Community

I was helping my group update their character for the new rules and it caught my eye. clerics are over powered (i said so in the survey but i didn't notice how much)

let us compare

spell slots (same)

hit points (cleric has more)

Armour (cleric can wear all the armour, wizard has a spell that gives him some weak mage armour)

Spellbook (cleric has all the spells he can cast, wizard has a finite list which cost him cast to expand)

Casting (wizard has to choose his spell in the before he goes out, cleric can swap out for some safe bets, flexible casting is so powerful when you have less spell slots)

Weapons (cleric has basic if not martial, wizard does a few of the weakest)

Concentration (cleric can hold and take damage, wizard can't)

Rituals (same)

spell list

Do the wizard come up in front, not at early levels

Lance of faith does better damage and a better type than Ray of Frost

Scorching Ray is better than magic missle at the same level on average and is more flexible

The cleric has much better single damage spells, inflict minor wounds and inflict moderates wounds beat sleep (ignoring it doesn't work unless you get all the hit points, which makes it even worse) and melf's acid arrow, yes the inflicts are touch but that what the armour and hit points fix.

Wizard has AOE but he doesn't get a decent ranged attacked AOE til fireball and is expected as a battle mage to wade into the frey with 12+dex AC and less hit points and weapons

Wizard may get a signature spell but cleric have turn undead (which can let a cleric control the dead), keep in mind both signature spells have unarmour wizard wading in close to get an affect.

So am i missing something or does this seem correct? the wizard is a unarmoured, underpowered spell caster who after his spell slots are gone is nothing

I would argue that the cleric is edging the wizard out slightly overall.  The wizard has more aoe's and utility.  Whether this balances him out I'm not convinced. The cleric's defenses are on all the time so he doesn't have to spend actions casting mirror image, mage armor, shield, etc.  Magic Missile is inarguably good and it may, imo, be arguably broken as the damage it does has no defense but lack of LoS.  Minor illusion has no definitive mechanical rules and thus relies too heavily on the DM for it's effectiveness and it's a cantrip, it's power should be proportional to other cantrips.  Color Spray is okay but puts the caster dangerously close to the action.  The rest of the spells itworks lists are good.  However the cleric has access to single target damage close to as good as the wizard in the inflict spells, though he actually has to roll to hit and has to touch the target.  But then again magic missile, imo, is probably too powerful.  Further a wizard can lose or be caused to lose his spellbook.  

In short: the wizard is slightly less powerful than the cleric in my humble opinion.   

The cleric uses a lot of his spell power on healing. He might have more awesome spells but he is a lot more limited having to use those to heal

Sorry if this has been discussed before but really I'm not too sure clerics should have ranged single target "lazer" spells, at least not at will.  Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of being able to wear heavy armor & use effective melee weapons?  Shouldn't the cleric be a bit more up close & personal in combat?  And if there is a small discrepancy between cleric & wizard this should fix it, right?  What do you guys think?

What's this, low level wizards are underpowered while high level wizards are overpowered?  I'm shocked!