>>95927898
Just coming off from a 1-20 campaign where we had a psychic chef as one of the oldest and original characters from the start. She didn't give a crap about giving heroism and haste, just liked making Udon noodles and using occult magic to mindfuck people with and summoning spirits; ignoring many of the most meta spells for themed ones but still carried as a controller and blaster with very creative uses of spells through counteracting

Casters are not weak and are highly valued in the meta, but they're harder to play.
That's the price to pay if you want spells to also be balanced verses players, having tanks being more valuable than summons and playable at mid & high level outside of going full 4E

To be a good caster you have to know itemization, counteracting, focus spell selection, knowledge statistics, minion rules, trait interactions and generally more advanced combat tactics. It's a steep learning curve-- if you're good at it you can be a big brained superstar of the group and you deserve it