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View Full Version : Wizard, a character class that should not be?



Mystral
2015-04-21, 08:32 AM
I'm not saying they're overpowered or something like that, I question the morality of this class.

I mean seriously, why would intellectuals be a core class along side soldiers and thiefs? And really, who would want to go on any sort of trip with a guy who's likely to turn you into a frog? And that's the best case scenario: he could just finger of death you and walk off with all your belongings, leaving you to rot in the middle of nowhere.

I mean, in all seriousness why would you have a class that is by its very definition a bender of the very fabric of reality? Yeah okay, adventurers tend to be racist and essentially genocidal, but at least they aren't a problem to their own society.

They kind of fixed this with warmages, and not just with the re-naming. You don't have to be a non-damagedealer if you so choose. But it seems that the only reason to bring one along is to deal damage. And they still reak of 'bender of reality', despite the fact that they can wear light armor.

Why do I have such thoughts? Well, I was reading up on stuff about the elfs (I'm only really familiar with the non-magic games, just so we know), and everywhere I see criticism of them being prancing , magical hippies. Also a lot of criticism of them (and half-elfs) being treehuggers, but that's not relevant here. But I do agree, why would anyone tolerate a race of prancing magical hippies? It makes no sense. I certainly wouldn't see a prancing and somewhat smelly bender of reality as cute.

Not that I'm trying to troll, but I honestly don't see why this is a core class. It seems more like something you would see in the supplements that detailed the assassin and blackguard class. And playing on that NWN server, most people played their wizards as either gods or batman (though strangely enough, few were generalists, though most were focused specialist conjurers). I mean, at the very best they're casting knock and stinking cloud.

Why is it that one of the classes by its very nature has to be either all-can-does or ultimate supporter? Unless you go with a gandalf character, I don't see anyway you could be balanced (and even that is questionable, I don't recall hearing anything about Gandalf enervating people in the back). I mean seriously, what kind of a decent person would have a skill set like this??? The things you excel in are knowledge, concentration, disabling people's everything, and blasting people in the back. Oh, and you can also cast genesis.

Is there anyway to play a wizard that isn't an obviously atrocious individual? I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but I don't understand why this class is one of the standard options. Monks make sense, Fighters make sense, Barbarians, truenamers, samurai. Yeah, bards and rangers are iffy, but bardsis more just the stereotype that having a high charisma means your character is able to talk people out of their pants. And just because you prefer shooting specific kinds of humanoids in combat doesn't mean you're overspecialised, its just a different tactic. And besides, rangers don't have to be archers. I mean Drizzt himself was fairly swordfighty, and just because you like archery doesn't mean you can't be good at other things, like talking with giant cats or brooding or whatnot. Honestly, you think about it constitution is kind of a dump-stat, since really the only characters that have high constitution are dwarfs, for everyone else its only above charisma on the priority list (unless you're a fighter or paladin or bard or something else that relies on getting hit in the face). Heh, you think about it there's actually more classes that rely on wisdom than there are for constitution! But that's kind of a tangent...perhaps something for another thread.

Eloel
2015-04-21, 08:46 AM
Parodies of parodies usually do not work.

Ashtagon
2015-04-21, 08:48 AM
You can put down the whip. There hasn't been anything left of the horse-shaped grease stain you've been beating for the last hour.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-21, 08:51 AM
I'm not saying they're overpowered or something like that, I question the morality of this class.

I mean seriously, why would intellectuals be a core class along side soldiers and thiefs? And really, who would want to go on any sort of trip with a guy who's likely to turn you into a frog? And that's the best case scenario: he could just finger of death you and walk off with all your belongings, leaving you to rot in the middle of nowhere.

I mean, in all seriousness why would you have a class that is by its very definition a bender of the very fabric of reality? Yeah okay, adventurers tend to be racist and essentially genocidal, but at least they aren't a problem to their own society.

They kind of fixed this with warmages, and not just with the re-naming. You don't have to be a non-damagedealer if you so choose. But it seems that the only reason to bring one along is to deal damage. And they still reak of 'bender of reality', despite the fact that they can wear light armor.

Why do I have such thoughts? Well, I was reading up on stuff about the elfs (I'm only really familiar with the non-magic games, just so we know), and everywhere I see criticism of them being prancing , magical hippies. Also a lot of criticism of them (and half-elfs) being treehuggers, but that's not relevant here. But I do agree, why would anyone tolerate a race of prancing magical hippies? It makes no sense. I certainly wouldn't see a prancing and somewhat smelly bender of reality as cute.

Not that I'm trying to troll, but I honestly don't see why this is a core class. It seems more like something you would see in the supplements that detailed the assassin and blackguard class. And playing on that NWN server, most people played their wizards as either gods or batman (though strangely enough, few were generalists, though most were focused specialist conjurers). I mean, at the very best they're casting knock and stinking cloud.

Why is it that one of the classes by its very nature has to be either all-can-does or ultimate supporter? Unless you go with a gandalf character, I don't see anyway you could be balanced (and even that is questionable, I don't recall hearing anything about Gandalf enervating people in the back). I mean seriously, what kind of a decent person would have a skill set like this??? The things you excel in are knowledge, concentration, disabling people's everything, and blasting people in the back. Oh, and you can also cast genesis.

Is there anyway to play a wizard that isn't an obviously atrocious individual? I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but I don't understand why this class is one of the standard options. Monks make sense, Fighters make sense, Barbarians, truenamers, samurai. Yeah, bards and rangers are iffy, but bardsis more just the stereotype that having a high charisma means your character is able to talk people out of their pants. And just because you prefer shooting specific kinds of humanoids in combat doesn't mean you're overspecialised, its just a different tactic. And besides, rangers don't have to be archers. I mean Drizzt himself was fairly swordfighty, and just because you like archery doesn't mean you can't be good at other things, like talking with giant cats or brooding or whatnot. Honestly, you think about it constitution is kind of a dump-stat, since really the only characters that have high constitution are dwarfs, for everyone else its only above charisma on the priority list (unless you're a fighter or paladin or bard or something else that relies on getting hit in the face). Heh, you think about it there's actually more classes that rely on wisdom than there are for constitution! But that's kind of a tangent...perhaps something for another thread.


lol, awesome.

LibraryOgre
2015-04-21, 10:20 AM
The problem with the Wizard in D&D, especially 3.x, but to a lesser extent AD&D (I'm not familiar enough with 5e to comment there) is that there's very little they can't do... a situation that 3e exacerbated by removing many of the restrictions on the class that existed in AD&D.

This becomes a problem for two reasons:
1) It's hard to make another spellcasting class that can't be replicated by adding more spells to a wizard. Few spells are outside their purview, those few can usually be rationalized as being inside their purview, and so when someone says "I have a neat new class", the response can really be "Why would I play this instead of a wizard?"
2) The wizard begins to overshadow pretty much everyone else, especially as the game advances.

goto124
2015-04-21, 10:33 AM
Next thread: Classes, a system that should not be?

Feel free to steal my idea please.

Mr.Moron
2015-04-21, 11:02 AM
I kind of agree. What if we replaced them with a rogue variant that specializes in BMX bikes?

Brookshw
2015-04-21, 11:17 AM
Someone implied truenamers make sense :smallconfused::smalleek::smalltongue:

Anonymouswizard
2015-04-21, 11:38 AM
I give it five days until fighters get a thread.

Ralanr
2015-04-21, 12:15 PM
I give it five days until fighters get a thread.

Shouldn't barbarians get a thread before fighters?

YossarianLives
2015-04-21, 12:22 PM
Next up on GiTP, Classes, a character concept that should not be?

Eloel
2015-04-21, 12:26 PM
"Wizard, a character class that should not be?", a thread that should not be?

Karl Aegis
2015-04-21, 01:44 PM
Aren't wizards just clerics with a worse chassis? Why even bother being a wizard. It's not like having a worse chassis makes you better at jumping several dozen meters into the air and body slamming someone so hard all of your gunpowder explodes in a fantastic display of manliness.

Lurkmoar
2015-04-21, 02:06 PM
Aren't wizards just clerics with a worse chassis? Why even bother being a wizard. It's not like having a worse chassis makes you better at jumping several dozen meters into the air and body slamming someone so hard all of your gunpowder explodes in a fantastic display of manliness.

Clerics are at least bound to an ethos of some sort that regulates their activity. Wizards just do whatever they want whenever they want, consequences be darned. At least until they mess with another wizard or entity that vastly out powers them.

That said, parodies work best the first time. But I always inwardly sigh when everyone at the table breaks out a wizard and I have to re-think the campaign a little so they don't break it into tiny, tiny pieces.

Only time I've personally experienced a fighter beating a player wizard was when another player PvPed the fighter and his allies. And the only reason the fighter won was because he happened to have an Arrow of Mage slaying that the wizard player didn't know about. And the wizard still wasted all of the fighter's allies while they busted down his defenses.

Hypername
2015-04-21, 02:13 PM
Enough with these threads guys, really.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-21, 05:47 PM
Enough with these threads guys, really.

:smallbiggrin: It really isn't.

That said, it is funny how the OP of the OP was asking "hey, why would you knowingly travel with someone who steals things?" and how the threads usually pursue different questions (I include myself in that).

To be honest, "why would you travel with someone so arbitrarily overpowered that they don't need you and could do anything they wanted by theirself" is probably a better question than the Paladin/Rogue threads, considering that Primary casters can make their parties redundant (depending on rule system). It's a bit of a stretch to make it a morality issue, though, considering that Wizards lack the explicit and implicit moral assumptions of the Paladin especially.

Nightcanon
2015-04-21, 05:48 PM
If we're taking this thread down the same 'history of the archetype in fantasy literature and RPGs/ how well or appropriately it gets represented in the D&D mechanic' route that was use to examine Thieves and Paladins, how do folks think the implementation of the Wizard in D&D compares with what they see in fantasy literature? It seems to me that D&D wizards are far more polymathic then their literary counterparts: if a spell exists anywhere in fantasy literature, from fairy stories to the latest high-concept novel, there is an app a spell for that and you can learn it with minimal effort. Individual wizards in literature are far more limited in what they can do in terms of the variety of spells they can cast (they polmorph self/ other, or are enchanters, or conjurors, and have limits to what else they can do), or there are limits or costs to their power. It's a hell of a long time since I read any Jack Vance, but I don't remember reading of guys who nova'd for 15 minutes then pulled down their rope trick/ teleported back to their demiplane. Even what I've read of D&D-based novels (late 80s/ early 90s stuff), wizards are rarely protagonists who function like the 3E wizard: they are either background characters/ facilitators (Elminster in DMPC mode), antagonists (Black Wizards/ Crystal Shard), or have limitations that aren't found in the standard rules (Raistlin Majere, who is physically exhausted by casting).

Nightcanon
2015-04-21, 05:53 PM
:smallbiggrin: It really isn't.

(Snip)

It's a bit of a stretch to make it a morality issue, though, considering that Wizards lack the explicit and implicit moral assumptions of the Paladin especially.
Wizards interfere with the laws of nature. It's ungodly/ against nature. Why wouldn't you burn them when they are first level?:smallbiggrin:

Keltest
2015-04-21, 06:03 PM
But I always inwardly sigh when everyone at the table breaks out a wizard and I have to re-think the campaign a little so they don't break it into tiny, tiny pieces.

In my campaign setting, the antagonists have just finished developing super-golems that actively repel magic. Magic weapons have a hard time hitting them, and spells have a higher chance to fizzle or reflect on the caster with increasing spell level. so a +2 sword acts as a -2 sword against them, while an epic level wizard is more than likely going to disintegrate himself on accident.

Hiro Protagonest
2015-04-21, 06:18 PM
Next up on GiTP, Classes, a character concept that should not be?

Well, considering that D&D and D&D-likes are basically the only systems that actually use classes, probably. :smalltongue:

YossarianLives
2015-04-21, 06:27 PM
To be honest, "why would you travel with someone so arbitrarily overpowered that they don't need you and could do anything they wanted by theirself" is probably a better question than the Paladin/Rogue threads, considering that Primary casters can make their parties redundant (depending on rule system).
Because you get money without having to do anything.

Brookshw
2015-04-21, 06:38 PM
Well, considering that D&D and D&D-likes are basically the only systems that actually use classes, probably. :smalltongue:

True though we do have a number with soft classes, WOD clans, Shadowrun mages, hackers, riggers etc.

goto124
2015-04-21, 07:22 PM
Well, considering that D&D and D&D-likes are basically the only systems that actually use classes, probably. :smalltongue:

DnD is so huge and popular, it spun off many clones... how many DnD likes are out there?

Cluedrew
2015-04-21, 09:21 PM
Another one of these!

Sigh...

Well, I guess I should disentangle myself from the last one before I say too much here. And read the opening post. ... OK I did that. Wizards are not really a problem because of flavour or anything in my option, I mean it is a fantasy game. More than anything else though, I wonder why wizards were given such powerful spells. A level 20 wizard can do more than your average god in any of the fiction for the story. Except the little things, like when a wizard quietly made a farmer's store house bigger on the inside as a thank-you, in... I can't remember what it was called.

So I guess my stance is give the wizard less raw power and more interesting (and helpful) spells.

P.S. Are we just going to keep going until we have one of these for every core class?

Lord Raziere
2015-04-21, 09:44 PM
If there is any class, that needs to be broken down into nine smaller ones, its this one.

I mean, I'm all for playing a magical guy with awesome powers-in fact I'd go so far as to say that I play little else-, but not a utility belt guy that can do anything if given the opportunity and make everyone else redundant.

and when you have a guy that loves playing magical superpowers and such saying that about a class....you have big problems. I'd love to play the class, but its too powerful. Such power is simply below my standards for good design. Its attempting to emulate who knows how many kinds of magic at the same time, which are often mutually exclusive in their logic in the sources they probably came from. this problem is compounded by people who have latched onto the class to not emulate specific kinds of magic and certain wizardly archetypes, but to play all-solving magical batgod without any regards to the original purpose of those spells. its not coherent or inspiring, its annoying how that has become the image of the class now. An image that is only problematic for a game attempting to emulate sword and sorcery and high fantasy, because often the point in those stories is: magic doesn't solve everything.

I mean, name one fantasy story where magic solves everything. Name one. You can't, because such a story is stupid. Wizards shouldn't be omni-solving gods. They should be characters that like everyone else, has problems and challenges they must face in life, with goals that are far from easily achieved.

LooseCannoneer
2015-04-21, 09:55 PM
Characters, a RPG tool that should not be?

Anonymouswizard
2015-04-22, 03:00 AM
Characters, a RPG tool that should not be?

Threads, a forum element that should not be?

EDIT: as in, they are useful to people but not literally required.

Kami2awa
2015-04-22, 03:53 AM
Threads, a forum element that should not be?

Next up on Football Online: why we don't need balls. Or feet.

malkarnivore
2015-04-22, 05:36 AM
These threads are getting dumber and dumber.

And they started out pretty dumb.

Tiri
2015-04-22, 07:23 AM
Some of the OP doesn't even make sense and it's filled with horrible spelling and grammar.

goto124
2015-04-22, 10:18 AM
Next up on Football Online: why we don't need balls. Or feet.

There's American Football...

Hiro Protagonest
2015-04-22, 11:27 AM
Next up on Football Online: why we don't need balls. Or feet.

Dungeons: An adventure environment that should not be?

BayardSPSR
2015-04-22, 03:48 PM
Dungeons: An adventure environment that should not be?

I'd make that argument. Maybe with the qualification "standard," "frequent," or "expected," but I'd make it.

The trick, as always, is to interpret the OP as meaning something completely different than it actually says.

Kami2awa
2015-04-22, 04:40 PM
Dungeons: An adventure environment that should not be?

Dragons : why they should never be affiliated with dungeons

Roles : why they should never be played

Anonymouswizard
2015-04-22, 04:43 PM
Dragons : why they should never be affiliated with dungeons

Roles : why they should never be played

Games: nothing wrong, I'm just a bit sick of them to be honest.

LibraryOgre
2015-04-22, 06:02 PM
The Mod Wonder: On second thought, let's not have this thread. 'Tis a silly place.