D&D 5E Companion thread to 5E Survivor - Subclasses (Part XIV: Wizard)

[Vaalingrade]

I'm not sure I follow. What do you mean by "prevents classes from happening"?

"We can't have X, that's the wizard's niche!"

"You don't need Y, that's what the wizard is for."

"If you do Z, my wizard won't be special!"

 

[CleverNickName]

"We can't have X, that's the wizard's niche!"

"You don't need Y, that's what the wizard is for."

"If you do Z, my wizard won't be special!"

Hm. I'm trying to figure out what X, Y, and Z might be, but the only thing that comes to mind is the find familiar spell/ritual and the clone spell...the artificer and the sorcerer can do just about everything the wizard can do. I'm sure there are more, though...the wizard spell list is like 300 spells long. I wonder how many "wizard only" spells there are in 5E.

(checks donjon.bin)

Turns out, there are several spells that are exclusive to the Wizard and only the Wizard: 28 in total. They are: clone, contingency, create homunculus, drawmij's instant summons, evard's black tentacles, find familiar, fire shield, illusory dragon, invulnerability, magic jar, maze, melf's acid arrow, mighty fortress, nystul's magic aura, otiluke's freezing sphere, passwall, phantom steed, prismatic wall, rary's telepathic bond, sequester, simulacrum, telepathy, tenser's floating disk, tenser's transformation, wall of force, wall of ice, wall of sand, and weird. This is about 9% of the total number of spells (311) that the Wizard can learn.

And a few of them are downright iconic: find familiar, acid arrow, phantom steed, and passwall are the ones I've seen the most often. (This is probably because many of these spells aren't in the Player's Handbook, and most are 6th level and up.) As iconic as they are, I've never seen anyone but an NPC villain ever use floating disk or magic jar. So maybe there is something to be said for X, Y, and Z, above.

I guess it all comes down to how you define "Wizard's niche."

In the games I've played, everyone expected the wizard to be a blaster: he was expected to (1) throw fireballs and magic missiles to keep the crowd under control and activate the cleric's toll the dead cantrip, and (2) to let the party bypass guards and obstacles with fly, knock, and invisibility. If someone at the table rolls up a wizard and doesn't select these spells, he will never hear the end of it. (Ask me how I know!) But none of these spells are exclusively wizard-only.

But if we define the Wizard's "niche" as "something that only the Wizard can/should do," you're going to be all over the place. You will end up with everything from "owner of a magical menagerie of summoned familiars and horses" to "master spy who walks through walls and reads minds" and "swordsman summons a katana from thin air and transforms into Musashi Miyamoto."

 

[Undrave]

I think this would be really easy to do with a custom spell list: just delete out the spells you don't like, add in the ones you do, and you're off to the races. Going off of my "the spells make the mage" comment above: instead of having a single spell list that is shared by all Wizards, you could even make a list for each "schoool" Subclass to fit your campaign ("In this campaign, Abjurers choose their spells off of the Abjurer list," for example.)

The Wizard default is to gain 2 spell per level. I think the base class should have you learn ONE Spell per level, and each of the specialist gain an additional one FROM THEIR SCHOOL as part of the subclass feature. And guys like the Scribe, the War Mage and the Bladesinger? They get their pick from every school, but only at certain levels instead of every level. You could even have subclasses with thematic blocks of bonus spells early on.

The blanket +2 spells is what leads to the 'not-so specialists' we have now.

 

[Undrave]

Turns out, there are several spells that are exclusive to the Wizard and only the Wizard

Note that the Sorcerer has ZERO exclusive spells.

But if we define the Wizard's "niche" as "something that only the Wizard can/should do," you're going to be all over the place. You will end up with everything from "owner of a magical menagerie of summoned familiars and horses" to "master spy who walks through walls and reads minds" and "swordsman summons a katana from thin air and transforms into Musashi Miyamoto."

Isn't that kind of a problem? This is why I called it both the BEST and the WORST class in the game...

 

[Undrave]

Bladesinging 5 - 2 = 3 Just play an Eldritch Knight.

An Eldritch Knight doesn't combine spell and sword, he uses a sword with one hand and throws spells with the other. It never feels integrated.

 

[Tonguez]

An Eldritch Knight doesn't combine spell and sword, he uses a sword with one hand and throws spells with the other. It never feels integrated.

neither does Bladesinger to be fair, which is why Hexblade is the best iteration of the theme.

really they should have allowed Bladesinger to use their weapon as a focus

 

[CleverNickName]

Isn't that kind of a problem? This is why I called it both the BEST and the WORST class in the game...

Well not for me, because that's not how I would define "the Wizard's niche." But off the cuff, it looks like it would be more of a feature than a bug. By the time the wizard is high enough of a level to cast most of these wizard-only spells, he could have dozens and dozens of spells scribed in his spellbook. That would give the player the freedom to customize their wizard after every long rest by preparing certain spells.

The rogue got captured and we need to break him out of jail? Passwall and telepathy.

Dueling an infamous swordsman in the morning? Drawmij's instant summons and tenser's transformation.

Traveling overland through dangerous territory? Find familiar for scouting, and phantom steed for transportation.

Bards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks are all hedged in by the spells they choose, but not the Wizard. His schtick is that he gets a magical library of books to pull his spells from, and that list can get enormous, depending on how many scrolls you are able to find/purchase/research in your downtime. (And that is all in full control of the DM, for better or worse.)

 

[Aldarc]

Well not for me, because that's not how I would define "the Wizard's niche." But off the cuff, it looks like it would be more of a feature than a bug. By the time the wizard is high enough of a level to cast most of these wizard-only spells, he could have dozens, if not hundreds, of spells scribed in his spellbook. That would give the player the freedom to customize their wizard after every long rest by preparing certain spells.

The rogue got captured and we need to break him out of jail? Passwall and telepathy.

Dueling an infamous swordsman in the morning? Drawmij's instant summons and tenser's transformation.

Traveling overland through dangerous territory? Find familiar for scouting, and phantom steed for transportation.

Bards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks are all hedged in by the spells they choose, but not the Wizard. His schtick is that he gets a magical library of books to pull his spells from, and that list can get enormous, depending on how many scrolls you are able to find/purchase/research in your downtime. (And that is all in full control of the DM, for better or worse.)

This would still be the wizard's schtick even if they had less spells to choose from: for example, if the wizard had the sorcerer's spell list, the wizard would still have this strength. Restricting their spell list would IMHO free up space for other archetypes while also helping hone the wizard's even more. And honestly, I would probably take the psion/illusionist/enchanter and necromancer out of the wizard and make them their own thing.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

There's not a lot of range between a Psion and and Enchanter when both do "mind control" as spells.

Similarly, there's not a lot of space between an Invoker and a Sorcerer if both are elemental blasters.

The only way to make more iconic ground is to limit the generalist Wizard more.

 

[Aldarc]

There's not a lot of range between a Psion and and Enchanter when both do "mind control" as spells.

Similarly, there's not a lot of space between an Invoker and a Sorcerer if both are elemental blasters.

The only way to make more iconic ground is to limit the generalist Wizard more.

I'm cool with all that, though I know a lot of people wouldn't be because "Don't touch my wizards!"