Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Wizard Class Implementation: Discussion & Feedback

Setting aside their ability to learn scrolls over their level I feel pure wizards aren't in a great place. There are too many scrolls, buffs and clickies taking away their best advantages. The School bonuses are pretty powerful but struggle to compete with the increased effectiveness of Heighten and Quicken spell. Still to be fair their spell flexibility does retain some uses.

Level 1: Shield, Longstrider, Enhance Leap, Magic Missile (very useful in conjunction with Level 2: Hold Person, Invisibility, Misty Step(there's a lot of ways to get this but more misty step is never bad), See Invisibility (except for ), Mirror Image (though really dependant on the AI being scared to target them)
Level 3: Animate Dead, Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Glyph of Warding, Haste, Hypnotic Pattern, Counterspell, Blink
Level 4: Confusion, Polymorph, Wall of Fire
Level 5: Dominate Person, Hold Monster, Cloudkill, Conjure Elemental
Level 6: Create Undead, Ottos Irresistable Dance (though stacking save DC buffs makes this somewhat redundant), Globe of Invulnerability

That's more than a sorcerer can access and involves some very very powerful unique spells in Conjure Elemental and Animate Dead. If you go deep into it's enough to make them feel competitive with Sorcerer (setting aside infinite metamagic) but otherwise it's tough to compete with metamagic. Necromancy and Divination kind of do it. A level 6 hold monster that's guaranteed to remove two enemies wrecks most boss encounters and there's items to make animate dead very appealing.

The advantage for a sorcerer of taking 1 level of wizard is limited and based mainly on supplementing the sorcerer’s very limited number of known spells with a handful of spells that don’t rely on casting stat (e.g., haste, misty step). Damage dealing spells would still need to be taken from sorcerer list to be effective. Trading one feat and a 1-level delay in access to key spells (eg, lightning bolt, chain lightning) would probably be worth it, but I’d need to do the math. I dislike playing sorcerers in PnP because one needs to map out spell progression in excruciating detail at the start of play, and taking a level of wizard would complicate things.

Taking 1 level of wizard on a tempest cleric instead could be a very powerful combination but would rely heavily on getting a good DC for intelligence since lightning spells would need to come from scrolls.

But a lvl 1 wizard can't scribe a scroll of lightning bolt?

There's an exploit: Respec to full wizard, learn spells that you want, then respec to sorc11/wiz1. You retain your spells learned.

Why have they *still" not fixed it? Surely that can't be intentional, you really shouldn't be able to keep all those spells as known and cast-able with just one level of Wizard!

Having played with a 2 wizard multiclass for a bit in Act 3 now, I no longer care at all if Larian remove the ability to memorize / retain higher level scrolled spells on multiclassed Wizards.

Its an OK build, definitely a lot better than a pure wizard, yet completely mediocre and sub par to a pure sorcerer. Personally my gameplay wouldn't be affected as I will never play a Wizard in this game in its current format nor use one in my party so long as a pure class Wizard remains as gimpy as it currently is.

As for the term 'exploit', I would personally consider an exploit to be something that 'breaks' the game in someway. If a multiclassed wizard is somehow an exploit, than a level 12 sorc must be a mega exploit, even without the restoration point 'actual exploit' being abused.

Larian responded via email and confirmed that this is an exploit and that it will be fixed in a future patch.

Bunch of exploiters :P

lol. Though I'm unsure why anyone gives a toot about exploits in what's essentially a single player game with optional multiplayer, no player vs player content, and whatnot.

That said, I don't really *like* wizards, so this doesn't affect me.

Still unsure what the difference is supposed to be between wizards and sorcerers though. Used to be sorcs got fewer spells, but more spell slots. Not anymore. There's literally no difference that I'm seeing between a spontaneous spellcaster(sorc) and a prepared spellcaster(wizard). I'm used to where I could dump ALL of my lvl 3+ slots on Fireballs, quickened fireballs, delayed blast fireballs..... and the wizard could only cast however many of them he prepared.

There's still a difference. Wizards can learn any spell that's on a scroll (which includes some spells that are actually spell-only) and have a larger pool of spells to choose from than sorceror when leveling I believe. Sorcs can actually learn a relatively limited number of spells in 5e (A spell a level, right? With 2 spells at level 1? So by level 12, you have just a dozen spells to choose from.) In tabletop, this is a much bigger advantage for wizards. In a cRPG, you can usually whittle down the spell list to choose which spells are actually optimal to have during the campaign.

They do both have the same base number of spell slots now. Wizard casting has changed from the old system: You essentially "memorize" what spells you have per day, but you can freely choose which ones you cast. Think of it a bit like sorceror casting, but you actually get to choose which spells you have access to every day. Sorcerors can still cast MORE spells per day through sorcery points, and have more flexibility in casting them, and metamagic, but they only ever have access to the same set of spells (and the set of spells they can cast can be relatively small). Wizards have the advantage of being able to swap out what spells they're using for any they've learned (which is potentially any arcane spell.) Again, it's a bigger advantage in tabletop. BG3 also makes it even LESS of an advantage because a sorceror can, at any point, change their selected spells, basically for free, through respecing.

Correct, in addition Sorcerers have a much more limited spell list - mainly they don't have access to most summoning spells like conjure elementals, undead, etc... This MASSIVE exploit allowed sorcerers to bypass all that with 1 level of Wizard.

Man, 5e is heckin weird.

I'm used to Pathfinder 1e lol.

I think I've heard there could be a good multi with Wizard and Monk, but I'm like, dumb? So does someone have some info?

Is Wall of Stone not anymore available on Wiz?

level 5 arcane spell yes its stll in game

https://media.discordapp.net/attach...de9a&=&width=1202&height=676

I’m lvl 6 Wiz and can’t find it there

there are a few scattered scrolls but the best place to always get one is Boney

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...b6a0a7c3f520fe984f6566a595ed3c61a60&

p.s, at Wizard level 9 you can cast a level 5 arcane spell

Some of the mess with Wizards is the open use of scrolls. Seem to recall int early DnD versions scrolls where class restricted, so a Cleric could not use a mage scroll. In fact this was a nice perk of a rogue as I recall that they could use some mage scrolls. Something a fighter and cleric could not do.

In 5e scrolls *are* class restricted, in the sense that the spell has to be on your class's spell list:

"A spell scroll bears the words of a single spell, written in a mystical cipher. If the spell is on your class’s spell list, you can read the scroll and cast its spell without providing any material components. Otherwise, the scroll is unintelligible."

https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/5418-spell-scroll

Non-caster Classes can't use scrolls at all in 5e AFAIK.

Well, this thread is awfully depressing for someone who always played as Wizard in other DnD related games.

Since there is no way to actually craft scrolls and there is no way to control access to scrolls I really dont get how its much of a big deal that Larian decided everyone gets to cast spells from scrolls.

For any spell, only spellcasters who actually get that spell can actually reliably cast that spell.