D&D 5E (2014) Treantmonk's Guide to Wizards 5e

[Jman Owen]

Awesome guide Treantmonk! The spell and tradition analysis is especially helpful! Any plans on updating the guide to include the new Wizard stuff from Xanthar's, specifically the War Mage?

 

[jgsugden]

Give him some time to reflect.

In general, there is not a lot of great stuff in this book for wizards. There are a few gems, but not too many.

War wizards are fine, with a nice defensive ability at level 2 and great speed in combat to strike first (level 2 abilities), a minor offensive damage uptick with power surge, more defensive benefits at 10th level, and another small damage dealing benefit at 14th level. I imagine Treatmonk will not be too fond of the damage dealing perks, but the defense and init bonuses can be nice. It is playable in my opinion, mostly as an alternative to the evoker, but it would not be my first min/max pick for a subclass for wizard.

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

Awesome guide Treantmonk! The spell and tradition analysis is especially helpful! Any plans on updating the guide to include the new Wizard stuff from Xanthar's, specifically the War Mage?

Here's where we are sitting on that:

I bought Xanathar's at my local hobby shop on the weekend (cancelled my Amazon purchase and spent $20 extra bucks to get it 10 days earlier, because sometimes I'm not patient)

Read through it in the first couple days and wrote some notes and opinions for myself. It's a good read, I love Xanathar's little posties for a good laugh. There are a lot of things in it I will get a lot of use from as a DM, and ideas I can steal as a player.

Decided that I needed to do a review of the entire book, so I've been slowly editing those original notes into more of a "guide", along with a second reading.

Reviewed Jeremy Crawfords twitter feed over the last week, after reading his tweets, it changed my thoughts on a number of areas, went back and made some changes.

As for spell review, that is not quite done yet. I'm up to level 6, well over 1/2 way. I have had a few days off work, and tomorrow off as well, I'm kind of hoping I might finish tomorrow.

Once completed, I will need to do a small edit to specifically Wizard spells (some may change ratings as well, as I will be evaluating them for their use to a God Wizard. Shadow Blade for example is not going to have the same rating) and my War Mage evaluation, which will be added to my current guide. In any case where a spell was published in Elemental Evil and Xanathar's, my Xanathar's review will replace my current review (some of the spells have changed a bit. Some just have clearer wording).

I will post my Treantmonk's Guide to Everything about Xanathar's around the same time.

I will post here as soon as they are up. I would say better than 50% they will be completed and up sometime tomorrow, if not then (because I find myself demotivated or something tomorrow), Friday.

I've found I've been spending longer going over each spell, and this is making for longer text on each spell, which is slowing the process significantly (takes me about 10 minutes per spell, and thats been many hours for just spell reviews so far.)

 

[MatsuKurisu]

Wow! Thanks for all the effort! Looking forward to your thoughts

 

[Jman Owen]

Once completed, I will need to do a small edit to specifically Wizard spells (some may change ratings as well, as I will be evaluating them for their use to a God Wizard. Shadow Blade for example is not going to have the same rating) and my War Mage evaluation, which will be added to my current guide. In any case where a spell was published in Elemental Evil and Xanathar's, my Xanathar's review will replace my current review (some of the spells have changed a bit. Some just have clearer wording).

I will post my Treantmonk's Guide to Everything about Xanathar's around the same time.

I will post here as soon as they are up. I would say better than 50% they will be completed and up sometime tomorrow, if not then (because I find myself demotivated or something tomorrow), Friday.

Yeah it wasn't until after I posted that I saw your post about planning to review Xanthar a few pages back. Looking forward to your insight and thoughts on War Magic as a God Wizard. Considering replacing that for my Evoker in my current campaign. Thanks for all the effort you put into these reviews!

 

[Mistwell]

Synaptic Static.

Pardon for the crudeness...but isn't that just a nice way of saying "Brain Fart"?

 

[Robert Charles]

Pardon for the crudeness...but isn't that just a nice way of saying "Brain Fart"?

No that's Flatulent Fragmentation. SS is what happens when you DM for more than 6 hours straight on nothing but a diet of Mountain Dew and Cheetos.

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

No that's Flatulent Fragmentation. SS is what happens when you DM for more than 6 hours straight on nothing but a diet of Mountain Dew and Cheetos.

I'm pretty sure it's called Frequency Actuated Cerebellum Tremor

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

So here is where we stand.

OK, I spent a stupid amount of time today on the Xanathar's guide, because I foolishly suggested it would likely be posted today, so, finally, it's done. I stopped enjoying the work about 4 hours ago!

My new guide

As for updating my existing guide, well, it's mostly a cut-and-paste job, and I'm not likely to be doing it today. Maybe this weekend. That said, all my ratings for all the spells as well as the War Mage are all in the guide, I hope you like it!

 

[RustoPhats]

Thanks treantmonk!! I really appreciate your work.