Patching up the PHB Wizard At-Wills

[RefinedBean]

Not to be confused with Mengu's awesome homebrew stuff from an earlier thread.

A friend and I came up with this "patch" to the PHB wizard at-wills to accomplish two things:

1. Make Implement Mastery more beneficial/"important"
2. Bump up the Wizard at-wills to the level we've seen with other controllers

So basically, we gave Magic Missle and Scorching Burst their Master's Wand effects from the AV, straight out of the gate.

Then, we tied the other three to a certain Implement Mastery. If you have the mastery and take the at-will, you gain the Master's Wand benefit for the at-will as well, as follows:

Orb: Cloud of Daggers
Wand: Ray of Frost
Staff: Thunderwave

Thoughts? Comments? Vitriol?

 

[tempor]

Interesting idea, and I think that a new wizard would like some guidance through this rule. Perhaps take it a step further and assign all of a wizard's powers to one of the three implements? Making a school of sorts.

What do you think?

 

[RefinedBean]

Well, I think Magic Missle works best as something un-related to any kind of school or what-not. The At-Wills are supposed to be bread and butter, so having MM and SB unrelated to the Implement Mastery helps make them a bit more reasonable for all Wizards to take.

Schools are great, but WotC has said that they're going to split up the "schools" into seperate classes, such as Enchanter, Illusionist, Necromancer, etc.

Also, I'm dreadfully lazy and am mainly sticking to the at-wills right now.

 

[PeelSeel2]

I added a spell specialization feat for Magic Missile. It ups it's damage by 1 dice. Works good. Player Happy, I am happy (not out of line with other at-wills or specialized weapon damage).

 

[Plane Sailing]

So basically, we gave Magic Missle and Scorching Burst their Master's Wand effects from the AV, straight out of the gate.

Then, we tied the other three to a certain Implement Mastery. If you have the mastery and take the at-will, you gain the Master's Wand benefit for the at-will as well, as follows:

Orb: Cloud of Daggers
Wand: Ray of Frost
Staff: Thunderwave

Thoughts? Comments? Vitriol?

So in a nutshell, what are those 'mastery' effects?

Cheers

 

[jasonbostwick]

Magic Missile - In addition to the damage, push the target one square on a hit.

Scorching Burst - The target in the centre of the burst takes an extra 1d6 damage.

Cloud of Daggers - The target takes twice your Wis mod damage instead of just Wis mod damage.

Ray of Frost - Ignore cover from enemies.

Thunderwave - You can choose to make Thunderwave a Close Burst 1.

 

[RefinedBean]

Magic Missile - In addition to the damage, push the target one square on a hit.

Scorching Burst - The target in the centre of the burst takes an extra 1d6 damage.

Cloud of Daggers - The target takes twice your Wis mod damage instead of just Wis mod damage.

Ray of Frost - Ignore cover from enemies.

Thunderwave - You can choose to make Thunderwave a Close Burst 1.

Thanks for the list. I probably should've put 'em in the original post.

The only downside to this "patch" is, besides Magic Missle and maybe Thunderwave, the At-Wills haven't become any more Controller-y, which seemed to be Mearls' (and many others) main quibble with the powers. Still, if we're going to have the Wizard do damage, they may as well do even MORE on the at-wills, and this patch works well that way.

I do like the fluff of each mastery matching up with the at-will...a wizened old wizard hitting the ground with his staff to cause a Thunderwave all around him, the practiced wand user arcing the ray of frost around enemies to get to the one he needs, stuff like that.