D&D General Why Do You Think Wizards Are Boring?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

A bard or a fey. Same thing, honestly.

I think a D&D bard inherently needs an audience. An illusionist can be into creating a world out of their imagination -- that's the basis of shadow magic, historically.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I think a D&D bard inherently needs an audience. An illusionist can be into creating a world out of their imagination -- that's the basis of shadow magic, historically.

I think with such a high Charisma, I feel a good bard can have a rich inner world.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

When you only have 10 spells a day at absolute maximum, you cannot afford to spare one for a bubble bath. All of them need to be good spells worth their keep.

Depends on what options are available. If you take a Feat or multiclass into something that lets you use spell slots differently, you CAN memorize that bubble bath spell.

Example: I played a 3.5Ed sorcerer invested in the Draconic Heritage/Draconic Breath, etc. feat tree. He wore scale armor, but didn’t worry about ASF because he could burn any arcane spell slot to do a line breath weapon attack for 2d6/spell level slot burned electrical damage. His spell list was largely utility spells because of his background.

Had he been multiclassed with Wizard or any other arcane caster, he could’ve converted those slots as well.

And depending on what kind & level of spell Bubble Bath was, there might have been a Reserve Feat that synergized with it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Or it could have been a 4e style ritual when your wizard can go and buy a scroll to learn to make a bath bomb.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Depends on what options are available. If you take a Feat or multiclass into something that lets you use spell slots differently, you CAN memorize that bubble bath spell.

Example: I played a 3.5Ed sorcerer invested in the Draconic Heritage/Draconic Breath, etc. feat tree. He wore scale armor, but didn’t worry about ASF because he could burn any arcane spell slot to do a line breath weapon attack for 2d6/spell level slot burned electrical damage. His spell list was largely utility spells because of his background.

Had he been multiclassed with Wizard or any other arcane caster, he could’ve converted those slots as well.

And depending on what kind & level of spell Bubble Bath was, there might have been a Reserve Feat that synergized with it.

You do know that Reserve Feats were the 3.5e mechanic that led to 4e's At-Will attacks, right? This is less a rebuttal and more an agreement with my point. If there are solid, reliable options available to you, you are much more empowered to slot in quirky weird things because the opportunity cost is slim. As stated: it becomes much less a dull calculation, and much more a value judgment. Those Draconic Heritage/etc. feats gave you the freedom to be weird with your spell picks, because you could always fall back on damage options if needed. Reserve feats would give you effectively inexhaustible cantrips so long as you keep an appropriate spell memorized. Etc.

Game design which encourages value judgment as the primary drive of character-building is, in general, preferable to game design which encourages mere calculation.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I think a D&D bard inherently needs an audience. An illusionist can be into creating a world out of their imagination -- that's the basis of shadow magic, historically.

I'd personally rather have a dedicated shadowcaster than make that a subclass of illusionist. Of course, an illusionist can be a lot of things - to me it first conjures an image of a stage magician but with real power - ie Zatanna from Batman - so it's part wizard art rogue...

But if we don't want to go nuts with classes, I guess we could do illusionist as a base with shadowcaster, magician, bard and maybe a divine variant as subclasses.

 

[Guest 7042500]

No reasearch rules? Good grief! In OD&D, the rules for spell research were located BEFORE the spell list!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'd personally rather have a dedicated shadowcaster than make that a subclass of illusionist. Of course, an illusionist can be a lot of things - to me it first conjures an image of a stage magician but with real power - ie Zatanna from Batman - so it's part wizard art rogue...

But if we don't want to go nuts with classes, I guess we could do illusionist as a base with shadowcaster, magician, bard and maybe a divine variant as subclasses.

I would rather just have the illusionist as a dedicated wizard subclass in 5E. Illusionist as its own class works well in some games, like Castles & Crusades, but the subclasses have been folded into the main wizardly class for so long, unpacking them again would be a lot of work and create needless bloat, IMO.

And spinning off what someone said up-thread, having the illusionists have ties to fey magic would also be a good idea.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No reasearch rules? Good grief! In OD&D, the rules for spell research were located BEFORE the spell list!

You're going to need to pull up a chair. A lot has happened since then.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I think a lot of these problems would be solved by going to Dungeon Crawl Classics but what do I know??