Bringing Wizards to parity with Sorcerers

[boho]

I'm not sure there's anyone who would argue that the Sorcerer is far and away the dominant arcane in HG, with Wizard being sufficient to fill the role, but inferior in almost all ways, from usability (spellbook management is a drag) to their metagame power (only 4-5 spells per level are must-haves in each endgame area) to their sheer numerical power (Sorcs have heaps of perks, Wizards... don't).

As I see it, the advantages/disadvantages, both in terms of design and the meta-game, of each are:

Wizard Advantages by Design

* True Generalists, extremely flexible and capable of rapidly adapting to any situation, on paper.

* Only class with Scribe Scroll.

* Tons of skillpoints due to high INT.

* HG: Can declare a Specialist school for a free Spell Focus feat in that school (+2 DC, and any bonus effects from the focus), at the cost of ALL access to two different spell schools.

Wizard Advantages in the Metagame

* Wizard gear in general is cheap. Wizard CCs are the only builds whose primary stat is INT, and they're underplayed.

* Can splash Rogue for bonus treasure, if no other Rogue is around.

Sorcerer Advantages by Design

* Sorcs only get a handful of spells per level, but can cast them many more times per rest.

* Don't have to find scrolls to learn their spells, but can use scrolls just like a Wizard.

* HG: Get 1.5x extra spell slots from gear.

* HG: Can use !mm channel to burn up to 3 additional spell slots on a spell, thereby adding up to 3 temporary caster levels to a spell.

* HG: A pure Sorc always has !mm channel 1 enabled at no additional spell slot cost.

* HG: Sorcs get more spell choices per level than vanilla.

Sorcerer Advantages in the Metagame

* Most spell levels have 4-6 spells which are head and shoulders better than everything else at that level.

* Only 4-6 spells per level are ideal in the most important, most popular zones.

* Many spells are literally or functionally irrelevant, either due to HG's focus on combat, the need to keep pure rogues relevant, or simply because they're garbage in every NWN module.

* Spellbooks become increasingly annoying to manage as your number of spell slots grows and grows. Sorc avoids this.

* Randomized spawns in the most popular zones make predicting exactly how many copies of those 4-6 spells to load impossible. Sorc simply does not have this problem.

* Can splash Paladin for heaps of free saves.

Setting aside from the glaring imbalances caused by past tweaks to bring Sorcs up to Wizards (1.5x spell slots, !mm channel, more spell choices), the massive flaw in this balance is that Wizard's primary advantage - its flexibility - is rendered irrelevant due to the focus on spell DC checks, and thus the need for spell focus feats. And no, the Specialist Wizard option is an absolute joke and does not even come close to addressing the gap.

Propositions on Bridging the Gap

No, don't nerf Sorcs. Instead, leave Sorcs alone and declare them the masters of CL (channeling is a cool idea that lets you flex those bonus slots, and a Sorc built specifically for one area SHOULD out-perform a Wizard that is better suited for any area), while Wizards are the masters of calculated flexibility and DC (their magic comes from deliberate practice, so stuff is more likely to work, but they also aren't able to throw raw power at the problem).

Ideas:

- Give a bonus to pure Wizards (+1 DC to everything, perhaps?)

- Characters with at least 30 (or more?) Wizard levels and who aren't members of a Quasiclass can read two spell focus books instead of one, granting them mastery over one more school than Sorcs.

or...

- All Wizards gain the basic Spell Focus feats for free.

- Specialist Wizards gain +2 to their chosen school, and free GSF feats in all remaining schools they can cast. Two schools are marked restricted, as is currently live.

or...

- All Wizards may choose a Specialist school, gaining +2 (+3?) DC to that school. No schools are marked restricted, this is simply a freebie perk of being a Wizard.

or...

- All Wizards get +1 DC to all schools. It is no longer possible to be a specialist Wizard -- that's the Sorc's wheelhouse.

[drunkenboastor]

Being able to specialize for no loss of spell schools would bring some balance. In addition, specialization should also increase spell penetration.

[desocupado]

Feb 27, 2015 3:34:24 GMT desocupado said:

Wizard

-Epic spells from specialized chosen school can be used one more time per day (for up to x3 epic with PSK)
-Wizards with 25+ levels that don't belong to a quasiclass get get Epic Polymath (for epic spells) for free at level 41
-Legendary Wizards that don't belong to a quasiclass may specialize in another school using the spell pedestal.
-Wizard no longer have to get barred schools to specialize. // setting your spell book is enough
-Specialist Wizards have 33% chance to not spend a spellslot from their specialized spell school when casting it. If they don't belong to a quasiclass this chance is increase to 50%.
-Specialist Wizards get paragon spell knowledge for their chosen when they get Paragon spell focus on that school.

Reasoning: Specialization needs some love and barred schools are not fun so why not fix both?
Another epic use, a free PSK (with PSF) and lesser spell consumption fits quite well for specialization.
The epic polymath would give a huge versatility boost for regular wizards early on.

This should help a lot. If I were to prioritize I would go with

• Free PSK in specialized schools, after PSF (another bonus feat)
• No blocked schools (it's too frustrating)
• Epic Polymath (it's thematic)

[Enius the White]

Aug 13, 2018 21:19:00 GMT boho said:

* Spellbooks become increasingly annoying to manage as your number of spell slots grows and grows. Sorc avoids this.

* Randomized spawns in the most popular zones make predicting exactly how many copies of those 4-6 spells to load impossible. Sorc simply does not have this problem.

...

Setting aside from the glaring imbalances caused by past tweaks to bring Sorcs up to Wizards (1.5x spell slots, !mm channel, more spell choices), the massive flaw in this balance is that Wizard's primary advantage - its flexibility - is rendered irrelevant due to the focus on spell DC checks, and thus the need for spell focus feats. And no, the Specialist Wizard option is an absolute joke and does not even come close to addressing the gap.

[/div][/quote]

This is my observation as well, having played both classes well beyond level 80; the Wiz well beyond his justifiable usefulness. I have not touched the Wiz in ~7 years.

In every spawn that matters (e.g. randoms, boss fights) a Sorc outguns a Wiz so brutally, that there is little to debate in by books. Never mind the more than 150% innate spell number bump, more effective impact per spell, etc, for a Wiz to attempt to actually gain any functional utility from their flexibility, they must waste many of their spell slots with "what if" spells, every key rest. This gets worse with every additional niche spell that is brought in with the ironic intent of increasing relative Wiz "flexibility" power.

Just like a Sorc, but much more acutely so, the more a Wiz strives for flexibility, the closer they come to being useless at everything.

The end-game Wiz is, however, usually superior at opening the RAA doors without using scrolls...

[buddhamind]

Here's what I would do.

1) The appeal of wizards is that they can cast literally any arcane spell in the mod. Nobody specializes except staffmasters. On the other hand, sorcs are often "specialized" in that they take very specific spells for certain areas. Thus, eliminate specialization for wizards and give it to Sorcs instead. It matches their build style better, and banning two schools is still a pretty harsh penalty for sorcs who want to go that route.

2) Spontaneous casting means you have a higher effective number of spells to use, even if the absolute number goes down. I don't think you'll find any sorc player who would claim that sorcs need more spell slots. So I'd propose to eliminate the spell slot bonus for sorcs and give it to wizards instead. Then Wizards might become a little more competitive.

3) And while I'm at it, I want a pony: The !sb save commands were really useful and would help a lot for non-spontaneous casters.

[chirality]

i remember more than once wiz buff suggestion threads getting responses along the lines of "being a mage, they're strong, of all classes do they really need a buff, look at other classes first". so far, there's been some work done there, but even still, as a longtime wizard whiner, i have to admit it's hard to argue that better balancing 2 of the strongest classes in the game relative to eachother is very important or holds much priority.

i also remember the usual "wizards r actually strong, if u dont think they're weaker than sorcs than u need to git gud". not much to say on that obviously, but just mentioning it's funny how the forum meta shifted from wizard apologist theory, to OP where even a new player being able to clearly and concisely break down how and why wizards sux compared to sorcs.

Aug 13, 2018 22:54:14 GMT drunkenboastor said:

specialization should also increase spell penetration.

was slated/to-do back in PL brainstorm days but never materialized. i think because of the usual "wiz/sorc balance will shift back into wizard's favor once new spells/areas are released", which afaik is pretty much applied to any wiz buff suggestion, so i guess we can only see what the brave new world holds

Aug 14, 2018 1:55:45 GMT buddhamind said:

The !sb save commands were really useful and would help a lot for non-spontaneous casters.

caused server crashes so were removed (indefinitely? unless/until someone can implement it without issue?)

___________________________________________________

wizards are wizards and u can buff them a lot but at the end of the day there's (afaik) no feasible way around the built-in mechanics of spontaneous vs spell prep. when all else is said and done, even if wizards had better DC/SP and more slots, they still need to set spellbooks. 

maybe next area will have new spells for wizards only, set spawns with no randoms. there, sorc nerf/wiz buff. 3 days, worth the wait

[buddhamind]

Aug 14, 2018 4:06:42 GMT chirality said:

wizards are wizards and u can buff them a lot but at the end of the day there's (afaik) no feasible way around the built-in mechanics of spontaneous vs spell prep. when all else is said and done, even if wizards had better DC/SP and more slots, they still need to set spellbooks. 

True but people still play clerics and druids... cause they're good.

maybe next area will have new spells for wizards only, set spawns with no randoms. there, sorc nerf/wiz buff. 3 days, worth the wait

Maybe they'll make it so that you have to have every school, so you have to be a generalist wiz or take multiple sorcs.

[chirality]

cleric and druid spellbook management is really nothing compared to arcane imo (and i think it's the case that most ppl don't find it easy to play either cleric or druid to their optimal potential in abyss, due spellbook management). druid comes close on some runs but even still it's a lot less stressful (and effort intensive) imo. altho to be fair, there once was a time that "2nd arcane" was prolly a lot more popular than in recent years (frankly 1 solid sorc is plenty, another would be wasting a 2h dmger/picker/utility quasi spot), so i'll grant that if the duties are being split and wizard doesn't need to worry about everything, it's a lot less hassle and more optimal delivery of their precious slots (but then 2nd arcane -> 2nd class citizen, bingo).

i also feel like druid prepping ~3-7x of a given "specialized" spell tends to be a lot more effective or a lot less noticeable if you run out/fail than a wizard with similar spellbook/intentions. a) you rarely find yourself "missing" (lesser resto is stronk, and making sure NB is on because you're the one using it) and b) there's a lot less pressure if you do run out of X thing (oops no harms, np, vrock gonna die to fire anyway/mage will PWK adaru, oops no more crumble, shrug, it's stoned, ignore it and we'll spam heals while beat it down, oops no more defoliate, shrug, will die to dmg spam, oops no more banish, np sorc or cleric got this), whereas arcane running out of PWK or weird or banish or ED or coldballs or disint or cod (or almost as bad, prepped too many so that's X# less emped/maxed dmg spam couldve been delivered) is so weak and lame.

if druid or cleric doesn't have the right spell prepped (cuz too few memmed or ran out from fails), it's like "lol...get more next time but no biggie: sorc (and/or tanks) will solve that problem, even if we have to spam heals for kb", after all druid and cleric are prolly doing their "main" jobs anyway (or if it's a map/spawn where their main job *is* to land some "exotic" insta/disables or dmg spam, they usually have plenty of room cuz no need for racks of drown/plode etc). ofc it doesn't help that sorcs has tons of slots for that, so i don't mean to say that sorc slots aren't part of the problem too. but even sp/dc and huge slots aside, it's still the spontaneous flex that's really the kicker.

if wizard is the 1 arcane and doesn't have the right spell rdy, it's like "darn, wish we had a sorc..." and i'm pretty sure the thought of "darn wish this sorc was a wizard" never crossed anyone's mind (at worst it's "darn wish this hell sorc was a abj sorc")

[boho]

Aug 14, 2018 5:56:24 GMT buddhamind said:

Maybe they'll make it so that you have to have every school, so you have to be a generalist wiz or take multiple sorcs.

The problem there is that the DCs would have to be trivialized, since Wizard is given nothing to help the number of schools they can take to PSF over a Sorc. Also remedying class balance by designing content to exclude OP classes or require underpowered classes either pisses off players or creates another one-trick pony Rogue situation where there's only one class that can do a specific thing, but it's not exactly required, because making an inferior/rare class suddenly required is too disruptive, so instead it's just very beneficial to have.

I proposed a DC-based advantage to Wizards over Sorcs because it addresses a lot of the nasty problems we've all identified with the class in a way that doesn't disrupt the design of the rest of the game. Making Wizard spells work more reliably than Sorcs' would increase the margin of error for "guessing wrong" with your spell selections, plus make taking only a handful of edge-case spells viable as they're much more likely to work the first time than a Sorc's, plus make the 1.5x spells per level bonus Sorcs get less of a naked advantage.

This way on average, Wizards would need to cast fewer times to achieve full effect, but have to gamble up-front with spell selection, while Sorcs would need gamble more from moment to moment via the use of !mm channel. "Lucky" Wizards would have a perfectly tailored spellbook, while "lucky" Sorcs would land their non-channeled spells the first time, leaving them with 1.5x the effective slots as a Wizard. On average, Wizards won't guess perfectly and Sorcs will have to use channel or fall behind in the action economy, but in the end both would have similar rest efficiency and requirements.

[chirality]

without bonus slots channel wouldn't make much sense as a mechanic.

the thing with sorc is that without channel or extra LL spells/ESK feats or bonus slots, they'd start to look a lot weaker than wizards, especially for vets that know how to prep efficient spellbooks. if sorcs got nerfed to a point, vets would prolly grumble about the added effort and play wizards instead (or considering OP powercreep, maybe not even gaf). wizard is inherently stronger in D&D/NWN in many ways, which is why sorcs got loaded up with special HG modifications. the problem is over time a wizard with +1 school and better buffs stopped mattering when you can just have a 2nd or 3rd sorc on demand that doesn't miss the lack of school. and making more mobs vulnerable to more 1 or 2 more niche-y wizard-y stuff just ends up with reinced sorc builds adapted to a new meta (we've seen how adding couple new niche spells worked, like banish and PWK: sorcs aiming for those zones drop another spell for it and shrug it off, and with the way gear/augs works, you don't even need wizard "extra esf" to make it work--admittedly sorc channel is a big part of why it does work tho)

i think one issue is that there aren't enough niche "guarantee" spells for wizards to fully take advantage of (like PWK) without punishing sorcs harshly for doing the same. and then spells that are niche-y but are low level and fail to land reliably aren't super hot. much like salt ray vs slaads, it's cool in concept but if you have to spam something more than 2-3x before it works, it's not doing wizards any favors. even managing spellbook for PWK isn't fun when 9s are so valuable, and sorc will only ever run out of PWK when literally running out of spells (and time for sync). if there were more spells like blistering radiance niche insta but didn't have to roll for save, it'd be pretty cool for wizards. iirc there's stuff like this planned, but eh, zots are zots, and new spells is a big task. i'd try to make more use of the ones that exist already and make them do something useful without worrying about needing to cast multiple times on 1 target (assuming SR passed if applicable). for example maybe galvanic cone could overload the the senses and "stun" (or immobilize like marut chain) of some 1-3 prio targets, or maybe overload and temporarily disable the kb field of hell constructs; blistering radiance could insta with no save (or like suggested in the past reduce conceal); viscid glob could get a buff to be useful (make it do resin geyser check hue); temporal stasis could be no save or instakill something like phanes, or disable contingency, or get the "lure phane" treatment and last longer but switch off rounds of frozen/active; polar ray could insta something like palrethees or pyrexic fumes (maybe !opt toggle it to either deal damage or freeze things with no damage--but this wouldn't help sorc vs wiz due sorc floating L8 slot); feeblemind could prevent target from activating any special abilities for short time (prolly big coding task tho); phantasmal killer could no-save insta or disable something useful.

wizards could get a TA free (makes sense in a lot of ways)

one problem with buffing "wizard spells" is that it would still buff sorcs and the same meta of having multiple sorcs for diff runs won't ever change, and most players (esp "top" players) can easily afford to level/gear/tag up multiple sorcs. if there was more reward for picking wizard and sticking with it to have 1 toon that can arcane any run, as opposed to logging diff sorcs to arcane their built-for run, it could also help. but reincarnation and player vaults is a thing, so there's not much to do there.

school specialization is that is just a dinosaur from PnP. bonus slots was the original 3e "benefit" for spec and iirc this was discussed as untenable for NWN/hg. +DC is interesting but even in vanilla it's of questionable value. the entire concept fails on HG for multiple reasons (not least of which the push over the years to "make more spells to make wizards better" when in practice all it does is make specialization less and less viable). there's yearly requests to improve/rebalance specialization but i think it's a waste of time honestly. even if it was buffed to be suddenly desirable (like the once-discussed/slated +SP in PLs in spec school, or only 1 banned school, or even better DC in spec school) it's just recreating the basic sorc meta dynamic: make 2-3 wizards specced for diff areas, which doesn't really help the class itself stand as a unique alternative, as much as just make a sorc copy.

wizards are strong by virtue of being mages. they still excel for LLs and they still can be looters and they still have tensers and EI and ability to prep spells to "be a sorc" for a given run at no reinc cost. it's only once you play as or with a sorc that you start to feel shortchanged, but that's the nature of spontaneous casting (even without channel i'd still play sorc no question--even without bonus slots AND channel). leave it like it is, the tangled web of HG has really just created a dilemma where there's not much you can do to "fix" the "balance" between the 2 classes (short of never-ending arms race of new spells/new mobs). it's not even a bad thing per se; it's just a thing, and there's a lot of stuff that needs fixing. well, at least we can say that wizard still serves a fine purpose as a vehicle for kewl quasis like SM and GI (oh wait nvm)

how bout this, wizard spellcasting counts as psionics. there, buffed.

[boho]

I should note that when I say Wizard spells I mean “Arcane spells when cast by a Wizard.”