Wizard Thematics are Bad

[PhoenixPhyre]

So, quick question...assuming Wizard really does have "no thematics", is "generic", etc., why is that a bad thing?

Fighter and Wizard both exist as a solid baseline for characters. They may have little innate identity, but it's what makes them flexible out of the box without needing to worry about your dumb tablemates foisting off specific stereotypes any time you try to do something "out of the norm".

Nobody ever tells someone "that's not Fighter-like behavior" or "you really don't seem like a Wizard right now", but you do get a lot of morons who'll raise their eyebrows at you if you're a Barbarian who isn't constantly pissed off and dumber than a brick, or a Bard who *gasp* doesn't want to **** everything that moves and half the things that don't.

5e suffers from this issue already in a mechanical sense (why can't I make an archery-focused Barbarian?), what is the value in exacerbating the problem by "gutting" classes who don't meet some arbitrary standard of "good thematics"?

Because broad thematics mean that
a) you eat into everyone else's design space
b) there are no natural balancing limits
c) bland bland bland bland bland
d) encourages people to think about mechanics first

D&D (and any class-based system) works best when the classes actually have coherence within themselves both mechanically and thematically. If you want customization, play a point-buy system. Don't try to awkwardly construct it in a class-based system.

[Rynjin]

Because broad thematics mean that
a) you eat into everyone else's design space
b) there are no natural balancing limits
c) bland bland bland bland bland
d) encourages people to think about mechanics first

Being honest, none of these read as problems to me. D is just how some people build characters, and it works fine. A could be argued more as "reduces bloat" because now you don't have to have a separate class for each specialty (see: 3.5's Beguiler being a suped up Enchantment Wizard). B applies to every class, and C as mentioned is a matter of a specific character, not the class. Bland as a class is an UPSIDE, because it means they can be whoever you want them to be.

D&D (and any class-based system) works best when the classes actually have coherence within themselves both mechanically and thematically. If you want customization, play a point-buy system. Don't try to awkwardly construct it in a class-based system.

This is more an issue with 5e being very anti-customization and not one of "customization doesn't work in a class based system". There are plenty of customizable class based systems. That is, most class-based systems.

The only class based systems I know of that don't allow customization are all video games. JRPGs at that, the most rigid and mechanically boring or all RPGs.

[sithlordnergal]

I mean...are Wizards really eating into other classes design spaces though? Looking at the full casters we have:

- Artificer: Guy who builds/creates magical artifacts to gain magic
- Bard: Guy who uses song and dance to gain magic
- Cleric: Guy who worships a deity/ideal to gain magic
- Druid: Guy who strictly adheres to nature to gain magic
- Paladin: Guy who worships a deity/idea to gain magic, but punches harder
- Ranger: Guy who studies/lives in nature to gain magic
- Sorcerer: Guy born with magic
- Warlock: Guy who traded something for magic
- Wizard: Guy who studies magic to gain magic


Out of those casting classes, the only one even close to the Wizard's themes is the Artificer, and Artificers are pretty different from Wizards since they, you know, build things. Heck, if you're worried classes eating into design space, shouldn't you be more concerned about Paladins, which literally have the same magic source as a Cleric with the only difference being "Paladins hit better"?

Now, I will agree that Wizards probably need some of their spells moved over to other classes. There are plenty of Wizard spells that I look at and wonder "Why isn't this a Warlock or Sorcerer Spell instead"? But having a somewhat generic arcane spell caster is a good thing over having eight different classes that, together, end up doing what the one wizard does. I find the base Wizard class is very similar to the Warlock class, in that its very easy to tweak the Wizard into being whatever you like instead of having a ton of classes.

Heck, I find the fact that 5e only really has 13 or 14 official, printed classes to be one of its greatest strengths. I far prefer having fewer classes with decent subclasses over the 66 main classes of 3.5, and who knows how many prestige classes on top of that. By making the Wizard into a more generic class that can basically use any school of arcane magic, they made the Wizard modular. No need to make a Witch class like the 3.5 DMG suggests, you can just go School of Enchantment, and focus on the Enchantment spells.

[Psyren]

I agree with Rynjin on this one but I've been limiting my comments here since the premise of the thread is folks who are dissatisfied with wizards. I know there's zero chance of WotC *not* publishing them so I'm good.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

This is splitting into a worrying number of threads now, but I agree. Gut the Wizard spell list, moving most of them to its subclasses the same way all other casters do at this point (except those that get their casting via subclass).

Then after that we can tinker with extra flavor and features to fill the gap left behind, like by leaning more into Rituals or whatever.


I didn't even need to, in the last 5 years i've only seen one Wizard at the table. My group has just collectively realized that the vast majority of their character concepts are better represented elsewhere.

We haven't had a lot of wizards either... 2 I believe. One was a transmuter and the current one is an evoker, but they largely have used mostly the same spells. Many of those spells are ones that other casters have used when they could. My light cleric and fire dragon sorc come to mind here. My bard is just getting to the level where he can cast 4th level spells and it's likely Polymorph will be the first one I cast... and this is in the same campaign as the Evoker who predominanly uses his 4th level slots for Polymorph.

I don't know if it's that spell lists need to be trimmed down as much as spell balance needs to be a lot narrower combined with a benefit from casting spells from a wizard's school. I think that would differenciate wizards from each other and from other classes.

I hadn't thought about this before, but as I write this I guess I largely agree with the OP.

[Witty Username]

This reminds me of a conversation with a friend of mine, his take was that the fighter is frustrating, because it's design space amounts to, the best martial, making it either redundant or oppressive.

As for wizard changes
I liked the idea of prohibited schools from previous editions, picking a school or two you cannot learn made for alot of differentiation. Subclass spell lists could fit that, but I like prohibited lists better, a reoccurring issue I have with cleric concepts is the base cleric list being insufficient to convey the theme, I wouldn't want to inflict that design problem on another class. And what a character has deliberately avoided is more interesting.

I am not sure that is necessary though, wizards are not as all consuming as they are made out to be. Cleric and Wizard are IMO, the best class/subclass systems in the game, both classes can support multiple mindsets and playstyles simply by subclass and spell selection. They lose some precision in those themes, there is only so much one can do with a Nature cleric or an Enchanter wizard, but that ground leaves room for druid and bard to be strongly tied to much more specific concepts without leaving thematic gaps.

-
Wizard only looks like a problem because of the existence of sorcerers.
You will find warlock, bard, wizard, cleric and druids all play well together and have interesting niches. This isn't even a balance problem either as sorcerer has been the subject of several game breaking interactions and with the Tasha's and Xanathar's subclasses some perfectly reasonable and powerful options.
The issue is the lore of sorcerer is "wizard, but..." This means it's competing in the wizard's niche in thought, word, and deed.
Now, counter-argument here is that this issue disappear if the wizard is removed, as the sorcerer would fill the gap and fits a better balance point (allegedly, I would disagree in games that allow multiclassing, but eh, VMMV). That's fair, although I personally think that would leave little reason for the Int stat to still exist in the game. But it comes to personal preference.
Overall, sorcerer needs an identity either by dead man's boots or to find a calling to its exclusive lore.
And it is blasphemy that the only caster with the free time to learn other vocations, is the only one that doesn't have a martial subclass.
-
Overall, I see no major issues with the current system from a balance perspective. I wouldn't be against limitations based on specialization (but I tend to self impose those anyway, and at least my playgroup responds much more to theme over function). I would like to see other classes get cool things and feel like the sorcerer could use some extra pop.

[strangebloke]

So, quick question...assuming Wizard really does have "no thematics", is "generic", etc., why is that a bad thing?

Fighter and Wizard both exist as a solid baseline for characters. They may have little innate identity, but it's what makes them flexible out of the box without needing to worry about your dumb tablemates foisting off specific stereotypes any time you try to do something "out of the norm".

Nobody ever tells someone "that's not Fighter-like behavior" or "you really don't seem like a Wizard right now", but you do get a lot of morons who'll raise their eyebrows at you if you're a Barbarian who isn't constantly pissed off and dumber than a brick, or a Bard who *gasp* doesn't want to **** everything that moves and half the things that don't.

5e suffers from this issue already in a mechanical sense (why can't I make an archery-focused Barbarian?), what is the value in exacerbating the problem by "gutting" classes who don't meet some arbitrary standard of "good thematics"?

In the first place fighters are thematically unique in 5e by virtue of not being casters or otherwise supernatural. Only 2/13 classes in this game can be said to be truly 'mundane'. Fighter is one of these 2 classes. Comparatively not only are 9/13 classes "casters" like the wizard, but 5/13 (bard, artificer, wizard, warlock, sorcerer) are "arcane" spellcasters. Fighter is part of the least saturated conceptual space, Wizard is part of the most saturated space.

But yes, Fighters also are better thematically, because they are actually a blank canvas. You have to make real decisions prioritizing defense or offense, combat or utility. You have to pick a flavor. Every choice locks out other choices. You can be a rune knight and have runes, but this locks you out of Battlemaster and by extension most maneuvers. You can go with defense style for flexibility, but this prevents you from specializing in damage. You can build for HAM and STR, but this locks you out of DEX and CBE. etc. etc. The choices are interesting and expressive, and have significant aesthetic impacts. Fighters are limited, but you get to choose how they're limited. Other thematically good classes like the warlock or paladin work in this same way.

For contrast, a wizard who is a diviner gets 1 really busted ability and then... has spells. All the same spells any other wizard has. There's some opportunity cost here. It's impractical to actually have all the spells. But taking a spell over another doesn't lock it out, it only locks it out until you find a way to copy it or level up and get it that way. There's little room for expression here. So its a blank canvas painted in shades of gray; its tepid and tasteless. You can build to a theme if you want to, but nothing about the class actually pushes you that way. Rather the opposite in fact.

I hadn't thought about this before, but as I write this I guess I largely agree with the OP.

For me personally wizards are pretty normal in terms of popularity. 7 longrunning campaigns with something like 40 characters and there were about 3 characters with more than 2 levels of wizard. 2 diviners and an abjurer. That's a lot better than say artificers, which I've never seen, but a lot worse than fighters, of which I've seen six. But 2 out of these 3 wizard players dropped their character and switched to a completely different character partway because they weren't feeling it.

Anecdotes aren't evidence, but at least on Roll20 they're not super popular in spite of their strength.

[Kylar0990]

People often talk about the thematics of a class being bad. Rangers and Sorcerers usually get picked on here, though I've also seen barbarians and druids get mentioned as well.

But while these all have thematic issues, IMO they pale in comparison to the thematically most confused class in 5e: the wizard.

What is a wizard? Well lets ask the PHB:


A wizard is a magic guy. Yay. Now this is already a bad start. Everyone has magic in 5e. Less than a quarter of the game's design space is occupied by non-spellcasters, and of those that aren't spellcasters, a huge percentage are supernatural non-spellcasters like beast barbarians and ancestral barbarians. Having magic is literally less flavorful in 5e than not having magic.

The only claim to fame here is that wizards study magic, as opposed to an innate knowledge or a gifted knowledge. That's something. But this is a pretty narrow space, and the actual mechanics of the class undercut this. Scholars and academics would of all classes be the ones that you expect to specialize the most. After all, that's what academics do, right? You don't ever meet a guy who has a PHD in "science" do you?? But every wizard effectively does have a PHD in "magic." Wizards don't specialize. Its suboptimal for them to do so. An evoker usually will take fireball or lightning bolt, but an abjurer and an illusionist will as well. The evoker will be a little better with that particular spell, but its going to be good for all of them. They probably all have mage armor and shield and silvery barbs and find familiar and web and sleep and magic missile and counterspell as well, yeah?

Every Wizard is a supergeneralist who also get access to all the best-in-class spells for nearly every category, and taking only the good spells is usually going to be the best option. There's some variance of choice here because list of excellent spells is that long, but I've essentially never seen a truly focused/specialized wizard. Customization comes down to things like "skipping counterspell this time" or "getting light armor proficiency and skipping mage armor" or "taking lightning bolt instead of fireball."

Sure, not every wizard takes ALL the good spells, but there's little argument in favor of it.

And yeah, this has knock-on effects for other classes. Sorcerers in PF were the blasting class, sort of a red mage to the wizard's blue. But in DND, while sorcerers can be decent blasters, they have to give up on everything else to do that, while wizards are always going to be good blaster as well as whatever else they feel like. Bards are support and control casters, but again, wizards magically do most of the same things already and bards have to go back to their class features to have an impact.

Wizard thematics need a rework, just like 3e paladins did.

My proposed solution would be pushing a lot of best-in-class spells like fireball and lightning bolt to the specialized subclass lists, to reflect that this is an area of focus for the wizard in question. War Wizards and Evokers can learn Shatter and Rimes Binding Ice and fireball, but a master illusionist might not be familiar with those spells, or perhaps can learn them but not until higher than the normal level. Until then if they want to do blasting on the side they'll have to get by with Aganazzar's Scorcher and the like.

And yes, I'm not saying every good spell needs to leave the wizard list. Some things like counterspell are very on-brand for a wizard; others like mage armor are pretty essential to how the wizard functions as a class without feats or multiclassing.

In earlier editions when you chose your wizard school it limited you from opposing schools so you weren't just picking what you were good at but also what you couldn't do. This went a long way to making the different schools distinct.

[Psyren]

Anecdotes aren't evidence, but at least on Roll20 they're not super popular in spite of their strength.

I'd argue it's because of their strength. Pretty much everyone knows that any wizard can contribute to a party, even their quote-unquote "worst" subclasses like Graviturgist or Transmuter are still among the most powerful spellcasters in the game (which of course makes them among the most powerful character builds in the game.) So rather than prove that over and over, people play something weaker that they can have fun optimizing up.

Also, in every edition wizard has been the most complex spellcaster and 5e is no exception, because being able to change your spell list every morning + never having access to all of it on any given build comes with bookkeeping that other casters don't have to deal with. The others either have a limited list that they don't have to worry about changing, or they know their entire list so they don't have to agonize over selection at level-up / comb treasure piles for books and scrolls. The others don't have to worry about protecting their spellbook either.

So I'd say wizard being less played in practice has other explanations besides people thinking they're too open-ended thematically.

[Thunderous Mojo]

For contrast, a wizard who is a diviner gets 1 really busted ability and then... has spells. All the same spells any other wizard has. There's some opportunity cost here. It's impractical to actually have all the spells. But taking a spell over another doesn't lock it out, it only locks it out until you find a way to copy it or level up and get it that way. There's little room for expression here. So its a blank canvas painted in shades of gray; its tepid and tasteless. You can build to a theme if you want to, but nothing about the class actually pushes you that way. Rather the opposite in fact.

Spells are to Wizards, as Weapons are to Fighters.

A Battlemaster or Rune Knight Fighter can use whatever instrument of bloody death they wish to use. Spells are to Wizards, as weapons are to Fighters.

An Evoker Wizard no more receives the Portent Ability than a Rune Knight receives a Psi Energy Die.

Tasha’s introduced a Fighting Style that allows every Fighter to take a Maneuver. The Martial Initiate feat has been available since 5E’s release.

In theory, all of Strangebloke’s issues with the Wizard class are applicable to the Battlemaster Fighter. Aesthetic determinations are by nature idiosyncratic and somewhat capricious.

In essence, Strangebloke argument seems to be stating:

Wizards with the same spells, are the same, regardless of their subclass.

Which seems to discount Roleplaying.

Shaquille O’Neal and Kareem Abdul Jabar are both professional Basketball Centers, that are over 7 feet tall, that have won NBA Championship rings with the Los Angeles Lakers, and can shoot the Sky Hook.

In play, Kareem and Shaq must have been exactly the same, they had similar height statistics, class, and spells after all.🃏

[KorvinStarmast]

I still think Wizards (and Bards, for that matter) should be half-casters

Wizards no, bards yes, and I still owe Phoenix and a few others my attempt at a bard class built fro the ground up to be a half caster. Three sub classes Lore, Valor and either Glamor, Whispers or Creation. (I'll do the first two easy, but the third one I am gonna have to think about a bit more).

there's less of a need to slavishly focus on what everyone does during the murderfest.

Monty Python voice: You're no fun anymore

I ditched wizards from my games about 2 years ago

In the two games that I currently DM (13 players all told): two sorcerers, one lore bard, no wizards, one Cleric, one Druid.

Why should people who learn magic through hard work and study be weaker than those who get magic through heredity or divine sugar daddies? This feels like the Guy at the Gym Fallacy, only focused on magic, which no guy at the gym can actually do.

*golf clap*

As much as I disliked the old "How many fireballs per day" Vancian casting system, It DID have a nice grabbing point thematically, with a wizard "Preparing" a spell carefully and then unleashing it later, rather than just calling up power and throwing it out.

And you had to go out and find spells. you didn't just get them out of the air. Part of the original game's reason for a wizard to even go adventuring was to find and acquire spells in those old/eldritch ruins, etc, so that they can do better magic. And to find magic items. And you could die trying to get better.
I disagree with your chef analogy. A good chef is constantly adding to their recipe book. My own cooking, and that of my wife's, keeps expanding as we try and adapt new recipes, and variations thereof.

Why shouldn't they be weaker, other than the fact that geeks tend to wildly overvalue "being smart"?

Careful, they used to stone people for proclaiming heresies inconvenient truths!

So, quick question...assuming Wizard really does have "no thematics", is "generic", etc., why is that a bad thing?

It isn't. The original game class of Magic User was a solid design. Specialization is for ants.

[Psyren]

In my next game I will be playing wizard purely to spite the folks who find them boring or think nobody is playing them

(Assuming I don't just end up multiclassing my Artificer into it - which with the new UA has become exceedingly likely.)

[Thunderous Mojo]

It isn't. The original game class of Magic User was a solid design. Specialization is for ants.

Which segues into the point that School Specialization was always optional, when Oppositional Schools, (also Known as Spell List Restriction), was a balancing factor.

The Generalist Wizard was still alive and well even in 2e AD&D days.

3e and 5e style multi-classing makes spell list restriction a bit of a toothless Tiger.

Also, what classes benefit most, from broadening their spell lists…be it through Ravnica or Strixhaven Backgrounds, Eberron Dragonmark races, or Feats like Fey-Touched?

I would argue that spellcasters with more natively tailored lists benefit more from making more options available to them.

This undercuts the premise of the thread, somewhat. The trend for D&D seems to be breaking down barriers between the disparate spell lists, overtime.

[Snails]

For some reason, it is treated as a de facto holy bovine that we do not restrict wizard spell selection, and thus the thematics is destined to completely suck. If the most important feature of a class is not allowed to be thematically tuned, then the class is not allowed to have a theme that really matters, by design.

I say bollocks on that. IMNSHO, the 3.5 Psion offered a reasonable compromise. To summarize, there was a large, broad list of "spells" (powers) that were available to all Psions, so they could be competent generalists. But each Psion had an area of focus where they could choose from superior spells.

The other way to do that is to actually tune the spell slot. For example, Invisibility might be a 3rd level spell for an Evocationist. So you are not forbidden from certain spells, but you are naturally going to cast more of certain spells and fewer of certain others.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Spells are to Wizards, as Weapons are to Fighters.

A Battlemaster or Rune Knight Fighter can use whatever instrument of bloody death they wish to use. Spells are to Wizards, as weapons are to Fighters.

An Evoker Wizard no more receives the Portent Ability than a Rune Knight receives a Psi Energy Die.

Tasha’s introduced a Fighting Style that allows every Fighter to take a Maneuver. The Martial Initiate feat has been available since 5E’s release.

In theory, all of Strangebloke’s issues with the Wizard class are applicable to the Battlemaster Fighter. Aesthetic determinations are by nature idiosyncratic and somewhat capricious.

In essence, Strangebloke argument seems to be stating:

Wizards with the same spells, are the same, regardless of their subclass.

Which seems to discount Roleplaying.

Shaquille O’Neal and Kareem Abdul Jabar are both professional Basketball Centers, that are over 7 feet tall, that have won NBA Championship rings with the Los Angeles Lakers, and can shoot the Sky Hook.

In play, Kareem and Shaq must have been exactly the same, they had similar height statistics, class, and spells after all.🃏

You're not wrong that roleplaying should make every character unique. But some people aren't good are roleplaying. Some people need the fluff (and mechanics) to help them out with roleplaying and have a tough time making a distinct character without them. By comparison pretty much anyone can pick up a Cleric Subclass and have an inspiration for how to play it. Wizard subclasses? Maybe a bit with some subclasses, but for the most part I'd say no.

[strangebloke]

In theory, all of Strangebloke’s issues with the Wizard class are applicable to the Battlemaster Fighter. Aesthetic determinations are by nature idiosyncratic and somewhat capricious.

I mean yeah I've talked about this problem with the battlemaster before. You pick from the same ever-shrinking pool of maneuvers. It's also really conceptually broad and non-specific, and I've said several times I'd prefer if maneuvers were a generic feature.

But that's one subclass. BMs are still sitting on top of the fighter chassis, which is one of the most flexible classes in the game in terms of how different fighters end up from each other. Wizard is that problem extended to an entire class.

In essence, Strangebloke argument seems to be stating:

Wizards with the same spells, are the same, regardless of their subclass.

Which seems to discount Roleplaying.

If you're going to put all the weight of expression and character customization on roleplaying, why even have a system? The system's job is to create an environment where you can build something that has unique personality, aesthetics, and mechanics. I've done free-form roleplay and its fun, but if the Wizard is both extremely complex and relies on players to carry all the flavor, that sort of indicates that the class itself is very weak in terms of flavor.

It isn't. The original game class of Magic User was a solid design. Specialization is for ants.

In a game with few classes and only 1-2 classes with magic, "magic user" makes sense.

In a game where everyone's a magic user its meaningless.

For some reason, it is treated as a de facto holy bovine that we do not restrict wizard spell selection, and thus the thematics is destined to completely suck. If the most important feature of a class is not allowed to be thematically tuned, then the class is not allowed to have a theme that really matters, by design.

I say bollocks on that. IMNSHO, the 3.5 Psion offered a reasonable compromise. To summarize, there was a large, broad list of "spells" (powers) that were available to all Psions, so they could be competent generalists. But each Psion had an area of focus where they could choose from superior spells.

The other way to do that is to actually tune the spell slot. For example, Invisibility might be a 3rd level spell for an Evocationist. So you are not forbidden from certain spells, but you are naturally going to cast more of certain spells and fewer of certain others.

Yup. I'm not saying you need to completely lose access to fireball as a non-evoker, but maybe preparing one uses up two "spells perpared" slots.

You're not wrong that roleplaying should make every character unique. But some people aren't good are roleplaying. Some people need the fluff (and mechanics) to help them out with roleplaying and have a tough time making a distinct character without them. By comparison pretty much anyone can pick up a Cleric Subclass and have an inspiration for how to play it. Wizard subclasses? Maybe a bit with some subclasses, but for the most part I'd say no.

Yes this is my point exactly. I can show up to a table with a champion fighter and have the party head over heals in love with how cool and interesting they are... but if that happens, I've done all the work myself.

[sandmote]

Spells are to Wizards, as Weapons are to Fighters.

A Battlemaster or Rune Knight Fighter can use whatever instrument of bloody death they wish to use. Spells are to Wizards, as weapons are to Fighters.

An Evoker Wizard no more receives the Portent Ability than a Rune Knight receives a Psi Energy Die.

A fighter can use whichever instrument of bloody death they want, but most will grab a particular fighting style and/or a feat that specifically works with a particular subset of weapons. Once they've done that, the other instruments of bloody death are comparatively less effective. Similarly, specifically making choices to focus on survivability or flexibility with weapons requires making other choices, which sacrifice your death-dealing efficiency in combat. Grabbing Archery and Sharpshooter makes your optimal choices fundamentally different than if you grab Great Weapon Fighting and Great Weapon master and both result in a PC who operates differently than one who goes with Interception and Heavy Armor Master.

Fighters therefore likely already decided on duel wielding/polearm/heavy weapon/sword and board/focusing on ranged and typically need a reason to carry more than one type of backup equipment (and even then the backup is often either ranged or a melee finesse weapon to contrast what they're focusing on). A wizard's other choices on subclass and feats, however, only end up taking up about half the spells they can prepare. So the wizard needs a reason not to prepare all the usual suspects.

As a result, 5e fails to make Wizard spells analogous to fighter weapons.

Which segues into the point that School Specialization was always optional, when Oppositional Schools, (also Known as Spell List Restriction), was a balancing factor.

The Generalist Wizard was still alive and well even in 2e AD&D days.

This makes me wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to have all 1st level wizards have to choose two spell schools they can't get wizard spells from, and then create a "College Dropout" archetype that gets access to those spell schools at 2nd level.

[Anymage]

This makes me wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to have all 1st level wizards have to choose two spell schools they can't get wizard spells from, and then create a "College Dropout" archetype that gets access to those spell schools at 2nd level.

Back in 3.5 people already had a good idea which schools were safest to drop as a specialist. I don't think opposition schools will meaningfully support flavor. A few school specializations did - diviners getting refunded spell slots or abjurers effectively healing for casting in-school spells helped encourage that - but it's easier to make a subclass with general perks than to balance ones that incentivize casting in-school spells. Given that we're not going to be losing wizard anytime soon, I would appreciate if 5e tried to have subclass more actively encourage use of whatever thematic spells.

[BRC]

I think it's less "Wizard Theme Bad" as it is that it's hard to build a wizard whose theme goes beyond "Wizard" without feeling like you're hamstringing yourself mechanically.

A fighter can be an expert marksman, a Rapier-Swinging Duelist, the classic sword-and-board knight, a greatsword master, and more, and there are ways to build your fighter such that you embody that theming. A Master Marksman fighter can't just pick up a greatsword and be as good as the Greatsword specialist. You feel like you're playing Your Fighter, not just "A Fighter Who Happens to be using this weapon right now".


A Wizard might want to have the theme of "Illusionist", but once you've picked up invisibility, Major Image, and Silent Image, you've gotten the bulk of your Illusion spells taken care of. What's more, with Illusionist specifically, since so many spells are concentration, once you've cast your Illusions, you can't really cast many more, and you'll inevitably fall back on the Fireball train. Plus there are some spells like Fly, Teleportation Circle, and the like that are such powerful utility that it's hard to justify NOT casting them, and their power is such that they'll kind of take over your character's role. You might be the "Illusion Guy", but once you can cast Teleportation Circle, you're the Teleportation Guy, regardless of anything else you can do. You kind of merge into "The Wizard" regardless of what you do, and if you're going to limit yourself to a smaller selection of spells, why not go Sorcerer?

Which isn't TERRIBLE. A lot of classes lack much in the way of thematic versatility with their mechanics.

[Anonymouswizard]

I think it's also that Wizard subclasses kind of do the least out of the Big Four. Cleric, Fighters, and Rogues can all have their playstyles moulded pretty substantially by their subclasses, whereas many wizard subclasses just don't do that.

Some do, out of the core eight Necromancer and Illusionist have abilities that can potentially lead to quite substantial shifts, and War Magic seems to begin at the same core idea as Evocation and twists it to have a more defensive style. But most subclasses don't stop you from casting Fireball because few give you a reason not to.

I think starting the Wizard subclasses with eight schools instead of three to four playstyles was a mistake. Imagine if the Fighter subclasses had been 'Archer, Dual Wielder, Great Weapon Fighter, Shield Barer'. It would have been boring.

[BRC]

I think it's also that Wizard subclasses kind of do the least out of the Big Four. Cleric, Fighters, and Rogues can all have their playstyles moulded pretty substantially by their subclasses, whereas many wizard subclasses just don't do that.

Some do, out of the core eight Necromancer and Illusionist have abilities that can potentially lead to quite substantial shifts, and War Magic seems to begin at the same core idea as Evocation and twists it to have a more defensive style. But most subclasses don't stop you from casting Fireball because few give you a reason not to.

I think starting the Wizard subclasses with eight schools instead of three to four playstyles was a mistake. Imagine if the Fighter subclasses had been 'Archer, Dual Wielder, Great Weapon Fighter, Shield Barer'. It would have been boring.

Imagine each class as split between being defined by it's Base Class vs it's Subclasses. I don't know for sure which class is most Defined by it's subclass (Druid or Cleric maybe? Monks seem to get a lot of identity from their subclasses), but if I had to say what class is the Least defined by it's subclass, it would be Wizard.

If you played a Subclassless Wizard, with no additional features from it's specialization, while you'd certainly be weaker than a standard wizard, I don't think it would be especially noticable. Subclass Features can be pretty cool (Like the Divination Wizard), but they don't really change the way you Wizard, they just make you slightly better at certain types of Wizarding.

(Compared to say, the Fighter. While Battlemaster is almost as theme-neutral as Champion, it does affect how you play).

I think the only way to fix the problem is to rebuild wizards from the ground up. You could give them so many tools that they'll play with those instead of casting Fireball, but Wizards are already a very potent class, and so building a new wizard that outcompetes the old one doesn't seem great.

[strangebloke]

I would also point out that the subclasses for wizard that are actually impactful and flavorful are hilariously overpowered. Like Bladesinger is flavorful! It's also just casually a fantastic melee combatant with amazing AC while being a full-on wizard.

[Segev]

If you played a Subclassless Wizard, with no additional features from it's specialization, while you'd certainly be weaker than a standard wizard, I don't think it would be especially noticable. Subclass Features can be pretty cool (Like the Divination Wizard), but they don't really change the way you Wizard, they just make you slightly better at certain types of Wizarding.

You could say the same about any base class, really. Ignore the subclass, and you don't change the class!

Diviners are a huge callout on how you can play differently: they're a save-or-suck master and a friend to all who need just one or two 'saving graces' per day. And their ability to recover spell slots when using divination magic seriously ups the amount of divination they cast, trust me. I've seen it in action. They lean hard into being the wizard always ready to look into the future, or past the wall, or to otherwise use those spells.

Abjurer wizards have entire builds centered around maximizing that ward. Some of those builds are multiclass, but the fact that the school choice influences the multiclass so much belies the notion that it is transparent.

Illusionists are a favorite of mine, but I admit they actually don't really feel much different from other wizards before level 6. After level 6, though, Malleable Illusions makes some rather meh illusion spells into really neat tools. Illusory script goes from being a way to send a secret message to being a bluffing tool, the Doctor's slightly psychic paper. Magic mouth becomes a way to throw your voice and a reason to, perhaps, play a pre-multiverse Kenku so you can mimic all sorts of sounds from it. No spellcasting, no need to worry about placing a minor illusion, just leave the mouth somewhere and watch it make sounds. By level 11, the illusionist is really leaning into his own, hauling about one or two major images that are permanent and can be altered at will. And the things he can do with mirage arcane when he gets it at level 13.... hoo boy. No other wizard plays like this.

I'll grant that the transmuter is a bit meh, though I bet there are people on this forum who would argue with me and may even convince me otherwise, pointing out how it can play very differently from other wizards in some fashion.

Necromancers, like illusionsts, take a while to differentiate from other wizards, but by 6th level they're the best minionmancers, which is good. They could and should be better, in my opinion, but that's a whole nother thread.

In short: wizard subclass can RADICALLY change your play style if you pick the right one and the right spells to exploit its quirks.

[strangebloke]

You could say the same about any base class, really. Ignore the subclass, and you don't change the class!

Nah, sorry, I won't agree here.

If you think about a fiend and celestial warlock, they don't feel like the same class. They're both firey blasters, sure, but fiend gets fireball and an insane bosskiller move, while Celestial gets buckets of healing, and concentration damage spells like wall of fire and flaming sphere. And of course in flavor someone who made a deal with a fiend is a completely different character from someone who made a deal with a celestial.

Similarly an EK and a Rune Knight play radically differently and also have significantly different thematics.

You can build to the arcane ward being good, but by default its really not that impressive. Portent is amazing but its twice per day. War Magic is just "yeah I'm a bit faster and tougher." And, mechanical considerations aside, these subclasses are also lacking in flavor. A war wizard is a wizard who... wars. Yay.

[Anonymouswizard]

I would also point out that the subclasses for wizard that are actually impactful and flavorful are hilariously overpowered. Like Bladesinger is flavorful! It's also just casually a fantastic melee combatant with amazing AC while being a full-on wizard.

Huh, I guess Monte Cook is back on the 5e team.

I think it's just a thing that flavourful subclasses tend to be better anyway because there's a stronger core idea. Which I think is why Cleric Domains feel better to me than Wizard Traditions (plus the Grave Domain was pretty much made for the death priest character I've always wanted to play).

[Segev]

Nah, sorry, I won't agree here.

If you think about a fiend and celestial warlock, they don't feel like the same class. They're both firey blasters, sure, but fiend gets fireball and an insane bosskiller move, while Celestial gets buckets of healing, and concentration damage spells like wall of fire and flaming sphere. And of course in flavor someone who made a deal with a fiend is a completely different character from someone who made a deal with a celestial.

Similarly an EK and a Rune Knight play radically differently and also have significantly different thematics.

You can build to the arcane ward being good, but by default its really not that impressive. Portent is amazing but its twice per day. War Magic is just "yeah I'm a bit faster and tougher." And, mechanical considerations aside, these subclasses are also lacking in flavor. A war wizard is a wizard who... wars. Yay.

Sure, and if I cherry pick my subclasses, I can point to how the Feylock and the Fiend play very similarly, sharing the boss killer and having otherwise features that are nice on the rare times they come up, but it all comes down to spell selection and invocation selection after that. Pact Boon makes more of a difference. Meanwhile, an Illusionist and an Abjurer play VERY differently. (And, when you have to assert that "baseline" the Abjurer isn't very impressive without building to it, you're conceding my point about how you can ignore your subclass features and find that the subclass doesn't matter with any class.)

You're right; a wizard who picks the generic and flavorless subclass will feel more "wizard" than "war wizard." That's a problem with that one subclass.

A diviner's portent is good 2x per day, true. But his level 6 feature shapes his behavior a LOT. Most wizards get their "playstyle-shaping" feature at level 6, come to think of it. At least the Diviner, the Illusionist, and the Necromancer do. The Abjurer gets his at level 2.

[Drascin]

A problem with Wizard is that the D&D Wizard is actually really ****ing weird, but the gameline has been acting since decades ago like no, this isn't odd at all, this is actually the most basic and generic form of the magic user, that everything else magical should be mechanically derived from, which has been kind of a problem.

Like, the combination of the "hypergeneralist that can do anything magic from an Everything List" chassis and the weird mix of gnostic+hermetic+80s engineering nerd built into the class's basic identity makes it incredibly specific and basically not a character type that exists outside of D&D and D&D-derived media... but at the same time the game believes that this is the basic caster and so it basically has nothing to itself beyond "can cast pretty much anything in the book". The wizard is all spells and nothing else.

Which kinda results in the common problem that A Wizard is a Wizard. They all basically end up in a sort-of-the-same mold.

Because all the class really has is spells, but also the class is very strongly disassociated from its spell choices (due to the basic concept being born from "can do anything" and "magic engineer", and being strongly incentivized to learn everything they come across via scrolls and such), so it's not like the sorcerer or the bard, where people routinely pick less good spells because the spells a sorcerer develops can be used to represent who they are, and if you have a fire sorcerer you're probably not going to pick up Shadow Conjurations just on flavor alone. A wizard's spells are just their toolbelt, nothing more, they're not really a character defining choice the way a warlock's patrons and pacts or a paladin's oaths or a sorcerer's spells known are. They're just the things you got around to learning first but you can trade them in whenever, they're more like the different swords in the 3.5 fighter's golf bag to hit different immunities. And so wizards naturally end up sort of gravitating towards a lot of similarity, even played by very different people.

[strangebloke]

Sure, and if I cherry pick my subclasses, I can point to how the Feylock and the Fiend play very similarly, sharing the boss killer and having otherwise features that are nice on the rare times they come up, but it all comes down to spell selection and invocation selection after that. Pact Boon makes more of a difference. Meanwhile, an Illusionist and an Abjurer play VERY differently. (And, when you have to assert that "baseline" the Abjurer isn't very impressive without building to it, you're conceding my point about how you can ignore your subclass features and find that the subclass doesn't matter with any class.)

You're right; a wizard who picks the generic and flavorless subclass will feel more "wizard" than "war wizard." That's a problem with that one subclass.

A diviner's portent is good 2x per day, true. But his level 6 feature shapes his behavior a LOT. Most wizards get their "playstyle-shaping" feature at level 6, come to think of it. At least the Diviner, the Illusionist, and the Necromancer do. The Abjurer gets his at level 2.

Building to abjurer generally means using multiclassing or race selection to grab spells completely outside the wizard class as well as exploiting cheese to fill of the war quickly. It's an interesting build, but its a very specific build, and calling everything else "ignoring your subclass features" feels like a pretty lofty optimization standard. Am I ignoring my subclass features because I don't multiclass or play a Mark of Warding Dwarf / Deep Gnome? Come on.

For contrast, a moon druid is a weird kind of character regardless of what you do with it. Rune Knights are always going to be massively different from Echo Knights and Battlemasters. Even your cherry picked example of a fey vs. fiendlock doesn't really work here. Both subclasses unlock lots of new spells, including some very good ones, and while DD and HtH are similar, everything else is different. But besides this, Warlock also has more interesting options built into other parts of the class. Pacts, boons, and spell selection that has a long term impact.

An evoker or diviner might cast more evocation or divination spells respectively after level 6 or so, but at level 1 a feylock can cast sleep and most other warlocks simply can't

And lastly, I'll reiterate: wizard subclasses lack lore flavor. Abjurers are wizards with forcefields (but all wizards have forcefields), evokers are wizards with fireball (but fireball is really good for all wizards)

[KorvinStarmast]

In a game with few classes and only 1-2 classes with magic, "magic user" makes sense.

Thank you for agreeing with me, and yes, Sorcerer is the first on the chopping block.

In a game where everyone's a magic user its meaningless.

Hey, how about that, maybe magic is overdone in WoTC D&D?

Huh, I guess Monte Cook is back on the 5e team.

Inflation, man. Everyone needs a side hustle.

[strangebloke]

Thank you for agreeing with me, and yes, Sorcerer is the first on the chopping block.

Sorcerer has bad thematics, but I think a lot of this comes down to the wizard crowding everyone else out.

Sorcerers should be the blasters and arcane melee casters, wizards can stay squishy and stay on the back line.

IMO, anyway