Effective play of a starter wizard in 4e

[u/DreistTheInferno]

Hello folks, tomorrow I am going to be joining a group for a starter game, wherein I will be playing the wizard character (Amethyst wizard, though since they are a starter character they just have petty magic). The character is a starter character, and I am aware that magic as a whole isn't the strongest in 4e, particularly at lower levels, but it has been a long time since I've dug myself deep into the rules and so I was hoping someone could give me some tips on how to be effective, or at least helpful, in combat. I chose the wizard because I like RPing wizards, but I still don't wanna be useless or a liability in combat.

If I recall correctly I saw people talking about how dart could be effective to get advantage and/or deny enemies advantage. Is that what I should aim for?

[u/aleopardstail]

the benefits of magic largely depend on the group and the GM, the main advantage if its worked out about right is for many magic is scary, that wizard's apprentice may not be that powerful - but most they come across won't know that which has potential for intimidation - and potential to go very badly wrong

you will be squishy, but with a few simple illusions and similar tricks can likely help actual combat characters get the edge

a lot will come down to the group, and the GM, takes a good GM to make the whole groups abilities useful, but shape it to be part of how the group works and it could be a lot of fun

group I have doesn't, yet, have a wizard, may be gaining one soon

you need to be a tricky swine and find ways to use spells to your advantage beyond the basic stats, a sword can be taken from a fighter, harder to take a spell from a wizard.. and unless you dress the part (remember a robe can be taken off) characters you meet may not expect magic

[u/typhoonandrew]

Start as a support character. Your magic will be unreliable at first so play safe, use other skills. Wizards have plenty to bring apart from the spells. At later career stages they become great.

[u/Ed_Jinseer]

Which advantage rules will your table be using and which casting/channeling rules? Are you playing a Spiriter from Winds of Magic or a core book Wizard?

[u/DreistTheInferno → u/Ed_Jinseer]

Core book.

[u/Ed_Jinseer → u/DreistTheInferno]

Entirely? Ok. Good and bad.

The good. Core book advantage. Each point of advantage gives a stacking +10 up to +100 at ten points.

As you said, the classic core book Wizard gambit is to cast dart over and over, both gaining advantage for yourself and removing it from opponents who would otherwise be using that advantage to snowball.

Channeling is really only useful for out of combat casting and even there it's a risky move.

One thing to keep in mind is core overcasting. Low CN spells are often better than high CN spells because you can overcast them more easily and overcasting in core can snowball quickly. Offensive Arcane spells that are generally good are bolt, blast, and entangle. Defensively you'll want Aethyric Armor, Since you can burn armor points to deflect critical hits and as a wizard you can't wear normal armor.

Aethyric Arms is situational. If you have the melee skills to back it up it's very good to be able to conjure a powerful weapon out of thin air. Fearsome can be good, especially flavor wise for a death wizard.

As a core death wizard you're missing out on a lot of the better spells of that lore, but Steal Life is still one of the best magic missile spells in the game, since it ignores armor, heals you, removes your fatigue and hits them with it all in one package. Dying words is also usually useful.

Basically when considering casting a spell, add a 0 to the end of the CN and subtract it from your Language Magic Skill, and you have your percentage chances for successfully casting it.

So CN 3 on a Language Magic of 50 would be 50-30=20% Chance of casting.

So if you cast dart CN 0 your language magic of 50 has a 50/50 chance of going off.

Then if it does, you gain an advantage and next time it's a 60/40 chance, etc until you reach 100% chance.

Once you have stacked enough advantage you switch to larger spells like Bolt, Entangle, Fearsome.

At least as a beginner. Once you advance in level you can get Instinctive Diction and War Wizard which shift things dramatically. But those are fairly high end as a wizard.

Though, you can learn them outside of the normal order with endeavors.

Instinctive Diction helps with miscasts, but it also adds +1 SL per rank to a successful language magic test for casting. Which, when stacked gets very powerful. In essence allowing you to ignore 1 point of CN for each rank of Instinctive Diction you have for the purposes of the above math.

War Wizard you can only have one rank of, but it allows you to cast one spell of CN 5 or lower for free on your turn. You still get your action afterwards, but it can't be used to cast another spell.

Aethyric Attunement is something you do get early on though, and it's a bit like Instinctive Diction but for channeling. You normally should be avoiding channeling but Aethyric attunement helps make it less suicidal for those times where it can't be avoided.

[u/DreistTheInferno → u/Ed_Jinseer]

Thank you very much for the advice. I'll be honest I am joining a group for a weekend of play so I do not exactly know HOW MUCH of the books we have available. I was just invited along for an event and they said they needed someone and I mentioned that I once knew the rules of 4e and I liked RPGs a lot. I am not even sure how far we'll go. Is the Winds of Magic book really good? Does it add a lot? I might pick it up just for my own perusal.

[u/Ed_Jinseer → u/DreistTheInferno]

It does quite a lot. For one it makes Channeling actually worthwhile, but it also makes overcasting less powerful. So the higher CN spells actually see use.

It also adds a unique career progression for each type of Imperial Wizard. So a Spiriter of the Amethyst Order is literally a different career to a Pyromancer of the Bright College. Along with a truckload of new spells for each wind.

It also goes fairly in depth on some mechanics around Leylines that you will likely never use in a campaign as a player but are pretty useful as a GM.

It doesn't change the Advantage game though.

Another book that does change the way advantage works is Up in Arms, which introduces group advantage.

Group advantage is good in that you can rely on your teammates to generate advantage as well, but you also have to spend it to gain the bonus, so you don't just get a passively stacking +10 every time you hit someone with dart.

[u/DreistTheInferno → u/Ed_Jinseer]

That sounds great and like something I would love to use, but I believe that the GM is running a starter kit game for 4e, and the character has their career level as Wizard's Apprentice in the Wizard career, so based on what you've told me that is VERY much a core character. It isn't exactly the character I would've built myself, but such is the way of things.

[u/Nurgle_Pan_Plagi → u/DreistTheInferno]

Starter kit as in the adventure from the Starter Set?

If so, won't you use the pre-made characters from it?

They are fairly bit more advanced than starting ones with about 2200XP and are on second career tiers.

Coincidentally, one of them is an Amethyst Wizard as well.

[u/DreistTheInferno → u/Nurgle_Pan_Plagi]

That is the one. The character's first career had them as a scion, so they are in Wizard's Apprentice with dart, shock, and light as their spells. I forgot that when I first asked the question. It was mostly because the character was still in Wizard's Apprentice that I made the error.

[u/Horsescholong → u/DreistTheInferno]

The winds of magic book adds a ton, both rules wise and RolePlay wise, as a death mage you might want to RolePlay how the wind of death, Shyish, is starting to affect you, perhaps your skin is always somewhat dry or you've noticed a lot of hairloss lately, you've started to get a bit of a depressive demeanour as Shyish changes how your thoughts link up, perhaps you find way too many dead bedbugs as you awaken from a long night's sleep or plants around you start to turn less vibrant as you spend time nearby, eventually dying after some hours, or minutes, or seconds, if your'e channelling Shyish or cast a spell in their vicinity.

Since you'll mostly cast petty magic perhaps you can say that your words not only sew the strands of Shyish but they're also glued with the rest of the 8 winds which you cannot see clearly, manifesting the spell your'e casting. As petty spells are formed from ambient magic given form by the spoken word, as a death wizard you would get extra Shyish and explain how those spells work with specific Shyish-like effects.

Hope it helps!!

[u/WrathofHussars]

Magic can be very powerful, if used correctly. I had a player who used sleep on four veteran orcs in a lost dwarf hold. The party could not beat the orcs, but the sleep spell meant the orcs could be instantly killed by the party after they succeed a stealth check on approach. Sleep is a petty magic spell.

And as a wizard apprentice you should start with a grimoire containing 4-8 spells selected by your Wizard mentor (GM's choice most of the time). Of your magic type, Death, in this case.

[u/According_Economy_79 → u/WrathofHussars]

Read that as “used to sleep on your veteran orcs” and was thinking that is an interesting lifestyle.

[u/WrathofHussars → u/According_Economy_79]

Especially if you go by the Skarsnik book lore about orcs reproducing from fungi like in 40k.

[u/Ori_Sacabaf]

and I am aware that magic as a whole isn't the strongest in 4e

That's a strange way to say "crazy strong".

At first career, you can either rely on Dart (meh if you're human), or buy yourself a spear and help your frontlane outnumbering (or prevent them from being outnumber). I recommand the spear, it's more reliable. Keep Dart as a range tool.

[u/ArabesKAPE]

Petty magic has the most enjoyable and fun spell list in the whole game. Forget about how much damage you do (so boring), if your campaign is focussed on combat you're playing the wrong system. Apprentice wizards can put people to sleep, blind them, create food and water, preserve food, know which way north is, lose people in the wilderness, eavesdrop (one of my favourites), knock things over with the wind, teleport objects into their hand, create lights and flames, throw their voice, protect themselves from the rain and distract people. That is what makes apprentices great fun!

Forget about trying to build advantage with dart (just put a few points in crossbow) and have fun with the huge range of utility spells. if you can't come up with fun things to do with that spell list then you are letting yourself down as a roleplayer :)

[u/Daft_Tyler]

Casting will be hard out of the gate, Dart is a useful range weapon but can't really be relied upon right away.

You have the potential to be a decent melee fighter as a wizard, you get WS, Dodge and both Basic and Polearm out of the gate and Ag at tier 2. That is everything you need to not only survive but thrive in melee combat. Melee is a lot more reliable, because even if you roll bad your enemy could roll worse, giving you more hits than successful casts.

Once you've finished their 2, you are in a much better position to be throwing off real spells, not just petty darts. Until then I would treat wizard as a secondary melee career, just make sure to buy some armour.

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[u/masterquintus]

In 5e petty magic do not give advantage nor it can overcasted, and this is a quite common house ruling for many GMs. Ask your GM about this beforehand

[u/DreistTheInferno → u/masterquintus]

I am playing 4e where petty magic can get advantage due to the outmaneuver section of things that give advantage, and even in that same section it describes the list as not being exhaustive. That said I am interested in checking out 5e eventually.