So: Why Do People Hate Sorcerers And Thaumaturges?

[Stardusk78]

I get that you lose access to the last two spell levels but combining either Priest with Wizard of Druid with Wizard offering new and interesting possibilities. Why do people seem universally opposed to the idea?

[baldurs_gate_2]

Because a pure Wizard is just better.

[Stardusk78]

Because a pure Wizard is just better.

Just better is not very descriptive. You have things to enhance action speed and intelligence with a Wizard that will aid tremendously with a Druid, for example.

[bigwillystyle]

One reason is the power level gap.  A pure Druid or Wizard is +2 power levels above a multi-class, which pays off in terms of duration, damage, etc ... Some of this can be mitigated by items (i.e., Magran's Favor for a Fire specialist), so your mileage may vary.  I personally like the Sorceror multi-class.  Lots of firepower at early levels.  Can mitigate some of the power level gap by going with Evoker for +2PL for Evocation spells and / or items like Firethrower Gloves, etc ...

[Dorftek]

Well for me i just think that druids are just bad plain and simple. Their firepower is inferior to wizards and priests. The only thing I like about druids are Form of the Delemgan.

[AndreaColombo]

I think an exception should be made for Tekehu: His Druid subclass is top-tier.

[Stardusk78]

One reason is the power level gap.  A pure Druid or Wizard is +2 power levels above a multi-class, which pays off in terms of duration, damage, etc ... Some of this can be mitigated by items (i.e., Magran's Favor for a Fire specialist), so your mileage may vary.  I personally like the Sorceror multi-class.  Lots of firepower at early levels.  Can mitigate some of the power level gap by going with Evoker for +2PL for Evocation spells and / or items like Firethrower Gloves, etc ...

My favourite spell in the game is Autumn Decay, find the DOT still as value, even at later levels. Maybe it is just me though. Are 2 power levels really that noticeable?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

In general casters benefit much more from increased power level and don't have synergy like the martial classes do. Druids seem to be better as a multi with martial classes because of Spirit Shift.

[Frog Man]

From what I’ve been reading on here, it seems like players tend to favor multiclassing a caster (priest Druid wizard) with a melee class that can buff their casting damage and speed (barbarian, fighter, monk). I haven’t had the chance to test these but I’m very eager to test barbarian/evoker and fury/helwalker. Seems to have better synergy than going Druid/Wizard for MOAR SPELLZ

[Haplok]

 

One reason is the power level gap.  A pure Druid or Wizard is +2 power levels above a multi-class, which pays off in terms of duration, damage, etc ... Some of this can be mitigated by items (i.e., Magran's Favor for a Fire specialist), so your mileage may vary.  I personally like the Sorceror multi-class.  Lots of firepower at early levels.  Can mitigate some of the power level gap by going with Evoker for +2PL for Evocation spells and / or items like Firethrower Gloves, etc ...

My favourite spell in the game is Autumn Decay, find the DOT still as value, even at later levels. Maybe it is just me though. Are 2 power levels really that noticeable?

 

 

Not really. But having access to spells 2 power levels higher at any point in the game is very noticeable.

 

Also action economy leads to anti-synergy. You can either cast wizard OR druid spells, not both at the same time. An average encounter won't exhaust all of your spell casts from a single class past mid-game. If they were from either pure class, those spells would have been stronger AND you would have had access to spells 2 power levels higher.

Edited August 10, 2018 by Haplok

[grasida]

I think druids are pretty good! Touch of rot is also a strong DoT that’s deals damage competitive with higher level spells. Lots of people mention the priest of Berath version, but it’s originally a Druid spell. And the insect plague spells are quite solid AoE dots. Most of the druid’s healing spells are first rate and they get some spells that deal a very powerful mix of utility and damage, like relentless storm and venom bloom.

 

I think people don’t like mixing caster classes because they don’t have a strict synergy that makes specific numbers go up. Versatility is hard to measure and the way to “win” the meta game is to maximize specific, measurable numbers. But I’m just trying to represent a reason caster multiclasses aren’t popular, not give a judgement on their effectiveness. I can’t give a proper answer to that.

[Dr <3]

Wiz + priest is strong. You lose the top lvl spells and 2 power levels, but is nothing too severe. On the other side you get 2x the spells of a single class, so you can really spam a lot / have more lasting power in longet fights.

 

I played an evoker/ magran Priest and he really had huge firepower from lvl 1

( pun intended, indeed is lame)

 

Edit: also helps that fire atm is the more enanchable element, you can stack a lot of +1/2 power level items, and you even have ring of focused flame for +10 acc.

But i bet that even freeze route could be pretty good

Edited August 10, 2018 by Dr <3

[gkathellar]

Several reasons, most of which have been mentioned, but I'll give my spin on:

• By high levels, single-class casters already generally have more spells than they can use during any given fight. This means that at the top end, multi-class casters are often ending fights with a slightly less than half of their resources untouched. At this point, you start to wonder if all of those ability points you spent on spells might not have been better-spent on passives which their classes tend not to have. Conversely, in the kind of marathon fights where a double-caster can start to really stretch their wings, caster/martial or caster/Chanter builds in particular are ... also going to be able to really stretch their wings.
• PL tends to be a pretty big deal for offensive casters (it is for everyone, but they stand out), and so the reduced PL-progression, while not life-ruining, is painful. This could be at least eased with PL-boosting itemization, but since Druids, Priests and Wizards all have their own set of spell schools, many of those items tend only to benefit one half of their build.
• Subclass synergy, due to the aforementioned separate classification schemes for spells, is nonexistent. A Lifegiver/Priest, for instance, is not the phenomenally good healer that one might expect given their multiclass. You might think an Enchanter/Priest would get to punch above their weight in terms of buff spell durations, but noooope. An Evoker/Fury cannot blast as well as a vanilla Evoker (or arguably, even a vanilla Fury). I expect this was done for balance reasons, in order to prevent the Law of Unintended Consequences, but it does mean that potentially interesting caster combinations are not what they could be and people don't jump to experiment with them in the way that they do with non-caster subclass combinations.
• Finally, the loss of top-level spells is a one-two punch in terms of play style and fun factor, because people really like having them top-level nukes. Missing out on those can take away some of what makes a caster desirable in the first place, whether or not it's actually a big problem in terms of their effectiveness.

 

I think druids are pretty good! Touch of rot is also a strong DoT that’s deals damage competitive with higher level spells. Lots of people mention the priest of Berath version, but it’s originally a Druid spell. And the insect plague spells are quite solid AoE dots. Most of the druid’s healing spells are first rate and they get some spells that deal a very powerful mix of utility and damage, like relentless storm and venom bloom.

 

Druids are great! They get some excellent PL 8 and 9 powers

 

I think people don’t like mixing caster classes because they don’t have a strict synergy that makes specific numbers go up. Versatility is hard to measure and the way to “win” the meta game is to maximize specific, measurable numbers. But I’m just trying to represent a reason caster multiclasses aren’t popular, not give a judgement on their effectiveness. I can’t give a proper answer to that.

 

Two things:

• Deadfire's casters are also already pretty versatile. Unless you want very specific combinations of spells, you can often achieve the same ends with a single-class caster that you could with a multi-class caster.
• Reduced spell progression means that you are, in other respects, less versatile for most of the game. Less of a thing at level 19, but a significant portion of the game is spent getting to level 19, not already being there.

Edited August 10, 2018 by gkathellar

[thundercleese]

The main reason pure casters are better for damage dealers, is outside of a few items that add ~3-10% damage there are only two ways to increase spell damage - Might abd PL. To make things worse, PL is a separate multiplier on spell damage from Might the the afore mentioned items. Most pure casters will take the Prestige talent (+1 PL) which means you are PL10 vs PL7 at end game (subclasses and PL increasing items aside).

 

Druids are strong, versatile casters - some good debuffs, good HoTs and lots of DoTs, including two raw damage ones that have obscene AoE. Also the storm spells. I think the reason people don't like them for damage dealers is because most of their strong spells are DoTs, and people prefer to throw fireballs that do ~200 damage instantly, as opposed to over a minute.

[Metaturtle]

Generally I think they are okay to have in a party for most of the common fights since they offer a range of flexibility assuming you don't select spells that are redundant. It works alright for a support caster when you want your healbot to do some aoe on the side of their main healing power pool.

 

I find multiclassing casters with set resources to each other (druid,priest,wiz) iffy in upscale potd where power levels is one of the ways to gain penetration on spells and a lot of the skills that work great in the higher difficulties are locked in the higher tiers. I'm not saying they'll do bad since a lot of the game you can be fine with them until you meet those fights that becomes their antithesis because you lack the means of punching thru the enemy's mitigation or lack the staying power to defensively draw out the fight into pure attrition.

[Verde]

I just don't see the synergy honestly.

 

Biasedly, I see no reason to ever multi a Priest. Might as well go Paladin. Priest's best spells are at lvl 8 and 9 and exponentially increase their prowress.

Edited August 11, 2018 by Verde

[thundercleese]

I just don't see the synergy honestly.

 

Biasedly, I see no reason to ever multi a Priest. Might as well go Paladin. Priest's best spells are at lvl 8 and 9 and exponentially increase their prowress.

There's BDD and Salvation of Time. But yes their level 8 and 9 spells really do take them up a notch, and you also get all the spells faster. Unless your aim is to self buff on a martial character, I agree there's little reason to multi them.

[gkathellar]

 

I just don't see the synergy honestly.

 

Biasedly, I see no reason to ever multi a Priest. Might as well go Paladin. Priest's best spells are at lvl 8 and 9 and exponentially increase their prowress.

There's BDD and Salvation of Time. But yes their level 8 and 9 spells really do take them up a notch, and you also get all the spells faster. Unless your aim is to self buff on a martial character, I agree there's little reason to multi them.

 

It's telling that the best priest multiclasses - Wael and Skaen - are also the ones that function as a mini-wizard and mini-rogue, respectively.

[InsaneCommander]

I think double casters have too many spells. That can be a good thing, but if you choose well and have other characters with these classes you'll be much better. I ended up changing Fassina to Aloth in my party, although I really like the Druid/Wizard combination.

 

But if you want to play a certain build then who cares about synergy or efficiency? I'm considering a Druid/Wizard or Druid/Chanter focused on ice spells for a future playthrough.

[gkathellar]

But if you want to play a certain build then who cares about synergy or efficiency? I'm considering a Druid/Wizard or Druid/Chanter focused on ice spells for a future playthrough.

 

Caster/Chanter is pretty sweet in general, fwiw

[pi2repsion]

 

But if you want to play a certain build then who cares about synergy or efficiency? I'm considering a Druid/Wizard or Druid/Chanter focused on ice spells for a future playthrough.

 

Caster/Chanter is pretty sweet in general, fwiw

 

It certainly is, but then, Chanter goes with everything.

 

Ranged or melee, caster or martial, and healer, buffer, debuffer, controller, or damagedealer - whatever your intended role for a character the chanter has the tools to multiclass nicely with it.

[Manveru123]

Uhh Chanter used to be great for casters because he had a Brilliant invocation, but I don't really see is being that great now.

[Verde]

I think double casters have too many spells. That can be a good thing, but if you choose well and have other characters with these classes you'll be much better. I ended up changing Fassina to Aloth in my party, although I really like the Druid/Wizard combination.

 

But if you want to play a certain build then who cares about synergy or efficiency? I'm considering a Druid/Wizard or Druid/Chanter focused on ice spells for a future playthrough.

If you like a build that's all that matters. I was only speaking from a matter of opinion. I'm certainly no powergamer.

[baldurs_gate_2]

Uhh Chanter used to be great for casters because he had a Brilliant invocation, but I don't really see is being that great now.

Still good, because the animated weapon's can kill high AR enemies, where your spells don't pen anymore.

[gkathellar]

Uhh Chanter used to be great for casters because he had a Brilliant invocation, but I don't really see is being that great now.

 

Getting unlimited spells at 19th level was cute, but it was never the reason why the combination was good at every level. Phrases present one of the few strong ways for a caster to improve their action economy, are an effective compliment to caster classes that otherwise lack an abundance of passive abilities, and can help fill the holes in spell lists. In addition, invocations and spells alternate really naturally, tending towards a pattern of "Invocation, Spell, Spell, Invocation, Spell, Spell," with the chanter's infinite-but-time-reliant resources synchronizing excellently with a caster's lengthy-but-abundant spell resources.

 

That's not to say that Chanter/[Caster] is the One Multiclass To Rule Them All, but it's a very natural combination that tends towards a very specific variation on caster playstyle.

 

Still good, because the animated weapon's can kill high AR enemies, where your spells don't pen anymore.

 

Hel-Hyraf also helps with AR for your spells, and summons in general can be a godsend to the solo player.

Edited August 11, 2018 by gkathellar