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Originally posted by Charles Phipps

1. No Prestige Classes: I was surprised by this move since The Prestige Class was a major cash cow for WOTC. Of course, I always recognized that Prestige Classes were nothing more than "Kits" from 2nd Edition warmed over. Frankly, I won't be surprised if there's something similiar that pops up soon.

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Originally posted by Charles Phipps

Might as well give Swords to Wizards.

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bother with memorizing spells, if they are such a small part of what a wizard can do?

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Originally posted by Venger

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bother with memorizing spells, if they are such a small part of what a wizard can do?

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Because the spells which comprise that 20% are going to be the most powerful spells in the Wizards arsenal.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
You wouldn't strip a warrior of his weapons and armor and expect him to still be at 80% capability...

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Obviously not, if that's only a fifth of the wizard's strength.

Only once did I play a single-class wizard, and that was because I hated the "oh, I've tossed my three spells, now I'm useless" aspect of wizards, particularly at low levels. But come on, now spells are only 20% of their strength? In other words, what previously defined wizards is now almost a footnote. Give them a boost or something, sure, but don't make the defining characteristic of the class become an afterthought. You wouldn't strip a warrior of his weapons and armor and expect him to still be at 80% capability...

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Originally posted by SirUrza

Sounds like they've made spellcasting terribly complicated.

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Originally posted by SirUrza

Sounds like they've made spellcasting terribly complicated.

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Originally posted by Venger

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Obviously not, if that's only a fifth of the wizard's strength.

Only once did I play a single-class wizard, and that was because I hated the "oh, I've tossed my three spells, now I'm useless" aspect of wizards, particularly at low levels. But come on, now spells are only 20% of their strength? In other words, what previously defined wizards is now almost a footnote. Give them a boost or something, sure, but don't make the defining characteristic of the class become an afterthought. You wouldn't strip a warrior of his weapons and armor and expect him to still be at 80% capability...

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You misread that, Wooly. The quote is "a wizard who casts all his memorized per day spells should be at about 80% of power." That doesn't mean, however, that 80% of the Wizard's power doesn't derive from spells. And when they say 80%, what they mean to say is that after expending all your memorized spells, about 80% of your spells will still be available to you. That doesn't mean, however, that the other 20% of spells are weak.

Every class in 4E has At Will, Per Encounter, and Per Day abilities. For the Wizard, these abilities will be spells. The memorized spells will likely be the Per Day abilities. And yes, they are the Wizard's most powerful spells. That's why you'll only be able to cast them once per day. And they've actually said as much. Here's a quote. "Spells are divided among at will (lesser power than a fighter’s melee attack), per encounter, per day (the really powerful stuff, these are the most powerful abilities in the game) and rituals. Rituals cover magic item creation, and non-combat spell (divinations are prime examples)."

Here's a specific example of spells under the new system in this article: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drcw/20071214. In this article, you have a Wizard who selects the spells Magic Missile and Fireblast (At Will), Burning Hands (Per Encounter), and Sleep (Per Day). Once the Per Day spell, Sleep, is cast, that Wizard will be at about 75% of her power, still have 3-out-of-4 spells she can cast. That doesn't mean, however, that Sleep isn't more useful then Magic Missile, or that the Wizard will have to rely on abilities other then magic. They've even said "a wizard should never have to rely on a crossbow because he's out of spells".

Wizards will still rely on magic. Some of them, like Magic Missile, will be spells they can cast all day long, whenever they want to. Other spells, like Burning Hands, can be cast once per encounter. And other spells, like Sleep, are spells that the Wizard has to memorize. They can be cast once per day, and are the most powerful spells available to the wizard.

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But it still says that a wizard who casts all of his spells is still at 80% strength. It doesn't matter how you split them up. At will, per day, etc -- those are all still memorized spells.

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And tossing them off doesn't appreciably weaken the wizard. No matter how you want to slice it, that's a radical recasting of the class, and it definitely turns them into something they weren't.

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But it still says that a wizard who casts all of his spells is still at 80% strength. It doesn't matter how you split them up. At will, per day, etc -- those are all still memorized spells.

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Originally posted by Venger

Wooly apparently missed those two words with his previous reading, and I wanted to make sure he saw them, this time.

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Understood, but blowing words up like that would be considered by many posters to be aggressive, even though that wasn't how you intended to come across.

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