D&D 5E It’s Official: I don’t like 5th Edition Wizards and ‘Specialists’

[Saeviomagy]

Something I think 5e is missing is tradeoffs. 5e sticks with addition of abilities and never really takes away anything so specialist wizards are just wizards with an aptitude for a specific school, a player doesn't have to decide at 1st level if they will be a generalist with full access to spells or a specialist who has more spells but an inability to cast spells from certain schools.

I personally think that requiring people to select class features that will haunt them for the rest of their career at 1st level when they don't actually know anything about their class is a poor mechanic. Hence why most classes don't have specialization at 1st level. And yes, I think the 5e cleric is bad for doing it.

The only thing that 5e misses in this respect is the existence of a generalist wizard (and a pantheist cleric). Apparently the designers think it's fine to make new warrior sub classes that just boost combat numbers and have a generic name, but think that having a minimal flavor wizard subclass that boosts spells known and spell slots would be awful. Once you add that, you're giving up spells known and spell slots in order to get perks relating to your chosen school. The only thing you're 'missing' is the ability to not take spells which aren't a thematic match, and the mini game of finding a splatbook that has a version of fireball that isn't an evocation.

Races are similar, before 4e, races had a penalty to stats while having a bonus for others; in general 5e doesn't do this (except for the poor little kobold).

Except it does. Effectively every race has -1 to all stats, compared with a basic human. Which is kind of academic in 5e, because stats pretty much don't matter.

2e priests were similar to specialist wizards once gods had specialist priests. Choose to be a cleric or choose to be a specialist and have different access to spells which could include limited access to healing spells. I can kind of understand why D&D has evolved to have everything be additive instead of tradeoff but I do feel like it loses some of what I loved about the earlier editions (don't get me wrong, I love 5e, but there were definitely things from earlier editions that I miss from time to time).

"I miss not using things. I wish I could not use things now".

As others have said, there's nothing stopping you from refusing to heal with your cleric (or cast necromantic spells with your illusionist etc), and doing so is far less crippling than it would have been in 2e.

 

[5ekyu]

It's nothing like the trade offs in previous editions though where to gain something you lose something else that you would otherwise have access to, choosing conjuration doesn't mean you are completely unable to use evocation or divination spells it just means you don't add certain abilities to the base class. Subclasses add abilities, they don't remove anything and with the way 5e currently works it is true that it might be weird to suddenly not know how to use certain spells. Had wizards gained subclasses at level one then I think it would have been fine to still have prohibited schools since you would have never been able to use X type of magic anyway.

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I know other editions did things differently but the old days not always goid days.

Literalky right now you can play an illusionist spec wizard with no divone and no evoc if that is what you want. That old feel has not been removed.

You just dont have all those folks who did not like that being forced to do the same.

You are basically saying take peas off the buffet in the illusionst line as opposed to just you not selecting peas.

Juat choose to say "no"... Unless that old school feel is avout some benefit that was lost in 5e and not some lock-out that went from mandatory to optional.



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[cbwjm]

I know other editions did things differently but the old days not always goid days.

Literalky right now you can play an illusionist spec wizard with no divone and no evoc if that is what you want. That old feel has not been removed.

You just dont have all those folks who did not like that being forced to do the same.

You are basically saying take peas off the buffet in the illusionst line as opposed to just you not selecting peas.

Juat choose to say "no"... Unless that old school feel is avout some benefit that was lost in 5e and not some lock-out that went from mandatory to optional.



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You're clearly not understanding me since that isn't basically what I'm saying at all. It's about making a choice which gives you benefits while also giving you penalties, you gain X but in return you lose Y. I thought that was a good design even though you might think it was not. You may not think the old days were good but some of us still do.

Also, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy 5e, I think it is a great edition but I also feel D&D has lost something along the way to this edition.

 

[5ekyu]

You're clearly not understanding me since that isn't basically what I'm saying at all. It's about making a choice which gives you benefits while also giving you penalties, you gain X but in return you lose Y. I thought that was a good design even though you might think it was not. You may not think the old days were good but some of us still do.

Also, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy 5e, I think it is a great edition but I also feel D&D has lost something along the way to this edition.

RE the bold - *you* can still do that. *You* can still decide that when you choose illusionist *you* give up evocation or *you* give up draft beer or whatever other things make it more fun for *you*--AND-- you can likely work those into the traits as flaws or bonds and ideals and maybe even get an organization or allies with such a code as part of that background included by your GMs in their games. . ALL that was not removed at all in 5e, it was just made "optional" or rather "personal" by default and so any player who likes that can choose it - as AFAIK there is no automatic "thou must take evocations" RAW.

The default does not make you "lose" in order to gain as a **mandatory rule for everyone** who wants to specialize... it left the peas on the illusionist buffet for those who want it.

To me its not about whether or not sudden loss of knowledge was good or bad - its about how many different preferences one wants to allow a PLAYER to choose from. The current game allows you to do it your way for your character and have fun with the challenge of "dont know no evoc and dont drink no draft beer." or whatever ideas you think are most fun. The current game also allows those who see specialization as "focus going forward" to have their characters do that too.

***both*** are served as far as "what my character is" choices... while not necessarily scratching any itches for telling others what they are limited to cuz you find it fun to use those choices for your characters.

Again, unless this is not so much about missing what you *had* to give up (and still can just as you did then) but about some added bennie that was there then and not here now.

 

[Monayuris]

I noticed something like this in my game. I have a player who is running a Diviner wizard.

This player’s answer to an encounter with some serious threats was to drop two fireballs! back to back.

I feel like that is either a fundamental failure of the diviner design or a failure of player imagination... i’m not sure which.

But, the player’s complaint was a lack of divination spells availble in the game

A wizard’s ‘specialty’ is its spells known, more so than any other ability.

The wizard gets at least two spells per level, free. So, if you want to be an illusionist, you simply take illusion spells. The problem may be more of a lack of interesting or effective spell choices in certain schools at certain levels.

I’d be wary of any mechanic that allows multiple concentration, but at the same time it is not necessary for a rule like that to be universal. If allowing multiple concentration spells help illusionists then limit that ability to illusion spells only.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think the concentrate on multiple spells idea is bad because some schools are a lot better in that regard.

The benefits to casting the spells in the school are also a bit negligible. And then you have things like diviners using their ability on enchantment spells.

 

[ccs]

Oh dear Jesus no.

Concentration is one of the few reasons I feel a caster is actually challenging, because I have to really keep an eye towards what I'm doing, and I have to be incredibly strategic with limited resources on abilities that are frankly too good in every other way.

Let the Quadratic Wizard die. It was a mistake.

Given that my preferred edition (as either DM or player) is 1e, I'm perfectly happy with spells simply having a duration.

 

[ccs]

I noticed something like this in my game. I have a player who is running a Diviner wizard.

This player’s answer to an encounter with some serious threats was to drop two fireballs! back to back.

I feel like that is either a fundamental failure of the diviner design or a failure of player imagination... i’m not sure which.

It was neither. It was the character having accurately divined that there'd be times where they'd need Fireball.
Afterall, Divination is all about info gathering & prep....

 

[5ekyu]

I noticed something like this in my game. I have a player who is running a Diviner wizard.

This player’s answer to an encounter with some serious threats was to drop two fireballs! back to back.

I feel like that is either a fundamental failure of the diviner design or a failure of player imagination... i’m not sure which.

But, the player’s complaint was a lack of divination spells availble in the game

A wizard’s ‘specialty’ is its spells known, more so than any other ability.

The wizard gets at least two spells per level, free. So, if you want to be an illusionist, you simply take illusion spells. The problem may be more of a lack of interesting or effective spell choices in certain schools at certain levels.

I’d be wary of any mechanic that allows multiple concentration, but at the same time it is not necessary for a rule like that to be universal. If allowing multiple concentration spells help illusionists then limit that ability to illusion spells only.

For me the two fireball diviner answer says more about the challenge. Power or value or use is determined by the intersection of need and capbility. If you present a character a situation where two fireballs is a good answer its not on them or the system but on you.

I also agree, any concentration change needs to be limited to the specialty only. Maybe the extra slot is illusion or maybe its only if both are illusions.

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[Li Shenron]

I am going to comment again on the specialization topic, but not on the Wizard class in general because I feel it's too vast a subject for a single thread... the new semi-vancian spellcasting rules, the concentration rules, the ritual rules, the cantrips rules, each one of these has significantly changed Wizards (and others) compared to your favourite AD&D 2nd edition, that it's very hard to address all of them at once.

As someone mentioned here, though, perhaps part of it (but not all of it) is the spell lists: there really are no spells forbidden to various 'Specialists'. So, for example, while you get a couple of school specific abilities (some much more useful or flavorful or cool than others), you don't see an Illusionist who can't cast Necromancy spells at all.

I start again from this older post of yours, to add some thoughts of mine...

I certainly share the feeling that the choice of spells is the most powerful thing to make a spellcaster feel "special". If you want your illusionist to have a strong identity, you'd probably better learn, prepare and use as many illusion spells as you can. Another player playing e.g. an evoker should better do the same with evocation spells.

But do you need the game to force you into that? Well, yes and no...

In my own 5e conversion of Rokugan, I have changed how Shugenja (the Rokugan only spellcaster class) can learn spells. In the 3e official version of the setting, each Shugenja had one favourite element (Fire/Air/Water/Earth) which also implied a forbidden opposite element. I changed it so that you don't have anything forbidden, but you are only proficient in spells of your elements, meaning you add your proficiency bonus to DC/attacks of only those spells. This strongly encourage the Shugenja to use spells of their chosen school, without using any hard prohibition.

The reason why I didn't like hard prohibitions is because IMHO they end up punishing only the players who really don't deserve it, e.g. the players who actually does spontaneously choose mostly spells of their school but may need an exception or two, or the players who want to creatively merge 2 schools. Say for instance that after a few levels, you decide you want an Illusionist/Necromancer, but perhaps the rules forbid that because you've already chosen the other as an opposite school. At the same time, there were ways around prohibitions such as by multiclassing, using feats or magic items, so ultimately those prohibitions only achieved to be unfair without really accomplishing much.

The 5e specialist abilities aren't huge IMO, but they take the "carrot" approach: they give you something unique that none of the other specialists will have (if anything, the problem now is that you cannot avoid feeling like a specialist because of these). Older prohibitions didn't do that: the vast majority of wizards could still learn the same Illusion spells as your specialist, only those who had Illusion as prohibited could not do so. So instead of having the Wizard population sorted between Illusionists, Evokers, Necromancers etc., you ended up with it being sorted between non-Illusionists, non-Evokers, non-Necromancers.