Fragment of an idea for a "low" magic system

[Ancalagon]

Hello

This idea was inspired by Warhammer 2nd ed. In that system, casters aren't the swiss army knives that they can be in D&D. They are limited to one "color" of magic (analogous to school). They all have a few generic spells (ie cantrips) and then beyond that they take one color and that it. You want to be a firemage? Great, have a blast! Won't be able to use divination though...

I was wondering if it would be possible to have a system like this, where, for example, a wizard has one school of magic. Would this still be fun - it worked in warhammer...

 

[Tony Vargas]

D&D schools are more conceptual than functional, as an upshot, some of them have a fair range of capabilities, and being restricted to one would not be unduly limiting...

... other schools, not so much.

 

[StormbringerAUS]

It could be done using the schools and a fair bit of work - I like the idea a lot like the old Illusionist in the early edition, much to be appreciated in the concept even if colours make it sound MtGish.

 

[77IM]

It sounds easier to do this with a new core class that has its own highly-thematic class lists to pick from. Make it a full caster progression, but the spell lists are soooo one-trick-pony that you can reasonably give the class decent weapons, armor, and skills, plus Extra Attack, and a d8 hit die. For a balance comparison, see the Valor bard: he's got all the combat proficiency except heavy armor; a d8 hit die; Extra Attack (but later than 5th level); 3 skills; and a full caster progression, BUT the bard spell list is mostly enchantments/illusions, with good control effects and some buffs/debuffs.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I was wondering if it would be possible to have a system like this, where, for example, a wizard has one school of magic. Would this still be fun - it worked in warhammer...

Historically speaking, third edition had the Shugenja class, which was divided by classical elements. You got a bonus when casting spells of your own element, but you could never learn the opposing element, which was unfortunate since all of the blasting spells were in Fire and all of the healing spells were in Water; if you wanted both, it meant you had to specialize in buffs or de-buffs.

Mechanically, such a thing would be trivial to construct in 5E. You just make a spellcaster class that has four subclasses, and restrict most of the spells to one particular subclass. The only hard part would be dividing the spells up evenly between subclasses.

And of course, a game that utilized such a restricted caster class would be pointless if you still allowed things like Wizard and Cleric at their full capacities. That was what really killed the Shugenja in 3E, was that Druid still existed.

 

[Horwath]

One solution would be to reduce spells prepared/known.

Ranger IMO has the right amount of known spells.

Full casters could get 50% more than a ranger.

Too many spells at hand gives too much versatility.

 

[cbwjm]

I think it could work, not sure if they would need to be compensated for the restriction, presumably a wizard would only be able to use spells of the school chosen at 2nd level. Since they have access to all schools at level 1, perhaps make 1st level spells of all schools available to all wizards.

 

[Hayato]

I was thinking about nerfing full casters making them only have 3 or 4 ASI, but hitting on spells known and prepared is a good start to. As least, nothing about 9th lvl spells, it's ridiculous.

 

[Henry]

While you’re at it, include the Wild Magic table as a possibility as an increasing chance (roll a d6 per spell level, and any time two numbers come up the same, there’s a wild magic surge).

However, in warhammer at least, wizards can be decent combatants at melee or ranged, as well, so they have something besides magic to fall back on...

 

[Nevvur]

It's not clear to me what you hope this system will accomplish. I suspect you want to be able to trade in some of the wizard's versatility for more oomph in another area. It's not an unsound premise, it's just that versatility is a difficult power to quantify and translate into something else. The DMG itself (if you dare trust its guidance) suggests changing class spell lists does not inherently change the power of the class, and the player who was interested in playing a nuke happy wizard probably wasn't going to be spending many spell slots on divination to begin with.

With those two things in mind, it sounds a lot like you want to give up nothing to gain something.