Munchkin Vanilla - Is the Wizard overpowered?

[Magnalon]

One thing I've been noticing consistently in games is that the Wizard dominates. The "Charm" ability is really overpowered, and allows you to simply discard one card to potentially draw 1-5 treasures from any monster, as well as eliminating it from a combat. There's no risk/reward at all, compared to the Thief, who, when stealing, has to risk a level, and has a 50% chance to succeed. Another potentially sleazy use of Charm is to completely poof away a higher level wandering monster, then defeat the original lower level monster, an unlimited amount of times. It's almost like the developers forgot to put something like "on a 4-6, you charm, on a 1-3, the bad stuff happens".

Everyone in my group has admitted that Charm is overpowered, and one way we have tried to balance it is by rewording the Charm skill so "you may take one treasure for every card you have in your hand" - so, one card = 1 treasure per charm, maximum.

Before people say "try another Munchkin" - we have - and all the classes, we've found, are much more balanced. However, we still like Vanilla Munchkin now and then, and I was just wondering what people's opinions were on the Vanilla Wizard.

[StaticHamster]

The Wizards power changed in the 19th printing.

You now have to discard at least 3 cards to Charm a monster.

[majikfreak]

I was a Ghome/Wizard last night... life was good, cause people kept pumping monsters up against me and I kept charming them and getting the treasure...

[whassumattuh]

Of the games I've played, the Mutant in Super Munchkin is the most overpowered. The Wizard is much less powerful now that he has to discard his whole hand with a minimum of three cards. A lethal combination is the Halfling Wizard.

[MunchkinMan]

This really is an old discussion. I'm not disappointed by the change in the Wizard, but I'm not going to agree that it was severely overpowered prior to the 19th printing, either. I'd argue that relying on the Wizard through the entire game is a foolish idea. The Wizard has its time in place, but it's not a winning strategy 999 times out of 1000 as some people would like to argue. I'm not even sure it's 99 times out of 1000. . .