D&D 5E It’s Official: I don’t like 5th Edition Wizards and ‘Specialists’

[Zardnaar]

The old wizards had a few charms the new ones do kind of blend together as they can all cast the same spells and most of them do not really cast the speciality spells that much better than anyone else.

AD&D low level wizards were a bit meh and probably OP at the higher levels (rarely played them) but I liked specialists a lot with Spells and Magic for example. There were trade offs to be made and I kind of liked that.

 

[cbwjm]

Something I think 5e is missing is tradeoffs. 5e sticks with addition of abilities and never really takes away anything so specialist wizards are just wizards with an aptitude for a specific school, a player doesn't have to decide at 1st level if they will be a generalist with full access to spells or a specialist who has more spells but an inability to cast spells from certain schools. Races are similar, before 4e, races had a penalty to stats while having a bonus for others; in general 5e doesn't do this (except for the poor little kobold). 2e priests were similar to specialist wizards once gods had specialist priests. Choose to be a cleric or choose to be a specialist and have different access to spells which could include limited access to healing spells. I can kind of understand why D&D has evolved to have everything be additive instead of tradeoff but I do feel like it loses some of what I loved about the earlier editions (don't get me wrong, I love 5e, but there were definitely things from earlier editions that I miss from time to time).

 

[ccs]

I hadn't even got this far but Thank You. That's a concern to the House Rule I would use.

So, how to attack the concentration problem in a balanced way?

I would allow the specialist to have a # of active concentration spells running up to their proficiency bonus.
Anything that would normally require a concentration check/save would be rolled per active spell.

Any other schools spells would still be limited to just 1 active at a time.

You could combine this. EX: Illusionist specialist, +3 prof bonus. They could maintain concentration on 3 illusions. Or 2 illusions & 1 other.

 

[Fractal Rabbit]

Well I did put "wrong" purposefully under quotes and used it for lack of a better term.

Generally speaking, for my tastes it felt a bit "wrong" narratively that a specialist was completely forbidden to learn a group of spells, since the Wizard is all about study (I had no problems with clerics of good deities being forbidden to use evil spells). Always felt as if someone said that a Fighter specialising in sword and board should be forbidden to ever learn how to use a bow.

But since you fairly pointed out that it sounds like bringing up badwrongfun, I correct myself and just say that while the Wizard was my 3e favourite class, I personally found the concept of forbidden schools for specialists simply not fun for me.

I hope that my playful tone came through but I'm think now that it didn't. As Larry David would say, "But I was trying to be affable!"

But you did help me get to the bottom of what I don't like about 5e Wizards!

 

[Fractal Rabbit]

I would allow the specialist to have a # of active concentration spells running up to their proficiency bonus.
Anything that would normally require a concentration check/save would be rolled per active spell.

Any other schools spells would still be limited to just 1 active at a time.

You could combine this. EX: Illusionist specialist, +3 prof bonus. They could maintain concentration on 3 illusions. Or 2 illusions & 1 other.

I think you are on to something here. I'm not sure about the full Proficiency bonus. A number cruncher (someone who gets that sort of thing better than I do) would have to say if its balanced over the long term. But I think its a step in the right direction.

I think someone already mentioned it but I like the idea of an addition + to the Spell Save DC as well for School spells.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So, how to attack the concentration problem in a balanced way?

You could say that Illusionists can cast illusion spells without concentration. I don't think there's anything game-breaking in there, or if there is, you could say that they can cast certain specific illusion spells without requiring concentration.

 

[schnee]

I would allow the specialist to have a # of active concentration spells running up to their proficiency bonus

Oh dear Jesus no.

Concentration is one of the few reasons I feel a caster is actually challenging, because I have to really keep an eye towards what I'm doing, and I have to be incredibly strategic with limited resources on abilities that are frankly too good in every other way.

Let the Quadratic Wizard die. It was a mistake.

 

[Zardnaar]

Transmution would get a huge bump.

 

[5ekyu]

Something I think 5e is missing is tradeoffs. 5e sticks with addition of abilities and never really takes away anything so specialist wizards are just wizards with an aptitude for a specific school, a player doesn't have to decide at 1st level if they will be a generalist with full access to spells or a specialist who has more spells but an inability to cast spells from certain schools. Races are similar, before 4e, races had a penalty to stats while having a bonus for others; in general 5e doesn't do this (except for the poor little kobold). 2e priests were similar to specialist wizards once gods had specialist priests. Choose to be a cleric or choose to be a specialist and have different access to spells which could include limited access to healing spells. I can kind of understand why D&D has evolved to have everything be additive instead of tradeoff but I do feel like it loses some of what I loved about the earlier editions (don't get me wrong, I love 5e, but there were definitely things from earlier editions that I miss from time to time).

But choosing between A or B is a trade off. To gain one you do not gain the other. Its just viewed from a different starting point of say 20th looking back.

Sub-class decision that take away things you know how to do would be really counter-intuitive as opposed to those which expand things you know but only in certain lines.

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[cbwjm]

But choosing between A or B is a trade off. To gain one you do not gain the other. Its just viewed from a different starting point of say 20th looking back.

Sub-class decision that take away things you know how to do would be really counter-intuitive as opposed to those which expand things you know but only in certain lines.

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It's nothing like the trade offs in previous editions though where to gain something you lose something else that you would otherwise have access to, choosing conjuration doesn't mean you are completely unable to use evocation or divination spells it just means you don't add certain abilities to the base class. Subclasses add abilities, they don't remove anything and with the way 5e currently works it is true that it might be weird to suddenly not know how to use certain spells. Had wizards gained subclasses at level one then I think it would have been fine to still have prohibited schools since you would have never been able to use X type of magic anyway.

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