But I agree GMs that are completely stuck on the current list as it is are making the game more difficult for wizard players. I think the intent was clear enough to incorporate spells that meet the theme and by doing this meant they only needed to provide a list of examples rather than a hard unalterable rule of a list and makes it unnecessary to revise the lists over and over as new content comes out.The schools don't have any easy to understand correspondence like sharing traits or anything, and frankly they don't even share the same structure as each other (ARS GRAMMTICA). When 'Boundary' variably means 'teleport' or 'force damage' or 'void damage', when Protean Form has toxic cloud in it, how can a GM tell what's in-theme or not?
Also, if they were concerned about revising lists, maybe they should have, you know, not made it a list in the first place. Or introduced more spell traits, maybe. Making a 'thematic' school which randomly has some barely thematic entries in it and telling the GM to figure out what qualifies is going to result in chaos.
What I think we need is some Wizard feats that will give additional choices for your school slots.
Like "Elemental Study" which would allow you to add your choice of Fire, Electric, Cold, or Acid spells to your school.
Or "Religious Study" which would allow you to add your Deity's granted spells to your school.
Or "Dual Major" which would allow you to pick a second school.
Or "Acadamae Student" which would allow you to add spells with the Summon trait to your school.
(Possibly with some limitations -- pick one per rank. Or doesn't include your highest rank. Or these are high level feats which come online late and can't be picked up via multiclass.)
Will this fix Wizards if you just don't like the Wizard playstyle? Of course not. These are suggestions of ways to fix the Wizard for those who liked the Premaster Wizard, but feel the Remaster broke them.
Thats a neat idea.
Just taking elemental study.The first feat could be lower level opening up the tags to curriculum slots. Then a 6th level feat in the tree adds some benefit when casting spells with those tags out of a curriculum slot.
It is clear though that the design stays away from over specialization but doing it to an appropriate degree would be cool.
But I agree GMs that are completely stuck on the current list as it is are making the game more difficult for wizard players. I think the intent was clear enough to incorporate spells that meet the theme and by doing this meant they only needed to provide a list of examples rather than a hard unalterable rule of a list and makes it unnecessary to revise the lists over and over as new content comes out.The schools don't have any easy to understand correspondence like sharing traits or anything, and frankly they don't even share the same structure as each other (ARS GRAMMTICA). When 'Boundary' variably means 'teleport' or 'force damage' or 'void damage', when Protean Form has toxic cloud in it, how can a GM tell what's in-theme or not?
Also, if they were concerned about revising lists, maybe they should have, you know, not made it a list in the first place. Or introduced more spell traits, maybe. Making a 'thematic' school which randomly has some barely thematic entries in it and telling the GM to figure out what qualifies is going to result in chaos.
I agree with how Easl put it.
Thinking of theme just as tags is one way to theme. Like lighting is a theme sure, and my favoorite. But they went with a broader approach to themeing by a collection of concepts rather than more narrow themeing like tags. This actually creates much more freedom for players. All GMs have to do is consider, is this spell reasonable? if so allow it.I remember you dislike Ars perhaps the most. For Ars anything related to to either written forms or communication or unraveling of magic fit the theme. So if a player thinking eldritch horror theme Ars wizard who writes all of their spells into their book in Aklo looking at whispers of the void for a rank 4 curriculum spell, I would say yea that works.