D&D General Things I Do To Make Wizards More Fun!

[Sparky McDibben]

Hey folks,

So a little while ago, I put up another thread and invited folks to tell me why they think wizards are boring (if, in fact, they do so). There were some great responses, and I really enjoyed the back and forth of the various takes folks put up. There were a lot of sincere points made that I don't have an answer to, but there were a few that I think we can alleviate (though probably not solve) with some creative soft measures. Please note these ideas are not meant to be authoritative nor exhaustive. I don't think I'm the first one to come up with any of these, but I wanted to present a few options for discussion and debate, and see what y'all thought. Maybe most of them don't work for you, but if only one does, I hope it helps!

First, let me address some the points that I won't be arguing against. If you have a gripe with D&D magic in general, then that's outside the scope of this project. I have my own gripes with D&D magic, but right now I'm trying to make wizards more interesting, not fix 3,000 different versions of the 5E magic system. If your gripe is that casters take up too much table time, I can't help with that here.

I saw four general points of contention made:

• Too much bookkeeping​
• Too little flavor​
• Too few restrictions​
• Too little variety between wizards​

TOO MUCH BOOKKEEPING:
As to bookkeeping, which I'm seeing defined as changing up spell loadouts, I recommend having the player develop a few lists for general situations for use at the table, and assigning an amount of time for switching between them. That way, you can easily swap spells prepared without taking half an hour to pick out each particular spell. Plus, it's easier if you need to make specific changes (e.g., if you know you're going up against a troll, you can just say, "I'm going with my Combat loadout, but I'm swapping shatter for scorching ray.") This can also help if you're running into a similar problem with clerics and druids, given that all three know a ton of spells, but have limited prepared spells and spell slots. As the DM, just let the player know they can swap between spell loadouts on a long rest, and you're good to go.

TOO LITTLE FLAVOR:
I see this as a feature, not a bug, since it lets the DM customize their world's magic system. However, if the DM hasn't given much thought to their world's magic system, it can be hard on players to develop that without knowing more about the world. Of course, the reverse is also true. If the DM doesn't have a firm idea of how magic works in their world, the door is wide open for you to build it how you want!

I think, much like the fighter and rogue, you can either a) plug wizards more into your world, b) twist any of the various cliches about wizards, or c) both! When I say, "plug wizards into your world," I mean they should have a spot on the map, NPCs, a defined code of behavior, and consequences for their actions. So if your wizard accidentally burnt down a library, the next time they meet their mentor, that library thing should come up. Even if you (the player) have to put it into conversation. "So, promise you won't be mad, but..." is a great way to lead this in. I know that sounds basic as hell, but basic stuff matters for injecting flavor into the world. Even things like somatic components- does your tradition have a specific way to do them? What if each tradition does it differently? How cool would it be if you could ID someone based on their gesture style?

What if different groups of wizards used different languages for their spells? What if those languages were good at different things, which is why Illusionists use High Gnomic, but evokers tend toward Ancient Draconic (and encode their spells in cuneiform!)?

You also don't have to stop there. Since spells are the core of the wizard class, you can further inject flavor by making your spells unique or different. This can be simple reskinning, or you can work with your DM to literally change things about the spell.

As far as twisting clichés, there are a lot you can do. Three common wizard clichés off the top of my head:

• Wizard schools​
• Cryptic mumbo-jumbo​
• Beards​

So what if your wizard school was actually a work-release program? You pissed off the wrong temple, and rather than throw you in the dungeon, they decided to farm you out as a dogsbody to the local wizard. Turns out, you've got a knack for the arcane, and after awhile the old man decided to adopt you as an apprentice.

What if wizards mostly don't need all that cryptic mumbo-jumbo they spout, but they do it anyway to keep people scared of the arcane? What if your character is spearheading a revolution in education, trying to make magic mass-accessible? Their goal is that everyone on the planet knows at least one cantrip within two generations after their death. What does democratizing magic look like? How does that affect the world?

What if wizards don't really need beards, but it's a traditional thing, and every wizard grows a beard? Now you're a female wizard (one of a few), and your options are to flout tradition (perfectly legit), or wear a fake beard that looks as ridiculous as possible, but only on formal occasions.

That's just three possibilities off the top of my head, but imagine all the ways you could make wizarding even cooler!

I know some folks are going to say that they don't want to have to do more work to define their character; that the game should tell them how to play it. I am personally flabbergasted by that position. Getting to add fun, cool things to your character is the whole reason you choose less-flavored class (wizard, fighter, and rogue). They're like oatmeal; you can make them taste like whatever you want!

TOO FEW RESTRICTIONS / TOO LITTLE VARIETY:
I think this is mostly a playstyle difference – I think the point of the wizard is that there is always a tool you have to deal with a situation. The trick is knowing when you are the only / best tool the party has to deal with that situation. However, some of y'all are clearly having an issue with the large number of wizard spells known.

Now, I would point out that wizards get the exact same maximum number of spells they can prepare as clerics and druids (both of whom wind up knowing more spells that wizards do by level 5, as both of them have access to their entire spell list). So, I'm not sure where the “too few restrictions” issues are coming from; wizards have plenty of restrictions on what they know and what they can prepare.

If you want your wizards to have their spells feel earned, I sympathize entirely. However, we run into another problem: playstyle. Let's consider this spectrum as a dichotomy – sandbox vs adventure path. In a sandbox, you've got plenty of time for research, scribing, and various crafting activities, whereas on an adventure path, you're usually racing some kind of Doom Clock. So solutions for the former generally don't work for the latter, and vice versa.

I'm going to split my suggestions along this (completely false but analytically useful) dichotomy, just to save myself some time and headache.

For a sandbox game (defined as one in which the PCs control what jobs and adventures they go on), I recommend that all full casters do not learn spells as they level. Rather, they learn spells by adventuring. Yes, that includes the warlock – your pact has given you the ability to cast magic, but learning the actual spells to do so requires seeking out those spells. Unless, of course, you want to runup a tab with your patron (which actually brings the patron into the game more).

With this option, spells become treasure. Not just for wizards, anymore – you can find holy tomes with sacred prayers, druid rites scrawled into tree trunks, or full wizard spell scrolls inscribed in 50' tall letters on the side of a cliff (“Wait, is that disintegrate?”). You as the DM have to be pretty liberal, and you have to be pretty generous with putting spells in the world naturally, but it incentivizes spellcasters to go out and hunt for spells. Hell, even if you don't have druids in the party, finding a tome of druid spells can still be useful for a party – you never know when you might need to go to the local druid circle and ask for a favor.

On an adventure path, though, you're moving through scripted beats, and there's no time to slow down progression – the wizard's going to need that fireball spell to beat the mind flayer thralls! So instead, what I do is to make magic have consequences. The trick is to make the consequences interesting, and not punitive. So rather than rolling on a random table where the result might be “You blowup the whole party! Lolsorandom!” I usually have magic-users able to sense the use of magic. Spell-work lingers, like an old chalk outline. Those studied in various arts can discern a lot from studying an old spell, like a) who cast it? What kind of magic do they practice? b) What was the spell? What were they trying to accomplish? c) When was this working done?

Some casters might be curious enough to start sniffing around, or to send their familiar out to have a look at the new kids on the block. If the party committed any crimes facilitated by a spell, then the magic-user has now left their metaphorical fingerprints all over that crime.

What this does is force the casters in the party to think about their abilities. How long is that spell going to linger (rule of thumb: one week per spell level)? Can we “wash off” magical residue (yes, with running water, but doing so leaves a lacuna that other casters will see as the destruction of evidence)? Can this spell be linked back to me? And of course, all this goes for the bad guys, too.

This tends to come into play more often in intrigue-heavy campaigns rather than combat-heavy ones. Even in combat-focused campaigns, though, having the Evil Wizard able to ID your party casters helps justify why they've got a real challenging spell selection loadout, and gear that exactly counters the party's abilities. Of course they do –they've been watching you for some time....

Now, as to the “Too Little Variety” group, I'm understanding this complaint as being that every wizard has the same spells known, and you never find a wizard with illusory script prepared (and you should!).

My suggestion here is that you have any player playing a wizard choose one 1st level spell, and then roll randomly for the rest of them. This lets the player choose a spell that they'll need, like magic missile, without having to worry that they'll only wind up with jump and longstrider. Combine this with the “You don't get spells from leveling” suggestion above, and you can have some very interesting emergent combos. In one game, I had a player combine illusory script with mage hand to give a librarian the impression they were hallucinating as books were flying off the shelves and the writing on the wall changed before their eyes!

Fun times.

So alright, I just wanted to float some of my responses to the irritations I've seen voiced here over the last couple of weeks. Let me know if these are useless, helpful, or just kinda meh. If you have other variants that made wizards even more fun in your games, please post them! Have fun!

 

[jdrakeh]

The best thing that I've ever done to make a wizard more fun was, when facing combat for the first time with a new party, state as my first combat action "I fly away!" (then cast the fly spell). I didn't actually fly away, of course, (I only flew to higher ground) but all of my party members actually thought I was going to abandon them and went absolutely bonkers. Admittedly, that only works once, but we still laugh about it all the time.

 

[bloodtide]

I'd say the big thing is More Spells!

This is a big thing. It can be fun having ten spells and sitting around waiting to use them. Often a wizard who picks all combat related spells can't do much else. But then too often the "utility" spells don't do much.

I watch lots of players get frustrated....the wizard can do 100 damage...but nothing else.

Then they watch my gnome npc wizard come over and cast Animate Dirt. Sure, they laugh at the dumb spell......until they watch the gnome wizard do 101 things with just a simple animated pile of dirt.

This is linked with Verity. Having enough special spells to make every wizard feel unique. Every wizard in the world does not need to pick from the same ten "cool" spells.

You want more then enough spells so you can not only make say a 'pure' fire wizard with only fire spells......but 25 totally different fire wizard sects each with unique spells(though sure there are some cross over spells too).

The Gnome Homefire wizards are nothing like the Elven Forest Burners, or the Orc Dark Flames, or the Order of the Blue Light or the Scared Fire Walkers.

And again, I love making such NPCs. Making a wizard more unique by spells chosen by region, religion, location, area, history, back ground, race, and more. And not just "drow wizards use acid spells" and not just "southern drow wizards use gas based acid spells" and a lot more "Drow wizards from the southern upperdark around Zotha use light colored gas spells that hug the ground low and have delayed acid effects."

This leads to spells as Treasure . You can track a spell and find it where it's from. For just the Underdark, I have lots of fungi, mushroom, cave, darkness, and stone based spells with all sorts of effects. Quite often players love them, and will then sneak out the spells as treasure.

I've done the "spell runes on some tree barks" or on a shield forever.

 

[Neonchameleon]

TOO LITTLE FLAVOR:
I see this as a feature, not a bug, since it lets the DM customize their world's magic system. However, if the DM hasn't given much thought to their world's magic system, it can be hard on players to develop that without knowing more about the world. Of course, the reverse is also true. If the DM doesn't have a firm idea of how magic works in their world, the door is wide open for you to build it how you want!

Except that the wizard doesn't do this. The wizard has plenty of flavour but it is almost all game world flavour. The Wizard requires mystic inks to inscribe spells into their spell book and requires weird material components (let's face it wizards are the only class to use the vestigial component system). What they don't have is personal flavour; the Storm Sorcerer may be a disasterpiece in terms of survivability and crippled in terms of spells known but has a lot of personal flavour that comes out in its actions and rules without forcing its flavour onto the wider game world.

The complaint about the wizard having too little flavour doesn't mean that it's plain white rice that will go with anything. It's that it's budget airline food that tastes of cardboard.

What if different groups of wizards used different languages for their spells?

Then you are actively changing the D&D rules on spellbooks and learning spells.

Meanwhile you can have different groups of sorcerers using different languages for their spells without breaking anything because there is no requirement for sorcerer spells to be cross-intelligible. And warlocks naturally go for different languages; you don't address an Archfey in the same language you do a Duke of Hell and goodness knows if how you communicate with a Great Old One is even a language. And bards and languages are a whole can of worms. The wizard is the single least suited class for this idea.

You also don't have to stop there. Since spells are the core of the wizard class, you can further inject flavor by making your spells unique or different. This can be simple reskinning, or you can work with your DM to literally change things about the spell.

Or you can do this with a sorcerer. Except this is easier for the sorcerer thanks to metamagic. You don't have to ask your DM for special treatment to make your sorcerer do this. Or you can do it with a warlock using Invocations. Or bards.

So what if your wizard school was actually a work-release program? You pissed off the wrong temple, and rather than throw you in the dungeon, they decided to farm you out as a dogsbody to the local wizard. Turns out, you've got a knack for the arcane, and after awhile the old man decided to adopt you as an apprentice.

Or you can do this with a sorcerer, warlock, or bard. Except that there isn't the requirement for really expensive spellbooks in either case so it's thematically better for this to be a non-wizard as it's less of a personal financial investment.

What if wizards mostly don't need all that cryptic mumbo-jumbo they spout, but they do it anyway to keep people scared of the arcane?

More house rules? (Hint: Verbal is a game mechanical component). And why not do this with a sorcerer or warlock?

What if your character is spearheading a revolution in education, trying to make magic mass-accessible? Their goal is that everyone on the planet knows at least one cantrip within two generations after their death. What does democratizing magic look like? How does that affect the world?

More house rules. But if you want to make this more interesting as a plot do it with a warlock not a wizard.

What if wizards don't really need beards, but it's a traditional thing, and every wizard grows a beard? Now you're a female wizard (one of a few), and your options are to flout tradition (perfectly legit), or wear a fake beard that looks as ridiculous as possible, but only on formal occasions.

Again. This is nothing inherent to the wizard class.

I know some folks are going to say that they don't want to have to do more work to define their character; that the game should tell them how to play it. I am personally flabbergasted by that position. Getting to add fun, cool things to your character is the whole reason you choose less-flavored class (wizard, fighter, and rogue). They're like oatmeal; you can make them taste like whatever you want!

And this is just a strawman. The problem isn't the wizard doesn't come with fluff. It's that the fluff it comes with is bland, worthy of no more than a subclass. The wizard is not a generic caster you can do what you want with. The generic caster that you can then do what you want with is the sorcerer. (Unfortunately they have too few spells known)

It's telling that literally all the suggestions you made other than the beards would work better with literally any of the other three primary arcane casters than they do the wizard.

TOO FEW RESTRICTIONS / TOO LITTLE VARIETY:
I think this is mostly a playstyle difference – I think the point of the wizard is that there is always a tool you have to deal with a situation. The trick is knowing when you are the only / best tool the party has to deal with that situation. However, some of y'all are clearly having an issue with the large number of wizard spells known.

Now, I would point out that wizards get the exact same maximum number of spells they can prepare as clerics and druids (both of whom wind up knowing more spells that wizards do by level 5, as both of them have access to their entire spell list). So, I'm not sure where the “too few restrictions” issues are coming from; wizards have plenty of restrictions on what they know and what they can prepare.

And this is missing two issues.

• The wizard doesn't need to have spells prepared to cast them as rituals.
• The druid and cleric have more going on than just spellcasting, and more calls on their spells (such as healing) while having generally weaker spells.

If you want your wizards to have their spells feel earned, I sympathize entirely. However, we run into another problem: playstyle. Let's consider this spectrum as a dichotomy – sandbox vs adventure path. In a sandbox, you've got plenty of time for research, scribing, and various crafting activities, whereas on an adventure path, you're usually racing some kind of Doom Clock. So solutions for the former generally don't work for the latter, and vice versa.

I'm going to split my suggestions along this (completely false but analytically useful) dichotomy, just to save myself some time and headache.

For a sandbox game (defined as one in which the PCs control what jobs and adventures they go on), I recommend that all full casters do not learn spells as they level. Rather, they learn spells by adventuring. Yes, that includes the warlock – your pact has given you the ability to cast magic, but learning the actual spells to do so requires seeking out those spells. Unless, of course, you want to runup a tab with your patron (which actually brings the patron into the game more).

With this option, spells become treasure. Not just for wizards, anymore – you can find holy tomes with sacred prayers, druid rites scrawled into tree trunks, or full wizard spell scrolls inscribed in 50' tall letters on the side of a cliff (“Wait, is that disintegrate?”). You as the DM have to be pretty liberal, and you have to be pretty generous with putting spells in the world naturally, but it incentivizes spellcasters to go out and hunt for spells. Hell, even if you don't have druids in the party, finding a tome of druid spells can still be useful for a party – you never know when you might need to go to the local druid circle and ask for a favor.

So what you are saying is that the DM should literally custom-tailor the sandbox to make up for the shortcomings of the most supported class by the game rules? Something which I'm not aware any published sandbox does. Hey, everyone, we can make wizards more interesting if we literally write the setting to make up for their shortcomings as the bland and boring class. And somehow it is a reasonable ask to put this onto the DM's shoulders.

Seriously, this sounds like a great idea for a sandbox if you want to publish it. But that you are literally suggesting a custom setting to make the wizard non-boring only emphasises the problem with the class and loads onto the DM's shoulders making up for the shortcomings of the class.

On an adventure path, though, you're moving through scripted beats, and there's no time to slow down progression – the wizard's going to need that fireball spell to beat the mind flayer thralls! So instead, what I do is to make magic have consequences.

Once more this translates as "the wizard is a bland and tedious class so I literally rewrite the game to make up for the failure of the designers". House rules to fix a bad situation are evidence that the situation is bad.

The trick is to make the consequences interesting, and not punitive. So rather than rolling on a random table where the result might be “You blowup the whole party! Lolsorandom!” I usually have magic-users able to sense the use of magic. Spell-work lingers, like an old chalk outline. Those studied in various arts can discern a lot from studying an old spell, like a) who cast it? What kind of magic do they practice? b) What was the spell? What were they trying to accomplish? c) When was this working done?

Again there is no real reason this helps wizards more than the other primary casters. All it really does is leaves fighters twiddling their thumbs even more often as there are even more non-combat situations they can't help with.

My suggestion here is that you have any player playing a wizard choose one 1st level spell, and then roll randomly for the rest of them.

Yay! Let's add more house rules to make up for the wizard being a bland and tedious class.

You'll note that this is something that is not a significant problem for warlocks or sorcerers and bards don't complain about. The wizard is about as interesting as a single subclass of sorcerer or warlock and the bard has more than spellcasting going on.

So alright, I just wanted to float some of my responses to the irritations I've seen voiced here over the last couple of weeks. Let me know if these are useless, helpful, or just kinda meh. If you have other variants that made wizards even more fun in your games, please post them! Have fun!

Your responses seem to indicate that you are in complete agreement with the suggestion that the wizard is the most bland and tedious of the primary arcane casters (although you miss the point that it is also the arcane caster that does the most to straightjacket worldbuilding). And you are therefore suggesting loading more onto the DM to make the wizard into a special snowflake that the world is literally created around. Despite their having already got the biggest chunk of the rulebook dedicated to them (as they get far the most spells).

Frankly you do a better problem demonstrating the problems with the wizard class in this post than the entire thread this is a spinoff of did.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

What Wizards need is more mechanical heft to their main class chassis, something that is more then just casting spells (which all casting classes can do). The Memorize/Modify/Create Spell....spells from the UA were a step in the right direction in my opinion, because it actually gave the base Wizard a unique feature that fits with it's theme, masters of spell craft being able to quickly modify and create unique and individualized spells with time and practice. Not to mention giving them a ritual that allows them to switch out a spell they know in a pinch during a short rest, like a master of arcane knowledge learning their is a dangerous creature like a hydra the party must contend with and going "oh, I believe I have heard about Hydras and may know a spell that can handle those pesky regenerative heads, let me quickly look over it and I'll be ready for action".

They also need better designed subclasses with more impactful features throughout all subclass levels, especially the 8 schools of magic subclasses. While a few of them get an early feature that is pretty cool and thematic while playing off the spells of that school, many of them don't get features that really capture the theme of that magic school until significantly later in level, if at all (looking at you Conjuration and Transmutation). I think the idea of a Wizard who is a master of a specific class is cool in theme and theory, but it's not executed well. I'd also love to see each subclass be able to interact with the Modify/Create Spell feature in a unique way as well, like how the UA Rogue Subclasses interact with the main class's Cunning Strike feature.

Just....give us more then just "can cast spells" please.

 

[Li Shenron]

Having played many Wizards in almost all editions by now, I think the ones that were more fun were always those with a theme, and not necessarily one of the traditional schools but also something diagonal such as "shadows" or "plants". Having a theme forces you to pick spells that you might otherwise ignore, although you can also rewrite spells descriptions to suit theme.

I totally endorse your idea to roll randomly for known spells. I personally played PCs that were even totally randomised (everything from class down to the last details) but that's a bit extreme. But making a Wizard and for example roll half your known spells is easy and safe to try.

Last thing that worked for me (sometimes, I don't really do this frequently) is to track spell components. Running out of bat guano CAN result in a more interesting gameplay as it restricts tactical options and forces you to use other tactics. But admittedly this suggestion is for hardcore players only!

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

- I like to experiment a lot. I'm playing a wizard and, other than a couple of damage oriented cantrips, I've completely abandoned damage spells. The party is big and they do piles of damage, what do they need me for? I just have utility spells.

- I've also experimented with spells that almost never get used. I LOVED experimenting with Magic Jar. My character found it in a 'evil-doers' basement and he scribed it and started causing havoc. I was a divination wizard so I could force people to fail their save so it was pretty powerful. It lead to all kinds of interesting debates of how the spell would work. I made a whole thread about it.

- As a DM, I always try to give scrolls and spell components as treasure. And it's generic, not specific. Example:

You find several crates with various arcane components. Make an Int(arcana)check. Then, based on the check, I assign an amount of generic 'spell components'. Example DC 15 would be 500gp worth spell components and two 2nd level scrolls. DC 20 1000gp and a 3rd level scroll.

I let the player decide what those spell components are. If they need 250gp in 'special incense' and 200gp in diamonds, then that's what they find because that's what they scrounged together. For the scrolls, I might dictate the school of magic (it must be a necromancy school because he was a lich) but they can choose what spell is on the scroll to give them the freedom to 'fill out' their spell book.

 

[Baumi]

As I have written in another threat, but it fits perfectly here...

After playing Baldurs Gate 3 and Pathfinder 2, where wizards can just change Spells out of combat (its a Wizard Class Option in PF2) I would love that feature in 5E. Even moreso just have every spell know prepared. So Wizards don't have more spell slot, but have much more options at hand.

I haven't seen anything that broke in BG3 or PF2 with it, but it made playing the Wizard much more fun and usefull for the group. It's also easier to use when you don't have to change around which spells you have prepared. It also makes the difference to Sorcerer more profound .. Wizard has much more Options, while Sorcerer more power with the spells he knows.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I make my wizards fun by creating a character with interesting personality traits, quirks, habits, and ideas... and then in the game I try to act out and exemplify those interesting personality traits, quirks, habits, and ideas.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I make my wizards fun by creating a character with interesting personality traits, quirks, habits, and ideas... and then in the game I try to act out and exemplify those interesting personality traits, quirks, habits, and ideas.

So what you're saying is that the wizard class adds almost nothing in terms of making the character interesting?