Are D&D wizards the msot powerful wizards in all of fantasy?

[Hackulator]

Especially 3.5 wizards but even including 2nd or even 5th ed, are they? They have an insane breadth of powers including utility, defense and offense that is off the charts. I honestly don't think there are any more powerful examples of wizards anywhere.

To clarify I'm talking more about groups or traditions of wizards as opposed to individual characters.

[Khedrac]

I haven't played it, but I think you will find that wizards from the WW game mage: the ascension are considerably more powerful!

On the fiction front, although they don't usually have as many spells prepared, but I think the wizards of Amber and Chaos (Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber) probably count as more powerful fromt he shere flexibility they gain from world walking. Why bother trying to enstil devotion in a bunch of followers when you can find a world that regard you as their god?

Also, anyone with more than basic time manipulation powers (e.g. Dr Strange from the MCU) should be able to beat a D&D wizard without much difficulty (I don't know his powers in the comics - I suspect they are greater there...).

[noob]

Doctor strange sometimes goes straight out in omnipotence fulled silliness.
While dnd wizards are very powerful there is always stories with omnipotent whatever.
On the other hand most people who place omnipotent character does not know what omnipotence means and so have no idea of the implications of omnipotence like the fact that all the omnipotent characters in a given story necessarily agree with each other on what to do or one of those characters was labelled omnipotent wrongly.


I haven't played it, but I think you will find that wizards from the WW game mage: the ascension are considerably more powerful!

On the fiction front, although they don't usually have as many spells prepared, but I think the wizards of Amber and Chaos (Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber) probably count as more powerful fromt he shere flexibility they gain from world walking. Why bother trying to enstil devotion in a bunch of followers when you can find a world that regard you as their god?

Also, anyone with more than basic time manipulation powers (e.g. Dr Strange from the MCU) should be able to beat a D&D wizard without much difficulty (I don't know his powers in the comics - I suspect they are greater there...).
doctor strange is not powerfuler than a dnd wizard when doing time manipulation since dnd wizards can do that too but doctor strange is more powerful than a dnd wizard when it use omnipotence directly.
and mage: the ascension's wizard are pathetic weaklings when compared to dnd wizards.
Also why search for a world with what you want when you can create it?

So while you are right that doctor strange is more powerful than a dnd wizard you are right for the wrong reason and the other wizards you mentioned are incredibly weakerest of final ultimate supreme weakness.

Seriously if you have to search for a world full of followers instead of creating an infinity of worlds full of an infinity of your followers which are all gods and wizards as powerful as you and dedicated to you forever in one instant then you are weak.
And dnd wizards have no less than three ways to travel backwards in time.

[Hackulator]

I haven't played it, but I think you will find that wizards from the WW game mage: the ascension are considerably more powerful!

On the fiction front, although they don't usually have as many spells prepared, but I think the wizards of Amber and Chaos (Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber) probably count as more powerful fromt he shere flexibility they gain from world walking. Why bother trying to enstil devotion in a bunch of followers when you can find a world that regard you as their god?

Also, anyone with more than basic time manipulation powers (e.g. Dr Strange from the MCU) should be able to beat a D&D wizard without much difficulty (I don't know his powers in the comics - I suspect they are greater there...).

I would definitely disagree with Mage. Most mages don't have the breadth of power to match D&D wizards. Though some really strong mages can do insane things, notably oracles, these are similar to D&D characters who are in the epic or mythic tiers or have ascended to immortality or godhood, so even at that point I think the D&D wizards can match or exceed them.

As for Dr. Strange, first off I'm talking more about magic types/groups than individuals, however even there I think there are D&D casters like Elminster, Raistlin or the Simbul as well as various others who could match him as they have also matched Gods or ascended to godhood themselves.

[zlefin]

it depends on optimization levels allowed, as there's a lot of gradations of possible cheese in DnD compared to more fleshed out sources (as well as compared to actual DnD settings); (and also varies by edition, 3rd ed has some of the silliest high power wizard capabilities compared to other versions)
it's definitely on the high end, and possibly near the top for the higher op versions.
it should be noted that published DnD setting wizards aren't anywhere near as strong as some of what's done on the boards.

pre-mending planeswalkers would tend to be higher powered.

[Biggus]

Sourcerers from the Discworld? One of them managed to single-handedly imprison all the gods...

[ezekielraiden]

Simply because Wizards follow some set of rules, no matter how hole-filled or abusable, I suspect the answer is a provisional "no." That is, it's relatively likely that SOME spellcaster type in SOME setting is more powerful purely by the length of time fiction has existed. And if we allow for future fiction, then it's guaranteed simply because someone could make a caster explicitly just "D&D wizard, but better."

[Coventry]

There was an extremely flexible points pool in Champions that made their wizards far more flexible than D&D wizards. That was the first truly broken character I ever built. :smallcool:

[ExLibrisMortis]

Most fictional wizards have "powers as the plot demands". Even someone ostensibly omnipotent like (apparently) Dr. Strange will be held back for plot reasons. Theoretically optimized D&D wizards, meanwhile, can be played to the breaking point, where there's no real story left to tell, or at least not one that has follows traditional forms of plot. All the usual assumptions--say, the hero will go forth, meet his match, be defeated, uncover a great secret, win the rematch, and with that, save the world--no longer make any sense. Any obstacle that can be placed in a high-optimization wizard's way will necessarily be of three types: trivially weak, overwhelmingly strong, and exactly the same. That's because wizards at that level are no longer about numbers, but rather about how quickly their infinite loops scale, or how close to the beginning of time the causal loop of their existence starts. The wizard placed in a conventional hero plot will by the second act either be the highest deity in the pantheon, or dead.

[Hackulator]

Most fictional wizards have "powers as the plot demands". Even someone ostensibly omnipotent like (apparently) Dr. Strange will be held back for plot reasons. Theoretically optimized D&D wizards, meanwhile, can be played to the breaking point, where there's no real story left to tell, or at least not one that has follows traditional forms of plot. All the usual assumptions--say, the hero will go forth, meet his match, be defeated, uncover a great secret, win the rematch, and with that, save the world--no longer make any sense. Any obstacle that can be placed in a high-optimization wizard's way will necessarily be of three types: trivially weak, overwhelmingly strong, and exactly the same. That's because wizards at that level are no longer about numbers, but rather about how quickly their infinite loops scale, or how close to the beginning of time the causal loop of their existence starts. The wizard placed in a conventional hero plot will by the second act either be the highest deity in the pantheon, or dead.

Eh, that's highly inaccurate when you speak of placing a wizard into a narrative, as that wizard does not then automatically have access to every splatbook ever created. I'm not talking about individual TO wizards.

I'm talking about a powerful order of D&D mages that might exist in one of the many D&D novels compared to the Aes Sedai compared to Harry Potter wizards compared to the Druids of Shannara etc.

[Kalkra]

Heck, of you dig onto the lore, Gandalf is technically some kind of deity with an unknown but possibly nigh-infinite amount of power.

[weckar]

Doctor strange sometimes goes straight out in omnipotence fulled silliness.
While dnd wizards are very powerful there is always stories with omnipotent whatever.
On the other hand most people who place omnipotent character does not know what omnipotence means and so have no idea of the implications of omnipotence like the fact that all the omnipotent characters in a given story necessarily agree with each other on what to do or one of those characters was labelled omnipotent wrongly.


Just because you have power does not always mean you will use it.

[Troacctid]

I mean, I feel like the answer is pretty obviously no? Potterverse wizards can do all the stuff D&D wizards can do, but with no saving throws and no spell slot limitations, and they're arguably the most prominent example of wizardry in contemporary pop culture.

[ben-zayb]

Suggsverse unfortunately exists, so no (hypothetically at the least)

[RoboEmperor]

Heck, of you dig onto the lore, Gandalf is technically some kind of deity with an unknown but possibly nigh-infinite amount of power.

A wizard who can't even throw a fireball and has to kill demons with a sword is not a wizard. If you do count these as wizards then whats stopping a dragon ball character that blows up planets or erases entire universes from being considered wizards? Them shooting energy balls is more wizardly than Gandalf killing stuff with a sword.


I mean, I feel like the answer is pretty obviously no? Potterverse wizards can do all the stuff D&D wizards can do, but with no saving throws and no spell slot limitations, and they're arguably the most prominent example of wizardry in contemporary pop culture.

Potterverse wizards have done nothing similar to Gate or Wish. Or Meteor Swarm for that matter. Finger of Death is their strongest spell.

[Elysiume]

Depends on how you define a wizard. In the Tide Lords quartet a tide lord at the peak of their power could annihilate an entire country with ease, does not age, and can't be (permanently) killed. It's magic, but is it wizardry? It's more like sorcery, since they're not learning spells or anything. Where do you draw the line for what qualifies as a wizard?

[Hackulator]

I mean, I feel like the answer is pretty obviously no? Potterverse wizards can do all the stuff D&D wizards can do, but with no saving throws and no spell slot limitations, and they're arguably the most prominent example of wizardry in contemporary pop culture.

Strongly disgree, Potterverse combat magic is primitive and ineffective, you'd be better off with a machine gun. As for everything else there's very little I've seen a potterverse wizard do that I don't think a D&D wizard could do.


Suggsverse unfortunately exists, so no (hypothetically at the least)

No idea what that is.


Depends on how you define a wizard. In the Tide Lords quartet a tide lord at the peak of their power could annihilate an entire country with ease, does not age, and can't be (permanently) killed. It's magic, but is it wizardry? It's more like sorcery, since they're not learning spells or anything. Where do you draw the line for what qualifies as a wizard?

To qualify as a "wizard" in this case I would say you need to be a creature that is not normally exceedingly powerful but who learns magic and gains power, be it through some inborn talent unusual to your race or through pure knowledge. Never read the Tide Lords quartet but I don't think they qualify as wizards, more just gods.

[Troacctid]

Strongly disgree, Potterverse combat magic is primitive and ineffective, you'd be better off with a machine gun. As for everything else there's very little I've seen a potterverse wizard do that I don't think a D&D wizard could do.
Primitive and ineffective? None of their offensive spells offer saving throws. They just wave their wand at you and poof, you're a ferret. Or paralyzed. Or dead. The only way to counter it is to be a Potterverse wizard yourself, because they also have incredibly potent shielding and counterspelling abilities. What can a D&D wizard do that a Potterverse wizard of the same level can't do better?

[Elysiume]

Harry Potter and the Natural 20 (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8096183/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Natural-20) explores the balance between a 3.5 and HP wizard, if anyone's interested. I found it to be a fun read that is, unfortunately, on what appears to be an indefinite hiatus, so keep that in mind if you choose to read it. I'd still consider worth it reading.


To qualify as a "wizard" in this case I would say you need to be a creature that is not normally exceedingly powerful but who learns magic and gains power, be it through some inborn talent unusual to your race or through pure knowledge. Never read the Tide Lords quartet but I don't think they qualify as wizards, more just gods.I actually haven't read the last book yet but they initially thought there was a particular flame that granted the power and it wasn't until the third (?) book that it turned out that it's lineage-based of some sort. I think that meets the criteria, but I should probably read the final book...

[RoboEmperor]

Primitive and ineffective? None of their offensive spells offer saving throws. They just wave their wand at you and poof, you're a ferret. Or paralyzed. Or dead. The only way to counter it is to be a Potterverse wizard yourself, because they also have incredibly potent shielding and counterspelling abilities. What can a D&D wizard do that a Potterverse wizard of the same level can't do better?

Shapechange into a colossal creature.
Gate in some kind of epic creature. There are no epic creatures in potterverse so it could be because of this rather than lack of the spell.
Miracle such as resurrect all allies
Raise Dead/Resurrection/True Resurrection
Wish
Time Stop
Genesis

They do have Dominate Person (don't know about monster), finger of death, and that giant fire snake thing, which is either similar to animate breath weapon, summon elemental monolith, or something like that. But since they're just fire in the shape of a creature I doubt it can be considered an elemental.

[Hackulator]

Primitive and ineffective? None of their offensive spells offer saving throws. They just wave their wand at you and poof, you're a ferret. Or paralyzed. Or dead. The only way to counter it is to be a Potterverse wizard yourself, because they also have incredibly potent shielding and counterspelling abilities. What can a D&D wizard do that a Potterverse wizard of the same level can't do better?

Cast improved invisibility and fly. Fireball everyone from above while invisible.

[RoboEmperor]

Cast improved invisibility and fly. Fireball everyone from above while invisible.

I think that's possible with potterverse. They already fly, theres that invisibility cloak, and they can throw out giant fire snakes.

[frogglesmash]

Primitive and ineffective? None of their offensive spells offer saving throws. They just wave their wand at you and poof, you're a ferret. Or paralyzed. Or dead. The only way to counter it is to be a Potterverse wizard yourself, because they also have incredibly potent shielding and counterspelling abilities. What can a D&D wizard do that a Potterverse wizard of the same level can't do better?

A d&d wizard's ability to manipulate action economy almost guarantees that d&d wizards will act before, and more often than potter wizards. Furthermore the plethora of immunities, contingency spells, and other defensive spells a d&d is likely to have seems to be far superior to potter wizard defenses, and even if the potter wizard manages to breach those defenses, the wizard has a wide variety of options available to ensure their immediate resurrection whereas potter wizards tend to stay dead, and even if they don't, it takes them years to recover. As for actual offensive capabilities, potter wizards are severely limited, as the vast majority of their offensive spells require them to make ranged touch attacks, whereas d&d wizards have access to a far more methods of attack, and if they astral project, they don't even need to be present to engage in combat.

[ben-zayb]

No idea what that is.Here are the links for the TVTrope (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Suggsverse) entry and the wiki (https://suggsverse.fandom.com/wiki/Suggsverse_Wiki).

To save you the headache from the poorly-written nonsense: Suggsverse is supposed to be one of the, if not the, most powerful fictional universe, whatever that entails. It does look like it was created for that express purpose.

Omnipotence, multiple levels of reality warping, going beyond "multiversal" in scope, and 4th wall breaking, are casual fare.

Here's one ridiculous excerpt that I hope makes enough literal sense (for context, Heir to the Stars is the fiction that the RL author Lionel Suggs wrote):
Ouroboros the Beacon glared, halting the outer parameters of Heirs to the Stars, shattering the greater beyond and lower cosmological structure that is Heir to the Stars, specifically targeting Avalon Crown.

Heir to the Stars was omniversally irreversibly unwritten...

....and yet, Avalon Crown remained unaffected by the efforts of Ouroboros the Beacon.

"You still haven’t even reached my feet"

Avalon Crown outright negated the Metævent, Ouroboros the Beacon had never caused.

I imagine hypothetical wizards from that thing are stupidly more broken.

[Lord Raziere]

everyone that can wield this type of magic (https://powerlisting.fandom.com/wiki/Almighty_Magic) on the superpower wiki. said page provides examples.

[magic9mushroom]

Leaving aside TO shenanigans (which aren't really related to Wizards and more related to D&D - especially 3e - being a system with holes in it; while wizards can access Pun-Pun, they're far from the easiest way to access it), I'd say that Mage: the Awakening has a higher top-end.

At least, inasmuch as MtAw cosmology is basically "a wizard cabal haxxored reality, killed/cast out the gods and mind-controlled the entire world population". Even Vecna and Karsus' epic feats fall significantly short of that - MtAw is basically the Tippyverse.

[Kurald Galain]

Here are the links for the TVTrope (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Suggsverse) entry and the wiki (https://suggsverse.fandom.com/wiki/Suggsverse_Wiki)."

"Metævent"? Seriously?

[Anymage]

What's our point of comparison? Average adventuring wizard? Level 20 TO exercise? Arbitrarily epic?

As you approach the top end, you start looking at characters with stats of essentially You Lose. Pun Pun vs. Lady of Pain is entirely a DM judgment call about whether Pun Pun can give himself a power to override the LoP's "no stats, she's a pure plot device" nature. Everything is so far off the charts that you can't really adjudicate.

Your average D&D adventuring wizard does have a massive edge over your average protagonist wizard, for a couple of reasons. First, being able to change your spell loadout every day is incredibly handy for any long-term problem. Second, with the sheer number of D&D spells available, the D&D wizard can cherry pick the too-good stuff that got overlooked.

[Selion]

Can a D&D wizard resist strikes that would shatter the planet casually? Dr strange can, Dr doom can. Soul binding tricks are nice, but in D&D they require a save, in other fiction they are just a snap of fingers.
Tbh D&D power level is not that high in fiction, unless you are referring to infinite wishes which is no more D&D and no more is even related to being a wizard, it's just stretching DMs approval.

[Malphegor]

Debateable. I'd say Disney's Sword in the Stone Merlin is about on par with a mid to high mid level D&D wizard because he's got unrestricted (The man can turn into diseases!), at will, polymorph, animated objects, and a whole bunch of miscellaneous spells, most of which are pretty decent, though he pulls his punches a lot in that movie. He can time travel within 6 seconds to the 20th century (from the 5th or a very 10th century inspired version of the 5th century from the perspective of the 20th century), so I suspect a no holds barred fight with Merlin would be some kind of time war where you both try to go further back in time to ruin the plans of the other. Possible with D&D magic, but you're burning spell slots and the man is aware of futuretech, so you might end up in the Cretaceous period and he activates a nuke before teleporting back to a timeline where he can relax.



Maleficent looks impressive, but meh. Turns into a fiendish dragon of some sort (That is not all the power of hell, mally), does some druid magic... it's honestly not a great deal, just very widespread, and flashy. She ultimately dies to some transmutation focused sorcerer pixies and one Knight.


The live action Sorcerer's Apprentice are transmuter-evocators and they're not even particularly good ones at that, often taking a long time to cast spells. Some cool stuff with plasma as an elemental type (and they seem more like conjurations, so probably best to assume they work like Orb of X spells) but nothing too hard to fight.

Harry Potter stuff has potential, mainly because Rowling was winging her magic system and even made it self-contradictory (Gamp's law of transfiguration makes no sense in a universe where humans can transmute pincushions into hedgehogs. Maybe they're inedible but there was no indication of that), and there's reference in the later books of ancient power that nobody wields nowadays. Standard wizards, meh, they're evocators and petty transmutors. They've got something that resembles spell resistance, but not a lot.

Beyond that, I'm stumped on high 'level' magics in media outside the heroic fantasy which D&D is inspired by. And mythology, but when you get into myths there's always that awkward moment when you realise the scale for power is not equal and you might be technically more powerful than a god even if you probably wouldn't be in actual combat.

[emeraldstreak]

High "level" Exalt Sorcerers in Exalted 2nd Edition do many of the things wizards are known for.

- can divine threats or targets

- can primacy actions and choose whether to fight or teleport to safety

- can create own "dimensions"

- have a host of persistent immunities, and active perfect defenses that can be nigh persistent too

- high regional destructive potential (arguably world-wide with certain TO)

- can create/bind/otherwise gain powerful minions

- can utilize loops for arbitrary high or even infinite stats

[Mordaedil]

D&D wizards are both constrained by the fact that their powers are listed, making them fairly consistent, but they also aren't oddly challenged by random mundanity of plot conveniance.

I feel like it's pretty much like trying to compare Superman to Goku in that it kinda becomes a matter of confirmation bias in which character you like more or which factors you put higher priority upon.

For instance, people mentioned Harry Potter and they have magic like time travel, which D&D wizards do not have (outside of epic spells at least), but D&D wizards have a far larger established repoirtare of spells available to them and have more options and capable of doing some serious damage that nothing in Harry Potter could even match.

It's actually kinda impressive that D&D has as much flexibility as it does.

[noob]

D&D wizards are both constrained by the fact that their powers are listed, making them fairly consistent, but they also aren't oddly challenged by random mundanity of plot conveniance.

I feel like it's pretty much like trying to compare Superman to Goku in that it kinda becomes a matter of confirmation bias in which character you like more or which factors you put higher priority upon.

For instance, people mentioned Harry Potter and they have magic like time travel, which D&D wizards do not have (outside of epic spells at least), but D&D wizards have a far larger established repoirtare of spells available to them and have more options and capable of doing some serious damage that nothing in Harry Potter could even match.

It's actually kinda impressive that D&D has as much flexibility as it does.

there is a spell called teleport through time and it is a ninth level spell so saying it is restrained to epic levels is false.

[Efrate]

Death ward and protection from evil negate most harry potter bad news spells. A contingency or contingent spell vs. the various transmutations beats a fair bit, or the shapechanger subtype, and some fire resistance, and most of the potterverse cannot touch you. Add freedom of movement if you must. They mention an antifire charm that is pretty simple which should do the trick vs. fire snakes even in universe. All these are fairly standard character defenses.

[Oberron]

Gurps magic system is pretty dumb I think they can match up.

But if you want something with levels then world of synibarr can match up but it's a silly place.

[Karl Aegis]

Wizards of Earthsea are all pretty good. Sparrowhawk defeats an army with a single cleverly used spell as a teenager. Less talented wizards can at least tame wild animals and attempt to give a dragon pause. Dragons of Earthsea are also pretty powerful wizards.

[awa]

wings of fire book series has the magic be basically at will wish with no monkey paw shenanigans, and the only real limitation being the most of the small number of people using it are just really uncreative.

wish from the one mostly smart dragon immunity to harm, immunity to any magic except my own, make that particular magic user not a magic user. Every one who meets me likes and trusts me. teleport all wizards into my presence. As just a few. These aren't the exact phrasing but since no one gets a wish that does not work exactly as intended it doesn't really matter.

[Hackulator]

wings of fire book series has the magic be basically at will wish with no monkey paw shenanigans, and the only real limitation being the most of the small number of people using it are just really uncreative.

wish from the one mostly smart dragon immunity to harm, immunity to any magic except my own, make that particular magic user not a magic user. Every one who meets me likes and trusts me. teleport all wizards into my presence. As just a few. These aren't the exact phrasing but since no one gets a wish that does not work exactly as intended it doesn't really matter.

I feel like that crosses the threshold from wizard to god pretty clearly.

[awa]

I feel like that crosses the threshold from wizard to god pretty clearly.

they are relentlessly dumb about using the magic until like the final book of that sub series.

edit
its true based on what we are shown their seems to very few limits on what they can do at the very least no one tries to do anything and has it fail. Course on the other hand a level 20 d&d wizard is already comfortable in god region themselves. A lot of fictional gods cant do every thing a level 20 wizard can do, and that's not even including what you can do with optimization.

The real problem is when we get out side of the game is whose mechanics trump whose? take the harry potter example the person said their spells grant no save, but can a death ward+ mind blank stop them? Does the killing curse punch through magical defenses (except true love I guess?). Or even does the killing curse grant a save and that save just happens to be a reflex save?

[Calthropstu]

Epic 3.5 wizards have access to some ridonculous abilities.
However, there are 3 abilities that beat any wizard the instant it is used.
Dr Who beats all d&d wizards because time travel is one of those 3.
Anyone capable of stopping time also wins as long as the amount of time allowed in stopped time is infinite. I have seen a couple instances of this.

Yes, d&d wizards have weakened versions if both of those. So it comes down to whoever uses the ability first.

As such, yes. Since d&d wizards have access to 2 of the three penultimate powers, they are the most powerful. But they share that title with others.

[Zanos]

Primitive and ineffective? None of their offensive spells offer saving throws. They just wave their wand at you and poof, you're a ferret. Or paralyzed. Or dead. The only way to counter it is to be a Potterverse wizard yourself, because they also have incredibly potent shielding and counterspelling abilities. What can a D&D wizard do that a Potterverse wizard of the same level can't do better?
Hit a moving target, for starters.

[noob]

Epic 3.5 wizards have access to some ridonculous abilities.
However, there are 3 abilities that beat any wizard the instant it is used.
Dr Who beats all d&d wizards because time travel is one of those 3.
Anyone capable of stopping time also wins as long as the amount of time allowed in stopped time is infinite. I have seen a couple instances of this.

Yes, d&d wizards have weakened versions if both of those. So it comes down to whoever uses the ability first.

As such, yes. Since d&d wizards have access to 2 of the three penultimate powers, they are the most powerful. But they share that title with others.

dnd wizards does not stops time: they get to act infinitely fast which looks just like stopping time.
(unless the dnd wizard decide to use shenanigans to apply stasis to all the things in the universe)
and dnd wizards does not gets a weakened time travel they get 3 ways to travel through time: crafting an epic spell with negative dc(it takes a negative time and negative cost in experience and gold), casting travel through time or using time gates(which they can craft but they are based on the travel through time spell) and using temporal regression abuse.
The reason why doctor who is stronger than dnd wizards does not comes from time travel but from his ability to gain omnipotence(unless the wizard in question is pun pun but then the wizard levels serve no purpose).

[Grek]

Obviously not. Have a constructive proof:

"Once upon the time, there was the mighty wizard Grekhaus, who was the msot powerful of all wizards. With a single snap of their fingers, they defeated every D&D wizard ever. Simultaneously. Twice. And so, everyone lived happily ever after, the end."

[jintoya]

I believe most current deity count as incredibly powerful wizards... No matter your religion, unless you think they are all simultaneously true, then the wizards that have been listed so far are all just the creations of The lesser beings said beings created... Id argue that one of them must therefore be more powerful

[Divine Susuryu]

Obviously not. Have a constructive proof:

"Once upon the time, there was the mighty wizard Grekhaus, who was the msot powerful of all wizards. With a single snap of their fingers, they defeated every D&D wizard ever. Simultaneously. Twice. And so, everyone lived happily ever after, the end."

I can do you one better.

"This is a fantasy story. There exists an entity X in this fantasy story. X is axiomatically transcendent of any and all hierarchies by a degree of Ω, or Absolute Infinity. The end."

Not a great story, I admit, but certainly a more powerful wizard than any D&D wizard. Or any other wizard. In fact, it's a more powerful anything than anything by it's very nature.

The argument is a bit silly, but this is a silly thread after all.

[noob]

I can do you one better.

"This is a fantasy story. There exists an entity X in this fantasy story. X is axiomatically transcendent of any and all hierarchies by a degree of Ω, or Absolute Infinity. The end."

Not a great story, I admit, but certainly a more powerful wizard than any D&D wizard. Or any other wizard. In fact, it's a more powerful anything than anything by it's very nature.

The argument is a bit silly, but this is a silly thread after all.

I guess you did not read the work of cantor: the thing you wrote does not have a valid meaning: there is no infinity bigger than all the other infinities.

[Kyrell1978]

I'd put the wizards of David Eddings Belgariad/Mallorean as at least equivalent to the D and D wizards. Their only real limitation being that if they try to "unmake" something that they themselves will be unmade instead.

[Divine Susuryu]

I guess you did not read the work of cantor: the thing you wrote does not have a valid meaning.

It does under NFU set theory, and I can just define said story as using NFU.

Do I actually understand NFU? Heck no, but people way smarter than me do, and I trust them.

[MisterKaws]

Primitive and ineffective? None of their offensive spells offer saving throws. They just wave their wand at you and poof, you're a ferret. Or paralyzed. Or dead. The only way to counter it is to be a Potterverse wizard yourself, because they also have incredibly potent shielding and counterspelling abilities. What can a D&D wizard do that a Potterverse wizard of the same level can't do better?

Wings of Cover can nullify nearly all of potterverse spells. That's talking lvl2 spells.

Let's not even get into Twin Celerity, but I digress.

Chinese Xuanhuan(Basically Wuxia+Western Fantasy) oftentimes has super duper overpowered mages, which usually just rocket race into hitting each other with multiverse-sized fireballs.

Some newer western fantasy novels also do it, taking after Xuanhuan novels. It's actually pretty common since about 10 years ago, with the rise of Wuxia translators and the subsequent localizing of that webnovel site(not sure whether mentioning sites is against the rules).

Also anime I guess but anime is always ridiculous.

[Hackulator]

I'd put the wizards of David Eddings Belgariad/Mallorean as at least equivalent to the D and D wizards. Their only real limitation being that if they try to "unmake" something that they themselves will be unmade instead.

I dunno about that. They certainly have limitations as their magic tires them out. There's almost nothing any of them do in any of the books that a D&D mage couldn't do, and lots D&D mages can do that they never give even a hint of being able to do.

[RoboEmperor]

Also anime I guess but anime is always ridiculous.

Does anime have wizards? If you say magical girls are wizards then i guess but i'm pretty sure no magical girl show has someone capable of casting Genesis and Astral Projection and the like.

[Cicciograna]

What about "Magic: The Gathering" Planeswalkers? More or less powerful than D&D 3.5 Edition Wizards?

[RoboEmperor]

What about "Magic: The Gathering" Planeswalkers? More or less powerful than D&D 3.5 Edition Wizards?

Yugioh lets you not only summon literal gods but spam them all in one turn.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Eh, that's highly inaccurate when you speak of placing a wizard into a narrative, as that wizard does not then automatically have access to every splatbook ever created. I'm not talking about individual TO wizards.

I'm talking about a powerful order of D&D mages that might exist in one of the many D&D novels compared to the Aes Sedai compared to Harry Potter wizards compared to the Druids of Shannara etc.
It's annoying how you don't reply to the actual post, and instead say "that wasn't what I meant so it's wrong".


In any case, D&D novels have nothing to do with 3.5 wizards. The novels only pay token respect to the mechanics of the game, and generally, powers are "as the plot demands". In fact, my entire post applies to the difference between D&D novels and D&D games as much as it does to any story-to-game comparison. The point is that games allow characters to be played optimally according to the rules of the game, whereas wizards in stories are moved according to the rules of storytelling.

[Doctor Awkward]

On their face, mages in White Wolf's Mage: the Ascension are immensely more powerful than those found in D&D, and this is largely due to the game mechanics of how magic works in that system.

In short, reality is not static, and those who understand this can call upon one or more of nine spheres of that compose the physical makeup of reality in order to alter it to better suit their needs. Thus with the appropriate knowledge of given spheres a mage could create literally any effect they wish simply by willing it, whereas a wizard in D&D would require the particular spell in order to produce a desired result.

The only drawback White Wolf mages suffer is an effect known as paradox, which is when reality is warped too much from what the general consensus of human understand would be by a particular effect and this causes a backlash that has a measurable negative effect on the mage (including death, or worse). This is almost universally determined by the ST, and there aren't many hard rules on how bad a paradox should be, let alone if one should happen at all.

Essentially, a mage from Mage: the Ascension is what you would get if a wizard in D&D 3.5 were able to prepare every one of his daily spell slots as Wish.

[MisterKaws]

Does anime have wizards? If you say magical girls are wizards then i guess but i'm pretty sure no magical girl show has someone capable of casting Genesis and Astral Projection and the like.

You don't watch much anime, do you?

There's anime about literally anything. And if you figure out an anime they didn't do yet, tell them and they'll probably make it in the next 3 years.

Also, ironically, the Fate series has a spin-off with magical girls who are technically canon magicians in the series, and they're pretty overpowered. With that I mean they're sentient incarnations of a wish-granting artifact. Technically still mages.

[Dunsparce]

I mean, I feel like the answer is pretty obviously no? Potterverse wizards can do all the stuff D&D wizards can do, but with no saving throws and no spell slot limitations, and they're arguably the most prominent example of wizardry in contemporary pop culture.

I remember hearing something about JK herself saying that in an all-out Wizard vs Muggle war that the Muggles would easily win because of how easy it is to outright kill with guns compared to magic.

I also remember many HP fans being really angry with her saying that, but she IS the creator of the series.

[frogglesmash]

I remember hearing something about JK herself saying that in an all-out Wizard vs Muggle war that the Muggles would easily win because of how easy it is to outright kill with guns compared to magic.

I also remember many HP fans being really angry with her saying that, but she IS the creator of the series.

Tbh that's pretty dumb assessment on JK's part. The fact potter wizards are indistinguishable from ordinary humans, and that all their communities are hidden in the midst of muggle communities combined with their vastly superior transportation and infiltration abilities means that muggles would never even have an opportunity to target them, let bring any meaningful military force to bear against them. Plus, with liberal use of the imperious curse, the potter wizards could just have muggle society tear itself apart from within.

[noob]

I remember hearing something about JK herself saying that in an all-out Wizard vs Muggle war that the Muggles would easily win because of how easy it is to outright kill with guns compared to magic.

I also remember many HP fans being really angry with her saying that, but she IS the creator of the series.

Also wizards from potterverse are not very good at cooperating relatively to muggle armies and they are vastly outnumbered and the few really good things that could help the wizards to fight muggles(such as orcrux creation or time turners) are extremely restrained and barely transmitted up to the point that it is quite likely that it is this mentality of hiding and not transmitting that made them lose a lot of knowledge about old magics.
Also their mentality of not progressing until muggles does things 100 times better is not helping at all (like how they made ways to copy written text only after muggles did).
However with the way paintings works it might be possible to recover a lot of the lost magical knowledge once the whole system crumbles and that muggle government's wizards are a thing (so after the wizard population get damaged enough for no longer retrieving young wizards)
The wizard society in harry potter keeps itself in place but is not exactly adapted for defeating a world where societies that stops advancing are stomped on by societies that keeps advancing.

[Quertus]

This thread seems poorly defined. But, fine. What Wizards do we have, to compare? Let me know if I've missed any.

D&D (3e)
D&D (2e)
D&D (other)
WoD M:tA
MtG
Harry Potter
Marvel
DC
Gurps
M&M
H&H
Heroes/Champions
Aes Sedai
Dresden universe
Disney
"not Disney"
LotR
Suggsverse
Paradox (homebrew)
Rifts
Exalted
Scion
Warhammer Fantasy
Druids of Shannara (?)
world of synibarr (?)
Wizards of Earthsea (?)
wings of fire (?)

Diablo? Conan? Any other universes support/sport Wizards?

[Hackulator]

This thread seems poorly defined.

I mean, guilty as charged, it was a random question I threw out while daydreaming about wizards.

[zlefin]

Does anime have wizards? If you say magical girls are wizards then i guess but i'm pretty sure no magical girl show has someone capable of casting Genesis and Astral Projection and the like.

anime does have wizards; it's a medium rather than a genre; so there's a lot of everything.

there are some instances which reach extremely high levels of power.

[Gullintanni]

I feel like the spell "Astral Projection" needs to be part of this discussion. Almost none of the wizards in most pop culture fiction are capable of inter-dimensional travel. HP, Shannara, LotR, Wheel of Time, etc. would have no way of hunting down a D&D Wizard who was fighting from another plane of existence. While inter-dimensional travel certainly does exist outside of D&D, its ease in 3.5 certainly puts a limit on the number of fictional spellcasters who can even interact with D&D's Wizards.

...and if we accept that many deities in 3.5 have Wizard class levels things get a little bit out of hand, Salient Divine Abilities being what they are. Probably a bit disingenuous to the challenge though.

[Quertus]

I feel like the spell "Astral Projection" needs to be part of this discussion. Almost none of the wizards in most pop culture fiction are capable of inter-dimensional travel. HP, Shannara, LotR, Wheel of Time, etc. would have no way of hunting down a D&D Wizard who was fighting from another plane of existence. While inter-dimensional travel certainly does exist outside of D&D, its ease in 3.5 certainly puts a limit on the number of fictional spellcasters who can even interact with D&D's Wizards.

...and if we accept that many deities in 3.5 have Wizard class levels things get a little bit out of hand, Salient Divine Abilities being what they are. Probably a bit disingenuous to the challenge though.

My race is god. I'm a Wizard. What did me being a Wizard let me bring to the table?

That sounds like a valid version of the challenge.

[Analytica]

Does anime have wizards? If you say magical girls are wizards then i guess but i'm pretty sure no magical girl show has someone capable of casting Genesis and Astral Projection and the like.

You might enjoy Madoka! :)

[RoboEmperor]

I feel like the spell "Astral Projection" needs to be part of this discussion. Almost none of the wizards in most pop culture fiction are capable of inter-dimensional travel. HP, Shannara, LotR, Wheel of Time, etc. would have no way of hunting down a D&D Wizard who was fighting from another plane of existence. While inter-dimensional travel certainly does exist outside of D&D, its ease in 3.5 certainly puts a limit on the number of fictional spellcasters who can even interact with D&D's Wizards.

...and if we accept that many deities in 3.5 have Wizard class levels things get a little bit out of hand, Salient Divine Abilities being what they are. Probably a bit disingenuous to the challenge though.

What no. Astral Projection is not inter-dimensional travel. Wtf. Astral Projection is infinite copies of yourself and equipment. For example, a Demon Prince like Demogorgon with his at-will Astral Projection will astrally project onto the material plane, spam like a hundred scrolls of Gates, Wish, etc. and then when finally slain the very next round he Astrally Projects back into the material plane with full health and full gear and endlessly restarts his onslaught. Without end. As you can see, the interdimensional travel part of Astral Projection is the least important aspect of that spell.

[Quertus]

OK, so let's take a look at my list, and start to see if there's any we can cross off.


D&D (3e)
D&D (2e)
D&D (other)
WoD M:tA
MtG
Harry Potter
Marvel
DC
Gurps
M&M
H&H
Heroes/Champions
Aes Sedai
Dresden universe
Disney
"not Disney" (?)
LotR
Suggsverse
Paradox (homebrew)
Rifts
Exalted
Scion
Warhammer Fantasy
Druids of Shannara (?)
world of synibarr (?)
Wizards of Earthsea (?)
wings of fire (?)
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
Sailor Moon

Diablo? Conan? Various Anime (I think those last two fall under this category)? Any other universes support/sport Wizards?

So, I would have crossed off Harry Potter and GURPS, but some have claimed that their Wizards are able to be on par with D&D Wizards. :smallconfused:

Can we safely cross off D&D(other editions), Aes Sedai, Dresden universe, Rifts, and Warhammer Fantasy? Plus Conan, Diablo, and most movie and anime Wizards? And my new ShadowRun, Earthdawn & Jedi?

That's still a pretty big list of "is tall enough to ride" Wizards.

[Zancloufer]

Does anime have wizards? If you say magical girls are wizards then i guess but i'm pretty sure no magical girl show has someone capable of casting Genesis and Astral Projection and the like.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha? Which oddly enough isn't about "classical" magical girls, but space wizards that happen to be girls. Actually by the third season the title is mostly lies but still.

Their teleport spells are essentially Greater Teleport mixed with plane shift. They have Anti-magic fields and the equivalent to meta-magic that can pierce AMFs. They have demonstrated the ability to create small sub-planes. They have trans-dimensional spells (imagine 100% accurate plane-shifts but you send spells instead of yourself).

Also the top tier mages can level entire cities with a single spell. Pretty sure they could crack a planet with some effort as well but it's never been demonstrated. They can collapse demi-planes though so a planet is probably not beyond their capacity.

So would creating a demi-plane, firing off a city obliterating spell at another planet located in a different dimension and them flocking off to the other side of the galaxy be something a D&D wizard can do pre-epic? Probably not.

[Prime32]

Didn't Sailor Moon once defeat a villain by destroying the universe and recreating it without the villain in it or something? Magical girl powers function as a metaphor for the protagonist growing into adulthood and determining their own destiny, so they tend to be completely bonkers.

[Mnemius]

Didn't Sailor Moon once defeat a villain by destroying the universe and recreating it without the villain in it or something?

Does Meatball head even meet the intelligence requirements to be a wizard? Maybe a charisma caster? (or wisdom, somehow?) But not wizard.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Slayers yet, with the likes of Lina Inverse, Naga, and... the always off-screen Luna Inverse. I mean, Lina has a spell that failing the concentration check on could result in destruction of the multiverse...

The Madoka girls are technically liches, so yeah, they count as wizards. (As one webcomic person described it, magical schoolgirl liches).

And since fantasy was mentioned, what about video game wizards, like Lezard Valeth of Valkyrie Profile? (one of these days I'll play through the 2nd game)

[Quertus]

Sounds like I should add ShadowRun, Earthdawn, Jedi, and lots of things I don't recognize to my list.

[InvisibleBison]

I feel like the spell "Astral Projection" needs to be part of this discussion. Almost none of the wizards in most pop culture fiction are capable of inter-dimensional travel. HP, Shannara, LotR, Wheel of Time, etc. would have no way of hunting down a D&D Wizard who was fighting from another plane of existence. While inter-dimensional travel certainly does exist outside of D&D, its ease in 3.5 certainly puts a limit on the number of fictional spellcasters who can even interact with D&D's Wizards.

I think you are both overestimating how accessible inter-dimensional travel is to D&D wizards and underestimating how inaccessible it is to non-D&D wizards. For the former, the only way to make inter-dimensional travel anything more than a different form of teleportation is via astral projection, which is a ninth-level spell - that is, not innate available to the vast majority of wizards (and leveraging WBL or summoned creatures seems a bit odd in this discussion, since non-wizards can do it too). For the latter, both LotR and Wheel of Time do actually contain inter-dimensional travel. Wheel of Time actually has 2 different methods, one of which is available to non-casters.

[Kalkra]

When I said earlier that if you look into the lore, Gandalf is really strong, what I meant by that is that he's stronger than he demonstrates in the actual trilogy.

For reference, wiki (https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Gandalf). Check out the part about destroying universes.

[Hackulator]

OK, so let's take a look at my list, and start to see if there's any we can cross off.



So, I would have crossed off Harry Potter and GURPS, but some have claimed that their Wizards are able to be on par with D&D Wizards. :smallconfused:

Can we safely cross off D&D(other editions), Aes Sedai, Dresden universe, Rifts, and Warhammer Fantasy? Plus Conan, Diablo, and most movie and anime Wizards?

That's still a pretty big list of "is tall enough to ride" Wizards.

I mean, I would say Aes Sedai are definitely "tall enough to ride" even though they are probably not going to come out over D&D wizards in the end. They can do some truly insane stuff.


When I said earlier that if you look into the lore, Gandalf is really strong, what I meant by that is that he's stronger than he demonstrates in the actual trilogy.

For reference, wiki (https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Gandalf). Check out the part about destroying universes.

I would say anything not actually demonstrated by feats should not really go into the equation.

[Kalkra]

Achnologia from Fairy Tail. He can eat magic and absorb it's power. A lot of people might have trouble with those kinds of hacks.

[RifleAvenger]

and mage: the ascension's wizard are pathetic weaklings when compared to dnd wizards.
Also why search for a world with what you want when you can create it?

So while you are right that doctor strange is more powerful than a dnd wizard you are right for the wrong reason and the other wizards you mentioned are incredibly weakerest of final ultimate supreme weakness.

Seriously if you have to search for a world full of followers instead of creating an infinity of worlds full of an infinity of your followers which are all gods and wizards as powerful as you and dedicated to you forever in one instant then you are weak.
And dnd wizards have no less than three ways to travel backwards in time.All my response is based on Awakening, not Ascension, but I'm 99% sure anything you can accomplish in Awakening can also be done in Ascension.

Mages can cast spells through time as early as Time 2. Archmages of Time can time travel physically. Archmages of any arcana can create worlds (some can create entire universes), a Master of multiple arcana likely could too (Space + Spirit? Matter+Forces+Life?). Any Mage with 4/5 Spirit, Mind, or Death can summon and bind (4) or create ex nihilo (5) minions. Likely could argue to a storyteller for other arcana too (matter for golems, forces for elementals). Archmages can create sapient fragments of their own soul with spellcasting capability of their own, allowing any archmage with high enough gnosis/arcana to hypothetically chain clone themself (the Exarchs army of ochemata in the Supernal Realms is explicitly this).

Mage the Awakening characters can start the game with the ability to redo the previous turn, at will (compare that to 4 cantrips, two 1st level spells, and a crossbow). By Master level, you're the D&D equivalent of a character with Wish and Epic Magic as an at-will ability. By Archmaster level you can rewrite the universe at a whim, held back only by the existence of other absurdly powerful beings (many of whom are opposing Archmages).

Sure, there's Paradox. But given that you can routinely Reach twice over limit with Paradox at a chance die? Don't do obvious magic in front of a crowd and you'll be fine. That's like, the one thing D&D has over Mage, and there are plenty of places where you're not going to encounter Sleepers (any adventure on another plane for starters) and ways to evade them seeing your spells (rendering spells invisible, spells that don't do anything perceived as magical, pulling the opponent into a space or time bubble where Sleepers cannot see, etc.).


I would definitely disagree with Mage. Most mages don't have the breadth of power to match D&D wizards. Though some really strong mages can do insane things, notably oracles, these are similar to D&D characters who are in the epic or mythic tiers or have ascended to immortality or godhood, so even at that point I think the D&D wizards can match or exceed them.If we're doing comparisons, they have to be at the same relative level. Looking at a 1st level wizard, versus the Gnosis 3, Time 3, Fate 2, +1 arcana dot wherever Acanthus you can begin with in Mage, I know which one I think is more powerful.

By the time we hit mid-levels, a Mage is either highly specialized but hitting their equivalent to 8th-9th level spells in their arcana (Master level), or has broadened out to multi-Disciple or multi-Adept level which gives them easily as much versatility as a D&D wizard.

Archmaster/Epic levels, sure they're about equal. Both have freeform magic at that point which depends on bizarre items or occurrences to be effective (Quintessences in Mage, shoving as many casters as possible into a cube or the like to drive down the Spellcraft DC in D&D). Except the Mage's non-Imperial, non-epic spells are far less restricted and far more powerful than the D&D Wizard's.

[noob]

All my response is based on Awakening, not Ascension, but I'm 99% sure anything you can accomplish in Awakening can also be done in Ascension.

Mages can cast spells through time as early as Time 2. Archmages of Time can time travel physically. Archmages of any arcana can create worlds (some can create entire universes), a Master of multiple arcana likely could too (Space + Spirit? Matter+Forces+Life?). Any Mage with 4/5 Spirit, Mind, or Death can summon and bind (4) or create ex nihilo (5) minions. Likely could argue to a storyteller for other arcana too (matter for golems, forces for elementals). Archmages can create sapient fragments of their own soul with spellcasting capability of their own, allowing any archmage with high enough gnosis/arcana to hypothetically chain clone themself (the Exarchs army of ochemata in the Supernal Realms is explicitly this).

Mage the Awakening characters can start the game with the ability to redo the previous turn, at will (compare that to 4 cantrips, two 1st level spells, and a crossbow). By Master level, you're the D&D equivalent of a character with Wish and Epic Magic as an at-will ability. By Archmaster level you can rewrite the universe at a whim, held back only by the existence of other absurdly powerful beings (many of whom are opposing Archmages).

Sure, there's Paradox. But given that you can routinely Reach twice over limit with Paradox at a chance die? Don't do obvious magic in front of a crowd and you'll be fine. That's like, the one thing D&D has over Mage, and there are plenty of places where you're not going to encounter Sleepers (any adventure on another plane for starters) and ways to evade them seeing your spells (rendering spells invisible, spells that don't do anything perceived as magical, pulling the opponent into a space or time bubble where Sleepers cannot see, etc.).

If we're doing comparisons, they have to be at the same relative level. Looking at a 1st level wizard, versus the Gnosis 3, Time 3, Fate 2, +1 arcana dot wherever Acanthus you can begin with in Mage, I know which one I think is more powerful.

By the time we hit mid-levels, a Mage is either highly specialized but hitting their equivalent to 8th-9th level spells in their arcana (Master level), or has broadened out to multi-Disciple or multi-Adept level which gives them easily as much versatility as a D&D wizard.

Archmaster/Epic levels, sure they're about equal. Both have freeform magic at that point which depends on bizarre items or occurrences to be effective (Quintessences in Mage, shoving as many casters as possible into a cube or the like to drive down the Spellcraft DC in D&D). Except the Mage's non-Imperial, non-epic spells are far less restricted and far more powerful than the D&D Wizard's.

could one of those mages decide "that mage which progressed far beyond me I am going to make a copy of it with all its power and that obeys me"

[Aharon]

I mean, I feel like the answer is pretty obviously no? Potterverse wizards can do all the stuff D&D wizards can do, but with no saving throws and no spell slot limitations, and they're arguably the most prominent example of wizardry in contemporary pop culture.

That depends on which ruleset is used. If we try to convert Potterverse wizards to D&D, they are very versatile and powerful, but lack some of the "big guns" - Binding/Summoning, for example, is almost absent:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=15556002&postcount=215

[Khedrac]

I feel like the spell "Astral Projection" needs to be part of this discussion. Almost none of the wizards in most pop culture fiction are capable of inter-dimensional travel. HP, Shannara, LotR, Wheel of Time, etc. would have no way of hunting down a D&D Wizard who was fighting from another plane of existence. While inter-dimensional travel certainly does exist outside of D&D, its ease in 3.5 certainly puts a limit on the number of fictional spellcasters who can even interact with D&D's Wizards.

...and if we accept that many deities in 3.5 have Wizard class levels things get a little bit out of hand, Salient Divine Abilities being what they are. Probably a bit disingenuous to the challenge though.

How did I forget the works of Diana Wynne Jones?
Various sets of wizards in her works, but 2 groups do have access to inter-planar/dimensional travel and are worth considering (one group just have access but are defintiely not as powerful - those of A Sudden Wild Magic).
Magids etc - most magids probably are not as apowerful as a top-end D&D magician, they are policing considerably less-powerful magicians. That said, there does appear to be at least one magaician on a par with top-end D&D mages (Romanov) - but there isn't enough info on his powers to decide one way or another.
Wizards of the related worlds - here wizards vary in power from less powerful than a D&D wizard 1 up to nine-lived enchanters. I would say that the nine-lived enchanters (Chrestomanci etc.) are more powerful than a top-end D&D wizard.
For consideration a "normal" enchanter (so not even close to the power of a 9-lived one) managed to cast a spell so that everythying someone else said came true. Everything - had he said something like 2+2 = 5 the entire universe would probably have come apart as reality broke down. OK this particulare universe wasn't a full one - it had failed to split from another so was probably the equivalent of a large demiplane - but even that is probably beyond the power of any D&D wizard.
9-lived enchanters are an order of magniture (or 2) more powerful...

[Eldan]

Achnologia from Fairy Tail. He can eat magic and absorb it's power. A lot of people might have trouble with those kinds of hacks.

I mean, D&D wizards deal with spell resistant, magic immune, spell reflecting and spell absorbing monsters quite commonly. You just drop a heavy rock on them, as the most simple solution.

[Quertus]

So, as OP as D&D Wizards may seem at times, they're actually kinda... average. Is that the big takeaway from this thread?

[GrayDeath]

To qualify as a "wizard" in this case I would say you need to be a creature that is not normally exceedingly powerful but who learns magic and gains power, be it through some inborn talent unusual to your race or through pure knowledge. Never read the Tide Lords quartet but I don't think they qualify as wizards, more just gods.

Going with this definition, and as the thread got a bit heated, going to ignore that section.


it depends on optimization levels allowed, as there's a lot of gradations of possible cheese in DnD compared to more fleshed out sources (as well as compared to actual DnD settings); (and also varies by edition, 3rd ed has some of the silliest high power wizard capabilities compared to other versions)
it's definitely on the high end, and possibly near the top for the higher op versions.
it should be noted that published DnD setting wizards aren't anywhere near as strong as some of what's done on the boards.

pre-mending planeswalkers would tend to be higher powered.

Strongly agree.

Now if we take a D&D Wizard who did not have the Luxury of choosing ALL THE SPELLS MUHAHAHAHA, but is limited to say, about 150 in Total, and also does not have complete and utter Knowledge about what he will be facing, all the time, ever, and of course (for avoidance of Infinity Loops and similar Cheese) assuming the RAW Exploits work at most 1/4th of the time one tries them, and are at least somewhat Ressoiurce taxing or risky, I would say no. Not THE most powerful.
They are at least in the top 3 though. And very likely kings of Strategic Spell Flexibility (if overtaken qquite a bit in regards to tactical Flexibility).

If we go by what the D&D Wizards do in Stories vs. other Wizards in Stories, it gets much more muddled, even if one tries to exclude "simply because of Plot" and removes Gary Stues Squared guys like Elminster. But evne then I would say that they are very much up there, if far less flexible than if "used" by a Playgrounder ^^

[ben-zayb]

So, as OP as D&D Wizards may seem at times, they're actually kinda... average. Is that the big takeaway from this thread?If I were to guess, it would still be above average by virtue of sheer number of fantasy fiction wizards. It's just that the wizards above are also above average.

[Eldan]

So, as OP as D&D Wizards may seem at times, they're actually kinda... average. Is that the big takeaway from this thread?

Well, the question is how powerful you are allowed to make your D&D wizard. The average D&D wizard is quite powerful, but matched by a lot of stuff. A well-built epic wizard? Probably unmatched.

[Icarium]

I haven't seen it mentioned before, how would Pug fare in this worldshattering power-struggle..?

Also, the elder warren users from the Malazan books..?

[Quertus]

Well, the question is how powerful you are allowed to make your D&D wizard. The average D&D wizard is quite powerful, but matched by a lot of stuff. A well-built epic wizard? Probably unmatched.

By all means, describe (in system-agnostic terms) exactly what a well-built epic 3e wizard looks like, and we'll compare him to the high-end of other systems/settings.

(EDIT: not that this was the intent of the thread, I think, but, then, the intent was rather obfuscated, and this seems an interesting question)

EDIT: here's my attempt to describe a well-built, well-played pre-epic 3e Wizard: theoretically finite battery, but able to travel to places where time runs differently or travel through time to (usually) mitigate this drawback.
theoretically finite dwoemer duration, but able to ignore this limitation (for personal spells) by various shenanigans.
theoretically disruptable, hazardous, and/or costly casting, but all able to be ignored, by various shenanigans.
Mix of resistable and irresistible spells.
Mix of "measurable effect" and "infinite effect" / "just works" spells (ie, Wall of Force has infinite damage absorbtion)
Mix of direct effect spells, and spells that are sufficiently indirect to bypass "immunity to magic".
Finite number of spells known; even more finite number of spells able to be cast at a given moment (the latter largely mitigated by Divinations and various time shenanigans, to within the limits of the former).
Mix of defined (published) and "GM Fiat" (researched) spells.
Plot armor to take around 20+ times the beating of a normal human.
GM Fiat ability to understand the universe.
Reliant on particular planar geography; without that, any (published) travel- and summoning-based spells do not function.
Reliant on existence of magic. Limited scout to ignore certain very specific types of disruptions to this requirement.
Not reliant on a particular body, but reliant on certain general properties (such as ability to vocalize particular sounds) for some spells (which may be mitigated).
Able to take "interrupt" actions, sometimes even when unaware of the situation.
Rarely will the average human get the drop on them (never with shenanigans) or best them on the draw (never with GM Fiat & shenanigans?)
Able to act numerous times / many times faster than a normal human (with pursuant drawbacks, mitigated by shenanigans).
Able to stop time for a GM Fiat amount of time.
Able to change self or others into numerous creatures, subject to limitations and GM Fiat, sometimes with special abilities included.
Able to kill the average human... how many times over?
Able to not selectively kill the average human in huge areas outside cities (subject to the existence of a city?)
And to control the actions of nearly any sentient creature (resistable, free resist attempt by GM Fiat on each action, noticeable) for days at a time.
Able to rewrite the memories and personality of nearly any sentient creature (resistable, noticeable)
Able to travel instantly through space, time, and "planes" (all subject to planar geography, except time travel).
Able to create minions, mostly subject to GM Fiat.
Immune to physical harm (albeit shenanigans)
Able to cast GM Fiat magic within their usual range of capabilities (costly, mitigated by shenanigans)
Able to cast GM Fiat magic outside their usual range of capabilities (costly, mitigated by shenanigans, and dangerous, by GM Fiat)
Able to cast their spells / take their actions through the safety of a proxy (subject to planar geography).
Able to permanently destroy own ability to cast spells.

[Kurald Galain]

So, as OP as D&D Wizards may seem at times, they're actually kinda... average. Is that the big takeaway from this thread?

The big takeaway is that cosmic or reality warping levels of power are easier to deal with in literature than in a RPG.

Essentially, a D&D wizard is like a superhero: he has a limited (albeit large) amount of specific powers with clearly defined results and limitations. Even the Epic rules largely boil down to creating a new specific power with clerly defined results and limitations. Harry Potter characters also fall in this category, as well as most Brandon Sanderson characters, and Pug/Milamber or Vanyel Ashkevron are basically high level D&D wizards.

This is a step below characters that can more-or-less do as they please, at will; such as Belgarath, Coin the Sourceror, Ruin / Harmony / Odium, the Planeswalkers from MtG, and Mage: the Ascension characters.

And that is a step below axiomatic characters that alter or define reality itself on a fundamental level; such as Ged of Earthsea, Dr. Strange, Dream of the Endless, or Dworkin of Amber.

[Kyrell1978]

I dunno about that. They certainly have limitations as their magic tires them out. There's almost nothing any of them do in any of the books that a D&D mage couldn't do, and lots D&D mages can do that they never give even a hint of being able to do.

I think this depends on how you look at it. If you are looking for something to match spell for spell with the 50 or so years of printed material for D and D you're probably not going to find anything. The limitations of wizards are set very clearly in the will and the way. If you can think of something and have the willpower to do it you can make it happen. The only limit to that is unmaking, the universe doesn't allow that. I like to look at it as more examples of schools that it shows them using when comparing to something like DnD. It shows them using conjuration (demons no less), evocation (Burn), transmutation (disguises and ploymorph basically at will), divination (he can pick his name out when it is spoken), abjuration (dispelling others spells), necromancy (hello horse), enchantment (Grolim controlling Garion concerning mentioning him), illusion (making a screen of the surrounding terrain to shield them from scrying), and you could throw some of the misc. other things they do under universal. Anyway, just an opinion.

[Quertus]

The big takeaway is that cosmic or reality warping levels of power are easier to deal with in literature than in a RPG.

Most of my list was RPG Wizards - or, at least, Wizards from universes with associated RPGs.

So, removing everything with no known (to me) associated RPG, that still leaves

D&D (3e)
D&D (2e)
D&D (other)
WoD M:tA
MtG
Harry Potter
Marvel
DC
Gurps
M&M
H&H
Heroes/Champions
Aes Sedai
Dresden universe
LotR
Paradox (homebrew)
Rifts
Exalted
Scion
Warhammer Fantasy
ShadowRun
Jedi
Earthdawn
[/QUOTE]

That still leaves D&D Wizards as fairly average, by my thinking.


Essentially, a D&D wizard is like a superhero: he has a limited (albeit large) amount of specific powers with clearly defined results and limitations. Even the Epic rules largely boil down to creating a new specific power with clerly defined results and limitations. Harry Potter characters also fall in this category, as well as most Brandon Sanderson characters, and Pug/Milamber or Vanyel Ashkevron are basically high level D&D wizards.

This is a step below characters that can more-or-less do as they please, at will; such as Belgarath, Coin the Sourceror, Ruin / Harmony / Odium, the Planeswalkers from MtG, and Mage: the Ascension characters.

And that is a step below axiomatic characters that alter or define reality itself on a fundamental level; such as Ged of Earthsea, Dr. Strange, Dream of the Endless, or Dworkin of Amber.

Yeah, I don't know most of your high-end examples. But, for the two I recognize, 1) does Dream really qualify as a Wizard; 2) how can Doctor Strange define reality on a fundamental level?

Also, doesn't this definition make D&D Wizards... subpar?

[Kurald Galain]

Also, doesn't this definition make D&D Wizards... subpar?
Subpar by literary standards, but strong by RPG standards.

Comparing D&D 3E wizards to those in other RPGs, they're stronger than

D&D (2e)
D&D (other): 3E wizards are stronger than in 5E, and both are much stronger than 4E wizards
MtG, assuming you mean the players, which is not the same as the characters in the novels
Harry Potter
Marvel, assuming you mean the RPG characters, which is not the same as the higher-tier characters in the comics
Gurps
LotR, assuming you mean the RPG characters, which is not the same as the Wizards (Maiar) in the novels
Jedi, again for the RPG characters
Earthdawn
(and probably than a few more that I'm not listing because I'm not familiar with them)


They are indeed weaker than WoD M:tA and Exalted, because those are some of the few RPGs that go to the higher category on my list.

[Khedrac]

Subpar by literary standards, but strong by RPG standards.

Comparing D&D 3E wizards to those in other RPGs, they're stronger than

D&D (2e)
D&D (other): 3E wizards are stronger than in 5E, and both are much stronger than 4E wizards
MtG, assuming you mean the players, which is not the same as the characters in the novels
Harry Potter
Marvel, assuming you mean the RPG characters, which is not the same as the higher-tier characters in the comics
Gurps
LotR, assuming you mean the RPG characters, which is not the same as the Wizards (Maiar) in the novels
Jedi, again for the RPG characters
Earthdawn
(and probably than a few more that I'm not listing because I'm not familiar with them)


They are indeed weaker than WoD M:tA and Exalted, because those are some of the few RPGs that go to the higher category on my list.
RPGs:
I would go with D&D 3.5 wizards being stronger than RuneQuest (Glorantha) wizards, but they have different tricks and Gloranthan sorcerors are probably stronger in relation to the rest of their world than a D&D wizard is.
I would also think stronger than MERP/Rolemaster wizards - even with spells going up to 100th level (yes 100th) the RM spells are less system-breaking than D&D ones.
Not familiar with Tunnels and Trolls but given it's date I am fairly sure D&D 3.5 are stronger.

Literature:
Definitely stronger than Robert Asprin's Myth series wizards
In fact I would say they are above average, but people looked at above average examples because of the way the question was worded.
E.g. I would say D&D wizards are stronger than Pratchett wizards (though not sourcerers)

[Kurald Galain]

In fact I would say they are above average, but people looked at above average examples because of the way the question was worded.
E.g. I would say D&D wizards are stronger than Pratchett wizards (though not sourcerers)

Let's clarify that...

D&D wizards are above average compared to main characters in literature. Most literary settings have a few background characters that are well beyond what D&D wizards are capable of. For instance, Coin is clearly not the protagonist of Sourcery.

[emeraldstreak]

Let's clarify that...

D&D wizards are above average compared to main characters in literature. Most literary settings have a few background characters that are well beyond what D&D wizards are capable of. For instance, Coin is clearly not the protagonist of Sourcery.

Aren't DnD wizards in literature (Elminster) much weaker than PO let alone TO DnD wizards?

[Kurald Galain]

Aren't DnD wizards in literature (Elminster) much weaker than PO let alone TO DnD wizards?

D&D wizards in D&D literature are generally stronger than PO but much weaker than TO.

They are also much weaker than numerous wizards in non-D&D literature, such as the do-as-they-please and axiomatic characters I mentioned in my earlier post.

The hierarchy of wizards is something like this, from weak to strong:

Casters in most RPGs that aren't 3E D&D
Wizard PCs in 3E D&D (and related classes)
Powerful wizard characters in D&D novels (and related works, e.g. Pug and Vanyel belong here)
Theory-op wizards, as well as do-as-they-please characters from non-D&D novels (such as Belgarath, Coin, and Ruin), as well as PCs from a rare few RPGs like MtA
Axiomatic characters (such as Ged of Earthsea, Dr. Strange, Dream of the Endless, or Dworkin of Amber).

[RifleAvenger]

could one of those mages decide "that mage which progressed far beyond me I am going to make a copy of it with all its power and that obeys me"Yes, Practice of Entities - Prime (7 dots) to Awaken a soul, then use Mind 4+ to do everything from just dominating them to making them your utter thrall, and then imprinting a copy of a more powerful Mage's knowledge of the Arcana onto it (Mind 4 or 5. Maybe lower?). Stealing a more powerful Mage's soul (lots of ways: reaper attainments, Practice of Excision - Prime (7 dots)) and grafting it to a being you create with other arcana (Life, Death, Mind, Spirit, arguably more at Archmastery). Then use Mind, Spirit, or Death depending on the entity created to command it. Practice of Proxies (any arcana - 8 dots) is intended to form an entity with a sub-soul of your own, but I don't see why it couldn't be used to create sub-souls from other entities powerful enough to survive the process.

Of course, the issue is surviving long enough to gather the quintessence for those imperial spells, craft the spell itself, and cast it on a target far stronger than yourself (which includes finding and cornering the target). Then again, simulacrum and ice assassin have a casting time measured in hours at a range of touch. I'm sure there are ways to get past Ice Assassin and Simulacrum's limitations, or other spells that clone a target, in D&D, but once again I'm fairly certain I can craft a Mage able to duplicate those tricks so long as I'm allowed to use Archmagic. For example, an archmage could at least try to cast the spell at sympathetic range after having proxies and catspaws collect the quintessence and an item with sympathy to the target for her, while crafting the spell's imago in a secure extra dimensional space.

[noob]

A dnd wizard can just use ignore material components(a feat) and uncanny forethought(another feat) to cast ice assassin of a person it never met nor heard about nor got any part from in a single round and for free(except 5000 xp cost but it is trivial to bypass that with stuff like xp bottles).
Also can your wizard not just create an infinity of quintessence from some quintessence instantly?
Dnd wizard could do that with quintessence if counts as an object.
And ice assassin in normal time does not needs you to defeat the target but just a body part(and it does not needs a minimum size so if you got a toenail you can cut it in 10 parts to make 10 ice assassins)
The spell is not cast on the opponent but on a statue of the opponent.

[RifleAvenger]

Also can your wizard not just create an infinity of quintessence from some quintessence instantly?
Dnd wizard could do that with quintessence if counts as an object.
And ice assassin in normal time does not needs you to defeat the target but just a body part(and it does not needs a minimum size so if you got a toenail you can cut it in 10 parts to make 10 ice assassins)
The spell is not cast on the opponent but on a statue of the opponent.Quintessences are unique objects or events that must be obtained or come to pass for an Archmage to learn an Imperial spell, which plays into the "magic is when symbolism becomes reality" and gnostic themes of Mage the Awakening. It isn't a particular component, so no you can't just make more; even if it's a specific object its Supernal aspect cannot be duplicated. If we're porting over that particular theme to other systems, I'd say a D&D wizard couldn't do it either; like a Mage, you'd just end up with something which is an exact copy physically and even in terms of lesser magic, but lacks the innate spark which makes a Quintessence (the very act of copying it with magic disrupts its symbolism to the point it won't work as a Quintessence).

The method I proposed for Mage also doesn't need to defeat them, though it does require successfully casting a spell on them. You hypothetically get unlimited tries though (until The General shows up at your doorstep to merk you for trying to clone her).

Hell, given the freeform nature of Mage's spellcasting system, if you can convince the Storyteller to let you literally cast Ice Assassin, you can cast Ice Assassin.

Matter 2 (to shape the ice)+Mind 5 (to create a copy of their mind)+Prime 7/8 (to grant it Gnosis and Arcana, and possibly make it move without needing Forces or Spirit). Maybe Space would be needed too, or abusing Time to target them before they Awakened, and then Time + Mind to model their mind and arcane growth up to the present in the construct.

I don't see how you're ever going to get past the fact that Mage's spellcasting will let you do anything that fits within the VERY LOOSE definitions of the Practices, while until level 21 D&D is going to have hardcoded things your spells can and cannot do. At 8 dots, you're creating sapient universes and deities out of your own soul. At 9 dots you can turn into the Arcana, its universal manifestation, and command everything related to its purview (so utter control of Space, or Time, or Forces, or Mind, or Life, or...). At 10 dots you ascend to become part of the foundation of the universe and essentially become the "omnipotent" category Dr. Strange and Dream of the Endless fall into. No spell slots to limit how often you can cast. Sure there's mana, but anything within your Path and Attainment Ruling Arcana negates the base mana costs for those Arcana, and at high level Mage you likely **** tass (portable mana) and can rip mana from your surroundings and living things if you're not concerned about maintaining high Wisdom.

It's pretty much a strict upgrade to non-epic D&D wizards, and either slightly better or even with Epic Spellcasting (sure, mages have to wait for Archmastery to do Simulacrum shenanigans, but they get an infinity of other spells which would easily be Epic in D&D at Master or even Adept level).

[noob]

(the very act of copying it with magic disrupts its symbolism to the point it won't work as a Quintessence).
what if you create an infinity of people which then use the craft skill on the thing?
the craft rules are a complicated mess including stuff like making a statue of gold with a third of its mass in gold.

[ExLibrisMortis]

This is a step below characters that can more-or-less do as they please, at will; such as Belgarath, Coin the Sourceror, Ruin / Harmony / Odium, the Planeswalkers from MtG, and Mage: the Ascension characters.

And that is a step below axiomatic characters that alter or define reality itself on a fundamental level; such as Ged of Earthsea, Dr. Strange, Dream of the Endless, or Dworkin of Amber.
I wouldn't call all such characters "powerful", because for many of them, their great achievements are mainly due to author fiat, and don't translate to other settings. There's no point talking about fictional wizards being powerful at some point in certain situations in one particular setting unless you have an indication that they would be as powerful under other circumstances, and that requires a way to translate their powers from scenario to scenario and from setting to setting. D&D wizards are written from a fairly clear rule system, so they can be transplanted fairly easily (except for certain cosmology-dependent spells, of course), but for most wizards, their performance outside their own stories is simply undefined. Ged, for instance, could be powerless outside Earthsea, because the things there do not know their own names, but there's no way to know for sure (also, I don't think that Ged "defines reality itself on a fundamental level", but Kalessin might be in that group).

In short: authors can decide that anything is true, but that doesn't mean their characters have those abilities all the time, like a 3.5 wizard does.

[RifleAvenger]

what if you create an infinity of people which then use the craft skill on the thing?The events behind an object are often more important than the object itself. An item created by an army of magically generated beings could, itself, be a quintessence. But it'd only work for creating/learning the one Imperial spell that its symbolism resonates with.

Despite its absurd hypothetical power levels, Mage is a narrativist, if crunchy, system that attempts to invoke a some degree of mysticism.

Creating imperial spells in an actual Archmage game, so PO, is meant to involve entire adventures/stories. These spells alter reality and peel away (or create) the Lie by acting directly on the Supernal itself. Creating them and using them as a bridge to ascension is the intended structure of an archmage chronicle as laid out in Imperial Mysteries (the splatbook for actually playing at archmaster level).

For TO of Mage, we can just assume that Archmage already has developed whatever Quintessences are needed for his/her spells.

[Efrate]

Will and the word has enough limitations that I believe DnD wizards out rank it. I am reminded of complaints from Belgareth about how much all the air weighed after Belgarion made a storm, and he could not just end it. Been years though so I am fuzzy.

[Kalkra]

Will and the word has enough limitations that I believe DnD wizards out rank it. I am reminded of complaints from Belgareth about how much all the air weighed after Belgarion made a storm, and he could not just end it. Been years though so I am fuzzy.

Belgarath is reaaaaaly unoptimized. He doesn't use buff spells, for one. Any system of magic so versatile should make it fairly easy to get some infinite loop going, or at the very least achieve phenomenal cosmic power. I have the same problem with Eragon and Elantris, but the will and the word is just soooo open-ended and even easier to use.

[Gullintanni]

What no. Astral Projection is not inter-dimensional travel. Wtf. Astral Projection is infinite copies of yourself and equipment. For example, a Demon Prince like Demogorgon with his at-will Astral Projection will astrally project onto the material plane, spam like a hundred scrolls of Gates, Wish, etc. and then when finally slain the very next round he Astrally Projects back into the material plane with full health and full gear and endlessly restarts his onslaught. Without end. As you can see, the interdimensional travel part of Astral Projection is the least important aspect of that spell.

...right, Astral Projection is, literally, projecting a copy of yourself from Dimension A onto the Material Plane. You are literally sending a remote version of yourself from your dimension, through the astral plane, and into another dimension, the prime material. Whether it's the copy, the consciousness, or simply the wizard's magic, SOMETHING is crossing planar borders as a result of the Astral Projection spell.

[Efrate]

But if Belgareth is the "best" in his fiction, and he is unoptimized and worse off than what I would call average optimization, that makes it inferior to a D&D wizard.

[Calthropstu]

But if Belgareth is the "best" in his fiction, and he is unoptimized and worse off than what I would call average optimization, that makes it inferior to a D&D wizard.

Unoptimized?
No, more like lazy. He literally has access to 9th lvl spells, and can make up spells on command.

[Missing]

Unoptimized?
No, more like lazy. He literally has access to 9th lvl spells, and can make up spells on command.

^This. Also the way magic works in the world, announcing its use to other practitioners means that its not always the best idea to do magic for the hell of it.

[Thedez]

Okay, uh, I guess I'll go to bat for Shadowrun and Anima:Beyond Fantasy here.

So, Shadowrun mages are, I'd say, more powerful than your average PO mage. Basically, due to the way the system is set up, they're capable of literally everything at level 1. The only spells I can think of that they can't replicate is Raise Dead, which honestly isn't a wizard spell anyway, and Teleportation. Which they don't need.
Wish is kind of one of those 'sort of, but not really' deals. They can find Free Spirits that can do almost all of that stuff. While it's true that a 20th-level Wizard in D&D can destroy cities and such, really, a 20th level-equivalent Mage in Shadowrun can, too, they just avoid it.
Essentially, a 20th level-equivalent Mage can infuse themselves with a spirit so powerful, it's multitudes of levels beyond the comprehension of humans, and only a similarly powerful spirit could even begin to comprehend how intelligent they are. The Mage can become all of that just by sticking them in their body.
Then, while they're doing that and becoming essentially impossibly everything, they can follow up with literal omnipotence, just doing a quick sweep of the entire world from the astral realm in the blink of an eye and have at their beck and call as many alchemical preparations capable of destroying cities as they want. They can keep Greatform Spirits the size of cities that would consider it only one Task to then destroy the entire city.
They can not only plane-shift to any world they want, but arguably by simply growing a forest with magic and then transforming the entire forest into redwoods, and then shaping the entire forest into a roughly spherical shape, and then levitating that monstrosity, they could make another planet, complete with magic and everything, for themselves.
They can break the speed of light. They can mind-control literally everything. The list goes on, because really, once you've managed to Channel your first Spirit, it's only a matter of effort for how far up that chain you want to go.

Oh, yeah, and Anima.
You begin play being able to create life, steal souls, yadda yadda yadda, and end with an ability that literally lets you just rewrite the fundamental laws of reality. There's really nothing they can't do.

[Kyrell1978]

Unoptimized?
No, more like lazy. He literally has access to 9th lvl spells, and can make up spells on command.


^This. Also the way magic works in the world, announcing its use to other practitioners means that its not always the best idea to do magic for the hell of it.

Yep. All of this.

[Sereg]

There are wizards who can destroy entire Universes.


If magical girls count, then Madoka dwarfs everything else mentioned so far. Though she didn't actually study for her power. At least, not directly.

The thing is, are we counting to epic spellcasting? And what limits are we imposing? Are we imagining a level NI wizard?

[Aharon]

Okay, uh, I guess I'll go to bat for Shadowrun and Anima:Beyond Fantasy here.

So, Shadowrun mages are, I'd say, more powerful than your average PO mage. Basically, due to the way the system is set up, they're capable of literally everything at level 1. The only spells I can think of that they can't replicate is Raise Dead, which honestly isn't a wizard spell anyway, and Teleportation. Which they don't need.
Wish is kind of one of those 'sort of, but not really' deals. They can find Free Spirits that can do almost all of that stuff. While it's true that a 20th-level Wizard in D&D can destroy cities and such, really, a 20th level-equivalent Mage in Shadowrun can, too, they just avoid it.
Essentially, a 20th level-equivalent Mage can infuse themselves with a spirit so powerful, it's multitudes of levels beyond the comprehension of humans, and only a similarly powerful spirit could even begin to comprehend how intelligent they are. The Mage can become all of that just by sticking them in their body.
Then, while they're doing that and becoming essentially impossibly everything, they can follow up with literal omnipotence, just doing a quick sweep of the entire world from the astral realm in the blink of an eye and have at their beck and call as many alchemical preparations capable of destroying cities as they want. They can keep Greatform Spirits the size of cities that would consider it only one Task to then destroy the entire city.
They can not only plane-shift to any world they want, but arguably by simply growing a forest with magic and then transforming the entire forest into redwoods, and then shaping the entire forest into a roughly spherical shape, and then levitating that monstrosity, they could make another planet, complete with magic and everything, for themselves.
They can break the speed of light. They can mind-control literally everything. The list goes on, because really, once you've managed to Channel your first Spirit, it's only a matter of effort for how far up that chain you want to go.

Oh, yeah, and Anima.
You begin play being able to create life, steal souls, yadda yadda yadda, and end with an ability that literally lets you just rewrite the fundamental laws of reality. There's really nothing they can't do.

Uh... which edition of Shadowrun would that be, and what Karma would you equate to "20th level"? Like, an Initiate of Grade 20? Yeah, that would be mind-boggingly powerful... but such things don't exist, to my knowledge.

[Hackulator]

Unoptimized?
No, more like lazy. He literally has access to 9th lvl spells, and can make up spells on command.

I mean, he certainly does not "literally" have access to 9th level spells. I mean, those books are some of my favorites of all time as they were the first "adult" fantasy I ever read, but I feel like you are way overestimating their power. Can you name a single thing they do in those books that can't de done with D&D magic? Their teleportation is WAY less powerful and most of the offensive stuff they do could likewise be easily modeled by a third level spell. I might agree they are perhaps one of the rare groups that is more versatile than D&D wizards as their powers are basically "what you want to happen happens" but they are can be tired out, sometimes even to the point of near death, by using their magic and almost none of their effects that I can remember seem like 9th level spell stuff except maybe when Zandramas transforms into a Dragon, and I've probably read that series like 10 times. The most powerful things they do are generally done with the direct aid of gods.

As for the person talking about Shadowrun, that sounds like the TO equivalent in Shadowrun, and there is basically nothing a TO D&D mage cannot do.

[noob]

I mean, he certainly does not "literally" have access to 9th level spells. I mean, those books are some of my favorites of all time as they were the first "adult" fantasy I ever read, but I feel like you are way overestimating their power. Can you name a single thing they do in those books that can't de done with D&D magic? Their teleportation is WAY less powerful and most of the offensive stuff they do could likewise be easily modeled by a third level spell. I might agree they are perhaps one of the rare groups that is more versatile than D&D wizards as their powers are basically "what you want to happen happens" but they are can be tired out, sometimes even to the point of near death, by using their magic and almost none of their effects that I can remember seem like 9th level spell stuff except maybe when Zandramas transforms into a Dragon, and I've probably read that series like 10 times. The most powerful things they do are generally done with the direct aid of gods.

As for the person talking about Shadowrun, that sounds like the TO equivalent in Shadowrun, and there is basically nothing a TO D&D mage cannot do.

But a dnd wizard that gates in a sarrukh and then use its power to be omnipotent is no different from a commoner doing so or a divine minion turning in a sarrukh or a sarrukh making itself omnipotent and so at that point calling them wizard is like saying "here is bob the hat stylist oh by the way it is the god of death too but you should still call it a hat stylist".

[Clistenes]

3.5 Epic Wizards may be the most powerful wizards in RPGs (or not, there are many, many rpg systems I haven't tried...), but not the most powerful wizards in fantasy...

Wizards in novels, comics, cartoons, mangas, anime, manhuas (Chinese mangas), manhwas (Korean mangas), xianxia light novels...etc., aren't bound by hard rules like D&D ones, and they are as powerful as the plots wants them to be...

They have already mentioned Dr. Strange, who fights creatures who are a threat even to Eternity, the incarnation of all space and time. In Magi, Labyrinth of Magic, the most powerful mages could create spells that allow to kill God (not "a god", the "God", the Almighty creator of the universe, similar to the Judeo-Christian one...) and steal his power, reshape the universe at will, and accumulate enough power to go against even higher gods who control greatest universes...

[MisterKaws]

The thing is, are we counting to epic spellcasting? And what limits are we imposing? Are we imagining a level NI wizard?

Well if that counts I did a semi-TO build for the pantheon leader(a God of Magic) for one of my homebrew settings a few years ago.

Avatars are pretty good for chain-buffing epic magic. Plus Alter Reality to make every single spell permanent. And infinite counterspells.

Also Greater Deities of magic know 3 weeks in advance every single spell any being in existence is going to cast.

In that setting Pun-Pun got killed before he even thought about getting a snake familiar :D

[Quertus]

Subpar by literary standards, but strong by RPG standards.

Comparing D&D 3E wizards to those in other RPGs, they're stronger than

D&D (2e)
D&D (other): 3E wizards are stronger than in 5E, and both are much stronger than 4E wizards
MtG, assuming you mean the players, which is not the same as the characters in the novels
Harry Potter
Marvel, assuming you mean the RPG characters, which is not the same as the higher-tier characters in the comics
Gurps
LotR, assuming you mean the RPG characters, which is not the same as the Wizards (Maiar) in the novels
Jedi, again for the RPG characters
Earthdawn
(and probably than a few more that I'm not listing because I'm not familiar with them)


They are indeed weaker than WoD M:tA and Exalted, because those are some of the few RPGs that go to the higher category on my list.

2e D&D? What can a 3e Wizard do that you think cannot be done in 2e?

MtG? I had decks going infinite back when Ice Age released. And the first novels had a character who could permanently (add or) remove a Wizard's ability to cast, so I think they're pretty on par.

My Marvel RPG characters were quite capable of hitting and exceeding par. For example, my first action for one starting character was to build Class 1000 ("immune to all damage") power armor. Also, you fail your concentration check, because "I spend karma".

Others have claimed that GURPS or Harry Potter or LotR Wizards (Maiar) can keep up - I leave it to them to defend that claim.


Okay, uh, I guess I'll go to bat for Shadowrun and Anima:Beyond Fantasy here.

So, Shadowrun mages are, I'd say, more powerful than your average PO mage. Basically, due to the way the system is set up, they're capable of literally everything at level 1. The only spells I can think of that they can't replicate is Raise Dead, which honestly isn't a wizard spell anyway, and Teleportation. Which they don't need.
Wish is kind of one of those 'sort of, but not really' deals. They can find Free Spirits that can do almost all of that stuff. While it's true that a 20th-level Wizard in D&D can destroy cities and such, really, a 20th level-equivalent Mage in Shadowrun can, too, they just avoid it.
Essentially, a 20th level-equivalent Mage can infuse themselves with a spirit so powerful, it's multitudes of levels beyond the comprehension of humans, and only a similarly powerful spirit could even begin to comprehend how intelligent they are. The Mage can become all of that just by sticking them in their body.
Then, while they're doing that and becoming essentially impossibly everything, they can follow up with literal omnipotence, just doing a quick sweep of the entire world from the astral realm in the blink of an eye and have at their beck and call as many alchemical preparations capable of destroying cities as they want. They can keep Greatform Spirits the size of cities that would consider it only one Task to then destroy the entire city.
They can not only plane-shift to any world they want, but arguably by simply growing a forest with magic and then transforming the entire forest into redwoods, and then shaping the entire forest into a roughly spherical shape, and then levitating that monstrosity, they could make another planet, complete with magic and everything, for themselves.
They can break the speed of light. They can mind-control literally everything. The list goes on, because really, once you've managed to Channel your first Spirit, it's only a matter of effort for how far up that chain you want to go.

Oh, yeah, and Anima.
You begin play being able to create life, steal souls, yadda yadda yadda, and end with an ability that literally lets you just rewrite the fundamental laws of reality. There's really nothing they can't do.


Uh... which edition of Shadowrun would that be, and what Karma would you equate to "20th level"? Like, an Initiate of Grade 20? Yeah, that would be mind-boggingly powerful... but such things don't exist, to my knowledge.


As for the person talking about Shadowrun, that sounds like the TO equivalent in Shadowrun, and there is basically nothing a TO D&D mage cannot do.

I never tried to "break" ShadowRun, and I only played 2 editions (only the earlier of which I liked). But I've never seen anything like what was described.

Care to explain how this works, in what edition, and whether GMs would be throwing books ICE at you for TO shenanigans?

[noob]

Well if that counts I did a semi-TO build for the pantheon leader(a God of Magic) for one of my homebrew settings a few years ago.

Avatars are pretty good for chain-buffing epic magic. Plus Alter Reality to make every single spell permanent. And infinite counterspells.

Also Greater Deities of magic know 3 weeks in advance every single spell any being in existence is going to cast.

In that setting Pun-Pun got killed before he even thought about getting a snake familiar :D

you do not need spellcasting anymore to do pun pun.(unless you consider the power of a divine minion is spellcasting)

[MisterKaws]

you do not need spellcasting anymore to do pun pun.(unless you consider the power of a divine minion is spellcasting)

Supernatural is probably still magic enough to be detected 🤔

[RifleAvenger]

I kinda feel this discussion should really narrow down to TTRPG's, and even then specifically playable characters.

Plenty of non-game fiction has "plot-device" level characters. A few more focus on characters of such power (Dr. Strange, Dr. Fate), but even then the characters are almost never consistent in depiction of their limits or lack thereof (or at least how willing they are to utilize their full strength). It's also self-evident that such singularities of possibility are beyond (if only technically) D&D Wizards. There are innumerable stories out there with a character who attains or has always had universe altering levels of power.

Plenty of games, on the other hand, involve the players killing deific beings (and thereby, being hypothetically stronger or more capable). But are we really going to say that casters in Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, or Shin Megami Tensei are on the same level as 3.5 Wizards or MtAs/Aw Mages, when most of the spells depicted or player-usable in those JRPG franchises are straight damage/healing/buff/debuff spells for combat?

The limits in a tabletop game, on the other hand, seem to be more immediately relevant and comparable to D&D.


The thing is, are we counting to epic spellcasting? And what limits are we imposing? Are we imagining a level NI wizard?
This is an important benchmark to answer. For example, a lot of my arguments in favor of Mage the Awakening presume I'm able to use Archmastery level spellcraft. If we're looking at Epic D&D wizards, this seems completely fair. But if we're taking Wizard 20 as our benchmark, then we need to define a cutoff for Mage too. Is it Mastery, because most games don't proceed to the Archmage scale? Though most D&D games aren't played past mid levels either, there's a definite design cutoff between Mage and Archmage that seems more similar to pre and post Epic in D&D. Could I use Archmages, but only up to 7 or 8 dots in an arcana?

Heck, just whether D&D wizards have Epic magic makes a huge difference.

[Zanos]

This is an important benchmark to answer. For example, a lot of my arguments in favor of Mage the Awakening presume I'm able to use Archmastery level spellcraft. If we're looking at Epic D&D wizards, this seems completely fair. But if we're taking Wizard 20 as our benchmark, then we need to define a cutoff for Mage too. Is it Mastery, because most games don't proceed to the Archmage scale? Though most D&D games aren't played past mid levels either, there's a definite design cutoff between Mage and Archmage that seems more similar to pre and post Epic in D&D. Could I use Archmages, but only up to 7 or 8 dots in an arcana?
Don't Archmages get banned from the physical world?

I mean, most time people bring up MtA mages the ignore like...every restriction on their magic, which between Arete, Spheres, Implements, Quitessence, and Paradox, is actually pretty limited. What is possible is not the same as what is practical. A D&D wizard can practically have a solid selection of spells from every school, it's very difficult for even an experienced MtA mage to have 5 dots in more than, what, two spheres? And one of those should probably be Prime.

[RifleAvenger]

Don't Archmages get banned from the physical world?

I mean, most time people bring up MtA mages the ignore like...every restriction on their magic, which between Arete, Spheres, Implements, Quitessence, and Paradox, is actually pretty limited. What is possible is not the same as what is practical. A D&D wizard can practically have a solid selection of spells from every school, it's very difficult for even an experienced MtA mage to have 5 dots in more than, what, two spheres? And one of those should probably be Prime.In Awakening, Archmages have a gentleman's agreement not to interfere too much in the Phenomenal World. And like the rest of the Pax Arcana, everyone cheats that agreement routinely. Especially if it's the players controlling some Archmages. Truly Ascended beings can't return to the Phenomenal World at all, but they can create ochemata avatars for themselves and send those.

I don't know about Ascension (and my memories of Awakening 1e are foggy), but in Awakening 2e it's easier to get a wider spread. A lot of provided NPC's have significant investment in several arcana; some of the provided NPCs in Imperial Mysteries are multi-archmasters. Any archmaster with Prime 7 can, RAW, hypothetically bootstrap herself to at least 5 dots (Mastery) in every other arcana using the Practice of Entities (and if you're playing an Archmage chronicle, I'd put it at a coinflip if the ST would allow it or not).

Yantras, the Awakening equivalent to Implements, are boosts, not requirements. You can reliably get plenty of Reach and deep dice pool with the one yantra allowed for a one action casting (get your other boosts from the party Fate and/or Prime user, especially if the ST rules that As Above, So Below can apply to yantras used by fellow Mages).

Paradox is easy to skirt in Awakening as long as you're not casting obvious magic in front of Sleepers; you can routinely reduce paradox pools of 2 or less to a chance die from the beginning of the game.

There's also a lot more you can DO with a given Sphere/Arcana and enough creativity than any sub-epic Wizard spell or I'd even argue school is going to (not that such spells cannot have their own creative uses).

A lot of what keeps Mages down in Awakening, aside from Paradox and the Abyss, is the legion of entities stronger than themselves which don't approve of magic being in widespread use. Rock the cage too much, and you'd better be prepared for the consequences. D&D Wizards do have that over Mages, in the average D&D setting.

[Thedez]

Uh... which edition of Shadowrun would that be, and what Karma would you equate to "20th level"? Like, an Initiate of Grade 20? Yeah, that would be mind-boggingly powerful... but such things don't exist, to my knowledge.

5E, and if I had to be honest, initiate grade 8 or so, only because that's about two times as high as what you could reasonably expect to initiate on a month-to-month basis before you start hitting diminishing returns.
But the fact of the matter is, the Initiate Grade...Actually doesn't matter much after 4. You'll have grabbed everything you really need to ascend to near-godhood, even if the setting keeps refusing to acknowledge it.
If you know what you're doing, Initiate Grade 2 probably will allow you to become more powerful than Dragons or, hell, the Horrors you're supposed to be 'scared' of.

[Thedez]

1
I never tried to "break" ShadowRun, and I only played 2 editions (only the earlier of which I liked). But I've never seen anything like what was described.

Care to explain how this works, in what edition, and whether GMs would be throwing books ICE at you for TO shenanigans?

Initiate Grade 1 gets you channeling. Channeling allows you to allow spirits to 'possess' your body, except you're in charge. Also, you get their magic score and--AFB here, so it might actually be *better* than this, you get their mental stats, too, as long as they're better. Then, you get half-again their physical stats added to yours, so long as their stats beat yours.
So, all ya have ta do is Channel one spirit into your body. Just like Conjurer, there's a lot of ways to optimize this. Once you've channeled a Spirit, you now have a much better mental stat-block, which is needed for resisting drain, and a much better Magic block, which is needed for determining what that drain is. You *will* take the drain before the spirit is channeled, which you'd think is a bad thing, but not really. Why? Simple.
Because when you summon the *next* spirit, that means you get to use your *current* spirit's stats for it. So you've got, what. A F9 Spirit of whatever you want, that you could reasonably summon into yourself? You'll probably take about 3 boxes of physical damage, but don't worry. When possessed, the spirit lets you ignore damage boxes equal to its force. It doesn't *stop* the damage, but the damage doesn't hurt your casting abilities. Then bind the spirit. It'll be 18 dice vs. your 15, so Edge the result and you should have it in the bag. Regardless, you'll probably take another 6 boxes of physical drain.
Take a day to heal. It's an extended test using body x2. Remember, you're getting 4 to your body, so that's at least 10, probably 14 dice on that extended test. Or 4 hits more or less automatic, plus any medicine check you're able to get. Make it yourself to rely less on others.
Then the next day, do the same thing, but use a F12 Spirit of Man. Now, you've got Summoning 6/Binding 6/Magic 9, so you've got 15 Dice vs. that 12. Edge it, if you want. It'll make it more consistent. You'll be looking at 8 average drain. You'll have 18 dice, so that means you'll, on average, take 2 drain. Binding will be 24 dice vs. your 18. It's got 2 net hits on you, but if you edge it, your exploding dice are much stronger.
Regardless, you'll have to resist 16 drain. Don't worry, you'll have 8 net hits. So 10 P. drain total. Assuming a Body of 3, you're looking at 2 boxes of damage left-over.
Take a day to heal. Now you've got 18, or 6, guaranteed hits, plus medicine.
By this point, you're actually going to want to pause. You're going to start running into Spirits that'll kill you at this point, so stop there. After all, you're now two times more powerful than average. Spend your valuable Karma increasing your actual Edge score and grabbing more Summoning and Binding.
I didn't get into traits, or traditions, or those weird pseudo-traits, or anything like that. I didn't use drugs. I didn't abuse anything but *one* Metamagic. I didn't cast any spells prior. I just invested in three skills, and made sure my stats were good enough to resist the beginning drain well. That's not TO--That's just regular optimization.

And that F14 Spirit? With that channeled, you can go over to Alchemy. And make a Preparation using the Fling spell. Fling is a spell which has an accuracy essentially equal to its' ForcexPotency, and then a damage code = to it's Force(Because of the quirks of Alchemy.)
So, before we go any further, go ahead and conjure up, oh, five F6 Spirits. Bind them. 8 drain each. Ohno! You'll resist all their drain trivially.
Now, we go to make a F30 Preparation. Spirits Aid Alchemy, giving 30 dice. Your Spirit gives 12. 1 Alchemy gives 1. 43 dice. 14 hits. Vs. 10. You got 4 potency, 30 Force, for 34 on the ranged attack, and 30 on the damage code.
I didn't use anything other than channeling and one preparation. You can get all of this by initiating once. It won't even cost you more than 13 Karma. You could do this, conceivably, after your first run, because you didn't even have to invest Karma to get *good* at any of this.

I haven't been throwing TO at you--There's no mental gymnastics, here. I just did exactly the math that they provide. In the book. With the metamagics they wrote. Shadowrun mages are broken.

EDIT: But to answer your question, you'll have books raining down on you because, as a Mage, the first thing you have to understand is that, WITHOUT all these shenanigans, you already are capable of outrunning cars by just using a Spirit's Movement power. You're ALREADY capable of destroying rooms with a single favor. You're not SUPPOSED to be able to hit a half-mile out with a single Fling spell dealing essentially a guaranteed 30 damage. It breaks the balance in half. It just also doesn't require anything but minimal investment and the slightest understanding of the rules of the game.

[Satinavian]

So, as OP as D&D Wizards may seem at times, they're actually kinda... average. Is that the big takeaway from this thread?

The first takeaway is that the power of a D&D wizard is not well defined. There is a huge gap between level 1 and 20. And theoretically there is epic afterwards.


The second takeaway is that many settings that come from books, films etc. don't really show the most powerful magic that the setting allows. It might show the most powerful magic that the acting characters posess at that moment of time. Which leaves a lot of guessweork about what could be done with this kind of magic. In an RPG you can refer to the rules. But what theoretically is possible is not what happens.
Look at settings like Eberron where long has been stated that there are no high level individuals. If you take that serious and have only a single resulting campaign journal instead of the rulebooks, you won't be able to make a good judgement about the strengrt of D&D wizards.

The third takeaway is that the challange is not well defined. Some people think this is about who would win in a fight, others would want to compare more peaceful applications. Then there is versatility vs pure strength. Then the stuff that D&D wizards have to prepare stuff and run out of spellslots while most others don't and it is questionable how to take that into account. Equally with other limitations. There are many settings that have "risk for power"-mechanics, how do you cost those ?


The fourth takeaway is that different magic systems often come with mechanics and cosmology attached that have no defined interaction with other magic systems. Planetravel and summoning and timetravel are always mentioned as strong points of D&D wizards. But it is very common for any settings to have magic allow travel to all planes in that setting and summon any summonable creatures in that setting. Are those abilities now equal or are you simply counting every monster manual entry that could exist in a setting as a point for D&D summoning and vise versa ? There are settings where "time travel exists and is possible but the laws of the universe reverse any kind of lasting change". Does this count as a limitation to the magic or as only a setting quirk ?

Theoretically i could mention some more RPGs that maybe couldtake part in the content. Some that have basically instant freeform magic, where you could do really anything but have to pass a check based on your skill in the magic school it would be classified in. Which obviously beats any versatility of D&D magic by far and only leaves power level as such.
Or RPGs that have things that are basically the same as D&D Epic casting, but less broken and coming online way earlier.


But yes, if the expectation was "D&D wizards are far more powerful than all others in fiction", well, no. At least there are many many close calls.

[Aharon]

Possesion stacking

:smallbiggrin: Both SR3 and SR4 had explicit rules that only allowed one spirit to possess you at the same time... Wonder why they got rid of that rule XD
Small correction: you can't enter the astral realm when doing that, since you're dual-natured - dual natured creatures can't shift to the astral.

[Thedez]

:smallbiggrin: Both SR3 and SR4 had explicit rules that only allowed one spirit to possess you at the same time... Wonder why they got rid of that rule XD
Small correction: you can't enter the astral realm when doing that, since you're dual-natured - dual natured creatures can't shift to the astral.

Yep. No rules against literally getting a new spirit to possess you. Constantly. Other than one spirit kicks out the other.
Also, concerned about your dual-natured nature? Don't be! Just initiate one more time, maybe two, and grab Greatform Spirit! Among the many powers they have is the ability to rip open an astral gateway, allowing you to just step, body and all, into the Astral. Normally this would be hard, but for reasons you already likely know, it's not really.

SR5 didn't intend to make such a stupid OP archetype--they've spent the entirety of thr edition houseruling it back down--but thr writers keep on making it that way.

[NichG]

Seconding Slayers, if only because it has a D&D based tabletop adaptation and level-for-level, op-level for op-level, I'd always play the Slayers d20 Wizard over the D&D Wizard. It's basically D&D wizard spell list access + Slayers specific spells + technically if you can hit the DC and pay the drain you can cast any spell at any level + a system like epic casting that lets you trade between mitigation factors. 0-XP Wish several times a day on a 9th level character is doable without too much craziness. And the crafting system also benefits from the same mitigation tricks, so you can get all sorts of permanent spell effects up without much fuss.

If we're talking the fictional aspects, I'd say Slayers is simultaneously ahead and behind. In the first season we see Lina improvising a new spell in the middle of a fight that inverts the target's racial abilities (turns troll Regeneration into a kind of rapid degeneration), which I think corresponds to an SDA in D&D magic terms (Boccob's craft spell at will). The same character has a spell that supposedly destroys the world on a failed casting check (but actually you just turn into the setting's overdeity briefly). On the other hand, lore-wise magic is supposed to be predominately asking favors of outsiders to borrow a bit of their power, so presumably casters are limited by who will grant them that favor. At the same time, the granting doesn't seem to be conscious or even subject to refusal - at one point someone casts Gaav's signature attack spell at Gaav. It goes off, but there's not much of an effect on Gaav himself. So in practice, not sure how serious a limit this really is with the exception of very specific bad matchups. Utility-wise, you don't see as much as you do of the combat magic but it's there (notable mention for always-on flight being a staple of basically every single magic user).

Teleportation is canonically hard not because the spells can't exist but because the Astral is densely populated with things that will just eat you and have a strong home field advantage. Otherwise, we see time travel, raising the dead (kinda; special case), demiplane shenanigans, even inter-setting travel. Something like ice assassin was a major plot point in season 1. So it's very similar to D&D.

I'd still put Chronicle of Amber wizards several steps higher though. Merlin is basically working his infinite loop in the second half of the series with Ghostwheel.

[Calthropstu]

I mean, he certainly does not "literally" have access to 9th level spells. I mean, those books are some of my favorites of all time as they were the first "adult" fantasy I ever read, but I feel like you are way overestimating their power. Can you name a single thing they do in those books that can't de done with D&D magic? Their teleportation is WAY less powerful and most of the offensive stuff they do could likewise be easily modeled by a third level spell. I might agree they are perhaps one of the rare groups that is more versatile than D&D wizards as their powers are basically "what you want to happen happens" but they are can be tired out, sometimes even to the point of near death, by using their magic and almost none of their effects that I can remember seem like 9th level spell stuff except maybe when Zandramas transforms into a Dragon, and I've probably read that series like 10 times. The most powerful things they do are generally done with the direct aid of gods.

As for the person talking about Shadowrun, that sounds like the TO equivalent in Shadowrun, and there is basically nothing a TO D&D mage cannot do.

He casts the spell imprisonment in one instance, a 9th lvl spell.
He casts greater planar binding at another point.
Major image in another instance.
Shapechange is easy for him.
All mainstays of a powerful 3.5 spellcaster.

[Quertus]

Don't Archmages get banned from the physical world?

I mean, most time people bring up MtA mages the ignore like...every restriction on their magic, which between Arete, Spheres, Implements, Quitessence, and Paradox, is actually pretty limited. What is possible is not the same as what is practical. A D&D wizard can practically have a solid selection of spells from every school, it's very difficult for even an experienced MtA mage to have 5 dots in more than, what, two spheres? And one of those should probably be Prime.

My strongest MtA Mage only has rank 5 in 2 spheres (rank 2-4 in the rest). He could have more (he has the XP), but he's Jealousy-based - here's never seen anyone do anything that he wants to do that he cannot do with the levels of the spheres that he has.

Of course, that's in part because Mage is all about there being more than 1 way to skin a cat.


Yep. No rules against literally getting a new spirit to possess you. Constantly. Other than one spirit kicks out the other.
Also, concerned about your dual-natured nature? Don't be! Just initiate one more time, maybe two, and grab Greatform Spirit! Among the many powers they have is the ability to rip open an astral gateway, allowing you to just step, body and all, into the Astral. Normally this would be hard, but for reasons you already likely know, it's not really.

SR5 didn't intend to make such a stupid OP archetype--they've spent the entirety of thr edition houseruling it back down--but thr writers keep on making it that way.

Just to check - none of those soak rolls suddenly become fatal because of the timing on spirits being kicked out or anything, do they?


Seconding Slayers, if only because it has a D&D based tabletop adaptation and level-for-level, op-level for op-level, I'd always play the Slayers d20 Wizard over the D&D Wizard. It's basically D&D wizard spell list access + Slayers specific spells + technically if you can hit the DC and pay the drain you can cast any spell at any level + a system like epic casting that lets you trade between mitigation factors. 0-XP Wish several times a day on a 9th level character is doable without too much craziness. And the crafting system also benefits from the same mitigation tricks, so you can get all sorts of permanent spell effects up without much fuss.

Why Wish only several times per day? Is some finite resource is getting consumed here?

[Mnemius]

The Slayers wish would be off innate power. If you could chain bind monsters... well, Slayers also goes down the path of wish abuse. (That, and it's a little bit harder to bind the wish granting monsters...)

[Hackulator]

He casts the spell imprisonment in one instance, a 9th lvl spell.
He casts greater planar binding at another point.
Major image in another instance.
Shapechange is easy for him.
All mainstays of a powerful 3.5 spellcaster.

You're mostly correct on imprisonment, though the part where it puts the person in stasis is more a function of the person he uses it on being immortal, not the magic he does. Hard to say what level Planar binding he does, I doubt it's greater. That's also from a totally different tradition of magic he has learned cause he's 7000 years old, not that that invalidates it for this particular conversation. As for shapechange, I'm not sure if that qualifies as the only things he ever turns into are a wolf and a hawk which could be done with a simple polymorph. The only person I think you could reasonably say uses shapechange is Zandramas who is also infused with the spirit of the Child of Dark.

However, still all of that can be easily done by a D&D wizard, while there are things they do where a D&D wizard's version of that is way more powerful, notably his teleportation. You still haven't given an example of something he does that is more powerful than what a D&D wizard could accomplish.

[Thedez]

Just to check - none of those soak rolls suddenly become fatal because of the timing on spirits being kicked out or anything, do they?
Good question. The answer is generally undefined. However, under the most conservative answer, then for F15, the answer is 'probably not.' You'd be looking at an average of 10 damage, and you'd be resisting about 3 of them, so with just 3 body, you'd have 3 boxes remaining. You could get these numbers down by a lot with some very simple sorcery that, again, under the more conservative of rules decisions would only be useful in between spirits and about 1,250 Nuyen's worth of Reagents.
Under a more common-sense ruling, very unlikely. Resisting the drain is part of the summoning process as a whole--So the most reasonable conclusion would be that you're resisting the drain before the Spirit even gets to you. Since there's no spirit there to possess you yet, then there's no reason for the current spirit to vacate.
But again, that's not very well described.

[NichG]

Why Wish only several times per day? Is some finite resource is getting consumed here?

Mechanically, there are two factors. The easy one to overcome is that instead of spell slots you take 'sticky' nonlethal damage which isn't directly healed by magical effects. However you can use effects that accelerate natural healing to get this back faster. There's also a Slayers spell that heals it, and if you can get the math right (or get a bunch of apprentices to help shoulder drain) it can heal more than its average casting cost.

The harder factor at low level is that one of the big mitigating factors you can exploit is to increase casting time. So there will be some point in your career where you could cast Wish 1/week but not 1/day, because you need that +X to reduce your chance of failing (and double drain Wish will easily knock you out at low level, or kill you if you 'take drain as lethal' for an additional +5.

Basically what it comes down to is needing to make a DC 101-Mitigation Fort save. I think the drain was 8d10, halved if you beat the save by 10, double if you fail.

[SirNibbles]

D&DWiki Wizards have the potential to be more powerful than D&D Wizards.

[MultitudeMan]

D&DWiki Wizards have the potential to be more powerful than D&D Wizards.

Ah, this is probably the time to mention "The Wish and the Word", https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/The_Wish_and_the_Word_(3.5e_Optimized_Character_Bu ild), which is a pretty good example of what you can do with the poorly-thought-out rules that minmaxers keep finding in 3.5. I know they've probably been surpassed now, but I found this pretty impressive.

[Quertus]

But yes, if the expectation was "D&D wizards are far more powerful than all others in fiction", well, no. At least there are many many close calls.

Well, some have claimed that D&D Wizards aren't even "close calls" to the real power players.

So, yeah, I think we're pretty much all in agreement that "D&D (3e) Wizard" is decidedly not the undisputed top of the food chain.


The first takeaway is that the power of a D&D wizard is not well defined. There is a huge gap between level 1 and 20. And theoretically there is epic afterwards.

I feel like "power level varies" is true of almost any RPG with XP, and of almost any literary reality, too. I'm struggling to see how this statement is particularly relevant, beyond the OP needing clarification of the scope of the question. Personally, I am... hmmm... primarily focusing on "PC, maximum realistically attainable PO power if starting from 'starting character', foo" (for RPGs), but including TO and other theoretical power levels for reference.

In other words, what's reasonable possible... and what's theoretically possible.

On that note... Epic, in 3e? I'd call that reasonable possible. Whereas in 2e? Deep epic is only theoretically possible - after all, by RAW, a party of 6 would have to grind through 1,000 goblins for the Wizard to just reach level 2.


The second takeaway is that many settings that come from books, films etc. don't really show the most powerful magic that the setting allows. It might show the most powerful magic that the acting characters posess at that moment of time. Which leaves a lot of guessweork about what could be done with this kind of magic. In an RPG you can refer to the rules. But what theoretically is possible is not what happens.

This does make discussing fiction more difficult and less precise without additional source material.


Look at settings like Eberron where long has been stated that there are no high level individuals. If you take that serious and have only a single resulting campaign journal instead of the rulebooks, you won't be able to make a good judgement about the strengrt of D&D wizards.

Kind of. You would get a picture of just how rapidly their power grows, however - and might make some interesting extrapolations about just how powerful ancient elves and Dragons should be.

I think most posters are limiting their discussion to "demonstrated power".


The third takeaway is that the challange is not well defined. Some people think this is about who would win in a fight, others would want to compare more peaceful applications. Then there is versatility vs pure strength. Then the stuff that D&D wizards have to prepare stuff and run out of spellslots while most others don't and it is questionable how to take that into account. Equally with other limitations. There are many settings that have "risk for power"-mechanics, how do you cost those ?

Well, certainly "I can do everything you can do, but without your limitations" products a clear winner.

I think just seeing what criteria people use to evaluate these things is at least as interesting as the topic itself.


The fourth takeaway is that different magic systems often come with mechanics and cosmology attached that have no defined interaction with other magic systems. Planetravel and summoning and timetravel are always mentioned as strong points of D&D wizards. But it is very common for any settings to have magic allow travel to all planes in that setting and summon any summonable creatures in that setting. Are those abilities now equal or are you simply counting every monster manual entry that could exist in a setting as a point for D&D summoning and vise versa ? There are settings where "time travel exists and is possible but the laws of the universe reverse any kind of lasting change". Does this count as a limitation to the magic or as only a setting quirk ?

This I find to be a very interesting set of questions. My preferred version opens with the notion of armor making you harder to hit in some worlds, reducing the damage taken in others. Is that a property of the armor, the character, or the world? Which takes precedence, when world-hopping?

Polymorph magic is one of the places where 2e has a huge advantage over 3e, as 2e doesn't reference / isn't limited by "hit dice".

Dresden - who/which I discounted - can summon deities, whereas a 3e Wizard cannot. Personally, I view that as a limitation (or lack thereof) of the magic. But an argument could be made for it being a property of the setting, or even of the gods.


Theoretically i could mention some more RPGs that maybe couldtake part in the content. Some that have basically instant freeform magic, where you could do really anything but have to pass a check based on your skill in the magic school it would be classified in. Which obviously beats any versatility of D&D magic by far and only leaves power level as such.
Or RPGs that have things that are basically the same as D&D Epic casting, but less broken and coming online way earlier.

IMO, such additions would be cool. But "epic casting, but earlier"? What, do the characters start with it? RAW advancement in 3e is so fast already, I could probably run a character through fights to go from level 1 to epic in my spare time by next week.

Measuring power vs versatility? Well, the thread says "power", but, as a certain Lich says, "power is power". And standard 3e Wizards' lack of versatility / lack of spontaneous flexibility certainly is a weakness.

[Mato]

Q: Are D&D wizards the most powerful wizards in all of fantasy?
A: No, more like midline.

Remember most of your TO wizard abilities have very little to do with him. Contact other plane requires a significantly more powerful deity to answer the wizard's questions and gate is just the mind control and teleportation of unnamed generic creatures with no importance. Astrial projection relies on D&D's cosmology and most wizard in other media can access their universes cosmology just fine. I think I seen resurrection and miracle mentioned too and those aren't even wizard spells. Teleport thought time? Depends on the campaign setting, it's an FR spell that doesn't do what you think in DL.

As far as other media goes. Several Disney wizards are comparable, Jeffar as a genie can alter the cosmos, Merlin is OP, Mickey Mouse with a hat could control elements and animate things. In comics, Dr Fate & Dr Strange are some of the most powerful people in their entire multiverse and can out cast a D&D wizard often without even using an actual spell. In well known fiction Potterverse has just about every iconic D&D trait in it somewhere. Wheel of Time's casters can freely travel their planes their weave abilities mimic every metamagic feat and stuff like contingency. Magic the Gathering's post-nerf Planeswalkers are still comparable to a well armed Sorcerer. and Discworld wizards are encouraged not to use magic to prevent the world from being destroyed. Most Saturday morning cartoons are pretty bad at limiting magic as a whole too, they typically have a limit of no murder (it's a kid's show) and (sometimes) free will.

Some wizards are functional universes are weaker. Like Lord of the Rings or the Sword of Truth (well reality warping is in SoT but still), it's a very wide subject with a lot of examples. But if you want to compare the most powerful D&D wizard you should look at the most powerful wizards in other media too.

[Calthropstu]

You're mostly correct on imprisonment, though the part where it puts the person in stasis is more a function of the person he uses it on being immortal, not the magic he does. Hard to say what level Planar binding he does, I doubt it's greater. That's also from a totally different tradition of magic he has learned cause he's 7000 years old, not that that invalidates it for this particular conversation. As for shapechange, I'm not sure if that qualifies as the only things he ever turns into are a wolf and a hawk which could be done with a simple polymorph. The only person I think you could reasonably say uses shapechange is Zandramas who is also infused with the spirit of the Child of Dark.

However, still all of that can be easily done by a D&D wizard, while there are things they do where a D&D wizard's version of that is way more powerful, notably his teleportation. You still haven't given an example of something he does that is more powerful than what a D&D wizard could accomplish.

Fair, though you are forgetting some of the forms he takes. There's also the whole colossal illusion thing, and taking control of the weather thing.

Where belgarath shines though, is his ability to make up spells on the fly. Wizards can't do that in d&d. So he has more versatility, and can provably mimic 9th lvl spells.

[Hackulator]

Fair, though you are forgetting some of the forms he takes. There's also the whole colossal illusion thing, and taking control of the weather thing.

Where belgarath shines though, is his ability to make up spells on the fly. Wizards can't do that in d&d. So he has more versatility, and can provably mimic 9th lvl spells.

D&D wizards can cast Control Weather. A 20th level wizard can create a 50 foot tall illusionary monster without anything but the base Major Image spell.

While he can theoretically make up spells on the fly, it's stated and shown many times that it can be dangerous to do things you don't understand, like mess with the weather, or when Garion accidentally buries himself trying to move that rock.

[Calthropstu]

D&D wizards can cast Control Weather. A 20th level wizard can create a 50 foot tall illusionary monster without anything but the base Major Image spell.

While he can theoretically make up spells on the fly, it's stated and shown many times that it can be dangerous to do things you don't understand, like mess with the weather, or when Garion accidentally buries himself trying to move that rock.

Well, yes. But it's definitely at least as powerful as 3.5 wizards, and probably more versatile. Which, again, makes him on par with 3.5 without pun-pun shenanigans.

[Kalkra]

I think in many cases you could actually make a stronger argument for clerics being the most powerful wizards in all of fantasy, because they can heal, which for some reason most fantasy wizards, even those capable of wreaking havoc and generally causing mass destruction, can't. They still have to sell their soul to the devil to cure their girlfriend's cancer, and can't bring people back from the dead without large quantities of human sacrifice, and even then often get something more like a zombie. Sure, wizards can do all that stuff with the right feats (Arcane Disciple, etc.), but clerics can do it by default, and they don't sacrifice that much in versatility or power, especially with the right domains or at high levels.

[Satinavian]

IMO, such additions would be cool. But "epic casting, but earlier"? What, do the characters start with it? RAW advancement in 3e is so fast already, I could probably run a character through fights to go from level 1 to epic in my spare time by next week.

Measuring power vs versatility? Well, the thread says "power", but, as a certain Lich says, "power is power". And standard 3e Wizards' lack of versatility / lack of spontaneous flexibility certainly is a weakness.
Well, the most widespread of those particular freeform magic systems would probably be Ars Magica. Where every magical effect is somehow shoehorned into a combination of verb and nouns of which you have discrete sets you rise as skills. Doing a spell means testing against the corresponding skills, you can properly learn spells instead of inventing them on the spot but that only makes it easier.

Now there are other limitations and i am sceptical if Ars Magica itself would deserve a spot among the most powerful wizard list, not least because it has an inbuilt rule of "when a wizard becomes really powerful, he ascends to some other plane of existence and leaves the scope of the game". But the basic principle has inspired many other, newer works. Among them Myranor, which i think can match D&D in power scale (you could even do Pun-Pun if you really want. Maybe they should not have included magic schools that can raise your magic abilities) while relying even more on the "invent any spells you want to cast spontaniously that match any of the schools you bothered to invest in".

Then there is Splittermond. Now, Splittermond magic generally is not too powerful. You also raise magic schools like skills, but only a very limited number of spells by doing so. And those are certainly less broken than many of their D&D counterparts.
But it has "ritual magic", which is kind of similar to epic casting and is intended to excuse any plot device magic and any other magic effect that does not match the regular spell list. You can access this system via something like a feat line, that do nothing but allow you to cast progressively more powerful rituals with the power determined only by the effect of the ritual. Yes you can start with the ability to do ritual casting but the really worldshattering effects will only come online gradually during your career.
But that is not the only limitation. Such ritual spells have to be researched, which can take up to decades for the really powerful stuff (and no, there are no fast time demiplanes or such stuff). And to actually do such a ritual, you need ritual components like materials, other casters that help you, sacrifices, weaknesses, limitations etc. Very similar to epic casting but instead of changing a DC you have to collect stuff to reach a threshhold based on the ritual power.
But which of those you need are part of the ritual formula. Which means when researching such a formula you can make the ritual easier to actually get performed by specializing it for components you have access to and want to use anyway. With the tradeoff that the ritual is harder to pull off in other situations.
Also to get effects of the highest level, it would strain the ressources of the most powerful empires in the settin to gather the ressources. And indeed many of the big worldshattering events in the published setting history are basically "an empire did a ritual to change the world in a big way".

This is why having ritual casting ability on a character is not as broken as it might seem. While the charater could perform quite impressive and at higher level basically unlimited magic rituals, he is both limited in the ritual formulas (he could invent new ones but no big ones during his adventurer career) and components (if he can already spend the ressources of much of a continent on his spellcasting, the rituals magic is not what breaks the game).
So usually a PC would stick to the lower and medium level rituals which are still quite impressive, could be researched in reasonable time and don't require that many components which means they are not that hard to perfom.

@Kalkra
Most fantasy wizard that don't directly derive from D&D can actually heal or could learn it. Shadowun ? Mage ? TDE ? I mean, TV tropes calls it WhiteMage (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhiteMage) not "white cleric" for a reason. Healing magic is one of the most iconic things wizards and witches can do. It is not uncommon for clerics to get this power too, but it is rarely a distinction. There are as many settings where wizards can heal and clerics can't as the other way around.

[awa]

yeah but actually raising the dead is rare particularly if it is also reliable without significant draw backs.
Not much actually stops a true resurrection i think very few settings/ systems beat a true resurrection.

[Calthropstu]

I think in many cases you could actually make a stronger argument for clerics being the most powerful wizards in all of fantasy, because they can heal, which for some reason most fantasy wizards, even those capable of wreaking havoc and generally causing mass destruction, can't. They still have to sell their soul to the devil to cure their girlfriend's cancer, and can't bring people back from the dead without large quantities of human sacrifice, and even then often get something more like a zombie. Sure, wizards can do all that stuff with the right feats (Arcane Disciple, etc.), but clerics can do it by default, and they don't sacrifice that much in versatility or power, especially with the right domains or at high levels.

Until they get wish. When they can cast wish, they can do all of that.

[Quertus]

Until they get wish. When they can cast wish, they can do all of that.

Or, you know, half a rank in UMD, and some WBL. :smalltongue:

[Schadenfreuda]

Discworld sourcerers are sources of magic, basically capable of re-ordering reality however they see fit at will, and even empowering others to do so. The only one we see not only imprisons all gods with a thought, but makes the other wizards of the Disc capable of magic far beyond what they'd normally be able to do. Essentially, they have a quickened at-will Wish SLA, and an infinite caster level. They aren't exactly a tradition, and only one was born in the last several thousand years, since the time when many humans had that much power was devastating to the world, and they use magic intuitively, just like D&D sorcerers, so they may not count.

[Malphegor]

In theory, Jafar before the ‘become a genie’ wish could beat a wizard.

He asked to be ‘the most powerful sorcerer in the world’. Disney uses sorcerer and wizard kinda interchangeably so let’s assume they’re the same in a Disney universe no matter how a D&D wizard or sorcerer functions when they bring magic for a brawl.

In a fight against a wizard, it is arguable that the genie’s magic will auto-correct the error in power level and maintain Jafar as the ‘most powerful’

It depends if Disney genie magic self-refreshes when an invalid condition makes the wish no longer valid.


In reality though Disney’s Jafar is a petty fool who gets tricked by a kind of terrible rogue with a lot of luck feats and a lot of skill points. Pretty much any protagonist-minded class could take him down... Maybe he’d win against a barbarian who he can outthink maybe.

[Quertus]

In a fight against a wizard, it is arguable that the genie’s magic will auto-correct the error in power level and maintain Jafar as the ‘most powerful’

It depends if Disney genie magic self-refreshes when an invalid condition makes the wish no longer valid.

I mean, Aladdin wishes to be a Prince, and the genie's magic doesn't appear to self-correct then...or does it?