D&D 5E Any ideas for a variant where you can only learn one magic school?

[Weltende]

Hey,

i work on the Setting for D&D 5e, but there are some hurdles to take. In my original setting a mage can only learn one type of magic. They are born with it. So if you are born with the ability to cast illusionary spells you can cast only illusion spells. So since D&D works al lot different, i got a few problems here. First even if i go the easy way and only allow one magic school, there is a big difference between the amount of spells availible. So i thought of making evocation availible for all, so everyone have some good battle spells plus one other magic type (minus the healing spells).

So, maybe someone did this before and somewhere in the deep corners of the Internet is a good solution for it. Or someone here have a good idea for it - So any idea is welcome

Best Regards
Weltende

 

[Blue]

Stock D&D 5e isn't well positioned for this. There are some schools of magic that have almost no choice at some levels. Also there was no effort to "balance" schools of magic against each other like this - some will be a lot more and a lot less useful.

If you want to do this, I suggest you make up your own types of magic separate from the schools, made up from spells from all the schools but fitting your new theme. (Including reskinning at time.)

Like you might have a Fire school, and is has things like Fireball but also Fire Shield and Flame Blade and the Green Flame Blade cantrip. And maybe you reskin Misty Step as "Flame Step", and some crowd control spell in there as well.

Foundational spells may end up in different schools, just reskinned as different types of magic for your setting. A force creator could have Mage Armor, but maybe a telekinetic has does as well, but with a slightly different way of achieving the same thing, and your cloth controller uses a reskinned version of turning normal cloth steel hard as well as having it parry and such.

The other option is that there are likely other game systems that support this better.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Single school? Probably not the best idea...in D&D. Unless you let PCs learn other Magic from other teachers. I suppose it could be a way of limiting caster power- IOW, for a low-magic setting- but spells are not evenly distributed across the various schools, in number OR power.

Having a system akin to 3.5Ed specialization or 2Ed Players’ Option could work, though.

In the former, you’re better at one particular school of magic, getting bonuses in number of spells and how effective they are, but you sacrifice being able to learn 2-3 other schools of magic.

In the latter, you have Major (full) access to a few subdivisions of magic, Minor (capped at 3rd level spells) access to some more, and no access to others. What access you have is determined by allocating points.

 

[Tony Vargas]

. In my original setting a mage can only learn one type of magic. They are born with it. So if you are born with the ability to cast illusionary spells you can cast only illusion spells.

You can just use the inborn-magic Sorcerer, more or less exclusively, instead of wizard &c.

Instead of using comparatively elaborate sub-classes, give each sorcerer a unique, focused, spell list.

 

[Weltende]

Thank you for the fast answers. [MENTION=20564]Blue[/MENTION]: I think that woud be the best fitting solution, but this woud take surely an enormous amount of time and balancing.
[MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION]: Yeah, you are probably right, that this is not the best idea, but you know - if there s some idea stuck in your head.
[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]: Hm, thats sounds promising. I will look into this. Thank you.

 

[aco175]

You could have a universal school with some of the basic spells that everyone has in addition to the selected school.

 

[jgsugden]

Spellcasters have one school from which they can always select spells with no risk of failure.

If they want to learn a spell from another school, they need to make an ability check with a DC of (15 + (spell level X 2)). If they fail it, they can *never* learn that spell. Clerics, druids and paladins make this check the first time they attempt to prepare a spell. "Spells known" spellcasters make the check when they first attempt to know a spell. Wizards make the check whenever they add to their spellbook. Etc...

The spells that are essentially class features (Eldritch Blast, Find Steed, Cure Wounds, etc...) are things you can attempt to learn once per level.

Further, you should make more spells for the spellcaster within their focus school so that they have options.

To compensate for their loss of flexibility, each impacted class should get a bonus feature, such as a free resistance, a free first level spell, or expertise in a skill.

 

[Draegn]

In my game the "schools" are now separate skills. You can only cast the type of spells for which you have skills. You could have spell casting skills so difficult to learn that you can only learn one.