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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Mystic Archivist: The Wizard Subclass With The Urge To Theurge



zhdarkstar
2015-03-24, 08:30 PM
Mystic Archivists are wizards who have learned how to replicate the way deities allow clerics to manipulate the Weave, but from an academic perspective. Some may be found working as scribes in various temples, particularly those who worship deities of Knowledge and Magic. Others can be found on the battlefield, using their knowledge and versatility to provide field support to their allies. Of course, this field of study sometimes attracts the attention of corrupt and delusional spellcasters, whose god complexes are fed by their avarice for wielding the magic of the divine.

Clerical Savant: Beginning at 2nd level when you select this subclass, you may learn cantrips and prepare spells from the cleric spell list as you gain class levels. Count half of your wizard class levels (rounded up) as cleric levels to determine what cleric spells can be inscribed in your spellbook. Only one of the spells added to your spellbook when you gain wizard class levels, including this level, can be a cleric spell not shared with the wizard spell list. Cleric spells found written in holy tomes, scrolls, and ritual books can be copied into your spellbook. The time and gold required to copy cleric spells into your spellbook is double that of wizard spells of the same level.
You may use a holy symbol as a spellcasting focus for casting cleric spells. Those spells also found on the wizard spell list can use either type of associated spellcasting focus. These spells use Intelligence as your spellcasting ability and count towards the total amount of spells that you can prepare each day. Cleric spells that do not also appear on the wizard spell list do not count as wizard spells for other class features.

Administrative Orientation Training: At 2nd level, you understand that the preliminary martial training of clerics is designed to prevent somatic gestures from being hindered by the weight and mass of armaments. You gain proficiency with light armor and two languages of your choice.

Dark Knowledge: Beginning at 6th level, you can draw upon your expansive knowledge to gain the upper hand against your foes. Each use counts as two levels expended from your Arcane Recovery limit. You cannot use this ability if you cannot use Arcane Recovery. You begin with Tactics and unlock new dark knowledge options as your class level increases.
Using dark knowledge requires a bonus action and an Intelligence (Arcana/History/Nature/Religion) check of a type appropriate to the creature faced. The DC of the check is 8 + CR (rounded up) of the target creature. The dark knowledge can affect a single creature or all creatures of the same race, depending on the effect used. A target creature must be within 60 feet, and you must be aware of the creature's presence, although you need not have a line of sight to it. The effects of dark knowledge last for 1 minute or until you break concentration, as if concentrating on a spell. An individual creature or race affected by dark knowledge cannot be affected by it again for the next 24 hours.

Dark Knowledge - Tactics: You know the general combat behaviors of creatures of that race, granting you and all allies within 30 feet advantage on attack rolls made against those creatures.

Dark Knowledge - Foe: Starting at 10th level, you can direct your allies to attack vital spots of your enemies. On a successful Intelligence check, you and all allies within 30 feet gain a bonus to weapon damage rolls made against the target creatures equal to your Intelligence ability modifier. This damage is of the same type as the weapon.

Dark Knowledge - Foreknowledge: At 14th level, you can better prepare your allies for the attacks of the affected creature, making it harder for the creature to land blows and successfully deal damage. Attacks by the affected creature against you and allies within 30 feet have disadvantage.

Giant2005
2015-03-25, 02:11 AM
I don't really like this at all.
The concept of squeezing in some Clerical stuff at the expense of subclass abilities works well and I think the Clerical Savant ability was quite restrained and very impressive.
However the rest of the class abilities are far too good considering everything that the Wizard/Cleric already is and you shouldn't be giving it such superior Martial bonuses. You have essentially turned a full Wizard/half Cleric (An already potent combo) into a full Wizard/half Cleric/quarter Fighter/half buffbot. Obviously I made those ratios up on the spot but the point still stands - what you have made equates to more than a single class should. If my ratios are to be trusted, then your design equates to more than twice what a single class should.
Firstly, those proficiencies (The Shield in particular) should be toned down quite a bit. Take some inspiration from the Warlock which is already a partial gish - something with over 1.5x times the spellcasting talent of that partial gish should not have better martial proficiencies. At the absolute most, the extra proficiencies should match the Warlock's but really, they should be a notch lower.
As for Dark Knowledge, the abilities it bestows are pretty powerful but not so far beyond the realm of balance. What aggravates the issue more is the mechanic by which you limit their uses. You are essentially allowing their use Wizard level /2 times per long rest which is far too often for such potent abilities. The abilities themselves are at least comparable to (And less-conservatively probably more powerful than) Channel Divinity which a Cleric can use a total of 3x when at max level and a Paladin can only use a single time. You should be looking more to those values for inspiration which means the possible 10 uses per day is far too excessive. The idea of using Arcane Recovery as the limitation in itself is actually pretty good, I just don't think the 1 spell level trade is very balanced. Two or three spell levels per use seems more fitting or you could even untie the cost from the Dark Knowledge base power and add it in to each potential use (So you could have variable costs for each ability). Although Ihaving said that, I'm having trouble picking any of those abilities to be weak enough to warrant a lesser cost.

zhdarkstar
2015-03-25, 01:44 PM
Thanks for the feedback. When designing homebrew, I usually take the approach of laying everything out that my mind comes up with first and then proceed to pare for balance.

Glad you liked Clerical Savant. Balancing the extra spell access was the biggest design hurdle. I made sure that there was a mechanism that would allow the Mystic Theurge dual casting progression to work with 5e multicasters.

As for AOT, perhaps limit it to 2 languages, light armor, and shields? I know that the 3.5 archivist had medium armor and no shields, but swapping the two allows full compatibility with the holy symbol options. I'm on the fence about keeping the simple weapons, so arguments can be made for both sides before the next revision.

Would increasing DK cost to 2 levels expended be a better balance? It would put it in line with other Arcane Tradition abilities with Int mod uses per long rest.

Edit: One of the other ideas I originally had for Clerical Savant was to have the prepared cleric spells use up Arcane Recovery levels instead of spell slots. Do you think putting that back in would work better?

Giant2005
2015-03-26, 01:32 AM
As for AOT, perhaps limit it to 2 languages, light armor, and shields? I know that the 3.5 archivist had medium armor and no shields, but swapping the two allows full compatibility with the holy symbol options. I'm on the fence about keeping the simple weapons, so arguments can be made for both sides before the next revision.
I wouldn't really worry about a holy symbol so much - the character could easily wear an Ankh if they needed to or more likely just use a component pouch as that would single-handedly cover all of their spellcasting needs. As for the Shield itself, I really think that proficiency really is too much. Shield Proficiency is imo. the most important proficiency a class can have - it is the main reason why a caster would dip into a Martial class (That and Con proficiency). On a class that doesn't need weapons for their damage, it is an extra 2 AC with no real opportunity cost that is equivalent in power to a Very Rare magic item. The other proficiencies aren't really a big deal but giving that one out to a more than a full caster is too much imo.


Would increasing DK cost to 2 levels expended be a better balance? It would put it in line with other Arcane Tradition abilities with Int mod uses per long rest.
Yes that sounds quite reasonable.


Edit: One of the other ideas I originally had for Clerical Savant was to have the prepared cleric spells use up Arcane Recovery levels instead of spell slots. Do you think putting that back in would work better?
No that doesn't sound as good really - there aren't enough uses for any serious clerical uses and those Cleric spells should be more of a focus than Dark Knowledge. If you limited the Cleric spells to that extent, you would probably be better off just playing a Wizard with a dip in Cleric levels in order to make a Theurge.

zhdarkstar
2015-03-26, 01:36 PM
Changed AOT and DK as discussed. Something still feels off though, in terms of balance. Perhaps changing CS so that spell slots expended on cleric spells cannot be regained using Arcane Recovery? There has to be a bigger opportunity cost for casting cleric spells. Probably going to add caveats to prevent cleric spells from working with Spell Mastery and Signature Spells.

Giant2005
2015-03-26, 09:11 PM
Changed AOT and DK as discussed. Something still feels off though, in terms of balance. Perhaps changing CS so that spell slots expended on cleric spells cannot be regained using Arcane Recovery? There has to be a bigger opportunity cost for casting cleric spells. Probably going to add caveats to prevent cleric spells from working with Spell Mastery and Signature Spells.

Just specify that they don't count as Wizard spells - that would stop most of the Wizard's class abilities from working with them. The only one that would would be Arcane Recovery due to it being pretty hard to stop working... Arcane Recovery recovers spell slots and spell slots aren't differentiated between classes. Any attempt to stop the Cleric spells from working with it would be an extremely cumbersome alteration. I'd just go ahead and let the Cleric Spells benefit from Arcane Recovery if I were you.
You might want to specificy what casting stat you want the Cleric spells to be using though.

zhdarkstar
2015-03-27, 08:32 PM
Just specify that they don't count as Wizard spells - that would stop most of the Wizard's class abilities from working with them. The only one that would would be Arcane Recovery due to it being pretty hard to stop working... Arcane Recovery recovers spell slots and spell slots aren't differentiated between classes. Any attempt to stop the Cleric spells from working with it would be an extremely cumbersome alteration. I'd just go ahead and let the Cleric Spells benefit from Arcane Recovery if I were you.
You might want to specificy what casting stat you want the Cleric spells to be using though.
The casting stat was always Intelligence, like the Archivist from 3e. It was buried in the first lines of Clerical Savant. Just moved it to the last paragraph of the ability and added the clarification on division of spell lists.