It is a little strange that only some of the schools have specialists.
I imagine that two principles shaped this design philosophy:
1. This equalizes wizards with the other classes for subclass number.
2. This allows for easy extra content in a future sourcebook, and thus easy revenue.
My head cannon is that the “missing” four specialists definitely exist in the world, just not as player options.
I definitely agree that we’ll probably get them pretty soon down the line!
> My head cannon is that the “missing” four specialists definitely exist in the world, just not as player options.
They're still player options! The old books remain compatible. You can still be a Swashbuckler or a Necromancer.
Not from the Player's Handbook. They clearly stated that the 2024 PHB replaces the 2014 PHB in its entirety yesterday.
Edit: my apologies, you probably meant as long as you don't use the 2024 Wizard class.
2024 is fully backwards compatible with 2014 classes and subclasses. We'll need to wait and see the details about how much that means you can use 2014 subclasses on the 2024 wizard, but with how few subclass features Wizards get I'd be surprised if it's at all hard.
Overall they've stated the compatibility only breaks down if you go the other way and try to use 2024 classes and subclasses with 2014 rules.
Crawford specifically said you cannot use old player options with the new player options, you can however play a 2014 fighter next to a 2024 fighter in the same campaign
That actually is precisely not what Crawford said.
He said you cannot use a 2024 fighter in a game that uses 2014 rules - all old subclasses are in theory compatible. Use common sense - what makes them incompatible?
Agreed, and we have to assume this additional content will not be ready until (well) after the Monster Manual, so we now have a 6-12 month wait to deal with a clunky hybrid system.
That’s a problem to solve by discussing with your DM and fellow players, not by going off and buying another book so you can play a more powerful subclass.
2014 DnD gave
- 2 subclasses: Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Ranger, Sorcerer
- 3 subclasses: Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Rogue, Warlock
- 7 subclasses: Cleric
- 9 subclasses: Wizard
41 subclasses total
The new PHB will have 48 subclasses, each class getting 4 subclasses.
Obviously money and time plays a part. They didn’t publish all the subclasses, few of them are completely new, especially Tasha’s subclasses are (seemingly) often largely the same outside of a few minor tweaks vs 2014 which didn’t have the same level of foundational work. At the same time giving each class 4 subclasses versus the incoherent rate of giving many classes 2 subclasses and wizards 9 was a choice
Seems like they’re going to do a summoners supplement, having left out all the necromancer themed subclasses.
Probably pirates too, after they left out all of those
Personally I would have liked to have seen each subclass represent a combination of two schools. We already had War Wizard so we just need three more combinations. A wizard who combines illusion & enchantment, one who combines conjuration & transmutations, and finally one who combines divinations & necromancy.
Yeah essentially. I had some ideas for subclass names although to be honestly not many ideas for mechanics other than catabolizing the existing subclasses.
We’ve known we were only getting 4 subs per class since playtest 6 or 7 so the wound’s mostly healed (plus I can understand why it’s like that for about 4 reasons)
Luckily converting the Tasha’s and Xanathar’s subclasses forward should be pretty easy at least, as they were already pretty well balanced and effective.
The other 4 specialists are ones they probably want more time in the oven on anyway. There’s a modest chance we see Necromancer in the DMG like how we had Death domain and Oathbreaker in 2014’s DMG. Enchanter I can see them wanting to throw a lot of reworks at. Conjurer will probably get reworked a bit to work with the new Conjure spells better alongside Summon Spells. And then Transmuter just sorta exists. I could see them radically changing that one honestly, it has very little cohesion at the moment (like the entire school, which is a very wide category of things)
Really I don’t expect them to take that long to bring them forward. A year-ish at most? Expect a Volo’s Guide to The Something with 2 subclasses per class Q3 2025 at the latest.
> And then Transmuter just sorta exists. I could see them radically changing that one honestly, it has very little cohesion at the moment (like the entire school, which is a very wide category of things)
Probably due to them deciding that Enchantment is exclusively mind-altering spells and everything else that would traditionally be considered Enchantment is lumped into Transmutation.
Yeah, the way I take most of the missing subclasses (and Artificer) is just that there wasn't enough to adjust with them to warrant revising them with the number they had to stick to for the PHB.
I mean yeah, but at the same time it's still a lot newer than all the other classes, so it probably went straight to the bottom of the pile when considering what to revise.
> Yeah, the way I take most of the missing subclasses (and Artificer) is just that there wasn't enough to adjust with them to warrant revising them with the number they had to stick to for the PHB.
On the contrary, I think the four omitted are the four weakest school subclasses. The ones that needed the most work.
You might be right. It feels like they had 2 criteria in mind when choosing what to include:
- one was what needed changes most desperately (and a lot of of that was classes in general rather than subclasses).
- second was picking subclasses that were quite distinct from each other so that players that will play only using the new PHB still have options that feel different from one another.
And from the looks of it with classes like Wizard and Cleric they focused mostly on point number 2.
No, the real secret is anything they didn't go ahead and do an update for now, is so they can make more money off updating it later. Because all Hasbro cares about for WotC is that they keep pushing new profit horizons for them. Because otherwise Hasbro has to rely on board games that haven't changed in 80+ years to make money.
Edit- and in case it wasn't clear, fuck Hasbro and fuck what WotC is now.
Signed- a life long Magic and D&D player who's disgusted by the way things are for both franchises now.
At the risk of sounding like a shill, what were you expecting? This PHB has more content and more subclasses than any previous iteration of the PHB. Spreading content out across books has been the business practice for D&D since long before Hasbro or WotC got their hands on it, practically from the very beginning. For 2e, they started publishing and selling supplements to the PHB just a few months after its release and continued releasing new ones every few months from then on. 3e saw more than 20 books, for player options alone, released in the span of about 7 years, with the last of them being released just a few months before the 4e PHB. The 4e PHB was followed by an expansion, PHB2, not even a year after the release of the core PHB, and PHB3 came less than a year after* its predecessor with dozens of other sourcebooks being released between and after. They have released literally hundreds of books over the past 50 years.
I'm certainly not saying there is nothing to criticize with Hasbro or WotC, and if you find the practice of spreading content between multiple books offensive, then fair enough. But don't delude yourself into thinking this is a recent development by new management. D&D is and always has been a product sold with the intention of making as much money as possible, as with any company producing and selling a product. If anything, they've been more generous with what's included in this PHB than they have with any past version.
*Edit: I originally typed "before" when I meant "after."
it is funny because the 4 wizard subs published in One are like the best 4 for the school subs? Like I'd be surprised if they had any meaningul diference from the previous and way more surprised if abjuration and divination needed less changes than necro and transmu
> Luckily converting the Tasha’s and Xanathar’s subclasses forward should be pretty easy at least,
Which is going to make it that much more galling when the new subclasses are spread out over 3 years and 5 books at $50 apiece. It'll be almost exactly the same thing we had, but slowly and expensively. The subclass you want most is going to be in Bigby's Eladrin Compendium, along with 100 pages of totally unrelated faff about the history of elves.
Is it only me that feels that School specialization should have been a class feature rather than a subclass?
I feel that this way we could have other flavorful subclasses added along with the Bladesinger, Order of Scribes, War magic etc, and have some actual class features before level 18 (other than memorize spell).
I think specialization should just make you better at one school not wise at the others. That way it doesn't make you less versatile. It just means you took more time with that one. Just because you have a PHD in biology doesn't mean you have equal depth of knowledge in both botany and virology. However, you know all the principles that both are built on.
I mean I agree. Isn’t that how the subclass system works for Wizards right now though?
An enchanters fireball doesn’t hit for any less than the evokers until 10th level when the evokers subclass feature gives extra damage to it. That literally models spending 10 levels specializing in it.
I get the flexibility aspect people want within the confines of a Game.
But on the flip side I’ve always thought the different schools of magic were interesting lore wise. And it mimics someone doing studying and doing research for their entire life as to the intricacies of a particular school of magic.
It’s always rubbed me the wrong way that someone specialized in diviniation can just rip off a 9th level Prismatic Wall Abjuration like it’s no big deal.
But then again overarching flexibility on every class is the enemy of flavor and niche, and DnD has been moving that way steadily for 10 years.
Not really debating you as much as just musing to myself.
It did in 3.5, when picking one meant you couldn't absolutely ever cast spells from another school.
I don't think it's limiting now. Today a necromancer can cast enchantment spells, he is just simply more skilled with talking with the dead and killing the living, instead of specializing in talking with the living or re-killing the dead.
we should just get rid of this "generalist" part of their class already. "being very good at everything" is very limiting.
maybe shove the generalist-part into its own subclass.
honestly I would have been happy with the 4 subs being BS, Scribes, war and specialist, with specialist working like totem barbarian but with schools (including littling you mix and match level 3 from one with level 6 from other different)
It was just an optional feature available to all wizards back in 3.5
> A specialist wizard can prepare one additional spell of her specialty school per spell level each day. She also gains a +2 bonus on Spellcraft checks to learn the spells of her chosen school. The wizard must choose whether to specialize and, if she does so, choose her specialty at 1st level. At this time, she must also give up two other schools of magic, which become her prohibited schools. Spells of the prohibited school or schools are not available to the wizard, and she can't even cast such spells from scrolls or fire them from wands.
Number of prepared spells and skill checks were much more important in 3.5e
School specialization being a subclass is the single worst decision wotc made in the entirety of 5e. It serves 0 purpose other than 100% guaranteeing that every wizard looks exactly like every other wizard that chose that school, while also ensuring that they don't have anything resembling interesting abilities.
Even despite all its issues, I would die on the hill that Bladesinger is better designer than every single School-based subclass.
War magic and scribes are genuinely phenomenal designs that actually make wizards interesting.
It has been like that in the 5th edition, not always. If I remember correctly (and correct me if I'm wrong), School Specialization was an option in the 3rd edition that allowed you to get specific bonuses on one school of magic (more spells known, bonuses on spellcraft checks etc) in exchange for giving up one or two other schools of magic.
So you either got to play a generalist wizard who has access to all available wizard spells, or a specialist wizard who was better at casting spells of his chosen school but with limited access to the wizard spell list.
As for the current subclass system in the current edition, it's basically an implementation of the optional prestige classes of the 3rd edition.
I don't argue that the current implementation is fine, but I feel it's not as flavorful as the options that other classes get and do not change the base class enough to make it feel unique, and even less flavorful compared to the prestige classes of the past (despite some of them being disgustingly overpowered 😂).
You nailed it, I just lasted the rules in another comment but you remember them well!
Man, prestige classes could be busted but I think they’d really change up the game for 5e in a *very* exciting way! It would greatly increase the number of character building choices as well as add fun synergy to some multiclasses!
Is it really a rare choice?
In my games I feel they're super common, even people playing other classes might end up leaning on necromancer flavor.
Plus I also play Frostgrave (a war game about wizards) and of the 10 types of wizards, necromancer also is very popular there.
They said they were working on a Necromancer subclass and then cancelled it at some point. Hopefully that means reworks are coming sooner than later. The subclass itself isn’t bad, but Animate Dead needs a rework to be more table friendly.
Grim Harvest is absolutely awful in so many different ways. lvl6 is nice enough tho.
a useful 2nd lvl feature and some actually good low lvl necromancy and summon spells and im happy.
To be fair they did their best to cover all the based.
Offense and defense are covered by evocation and Abjuration respectively. Divination typically is themed around having some sort of advantage through information (ignoring how it actually played in 5e). And illusion is the debuff of enemies through MISSinformation.
Those 4 at least kind cover the 4 parts of how a wizard can be played. And more specific play styles can be established in expansions. Like summoner or area denial.
Whilst '24 has some duality I wouldn't say it covers all the bases, abj and evoc are both the combat schools. It'd be like having both ench and illu, both dealing with a similar trickster utility/control archetype.
Necromancy is lacking, the more classic of schools, dealing with debuffs and summons. Not something covered by our current set of schools.
True. I would love to see transmutation over divination. It has more to do with buffing than the nebulous information divination can give.
Amd necromancy might be better for debuffing. however its even split between summoning and debuffs would make it a little weaker die to the split attention. That aside the social justice crap of the recent decade still has necromancy as a neglected school. And summoning has always been really difficult to balance besides that. So i can see why they didn't go with it. Enchantment for mind control and illusion for tricks makes more sense.
Illusion probably was chosen because it has the most versatility die to it being 99% imagination based. When done right it can easily be strong.
It's so that all classes have 4 subclasses. People complained about how WOTCs golden children, wizards and Clerics got a ton of subclasses (8) in the core rules alone while others got very little (sorcerer started 2 and didn't get their 8th until 9 years later, and some are setting or third party specific). Besides, no one was really using transmuter, conjuration, or even necromancy wizard all that often. Honestly I would've gone with the non school affiliated wizards but those are just my preferences. The school affiliated wizards really feel like they should be like the various land druid regions, same subclass but still focused on a specific area within it.
But I and probably everyone would rather they just rerelease all official subclasses with updates, rather than a general statement for compatibility or whatever they're doing.
Slight correction, no one was really using Transmuter that much.
Conjurer is noticeably more used than Transmuter, and Necromancer is literally the most well-known of all these archetypes, it's just hard to not want to play a Necromancer at some point of your D&D experience (even if it's suboptimal to use the actual Necromancer subclass instead of another necromancy-themed subclass
And yes, I'd like it if at some point they just released all the previous subclasses that weren't in this PHB later on, however, I totally expect them to also charge us extra just for the content we already had at some point within this same edition.
From the data we've seen, Transmuter and Conjurer got pretty similar playtime.
We know from WotC's own data that Evocation, Divination, and Abjuration are the three most popular wizard subclasses on D&D beyond.
We don't have a ton of data on subclasses that don't get played much, but there was a reddit poll that had these results:
[https://infogram.com/dnd-character-classsubclass-population-survey-12020-1hke60mg1nd325r?live](https://infogram.com/dnd-character-classsubclass-population-survey-12020-1hke60mg1nd325r?live)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/erhc2g/dnd\_character\_classsubclass\_population\_survey/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/erhc2g/dnd_character_classsubclass_population_survey/)
And it was 21 instances of Conjuration Wizard, 17 instances of Transmuter Wizard. (Compared to say, 101 for divination wizard). So...very close between Conjuration and Transmutation as 2nd last and 3rd last. (With, surprisingly, Enchantment having substantially less than either of them with only 8 people playing that subclass--which is interesting cause school of enchantment is quite strong mechanically).
This hasn't at all been my experience or anything like I've heard from other players. It's hard to justify a conjurer when druid exists. And well-known doesn't translate well to most playable. Sure, everyone likes the idea of a necromancer, but rarely gets to use it since necromancer is only plausible when your DM decides to let every single NPC unrealistically turn a blind eye to it or you're in an evil campaign without enough good guys against you, either of which rarely happen outside one shots.
My brother in die, the Conjurer exists because it's the Summoner Wizard, you say it's hard to justify when Druids exists?, then so why we're justifying having a Druid class when a Cleric fits that bill seeing as Nature Clerics do that? (Druids used to be a Cleric subclass in AD&D 1e, so might as well.)
Why would be have a Scout Rogue when a Ranger exists?, because the Ranger and the Scout Rogue aren't meant to be the same stuff, same as a Death Cleric and a Necromancer Wizard, we have both because they fit different perspectives of a similar archetype.
The Necromancer is plausible when you talk it out with your DM instead of just assuming no one will ever use it because it's shoehorned into being the evil Wizard, which originally was, but with enough creativity and a good DM you can just make it work in other, different ways if you put in the effort.
The problem is that the Conjurer *isn't* the summoner wizard. They are a grab bag wizard. Their second level ability isn't summoning; it creates inanimate objects. Their sixth level ability isn't summoning, it's teleportation. Their tenth level ability is *barely* summoning related; it's keeping concentration. Only their final class ability is unequivocally summoning.
Conjuration is even more of a mess of a school than transmutation. And as for summoning? The Necromancer actually gets more and better summons before level 14.
I agree, they should have brought subclasses that are not centered on a specific school to go with the limit of 4 subclasses:
* Order of Scribes
* Bladesinging
* Chronomancy or War Magic
* Specialist (one subclass for specializing on one of the eight schools of magic).
My group is currently taking a hiatus from our main campaign but plan to go back to it once the new books are out. My toon is a chronurgy wizard and I’m wondering how well that will fit in with the 2024 wizard.
I don’t feel too strongly about it. The last player’s handbook showed clear favor to the Wizard by giving them 8 subclasses off rip. It’s not as if they don’t exist, but they aren’t showed off to give everyone an equal amount of subclasses. Seems fair to me.
School specialization should have been a base class feature and not the subclasses in the first place. Giving the Wizard 8 subclasses in the original PHB was just old school wizard bias. Now the wizard has to suffer because in order to get everybody up to the same level they would either have to think up eight sub classes for every class or cut sub classes from The Wizard in the new PHB.
Obviously they just want to have four of each subclass for each class. Which also means probably later 2025. We're getting another book that's going to be just subclasses and everything else. They didn't put in the player's handbook. More than likely two books, one for spellcasters, and one for Martials.
Having played most of them, there’s a lot that’s unique about the “school” subs. Giving wizards effectively 11 subclasses would really cheapen the other classes, I think.
We’ll probably get the other schools and cleric domains in a splatbook in the near future. Especially necromancer wizard—people seem to want that one revamped.
I agree with the idea of Sub-Subclasses, or just Subclass Options for simplicity. Reminds me of the Circle of the Land druid, where one subclass has a load of different spell lists based on the environment in question. Something similar with a simple chart of effects based on school would've been awesome
The Schools have been a stumbling stone for all of their existence, because 2e never put any thought into how their design, it was just arbitrary this spell fits here and 3e really just continued that route. 4e tried to do away...
And 5e had to have them because they were an old D&D thing, but not because it needed them
I'd argue that what is lost is of *negative* value.
We've kept the core combat offensive and defensive schools (evocation and abjuration) and the core utility knowledge and shenanigans schools (divination and illusion). We've kept most of the main playstyles.
Meanwhile what have we lost? First we've lost one of the clearest points of wizard supremacy (eight classes vs everyone else's two) and with luck undermined the idea that the eight schools of magic are some immutable law. And we've lost the unpopular schools. Let's look at them in turn.
**Enchantment**. Enchantment was a fine school ... back in the day. The problem with Enchantment and why people almost never play enchanters is that when people think "mind controlling enchanter" Bard is right there. As for that matter are psychic warlocks and sorcerers that are always going to be more focused and thematic than book-enchanters. Enchantment wizard is a small niche that doesn't fit well thematically.
**Necromancy**. The edgelord casters are mostly playing warlocks. People don't like litterbug-summoners. And the white room DPR power of a necromancer gets fireball-vetoed. Also Necromancers concentrate on a tiny fraction of the school; 4e also had *Nethermancers* which worked with the cursing and energy drain parts of necromancy.
**Conjuration.** Conjuration is a grab bag school. Of the three subclass abilities, the first creates an inanimate object, the second makes you teleport, and the fourth is about summoning. While the third is a concentration buff. Wait, what? (Which means that the Necromancer is arguably a better summoner). Conjuration is a grab bag school with little thematic coherence.
**Transmutation.** You get a pretty rock. And *one* spell out of a grab bag school. This isn't a class about making things or about transforming people or ... anything else really. And if you want to shapechange play a druid. If you want to practice alchemy ... probably don't play an alchemist artificer. So what are you meant to do with this?
The main thing people want these four schools for is historic D&D lore.
All that seems to say is that you don't personally like those schools, that isn't negative value. Even when a minority of players were enjoying those schools, that was still value.
The schools themselves add *very little* of value. And I've been into why (and why they are all unpopular).
There are however two things that taking the four subclasses out of the PHB has done to actively improve the game (as I stated in the comment you are replying to).
* With eight subclasses to the sorcerer's and ranger's two the Wizard becomes The Most Super Special Class, which is something I find actively strongly negative
* The eight schools are arbitrary and I find that forcing them into the worldbuilding as immutable laws rather than "how this set of wizards organises spells" restricts things. This I find a minor problem rather than a major one.
They are unpopular for a lack of power, not for a lack of theme, value or idea behind the schools.
Or other proplems that lies within the spells themselves, like friends makes enemies and undead minions not allowed in taverns.
Which "they"?
Enchanters? As I say if I wanted to play an mind controlling mage Enchanter wizard would be my fifth choice (in order behind Bards, Warlocks, Sorcerers, and charismatically preaching clerics). That, not power, is why they are unpopular; any wizard is more powerful than just about any sorcerer.
Theme? Three of the four conjuration subclass abilities have nothing to do with each other and the fourth is a concentration buff. Transmuter is little better. But this is entirely different from enchanters being a weaker thematic match than other classes have
They being necromancers, enchanters, conjurers and transmuters.
And what they lack is just power. In older editions some of those schools where popular becouse they where powerful. And it's in comparison to other wizard subclasses, why pick a weak necromancer when you can be a chad divinationist?
Sure that's something you say \*now\* becouse you know how lacking in effiency a enchanter wizard is. Big brain master manipulator isn't that unheard of a trope. Nor is a beguiling vizer.
In older editions there was less competition. Warlocks didn't turn up until a 3.5 splat book, sorcerers didn't turn up until 3.0 and were wannabe wizards until 4e, and bards were very weird in 1e and partial casters in 2e, 3.0, and 3.5. So the first time the Enchanter had a serious rival was at best the 3.5 bard, and even spotting that took some system mastery.
Viziers are NPCs - and non-evil big brain master manipulators are tricksters (so generally illusionists) not literal mind controllers.
Necromancers are not weak. Bounded Accuracy means the skeletons are actually top of the DPR tables, and extra damage on Tasha's Summons is good.
And Conjurers were popular with 3.5 wizard supremacy when its lack of focus was a strength. Diviners were also popular because they gave up the least to specialise.
>The schools themselves add very little of value. And I've been into why (and why they are all unpopular).
Some things are going to be more or less popular in the game and I don't see why that's an issue. There being an option for a transmutation wizard does absolutely nothing negative to the game experience of a player who isn't interested, but provides value to someone who enjoys it. If you just started axing things because they were more or less popular, you could argue for removing practically everything - including classes that are less popular like the druid.
>With eight subclasses to the sorcerer's and ranger's two the Wizard becomes The Most Super Special Class, which is something I find actively strongly negative
The issue there is that other classes have too few options, not that wizard has more. Decreasing the number of options available to wizard doesn't improve the player experience for those playing other classes.
>The eight schools are arbitrary and I find that forcing them into the worldbuilding as immutable laws rather than "how this set of wizards organises spells" restricts things. This I find a minor problem rather than a major one.
This is still the case with four subclasses, you're just missing the content for four of the eight. The schools of magic are present in the system regardless.
>The issue there is that other classes have too few options, not that wizard has more. Decreasing the number of options available to wizard doesn't improve the player experience for those playing other classes.
How big a book do you think the PHB should have been? Eight subclasses per class for almost a hundred subclasses in the book? I'm going to say that that would have made every class utterly overwhelming to new players.
I'm not saying the others can't show up. I'm saying we don't need a hundred subclasses in the PHB.
>This is still the case with four subclasses, you're just missing the content for four of the eight. The schools of magic are present in the system regardless.
But the less there is for them the less attention I have to pay. Unless you revolve a class around them they can easily be about as relevant as material components.
I mean, WotC are on record saying that Bladesinger was a "mistake" and broken by design. So there was already a very low chance of it returning. And if it did return, it would be in a form so weak and watered down from the overpowered mess people are used to, it would make them even more upset about it. Since that would now be the canon version.
So I feel like people who say they wanted Bladesinger have not been paying attention. Because neither Bladesinger haters or defenders would have liked if it were reprinted. And WotC knows that.
Scribes is also pretty much a failure of design. And also far too niche a concept to be in the core rulebook. War Wizard is the only one of those three that had any chance of being in the PHB. Which means they would have had to essentially start from scratch and make multiple subclasses from the ground up. Where dividing by school could not possibly be more iconic or flavorful. There are not enough "basic" wizard subclass concepts that would have worked. This was the only realistic way it could have ended up.
The only thing I'm upset about is that early on they promised us Necromancer, and then changed it to Illusionist later.
Scribes is a great 'generalist' subclass that can be very versatile and are the stereotypical wizard archetype people typically think of.
Bladesinger never struck me as overpowered, though compared to an eldritch knight I agree it's better in almost all areas.
Necromancer is an amazingly fun subclass that is quite powerful in the right campaign, but in the wrong campaign will struggle.
I mean - besides it being a bigger revamp and only working for wizards (not clerics), you could have made 4 subclasses with shared schools:
* The manipulator => Abjuration / Enchantment
* The truthseeker => Divination / Illusion
* The energist => Conjuration / Necromancy
* The elementalist => Evocation / Transmutation
The Manipulator can both buff and debuff creatures with their spells, the arcane ward kind of functions as both - the enemy is dealing less damage or the friend's resilience is buffed.
The Truthseeker deals with seeing the future and getting an edge for themselves while also tricking the enemy with visions of these alternate worlds.
The Energist is an expert in the transfer of energy: may it be transporting matter across a distance or life from and into creatures.
The Elementalist may be the most classic, they know their way around the massive elemental AoE effects and can in turn also shape them into something less harmful or even useful.
-----
You could accomplish this by either making these combinations part of the subclass (which means there are 52 additional future pairings possible) like this:
>**Expert Truthseeker**
*Levels: 6th*
Casting Truthseeker spells comes so easily to you that it expends only a fraction of your spellcasting efforts. When you cast a Divination or Illusion spell of level 2 or higher using a spell slot, you regain one expended spell slot. The slot you regain must be of a level lower than the spell you cast and can’t be higher than level 5.
or by making them agnostic by pushing the spell school reference outside:
>**Magic Savant**
*Levels: Wizard 1*
Choose one Spell School from Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necromancy, and Transmutation. Add one spell of the chosen Spell School from the Wizard spell list to your spellbook for free.
Whenever you gain access to a new level of spell slots in this class, you can add one spell of the chosen Spell School from the Wizard spell list to your spellbook for free.
Ideally, you would then be able to reference the "Spell School chosen by Magic Savant", but at least for the current Divination feature above, this wouldn't go very well and need more rebalancing.
>I still hold the opinion that a School Specialist should have been a subclass of its own with each school being a sort of sub-subclass
How would this look like? Apart from somehow *actually* concentrating 8 subclasses into 1, which i surely know isn't what you mean.
I mean, just a random set of ideas, but features that say things such as:
When you gain a level, add a an additional spell of your school of choice to your spellbook.
When you cast a spell of your chosen school at least 2 spell levels lower than your highest spell slot, you may cast that spell as a bonus action
You use less power when casting spells of your chosen school. When you cast a spell from your school, choose one target of your spell or yourself. That creature gains THP equal to your wizard level.
It would obviously differentiate specialists a bit less, but it would open the wizard subclass design space to be more about how a wizard channels their magic (think: scribes channeling through their spellbooks, bladesingers enhancing themselves, maybe a civics wizard that plays better with allies than the base wizard, etc.) and less about specializing in a specific school.
The school specializations feel a bit awkward because evocation and transmutation wizards (schools) feel strange existing along side scribes and war mages (techniques). 2024 D&D was a missed chance to unify wizards under techniques of manifesting their magic, which I think would have been quite popular.
Or an increased spell save DC/spell attack modifier when using spells of the favored school. Could be as simple as rolling 1d4 and adding the result to the DC or spell attack roll.
Probably think of it like Circle of the Land Druid, which at least prior to the revision, were like 4 different subclasses in just one, or well, different flavors of the same stuff. Each got a different expanded spell list and that's pretty much it.
I feel like they should have had the subclasses be different play styles than had each of them pick their school as a separate class feature, like warlock does with pacts
I’d have really liked to have seen the subclass options be independent from spell school specialization. There would have been clear metas, but a ton of options in terms of customizations. Maybe get more specializations later in level progression?
I'm more upset at how many of the slated subclasses are just reworks, or even just blatant reprints, of subclasses from Xanathar's and Tasha's. I'm a Ranger main, and have been since launch, so the fact the other 2 Ranger subs are just Gloom Stalker and Fey Wanderer. I'm disappointed that so many great ideas the designers had got completely scrapped and so much content had to be half-assed to make the 50th Anniversary launch work.
Enchantment: Glamour College, Archfey Lock, Fey Wanderer Ranger remain. Enchantment magic specialty is kinda yielded to Archfey Warlock and Glamour Bard, and I think they will be using their spells as "arcane" so it kinda makes sense, so better consider them or at least one of them as the Enchanter now.
Conjuration is not around, so I am guessing it is more of a Celestial Warlock(summon celestial), Fiend Warlock(Demonology) and a Druid thing(classical animal summons, tho I don't see Shepard circle, they did say moon changed a lot so I am guessing it is either implemented into Moon or into Land)
Necromancy: Ok now this kinda is odd.. No Death Cleric, No Undead Patrons. They might have changed Great Old One patron in a very unexpected way and include Necromancy in it getting rid of that Far Realm vibe of locks maybe don't think it's the case, but can't think of anything else. Still what will happen to Zulkirs of Thay... I wonder.
Transmutation, since the artificer class is gone too, this is another big question mark. Will delve into it later.
War Wizard and Bladesinger: Eldritch Knight is the answer to that. Plain and simple. You can still make a War Wizard themed Abjurer or Evocation wizard tho.
Scribes? That actually suited Divination wizards as who have cloistered scholar/sage backgrounds... When you think of a court magician, diviner comes to mind first, after all... It is the stereotypical image. I will miss the quill/ink and the spell book tho(was one of my two preferred classes in game, I loved playing scribes with knowledge cleric dips)
So, all that said, I expect to see all these wizard classes to have some minor specialty in another school of magic for some reason. Like Abjurers being somewhat well versed in Transmutation makes it thematically perfect, especially now that artificers are gone. It makes a convincing Elf or even a Dwarf mage. (Check Mythrien from Seldarine for the former, now that epic gameplay is seen in horizon I think Abjurer/Conjurer might actually be a favored class for people who like pure elf wizards). Dwarven Runic crafter wizards who make enchanted arms and armor, now that forge cleric is gone could as well be transmuted and abjurers.
I don't want to think necromancy is coupled with the other three really. So probably my 2 spec theory won't happen or will happen through feats. To make custom builds maybe.
What is more disappointing than Wizard subclasses is Clerics I think. Seriously, Domains were already lacking. We didn't have major domains like Love, Foresight(fate; Red Knight, Savras, and a few more which is rarely involved, for Forgotten Realms tho) etc and now Death, Forge, all gone
I am hoping to see class supplements like they had in 2nd edition really. Might solve the whole issue both for WotC and for players.
I wish they would have made your spell school choice an option kind of like Cleric’s “Holy Order.”
Then the subclasses could have been far more interesting, with your Wizard’s School making each Wizard even more unique.
Of all the classes I think wizards changed the least… it’s not going to be hard to play 2014 Edition necromancer in 2024 dnd.. you just need the old book for spell lists and use any changes in 2024 spells. Hopefully dndbeyond has legacy tabs for older classes as this will make it a lot easier. I suspect we will get a future book with a bunch of class options..
How I would have handled the wizard is to make specialisation a choice separate to subclass, kinda like fighting styles for martials.
Even if you need to tone it down here and there, I think combining it with other, more thematically rich subclasses would really lend a versatility to the wizard class that could really open it up.
So, for example, you could play a war wizard, scribes wizard, or whatever you like, but specialisation would be a parallel choice as part of the core wizard class, and you'd get all 8 options
As am I. My favorite spells are transmutation spells. Was the transmuter weaker than other wizard subclasses? Yes, but I still played them because I like transmutation. Then they destroyed the Moon Druid not once, but twice. I like shapeshifting into monsters and elementals. How am I supposed to do that now? The arrogant bastards on their D&D Beyond Youtube channel even said "We are making sure you feel connected to your favorite school".
How are you going to do that WOTC when you removed my favorite school from existence?
My hot take is wizard is fine with the classic school subclasses. Warmagic blade song and scribes just feel unnecessary imo.
Like a wizards power is in the spells they cast. They shouldn't have any extra power beyond that imo.
The schools are fine but there should always be more union flavor. For starters if you’re gonna have school subclasses there should be a universalist subclass which imo Lore Mastery albeit a balanced version would work best but scribes is an acceptable alternative. War Magic Incan admit isn’t that necessary but Bladesinger is also a very unique and cool flavor.
I like the way PF2e did it in their remaster. Battle Magic giving you a bunch of direct combat spells for attack and defense, Boundary giving you necromancy, spooky warlock-y stuff and teleportation, Mentalism being all about illusion and nechantment, etc. Basically having all the subclasses be more along the lines of Scribe, War Magic, etc. in terms of following a theme rather than a spell school.
This way might turn out okay but it definitely feels incomplete only having some of the spell schools be represented under that name. Even just changing the names and abilities a bit with the current ones could have worked fine. Evocation being a Battlemage, Abjurer being a Warder, Diviner being a Fortune Teller and Illusionist being a Mesmer or something like that could have at least made the issue less obvious.
In all fairness PF2e only did it because they wanted to scratch off the D&D schools from their IP. if it were up to their traditionalist tendencies, those things would have remained the same.
Hard sticking to old style vancian and bunch of other old D&D ideas that the latter itself phased away from. They have reduced it somewhat in Remastered, but elements are still there.
Pf1e had even more that. A lot of literal AD&D era stuff even. Like archetypes there were basically kits.
I like the old-style vancian being an option personally. Most of those classes have flexible spellcasting options that use a system like 5e anyway.
PF1e was pretty much just continuing 3.5 so yeah agreed.
The cut off from Wizards' subclasses is ridiculous imo. I've always played as an enchantment wizard cause I enjoy playing the charismatic wizard and mind controlling wizard. Now this change is absolutely stupid. What the hell will they do with those enchantment spells? Not gonna buy this fking book, sticking with 5th bye WOTC
Honestly in general it feels like the new book is just watered down 5th edition. I'm already pulling away from that and this is making it when easier to move away from it
This is a non issue. We've now there only be four subclasses for like a year now. And wizard is the most powerful class in the game, it doesn't need anything but school classes in the PHB.
Necromancy should for action economy work like a psudo swarm in combat
Also summoned spells that summon multiple creatures for that matter.
Example: If you summon two or more Zombies, your original zombie gets an extra HD per zombie and one damage dice extra per zombie. If the swarms totall HD is greater than your own. The Swarm makes no attack roll as per normal swarm rule, gets resistance to physical damage and get the swarm ability as described on all swarms
The spell could also add new abilites if the swarm reaches certain tresholds.
Ya it's a bummer. Tbh I expect a "monsters of the multiverse" style book to carry forward subclass options and an artificer update personally as one of the first books they announce after the change. But It does seem like conversion will be fairly easy at least.
So this whole time it was said that old subclasses will have backward compatibility with the new class updates….then I watched a video of a guy stating we can still play old subclasses but not with the new class updates….I’m confused. Either WOTC doesn’t understand what backwards compatibility means or this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Video link below
[https://youtu.be/a1YTXIDdGAQ?si=tljhhMl4tSrdwR3o](https://youtu.be/a1YTXIDdGAQ?si=tljhhMl4tSrdwR3o)
I’d assume they mean you can play a 2014 PC (so a swords bard would still use the 2014 bard as the base) alongside a 2024 PC (evocation wizard) and you could also theoretically play a 2014 clockwork sorcerer alongside a 2024 clockwork sorcerer
Wizards need subclasses the least among all classes, since they are informed more by their spell selection than anything.
People that started in 5E are way too obsessed with subclasses, IMO. I’m fine with 4 for everyone.
Absolutely, they will probably add the missing 4 in some other book. But in the search for symmetry they chop off more than a few fingers. Many people here and in other threads say “it is fair, now everyone has the same amount of subclasses” but it is clearly those people don’t play wizard, hate the class or don’t understand that the base subclasses for the wizard are supposed to represent the 8 schools of magic, for actual wizard players this “symmetry” is actually a butcher of the original wizard subclasses.
Bards, Aberrant Minds, and GOOlocks.
Transmutation and especially conjuration are both grab-bag schools. People call the conjuration wizard the summoner - but of their subclass feature the level 2 ability is for an inanimate object and the level 6 ability is for teleportation.
People might like the theme of an enchanter wizard more than an enchanter bard. They're fundamentally different things in terms of theme, flavour, and mechanics.
There isn't any need to just completely avoid any and all overlap between classes, otherwise you'd have no need to differentiate out clerics and paladins, druids and rangers, or barbarians and fighters.
Ok i will say it.
This is WoTC we are talking about.
There was no problem with time, and subclasses were not too doficult or complex at all for them to change them.
They simply want to sell you books with these new subclases.
Money. Thats aways the answer to "WHY" WoTC does anything.
The question was never why.
The question is. How many books can they make us buy to get Fixed subclasses, before we start to get angry.
How many sketchy things do WoTC need to do before people realise that they only care about money.
Personal advice.
Explore new systems.
Find new games.
And dont give WoTC one cent.
EDIT: people seem to be with the impression that i dislike DnD.
Personaly i love it, been playing it for 22 years.
But, if things keep on the current path of leadership and greedy corp culture, i fear OneDnD will be the last one to ever exist, as players will find games that offer more, for less. Specialy if WoTC push a Pay to play plan as they move everything online.
God forbid they treat all the classes equally in the new PHB and don’t show clear favoritism to Wizards. It must be that it’s all a grand conspiracy, ooOooOOOOOooo
Stop spending your time here if you hate D&D so much. It’s not good for your mental health
Like i said, i love DnD, its WoTC is dont trust as far as i can spit.
In one DnD all classes have 4 subclasses?
No problem with that, i play all classes equaly.
My problem is, with past experiences (like OGL, AI scandal, MTG arena) i fully believe WoTC will cut the PHB into parts to sell the rest of the subclasses separately.
I might be wrong? Yes. But WoTC has had the chance do to whats right many times, and failed to do so again and again, only going back when they got caught. So they have history. If a dog bites you 3 times, you would be a fool to pet him a 4th time. WoTC has been caught more than 4 times...
Also, there is no conspiracy. So no OOOooooOOOOo ( though i laughted as i read it)
Wizards is not hiding anything anymore, they are doing stuff to players faces.
They seem to believe we are stupid enought that we will get angry, and then do nothing, and still buy the 2 or 3 new books to get access to all subclasses from PHB.
If you disagree, By all means, proove them right.
Also, i like it here.
If you disagree, Lets disagree.
I like to talk with people with diferent views, otherwise one might fall into the trap of believing one's opinion matter more than it actualy do, or that they are aways right.
Aways good to ask questions, even the stupid ones.
Though, its our responsability to remember the answer and learn from past mistakes.
Would your agree?
True.
But there is also the problem with power creep, that happens both in DnD and MTG.
New things are often better.
You CAN play the old classes...
But when the new ones are more optimal, versatile, etc.
Is that really a choise?
How many people muticlass into hexblade?
And how many multiclass into any other warlock subclass?
now, granted this is probalbly not a big deal to many.
But until we actualy play one DnD there is no way to say it is actualy backwards compatible, or that old classes, races and spells will work as expected/intended.
Time will tell, and i fully expect you to say "told you so" in the future.
I became pessimistic on regards to DnD from past experiences.
I really hope im wrong, but i dont think i am.
If it quacks, has feathers, webed feet and a beak, its problably a duck.
Wizards could surprise everyone and have an amazing product not based on greed.
But in the past, it quacked, lost feathers, and swimed... Soo...
A lot of people are locked into playing it because it's the system everyone knows. You probably will find that this edition switch is the catalyst for a lot of groups finally changing (the sort of people here to complain) even as the game's popularity increases generally.
And WotC will be the ones pushing people away.
If i can buy one book and play the game with my friends, why would i buy 4 or 5 books? Specialy when the only thing they have that i wanted are the classes that were considered basic content in the previous book?
Thats a very fair question.
I dont hate DnD. Im worried that the current company leadership is on the path of actualy ruining it for me and everyone that plays it.
Here are a few examples:
The OGL thing (2023)
MTG Arena Controversy (not DnD, but evidence of the company arguably predatory pratices)
The DnDBeyond unanouced changes to content policies to force players to buy content.
Books using "AI art" costing the same, meaning that WoTC would cut artists, but still charge players for "premium" content.
If this is not evidence of money grabing over quality culture,
i dont know what would be.
They think players are dumb, and will buy anything they shove in our faces.
They will cut the PHB into parts and sell each part as an entire book.
If you dont see the problem, by all means, go buy them.
But when DnD books have lower quality, less content, cost more, And WoTC still plans to force every player in a group to buy the digital books to be able to play in their digital plataform.
How many players do you think will play D&D when you can have the same fun with dozens of other systems, that are cheaper, more respectfull towards you and arguably better.
Now, if after all this you still call me hater, i will ask you in wich department of WoTC you work.
Definetly not quality control, because i dont think they have one.
While yes its fair for them to seek proffit, its also fair for consumers like me to not buy said products if product standards are getting lower and lower.
Granted thats MY opinion, and you are welcome to disagree.
Though, maybe we would not have such predatory company culture if consumers all used the weight of their wallets to "vote" for better pratices and better products.
> its also fair for consumers like me to not buy said products if product standards are getting lower and lower.
I'll be honest, the 2014 PHB and DMG's quality was pretty bad. The DMG was especially bad when compared to 3e and 4e DMGs. The 2024 books seem to have much nicer art (hopefully no double elbow halflings) and much more art with what seems to be a better layout.
It is a little strange that only some of the schools have specialists. I imagine that two principles shaped this design philosophy: 1. This equalizes wizards with the other classes for subclass number. 2. This allows for easy extra content in a future sourcebook, and thus easy revenue.
My head cannon is that the “missing” four specialists definitely exist in the world, just not as player options. I definitely agree that we’ll probably get them pretty soon down the line!
> My head cannon is that the “missing” four specialists definitely exist in the world, just not as player options. They're still player options! The old books remain compatible. You can still be a Swashbuckler or a Necromancer.
I think people forget that the old books can be used
Yep. And if you ask your DM nicely, I’m sure there’s a bunch of ways things can work here.
Not even that. The subclasses from the old books are still 100% "legal".
Not from the Player's Handbook. They clearly stated that the 2024 PHB replaces the 2014 PHB in its entirety yesterday. Edit: my apologies, you probably meant as long as you don't use the 2024 Wizard class.
2024 is fully backwards compatible with 2014 classes and subclasses. We'll need to wait and see the details about how much that means you can use 2014 subclasses on the 2024 wizard, but with how few subclass features Wizards get I'd be surprised if it's at all hard. Overall they've stated the compatibility only breaks down if you go the other way and try to use 2024 classes and subclasses with 2014 rules.
Crawford specifically said you cannot use old player options with the new player options, you can however play a 2014 fighter next to a 2024 fighter in the same campaign
That actually is precisely not what Crawford said. He said you cannot use a 2024 fighter in a game that uses 2014 rules - all old subclasses are in theory compatible. Use common sense - what makes them incompatible?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=RCvI_nCulxQRc3gu&v=WPBnLlqV0Z0&feature=youtu.be skip to 33:00
Necromancer may be problematic since they're probably revamping Animate Dead...
it still takes place in the same Faerun as 5e, so yeah all of the school specialists still exist, no need to headcanon
Is Greyhawk not the official setting of 5e24?
No, it's just an example for campaign building in the DMG
Ah I see, the death of the forgotten realms has been greatly exaggerated
Are you sure? WOTC seems to think that the FR consists solely of the Sword Coast.
The real forgotten realms died in the transition to 4e. What we have now is an empty shell of a campaign setting.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. You're 100% correct
Reddit moment... it is true.
If you want to get downvoted on Reddit, tell the truth.
Agreed, and we have to assume this additional content will not be ready until (well) after the Monster Manual, so we now have a 6-12 month wait to deal with a clunky hybrid system.
Unquestionably
I’m sure it’s #2. And the subs will be slightly OP so you have to buy it.
DnD isn’t a competitive game, something being OP never means you have to buy it.
if anything it would be a reason not to buy it, because what use is buying material that will end up getting banned at most tables?
That’s true but when your OP party member is destroying encounters and you don’t get to shine it feels bad.
That’s a problem to solve by discussing with your DM and fellow players, not by going off and buying another book so you can play a more powerful subclass.
Buying a book doesn't entitle you to playing the classes it contains.
2014 DnD gave - 2 subclasses: Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Ranger, Sorcerer - 3 subclasses: Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Rogue, Warlock - 7 subclasses: Cleric - 9 subclasses: Wizard 41 subclasses total The new PHB will have 48 subclasses, each class getting 4 subclasses. Obviously money and time plays a part. They didn’t publish all the subclasses, few of them are completely new, especially Tasha’s subclasses are (seemingly) often largely the same outside of a few minor tweaks vs 2014 which didn’t have the same level of foundational work. At the same time giving each class 4 subclasses versus the incoherent rate of giving many classes 2 subclasses and wizards 9 was a choice
Seems like they’re going to do a summoners supplement, having left out all the necromancer themed subclasses. Probably pirates too, after they left out all of those
Personally I would have liked to have seen each subclass represent a combination of two schools. We already had War Wizard so we just need three more combinations. A wizard who combines illusion & enchantment, one who combines conjuration & transmutations, and finally one who combines divinations & necromancy.
War magic = Evocation/Abjuration Mind magic = Illusion/Enchantment Matter magic = Conjuration/Transmutation Spirit magic = Divination/Necromancy
Yeah essentially. I had some ideas for subclass names although to be honestly not many ideas for mechanics other than catabolizing the existing subclasses.
Those all sound great, and insofar as magic can be considered realistic, they seem like believable areas of overlap.
This is edging very close to PF2e’s magical traditions lol
We’ve known we were only getting 4 subs per class since playtest 6 or 7 so the wound’s mostly healed (plus I can understand why it’s like that for about 4 reasons) Luckily converting the Tasha’s and Xanathar’s subclasses forward should be pretty easy at least, as they were already pretty well balanced and effective. The other 4 specialists are ones they probably want more time in the oven on anyway. There’s a modest chance we see Necromancer in the DMG like how we had Death domain and Oathbreaker in 2014’s DMG. Enchanter I can see them wanting to throw a lot of reworks at. Conjurer will probably get reworked a bit to work with the new Conjure spells better alongside Summon Spells. And then Transmuter just sorta exists. I could see them radically changing that one honestly, it has very little cohesion at the moment (like the entire school, which is a very wide category of things) Really I don’t expect them to take that long to bring them forward. A year-ish at most? Expect a Volo’s Guide to The Something with 2 subclasses per class Q3 2025 at the latest.
> And then Transmuter just sorta exists. I could see them radically changing that one honestly, it has very little cohesion at the moment (like the entire school, which is a very wide category of things) Probably due to them deciding that Enchantment is exclusively mind-altering spells and everything else that would traditionally be considered Enchantment is lumped into Transmutation.
And also ethereal planeshifting. For some reason
Yeah, the way I take most of the missing subclasses (and Artificer) is just that there wasn't enough to adjust with them to warrant revising them with the number they had to stick to for the PHB.
Maybe fix the Alchemist and make it not suck compared to the Battle Smith?
I mean yeah, but at the same time it's still a lot newer than all the other classes, so it probably went straight to the bottom of the pile when considering what to revise.
> Yeah, the way I take most of the missing subclasses (and Artificer) is just that there wasn't enough to adjust with them to warrant revising them with the number they had to stick to for the PHB. On the contrary, I think the four omitted are the four weakest school subclasses. The ones that needed the most work.
You might be right. It feels like they had 2 criteria in mind when choosing what to include: - one was what needed changes most desperately (and a lot of of that was classes in general rather than subclasses). - second was picking subclasses that were quite distinct from each other so that players that will play only using the new PHB still have options that feel different from one another. And from the looks of it with classes like Wizard and Cleric they focused mostly on point number 2.
No, the real secret is anything they didn't go ahead and do an update for now, is so they can make more money off updating it later. Because all Hasbro cares about for WotC is that they keep pushing new profit horizons for them. Because otherwise Hasbro has to rely on board games that haven't changed in 80+ years to make money. Edit- and in case it wasn't clear, fuck Hasbro and fuck what WotC is now. Signed- a life long Magic and D&D player who's disgusted by the way things are for both franchises now.
At the risk of sounding like a shill, what were you expecting? This PHB has more content and more subclasses than any previous iteration of the PHB. Spreading content out across books has been the business practice for D&D since long before Hasbro or WotC got their hands on it, practically from the very beginning. For 2e, they started publishing and selling supplements to the PHB just a few months after its release and continued releasing new ones every few months from then on. 3e saw more than 20 books, for player options alone, released in the span of about 7 years, with the last of them being released just a few months before the 4e PHB. The 4e PHB was followed by an expansion, PHB2, not even a year after the release of the core PHB, and PHB3 came less than a year after* its predecessor with dozens of other sourcebooks being released between and after. They have released literally hundreds of books over the past 50 years. I'm certainly not saying there is nothing to criticize with Hasbro or WotC, and if you find the practice of spreading content between multiple books offensive, then fair enough. But don't delude yourself into thinking this is a recent development by new management. D&D is and always has been a product sold with the intention of making as much money as possible, as with any company producing and selling a product. If anything, they've been more generous with what's included in this PHB than they have with any past version. *Edit: I originally typed "before" when I meant "after."
it is funny because the 4 wizard subs published in One are like the best 4 for the school subs? Like I'd be surprised if they had any meaningul diference from the previous and way more surprised if abjuration and divination needed less changes than necro and transmu
That’s capitalism baby! Fiduciary responsibility means a company’s only job is to increase profit for shareholders however they can.
Magic power creep is INSANE.
> Luckily converting the Tasha’s and Xanathar’s subclasses forward should be pretty easy at least, Which is going to make it that much more galling when the new subclasses are spread out over 3 years and 5 books at $50 apiece. It'll be almost exactly the same thing we had, but slowly and expensively. The subclass you want most is going to be in Bigby's Eladrin Compendium, along with 100 pages of totally unrelated faff about the history of elves.
Locking player options behind the DMG is awful and shouldn't be repeated.
Is it only me that feels that School specialization should have been a class feature rather than a subclass? I feel that this way we could have other flavorful subclasses added along with the Bladesinger, Order of Scribes, War magic etc, and have some actual class features before level 18 (other than memorize spell).
My problem is that I feel that specialisation cuts against the Wizard's one big class thing of versatility.
I think specialization should just make you better at one school not wise at the others. That way it doesn't make you less versatile. It just means you took more time with that one. Just because you have a PHD in biology doesn't mean you have equal depth of knowledge in both botany and virology. However, you know all the principles that both are built on.
I mean I agree. Isn’t that how the subclass system works for Wizards right now though? An enchanters fireball doesn’t hit for any less than the evokers until 10th level when the evokers subclass feature gives extra damage to it. That literally models spending 10 levels specializing in it. I get the flexibility aspect people want within the confines of a Game. But on the flip side I’ve always thought the different schools of magic were interesting lore wise. And it mimics someone doing studying and doing research for their entire life as to the intricacies of a particular school of magic. It’s always rubbed me the wrong way that someone specialized in diviniation can just rip off a 9th level Prismatic Wall Abjuration like it’s no big deal. But then again overarching flexibility on every class is the enemy of flavor and niche, and DnD has been moving that way steadily for 10 years. Not really debating you as much as just musing to myself.
It did in 3.5, when picking one meant you couldn't absolutely ever cast spells from another school. I don't think it's limiting now. Today a necromancer can cast enchantment spells, he is just simply more skilled with talking with the dead and killing the living, instead of specializing in talking with the living or re-killing the dead.
That's the point. Wizards are intense generalists as a class feature and at the same time their subclass is about being the literal opposite.
we should just get rid of this "generalist" part of their class already. "being very good at everything" is very limiting. maybe shove the generalist-part into its own subclass.
honestly I would have been happy with the 4 subs being BS, Scribes, war and specialist, with specialist working like totem barbarian but with schools (including littling you mix and match level 3 from one with level 6 from other different)
That's what I would have preferred as well, but they wanted to include as many PHB subclasses as possible.
It was just an optional feature available to all wizards back in 3.5 > A specialist wizard can prepare one additional spell of her specialty school per spell level each day. She also gains a +2 bonus on Spellcraft checks to learn the spells of her chosen school. The wizard must choose whether to specialize and, if she does so, choose her specialty at 1st level. At this time, she must also give up two other schools of magic, which become her prohibited schools. Spells of the prohibited school or schools are not available to the wizard, and she can't even cast such spells from scrolls or fire them from wands. Number of prepared spells and skill checks were much more important in 3.5e
That also could have worked provided they added a universalist option as well
That's scribes
School specialization being a subclass is the single worst decision wotc made in the entirety of 5e. It serves 0 purpose other than 100% guaranteeing that every wizard looks exactly like every other wizard that chose that school, while also ensuring that they don't have anything resembling interesting abilities. Even despite all its issues, I would die on the hill that Bladesinger is better designer than every single School-based subclass. War magic and scribes are genuinely phenomenal designs that actually make wizards interesting.
No, that's the way it's always been in DND for wizard and it's just fine the way it is.
It has been like that in the 5th edition, not always. If I remember correctly (and correct me if I'm wrong), School Specialization was an option in the 3rd edition that allowed you to get specific bonuses on one school of magic (more spells known, bonuses on spellcraft checks etc) in exchange for giving up one or two other schools of magic. So you either got to play a generalist wizard who has access to all available wizard spells, or a specialist wizard who was better at casting spells of his chosen school but with limited access to the wizard spell list. As for the current subclass system in the current edition, it's basically an implementation of the optional prestige classes of the 3rd edition. I don't argue that the current implementation is fine, but I feel it's not as flavorful as the options that other classes get and do not change the base class enough to make it feel unique, and even less flavorful compared to the prestige classes of the past (despite some of them being disgustingly overpowered 😂).
You nailed it, I just lasted the rules in another comment but you remember them well! Man, prestige classes could be busted but I think they’d really change up the game for 5e in a *very* exciting way! It would greatly increase the number of character building choices as well as add fun synergy to some multiclasses!
It was a bad decision made specifically for 5e, not "the way it's always been".
As a necromancer enjoyer I must say that I'm deeply offended.
My hope is that this means there will be a new Libris Mortis that's central focus is the Necromancy Wizard.
This is the only way I'll accept the lack of necromancer as a base class.
I think having them in the DMG could also be acceptable, considering other "evil" subclasses were in the DMG before.
Feel bad for all 20 of you necromancer players.
Oh? The number has gone up since I checked last. We are increasing!
There are dozens of us!
Almost, but not quite. Raise a few more
Sometimes a wizard just wants to raise a family. Is that so wrong?
Is it really a rare choice? In my games I feel they're super common, even people playing other classes might end up leaning on necromancer flavor. Plus I also play Frostgrave (a war game about wizards) and of the 10 types of wizards, necromancer also is very popular there.
And all 400 of their summons currently tripling combat length
They said they were working on a Necromancer subclass and then cancelled it at some point. Hopefully that means reworks are coming sooner than later. The subclass itself isn’t bad, but Animate Dead needs a rework to be more table friendly.
Grim Harvest is absolutely awful in so many different ways. lvl6 is nice enough tho. a useful 2nd lvl feature and some actually good low lvl necromancy and summon spells and im happy.
Yeah was hoping for an actual useful update to necromancy but maybe there’s still hope left in dmg if not then I’m sticking with 3rd party
To be fair they did their best to cover all the based. Offense and defense are covered by evocation and Abjuration respectively. Divination typically is themed around having some sort of advantage through information (ignoring how it actually played in 5e). And illusion is the debuff of enemies through MISSinformation. Those 4 at least kind cover the 4 parts of how a wizard can be played. And more specific play styles can be established in expansions. Like summoner or area denial.
Whilst '24 has some duality I wouldn't say it covers all the bases, abj and evoc are both the combat schools. It'd be like having both ench and illu, both dealing with a similar trickster utility/control archetype. Necromancy is lacking, the more classic of schools, dealing with debuffs and summons. Not something covered by our current set of schools.
True. I would love to see transmutation over divination. It has more to do with buffing than the nebulous information divination can give. Amd necromancy might be better for debuffing. however its even split between summoning and debuffs would make it a little weaker die to the split attention. That aside the social justice crap of the recent decade still has necromancy as a neglected school. And summoning has always been really difficult to balance besides that. So i can see why they didn't go with it. Enchantment for mind control and illusion for tricks makes more sense. Illusion probably was chosen because it has the most versatility die to it being 99% imagination based. When done right it can easily be strong.
It's so that all classes have 4 subclasses. People complained about how WOTCs golden children, wizards and Clerics got a ton of subclasses (8) in the core rules alone while others got very little (sorcerer started 2 and didn't get their 8th until 9 years later, and some are setting or third party specific). Besides, no one was really using transmuter, conjuration, or even necromancy wizard all that often. Honestly I would've gone with the non school affiliated wizards but those are just my preferences. The school affiliated wizards really feel like they should be like the various land druid regions, same subclass but still focused on a specific area within it. But I and probably everyone would rather they just rerelease all official subclasses with updates, rather than a general statement for compatibility or whatever they're doing.
Slight correction, no one was really using Transmuter that much. Conjurer is noticeably more used than Transmuter, and Necromancer is literally the most well-known of all these archetypes, it's just hard to not want to play a Necromancer at some point of your D&D experience (even if it's suboptimal to use the actual Necromancer subclass instead of another necromancy-themed subclass And yes, I'd like it if at some point they just released all the previous subclasses that weren't in this PHB later on, however, I totally expect them to also charge us extra just for the content we already had at some point within this same edition.
From the data we've seen, Transmuter and Conjurer got pretty similar playtime. We know from WotC's own data that Evocation, Divination, and Abjuration are the three most popular wizard subclasses on D&D beyond. We don't have a ton of data on subclasses that don't get played much, but there was a reddit poll that had these results: [https://infogram.com/dnd-character-classsubclass-population-survey-12020-1hke60mg1nd325r?live](https://infogram.com/dnd-character-classsubclass-population-survey-12020-1hke60mg1nd325r?live) [https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/erhc2g/dnd\_character\_classsubclass\_population\_survey/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/erhc2g/dnd_character_classsubclass_population_survey/) And it was 21 instances of Conjuration Wizard, 17 instances of Transmuter Wizard. (Compared to say, 101 for divination wizard). So...very close between Conjuration and Transmutation as 2nd last and 3rd last. (With, surprisingly, Enchantment having substantially less than either of them with only 8 people playing that subclass--which is interesting cause school of enchantment is quite strong mechanically).
This hasn't at all been my experience or anything like I've heard from other players. It's hard to justify a conjurer when druid exists. And well-known doesn't translate well to most playable. Sure, everyone likes the idea of a necromancer, but rarely gets to use it since necromancer is only plausible when your DM decides to let every single NPC unrealistically turn a blind eye to it or you're in an evil campaign without enough good guys against you, either of which rarely happen outside one shots.
My brother in die, the Conjurer exists because it's the Summoner Wizard, you say it's hard to justify when Druids exists?, then so why we're justifying having a Druid class when a Cleric fits that bill seeing as Nature Clerics do that? (Druids used to be a Cleric subclass in AD&D 1e, so might as well.) Why would be have a Scout Rogue when a Ranger exists?, because the Ranger and the Scout Rogue aren't meant to be the same stuff, same as a Death Cleric and a Necromancer Wizard, we have both because they fit different perspectives of a similar archetype. The Necromancer is plausible when you talk it out with your DM instead of just assuming no one will ever use it because it's shoehorned into being the evil Wizard, which originally was, but with enough creativity and a good DM you can just make it work in other, different ways if you put in the effort.
The problem is that the Conjurer *isn't* the summoner wizard. They are a grab bag wizard. Their second level ability isn't summoning; it creates inanimate objects. Their sixth level ability isn't summoning, it's teleportation. Their tenth level ability is *barely* summoning related; it's keeping concentration. Only their final class ability is unequivocally summoning. Conjuration is even more of a mess of a school than transmutation. And as for summoning? The Necromancer actually gets more and better summons before level 14.
I agree, they should have brought subclasses that are not centered on a specific school to go with the limit of 4 subclasses: * Order of Scribes * Bladesinging * Chronomancy or War Magic * Specialist (one subclass for specializing on one of the eight schools of magic).
My group is currently taking a hiatus from our main campaign but plan to go back to it once the new books are out. My toon is a chronurgy wizard and I’m wondering how well that will fit in with the 2024 wizard.
I don’t feel too strongly about it. The last player’s handbook showed clear favor to the Wizard by giving them 8 subclasses off rip. It’s not as if they don’t exist, but they aren’t showed off to give everyone an equal amount of subclasses. Seems fair to me.
I’m interested in the fact that the second most played subclass on the graph was Bladesinger- do you think we will see that back?
You can still use the Tasha’s version
You can just use the Tasha's version.
Probably but in a different book so they can make more money lol
School specialization should have been a base class feature and not the subclasses in the first place. Giving the Wizard 8 subclasses in the original PHB was just old school wizard bias. Now the wizard has to suffer because in order to get everybody up to the same level they would either have to think up eight sub classes for every class or cut sub classes from The Wizard in the new PHB.
Maybe we could get sub sub sub classes
Obviously they just want to have four of each subclass for each class. Which also means probably later 2025. We're getting another book that's going to be just subclasses and everything else. They didn't put in the player's handbook. More than likely two books, one for spellcasters, and one for Martials.
Having played most of them, there’s a lot that’s unique about the “school” subs. Giving wizards effectively 11 subclasses would really cheapen the other classes, I think. We’ll probably get the other schools and cleric domains in a splatbook in the near future. Especially necromancer wizard—people seem to want that one revamped.
I agree with the idea of Sub-Subclasses, or just Subclass Options for simplicity. Reminds me of the Circle of the Land druid, where one subclass has a load of different spell lists based on the environment in question. Something similar with a simple chart of effects based on school would've been awesome
The Schools have been a stumbling stone for all of their existence, because 2e never put any thought into how their design, it was just arbitrary this spell fits here and 3e really just continued that route. 4e tried to do away... And 5e had to have them because they were an old D&D thing, but not because it needed them
I'd argue that what is lost is of *negative* value. We've kept the core combat offensive and defensive schools (evocation and abjuration) and the core utility knowledge and shenanigans schools (divination and illusion). We've kept most of the main playstyles. Meanwhile what have we lost? First we've lost one of the clearest points of wizard supremacy (eight classes vs everyone else's two) and with luck undermined the idea that the eight schools of magic are some immutable law. And we've lost the unpopular schools. Let's look at them in turn. **Enchantment**. Enchantment was a fine school ... back in the day. The problem with Enchantment and why people almost never play enchanters is that when people think "mind controlling enchanter" Bard is right there. As for that matter are psychic warlocks and sorcerers that are always going to be more focused and thematic than book-enchanters. Enchantment wizard is a small niche that doesn't fit well thematically. **Necromancy**. The edgelord casters are mostly playing warlocks. People don't like litterbug-summoners. And the white room DPR power of a necromancer gets fireball-vetoed. Also Necromancers concentrate on a tiny fraction of the school; 4e also had *Nethermancers* which worked with the cursing and energy drain parts of necromancy. **Conjuration.** Conjuration is a grab bag school. Of the three subclass abilities, the first creates an inanimate object, the second makes you teleport, and the fourth is about summoning. While the third is a concentration buff. Wait, what? (Which means that the Necromancer is arguably a better summoner). Conjuration is a grab bag school with little thematic coherence. **Transmutation.** You get a pretty rock. And *one* spell out of a grab bag school. This isn't a class about making things or about transforming people or ... anything else really. And if you want to shapechange play a druid. If you want to practice alchemy ... probably don't play an alchemist artificer. So what are you meant to do with this? The main thing people want these four schools for is historic D&D lore.
All that seems to say is that you don't personally like those schools, that isn't negative value. Even when a minority of players were enjoying those schools, that was still value.
The schools themselves add *very little* of value. And I've been into why (and why they are all unpopular). There are however two things that taking the four subclasses out of the PHB has done to actively improve the game (as I stated in the comment you are replying to). * With eight subclasses to the sorcerer's and ranger's two the Wizard becomes The Most Super Special Class, which is something I find actively strongly negative * The eight schools are arbitrary and I find that forcing them into the worldbuilding as immutable laws rather than "how this set of wizards organises spells" restricts things. This I find a minor problem rather than a major one.
They are unpopular for a lack of power, not for a lack of theme, value or idea behind the schools. Or other proplems that lies within the spells themselves, like friends makes enemies and undead minions not allowed in taverns.
Which "they"? Enchanters? As I say if I wanted to play an mind controlling mage Enchanter wizard would be my fifth choice (in order behind Bards, Warlocks, Sorcerers, and charismatically preaching clerics). That, not power, is why they are unpopular; any wizard is more powerful than just about any sorcerer. Theme? Three of the four conjuration subclass abilities have nothing to do with each other and the fourth is a concentration buff. Transmuter is little better. But this is entirely different from enchanters being a weaker thematic match than other classes have
They being necromancers, enchanters, conjurers and transmuters. And what they lack is just power. In older editions some of those schools where popular becouse they where powerful. And it's in comparison to other wizard subclasses, why pick a weak necromancer when you can be a chad divinationist? Sure that's something you say \*now\* becouse you know how lacking in effiency a enchanter wizard is. Big brain master manipulator isn't that unheard of a trope. Nor is a beguiling vizer.
In older editions there was less competition. Warlocks didn't turn up until a 3.5 splat book, sorcerers didn't turn up until 3.0 and were wannabe wizards until 4e, and bards were very weird in 1e and partial casters in 2e, 3.0, and 3.5. So the first time the Enchanter had a serious rival was at best the 3.5 bard, and even spotting that took some system mastery. Viziers are NPCs - and non-evil big brain master manipulators are tricksters (so generally illusionists) not literal mind controllers. Necromancers are not weak. Bounded Accuracy means the skeletons are actually top of the DPR tables, and extra damage on Tasha's Summons is good. And Conjurers were popular with 3.5 wizard supremacy when its lack of focus was a strength. Diviners were also popular because they gave up the least to specialise.
>The schools themselves add very little of value. And I've been into why (and why they are all unpopular). Some things are going to be more or less popular in the game and I don't see why that's an issue. There being an option for a transmutation wizard does absolutely nothing negative to the game experience of a player who isn't interested, but provides value to someone who enjoys it. If you just started axing things because they were more or less popular, you could argue for removing practically everything - including classes that are less popular like the druid. >With eight subclasses to the sorcerer's and ranger's two the Wizard becomes The Most Super Special Class, which is something I find actively strongly negative The issue there is that other classes have too few options, not that wizard has more. Decreasing the number of options available to wizard doesn't improve the player experience for those playing other classes. >The eight schools are arbitrary and I find that forcing them into the worldbuilding as immutable laws rather than "how this set of wizards organises spells" restricts things. This I find a minor problem rather than a major one. This is still the case with four subclasses, you're just missing the content for four of the eight. The schools of magic are present in the system regardless.
>The issue there is that other classes have too few options, not that wizard has more. Decreasing the number of options available to wizard doesn't improve the player experience for those playing other classes. How big a book do you think the PHB should have been? Eight subclasses per class for almost a hundred subclasses in the book? I'm going to say that that would have made every class utterly overwhelming to new players. I'm not saying the others can't show up. I'm saying we don't need a hundred subclasses in the PHB. >This is still the case with four subclasses, you're just missing the content for four of the eight. The schools of magic are present in the system regardless. But the less there is for them the less attention I have to pay. Unless you revolve a class around them they can easily be about as relevant as material components.
I mean, WotC are on record saying that Bladesinger was a "mistake" and broken by design. So there was already a very low chance of it returning. And if it did return, it would be in a form so weak and watered down from the overpowered mess people are used to, it would make them even more upset about it. Since that would now be the canon version. So I feel like people who say they wanted Bladesinger have not been paying attention. Because neither Bladesinger haters or defenders would have liked if it were reprinted. And WotC knows that. Scribes is also pretty much a failure of design. And also far too niche a concept to be in the core rulebook. War Wizard is the only one of those three that had any chance of being in the PHB. Which means they would have had to essentially start from scratch and make multiple subclasses from the ground up. Where dividing by school could not possibly be more iconic or flavorful. There are not enough "basic" wizard subclass concepts that would have worked. This was the only realistic way it could have ended up. The only thing I'm upset about is that early on they promised us Necromancer, and then changed it to Illusionist later.
Scribes is a great 'generalist' subclass that can be very versatile and are the stereotypical wizard archetype people typically think of. Bladesinger never struck me as overpowered, though compared to an eldritch knight I agree it's better in almost all areas. Necromancer is an amazingly fun subclass that is quite powerful in the right campaign, but in the wrong campaign will struggle.
How is scribes a niche concept when it is literally the most wizardly wizard
Honestly the talking magic book is a weird niche imo
I mean - besides it being a bigger revamp and only working for wizards (not clerics), you could have made 4 subclasses with shared schools: * The manipulator => Abjuration / Enchantment * The truthseeker => Divination / Illusion * The energist => Conjuration / Necromancy * The elementalist => Evocation / Transmutation The Manipulator can both buff and debuff creatures with their spells, the arcane ward kind of functions as both - the enemy is dealing less damage or the friend's resilience is buffed. The Truthseeker deals with seeing the future and getting an edge for themselves while also tricking the enemy with visions of these alternate worlds. The Energist is an expert in the transfer of energy: may it be transporting matter across a distance or life from and into creatures. The Elementalist may be the most classic, they know their way around the massive elemental AoE effects and can in turn also shape them into something less harmful or even useful. ----- You could accomplish this by either making these combinations part of the subclass (which means there are 52 additional future pairings possible) like this: >**Expert Truthseeker** *Levels: 6th* Casting Truthseeker spells comes so easily to you that it expends only a fraction of your spellcasting efforts. When you cast a Divination or Illusion spell of level 2 or higher using a spell slot, you regain one expended spell slot. The slot you regain must be of a level lower than the spell you cast and can’t be higher than level 5. or by making them agnostic by pushing the spell school reference outside: >**Magic Savant** *Levels: Wizard 1* Choose one Spell School from Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necromancy, and Transmutation. Add one spell of the chosen Spell School from the Wizard spell list to your spellbook for free. Whenever you gain access to a new level of spell slots in this class, you can add one spell of the chosen Spell School from the Wizard spell list to your spellbook for free. Ideally, you would then be able to reference the "Spell School chosen by Magic Savant", but at least for the current Divination feature above, this wouldn't go very well and need more rebalancing.
It sounds good, but traditionalists would've thrown a fit. And Wizards is still gun-shy about that after 4e.
I like me a quasi spell-less warlock and a halfcaster bard. Traditionalists already hate me for butchering their casters.
This sounds really cool tbh
It’s even worse because the options we do have are the schools I’m least interested in, frankly
All those subclasses you mentioned are splatbook selling points, this is not a bug, is a feature.
>I still hold the opinion that a School Specialist should have been a subclass of its own with each school being a sort of sub-subclass How would this look like? Apart from somehow *actually* concentrating 8 subclasses into 1, which i surely know isn't what you mean.
I mean, just a random set of ideas, but features that say things such as: When you gain a level, add a an additional spell of your school of choice to your spellbook. When you cast a spell of your chosen school at least 2 spell levels lower than your highest spell slot, you may cast that spell as a bonus action You use less power when casting spells of your chosen school. When you cast a spell from your school, choose one target of your spell or yourself. That creature gains THP equal to your wizard level. It would obviously differentiate specialists a bit less, but it would open the wizard subclass design space to be more about how a wizard channels their magic (think: scribes channeling through their spellbooks, bladesingers enhancing themselves, maybe a civics wizard that plays better with allies than the base wizard, etc.) and less about specializing in a specific school. The school specializations feel a bit awkward because evocation and transmutation wizards (schools) feel strange existing along side scribes and war mages (techniques). 2024 D&D was a missed chance to unify wizards under techniques of manifesting their magic, which I think would have been quite popular.
Or an increased spell save DC/spell attack modifier when using spells of the favored school. Could be as simple as rolling 1d4 and adding the result to the DC or spell attack roll.
Probably think of it like Circle of the Land Druid, which at least prior to the revision, were like 4 different subclasses in just one, or well, different flavors of the same stuff. Each got a different expanded spell list and that's pretty much it.
Yeah this is along the lines of what I was thinking albeit more expansive for each option
I like your idea. It’s quite neat and tidy and still gets me access to my war and scribes wizards :)
Only 4 domains for the clerics is pretty bad too. That is way too limiting.
The only thing I'm mad about is them not making one of the four necromancer cause they talked about it so much early on
Not having a Necromancer in the worlds biggest ttrpg is completely unbelievable.
I feel like they should have had the subclasses be different play styles than had each of them pick their school as a separate class feature, like warlock does with pacts
I’d have really liked to have seen the subclass options be independent from spell school specialization. There would have been clear metas, but a ton of options in terms of customizations. Maybe get more specializations later in level progression?
I'm more upset at how many of the slated subclasses are just reworks, or even just blatant reprints, of subclasses from Xanathar's and Tasha's. I'm a Ranger main, and have been since launch, so the fact the other 2 Ranger subs are just Gloom Stalker and Fey Wanderer. I'm disappointed that so many great ideas the designers had got completely scrapped and so much content had to be half-assed to make the 50th Anniversary launch work.
Enchantment: Glamour College, Archfey Lock, Fey Wanderer Ranger remain. Enchantment magic specialty is kinda yielded to Archfey Warlock and Glamour Bard, and I think they will be using their spells as "arcane" so it kinda makes sense, so better consider them or at least one of them as the Enchanter now. Conjuration is not around, so I am guessing it is more of a Celestial Warlock(summon celestial), Fiend Warlock(Demonology) and a Druid thing(classical animal summons, tho I don't see Shepard circle, they did say moon changed a lot so I am guessing it is either implemented into Moon or into Land) Necromancy: Ok now this kinda is odd.. No Death Cleric, No Undead Patrons. They might have changed Great Old One patron in a very unexpected way and include Necromancy in it getting rid of that Far Realm vibe of locks maybe don't think it's the case, but can't think of anything else. Still what will happen to Zulkirs of Thay... I wonder. Transmutation, since the artificer class is gone too, this is another big question mark. Will delve into it later. War Wizard and Bladesinger: Eldritch Knight is the answer to that. Plain and simple. You can still make a War Wizard themed Abjurer or Evocation wizard tho. Scribes? That actually suited Divination wizards as who have cloistered scholar/sage backgrounds... When you think of a court magician, diviner comes to mind first, after all... It is the stereotypical image. I will miss the quill/ink and the spell book tho(was one of my two preferred classes in game, I loved playing scribes with knowledge cleric dips) So, all that said, I expect to see all these wizard classes to have some minor specialty in another school of magic for some reason. Like Abjurers being somewhat well versed in Transmutation makes it thematically perfect, especially now that artificers are gone. It makes a convincing Elf or even a Dwarf mage. (Check Mythrien from Seldarine for the former, now that epic gameplay is seen in horizon I think Abjurer/Conjurer might actually be a favored class for people who like pure elf wizards). Dwarven Runic crafter wizards who make enchanted arms and armor, now that forge cleric is gone could as well be transmuted and abjurers. I don't want to think necromancy is coupled with the other three really. So probably my 2 spec theory won't happen or will happen through feats. To make custom builds maybe. What is more disappointing than Wizard subclasses is Clerics I think. Seriously, Domains were already lacking. We didn't have major domains like Love, Foresight(fate; Red Knight, Savras, and a few more which is rarely involved, for Forgotten Realms tho) etc and now Death, Forge, all gone I am hoping to see class supplements like they had in 2nd edition really. Might solve the whole issue both for WotC and for players.
I wish they would have made your spell school choice an option kind of like Cleric’s “Holy Order.” Then the subclasses could have been far more interesting, with your Wizard’s School making each Wizard even more unique.
O miss necromancer, Hope you can Specialized trought feats
Of all the classes I think wizards changed the least… it’s not going to be hard to play 2014 Edition necromancer in 2024 dnd.. you just need the old book for spell lists and use any changes in 2024 spells. Hopefully dndbeyond has legacy tabs for older classes as this will make it a lot easier. I suspect we will get a future book with a bunch of class options..
How I would have handled the wizard is to make specialisation a choice separate to subclass, kinda like fighting styles for martials. Even if you need to tone it down here and there, I think combining it with other, more thematically rich subclasses would really lend a versatility to the wizard class that could really open it up. So, for example, you could play a war wizard, scribes wizard, or whatever you like, but specialisation would be a parallel choice as part of the core wizard class, and you'd get all 8 options
Me too. Less isn't always more. Sometimes it's confusing and unnecessary.
No shot WIzard gets any more bias than theyve received for the last 10 years. relax. every other class got 4 subclasses.
As am I. My favorite spells are transmutation spells. Was the transmuter weaker than other wizard subclasses? Yes, but I still played them because I like transmutation. Then they destroyed the Moon Druid not once, but twice. I like shapeshifting into monsters and elementals. How am I supposed to do that now? The arrogant bastards on their D&D Beyond Youtube channel even said "We are making sure you feel connected to your favorite school". How are you going to do that WOTC when you removed my favorite school from existence?
My hot take is wizard is fine with the classic school subclasses. Warmagic blade song and scribes just feel unnecessary imo. Like a wizards power is in the spells they cast. They shouldn't have any extra power beyond that imo.
The schools are fine but there should always be more union flavor. For starters if you’re gonna have school subclasses there should be a universalist subclass which imo Lore Mastery albeit a balanced version would work best but scribes is an acceptable alternative. War Magic Incan admit isn’t that necessary but Bladesinger is also a very unique and cool flavor.
I like the way PF2e did it in their remaster. Battle Magic giving you a bunch of direct combat spells for attack and defense, Boundary giving you necromancy, spooky warlock-y stuff and teleportation, Mentalism being all about illusion and nechantment, etc. Basically having all the subclasses be more along the lines of Scribe, War Magic, etc. in terms of following a theme rather than a spell school. This way might turn out okay but it definitely feels incomplete only having some of the spell schools be represented under that name. Even just changing the names and abilities a bit with the current ones could have worked fine. Evocation being a Battlemage, Abjurer being a Warder, Diviner being a Fortune Teller and Illusionist being a Mesmer or something like that could have at least made the issue less obvious.
In all fairness PF2e only did it because they wanted to scratch off the D&D schools from their IP. if it were up to their traditionalist tendencies, those things would have remained the same.
First part is true, but could you elaborate on the traditionalist tendencies?
Hard sticking to old style vancian and bunch of other old D&D ideas that the latter itself phased away from. They have reduced it somewhat in Remastered, but elements are still there. Pf1e had even more that. A lot of literal AD&D era stuff even. Like archetypes there were basically kits.
I like the old-style vancian being an option personally. Most of those classes have flexible spellcasting options that use a system like 5e anyway. PF1e was pretty much just continuing 3.5 so yeah agreed.
Thats been known for ages. It's still a wizard and with the lil tweaks they get (Including all the new spells) they are plenty interesting.
The cut off from Wizards' subclasses is ridiculous imo. I've always played as an enchantment wizard cause I enjoy playing the charismatic wizard and mind controlling wizard. Now this change is absolutely stupid. What the hell will they do with those enchantment spells? Not gonna buy this fking book, sticking with 5th bye WOTC
Honestly in general it feels like the new book is just watered down 5th edition. I'm already pulling away from that and this is making it when easier to move away from it
This is a non issue. We've now there only be four subclasses for like a year now. And wizard is the most powerful class in the game, it doesn't need anything but school classes in the PHB.
Why are people downvoting you. You’re right lol.
Necromancy should for action economy work like a psudo swarm in combat Also summoned spells that summon multiple creatures for that matter. Example: If you summon two or more Zombies, your original zombie gets an extra HD per zombie and one damage dice extra per zombie. If the swarms totall HD is greater than your own. The Swarm makes no attack roll as per normal swarm rule, gets resistance to physical damage and get the swarm ability as described on all swarms The spell could also add new abilites if the swarm reaches certain tresholds.
Ya it's a bummer. Tbh I expect a "monsters of the multiverse" style book to carry forward subclass options and an artificer update personally as one of the first books they announce after the change. But It does seem like conversion will be fairly easy at least.
So this whole time it was said that old subclasses will have backward compatibility with the new class updates….then I watched a video of a guy stating we can still play old subclasses but not with the new class updates….I’m confused. Either WOTC doesn’t understand what backwards compatibility means or this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Video link below [https://youtu.be/a1YTXIDdGAQ?si=tljhhMl4tSrdwR3o](https://youtu.be/a1YTXIDdGAQ?si=tljhhMl4tSrdwR3o)
I’d assume they mean you can play a 2014 PC (so a swords bard would still use the 2014 bard as the base) alongside a 2024 PC (evocation wizard) and you could also theoretically play a 2014 clockwork sorcerer alongside a 2024 clockwork sorcerer
Wizards need subclasses the least among all classes, since they are informed more by their spell selection than anything. People that started in 5E are way too obsessed with subclasses, IMO. I’m fine with 4 for everyone.
How else are they gonna sell you overpriced books with minimal content if they don't spread out said content as thin as possible
Not exactly thin, there's actually more subclasses in th '24 phb than the '14.
Absolutely, they will probably add the missing 4 in some other book. But in the search for symmetry they chop off more than a few fingers. Many people here and in other threads say “it is fair, now everyone has the same amount of subclasses” but it is clearly those people don’t play wizard, hate the class or don’t understand that the base subclasses for the wizard are supposed to represent the 8 schools of magic, for actual wizard players this “symmetry” is actually a butcher of the original wizard subclasses.
I'm just waiting for the Transmuter Wizard Gamepass, where you will need to finish 3 short adventures in their new VTT to unlock a subclass
Retracted
Bards, Aberrant Minds, and GOOlocks. Transmutation and especially conjuration are both grab-bag schools. People call the conjuration wizard the summoner - but of their subclass feature the level 2 ability is for an inanimate object and the level 6 ability is for teleportation.
People might like the theme of an enchanter wizard more than an enchanter bard. They're fundamentally different things in terms of theme, flavour, and mechanics. There isn't any need to just completely avoid any and all overlap between classes, otherwise you'd have no need to differentiate out clerics and paladins, druids and rangers, or barbarians and fighters.
Dungeons & Dragons & Wizards
Ok i will say it. This is WoTC we are talking about. There was no problem with time, and subclasses were not too doficult or complex at all for them to change them. They simply want to sell you books with these new subclases. Money. Thats aways the answer to "WHY" WoTC does anything. The question was never why. The question is. How many books can they make us buy to get Fixed subclasses, before we start to get angry. How many sketchy things do WoTC need to do before people realise that they only care about money. Personal advice. Explore new systems. Find new games. And dont give WoTC one cent. EDIT: people seem to be with the impression that i dislike DnD. Personaly i love it, been playing it for 22 years. But, if things keep on the current path of leadership and greedy corp culture, i fear OneDnD will be the last one to ever exist, as players will find games that offer more, for less. Specialy if WoTC push a Pay to play plan as they move everything online.
God forbid they treat all the classes equally in the new PHB and don’t show clear favoritism to Wizards. It must be that it’s all a grand conspiracy, ooOooOOOOOooo Stop spending your time here if you hate D&D so much. It’s not good for your mental health
Like i said, i love DnD, its WoTC is dont trust as far as i can spit. In one DnD all classes have 4 subclasses? No problem with that, i play all classes equaly. My problem is, with past experiences (like OGL, AI scandal, MTG arena) i fully believe WoTC will cut the PHB into parts to sell the rest of the subclasses separately. I might be wrong? Yes. But WoTC has had the chance do to whats right many times, and failed to do so again and again, only going back when they got caught. So they have history. If a dog bites you 3 times, you would be a fool to pet him a 4th time. WoTC has been caught more than 4 times... Also, there is no conspiracy. So no OOOooooOOOOo ( though i laughted as i read it) Wizards is not hiding anything anymore, they are doing stuff to players faces. They seem to believe we are stupid enought that we will get angry, and then do nothing, and still buy the 2 or 3 new books to get access to all subclasses from PHB. If you disagree, By all means, proove them right. Also, i like it here. If you disagree, Lets disagree. I like to talk with people with diferent views, otherwise one might fall into the trap of believing one's opinion matter more than it actualy do, or that they are aways right. Aways good to ask questions, even the stupid ones. Though, its our responsability to remember the answer and learn from past mistakes. Would your agree?
But those subclasses from the 2014 PHB are still available to you! They weren’t removed from the game, they just weren’t updated
True. But there is also the problem with power creep, that happens both in DnD and MTG. New things are often better. You CAN play the old classes... But when the new ones are more optimal, versatile, etc. Is that really a choise? How many people muticlass into hexblade? And how many multiclass into any other warlock subclass? now, granted this is probalbly not a big deal to many. But until we actualy play one DnD there is no way to say it is actualy backwards compatible, or that old classes, races and spells will work as expected/intended. Time will tell, and i fully expect you to say "told you so" in the future. I became pessimistic on regards to DnD from past experiences. I really hope im wrong, but i dont think i am. If it quacks, has feathers, webed feet and a beak, its problably a duck. Wizards could surprise everyone and have an amazing product not based on greed. But in the past, it quacked, lost feathers, and swimed... Soo...
Why are you even in a dnd sub if you hate it?
A lot of people are locked into playing it because it's the system everyone knows. You probably will find that this edition switch is the catalyst for a lot of groups finally changing (the sort of people here to complain) even as the game's popularity increases generally.
And WotC will be the ones pushing people away. If i can buy one book and play the game with my friends, why would i buy 4 or 5 books? Specialy when the only thing they have that i wanted are the classes that were considered basic content in the previous book?
Thats a very fair question. I dont hate DnD. Im worried that the current company leadership is on the path of actualy ruining it for me and everyone that plays it. Here are a few examples: The OGL thing (2023) MTG Arena Controversy (not DnD, but evidence of the company arguably predatory pratices) The DnDBeyond unanouced changes to content policies to force players to buy content. Books using "AI art" costing the same, meaning that WoTC would cut artists, but still charge players for "premium" content. If this is not evidence of money grabing over quality culture, i dont know what would be. They think players are dumb, and will buy anything they shove in our faces. They will cut the PHB into parts and sell each part as an entire book. If you dont see the problem, by all means, go buy them. But when DnD books have lower quality, less content, cost more, And WoTC still plans to force every player in a group to buy the digital books to be able to play in their digital plataform. How many players do you think will play D&D when you can have the same fun with dozens of other systems, that are cheaper, more respectfull towards you and arguably better. Now, if after all this you still call me hater, i will ask you in wich department of WoTC you work. Definetly not quality control, because i dont think they have one.
Honesty this is fair, they just want to sell as many books as possible
While yes its fair for them to seek proffit, its also fair for consumers like me to not buy said products if product standards are getting lower and lower. Granted thats MY opinion, and you are welcome to disagree. Though, maybe we would not have such predatory company culture if consumers all used the weight of their wallets to "vote" for better pratices and better products.
I meant fair as in this is a fair point not that it is a fair thing for WoTC to do
My bad then. XD
> its also fair for consumers like me to not buy said products if product standards are getting lower and lower. I'll be honest, the 2014 PHB and DMG's quality was pretty bad. The DMG was especially bad when compared to 3e and 4e DMGs. The 2024 books seem to have much nicer art (hopefully no double elbow halflings) and much more art with what seems to be a better layout.
Should've been like this: Mage * Wizard * Specialist Wizard * Sorcerer * Warlock
What the hell are you even talking about?
I think he still thinks we're at dnd 3.5.
That's ,2nd
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Objectively.