D&D 5E Wizard academy providing “all spells”, how strong?

[Stalker0]

A discussion on how powerful the wizards “breath of knowledge” is.

let us assume a common scenario in some campaigns.

The party’s wizard is an alumni at a Wizards academy. An alumni perk, access to their spell library. while the wizard must supply their own inks, they effectively can have any core spell in the game if they use their downtime to swing by the alma mater.

compared to the standard wizard who finds the occasional scroll for copy, how “strong” is this?

how much better is the alumni wizard in comparison? Or put another way, how much money is the privilege or all of that spell access “worth” should the school charge its alumni for access?

For this purpose let’s assume the wizard is your typical adventuring PC, receiving normal treasure, and gets some downtime between each major adventure.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

It's obviously up to you, but I would say 7th or higher spells are definitely not included for alumni wizards. These are truly the high-tier spells.

I use those as a baseline, because I know Rakshasa have limited magic immunity that makes them immune to spells of 6th level or lower. It's a pretty insane ability, but shows that 7th or higher really are in a tier of their own.

 

[jgsugden]

In my setting, it is fairly trivial to find a PHB spell. The majority of the joy for players is finding the homebrew spells that they didn't know they really wanted. It has never been a problem having the PHB spells be easy to locate.

If you like this idea, I'd suggest looking at some of the higher ranked spells on D&D Beyond to add to the collection.

 

[Ancalagon]

It's strong, but also consider that the academy needs money to keep going. Academy members should be expected to support said academy with funds, magic etc. So it shouldn't be free.

 

[Oofta]

I've always allowed people to take whatever spell they want, it's not a big deal.

 

[Mort]

A discussion on how powerful the wizards “breath of knowledge” is.

let us assume a common scenario in some campaigns.

The party’s wizard is an alumni at a Wizards academy. An alumni perk, access to their spell library. while the wizard must supply their own inks, they effectively can have any core spell in the game if they use their downtime to swing by the alma mater.

compared to the standard wizard who finds the occasional scroll for copy, how “strong” is this?

how much better is the alumni wizard in comparison? Or put another way, how much money is the privilege or all of that spell access “worth” should the school charge its alumni for access?

For this purpose let’s assume the wizard is your typical adventuring PC, receiving normal treasure, and gets some downtime between each major adventure.

How strong this depends on a few factors.

1. How much time the wizard have and how close is he to the actual library?

If, for example, the wizard is based in Sharn and so is the university then (depending on #2) this is a big perk. If, on the otherhand, the university is in Sharn and, after level 3, the wizard is on Xen'Drik - the benefit is near illusory. Or if the wizard is closer but the DM has a ton of doom clocks and other pushes on the wizards time that barely allow for a long rest, much less going to the library? the benefit is wasted.

2. How much spare gold does the wizard actually have?

If the wizard has enough AND #1 is also true, this is a significant benefit. If the gold is constantly tied up to the point where the wizard can barely afford ink? benefit is illusory.

But to answer the strength if the conditions above are met? It's strong, especially if players can dictate the pace of play.

That said, if the spells are restricted, the smart player just grabs the restricted spells through their class feature and copies the rest!

I think, this shouldn't break the game - but to the smart player it's a big boon.

 

[SkidAce]

I've always allowed people to take whatever spell they want, it's not a big deal.

I let them take anything in the PHB.

Except teleport spells, they've been lost to the sands of time and no one has rediscovered them yet.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Some thoughts about potential arguments around this idea (which I like).

1. No sane wizard would allow one to get away with his spellbook.

That's... true. But creating a backup spellbook takes 1 hour and 10 gp per spell level. Settings where there is a wizard academy would have curricular spellbook, sorted by school, made from the faculty's spellbook (up until a level that is fine for you to have "restricted", I feel the Eberron divide of 1-3 = common magic, 4-6 = strong magic, but you could find it in a world-class academy, 7+ = restricted reading at best, unavailable at worst) is fine. So the alumni would simply come to the school and work from a student copy. The investment would be worthwhile for the academy, either because it's only 5,090 gp to make a copy. If you consider the School Savant feature to apply, they can have the books readied for half as much gold. The benefit for the studients are invaluable and the first one to do that would recruit the best of them... until at some points everyone does this and a nominal fee will be created. You can't commission spells to be copied, since copying involves understanding, experimenting, and converting in your own arcane notation the works of another wizard, so the 50 gp cost wouldn't be lowered, but charging 10% gp on top of that sounds perfectly accceptable.

2. When exactly are those adventuring wizards doing magical research?

If one wanted to explain away why nobody thought about it before -- because if no school does it, a player wizard should be the first to do it and open his own school as part of a get-rich-quick scheme -- one could say that the "research" leading to two new spells every level already reflects the ability to exchange information with life-long training manager at their alma mater. Wizards don't do "downtime research" and I don't see every wizard reinventing fireball independently when reaching level 5. Instead, they subscribe to Teach Enchantment by Dreaming service (also known as TED talks) where the basics of the spells are explained so they just need a few hours of work to copy it once they have digested the learning.

 

[aco175]

I thought the 'standard' wizard gets 2 spells per level for free. This was one of the better features of being a wizard. I let them pick PHB spells for this. I would have an academy be where you can pick some of the other books and 3pp spells. Maybe focus them into schools or themes.

 

[Laurefindel]

I guess it depends how accessible magic is in myour world, but the game seems to make an important distinction between level 1-5 spells and level 6-9 spells (half casters cap at spells level 5, domain spells and other bonus/expanded list spells go until level 5, the warlock's mystic arcanum starts at level 6 etc)

Free access to level 1-5 spells from the library seems alright for a wizard alumni. To get access to level 6-9 spells, I'd say you need to make more than a one-time donation, you'd need to be one of the major sponsors of the university/college/academy (which isn't outside the scope of tier 3 and tier 4 play, actually).