Fragment of an idea for a "low" magic system

[CubicsRube]

Works in shadow of the demon lord. If you want to do that in 5e, just group the spells into schools.

 

[Ancalagon]

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.

I suspect you think I'm asking as a player. I'm asking as a GM.

 

[TallIan]

Older editions of D&D had a wheel of eight schools, where schools opposite each other on the wheel opposed each other (yeah I saw the bad language in that but I can't think how else to write it) specialist mages chose to specialise in a school and gained an extra spell slot per level but could not access spells from the opposing school, all other schools were fair game.

I remember it always being a tough choice, but ultimately saw a bit of both.

You could implement this without too much hassle or balance issue in 5e I think. If you wanted to go further and ban al but your specialist school, you would have to give the wizard back something. 77IM makes some good suggestions.

Something that I keep kicking around inside my head (though have never tested) is to have your chosen school gain a +1 casting modifier (or maybe just DC) the two adjacent schools get 0 and the next two get -1. Allowing access 5 schools and restricting only 3 schools.

Chart So you could specialise in Necromancy, getting +1 to your necromancy spells; divinations and transmutations spells would be cast with the rules as they are; abjuration and evocation would each get -1 and you would be prohibited from using illusion, conjuration and enchantment spells.

The drawback to this idea (and similarly the OP's) is that the schools aren't really balanced against each other. Some schools have many more spells than others and some spells are much better than others.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Ok, so the idea I have in mind:
- Light Armor prof. + simple weapon, extra attack at lvl 6-7
- No damage cantrip, but they are not restricted by school
- School is chosen at lvl 1: +2 DC to spells of chosen school, spell list is restricted to the spell from your school at first
- Remove Arcane recovery: Give a social feature instead. Something like the wizard being able to communicate thoughts without speaking and gazing sternly to frighten commoners; magic is rare and frightening to common people, so a mage would use his reputation to gets his way.
- Magical Experiement: at level X,Y,Z you can learn spell from other schools, but may trigger a Wild Surge.
- At higher level: can create 1 spell (another one later on) for your school of 5th level or lower.

 

[Nevvur]

I suspect you think I'm asking as a player. I'm asking as a GM.

I thought you were asking as a system designer.

 

[Celebrim]

I suspect you think I'm asking as a player. I'm asking as a GM.

Unless the casters and non-casters were completely unbalanced to begin with, a nerf like this to casters would break the game.

Whereas, if the casters and non-casters are completely unbalanced to begin with, a nerf like this probably would not really change that. What it would actually do is make casters into one trick ponies that would rely heavily on particular 'builds' in particular schools to overcome or evade the limitation. What you'd probably end up with is something more like a GURPS spellcaster, where they go deep rather than broad to build a particular hammer big enough to treat every obstacle like a nail.

So to make this work, what you'd probably have to do is build the system (or in the case of a D20 system, at least the classes and spells) from the ground up. Could it be fun? Sure, if you did it right.

 

[Gadget]

To add onto the above, you would have to avoid the schools of magic poaching another school's shtick: "This is a conjured ball of real acid, therefore if avoids Magic Resistance"(Shades of 3.x). "I'm a fire mage, so I can teleport from one fire to another on the other side of the continent! (Actually that does sound kind of cool, as long as there were real limitations and maybe a higher level slot cost). But the Schools were never really designed to be 'balanced' against each other in this way, as witnessed by the powerful ability of the diviner wizard (or previous editions forcing certain specialist wizards to choose two opposing schools).

 

[SkidAce]

Just roll with it. It could be fun. I like the idea above of them knowing all 1st level spells.

Then just additional spells of the chosen school from 2nd onward.

Will it be balanced? Probably not.


But t could be fun, and in my opinion, its okay of some schools do some things better than others.

Thats WHY you would choose an illusionist over an evoker.

 

[Ancalagon]

I was thinking about this on the bus and it made me realized something - there are already characters like this in the game. Sorcerers have limited spell selection. You could try to carefully curate the list so you are as flexible as possible and avoiding all overlap (you only take one illusion spell, one movement spell, one debuff etc etc)... or you could go for a shtick - I'm a fire sorcerer!

A single school wizard would be a lot like that.

 

[Ancalagon]

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.

Oh absolutely. Wizards would only have one school, clerics their domain spells etc etc.