GM's Tip of the Week
As I said with the last one of these; I’m looking at classes right now. Having more or less covered paladins, I’m going to take a look at Wizards this week. Wizards seem to get almost as much mixed review as paladins; people either love them or hate them. The wizard requires a certain amount of planning, and someone planning on playing one well needs to be paying careful attention to what is going on, as well as being good at predicting what’s likely to come up. For a GM, dealing with a clever wizard player, they require almost as much forethought – how much do their enemies know about him? How much are they prepared? Early in a campaign, this probably won’t be an issue. A new villain, a new foe, probably isn’t going to know much, and won’t necessarily be prepared for your specific wizard like one who has been tangling with the group for a while, whether that is through proxies and minions or directly. This tip can apply to the GM’s wizards, as much as it will apply to the player’s, so… read on.
A properly played wizard is a boon to his team and a terror to his enemies. A badly played wizard is a hazard to everyone. Most people fall in between one of these two extremes, and most people who build wizards build for sheer destructive power.
That isn’t a bad thing. It’s valid, and it works. It isn’t the only way to do it; one of the most dangerous wizards I ever saw in play – as a GM – was one of the alternate builds, a conjurer with a class ability that gave him very high mobility. His player was indirectly responsible for the highest kill count, all because he usually had /something/ he could summon to get the job done. He was also personally responsible for the demoralization of more monsters than I can count, and the instigator for more types of shenanigans than the rest of the party expected. No one realised this until I took him out for ten rounds and the whole group flailed. Then the Contingency kicked in and.. well.
I had to laugh, really. The character wasn’t built for direct damage, and he remained the most dangerous person on the field. That kind of build is just as good as the blaster, and as effective, if played well.
The next on the board is the support caster; a wizard who’s spells bolster his allies and inconvenience his opponents. This may be another conjurer, a transmuter or an abjurer – or none of the above – his job is buffs and debuffs and battlefield control. This is another caster who can be indirectly responsible for the most kills or successful raids in the group, usually by bolstering the fighter or rogue in some way.
The blaster, of course, can be built in many different ways. Fire is a common element of choice (this surprises me, because a lot of things are at least resistant to it, if not outright immune), and a smart caster keeps either a lot of options, or has feats that they can use to modify their load out on the fly. Myself, I have found casters who can combine blast spells with battlefield control to be some of the most effective and dangerous; particularly working in concert with a ‘tank’ type fighter.
Of course, always keep a back up weapon, wand or scroll handy; magic suppression is a thing, silence is a thing, and sometimes you’re just going to want to hit something. Also don’t forget the rest of the party; you will want to coordinate with them for maximum effectiveness. This may or may not be true for GM-controlled wizards. If your caster is the megalomaniacal type, his companions may, in fact, be naught but cannon fodder. Heh, heh, heh…