D&D 5E Cost of Attending Wizard School

[akr71]

"OK class, I know none of you have ever cast a reaction spell before, but its time to practice your reactions with the shield spell. Half of you ready your magic missiles"

"Wow, you all did great, now side A practice absorb elements. Side B get ready with your firebolts, this is going to hurt."

Any magical mishap is probably death for a novice wizard (every cantrip and first level damage spell has the potential to kill, and any failed reaction is probably death). 3-6 years is a long time to practice something without messing up even once.

Shield will work equally well when your training partner throws a leather ball at your head and its a lot more lethal.

I'm not saying a wizard school would not be dangerous - it would. I am only stating that it would be a lot less dangerous and controlled than taking up adventuring. Perhaps some would be wizards - like academics - are there to learn magic because that is what they want to do - learn magic, not fight dangerous monsters. Future careers as court wizards, entertainers (illusionists, etc), or even setting up shop creating and selling magic items to the more adventuresome folk.

The firebolt example is a bit ridiculous too. Practicing Knights and warriors did not start with steel weapons, so why would a wizard start with the lethal equivalent. Sure, practice your firebolt, but on summoned targets or vermin wandering the sewers and cellars.

 

[Celebrim]

"OK class, I know none of you have ever cast a reaction spell before, but its time to practice your reactions with the shield spell. Half of you ready your magic missiles"

I know you are probably being humorous, but I would imagine that any wizard that wanted to train young wizards would invent various missile and ray spells that are harmless or nearly so and have the students practice with these harmless examples long before they learned magic missile. There may well be a whole variety of such spells which, having been invented over the course of the last 20 centuries for this purpose, are well known in the academic community and well known to loremasters which never show up in Player's Handbooks because adventuring PC's have no need of them.

Aside from avoiding mishaps with students, there is a very practical matter that young people tend to have very bad judgment and short tempers, so if you make a 12 or 13 year old go around with the magical equivalent of a switchblade or a pocket/purse gun all the time, there is a very high chance they'll end up using it on a peer, a bully, or you. If your apprentice is getting tormented as a nerd by a group of village toughs, you have a problem. But if your apprentice responds to this by firing off a magic missile, then you have a torches and pitchforks sort of problem.

 

[snickersnax]

Perhaps some would be wizards - like academics - are there to learn magic because that is what they want to do - learn magic, not fight dangerous monsters. Future careers as court wizards, entertainers (illusionists, etc), or even setting up shop creating and selling magic items to the more adventuresome folk.

If only there were simple, easy to cast magics that were designed to help wizards learn spells. Oh wait they had those (called cantrips in earlier editions), but they got buffed to simple, easy to cast magics that do lethal damage and eventually scale to be more powerful than many 2nd level spells. Now when wizards students are learning light crossbow proficiency, the students are all like, "Why do we even have to learn this, its not like I'm ever going to shoot a crossbow in the real world anyway."

 

[akr71]

@snickersnax yes, and the current, real-world public school system contains nothing but practical lessons, applicable in everyday life. Just the other day, my Director made sure I still had that passage memorized from "King Lear" and my wife had to solve a quadratic equation before she was allowed to purchase our groceries.

 

[Salthorae]

That is indeed a problem of having cantrips be a source of combat ability like they never have before. Cantrip used the be the first spell a Wizard learned and it was basically just Prestidigitation. Now that Wizards don't HAVE to learn that cantrip it might make practicing them harder.

I had a quick browse through the attack cantrips, and of them, only Fire Bolt lets you target an object. Interesting. I let them all target objects personally.

Either way, if they have to target creatures... there's not really any good Wizard Summoning/Conjuration spells to use as targets like there used to be.

Wizard's lowest level summons is Summon Lesser Demons which could bring in 8 immediately hostile manes or dretches as a 3rd level spell. You'd have to control them in some way.

The next option is Conjure Minor Elementals at 4th level. You could summon 8 steam mephits into a room and bring them out one at a time to get blasted by students or something.

New House Rule for my game. Wizards start the game with 3 Cantrips + Prestidigitation.

 

[BlivetWidget]

@Salthorae I think Animate Objects would suit your target needs perfectly.

It’s a shame the unearthed arcana skill feats didn’t make it into XGE. Wizards should start the game with Arcanist.

 

[Salthorae]

@Salthorae I think Animate Objects would suit your target needs perfectly.

It’s a shame the unearthed arcana skill feats didn’t make it into XGE. Wizards should start the game with Arcanist.

I do love those skill feats.

My thought for the other two spells was that they could be cast by lower-level instructors to let the 14th level wizards not have to teach cantrip 101, but if in your vision they are teaching all the classes anyway, then sure, Animate Objects would work just fine!

 

[snickersnax]

New House Rule for my game. Wizards start the game with 3 Cantrips + Prestidigitation.

New House Rule for my game: Wizards have to start with at least one cantrip that uses a spell attack, one that uses a saving throw, one that uses concentration, and one that will be in their chosen school. How else they gonna learn these skills?

 

[Salthorae]

New House Rule for my game: Wizards have to start with at least one cantrip that uses a spell attack, one that uses a saving throw, one that uses concentration, and one that will be in their chosen school. How else they gonna learn these skills?

So you're giving them 4 cantrips to start as well then or are you expecting them to double up on one or more of those categories and still start with 3 cantrips?

It's interesting, I always end up with 1 attack, 1 save + 1 utility. I'd bet that I probably woudl fall under your house rule most of the time with my wizards, but maybe not.

 

[Celebrim]

A 1st level Wizard is not an apprentice Wizard. They are "effectively", not "actually", apprentice adventurers. To me, those are different things.

To me as well, but I wanted to add that we can't know from whether someone is an "apprentice" what level they are as a wizard. "Apprentice" is an in universe social role, and social role isn't strictly dictated by metagame constructs like level. It certainly could be the case that in your homebrew universe as soon as a wizard could cast a first level spell, he'd finished his apprenticeship and was turned out by his master to go out on his own. That could be in the context of your setting reasonable.

But it's not actually a construction of the rules. If some wizard says to you, "I'm Master Merlin's apprentice.", in most settings you probably shouldn't treat this as a confession of the character's level. For all you know, he's a prodigy specially chosen by Merlin, has been casting 1st level spells since he was nine, has been occasionally out adventuring with Old Merlin himself, and is this universe's equivalent of Harry Potter or Hermione Grainger. All you should probably take from the statement is, "I'm not as good of a wizard as Merlin (yet)."