Wizards Gone Wild
December 19th, 2011
Hello, everyone. Today marks the beginning of Wizard Week, which means that the following few days will be a bit thicker on the spells and staves than normal. And, of course, in the great traditions of wizards everywhere, it means pointy hats and long, white beards. Perhaps some half-moon spectacles, if you’re feeling particularly modern. Finally, it means that today, I’ll be talking about wizards (not Wizards, especially of the Coastal variety, just regular old wizards), and their relationship with game design.
The first thing that I think of when I think about writing a Dark Designs article about everyone’s favorite class of spell slingers, is the fact that wizards are widely believed by Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder players on the internet as being the most powerful class, and absolutely wrecking the balance of the game, if played well. Though I suspect that there’s a certain amount of hyperbole in this, there are definitely legitimate concerns about a wizard’s effect on a game, and this seems like as good a time as any to discuss them.
As a brief aside, I should clarify that when I say “Dungeons and Dragons players,” I mean the 3.5 edition (Pathfinder’s older half-brother), and not the 4th edition. I’m admittedly less informed about 4th edition than I could be, and it may be that 4th edition wizards are incredibly powerful as well, but I doubt it, and even if they are, I suspect it’s for entirely unrelated reasons. This article will focus on the 3.5/Pathfinder wizards.
So, what is it about wizards that stretches and twists the balance of the game? To be perfectly honest, most of the factors aren’t really specific to wizards. In general, full spellcasters like clerics, druids, sorcerers, and wizards are all among the more powerful classes in the game, which has led some of 3.5/Pathfinder’s detractors to refer to it as “caster edition.” The main reason for this is spellcasters’ wide utility, and their ability to fulfill multiple roles.
What do I mean by that? Well, in a game of D&D or Pathfinder, characters generally fall into roles, even if those roles aren’t labeled as clearly as in 4th edition, for example. Fighters (and similar characters) stand up front, hit things, and soak up the damage that monsters dole out. Rogues (and similar characters) do lots of damage, but are more fragile. They also deal with traps, and have access to a lot of skills. Clerics (and similar classes) heal and cast spells that protect and empower other party members. Wizards (and similar classes) cast offensive spells, spells that empower other party members, and other spells. You get the idea.
The problem, and the concern for unbalance, comes when the wizard is able to fulfill other party members’ roles as well as (or better than) those party members. You don’t need a rogue to deal with traps if you can cast a spell that deals with them, instead. You don’t need his ability to bluff if you can cast glibness (which, admittedly, wizards can’t, though they can use Use Magic Device to cast it from a wand). You don’t need the rogue’s sneak attack damage if you can disintegrate everything in your way.
One of the biggest complaints about wizards in 3.5 D&D is that a wizard with access to polymorph can easily outshine any fighter by simply becoming something Huge and incredibly strong, and proceeding to do more damage than the fighter, gaining huge amounts of natural armor, and just ripping enemies apart (or swallowing them whole). This issue was actually addressed in the updated Pathfinder rules, which has made polymorpheffects in general a little less powerful. Though a wizard can still use polymorph to become something big and scary, and can spend some time in the “tank” role generally reserved for fighters and their ilk, at least he’s probably not going to be quite as good at it as the fighter is.
The really frustrating part of this sort of thing, from the perspective of other players at the table, is that the usurped role isn’t the only one the wizard is capable of fulfilling. If the wizard had to bend all his spells, feats, and class features in order to be an effective rogue, it wouldn’t really be any different from having two rogues in the party. But if he only needs to devote three or four of his daily spell slots to it? Well, not only can the wizard stick his nose all in the rogue’s business, but he can do it to the fighter and the cleric, too, and still have a little bit left over to worry about fulfilling his own role.
What’s more, the wizard is amongst the hardest roles for others to usurp, too. A fighter can generally be made to work like a rogue, and a rogue can probably be made to work more or less like a fighter, but only a spellcaster is really going to be able to, say, teleport wherever he wants in the blink of an eye. Yes, in theory, everyone has access to magic items, and with Use Magic Device you could theoretically do a reasonable wizard impersonation by using wands and scrolls, but this is a much larger commitment than learning a few spells; it requires some sufficiently high DCs that you may well fail, and it just isn’t the same. Besides, it’s not like wizards can’t use those things, too.
And then of course, there are the things that are really and truly abusable. If you think that the wizard can make the rest of the party obsolete by casting spells and doing their jobs himself, consider the fact that with dominate person, he can actually build his own party of mind-controlled slaves. Why stick to one fighter, when you can have three? Grab a couple disposable rogues, and if their ability to disarm traps is hindered by being dominated, well, they’ll at least show you where it is when it kills them. Spend one day a week (or, at higher levels, closer to one per month) re-dominating each of them, and the rest of the time you’re good to go. To a lesser extent, animate dead and friends can work in similar ways, though, for that matter, so can the Leadership feat (by far the most powerful feat in the game).
Canny readers will realize that this all adds up to the conclusion that, as far as their utility is concerned, wizards primarily break the game by trying to be things other than wizards. That doesn’t mean that a wizard who sticks to wizarding and doesn’t try to be a one-man army has to be broken, right?
Well, of course, it’s possible to build a bad wizard. I’d start with an Intelligence of 9. But there’s a fair question in there, as to whether a wizard who doesn’t go out of his way to render the rest of the party obsolete, but still tries to be a good wizard, is still going to be game-warping (as opposed to reality-warping, which is something we generally accept from our arcane practitioners).
Here it becomes a bit murkier, because you start to compare apples to oranges. High-level spells definitely pack high-level power, and to be honest at any level of the game there are spells that can really take over games. In the original 3.5, access to a variety of “save or die” spells allowed a wizard to hinge his foes’ very lives on a single die roll, and while Pathfinder made an effort to avoid “save or die” spells, they left in more or less all of the “save or you suck” spells. A 1st-level wizard with nothing but a scroll of sleep and a fluffy pillow can single-handedly slay a quartet of orc warriors (provided that they’re also 1st-level, and that your DM is willing to let you smother them with a pillow, rather than, say, slitting their throats with a dagger). At higher levels, a hold person or a forcecage will quickly take the average fighter or monster out of the fight, and a dominate person can turn them into an ally (see above).
This power to decisively end an encounter with a single spell and a single saving throw is not something that non-casters really have access to. Unless a fighter is going to kill his opponent in one hit (in which case, most likely, he was fighting someone far below his level) he can’t do this, and the same is basically true of rogues (though their excessive sneak attack damage puts them perhaps a bit closer). It’s also pretty powerful, and one of the wizard’s strongest defensive features: it’s hard to kill a wizard with your sword if he can end the fight in a single turn by turning you into a frog, or a slave, or a pile of ashes.
Of course, if the creature makes its saving throw in a lot of these cases, nothing (or basically nothing, with some spells) happens, and the spell and casting time were wasted. This effectively means that the efficacy of save-or-die spells is largely a question of how likely your opponent is to succeed on his saving throw. Luckily for wizards, there are save-or-die spells that hinge on at least two different kinds of saving throws, probably three (I can’t think of any that use Reflex off the top of my head, but I’m sure there’s one somewhere). Got a big bruiser to deal with? Throw a mind-control spell at him. Someone more mentally-oriented? Toss a spell aimed at their Fortitude.
In general, though, I think that most people underestimate the number of times a saving throw will be succeeded, at least at lower and mid levels. What’s more, beefing up your saves is pretty cheap, and a DM who’s worried about save-or-die spells can easily combat them with a lot of cloaks of resistance and monsters with high saves. The potential to end the fight in a single action will always be powerful, but it becomes a lot less powerful the more it becomes a gamble that, instead, you will waste your spell and accomplish nothing, only to be outstripped by the fighter’s slow-but-steady depletion of enemy hit points.
And that’s the big ugly secret about wizards. They’re powerful, and if allowed to have their own way can quickly spiral out of control to eclipse the rest of the party. Conscientious and courteous players will play their wizards without doing so overtly, but even then, the particularly powerful (and fun) spells may still render the rest of the party obsolete, but here the DM has a bit more control, and can tweak things to keep the wizard from simply overcoming all challenges on his own, hopefully with minimal frustration for everyone, and without making things feel too terribly contrived.
That’s it for today. Enjoy the rest of Wizard Week, and thanks for reading.