D&D 5E Magic user back?!

[gyor]

I wonder what will become of the Favoured Soul bloodline now for sorcorors, or even sorcerors in general.

 

[mlund]

I'm very happy to see that. The concept of the Super-Class / Class Category wasn't getting enough love. I'd like to see 4 spheres: Magic-User, Warrior, Expert, and Vicar. Some classes (Wizard/Sorcerer/Warlock, Fighter/Berserker/Marshall, Rogue, Cleric/Druid) would be firmly within one sphere or another, and some would live in the overlapping areas (Paladin, Bard, Ranger, Gish).

- Marty Lund

 

[MoonSong]

Great, yet another layer of obfuscation for no good reason. I'm beginning to suspect long gone are the days of the simple sorcerers. (Really I see little point on draging along all arcane classes when the sole purpose of this is to make wizards flexible. Besides Magic Users are ew, I never touched one on 2e and I'll never ever want to touch one ever.)

 

[the Jester]

There IS a distinct advantage to having a "magic-user" bucket that you pour wizard, warlock, sorcerer, etc out of: you can tie things to the "magic-user" keyword.

Maybe some magic items can only be attuned by magic-users. Maybe some monsters get bonuses against magic-users. Maybe some items have special properties when used against "magic-users" (sword +1, +2 vs. magic-users? potion of magic-user influence?).

The thing that made 4e's power sources lame (IMHO) is that they never ever mattered. Except once in a while for epic destiny or paragon path entry. LAME. They could have been awesome and very useful- first, every monster power gets tagged with a power source; then, some monsters have abilities keyed to power source elements (maybe iron golems get resist 15 arcane and divine, maybe certain undead get resist primal, some aberrations and gith get resist psionic, good angels- not that we saw many good monsters- get resist shadow, etc). (Heck, even the weapon and implement keywords could have been tied in to these kinds of effects, but weren't.)

 

[howandwhy99]

I highly doubt Magic_User will be a class. It will probably be a category of classes, which Fighter might be better off being too. I think it depends on their design goals.

Multiple magic systems are desired after Sorcerer & Warlock (and the last 7-8 years of different effect systems coming out for D&D). I could see M-U as a category of classes covering all of these.

What we're not likely to get is multiple skill, feat, combat or cleric systems. I like the phraseology and all, but I'm not sure where they might go, if this becomes a precedent.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There IS a distinct advantage to having a "magic-user" bucket that you pour wizard, warlock, sorcerer, etc out of: you can tie things to the "magic-user" keyword.

Maybe some magic items can only be attuned by magic-users. Maybe some monsters get bonuses against magic-users. Maybe some items have special properties when used against "magic-users" (sword +1, +2 vs. magic-users? potion of magic-user influence?).

Except that Clerics, Druids, Bards, possibly Paladins are ALSO "magic users". If they all have spells... they all use magic. Now you might then make the distinction between Arcane magic-users, and non-Arcane magic-users... but then we get right back into the Power Source issue that so many people decried.

And what's lame about it is that Warlocks aren't really Arcane anyway. Warlocks are and have always been much closer to Clerics than Wizards... because their magic is granted to them by some much more powerful entity. The only reason they've been called 'arcane' is because there's this nebulous energy called 'arcane energy' that D&D has created and yet has never really defined... and have just randomly assigned certain classes to it. How is the magic granted by a devil the same as the magic you get by using hand gestures, incantations and bit and pieces of random crap? Or the same magic as playing music? To me, they aren't similar at all. So to call a Warlock's magic 'arcane magic' is just hand-waving the fluff because they don't want to call a devil a source of 'divine' magic, since it's always been "the gods" who had a moratorium on that term.

But hell... (pun intended)... Asmodeus is the king of the devils as well as a god in 4E. Which means a cleric and a warlock can get their powers from exactly the same person. If that doesn't mean clerics and warlocks should actually be put in the same category rather than warlocks and wizards, I don't know what would.

Fey pact warlocks... okay, maybe their magic is arcane. Infernal warlocks? Divine magic all the way. Which tells me creating a "super-group" of all arcane casters is kinda useless and is actually antithetical to its own fluff.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

There IS a distinct advantage to having a "magic-user" bucket that you pour wizard, warlock, sorcerer, etc out of: you can tie things to the "magic-user" keyword.

Worth noting that warlocks are specifically NOT part of the "magic-user" group. (Nor are clerics, it would seem.)

Also, what the hell is the difference between a wizard and a sorcerer if not spellcasting mechanics? (In 3e, nothing.)

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

Except that Clerics, Druids, Bards, possibly Paladins are ALSO "magic users". If they all have spells... they all use magic. Now you might then make the distinction between Arcane magic-users, and non-Arcane magic-users... but then we get right back into the Power Source issue that so many people decried.

Power sources weren't really decried from a conceptual standpoint; as the Jester noted, they were mostly decried because they either didn't do anything (Martial, Arcane, and Primal didn't really have shared mechanics, just a shared theme) or did too little (Divine had Channel Divinity, but every class's CD did something different) and aside from a few paragon paths nothing really keyed off them.

If 5e uses AD&D's super-class groupings, then "power source" would actually have an impact, because that gives you class inheritance (paladins and rangers in 1e were "as a fighter, except the following," which lets classes share mechanics and/or a class chassis without too much redundancy in the rules) and the ability to have "X group only" items, specialties, etc. (instead of having the Necromancer theme say "this specialty is only for wizards, sorcerers, wu jen, [insert arcane class here], ...." it can just say "this is a magic-user theme).

And what's lame about it is that Warlocks aren't really Arcane anyway. Warlocks are and have always been much closer to Clerics than Wizards... because their magic is granted to them by some much more powerful entity. The only reason they've been called 'arcane' is because there's this nebulous energy called 'arcane energy' that D&D has created and yet has never really defined... and have just randomly assigned certain classes to it. How is the magic granted by a devil the same as the magic you get by using hand gestures, incantations and bit and pieces of random crap? Or the same magic as playing music? To me, they aren't similar at all. So to call a Warlock's magic 'arcane magic' is just hand-waving the fluff because they don't want to call a devil a source of 'divine' magic, since it's always been "the gods" who had a moratorium on that term.

Arcane magic has at least one pretty clear distinction from divine magic, at least pre-4e: arcane magic is something you own, divine magic is something you borrow. If a cleric or paladin pisses off his deity, or a druid breaks his oaths, goodbye magic; if a warlock pisses off his infernal patron, too bad, he was given his power and no take-backs. This was blurred in 4e once divine casters no longer could lose their powers for breaching their code of conduct and warlocks had pact boons rather than just making one agreement in their backstory, but given the revival of older flavor I'm guessing we'll see paladin and cleric codes again, whether you like it or not.

But hell... (pun intended)... Asmodeus is the king of the devils as well as a god in 4E. Which means a cleric and a warlock can get their powers from exactly the same person. If that doesn't mean clerics and warlocks should actually be put in the same category rather than warlocks and wizards, I don't know what would.

Fey pact warlocks... okay, maybe their magic is arcane. Infernal warlocks? Divine magic all the way. Which tells me creating a "super-group" of all arcane casters is kinda useless and is actually antithetical to its own fluff.

Personally, I hope Asmodeus goes back to being a non-divine Power again; making every powerful being a deity changed a lot flavor-wise--Asmodeus no longer has a true form in Nessus, Archdevils/Demon Princes/Archomentals now have to deal with worshipers and such, you don't have the difference between an organized evil religion and a smaller evil cult, etc.--and, I feel, made things less distinct and interesting.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I like the idea of power sources, but disliked how they were used.

WARLORDs, FIGHTERs, and MONKs are all Martial trained
WIZARDs, SWORDMAGEs, and SORCERERs all cast Arcane spellsWAR
CLERICs, PALADINs, AVENGERs, and INVOKERs all pray for Divine powers
DRIUDs, WARDENs, and SHAMANs all channel Pimal nature energy
PSIONs, BATTLEMINDs, and ARDENTs all unlock there Psioic potental.


BUT...
Most ROUGES are not trained to be martial at all, samme with RANGERs (although a better case can be made there)
WARLOCKs are all over the place with Divine, Psionic, Arcane and other based on where they get there toys
BARDs have less in common with wizard then warlocks
RUNE PRIEST do not pray and focus on lost lore, maybe more qrcane but again does not fit
BARBARIANs aare all over the place like warlock.

 

[Warbringer]

Confirmation that

1 they're really listening
2 core rules will be a basic rule set
3 1-10 next playtest

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20121015