Phrasing help with a Wizard subclass: School of Dark Magic

[SyntheticHuman]

This is a subclass based on Dark Magic from The Dragon Prince. I'd love some help making the rules more coherent and concise, as well as balancing help. :smallbiggrin:

School of Dark Magic
Long ago, an enclave of Human mages grew jealous of the innate magic that other creatures possessed. These mages discovered a way to steal this magic for their own. These wizards became the first Dark Mages, a type of Wizard nearly universally reviled. The secrets of Dark Magic allow one to use the magical power of others for their own benefit.

Antimagic Arcana
Starting when you choose this school at 2nd level, you may choose a number of creature types equal to your Intelligence modifier from aberrations, celestials, constructs, dragons, fey, fiends, elementals, giants, monstrosities, oozes, and undead. You may gain advantage on a spell attack against a creature of one of these types, or force a creature of one of those types to gain disadvantage on one saving throw against a spell you cast on it. You may gain this advantage or force this disadvantage a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier, regaining all spent uses on a long rest. Whenever you complete a short or long rest, you may exchange one of your selected creature types for another, and when your Intelligence modifier changes, you choose what creature types you lose or gain.

Absorb Magic
Starting when you choose this school at 2nd level, you gain the ability to steal the magical energy of a fallen creature. Whenever a creature that has the ability to cast any spell dies within 120 feet of you, as a reaction, you may regain expended spell slots whose combined slot level are equal to half its challenge rating or level, whichever is applicable (rounded down, minimum of zero). For example, if a spellcasting creature of challenge rating six died within range, you may regain one 2nd level slot and one 1st level slot, or three 1st level slots. After you use this ability, you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again.

Arcane Rebuke/B]
Starting at 6th level, as a reaction when a creature within range of one of your cantrips casts a spell, you may immediately cast that cantrip, targeting that creature. After you use this ability once, you must finish a long rest before you can use it again.

[B]Spell Absorption
Starting at 10th level, you gain the ability to absorb the power of incoming spells. As a reaction when a spell is cast that targets you or includes you in its area of effect, you may make a check using your spell attack bonus against a DC equal to 10 + the spell's level. On a success, the spell has no effect, and the originator wastes any resources they used to create this effect. If a spell is canceled by this effect, you regain an expended spell slot of a level equal to half the level of the spell that was canceled, rounded down. You can use this ability a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier, regaining all expended uses on a long rest.

Borrowed Enchantments (Warning: This feature potentially severely unbalanced and/or overly verbose feature)
Starting at 14th level, you learn to mimic the magical abilities of fallen creatures. As a reaction when a creature dies within 120 feet of you, you may choose one of its features, actions, bonus actions, or reactions, or you may choose its movement speeds, saving throw proficiencies, skill proficiencies, condition immunities, or damage vulnerabilities, resistances, and immunities. You magically create an arcane token that contains this feature, conjuring a Tiny object that weighs one fourth of a pound and is immune to all damage. You may have only one of these tokens at a time. If you try to create a new token while you already have one, the old one is destroyed. As an action, you may magically destroy this token and gain the benefits of the feature for the next 8 hours. You cannot gain proficiency in a skill or saving throw twice from this feature. If you chose a Spellcasting feature, you gain the ability to cast any spells the creature was able to cast as Wizard spells. Any features you have that contradict the feature you chose are overwritten as long as the feature persists. You may benefit from only one use of this feature at a time, and if you activate another token while you still have the feature of another, the old feature ends and is replaced by the new one. You may also choose to end the feature early as a bonus action.


Version 1.0.3 - Replaced Shadow Touch with Arcane Rebuke so that it fits with the theme better, nerfed Borrowed Enchantments and moved it to 14th level, heavily nerfed Spell Absorption and moved it to 10th level.

[JNAProductions]

Shadow Touch could probably have its wording cleaned up, but I get what you're going for. Seems fine.

Absorb Magic avoids the bag of rats problem by requiring a casting creature.
That being said, I already see a way to cheese it. If you have a Zealot Barbarian of level 7 or 8 plus (does this round up or down?) who has racial casting and you've taken enough Cleric levels to get Revivify, you can have the Zealot die, regaining a 3rd level and a 1st level slot. Then, use that 3rd level to revive them. Repeat.
I doubt it would ACTUALLY be abused this way, but I also think that it's either too niche (not enough spellcasting foes to merit its inclusion) or too good (spellcasting foes are common, meaning your slots are ENDLESS).
I'd replace this entirely-maybe something like Dark One's Blessing?

Consume Life feels real problematic. Now bags of rats gives you infinite first level slots.

Borrowed Enchantments is, as you note, overly wordy. I'd just do something else-maybe something about coercing control over other people's spells? Used proactively (take Concentration from a friend to let them use another Concentration spell) or offensively (turn an enemy's spell against themselves!).

Antimagic Aura reads as not shutting you down. Which... Yeah, that's too good if your foes commonly sling spells.

[SyntheticHuman]

^Just realized the "bag of rats" problem, as you put it. I'm going for a subclass that revolves around the Absorb Magic and Consume Life features, so I'll try to fix them up real quick. I'm gonna keep working on the Borrowed Enchantments feature.

[Catullus64]

Absorb Magic is the one that I think has the potential to cause problems for a few reasons. The first is that Challenge Rating is a bit of a wonky thing to tie to spell levels, because they scale very differently. At early levels, when you're mostly recharging 1st and 2nd level slots, that's one thing, though still very strong. But at higher levels, if you can start refilling your 6th+ level slots, that's where I think it starts to break the curve a bit. Most spell-slot regaining features, like Flexible Casting or Arcane Recovery, explicitly cap out at 5th level; for this, potentially limitless-use feature, I would have it cap no higher than 3rd. Definitely cap the number of extra slots you can regain before a Long Rest.

Tying it to Challenge Rating or Level makes it a little unfriendly to DMs who design their own monsters. (Part of that's not your fault, the rules for assigning CR to custom monsters are a mess). If this is for your own table that's probably not an issue, but worth considering if you intend this for publication.

I also think that 'spell-casting or non-humanoid non-beast' is a little too broad, though I also think that only 'spell-casting' is too narrow. I can't think of a particularly good middle ground here.

Finally, where it says 'regain spell slots', I would add the word expended. So no player tries to use it to build up a huge stockpile of spell slots above their normal max.

[MrStabby]

School of Dark Magic
Long ago, an enclave of Human mages grew jealous of the innate magic that other creatures possessed. These mages discovered a way to steal this magic for their own. These wizards became the first Dark Mages, a type of Wizard nearly universally reviled. The secrets of Dark Magic allow one to use the magical power of others for their own benefit.

Antimagic Arcana
Starting when you choose this school at 2nd level, you have advantage on spell attacks against undead and constructs, and they have disadvantage against your spells. In addition, your spells ignore the damage resistances and immunities of those creature types.

OK, this is one of those things that is going to be campaign dependent. Even at its most powerful, I don't think this is likey to be that broken. A lot of the attack spells are just oing to be worse than a martial atacking with weapons (even wth advantage) and the targets will have a condition immunity to most of the nasty stuff they otherwise might fail against. Its fine, but might be a bit 'unfun' in the sense that it doesn't make you great at stuff but makes you less bad at stuff you were bad at. There are some exceptions - spells like banishment, now with disadvantage on the save could be nasty as it doesn't have charmed/fear condition and spells like confusion are playable. I don't really feel this coming from the class description though.



Absorb Magic
Starting when you choose this school at 2nd level, you gain the ability to steal the magical energy of a fallen creature. Whenever a creature that either has the ability to cast any spell or is not a humanoid or beast dies within 120 feet of you, as a reaction, you may regain spent spell slots whose combined slot level are equal to half its challenge rating or level, whichever is applicable (rounded down, minimum of zero). For example, if a spellcasting creature of challenge rating six died within range, you may regain one 2nd level slot and one 1st level slot, or three 1st level slots.

So for friendly creatures this provides a nice bit of revovery and opens up spells like conjure elemental or similar. Taking spells like conjure beasts (which are actually Fey) through things like Eberron backgrounds could give a steady supply of low level spell slots. It gives a nice feel of harvesting back your magic. What happens to a creature with no defined CR, like another PC?



Shadow Touch
Starting at 6th level, you may cast a spell with a range of touch targeting a creature that is outside of that range as long as it is currently touching an area of dim light or darkness, such as its shadow.
Very cool ability. I like it, and I see why it works with the word "dark", though it doesn't seem to fit the actual description (though it may be the descripton that could be amended).




Borrowed Enchantments (Warning: This feature potentially severely unbalanced and/or overly verbose feature)
Starting at 10th level, you learn to mimic the magical abilities of fallen creatures. As a reaction when a creature dies within 120 feet of you, you may choose one of its features, actions, bonus actions, or reactions, or you may choose its movement speeds, saving throw proficiencies, skill proficiencies, condition immunities, or damage vulnerabilities, resistances, and immunities. You magically create an arcane token that contains this feature, conjuring a Tiny object that weighs one fourth of a pound and is immune to all damage. You may have a number of these tokens less than or equal to your Intelligence modifier at any given time. If you already have a number equal to your Intelligence modifier and try to make another, you must destroy one of your existing tokens, gaining none of the benefits of that token, or you fail to create a new one. As an action, you may magically destroy this token and gain the benefits of the feature for the next 8 hours. You cannot gain proficiency in a skill or saving throw twice from this feature. If you chose a Spellcasting feature, you gain the ability to cast any spells the creature was able to cast as Wizard spells. Any features you have that contradict the feature you chose are overwritten as long as the feature persists. You may benefit from only one use of this feature at a time, and if you activate another token while you still have the feature of another, the old feature ends and is replaced by the new one. You may also choose to end the feature early as a bonus action.

Sounds like it could be fun to play with, hell to be at a table where someone else plays this. Its slow enough with players chosing from their own spells with which they are familliar but to give them a bundle of other class abilities that are constantly rotating on top? Quite challenging. here are also a bundle of thins that just won't be balanced. Giving a dragon breath weapon for example could be a lot of damage or the perfect immunity for a fight turning things around. Keeping a library of these things to hand is not only a lot of extra power but is also a lot of extra flexability. Knowing you have such a token may mean you don't bother to learn some niche spells, freeing up another resource. If you capped it at a creature with CR equal to half your level or something, then it might be a bit better for balance, though likey still as problematic for speed.




Antimagic Presence.
Starting at 14th level, you gain the ability to manifest an aura that consumes magical energy around you. As a bonus action on your turn, you begin to absorb magical effects. This effect persists for one minute or until you lose your concentration, as if you were concentrating on a spell. Any spell that targets you or includes you in its area of effect has no effect, and the originator wastes any resources they used to create this effect. If a spell is canceled by this effect, you gain an extra spell slot of a level equal to the level of the spell that was canceled, provided it is a slot level you are able to cast. This slot persists until you spend it or take a long rest. Once you use this ability, you must finish a long rest before you can use it again.

I Think its worth changing this to a recovery of the slot so you must have already spent it. Also, capping the slot recovered at 5th level matches other recovery options - and I think this might be better (evn if shifting to a short rest to compensate). High level spells can ruin fights for other players (a price to pay for having a wizard in the party) but the trade-off is that this is usually a once per day thing.

[SyntheticHuman]

Thank you all so much for all the help! I think I still have more to do, but it's looking much less broken now. I'm still trying to make it an easier subclass to play, but that may be a lost cause. Let me know what you think of the new version.