D&D (2024) 2024 Player's Handbook Reveal: "New Wizard"

"The paramount collector of spells."

Open your spellbooks, everybody. Today we get a Wizard video.

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The last version of the class was in the UA Playtest 7 package (PT7). It's not clear how much they'll say here. Of the base class, I am hoping that they have recanted the level 5 ability, Memorize Spell (or perhaps shifted it to needing a short rest). They've said that the PHB will get clearer rules for how illusions work -- maybe they'll talk about that? Other than that, I think the most they can do is show us some revised spells: Will the revised version of Counterspell be kept? Any surprise Necromancy reveals? Let's find out.

OVERVIEW

• "the paramount collector of spells": "many" of new spells are for the wizard.
• As in PT7: cantrip change after long rest (level 1); scholar -- expertise in an academic field (at 2)
• NO MENTION OF ARCANE RECOVERY
• NEW: Ritual Adept broken out as a new class feature. They can cast spells in their spellbook, as before, but here ID'd as a new feature.
• NEW: Memorize Spell at 5: you can swap a spell after short rest.
• Each subclass gets a new version of Savant: free spells in spellbook of preferred school. 2 free spells of favored class, and a new spell for each spell level (so every 2 levels, as in the playtest. This isn't what is said in the video, but has been corrected elsewhere.

SUBCLASSES
Abjurer

• new abjuration spells feeds back onto how subclass functions.
• NEW: Arcane Ward at 3: resistance, immunity applied before the Arcane Ward.
• NEW: Projected Ward a 6: your friend's resistance is applied before the ward for them.
• NEW: Spell breaker at level 10: Counterspell and Dispell Magic are both prepared (PT7 did not include Counterspell). Dispell Magic is a bonus action.

Diviner

• NEW: Third Eye at 10. As in PT7, bonus action to activate; 120' darkvision, see invisibility. NO MENTION of Greater Comprehension ("read any language")

Evoker -- "all about bringing the boom"

• As in PT7: Potent Cantrip at 3 applies to cantrips both with a saving throw or an attack roll.

Illusionist -- "we felt that the subclass needed more" (YAY)

• NEW: Improved Illusions at level 3:
  • cast illusion spells with no verbal components. (FUN)
  • illusions with range with at least 10' is increased to 60' (no-- by 60' to 70').
  • you get minor illusion cantrip, with both visual and audible
  • you cast minor illusion as a bonus action.
• NEW: Phantasmal Creatures
  • summon beast and summon fey spells always prepared. These MAY BE changed from conjuration to Illusion, and the illusory version can be cast without expending a spell slot, but the summoned version, only with half the hit points. ONCE PER DAY.
  • illusions can step on a trap to set it off (?!)
  • (replacing Malleable Illusions, which I complained about here. This is so exciting.)
• NEW: Illusory Self triggered by you being hit by an attack (not when you are targeted). As in PT7, you can get more uses by giving up a spell slot of level 2+.

SPECIFIC SPELLS

• NEW: school shift to Abjuration: no examples
• Counterspell as in PT7.
• GUIDANCE ON ILLUSIONS in Rules Glossary. E.g. How are they affected by environment?
  • spell descriptions also clarified. Rules Glossary to be discussed in future video (also conditions, areas of effects, guidance on teleportation, telepathy, "
• "being dead" to be discussed in Cleric Video. Tease...

So this gave much more than I was expecting, and it looks amazing. Playing an illusionist will now be much more clearly not a "mother may I?" situation, which (I feel) has long been the case. I think I got most of what I'd asked for in the PT feedback.

 

[Stalker0]

Which of course depends on the wizard having the money and access to buy all the ritual spells. However rituals are VERY MUCH not as powerful as they are made out. If they were, sorcerers would take the spells. Rituals are like ribbons, they look pretty but don't do very much.

If you think rituals are weak no wonder you don’t like the wizard!

But I will simply disagree. Alarm, detect magic, comprehend languages, all great spells when they cost no slots and the wizard can pull them out whenever needed.

Augury is a great one.

Hell at 7th level my party’s wizard got water breathing. Every adventuring day the party always had it up, no spell slot required. Saved them several times.

 

[deadman1204]

If you think rituals are weak no wonder you don’t like the wizard!

But I will simply disagree. Alarm, detect magic, comprehend languages, all great spells when they cost no slots and the wizard can pull them out whenever needed.

Augury is a great one.

Hell at 7th level my party’s wizard got water breathing. Every adventuring day the party always had it up, no spell slot required. Saved them several times.

Look Alarm! you get an alarm when someone charges into camp. Oh wait thep arty can all take turns doing watch, and only get like 4 hours of interrupted sleep but it still counts as a full rest so it doesnt matter.

Your also pretending that ritual is the ONLY way to cast these. A big part of that is continually ignoring HOW DOES A WIZARD GET THEM. If they spend their 2 spells per level on it, then they are worthless in a fight (which is really the entire point of dnd). So either the wizard spends all their money on spells and has no gear, or there is no "magic is for sale" and the wizard doesn't have them anyways.

We keep talking around the main problem, wizards cannot have all these spells unless the dm goes out of their way to give them to the wizard. No other class has this gigantic problem. Name any other class that cannot function without either unlimited gold (and magic shops) or constant dm handouts?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not that I have any issues with wizards being a B tier class for once.

Actually, that's the real issue IMO: spite on the part of wizard-hating players, magnified through the player feedback to WotC, who dutifully made most other classes more powerful and left the wizard increasingly in the cold without anything special to call their own. The sorcerer has almost all their spells, bonus spells per subclass, and cool class features the wizard lacks. This is overcompensation to appease the ire of non-wizard players.

 

[tetrasodium]

If you think rituals are weak no wonder you don’t like the wizard!

But I will simply disagree. Alarm, detect magic, comprehend languages, all great spells when they cost no slots and the wizard can pull them out whenever needed.

Augury is a great one.

Hell at 7th level my party’s wizard got water breathing. Every adventuring day the party always had it up, no spell slot required. Saved them several times.

Wrt comprehend languages... The job requirements for in translator ls are some of the highest in the world for translators... yet it's almost impossible to make a PC that doesn't meet them easily and it's pretty simple to exceed them by coincidence without even trying. That was a good spell in the older editions when languages and sometimes even literacy for PCs was handled very differently.


Wrt alarm ... Is it a good spell? Well let's see... "Hey gm if I cast alarm so it alarms under $specificCondition, how does the spell determine the DC for a hiding/sneaking/etc creature meeting that condition...it can't be spell craft or something because that's gone, is it my spell save DC? Passive perception? Perception check? Something else? Some kinda truesight type thing?"What's that, you say that I shouldn't waste my time because it doesn't have a DC to overcome?.. Ok".

Detect magic collapses in value by way of getting undercut with "magic items are totally unsupported and cause problems for the gm...OpTiOnAl"

Augery falls under the earlier described umbrella of divination and what the GM wants you to (not) know/is incapable of knowing themselves pon top of elements sacrificed on the altar of "fun"... Once again yes it's a great spell for a work of fiction or in older editions... But actual play is not either of those things

 

[Stalker0]

Look Alarm! you get an alarm when someone charges into camp. Oh wait thep arty can all take turns doing watch, and only get like 4 hours of interrupted sleep but it still counts as a full rest so it doesnt matter.

Apologies I forgot everyone in the party was a ranger with a 20 passive perception that will never ever miss anyone sneaking into camp.

A watch does not grant you immunity from someone sneaking through an area. But a rogue with a 30 stealth walks into the alarm area, the alarm goes off.

Your also pretending that ritual is the ONLY way to cast these. A big part of that is continually ignoring HOW DOES A WIZARD GET THEM. If they spend their 2 spells per level on it, then they are worthless in a fight (which is really the entire point of dnd). So either the wizard spends all their money on spells and has no gear, or there is no "magic is for sale" and the wizard doesn't have them anyways.

We keep talking around the main problem, wizards cannot have all these spells unless the dm goes out of their way to give them to the wizard. No other class has this gigantic problem. Name any other class that cannot function without either unlimited gold (and magic shops) or constant dm handouts?

I'm not ignoring you, I do agree with you that the wizard's strength has a lot of variability depending on how treasure is awarded. But lets try to start with a common denominator. I think most everyone would agree that a 5-6th level heavy armor fighter is going to strive for plate armor. If the DM stiffs them on the armor, the fighter is going to be weaker.

That is 1500 gp, which = 30 levels worth of spells. So it seems reasonable to assume a DM should give the wizard at least this much if they are going to give the fighter either the gold to buy plate armor or just finding it in a dungeon. 30 levels is a lot of spells, that is like 4 3rd level spells, 5 2nd level, and 8 1st level as just one combination... more than enough to blow away sorcs in terms of spells known.

Wrt comprehend languages... The job requirements for in translator ls are some of the highest in the world for translators... yet it's almost impossible to make a PC that doesn't meet them easily and it's pretty simple to exceed them by coincidence without even trying. That was a good spell in the older editions when languages and sometimes even literacy for PCs was handled very differently.

If you are saying that a party often knows a lot of languages, I agree 5e has made language known pretty common. Is it so common that every language is covered by every party, absolutely not.

Detect magic collapses in value by way of getting undercut with "magic items are totally unsupported and cause problems for the gm...OpTiOnAl"

Lots of things give off magic that aren't magic items.

Augery falls under the earlier described umbrella of divination and what the GM wants you to (not) know/is incapable of knowing themselves pon top of elements sacrificed on the altar of "fun"... Once again yes it's a great spell for a work of fiction or in older editions... But actual play is not either of those things

You could say the same thing about the entire school of illusion. Turn Undead is a pretty crappy feature if the dm never throws out any undead. Man the rogue's hiding sucks in these dungeons filled with open white rooms with perfect lightning, etc.

Sure, DMs could utterly obliterate augury as a useful spell, or make it a cool device that gives the wizard some interesting info to stew over. Like so many things in dnd, it can be garbage or gold under different DMs purview.

 

[tetrasodium]

Apologies I forgot everyone in the party was a ranger with a 20 passive perception that will never ever miss anyone sneaking into camp.

A watch does not grant you immunity from someone sneaking through an area. But a rogue with a 30 stealth walks into the alarm area, the alarm goes off.

I'm not ignoring you, I do agree with you that the wizard's strength has a lot of variability depending on how treasure is awarded. But lets try to start with a common denominator. I think most everyone would agree that a 5-6th level heavy armor fighter is going to strive for plate armor. If the DM stiffs them on the armor, the fighter is going to be weaker.

That is 1500 gp, which = 30 levels worth of spells. So it seems reasonable to assume a DM should give the wizard at least this much if they are going to give the fighter either the gold to buy plate armor or just finding it in a dungeon. 30 levels is a lot of spells, that is like 4 3rd level spells, 5 2nd level, and 8 1st level as just one combination... more than enough to blow away sorcs in terms of spells known.

If you are saying that a party often knows a lot of languages, I agree 5e has made language known pretty common. Is it so common that every language is covered by every party, absolutely not.

Lots of things give off magic that aren't magic items.

You could say the same thing about the entire school of illusion. Turn Undead is a pretty crappy feature if the dm never throws out any undead. Man the rogue's hiding sucks in these dungeons filled with open white rooms with perfect lightning, etc.

Sure, DMs could utterly obliterate augury as a useful spell, or make it a cool device that gives the wizard some interesting info to stew over. Like so many things in dnd, it can be garbage or gold under different DMs purview.

Let's try to keep the discussion grounded in things actually printed. Which book and page number contains the 30 stealth monster you reference?

Ironically your defense of augury with a reference to how illusion spells work in 5e highlights yet another area where 5e's quest for the "fun' of simply creates the problem. Past editions avoided that by having illusion spells broken down with mechanical descriptors for how they function ls

 

[Stalker0]

Let's try to keep the discussion grounded in things actually printed. Which book and page number contains the 30 stealth monster you reference?

The ambitious assassin from book of many things is capable of a 30 stealth result: https://5e.tools/bestiary/ambitious-assassin-bmt.html

An exaggeration to imply such things are "common", but I think we can all agree that not everyone has a stellar passive perception, and so a stealth creature has a high chance to sneak past a person on watch, whereas alarm offers another level of protection that bypasses the stealth result.

 

[Staffan]

Add to this that until you get to high levels, its not uncommon for sorcerers to actually have MORE known spells than wizards. IF your dm isn't handing out free spells, then the wizard only gets 2 per level. Sorcerers have buckets of bonus spells that result in them having more "free" spells than wizards until you get close to 10th level.

We know that 2024 sorcerers will be getting bonus spells known, and that this is basically the same as how the Clockwork and Aberrant Mind sorcerers work in 2014, minus the ability to trade those spells out for others that fulfill certain requirements. Assuming base spells known for sorcerers remain the same as in 2014, that means that sorcerers have 2 and 3 spells known at levels 1 and 2. At level 3, they jump to 8, as they're both getting an extra base spell plus two more each at spell level 1 and 2. After that, they alternate getting 1 and 3 spells (1 base at every level, 2 bonus at every level where they gain a new spell level) until level 9, where they know a total of 20 spells. After that, they gain 1 more per level until level 11, then 1 more every other level until 17, and then they stop.

The wizard starts with 6 spells known, and adds 2 more each level. When they reach level 3, they get 2 more from their subclass, and after that they get a new school spell every odd level until 17. This spell is also generally more flexible than the bonus spells the sorcerer gets – there might be other spells you'd want more than hunger of Hadar or protection from energy.

That means that the wizard starts with 4 spells up on the sorcerer, goes up to 5 up at level 2, and then back down to 4 up at level 3, and back up to 5 up again at level 4. After that, the wizard gets ahead by 1 spell per even level up to level 10, after which they get ahead by 2 spells per level. And that's just their free spells. The wizard can spend gold to increase this – the feasibility of which is highly campaign-dependent (both in availability of gold and of downtime), but the sorcerer can't increase their spell selection at all.

 

[WanderingMystic]

First 50 gold per level is a trivial amount. Scrolls at least lower level ones will now be available to buy in the PHB along with some potions this is due to ability for someone with scribe tools to create spell scrolls. By the time a martial has bought plate you should have about 5-10 extra spells for the same amount of money.

 

[tetrasodium]

The ambitious assassin from book of many things is capable of a 30 stealth result: https://5e.tools/bestiary/ambitious-assassin-bmt.html

An exaggeration to imply such things are "common", but I think we can all agree that not everyone has a stellar passive perception, and so a stealth creature has a high chance to sneak past a person on watch, whereas alarm offers another level of protection that bypasses the stealth result.

No we can not agree because your point requires the linked +10 stealth creature rolling a nat 20 making it a long shot on top of an extreme edge case to get that 30 stealth result.