Go watch a video of a spellcaster from TV or film, count the seconds as they cast spells. Most of them don't cast a spell every six seconds, much less 2 as high level D&D Wizards often do. Another question we might ask is how fast a quickened spell is cast? If a Wizard casts a regular spell in the same round as a quickened spell we can assume the regular spell still takes about six seconds to cast, so the quickened spell must be cast virtually instantaneously. Of course Wizards also have access to spells like Contingency, Celerity, Simbul's Spell Matrix, and freaking Time Stop to further enhance the speed of their casting.
Hit Points
A 20th level Wizard likely has about as many hit points as an Orca Whale. It isn't clear what that means in world, but between all those hit points, various defensive magics, and a bunch of protective magic items Wizards are very hard to kill.
Conclusion
I'll cover more awesome magic in a follow up post, but I think this is enough to begin with. A couple takeaways. First, many iconic characters (Beowulf, Conan, Elric, Gandalf, Aragorn, King Arthur, Robin Hood, etc.) are nowhere near 20th level. This cannot be said enough, but high level D&D characters are much more comparable to mythic heroes, deities, and superheroes than your typical hero from sword and sorcery. Remember that the Queen of the Demonweb Pits module had you storm Lolth's (goddess of the drow) stronghold on the abyss and slay her as low as 10th level! Sure Lolth is a minor deity and for some reason 3e got rid of god slaying as an acceptable adventure but still.
Second is that for a martial character to keep up he has to be pretty awesome. For the most part they aren't. Without magical assistance a 20th level Fighter can't really do much. In AD&D they were at least ridiculously tough and did a ton of damage, but 3e took that away.
Thoughts?