spontaneous Wizard - critique please

S'mon

Legend
I'm looking at making the Wizard a spontaneous caster - IMC all the other spellcaster classes are already spontaneous. However I'd like to keep the Wiz's studious flavour & differentiate them from Sorcerer, mostly for reasons of my campaign world background. Here's what I have:
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Wizards on Ea cast spontaneously. Their maximum spells known = spells/day (with INT bonus), slots recharge as Sorcerers, if they don't study their spellbook an hour a day they start losing access to spells known, beginning with highest level spell & working down, ie for each hour of study missed they lose access to 1 spell. New spells known (up to the maximum) can be gained from other wizards' spellbooks or by research. Spells known can be swapped out the same as Sorcerers, at 6th, 10th etc.

Wizard's Spellbooks
Wizard PCs begin at 1st level with their maximum number of knowable spells (3 0th level spells, and 1 + INT bonus 1st level spells), in their spellbook. They automatically gain knowledge of 1 additional spell per level up to level 20, all of which must still be scribed into the book using special inks and vellum at the normal cost of 100gp/spell level (minimum 100 gp). Additional spells may be researched or copied from other spellbooks.
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What do you think of this, balance-wise? IMC arcane casters can use healing spells & spontaneous casters can use Quickened spells. In terms of balance, I would like the Wizard to be no more powerful than standard core non-spontaneous Wizard, but not weaker than the Sorcerer (which most people see as weaker than Wiz). Do you think this hits the mark? Suggestions to change it, while keeping the spontaneous casting?
 

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Hmm, consider this variant:

SORCERERS know a specific number of spells. They cannot trade these out except when they level. A Sorcerer gains extra spell-slots each day for having a high Charisma. He can never gain extra spells known.


WIZARDS have a specific number of spell-slots. They prepare a batch of known spells each day from which they may then spontaneously cast. A Wizard gains extra preparation slots (extra "spells known" from which to cast) for having a high Intelligence. He can never gain extra spell slots (castings per day).

SPECIALIST WIZARDS gain +1 spell-slot per spell-level, but in trade they must prepare at least one spell from their specialty school at each spell-level.

WIZARDS & METAMAGIC: Wizards prepare metamagic spells in advance. A Metamagic'd spell takes up a preparation-slot just like a normal spell, modified for the cost of the Metamagic Feat. Thus, if you were a 4th level Wizard who knew Extend Spell, you could prepare Extended Shield as one of your two 2nd level spells.


So, the Sorcerer becomes the master of repeated casting, while the Wizard becomes the tactical flexibility & utility dude. This weakens Wizards slightly, but frees them from the annoying "why did I prepare THAT spell?!?" issue.

-- N
 

Both cast spontaneously. Sorcerers have a limited number of spells know, but can cast more spells per day than a wizard. Toss in MM or Draconic feats at 1st, 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th levels.
 

Well, S'mon, your version of wizards seems a bit weaker than sorcerers now, I think..... They're essentially sorcerers with fewer spells per day and much fewer base spells known (though their maximum may be a little better, once they waste a lot of money researching spells). The wizard gets 5 bonus feats the sorcerer doesn't, but lacks Simple Weapon Proficiency and those extra spell slots. I'd suggest giving the wizard their normal base number of spells known, (except 0-level and 1st-level) while maybe doubling your maximum for their spells known. So wizards become the arcane casters who get new spell levels 1 level earlier and know slightly more spells if they research them, while having a few bonus feats too, but cast fewer spells per day. I don't know if their maximum spells per day should be doubled, but at least give them their normal 2 new spells known per wizard level beyond 1st.
 

Thanks Arkhandus, this is the kind of critique I'm looking for. I'm tending to agree with you that my "max no. spells known" may be too low - for Clerics IMC they cast spontaneously but they automatically know a number of spells equal to their spells/day, without WIS bonus. I'll have a think - maybe even letting them swap out one spell known/day might work...
 

Hello S'mon, did you design your spontaneous clerics as well, or did you take them from a source? If you are still working on them, you can take a look at Unearthed Arcana spontaneous versions of the cleric and the druid as either a reference or just to evaluate balance. They are very simple variants, which means that it is easy to suppose they are quite on par with the PHB non-spontaneous classes.

I think that the "UA way" could be applied to wizards as well (it wasn't done because it's not usually necessary, since there already is the sorcerer). I'm going to think about it and post a comment later.

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Anyway I am having some problems in understanding how your wizard work, so I'm going to ask some questions here :p

1- same number of spells/day as PHB wizard, right?

2- besides the spells known at lv1, your post says the wiz "automatically learns" 1 new spell every level, but it seems he has to pay for it; then how are there different from the others learnt later, is it only because the wiz doesn't need a source of knowledge?

3- there seems to be a max limit on spells known (equal to the spells/day chart, including Int bonus) is it so?

It is hard for me to try and evaluate the balance when I'm not sure how I understand these :)

However, in case I understood those correctly, it should be easy to compare your wizard daily slots (also the # spells known) with the same charts for the sorcerer.

About spells per day, a sorcerer has about +50% (slightly less when factoring bonus slots) than a generalist wizard, while a specialist wizard has about +25% more than the generalist.

About spells known (assuming you really meant that MAX to apply), your wizard has at least 4 higher level spells known more than a sorcerer at the end of their 20 levels, but definitely some more from Int bonus:

Sorcerer = 9, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3
Wizard = 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

...if e.g. the Wiz has Int 24 (+7), he could know 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4

However all those spells known must be paid for, and the price is not small for the high level spells. OTOH, the wizard still has 5 bonus feats and can cast higher level spells one lever earlier than the sorcerer.

Very hard to say, but overall to me seems quite ok already. The spellbook rules instead don't seem to have an impact on balance, they should be very fine.

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By the way, are you going to keep the sorcerer as well, or do you ban it?

I was thinking that if you only wanted the sorcerer mechanics with the wizard flavor, you could just do that: to keep the sorcerer as it is (and ban the wizard) but say that the sorcerer knowledge comes from books instead of blood. No need to change rules, except perhaps replacing Cha with Int.
 

Hi Li Shenron.

My Cleric is homegrown, a simple conversion of the PHB one.

1 - yes.

2 - Yes. IMC Wizards have never had books spontaneously appear in their book on level-up, they still need to buy the ink & scribe them in.

3. Yes.

Your analysis re balance was my initial impression, also. But people are used to Wizards being significantly better than Sorcs (IMO) so this seems like a nerf.

I want to keep Wizards & Sorcs but make them more similar. They fulfil different roles IMC.
 

S'mon said:
My Cleric is homegrown, a simple conversion of the PHB one.

Fine. My suggestion to take a look at the Unearthed Arcana version is still valid for the purpose of comparison with your version, so to have another proof that yours is balanced.

FYI, the UA spontaneous cleric keeps the same amount of spells/day as cleric (but there is no distinction between regular slots and domain slots), with possibly 1 extra 0th-level slot.
Then it uses the same spells known chart as the PHB sorcerer, plus it automatically knows all the spells from the two domains.

Note that for example at 3rd level the cleric can now cast 2nd level spells, but the sorcerer chart does not give him spells known of that level. He can therefore use those slots only for the two 2nd level domain spells for the moment.

Everything else is unchanged.

IMXP UA spontaneous clerics work well. The only problem is that if you allow free choice of domains (such as "godless priests"), with the correct choices you can have a cleric pretty close to a sorcerer, but with all the better stats of a cleric.

S'mon said:
But people are used to Wizards being significantly better than Sorcs (IMO) so this seems like a nerf.

Just to let you know, I think they are very much on par with each other in 3.0, but indeed Wizards are better in 3.5 if you allow Complete Arcane and other supplements.
 

In 3.0 a Wizard could cast 3 spells/round, Sorcerer 2 spells/round - but I always let Sorcs quicken. I still think Wizzes were better in 3.0

My Cleric gets regular number spells/day and knows as many spells as his spells/day (minus WIS bonus) which seems _more_ powerful than the UA version described by you.

From feedback here I'm currently thinking my proposed spont Wizard is fairly balanced, but there might be a case for increasing the max spells known. Either that or allow swapping out more frequently - maybe 1 spell/level or 1 spell per month? I'm a bit worried though I'll accidentally make them far too powerful, when if anything I'd rather weaken them slightly.
 

I think the number of spells known or easier swapping makes more sense for the Wizard, I'd be tempted to make swapping easier, but link it to a number of hours of study of a spell book - maybe something like 1/hour per spell level per spell so more powerful spells require more effort. This time would be on top of the regular study required.

Possibly the cleric is more powerful than the UA version, but I don't feel it's overpowered.
 

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