D&D 5E I want more flavorful wizard subclasses.

[Dragonhelm]

I had a thought about the wizard recently. Most wizard subclasses are based on the wizard schools of magic. Some of them are fine, like illusionists and necromancers. Yet when I think of subclasses such as the abjurer, conjurer, or transmuter, I get a bit bored.

What I suggest instead is stronger, more flavorful archetypes. Something that says that they are still academic, learned mages at heart, but they do it in different ways. So while your illusionists and necromancers are still strong archetypes, I want to see rune mages, witches, and war mages as well.

To me, that would make the wizard more appealing. What do you think? If WotC took this approach, what are wizard subclasses you would want to see?

 

[DavyGreenwind]

I'd like a Hedge Mage, the conjurer of cheap tricks, the wizard school dropout. Maybe they can make quick escapes, getting to disengage as a bonus action, or maybe a souped-up Prestidigitation to fool people out of gold.

In general, I'd like more things like Bladesinger, with unique abilities and roles to play. Not mere specialists.

Maybe an Arcane Historian, getting expertise in Arcana and History, and some enhanced divination. More interesting than "Diviner."

Or Magizoologist: all about expertise in magical creatures, taming and summoning them. Cooler than Conjurer.

 

[jgsugden]

Sure. Go for it. If you want inspiration, go check out DNDBeyond's homebrew subclasses for wizard. They may not all be outstanding, but they are all good for inspiration.

For the next edition, I'd have stuck with the same '1 subclass for each school' idea, but also had a war wizard, an invoker / mystic theurge (a wizard that infuses the arcane with the divine), and a spellweaver (who can twist spells and alter them as cast to change things on the fly - but in a way distinct from sorcerers and their metamagic).

 

[cbwjm]

I was looking through some of my dragonlance stuff thinking about how cool the wizards of high sorcery are as a concept, I'd love a subclass specifically for them, restricted magic and all.

A shadow-mage would be cool, might even be able to take the sorcerer subclass and slot it into the wizard class.

An elementalist one who plays with stone, flame, frost, and gale, getting different bonuses with different elements or mixing them together.

 

[Cadence]

I had a thought about the wizard recently. Most wizard subclasses are based on the wizard schools of magic. Some of them are fine, like illusionists and necromancers. Yet when I think of subclasses such as the abjurer, conjurer, or transmuter, I get a bit bored.

What I suggest instead is stronger, more flavorful archetypes. Something that says that they are still academic, learned mages at heart, but they do it in different ways. So while your illusionists and necromancers are still strong archetypes, I want to see rune mages, witches, and war mages as well.

To me, that would make the wizard more appealing. What do you think? If WotC took this approach, what are wizard subclasses you would want to see?

Subclass choice (at least variety, maybe not always execution) was one place I thought PF1e really showed. They also had the elementalist schools as an option. I wonder how hard it would be to convert, or if some other 3pp already did.

Wizard – d20PFSRD

www.d20pfsrd.com

 

[fuindordm]

I'm bored with the eight schools and would like to see them go away entirely. There are too many spells whose classification is arbitrary or ambiguous. And I fully agree that many of the schools are too weak and/or too bland to support interesting subclasses

We could replace the schools with a system of tags, allowing spells to have multiple tags or none.

This would also free us to have a generic "specialist" subclass with advantages for spells with their choice of tag, and several more complex and interesting subclasses.

 

[CreamCloud0]

The Specialist: further reduces capacity for learning/casting from banned spell schools than standard in exchange for bonuses to learning/casting from a specific school(s).
The Generalist: removes limitations for learning banned schools in exchange for mid-tier access across the board.
The Librarian: reduced number of spell slots in exchange for extra knowledge proficiencies and bonuses to knowledge checks.
The Researcher: low number of spells inherently known but reduced costs to transcribing new spells and creating spell scrolls.
The Pioneer: limited access to metamagics and/or divine/primal magics.
The Battlemage: focus on combat magics, armour proficiencies and war casting.
The Supporter: limited combat magics learnt but access to a large number of utility, ritual and support spells.

putting in my on-standby list of alternate wizard subclass builds, as well as the suggestion that wizards should loose most of their combat spells and be a utility and battle support/control class

thinking about what i've said in other recent wizard threads, wizard needs to be more than just a list of spells, you could probably delete the wizard wholesale and recreate the entire range of options that was provided by the present wizard with like, two bard subclasses and a sorcerer subclass

 

[Tonguez]

Id make Specialist actually specialise restricting them to choosing 1 school at level one them maybe + 2 as they level up. Then look at some cool synergies between schools to develop as Subclass abilities(how War Wizard works now)

Id alliow for a generalist mage who can cast anything as a ritual but is otherwise limited to cantrips

I use freeform Traditions in my games that give +1 to spels of the Tradition. I like my Wind Dancer tradition that uses Air and Movement based sells via Dancing/Leaping

 

[CreamCloud0]

fundamentally i think all the 'spell school specialist' subclasses could be fitted into one (albeit longwinded) subclass, especially if some of the abilities are functionally shared across specialisations such as with this for example: "at 2nd level when you gain this subclass you choose a spell school to specialise in, you learn 3 additional spells of your chosen spell school from any class's spell list, at levelling up you may exchange one of these spells known for any another that is of a level you are capable of knowing, at 5th,9th,13th and 17th level you gain one additional spell known this way, the cost of scribing new spells from your chosen school is halved"

yes you'd have to have 8(?) different entries at some of the new ability levels but it'd still be more efficient than having a unique subclass for each spell school

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I'd like a Hedge Mage, the conjurer of cheap tricks, the wizard school dropout. Maybe they can make quick escapes, getting to disengage as a bonus action, or maybe a souped-up Prestidigitation to fool people out of gold.

That sounds a lot like the Arcane Trickster.