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Message: <blockquote data-quote="greymist" data-source="post: 9330474" data-attributes="member: 7113">Lots of interesting ideas in this thread. A number of people hearken back to the wizards from AD&D, but as someone who started playing back in the late 70’s, I humbly disagree. Reducing the wizard’s HD for 6 to 4 doesn’t work for me, as 5E monsters hit harder and more frequently than in 1E. My fix for hit points nerfs the wizard with a buff! At level 1 all classes get: MAX + AVG + CON hit points where,MAX = maximum on their hit dice type, AVG = average of their hit dice, and CON = constitution bonus. The nerf kicks in at later levels, because martial classes get add their AVG at various times as they level up, thus making them even more robust. Vancian casting (as per 1E) I find it hard to believe that anyone would want to return to this model. Everyone was always coming up with house rules to get rid of this casting system, BITD! Spell point, mana, even spell slots were all seen in 70’s and 80’s. I think the 5E system of slots and preparing spells is pretty solid.An easy nerf is to stop handing our free spells every level. Make it so the wizard has to find spells in-game. So now, a scroll in a chest could be cast and lost, or the wizard decides to save it to copy into their spellbook back in town. It’s been mentioned to remove focii and require the use of components. I would suggest using a generic component (floo powder?) for spells with no-cost components and using the specified components for other spells. This forces a bit of resource management without getting into the nitty-gritty of tracking how much bat guano you have left. Again, BITD, we usually hand-waved the cheap components because it just added annoyance. Certainly, some spells need to be tweaked; and making spells a bit more dangerous to the caster is one way to do it. Fireballs that create a volume of fire which might hit the caster; lightning bolts that bounce off walls and could kill the caster; teleport spells that might embed the caster in solid ground, killing them instantly.My fix for Leomund’s Tiny Hut was to have it create an actual hut not a force-field dome. A 15 ft square log cabin with a chimney, cooking pot, bundle of firewood, and even clean underwear on each of the bunks. Didn’t attract too much attention when Leomund was trekking on foot through the forests of Greyhawk; not as discreet in the middle of  a cavern in the Underdark. Level 1 AD&D wizards are famous for holding on to their single spell (hopefully Sleep) until just right the moment. Any other battle usually had them throwing daggers or darts; usually ineffectively. My 1E house rules to fix that problem inspired another potential nerf for 5E. BITD I, along with many others, came up with a replacement for throwing daggers: a cantrip-like power that I named Eldritch Knife. The wizard could cast this spell at-will, it required an attack roll, and it did 1d4 damage. No change to the wizard other than he looks more wizardly.For 5E my planned cantrip nerf, which I have not worked through fully, is two-fold: (1) reduce the damage die from 6 or 8 or 10 to 4 or 6; and (2) remove or reduce the levelling of the damage. This stops the wizard from dealing significant damage (beyond tier 1) with no cost in spell slots. This forces the wizard to be more judicious in the use of spell slots over the day, without forcing them to stop being a wizard in any given turn. If I allowed multiclassing, I would only allow wizard-levels to count towards levelling-up of spells. It was mentioned above that concentration should require actual concentration. Perhaps a wizard can only cast cantrips while concentrating; or levelled spells require a concentration check that increases with spell level - failure sees the wizard lose concentration or whiff on the casting. A final thought, is to limit the spells available to wizards. I have been trying to come up with a way to make wizards stick to their school, but the number of spells in each school is unbalanced. As others have mentioned, limiting most of a wizard’s spells to a specific school/element/type/etc. nerfs the wizard’s likelihood to cover-off other classes’ abilities with utility spells (one of my pet peeves).</blockquote>

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