D&D 5E New class options in Tasha

[TwoSix]

And a lack of long term vision. In a few years, some of them will go like: "Hey, how come we don't see people playing wizards anymore?"
Players' answer: "We don't want to gimp ourselves man. Wizards are a joke."

If that’s the worst thing that happens because of the rule change, than that’s no problem at all.

 

[DND_Reborn]

If that’s the worst thing that happens because of the rule change, than that’s no problem at all.

Really... people cry injustice at the idea of removing sorcerers or warlocks or other classes, but getting rid of wizards is not an issue?

 

[Minigiant]

Obviously! Try playing more sandbox style with creative players.

I do.

Like I said Spell Versatility is big for Rangers. Ahuge issue for Rangers is that they knew too few spells known that they could not have the proper spells to adapt to different environments.
In 2eand 3e, they casted like clerics. Therefore they can swap from foresty spells to arcticy spells to deserty spells to swampy spell everyday and were ready for any environment. In 5e, they were locked into their spells and had few. So you were stuck with water breathing in the desert.

Hoever when it came to "arcane solutions", it was rarely a blocked door style play even in sandbox. Your arcanist who prepare a few utility spells and if one matched the current puzzle, great. If not, there was another solution or the key was a McGuffin you had to go get. Same in 4e, 3e, 2e and 1e.

So obstacles locked behind specific "common" spells just felt weird to me.

 

[Minigiant]

Really... people cry injustice at the idea of removing sorcerers or warlocks or other classes, but getting rid of wizards is not an issue?

I'd buy a D&D game that removes wizard, cleric, druid,and the other full casters and repackages them as full classes based on the D&D schools of magic SO FAST IT AINT FUNNY!

 

[TwoSix]

Really... people cry injustice at the idea of removing sorcerers or warlocks or other classes, but getting rid of wizards is not an issue?

To me, no. Plus that’s only in other people’s games who play “RAW”, I would obviously compensate a wizard player who feels shortchanged.

 

[DND_Reborn]

All this still has me thinking if it "made sense" for wizards to have known spells and reserve their spellbook for rituals, I would be for making all spell casters known-casters and adopting the idea of Spell Versatility. But, so far I have not thought of a reason why it could work for wizards and other prepared casters...

 

[Helldritch]

What are 15 spells to 40 then? Because if we count every ritual spell as being prepared, the wizard could have 40 of those 44 spells ready to use now. Not tomorrow. Now.

And again, with nearly 40 unique spells for wizards, even if we take out the fifteen or so rituals, that stills leaves them with nearly 25 spells that are completely unique to them. And sorcerers have.... Chaos Bolt. Literally their only unique spell to date.

Not seeing how you are obsolete, Mr. Wizard. Maybe you won't always be the only one with the solution, but that isn't the same thing.



I'm curious. If you went for abusing this rule before judging it, how did you do that?

Did you put it into a real campaign and wait six months to see what happened? Or did you make a series of situations where the rule might be useful, and check out the impact?

Because, again. the only time this rule has an impact on Wizards is during a very small slice of the potential adventure. You need a very specific set of circumstances that I just don't see coming up all that often. But, if you are building scenarios specifically to test it, you are going to magnify the results.

1) You faiped to read the posts so I'll say it once again. Rituals can be obtained with a simple feat: "ritual caster". This line of thought of yours is useless.

2) As I said in earlier thread, I was not seeing many sorcerers until I applied two fixes of my own. Sorcery points bonus for charisma and one more known spell for charisma bonus with the bonus equal to one spell of the corresponding level. This has done wonders without balance issues.

3) As for the simulations. We used four scenari. Attack on lich lair. Assault on the efreet strong hold, The warlord and Githyanky for the ride. All are high level adventures that can be done in an evening about three or four hours of game time.

The players know these scenari well and know that they are test material for rule and balance checking. We have premade characters of appropiate levels with basic magic items and the expected spell list/known for a character of that level (13, 15 17 and 20) With the wizard, the difficulty is acceptable. With the sorcerer, the difficulty goes down the drain. Given the expected prep time, it means that the sorcerer will not only be able to change any "useless" spell for the task at hand, but will also be absolutely certain to get the best spell his list allow. This is not the case of the wizard as if the spell is not in his spellbook, too bad.

After the tests, the players looked at me and asked if I would really implement this rule. I said no. The sorcerer player told me it was a good thing as it was making him way to powerful.

This boost the warlock too but to a smaller degree.

You assume that we make these test blindly without careful thinking. We have been playing together for 37 years in some cases and well above 30 for the others. We are not novices in playtesting.

 

[TwoSix]

All this still has me thinking if it "made sense" for wizards to have known spells and reserve their spellbook for rituals, I would be for making all spell casters known-casters and adopting the idea of Spell Versatility. But, so far I have not thought of a reason why it could work for wizards and other prepared casters...

Spell book White-out: During a long rest, a wizard may erase one spell from their spell book and replace it with another spell from the wizard spell list, up to a level for which they have wizard spell slots. (Obviously, this needs to be worded to avoid the MC issues that the base wizard spellbook feature also suggests.)

Fundamentally, the Tasha’s change suggests that the designers feel one long rest is an appropriate cost to gain access to one new spell from a class’s spell list, since every class (bar wizard) can now do it. There’s two discrete issues here.

1) If every other class can do it, why not wizards? I’m sympathetic to this issue. Obviously, it’s more powerful on a wizard, but I don’t think it’s so much more powerful than on a divine soul sorcerer that wizard should be the only exclusion.
2) A long rest is too low of a cost for a feature of this magnitude. Spell choice is defining, just like feat choice and subclass choice, and changing that should be restricted in frequency to only on level up. I’m less sympathetic to this, since I don’t think clerics and druids are breaking the game, but simply banning the rule seems appropriate if you feel this might be an issue.

 

[Mistwell]

Mistwell, all of these examples involve prior scouting, encountering a problem and then being able to take a Long Rest to swap out spells.

That is not always possible. If the mechanical dragon is enroute to burn Ten Towns, the PCs don't have time to Rest.

Again, THAT'S THE WIZARD THING. Of course it involves a rest to swap spells to do those plans! It's what the Wizard has done in almost every edition! That's their Schick! Nobody PREPARES the Knock spell (it doesn't come up often enough to require a precious spell slot prep in unknown danger situations). It's on the list to do just what I described - prep it when you see the need and you have time to come back to it. Same as most of the other highly situational exploration spells.

As it stands now, the Sorcerer or Bard in the examples you gave are only able to help out,
if they happened to have the correct spell. Otherwise the player is helpless until they gain a level and can swap spells.

Exactly. It was the Wizard's thing, exclusively. It was one of their defining features. It's why countless threads have called them the swiss army knife of spellcasters. Did you never wonder why people called them that? I am glad we're all caught up on what the Wizard had before and the sorcerer and bard did not, and how this change gives away the thing the wizard had. We're on the same page now, finally.

If you only play only once a month, that could be a really long time to expect a player to do nothing.
Games involving a lot of downtime, or time to plan and prep, favor Wizards as is.

It only favored the wizard for the reason we are discussing. It now favors the sorcerer, because they now get all their spells while the wizard is only guaranteed 44 over the course of 20 levels.

As a DM and a player, I am happy to have anything added that helps groups overcome challenges. The sorcerer can now call upon their dragon ancestors and learn the magic words of opening to the sealed portal...cool!

You as a DM always had the power to deal with the situations you threw at the players. That's a horrible excuse for altering the classes this much. It is, again, the idea of giving the unarmed fighter to a ranger or the wildshaping to the paladin. Why they heck would you, as the DM, throw a door at the players they couldn't unlock without a knock spell? The purpose of that example is to let a wizard shine, if the DM know they have Knock in their spellbook that they've never used. Otherwise you could have given a key. Or no super-locked door to begin with!

Again, if your neighbor gets a raise, this does not make you poorer, especially when they are in your D&D party.

I am going to bludgeon you with this silly myth until you grok it. Nobody is arguing the sorcerer should not get a raise. People, including me, are arguing they should not get THIS KIND OF RAISE. Because THIS KIND OF RAISE does in fact make another class poorer. In the same way making a sorcerer a better wildshaper than a druid would in fact make the druid player feel like their special spotlight niche in the game has now become more mundane in nature. I know you get this. Why do you keep repeating this silly platitude you know doesn't match this situation?

You're not giving them a "sorcerer" raise. You're not, for example, giving them more points to gain more metamagic uses (which I favor). You're giving them someone else's special thing and for a bad reason. Nobody was running around and saying the sorcerer needed to be a better swiss army knife spellcaster than the wizard! They needed a boost to being more sorcerer! Not to being more wizard-like. We already have a wizard class for that. That's the purpose of class identities - to make them distinct niches in the game from each other. With this new rule, there isn't really meaningful identity to the wizard. A sorcerer with the ritual caster feat is a better wizard now, because they also get all that metamagic and other sorcerer abilities.

 

[Mistwell]

2) Clerics, druids, and paladins already have access to "any spell they could theoretically have" after a long rest (and can switch out all of their spells rather than just one).

They don't have the majority of the highly situational exploration and plan-enacting spells we're talking about on their spell list. Intentionally. This isn't just a thing the spell designers thought out for this edition - it's a thing going back through almost all the editions. There is a special set of these types of spells intended for the wizard to prep with a rest using their spell-book which the divine casters never had. The reason the sorcerer had them was for spell scrolls if a DM needed the party to have access to that spell one time.

people aren't seeing "what a massive change that is" because the argument that it is massive is based on presenting the most artifical, hyperbotastic, "sky is falling" theoretical extreme that ignores how real people actually play D&D that it's hard to take seriously.

People ARE seeing it. There are more of us in this thread, and in other forums around the internet, complaining about how this fundamentally changes the wizard class than there are of you guys claiming it's no biggie. It's not hyperbole, no matter how many times you declare it is. It's not extreme. It is in fact one of the defining characteristics of the wizard class, and people who have played wizards a lot know that right away. You don't have to listen, but your disdain sure isn't persuading anyone. Particularly your "not how real people actually play D&D" nonsense, which just makes you sound like a snob who thinks his games are the way everyone must play.