D&D 5E no wizards?

[Umbran]

You'd have the same problem if no one chose to play a wizard. I don't see it being all that big of a deal.

The difference, of course, is choice. If the party chooses to not have the utility, they have nobody to blame but themselves if they need it and don't have it.

If you, as the GM, eliminate utility as a choice, and then put them in a situation where it is called for, they blame you

 

[MoonSong]

The difference, of course, is choice. If the party chooses to not have the utility, they have nobody to blame but themselves if they need it and don't have it.

If you, as the GM, eliminate utility as a choice, and then put them in a situation where it is called for, they blame you

Utility sorcerers are still a thing, of course they won't have costly niche spells most of the time, but nothing shows you being inherently magical as not having to bother to do things the mundane way. Specially if you don't care to always being flashy and destructive with your magics. But even then, there are things like rods, staffs and knowstones which enhance the utilty of a sorcerer.

As for lore, Bards are awesome at lore.

 

[pukunui]

The man in the gleaming armor spat in disgust ...

You win the thread!

 

[Sadrik]

Something I really like about D&D 5e, the Sage background. You can just give your sorcerer or warlock or cleric the scholarly features with a background and you have that knowledgeable magic guy role filled.

Another thing, you do not have to define in your setting that the wizard class works the traditional D&D way, which is they are self made through their shear intellect. Wizards might instead be granted their power too, but they simply learn and use it a different way than the others. They receive the blessings of the gods and study them and manipulate those blessings to their desire. There is nothing to say that a wizard has to be the guy that unlocks secrets to the universe by figuring it out all on their own. They may be granted a set of keys, and their study is of those keys that they were granted by the fey lords or infernal entities or divine powers or even their arcane bloodline.

Many fictional "wizards" it is a bloodline or they are born unto it type of thing. I think wizards can exist in your devised world, you just have to redefine the traditional tropes of the D&D wizard.

 

[LightPhoenix]

I thought it might be fun to have a setting where there are no wizards as such, just sorcerers, warlocks, clerics, etc. The idea being that magic use is something you're either born with or gain through a pact with a supernatural entity of some kind (eg. warlocks make pacts with fey and fiends, clerics make pacts with deities, druids make pacts with nature spirits, and maybe bards make pacts with "muses"). It's not something you can learn through rigorous academic study.

That being said, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that, in a world where magic exists, there wouldn't be anyone studying it in an academic (and Intelligence-based) fashion. It's almost like, if you have magic, you have to have wizards too.

I think you answered your own question there.

The people of this hypothetical world know where magic comes from already - cosmic forces. Magic works the way it does because the forces that grant that power make it so. A wizard can't research how to cast spells - they don't have any pact granting them that ability in the first place. Attempts to study magic academically don't bear logical fruit, because it isn't dictated by laws and rules. Sure, practice makes you better at it. But why can clerics only work so many miracles while a warlock can do stuff over and over? Just because that's how it works.

 

[pukunui]

I was thinking about this again earlier, so I went through the spell list to figure out which spells are currently only available to the wizard (sorry, mage).

There aren't that many:

Arcane eye
Arcane lock
Clone
Evard's black tentacles
Find familiar
Grease
Maze
Melf's acid arrow
Mordenkainen's sword
Rope trick

I can see most of the above being castable as rituals (find familiar is already one); others can be added to other class's spell lists. Evard's black tentacles is right up the warlock's alley, while Melf's acid arrow could be a sorcerer spell.

Something like clone could be a special ritual that still requires the expenditure of your 8th level spell slot to cast.

The only other spells of note are alarm, which would become available only to rangers, and passwall, which would become available only to mountain circle druids. I could see them both becoming rituals though.


That being said, how does the concept of rituals (more specifically the idea that anyone can cast them) fit in a world where magic can only be worked by those with a special gift or pact?