Brace yourself: it’s about to get really fucking nerdy in here.

About twice a month, I play in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with a group of my friends. We have a party of seven, which is a bit large for most adventures, but our Dungeon Master is skilled at amping up the challenges accordingly.

Anyway, my character is a tiefling wizard. The tiefling race offers some intriguing storytelling possiblities, and as for the magic-user vocation, my choice of that class was twofold. One, I’ve never played a wizard before; In the past, I played thieves and occasionally a paladin. Secondly, when my current game started, the group already had a thief, two fighters, a ranger, and a cleric. (A paladin joined us two months ago.) They definitely needed some magic-based support.

My character and our party’s ranger tend to stay out of the melee and fire off attacks targeting multiple foes or causing area effects. This is all well and good, and I’ve managed to annoy quite a few enemies this way, but the amount of damage I actually inflict is trivial.

You see, much of a wizard’s life consists of waiting around to grow more powerful. I’m currently at level four.) This is not a knock against our DM, nor the adventures we’re playing in; this is common drawback to all magic-users. While wizards start out with the ability to target more than one foe at once, it comes at the cost of barely scratching them.

Other party members are routinely dealing out over twenty points of damage; I’m lucky if I can break ten. I do have a few more powerful spells, but they’re all dailies; that means I can only use them once per day in-game. If we’re exploring a dungeon and I use a daily power early on, I can’t use it again until we’re finished with the entire area. (Camping out in a creepy dungeon is not wise.)

My area-effect spells are becoming more useful as enemies go stronger, since my attack powers aren’t nearly as effective. I’ve convinced enemies to attack on another, confused them, and even immobilized them. That makes them easy pickings for our fighters, so I’m least I’m helpful in that regard. Otherwise, I’ll just have to settle for hiding in the shadows, plinking enemies with ice shards and electric shocks.

At least until I hit level five. Then I can finally cast Fireball.