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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 7339845" data-attributes="member: 1465">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.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.</blockquote>

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