Something I have always disliked about wizards, in spite of the fact I love wizards, is the fact that specialist wizards really don't feel like they are all that devoted to any school of magic.
So with this in mind, I have always wondered how wizards would fair if:
A) They had to specialise in a school of magic.
B) They could ONLY cast spells from their specialty school.
My gut feeling is that for some schools of magic the class would essentially still function "out of the box", conjuration and transmutation I feel would both function fine if they could take nothing from any other school. But others I feel may struggle, for instance abjuration and divination I feel would find themselves kind of wondering what to do.
With this in mind, do people feel a similar way? Would a way to balance this be to revamp school powers and potentially give more active ones to the struggling schools? I feel like it would be difficult to manage simply because I'd want to flat out give LESS powers to certain schools, but that would ruin the symmetry of progression.
Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
You're idea is bad.
Wizards don't feel specialized? They do a lot more in Pathfinder than they did in editions past.
School Powers affecting your spell choice and bonus spells from your school are more than enough to give the class flavor.
Your experience must be in players still generalizing, if that's the case I would be more willing to recommend the 3.5 way of doing things and simply ban opposed schools.
Like I said, I was pretty sure certain schools really wouldn't work as written. I stand by the fact that transmutation and conjuration most definitely would, those schools of magic are ridiculously diverse.
I understand how wizards function as a class, I have played a lot of wizards, but I also agree with the negative sentiment overall. Possibly it might be better to simply scrap wizards and work on some form of 6th level caster, who with the weaker offensive schools would have martial abilities to fall back on. That way you also wouldn't have to dilute the concept of divination by giving it too many offensive spells.
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I like the general idea of making specialists more specialized, but I think the execution leaves a lot to be desired. (I have no idea why you're getting such horribly negative responses, though.)
You would run into issues with some schools being more powerful than others. Divination, in particular, would probably start to feel pretty useless. (As is, it can be difficult to figure out what Divination spell you want to put in your school slot each day. The requirement that one of your two freebie spells each level must be from your specialty school is similarly painful; there's not a lot to choose from, and a lot of it overlaps heavily.)
Here's a few off the cuff ideas in a similar vein that might give the same sort of feel without being crippling to some schools:
- Pull some number of spells of your specialty school from other spell lists and add them to your own. As an example, a Diviner might want to pull Mind Thrust from the Psychic's list.
- Spells outside of your specialty school require two spell slots (like opposed schools do in the core rules). Spells from your opposed school additionally take a +1 level adjustment, like metamagic (so it wouldn't affect the DC or anything, but it would require a higher level spell slot). This could actually make a really good incentive to be a Universalist Wizard... You would be the only kind of Wizard that can cast any spell school using a single slot of the default level.
- Go through the spell list for each school, and determine which spells you feel would be reasonably "universal" that even non-specialists would learn it. This would probably include things like Mage Armor, that every Wizard would want to be able to cast, but you'd want to avoid the really powerful things like Greater Teleportation. Have these "universal" spells available to all Wizards, even if they don't match their specialist school. Specialists gain full access to their school's spell list.
- Mess with the DC of spells. Maybe increase the DC for specialist spells by 1 or 2, and reduce non-specialist spells by the same. A lot of the really important spells from each school don't require a save at all, so this ends up being a less severe version of the previous idea.
- Mess with the effective caster levels. Maybe non-specialist schools manifest at 3/4 caster level or specialist spells manifest at a higher caster level.
A lot of these ideas strictly reduce the power of the Wizard compared to the normal rules with no real compensation. Depending, that may be fine; the Wizard could stand to drop a tier or two. It does skew the balance as compared to other full casters, though, which may be a problem.
EDIT:
Here's another idea: give specialist Wizards some amount of spontaneity. Each day, they can sacrifice a prepared spell to instead cast one of their prepared school slot spells for the day, much like a Cleric's spontaneous cure/inflict spells.
Perhaps Universalist Wizards get a pseudo "spell slot" at each level. They can't actually cast from that slot, but they do gain the ability to use that same spontaneous casting power with the spells prepared in those "slots". As a Universalist, they're not restricted by school on what they can prepare in those "slots".
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I actually like this idea - split "Wizard" into countless different subsets thereof, each specializing in their own form of magic, and with their own extra quirky class features salient to it. It would be a way I'd consider reasonable to appease those who claim Wizards are too powerful: Give them great power, but only in a comparatively limited school of magic. It also does more to feed the "ever more material" beast that the game runs on.
I like the general idea of making specialists more specialized, but I think the execution leaves a lot to be desired. (I have no idea why you're getting such horribly negative responses, though.)
You would run into issues with some schools being more powerful than others. Divination, in particular, would probably start to feel pretty useless. (As is, it can be difficult to figure out what Divination spell you want to put in your school slot each day. The requirement that one of your two freebie spells each level must be from your specialty school is similarly painful; there's not a lot to choose from, and a lot of it overlaps heavily.)
Here's a few off the cuff ideas in a similar vein that might give the same sort of feel without being crippling to some schools:
...
- Pull some number of spells of your specialty school from other spell lists and add them to your own. As an example, a Diviner might want to pull Mind Thrust from the Psychic's list.
- Spells outside of your specialty school require two spell slots (like opposed schools do in the core rules). Spells from your opposed school additionally take a +1 level adjustment, like metamagic (so it wouldn't affect the DC or anything, but it would require a higher level spell slot). This could actually make a really good incentive to be a Universalist Wizard... You would be the only kind of Wizard that can cast any spell school using a single slot of the default level.
- Go through the spell list for each school, and determine which spells you feel would be reasonably "universal" that even non-specialists would learn it. This would probably include things like Mage Armor, that every Wizard would want to be able to cast, but you'd want to avoid the really powerful things like Greater Teleportation. Have these "universal" spells available to all Wizards, even if they don't match their specialist school. Specialists gain full access to their school's spell list.
- Mess with
Thanks for the great ideas Raider, I in particular like the one about creating a smaller "universal" list that would have spells that would be useful for all wizards, along with I would add some more school powers to each school and wizards would likely gain spells from other classes that fall within their specialty.
I actually like this idea - split "Wizard" into countless different subsets thereof, each specializing in their own form of magic, and with their own extra quirky class features salient to it. It would be a way I'd consider reasonable to appease those who claim Wizards are too powerful: Give them great power, but only in a comparatively limited school of magic. It also does more to feed the "ever more material" beast that the game runs on.Thassilonian Specialist already accomplishes that goal without the extreme measures the OP advocates.
It actually doesn't accomplish that goal, at all. Thassilonian specialist gives in some cases MORE power to wizards, for quite a small cost. Greed wizards gain a lot and lose very little really; specialists were the best class in the game in 3.5 so restoring banned schools to those days is a small sacrifice.
If you have Occult Adventures, you can always use the occultist's implement school progression (2 schools at 1st level, plus an additional school 2nd level and every four levels after that) as a basis to determine which schools a wizard can learn/cast spells from. Keep the number of spell slots for a "universal" wizard; the starting spellbook has all 0-level spells in the 2 schools selected and Universal cantrips, plus the standard 3 + Int mod 1st level spells (but they have to be in the schools selected). If the wizard has not selected the appropriate implement school, they can't use spell trigger or spell completion items for spells in that school without a Use Magic Device check.
You can also require the casting implements (sort of an arcane focus for a particular school) and include the Mental Focus and focus powers to (partially) replace some of the versatility and school powers they are giving up.
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I actually like this idea - split "Wizard" into countless different subsets thereof, each specializing in their own form of magic, and with their own extra quirky class features salient to it. It would be a way I'd consider reasonable to appease those who claim Wizards are too powerful: Give them great power, but only in a comparatively limited school of magic. It also does more to feed the "ever more material" beast that the game runs on.Thassilonian Specialist already accomplishes that goal without the extreme measures the OP advocates.
Not at all - I'm talking about making entirely different classes with all kinds of entirely different spell lists and features.
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I actually did this. You can find three of my seven Wizard School spellcasting classes HERE. I only have the Abjurer, Diviner, and Enchanter posted here so far. just need to add the other four. I made them all 6th level casters instead of full casters to give them a wider range of abilities, and I custom made the spell lists. Each class has full access to their own schools (6th level spells + some appropriate 7th or 8th level spells and some spells earlier than others) plus a smattering of other appropriate school spells to add versatility.
I do like the idea of a more specialized class like the summoner is. That said, the summoner still gets a few spells that aren't conjuration spells.
Dotted for interest.
In truth, I think it's a great idea, but only if you break free from the evoker, abjuration, etc... Elements need anything that is their element across any current "school", mental spells, illusory spells, nature spells, categorized in a less confusing way, but also in a manner that allows them to be spells of multiple schools. Sort of the way Ars Magica RPG works I suppose.
I'd never play a wizard under your rules. Period. And it's not because I prefer generalists. What the hell would my diviner wizard do besides casting tea leaves in your game?Scout.
Now now, you know you're not supposed to think outside the tiny little corner of a hyperbolic box you're presented with, kyrt-ryder. Read that as, "thank you".
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Because of this thread, I'm going to finish posting my 4 other classes to my site. If anyone wants to try them be my guest. If not, then that's fine too.
If you feel like doing the work to create some homebrew of your own, look into making some specialist casters in the vein of the 3.5 Dread Necromancer or Beguiler. I've been doing this for my homebrew setting, and so far have a Battlemage, a Mesmer, a Necromancer, and a Conjurer, and I'm currently working on a Seer. The basic concept is a 9th level caster with a very limited spell list, who knows every spell on the list and casts them spontaneously. Then sprinkle in class features that support the flavor. The biggest thing to remember is that it's ok for your Transmuter, for example, to have a few non-transmutation spells on his list. They should be specialized, but not necessarily locked into one school of magic.
As Taperat mentioned it sounds like you want the beguiler/dread necromancer/warmage from 3.5. I've been using this beguiler for a few sessions and it's been going pretty well. Not sure if there are warmage/dread necro conversion out there like it.
You would also get Universal spells, though I might make some (very few) strategic additions to that list, Like (just off the top of my head) Magic Missile, Mage Armor, and Dispel Magic (though not GDM).
Not to mention that an array of additional powers for each specialty would have to accompany this project, like the summoner, only not ridiculously overpowered.
Be honest...would you play an Abjurer whose ONLY magic that you could cast or use would be Abjuration spells? No Detect Magic, No prestidigitation, Not even Mage Armor.I would if many of them were immediate actions.
Agreed. Especially if an Abjurer came with a lot of the niceties related to counterspelling that Arcanists get.