wizard are not overpowered, they cast spell....that's the only thing they can do to save their life!! :-p
they are still fragile and spell dependent...
SoD spell are powerfull, but one good save and it's the wizard who lose!! And DC are not very high.
without magic item, a 20th level wizard casting a mid-level spell will have a spell DC of 12-13 and only 16-17 for a 9th level spell.
A strong save for a 20th level character is +12.clerics are clearly overpowered!! more spell per day, more hp, better saves (I don't understand why they have two strong save??), better bab, knowledge of all the spell, casting in armor...
Full round casting time is a good idea...improving counterspell too.
please pardon my poor english, this is not my native tongue...
A wizard with 20 Int (or a 14 Cha, i don't remember if paizo change the DC rules) will have a DC of 22 or 19 for Finger of Death a 7th level spell, and the best save is a 10 from the martial classes at the same lvl. It's a 50% that you will die by massive damage.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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My group has been playtesting the wizard class too (I have a guy playing single-classed wizard, and another going the way of the cleric/wizard/mystic_theurge; all Pathfinder RPG rules of course).
The group, and I, the DM, love the improvements made to the class. It's not overpowered. They can still only do only one standard action per round, so while there are now more options, they can still only do only one thing per round.
Bottom line: fun has increased, and power factor has stayed the same.
Good job Paizo.
What makes wizards overpowered is as much or more about what they can do in between the fights (and in particular during downtime) as what they can do once initiative is rolled. The idea that, with preparation, they can do essentially anything, and that conversely, because they can essentially do anything, they almost never are NOT prepared.
But I ain't got no more time for a discussion of that particular dead horse so take it for what it's worth.
Yeah, I am late back to the thread - work can get in the way of discussion...
What is overpowered? The word 'overpowered' in this context can take on two meanings.
1) Pathfinder RPG is designed to be a backward-compatible successor of 3.5E D&D. As such, if the power level is increased from the 3.5E baseline - things can be considered overpowered. Here the word overpowered refers to the 3.5E baseline.
There can be little doubt that the Wizard is overpowered by this definition. I have already listed the most important boosts he received on page one and they range from a 40% increase in average (mean) hit points (moving from d4 to d6), through the addition of school powers, to the addition of spell-like abilities (for universalists) and the effective removal of prohibited schools (for specialists).
Not all of these are bad things in and off themselves (though the removal of prohibited schools, IMO, is a definite negative - they should be loosened, not removed). However, the fact that these boosts were not compensated by adding some penalties is disconcerting. The baseline power level of the wizard has definitely been shifted... higher. The baseline power-level ought remain compatible between 3.5E and Pathfinder RPGA. A slight shift would have been fine (e.g. adding only the school powers, but keeping a d4 hit die and not adding spell like abilities to the generalist), but so many things add up here that it is a substantial boost.
This brings me to the second definition of overpowered:
2) Overpowered can also refer to the balance among the classes. In 3.5E, Wizards were widely considered among the top 3 classes in terms of power (some people would rank them at the top, but I would reserve the top places for Clerics and Druids). Yet, with the advent of the Pathfinder RPG, Wizards got a much bigger boost than the classes that were considered underpowered, such as the fighter. Weaknesses of the Wizard, such as his low hit points, were mitigated by the hit die increase (while hit dice of the Fighter, for example, remain the same) and they got yet more abilities and powers... well I am not going to describe them all again.
Wizards are overpowered on both levels/according to both meanings of the word overpowered in this context.
One more thing with respect to the spell slot number reduction. It is, in fact, very similar to getting rid of the spell-like abilities that wizards currently have. In both cases, we end up with essentially the same number of spells (including spell-like abilities in this case) castable per day in practice. Getting rid of the spell-like abilities would, in fact, be a somewhat preferable, but then we are back to the original problem that prompted their implementation in the first place: To give wizards an incentive to stay in the class rather than branching out to prestige classes, which advance spellcasting (but not spell-like abilities). I suppose the problem would be less pronounced than in 3.X edition, because of the school powers. These may or may not be enough.
A character class is only as good as the player playing it. There seems to have been a lot of talk about one class being more powerful than another, but everyone seems to have forgotten the human factor in all of this. Just because one class may be slightly better than another here and there isn't that big of a deal. The difference in how well the class is played by the player makes more of a difference than if the classes are perfectly balanced (which they'll never be since each class has its strengths and weaknesses).
A wizard with 20 Int (or a 14 Cha, i don't remember if paizo change the DC rules) will have a DC of 22 or 19 for Finger of Death a 7th level spell, and the best save is a 10 from the martial classes at the same lvl. It's a 50% that you will die by massive damage.
Part of the puzzle that's getting ignored I think is how often is a wizard targetting a fighter as opposed to targetting some 'monster' from the monster manual?
The saves for monsters tend to be higher than the saves for PC's and the DC's for monster abilities tend to be lower than the DC's for PC abilities.
I don't think the classes where really meant to be balanced against each other. This isn't a PvP game where equal levels should have 50% chance of taking each other out, or where a rock paper sizzors approach should be taken (i.e. fighter beats rogue, rogue beats wizard, wizard beats fighter). The classes are supposedly balance by what they will do to their typical target: Monsters.
A wizard with 20 Int (or a 14 Cha, i don't remember if paizo change the DC rules) will have a DC of 22 or 19 for Finger of Death a 7th level spell, and the best save is a 10 from the martial classes at the same lvl. It's a 50% that you will die by massive damage.And DC are not very high.
without magic item, a 20th level wizard casting a mid-level spell will have a spell DC of 12-13 and only 16-17 for a 9th level spell.
A strong save for a 20th level character is +12.
A 17th level Wizard will likely have an Int score of at least 26. That's 16 starting base, with 4 level increases, and a +6 item.
DCs are 10 + spell level + Int score + feats. If this spell happens to be part of his focus, he'll have a +2 from feats.
How Bilbo Baggins got a DC of 16-17 for a 9th level spell, I'm not sure. Minimum, assuming NO Int score is 19 (10 + 9th level spell). But to be able to cast a 9th level spell, you have to have an Int of 19, which is a +4 bonus.. meaning the lowest DC a 9th level spell will have is 23.
A 17th level caster, who's casting a spell in his focused school, will customarily have a DC of 20 + spell level. That's 29 for 9th level spells. His 7th level Finger of Death will have a DC of 25-27 depending on if he focused on necromancy.
A 13th level Wizard (7th level spells just reached) will likely have an Int of 23 (16 base, +3 levels, +4 item). A focused school spell will have a DC of 10 + 6 Int + 2 feat + spell level. So Finger of Death sits at around a DC of 25 (23 if not focused).
Monsters sitting at the CR 12-14 range have a Low save bottoming out at +8, and a high save peaking at +18 (ignoring the corner cases, like Iron Golem who are immune to most magic).
So against a high save, he's got a 35% chance of massive damage. Against a low save, he's got an 85%.
If the DC was only 12 or 13, he'd never get a spell to land, ever. Maybe I lost something in the translation there, maybe he means 10 + the numbers quoted.. but really, he's got a decent chance at landing his spells against most of his targets, short of those who are supposed to be good against them (and even then, landing a third of the time).