D&D 5E The non-mage mage, or an alternative to the EK, or an option for low-magic game

[Ancalagon]

So here's the idea.

Take a fighter - make it a champion (battle master is too fiddly and to obviously someone who trains as a warrior, champion is more raw talent). Take the sage background. Take the feats "magic initiate" and "ritual magic". Roleplay like a wizard - but one like Gandalf, very knowledgeable, hardy, tramping around with a sword but using magic sparingly.

Suboptimal? Probably. Fun? (esp in a party with no wizards or sorcerers) Oh yes

 

[Ancalagon]

I could see this character doing a lot of things to "magically" enhance himself to explain his fighting prowess. Like for example he would create a seven pointed tin star covered in runes and diagram that he would wrap around his sword's hilt, and this is why he's such a good swordsman. Mystical rituals explains his supernatural resilience etc

 

[MarkB]

Go with Monk instead, and choose Cleric spells. That way he can walk around in robes and not get ripped apart due to low AC.

 

[cbwjm]

This reminds me of the d20 conan RPG by mongoose. In the class books they had a warrior-scholar archetype which mixed soldier with scholar (the sorcerer class) to give them good martial prowess and some magical ability or alternatively extra skill points/feats (The scholar could trade in knowledge of magic for feats and skill points). I really liked the class books for conan, even though they used multiclassing for the archetypes in the book, each archetype was commonly able to replace some class abilities with ones unique to the archetype which essentially made them their own unique class.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Suboptimal? Probably. Fun? (esp in a party with no wizards or sorcerers) Oh yes

It's only suboptimal if your metric for optimal is based in a campaign that is exclusively combat.

Otherwise: this guy will be awesome. I just wish he was allowed to take ritual caster twice - once for wizard, once for cleric (or druid)

 

[cbwjm]

It's only suboptimal if your metric for optimal is based in a campaign that is exclusively combat.

Otherwise: this guy will be awesome. I just wish he was allowed to take ritual caster twice - once for wizard, once for cleric (or druid)

That's one thing I really loved about 4e, they just had rituals rather than class based rituals.

 

[Saeviomagy]

That's one thing I really loved about 4e, they just had rituals rather than class based rituals.

Well, it makes sense that a cleric doesn't automatically get contact other plane, and that a wizard doesn't automatically get commune, and that only the most atypical ritual books might contain both. Certainly as much sense as any other spell-list divide that exists.

 

[cbwjm]

Well, it makes sense that a cleric doesn't automatically get contact other plane, and that a wizard doesn't automatically get commune, and that only the most atypical ritual books might contain both. Certainly as much sense as any other spell-list divide that exists.

Maybe, but if ritual casting allowed any spell which was a ritual to be added then they would still have to find the ritual copy. A wizard could add contact other plane as one of his spell choices whereas a cleric would have to go out and find it.

Really though, I think rituals worked so well in 4e due to the changes between editions. Since each class tended to have encounter and daily powers with only a handful of at-wills, putting a lot of the previous utility spells into the ritual system made a lot sense and worked really well. Now that we are back to spell slots, players of casters might wonder why certain spells are only useable as rituals (had 5e stuck kept ritual magic separate) instead of being able to spend a spell slot on the spell.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

So here's the idea.

Take a fighter - make it a champion (battle master is too fiddly and to obviously someone who trains as a warrior, champion is more raw talent). Take the sage background. Take the feats "magic initiate" and "ritual magic". Roleplay like a wizard - but one like Gandalf, very knowledgeable, hardy, tramping around with a sword but using magic sparingly.

Suboptimal? Probably. Fun? (esp in a party with no wizards or sorcerers) Oh yes

If you want that Gandalf flavor, I'd even go so far as to suggest skipping Magic Initiate and taking ONLY Ritual Magic.

And I might suggest doing it on a Swashbuckler chassis instead of a Champion.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Really though, I think rituals worked so well in 4e due to the changes between editions. Since each class tended to have encounter and daily powers with only a handful of at-wills, putting a lot of the previous utility spells into the ritual system made a lot sense and worked really well.

It made sense from a point of view where non combat encounters were effectively not factored into your resource usage for the day... but to my mind that was a bit problematic in itself, especially since it wasn't done particularly consistently.

Now that we are back to spell slots, players of casters might wonder why certain spells are only useable as rituals (had 5e stuck kept ritual magic separate) instead of being able to spend a spell slot on the spell.

I do wonder what the criteria used to decide this was. I mean obviously there are some spells that shouldn't be rituals (spells that cure wounds or deal damage), but why not magic circle? Thematically it's a perfect fit, and mechanically there's nothing wrong with it, especially when something as busted to have on tap as leomund's tiny hut is already a ritual...

Anyway, I like the ritual system, but I dislike the current spell lists. They've just been meaninglessly changed in a myriad of ways from previous editions, and it just causes a heap of problems.