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Discussions Rules and Guidelines
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Most roleplay servers have own rules to balance the classes and make arcane casters more useful. E.g. reserve talents, which lets any arcane caster use certain spells for an unlimited time.
5th edition did magic better.
Wizzard is one of those classes that is hardest to play as you really need to know game mechanics to get all out of it you just cant click and play and fake it that you dont know it like you can when playing with easier classes.
Excactly, unlike a lot of rpgs people of use to, a wizard DOES NOT, rely on raw damage. While damage and aoe has it uses, what makes a wiizard powerful is CONTROL over the battle.
Put enemies to sleep, oil slick them, turn them to stone, debuff the hell out of them. A wizard is meant to control the situation, allowing everyone else to do damage, heal, and do everything else.
Now on the powerful side of things, there are some things towards later levels and certain spells that have potential for instant kills. A distinegrated enemy for example, could simply go poof. In this way a lucky roll, can make wizards one of the only classes that can outright kill without considering actual damage.
If your a non specialized wizard that scribes every possible scroll you can, your options are pretty well unlimited. Heck, when your in the mood use Tensers Transformation and go melee knight.
Basically a wizard is more a control class than anything else. If the focus is just damage thru magic, one of the other wizard type classes such as sorcerer is probally a better choice. For one less need to focus on intel, since your spells are charisma based. This brings up the other point of wizard, due to it intel base, it combines with other classes better for certain prestige classes. For example, a wizard is better for a thief going rouge trickster than sorcerer, cause thieves also have inteligence skills.
Yeah only proper way to make a Rouge Trickster. Since thieves also have intelligence skills, any magic base should also be intel so you spread your attributes less. Many peoples 1st intinct is sorcerer to avoid needign to memorize spells, but it gimps the overall character. Since wizard is intelligence based magic, it is clearly best for it.
What made wizards the same as everyone else in regular D&D is the need to rest and replenish spells which you have a hard time doing dungeon running, but in NWN you can rest pretty easy thus making your wizard much more powerful. And wizards survive very well at low levels due to spells like ghostly visage, buffs, shields, and other stuff, usually surviving much much easier than many other class's at lower level. They also survive pretty easy at higher levels due to lack of AI in the game. Normally even powerful wizards can be taken out easy with the right tactics, such as having weapons that go through their protective spells, knockdowns and sneak attacks from fighter rogues, you get the idea. A good fighter rogue will probably chew up an equal level wizard with the right build. Improved knockdowns, protection bypassing weapons, sneak attacks when the wizard is knocked down or distracted, etc.
The main power of wizards is versitilty. They have great buffs, great AOE crowd control. In online pvp i usually have my wizards with all buffs/aoe spells to control the pathroutes like webs, cloudkills, grease, and buffs to throw on the actual combat fighters to keep them going longer. On pc gaming i just ignore buffing (thats what my clerics/druids do) and go in full spells blazing with missiles/fireballs and the like to do mass aoe damage to soften up everything. Fully buffed i'll be the first one in and not have to worry about dying due to all the protection spells going, especially if i have some sort of damage shield up to damage anything hitting me. With visages, mirror images, shielding spells, buffs, no problem.
At low levels its very easy to simply play your wizard as a weak warrior, letting your main fighters work on the main groups while you take on any stragglers or maybe archers, etc. First level sleep lets you kill all those sleeping monsters easy, 2nd level ghostly visage and death armor lets you laugh while running in the middle of foes, etc.
If you play BG 2 on hardest you cant afford to ignore WiZ buffing potential. But I admit buffing is bit micro management intensive and kind of breaks flow of game especially RTS type of game play.
In baldurs gate 2 throne of bhaal content you get into problems if you don't know how to use wiz buffs, stuns properly. As there are monsters that sux levels, exp and stats permanently. Weapons that increase hit chance permanently after eatch hit. If you are not able to stun or buffs your guys so they can kill those enemies rapidly you are ♥♥♥♥♥♥. Difference among proper buffing and not buffing is huge. Without buffing you struggle and some fights are near impossible but turn easy or average hard with proper buffs.
Some other D&D games are a lot forgiving for not maxing your skill on WIZ use.
The good thing with the baldur's gate series is that dual classing stuff letting you have the health and combat skills of a dual welding warrior backed up with the power casting ability a powerful wizard, so your slamming stuff both with powerful dual weapons welded by a competent warrior and throwing out spells of a powerful mage. Your thieves and clerics are backedup by powerful warrior abilities also with your created characters. The prebuilt storyline characters are great for dialogue, but your created characters are the ones going to laugh through the series with their offensive power. To me, one of the bad rules of the old editions allowing such dual class characters much easier than current rules.
Best defense is always a good offense. Sure, they made foes not so easy to kill thankfully with spellcasters with start-of-fight spell triggers with protection, but nothing a few mage spells or your paladin won't be able to take down fast. Even later, even non-spellcasters with items can take down defensive protections fast and easy, or just use +5 weapons to bypass mage stoneskin like defenses like butter.
Unfortunately they are not very useful until level 5 when they get access to the third level fireball spell (wizards gain spell levels every odd level). Before then they are pretty useless because magic missile and the like just aren't that powerful.
However they are very squishy, something which you can easily compensate for by taking a level in Fighter and putting on heavy armor. Unfortunately this means having to take the Still Spell feat.
But then you take big hit as wizard because now your spells are one level higher. For instance your level 3 Fireball now takes up a level 4 slot, and your level 8 Sunburst (very powerful in late game) now takes up a level 9 slot. And since there is no level 10 slot, you cannot cast level 9 spells.
At least until you reach level 27 and take the Auto Still Spell feat, which is only available in the expansion pack.
At than point you can cast Sunburst and take out waves of the undead, and Wail of the Banshee can basically kill almost anything else.
So the Fighter/Wizard combo is very very powerful with an emphasis on Wizard. With the right gear, and the right buffs you can go toe to toe with pretty much any creature in the game, even better than a normal fighter due to the buffs. Premonition for example is an incredibly powerful defensive spell.
Of course such a build would be a complicated one, you could not just take whatever feat meets your fancy as you go along. You would have think through your build and have it all planned out in detail before even starting the game.
Which would be good advice in any D&D game anyways.
If you are facing a Fighter/Wizard with their own +5 swords, and +5 armor you might have your hands full. The right spells, like Premonition, and Bull's Strength would help even the odds. And probably keep him alive long enough to take you down with two or three volleys of Isaac's Greater Missile Storm.
At least on a one on one basis, against more foes the Isaac's Greater Missile Storm would spread out and lose its effectiveness.
As a previous poster said, if you know the mechanics, in can be a very potent class.
One thing that weaken Wiz is that in many D&D computer game you start solo or with very small group early in game. Wizards especially on low level are not very self reliant solo characters as most of spells are carbage and you need to rest to get more spells. Wiz have very low HP pool early on. Some games also have solo parts that are hard to pass trough only with wiz in group.
Warrior, Barbarian, Paladin, Cleric are much better choises to solo start game as main character.