Wizard ACF (Prohibited to One School) (P.E.A.C.H.)

[piratesthatpwn]

The wizard chooses 1 School of magic and prohibits the rest. In return She gains:

1. Spells in the chosen school are now considered one level lower. Exempli gratia:


-A level 0 spell is still a level 0 spell
-A level 1 spell is now a level 0 spell
-A level 2 spell is now a level 1 spell
-A level 3 spell is now a level 2 spell

So on and so on
This ACF also stacks with other ACFs where you prohibit schools of mage such as Focused Specialist from the Complete Mage and Specialist Wizard (ACF) Variants
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I would really enjoy your thoughts on this ACF especially in the areas of balance. (I believe it to be weaker then standard wizard.)

Any suggestions or comments/complains are welcome. (In fact the sole reason why I'm posting this is to receive them :smallsmile:)

[Balmas]

Well, this has interesting potential. If it stacks with other prohibitions, then you can have such nonsense as a focused abjurer with levels of Red Wizard with no additional penalties.

Honestly, I can't see many people doing this. The strength of wizards is that they can do pretty much anything given time. This class feature locks a wizard into one role for the course of his career. An evoker will only have one attack: kill it with the element of your choice. A transmuter has a bit more luck, being able to eventually get spells from his shapeshifted forms.

[Othesemo]

I'm imagining a level one wizard taking this and precocious apprentice and casting Haste. Or Stinking Cloud. Or Displacement. Or Fly. At level 1.

While it severely limits the number of ways that the wizard can be broken, it makes what ways remain even more potent. By my estimation, this would bump the wizard down to an obscenely powerful tier 2. Which is not a good thing.

[Jarian]

While it severely limits the number of ways that the wizard can be broken, it makes what ways remain even more potent. By my estimation, this would bump the wizard down to an obscenely powerful tier 2. Which is not a good thing.

Precisely. While this variant Wizard falls cleanly under the "10 nukes instead of 10,000" tier 2 category, it's developing nukes while the other countries are still using flintlock weapons, for the sake of a comparison. I can't say I much like the thought of that.

[TuggyNE]

I'm imagining a level one wizard taking this and precocious apprentice and casting Haste. Or Stinking Cloud. Or Displacement. Or Fly. At level 1.

While it severely limits the number of ways that the wizard can be broken, it makes what ways remain even more potent. By my estimation, this would bump the wizard down to an obscenely powerful tier 2. Which is not a good thing.

I have to agree with this. Shapechange at 15 is even more broken than usual, and the ability to stack up metamagic more than others is just messy. On the other hand, the severe lack of versatility makes for something of a one-trick pony — with, as mentioned, an absurdly powerful trick.


I'm of the general opinion that the schools of magic are not sufficiently well-defined, or sufficiently balanced, to make any rigid system based on them work well; the T3 limited-list casters make various tweaks to their lists to improve things, and that's a good pattern to follow.

[sreservoir]

conjuration and transmutation and illusion exist, so.

[ngilop]

Under this rule the spells that make wizards able to break games and campaigns now come online 2 whole levels earlier, something that I can say I won't be getting behind to support anytime soon.

[sreservoir]

depending on the specifics of the implementation, this also makes spell reprieve possibly useful; pick two of conjuration, transmutation, illusion, probably the former two.

oh, and transmuters screw things up. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/specialistWizardVariants.htm#spellVersatility)

[Madara]

Shadow
Craft
Mage


I win