WotC's Jeremy Crawford talks to D&D Beyond about the war mage. "So War Magic is a new arcane tradition for wizards in
Xanathar's Guide to Everything that really weaves together elements of the school of evocation and the school of abjuration, both of which appear in the
Player's Handbook. And what we were doing war magic is exploring that intersection between two different schools. Because in the Player's Handbook, each wizard focuses on a single school. Granted, wizards can cast spells from many schools of magic, but they're each essentially a specialist, so we decided "What would a wizard look like who is actually good at several of these different types of magic", and specifically a wizard who was all about being on a battlefield and being this war mage, someone who is at home next to an army, and not only has the ability to lay waste to the other side but who also is resilient, who can survive."
[video=youtube;w-riMfi8eio]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-riMfi8eio&feature=youtu.be[/video]
"In one of the little story bits in the war magic section in
Xanathar's Guide, there's this little bit where a war mage is saying "of an evoker(?) what good is it for me to be able to lay waste to my foes if I'm dead?", so again this person who values their ability to stay alive as much as they value defeating their opponents.
We also wanted this to be in some ways a less bookish wizard. Wizards are all at heart bookish. They are the class that are partially defined by the fact that they carry around this book of spells and they add spells to it, in a way they are the game's academic, they are the game's librarian, the games' sage, or the character in the party who's gathering strange bits lore, and many of those strange bits of lore are magic that go into the books. But we wanted to branch out a bit and have a wizard again who's a bit more active and again would feel at home right in the thick of things when battle breaks out.
The war mage in addition to being able to deal a certain amount of extra damage with these things called "power surges" also has a chance of acting faster in battle than other characters. The war mage gets to add their intelligence modifier to their initiative rolls in addition to their dexterity modifier, and this is representing their tactical genius, that in addition to their physical reaction contributing to when they get to act in battle, it's also the quickness of their wits.
This actually is a little side note, is something we have toyed around with over the years of doing with the initiative system itself, of actually working in wits along with your physical agility. Obviously we did not do it with the 5th Edition initiative system, but there's a glimmer of it here in the war mage.
The war mage also is a little bit of an evolution of an earlier wizard that we toyed around with in Unearthed Arcana, and that was the lore wizard. That was a wizard who was also very good at dealing damage, but also at manipulating spells. That wizard frankly had a mixed response, there were many people who really loved it but also many people who rightly pointed out that it was so powerful that it had a potential to eclipse other wizards in the game. We basically went back to the drawing board, took some the concepts we liked about that wizard, and incorporated them into the tradition of war magic.
War magic, also one of the fun things about it is, these wizards have essentially an innate shield spell. It's not the shield spell itself, but an ability to suddenly deflect damage coming in. In stories it's often been one of my favourite thing visually whenever wizards shield things, there's something visually satisfying about it, something Doctor Strange does a ton of in the old Doctor Strange comics, Gandalf of course does it on the bridge of Khazad Dum. It actually a visual trope associated with wizards that I find always just appealing. There's something nice playing the wizards to basically go "Nope, you're not getting me, you're not getting my friends." And so war mages have this innate ability to do that, and once they get to higher level they're able to then even turn that incoming damage against the person who attacked them. So they not only say "Nope" but deflect it back at the other person, which I think is an exciting visceral way being a wizard, and that was again our goal with the subclass. This is the wizard of action.
Now some people might wonder how in the end is it really different form the school of evocation. Evokers are all about dealing lots of damage. You can almost imagine evokers, especially on the battlefield, as being the artillery wizards way back with the general, calling down fire on the opposing forces, whereas the war mage is going to the one down there near the front line standing beside the fighter and the paladin and others, right there deflecting the foes's attacks and also breaking the spells of their opponents. Because the other element that's really fun about the war mage is if they counterpsell or dispel other peoples' magic, they can take that energy and use it for a power surge which they can then use to power up another spell and cause it do deal more damage. So they're also kind of great at fighting other wizards and other spell casters and using their magic against them.
So again these are the fighting wizards. The tradition of war magic is, I think, storywise particularly good if you're playing a character who might be a dwarf for instance, or a member of a culture that values martial prowess far more than book learning. It also is a strong choice if you use the multi classing rules and you might be playing a fighter or some other character who's not a magic user who decides to become a wizard and weave that magic in with their martial abilities. So again, this is really for the person who wants to play that wizard who feels less like an academic and more the person of action who wields spells as weapons in dungeons, on battlefields, and elsewhere.
So its tweak of the wizard. Honestly the wizard more than any of our other classes has fantastic and pretty comprehensive subclass coverage in the
Player's Handbook. The wizard has a lot of subclasses that cover many different thematic bases for conjuring creatures for other dimensions to altering the physical form of things to foreseeing the future to raining fire down on other people to teleportation, to raising the dead. We run the gamut because basically we have a subclass in the Player's Handbook for every school of magic in the game.
So this really is sort of getting at a niche type of wizard, this warrior type mage, and delving into that. And that is a combination of elements, the warrior and the mage, that D&D players have been fascinated wth since the game originally came out. It goes all the way back to the original Elf character back when Elf wasn't a race but was in fact a class. It combined elements of fighting and magic use. And also influenced by Elric stories where you have somebody who has magical billy but is also wielding sword. People are always fascinated by mixing these two together.
Now! The war mage has no particular special ability with weapon use, but its going into that same aesthetic realm of the magic user who is at home on a battlefield that again D&D players have been fascinated by going back to the 70s."
(Phew. That was a long one to transcribe! - Morrus)
[FONT=&]Save[/FONT][FONT=&]Save[/FONT]
