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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuindordm" data-source="post: 6434088" data-attributes="member: 5435">I can't find the post I saw this morning, but someone suggested the problem is not with the way the class is built but with the spell variety offered.I think this makes sense. 1e and 2e saw heavy reliance by low-level wizards on a handful of effective spells: sleep, MM, charm person...  This happened not because the other spells couldn't be encounter-changing, but because no sensible wizard would prepare a highly situational spell over one that was likely to be useful in any encounter.3e did a better job of giving each school of magic some interesting and effective spells. I think they also consciously tried to do this because the basic structure of specialization didn't change between 2e and 3e. If you block access to some schools, you have to make sure any specialist has something useful to do. Thus we saw innovations like True Strike and Ray of Enfeeblement as a good 1st level spell.I didn't play 4th edition enough to comment, but at-will cantrips were a good idea and I'm glad they retained it. But in 5th edition, there is something that feels odd about the mix of low-level spells. There are some cantrips that feel more powerful/useful than some 1st-level spells, which doesn't seem right. And by making all wizards generalists, maybe the designers didn't feel the need to build a spell list that has uniform school coverage.  I think KD has a valid complaint, that there isn't enough variety among the spells to support different styles of wizarding well at low levels.I think the best and easiest solution is to come up with more wizard spells, and in particular each specialty should have a nice "signature spell" at low levels to support abjurers feeling like abjurers, etc.In an earlier post, I suggested that a 1st-level abjuration spell that gives 1d4 + Int temporary HP to all allies within 10' might be comparable in effectiveness to the sleep spell and very useful to the party.For diviners, True Strike is a very logical choice, but the designers dropped the ball given the basic structure of combat in 5e -- anyone can give up an action to give an ally advantage on another attack, because having advantage is roughly equivalent to having two attack rolls (worse, obviously, because you can't get two hits). All True Strike does is let you do this for yourself, on the next round. That sounds like a generic combat action anyone can do: "I want to not attack this round, but try out several different stances and moves to look for a weakness in the Knight's defenses". I think a reasonable DM would give this player exactly the same effect as True Strike!But the spell could be fixed by changing it to a +5 to your next attack roll, so that you can potentially stack it with advantage for a nearly guaranteed hit. (Think of it as the inverse and natural counter to Shield.) And that would be worth doing, at least some of the time, for those times when it's more important to be sure of hitting.I'm sure this thread can come up with other useful suggestions for new spells to support different styles of magician. The "are they/aren't they" debate is just going around in circles now.</blockquote>

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