D&D 5E The Magical Martial

[nevin]

I think at least one of the Wizard's two free spells should be tied to their subclass.

I wouldn't have a problem with that as a table rule. seems reasonable.

 

[nevin]

Though I'd prefer to let subclass wizards get more spells of their subclass and take away other higher level spells or even whole schools more like 2nd edition did. . You want to be a great divination wizard maybe all the spells from some other school aren't available. I'd make cantrips exempt from this though so I didn't hurt em too bad at low level.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Maybe it's random, but they roll with advantage?

With over 300 spells, I think you'd need to have a pretty heavy thumb on the scales to get to playability for random selection.

Probably some mechanism to limit the population of potential results to some reasonable number, maybe 4 or 5.

Ultimately, my real issue would be from the narrative perspective. The wizard probably isn't studying spells at random, so it'd seem odd to get random spells through leveling.

It'd be like the dual weapon fighter randomly recieving the shield master feat at level up.

Maybe if it's tied to the spell school or something I could see a case for it. The balance of spells in those schools is pretty rough though.

 

[Micah Sweet]

With over 300 spells, I think you'd need to have a pretty heavy thumb on the scales to get to playability for random selection.

Probably some mechanism to limit the population of potential results to some reasonable number, maybe 4 or 5.

Ultimately, my real issue would be from the narrative perspective. The wizard probably isn't studying spells at random, so it'd seem odd to get random spells through leveling.

It'd be like the dual weapon fighter randomly recieving the shield master feat at level up.

Maybe if it's tied to the spell school or something I could see a case for it. The balance of spells in those schools is pretty rough though.

I respect that. I like the idea of picking a school and randomly determining from that. Or do that and drop it down to one new spell, but enforce the idea of treasure, trade and purchase (henceforth referred to as TTP) in worldbuilding. Make the assumption that TTP is in play explicit, but include a sidebar explaining that you might want to increase class-based new spell availability if TTP isn't practical for your campaign.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Thinking of the new Monk design, they can already dash and disengage with a bonus action. The Monk's bonus action attack should absolutely not be allowed to be swapped, because then their level 1 feature invalidates their level 2 feature.

That should be a decent enough solution to keep relative balance, make it "when you activate your Extra attack feature, you can swap an attack for [Blank]" This limits monk shenanigans, and keeps everyone else chugging along. IT also helps because I doubt you were planning on allowing dual-wielding to activate this, as then everyone can disengage and dash simply by drawing two daggers and "attacking".

I kind of like this, the more I think about it.

all that, and also you could limit it to specific classes. so if you don't want paladins to be able to do it for some reason, just don't give them the feature. and if you do let the monk have it, you could strip out their ability to dash/disengage as a bonus action, since it's redundant (or you could leave it, if you think it isn't. either way).

and yeah, i had thought of the bonus action thing before and that was basically how i thought of preventing that. it was just really late so i forgot about it.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I respect that. I like the idea of picking a school and randomly determining from that. Or do that and drop it down to one new spell, but enforce the idea of treasure, trade and purchase (henceforth referred to as TTP) in worldbuilding. Make the assumption that TTP is in play explicit, but include a sidebar explaining that you might want to increase class-based new spell availability if TTP isn't practical for your campaign.

I expect that'd be more palatable.

Personally I'm partial to something like making it two arcana skill checks, one for each spell you get when you level, with degrees of success/failure. Something like:

Crit fail - No spell, or pure random spell
Fail - Random(ish?) spell from spell school
Succeed - get the spell you rolled for
Crit succeed - choose a bonus spell.

The DCs should be pretty easy, but I'd think they should scale with spell level somehow.

The idea, generally, would be that I'd expect Wizards with lower Int and less knowledge of the arcane to be worse at learning new spells, and that higher level spells are more difficult to learn than lower level spells.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

The DCs should be pretty easy, but I'd think they should scale with spell level somehow.

8 + spell level maybe? or 10 + spell level.

 

[Gammadoodler]

8 + spell level maybe? or 10 + spell level.

Yeah thinking something like that. Maybe the first roll made with advantage or something.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I expect that'd be more palatable.

Personally I'm partial to something like making it two arcana skill checks, one for each spell you get when you level, with degrees of success/failure. Something like:

Crit fail - No spell, or pure random spell
Fail - Random(ish?) spell from spell school
Succeed - choose your spell
Crit succeed - choose a bonus spell.

The DCs should be pretty easy, but I'd think they should scale with spell level somehow.

The idea, generally, would be that I'd expect Wizards with lower Int and less knowledge of the arcane to be worse at learning new spells, and that higher level spells are more difficult to learn than lower level spells.

I like it. Combine with a graduated degree system of success and failure I'd like to implement, and Bob's your uncle!

 

[Chaosmancer]

You don't see the point of effort? What does that even mean?

Has the wizard not put in effort to survive and level up? It sounds like forcing them to jump through a hoop, "We know you survived, gathered XP, and leveled up and if you were like everyone else you would just get your abilities. Instead, so you can feel like you really accomplished something, your rewards are randomized, and if you don't get something you want, you can beg and plead to have the opportunity to spend even more time and resources to get that"

Again, hard disagree. You want to randomize spells gained? You have dice. Knock yourself out and randomly roll all your spells.