Homebrew class, True Mage (need opinions about balance)

[anest1s]

Hello everyone, long time no see

So an other guy made this class, the True Mage, and while I find it balanced the DM is not so sure. So what do you think about it? (The DM told me to ask in a forum)

The class is about a wizard who can cast druid + cleric spells too.

View attachment True mage.doc

Thanks for reading.

 

[Morrus]

What does he give up in return for access to the extra spells?

 

[anest1s]

Familiar, and the bonus feats of the wizard

edit: and I would add the opportunity to go school specialized wizard.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

One thing I've seen from the two classes (Pathfinder, so similar system) that do that sort of thing - you pick your base spell list; likely Sor/Wiz here, and the Cleric and Druid spells are 1 level higher for you than for Clerics or Druids. Still gives access, but a bit more of a drawback.

Perhaps add in the requirement of a Wis of appropriate level to learn the Cleric / Druid Spells - Makes it a little MAD.

Even with removing feats, school and familiar ... it just feels a bit off. Spell division is a big deal - and this class does away with that, and they also drop anything that isn't a spell either. Seems it could have balance issues and be sorta bland all at once.

 

[Michael Morris]

Hello everyone, long time no see

So an other guy made this class, the True Mage, and while I find it balanced the DM is not so sure. So what do you think about it? (The DM told me to ask in a forum)

Thanks for reading.

When characters can use any spell, they end up using only the *best* spells. Over in MtG land, there's a reason why there are colors of magic - to make it possible to have a deeper pool of playable cards - or spells. Each color is defined not just by what it can do, but what it can't.

Similarly, the classes in D&D are defined by their limitations. Removing those limitations just leads to a lame, boring, Mary Sue character.

 

[Celebrim]

Familiar, and the bonus feats of the wizard

In other words nothing.

Losing the familiar amounts to an advantage.

Losing the Wizard bonus feats involves almost no cost, since the sort of things a wizard might spend bonus feats on generally have low value.

In general, any class that improves an existing spellcasting class by discarding minor abilities in order to strengthen its core powers is unbalanced. For example, further reducing BAB to gain increased magical abilities is probably unbalanced.

If you want to balance increased spell selection, you have to trade away some strength - not something irrelevant. For example, increased spell selection could be balanced by slowed access to higher level spells. You have to be careful about negative game impact though. Hyperfocus is always bad. So while in theory you can trade increased spell selection for fewer available spells, in practice this is deginerate since it always leads to characters that 'go nova' and then find the means to retreat for a day before attacking again.

 

[Michael Morris]

A quick example of something along these lines that is balanced is the Magi prestige class in my setting. Spells in my setting are split into five colors of magic (what can I say, I like the flavor of MtG). A magi has a color of magic they focus on. Each color is allied to two colors and has two enemies. If a spell belongs to the magi's focus color he gets to use it at the lowest level from among all levels listed for it. He can also use it even if it belongs to another class so long as the level of the spell is lower than his magi level. The tradeoff? He doesn't count his magi levels when determining his caster level for spells belonging to his enemy colors, even if they appear on his class list. So a 5th level Valran Magi, 5th level wizard can cast raise dead (Valra, 5th), but his fireball spells only hit for 5d6 damage and he can't use Wall of Fire at all.

As a class the magi can cast any spell. But any given character in the class cannot.

To make this work I had to assign a color to all 1000 or so spells in Pathfinder which took me nearly a year. While it was fun, and reasonably balanced, it wasn't worth it.

 

[Celebrim]

To make this work I had to assign a color to all 1000 or so spells in Pathfinder which took me nearly a year. While it was fun, and reasonably balanced, it wasn't worth it.

Yeah, you really have to watch mechanics expansion for its own sake.

The questions you need to be asking are, "What narrative/genera am I trying to emulate?" and "Even if the mechanics don't emulate the process particularly well, do the results emulate the narrative well enough?"

If you are just making mechanics for their own sake, you'll ultimately put in a lot of work only to end up with a product that has narrow narrative utility and is played solely for its mechanical utility. That won't help your game much.

 

[Morrus]

Familiar, and the bonus feats of the wizard

edit: and I would add the opportunity to go school specialized wizard.

You've given up nothing of consequence, then. Your DM is right, I'm afraid. Way, way, way too powerful.

If you slow down the spell acquisition, and maybe cap it before 9th level, you *might* be heading in the right direction.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'm inclined to agree with others that as a general guideline, a new class should not be better than the core classes are at their main area of expertise. Having a "True Mage" would suggest that the existing cleric and wizard are "fake". Obsoleting them by creating a class that gets both of their spells in exchange for a modest loss is probably not the best idea.