D&D 5E Treantmonk's Guide to Wizards 5e

[Saeviomagy]

Reading shape water, I see a cantrip that allows you to:

Make water take a simple shape (ie - a 5' cube) and animate (ie - walk out of the pond and follow you) for 1 hour.
Freeze it, again for an hour.

And you can have 2 effects running at a time, so you can have two of them following you around, and you don't need to maintain the 'take a shape' power once you've used the 'freeze' power.

To me that gives you a fairly effective method of blocking doorways or tunnels. Or building stairs or bridges. Or triggering traps (each cube weighs a fair bit more than the average person).

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Interesting idea. Re-reading Shape Water, my big question would be, "Is 'walk out of the pond and follow me' really within the scope of 'animate'?" That seems a little bit more... sentient than the way I read the spell. As I read the spell, it's more like "Flow here" and "move there," which means that getting the water where you want it will take constant babysitting instead of a single "follow me" command.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Then what does 'animate' refer to?

I agree with you that 'follow me' is probably outside the scope because as you say it requires some sentience, but I would expect "repeat the movements of your corners that cause forwards movement" to be possible, and probably require an action or a recast to make it take corners.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Sure, I'd allow you to get the water ball rolling and make it keep moving, or change its direction with a second casting. That seems well within the scope of what "animate" should be. It's what I meant by "constant baby-sitting."

 

[fireinthedust]

Great work. Could you check out my article on 5e design? I'd love your opinions. I've got a few more coming, and it might interest you from a design point of view. CRACKING 5E PART ONE: RACES!


I'm shocked Watery Sphere doesn't demand a save to avoid drowning! And while the water control cantrip doesn't allow freezing on creatures, ray of frost should.

Horrid Wilting: a 30 foot cube (three dimensions) within 150 feet (30 spaces in all directions from you), doing 10d8 necrotic (relatively few foes have immunity to necrotic, compared to something like Fire), I'm not sure I'd say it should be a lower level spell. Average damage would be, what, 45 on a failed save? Group damage for 8th level spells should be 13d6 (average 39-ish?), so you're still doing more average damage than other 8th level area spells. It's a weird blasting spell, and arguably 8th level should be more interesting than blasting spells... but the math holds up. Plus you've got all that water now, so you could freeze it, shape it, etc, I suppose.
I'm not saying it's blue, but I would suggest better than ye stinky brown. Unless all damage spells at 8th level are auto-brown, this unusual fireball-type spell, with above-average damage, shouldn't be relegated to stinks-ville.

But yeah, lower level would be more interesting, considering you could, I don't know, create a clone or have a demiplane with the same slot. Monte Cook had a 3e 9th level spell that aged characters instead of doing hp damage. THAT would be a great 8th level spell for 5e.

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

Oh, I've had some activity here in the past week. Sorry for the delay in response

One cool thing you can do with Malleable Illusions, is cast Major Illusion once, and then change it over and over again to suit whatever you want. As you level up, you can make Major Illusion last longer and longer, eventually becoming permanent, at which point you can just have it follow you around and become whatever you need it to be without spending any additional spell slots.

Love it! Added the suggestion to the guide and gave you credit. Thanks!

Reading shape water, I see a cantrip that allows you to:

Make water take a simple shape (ie - a 5' cube) and animate (ie - walk out of the pond and follow you) for 1 hour.
Freeze it, again for an hour.

And you can have 2 effects running at a time, so you can have two of them following you around, and you don't need to maintain the 'take a shape' power once you've used the 'freeze' power.

To me that gives you a fairly effective method of blocking doorways or tunnels. Or building stairs or bridges. Or triggering traps (each cube weighs a fair bit more than the average person).

Full marks for being creative! I agree that "animate" is pretty subjective, so the mileage here is going to depend on the DM.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Great work. Could you check out my article on 5e design? I'd love your opinions. I've got a few more coming, and it might interest you from a design point of view. CRACKING 5E PART ONE: RACES!

Just FYI, the formatting on your article makes it almost unreadable for me. I'm about to copy-paste it into Notepad just so it doesn't drive me batty while reading it.

I'm not sure why. I think it might have something to do with the huge left margin and the fact that the wavy grey border on the left, plus the font, which according to Chrome is "Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans serif."

I'm looking forward to reading the content, it's just unfortunate that the presentation is so distracting.

Edit: okay, having read through the article, my main takeaway is that you overvalue dwarves as overpowered at 53 mp, undervalue variant humans as underpowered at 36 mp, and undervalue svirfneblin darkvision as being worth only 4 mp. In practice dwarves are pretty average no matter what your mp guesstimate says, and 120' darkvision, because it's greater than almost everybody else's darkvision, suffices to grant you advantage on attacks against almost everybody at ranges of 61' to 120'. That's easily worth as much as Drow Magic, which you've counted as 12 mp.

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

Great work. Could you check out my article on 5e design? I'd love your opinions. I've got a few more coming, and it might interest you from a design point of view. CRACKING 5E PART ONE: RACES!

Sure thing, I'll take a look tomorrow.

Horrid Wilting: a 30 foot cube (three dimensions)

OK, so I'm going to disagree with you on a few points here. Let's go through point by point. Yes it's 3 dimensions, but 30' cube (15' diameter) is quite a small area for the level. That said, if the damage was concentrated enough that wouldn't be an issue.

within 150 feet (30 spaces in all directions from you),

I have no problem with the range, its the effect that I have a problem with

doing 10d8 necrotic (relatively few foes have immunity to necrotic, compared to something like Fire)

ALL undead and ALL constructs are immune, and that's before we even look at necrotic resistance or immunity. That's not good, that's actually quite terrible. Undead alone are probably making up more enemies than all the creatures immune to fire in most campaigns. The amount of creatures immune to this spell is one of the big problems it has.

Average damage would be, what, 45 on a failed save?

A Failed CON save by the way. This is going to be the 2nd worst save to target at high levels (Str being the worst, though few things target strength). Those high CR monsters tend to have high Con scores, which means more made saving throws. Average 22 damage on a successful save. You need to be 15th level to cast this spell. You can cast it a maximum of once per day. 22 or 45 damage on average. That's for your premiere 1/day spell. That's not good. Average HP of a CR 11 creature is just shy of 200. That's CR 11 - you will be facing lots of such creatures for even a run-of-the-mill encounter.

Group damage for 8th level spells should be 13d6 (average 39-ish?), so you're still doing more average damage than other 8th level area spells.

You are talking about using a Fireball (3rd level spell) with an 8th level slot. Generally speaking, using low level spells with high level slots is just a terrible idea. We really aren't comparing apples to apples.

How about we look at Chain Lightning. Chain Lightning is a 6th level spell. Let's cast it with a 6th level slot and compare to Horrid Wilting:

1) Range: 150' in both cases - winner: tie
2) Damage: 10d8 in both cases - winner: tie
3) Damage immunity: (Electricity immunity/resistance) vs (Necrotic Immunity/Resistance + All Undead + All Constructs): Winner Chain Lightning
4) Saving throw: Dexterity vs Consitution: Winner Chain Lightning
5) Area of effect: 30' cube vs 30' radius (both 3 dimensional) Winner Chain Lightning

Now Chain Lightning has a maximum number of targets it can hit, but on the other hand, there is no friendly fire. That's probably a wash.

Chain lightning wins hands down. This is a 6th level spell, and I rated it orange and said "it's probably not worth it", still, superior to the 8th level Horrid Wilting spell.

I should also mention though, that if you are especially interested in Blasting spells - The Wizard Guide that really lays it out the best isn't mine, it's this one: Arrive on Time, A general guide to Wizardry. Check it out, it's well worth your time. I will note that he rated the spell better than I did (purple - his "so-so" rating) and pointed out that it's probably a good choice for Necromancers because of synergy with Grim Harvest.

It's a weird blasting spell, and arguably 8th level should be more interesting than blasting spells... but the math holds up. Plus you've got all that water now, so you could freeze it, shape it, etc, I suppose.
I'm not saying it's blue, but I would suggest better than ye stinky brown. Unless all damage spells at 8th level are auto-brown, this unusual fireball-type spell, with above-average damage, shouldn't be relegated to stinks-ville.

So a couple things:

1) I don't think the math holds up (as I pointed out above)
2) I don't think you actually get the water, I think it is gone. At least, that's the way I read it.
3) "Unless all blast spells at 8th level are auto-brown" It actually is pretty close to that. There really aren't any good blast options for your 8th level slot. Just look what Meteor Swarm is going to do with your 9th level slot. Shouldn't an 8th level blast be 1/2 as good? It's not even close to 1/2 as good.

But yeah, lower level would be more interesting, considering you could, I don't know, create a clone or have a demiplane with the same slot. Monte Cook had a 3e 9th level spell that aged characters instead of doing hp damage. THAT would be a great 8th level spell for 5e.

I should mention at this point that I rated Meteor Swarm green, and it's just a blast spell. However, unlike Horrid Wilting, the range, area and damage are appropriate for a spell of the level. IMO

 

[Quartz]

Just a thought but have you considered extending your article to differentiate between memorised spells and spells cast from scrolls or devices? IOW answering the question, "Is it worth me scribing this scroll or creating this item?"

 

[Henry]

Off-topic for wizards, but try a Lucky Lightfoot Halfling Diviner 2/Wild Sorcerer X (Heightened Spell + Bend Luck).

It strikes me that "Lucky Lightfoot" is a FANTASTIC name for a halfling PC.