new class idea - Wizard

wizard class submission

skills:

• dagger

• sword

• staff

• parry

• wands

• scrolls

• staves

• recall

• meditation

• trance

• metamagic feats

• spellbook

available races

• human

• half-human

• drow

• elf

• faerie

• illithid

• avian

spellbook: This skill allows you create a spellbook to store spells you find in the lands. You can scribe and copy scrolls, staves, and wands into your spellbook growing your arcane might at the expense of destroying the original.

The spells stored in the spellbook are available to you to cast, skill level are = to spellbook skill, spelllvl are = to character level.

metamagic feats: As you advance in your profession in wizardry select feats that you discover to bolster your spells in a limited way.

• Enlarge Spell: Normally a spell that targets singular is changed to target negatively everybody not in group, or positively everybody in group.

    Example Enlarge Sanctuary would affect you and your group, Enlarge Chill Touch would affect all mobs, players in room.

• Extend Spell: Double's a spells duration.

• Empower Spell: Increases your spelllvl with spell by +1.

• Maximize Spell: Spell damage roll is maximized.

• Twin Spell: Spell casts twice but lagged twice. 

• Quicken Spell: Reduce spells cast lag.

You gain 3 meta magic feats during your charaters progression so you must choose 3 out of 6.

You can't stack different feats on the same spell. Example you can't Twin Spell a Maximized Spell.

You can only feat a spell once and then you have a long timer before you can use it again. Timer starts once spell is casted.

Someone been playing dungeons and dragons eh?

Actually yeah lol, I'm running tomb of annihilation for my friends on roll20.

If you haven't, you should play a Psi destruction. You will like them. They are similar to what you sugested.

Also, Leech. Leech mages!!!

Is this a wizard class submission without any spells?

I think this is more of a spell 'feat' system which has been looked at a bit before.

Please give us some example of spells, the play style of the class, and how it would fit in with the current balance.

Would this class be sufficiently different from invokers to warrant a new class rather than a path?

How would things like extend spell be used with the cabal choice of savant, for instance?

Quicken spell shortens a casting time by how much? Under what conditions?

We really need more info to work with if you want more input.

Those are some interesting suggestions.

I've always wanted to see a mage class that works like the classical wizards - gather ingredients to create a spell. Or modify a spell. Or w/e.

Gaunticles' suggestion is really nice and can be greatly expanded on.

On 9/22/2017 at 10:03 PM, Celerity said:

Is this a wizard class submission without any spells?

I think this is more of a spell 'feat' system which has been looked at a bit before.

Please give us some example of spells, the play style of the class, and how it would fit in with the current balance.

Would this class be sufficiently different from invokers to warrant a new class rather than a path?

How would things like extend spell be used with the cabal choice of savant, for instance?

Quicken spell shortens a casting time by how much? Under what conditions?

We really need more info to work with if you want more input.

I lack a lot of the balance mechanics compared to others so I wanted to submit a basic idea of class I'd like to see. What makes a wizard different than Invoker is that it's customizable by picking your spells via finding them in the game. You will be limited in spells you can pick up with a spellbook that increases with skill and level of your character. 

It's easy to have 2 different wizards due to they choose to fill up there spellbook. It makes exploring the lands exciting to find weird spells that nobody uses often, you can get unexpected combos not seen before I think.

As a more refined way of doing it... how about the spellbook itself has to be held, and you can transcribe scrolls into it for your arsenal. A memory system similar to another class, and the spell book has a duration similar in length to hex, perhaps a bit longer.

The class itself has a few cantrips known intrinsicly, like detect magic and invis, burning hands, cold touch, lightning bolt, to help in early levels.

Instead of transcribing a spell, the wizard can "experiment". Chance of destroying spell book, but can add a random spell learned by other classes above level 38. Max of 3 successful experiments per spellbook.

26 minutes ago, Lloth said:

As a more refined way of doing it... how about the spellbook itself has to be held, and you can transcribe scrolls into it for your arsenal. A memory system similar to another class, and the spell book has a duration similar in length to hex, perhaps a bit longer.

 

The class itself has a few cantrips known intrinsicly, like detect magic and invis, burning hands, cold touch, lightning bolt, to help in early levels.

 

Instead of transcribing a spell, the wizard can "experiment". Chance of destroying spell book, but can add a random spell learned by other classes above level 38. Max of 3 successful experiments per spellbook.

I like this a lot.

New spell book should retain old spells.

New spell books crated after mile stone levels could add any unique cantrips or spells.

Perhaps add another of your magic skills;

Spell mimicry, a passive skill where the wizard will play copycat and mimic other spells being cast in battle.

Example:

Invoker casts flame arrow for *** OBLITERATE *** against the vulture!

Wizard mimics Invokers spell for DISEMBOWEL against the vulture!

As well as,

Necromancer's Shatter spell MASSACRES the Wizard!

Wizard mimics the Necromancer's ritual, Wizards spell maims the Necromancer.

The wizard will automatically mimic spells for a couple of hours.

Just adding to your concept.

Second thoughts.

What if spell books needed to be crafted through the sacrifice of a certain number of non rare scrolls?

Those scrolls would then be automatically in the book. The wizard must then add to the spell book.

This would add a certain unknown diversity that each wizard can build his skill set around. Providing even greater RP angles.

I was thinking spellbooks could be crafted and found.

crafting a spellbook require:

book cover and binding material, paper source, ink

types of material:

binding material, wood, leather, stone, skin, metal

paper source, paper, skin, vellum etc...

ink: blood, ink, charcoal, oil, dye

Based on skill and rarity of materials used could create better spellbooks of holding more spells. 

Found spellbooks could have spells already in them with room to add more. Some legendary spellbooks could have unique spells for example Necronomicon or Igglwivs mad tome of arcane might.

A beginning level 1 wizard could have practice spellbook containing basic spells to level until he adds more spells or creates another spellbook.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookbinding

6 hours ago, Fool_Hardy said:

I like this a lot.

New spell book should retain old spells.

New spell books crated after mile stone levels could add any unique cantrips or spells.

Perhaps add another of your magic skills;

Spell mimicry, a passive skill where the wizard will play copycat and mimic other spells being cast in battle.

Example:

Invoker casts flame arrow for *** OBLITERATE *** against the vulture!

Wizard mimics Invokers spell for DISEMBOWEL against the vulture!

As well as,

Necromancer's Shatter spell MASSACRES the Wizard!

Wizard mimics the Necromancer's ritual, Wizards spell maims the Necromancer.

The wizard will automatically mimic spells for a couple of hours.

Just adding to your concept.

I think mimicking spells is not really in line with the idea behind the class. With a customizable spellbook, they already have a great deal of flexibility.

@Gaunticles, I think the spellbook itself should have tiers similar to bard vogues, and get more slots as it is levelled. Building it can be akin to ranger staff in that it doesn't have a material component, as it has a duration and would get stronger with levels rather than with levels AND materials. 

Cantrips would be known like normal spells. The class should have something it can do should it lose it's spellbook or exhaust it's spells. They would be weak or lower end utility spells, like armor, shield, and the lower end elemental spells. It also gives them more to practice.

If you want to utilize components, perhaps let them create things like wands and staves, where different woods give them more charges, and different ores/gems give the actual spells themselves.

Ok but the spellbook shouldn't decay over time. Spellbooks should last forever until destroyed by cleave or something, and there should be some cool spellbooks you can find like the monks beads from the willow place.

Allow wizards the flexibility to play with scrolls they find to build their spell repertoire. Give them the opportunity to find ancient rare/unique tomes to steal spells from that may contain unique spells only wizards can cast.

Give them the ability to scribe scrolls, create wands, staffs, brew potions.

Brew would be a no. Only one class can do that, and it plays a large part in it's balance. 

If spellbooks didn't decay, there would be an issue of what to do with the old ones as the wizard gets stronger, and it would tether them to spell selections that may not be suited for higher levels. How would you propose fixing that?

Spellbooks could just hold the scroll for X amount of uses?

So depending on the spell level you can cast it X amount of times, then have to get the scroll again... Or have to rescribe it, takes a few ticks per spell and leaves you drained or with a cooldown.

Wizard vs Invoker: What I meant here was...would wizards have a sufficiently different spell selection/play style to differentiate themselves from invokers (or bmgs, psis, or other magic-users)? Mana charge is essentially quick cast.

Are you planning on allowing a bunch of existing spells from other caster classes? 

If you are planning to use mostly invoker spells (as given in the examples), would this be better suited as an invoker path rather than an independent class? It'd be simple to keep mana charge as the 'quick cast' selection, and expand 'mana charge specializations' like wands, spellbooks, or what not for the other selections you offered.

Would wizards have new spells? If unique, what role would they play? Afflictive, mental, etc?

If they do damage, how is it different from our current magic-users? If not, what would these spells do?

I imagine you'd need about 10 unique spells AND a new playstyle to justify a class rather than a path. Even then, I'd still probably recommend you create two or three paths from that content rather than one new class -- but it depends on the spells you have in mind.

A master spell list would be very helpful since it is the most important part of being a wizard.

The spellbook part is interesting, but it is hard to discuss because we don't know the strength of the spells involved -- therefore you can't determine number of casts or other important limitations/conditions.

There was a suggestion of memorization above...I just caution and remind that the system failed horribly when it was attempted with psionicists. How would it be different from that system so as to avoid its pitfalls?

The mem system failed?

Yeah -- it has gone from a strict system to iterations of 'softer' memorization that lets you overcome the limitations by expending more mana -- which could have been done without a memorization system in the first place. 

It was so bad as to be essentially unplayable for psis for years and years.

The problems arising from trying to compensate for the memorization system led to the class becoming the most broken in the game. If you adjust the spell strength to account for being a one-shot, they generally become too powerful or have other usability concerns.

Idk, i did well with vibbletick on the old system.

Yeah, I know you did. There have been some psis throughout the years that managed, although usually with the same ¿two? working combinations. 

Doing well doesn't mean the class was alright though. What I meant by broken was that the class swung from extremely weak to extremely overpowered. They were (are?) the absolute one-trick pony, due to their extremely limited 'playability'. Many spells were (are?) completely useless and you never saw them used for any reason.  Evil psis are still fairly unplayable to my knowledge.

I don't think the memorization system did the class any favors. Even if you managed to use it well enough, it was more in spite of the design, not because of it. There is a reason it has been all but phased out.