D&D 5E Caster with access to only one school

[TwoSix]

If that is the case, you need to specify the class the player wants to play. A wizard or sorcerer with Mage Armor is essentially a sitting duck, but Clerics and Druids have ways of mitigating this. Heck, a Cleric who chooses the Conjuration school probably increases in overall power.

Second, since the power depends on the school the player chooses, you should know ahead of time what school they intend to choose. You can’t balance Divination against Conjuration in a vaccuum, nor should you be asked to do all that work if the player only intends to play an illusionist.

My general feeling is that if I wanted to generalize the work, I'd consider 5 schools to need more assistance to be balanced (Divination, Abjuration, Necromancy, Illusion, Enchantment), and 3 schools to be pretty closed to balanced (Evocation, Conjuration, Transmutation).

 

[FrozenNorth]

The school is divination, and the class is cleric. With this concept, we're not allowing multiclassing. (The high concept is an Eberron half-elf with a powerful dragonmark of detection, the casting ability is the character gaining greater proficiency with their dragonmark.) I like the concept a lot, but I know just having access to divination spells is obviously underpowered compared to straight cleric, so I want to give them some bonus features to compensate.

I would reskin some non-divination spells as divination spells (Hunter’s Mark, Bless), and use the wizard’s diviner feat as the basis for their Channel Divinity. They would still need a 2nd Channel Divinity, and the lack of healing would hurt.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Maybe give him portent from the divination class. That would be a huge boost.

Clerics get their extra divine spells so you could easily give him divination spells from a different class: Speak with Animals, Commune with Nature etc..

Certain spells are not DIVINATION specifically but their use is strictly information gathering: Speak with Dead is transmutation but, reskinned as haruspex (reading entrails) could work, and it's a cleric spell.

Shield of Faith is an abjuration spell that could easily be described as seeing seconds into the future, allowing you to dodge and turning a hit into a miss.

There are plenty 1st and 2nd level divinations (if you count all classes)
3rd only has 2 and they're both cleric spells
4th only has 3 and only 1 is a cleric spell
5th has 6
6th only 2 (one is cleric)
7th has none!
9th has Foresight.

Edit: much of my post was ninja'd by @FrozenNorth

 

[DND_Reborn]

This is something I posted a while back:

@Minigiant :

Here is another radical approach. It requires a great "rethinking" of the classes and their roles, etc.

Divide up each school to each caster/half-caster as follows...

Example:
Bards: Enchantment (Charm) - 40 spells
Cleric: Conjuration (Create) - 78 spells
Druid: Transmutation (Change) - 93 spells
Paladin: Abjuration (Protect) - 52 spells
Ranger: Divination (Find) - 32 spells
Sorcerer: Illusion (Deceive) - 31 spells
Warlock: Necromancy (Delve) - 36 spells
Wizard: Evocation (Manifest) - 100 spells

So, the "old" main casters have long spell lists (78, 93, and 100) and the others much shorter, but they all have other features (inspiration, warriors, metamagic, invocations) to make up for it.

Does it make some drastic changes? You BET! Cure Wounds, for instance, would become a WIZARD spell!

But, it automatically removes sameyness, makes each caster type very unique, etc.

Example:
Bards: Enchantment (Charm) - 40 spells
Cleric: Conjuration (Create) - 78 spells
Druid: Transmutation (Change) - 93 spells
Paladin: Abjuration (Protect) - 52 spells
Ranger: Divination (Find) - 32 spells
Sorcerer: Illusion (Deceive) - 31 spells
Warlock: Necromancy (Delve) - 36 spells
Wizard: Evocation (Manifest) - 100 spells

I don't think it is a big downgrade IF you allow caster access to ALL spells of a school, not just ones they would have access to as part of their normal spell list.

Note: this does create some weird changes, such as Clerics not having access to Cure Wounds.

 

[TwoSix]

I would reskin some non-divination spells as divination spells (Hunter’s Mark, Bless), and use the wizard’s diviner feat as the basis for their Channel Divinity. They would still need a 2nd Channel Divinity, and the lack of healing would hurt.

Maybe give him portent from the divination class. That would be a huge boost.

Clerics get their extra divine spells so you could easily give him divination spells from a different class: Speak with Animals, Commune with Nature etc..

Certain spells are not DIVINATION specifically but their use is strictly information gathering: Speak with Dead is transmutation but, reskinned as haruspex (reading entrails) could work, and it's a cleric spell.

Shield of Faith is an abjuration spell that could easily be described as seeing seconds into the future, allowing you to dodge and turning a hit into a miss.

There are plenty 1st and 2nd level divinations (if you count all classes)
3rd only has 2 and they're both cleric spells
4th only has 3 and only 1 is a cleric spell
5th has 6
6th only 2 (one is cleric)
7th has none!
9th has Foresight.

Yea, those are some good ideas. I like the idea of using Channel Divinity to power a Portent-like ability, I might steal that. Tagging some spells as counting as divination for the purposes of the feature is nice too, bless and speak with dead seem like some good additions.

Right now, I have the following features; I'm modeling it as a custom cleric domain with Knowledge domain as a baseline inspiration.

Can only be taken by a half-elf with the Mark of Detection.

Spellcasting: Can't prepare from the cleric spell list, instead prepare divination spells from any spell list.

Can't use Channel Divinity to Turn Undead.

Gains Investigation and Insight as bonus proficiencies, doubled bonus. (Like Knowledge)

Can use Intelligence instead of Dex for ranged and finesse weapons, and for AC calculations. (We agreed that having a high Wisdom and Intelligence were both important for a magical detective, so some stat swapping made sense here.)

Can use Channel Divinity to recharge their racial Dragonmark ability once used. (I feel like this is a little weak, I may swap this for the Portent ability.)

At 6th, their two divination cantrips get an upgrade. True strike becomes concentration and can last for 5 rounds, it gives advantage on their first attack on each of their turns. Guidance gets bumped up to a d6.

At 8th, they get Divine Strike (they don't have any damage cantrips, so kinda necessary).

At 17th, they get Visions of the Past (as Knowledge).

 

[Gadget]

As others have said, D&D (particularly 5e) makes no attempt to balance the various schools of magic against each other. Though, as time goes on and more spells are released, it can help boost certain schools a little and make it less painful. I'm also reminded of avalanche of crunch we had in 3e, when you had spells come out for certain schools like conjuration, that would conjure acid, fire, etc. and bypass spell resistance because it was a "natural element" that was just magically conjured; making evocation kind of superfluous. I wouldn't want to see a return to that type of design in an effort to help make up for the lack of other schools.

 

[jgsugden]

If I were to implement this idea, it would be as follows:

• You do not use a normal spell list for your class for spells.
• You have major access to one school. All spells of this school appear on your spell list, regardless of whether they are normally allowed for your class.
• You have minor access to two different schools of magic when you gain access to a spellcasting feature. At any time, you may elect to add one spell of level one or higher from one of these two minor schools to your spell list. It must be a spell on your classes' normal spell list. When you do so, remove that school of magic from minor access. You gain an additional minor schools (which can be a school you previously had but to which you lost access, or to a new school, but not to a school to which you currently have unselected access) when you learn to cast a new spell level of spells. For example, an additional minor school becomes available when a bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, warlock or wizard attains 3rd, 5th, 7th, etc... levels.
• When selecting a cantrip, you can select a cantrip from your major school regardless of which class list it is on. You may select one cantrip from another school that is on your normal class list. If you know all the cantrips available in your major access, you may select additional cantrips from the same school as the one other cantrip you have taken.
• When you cast a spell that is not in your major school, remove it from your known/prepared spells until you take a long rest for a spell of level 1 or above, or once per short rest if a cantrip.
• Additional spells gained through class abilities are only gained if they match your major school, or if you elect to take them using a minor school access.

Example:
Bob is a 7th level war domain cleric with an 18 wisdom. His major school is necromancy. He could select as many Necromancy spells (or cantrips) as he liked from any class. He can know 11 spells of level 1 or above.

He also has access to one other cantrip from his normal class list, but he may only cast that cantrip once per short rest. As there are four necromancy cantrips and Bob knows 4 cantrips he can either know all 4 of those cantrips or know three of them and one other cantrip, but he can only cast that other cantrip once per short rest.

He has had 5 minor schools available to him. 2 at 1st, and then an additional at 3rd, 5th and 7th.

At first level, Bob had the ability to prepare 4 spells. He used both of his minor access during character creation to add two spells from the cleric spell list to his available spells. He selected Cause Fear, Inflict Wounds, Bless (an enchantment) and Cure Wounds (an evocation). He could only cast Bless and Cure wounds once per Long Rest. At 3rd he selected transmutation as a minor school to which he has access, but did not select a spell to add to his spell list. When he reached 5th level, he still had not selected a transmutation spell to his spell list. When he is granted access to another minor spell school at 5th, it could not be transmutation.

 

[commandercrud]

In my current campaign, schools are grouped in twos into 5 spheres (following the Mystara multiverse model) and each caster must choose a sphere. They are arranged such that one sphere opposes another, so all spells of the two schools that oppose the caster's chosen sphere are all treated as one level higher than normal.

 

[CleverNickName]

A bit off-topic, but I had an idea that I needed to get out of my head...

I think it would be interesting to give casters the option to focus on a particular school of magic. If they do, they get one extra spell slot for each spell level, but that spell slot can only be used to cast a spell from the chosen school. But they also have to choose a school of magic that they cannot learn or cast any spells from, ever...not even cantrips, not even from magic items, not even if they multiclass, not even racial spells or feats or rituals, not even with a wish.

Let the player decide if the juice is worth the squeeze.

 

[Minigiant]

I did mention somewhere in that discussion with @dnd4vr that I ran a oneshot of a ruleset with single schools casters.

The classes with no offensive capicity like Abjuration and Divination became warrior classes.

The current 5e Ranger can easily look like a warrior diviner.

Look at all the divination spells. All of them are either on the ranger list or could be argued for ranger in a high magic setting

Arcane Eye Augury Beast Bond Beast Sense Clairvoyance Commune Commune with NatureComprehend Languages Contact Other Plane Detect Evil and Good Detect Magic Detect Poison and Disease Detect Thoughts Divination Find Traps Find the Path Foresight Guidance Hunter's Mark Identify Legend Lore Locate Animals or Plants Locate Creature Locate Object Scrying See Invisibility Speak with Animals Telepathic Bond Tongues True Seeing True Strike

So Divination would be a full casting ranger. Abjuartion might be a full casting paladin or EK. etc.