Expanding War Magic

[Shadean207]

My thoughts revolve around the School of War Magic, and specifically their Level 6 feature: Power Surge

As a reminder, this is what the text says:

"Starting at 6th level, you can store magical energy within yourself to later empower your damaging spells.

You can store a maximum number of power surges equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of one). Whenever you finish a long rest, your number of power surges resets to one. Whenever you successfully end a spell with Dispel Magic or Counterspell, you gain one power surge, as you steal magic from the spell you foiled. If you end a short rest with no power surges, you gain one power surge.

Once per turn when you deal damage to a creature or object with a wizard spell, you can spend one power surge to deal extra force damage to that target. The extra damage equals half your wizard level."


Now I have never played any kind of Wizard yet, obviously including War Magic, but this feature intrigues me. Specifically, why it is limited to only Dispel Magic and Counterspell. Granted, both are almost essential for any full caster with access to them, but it got me thinking:
Could there be more options to use this feature on?

So, I went through just the base Wizard spells and dug up some more spells that Power Surge might or should work with.
The spells are as follows:
- Absorb Elements
- Shield
- Remove Curse
- Banishment (by storing some energy left behind by the banished being)

What do you think of this addition? Could it work? Would it break a balance? Is it necessary to power up an underused feature? I don't have any insights on that yet, and I am interested in feedback from more experienced players

[noob]

My thoughts revolve around the School of War Magic, and specifically their Level 6 feature: Power Surge

As a reminder, this is what the text says:

"Starting at 6th level, you can store magical energy within yourself to later empower your damaging spells.

You can store a maximum number of power surges equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of one). Whenever you finish a long rest, your number of power surges resets to one. Whenever you successfully end a spell with Dispel Magic or Counterspell, you gain one power surge, as you steal magic from the spell you foiled. If you end a short rest with no power surges, you gain one power surge.

Once per turn when you deal damage to a creature or object with a wizard spell, you can spend one power surge to deal extra force damage to that target. The extra damage equals half your wizard level."


Now I have never played any kind of Wizard yet, obviously including War Magic, but this feature intrigues me. Specifically, why it is limited to only Dispel Magic and Counterspell. Granted, both are almost essential for any full caster with access to them, but it got me thinking:
Could there be more options to use this feature on?

So, I went through just the base Wizard spells and dug up some more spells that Power Surge might or should work with.
The spells are as follows:
- Absorb Elements
- Shield
- Remove Curse
- Banishment (by storing some energy left behind by the banished being)

What do you think of this addition? Could it work? Would it break a balance? Is it necessary to power up an underused feature? I don't have any insights on that yet, and I am interested in feedback from more experienced players
Absorb elements, shield and banishments are already solid spells so adding an extra effect on top of those might be too much.
However adding the effect to remove curse is fine because it is a spell you are going to cast rarely.

Please note that this thread might be better in the homebrew design section of the forum.

[MrStabby]

My thoughts revolve around the School of War Magic, and specifically their Level 6 feature: Power Surge

As a reminder, this is what the text says:

"Starting at 6th level, you can store magical energy within yourself to later empower your damaging spells.

You can store a maximum number of power surges equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of one). Whenever you finish a long rest, your number of power surges resets to one. Whenever you successfully end a spell with Dispel Magic or Counterspell, you gain one power surge, as you steal magic from the spell you foiled. If you end a short rest with no power surges, you gain one power surge.

Once per turn when you deal damage to a creature or object with a wizard spell, you can spend one power surge to deal extra force damage to that target. The extra damage equals half your wizard level."


Now I have never played any kind of Wizard yet, obviously including War Magic, but this feature intrigues me. Specifically, why it is limited to only Dispel Magic and Counterspell. Granted, both are almost essential for any full caster with access to them, but it got me thinking:
Could there be more options to use this feature on?

So, I went through just the base Wizard spells and dug up some more spells that Power Surge might or should work with.
The spells are as follows:
- Absorb Elements
- Shield
- Remove Curse
- Banishment (by storing some energy left behind by the banished being)

What do you think of this addition? Could it work? Would it break a balance? Is it necessary to power up an underused feature? I don't have any insights on that yet, and I am interested in feedback from more experienced players

I think there are two issues here.

The first is that you are looking at one feature in isolation rather than the sub-class as a whole. Now if you could say that the war wizard around level six were to be weaker than most other classes, after factoring in available spells and previous abilities, then sure you could buff it.

Just because a particular feature on a class is a small part of it'spower doesnt mean its in need of a buff. If it were then presumably priority should be given to abilities like thieves cant.


The other thing is that this suggestion puts the war wizard squarely stomping on the toes of the abjuration wizard. It should not be better at abjuration spells than the abjurer.

[Valmark]

My thoughts revolve around the School of War Magic, and specifically their Level 6 feature: Power Surge

As a reminder, this is what the text says:

"Starting at 6th level, you can store magical energy within yourself to later empower your damaging spells.

You can store a maximum number of power surges equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of one). Whenever you finish a long rest, your number of power surges resets to one. Whenever you successfully end a spell with Dispel Magic or Counterspell, you gain one power surge, as you steal magic from the spell you foiled. If you end a short rest with no power surges, you gain one power surge.

Once per turn when you deal damage to a creature or object with a wizard spell, you can spend one power surge to deal extra force damage to that target. The extra damage equals half your wizard level."


Now I have never played any kind of Wizard yet, obviously including War Magic, but this feature intrigues me. Specifically, why it is limited to only Dispel Magic and Counterspell. Granted, both are almost essential for any full caster with access to them, but it got me thinking:
Could there be more options to use this feature on?

So, I went through just the base Wizard spells and dug up some more spells that Power Surge might or should work with.
The spells are as follows:
- Absorb Elements
- Shield
- Remove Curse
- Banishment (by storing some energy left behind by the banished being)

What do you think of this addition? Could it work? Would it break a balance? Is it necessary to power up an underused feature? I don't have any insights on that yet, and I am interested in feedback from more experienced players
Depending on the DM the ability to store Power Surges after casting Counterspell and Dispel Magic varies from effective to utterly useless- this would make it more widely applicable and I don't see it as too much of a buff/'fix'.

I wouldn't put Banishment together with the others though- if only because it breaks the theme of Istantaneous spells.

EDIT: Imo the war wizard subclass isn't very good in the first place unless as a dip either, so this buff wouldn't be out of line at all.


The other thing is that this suggestion puts the war wizard squarely stomping on the toes of the abjuration wizard. It should not be better at abjuration spells than the abjurer.

Would it? The war wizard's interactions with abjuration spells are completely different from the abjurer's ones.

The WW gets a bit of damage to one creature once a turn if it uses damage spells and recharges with only a few specific spells.

The Abjurer heals up (or rather heals the ward that can be used to protect allies) with all abjuration spells and boosts two of them (DM and Counterspell).

[Rukelnikov]

My thoughts revolve around the School of War Magic, and specifically their Level 6 feature: Power Surge

As a reminder, this is what the text says:

"Starting at 6th level, you can store magical energy within yourself to later empower your damaging spells.

You can store a maximum number of power surges equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of one). Whenever you finish a long rest, your number of power surges resets to one. Whenever you successfully end a spell with Dispel Magic or Counterspell, you gain one power surge, as you steal magic from the spell you foiled. If you end a short rest with no power surges, you gain one power surge.

Once per turn when you deal damage to a creature or object with a wizard spell, you can spend one power surge to deal extra force damage to that target. The extra damage equals half your wizard level."


Now I have never played any kind of Wizard yet, obviously including War Magic, but this feature intrigues me. Specifically, why it is limited to only Dispel Magic and Counterspell. Granted, both are almost essential for any full caster with access to them, but it got me thinking:
Could there be more options to use this feature on?

So, I went through just the base Wizard spells and dug up some more spells that Power Surge might or should work with.
The spells are as follows:
- Absorb Elements
- Shield
- Remove Curse
- Banishment (by storing some energy left behind by the banished being)

What do you think of this addition? Could it work? Would it break a balance? Is it necessary to power up an underused feature? I don't have any insights on that yet, and I am interested in feedback from more experienced players

I think Absorb Elements and Shield are ok because as a WW you don't really wanna cast either, since they are reactions and casting either means not using your lvl 2 ability which is a similar but weaker effect.

Power surge doesn't deal that much damage to begin with, so giving extra uses of it at the expense of spending low level slots seems like a fair trade, and would make it so you can have "weak" reaction at will, or strong reaction for extra damage later. And later on, once you hit 14, they aren't even adding damage anymore, since using your Arcane Deflection would deal the same amount of damage as Power Surge on up to 3 targets. On a subclass that's pretty much defined by its reactions I think its a fitting and fair buff.

Remove Curse fits thematically, but it probably won't come into play that much.

Banishment I don't think its necessary here, and it doesn't even really fit the theme.