At tier 2, is the Bard better than the Wizard?

[Merudo]

At tier 1 (level 1-4), the Wizard is arguably a better class than the Bard. Wizards have rituals at a time where spell slots are scarce; they get an impressive scout and help action giver (Find Familiar), their cantrips are better (Fire Bolt, Toll the Dead, etc), and they can learn the powerful level 2 concentration spells Flaming Sphere and Web.

At tier 3+ (level 11+), the Wizard gets access to crazy spells such as Wall of Force, Contingency, Simulacrum, Clone, Wish, etc. and so is easily the best class in the game.

Yet, at tier 2 (level 5-10, I think a reasonable case could be made that the Bard is actually better than the Wizard. Contrarily to Tier 1, 3 and 4, there is a large overlap regarding the best concentration spells: Hypnotic Pattern, Polymorph, Greater Invisibility, Animate Objects. Beside Counterspell and Fireball, there is not much lacking on the Bard's spell list.

Bard and Wizard thus end up casting very similar spells in combat, yet the Bard has the advantage of Bardic Inspirations that now recharge on a short rest, better hitpoint, better skills, Jack of All Trades, a more straightforward path to Moderately Armored, and access to the important Healing Word spell. At this point, cantrips are rarely used and the Familiar is much less useful, so these Wizard tier 1 advantages are less pronounced.

Additionally, most Wizard subclasses offer very little at level 6. The Abjurer can share their Ward with an ally, the Diviner can cast Divination more efficiently, the War Wizard can do very minor damage once per short rest, the Evoker does slightly more damage with some of his cantrips. Yawn. On the other hand, the Lore Bard gets one of the best feature of the game: the ability to take 2 spells from any spell list.

Overall, there is not much that the Bard can envy from the Wizard at tier 2. The lack of Fireball does hurt, but those who espouse the "Wizard as God" philosophy would probably be better served by playing the Bard instead of Wizard.

[diplomancer]

Easy-Medium access to magical items makes a big difference here. There simply are no uncommon magic items for wizards as good as the uncommon instruments of the bards.

Disadvantaged Hypnotic Pattern feels like playing the game on Easy Mode.

On tier 3-4, more opponents with charm immunity or magic resistance balances this somewhat, but on tier 2? Feels almost like cheating.

[Bobthewizard]

I think tier 2 bards are great, but even without fireball I'd still give a slight edge to wizards.

1. Arcane recovery means more spell slots per day than the bard.
2. Rituals are great for utility. Wizards can access more rituals in a day. Being able to cast Leomunds Tiny Hut without preparing it is great.
3. Plus wizards get better defense (shield, absorb elements, mirror image, counter spell) and movement (misty step, fly).
4. I still find web useful at these levels as probably the best 2nd level combat spell.

You'll have to decide if the above is better than the class features the bard gets. I enjoy playing both but find wizards more satisfying.

[MaxWilson]

I think tier 2 bards are great, but even without fireball I'd still give a slight edge to wizards.

1. Arcane recovery means more spell slots per day than the bard.
2. Rituals are great for utility. Wizards can access more rituals in a day. Being able to cast Leomunds Tiny Hut without preparing it is great.
3. Plus wizards get better defense (shield, absorb elements, mirror image, counter spell) and movement (misty step, fly).
4. I still find web useful at these levels as probably the best 2nd level combat spell.

You'll have to decide if the above is better than the class features the bard gets. I enjoy playing both but find wizards more satisfying.

Yeah, Web is good enough that I would take it as a 6th level Magical Secret if I weren't busy taking Conjure Animals and Aura of Vitality instead. It remains excellent even against high-CR monsters (they often have crummy Dex saves). Also, nice duration, and concentration means it's party-friendly. (You can instantly drop it if it's ever hurting the party more than it's helping, e.g. if a PC is about to take a bunch of attacks at advantage for being restrained.) It's a cheap, highly effective, long-lasting AoE crowd control spell.

In a party with a Shepherd Druid and a Sharpshooter Fighter or Necromancer I would take Aura of Vitality and Web as my 6th level magical secrets.

[cutlery]

Yet, at tier 2 (level 5-10, I think a reasonable case could be made that the Bard is actually better than the Wizard. Contrarily to Tier 1, 3 and 4, there is a large overlap regarding the best concentration spells: Hypnotic Pattern, Polymorph, Greater Invisibility, Animate Objects. Beside Counterspell and Fireball, there is not much lacking on the Bard's spell list.




Haste, Blur, Mirror image, Blink, Darkness, Banishment, Fire Shield, Phantasmal Killer, Private Sanctum, Resilient Sphere, Black Tentacles, Arcane eye.

Oh, and animate dead necromancer shenanigans.

There's a lot there.

[MrStabby]

Wizard tier 2 spells do include banishment and wall of force as well as the aforementioned counterspell. Bard spells are good, but these are better.

I would also stress the level 1 wizard spells are great - or rather shield and absorb elements are, but they get better when you can spam them as arcane recovery grows in power.

As you hit T2, your wizard spell book also leaps ahead of spells known. Not changing spells out doesnt matter so much in T1 when most of your tools are the same and you prepare a lot of spells relative to what you have in book. By level 8 a wizard should have at least 20 spells in their book and prepares probably 14. Six hand picked spells on the bench to swap in is useful... and it only gets better when you factor in easier access to divination.

Bard is no slouch, but even in T2 wizards are super powerful.

[CTurbo]

I may be the minority here, but I feel like Bards are the better class straight up at most tiers. Bards can be anything you need them to be and they can cherry pick all the best wizard spells anyway. Plus they have the benefit from being a Cha caster. They're Ritual Caster's in their own right although the Wizard gets better rituals no doubt.

[LudicSavant]

they can cherry pick all the best wizard spells anyway.

Eh.

The Bard gets 6 magical secrets by level 20 (8 with Lore).

The Wizard has 302 spells on their list, 199 of which are not on the Bard list. And a lot of them are gamechangers which can be used in combination with each other to become more than the sum of their parts. And Wizards get very strong subclass abilities that can fundamentally alter the way those spells are used.

It's true that they get a ton of power by borrowing Wizard tricks, but they can only borrow so much.


Bards can be anything you need them to be

So can Wizards. They have top tier optimized builds in literally every role; tank, healer, control, AoE damage, single target damage. Everything. I would say that both classes can be anything you need them to be.

[MaxWilson]

So can Wizards. They have top tier optimized builds in literally every role; tank, healer, control, AoE damage, single target damage. Everything. I would say that both classes can be anything you need them to be.

Healer? Are you counting Eberron-specific Mark of Healing builds here? Even then I don't think wizards are truly top tier healers until Spell Mastery comes online.

[HPisBS]

Let's not forget the standout spells Bards have access to - either natively or through Magical Secrets - that Wizards can never cast (though they may Wish they could). Spells like Spirit Guardians, Plant Growth, Find Greater Steed, Destructive Wave, Contagion, and of course Glibness.

Nor that Bards are also roughly tied with Rogues for being the ultimate skillmonkeys thanks to expertise and Jack of All Trades - especially if Lore or Eloquence.

[LudicSavant]

Healer? Are you counting Eberron-specific Mark of Healing builds here? Of course. Eberron is my favorite official setting. :smallsmile:


Even then I don't think wizards are truly top tier healers until Spell Mastery comes online.

They're in that category of healer that can heal quadruple digits a day, burst heal people to full repeatedly, mitigate buckets of damage, counter status effects, and have incredible action economy.

Though I'd love to hear your ideas on the competition.

[MaxWilson]

They're in that category of healer that can heal quadruple digits a day, burst heal people to full repeatedly, mitigate buckets of damage, counter status effects, and have incredible action economy.

Though I'd love to hear your ideas on the competition.

The best healer all-Tier I know of in 5E, now that Healing Spirit has finally been fixed, is a Jorasco Divine Soul 5+/Life Cleric 1 with Extended Spell metamagic. A regular Jorasco Wizard or Wizard/Life Cleric 1 is not bad at all, but Extended Spell essentially doubles the healing of each Aura of Vitality spell (120 HP => 240 HP), to the point where even Shield starts looking like an inefficient use of spell slots. Also, you get earlier access to revification (Revivify at 6th level instead of Clone at 16th), and easier access to bursty heals like Mass Cure Wounds and Heal, which can be important if things like pop-up AoE healing are legal and important at your table. (And you always have a 1/day Lesser Restoration on tap too, which is minor but convenient when you run across paralyzation or disease when you didn't expect to.)

At 6th level, a Divine Soul 5/Life Cleric 1 has 4/3/3 spell slots and 5 sorcery points, which is enough healing magic to heal 1200 HP of damage per day via 5 Extended Auras of Vitality. (Plus d8+5ish I guess from your free 1/day Mark of Healing Cure Wounds spell.) A Life Cleric 1/Wizard X can achieve a very respectable 440 HP of healing per day via 3 Auras of Vitality, 3 Cure Wounds IIs, and 4 Cure Wounds. 440 HP is very likely to be more than enough whole-day healing in practice if no one dies, but in the pure optimization space it doesn't compare, and again, the Wizard doesn't have access to Revivify or Raise Dead so he's significantly worse at dealing with burst damage that does make someone die.

Maybe I'm overlooking something though. For example, I don't know what you mean by a wizard "burst heal[ing] people to full repeatedly."

[LudicSavant]

Maybe I'm overlooking something though. For example, I don't know what you mean by a wizard "burst heal[ing] people to full repeatedly."

I'm familiar with that build. You're correct that the Wizard is worse at resurrecting dead people for most of their progression, and that Extend AoV is great noncombat healing. And they've got some other great tricks you didn't mention too, like Twinned Disciple of Life Regenerate. However, the Wizard has advantages of their own owing to their superior spell list, versatility, action economy, and burst healing.


- At tier 1, the Wizard is a stronger healer because Familiar and Unseen Servant can both deliver 25gp potions without using your Action for emergency healing (and can even yo-yo yourself). On top of having access to more spells than the Sorcerer.

This also means that you have an opportunity to yo-yo at more points in the initiative order, which makes it considerably harder to actually finish people off. This never stops being good. If anything, it only gets better later.

- At tier 3, the Wizard gets stuff like Simulacrum, Contingency, and Master Transmuter (which is like having two extra 9th level spell slots spent on Power Word: Heal). Contingency and Simulacrum not only dramatically increase your healing slot resources, but also your action economy, which is the most important economy. Especially since the tier 1 action economy advantage didn't stop being relevant, either -- if anything those potions just got more and more affordable and thus more and more spammable. Not to mention that your Simulacrum can have a familiar, too. And I'd rather have the Soul Cage combo than Heal.

It also means that even if you, the healer, go down... you can pop yourself right back up to full health. Repeatedly. Again and again. Your Contingency can heal you. Your Simulacrum can heal you. Your familiars can heal you. Your animated minions can heal you. And you can heal yourself at multiple points in the initiative order each turn. And you're a full blown controller Wizard on top of it, with all the mitigation that implies.

And I'm just scratching the surface. As you know, Tier 3 is when the Wizard basically flies off into crazy shenanigans town. This is no exception.

- At tier 4, you just straight up get infinite healing.

- At all tiers, they will have significantly greater versatility. The Wizard isn't using up a huge chunk of their spells known just to be able to play healer, like the Sorcerer is.

- The Wizard will still provide all the usual wizardly advantages that the Sorcerer doesn't, like having everyone sleep in Tiny Huts and travel on Phantom Steeds all the time and etc etc.

- As you mentioned, the party can only have so many hit points missing when combat ends; there comes a point where non-combat healing has diminishing returns.

I think the Divine Soul makes its best showing at exactly where you highlighted, Tier 2. And even then, it depends how much you value those raw noncombat healing numbers vs versatility and in-combat healing.

I would consider both high tier healer builds, with pros and cons for each. I think the Wizard's primary con is that at low levels they aren't good at resurrecting already-dead people, but that their advantages make up for it.

Edit:
At 6th level, a Divine Soul 5/Life Cleric 1 has 4/3/3 spell slots and 5 sorcery points, which is enough healing magic to heal 1200 HP of damage per day via 5 Extended Auras of Vitality. (Plus d8+5ish I guess from your free 1/day Mark of Healing Cure Wounds spell.) A Life Cleric 1/Wizard X can achieve a very respectable 440 HP of healing per day via 3 Auras of Vitality, 3 Cure Wounds IIs, and 4 Cure Wounds. 440 HP is very likely to be more than enough whole-day healing in practice if no one dies

A couple notes I would add:

- Why is the Wizard using Cure Wound II? Especially since we're comparing non-combat healing with Extended Aura of Vitality (which takes 20 rounds to finish). Wouldn't it be more appropriate to compare to, say, Prayer of Healing? That's worth 17 hit points per target (up to 102 hp).

- Extended Aura of Vitality in practice is less '240 hit points' because you're going to have like, 40 hit points at that level. Even a 16 Con Barbarian only has 65. There's only so much to heal after the combat's ended -- in practice it will often be no more healing than the Wizard's Aura of Vitality. Much is likely to be lost to overhealing (same goes for Prayer of Healing, of course).

- The Wizard also has some other nice things going for it in terms of non-combat healing which are less directly quantifiable but still important, like having Leomund's Tiny Hut.

Anyways if you pick Prayer of Healing and Aura of Vitality, and count the 5th Cure Wounds they can get, it's 721.5 potential hit points of healing during the day, up from 440. Of course a fair chunk of that won't apply in practice, but the same goes for the 1200 Extended Aura figure. People just aren't generally going to need 240 hit points of healing after each fight, because they don't even have that much health. And it's not like you can use just some of it and save it for later... any overflow is lost.

[Ashrym]

Strictly as spellcasters the wizard is ahead of the bard.

The bard's advantage is spells not available to the wizard, hit die (a few more hit points is minor), inspiration, and skills (skill bonus mileage can vary among tables). The wizard also has many spells unavailable to the bard (magical secrets only goes so far), spell swapping (due to prep), spells available (due to the prep mechanics), and a much better ritual caster mechanic.

If spellcasting power is the main focus of the player a bard wouldn't be my recommendation. Bards don't have the wizard's spell power, sorcerer's nova, or warlock's at-will powers. They gave up spell power for skills and inspiration in comparison.

[MaxWilson]

I'm familiar with that build. You're correct that the Wizard is worse at resurrecting dead people for most of their progression, and that Extend AoV is great noncombat healing. And they've got some other great tricks you didn't mention too, like Twinned Disciple of Life Regenerate. However, the Wizard has advantages of their own owing to their superior spell list, versatility, action economy, and burst healing.


- At tier 1, the Wizard is a stronger healer because Familiar and Unseen Servant can both deliver 25gp potions without using your Action for emergency healing (and can even yo-yo yourself). On top of having access to more spells than the Sorcerer.

This also means that you have an opportunity to yo-yo at more points in the initiative order, which makes it considerably harder to actually finish people off. This never stops being good. If anything, it only gets better later.

- At tier 3, the Wizard gets stuff like Simulacrum, Contingency, and Master Transmuter (which is like having two extra 9th level spell slots spent on Power Word: Heal). Contingency and Simulacrum not only dramatically increase your healing slot resources, but also your action economy, which is the most important economy. Especially since the tier 1 action economy advantage didn't stop being relevant, either -- if anything those potions just got more and more affordable and thus more and more spammable. Not to mention that your Simulacrum can have a familiar, too. And I'd rather have the Soul Cage combo than Heal.

It also means that even if you, the healer, go down... you can pop yourself right back up to full health. Repeatedly. Again and again. Your Contingency can heal you. Your Simulacrum can heal you. Your familiars can heal you. Your animated minions can heal you. And you can heal yourself at multiple points in the initiative order each turn. And you're a full blown controller Wizard on top of it, with all the mitigation that implies.

And I'm just scratching the surface. As you know, Tier 3 is when the Wizard basically flies off into crazy shenanigans town. This is no exception.

- At tier 4, you just straight up get infinite healing.

- At all tiers, they will have significantly greater versatility. The Wizard isn't using up a huge chunk of their spells known just to be able to play healer, like the Sorcerer is.

- The Wizard will still provide all the usual wizardly advantages that the Sorcerer doesn't, like having everyone sleep in Tiny Huts and travel on Phantom Steeds all the time and etc etc.

- As you mentioned, the party can only have so many hit points missing when combat ends; there comes a point where non-combat healing has diminishing returns.

I think the Divine Soul makes its best showing at exactly where you highlighted, Tier 2. And even then, it depends how much you value those raw noncombat healing numbers vs versatility and in-combat healing.

I would consider both high tier healer builds, with pros and cons for each. I think the Wizard's primary con is that at low levels they aren't good at resurrecting already-dead people, but that their advantages make up for it.

Edit:

A couple notes I would add:

- Why is the Wizard using Cure Wound II? Especially since we're comparing non-combat healing with Extended Aura of Vitality (which takes 20 rounds to finish). Wouldn't it be more appropriate to compare to, say, Prayer of Healing? That's worth 17 hit points per target (up to 102 hp).

- Extended Aura of Vitality in practice is less '240 hit points' because you're going to have like, 40 hit points at that level. Even a 16 Con Barbarian only has 65. There's only so much to heal after the combat's ended -- in practice it will often be no more healing than the Wizard's Aura of Vitality. Much is likely to be lost to overhealing (same goes for Prayer of Healing, of course).

- The Wizard also has some other nice things going for it in terms of non-combat healing which are less directly quantifiable but still important, like having Leomund's Tiny Hut.

Anyways if you pick Prayer of Healing and Aura of Vitality, and count the 5th Cure Wounds they can get, it's 721.5 potential hit points of healing during the day, up from 440. Of course a fair chunk of that won't apply in practice, but the same goes for the 1200 Extended Aura figure. People just aren't generally going to need 240 hit points of healing after each fight, because they don't even have that much health. And it's not like you can use just some of it and save it for later... any overflow is lost.

Good call on Prayer of Healing, I forgot that was included, and it's a worthwhile use of a second - level spell slot in some cases.

Sorcerers get Contingency/Simulacrum too via Wish, just later and more expensively (mirroring wizard and Revivify) and I think you're underrating Aura of Vitality (you can potentially save a lot on other abilities like Action Surge, Hypnotic Pattern and Wall of Force if you don't have to _care_, except in emergencies, how much damage enemies do before dying), but whatever, those are matters of personal taste, not factual disagreements.

I'm still interested in hearing more about that bursty wizard healing you mentioned the first time though, because I just don't see it. The Divine Soul can cast Mass Heal in combat if they really need to, so burst healing is clearly on the table (although simply starting Aura of Vitality and leaving it running after combat is often more than sufficient). But you mentioned a wizard doing a healing burst too. Are you imagining e.g. a Demiplaned stuffed with Glyphs of Cure Wounds or something?

(BTW, the Divine Soul can potentially do a Glyph of Raise Dead so his companions can resurrect him if necessary. It's painful to spend a spells-known on Glyph of Warding though so would only happen in campaigns where there were no alternatives.)

[HPisBS]

Sorcerers get Contingency/Simulacrum too via Wish, just later and more expensively (mirroring wizard and Revivify) and I think you're underrating Aura of Vitality (you can potentially save a lot on other abilities like Action Surge, Hypnotic Pattern and Wall of Force if you don't have to _care_, except in emergencies, how much damage enemies do before dying), but whatever, those are matters of personal taste, not factual disagreements.

I'm still interested in hearing more about that bursty wizard healing you mentioned the first time though, because I just don't see it. The Divine Soul can cast Mass Heal in combat if they really need to, so burst healing is clearly on the table (although simply starting Aura of Vitality and leaving it running after combat is often more than sufficient). But you mentioned a wizard doing a healing burst too. Are you imagining e.g. a Demiplaned stuffed with Glyphs of Cure Wounds or something?

(BTW, the Divine Soul can potentially do a Glyph of Raise Dead so his companions can resurrect him if necessary. It's painful to spend a spells-known on Glyph of Warding though so would only happen in campaigns where there were no alternatives.)

This was supposed to be a Wizard vs Bard comparison lol

[LudicSavant]

But you mentioned a wizard doing a healing burst too. Are you imagining e.g. a Demiplaned stuffed with Glyphs of Cure Wounds or something?

The Wizard doesn't have to wait until it gets Demiplane to have superior burst healing, their burst healing advantage starts at level 2, and just gets better from there.

The primary cause of this advantage is superior action economy. For example, a Wizard in an emergency at level 2 could hand out a potion with their Familiar action, their bonus action, and Cure Wounds with their racial spell all in the same turn... and that's before we even count their spell slots.

At tier 3, they have things like Simulacrum (including a second familiar), Contingency, Soul Cage, superior minionmancy, and Panacea (which is like getting 2 9th level slots of "Power Word: Heal" except even better because you can do it and cast a leveled spell in the same turn). Twinned Heal is a drop in the bucket by comparison.



At tier 3, the Wizard gets stuff like Simulacrum, Contingency, and Master TransmuterSorcerers get Contingency/Simulacrum too via Wish

Not at tier 3, they don't.

And at tier 4 there are other reasons they do worse.


The Divine Soul can cast Mass Heal in combat if they really need to, so burst healing is clearly on the table

They can do burst healing, they're just worse at it.

Also Mass Heal is pretty costly for a Divine Soul. They have to do it instead of something like Wish, and it takes up one of their spells known... which is a huge deal given that they only get a piddly four new spells known throughout tier 3-4. :smalleek:

[Falconcry]

Back to Wizard vs Bard I do think the OP glossed over some of the 6th and 10th level spell school abilities. My human transmuter loves the stone’s functionality and the mobility of giant owl/eagle escape button. On demand darkvision, longstrider(that stacks with the longstrider spell), con proficiency, or elemental resistance.

That seems on par with d8/d10 inspirations.

[LudicSavant]

Bringing it back to Bards:

I think Bards are a very strong class. That said here's some perspective...


Yet, at tier 2 (level 5-10, I think a reasonable case could be made that the Bard is actually better than the Wizard. Contrarily to Tier 1, 3 and 4, there is a large overlap regarding the best concentration spells: Hypnotic Pattern, Polymorph, Greater Invisibility, Animate Objects. Beside Counterspell and Fireball, there is not much lacking on the Bard's spell list.

A few other things that aren't on the Bard list that are important at tier 2 that the Bard doesn't really have an equivalent to, just off the top of my head (AFB at the moment):

Cantrips
Booming Blade
Create Bonfire
Toll the Dead
Fire Bolt
Ray of Frost
Lightning Lure
Control Flames
Mold Earth
Shape Water

Level 1 spells
Absorb Elements
Shield
Protection from Evil and Good
Magic Missile (for NW-style builds)
Find Familiar

Level 2 spells
Misty Step
Dragon's Breath
Flaming Sphere
Mind Spike (for Diviner builds)
Enlarge / Reduce
Web

Level 3 spells
Counterspell
Animate Dead
Fireball
Fly
Haste
Minute Meteors
Sleet Storm
Remove Curse
Phantom Steed
Tiny Hut (Edit: That one's actually a Bard spell)
Thunder Step
Tiny Servant

Level 4 Spells
Conjure Minor Elementals
Summon Greater Demon
Banishment (especially with Portent)
Sickening Radiance (especially with Sculpt Spells)
Storm Sphere (especially with Sculpt Spells)
Evard's Black Tentacles
Vitriolic Sphere
Wall of Fire
Resilient Sphere

Level 5 Spells
Wall of Force
Rary's Telepathic Bond
Telekinesis
Transmute Rock
Wall of Stone (especially with Sculpt Spells)
Contact Other Plane
Bigby's Hand


Additionally, most Wizard subclasses offer very little at level 6. The Abjurer can share their Ward with an ally, the Diviner can cast Divination more efficiently, the War Wizard can do very minor damage once per short rest, the Evoker does slightly more damage with some of his cantrips. Yawn. On the other hand, the Lore Bard gets one of the best feature of the game: the ability to take 2 spells from any spell list.

- Many (though obviously not all) of the best uses of that 'best feature in the game' are just grabbing things that the Wizard already has, like Counterspell or Shield.
- The Evoker isn't just getting Potent Cantrip, they also have Sculpt Spells, and it's amazing in tier 2 because they start getting things like Sculpted Storm Sphere, Sculpted Fireball, Sculpted Dawn, Sculpted Sickening Radiance, Sculpted Wall of Stone, etc.
- The Diviner doesn't just have more efficient divinations, they also have Portent, and it's amazing in tier 2 because they start getting stuff like Portent Banish that just straight up remove people from the fight, no save.
- I don't see any mention of Arcane Recovery in your post. More spell slots is important.
- Potent Cantrip is more impactful for an optimizer than you might intuitively assume, especially if you're playing 6-8 encounters per day (or more). It makes Create Bonfire comparable to an at-will Cloud of Daggers (especially when you consider its synergy with minion oil use... Create Bonfire combos can outperform Cloud of Daggers). And to get an idea of how much it's increasing your cantrip damage, an 18 Int Toll the Dead against a +3 Wis save will do 140% average DPR. Or if we're comparing to the Bard's attack cantrip Vicious Mockery, it's 362% DPR (and the difference with proper use of Create Bonfire is much more than that).

This isn't just some theoretical thing, I was able to use this in real games to outdamage Fighters in 10+ encounter days, with many of those encounters being Deadly.

And of course that's not to mention the potential of other subclasses, like the strong tier 2 minionmancy of the Necromancer.


Overall, there is not much that the Bard can envy from the Wizard at tier 2. The lack of Fireball does hurt, but those who espouse the "Wizard as God" philosophy would probably be better served by playing the Bard instead of Wizard.

Remember, Fireball spam is basically the optimization floor for the Wizard, not the ceiling.

[Frogreaver]

I'd say Bard is overall better than a Wizard in tier 1, tier 2 and early tier 3.

Tier 1:
The Bard knows as many spells as the wizard can prepare.
He get's expertise and jack of all trades and bardic inspiration and an additional skill proficiency.
He can take a subclass that gives him shields and medium armor for good AC (and that's not really his best subclass)
He can take a spell compliment that includes many of the wizards best tier 1 spells along with healing (healing being one of the best spell types in tier 1): Healing Word, Sleep, Silent Image, Invisibility, Shatter, Hold Person, Lesser Restoration.
Charisma skills are often more useful than intelligence skills.

Tier 2:
Similar to tier 1, except the spells change up a little and the bard gets even more uses of bardic inspiration and expertise.

Early tier 3:
Same as tier 2. It's not until level 7 spells I'd put the Wizard as definitively ahead.

[AttilatheYeon]

Healer? Are you counting Eberron-specific Mark of Healing builds here? Even then I don't think wizards are truly top tier healers until Spell Mastery comes online.

Polymorph is the best healing spell ever!

[Ashrym]

Tiny Hut

That one is a bard spell. ;-)

I've taken several of the others in tier 2 using secrets as well, but I would argue wizards don't have room to prep all those either so the list does not demonstrate the advantage. If a wizard can't take them all then a bard doesn't need them all to compare.

Bards do have decent spell options and their spells known are comparable to wizards spells prepped. Wizards not needing to prep rituals or situational spells until needed is a better advantage because bards don't have that luxury.

[KorvinStarmast]

Yet, at tier 2 (level 5-10, I think a reasonable case could be made that the Bard is actually better than the Wizard.

Overall, there is not much that the Bard can envy from the Wizard at tier 2. The lack of Fireball does hurt, but those who espouse the "Wizard as God" philosophy would probably be better served by playing the Bard instead of Wizard. Lore Bards get magical secrets at level 6. They can take Fireball if they want to.

Additional Magical Secrets
At 6th level, you learn two Spells of your choice from any Classes. A spell you choose must be of a level you can cast, as shown on the Bard table, or a cantrip. The chosen spells⁠ count as bard spells⁠ for you but don’t count against the number of bard spells⁠ you know.

But the question remains, from me to you: better at what?

[AttilatheYeon]

The best healer all-Tier I know of in 5E, now that Healing Spirit has finally been fixed, is a Jorasco Divine Soul 5+/Life Cleric 1 with Extended Spell metamagic. A regular Jorasco Wizard or Wizard/Life Cleric 1 is not bad at all, but Extended Spell essentially doubles the healing of each Aura of Vitality spell (120 HP => 240 HP), to the point where even Shield starts looking like an inefficient use of spell slots. Also, you get earlier access to revification (Revivify at 6th level instead of Clone at 16th), and easier access to bursty heals like Mass Cure Wounds and Heal, which can be important if things like pop-up AoE healing are legal and important at your table. (And you always have a 1/day Lesser Restoration on tap too, which is minor but convenient when you run across paralyzation or disease when you didn't expect to.)

At 6th level, a Divine Soul 5/Life Cleric 1 has 4/3/3 spell slots and 5 sorcery points, which is enough healing magic to heal 1200 HP of damage per day via 5 Extended Auras of Vitality. (Plus d8+5ish I guess from your free 1/day Mark of Healing Cure Wounds spell.) A Life Cleric 1/Wizard X can achieve a very respectable 440 HP of healing per day via 3 Auras of Vitality, 3 Cure Wounds IIs, and 4 Cure Wounds. 440 HP is very likely to be more than enough whole-day healing in practice if no one dies, but in the pure optimization space it doesn't compare, and again, the Wizard doesn't have access to Revivify or Raise Dead so he's significantly worse at dealing with burst damage that does make someone die.

Maybe I'm overlooking something though. For example, I don't know what you mean by a wizard "burst heal[ing] people to full repeatedly."

How do you get AoV on this build?

[LudicSavant]

That one is a bard spell. ;-)

So it is -- like I said I was AFB. I'll correct the post accordingly. Thank you very much for the correction! :smallsmile:

Of course, that still leaves the entire rest of that list.


I've taken several of the others in tier 2 using secrets as well, but I would argue wizards don't have room to prep all those either so

The point being made isn't that the Wizard will prep all of those at the same time. It's that Magical Secrets (being talked up as the best feature in the game by the OP) isn't giving you some ginormous, game-shattering advantage over the Wizard's spell list (which is well over twice the size of the Bard's spell list to begin with).

Even if we just count Tier 1-2 spells, a Wizard has 143 spells that aren't on the Bard list, and many of them are "consider grabbing with Magical Secrets" quality. A lot more than just two.


How do you get AoV on this build?

Max's using a Jorasco halfling for the Sorcerer.

[AttilatheYeon]

"How do you get AoV on this build?
Max's using a Jorasco halfling for the Sorcerer"

Where is this found?

[LudicSavant]

"How do you get AoV on this build?
Max's using a Jorasco halfling for the Sorcerer"

Where is this found?

Eberron: Rising From the Last War. Great setting, by the way; I've got all the books for it from 3.5e too :smallsmile:

[micahaphone]

Bard's a healer due to Healing Word, right? Have none of you ever played with a wizard who took Life Transference? :smallbiggrin:

I once DM'd for a 2 player wizard/paladin party. wizard had an Amulet of health and was okay sacrificing some HP to become the healer. fun times!

[AttilatheYeon]

Eberron: Rising From the Last War. Great setting, by the way; I've got all the books for it from 3.5e too :smallsmile:

Ah, thanks

[sambojin]

No.
But I wish people would stop using Simulacrum or Clone as a tier 3 comparison for Wizards. By and large, you can't actually cast it in any campaign-useful level of effect. Or you might do it once, like summoning Pixies, or something, when it's *really needed* for the story to continue.

If you do think those spells are just "standard wizard/ bard-secret" stuff, you may as well assume your DM lets you summon exactly what you want with Conjure Woodland Beings or Conjure Animals as a Druid in tier 2. Broken is broken, and you don't see anyone saying "but heaps of polymorph is fair!", or "yep, all the wolves, every time" is regular play in the Druid camp, even though it's possible.

Simulacrum? Yeah, no. Clone? Yeah, sure, problems occurred while you were away.

Some wizard stuff is just right off the table in most places. Same as some druid stuff. Some bard stuff is fine.

But wizards are still more powerful than bards at tier 2 play, sometimes. Depending on the campaign and the table. Bards have an incredibly high floor in a party, power-level-wise.

As-in, during actual adventures, that you'll actually play in. At a table, or behind a computer screen, with friends. Not theory-crafted/ theory-crazy spell-lists and their effects. They're sorta tier-1 as a class for a reason. Bards are amazing.

(I'm not saying Wizards or Druids can't do some amazing stuff, but singling out OP-af spells and their potential effects in theory-crafted scenarios just because "the book said that's totally a thing you do every day" isn't why they're both tier 1 classes. Hell, Paladins are tier 1 as well, for totally different reasons too, and incredibly playable ones. Hope that made you feel better :) )

[LudicSavant]

At Tier 2, is the Bard better than the Wizard?No.
But I wish people would stop using Simulacrum or Clone as a tier 3 comparison for Wizards. By and large, you can't actually cast it in any campaign-useful level of effect. Or you might do it once, like summoning Pixies, or something, when it's *really needed* for the story to continue.

If you do think those spells are just "standard wizard/ bard-secret" stuff, you may as well assume your DM lets you summon exactly what you want with Conjure Woodland Beings or Conjure Animals as a Druid in tier 2. Broken is broken, and you don't see anyone saying "but heaps of polymorph is fair!", or "yep, all the wolves, every time" is regular play in the Druid camp, even though it's possible.

Simulacrum? Yeah, no. Clone? Yeah, sure, problems occurred while you were away.

Some wizard stuff is just right off the table in most places. Same as some druid stuff. Some bard stuff is fine.

But wizards are still more powerful than bards at tier 2 play, sometimes. Depending on the campaign and the table. Bards have an incredibly high floor in a party, power-level-wise.

As-in, during actual adventures, that you'll actually play in. At a table, or behind a computer screen, with friends. Not theory-crafted/ theory-crazy spell-lists and their effects. They're sorta tier-1 as a class for a reason. Bards are amazing.

(I'm not saying Wizards or Druids can't do some amazing stuff, but singling out OP-af spells and their potential effects in theory-crafted scenarios just because "the book said that's totally a thing you do every day" isn't why they're both tier 1 classes. Hell, Paladins are tier 1 as well, for totally different reasons too, and incredibly playable ones. Hope that made you feel better :) )

Regarding Simulacrum:

As far as I know, there is no official published adventure where it isn't just amazing, nor have I ever seen a campaign where it wasn't... and I've played an awful lot, with a wide variety of DMs and playstyles.

I really have no idea why you think it isn't. Like you don't even give an argument for why it would be difficult to use, you just say 'yeah, no.'

Comparing it to "the DM letting you summon exactly what you want" is not even remotely comparable. One requires DM fiat. The other is just the spell doing exactly what it says on the tin. Most DMs in my experience nerf the spell and it still crushes it.

That's not a thing of 'theory crafted scenarios' it's a thing of every single campaign that gets to Tier 3+ and the DM doesn't just outright ban the spell. Or do some really weird hypothetical edge case thing like make it so that somehow a 14th level character can never come upon 1500 gp or something.

[sambojin]

Which is exactly why in most campaigns I've played in, it can never be cast. Ever. Because it's a broken-af spell. That warps the game outside the bounds of "every other class's abilities".

It's fine as an enemy-only spell. It's just stupid to think that one super-high-level spell-battery is fine, but another low-level one isn't. So we just went "Nope" to both.

No simulacrums. No pixies. Easy.

Because Wizard stuff is stupid. So is Druid stuff.

Made other classes a bit more balanced compared to them.

[LudicSavant]

Which is exactly why in most campaigns I've played in, it can never be cast. Ever.

So we're not allowed to say the spell is good, because it's so good that you ban it?

Seems like a pretty good argument for saying the spell is good, to me. :smalltongue:

[sambojin]

Yep. Too good. Way too good. Shouldn't even be considered to be allowed in any reasonable campaign. Broken as F**k.

Yet CAnimals and CWoodBeings needs "but Sage advice explicitly stated that it's DM approval on what you conjure, so that you don't break the game....". F'ing wizards.....

[AttilatheYeon]

Yep. Too good. Way too good. Shouldn't even be considered to be allowed in any reasonable campaign. Broken as F**k.

Yet CAnimals and CWoodBeings needs "but Sage advice explicitly stated that it's DM approval on what you conjure, so that you don't break the game....". F'ing wizards.....

Similicrum does have an expensive gold cost for arguably the class that already uses the most gold to expand class features.

[sambojin]

Not really a huge problem at lvl13+, cost-wise. One that gives you a spare lvl13+ wizard for the effort. It's a level 13+ wizard, with half HP. Yeah, sure, it costs tonnes to heal HP, but it's a level 13+ friggen Wizard, that "acts on your turn", under your control. It's like auto-every-turn Action-Surge, for everything, at its most basic form. Sheeze.... Not sure why people think this is a *class feature spell* instead of *DM-unapproval-needed-now* due to bad spell design on its ramifications for *the rest of the party* spell.

Anyway, yeah, Bards are great. And are really playable at both low and high levels. Depending on your playgroup, maybe you should take the Simulacrum spell at lvl14 as one of your magical secrets, to really f*-up your campaign (see above).

[Dork_Forge]

Similicrum does have an expensive gold cost for arguably the class that already uses the most gold to expand class features.

It's not particularly expensive for the level of spell and gold cost rarely comes up when Wizards are discussed here. It's usually just handwaved as of course you'll have enough gold.

[sambojin]

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

I wouldn't say Bards are "better" than Wizards in tier 2 play. They're just a lot more fun to play as up until that point, depending on subclass chosen, and are still very powerful in Tier 2. They feel like they've got tonnes of resources, tonnes of spell slots, and just enough spells known to do a heap, alongside actual skills themselves. So you're never letting the party down, or running out of things to do, no matter the situation.

Wizards don't really feel that good to play as until this point in time, to me at least, though YMMV. They're kind of crappy at lvl1-4. They just are. They're pretty good at lvl5-6, certainly not bad in any way, especially if you've got a gift-happy DM (though they're really not bad if you never find a spell-book or scroll the entire campaign). You can actually do heaps of stuff, or choose to. At about lvl7-8, the sheer diversity of what you can do each day, and the higher level of slot-regen (4lvls worth now) starts to look comparable to even the Bard's awesome abilities in some ways, even though they got their's a level or two ago. At about lvl9-10, I think it's starting to go in the Wizard's favour a little bit. Maybe. Well, kinda a lot.

It sort of depends on how you play them, and the campaign (I'm not really that experienced with either class), but that's the general feels I got from playing lore bard once and wizard twice.

[diplomancer]

I don't have in-game experience with Simulacrum, admittedly, but isn't it, specially one with the Wizard chassis, the quintessential glass-cannon? We are talking about a creature with around 50 hit points in a time where the adventurers are supposed to be already well known by the main antagonists of the campaign. It should be targeted mercilessly and killed as fast as possible.

[sambojin]

Should be. People theoretically say it's not (like how ritually casting Find Familiar "only" takes an hour and ten minutes, and how that's "fine", and the DM and the party "always lets them cast it that way", every time an enemy kills it (which also never happens in these campaigns anyway), to absolutely no problems in the middle of a dungeon bash with trolls on the other side of the next door).

[Dork_Forge]

I don't have in-game experience with Simulacrum, admittedly, but isn't it, specially one with the Wizard chassis, the quintessential glass-cannon? We are talking about a creature with around 50 hit points in a time where the adventurers are supposed to be already well known by the main antagonists of the campaign. It should be targeted mercilessly and killed as fast as possible.

As long as the Wizard isn't an Abjurer then yeah it's very squishy, a Wizard at 13th level with a +1 Con (despite a lot of builds here, ime +1 is more common on Wizards) would have 67 hp, giving their Simulacrum 33hp. There's plenty of creatures in the CR13 range that would instakill it without the need for crits.

[ATHATH]

What about Bards who dip Wizard 1 (or even go as far as dipping Diviner 2 for Portent, although I feel like you'd be better off going full Diviner at that point) for level 1 Wizard spell ritual casting, Find Familiar, Shield, and Absorb Elements?

[LudicSavant]

I don't have in-game experience with Simulacrum, admittedly, but isn't it, specially one with the Wizard chassis, the quintessential glass-cannon? We are talking about a creature with around 50 hit points in a time where the adventurers are supposed to be already well known by the main antagonists of the campaign. It should be targeted mercilessly and killed as fast as possible.

Yes. Though halving a Wizard's (base) hit points does not make it twice as easy to kill them, especially if you just doubled their actions. The thing about Wizards is that they (usually) have weak passive defenses, and very strong active ones.

[diplomancer]

Yes. Though halving a Wizard's (base) hit points does not make it twice as easy to kill them, especially if you just doubled their actions. The thing about Wizards is that they (usually) have weak passive defenses, and very strong active ones.

1500 gp and 12 hours looks like an expensive way to waste one round of a level-appropriate opponent.

[LudicSavant]

I don't have in-game experience with Simulacrum, admittedly

1500 gp and 12 hours looks like an expensive way to waste one round of a level-appropriate opponent.

It's not going to be 'wasting one round of a level-appropriate opponent.'

Base hit points, especially at Tier 3+, is not and never has been the primary obstacle to taking out a high level Wizard, or their Simulacrum.

[diplomancer]

It's not going to be 'wasting one round of a level-appropriate opponent.'

Base hit points, especially at Tier 3+, is not and never has been the primary obstacle to taking out a high level Wizard, or their Simulacrum.

A high level wizard, yes. Their simulacrum, which can't grow more powerful (so it's a DM call whether they can be buffed by, say, Hero's Feast), is going down on the first round against, for instance, an Adult Green Dragon, while it's also damaging the rest of the party(a Medium Encounter for a 13th level, 4 person party).

Yes, I have no in-game experience. But I would be interested to learn more about how to make the simulacrum last, specially since I will be coming to 14th level soon with my Lore Bard and want to know if it's worth a magical secret.

[LudicSavant]

A high level wizard, yes. Their simulacrum, which can't grow more powerful (so it's a DM call whether they can be buffed by, say, Hero's Feast), is going down on the first round against, for instance, an Adult Green Dragon, while it's also damaging the rest of the party(a Medium Encounter for a 13th level, 4 person party).

Yes, I have no in-game experience. But I would be interested to learn more about how to make the simulacrum last, specially since I will be coming to 14th level soon with my Lore Bard and want to know if it's worth a magical secret.

Sure!

This is the first I've heard of this 'can't get more powerful means buffs have no effect' interpretation (I even tried Googling it and couldn't find anyone else having that idea, though perhaps I'm just using the wrong keywords). In terms of RAI at least, my understanding is it's supposed to be 'can't replenish resources and doesn't learn new abilities.'

Incidentally, if you were a recipient of Heroes Feast, Adult Green Dragon breath would do precisely zero damage. And the non-poison dragon breaths would do only half damage with Absorb Elements, reducing the chance of a one-shot to... anydice is rounding to "0.00."

In addition you should be using things like Contingency, temp HP, Cutting Words, defensive reactions, control spells, etc. Also you generally want to keep them well away from fireball formation, and hidden if possible. This should be particularly easy as a Lore Bard since your Simulacrum should be a very stealthy snowman.

Actually, you should be using Cutting Words against AoEs in general. It's great value because most AoEs do all their damage as one roll, so if you cut that roll, you reduce the damage everyone takes.

Also as a Bard your Simulacrum should have a bit more hit points. If you have 16 Con, it'll have 57 base hit points. That plus Cutting Words and Res(Con) makes a one-shot from a Green Dragon's breath unlikely, but you should have more than just that.

[diplomancer]

Sure!

This is the first I've heard of this 'can't get more powerful means buffs have no effect' interpretation (I even tried Googling it and couldn't find anyone else having that idea, though perhaps I'm just using the wrong keywords). In terms of RAI at least, my understanding is it's supposed to be 'can't replenish resources and doesn't learn new abilities.'

Incidentally, if you were a recipient of Heroes Feast, Adult Green Dragon breath would do precisely zero damage. And the non-poison dragon breaths would do only half damage with Absorb Elements, reducing the chance of a one-shot to... anydice is rounding to "0.00."

In addition you should be using things like Contingency, temp HP, Cutting Words, defensive reactions, control spells, etc. Also you generally want to keep them well away from fireball formation, and hidden if possible. This should be particularly easy as a Lore Bard since your Simulacrum should be a very stealthy snowman.

Actually, you should be using Cutting Words against AoEs in general. It's great value because most AoEs do all their damage as one roll, so if you cut that roll, you reduce the damage everyone takes.

Also as a Bard your Simulacrum should have a bit more hit points. If you have 16 Con, it'll have 57 base hit points. That plus Cutting Words and Res(Con) makes a one-shot from a Green Dragon's breath unlikely, but you should have more than just that.

I think a simulacrum can self-buff, that is basically trading an own, limited, resource for a more useful power at that moment. But being buffed by others? I honestly don't know. I don't think a DM who said "nope" would be wrong. Sounds strictly like a ruling, not a nerfing houserule. It definitely makes the spell more balanced, in a similar way that DM choosing creatures makes the Conjure line of spells more balanced.

[heavyfuel]

I think this is comparing apples to oranges. The classes both fill out different roles, except in combat where they are both (usually) "controllers".


I think tier 2 bards are great, but even without fireball I'd still give a slight edge to wizards.

1. Arcane recovery means more spell slots per day than the bard.
2. Rituals are great for utility. Wizards can access more rituals in a day. Being able to cast Leomunds Tiny Hut without preparing it is great.
3. Plus wizards get better defense (shield, absorb elements, mirror image, counter spell) and movement (misty step, fly).
4. I still find web useful at these levels as probably the best 2nd level combat spell.

You'll have to decide if the above is better than the class features the bard gets. I enjoy playing both but find wizards more satisfying.

Seconding everything here

[MaxWilson]

As far as I know, there is no official published adventure where it isn't just amazing, nor have I ever seen a campaign where it wasn't... and I've played an awful lot, with a wide variety of DMs and playstyles.

At my table I try to make sure it's good but not amazing, similar in power level to Planar Binding a conjured Fey. (A Simulacrum of a 13th level PC comes out as sort of a very listless copy of that same PC at 5th to 8th level, depending on rolls.) Still worth a spell slot but no longer a broken extreme outlier among 7th level spells.


I don't have in-game experience with Simulacrum, admittedly, but isn't it, specially one with the Wizard chassis, the quintessential glass-cannon? We are talking about a creature with around 50 hit points in a time where the adventurers are supposed to be already well known by the main antagonists of the campaign. It should be targeted mercilessly and killed as fast as possible.

Between Inspiring Leader, possible Aid, AC 20ish, Shield, Absorb Elements, Dimension Door/Expeditious Retreat, Polymorph, Blur, Protection From Evil, Wall of Force, possibly Lucky feat, etc., 5E wizards need not be glass cannons at all, and neither therefore do their Simulacra. (Besides, by RAW you can just as easily make a Simulacrum of a tanky PC instead like a Paladin 6/Warlock 7, and keep it healed to full HP via Aura of Vitality, which can heal constructs.)

Simulacrum is an awful, broken spell which should not be run RAW. It's at least an order of magnitude more powerful than other 7th level spells.

[Ashrym]

Of course, that still leaves the entire rest of that list.

...

The point being made isn't that the Wizard will prep all of those at the same time. It's that Magical Secrets (being talked up as the best feature in the game by the OP) isn't giving you some ginormous, game-shattering advantage over the Wizard's spell list (which is well over twice the size of the Bard's spell list to begin with).

Even if we just count Tier 1-2 spells, a Wizard has 143 spells that aren't on the Bard list, and many of them are "consider grabbing with Magical Secrets" quality. A lot more than just two.

Bards also have access to many worthwhile spells wizards don't -- on the bard list and from the other spell lists. There's no spell not accessible through secrets.

I also think secrets doesn't give the game breaking advantage some people think (I actually think it's highly over-rated), and my point was that the spell list isn't really the advantage. The advantage is prep because that enables using more of the bigger list.


Bard's a healer due to Healing Word, right? Have none of you ever played with a wizard who took Life Transference?

Yes.

The spell works better with vampiric touch shenanigans but HP recovery isn't the challenge anyway. Removing stays effects is less common with wizards.


No.
But I wish people would stop using Simulacrum or Clone as a tier 3 comparison for Wizards. By and large, you can't actually cast it in any campaign-useful level of effect. Or you might do it once, like summoning Pixies, or something, when it's *really needed* for the story to continue.

If you do think those spells are just "standard wizard/ bard-secret" stuff...

Don't need those because wish is a pretty standard secret to pick up. Wish eliminates every "doesn't have this spell" argument up to 8th-level spells, albeit with a hefty slot requirement and not spammable.

But it's still delayed into tier four. That gets back to magical secrets only going so far. It's unlikely a wizard won't gain those spells in tier three and swap them in/out during downtime to make use of them.

[LudicSavant]

For reference...

The Tier 2 Bard has 108 spells on their list.

The Tier 2 Wizard has 223 spells on their list. (~206%)

The Tier 2 Bard list has 28 spells that the Wizard doesn't.

The Tier 2 Wizard list has 143 spells that the Bard doesn't. (~511%)

All Tier 2 non-Bard/Wizard classes combined have 77 spells that the Wizard doesn't, of a level that can be procured by Lore Bard's Magical Secrets at 6.

Make of that what you will.

[diplomancer]

To the topic at hand... I still think instrument of the bards makes a big difference here in Tier 2, as I mentioned earlier. Is there any Wizard specific (or even just anything at all) uncommon magical item that is as powerful as a Fochluran Bandore for a Bard? I can't think of anything.

[Ashrym]

For reference...

The Tier 2 Bard has 108 spells on their list.

The Tier 2 Wizard has 223 spells on their list. (~206%)

The Tier 2 Bard list has 28 spells that the Wizard doesn't.

The Tier 2 Wizard list has 143 spells that the Bard doesn't. (~511%)

All Tier 2 non-Bard/Wizard classes combined have 77 spells that the Wizard doesn't, of a level that can be procured by Lore Bard's Magical Secrets at 6.

Make of that what you will.

How many of those spells are actually in use?

A 5th-level bard knows 8 spells. This grows to 14 spells on a 10th-level bard. Secrets are available at 10th level (relevant because it's part of the tier and a single level from the 5th-level spells mentioned) and lore bards add additional secrets at 6th level.

There are 0 spells on the wizard list that are unavailable to bards due to secrets on top of the spells not available to wizards pointed out.

A 5th-level wizard preps 9 spells assuming 18 INT at that point. This increases to 15 spells at 10th level assuming 20 INT by then. The spells prepped fall between a standard bard and a lore bard spells known.

The bigger list isn't a significant advantage unless we make the assumption the quality of spells prepared will typically be better than the quality of the spells known, which isn't a fair assumption. Both classes will have good spells known / prepped at any given time.

The bigger list only has any significant relevance because preparation gives access to other spells in the spell book in the situation where incentive, sufficient advanced knowledge, and time are available to facilitate swapping spells. At that point the wizard still only has access to what's in the spell book and not the full spell list.

For the larger spell list to really matter the bard would need to run out of significant spells before running out of spells known, which isn't an issue; or the wizard would need to prep a significant number more than the bard knows, which also doesn't occur.

Magical secrets gets over-rated, but so does the the bigger spell list when it's restricted by spells scribed and spells prepared at any given time anyway.

I think my point stands: it's not the size of the list; it's the prep and ritual caster mechanics that make the real difference. Take those away and the rest of the list cannot be accessed in game play.

Plus arcane recovery for more slots per day also mattering, but the value of more spells versus skills and inspiration is more subjective.

[MaxWilson]

Maybe Wand of Magic Missiles could be better for a Hexvoker in the aggregate due to no-attunement letting it scale, but even then Instrument of the Bards is still probably better as an individual item.

[LudicSavant]

How many of those spells are actually in use?

A 5th-level bard knows 8 spells. This grows to 14 spells on a 10th-level bard. Secrets are available at 10th level (relevant because it's part of the tier and a single level from the 5th-level spells mentioned) and lore bards add additional secrets at 6th level.

There are 0 spells on the wizard list that are unavailable to bards due to secrets on top of the spells not available to wizards pointed out.

A 5th-level wizard preps 9 spells assuming 18 INT at that point. This increases to 15 spells at 10th level assuming 20 INT by then. The spells prepped fall between a standard bard and a lore bard spells known.

The bigger list isn't a significant advantage unless we make the assumption the quality of spells prepared will typically be better than the quality of the spells known, which isn't a fair assumption. Both classes will have good spells known / prepped at any given time.

The bigger list only has any significant relevance because preparation gives access to other spells in the spell book in the situation where incentive, sufficient advanced knowledge, and time are available to facilitate swapping spells. At that point the wizard still only has access to what's in the spell book and not the full spell list.

For the larger spell list to really matter the bard would need to run out of significant spells before running out of spells known, which isn't an issue; or the wizard would need to prep a significant number more than the bard knows, which also doesn't occur.

Magical secrets gets over-rated, but so does the the bigger spell list when it's restricted by spells scribed and spells prepared at any given time anyway.

I think my point stands: it's not the size of the list; it's the prep and ritual caster mechanics that make the real difference. Take those away and the rest of the list cannot be accessed in game play.

Plus arcane recovery for more slots per day also mattering, but the value of more spells versus skills and inspiration is more subjective.

Do you think that Magical Secrets is the best feature in the game or don't you? If you don't, what on earth is the position you think you are arguing against?

[Ashrym]

Do you think that Magical Secrets is the best feature in the game or don't you? If you don't, what on earth is the position you think you are arguing against?

Magical secrets is not the best feature in the game. I've called it over-rated many times.

I also believe the larger wizard spell list is over-rated because all classes play with what's known / prepped, not the full list. A list of spells not known or prepped is meaningless regardless of how long that list might be, which is where I was going with that, because they aren't available during gameplay.

What matters here is both classes can load up on good spells, and both bards and wizards have more than enough access to spells each other won't given the limits on known / prepared.

[LudicSavant]

What matters here is both classes can load up on good spells

What I don't understand is why you seem to be saying that as though it's disagreeing with someone's statement.

[Nagog]

Both classes are classes I love and play often, but I'd go so far as to say that Bard almost always beats out Wizard, in almost all tiers of play. That's a controversial stance, but Bard has something to offer in every situation or circumstance, they're built that way. Wizards are built to be extremely powerful damage dealers and utility casters, but often lack in other areas of play. Bards can often keep up or surpass Wizards in those areas depending on tier of play or Magical Secrets choices, but also blow them out of the water in other areas like skills, healing, support capacity, etc. So while I love playing Wizards for the great versatility and power they have in their fields, as an overall class they don't quite compete with Bards.

It's like comparing Barbarians to Rogues. Barbarians are the top tier martial in 2 categories: Sustained Damage and Tanking. Rogues can deal good Nova Damage, but are not nearly as tanky. But they also have skills and abilities that help them outside of combat as well. The comparison can be made, but Rogues will always win a lineup unless you're looking only at Combat, which the Barbarian specializes in.

[Dork_Forge]

Both classes are classes I love and play often, but I'd go so far as to say that Bard almost always beats out Wizard, in almost all tiers of play. That's a controversial stance, but Bard has something to offer in every situation or circumstance, they're built that way. Wizards are built to be extremely powerful damage dealers and utility casters, but often lack in other areas of play. Bards can often keep up or surpass Wizards in those areas depending on tier of play or Magical Secrets choices, but also blow them out of the water in other areas like skills, healing, support capacity, etc. So while I love playing Wizards for the great versatility and power they have in their fields, as an overall class they don't quite compete with Bards.

It's like comparing Barbarians to Rogues. Barbarians are the top tier martial in 2 categories: Sustained Damage and Tanking. Rogues can deal good Nova Damage, but are not nearly as tanky. But they also have skills and abilities that help them outside of combat as well. The comparison can be made, but Rogues will always win a lineup unless you're looking only at Combat, which the Barbarian specializes in.

Agree on Bard vs Wizard, but I do have to disagree about the Rogue thing. Sustained damage is the whole point of Sneak Attack, they're not the best damage dealers, but they can do it all day long without a resource so long as they leverage the conditions in their favour. On the other hand, it's entirely possible for a Barbarian to run out of rages in a day (or be in combat without one due to conservation), at which point they drop off severely in all areas.

[sithlordnergal]

A high level wizard, yes. Their simulacrum, which can't grow more powerful (so it's a DM call whether they can be buffed by, say, Hero's Feast), is going down on the first round against, for instance, an Adult Green Dragon, while it's also damaging the rest of the party(a Medium Encounter for a 13th level, 4 person party).

Yes, I have no in-game experience. But I would be interested to learn more about how to make the simulacrum last, specially since I will be coming to 14th level soon with my Lore Bard and want to know if it's worth a magical secret.

I personally wouldn't take it on a Bard. Yes, its a good spell, but its limited by how easy it is to destroy. Anti-Magic Sphere, Dispel Magic, damage, they can all instantly get rid of your Simulacrum. I play a lot of Adventure's League, and I've stopped using Simulacrum with my Wizard simply because it always dies near the beginning of the adventure, and it costs too much to replace. Now, it can do quite a lot, and I would consider it a major, worthwhile investment...if you're an Abjuration or Necromancer Wizard. But outside of that, its generally not worth it.

Also, pro-tip for anyone who is a high enough level. Simulacrum is, technically, a creature with all of your stats. You can, technically, cast Simulacrum, then True Polymorph, to turn it into a perfect version of yourself, but with the same personality of a simulacrum. Meaning you might be able to get it to listen to you because of that.

[Ashrym]

What I don't understand is why you seem to be saying that as though it's disagreeing with someone's statement.

What I disagree with is the degree of impact a longer spell list has, the wizard in particular in this discussion.

I made the observation that spell preparation is more significant than a longer list. So is the ritual casting mechanic wizards use. These abilities give some impact to the longer list but not what some people think, and without them the longer list loses most of it's impact. Those are observations not agreeing or disagreeing with anyone. They are given to explain my opinion.

In my head the tone here is a discussion instead of arguing, in case that's not clear. ;)

I'll give advantages for either.

[LudicSavant]

What I disagree with is the degree of impact a longer spell list has You disagree with what statement, from what person, about the degree of impact a longer spell list has?

[MaxWilson]

You disagree with what statement, from what person, about the degree of impact a longer spell list has?


What I disagree with is the degree of impact a longer spell list has, the wizard in particular in this discussion.

I made the observation that spell preparation is more significant than a longer list. So is the ritual casting mechanic wizards use. These abilities give some impact to the longer list but not what some people think, and without them the longer list loses most of it's impact. Those are observations not agreeing or disagreeing with anyone. They are given to explain my opinion.

In my head the tone here is a discussion instead of arguing, in case that's not clear. ;)

I'll give advantages for either.

FWIW, Ashrym, I am not sure what you and LudicSavant are discussing, but taking your observations as observations and not as argument, I found your observations on the interaction between spell list size ("all bard spells + 8 magical secrets") and spell flexibility to be thought-provoking. I think you're absolutely right that there's a correlation there but I struggle to quantify it or even describe it exactly.

I sort of want to say "the value of 'prepared casting' is the difference between the average value of the spell list you'd always have prepared if you couldn't swap spells, and the average value of the spell list you'd have prepared if you knew exactly what was coming." It's not specific enough but it's sort of the direction I'm leaning towards. It's self-evident that the ability to prepare from a whole class list (like clerics and druids) has a different impact than the ability to prepare from a self-selected subset of the class list (like wizards do). Anyway, without the ability to swap spells on the fly, prepared spellcasting has zero value (obviously), and if your spells known are numerous enough that you have already run out of interesting spells to learn (can happen to PHB-only Eldritch Knights), hypothetical prepared spellcasting also loses value.

There's a relationship there and your insight is appreciated. However, I don't yet know exactly what to do with it. Still chewing it over.

[Frogreaver]

FWIW, Ashrym, I am not sure what you and LudicSavant are discussing, but taking your observations as observations and not as argument, I found your observations on the interaction between spell list size ("all bard spells + 8 magical secrets") and spell flexibility to be thought-provoking. I think you're absolutely right that there's a correlation there but I struggle to quantify it or even describe it exactly.

I sort of want to say "the value of 'prepared casting' is the difference between the average value of the spell list you'd always have prepared if you couldn't swap spells, and the average value of the spell list you'd have prepared if you knew exactly what was coming." It's not specific enough but it's sort of the direction I'm leaning towards. It's self-evident that the ability to prepare from a whole class list (like clerics and druids) has a different impact than the ability to prepare from a self-selected subset of the class list (like wizards do). Anyway, without the ability to swap spells on the fly, prepared spellcasting has zero value (obviously), and if your spells known are numerous enough that you have already run out of interesting spells to learn (can happen to PHB-only Eldritch Knights), hypothetical prepared spellcasting also loses value.

There's a relationship there and your insight is appreciated. However, I don't yet know exactly what to do with it. Still chewing it over.

I’d suggest the impact of changing the prepared list is even lower. In general, You can only benefit from preparing different spells if 2 conditions are met:

1. you have some foreknowledge that the enemies and situations you are likely to face today will be atypical.
2. You’re not already preparing the best spells for those situations and enemies.

I suggest meeting both of those requirements is fairly rare, especially for combat uses. It’s a little more feasible for certain exploration/social scenarios.

[x3n0n]

I’d suggest the impact of changing the prepared list is even lower. In general, You can only benefit from preparing different spells if 2 conditions are met:

1. you have some foreknowledge that the enemies and situations you are likely to face today will be atypical.
2. You’re not already preparing the best spells for those situations and enemies.

I suggest meeting both of those requirements is fairly rare, especially for combat uses. It’s a little more feasible for certain exploration/social scenarios.

Fairly rare, but a few particular exceptions jump out at me: dealing with yesterday's situation (e.g. Raise Dead), "pre-buffs" that carry over a long rest but are not high enough priority to prepare daily (Simulacrum? Heroes' Feast? Contingency?), and choosing what day to address a specific upcoming situation (e.g. Alter Self for swimming speed).

Several of the Wizard's more valuable niche spells are rituals, which changes their calculus (paradoxically making it less valuable to prepare those spells). Other preparation ritual casters still need to prepare their rituals, so they still consume preparation slots.

[LudicSavant]

You can only benefit from preparing different spells if 2 conditions are met:

1. you have some foreknowledge that the enemies and situations you are likely to face today will be atypical.
2. You’re not already preparing the best spells for those situations and enemies.

I can think of quite a lot of situations where you can benefit that do not meet your criteria. Here's just a few of them:

The first is that you can cast spells on one day that continue to be relevant in the future even if you don't prepare them that day. For example, casting an "until dispelled" effect, then switching out that slot. Heck, you can even do stuff like prepare a bunch of spells, cast a Simulacrum, then prepare an entirely different set of spells tomorrow. You can't do that with a Sorcerer's version of Simulacrum even when they get it with Wish.

The second is that some spells don't need to be prepared the instant a situation comes up in order to dramatically help out that situation. For example, if you get cursed, you can prepare Remove Curse tomorrow. If you learn you need to travel to the other side of the planet, you can prepare Teleport tomorrow and it's still gonna be way faster than walking.

The third is that you don't need to know exactly what's coming, you just need to have a nonzero amount of information that allows you to constrain your range of anticipation by a nonzero amount. And that's all you need in order to create a Bayesian estimate that allows you to hedge your bets and get greater returns for the adventuring day.

Even just "going outside and looking around" is a sufficient clue to at least get a better-than-nothing estimate. And you often have far more information than that -- it's just a matter of noticing it. Certainly in the published modules you do. For example Storm King's Thunder straight up starts with you hearing rumors about goblins terrorizing the local settlements. And it's pretty anvilicious when it comes to warning you about what kind of giants you're gonna be up against next.

The fourth is that I can proactively seek out this information myself, rather than just hope it's given to me. And frequently do.

[diplomancer]

I can think of quite a lot of situations where you can benefit that do not meet your criteria. Here's just a few of them:

The first is that you can cast spells on one day that continue to be relevant in the future even if you don't prepare them that day. For example, casting an "until dispelled" effect, then switching out that slot. Heck, you can even do stuff like prepare a bunch of spells, cast a Simulacrum, then prepare an entirely different set of spells tomorrow. You can't do that with a Sorcerer's version of Simulacrum even when they get it with Wish.

I had just thought of that recently, and think that, for a Wizard, it might be one of the best ways to use a Simulacrum, specially from a meta-gaming perspective. If you "load" your simulacrum with mostly situational, out-of-combat spells, perhaps keeping some in-combat spells prepared in case the battle gets tough, and keep the simulacrum mostly out of harm's way, that might be a way to get "full value" for your money, and DMs will not feel as great a need to get rid of it as fast as possible.

[cutlery]

I think having as many as 25 prepared spells, on top of ritual casts for utility is flat out too much.

Overall, the move away from preparing specific slots with this edition has made certain casters (druids, clerics, wizards) far more flexible than they used to be, which makes other mechanics for spellcasting look far weaker than they used to. High level spells haven't been toned down all that much to compensate, although people can cast far fewer of them per day than they used to.

Once upon a time the only way a wizard could touch a sorcerer for blasting was if they thought of it the day before and used all their slots for it. Now? Sure, prepare a few evocation spells, big deal. You can prepare plenty more, and there's your rituals, too. They took the batman out of wizarding.

Now that ritual casting is base, any wizard (or bard) can throw up a tiny hut or rope trick when the party needs to rest; and that costs them little more than the gold for the scroll or one of their two spells learned per level. It used to be more costly in terms of immediate resources (rituals were optional rules) and require planning - if you needed to rest but lost or otherwise burned the spell, you had to do it the hard way. Now? Ten minutes casting a ritual. They gave ritual casting to a few other classes, and potentially anyone that wants it via a feat, which is sort of nice, but that just makes the "utility creep" worse across the board.


Part of the "charm" of wizards in previous editions was pouring over your prepared spells, and trying to guess whether burning one now was wise. That was also part of the ease of the sorcerer - you thought a bit more about spells learned, but once that was done you only really worried about slots.

Now everyone only really has to worry about slots - wizards didn't need to be made easier to play well.

[MaxWilson]

I had just thought of that recently, and think that, for a Wizard, it might be one of the best ways to use a Simulacrum, specially from a meta-gaming perspective. If you "load" your simulacrum with mostly situational, out-of-combat spells, perhaps keeping some in-combat spells prepared in case the battle gets tough, and keep the simulacrum mostly out of harm's way, that might be a way to get "full value" for your money, and DMs will not feel as great a need to get rid of it as fast as possible.

Note: by RAW Simulacra cannot regain spell slots, but they can still change which spells they have prepared. So, you don't need to swap out your own spells before making your Simulacrum, you just treat it like a second wizard, and between the two of you just prepare whatever spells you like.

A sorcerer who makes a Simulacrum of a wizard via Wish can of course do the exact same thing. (It can even be an enemy wizard!)

[HPisBS]

Note: by RAW Simulacra cannot regain spell slots, but they can still change which spells they have prepared. So, you don't need to swap out your own spells before making your Simulacrum, you just treat it like a second wizard, and between the two of you just prepare whatever spells you like.

A sorcerer who makes a Simulacrum of a wizard via Wish can of course do the exact same thing. (It can even be an enemy wizard!)

Ah, but can a Simulacrum of an enemy Artificer craft items, make Infusions, or a spell-storing item?

[MaxWilson]

Ah, but can a Simulacrum of an enemy Artificer craft items, make Infusions, or a spell-storing item?

By RAW, yes, they can do anything the original can do except learn or regain spell slots.

This is one of the reasons Simulacrum should not be run as written. It's an order of magnitude more powerful than other 7th level spells.

[LudicSavant]

By RAW, yes, they can do anything the original can do except learn or regain spell slots.

This is one of the reasons Simulacrum should not be run as written. It's an order of magnitude more powerful than other 7th level spells.

Mind, RAW simulacrum is so powerful you basically can't even play it -- I think it's reasonable to assume at least the stated RAI version (which has more explicit limitations).

Honestly they should just bloody errata it already. They mentioned doing so before...

[HPisBS]

By RAW, yes, they can do anything the original can do except learn or regain spell slots.

This is one of the reasons Simulacrum should not be run as written. It's an order of magnitude more powerful than other 7th level spells.

...
Honestly they should just bloody errata it already. They mentioned doing so before...

How about making it an 8th level spell instead?

Also, what's with the color? lol

[Eldariel]

How about making it an 8th level spell instead?

Also, what's with the color? lol

It's OP as a 9th level spell. Or 10th level for that matter. Or as anything. Getting a second full set of actions that at worst can cast every spell you can cast minus one 7th level slot is just absurdly ridiculously stupidly broken. And that's the floor level. And it's a downtime spell so literally the only opportunity cost is a pittance of gold and one spell known. No concentration, no spell prepared, no upkeep, none. If it were adjudicable, 3e-style "half casting" would be good enough. It'd still be ridiculous but slightly less so. But the issue is, half casting for innate casting? It would have to be written into monster entries how they scale down with HD: which woulda been supercool if WotC went through the trouble but they didn't so this is basically just not doable. In general, this kind of stuff is where the "build monsters randomly as you feel like"-stuff really bites the game in the rear (True Polymorph, Shapechange, Polymorph, Magic Jar, Wish, Summons, etc. are the other). Which is why I don't play that way myself but of course that does nothing to help the main game.

[HPisBS]

It's OP as a 9th level spell. Or 10th level for that matter.

Nonsense. True Polymorph alone is superior, to say nothing of Wish. It may not allow you quite the action economy advantage of Simulacrum, but it's still a much larger pile of extra hp, can give you powers you don't have access to, and can give you more spells to cast on top of all that. And that's just the obvious applications.

I'll concede that it may be more powerful than 8th level standouts like Feeblemind, though I'd say even that is debatable for all the reasons others pointed out previously.

[MaxWilson]

How about making it an 8th level spell instead?

Also, what's with the color? lol

It's more powerful than 8th level spells too. Even as a 9th level spell it would be unusually powerful, about on par with Wish.

================================


Nonsense. True Polymorph alone is superior, to say nothing of Wish. It may not allow you quite the action economy advantage of Simulacrum, but it's still a much larger pile of extra hp, can give you powers you don't have access to, and can give you more spells to cast on top of all that. And that's just the obvious applications.

And yet, making a Simulacrum of someone with True Polymorph gives you True Polymorph plus everything else they have.

[LudicSavant]

How about making it an 8th level spell instead?

Also, what's with the color? lol

His sig explains the color.

[Eldariel]

Nonsense. True Polymorph alone is superior, to say nothing of Wish. It may not allow you quite the action economy advantage of Simulacrum, but it's still a much larger pile of extra hp, can give you powers you don't have access to, and can give you more spells to cast on top of all that. And that's just the obvious applications.

Incidentally True Polymorph gets much better when you have a perfectly loyal extra body to polymorph, i.e. a Simulacrum. They are not exclusive in the slightest - on the contrary, they enhance one another in many ways.

[HPisBS]

Incidentally True Polymorph gets much better when you have a perfectly loyal extra body to polymorph, i.e. a Simulacrum. They are not exclusive in the slightest - on the contrary, they enhance one another in many ways.

Sure, but it's not at all clear how they interact. Does the Simulacrum's "CR" = the copied creature's level / CR? Is its "CR" halved since it only has half the hp? Is it an average of the two?

- No, clue, ask your DM.


Does the perfectly loyal Simulacrum cease to be so after being (permanently) TP'd?

- Ask your DM.


After you've permanently TP'd a Simulacrum, can you then make a new Simulacrum on account of your old Simulacrum no longer technically being a Simulacrum?

- Ask your DM.


If your DM is concerned about the power of Simulacrum, there's plenty of ways to limit that power without changing a single word that's written in the spell. Not to mention how relatively squishy they are.


Edit:
But of course, all of this is tangential to the purpose of the thread. As far as the actual thread goes, I'd say Bard and Wizard are roughly equal. Bards get toys Wizards don't get (Magical Secrets, Bardic Inspiration). Wizards are better and more flexible at using the toys they do have (prepared spells + ritual cast non-prepared spells), and can use them more often (Arcane Recovery). Bards absolutely dominate at skills.

[Eldariel]

Sure, but it's not at all clear how they interact. Does the Simulacrum's "CR" = the copied creature's level / CR? Is its "CR" halved since it only has half the hp? Is it an average of the two?

- No, clue, ask your DM.

That's explicit actually: Copy everything but stated. So the same.


Does the perfectly loyal Simulacrum cease to be so after being (permanently) TP'd?

- Ask your DM.

It's still the simulacrum, just with an effect. Simulacrum itself is 100% loyal. True Polymorph retains alignment and personality - so it's really hard to argue that it'd stop being loyal to you.


After you've permanently TP'd a Simulacrum, can you then make a new Simulacrum on account of your old Simulacrum no longer technically being a Simulacrum?

- Ask your DM.

Probably not since True Polymorph is a dispellable layered magical effect rather than a permanent change.


I'd say all of those have fairly clear RAW answers; DM can rule 0 it of course but by RAW we can figure all of those out. Not that it matters much: regardless of how it's ruled, Simulacrum + TP still remains incredible compared to just TP. Simulacrum is like a meta-spell: it just gives you more and better of everything you've already got. So whatever you can do gets better with it. No matter how good your other stuff is, Simulacrum means you have more of it and thus makes it better.

[cutlery]

By RAW, yes, they can do anything the original can do except learn or regain spell slots.

This is one of the reasons Simulacrum should not be run as written. It's an order of magnitude more powerful than other 7th level spells.

I know you aren't interested in defending purple text, but I completely agree. It is one of the handful of wizard spells that make an already strong late-game class ultrabusted.

Why Simulacrum is 7th level when Clone is 8th, I don't know.

[HPisBS]

That's explicit actually: Copy everything but stated. So the same.

Is it, though? CR seems less a part of the stat block in and of itself, and more of a classification. As in "ABCDEF ability scores + G proficiencies + X hp + Y abilities = __ CR."

Change the hp and you change the CR side of the equation, too.


It's still the simulacrum, just with an effect. Simulacrum itself is 100% loyal. True Polymorph retains alignment and personality - so it's really hard to argue that it'd stop being loyal to you.

I'd bet you've seen the same True Polymorphed Simulacrum arguments I have. The reasoning goes that since True Polymorph permanently (*) changes the Simulacrum from an illusory construct into a dragon or whatever, it would then no longer have a construct's "loyalty" and would instead become flesh-and-blood, with all the free will / self-determination that entails. A "real boy," as it were.



I'd say all of those have fairly clear RAW answers; DM can rule 0 it of course but by RAW we can figure all of those out. Not that it matters much: regardless of how it's ruled, Simulacrum + TP still remains incredible compared to just TP. Simulacrum is like a meta-spell: it just gives you more and better of everything you've already got. So whatever you can do gets better with it. No matter how good your other stuff is, Simulacrum means you have more of it and thus makes it better.

A DM would be perfectly within his rights to interpret Simulacrum as I laid out above. Even if you think there's a better interpretation - even if there actually is a better interpretation - it doesn't contradict anything in the RAW. (Iirc. The CR thing may be spelled out somewhere afaik.)


...
Why Simulacrum is 7th level when Clone is 8th, I don't know.

One turns "People die when they are killed!" into a lie. It effectively makes you immortal. The rest of your party, too, if you can afford it.

The other temporarily doubles your personal action economy - until its smaller hp pool runs out. And doubles your spell slots - until they run out once. Then, it's another 1500 gold (and a day-long spell) to refill them.


As for comparing a Bard's Simulacrum vs a Wizard's Simulacrum, the Wizard's preparation & ritual mechanics give it the clear edge in this case.

(I imagine that if it can't regain spent spell slots, then it also can't regain spent Bardic Inspiration. Right?)

[MaxWilson]

Is it, though? CR seems less a part of the stat block in and of itself, and more of a classification. As in "ABCDEF ability scores + G proficiencies + X hp + Y abilities = __ CR."

Change the hp and you change the CR side of the equation, too.

True Polymorph
Creature into Creature: If you turn a creature into another kind of creature, the new form can be any kind you choose whose Challenge rating is equal to or less than the target's (or its level, if the target doesn't have a Challenge rating). The target's game Statistics, including mental Ability Scores, are replaced by the Statistics of the new form. It retains its Alignment and personality.

CR is irrelevant when True Polymorphing a Simulacrum. You're only relying on its level. I don't even know anybody who routinely calculates the CR of their PC or their PC's Simulacrum.

[HPisBS]

True Polymorph
Creature into Creature: If you turn a creature into another kind of creature, the new form can be any kind you choose whose Challenge rating is equal to or less than the target's (or its level, if the target doesn't have a Challenge rating). The target's game Statistics, including mental Ability Scores, are replaced by the Statistics of the new form. It retains its Alignment and personality.

CR is irrelevant when True Polymorphing a Simulacrum. You're only relying on its level. I don't even know anybody who routinely calculates the CR of their PC or their PC's Simulacrum.

I would contend a Simulacrum doesn't have a level since it isn't a PC. I'd also contend that reading it in this way is one perfectly valid way to limit what could otherwise be a brokenly OP spell.

It may be semantics as much as anything, but if you're worried about something being too OP, then splitting these hairs can be a way to manage that power without appearing to want to just take the player's fun toys away.

Edit:
But either way, Wizards do it better than Bards. Even if you let the Bard's Simulacrum short rest to recover Bardic Inspiration.

[MaxWilson]

I would contend a Simulacrum doesn't have a level since it isn't a PC.

You shape an illusory duplicate of one beast or Humanoid that is within range for the entire Casting Time of the spell. The duplicate is a creature, partially real and formed from ice or snow, and it can take Actions and otherwise be affected as a normal creature. It appears to be the same as the original, but it has half the creature's hit point maximum and is formed without any Equipment. Otherwise, the illusion uses all the statistics of the creature it duplicates.

The original has a Level statistic, ergo the illusionary copy has a level statistic.

Besides, classes and class levels aren't just for PCs, or there wouldn't be NPC-only classes like Oathbreaker and Death Cleric.


I'd also contend that reading it in this way is one perfectly valid way to limit what could otherwise be a brokenly OP spell.

If you're going to revise the spell, revise the spell--don't hide behind a twisted interpretation as a pretext.


It may be semantics as much as anything, but if you're worried about something being too OP, then splitting these hairs can be a way to manage that power without appearing to want to just take the player's fun toys away.

Players aren't dumb. They'll know what you're doing.

[HPisBS]

Players aren't dumb. They'll know what you're doing.

I mean, yeah. In my mind, I'm the one playing a character with these rules lol.

(In reality, though, I didn't quite get to play my Bard to lvl 14.)

[Aaron Underhand]

But of course, all of this is tangential to the purpose of the thread. As far as the actual thread goes, I'd say Bard and Wizard are roughly equal. Bards get toys Wizards don't get (Magical Secrets, Bardic Inspiration). Wizards are better and more flexible at using the toys they do have (prepared spells + ritual cast non-prepared spells), and can use them more often (Arcane Recovery). Bards absolutely dominate at skills.


^^ This,

I would also add that Bard has better multiclass options from a pure mechanical/optimisation point of view...

[MrStabby]

I’d suggest the impact of changing the prepared list is even lower. In general, You can only benefit from preparing different spells if 2 conditions are met:

1. you have some foreknowledge that the enemies and situations you are likely to face today will be atypical.
2. You’re not already preparing the best spells for those situations and enemies.

I suggest meeting both of those requirements is fairly rare, especially for combat uses. It’s a little more feasible for certain exploration/social scenarios.

Whilst I think this is true, it highlights the issue I think.

The focus on combat.

And there are other pillars. A bard or sorcerer can learn spells for when in town and not in dungeons, they can have spells they use that are not directly for fighting enemies but it costs them combat versatility. There is a trade off.

For the likes of wizards the tradeoff is a lot less pronounced. You can prepare your fabricates, your divinations, your geas and such like for being in town and not expecting a full adventuring day worth of combat and as the peril rating rises swap in more combat spells. You get to excel in more pillars of the game at the cost of scribing a few more spells. Even more so due to the powerful ritual casting.

The more complex and diverse a game is, the better the broader range of spells is.

[cutlery]

For the likes of wizards the tradeoff is a lot less pronounced. You can prepare your fabricates, your divinations, your geas and such like for being in town and not expecting a full adventuring day worth of combat and as the peril rating rises swap in more combat spells. You get to excel in more pillars of the game at the cost of scribing a few more spells. Even more so due to the powerful ritual casting.



Do they, though?

A wizard won't replace a dedicated scout (until perhaps Tier 4, but even then whenever the group goes somewhere, scouting is useful), nor will they easily spell their way out of the social pillar.

A wizard can contribute to these pillars - but so can a bard. They have more skills and access to expertise; they also have good synergy with their casting stat and social skills, and jack of all trades is nice, too.


I think you'd need a very particular setup for a wizard to be more useful in these pillars, and that won't work in all cases. A wizard won't easily have expertise in perception or persuasion, and if you roll around charming people in town the swords might come out - that probably won't happen for a bard just talking to someone. Steps up from charm make the swords even more likely.

And, there can always be combat encounters while the wizard has a loadout aimed at exploration - indeed, that seems the ideal time to have one, doesn't it?

[MrStabby]

Do they, though?

A wizard won't replace a dedicated scout (until perhaps Tier 4, but even then whenever the group goes somewhere, scouting is useful), nor will they easily spell their way out of the social pillar.

A wizard can contribute to these pillars - but so can a bard. They have more skills and access to expertise; they also have good synergy with their casting stat and social skills, and jack of all trades is nice, too.


I think you'd need a very particular setup for a wizard to be more useful in these pillars, and that won't work in all cases. A wizard won't easily have expertise in perception or persuasion, and if you roll around charming people in town the swords might come out - that probably won't happen for a bard just talking to someone. Steps up from charm make the swords even more likely.

And, there can always be combat encounters while the wizard has a loadout aimed at exploration - indeed, that seems the ideal time to have one, doesn't it?

I think there is a risk that you can fall into the trap of thinking that it is the social encounters that are replaced by spells, rather it is the function that the encounters serve.

Asking about in town to find the whereabouts of the long lost son might be replaced by locate person, finding your fighter's ancestral weapon by locate object, and who needs persuasion when you can use detect thoughts?

Being able to swap in two or three spells of this ilk whilst in town let's you contribute to these activities better than most with no cost in terms of lost spells known for dungeon delving.

[Eldariel]

A wizard won't replace a dedicated scout (until perhaps Tier 4, but even then whenever the group goes somewhere, scouting is useful), nor will they easily spell their way out of the social pillar.

In my experience, Wizard actually does not only replace a dedicated scout but completely clowns them. It's really weak to just walk in front of the party and hope that nobody spots you; you're constrained by where you can move, by what you can perceive, by what you can comprehend, etc. Meanwhile, magical scouting often obviates some or all of those issues and more to the point, doesn't put you at risk. Whether or not your arcane eye or familiar or whatever spots targets, you don't put yourself in harm's way if you do fail a check. Physical scouts are liable to get caught alone against encounters the whole party should be there for and thus it's quite likely they'll get obliterated before help comes if they do get spotted. Also, many actual scouts lack magical senses and the option to e.g. fly over chasms or look through walls.

If we take the divination school as a whole and add Find Familiar, we're talking a very potent scouting setup. Find Familiar, Detect Thoughts, Clairvoyance, Arcane Eye, Scrying off the top of my head are very good at getting information about the target location and potential threats without even going in. And you can just cast another set of your "sight" spells if you don't have sufficient data. Scouting is certainly one thing where magic is totally indispensible: nobody can physically get information from miles away or from inaccessible areas or future adventure locales or whatever but with magic that's simple enough and most importantly, doesn't necessarily even consume resources on the day of the adventure (Arcane Eye does but it's such a nice spell that it's generally worth it). And on Tier 1, Find Familiar is simply the best combination of efficiency and safety; your Rogue or Bard or whatever blowing one check means they have a pretty decent chance of being chunky red salsa in a round's time while with Find Familiar, that's 11 minutes and 10 gold instead of a dead party member.

[cutlery]

I think there is a risk that you can fall into the trap of thinking that it is the social encounters that are replaced by spells, rather it is the function that the encounters serve.

Asking about in town to find the whereabouts of the long lost son might be replaced by locate person, finding your fighter's ancestral weapon by locate object, and who needs persuasion when you can use detect thoughts?

Being able to swap in two or three spells of this ilk whilst in town let's you contribute to these activities better than most with no cost in terms of lost spells known for dungeon delving.

Those are all fine; asking around town is sort of beneath the players in Tier 2 (for locate person); and there are simple ways to foil locate person or object - 1000 feet isn't that much range, really, and if the abductee is two villages or two mountains over, too bad, spell fails - or provides a red herring in the case of locate object. If this is an abduction, investigation might come into play, too, and anyone with divination magic might be able to shortcut that. On the other hand, someone with the criminal background might be able to shortcut the information, too.

Besides, once they have a specific goal (finding a person), how they solve it is largely up to them. The process leading up to them having that goal is where the social pillar lies to me, and in Teir 1 or 2 I don't see that being shortcut so easily, even with this sort of specific problem.

In other situations, the players may not even know what the information they are looking for is, or they may need to convince a person or group of persons to change their mind about something. Spells tend to turn that into a combat.

[LudicSavant]

A wizard won't replace a dedicated scout

Uh, since when?


A wizard won't easily have expertise in perception

Nor do they even want it as one of their Expertise picks when they do grab Expertise. They already have a Familiar with the Perception of a Cleric with the Observant feat, 120 foot Darkvision, and flight. And are one of the few classes that actually wants to max Int and therefore are great at Arcana (the skill for finding and disabling magic traps of any kind, as well as all kinds of other useful stuff) and Investigation (the skill for finding secret doors, understanding trap mechanisms, making sense of environmental clues when scouting, etc). And they have Divinations out the wazoo and (should) know how to use them. And they have abilities that would make any "proceed with an 11-foot pole" style party drool, like Mold Earth. They have access to a huge variety of spells with scouting utility, or even just directly boosting skills (like Skill Empowerment). And they have telepathic bonds to remotely coordinate with the party while scouting. And they even have stuff like Magic Mouth earpieces (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?539861-The-Arcane-Programmer-Guide-(-Official-Rules-Technique-)) and Contingencies.

And this is before I get into the stuff I took when I actually wanted to make a scout, instead of a blaster Evoker.

[cutlery]

They have a Familiar with the Perception of a Cleric with the Observant feat, 120 foot Darkvision, and flight.

An owl is better than no familiar, and better than most familiar choices, sure, but if the bulk of your scouting is the owl, the group isn't scouting very well - passive perception 13. That's limited to 100 feet away (so the wizard herself has to get out to scout an enemy camp - that might go badly), and isn't really suitable to higher difficulty hidden things one might stumble across in higher tiers - like traps or ambushes. You don't get advantage on passive perception, and the Owl is not clever.


The Owl (or other familiar) might just as easily alert whatever it is scouting to the presence of the wizard. Stealth of +3.

Really useful at Tier 1, sure, but completely obviating a scout later? Nah.

[LudicSavant]

if the bulk of your scouting is the owl

The Owl (or other familiar) might just as easily alert whatever it is scouting to the presence of the wizard. Stealth of +3.

Really useful at Tier 1, sure, but completely obviating a scout later? Nah.

The bulk? Completely obviating? You just left out the entire list of tools after "Owl."

Here's what you quoted:

They have a Familiar with the Perception of a Cleric with the Observant feat, 120 foot Darkvision, and flight.

And here's the bulk:

And are one of the few classes that actually wants to max Int and therefore are great at Arcana (the skill for finding and disabling magic traps of any kind, as well as all kinds of other useful stuff) and Investigation (the skill for finding secret doors, understanding trap mechanisms, making sense of environmental clues when scouting, etc). And they have Divinations out the wazoo and (should) know how to use them. And they have abilities that would make any "proceed with an 11-foot pole" style party drool, like Mold Earth. They have access to a huge variety of spells with scouting utility, or even just directly boosting skills (like Skill Empowerment). And they have telepathic bonds to remotely coordinate with the party while scouting. And they even have stuff like Magic Mouth earpieces (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?539861-The-Arcane-Programmer-Guide-(-Official-Rules-Technique-)) and Contingencies.

And this is before I get into the stuff I took when I actually wanted to make a scout, instead of a blaster Evoker.

[Eldariel]

An owl is better than no familiar, and better than most familiar choices, sure, but if the bulk of your scouting is the owl, the group isn't scouting very well - passive perception 13. That's limited to 100 feet away (so the wizard herself has to get out to scout an enemy camp - that might go badly), and isn't really suitable to higher difficulty hidden things one might stumble across in higher tiers - like traps or ambushes. You don't get advantage on passive perception, and the Owl is not clever.

Actually, its passive perception is 18 for sight- and hearing-based things since advantage on a check is +5 to passive scores. Which is pretty good.

EDIT: PHB page 177 sidebar in case you're curious for where to find this rule.

[LudicSavant]

passive perception 13.

No, it's 18 for any Passive Perception check where sight or hearing is relevant.

[cutlery]

No, it's 18 for any Passive Perception check where sight or hearing is relevant.

Ok, but that's still 18 at level 20, and the distance to the wizard is still in effect, which means the wizard goes out after it alone, or the party is nearby (and relevant stealth checks matter).


It's nice, but it doesn't obviate scouts for the entire game. For one, it can't open doors.

[Valmark]

Ok, but that's still 18 at level 20, and the distance to the wizard is still in effect, which means the wizard goes out after it alone, or the party is nearby (and relevant stealth checks matter).


It's nice, but it doesn't obviate scouts for the entire game.

But why exactly does the wizard need to go out? Can't they tell the owl to scout out and report later?

Regardless of the fact that 100 ft. Isn't low distance anyway.

[LudicSavant]

Ok, but that's still 18 at level 20, and the distance to the wizard is still in effect, which means the wizard goes out after it alone, or the party is nearby (and relevant stealth checks matter).


It's nice, but it doesn't obviate scouts for the entire game.

No, no it really isn't just having 18 Passive Perception at level 20. That is a very tiny fraction of the capabilities that was mentioned.

[cutlery]

No, no it really isn't just having 18 Passive Perception at level 20. That is a very tiny fraction of the capabilities that was mentioned.

Do you think it remains a suitable alternative to a rogue, ranger, or bard built for scouting throughout the game? Invisibility might stretch out it's usefulness, but that's a spell slot and concentration, and without invisibility it is likely to get noticed and eaten. It still can't open doors.

What about a rogue who also has access to an owl familiar? Or a druid who turns into a spider?

I don't think a familiar solves the scouting problem in all scenarios. If anything, I'd guess anyone that sees an owl where owls don't usually go will expect there is a wizard nearby and be on the lookout, which seems like a scouting failure to me.

[KorvinStarmast]

And they have telepathic bonds to remotely coordinate with the party while scouting. And they even have stuff like Magic Mouth earpieces (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?539861-The-Arcane-Programmer-Guide-(-Official-Rules-Technique-)) and Contingencies. Yeah, all true, but some DMs kill familiars out of hand. Our first DM killed dozens of owls before we got to level 7. (my brother's wizard; I was a cleric). Aside: I love the Magic Mouth programming guide, there's some neat stuff in there.

The Owl (or other familiar) might just as easily alert whatever it is scouting to the presence of the wizard. Stealth of +3. And my warlock casts guidance on her owl when he goes out to scout. If the party thinks it's necessary, me might burn invisibility on it. We are in the middle of tier 2.

Actually, its passive perception is 18 for sight- and hearing-based things since advantage on a check is +5 to passive scores. Which is pretty good. EDIT: PHB page 177 sidebar in case you're curious for where to find this rule. Yep, I had to share that with my brother the DM when this came up.

[LudicSavant]

I don't think a familiar solves the scouting problem in all scenarios.

The Owl (or other familiar) might just as easily alert whatever it is scouting to the presence of the wizard. Stealth of +3.

Really useful at Tier 1, sure, but completely obviating a scout later? Nah.


Ok, but that's still 18 at level 20, and the distance to the wizard is still in effect, which means the wizard goes out after it alone, or the party is nearby (and relevant stealth checks matter).


It's nice, but it doesn't obviate scouts for the entire game. For one, it can't open doors.

You keep acting like this is a discussion solely about Find Familiar, even though it never was anything remotely of the sort. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24703206&postcount=96)

A Wizard has dozens of different abilities that are relevant to scouting in addition to Find Familiar.


Do you think it remains a suitable alternative to a rogue, ranger, or bard built for scouting throughout the game?

Absolutely.


What about a rogue who also has access to an owl familiar? Or a druid who turns into a spider?

Yes, it is a suitable alternative to both of those things.

[cutlery]

Absolutely.



Yes, it is a suitable alternative to both of those things.



Nor does it need to, because a Wizard has like 100 exploration abilities that aren't Find Familiar.

You keep acting like this is a discussion solely about Find Familiar, even though it never was anything remotely of the sort. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24703206&postcount=96)


How many of these are at will?

Perhaps a wizard that devotes the bulk of their slots to scouting would fill the role, but if they devote the bulk of their slots to that for the adventuring day, they will have far fewer slots for blasting. That seems like a fine tradeoff. A rogue can get scouting done and still sneak attack later.

I'm not arguing that wizards aren't overpowered, but I still don't see them as a total replacement for scouts, particularly in the field or a dungeon crawl environment; and not without spending resources, at that.

[LudicSavant]

How many of these are at will? Quite a few actually. Of the things I mentioned in my original post, 8 specific abilities were named. 6 of them do not require spell slots.

Also, it's funny that you're suddenly italicizing 'at-will' given that your prior examples were definitely not at-will (like a Druid turning into a spider).

[MaxWilson]

Do you think it remains a suitable alternative to a rogue, ranger, or bard built for scouting throughout the game? Invisibility might stretch out it's usefulness, but that's a spell slot and concentration, and without invisibility it is likely to get noticed and eaten. It still can't open doors.

What about a rogue who also has access to an owl familiar? Or a druid who turns into a spider?

I don't think a familiar solves the scouting problem in all scenarios. If anything, I'd guess anyone that sees an owl where owls don't usually go will expect there is a wizard nearby and be on the lookout, which seems like a scouting failure to me.

Of course an owl by itself, or even with Invisibility, is not a whole-game replacement for a PC scout. Nobody said it was, they just said it is one excellent and expendable tool, but for example if you need to scout something further away from you than the width of eleven car parking spaces (100 feet), you need to switch strategies.

It does help quite a lot though to have an expendable point scout, and that's the role an owl fulfills. For deep recon use Arcane Eye, or a Chainlock Sprite, or a Roguesinger with Dimension Door, or a Shadow Monk, or a Planar Bound Invisible Stalker, etc. For actual infiltration (impersonation and talking to people) you want either a hireling or an actual PC, but my impression is that most people hate splitting the party so I doubt infiltration plays much of a role at most tables. (Even at mine I can't think of the last time someone tried it in its purest, long-term form, but writing this post makes me think about inserting more opportunities for gaining an advantage through infiltration, and/or work on game procedures to make it easier to run, without requiring hours spent in freeform roleplay with various enemy NPCs while other players sit around being bored.)

[cutlery]

Of course an owl by itself, or even with Invisibility, is not a whole-game replacement for a PC scout. Nobody said it was,

I have the distinct impression some people are saying it is.

Or that it is close enough, and handwaving the rest.

Wizards get lots of very cool toys, that's true, but particularly around Tier 2, I'd much rather have a PC scout in my group than a wizard for scouting.

Assuming anyone bothers to scout at all and doesn't instead just kick open doors.

[MaxWilson]

I have the distinct impression some people are saying it is.

The people you seem to be saying this about, e.g. LudicSavant, have repeatedly objected that this is a misrepresentation of their views.

Name one person on this thread who is claiming that an Owl familiar, by itself or with Invisibility, is in itself a sufficient all-Tiers replacement for a PC scout. I haven't seen any.



Or that it is close enough, and handwaving the rest.

So which is it? Are they or aren't they saying a owl is sufficient from 1-20?

Having gotten in similar arguments with LudicSavant myself, I agree that handwaving about Magic Mouth earpieces and Investigation skills isn't a cogent argument--but LudicSavant is still definitely NOT basing a whole argument on Owl familiars from levels 1-20. He's just not being very clear about what he _is_ arguing, which is an error of communication, not of logic.

Surely you can see with your own brain that wizards have plenty of tools for scouting besides invisible owls? Regardless of anyone else's communication, surely you don't need others to point out that e.g. Arcane Eye has a better range than familiars, or that an Invisible Stalker can open doors, or that a captured enemy can be mind-probed via Detect Thoughts to determine interior layouts/force dispositions?

Yes, that costs resources, such as spells known and spell slots, but that's where clarity of communication comes in: get everybody to state what their assumptions are about build investment, pre-adventure prep, and spell slot investment. Then you can meaningfully discuss those assumptions.

Handwaving at each other doesn't accomplish much.

[Eldariel]

What about a rogue who also has access to an owl familiar? Or a druid who turns into a spider?

Scout Rogue to me is a corpse. In general, going in front of the party alone is a bad idea. What if there's something above your powerscale in front of you? Creatures' passive perceptions go above 30: going into anything truly dangerous alone is likely to lead to a dead Rogue. I'd much rather the Rogue use their owl or arcane eye or whatever to scout and stay with the party so that they benefit of the protection of their fellow party members and can contribute as a group thus making a sudden demise far less likely. Rogue in particular is a character who really benefits of party members helping them to setup sneak attack and to multiply their dice and to grant them off-turn attacks and what-not. A lone Rogue is a dead Rogue.

Ranger is even worse: he's a half caster who has to burn a spell slot and a very sparse spell known on becoming any better of a scout than anyone with 16 Dex and Stealth proficiency (which, let's face it, a Wizard who's remotely interested in scouting or surviving in general has absolutely no reason not to have; Wizards don't need armor and Wizards already want a high Dex anyways and they have a reasonable set of free proficiencies - Arcana is the only must-have skill).


Bard is of course great at this as well as everything but a Scout Bard would have more in common with a Scout Wizard than anything else. Of course, the cost of learning e.g. Scrying or Arcane Eye is much higher for a Bard than for a Wizard since Bard can't swap spells from the Scrying day to the fighting day, which is a significant advantage in favour of the Wizard, but they can still get good at it. Of course, Bard has worse spell access but Arcane Eye honestly isn't a bad spell to Magical Secrets for a utility Bard.

Ultimately, I'd generally prefer Wizard over Bard though both are good but the Bard really wants Ritual Caster: Wizard for Find Familiar, Magic Mouth, Contact Other Plane and company off the ritual slot so as to expand their actual castable spell list without burning all their spells known on rituals you'll want anyways.

Scouting as a pillar has layers:
1) Target acquisition/information gathering: mostly divination spells like Divination, Contact Other Plane, Scrying and company work here. These let you figure out what you're dealing with/where to find what you're looking for/etc. You might or might not be able to get some information socially. Generally, even if you can, finding the people to ask is greatly aided by magic as is making them grant you their information.

2) Surveillance: Spells like Clairvoyance, Arcane Eye, familiars and company can be used to scout locales remotely and to get a lay of land, a read of enemy strength, etc. without actually entering. These effects too are mostly magic spells though Revised Ranger's creature sense ability can help a lot in this regard too (though only regarding their favoured enemies) and sometimes there are maps available or people to ask or prisoners to interrogate or so on. This is of course something you can do actual infiltration for but even there, spells like Dimension Door, Disguise Self, Misty Step, Invisibility, Pass without Trace and company are indispensable for getting in, finding what you need, remaining unnoticed, and getting out alive. Generally that should be the last resort if you for whatever reason can't get magical information otherwise: solo missions are both, socially troublesome for the game and many times more dangerous than normal adventuring since there's nobody to bail you out if things go bad.

3) Advance scout: This is what you seem to be talking about when you talk about scouting. A dude walks in front of the party looking out for threats. I generally much prefer a magical, dispensable thing scouting in front of the party rather than an actual PC whose death is of actual consequence since walking on the wrong symbol or running into the wrong thing or whatever has a very real chance of being immediately lethal to a sole PC. If you must do this with a PC, I'd say magic is paramount: being able to Contingency Dimension Door out if things go wrong and being able to turn invisible while scouting and being able to notice magical effects and so on enhances this far beyond what simple Stealth and Perception and perhaps Disguise Kit can achieve. But again, I'd rarely suggest actually scouting alone: this job is basically the job of a corpse.

[KorvinStarmast]

but if they devote the bulk of their slots to that for the adventuring day, they will have far fewer slots for blasting. On a tactical note, if you do a good enough scouting job, your battles will usually be at a time and place of your choosing. :smallwink: That allows you to set up your martials for success. It's called "shaping the battlefield" in modern military parlance. It's effective when applied well. :smallcool:

Assuming anyone bothers to scout at all and doesn't instead just kick open doors. I am trying to get our group to do that more often, as I learned old school D&D where the failure to scout resulted in either a TPK or a high body count for the friendlies.
Sometimes, though, our barbarian and our dwarf just kick in doors.

As to tools: arcane eye. Lovely scouting tool.

[MaxWilson]

*snip good discussion...*
3) Advance scout: This is what you seem to be talking about when you talk about scouting. A dude walks in front of the party looking out for threats. I generally much prefer a magical, dispensable thing scouting in front of the party rather than an actual PC whose death is of actual consequence since walking on the wrong symbol or running into the wrong thing or whatever has a very real chance of being immediately lethal to a sole PC. If you must do this with a PC, I'd say magic is paramount: being able to Contingency Dimension Door out if things go wrong and being able to turn invisible while scouting and being able to notice magical effects and so on enhances this far beyond what simple Stealth and Perception and perhaps Disguise Kit can achieve. But again, I'd rarely suggest actually scouting alone: this job is basically the job of a corpse.

IMO Advance Scout is better done in pairs, and the job is Recon In Force, which involves quietly killing things that are easier to kill when the party is split, and falling back to the prepared defensive positions occupied by the other half of the party when necessary. E.g. a level 7 Lore Bard and a Mobile Shadow Monk are working together at night to scout out a small group of buildings occupied by Frost Giants and Winter Wolves, while a Sharpshooter Fighter and a Necromancer with skeletons are in overwatch position from partial cover outside the town. If they run across something weak like a lone Winter Wolf, the monk just kites it to death while the bard stays hidden. If it's stronger (a couple of Frost Giants and several Winter Wolves), the bard may get involved with a Conjure Animals or Hypnotic Pattern, while the monk still kites things. If they run into something they can't handle, they run off into the night, chased by angry somethings, through the gates prepped with caltrops (carefully choosing the un-caltropped path through), and then light a torch or cast Dancing Lights to illuminate whatever is chasing them while the Fighter and skeletons get in free shots while everyone else is busy Dashing, except for maybe the Shadow Monk who might not need to Dash and is instead shooting arrows with advantage instead.

Recon in Force feels very risky sometimes because bad things happen if you get paralyzed or stunned, but operating in pairs helps reduce the danger--you're likely to have a buddy who is unaffected and can pull you out. (Notice that the Shadow Monk can shadow-teleport and the Bard can Dimension Door.)

[Eldariel]

IMO Advance Scout is better done in pairs, and the job is Recon In Force, which involves quietly killing things that are easier to kill when the party is split, and falling back to the prepared defensive positions occupied by the other half of the party when necessary. E.g. a level 7 Lore Bard and a Mobile Shadow Monk are working together at night to scout out a small group of buildings occupied by Frost Giants and Winter Wolves, while a Sharpshooter Fighter and a Necromancer with skeletons are in overwatch position from partial cover outside the town. If they run across something weak like a lone Winter Wolf, the monk just kites it to death while the bard stays hidden. If it's stronger (a couple of Frost Giants and several Winter Wolves), the bard may get involved with a Conjure Animals or Hypnotic Pattern, while the monk still kites things. If they run into something they can't handle, they run off into the night, chased by angry somethings, through the gates prepped with caltrops (carefully choosing the un-caltropped path through), and then light a torch or cast Dancing Lights to illuminate whatever is chasing them while the Fighter and skeletons get in free shots while everyone else is busy Dashing, except for maybe the Shadow Monk who might not need to Dash and is instead shooting arrows with advantage instead.

Recon in Force feels very risky sometimes because bad things happen if you get paralyzed or stunned, but operating in pairs helps reduce the danger--you're likely to have a buddy who is unaffected and can pull you out. (Notice that the Shadow Monk can shadow-teleport and the Bard can Dimension Door.)

That's fair, recon in force is quite efficient and if the party is fully stealth capable, it can literally just be standard party movement with a huge upside but little downside. However, I definitely dislike the idea of a single scout, be it of any class. Certainly a pair is better; any set of classes can fit the bill when built for the job really. The ally really helps out in a pinch, to get out with the unconscious body if nothing else.

[Dork_Forge]

Scout Rogue to me is a corpse. In general, going in front of the party alone is a bad idea. What if there's something above your powerscale in front of you? Creatures' passive perceptions go above 30: going into anything truly dangerous alone is likely to lead to a dead Rogue. I'd much rather the Rogue use their owl or arcane eye or whatever to scout and stay with the party so that they benefit of the protection of their fellow party members and can contribute as a group thus making a sudden demise far less likely. Rogue in particular is a character who really benefits of party members helping them to setup sneak attack and to multiply their dice and to grant them off-turn attacks and what-not. A lone Rogue is a dead Rogue.

This seems overly harsh, even if caught alone it's unlikely that the Rogue would just be out and out killed unless they were subjected to something like a save against paralysis and they failed that save. The core Rogue chassis has enough superior mobility that they should be able to get away from most situations, even if they take a few hits in the process. BA dash or disengage if caught in melee or just double dashing away if not should handle the escape, with hp and if 5 or above, Uncanny Dodge, to weather any blows. When you factor in that they'll have a good initiative modiifer if they do hit an encounter, and so have a chance to escape before things go awry. Then there's the subclasses: Scout can move away when advanced upon, Swashbuckler has a better initiative and can attack and flee, Arcane Trickster has spells which can include the often (imo over-) lauded Find Familiar. If there is a situation where a competent Rogue player gets caught out and murdered like you expect them to, then it's likely the encounter wouldn't have been trivial for the entire party either, if not just outright deadly.


Ranger is even worse: he's a half caster who has to burn a spell slot and a very sparse spell known on becoming any better of a scout than anyone with 16 Dex and Stealth proficiency (which, let's face it, a Wizard who's remotely interested in scouting or surviving in general has absolutely no reason not to have; Wizards don't need armor and Wizards already want a high Dex anyways and they have a reasonable set of free proficiencies - Arcana is the only must-have skill).

Better AC and HP but even more likely to become a corpse? Are you really marking using spells as a bad thing for the Ranger? If the Ranger isn't using spells for scouting then what on earth are they using them for? They're a half caster, using spells when they need to is a plus not a negative. You're also talking about them in a blanket manner, but a Gloom Stalker is one of the best in the dark scouts in the entire game, Beast Master brings an animal companions senses into play (and reduces the death risk for the Ranger in some ways) and the class as a whole is Dex/Wis based, the two stats you want in a scout.

A Wizard doesn't need armor, but why aren't we counting reliance on Mage Armor as a negative? I thought relying on spells for things was bad... right? You also assume that 16 Dex and Stealth prof is good enough, but the Wizard likely won't raise that Dex (and if they do, it won't be until late game) where as it's the priority for the Ranger.



Bard is of course great at this as well as everything but a Scout Bard would have more in common with a Scout Wizard than anything else. Of course, the cost of learning e.g. Scrying or Arcane Eye is much higher for a Bard than for a Wizard since Bard can't swap spells from the Scrying day to the fighting day, which is a significant advantage in favour of the Wizard, but they can still get good at it. Of course, Bard has worse spell access but Arcane Eye honestly isn't a bad spell to Magical Secrets for a utility Bard.

Similar except for Jack of All Trades and Expertise making the Bard better at the skill checks involved and has Dissonant Whispers to help avoid that corpse issue.


Ultimately, I'd generally prefer Wizard over Bard though both are good but the Bard really wants Ritual Caster: Wizard for Find Familiar, Magic Mouth, Contact Other Plane and company off the ritual slot so as to expand their actual castable spell list without burning all their spells known on rituals you'll want anyways.

And judging by a lot of the time Wizards are talked about on here the Wizard will be wanting Alert, medium armor master or any other number of feats *shrug*

[MaxWilson]

This seems overly harsh, even if caught alone it's unlikely that the Rogue would just be out and out killed unless they were subjected to something like a save against paralysis and they failed that save.

That's what makes it scary: "unlikely" is not "impossible." All it takes is being surprised by a Mind Flayer or Intellect Devourer or any of a dozen creatures that can paralyze you, and now you're dead, and the party might never even know what happened or be able to retrieve your body. Ideally you want a buddy with a different defensive profile from yourself (e.g. different saving throw proficiencies), and you keep some distance between you but not too much (trying to avoid AoEs that hit you both, while also staying within mutual support range). If you can you should also take along an expendable stalking horse like a familiar, conjured animal, Unseen Servant, etc., as long as it can be made reasonably stealthy (PWT).

Edit: or if your DM simply doesn't use ambushes by mind flayers or Abominable Yetis or beholders, etc., all of this is overkill and then I suppose maybe you don't bother. Different tables have different difficulty levels.

[Eldariel]

That's what makes it scary: "unlikely" is not "impossible." All it takes is being surprised by a Mind Flayer or Intellect Devourer or any of a dozen creatures that can paralyze you, and now you're dead, and the party might never even know what happened or be able to retrieve your body. Ideally you want a buddy with a different defensive profile from yourself (e.g. different saving throw proficiencies), and you keep some distance between you but not too much (trying to avoid AoEs that hit you both, while also staying within mutual support range). If you can you should also take along an expendable stalking horse like a familiar, conjured animal, Unseen Servant, etc., as long as it can be made reasonably stealthy (PWT).

The primary issue is that if this is your actual strategy, as being a scout would suggest, you get extreme repeat exposure and all it takes is one time it going bad (out of the hundred times you do it) for you to be a corpse. Which is why I don't like it as a strategy: the risk is too high vs. the reward even if your chances of success are very high.


Better AC and HP but even more likely to become a corpse?

Negligible difference, rarely enough to take more than one hit. More to the point, the things that are truly bad for you will practically never target your HP and AC since you can take hits there as a Wizard or as a Ranger but if you fail a save vs. enthrall or restraint or mindrape or death or petrification or whatever, woe be you.


Are you really marking using spells as a bad thing for the Ranger?

No, my point is that Ranger has far fewer spells than real casters. Of course the spell is great but a real caster could cast Pass without Trace or Invisibility just the same and use a far smaller amount of their daily resource budget.


If the Ranger isn't using spells for scouting then what on earth are they using them for? They're a half caster, using spells when they need to is a plus not a negative. You're also talking about them in a blanket manner, but a Gloom Stalker is one of the best in the dark scouts in the entire game, Beast Master brings an animal companions senses into play (and reduces the death risk for the Ranger in some ways) and the class as a whole is Dex/Wis based, the two stats you want in a scout.

Fair, Gloom Stalker is great for certain environments. Getting essentially free invisibility against a large subset of enemies is good.


A Wizard doesn't need armor, but why aren't we counting reliance on Mage Armor as a negative? I thought relying on spells for things was bad... right? You also assume that 16 Dex and Stealth prof is good enough, but the Wizard likely won't raise that Dex (and if they do, it won't be until late game) where as it's the priority for the Ranger.

Comparatively bad, not absolutely bad. Pass without Trace is still good but if we're comparing half-casters to full casters, the class with more spell slots is obviously the full caster and thus using a 2nd level spell to accomplish "scouting" is less resource intensive for them. Plus Mage Armor is non-Concentration 8 hour spell so ultimately that shouldn't really matter all that much on all but the most atypical adventure days once the party is casting 2nd level spells as half-casters (so level 5 earliest).


Similar except for Jack of All Trades and Expertise making the Bard better at the skill checks involved and has Dissonant Whispers to help avoid that corpse issue.

How does Dissonant Whispers do anything other control spells wouldn't? Yeah, Expertise is good (since the relevant skills are likely to be proficiencied for all involved parties Jack of All Trades does nothing) but the whole point is that generally skill check scouting is the last resort and just not all that good compared to spell scouting where skill checks or risk aren't even involved. I'm not actually recommending building a Wizard who goes in the front alone using nothing but Stealth check.


And judging by a lot of the time Wizards are talked about on here the Wizard will be wanting Alert, medium armor master or any other number of feats *shrug*

Alert, definitely (helps here too incidentally; basically eliminates the risk of ****ing up WRT hostile creatures since you can't be surprised and you have very high Initiative bonus - anyone who scouts in person, be it Rogue or Bard or even Wizard, should 100% have it). Moderately Armored for an extremely specific build. Medium Armor Master...well, for a superextremely specific build perhaps; I don't think I've ever actually expounded its virtues as anything but compared to something else. Generally the 3 best feats for a Wizard (and most other characters) are Alert, Lucky and Res: Con (Res: Wis for Con-save classes; Samurai, Gloom Stalker, Monk and Pally can make do without).

[MaxWilson]

Alert, definitely (helps here too incidentally; basically eliminates the risk of ****ing up WRT hostile creatures since you can't be surprised and you have very high Initiative bonus - anyone who scouts in person, be it Rogue or Bard or even Wizard, should 100% have it).

I'd say it mitigates the risk, not basically eliminates it, since there may be additional hostiles you don't see until they emerge from total cover (e.g. around a corner) and freeze you/mind blast you. (And of course you can fail initiative too.)

This probably isn't a factual disagreement between us, just me being more paranoid about how evil a hypothetical imaginary DM is going to be. :-P


The primary issue is that if this is your actual strategy, as being a scout would suggest, you get extreme repeat exposure and all it takes is one time it going bad (out of the hundred times you do it) for you to be a corpse. Which is why I don't like it as a strategy: the risk is too high vs. the reward even if your chances of success are very high.

I just saw this edit, responding now.

I'm not sure what you mean by "as a strategy." As a primary strategy? When facing an unknown hole in the ground and contemplating whether to jump in, yes, as a primary strategy, recon-in-force is crazy, you'll get your head bitten off sooner or later. It would be smarter and more cautious to send in a conjured animal or Arcane Eye or a familiar + Tiny Servant or something. When facing unknown ruins, it would be better to find a high vantage point and just observe the ruins for a few days.

But at the same time, doing crazy things instead of smart, cautious things tends to be more fun for the players, and it's an evil DM's job to create plausible reasons why doing fun, crazy things instead of smart cautious things might be necessary.

[Helpless shrug] In other words, you're not wrong, but I would still totally sign my PC up for a gambling habit or something that forced me, despite my general paranoia about evil DMs, to participate in a two-man recon-in-force into that unknown hole in the ground instead of cautiously conjuring/hiring an army of mercenaries to do it for me. Having triple-Deadly fights against Frost Giants is fun; watching a company of animated skeletons curbstomp everything in the dungeon while I watch through an Arcane Eye and give directions through a Rary's Telepathic Bond sounds not fun, for some reason.

[Aquillion]

Haste, Blur, Mirror image, Blink, Darkness, Banishment, Fire Shield, Phantasmal Killer, Private Sanctum, Resilient Sphere, Black Tentacles, Arcane eye.

Oh, and animate dead necromancer shenanigans.

There's a lot there.Those are good, but (aside from Animate Dead) I think you could make the argument that they're not really better than what the Bard gets, unlike at higher levels. Like... there are definitely wizards who could spend almost the entire tier using spells on the bard list.

Also the question of if you're using the Spell Versatility UA, which is clearly a buff for non-wizards. Personally I think it ought to be used - I can understand people feeling it steps on wizards' toes, but fact is, wizards already get the most spells prepared out of any class, as well as the most spell-enhancing class features.

And being able to change your spells more freely just generally makes for better gameplay by encouraging people to experiment with lesser-known spells, whereas if you lock them down most Bards and Sorcerers are going to go with reliable safe picks and keep them forever.

Another factor is that Bard subclasses differ drastically in power level compared to Wizard ones (which are more even.) Lore Bard in particular is obviously going to be better at levels 6-10 due to Magical Secrets letting them grab the best two Wizard spells (or whatever else the party needs).

Spending Bardic Inspiration as a reaction via Cutting Words is also a huge deal; used well, they're easily worth as much as a 2nd level spell slot. Imagine a second level spell that could be cast as a reaction and which usually made an attack miss after the die was rolled - people would absolutely use that.

Using Cutting Words as a reaction against an AOE spell that hit the whole party will also generally save you far more HP than could have been healed with a Mass Healing Word, which is a third-level spell. And Cutting Words is far more timely (since you can avoid the damage entirely at the moment when it's clear it's about to cause a catastrophe, whereas Mass Healing Word has to wait for your turn and can't be used to keep you, yourself, from going down.)

On top of that, Cutting Words can also ruin ability checks, which is more situational but often very powerful when it comes up - very fun if your party also has a grappler.


How does Dissonant Whispers do anything other control spells wouldn't? Yeah, Expertise is good (since the relevant skills are likely to be proficiencied for all involved parties Jack of All Trades does nothing) but the whole point is that generally skill check scouting is the last resort and just not all that good compared to spell scouting where skill checks or risk aren't even involved. I'm not actually recommending building a Wizard who goes in the front alone using nothing but Stealth check.
This depends heavily on how long your adventuring day is (obviously shorter days favor classes that rely more on spell slots.) Spending spells on scouting isn't always an option.

That said, in my experience familiars make the best scouts at low levels.

[Dork_Forge]

That's what makes it scary: "unlikely" is not "impossible." All it takes is being surprised by a Mind Flayer or Intellect Devourer or any of a dozen creatures that can paralyze you, and now you're dead, and the party might never even know what happened or be able to retrieve your body. Ideally you want a buddy with a different defensive profile from yourself (e.g. different saving throw proficiencies), and you keep some distance between you but not too much (trying to avoid AoEs that hit you both, while also staying within mutual support range). If you can you should also take along an expendable stalking horse like a familiar, conjured animal, Unseen Servant, etc., as long as it can be made reasonably stealthy (PWT).

Edit: or if your DM simply doesn't use ambushes by mind flayers or Abominable Yetis or beholders, etc., all of this is overkill and then I suppose maybe you don't bother. Different tables have different difficulty levels.

Completely behind the scouting in pairs approach, I think the fear is part of the appeal for the scout personally. It's exciting and rewarding if things don't go badly, I don't think anyone would be opposed to having a scouting partner and a Bard is probably one of the best placed classes to support scouts. For example you have a Rogue/Ranger combo scouting ahead in a place you know is dangerous as all hell, before they set off a Glamour Bard inspires them both (fall back against save based nastyness) and provides the party with a glut of temp hp.


The primary issue is that if this is your actual strategy, as being a scout would suggest, you get extreme repeat exposure and all it takes is one time it going bad (out of the hundred times you do it) for you to be a corpse. Which is why I don't like it as a strategy: the risk is too high vs. the reward even if your chances of success are very high.

If you are a dedicated scout, then why wouldn't the party be supporting you to reduce that risk? Inspiration, Invisibility, Death Ward and any manner of other buffs to help you pull off your job. Arguably one PC dying to a surprise Mind Flayer etc. is better than the party (and nothing suggests that spell scouting would actually achieve the same degree of scouting as an actual person).


Negligible difference, rarely enough to take more than one hit. More to the point, the things that are truly bad for you will practically never target your HP and AC since you can take hits there as a Wizard or as a Ranger but if you fail a save vs. enthrall or restraint or mindrape or death or petrification or whatever, woe be you.

Getting hit less and (if in comparison to Rogue at 5th level, obviously the higher the level the bigger the gap) 6hp more if they have the same Con can certainly mean the difference between getting out of a hair situation or not. The thread is about tier 2, ime those kinds of save or die like effects aren't super common in tier 2 (Abominable Yeti CR 9, Beholder CR 13, Mindflayer a more understandable CR 7, but a hyper intellegent enemy, are they going to blow Mind Blast against a single PC when they can assume more are to come?) but a Ranger is pretty decently prepared with Wis as a secondary stat.



No, my point is that Ranger has far fewer spells than real casters. Of course the spell is great but a real caster could cast Pass without Trace or Invisibility just the same and use a far smaller amount of their daily resource budget.
The Ranger is a martial, unlike casters they don't rely on them, so what else is that Ranger doing with their 2nd level slots? They don't have a Smite feature like Paladins and their spell list is far more geared toward utility and exploration than it is towards combat.


Comparatively bad, not absolutely bad. Pass without Trace is still good but if we're comparing half-casters to full casters, the class with more spell slots is obviously the full caster and thus using a 2nd level spell to accomplish "scouting" is less resource intensive for them. Plus Mage Armor is non-Concentration 8 hour spell so ultimately that shouldn't really matter all that much on all but the most atypical adventure days once the party is casting 2nd level spells as half-casters (so level 5 earliest).

Same as before, the full caster has more slots, they're also more reliant upon them, in combat all the Ranger will want most of the time is Hunter's Mark. Mage Armor is non-concentration and 8 hour duration, it's also a spell known and spell slot to achieve nothing but a competent AC (2 slots if you're actually covering the whole day). My experience as a full caster is a bit different, every slot counts until you hit 4th, maybe even 5th level spells. Those two Mage Armor's could have been Shields, Absorb Elements, Grease etc.


How does Dissonant Whispers do anything other control spells wouldn't? Yeah, Expertise is good (since the relevant skills are likely to be proficiencied for all involved parties Jack of All Trades does nothing) but the whole point is that generally skill check scouting is the last resort and just not all that good compared to spell scouting where skill checks or risk aren't even involved. I'm not actually recommending building a Wizard who goes in the front alone using nothing but Stealth check.

Give me an example of a control spell for comparison? Dissonant Whispers is guaranteed damage to some degree with the flee effect that you want, if they save you still achieve something. If you cast an all or nothing spell when caught out alone or just the two of you and they save, then the situation is far worse.


Alert, definitely (helps here too incidentally; basically eliminates the risk of ****ing up WRT hostile creatures since you can't be surprised and you have very high Initiative bonus - anyone who scouts in person, be it Rogue or Bard or even Wizard, should 100% have it). Moderately Armored for an extremely specific build. Medium Armor Master...well, for a superextremely specific build perhaps; I don't think I've ever actually expounded its virtues as anything but compared to something else. Generally the 3 best feats for a Wizard (and most other characters) are Alert, Lucky and Res: Con (Res: Wis for Con-save classes; Samurai, Gloom Stalker, Monk and Pally can make do without).

I don't think scouts being surprised themselves would be super common, but Observant would go al ong way to stopping that happening, Alert still lets you walk right up to them. I meant Medium Armored not MAM. Lucky is always powerful but Res:Wis is usually over rated in my experience (but table differences and all that).

[MaxWilson]

Mindflayer a more understandable CR 7, but a hyper intellegent enemy, are they going to blow Mind Blast against a single PC when they can assume more are to come?

I would, as a Mind Flayer. Mind Blast recharges in mere seconds. Blast the intruder, eat its brain, wait for further intruder alerts from the Elder Brain or Intellect Devourers.

[Eldariel]

I'd say it mitigates the risk, not basically eliminates it, since there may be additional hostiles you don't see until they emerge from total cover (e.g. around a corner) and freeze you/mind blast you. (And of course you can fail initiative too.)

This probably isn't a factual disagreement between us, just me being more paranoid about how evil a hypothetical imaginary DM is going to be. :-P

That's fair; probably more a matter of phrasing than anything. I do acknowledge that there are situations even with Alert where you might not have the time to Dimension Door the hell outta there or where secondary surprise might get you.


I just saw this edit, responding now.

I'm not sure what you mean by "as a strategy." As a primary strategy? When facing an unknown hole in the ground and contemplating whether to jump in, yes, as a primary strategy, recon-in-force is crazy, you'll get your head bitten off sooner or later. It would be smarter and more cautious to send in a conjured animal or Arcane Eye or a familiar + Tiny Servant or something. When facing unknown ruins, it would be better to find a high vantage point and just observe the ruins for a few days.

But at the same time, doing crazy things instead of smart, cautious things tends to be more fun for the players, and it's an evil DM's job to create plausible reasons why doing fun, crazy things instead of smart cautious things might be necessary.

[Helpless shrug] In other words, you're not wrong, but I would still totally sign my PC up for a gambling habit or something that forced me, despite my general paranoia about evil DMs, to participate in a two-man recon-in-force into that unknown hole in the ground instead of cautiously conjuring/hiring an army of mercenaries to do it for me. Having triple-Deadly fights against Frost Giants is fun; watching a company of animated skeletons curbstomp everything in the dungeon while I watch through an Arcane Eye and give directions through a Rary's Telepathic Bond sounds not fun, for some reason.

I don't really disagree: I was more responding to Dork_Forge's points, which mostly seem to deal with a single scout again. I think team scouting is certainly a viable way to play the game and much, much less disaster prone than solo scout. But it's also far less about individual characters and their builds and more about having multiple scouting-compatible characters in the party. Better yet if they can share spells with one another to make stealth all the easier (of course, dedicated design can do great things in this regard - a pair of Expertise Stealth Lore Bards with one picking up Pass without Trace on level 6 could do some ridiculous things to be sure).


If you are a dedicated scout, then why wouldn't the party be supporting you to reduce that risk? Inspiration, Invisibility, Death Ward and any manner of other buffs to help you pull off your job. Arguably one PC dying to a surprise Mind Flayer etc. is better than the party (and nothing suggests that spell scouting would actually achieve the same degree of scouting as an actual person).

Well, a whole party has a far lower risk of dying to a Mind Flayer. A solo character is massively at risk. A simple low level Cleric/Wizard/Bard/whatever enemy can have Hold Person as a spell for instance. That's death to a solo character and an NPC with Cleric levels and Perception proficiency or Wizard levels and a familiar or Bard levels and Expertise in Perception can have dangerously high Perception score. Of course the party should do what they can to help (though it's of course more resource efficient if you have slots to pitch in too; the more slots in the party, the better buffs they can afford for the scout after all).


Getting hit less and (if in comparison to Rogue at 5th level, obviously the higher the level the bigger the gap) 6hp more if they have the same Con can certainly mean the difference between getting out of a hair situation or not.

Well, if you have an option like Dimension Door, all you need to do is get an action to get out. It's very unlikely (though of course not impossible) for damage to knock you out in one round on these levels unless you're running at like 13- Con. And while the absolute gap gets larger with level, the relative gap probably lower since enemy damage tends to scale disproportionately; a single crit from a big hit enemy can be dangerous while nothing else is likely to really be a damage threat. And if a single crit from the creature can be dangerous to Wizard, it's incredibly improbable that the +6 HP or whatever is what it takes to make it not dangerous since we're talking about something hitting for the entire HP pool of a character in a crit. The chances of such high number of rolls landing precisely on the HP border between the classes is not very high simply due to the size of numbers (being doubled) involved.


The Ranger is a martial, unlike casters they don't rely on them, so what else is that Ranger doing with their 2nd level slots? They don't have a Smite feature like Paladins and their spell list is far more geared toward utility and exploration than it is towards combat.

Same as before, the full caster has more slots, they're also more reliant upon them, in combat all the Ranger will want most of the time is Hunter's Mark. Mage Armor is non-concentration and 8 hour duration, it's also a spell known and spell slot to achieve nothing but a competent AC (2 slots if you're actually covering the whole day). My experience as a full caster is a bit different, every slot counts until you hit 4th, maybe even 5th level spells. Those two Mage Armor's could have been Shields, Absorb Elements, Grease etc.

*shrug* There are full casters that are quite competent martials too (see: anyone with Booming Blade/Greenflame Blade, Valor/Swords Bards, Bladesinger and Moon Druid). There are also caster features that enable rather efficient at-will combat (familiar, Animate Dead, long duration spells, cantrips, etc.). I'd argue that while it's true that casters have the nukes to pull out and that martials do more on non-resource actions, the difference between non-resource caster action and non-resource martial action isn't that big as to burn through spell slots at a comparable rate to how much larger an amount of slots they have (due to how opening a new tier of spells not only increases your slots on a previous level but also provides another tier of slots; not to mention class features that recover slots such as Arcane Recovery).

Generally when I hit level 5 I find I have plenty of slots to work with for my purposes though I do remember a day when I did burn through all the slots (that was a Gritty Realism game where we went through a full dungeon and then had to fight off some specters and then another boss level enemy on the same day). Most of the days though I haven't found that to be a major issue though of course it matters (I might not cast Mage Armor twice TBH; the risk of getting into a fight with no advance warning is small enough to not be worth the slot when we're not specifically in hostile territory or dungeon or whatever).


Give me an example of a control spell for comparison? Dissonant Whispers is guaranteed damage to some degree with the flee effect that you want, if they save you still achieve something. If you cast an all or nothing spell when caught out alone or just the two of you and they save, then the situation is far worse.

I dunno what the damage is supposed to achieve here. Far as I can tell, if you get caught in a ****ty position alone against an enemy beyond your power, your first option should be "get the **** out" and the second "disable the enemy so that you can get the **** out". Level 1-2 control spells would be the likes of Command, Sleep, Hideous Laughter, Dissonant Whispers, etc. and level 2 opens up the option of hitting an enemy in a weak spot basically regardless of their weak spot with Earthen Grasp/Web/Levitate [or Blindness]/Phantasmal Force/Suggestion. Of course, if you're escaping and can't Dimension Door or whatever, simple Fog Cloud might be better than any of those.


I don't think scouts being surprised themselves would be super common, but Observant would go al ong way to stopping that happening, Alert still lets you walk right up to them. I meant Medium Armored not MAM. Lucky is always powerful but Res:Wis is usually over rated in my experience (but table differences and all that).

Aye, scout being surprised should definitely not be common but my problem with it is that if it happens even once against an inopportune opponent, there's an extremely high risk of a dead scout. Hence why I definitely prefer, in order, spell scouting and then team scouting. Res: Wis obviously depends on how many magical enemies you face but even just fear effects and such are pretty frequent and a frightened martial is pretty darn useless to be honest which you don't want from your primary DPS whenever you fight a dragon or whatever.

Observant is of course a must for any dedicated scout. Lucky I've found to be golden on basically everyone but especially scout: when you really need to GTFO you need to make those Initiative checks to go before Bad Things Happen™ and rerolling bad Initiative rolls goes a long way in that direction. Same with bad stealth checks and such. Alert...well, it's for when something does go wrong, it vastly increases your chances of getting to act first (and most importantly, ensures you get a chance to roll) which means you can teleport or run or whatever away before enemy gets a chance to Do Bad Things To You™.

[Dork_Forge]

I would, as a Mind Flayer. Mind Blast recharges in mere seconds. Blast the intruder, eat its brain, wait for further intruder alerts from the Elder Brain or Intellect Devourers.

Oh in a colony then yes I would assume it would act with great prejudice knowing that it has the backing of numbers and superior information, but at the level a party would be dealing with a MF colony I'd expect them to have more tricks or conventional Wisdom behind them besides just scouting.



I don't really disagree: I was more responding to Dork_Forge's points, which mostly seem to deal with a single scout again. I think team scouting is certainly a viable way to play the game and much, much less disaster prone than solo scout. But it's also far less about individual characters and their builds and more about having multiple scouting-compatible characters in the party. Better yet if they can share spells with one another to make stealth all the easier (of course, dedicated design can do great things in this regard - a pair of Expertise Stealth Lore Bards with one picking up Pass without Trace on level 6 could do some ridiculous things to be sure).

Not necessarily a single scout, just advanced scouting in general as more viable than the spell scouting argument makes it seem.



Well, a whole party has a far lower risk of dying to a Mind Flayer. A solo character is massively at risk. A simple low level Cleric/Wizard/Bard/whatever enemy can have Hold Person as a spell for instance. That's death to a solo character and an NPC with Cleric levels and Perception proficiency or Wizard levels and a familiar or Bard levels and Expertise in Perception can have dangerously high Perception score. Of course the party should do what they can to help (though it's of course more resource efficient if you have slots to pitch in too; the more slots in the party, the better buffs they can afford for the scout after all).


Depending on the circumstances you can go from a single fatality to more (or lose the PC that could cast rez magic). More targets increases the value of Mind Blast and a Wizard would be a prime candidate for being targeted for follow up execution. 1) Mind Blast 2) Go for the Wizard 3)once grappled Extract Brain for the kill (the initial Mind Blast puts the Wizard in a precarious postion regardless of a save since they'll lose a significant chunk of their hp immediately and the Mind Flayer is unlikely to be incapcitated). The party may survive, but multiple deaths or even a death spiral are certainly on the table.


Well, if you have an option like Dimension Door, all you need to do is get an action to get out. It's very unlikely (though of course not impossible) for damage to knock you out in one round on these levels unless you're running at like 13- Con. And while the absolute gap gets larger with level, the relative gap probably lower since enemy damage tends to scale disproportionately; a single crit from a big hit enemy can be dangerous while nothing else is likely to really be a damage threat. And if a single crit from the creature can be dangerous to Wizard, it's incredibly improbable that the +6 HP or whatever is what it takes to make it not dangerous since we're talking about something hitting for the entire HP pool of a character in a crit. The chances of such high number of rolls landing precisely on the HP border between the classes is not very high simply due to the size of numbers (being doubled) involved.


Yes, if you have a particular 4th level spell prepared (since I assume you're talking specifically about the Wizard), have a slot to cast it, the action opportunity to cast it and the casters that seem to be cropping up against martials in these scenarios don't have Counter Spell) then getting away is fairly trivial. I was comparing Ranger to Rogue in what you replied to, since you stated that Rangers would be worse (and thus more likely to end up a corpse) than them.

If you're talking about a Wizard then the gap is actually 16hp at 7th level assuming the same Con, that is signifcant and helps mitigate the devastation crits could possible deliver. Though to be honest the reality is often going to be larger, I've ran for (and so have complete access to their sheets) over a dozen Wizards at this point, and none have put the emphasis on Con that builds on here do. Wizards as built here are very MAD (max Int, +3 Dex, +3 Con preferably) and most people generally don't want to make the compromises to make that happen unless they've rolled and rolled well. Martials have a bigger incentive for Con (and more synergistic race choices) and will more likely have a higher Con than the Wizard. Not in all situations, but I doubt it would be uncommon.


*shrug* There are full casters that are quite competent martials too (see: anyone with Booming Blade/Greenflame Blade, Valor/Swords Bards, Bladesinger and Moon Druid). There are also caster features that enable rather efficient at-will combat (familiar, Animate Dead, long duration spells, cantrips, etc.). I'd argue that while it's true that casters have the nukes to pull out and that martials do more on non-resource actions, the difference between non-resource caster action and non-resource martial action isn't that big as to burn through spell slots at a comparable rate to how much larger an amount of slots they have (due to how opening a new tier of spells not only increases your slots on a previous level but also provides another tier of slots; not to mention class features that recover slots such as Arcane Recovery).

You're just cherry picking counterpoints to suit now, yes there are martial competent casters, that doesn't change them being on the whole far more reliant on slots than a half caster (and just having GFBB/BB doesn't make a character martial capable). Though you don't really address my point, you're talking around it. What reason does the Ranger have to be holding onto 2nd level slots? Exploration like scouting is the whole Ranger fantasy and their spell list caters to it.


Generally when I hit level 5 I find I have plenty of slots to work with for my purposes though I do remember a day when I did burn through all the slots (that was a Gritty Realism game where we went through a full dungeon and then had to fight off some specters and then another boss level enemy on the same day). Most of the days though I haven't found that to be a major issue though of course it matters (I might not cast Mage Armor twice TBH; the risk of getting into a fight with no advance warning is small enough to not be worth the slot when we're not specifically in hostile territory or dungeon or whatever).

Then you weren't really going through many encounters or weren't playing as being argued about. If you're burning slots on spell exploration, necessary defenses to survive and still casting leveled spells in combat, how are you not at least somewhat regularly coming to the bottom of your spell slot barrel? Arcane Recovery definitely helps, but it's only 3 spell levels at 5th.

The casting Mage Armor twice has absolutely nothing to do with notice, it has to do with encounters not all falling conveniently within the same 8 hour window of a 16 hour adventuring day.



I dunno what the damage is supposed to achieve here. Far as I can tell, if you get caught in a ****ty position alone against an enemy beyond your power, your first option should be "get the **** out" and the second "disable the enemy so that you can get the **** out". Level 1-2 control spells would be the likes of Command, Sleep, Hideous Laughter, Dissonant Whispers, etc. and level 2 opens up the option of hitting an enemy in a weak spot basically regardless of their weak spot with Earthen Grasp/Web/Levitate [or Blindness]/Phantasmal Force/Suggestion. Of course, if you're escaping and can't Dimension Door or whatever, simple Fog Cloud might be better than any of those.

Damaging the creature...? The hypothetical ambush needn't be a single tough creature, it could be smaller ones that are significantly injured on a save still, at worst you've achieved something on a save at least.

Sleep is realistically not going to do much against an uninjured opponent (if they're even vulnerable to it), Command does nothing against undead or anything that doesn't understand your language and you just listed Dissonant Whispers back to me when it was what you were challenging. If you're casting a spell to escape that relies on them failing a save, you're leaving your fate up to chance anyway, but at least the Bard has access to Dissonant Whispers, this was originally a Bard vs Wizard discussion and you have named spells that mostly fall on their list or that they can access.


Aye, scout being surprised should definitely not be common but my problem with it is that if it happens even once against an inopportune opponent, there's an extremely high risk of a dead scout. Hence why I definitely prefer, in order, spell scouting and then team scouting. Res: Wis obviously depends on how many magical enemies you face but even just fear effects and such are pretty frequent and a frightened martial is pretty darn useless to be honest which you don't want from your primary DPS whenever you fight a dragon or whatever.

A good scout shouldn't just be good at and plan for scouting ahead, they should be prepared to actually get back to the party to report.

Yes being under a fear effect sucks, but when did this turn from a scouting thing into a full encounter? In a full encounter there's plenty of other abilities to help out: being a halfling, being inspired, Favored by the Gods, being near a Paladin, Bless etc.


Observant is of course a must for any dedicated scout. Lucky I've found to be golden on basically everyone but especially scout: when you really need to GTFO you need to make those Initiative checks to go before Bad Things Happen™ and rerolling bad Initiative rolls goes a long way in that direction. Same with bad stealth checks and such. Alert...well, it's for when something does go wrong, it vastly increases your chances of getting to act first (and most importantly, ensures you get a chance to roll) which means you can teleport or run or whatever away before enemy gets a chance to Do Bad Things To You™.

I don't think it's a must but it makes more sense to me personally than Alert, what's the point of a Scout that isn't actually good at the seeing things part?

[cutlery]

Also the question of if you're using the Spell Versatility UA, which is clearly a buff for non-wizards. Personally I think it ought to be used - I can understand people feeling it steps on wizards' toes, but fact is, wizards already get the most spells prepared out of any class, as well as the most spell-enhancing class features.


I expect any game I run would use it. It's one spell per long rest, after all, and it has to be the same level - if you want to turn a 1st level spell known into a 3rd level spell known, you have to do that at level up as normal.

But, if we're talking about what non-core rules I would use - I'd make wizards memorize spells-per-slot again. It's the only thing that makes their spells known make sense. And in that scenario, I'm not sure spell versatility would make sense, unless there was a little more wiggle room given to wizards in the classical Vancian casting scheme.

I suspect few would want to play wizards in this case. I don't have problems with that.






Surely you can see with your own brain that wizards have plenty of tools for scouting besides invisible owls? Regardless of anyone else's communication, surely you don't need others to point out that e.g. Arcane Eye has a better range than familiars, or that an Invisible Stalker can open doors, or that a captured enemy can be mind-probed via Detect Thoughts to determine interior layouts/force dispositions?

Yes, that costs resources, such as spells known and spell slots, but that's where clarity of communication comes in: get everybody to state what their assumptions are about build investment, pre-adventure prep, and spell slot investment. Then you can meaningfully discuss those assumptions.



I don't know, my brain is pretty well-sauced right now. But yes - If resource spending scouting is the comparison, it needs to be compared to similar resource spenders (An invisible Arcane Trickster, say), but if no-resource scouting is the comparison, built for it PCs are, well, built for it.

Wizards are fantastically overpowered, but they can't quite do everything all at once, at least not without a fifteen minute adventuring day. All the full casters look too good when that's the situation, though, perhaps Wizard looks best, but still - it's a weird case.

Wizards can, with prep, sort of cover for a missing face and sort of cover for a missing scout (I think in both cases, less well than a bard built for it) - I don't think they can do both in the same day, and they certainly can't do both in the same day and do any blasting of note on that same day.

[Ashrym]

The thread went off topic and into scouting. I want to add a reminder that using dark vision such as the owl familiar or arcane eye examples would see greyscale only as in dim light (lightly obscured). The inability to carry a light source forces that and it includes disadvantage on checks relying on sight.

That means the arcane eye sucks at spotting because it's only visual in the first place and still uses the wizard check with disadvantage unless light is available, but also limited in visual range. It's more of a mapping tool. Still good but not so useful for spotting hidden objects and no sound regardless.

It's definitely a safer option than going but limited in what information it can give and cannot do anything.

The owl familiar passive perception is 13 using dark vision for visual checks because the advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out. It's 18 relying on hearing regardless and 18 in the light. That is helpful but the owl familiar still only has a 2 INT so is limited in capacity, other checks are poor, it only has a HP, and it looks like food to a lot of creatures.

Infiltration might inherently carry more risk than remote recon but infiltration allows for more options from the scout's position. Sometimes searching for and being able to open a secret door is useful too. ;)

[MaxWilson]

The casting Mage Armor twice has absolutely nothing to do with notice, it has to do with encounters not all falling conveniently within the same 8 hour window of a 16 hour adventuring day.

Why 16 hours instead of 24?


Wizards are fantastically overpowered, but they can't quite do everything all at once, at least not without a fifteen minute adventuring day. All the full casters look too good when that's the situation, though, perhaps Wizard looks best, but still - it's a weird case.

Wizards can, with prep, sort of cover for a missing face and sort of cover for a missing scout (I think in both cases, less well than a bard built for it) - I don't think they can do both in the same day, and they certainly can't do both in the same day and do any blasting of note on that same day.

FWIW, I agree--if you're building a wizard as a party scout/recon specialist, they might also be minimally competent at a few other things (e.g. crowd control, summoning, and artillery, dedicating one or two spells to each), but they can't be masterful at everything. When people say "wizards can do XYZ" it's really important to nail them down on whether they mean "this particular wizard I have in mind with XYZ subclass and five specific spells" or "every wizard that ever actually gets played at the table" or something in between.

My rough guesstimate is that making a wizard be roughly competitive with a Skulker Rogue for advance scouting (with less risk of dying but slightly more risk of alerting the enemy to the presence of intruders) requires about 1/4 of a wizard's build choices. It's not cheap, but it doesn't have to be your primary focus in order to be good.

I 100% agree that a bard built for it can exceed a wizard's peak scouting performance, at the cost of maybe 1/3 of a bard's build choices.

[cutlery]

The thread went off topic and into scouting. I want to add a reminder that using dark vision such as the owl familiar or arcane eye examples would see greyscale only as in dim light (lightly obscured). The inability to carry a light source forces that and it includes disadvantage on checks relying on sight.

I'm sure you can cast light on a collar or bracelet around one claw to mitigate the disadvantage from dim light, but that seems like a great way to be short one Owl very quickly. Probably an amusing ten minutes, though.

[Valmark]

The thread went off topic and into scouting. I want to add a reminder that using dark vision such as the owl familiar or arcane eye examples would see greyscale only as in dim light (lightly obscured). The inability to carry a light source forces that and it includes disadvantage on checks relying on sight.

That means the arcane eye sucks at spotting because it's only visual in the first place and still uses the wizard check with disadvantage unless light is available, but also limited in visual range. It's more of a mapping tool. Still good but not so useful for spotting hidden objects and no sound regardless.

It's definitely a safer option than going but limited in what information it can give and cannot do anything.

The owl familiar passive perception is 13 using dark vision for visual checks because the advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out. It's 18 relying on hearing regardless and 18 in the light. That is helpful but the owl familiar still only has a 2 INT so is limited in capacity, other checks are poor, it only has a HP, and it looks like food to a lot of creatures.

Infiltration might inherently carry more risk than remote recon but infiltration allows for more options from the scout's position. Sometimes searching for and being able to open a secret door is useful too. ;)

A scout without Devil's Sight would have the same problem though?

[MaxWilson]

A scout without Devil's Sight would have the same problem though?

Fortunately, the monsters have the same problem. Overall I'd call darkness an advantage for scouting.

[cutlery]

A scout without Devil's Sight would have the same problem though?

True; and a devil's sight scout would also need darkvision to handle regular dim light conditions.

[Valmark]

Fortunately, the monsters have the same problem. Overall I'd call darkness an advantage for scouting.


True; and a devil's sight scout would also need darkvision to handle regular dim light conditions.

Yeah, my question was because it looked like Ashrym was saying that only owls have problems in darkness when anything would anyway, unless it's a warlock with the invocation.

[Dork_Forge]

Why 16 hours instead of 24?


8 hours of any given day I assume to be devoted to a long rest, leaving the rest as active adventuring potentially.

[cutlery]

Yeah, my question was because it looked like Ashrym was saying that only owls have problems in darkness when anything would anyway, unless it's a warlock with the invocation.

Clearly, a bard built for scouting needs a two level dip in Warlock!

[Valmark]

Clearly, a bard built for scouting needs a two level dip in Warlock!

I mean, an invisible familiar with Voice of the Chain Master and Devil's Sight with a race using Darkvision sounds pretty good, regardless of what comes after (and that's... Level 3, end).

Or just level 2 for Devil's Sight, yeah.

[MaxWilson]

8 hours of any given day I assume to be devoted to a long rest, leaving the rest as active adventuring potentially.

But why wouldn't monsters be a threat during the 8 hours devoted to resting?

If the argument is that players can choose when to engage with monsters, why wouldn't they be able to restrict their activities to a shorter timeframe like 8 hours?

I don't see what makes 16 hours special.

[Dork_Forge]

But why wouldn't monsters be a threat during the 8 hours devoted to resting?

If the argument is that players can choose when to engage with monsters, why wouldn't they be able to restrict their activities to a shorter timeframe like 8 hours?

I don't see what makes 16 hours special.

It's more that it's more understandable to be un Mage Armored at night, you may not have had slots left to do so and the martials are taking their armor off too. Of course you can be attacked during a long rest and having MA up 24 hours a day is more sensible, I just took issue with how MA once a day is usually depicted as sufficient when it sure as hell wouldn't be in my games, to be able to count on having it up when you're trapsing around you need to have it up from the moment your feet leave the bedroll.

So I guess in short I was treating MA like conventional armor, you put it one when you get up, but if the slots are there for it during sleep it would only make sense to do so, either way it shouldn't be a one a slot a day thing if you're actually adventuring.

[Ashrym]

A scout without Devil's Sight would have the same problem though?


Fortunately, the monsters have the same problem. Overall I'd call darkness an advantage for scouting.


True; and a devil's sight scout would also need darkvision to handle regular dim light conditions.


Yeah, my question was because it looked like Ashrym was saying that only owls have problems in darkness when anything would anyway, unless it's a warlock with the invocation.

The issue exists for owls and not bards or rogues using infiltration because bards or rogues can light a torch or lantern when it's advantageous to do so. Owls cannot.

Dark vision is useful. The ability to create real light in addition to dark vision is better. The ability to do both with better check bonuses is even more betterer. ;-)

Wizards do have a solid list of spells for exploring and recon/gathering information. There's just only so much they can do without the ability to take direct actions.

[Valmark]

The issue exists for owls and not bards or rogues using infiltration because bards or rogues can light a torch or lantern when it's advantageous to do so. Owls cannot.

Dark vision is useful. The ability to create real light in addition to dark vision is better. The ability to do both with better check bonuses is even more betterer. ;-)

Wizards do have a solid list of spells for exploring and recon/gathering information. There's just only so much they can do without the ability to take direct actions.

Light is a Touch spell. Familiars can make real light just as well as anybody else, and to remove it the wizard only needs to cast it himself removing the one the familiar created.

[Dork_Forge]

Light is a Touch spell. Familiars can make real light just as well as anybody else, and to remove it the wizard only needs to cast it himself removing the one the familiar created.

Provided that the familiar is within 100ft of the Wizard, reducing it's scouting power if you actually use it that way.

[Eldariel]

Depending on the circumstances you can go from a single fatality to more (or lose the PC that could cast rez magic). More targets increases the value of Mind Blast and a Wizard would be a prime candidate for being targeted for follow up execution. 1) Mind Blast 2) Go for the Wizard 3)once grappled Extract Brain for the kill (the initial Mind Blast puts the Wizard in a precarious postion regardless of a save since they'll lose a significant chunk of their hp immediately and the Mind Flayer is unlikely to be incapcitated). The party may survive, but multiple deaths or even a death spiral are certainly on the table.

That's certainly better than one character dying and the party being none the wiser about what happened. Do they just expect that if the scout isn't returning that they ought to go to base? They still have no knowledge of what they're dealing with and if they wish to rescue the scout, they have to now engage the enemy down one party member. Wizard, incidentally, has high Int and Int-save proficiency so the risk of failing a save vs. a Mind Flayer's Mind Blast is very low indeed (and they won't take damage on a successful save). The grapple stun is also an Int-save so the chances of the Mind Flayer actually finding any way to disable a Wizard are contingent on the Wizard failing an Int-save; it can happen, of course, but it's not that likely. OTOH Wizard can either attack the Mind Flayer's HP or Str/Con-saves with fairly reasonable chances of success.


Yes, if you have a particular 4th level spell prepared (since I assume you're talking specifically about the Wizard), have a slot to cast it, the action opportunity to cast it and the casters that seem to be cropping up against martials in these scenarios don't have Counter Spell) then getting away is fairly trivial. I was comparing Ranger to Rogue in what you replied to, since you stated that Rangers would be worse (and thus more likely to end up a corpse) than them.

In this case you know you're going scouting so you'll probably prepare spells in such a way as to escape if things go sour. This goes for Ranger and Arcane Trickster as much as Wizard but of course they have slightly less information in that regard. Far as Ranger vs. Rogue, yeah, getting spells is of course great but again, if I wanna use spells to scout I'd rather do it on a full caster chassis (if, as you point out, you also wish to maintain spell loadout, just build a melee caster).


If you're talking about a Wizard then the gap is actually 16hp at 7th level assuming the same Con, that is signifcant and helps mitigate the devastation crits could possible deliver. Though to be honest the reality is often going to be larger, I've ran for (and so have complete access to their sheets) over a dozen Wizards at this point, and none have put the emphasis on Con that builds on here do. Wizards as built here are very MAD (max Int, +3 Dex, +3 Con preferably) and most people generally don't want to make the compromises to make that happen unless they've rolled and rolled well. Martials have a bigger incentive for Con (and more synergistic race choices) and will more likely have a higher Con than the Wizard. Not in all situations, but I doubt it would be uncommon.

*shrug* Fair, some people might not build that way. But they definitely should be well inclined to do so.


You're just cherry picking counterpoints to suit now, yes there are martial competent casters, that doesn't change them being on the whole far more reliant on slots than a half caster (and just having GFBB/BB doesn't make a character martial capable). Though you don't really address my point, you're talking around it. What reason does the Ranger have to be holding onto 2nd level slots? Exploration like scouting is the whole Ranger fantasy and their spell list caters to it.

I'm not really cherry picking, I'm just pointing out that it's not the full truth. Of course there are spellier casters too but if the caster is to perform scouting, they'll most likely play in such a way as to spare the resources necessary. As for Ranger, Silence is a big 2nd level spell they learn: no-save "**** you" to many enemy casters. Something they might be casting. Helps with sneaking too. OTOH Pass without Trace is so good that they are well-inclined to use it so it's fair enough that they'd want to use their slots on it. This doesn't change the fact that the total number of slots they have to play with is pretty limited up until level 9.


Then you weren't really going through many encounters or weren't playing as being argued about. If you're burning slots on spell exploration, necessary defenses to survive and still casting leveled spells in combat, how are you not at least somewhat regularly coming to the bottom of your spell slot barrel? Arcane Recovery definitely helps, but it's only 3 spell levels at 5th.

We (Scout Rogue, Knowledge Cleric, Swords Bard and Diviner Wizard) were efficient. We were able to solve two encounters (one with a skeleton minotaur, one with two flesh golems) with Minor Illusion with the Bard. Against the Wraith I didn't even cast leveled spells: simple cantrips sufficed while the Cleric wailed with Spiritual Weapon and cantrips. Dybbyk we were able to circumvent by making it chase after a phantom steed and the skeleton horde we simply ran from. The boss fight saw me burn both of my level 3 slots (the boss enemy was a caster so I was using Counterspell and I disabled his "knights" with a Web). Then against the Specters I used Dragon's Breath and portent [rolled a nat 20 so made our Rogue dust one] + cantrips while body tanking since I was the healthiest of the party. In the second boss fight I used my second portent [to go first], recoveried 3rd level slot to counterspell and final 2nd level slot [to earthen grasp the drow mage], and that was that. I must've cast a shield or something at a point since I was indeed all out of spells. Potentially against the Drow Mage's Shadow Demon companion. This was all on level 5.


The casting Mage Armor twice has absolutely nothing to do with notice, it has to do with encounters not all falling conveniently within the same 8 hour window of a 16 hour adventuring day.

There are different encounters: ones the party initiates and ones that occur randomly/out of enemy action. The ones the party initiates are timed by the party's actions so they can pick to do them when long duration buffs are in effect. The rest are probably rare enough that you don't need the second Mage Armor unless you expect a significant chance of significant amounts of trouble even if it means fighting a fight without Mage Armor (if you have a functional party and you're playing the ranged caster role, you can often use positioning to avoid the need of taking hits unless you need to).


Damaging the creature...? The hypothetical ambush needn't be a single tough creature, it could be smaller ones that are significantly injured on a save still, at worst you've achieved something on a save at least.

In this case it's just not relevant if we're talking about trying to GTFO. What's relevant is whether you can escape. That's your victory condition. Unless you can kill the enemy (in which case successful save damage from Dissonant Whispers is not where you want to be) you don't care about damaging them. Worse if there are multiple enemies: in that case Dissonant Whispers is a single target spell that still means you get caught by all the rest even if they fail their saves. Something like Web or Hypnotic Pattern would be far superior there.


Sleep is realistically not going to do much against an uninjured opponent (if they're even vulnerable to it), Command does nothing against undead or anything that doesn't understand your language and you just listed Dissonant Whispers back to me when it was what you were challenging. If you're casting a spell to escape that relies on them failing a save, you're leaving your fate up to chance anyway, but at least the Bard has access to Dissonant Whispers, this was originally a Bard vs Wizard discussion and you have named spells that mostly fall on their list or that they can access.

Sure, Dissonant Whispers is good for certain jobs. I'm just a bit perplexed by the "at least they have Dissonant Whispers"-point; how's that an advantage? Almost any caster can Wis save-or-lose with a level 1 spell (Druid only has Ensnare to be fair) and the damage is just not your victory condition in this scenario. What is your victory condition is that the CC effect sticks and to that end you need to pick whatever the enemy is the weakest towards and Wizard has the most encompassing list in that regard (plus the option of being a Diviner who can often just make them fail their save).


Yes being under a fear effect sucks, but when did this turn from a scouting thing into a full encounter? In a full encounter there's plenty of other abilities to help out: being a halfling, being inspired, Favored by the Gods, being near a Paladin, Bless etc.

My point was that Res: Wis is real nice.


I don't think it's a must but it makes more sense to me personally than Alert, what's the point of a Scout that isn't actually good at the seeing things part?

Alert is more generally applicable. It reduces the worst case scenario (i.e. you dying) while Observant mitigates the risk of the worst case scenario to some degree (but your primary fail condition is failing a stealth check, not failing a perception check so there it's not particularly useful - even if you notice the lurking shadow, if it notices you that's still an extremely dangerous situation) and is also useful in any kind of fight (why would you ever not want to go first? The more enemies you kill/disable before they get to act the better). Perception is also fallible; enemies within walls and ghostly things and such might not even be perceptible. Perception is generally good but as a scout you still need a plan for when you fail to spot something, be it a lethal trap or a magic glyph or an invisible demon waiting to devour your soul.


Overall, I certainly find it reasonable to argue that a mini scouting party acting instead of spell scouting can be fun and it's not that dangerous since you have someone covering your back. But I don't think any particular class is really that much better than anything else as a dedicated scout and I think Wizard's kit is just the best in that regard since spells obviate much of the risk and can provide the kind of information that's inaccessible otherwise. It costs resources but this game is all about using your resources to good effect and the party can easily just surveil one day and dungeon delve the next with full resources and a slightly different spell list (more Arcane Eye and Invisibility, less Clairvoyance and Scrying).

[MaxWilson]

That's certainly better than one character dying and the party being none the wiser about what happened. Do they just expect that if the scout isn't returning that they ought to go to base? They still have no knowledge of what they're dealing with and if they wish to rescue the scout, they have to now engage the enemy down one party member.

Small note: anyone with Prestidigitation (or a number of similar spells, such as Mold Earth) can send a long-range "Help!" message back to base just by creating a long-term Prestidigitation effect, like a funny symbol on a rock, and then dismissing it in order to send a message. "If you cast this spell multiple times, you can have up to three of its non-instantaneous Effects active at a time, and you can dismiss such an Effect as an action."

You could set one symbol for Help, I'm in trouble! Come get me!, another for Hostiles incoming! and maybe a third for Run Away and Save Yourselves!

[Valmark]

Provided that the familiar is within 100ft of the Wizard, reducing it's scouting power if you actually use it that way.

That's indeed true for when 100 ft aren't enough. Find Familiar alone isn't going to cover every and all situations. I think.

[Eldariel]

Small note: anyone with Prestidigitation (or a number of similar spells, such as Mold Earth) can send a long-range "Help!" message back to base just by creating a long-term Prestidigitation effect, like a funny symbol on a rock, and then dismissing it in order to send a message. "If you cast this spell multiple times, you can have up to three of its non-instantaneous Effects active at a time, and you can dismiss such an Effect as an action."

You could set one symbol for Help, I'm in trouble! Come get me!, another for Hostiles incoming! and maybe a third for Run Away and Save Yourselves!

That's a clever use for the spells. Mold Earth-line has the advantage of not needing Verbals but of course, given you are casting them in relative safe zone and them just dismissing them, that is rather unlikely to matter.

[Dork_Forge]

That's certainly better than one character dying and the party being none the wiser about what happened. Do they just expect that if the scout isn't returning that they ought to go to base? They still have no knowledge of what they're dealing with and if they wish to rescue the scout, they have to now engage the enemy down one party member. Wizard, incidentally, has high Int and Int-save proficiency so the risk of failing a save vs. a Mind Flayer's Mind Blast is very low indeed (and they won't take damage on a successful save). The grapple stun is also an Int-save so the chances of the Mind Flayer actually finding any way to disable a Wizard are contingent on the Wizard failing an Int-save; it can happen, of course, but it's not that likely. OTOH Wizard can either attack the Mind Flayer's HP or Str/Con-saves with fairly reasonable chances of success.

As Max already pointed out, there doesn't need to be radio silence and shrodingers scouting party.

Since this is tier 2 and a MF is a CR 7, let's say a Wizard has an Int of +4 and a prof of +3, I make that out to be a 35% chance of said Wizard failing the Mind Blast. I wouldn't call failing a little more than one in three times "very low indeed" and since the Wizard has a lower hp threshold, I would certainly be very nervous about failing that initial save, even if I made the first subsequent one. The grapple stun is an Int save yes, so till a 35% of failure and even if they succeed they took a chunk of damage and are grappled by the Mind Flayer.

I assume you mean an attack roll by "attack the Mind Flayer's HP" which is true, though I'd wager that a lot of attacks your average Wizard would have would be ranged based, so if the MF has closed, the Wizard has disadvantage. Str and Con saves sure, its more likely to fail those than any other save, but Con still hasa +1 and the MF will have advantage against what is likely to be a DC15 save. Reasonable chance of success yes, but far from certain, and that's assuming this Wizard even has Str/Con based saves to hand.


In this case you know you're going scouting so you'll probably prepare spells in such a way as to escape if things go sour. This goes for Ranger and Arcane Trickster as much as Wizard but of course they have slightly less information in that regard. Far as Ranger vs. Rogue, yeah, getting spells is of course great but again, if I wanna use spells to scout I'd rather do it on a full caster chassis (if, as you point out, you also wish to maintain spell loadout, just build a melee caster).

It's not really just about preparing the right spells, it's also about having those spells in your book to begin with and having the slots available at the time to make use of them.

You seem to think I was equating a Ranger or AT Rogue using spells to scout the same as a Wizard, I don't see that being the same at all. Both classes have other things to bring to the table for scouting that spells can enhance, the Wizard just brings spells.


*shrug* Fair, some people might not build that way. But they definitely should be well inclined to do so.
...And even if they did grab the same Con, they would be 17hp behind the Ranger, the standard Wizard is at a hp disadvantage and need to take extra measure to correct that, Abjurer's have this built in.



I'm not really cherry picking, I'm just pointing out that it's not the full truth. Of course there are spellier casters too but if the caster is to perform scouting, they'll most likely play in such a way as to spare the resources necessary. As for Ranger, Silence is a big 2nd level spell they learn: no-save "**** you" to many enemy casters. Something they might be casting. Helps with sneaking too. OTOH Pass without Trace is so good that they are well-inclined to use it so it's fair enough that they'd want to use their slots on it. This doesn't change the fact that the total number of slots they have to play with is pretty limited up until level 9.

Yes, play in a way that saves resources by relying on cantrips or other less than stellar options for their chassis, though this is specifically about the Wizard. A Wizard that doesn't burn slots is a Wizard with minimal impact.

Yes, Silence and Pass Without Trace are fantastic spells, that just reinforces that the Ranger will be spending their slots on these things, they have little else worthwhile to use those slots on. And when they run out of slots, they're still a D10 martial with profs, a Fighting Style and other calss/subclass abilities.


We (Scout Rogue, Knowledge Cleric, Swords Bard and Diviner Wizard) were efficient. We were able to solve two encounters (one with a skeleton minotaur, one with two flesh golems) with Minor Illusion with the Bard. Against the Wraith I didn't even cast leveled spells: simple cantrips sufficed while the Cleric wailed with Spiritual Weapon and cantrips. Dybbyk we were able to circumvent by making it chase after a phantom steed and the skeleton horde we simply ran from. The boss fight saw me burn both of my level 3 slots (the boss enemy was a caster so I was using Counterspell and I disabled his "knights" with a Web). Then against the Specters I used Dragon's Breath and portent [rolled a nat 20 so made our Rogue dust one] + cantrips while body tanking since I was the healthiest of the party. In the second boss fight I used my second portent [to go first], recoveried 3rd level slot to counterspell and final 2nd level slot [to earthen grasp the drow mage], and that was that. I must've cast a shield or something at a point since I was indeed all out of spells. Potentially against the Drow Mage's Shadow Demon companion. This was all on level 5.

This is more a testament to your DM allowing you to circumvent combats than anything:

You bypassed two encounters, in one day, with Minor Illusion. Fled an encounter, but were able to flee forwards to continue on. The Dybbyk chased a Phantom Steed... for some reason? It has good mental stats and Perception as a skill. So I'm not sure why it would chase the steed (though I wouldn't have allowed the steed to leave on it's own anyway), especially since it can Dimension Door at will with a 40ft fly speed. Why didn't it just catch it, lose interest and proceed to bamf back? It sounds like you even had time to ritual cast. All the power to your table and I hope you enjoy your games, this isn't anything of note besides your DMs style however.




There are different encounters: ones the party initiates and ones that occur randomly/out of enemy action. The ones the party initiates are timed by the party's actions so they can pick to do them when long duration buffs are in effect. The rest are probably rare enough that you don't need the second Mage Armor unless you expect a significant chance of significant amounts of trouble even if it means fighting a fight without Mage Armor (if you have a functional party and you're playing the ranged caster role, you can often use positioning to avoid the need of taking hits unless you need to).

I think too much weight is being given to the party deciding when combats happen here (again table differences), but I don't see how any of the above rectifies the campaign dictating encounters that happen outside of a nice and neat 8 hour window. As for a Wizard going into a combat with, what a 13AC? Sure they could be okay, but they're also a lot more likely to burn resources on things like Shield.


In this case it's just not relevant if we're talking about trying to GTFO. What's relevant is whether you can escape. That's your victory condition. Unless you can kill the enemy (in which case successful save damage from Dissonant Whispers is not where you want to be) you don't care about damaging them. Worse if there are multiple enemies: in that case Dissonant Whispers is a single target spell that still means you get caught by all the rest even if they fail their saves. Something like Web or Hypnotic Pattern would be far superior there.

The point was that failure still does something. If they fail their save you get away, the same as the other spells mentioned, if they don't you at least have chipped away at their HP, whether that helps you or your party when/if they come after you doesn't matter. One is succeed or fail, the other is succeed or fail with some damage. Whether you give any weight to that damage is something different, personally I do.


Sure, Dissonant Whispers is good for certain jobs. I'm just a bit perplexed by the "at least they have Dissonant Whispers"-point; how's that an advantage? Almost any caster can Wis save-or-lose with a level 1 spell (Druid only has Ensnare to be fair) and the damage is just not your victory condition in this scenario. What is your victory condition is that the CC effect sticks and to that end you need to pick whatever the enemy is the weakest towards and Wizard has the most encompassing list in that regard (plus the option of being a Diviner who can often just make them fail their save).

It's a great spell that only needs 1st level slots, a lot of the spells you mentioned are also Bard spells anyway.


My point was that Res: Wis is real nice.

Yes, more relevant in tier 3+ ime, but different tables different rates.


Alert is more generally applicable. It reduces the worst case scenario (i.e. you dying) while Observant mitigates the risk of the worst case scenario to some degree (but your primary fail condition is failing a stealth check, not failing a perception check so there it's not particularly useful - even if you notice the lurking shadow, if it notices you that's still an extremely dangerous situation) and is also useful in any kind of fight (why would you ever not want to go first? The more enemies you kill/disable before they get to act the better). Perception is also fallible; enemies within walls and ghostly things and such might not even be perceptible. Perception is generally good but as a scout you still need a plan for when you fail to spot something, be it a lethal trap or a magic glyph or an invisible demon waiting to devour your soul.

Perception is fallible, as is initiative, one is purely a combat feat, the other is a generally useful feat. Failing a stealth check is your primary fail here, and also completely irrelevant to the comparison since Alert doens't help with that either, the point was that Observant could give you the extra feet you need to GTFO safely or avoid combat altogether.



Overall, I certainly find it reasonable to argue that a mini scouting party acting instead of spell scouting can be fun and it's not that dangerous since you have someone covering your back. But I don't think any particular class is really that much better than anything else as a dedicated scout and I think Wizard's kit is just the best in that regard since spells obviate much of the risk and can provide the kind of information that's inaccessible otherwise. It costs resources but this game is all about using your resources to good effect and the party can easily just surveil one day and dungeon delve the next with full resources and a slightly different spell list (more Arcane Eye and Invisibility, less Clairvoyance and Scrying).

You... don't think that any classes lend themselves more to scouting than others? So a Barbarian is just as suited to the task as a Rogue? A Paladin as much as a Monk?

Yes spells are great, they're also pretty much all the Wizard brings, so they run out of slots? Don't have the time to ritual cast? Areas of Silence, magical Darkness, Anti Magic, enemy casters? And there's no time crunch of impracticality to just scoping out a location over a couple days? The following day positioning/population hasn't changed? The spells got entirely accurate information?




Small note: anyone with Prestidigitation (or a number of similar spells, such as Mold Earth) can send a long-range "Help!" message back to base just by creating a long-term Prestidigitation effect, like a funny symbol on a rock, and then dismissing it in order to send a message. "If you cast this spell multiple times, you can have up to three of its non-instantaneous Effects active at a time, and you can dismiss such an Effect as an action."

You could set one symbol for Help, I'm in trouble! Come get me!, another for Hostiles incoming! and maybe a third for Run Away and Save Yourselves!

Something to the effect of "I did a simple spell and somewhere, a coin heated up."

[Ashrym]

Light is a Touch spell. Familiars can make real light just as well as anybody else, and to remove it the wizard only needs to cast it himself removing the one the familiar created.

As pointed out, it's a very limited range, but the wizard would also need to stop using the familar's senses to do it because of the action cost. At that point there's no clear path to the target to cast the spell.

Even if a DM ignored the clear path rule, the owl does what with the light better than skill classes?

Edit: also, since when is light a typical wizard pick over damage or more versatile cantrips? I'm calling Schrodinger there. ;-)

[cutlery]

Edit: also, since when is light a typical wizard pick over damage or more versatile cantrips? I'm calling Schrodinger there. ;-)

Non-darkvision race, maybe?

[Valmark]

As pointed out, it's a very limited range, but the wizard would also need to stop using the familar's senses to do it because of the action cost. At that point there's no clear path to the target to cast the spell.

Even if a DM ignored the clear path rule, the owl does what with the light better than skill classes?

Edit: also, since when is light a typical wizard pick over damage or more versatile cantrips? I'm calling Schrodinger there. ;-)

The range was pointed out as being pretty far actually? At least I recall that. And... Not sure why the wizard needs to keep looking to cast it, since it doesn't require vision.

Regarding the edit, I've yet to see a wizard not taking Light. At least, I always grab it given how useful a free re-usable source of light can be. Regardless of Darkvision.

[MaxWilson]

The range was pointed out as being pretty far actually? At least I recall that.

Someone certainly asserted that, but... 100' is the width of nine parking spaces in real life. As horizontal distances go it's very close. It's primarily going to be useful for peeking around corners, or looking upstairs in a house, or other close-range activities. But it's not far enough away that you can park yourself outside the house and have the owl go check out the interior.

If you're close enough to the owl so that a human standing next to the owl could hear your slightly-raised voice, then you're probably close enough to see through its eyes.

[Ashrym]

The range was pointed out as being pretty far actually? At least I recall that. And... Not sure why the wizard needs to keep looking to cast it, since it doesn't require vision.

Regarding the edit, I've yet to see a wizard not taking Light. At least, I always grab it given how useful a free re-usable source of light can be. Regardless of Darkvision.

The clear path rule is under spell casting. The familiar isn't casting the spell; only delivering it. The clear path rule would still apply to the wizard as the caster.

Don't get me wrong. Familiars have their uses. They just also have their limitations.

IME most wizards take a damage options plus mage hand and minor illusion, then things like mold earth. Light tends to be a lower priority because a torch or lantern can cover it. Classes more inclined to take don't have the free hand to hold a light.

[Satori01]

Light is a Touch spell. Familiars can make real light just as well as anybody else, and to remove it the wizard only needs to cast it himself removing the one the familiar created.

An owl flying indoors, and shining as brightly as a nice cool tone LED bulb, is an invitation for the Familiar to get shot, no matter where you are.

Great for a distraction, but the Familiar is probably is dying.

Eventually Wizard Familiars get outpaced by the power level.
Sometimes you need the investigative prowess of the Inquisitive, and not the wit of an Owl Familiar.

Familiars are fragile, they don't last long.

At 3rd level a Familiar combined with Dragon's Breath, is 5e D&D's submission to the D&D Hall of Fame, for Great Moments at the Gaming Table.
Even if your are not playing the Wizard, you are rooting for the Familiar.
This is the high water mark, for the Wizard's Familiar.

Then the game passes the Familiar by, with the Bard playing Bruce Springsteen's Glory Days as they pass.

[Eldariel]

The clear path rule is under spell casting. The familiar isn't casting the spell; only delivering it. The clear path rule would still apply to the wizard as the caster.

Don't get me wrong. Familiars have their uses. They just also have their limitations.

IME most wizards take a damage options plus mage hand and minor illusion, then things like mold earth. Light tends to be a lower priority because a torch or lantern can cover it. Classes more inclined to take don't have the free hand to hold a light.

I generally don't bother with either Mage Hand or Light. Mold Earth, Minor Illusion, Shape Water, Prestidigitation all come first for me. And generally two different damage options.

Mage Hand is generally accomplished by Unseen Servant which is a ritual and thus less resource intensive while Light isn't better enough than a Hooded/Bullseye Lantern to be worth picking up over alternative options.

[Valmark]

The clear path rule is under spell casting. The familiar isn't casting the spell; only delivering it. The clear path rule would still apply to the wizard as the caster.

Don't get me wrong. Familiars have their uses. They just also have their limitations.
Oh, found it. Now I'm utterly confused by the fact that some spells require it and is mentioned in the spell description and some don't say it in the spell description, but that's irrilevant to the topic. Regardless, you're right then.

An owl flying indoors, and shining as brightly as a nice cool tone LED bulb, is an invitation for the Familiar to get shot, no matter where you are.

A wizard can just cast Light again removing the one on the familiar just like someone can snuff out a torch (nevermind that above something else was pointed out that makes it not work apparently).

[Satori01]

An Owl Familiar has AC 11 and 1 HP and a +3 Stealth.
The Light spell shines bright light in a 20' radius and dim light for an additional 20' radius.

Everything in the area knows something is coming.

If the Wizard cancels the Light spell, the Owl Familiar still has a woeful +3 to Stealth, and an 11 AC preventing whatever lurks out in the immediate area, from killing it.

I don't think it is a stretch of the truth to say, this is a grim situation for the owl familiar.

[Valmark]

An Owl Familiar has AC 11 and 1 HP and a +3 Stealth.
The Light spell shines bright light in a 20' radius and dim light for an additional 20' radius.

Everything in the area knows something is coming.

If the Wizard cancels the Light spell, the Owl Familiar still has a woeful +3 to Stealth, and an 11 AC preventing whatever lurks out in the immediate area, from killing it.

I don't think it is a stretch of the truth to say, this is a grim situation for the owl familiar.

And a 60 ft. Flying speed with Flyby.

[MaxWilson]

An Owl Familiar has AC 11 and 1 HP and a +3 Stealth.
The Light spell shines bright light in a 20' radius and dim light for an additional 20' radius.

Everything in the area knows something is coming.

If the Wizard cancels the Light spell, the Owl Familiar still has a woeful +3 to Stealth, and an 11 AC preventing whatever lurks out in the immediate area, from killing it.

I don't think it is a stretch of the truth to say, this is a grim situation for the owl familiar.


And a 60 ft. Flying speed with Flyby.

Potato, potawto.

The whole point of using an owl instead of a PC is that it's immortal and relatively cheap to re-summon if it dies, as well as being reasonably stealthy (especially in the dark where other monsters are taking -5 to their passive Perception vision rolls) and mobile. If we take a concrete situation like "a cavern full of eight Gricks and an Alpha Grick, and the Alpha Grick is sleeping right by the entrance the owl will come in" I suspect you're both going to basically agree on whether or not the Owl is likely to get out of there alive.

The disagreement is just over how likely such situations are, and whether the benefit of sending the owl in exceeds the cost of resummoning it. And THAT benefit in turn depends on whether you're running a wargaming game where PCs have reason to strive to keep themselves alive against whatever happens to be in the dungeon, or a roleplaying tour where the DM is responsible for keeping the PCs alive so they can continue to perform amusing antics and develop relationships with each other.

So, Satori and Valmark, maybe it would help if you talked about your DMing style, or your DM's DMing style. Say it's an 8th level party in a dungeon crawl. What is that Owl likely to encounter in its scouting, and what would you expect to happen to the PCs against those monsters if no scouting is conducted? Is TPK ever on the table?

[Valmark]

Potato, potawto.

The whole point of using an owl instead of a PC is that it's immortal and relatively cheap to re-summon if it dies, as well as being reasonably stealthy (especially in the dark where other monsters are taking -5 to their passive Perception vision rolls) and mobile. If we take a concrete situation like "a cavern full of eight Gricks and an Alpha Grick, and the Alpha Grick is sleeping right by the entrance the owl will come in" I suspect you're both going to basically agree on whether or not the Owl is likely to get out of there alive.

The disagreement is just over how likely such situations are, and whether the benefit of sending the owl in exceeds the cost of resummoning it. And THAT benefit in turn depends on whether you're running a wargaming game where PCs have reason to strive to keep themselves alive against whatever happens to be in the dungeon, or a roleplaying tour where the DM is responsible for keeping the PCs alive so they can continue to perform amusing antics and develop relationships with each other.

So, Satori and Valmark, maybe it would help if you talked about your DMing style, or your DM's DMing style. Say it's an 8th level party in a dungeon crawl. What is that Owl likely to encounter in its scouting, and what would you expect to happen to the PCs against those monsters if no scouting is conducted? Is TPK ever on the table?

The owl could run away at 120 ft. of speed without triggering AoOs, so it could indeed survive.

I've honestly never been in a group where not playing at least a bit smartly didn't mean a variable number of PCs deaths or at least an intensive consume of resources aside from that time we had an inexpert DM with like, 8 PCs so there was hardly a threat (the DM insisted on all those people playing, and we had fun, so no problem but it was a rare case). So a disposable scout with reasonably good scouting and get away abilities is definitely useful. Especially with jerk DMs (I've had a few like one dropping a beholder who couldn't be spotted with a 30 because "it was behind a wall" on the lone scout. Didn't survive the surprise round)

Even if it doesn't get that bad (I know I hate killing players when I DM, and try to make it so that it's a very low possibility), a Tiny animal possibly flying "reusable" is always going to be useful- I'm not saying it's universally better then a PC scouting ahead, obviously, but often it'll be preferable to send that one. Regardless of wether it can pass as a standard animal or not.

...yeah, I've avoided talking about what they might find because I don't recall what is a challenge at that level specifically, but in my experience anything the manual has to offer and then some handmade ones (I usually use handmade monsters).

[MaxWilson]

The owl could run away at 120 ft. of speed without triggering AoOs, so it could indeed survive.

It couldn't escape though if the gricks wake up and ready actions instead of relying on opportunity attacks though. You could wind up in a scenario where the owl is cornered, flying madly around the ceiling, trying to stay out of reach of the gricks who are also crawling up the walls and ceiling trying to reach it, while a few gricks cover the exits with readied actions.

That would be a perfect time for the party to hit them--while they are all out of position and discombobulated from trying to catch the owl. You might even be able to get surprise.


I've honestly never been in a group where not playing at least a bit smartly didn't mean a variable number of PCs deaths or at least an intensive consume of resources... Even if it doesn't get that bad (I know I hate killing players when I DM, and try to make it so that it's a very low possibility), a Tiny animal possibly flying "reusable" is always going to be useful- I'm not saying it's universally better then a PC scouting ahead, obviously, but often it'll be preferable to send that one. Regardless of wether it can pass as a standard animal or not.

...yeah, I've avoided talking about what they might find because I don't recall what is a challenge at that level specifically, but in my experience anything the manual has to offer and then some handmade ones (I usually use handmade monsters).

Okay, so you play in a fairly deadly game where when an owl gets killed you're probably just going to sigh in relief and say, "Good thing that wasn't one of us!" and then go deal with whatever killed the owl. Right?

What about you, Satori?

[Valmark]

It couldn't escape though if the gricks wake up and ready actions instead of relying on opportunity attacks though. You could wind up in a scenario where the owl is cornered, flying madly around the ceiling, trying to stay out of reach of the gricks who are also crawling up the walls and ceiling trying to reach it, while a few gricks cover the exits with readied actions.

That would be a perfect time for the party to hit them--while they are all out of position and discombobulated from trying to catch the owl. You might even be able to get surprise.

Okay, so you play in a fairly deadly game where when an owl gets killed you're probably just going to sigh in relief and say, "Good thing that wasn't one of us!" and then go deal with whatever killed the owl. Right?

What about you, Satori?

Either that or we go "Nope, not worth it, f*** this". This actually happened when we found a dragon under a trapdoor for... Absolutely no reason whatsoever (It was bigger then the only entrance/exit so it made literally no sense and we left it there).

[MaxWilson]

Either that or we go "Nope, not worth it, **** this". This actually happened when we found a dragon under a trapdoor for... Absolutely no reason whatsoever (It was bigger then the only entrance/exit so it made literally no sense and we left it there).

Sure, that's rational behavior.

[MrStabby]

Either that or we go "Nope, not worth it, f*** this". This actually happened when we found a dragon under a trapdoor for... Absolutely no reason whatsoever (It was bigger then the only entrance/exit so it made literally no sense and we left it there).

At my table they would deduce that it was an illusion, determine that it had been placed there to ward off low Int intruders and therefore there be treasure behind it.

[Ashrym]

I generally don't bother with either Mage Hand or Light. Mold Earth, Minor Illusion, Shape Water, Prestidigitation all come first for me. And generally two different damage options.

Mage Hand is generally accomplished by Unseen Servant which is a ritual and thus less resource intensive while Light isn't better enough than a Hooded/Bullseye Lantern to be worth picking up over alternative options.

Mage hand is quickly cast compared to unseen servant (wizards don't prep rituals normally) and readily available in the absence of gear. I see it get taken.

I did take light many times because I was using a shield so couldn't hold the torch or lantern at the same time but that's a lot less common.

I'm partial to a damage attack, shocking grasp to deny reactions, prestidigitation, minor illusion, and mold earth. I need a reason to take light.

[Satori01]

What about you, Satori?

Max, have you not been reading the thread? :)
I started posting about Familiars after it was suggested that casting a Light spell on an Owl Familiar is a good tactic for scouting.

It isn't, it negates all the Wisdom (Perception) advantages you described in the grick scenario. Flyby + 60' Move and Dash Action is great against melee attacks, but is a poor solution to the problem of a Longbow.

Owl, Owl Burning Bright ,(with Light), is a good distraction! (As I previously stated) Odds are the Familiar is going to die though.

Not all adventuring happens in darkness. Most games have at least a few hours of daylight, plentiful torches, and Continual Flame spells...to assume all scouting is done in pitch black conditions is a stretch for me.

More importantly sticking to just one form for the Familiar, is a waste of the versatility of the spell, and is a waste of the role playing potential of the fact that the PC wizard, has through the FF spell bound an immortal spirit of malleable form.
Always summoning an Owl, means you have Hedwig.

Mixing up the forms, means you have a spirit at your disposal, that defies normal D&D statistical conventions in it's base form...like the Spirit Totem summons for the Shepherd Druid.

Also, be-winged creatures flying indoors tend to attract attention, and generates questions like "How did that owl get in here?". Those are precisely the type of questions you don't want to be asked.

Seeing a rat or a spider indoors, might make one go "icky, gross", but may not draw as many questions as an owl flying around the high security wing of a prison the PC group is infiltrating.

FF as a Ritual, typically means recasting the Familiar on a Short Rest.

Familiars are great, but as the PC rise in level, their usefulness for scouting gets superseded by other options.....that seems fairly self evident, and a non-controversial position, to me at least. Which is why I just wrote it again.

[Valmark]

Max, have you not been reading the thread? :)
I started posting about Familiars after it was suggested that casting a Light spell on an Owl Familiar is a good tactic for scouting.

It isn't, it negates all the Wisdom (Perception) advantages you described in the grick scenario. Flyby + 60' Move and Dash Action is great against melee attacks, but is a poor solution to the problem of a Longbow.

Owl, Owl Burning Bright ,(with Light), is a good distraction! (As I previously stated) Odds are the Familiar is going to die though.

Not all adventuring happens in darkness. Most games have at least a few hours of daylight, plentiful torches, and Continual Flame spells...to assume all scouting is done in pitch black conditions is a stretch for me.

More importantly sticking to just one form for the Familiar, is a waste of the versatility of the spell, and is a waste of the role playing potential of the fact that the PC wizard, has through the FF spell bound an immortal spirit of malleable form.
Always summoning an Owl, means you have Hedwig.

Mixing up the forms, means you have a spirit at your disposal, that defies normal D&D statistical conventions in it's base form...like the Spirit Totem summons for the Shepherd Druid.

Also, be-winged creatures flying indoors tend to attract attention, and generates questions like "How did that owl get in here?". Those are precisely the type of questions you don't want to be asked.

Seeing a rat or a spider indoors, might make one go "icky, gross", but may not draw as many questions as an owl flying around the high security wing of a prison the PC group is infiltrating.

FF as a Ritual, typically means recasting the Familiar on a Short Rest.

Familiars are great, but as the PC rise in level, their usefulness for scouting gets superseded by other options.....that seems fairly self evident, and a non-controversial position, to me at least. Which is why I just wrote it again.

You talk about the problem of using a light as if it's a problem only for familiars. Also, I don't think anybody said that scouting is only done in broad daylight? Although it's obviously less effective if you want ti stay hidden. Speaking of which, a spider is going to attract way less attention then a PC too.

There's people who stick to the same familiar exactly for RP reasons so it's really a matter of opinions.

Last note, taking 10 minutes to remake the ritual is way less then a short rest and I've seen that matter plenty of times. Though it's obviously not a combat thing.

Yeah, I don't think I disagree with anything else, at least not when restricted to Wizards and Bards which is what the thread is about.

[Satori01]

Find Familiar has a 1 hour casting time. Find Familiar as Ritual takes 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Valmark, I think you write interesting posts, but here, I feel that perhaps you are trying to "win" a discussion, instead of absorbing what people are saying.

I brought up the point about spiders familiars being icky but not raising questions as to why it is where it is.

Arcane Eye, Clairvoyance, even Augury can provide scouting information of one kind or another without alerting the occupants.

[Valmark]

Find Familiar has a 1 hour casting time. Find Familiar as Ritual takes 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Valmark, I think you write interesting posts, but here, I feel that perhaps you are trying to "win" a discussion, instead of absorbing what people are saying.

I brought up the point about spiders familiars being icky but not raising questions as to why it is where it is.

Arcane Eye, Clairvoyance, even Augury can provide scouting information of one kind or another without alerting the occupants.

Oh wow, I got the casting time wrong by a lot. Wonder what I was thinking about. Yeah, my bad.

I don't think this is a discussion one can see in terms of winning or losing- people raise points or questions and those who disagree/have other opinions raise counterpoints or offer different points of view, and viceversa. At least, that's how I'm seeing this, it's not like there is something to gain from being "right" anyway.

[MaxWilson]

FWIW, I believe that Find Familiar and Invisibility are both more commonly-chosen spells for a spellbook than Arcane Eye, and yet familiar + Invisibility does approximately the same job as Arcane Eye. An invisible bat would be a pretty decent scout. (And of course a chainlock's Sprite is even better.)

[Satori01]

FWIW, I believe that Find Familiar and Invisibility are both more commonly-chosen spells for a spellbook than Arcane Eye, and yet familiar + Invisibility does approximately the same job as Arcane Eye. An invisible bat would be a pretty decent scout. (And of course a chainlock's Sprite is even better.)

An Invisible Inquisitive Rogue is even better. :)
While Forbiddance is by no means a common dweomer to encounter, certain areas will have it. Often times these will be important areas.

A single casting of Forbiddance can exclude Fey, Fiends and Celestials, so sometimes an Invisible Bat Familiar is just not a viable scouting option.

Arcane Eye also has no scent, makes no sound, and can't be detected by effects like Primeval Awareness and other creature detection powers.

Every Diviner Wizard, I have seen in play..(3 in this case), have taken Arcane Eye.
YMMV of course.

Valmark, I do appreciate the points you raise, in this thread and others.
Just, thought that sentiment bore repeating. :)

Come November, when the Bard can likely, swap a known spell for another spell on the Bard spell list every short rest...the Wizard spell list becomes less vaunted.

Having both Awaken and Planar Binding on a spell list, and a campaign that features Downtime, can lead to some interesting player actions....without the scribbing costs a Wizard has to endure to access their spell list. (Actually, the U/A might have had a cost associated for the daily swap...I vaguely recall).

A Chain lock Sprite Familiar does have a great Stealth modifier. It has nothing else, besides woeful damage and E.T.'s Heartlight...at DC 10. An Imp is CR 1...isn't a Sprite C/R 1/8th or so?

[Dork_Forge]

A Chain lock Sprite Familiar does have a great Stealth modifier. It has nothing else, besides woeful damage and E.T.'s Heartlight...at DC 10. An Imp is CR 1...isn't a Sprite C/R 1/8th or so?

Specifically Sprite vs Imp in a scouting role, the sprite has both better stealth and perception than the Imp whilst retaining the invisibility (it also has the poisoned shortbow, but I don't really think that amounts to that much for scouting). The Imp brings a lot more to the table in basically every other area besides roleplay though.

[Valmark]

Arcane Eye also has no scent, makes no sound, and can't be detected by effects like Primeval Awareness and other creature detection powers.

A Chain lock Sprite Familiar does have a great Stealth modifier. It has nothing else, besides woeful damage and E.T.'s Heartlight...at DC 10. An Imp is CR 1...isn't a Sprite C/R 1/8th or so?
In another thread it was argued that Arcane Eye can be smelled, read 'has no scent' made me laugh so much xD

A sprite can turn invisible! Though I think out of all the choices a Chainlock has the sprite's the weakest (I'm considering flight-able invisibility-able only). Also 1/4 CR, still lower then the imp.

[MaxWilson]

Specifically Sprite vs Imp in a scouting role, the sprite has both better stealth and perception than the Imp whilst retaining the invisibility (it also has the poisoned shortbow, but I don't really think that amounts to that much for scouting). The Imp brings a lot more to the table in basically every other area besides roleplay though.

Sprite also has better AC (magnified by Invisibility disadvantage) and somewhat higher intelligence, but it loses out on Darkvision unless you cast Darkvision on it.

However, aside from the Darkvision, it's tough for me to see why you'd want an Imp at all. Isn't recon and communication the whole point of having a familiar? It's not like giving up your action to have an Imp attack is a good use of your combat action. (Honestly I think the Sprite attack is better in that at least I can imagine rare scenarios where you'd want to spend your action attempting to poison someone to inflict disadvantage, as a kind of surrogate Dodge to protect a wounded PC or offset Reckless Attack.)

[KorvinStarmast]

Non-darkvision race, maybe?
My vhuman warlock, yeah. But as often as not she casts light on the barbrians head band so that he can see to hit things, or has a light imbued coin in a pocket that she can toss into a room if need be.

And THAT benefit in turn depends on whether you're running a wargaming game where PCs have reason to strive to keep themselves alive against whatever happens to be in the dungeon, or a roleplaying tour where the DM is responsible for keeping the PCs alive so they can continue to perform amusing antics and develop relationships with each other.
---snip---
Say it's an 8th level party in a dungeon crawl. What is that Owl likely to encounter in its scouting, and what would you expect to happen to the PCs against those monsters if no scouting is conducted? Is TPK ever on the table? I am having the damnedest time getting our level 8 party in a dungeon crawl to remember how important scouting is. We had a run in with 4 flame skulls who nova's a whole bunch of fire balls on the two who blundered around a corner - I had to use revivify for the first time in this campaign. (We got outta there, all said and done, thanks to the ranger dropping a fog cloud to cover our move) and are now pondering how we'll address that threat. We'll see how smart we got next time ...

I have now and again done the whole "I go deaf while owl scouts ahead after I cast guidance on the owl" schtick with my familiar, but until this most recent oops the party has started doing a lot of "we walk down the hall" and stumble over stuff.
Yes, I stay in the rear of the party by choice, now, why do you ask? :smallcool::smallbiggrin:

A bard's magical resources we have access to, but the player isn't that big on scouting so far.

[MaxWilson]

My vhuman warlock, yeah. But as often as not she casts light on the barbrians head band so that he can see to hit things, or has a light imbued coin in a pocket that she can toss into a room if need be.
I am having the ***est time getting our level 8 party in a dungeon crawl to remember how important scouting is. We had a run in with 4 flame skulls who nova's a whole bunch of fire balls on the two who blundered around a corner - I had to use revivify for the first time in this campaign. (We got outta there, all said and done, thanks to the ranger dropping a fog cloud to cover our move) and are now pondering how we'll address that threat. We'll see how smart we got next time ...

Time for illusion magic! Get the monsters to blow their nova on PCs who aren't really there. :)

Flameskulls are awesome.

[Dork_Forge]

Sprite also has better AC (magnified by Invisibility disadvantage) and somewhat higher intelligence, but it loses out on Darkvision unless you cast Darkvision on it.

However, aside from the Darkvision, it's tough for me to see why you'd want an Imp at all. Isn't recon and communication the whole point of having a familiar? It's not like giving up your action to have an Imp attack is a good use of your combat action. (Honestly I think the Sprite attack is better in that at least I can imagine rare scenarios where you'd want to spend your action attempting to poison someone to inflict disadvantage, as a kind of surrogate Dodge to protect a wounded PC or offset Reckless Attack.)

It's situational, you may want the Imp to scout because you're up against enemies that speak Infernal and the Imp has the chance to overhear things (likewise with Elvish and Sylvan for the Sprite or Draconic for the Pseudodragon), other than that the Imp is far more resilient. It has lower AC but more hit points, resistances and immunities. As for why you might want to attack with it, I could see maybe trying to provoke enemies to draw them off or maybe try and score some kind of damage if your familiar has been rumbled anyway (and the damage on the Imp is far superior). Attacking with a familiar in general will get a lot more appealing if that invocation for scaling comes out in Tasha's.

[KorvinStarmast]

Time for illusion magic! Get the monsters to blow their nova on PCs who aren't really there. :)

Flameskulls are awesome. I don't think our wizard has any illusion spells beyond Phantasmal Forces; I'll ask the Bard what he's got. (Flame skulls have advantage on saves versus magic, so we'd need an illusion that requires an ability check)

[Valmark]

It's situational, you may want the Imp to scout because you're up against enemies that speak Infernal and the Imp has the chance to overhear things (likewise with Elvish and Sylvan for the Sprite or Draconic for the Pseudodragon), other than that the Imp is far more resilient. It has lower AC but more hit points, resistances and immunities. As for why you might want to attack with it, I could see maybe trying to provoke enemies to draw them off or maybe try and score some kind of damage if your familiar has been rumbled anyway (and the damage on the Imp is far superior). Attacking with a familiar in general will get a lot more appealing if that invocation for scaling comes out in Tasha's.

To add to this, the imp has Devil's Sight and Shapechanger to help its scouting.

I'm curious, which invocation is it?

[Dork_Forge]

To add to this, the imp has Devil's Sight and Shapechanger to help its scouting.

I'm curious, which invocation is it?

It's from the Class Features Variant, Investment of the Chain Master:

-The familiar gains a fly or swim speed of 40ft (your choice)
-The familiar no longer needs to breathe
-The familiars weapon attacks are considered magical for overcoming immunity and resistance
-If the familiar forces a creature to make a save it uses your save DC

It's a big old powerup in general for the familiar, but that last point makes the Imp far more appealing damage wise since it's save is worth 3d6 and this can come online at 3rd level. The Pseudodragon and Sprite become more appealing for the poisoned conidtion and knockouts (especially if you've got a lore Bard and/or a Diviner).