The Class Identity Crisis of the Wizard

April 28TH, 2023

People often talk about the thematics of a class being bad. Rangers and Sorcerers usually get picked on here, though I've also seen barbarians and druids get mentioned as well.

But while these all have thematic issues, IMO they pale in comparison to the thematically most confused class in 5e: the wizard.

What is a wizard? Well lets ask the PHB:

Wizards are supreme magic-users, defined and united as a class by the spells they cast. Drawing on the subtle weave of magic that permeates the cosmos, wizards cast spells of explosive fire, arcing lightning, subtle deception, and brute-force mind control. Their magic conjures monsters from other planes of existence, glimpses the future, or turns slain foes into zombies. Their mightiest spells change one substance into another, call meteors down from the sky, or open portals to other worlds.

A wizard is a magic guy. Yay. Now this is already a bad start. Everyone has magic in 5e. Out of 13 base classes, only 4 are not spellcasters. Less than a quarter of the game's design space is occupied by non-spellcasters. I say ‘less’ because of course shadow monks and eldritch knights and arcane tricksters and such exist. Even totem barbarians and ancestral barbarians cast a few spells. The core concept of wizard is “has magic” in an edition where everyone has magic. That’s a problem.

The only claim to fame here is that wizards study magic, as opposed to an innate knowledge or a gifted knowledge. That's something. But this is a pretty narrow space, and the actual mechanics of the class undercut this. Scholars and academics would of all classes be the ones that you expect to specialize the most. After all, that's what academics do, right? You don't ever meet a guy who has a PHD in "science" do you?? But every wizard effectively does have a PHD in "magic." Wizards don't specialize. Its suboptimal for them to do so. An evoker usually will take fireball or lightning bolt, but an abjurer and an illusionist will as well. The evoker will be a little better with that particular spell, but its going to be good for all of them. They probably all have mage armor and shield and silvery barbs and find familiar and web and sleep and magic missile and counterspell as well, yeah?

Now, omnidisciplinary scientists are a thing in fiction, if not in real life. In Stargate SG1 Sam Carter knows everything there is to know about everything, and that is fine in SG1 because she’s the only science guy. If you look at a show with multiple science guys, like Agents of Shield, it becomes obvious that they have to have clear specializations lest one of them start to feel redundant.

Every Wizard is a supergeneralist magic man in a party of magic men. Bards are magical beguilers, warlocks are creepy and weird, clerics are simple and solid, druids are powerful and slow and wizards…. Are everything. They can do everything. They get access to all the best-in-game spells for nearly every category, and taking only the good spells is usually going to be the best option. There's some variance of choice here because list of excellent spells is long, but I've essentially never seen a truly focused/specialized wizard. Customization comes down to things like "skipping counterspell this time" or "getting light armor proficiency and skipping mage armor" or "taking lightning bolt instead of fireball."

Sure, some wizards intentionally take bad spells, but there's little argument in favor of it. Why hurt yourself?

And yeah, this has knock-on effects for other classes. Sorcerers in PF were the blasting class, sort of a red to the wizard's blue. But in DND, while sorcerers can be decent blasters, they have to give up on everything else to do that, while wizards can always going to be good blaster as well as whatever else they feel like. Bards are support and control casters, but again, wizards magically do most of the same things already and bards have to go back to their class features to have an impact.

Wizards are in the unfortunate position of being both extremely strong and extremely bland. The most flavor they get comes from big overpowered legacy spells like Wish and Simulacrum, but aside from being strong, are these spells actually…. Distinctive? Sufficient?

I don’t think so.

Wizard thematics need a rework, just like 3e paladins did.

My proposed solution would be removing a lot of best-in-class spells like fireball and lightning bolt from the wizard list, but then adding them back in if the wizard specializes. So going enchanter locks you out of fireball, but gets you hypnotic pattern, and so on. War Wizards and Evokers can learn Shatter and Rimes Binding Ice and fireball, but a master illusionist might not be familiar with those spells, or perhaps can learn them but not until higher than the normal level. Until then if they want to do blasting on the side they'll have to get by with Aganazzar's Scorcher and the like. 

And no, I'm not saying every good spell needs to leave the wizard list. Some things like counterspell are very on-brand for a wizard; others like mage armor are pretty essential to how the wizard functions as a class without feats or multiclassing. But as long as “wizards can do EVERYTHING” is a core part of how the class is designed, it creates lots of problems for the system as a whole.