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I think you've misunderstood the Magic Missile spell. When you cast magic missile, you roll 1d4 + intelligence modifier (1d4+1+5). That damage is then applied to 3 targets: 3d4+18 damage! Feel free to google for more information and confirmation, Jeremy Crawford has tweets confirming it too! Of course, you can house rule another way if you choose!
@@DnDShortsfind a way to turn it into a artificer spell and an ability to change its damage type into fire, acid, poison or necrotic and 5 levels in alchemist artificer for another +5 to each hit.
Best thing about Bladesinger's extra attack is that you don't need a melee weapon to use it. If you don't mind missing out on the capstone, its one of the best ways to play an arcane gunslinger.
I managed to roll good enough stats to be able to fit in a feat on mine and took Crossbow Expert - being able to shoot/cantrip/shoot again feels SO good
The reason the ratings of the Transmutation wizard is spread among the community is because Caleb from Campaign 2 of Critical Role was a transmutation wizard
Every other PHB wizard is better at their chosen school of magic, except Transmuter. It's a real shame. They could've gone all Fullmetal Alchemist with it, and had some equivalent exchange nonsense going on like taking a debuff to get a bigger boost to the Transmuter's stone effect, or sharing Transmutation spell effects with the person holding the Transmuter's stone.
@@matthewlabodin3981 I'm way into this. I want some FMA shit and unique abilities in order to appeal to that fantasy. But right now, Transmutation Wizard is just a shitty subclass when you compare it to things like Bladesinger, Chronomancy, and Divination Wizards.
Personally I could see that, but also they're utility casters being utility casters. Their level 6 feature is party support. Anyone in the party could use the stone. Gaining 60ft dark vision can save races without it, a bonus 10ft movement is great for any martial, Con save proficiency is a great bonus for a wizard, damage resistance is useful for anyone. The level 14 feature where you destroy your stone and manifest a unique effect is actually a very strong feature Major transformation, you could take a solid block of gold worth 5000 gold and turn it into a specialized spell component that might be rare, like a diamond. The limits of this type of transmutation are endless and scary, limited essentially by your own imagination and the DM. Panacea, a full heal, just straight up, a full heal, best used on someone who is under true poly morph or shape change spell for BIG HEALING. Restore life, isn't the dead clerics player super happy that you're a transmuter and you can bring them back to life. Restore youth, kind of meh to be honest. Has great RP potential tho. I will say that Shapechanger at level 10 is a bit weak but compare it to the other level 10 subclass features, Abjurers, better dispel/counter spell. This does nothing outside of anti magic combat, and it also forces you to prepare those spells. Conjurers, actually kind of neat, you're almost never going to lose concentration, it's only damage based. Sleet storm forces a non damage based concentration save. Keep that in mind, sleet storm "can" end the level 9 spell invulnerability because it circumvents damage based concentration saves. Enchanter split enchantment is the CORE reason why people play enchanter, that's the defining feature, casting an enchantment at 2 people strongest level 10 feature. Evocation empowered evocation adds + int mod to a damage roll of an evocation spell. Not bad but relies on gimmicks to make the most of it. (People will say that they add the +5 to all the darts of magic missile because according to JC you roll the damage once, that's dumb anyone who's actually played the game will tell you that's dumb, I swear everything JC has ever said to explain the rules of magic missiles is dumb and makes absolutely no sense, but the mileage of this feature will vary greatly depending on your table.) (The reason why it's dumb is a warlock hex blade adds their proficiency bonus to damage rolls against creatures they hex with hex blades curse, put simply a high level warlock with an uncommon wand of magic missile could drop a 6th level casting easily, dealing 8d4+56 to a single target or 1d4+1 +6 from curse times 8 darts, this is stupid, this shouldn't be how the spell interacts with the feature, however according to JC this is correct. Taking this to the extreme a level 17 evocation wizard 1 hex blade warlock would automatically deal 105 damage to a single target if they over channeled a level 5 magic missile and used their bonus action hex or 148.5 average damage if casting it at level 9) Illusion, you can automatically avoid a single attack once per short or long rest. Honestly not terrible, this trumps critical hits and costs a reaction. Necromancy, gain necrotic damage resistance and your max hp won't be lowered by things that normally lower it. A possibly unexpected side effect a necromancer can just walk around with Mummy Rot. They cannot regain any hit points due to the curse but also their max hp cannot be reduced, and mummy rot doesn't actually deal damage, it just reduces max hp. Predominantly undead are the creature type where "max hp reduction" often originates from so I guess lore wise this feature does make sense.
@@happyslapsgiving5421 Rope Trick. They can hide in a pocket dimension in complete safety while still doing some incredible damage with their intangible, commandable spellbook. It's actually broken and can prevent a TPK, easily worthy of at least A tier.
Two nights ago at D&D I got to unleash my scribe wizard properly for the first time. You know how lightning bolt is so hard to line up because how often will the enemy fight you in a straight line? Throwing your awakened spellbook over there, and then casting lightning bolt in exactly the right place is amazing. The dm will not be able to avoid it happening because you can come at him from any angle. But now you change the damage type from lightning to radiant so those undead creatures just dissolve. So much fun! Add to that every morning I prepare a scroll of scorching ray that just sits there waiting for me to use it upcast to level 3 for free. Casting detect magic, identify or comprehend languages in the heat of a situation as a fast ritual is amazing. I use mine every in game day. And I was already given a scroll by another character which I was able to copy into my spellbook in 2 minutes instead of an hour, so my party didn't have to wait around. I'm finding the Scribe wizard incredible.
For a casual game, I really like the idea of casting almost exclusively Magic Missile and transmuting the damage. I understand force damage is already one of, if not, the best damage type and not a lot of monsters have weakness to damage types, but the thought of turning them into metal balls and dealing bludgeoning damage or blades or spikes, acid, psychic, just sounds like a good time. Especially if you’re playing a Jigsaw type psychopath.
I’ve been playing a scribe wizard in my latest campaign and I can honestly say the ritual thing and the magic writing skills are way more helpful than you think. I collected basically every ritual i can and I can just cast one as an action when needed, great to read secret text or detect magic without taking very specific spells
Remember that it's not the ability to cast a ritual as an action - but without the 10 minute delay of ritual casting. Leomunds tiny hut for example would still take 10 full rounds of concentration (1 minute cast time) Great for needing to read text or detect magic like you said (still need to have those specific spells.) but most of the time you can just squat for 10 minutes without much difference :P
@@FrenchSensei true but theatrically it’s more impressive to say “I use my scribe ability to cast this ritual spell as an action” plus in the times I actually use it it usually is time sensitive. Comprehend languages has been very useful in the world we play in because the bad guys don’t always speak in common. Similarly our DM uses timed mechanics sometimes, meaning we don’t have ten minutes to loiter
@@FrenchSensei Depends on the DM I guess, most of my DMs have always made me wait on those ten minutes. Meaning that, whenever I want to use it, my DM says ok you squat to perform that ritual. And then goes to the rest of the party and asks, what does the rest of the party want to do? Making me miss on treasure, clues, roleplaying moments, etc. While my character just sits there doing a ritual. If I am on a dungeon, or some place dangerous, my DM would be like "Are you sure you want to perform a ritual? This seems like a dangerous place" Often I have to prepare detect magic... because it sucks to have it only as a ritual, when I most need it.
That's exactly it. I think a few abilities weren't really considered for scribe. in my own experience they're fantastic. Not just the ritual thing, but damage swapping is huge as is the awakened spellbook. By the time you get it you should have at least a 3 profiency bonus meaning you've got it for most combats you'd get per day. I'm not saying it's S tier but I think it should be A
@@Sean-ni4qy if 5e had more vulnerabilities it would be S tier for sure. But even as it is it’s super helpful that a gaggle of demons isn’t immune to fireball anymore, cuz now it does radiant damage (wither and bloom) or something like that
So I'm playing a scribes wizard at the moment and I will say it's unparallel utility for exploration with large parties. Get find familiar (which you can instacast if you need) and then summon your mainfest mind. Then plonk the familiar on another party member who's exploring one part of the map and the manifest mind on another party member exploring a different part while you explore the last (this can also work with guarding areas as you explore) get the familiar to telepathically communicate to you to see through its eyes if the player it's joined to call on you. If you can also grab dimension door so you can also teleport there too. Congratulations you now can be 3 places at once.
Scribes power doesn't come from exploration, it comes from their ability to change your spell damage and bypass any resistances or immunities. Which is arguably up there with portent in terms of power since you can use your higher level spells without worrying about resistance as long as you're aware of the creatures resistances
@@tyto.c order of scribes get the ability to cast ritual spells using the amount of time it would normally take to cast it with a spell slot. That's what I was referencing
@@SnowCat-nu7gj "When you cast a wizard spell as a ritual, you can use the spell's normal casting time, rather than adding 10 minutes to it." So it'd take an hour rather than an hour and 10 minutes.
@@blackwingdragonmasta a scribe wizard with elemental adept is crazy strong. you can take cold, which less creatures are immune to than fire and has a wizard spell for every level so all of your damaging spell can be cold, and now when you cast magic missile or whatever you treat ones as twos, making a first level magic missile deal a minimum of 9 damage which bypasses resistance.
I am absolutely FLABBERGASTED that you did not mention the trick of getting Eldritch Adept feat as an Abjuration Wizard to take Armor of Shadows invocation. Infinite, FREE recharging of your ward between combats is AWESOME!
@@jayredharpstudios9672 that's a fundamentally flawed evaluation, then. if we're only talking about class features, then conjuration wizards are useless because their only good feature relies on spells. features are an inherent part of levels and should absolutely be considered when ranking class value. of course, this guy is notorious for getting rules wrong, so it's not like his rankings have too much weight behind them anyway.
@thalmorjusticiar1 if DnD shorts is 'notorious for getting rules wrong like you claim he does, then why are you watching and why do I have to point it out when if you would just read the title of the video you would see he's ranking the Subclasses and if you just watched the video he makes no mentions of Feats because Feats make your character so customizable and people like you love to argue about them down in the comments of his breaking bad Feats videos. So good day and get off the internet and go touch some grass
@@jayredharpstudios9672 I watch him because I'm not a pretentious dickhead who can't look past errors about the rules of a game with (also notoriously) poorly written rules. I mean really, look at magic missile for example. According to the phb, "If a spell or other effect deals damage to more than one target [at the same time], roll the damage once for all of them." Magic missile falls into that category ONLY if you choose to target multiple enemies, because "The darts all strike simultaneously". With eldritch blast, you make an attack roll for each beam, so it's obvious that you roll damage separately, but that's not true of magic missile. Jeremy Crawford *did* clarify this, but poorly. All he did was refer to the page I quoted earlier. There was no reason for you to go so aggro on me like that. I wasn't attacking your character, calm down.
you are correct as it states "Once per turn when you kill one or more creatures with a spell of 1st level or higher, you regain hit points equal to twice the spell's level" meaning that spells straight up heal you
"Once per turn when you kill one or more creatures with a spell of 1st level or higher, **you regain hit points** equal to twice the spell’s level, or three times its level if the spell belongs to the School of Necromancy" No, youre not misinterpreting it. Its a heal for yourself when you kill, not THP. If it was THP it would SAY you gain THP.
@devin5201 I'd personally just homebrew it that, when you reach a higher level you can give those HP to an ally instead. Would make it incredibly useful at all times, and being that you need to kill a target tk get it makes it not as freely available as an actual healer. Feels balanced IMO.
You forgot about the "Shadow Wizard Money Gang" subclass It is absolutely busted, you can love casting spells at 2nd level and even legalize nuclear bombs in the late-game Instead of getting a small cut in the price of copying spells like inferior subclasses, you can get sponsored by the Shadow Government and ignore the cost
@@gabrielsalesmartins it's the start of a song, that became a meme, you can type "shadow wizard money gang" to see the cool animations people did with this sound, the DJ also say stuff like "this song is sponsored by the shadow government" "we like casting spells" or "legalize nuclear bombs"
@@morgan9660Or just take Magic Missile/Burning Hands and being able to hit enemies in a cone of force damage or have essentially a smaller auto-hit Scorching Ray levels earlier
plus if you multiclass 2 lvl in tempest cleric you can do max thunder/lightning dmg with one of your spell. Even the one you change its type (like a max dmg lightning ball)
You think that's the game changer? You can sit inside an anti-magic field and cast your spells through your book with the level 6 feature (assuming you summoned your spellbooks awakened mind before hand and sent it out of the zone). RAW you are casting as if within it's space, not your own in the anti-magic bubble. No need to worry about enemy spells. You can also hide in a wall of force or other defensive ability, and have your awakened spellbook out in the line of danger casting your spells. You can do it with Leomunds tiny hut at 6th level when you pick it up giving you 3 spells (proficiency modifier) to cast from the inside of pure cover. Otiluke's Resillient sphere, any of those sort of spells. Look up the cowardly quill - absolutely busted super defensive hidey hole wizard build.
I think you missed a few things about the scribe wizard that might affect your ranking: - Wizardly quill lets you copy spells 60 times faster. Meaning that what would take days/weeks for a normal wizard to do, you can do in a short rest. ==> This means you'll have a LOT more spells in your book which will impact your other abilities. - Wizards can cast any spell in their book as a ritual, it doesn't need to be prepared. Meaning scribe can choose not to prepare any of their ritual spell yet still be able to cast ANY of them for it's normal cast time. Effectively giving a massive increase in the amount of spells "prepared" - Manifest mind is simply op, it lets you: ==> Scout areas/dungeons safely (you can even make it appear behind a door) ==> Have 2 LOS on a battlefield, which even find familiar doesn't let you do. ==> Cast close range spells without getting close yourself. ==> Upgrade Misty step's effective range to 330ft I think you got most of the other cool stuff that can be done though.
Manifest mind can just wreck games if used intelligently. Yeah its just a few times a day but unless everything is on a clock who cares. Animate object 4 times a day can clear out places in a couple days. All safely from 300 feet away. The party doesn't even need to enter the dungeon, keep etc. DMs have to alter everything just to deal with that one feature unless the player intentionally nerfs themselves by not using it to its full potential.
I agree. And the biggest weakness of wizards is their dependency on their spell book. A scribe wizard effectively can’t lose theirs. If you play a crunchy game, that alone will be op. You can even destroy your own spell book, enter Mulmaster, recreate it in an hour, and wreak havoc on that dump
Scribe is also gread for multiclassing with other casters (Tempest cleric, Draconic Lineage Sorcerer, etc) because you can always get the bonus without limiting which spells you cast. Elemental Adept works as well.
Surprised no mention of the Wizardly Quill for Scribes Wizard. Allows you to scribe spells into your spellbook at a rate of 2 minutes per spell level (versus 2 hours) and completely replace your spellbook over the course of a short rest if it gets lost. Also the Master Scriviner feature allows you to create 1 free level 1-2 spell scroll per long rest that is upcast an additional level so you can't stockpile those as they disappear when you take a long rest. However, this feature also allows you to craft normal scrolls for half the cost and time and those you can stock up...or sell :D Probably one of my favorite wizards tbh. Has some nice features to help players new to the class/game while also providing a good deal of room for shenanigans for more experienced players.
Let's say you sneak into a wizard's house and want to copy his spellbook without stealing it With the "keen mind" feat, you can flip through a book, "copy" entire book in your mind and rewrite the spells you need later on And just because you can rewrite spells ultra fast doesn't get rid of expensive components for ink. You still need thousands of gold coins to rewrite a book.
@@DOneClub Well if you mean re-write your own spell book, a Scribes Wizard doesn't need the ink for that. If, however, you're talking about transcribing a new spell into your spellbook don't forget that "time" is also a cost for doing that. As you get higher level spells that cost gets significantly higher and since it's much more difficult to generate more time than it is to generate more gold, Scribes getting a substantial discount on the time cost of entering a new spell into their spellbook is nothing to sneeze at. Like all abilities though this is campaign dependent and this is definitely less of an impressive ability in a campaign where your party gets a lot of down time and has limited access to scrolls to transcribe.
Abjuration is weirdly underrated. It is the tankiest anti-mage wizard there is. They get the tough feat for free [Ward], add in the actual tough feat, some armor through multiclassing or race choice, and decent con, and the stereotypical squishy wizard is history. Also, using a 3rd level slot to take down a 9th level slot with an 8 or higher roll at later levels? Add in the lucky feat and BBEG ain't casting any big spells, period.
Abjuration is also arguably a little broken if you take Eldritch Adept feat for Armor of Shadows invocation. Infinite free reloading of your ward out of combat!
@@Hilianus Yes with careful feat selection you can break it even further. I have seen every DnD TH-camr I know simply ignoring Abjuration as it is supposed to be "boring". I played one in a super gritty campaign and my character was the hardest to put down even in lower levels, despite being the "squishy wizard". Absolutely love this subclass, Bladesinger and Cronurgy being my other two fav ones. I feel he doesn't get the power of a Bladesinger either
Yeah, and those is before you even incorporate the squishy caster fallacy. I feel like overall most of A tier shouldn't be there as they are all DM dependent and if your DM doesn't flow well with subclass then it is shit. I think a good subclass for any class should be the one able to do the great consistently no matter campaign/DM type and conjuration, enchantment, and illusion all fail to some degree because of that and so are, by definition of a standard well-made tier list, B or C tier material.
of course the best subclass is the one you enjoy playing the most, and all of these can set a man on fire with only a thought, so you do you at the end of the day.
I have been enjoying the build you did with the arteficer bladesinger. I'm playing as a former human who got turned into yaunti nightmare speaker. Shes a former priestess of dendar. My blade song if flavored to be a battle stim and I can buy alot of rare herbs to put people to sleep and entire their dreams like Freddy Krueger.
@@MyLittlePonyTheaterthe way magic missile is supposed to be used is you roll 1d4 +1, and that’s how much damage you do with each bolt. So if you add plus five to that, it’s 1d4+6. Three bolts is 3d4 + 18
The ritual cast feature on the Scribes Wizard is actually low-key super handy. It's functionally a free Detect Magic, Identify, or any number of other things as an action. That's super useful.
Our DeVito dungeon crawl is fantastic, Twin DeVito's spammable all day with the other Twin a Schwarzenegger (Str 18, Cha 13, Int 8). Free taxi's, no need for Uber, and free polymorphs into Penguins.
fun note is that the Conjuration Wizard's Benign Transposition ability also allows you to swap places with a willing ally, so you could use your action to swap and then use Misty Step to teleport out. this essentially gave them access to Vortex Warp before Vortex Warp was a thing
I feel like Scribes got slept on pretty hard here, and it’s not even my favorite subclass. Wizardly quill lets you copy insane amounts of spells in crazy short amount of times. Time is a wizard’s biggest constraint next to money. With the legendary tashas grimoires you can also get around paying for the transcribing the spells in them by using a short rest to make them your new spell book, and then using another short rest to bring all spells (including the ones you did not transcribe yourself from the grimoire) into your old spellbook. Manifest mind also has a lot more utility than just attacking from hiding. You can take advantage of the wording of the feature to increase the range of spells like misty step from 30ft to up to 330ft. Also even without the spellcasting portion, manifest mind is a better arcane eye you can use for free, with unlimited duration, that can be recast if dispelled with a 1st level spell slot, and is available as early as 6th level. Definitely not as overtly broken as chronurgy, but I’d definitely put it on the same tier as bladesingers for actively changing the way you play your wizard for the better
manifest mind is a better find familiar to be exact, more range to see from, instead of 100 it is 300. you can cast spells other than touch spells from it, and it can't be killed other than dispelling effects.
Getting a free ritual spell with the original casting time is huge for a subclass that thrives on collecting many spells in their spellbook. After all, Wizards don't need to have spells prepared to cast them as rituals, meaning that out of ALL the spells you have collected, you can cast ANY ritual for the original casting time once per day. Honestly sounds huge to me
It's absolutely massive. He also failed to mention how good manifest mind is. It can scout, it can cast close range spells without you needing to get close, and it can even upgrade misty step's range to 330ft.
@@arthurgraton7165misty step wouldn't work "you teleport up to 30 feet", even if you're using the books' senses, you'd still be moving yourself more than 30 feet.
correction for Necromancy Grim Harvest: it clearly says hit points not tempory hit points Undead Thralls: it scales with your character level and you get a two of them for the cost of one. also 10th level is resistance to necrotic damage not immunity. but not just Create Magen but also create homunculus, and the Life transference spell. but most importantly a much easier access to the Clone spell.
@@Lord_necromancer true but it's already a pretty good spell. 8d8 healing for a third level spell. Also it heals double the damage... So if you halve the damage you'd halve the healing.
@@nathans9764 oh yeah, it can be a ton of healing. The problem is that spellcasters don't usually have a lot of HP LOL and so I think a necromancer wizard being better at it won't really break the game. I am a necromancer in my current campaign, and I am also basically the dedicated healer because we have a fighter a barbarian and a ranger as the rest of the party. I use wither and Bloom when a person drops down to 0 hit points in order to get them back up, and I use life transfer to keep them up when they're in melee. But also if the wording of the spell is damage dealt, not damage taken, then reducing the damage would not also reduce the healing. Let's say you roll 22 on the dice - the dice deal 22 damage therefore they will heal 44 health, but if you reduce that damaged because of an innate ability, then you only receive 11 damage. The damage dealt does not change, only the damage received.
Scribes is great for multiclassing. Currently playing a Scribes Wizard with 2 in Tempest Cleric. Change Fireball to Lightning damage, activate Channel Divinity for Destructive Wrath, goodnight Vienna to everybody in a 20ft radius
Evocation will always be my favourite, there is something so satisfying about throwing a fireball, and the fighter and barbarian don't even get warm from it, throw in elemental adept and you have a recipe for an annoyed DM.
Each time I’ve played an Evocation Wizard my character spontaneously developed a gunslinger swagger that was difficult to justify based on ability alone. Intimidating and, at times, slightly obnoxious. Trading witty banter with the barbarian or paladin about the relative shortcomings of their martial prowess. Choosing Chill Touch, Fire Bolt and Ray of Frost as a cantrip loud-out instead of anything with out-of-combat utility. Never having any spell slots left at the end of the day. A simplistic mind-set whereby battlefield control is akin to damage per unit area. Finesse zero, fun factor lots and many.
"Beginning at 10th level, you can add your intelligence modifier to [ONE] damage roll of any wizard evocation spell you cast." That means if you cast magic missile at 1st level, you roll 3d4 + 3 for the base spell damage, then add your intelligence modifer ONCE. Jeremy Crawford did not say you add the modifier to ALL rolls, he said just that it works for magic missile, which is obvious.
The absolute *shenanigans* I've implemented with my Scribe Wizard has been really impressive. You dismiss the Manifest Mind tricks as "coward strats" but there's just no end to the creativity that you can implement with a luminous, talking, floating incorporeal entity that can cast (for instance) a Thunder Step spell that is altered to deal Necrotic damage.
Don’t forget about bladesingers extra attack can be used on blade wars too. Enjoy the physical damage resistance, use a scimitar and shadow blade and still get two attacks
you forgot the fact that arcane abeyance forgoes casting times. One of the best uses is arcane abeyance-ing Leomund's Tiny Hut and then having your familiar (who acts right after you) smash it, giving you a long rest in the middle of combat.
Nice stuff! War Magic is an awesome 2-level dip for martials to increase their defenses. And since Arcane Deflection isn't casting a spell, Barbarians can come to the party too!
War wizards are actually *GREAT* for a low-level wizard dip (if, for example, you want to give your druid the Shield spell and a positive modifier to the INT save it's already proficient with). I would basically never use Arcane Deflection for the AC bonus because of the cost, but the +4 bonus to, for example, a key Concentration save is better than being proficient with CON saves for most of your career. And any initiative bonus is a good thing, since going first can mean some opponents never get to act at all.
Fully agree with the illusion point. I love playing illusionists and if you have a strict dm you are hosed. I have used it to put a big white void in a doorway because we knew an army(at least 15) of goblins were sitting there with held actions for when we entered, but since you need to use an action to discern it is an illusion, they couldn't trigger their actions. Also its fun playing anxious people who will use the verbal/visual minor illusion to create people to have conversations with at the tavern so people don't approach you.
The Scribes Wizard has 1 ability that puts them above all others...If necessary, you can replace the book over the course of a short rest by using your Wizardly Quill to write arcane sigils in a blank book or a magic spellbook to which you're attuned. At the end of the rest, your spellbook's consciousness is summoned into the new book, which the consciousness trans- forms into your spellbook, along with ALL its spells... not just those in your memory.
I love scribes wizard so much. Once I dropped my spellbook from a cliff into the center of a Drow Raid party and told it to cast fireball, changing the damage type to Force. I call it the Flashbang. Afterwards you can just command your spellbook to return to you.
My favourite wizard is still evoker. Just being able to drop a fireball with a bit of extra damage on everyone is great. But casting a sickening radiance or maddening darkness and killing everything in the room that's not your party, priceless.
I think some people's love of Transmutation wizards comes from CR campaign 2, as Caleb was such an incredible character portrayed by Liam O'Brian. His use of the character and methods of playing the Subclass it his plans went well in my opinion. As a long time DM my personal opinion is this. Play whatever Subclass or class you want to. If you are passionate about making it work you will. Dnd is about storytelling now and stories deserve to be told, no matter the mechanical faults
Re: Transmutation Wizards Not to argue that it is equal to divination or anything, but I think you missed the cool gimmick of the 2nd level ability. The transmutation ends, but changes to the object do not, which means you can craft and shape anything easily by transforming it into balsa wood, carving it and letting it snap back. Alternatively, you can make it clay and smush it together to merge seams and joints. You can make a shirt with no seams! With woodcarving tools and proficiency and pottery, you are capable of making almost anything out of almost anything. This is mostly flavor, but it lets you do neat stuff like make a chest out of solid stone, do repair to large scale objects like ladders and walls. Alternatively, if all changes to the object snap back (DM choice I imagine,) you now have a magical reset on any item that you can transform, which also leads to shenanigans. Large scale you could even transmute a spell jamming ship or something, have it be a harder material, then snap back when your concertation breaks. Also, Major Transformation which you dismissed rapidly has some key features... it is limited by VALUE, not magicalness. Combined with a source of valuable junk, you can use it to mass produce potions, low and high value magical items. (Apologies if this go errata'd out and I missed it) If you have an artificer friend with two alchemical jugs, you can create a ridiculous amount of wealth by transforming poison doses (1oo GP per day per jug) into LITERALLY ANYTHING YOU NEED. And, if you want go go silly, you can transmute a bunch of diamonds INTO alchemical jugs, use them to make more diamonds, and you only cap out when you have more poison doses than you can fit into the Major Transmutation box. If your GM lets you sell and buy anything, this is less useful, but still seems like a nifty trick. Given a month you can kit out your whole party in utterly ridiculous gear. 14th level characters are arguably able to generate ridiculous wealth a lot of ways, but this solves the selling markdown, the availability of buying, and the availability of buyers problems at 100% efficiency, unless you want to buy big (long wide tall) things. In an environment/campaign of theoretical scarcity (Like say Ravenloft) having the equivalent of a magic item and potion shop with every item in the game for sale that gives 100% trade in value for EVERYTHING is arguably pretty neat.
Some of the most renowned parts of Bladesinger's kit are all things that make the Wizard super powerful in Early Game. At level 5, you can stack spell effects onto yourself so that enemies have to pass through a swath of effects like Blink, Mirror Image, Shield and Silvery Barbs in order to hit you. And though thats standard for a class as squishy as a Wizard, that stops being so standard once the Wizard stops being squishy. Adding a +4 or +5 to AC is incredibly powerful, and makes all of the Wizard's evasive magic even better because now, even if you don't blink into the Ethereal Plane, even if the enemy doesn't hit the mirror image, they still have to hit a AC of like, 25. It's not uncommon to be able to create less-than-1% hit rates for enemies, but it is uncommon at level 5.
Glad to see so many comments about how dirty you did Scribes. Not saying they needed to be S-tier (but with an even slightly intelligent player, it probably should), but anything below A-tier is pure disrespect
The character I dipped into War Wizard with didn't go for Armorer, but that is because he doesn't get barely anything from that subclass. Why? Because he's a Warforged Battlemaster who also has a bit of Barbarian to him in addition to artificer(which to him was more of thematic self-discovery) and war wizard. By the time he is done, he is going to have four levels of Zealot-Barbarian, two levels each of Wizard (War) and Artificer, and the rest dumped into Fighter. The infusion on his armor is deliberately NOT AC. Instead he picked Armor of Magical Strength to essentially ignore knockdown attempts even without raging. All of that combined with Shield Master makes him a rather sturdy opponent. And having crafted both a greatsword and a suit of plate armor from adamantine, he has the choice between durability of hammer and shield, or go all-out wrecking stuff with the greatsword. In case you are wondering, DM said since the armor becomes part of the warforged's body (akin to a Tortle's shell, just more versatile) the plate armor is compatible with rage - which is awesome. Downside is, Defense fighting style is pointless as a result. But oh boy is he fun to play... Thematically he is a survivor of attrition warfare (think the D&D-equivalent of WW1 trench-warfare), which explains why he is so insanely tough. His spells are mostly out-of-combat/utility stuff. Mold Earth (instant-trench), Message, that sort of thing. Plus Absorb Elements and Shield - just in case. In a nutshell he is the embodiment of the term "Immovable Object" that you want on your side to put in the way of an unstoppable force. No, his name is not Cadia.
Surprised at the blasé response to the instant ritual cast on scribes. It saves our party like every other session in some way - of save might not be the right word, as it isn't always a danger situation, but solves a puzzle(and sometimes it is literal saving the party). it's actually very interesting, I chose it for back story reason, expecting it to be a weak wizard after only a quick glance, soon realised I was wrong. Never worrying about damage types. Scouting infinitely with the book (minor considering can use familiar - but can't be damaged easily, and no re-summon money cost, and you maintain both senses) - and that first time i scouted into an army of xbow men, who shot at it, doing nothing, and I responded with a fireball from a few rooms away - still smile. And you also never need to worry about losing your spellbook, doesn't come up much. But I used that to agree to swap books with another wizard, and then i summoned mine back to a spare blank book, erasing the original - 2 books to me, 0 to the other guy. Admittedly it's no chrono or divination, but i'm finding it stronger than the classic evocation by a tier easily, and close to bladesinger(in power - completely different in play style).
Actually, one thing that hit me about Transmuter Wizards. Silver and wood are on the list of substances. A cubic foot of wood would be relatively cheap to acquire, while a cubic foot of silver weighs 655 pounds. Powdered silver can be used for a fair few different spells, such as Protection from Good and Evil and Magic Circle. But also, the Cleric or Paladin spell Ceremony which can create Holy Water for 25 gold worth of powdered silver. And the powdered silver is consumed, so it does not revert, it stays holy water. Ceremony is also a ritual, so a Cleric can cast it repeatedly without using spell slots. This means that a level 2 Transmuation Wizard with a level 1 Cleric buddy can churn out effectively limitedless Holy Water (so long as thry have access to watwr, wood, and a file to powder down the silver/wood they transmute.) You can then sell said holy water, or keep it for spell components, as many spells that use powdered silver can use holy water instead. The math on how much 25 gp worth of sulver is may vary, but my method is that 25 gp is equal to 250 sp. Per the Players Handbook, 100 coins of any denomination is about 1 pound. So 25 gp of powdered silver is 2.5 pounds in weight, but lets just highball it and make it 5 pounds. Again, a cubic foot of silver weighs 655 pounds, but lets say you lose some of the material while powdering and go down to 500 pounds. With these very conservative estimates against the Trasmuters favor, this means one cubic foot of wood can be converted into 100 vials of holy water. If we say the Cleric is willing to cast Ceremony 5 times an hour, this process takes 20 hours, which if we say takes 4 days at 5 hours each, thats 25 vials of holy water a day. Even if you are selling the holy water at a steal for just 10 gold a vial, thats 250 gold a day thst you can split to 125 for the Cleric and the Wizard, so long as there is someone willing to buy said holy water.
You can only add your int modifier on one damage roll of a spell. So only one magic missile gets the bonus 5 damage. No+18, just plus 8 if rules as written.
MM is actually rolled 1d4+1 and whatever you roll applies to each missile. So with empowered evocation you roll 1d4+6 and each missile does that much damage.
My best use of the transmuter wizard was when an NPC one gave their transmuter stone to the party as a quest reward. I let the person getting it pick the effect, so it was a fun little custom reward for them (the npc was also this PC's father).
Bladesingers are absolutely S tier. Maybe low S tier, but they deserve that top category. Full casters with martial options that mix the ability to cast and fight in the same attack action, using your intelligence to compliment your martial ability, setting up a combo with cantrips that increase your damage output, all of that is amazing. And if you’re smart with your spells and do things like mage armor, shield, mirror image, silvery barbs, blur, or any of the other low-cost spells that can protect you, your CON matters extremely little. Martials typically have very few magical means to defend themselves and rely on their CON and their armor, but being a wizard and having a full complement of spells offsets that to the extreme. You end up with statistically better defense and survivability than 90% of other more martial classes just because you have access to a suite of Abjuration, Illusion, and Enchantment magics that all stack with your bladesong, WHICH INCREASES YOUR AC BY AN AMOUNT EQUAL TO YOUR INTELLIGENCE MODIFIER. You dont need medium or heavy armor, or a high CON stat, by level 4 you’re already near-impossible to hit. At level 4, take War Caster, and you never really have to worry about a CON saving throw for concentration checks either. Easy S Tier, hands down, end of
Well I had an idea for wizard con man. It'd be a Transmuter Wizard that had proficiency in Wood Carver's Tools. So here is how it goes, I'd carve a chunk of wood into a statue, a figurine, or something, then I'd change the wood into silver, sell the "art piece", and then flee the village never to return.
I was also thinking that you could also take some metal, turn it to clay, mold it into the shape of a key you saw, and then turn it back to metal. Could also turn the door lock into clay too tho. There’s some interesting ideas here, just wish it didn’t take ten minutes, or be stronger with a spell slot cost :/
@@sunray501 My con man wizard would also sell Augury “psychic reading” for cheap. “But what about that pesky cumulative 25 percent chance of misinformation?” *_shoulder shrug_* I dunno, I’m not the one that wants to make a choice.
@@sunray501I would argue that 10min / 1 cubic ft is written as the rate for transmuting. If interpreted that way and if my math is right, it means that it takes roughly 0.35 seconds to transmute 1 cubic inch of material. I'd say the bolt on an average door is roughly 2 cubic inches, so in less than a second that bolt is clay and you are in. Are you in a cell, well just change how ever many inches you need of each bar to cut yourself out. Combat rounds are 6 seconds and armor aint that thick maybe as a bonus you make part of it wood and light it on fire. Some of this is up to DM discretion, but they seem to have written it intentionally open.
Silvery Barbs is an Enchantment spell, meaning that you can use it to force 2 creatures to reroll that save against Fireball/Dominate monster instead of 1.
I made a Fighter(battle master)3/Wizard(abjuration)7 and my DM had a hard time puting enemies on the field that I didn't hamstring in a way. I could wade into combat and survive quite a bit of harm (thank you Heavy Armor Master and Arcane Ward), used the few battle maneuvers I had picked up to coordinate with my Crossbow Expert Rogue and Retribution Paladin party members, counter-spelled nearly every big spell the DM tried to put down on my party that I started carrying a flash card that said "Counter!" and during the final encounter with the BBEG I threw two spells at them with Action Surge (Web from my spellbook and Fire Wall from a staff of flames I wielded, yes we found out later that I shouldn't have been able to do this but the whole table plus the GM agreed it was cool) that turned what would have been a massive chase fight through a crumbling city filled with traps into a claustrophobic alleyway fight with two tanks on either end preventing the bad guys from leaving. If I ever got to play that character again I might make some adjustments and changes to my choices but for certain I would take abjuration and heavy armor master
Graviturgy wizards are one of my favorite wombo combo wizards, their adjust density ability alone is amazing. got a pesky dragon getting ready to fly away? make them lighter and cast earthbind, if they succeed just drop the density change Want to give your barbarian or fighter an extra hand in grappling a target without using a spell slot? my DM also made slight tweaks to the abilities Gravity well now moves creatures 10 feet Gravity Attraction now does the extra 1d10+ int modifier Gravity Attraction now gives a target maximum fall damage (great for the reverse gravity spell) I understand the rules as written version isn't the greatest, but it can still be made into a really fun character
I love Order of Scribes Wizard. Everybody talks about microwave combo of Chronurgy wizard with wall of force + sickening radiance, but scribe wizard can use awakened mind to throw a Mordenkainen's hound inside the wall of force, and the enemy trapped there can't go anywhere. Also, be capable to change damage at spells really depends of interpretation, for exemple, if you have absorb elements and Ray of sickness on your Spellbook, you could use absorb elements to absorb poison damage. If you're playing a setting specific campaign, being a Lorehold scribe wizard will be amazing, with spirits guardians being casted through awakened mind.
Genuinely this. There is potentially a LOT of DM fiat needed for the Scribes Wizard, but if your DM lets things slide it's insanely powerful. I played through Strixhaven and an extension homebrew after with the mentioned Lorehold Spirit Guardians combo. DM let it follow my Manifest Mind; it's seriously a remote lawn mower. We just had a huge battle in a cave where we were pincered by many soldiers on either side. One side was completely shut down by transmute rock and a fellow spellcaster's sickening radiance at a chokepoint, then the Mind mowing down the majority who were trapped out. My wizard is, funnily, mostly utility, and was played in a setting that really helps them thrive, but it feels like a carefully planned Scribes Wizard can be grossly powerful in any setting and situation.
@@isaace.2216 nice! My scribe wizard was a Dhampir changing every spell to piercing damage. Yes, Vlad vibes. I think order of scribes is a underrated subclass, with lots of potential, depending DM fiat, of course.
I rate Abjuration at A tier. 1 level of Warlock, or gaining access to Armor of Agathys, you have huge temp HP, Ward, and an auto counter dmg vs melee, a wizards weakest area.
I absolutely love divination wizard, it’s super powerful and something about forcing other people to roll a number is so satisfying, I just wish they had more roleplay and flavor. Always feel like there’s something missing with them
As an awakened wizard I will only say this, one minute tiny hut and I can cast 5 spells at high levels than a concentration spells. As I am not casting it through my book anymore and the book is outside of the hut you are a wizard tank for 8 hours.
One exploit you can do for Abjuration wizards is take the Eldritch Adept feat to get Armor of Shadows, letting you cast Mage Armor at will. Basically, your arcane ward is available all the time since you can regenerate it outside of combat.
Correction: abjuration wizards have the second strongest counterspell in the game. The first is lore bards, who not only get a bonus to the roll several levels earlier, but also can eventually add their own bardic inspiration die to it. That’s not to mention the glibness spell that guarantees any charisma roll you make is at least a 15 plus modifiers.
New idea for videos/shorts: How would you fix D tier subclasses? Is there a quick fix to make Transmuter balanced? I love playing shapeshifters, and I'm wrapping up the campaign where I'm a druid.
Probably speed up the Transmutation feature. I had a really good use for it in Dungeon of the Mad Mage, but the DM (I don't know if this is written in the module) said the walls and doors are all magical and can't be affected by it or Stone Shape, so the character wasn't able to utilize any of the abilities to bypass locked doors I knew of.
I'd give the Polymorph once for free with no restrictions, and at LEAST shore up the core starting skill the class gets. Seriously; I know not every class can have Portent or something as potent, but at least the other sublcasses tend to get useful things that will come up, I don't know, even once. Necromancers, Abjurers, Evokers... these are solid starting abilities that, even if they aren't shaking the Earth, will potentially be used very frequently for an entire campaign. Transmuters get NOTHING. It's basically there for flavor; there is no current system in the game that allows for any of those materials to be useful for one hour, aside from unscrupulously lying to people and using the silver to con them. And there are better classes for that, and better cons for those classes. It's embarrassing.
@@Levyathyn Well, if you're stuck in a dungeon or trying to access a castle, turning the stone walls to balsa wood is very effective for gaining access to the next area. Assuming you don't have the DM and setting I did.
@@robinthrush9672 Hard agree. Maybe they could transmute material at a rate of one 5x5x5' cube per minute. Or maybe if they concentrate on it for long enough, it'll stay transmuted permanently. Both or either of those options would make the feature useful, imo. (e.g., it'd be powerful and flexible enough to actually give you problem-solving options).
My favorite is scribe. it has so many things you can do, and if you multiclass into thief rogue you can use a magic item, like a spell scroll as a bonus action. so if you plan it right you can set up your friends with their favorite buff spells that they concentrate on and you can cast 2 leveled spells each turn
The funniest thing you can do with illusion wizards capstone is make a set of plate armor real around another caster/ non heavy armor wearing character. They suddenly can’t cast spells until they can get the illusion off and have disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws. No save, and nothing they can do except counterspell a 1st level spell *if* they know what you’re doing with it.
Evoker's Overchannel is more powerful than people give it credit...though it depends on how you DM interprets the rules. For instance, while it may not be intended, as written the spell only needs to deal damage, so a concentration spell like Animate Object cast with a 5th level spell slot targeting tiny objects (recommended silver coins) would deal a minimum of 80 (10d4+40 maxed) damage per round for the duration and each object can crit and take reactions for more damage potential. That example is tricky due to the attack rolls of the objects, but something like cloud of daggers works too. There has been no clarification for Overchannel's effect being limited to only working on instantaneous or 1st instance of spell damage.
I had to go and check, because my first thought was that surely it must just be for evocation spells, which would not include Animate Object. But no, you're right, there are no limitations beyond being 5th level or lower. That's disgusting and I'm very sad that my Evoker does not have Animate Object now.
You forgot to mention that abjuration wizards get recistance to damage from spells at level 14. This combined with the level 10 feature makes them the greatest single classed anti-mage since you rarely get affected by spells at level 14 and you can easily shut down dangerous spells with a third level counterspell.
For blade singer you need to remember that they don’t have to go on the front lines The best way to play blade singer is as a regular wizard with insane ac and at later levels you can be a better martial by casting tensor’s transformation or Tasha’s otherworldly guise Also blade singer is one of the best options for a wizard multiclass especially with battle smith Easy S tier
Also scribe and war wizards are at least A tier scribe is goated for positioning ,scouting, having a huge spell list and bypassing resistances (+it’s also obviously really good to have plenty of scrolls) And for the war wizard I really think that you are underestimating the power of the 2nd and 6th lvl features
Truth, the best part about blade singer is that instead of losing a level of spell progression for a multiclass dip to secure your ac, you can just activate the bladesong to raise it when needed, whereas other wizards have to take a dip into fighter, artificer, or cleric to grab armor proficiency. Effectively, an optimized bladesinger gets the next level of spells a level before most other optimized wizards, which is nothing to scoff at.
the weight manipulation ability of the graviturgy wizard can be really useful with some setup and a more chill DM. I played one in an adventure time themed campaign and i had an ally in the party that used a damaged jetpack to hover. the DM heard us out and said his jetpack was able to give him outright flight once i hit him with the weight halving ability. its all about making something fun out of something average
Empowered evocation affect only one damage roll, as per description , so magic missile only benefit once the int modifier; total dmg being then 3d4 + 3 + int mod
This got clarified by Crawford. The reason it works in Magic Missile, but not on Scorching Ray, is because the damage on Magic Missile happens simultaneously. It's weird, but that was the semi-official ruling.
@@redactedlemons6817 "clarified by Crawford", lol, this guy said so much bullshit, he is just a joke. Empowered evocation application is not a point subject to interpretation, it is writen black on white.
Scribe wizard is great when it comes to flavour and rp. You can cast fireball flavoured as a giant magic sword swirling in an area dealing slashing damage, magic missile daggers, cloud of daggers that’s actually a ball hovering somewhere spitting acid… or you can make it completely psychic, attacking minds of your foes.
Stumbled back into this months later but something I'm now aware of that you missed: Mirage Arcane, when combined with the 6th level Illusionist feature and an iota of creativity (tiny amounts of mist or thin veils of spider webs all over the ground across the entire region, for example), lets you mold an entire mile square as an action every turn for 10 days, and you and your allies (as well as anything that makes the check) can choose whether to interact with the quasireal illusion (interaction does not instantly pierce it) or the actual terrain (and since this includes buildings, this means you can erect structures at will). Pretty dope, even if technically a DM can be a joykill with high Investigation bonuses/fudged rolls.
Glyph of Warding breaks everything but conjuration wizard most of all. You can conjure the material components so you don’t have to spend money on it and cast the spell. The glyph auto targets whatever triggers the glyph and the conditions can be whatever you want. So if you were to set up a sickening radiance, wall of force, and a counterspell, set the condition to be “when a creature you want to die breathes swims flies or touches a surface when no allies or innocents are within 20ft of them” the glyphs will auto target the enemy simply by wishing death upon them and most likely kill them. No concentration, no magic items, possible before level 10.
Up to GM I guess but the wording of Minor Conjuration is "Conjure up AN inanimate object" so 1 object. Meanwhile the Glyph of Warding are "Incense and powdered diamond worth at least 200 gp, which the spell consumes" which is not 1 object. But the minor conjuration ability already has so many holes in it so who knows.
War magic arcane deflection is epic if you consider saving throws out of combat. Cast dancing lights for the +2 to saving throws and use your reaction for a +6 to most saving throws out of combat.
Missed the Abjurer + Armour of Agathys combo, available with certain feats/races/multiclasses. It works especially well with ritual spells to recharge your ward, or with Warlock to get Abjuration spells as at-will abilities.
When I played a Graviturgy Wizard I liked taking spells that could make the most of pushing enemies around. Spell that can hit multiple times (like Magic Missile and Scorching Ray), or use with repeated actions or bonus actions (like Melt’s Minute Meteors and Storm Sphere) were my favorites to use. Remember that if you can hit one target twice or more you can move them up vertically in the air to potentially cause them Falling Damage will automatically knocking them Prone. If you’re at least level 10 you can even use your reaction too to increase the Falling Damage that an enemy takes. I was playing an evil character at the time so I utilized these tactics often. “Rocks fall, everybody dies” basically described what I did to the enemies.
What I LOVE about D&D is the orderly categorization and cohesivnes of say the Draconic species, races and sub races ( Dragons, Drakes, Wyverns, Wyrms, Half- Dragon, Dragonborn, Dragonkin, Draconian, Kobolds etc )and the distinction of different spellcasters and their origins/ sub-classes and schools. The latter being: Spellcaster/ Mage: - Sorcerer - Warlock - Wizard - Bard - Druid - Cleric And while in other fantady, Necromancer is its own thing. Here in D&D, PF etc, they are a school of magic. But theres room for at least 1 more. Fiendology ( Demonology + Devilology ). Heck something Fey could fit aswell! Point is STRUCTURE and make sense of it all and easy to get what is the umbrella term/ class group and whats the differences between classes, sub classes and so on.
Minor note on Abjuration Wizard: the Arcane Ward isn’t temp hp. Per the wording of the feature, the Arcane Ward is it’s own thing with it’s own health pool, therefore if you are concentrating on a spell and get hit by an attack and the Ward absorbs all the damage from the attack, then you don’t even need to make a concentration check. And even if you don’t block all of the damage, blocking 6 damage from a high damage hit will lower your concentration DC by 3. Keep in mind that all of this applies to your allied spellcasters as well because you can share the Ward at 6th level. This has some minor drawbacks and IMO doesn’t change the placement much if at all, but I like Abjuration Wizard so I figured that I’d mention it.
I think you misread the evocation ability. It applies to ONE damage roll. Each magic missile is a damage roll meaning the bonus would be applied only once. That post was made back when the text was 'add your Intelligence modifier to the damage roll of any wizard evocation spell you cast' but now the text is 'add your Intelligence modifier to ONE damage roll of any wizard evocation spell you cast
Another note about Abjuration wizard is that because your ward takes damage instead of you, it gives a buffer of free hitpoints before you have to worry about concentration on spells
Could you explain how "add your intelligence modifier to ONE damage roll" would give you an extra 15 points of damage on Magic Missile? The spell has 3 separate damage rolls, but you only get to add your modifier to one of them.
Currently playing a Transmutation wizard as a Dwarf because it thematically fits with a backstory. the Minor Alchemy has come in use as has the transmuter stone. It's really all down to how you utilise and combine the abilities.
Autognome(self heals with mending, built for success, cooks tools), Earthspur Miner background(Miners and Stonemasons tools, can keep 6 people fed while underground), straight Divination Wizard. "Was constructed to be an aide de campe for exploratory mineral prospecting. Tireless worker in the mines, divination magics to help us find places to dig, and actually a good cook. Turns out he is a major help to any adventuring team too."
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grim harvest on the necro doesnt say anything about temporary.
I think you've misunderstood the Magic Missile spell. When you cast magic missile, you roll 1d4 + intelligence modifier (1d4+1+5). That damage is then applied to 3 targets: 3d4+18 damage! Feel free to google for more information and confirmation, Jeremy Crawford has tweets confirming it too! Of course, you can house rule another way if you choose!
@@DnDShortsfind a way to turn it into a artificer spell and an ability to change its damage type into fire, acid, poison or necrotic and 5 levels in alchemist artificer for another +5 to each hit.
my brother in chriest girm harvest does not give
teporary hit points to my boys the necromancers those are hit points
wanted to know what your thoughts are on Wizard: Onomancy.
wizards of the coast are the worst wizards
Fax
Came here to say this
Agreed
Preach.
Based tbh
Best thing about Bladesinger's extra attack is that you don't need a melee weapon to use it. If you don't mind missing out on the capstone, its one of the best ways to play an arcane gunslinger.
I managed to roll good enough stats to be able to fit in a feat on mine and took Crossbow Expert - being able to shoot/cantrip/shoot again feels SO good
Why would you miss out on the capstone?
@@TheLegendaryLegacy because it affects only melee attacks
The best tging about bladesingers is never actually picking up the blade, just enjoy some of the best defensive abilities any wizard can get
@@TheLegendaryLegacy Level 14 only work for melee weapon.
The reason the ratings of the Transmutation wizard is spread among the community is because Caleb from Campaign 2 of Critical Role was a transmutation wizard
That’s exactly how I feel about Trickery Domain Cleric
Every other PHB wizard is better at their chosen school of magic, except Transmuter. It's a real shame. They could've gone all Fullmetal Alchemist with it, and had some equivalent exchange nonsense going on like taking a debuff to get a bigger boost to the Transmuter's stone effect, or sharing Transmutation spell effects with the person holding the Transmuter's stone.
@@matthewlabodin3981 they should have just made it the artificer
@@matthewlabodin3981 I'm way into this. I want some FMA shit and unique abilities in order to appeal to that fantasy. But right now, Transmutation Wizard is just a shitty subclass when you compare it to things like Bladesinger, Chronomancy, and Divination Wizards.
Personally I could see that, but also they're utility casters being utility casters. Their level 6 feature is party support. Anyone in the party could use the stone.
Gaining 60ft dark vision can save races without it, a bonus 10ft movement is great for any martial,
Con save proficiency is a great bonus for a wizard, damage resistance is useful for anyone.
The level 14 feature where you destroy your stone and manifest a unique effect is actually a very strong feature
Major transformation, you could take a solid block of gold worth 5000 gold and turn it into a specialized spell component that might be rare, like a diamond.
The limits of this type of transmutation are endless and scary, limited essentially by your own imagination and the DM.
Panacea, a full heal, just straight up, a full heal, best used on someone who is under true poly morph or shape change spell for BIG HEALING.
Restore life, isn't the dead clerics player super happy that you're a transmuter and you can bring them back to life.
Restore youth, kind of meh to be honest. Has great RP potential tho.
I will say that Shapechanger at level 10 is a bit weak but compare it to the other level 10 subclass features,
Abjurers, better dispel/counter spell. This does nothing outside of anti magic combat, and it also forces you to prepare those spells.
Conjurers, actually kind of neat, you're almost never going to lose concentration, it's only damage based. Sleet storm forces a non damage based concentration save.
Keep that in mind, sleet storm "can" end the level 9 spell invulnerability because it circumvents damage based concentration saves.
Enchanter split enchantment is the CORE reason why people play enchanter, that's the defining feature, casting an enchantment at 2 people strongest level 10 feature.
Evocation empowered evocation adds + int mod to a damage roll of an evocation spell. Not bad but relies on gimmicks to make the most of it. (People will say that they add the +5 to all the darts of magic missile because according to JC you roll the damage once, that's dumb anyone who's actually played the game will tell you that's dumb, I swear everything JC has ever said to explain the rules of magic missiles is dumb and makes absolutely no sense, but the mileage of this feature will vary greatly depending on your table.) (The reason why it's dumb is a warlock hex blade adds their proficiency bonus to damage rolls against creatures they hex with hex blades curse, put simply a high level warlock with an uncommon wand of magic missile could drop a 6th level casting easily, dealing 8d4+56 to a single target or 1d4+1 +6 from curse times 8 darts, this is stupid, this shouldn't be how the spell interacts with the feature, however according to JC this is correct. Taking this to the extreme a level 17 evocation wizard 1 hex blade warlock would automatically deal 105 damage to a single target if they over channeled a level 5 magic missile and used their bonus action hex or 148.5 average damage if casting it at level 9)
Illusion, you can automatically avoid a single attack once per short or long rest. Honestly not terrible, this trumps critical hits and costs a reaction.
Necromancy, gain necrotic damage resistance and your max hp won't be lowered by things that normally lower it. A possibly unexpected side effect a necromancer can just walk around with Mummy Rot. They cannot regain any hit points due to the curse but also their max hp cannot be reduced, and mummy rot doesn't actually deal damage, it just reduces max hp.
Predominantly undead are the creature type where "max hp reduction" often originates from so I guess lore wise this feature does make sense.
Scribes wizard got done dirty being put into B tier IMO.
Why?
@@happyslapsgiving5421 Rope Trick. They can hide in a pocket dimension in complete safety while still doing some incredible damage with their intangible, commandable spellbook. It's actually broken and can prevent a TPK, easily worthy of at least A tier.
Two nights ago at D&D I got to unleash my scribe wizard properly for the first time. You know how lightning bolt is so hard to line up because how often will the enemy fight you in a straight line? Throwing your awakened spellbook over there, and then casting lightning bolt in exactly the right place is amazing. The dm will not be able to avoid it happening because you can come at him from any angle. But now you change the damage type from lightning to radiant so those undead creatures just dissolve. So much fun! Add to that every morning I prepare a scroll of scorching ray that just sits there waiting for me to use it upcast to level 3 for free. Casting detect magic, identify or comprehend languages in the heat of a situation as a fast ritual is amazing. I use mine every in game day. And I was already given a scroll by another character which I was able to copy into my spellbook in 2 minutes instead of an hour, so my party didn't have to wait around. I'm finding the Scribe wizard incredible.
Also they're amazing at copying spells. And every spell they copy has a use in their spell book, as fodder to mitigate damage.
For a casual game, I really like the idea of casting almost exclusively Magic Missile and transmuting the damage. I understand force damage is already one of, if not, the best damage type and not a lot of monsters have weakness to damage types, but the thought of turning them into metal balls and dealing bludgeoning damage or blades or spikes, acid, psychic, just sounds like a good time. Especially if you’re playing a Jigsaw type psychopath.
I’ve been playing a scribe wizard in my latest campaign and I can honestly say the ritual thing and the magic writing skills are way more helpful than you think. I collected basically every ritual i can and I can just cast one as an action when needed, great to read secret text or detect magic without taking very specific spells
Remember that it's not the ability to cast a ritual as an action - but without the 10 minute delay of ritual casting. Leomunds tiny hut for example would still take 10 full rounds of concentration (1 minute cast time)
Great for needing to read text or detect magic like you said (still need to have those specific spells.) but most of the time you can just squat for 10 minutes without much difference :P
@@FrenchSensei true but theatrically it’s more impressive to say “I use my scribe ability to cast this ritual spell as an action” plus in the times I actually use it it usually is time sensitive. Comprehend languages has been very useful in the world we play in because the bad guys don’t always speak in common. Similarly our DM uses timed mechanics sometimes, meaning we don’t have ten minutes to loiter
@@FrenchSensei Depends on the DM I guess, most of my DMs have always made me wait on those ten minutes. Meaning that, whenever I want to use it, my DM says ok you squat to perform that ritual. And then goes to the rest of the party and asks, what does the rest of the party want to do? Making me miss on treasure, clues, roleplaying moments, etc. While my character just sits there doing a ritual.
If I am on a dungeon, or some place dangerous, my DM would be like "Are you sure you want to perform a ritual? This seems like a dangerous place"
Often I have to prepare detect magic... because it sucks to have it only as a ritual, when I most need it.
That's exactly it. I think a few abilities weren't really considered for scribe. in my own experience they're fantastic. Not just the ritual thing, but damage swapping is huge as is the awakened spellbook. By the time you get it you should have at least a 3 profiency bonus meaning you've got it for most combats you'd get per day. I'm not saying it's S tier but I think it should be A
@@Sean-ni4qy if 5e had more vulnerabilities it would be S tier for sure. But even as it is it’s super helpful that a gaggle of demons isn’t immune to fireball anymore, cuz now it does radiant damage (wither and bloom) or something like that
So I'm playing a scribes wizard at the moment and I will say it's unparallel utility for exploration with large parties. Get find familiar (which you can instacast if you need) and then summon your mainfest mind. Then plonk the familiar on another party member who's exploring one part of the map and the manifest mind on another party member exploring a different part while you explore the last (this can also work with guarding areas as you explore) get the familiar to telepathically communicate to you to see through its eyes if the player it's joined to call on you. If you can also grab dimension door so you can also teleport there too. Congratulations you now can be 3 places at once.
Scribes power doesn't come from exploration, it comes from their ability to change your spell damage and bypass any resistances or immunities. Which is arguably up there with portent in terms of power since you can use your higher level spells without worrying about resistance as long as you're aware of the creatures resistances
Find Familiar takes an hour to cast, wouldn't really call it "instacast" lol
@@tyto.c order of scribes get the ability to cast ritual spells using the amount of time it would normally take to cast it with a spell slot. That's what I was referencing
@@SnowCat-nu7gj
"When you cast a wizard spell as a ritual, you can use the spell's normal casting time, rather than adding 10 minutes to it." So it'd take an hour rather than an hour and 10 minutes.
@@blackwingdragonmasta a scribe wizard with elemental adept is crazy strong. you can take cold, which less creatures are immune to than fire and has a wizard spell for every level so all of your damaging spell can be cold, and now when you cast magic missile or whatever you treat ones as twos, making a first level magic missile deal a minimum of 9 damage which bypasses resistance.
I am absolutely FLABBERGASTED that you did not mention the trick of getting Eldritch Adept feat as an Abjuration Wizard to take Armor of Shadows invocation. Infinite, FREE recharging of your ward between combats is AWESOME!
Don't forget infinite free castings of silent image via the same feat.
He's just taking a look at what the subclasses give you not taking feats into a count so that would be why he didn't mention Eldritch Adept
@@jayredharpstudios9672 that's a fundamentally flawed evaluation, then. if we're only talking about class features, then conjuration wizards are useless because their only good feature relies on spells. features are an inherent part of levels and should absolutely be considered when ranking class value.
of course, this guy is notorious for getting rules wrong, so it's not like his rankings have too much weight behind them anyway.
@thalmorjusticiar1 if DnD shorts is 'notorious for getting rules wrong like you claim he does, then why are you watching and why do I have to point it out when if you would just read the title of the video you would see he's ranking the Subclasses and if you just watched the video he makes no mentions of Feats because Feats make your character so customizable and people like you love to argue about them down in the comments of his breaking bad Feats videos.
So good day and get off the internet and go touch some grass
@@jayredharpstudios9672 I watch him because I'm not a pretentious dickhead who can't look past errors about the rules of a game with (also notoriously) poorly written rules. I mean really, look at magic missile for example. According to the phb, "If a spell or other effect deals damage to more than one target [at the same time], roll the damage once for all of them." Magic missile falls into that category ONLY if you choose to target multiple enemies, because "The darts all strike simultaneously". With eldritch blast, you make an attack roll for each beam, so it's obvious that you roll damage separately, but that's not true of magic missile. Jeremy Crawford *did* clarify this, but poorly. All he did was refer to the page I quoted earlier.
There was no reason for you to go so aggro on me like that. I wasn't attacking your character, calm down.
On the Transmuter, they don't love the stones, they love Caleb Widoghast
::holds up a photo with Liam O Brian::::
I might have interpreted it wrong but I think necromancy wizards 2nd level ability let's you heal hitpoints, not gain temporary hitpoints.
Glad I wasn't the only one that caught this
you are correct as it states "Once per turn when you kill one or more creatures with a spell of 1st level or higher, you regain hit points equal to twice the spell's level" meaning that spells straight up heal you
"Once per turn when you kill one or more creatures with a spell of 1st level or higher, **you regain hit points** equal to twice the spell’s level, or three times its level if the spell belongs to the School of Necromancy"
No, youre not misinterpreting it. Its a heal for yourself when you kill, not THP. If it was THP it would SAY you gain THP.
You are correct, it's a heal. Hm it might actually be better as temp HP because that way you don't need to be hurt to capitalize on it.
@devin5201 I'd personally just homebrew it that, when you reach a higher level you can give those HP to an ally instead. Would make it incredibly useful at all times, and being that you need to kill a target tk get it makes it not as freely available as an actual healer. Feels balanced IMO.
You forgot about the "Shadow Wizard Money Gang" subclass
It is absolutely busted, you can love casting spells at 2nd level and even legalize nuclear bombs in the late-game
Instead of getting a small cut in the price of copying spells like inferior subclasses, you can get sponsored by the Shadow Government and ignore the cost
I was searching this comment, thank you 1500th Socialist Republic of Vietnam
What subclass are you talking about?
@@gabrielsalesmartins It's a meme, Batman
@@gabrielsalesmartins it's the start of a song, that became a meme, you can type "shadow wizard money gang" to see the cool animations people did with this sound, the DJ also say stuff like "this song is sponsored by the shadow government" "we like casting spells" or "legalize nuclear bombs"
Don't forget it's ability to summon the "Swag Messiah" at level 16
I feel like you did Scribe Wizards dirty. Their ability to change the damage type of their attacks is a game changer.
especially at level one- pick up magic missile and chromatic orb, and then you can chromatic orb w/ force damage
@@morgan9660Or just take Magic Missile/Burning Hands and being able to hit enemies in a cone of force damage or have essentially a smaller auto-hit Scorching Ray levels earlier
@@morgan9660or take any spell that does bludgeoning damage and bypass everyone's resistances and immunities
plus if you multiclass 2 lvl in tempest cleric you can do max thunder/lightning dmg with one of your spell. Even the one you change its type (like a max dmg lightning ball)
You think that's the game changer? You can sit inside an anti-magic field and cast your spells through your book with the level 6 feature (assuming you summoned your spellbooks awakened mind before hand and sent it out of the zone). RAW you are casting as if within it's space, not your own in the anti-magic bubble. No need to worry about enemy spells. You can also hide in a wall of force or other defensive ability, and have your awakened spellbook out in the line of danger casting your spells. You can do it with Leomunds tiny hut at 6th level when you pick it up giving you 3 spells (proficiency modifier) to cast from the inside of pure cover. Otiluke's Resillient sphere, any of those sort of spells.
Look up the cowardly quill - absolutely busted super defensive hidey hole wizard build.
I think you missed a few things about the scribe wizard that might affect your ranking:
- Wizardly quill lets you copy spells 60 times faster. Meaning that what would take days/weeks for a normal wizard to do, you can do in a short rest.
==> This means you'll have a LOT more spells in your book which will impact your other abilities.
- Wizards can cast any spell in their book as a ritual, it doesn't need to be prepared. Meaning scribe can choose not to prepare any of their ritual spell yet still be able to cast ANY of them for it's normal cast time. Effectively giving a massive increase in the amount of spells "prepared"
- Manifest mind is simply op, it lets you:
==> Scout areas/dungeons safely (you can even make it appear behind a door)
==> Have 2 LOS on a battlefield, which even find familiar doesn't let you do.
==> Cast close range spells without getting close yourself.
==> Upgrade Misty step's effective range to 330ft
I think you got most of the other cool stuff that can be done though.
Manifest mind can just wreck games if used intelligently. Yeah its just a few times a day but unless everything is on a clock who cares. Animate object 4 times a day can clear out places in a couple days. All safely from 300 feet away. The party doesn't even need to enter the dungeon, keep etc. DMs have to alter everything just to deal with that one feature unless the player intentionally nerfs themselves by not using it to its full potential.
I agree. And the biggest weakness of wizards is their dependency on their spell book. A scribe wizard effectively can’t lose theirs. If you play a crunchy game, that alone will be op. You can even destroy your own spell book, enter Mulmaster, recreate it in an hour, and wreak havoc on that dump
Agreed.
Treantmonk is the only content creator I’ve seen really give this subclass the respect it deserves.
Scribe is also gread for multiclassing with other casters (Tempest cleric, Draconic Lineage Sorcerer, etc) because you can always get the bonus without limiting which spells you cast. Elemental Adept works as well.
you also forget that the quill has infinite ink, you don't need to buy magic ink to copy spells.
Surprised no mention of the Wizardly Quill for Scribes Wizard. Allows you to scribe spells into your spellbook at a rate of 2 minutes per spell level (versus 2 hours) and completely replace your spellbook over the course of a short rest if it gets lost.
Also the Master Scriviner feature allows you to create 1 free level 1-2 spell scroll per long rest that is upcast an additional level so you can't stockpile those as they disappear when you take a long rest. However, this feature also allows you to craft normal scrolls for half the cost and time and those you can stock up...or sell :D
Probably one of my favorite wizards tbh. Has some nice features to help players new to the class/game while also providing a good deal of room for shenanigans for more experienced players.
Let's say you sneak into a wizard's house and want to copy his spellbook without stealing it
With the "keen mind" feat, you can flip through a book, "copy" entire book in your mind and rewrite the spells you need later on
And just because you can rewrite spells ultra fast doesn't get rid of expensive components for ink. You still need thousands of gold coins to rewrite a book.
@@DOneClub Well if you mean re-write your own spell book, a Scribes Wizard doesn't need the ink for that.
If, however, you're talking about transcribing a new spell into your spellbook don't forget that "time" is also a cost for doing that. As you get higher level spells that cost gets significantly higher and since it's much more difficult to generate more time than it is to generate more gold, Scribes getting a substantial discount on the time cost of entering a new spell into their spellbook is nothing to sneeze at.
Like all abilities though this is campaign dependent and this is definitely less of an impressive ability in a campaign where your party gets a lot of down time and has limited access to scrolls to transcribe.
Abjuration is weirdly underrated. It is the tankiest anti-mage wizard there is. They get the tough feat for free [Ward], add in the actual tough feat, some armor through multiclassing or race choice, and decent con, and the stereotypical squishy wizard is history. Also, using a 3rd level slot to take down a 9th level slot with an 8 or higher roll at later levels? Add in the lucky feat and BBEG ain't casting any big spells, period.
Abjuration is also arguably a little broken if you take Eldritch Adept feat for Armor of Shadows invocation. Infinite free reloading of your ward out of combat!
@@Hilianus Yes with careful feat selection you can break it even further. I have seen every DnD TH-camr I know simply ignoring Abjuration as it is supposed to be "boring". I played one in a super gritty campaign and my character was the hardest to put down even in lower levels, despite being the "squishy wizard". Absolutely love this subclass, Bladesinger and Cronurgy being my other two fav ones. I feel he doesn't get the power of a Bladesinger either
Yeah, and those is before you even incorporate the squishy caster fallacy. I feel like overall most of A tier shouldn't be there as they are all DM dependent and if your DM doesn't flow well with subclass then it is shit. I think a good subclass for any class should be the one able to do the great consistently no matter campaign/DM type and conjuration, enchantment, and illusion all fail to some degree because of that and so are, by definition of a standard well-made tier list, B or C tier material.
Also be a dwarf
Get Armor of Agathys from multiclass, feat, or Warding Dwarf and watch your enemies kill themselves attacking you.
of course the best subclass is the one you enjoy playing the most, and all of these can set a man on fire with only a thought, so you do you at the end of the day.
There all busted
Thanks for the great video
Where does the +18 come from on that Evocation Wizard Magic Missile come from? I know you explained it, but I still can’t wrap my head around it
I have been enjoying the build you did with the arteficer bladesinger. I'm playing as a former human who got turned into yaunti nightmare speaker. Shes a former priestess of dendar. My blade song if flavored to be a battle stim and I can buy alot of rare herbs to put people to sleep and entire their dreams like Freddy Krueger.
@@MyLittlePonyTheaterthe way magic missile is supposed to be used is you roll 1d4 +1, and that’s how much damage you do with each bolt. So if you add plus five to that, it’s 1d4+6. Three bolts is 3d4 + 18
The ritual cast feature on the Scribes Wizard is actually low-key super handy. It's functionally a free Detect Magic, Identify, or any number of other things as an action. That's super useful.
I have never seen somebody be so wrong about something in my life. D&D&DD is absolutely amazing.
Our DeVito dungeon crawl is fantastic, Twin DeVito's spammable all day with the other Twin a Schwarzenegger (Str 18, Cha 13, Int 8). Free taxi's, no need for Uber, and free polymorphs into Penguins.
fun note is that the Conjuration Wizard's Benign Transposition ability also allows you to swap places with a willing ally, so you could use your action to swap and then use Misty Step to teleport out. this essentially gave them access to Vortex Warp before Vortex Warp was a thing
I feel like Scribes got slept on pretty hard here, and it’s not even my favorite subclass.
Wizardly quill lets you copy insane amounts of spells in crazy short amount of times. Time is a wizard’s biggest constraint next to money.
With the legendary tashas grimoires you can also get around paying for the transcribing the spells in them by using a short rest to make them your new spell book, and then using another short rest to bring all spells (including the ones you did not transcribe yourself from the grimoire) into your old spellbook.
Manifest mind also has a lot more utility than just attacking from hiding. You can take advantage of the wording of the feature to increase the range of spells like misty step from 30ft to up to 330ft. Also even without the spellcasting portion, manifest mind is a better arcane eye you can use for free, with unlimited duration, that can be recast if dispelled with a 1st level spell slot, and is available as early as 6th level.
Definitely not as overtly broken as chronurgy, but I’d definitely put it on the same tier as bladesingers for actively changing the way you play your wizard for the better
manifest mind is a better find familiar to be exact, more range to see from, instead of 100 it is 300. you can cast spells other than touch spells from it, and it can't be killed other than dispelling effects.
@@matth2283spectral mind can use touch spells. No where does it state that it can’t
Getting a free ritual spell with the original casting time is huge for a subclass that thrives on collecting many spells in their spellbook. After all, Wizards don't need to have spells prepared to cast them as rituals, meaning that out of ALL the spells you have collected, you can cast ANY ritual for the original casting time once per day. Honestly sounds huge to me
It's absolutely massive.
He also failed to mention how good manifest mind is. It can scout, it can cast close range spells without you needing to get close, and it can even upgrade misty step's range to 330ft.
@@arthurgraton7165misty step wouldn't work "you teleport up to 30 feet", even if you're using the books' senses, you'd still be moving yourself more than 30 feet.
For a DnD channel with 'Shorts' in the name, I genuinely enjoy your longer form videos.
Addendum: I'd totally play DnDnDD
correction for Necromancy
Grim Harvest: it clearly says hit points not tempory hit points
Undead Thralls: it scales with your character level and you get a two of them for the cost of one.
also 10th level is resistance to necrotic damage not immunity.
but not just Create Magen but also create homunculus, and the Life transference spell.
but most importantly a much easier access to the Clone spell.
Life transference doesn't reduce maximum hitpoints and specifies that the damage can't be reduced in any way, so the necro ability doesn't affect it.
@@nathans9764which is stupid. It's a necromancy spell. Necromancers should be better at it.
@@Lord_necromancer true but it's already a pretty good spell. 8d8 healing for a third level spell. Also it heals double the damage... So if you halve the damage you'd halve the healing.
@@nathans9764I'd argue wilt and bloom is a bit worse. Mostly because of the amount of healing it does.
@@nathans9764 oh yeah, it can be a ton of healing. The problem is that spellcasters don't usually have a lot of HP LOL and so I think a necromancer wizard being better at it won't really break the game. I am a necromancer in my current campaign, and I am also basically the dedicated healer because we have a fighter a barbarian and a ranger as the rest of the party. I use wither and Bloom when a person drops down to 0 hit points in order to get them back up, and I use life transfer to keep them up when they're in melee. But also if the wording of the spell is damage dealt, not damage taken, then reducing the damage would not also reduce the healing. Let's say you roll 22 on the dice - the dice deal 22 damage therefore they will heal 44 health, but if you reduce that damaged because of an innate ability, then you only receive 11 damage. The damage dealt does not change, only the damage received.
Scribes is great for multiclassing. Currently playing a Scribes Wizard with 2 in Tempest Cleric. Change Fireball to Lightning damage, activate Channel Divinity for Destructive Wrath, goodnight Vienna to everybody in a 20ft radius
Evocation will always be my favourite, there is something so satisfying about throwing a fireball, and the fighter and barbarian don't even get warm from it, throw in elemental adept and you have a recipe for an annoyed DM.
Evocation is my favorite too
Each time I’ve played an Evocation Wizard my character spontaneously developed a gunslinger swagger that was difficult to justify based on ability alone. Intimidating and, at times, slightly obnoxious.
Trading witty banter with the barbarian or paladin about the relative shortcomings of their martial prowess. Choosing Chill Touch, Fire Bolt and Ray of Frost as a cantrip loud-out instead of anything with out-of-combat utility. Never having any spell slots left at the end of the day.
A simplistic mind-set whereby battlefield control is akin to damage per unit area.
Finesse zero, fun factor lots and many.
"Beginning at 10th level, you can add your intelligence modifier to [ONE] damage roll of any wizard evocation spell you cast."
That means if you cast magic missile at 1st level, you roll 3d4 + 3 for the base spell damage, then add your intelligence modifer ONCE. Jeremy Crawford did not say you add the modifier to ALL rolls, he said just that it works for magic missile, which is obvious.
The absolute *shenanigans* I've implemented with my Scribe Wizard has been really impressive. You dismiss the Manifest Mind tricks as "coward strats" but there's just no end to the creativity that you can implement with a luminous, talking, floating incorporeal entity that can cast (for instance) a Thunder Step spell that is altered to deal Necrotic damage.
Don’t forget about bladesingers extra attack can be used on blade wars too. Enjoy the physical damage resistance, use a scimitar and shadow blade and still get two attacks
you forgot the fact that arcane abeyance forgoes casting times. One of the best uses is arcane abeyance-ing Leomund's Tiny Hut and then having your familiar (who acts right after you) smash it, giving you a long rest in the middle of combat.
When you mentioned evocation wizards making things go boom I immediately thought of Megumin, good work on including a clip of her.
Nice stuff! War Magic is an awesome 2-level dip for martials to increase their defenses. And since Arcane Deflection isn't casting a spell, Barbarians can come to the party too!
War wizards are actually *GREAT* for a low-level wizard dip (if, for example, you want to give your druid the Shield spell and a positive modifier to the INT save it's already proficient with). I would basically never use Arcane Deflection for the AC bonus because of the cost, but the +4 bonus to, for example, a key Concentration save is better than being proficient with CON saves for most of your career. And any initiative bonus is a good thing, since going first can mean some opponents never get to act at all.
If you pay attention, the editing on this video is phenomenal. Great job!
Fully agree with the illusion point. I love playing illusionists and if you have a strict dm you are hosed. I have used it to put a big white void in a doorway because we knew an army(at least 15) of goblins were sitting there with held actions for when we entered, but since you need to use an action to discern it is an illusion, they couldn't trigger their actions. Also its fun playing anxious people who will use the verbal/visual minor illusion to create people to have conversations with at the tavern so people don't approach you.
It is so nice to have a D&D channel who actually understands power and optimization. Nice commentary!
abjuration wizard takes a single feat - Erdrich adept, and take armor of shadows, now you can ,within a minute, free-recharge ward
My dude put Realm Overworld from Spirit Tracks and thought no one would notice. I did. Thank you.
The Scribes Wizard has 1 ability that puts them above all others...If necessary, you can replace the book over the course of a short rest by using your Wizardly Quill to write arcane sigils in a blank book or a magic spellbook to which you're attuned. At the end of the rest, your spellbook's consciousness is summoned into the new book, which the consciousness trans- forms into your spellbook, along with ALL its spells... not just those in your memory.
I love scribes wizard so much. Once I dropped my spellbook from a cliff into the center of a Drow Raid party and told it to cast fireball, changing the damage type to Force. I call it the Flashbang.
Afterwards you can just command your spellbook to return to you.
My favourite wizard is still evoker. Just being able to drop a fireball with a bit of extra damage on everyone is great. But casting a sickening radiance or maddening darkness and killing everything in the room that's not your party, priceless.
I think some people's love of Transmutation wizards comes from CR campaign 2, as Caleb was such an incredible character portrayed by Liam O'Brian. His use of the character and methods of playing the Subclass it his plans went well in my opinion. As a long time DM my personal opinion is this. Play whatever Subclass or class you want to. If you are passionate about making it work you will. Dnd is about storytelling now and stories deserve to be told, no matter the mechanical faults
Re: Transmutation Wizards
Not to argue that it is equal to divination or anything, but I think you missed the cool gimmick of the 2nd level ability. The transmutation ends, but changes to the object do not, which means you can craft and shape anything easily by transforming it into balsa wood, carving it and letting it snap back. Alternatively, you can make it clay and smush it together to merge seams and joints. You can make a shirt with no seams! With woodcarving tools and proficiency and pottery, you are capable of making almost anything out of almost anything.
This is mostly flavor, but it lets you do neat stuff like make a chest out of solid stone, do repair to large scale objects like ladders and walls.
Alternatively, if all changes to the object snap back (DM choice I imagine,) you now have a magical reset on any item that you can transform, which also leads to shenanigans. Large scale you could even transmute a spell jamming ship or something, have it be a harder material, then snap back when your concertation breaks.
Also, Major Transformation which you dismissed rapidly has some key features... it is limited by VALUE, not magicalness. Combined with a source of valuable junk, you can use it to mass produce potions, low and high value magical items. (Apologies if this go errata'd out and I missed it) If you have an artificer friend with two alchemical jugs, you can create a ridiculous amount of wealth by transforming poison doses (1oo GP per day per jug) into LITERALLY ANYTHING YOU NEED. And, if you want go go silly, you can transmute a bunch of diamonds INTO alchemical jugs, use them to make more diamonds, and you only cap out when you have more poison doses than you can fit into the Major Transmutation box. If your GM lets you sell and buy anything, this is less useful, but still seems like a nifty trick. Given a month you can kit out your whole party in utterly ridiculous gear.
14th level characters are arguably able to generate ridiculous wealth a lot of ways, but this solves the selling markdown, the availability of buying, and the availability of buyers problems at 100% efficiency, unless you want to buy big (long wide tall) things. In an environment/campaign of theoretical scarcity (Like say Ravenloft) having the equivalent of a magic item and potion shop with every item in the game for sale that gives 100% trade in value for EVERYTHING is arguably pretty neat.
War Magic Surges should be tied to your 2nd Lv AC Boost! It’s a way to make it actually useful and it would make the higher level feature make sense!
Some of the most renowned parts of Bladesinger's kit are all things that make the Wizard super powerful in Early Game. At level 5, you can stack spell effects onto yourself so that enemies have to pass through a swath of effects like Blink, Mirror Image, Shield and Silvery Barbs in order to hit you. And though thats standard for a class as squishy as a Wizard, that stops being so standard once the Wizard stops being squishy. Adding a +4 or +5 to AC is incredibly powerful, and makes all of the Wizard's evasive magic even better because now, even if you don't blink into the Ethereal Plane, even if the enemy doesn't hit the mirror image, they still have to hit a AC of like, 25. It's not uncommon to be able to create less-than-1% hit rates for enemies, but it is uncommon at level 5.
Glad to see so many comments about how dirty you did Scribes. Not saying they needed to be S-tier (but with an even slightly intelligent player, it probably should), but anything below A-tier is pure disrespect
War Magic paired with 3 lvl of Armorer for the massive AC and save bonuses is really solid.
War Wizards are a sick nasty 2 level dip
The character I dipped into War Wizard with didn't go for Armorer, but that is because he doesn't get barely anything from that subclass. Why? Because he's a Warforged Battlemaster who also has a bit of Barbarian to him in addition to artificer(which to him was more of thematic self-discovery) and war wizard. By the time he is done, he is going to have four levels of Zealot-Barbarian, two levels each of Wizard (War) and Artificer, and the rest dumped into Fighter. The infusion on his armor is deliberately NOT AC. Instead he picked Armor of Magical Strength to essentially ignore knockdown attempts even without raging. All of that combined with Shield Master makes him a rather sturdy opponent. And having crafted both a greatsword and a suit of plate armor from adamantine, he has the choice between durability of hammer and shield, or go all-out wrecking stuff with the greatsword.
In case you are wondering, DM said since the armor becomes part of the warforged's body (akin to a Tortle's shell, just more versatile) the plate armor is compatible with rage - which is awesome. Downside is, Defense fighting style is pointless as a result. But oh boy is he fun to play...
Thematically he is a survivor of attrition warfare (think the D&D-equivalent of WW1 trench-warfare), which explains why he is so insanely tough.
His spells are mostly out-of-combat/utility stuff. Mold Earth (instant-trench), Message, that sort of thing. Plus Absorb Elements and Shield - just in case. In a nutshell he is the embodiment of the term "Immovable Object" that you want on your side to put in the way of an unstoppable force.
No, his name is not Cadia.
Surprised at the blasé response to the instant ritual cast on scribes. It saves our party like every other session in some way - of save might not be the right word, as it isn't always a danger situation, but solves a puzzle(and sometimes it is literal saving the party).
it's actually very interesting, I chose it for back story reason, expecting it to be a weak wizard after only a quick glance, soon realised I was wrong. Never worrying about damage types. Scouting infinitely with the book (minor considering can use familiar - but can't be damaged easily, and no re-summon money cost, and you maintain both senses) - and that first time i scouted into an army of xbow men, who shot at it, doing nothing, and I responded with a fireball from a few rooms away - still smile. And you also never need to worry about losing your spellbook, doesn't come up much. But I used that to agree to swap books with another wizard, and then i summoned mine back to a spare blank book, erasing the original - 2 books to me, 0 to the other guy.
Admittedly it's no chrono or divination, but i'm finding it stronger than the classic evocation by a tier easily, and close to bladesinger(in power - completely different in play style).
Actually, one thing that hit me about Transmuter Wizards.
Silver and wood are on the list of substances. A cubic foot of wood would be relatively cheap to acquire, while a cubic foot of silver weighs 655 pounds.
Powdered silver can be used for a fair few different spells, such as Protection from Good and Evil and Magic Circle. But also, the Cleric or Paladin spell Ceremony which can create Holy Water for 25 gold worth of powdered silver. And the powdered silver is consumed, so it does not revert, it stays holy water. Ceremony is also a ritual, so a Cleric can cast it repeatedly without using spell slots. This means that a level 2 Transmuation Wizard with a level 1 Cleric buddy can churn out effectively limitedless Holy Water (so long as thry have access to watwr, wood, and a file to powder down the silver/wood they transmute.) You can then sell said holy water, or keep it for spell components, as many spells that use powdered silver can use holy water instead.
The math on how much 25 gp worth of sulver is may vary, but my method is that 25 gp is equal to 250 sp. Per the Players Handbook, 100 coins of any denomination is about 1 pound. So 25 gp of powdered silver is 2.5 pounds in weight, but lets just highball it and make it 5 pounds. Again, a cubic foot of silver weighs 655 pounds, but lets say you lose some of the material while powdering and go down to 500 pounds. With these very conservative estimates against the Trasmuters favor, this means one cubic foot of wood can be converted into 100 vials of holy water. If we say the Cleric is willing to cast Ceremony 5 times an hour, this process takes 20 hours, which if we say takes 4 days at 5 hours each, thats 25 vials of holy water a day. Even if you are selling the holy water at a steal for just 10 gold a vial, thats 250 gold a day thst you can split to 125 for the Cleric and the Wizard, so long as there is someone willing to buy said holy water.
This is awesome. Would you consider covering Cleric spells next?
You can only add your int modifier on one damage roll of a spell. So only one magic missile gets the bonus 5 damage. No+18, just plus 8 if rules as written.
MM is actually rolled 1d4+1 and whatever you roll applies to each missile. So with empowered evocation you roll 1d4+6 and each missile does that much damage.
My best use of the transmuter wizard was when an NPC one gave their transmuter stone to the party as a quest reward. I let the person getting it pick the effect, so it was a fun little custom reward for them (the npc was also this PC's father).
Bladesingers are absolutely S tier. Maybe low S tier, but they deserve that top category. Full casters with martial options that mix the ability to cast and fight in the same attack action, using your intelligence to compliment your martial ability, setting up a combo with cantrips that increase your damage output, all of that is amazing. And if you’re smart with your spells and do things like mage armor, shield, mirror image, silvery barbs, blur, or any of the other low-cost spells that can protect you, your CON matters extremely little. Martials typically have very few magical means to defend themselves and rely on their CON and their armor, but being a wizard and having a full complement of spells offsets that to the extreme. You end up with statistically better defense and survivability than 90% of other more martial classes just because you have access to a suite of Abjuration, Illusion, and Enchantment magics that all stack with your bladesong, WHICH INCREASES YOUR AC BY AN AMOUNT EQUAL TO YOUR INTELLIGENCE MODIFIER. You dont need medium or heavy armor, or a high CON stat, by level 4 you’re already near-impossible to hit. At level 4, take War Caster, and you never really have to worry about a CON saving throw for concentration checks either.
Easy S Tier, hands down, end of
Well I had an idea for wizard con man. It'd be a Transmuter Wizard that had proficiency in Wood Carver's Tools. So here is how it goes, I'd carve a chunk of wood into a statue, a figurine, or something, then I'd change the wood into silver, sell the "art piece", and then flee the village never to return.
I love him
I was also thinking that you could also take some metal, turn it to clay, mold it into the shape of a key you saw, and then turn it back to metal. Could also turn the door lock into clay too tho. There’s some interesting ideas here, just wish it didn’t take ten minutes, or be stronger with a spell slot cost :/
@@sunray501 My con man wizard would also sell Augury “psychic reading” for cheap.
“But what about that pesky cumulative 25 percent chance of misinformation?”
*_shoulder shrug_*
I dunno, I’m not the one that wants to make a choice.
@@sunray501I would argue that 10min / 1 cubic ft is written as the rate for transmuting. If interpreted that way and if my math is right, it means that it takes roughly 0.35 seconds to transmute 1 cubic inch of material. I'd say the bolt on an average door is roughly 2 cubic inches, so in less than a second that bolt is clay and you are in. Are you in a cell, well just change how ever many inches you need of each bar to cut yourself out. Combat rounds are 6 seconds and armor aint that thick maybe as a bonus you make part of it wood and light it on fire. Some of this is up to DM discretion, but they seem to have written it intentionally open.
@@Feathertusk I'm sure most DMs would agree, but RAW, it doesn't specify that the time could be reduced/split for a smaller target
Silvery Barbs is an Enchantment spell, meaning that you can use it to force 2 creatures to reroll that save against Fireball/Dominate monster instead of 1.
I made a Fighter(battle master)3/Wizard(abjuration)7 and my DM had a hard time puting enemies on the field that I didn't hamstring in a way.
I could wade into combat and survive quite a bit of harm (thank you Heavy Armor Master and Arcane Ward), used the few battle maneuvers I had picked up to coordinate with my Crossbow Expert Rogue and Retribution Paladin party members, counter-spelled nearly every big spell the DM tried to put down on my party that I started carrying a flash card that said "Counter!" and during the final encounter with the BBEG I threw two spells at them with Action Surge (Web from my spellbook and Fire Wall from a staff of flames I wielded, yes we found out later that I shouldn't have been able to do this but the whole table plus the GM agreed it was cool) that turned what would have been a massive chase fight through a crumbling city filled with traps into a claustrophobic alleyway fight with two tanks on either end preventing the bad guys from leaving.
If I ever got to play that character again I might make some adjustments and changes to my choices but for certain I would take abjuration and heavy armor master
Graviturgy wizards are one of my favorite wombo combo wizards, their adjust density ability alone is amazing.
got a pesky dragon getting ready to fly away? make them lighter and cast earthbind, if they succeed just drop the density change
Want to give your barbarian or fighter an extra hand in grappling a target without using a spell slot?
my DM also made slight tweaks to the abilities
Gravity well now moves creatures 10 feet
Gravity Attraction now does the extra 1d10+ int modifier
Gravity Attraction now gives a target maximum fall damage (great for the reverse gravity spell)
I understand the rules as written version isn't the greatest, but it can still be made into a really fun character
I love Order of Scribes Wizard. Everybody talks about microwave combo of Chronurgy wizard with wall of force + sickening radiance, but scribe wizard can use awakened mind to throw a Mordenkainen's hound inside the wall of force, and the enemy trapped there can't go anywhere.
Also, be capable to change damage at spells really depends of interpretation, for exemple, if you have absorb elements and Ray of sickness on your Spellbook, you could use absorb elements to absorb poison damage.
If you're playing a setting specific campaign, being a Lorehold scribe wizard will be amazing, with spirits guardians being casted through awakened mind.
Genuinely this. There is potentially a LOT of DM fiat needed for the Scribes Wizard, but if your DM lets things slide it's insanely powerful. I played through Strixhaven and an extension homebrew after with the mentioned Lorehold Spirit Guardians combo. DM let it follow my Manifest Mind; it's seriously a remote lawn mower. We just had a huge battle in a cave where we were pincered by many soldiers on either side. One side was completely shut down by transmute rock and a fellow spellcaster's sickening radiance at a chokepoint, then the Mind mowing down the majority who were trapped out. My wizard is, funnily, mostly utility, and was played in a setting that really helps them thrive, but it feels like a carefully planned Scribes Wizard can be grossly powerful in any setting and situation.
@@isaace.2216 nice! My scribe wizard was a Dhampir changing every spell to piercing damage. Yes, Vlad vibes.
I think order of scribes is a underrated subclass, with lots of potential, depending DM fiat, of course.
I hope your sponsors give you a massive premium on ad reads. You are so good at them, I actually watch them.
I’ve always liked Abjuration for the flavor, roleplay, and of course, being able to protect the party
Its good not having to make concentrations checks also, just a long as your ward still has its own hit points. Amazing if used well.
I rate Abjuration at A tier. 1 level of Warlock, or gaining access to Armor of Agathys, you have huge temp HP, Ward, and an auto counter dmg vs melee, a wizards weakest area.
I absolutely love divination wizard, it’s super powerful and something about forcing other people to roll a number is so satisfying, I just wish they had more roleplay and flavor. Always feel like there’s something missing with them
As an awakened wizard I will only say this, one minute tiny hut and I can cast 5 spells at high levels than a concentration spells. As I am not casting it through my book anymore and the book is outside of the hut you are a wizard tank for 8 hours.
As DndShorts just used the term "tank wizard" in the video, I'm struck by the difference in power between the phrases "tank wizard" and "wizard tank".
I felt like Mysterio from Spider-Man: Far From Home was the closest example of a Illusion Wizard.
One exploit you can do for Abjuration wizards is take the Eldritch Adept feat to get Armor of Shadows, letting you cast Mage Armor at will. Basically, your arcane ward is available all the time since you can regenerate it outside of combat.
Same using the Misty Visions invocation with the Illusionist wizard at higher levels to just constantly be making stuff.
@@jonp8015”bro, you’re just making shit up!”
''this is one of Matt Mercer's homebrew classes...and it's OP as hell''
I am SHOCKED. SHOCKED I say!
Correction: abjuration wizards have the second strongest counterspell in the game. The first is lore bards, who not only get a bonus to the roll several levels earlier, but also can eventually add their own bardic inspiration die to it. That’s not to mention the glibness spell that guarantees any charisma roll you make is at least a 15 plus modifiers.
New idea for videos/shorts: How would you fix D tier subclasses? Is there a quick fix to make Transmuter balanced? I love playing shapeshifters, and I'm wrapping up the campaign where I'm a druid.
Probably speed up the Transmutation feature. I had a really good use for it in Dungeon of the Mad Mage, but the DM (I don't know if this is written in the module) said the walls and doors are all magical and can't be affected by it or Stone Shape, so the character wasn't able to utilize any of the abilities to bypass locked doors I knew of.
I'd give the Polymorph once for free with no restrictions, and at LEAST shore up the core starting skill the class gets. Seriously; I know not every class can have Portent or something as potent, but at least the other sublcasses tend to get useful things that will come up, I don't know, even once. Necromancers, Abjurers, Evokers... these are solid starting abilities that, even if they aren't shaking the Earth, will potentially be used very frequently for an entire campaign. Transmuters get NOTHING. It's basically there for flavor; there is no current system in the game that allows for any of those materials to be useful for one hour, aside from unscrupulously lying to people and using the silver to con them. And there are better classes for that, and better cons for those classes.
It's embarrassing.
@@Levyathyn Well, if you're stuck in a dungeon or trying to access a castle, turning the stone walls to balsa wood is very effective for gaining access to the next area. Assuming you don't have the DM and setting I did.
Chalk is a very fragile form of limestone. Just imagine going through a world made of chalk then literally all you need is a little time.
@@robinthrush9672 Hard agree. Maybe they could transmute material at a rate of one 5x5x5' cube per minute. Or maybe if they concentrate on it for long enough, it'll stay transmuted permanently. Both or either of those options would make the feature useful, imo. (e.g., it'd be powerful and flexible enough to actually give you problem-solving options).
8:24 Why do you think that "one" damage roll would include ALL damage rolls of Magic Missile?
Raw says "add to one damage roll", not each.
I just love all the magic the gathering card art being used as the arts for each subclass
Thanks for the rundown on wizards. Keep up the good work
DnDShorts: Don't play transmutation wizards, please...
Liam O'Brien in Zemnian: Am I a joke to you
My favorite is scribe. it has so many things you can do, and if you multiclass into thief rogue you can use a magic item, like a spell scroll as a bonus action. so if you plan it right you can set up your friends with their favorite buff spells that they concentrate on and you can cast 2 leveled spells each turn
its sad seeing graviturgy so low, i have a graviturgy muscle wizard concept id want to play some day, still hyped about playing him one day tho
Low means not as powerful as the other subclasses, but it does not mean it is less fun than the others. Have fun!
The funniest thing you can do with illusion wizards capstone is make a set of plate armor real around another caster/ non heavy armor wearing character. They suddenly can’t cast spells until they can get the illusion off and have disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws. No save, and nothing they can do except counterspell a 1st level spell *if* they know what you’re doing with it.
Evoker's Overchannel is more powerful than people give it credit...though it depends on how you DM interprets the rules. For instance, while it may not be intended, as written the spell only needs to deal damage, so a concentration spell like Animate Object cast with a 5th level spell slot targeting tiny objects (recommended silver coins) would deal a minimum of 80 (10d4+40 maxed) damage per round for the duration and each object can crit and take reactions for more damage potential. That example is tricky due to the attack rolls of the objects, but something like cloud of daggers works too.
There has been no clarification for Overchannel's effect being limited to only working on instantaneous or 1st instance of spell damage.
I had to go and check, because my first thought was that surely it must just be for evocation spells, which would not include Animate Object. But no, you're right, there are no limitations beyond being 5th level or lower. That's disgusting and I'm very sad that my Evoker does not have Animate Object now.
You forgot to mention that abjuration wizards get recistance to damage from spells at level 14. This combined with the level 10 feature makes them the greatest single classed anti-mage since you rarely get affected by spells at level 14 and you can easily shut down dangerous spells with a third level counterspell.
For blade singer you need to remember that they don’t have to go on the front lines
The best way to play blade singer is as a regular wizard with insane ac and at later levels you can be a better martial by casting tensor’s transformation or Tasha’s otherworldly guise
Also blade singer is one of the best options for a wizard multiclass especially with battle smith
Easy S tier
Also scribe and war wizards are at least A tier scribe is goated for positioning ,scouting, having a huge spell list and bypassing resistances (+it’s also obviously really good to have plenty of scrolls)
And for the war wizard I really think that you are underestimating the power of the 2nd and 6th lvl features
Truth, the best part about blade singer is that instead of losing a level of spell progression for a multiclass dip to secure your ac, you can just activate the bladesong to raise it when needed, whereas other wizards have to take a dip into fighter, artificer, or cleric to grab armor proficiency. Effectively, an optimized bladesinger gets the next level of spells a level before most other optimized wizards, which is nothing to scoff at.
the weight manipulation ability of the graviturgy wizard can be really useful with some setup and a more chill DM. I played one in an adventure time themed campaign and i had an ally in the party that used a damaged jetpack to hover. the DM heard us out and said his jetpack was able to give him outright flight once i hit him with the weight halving ability. its all about making something fun out of something average
Empowered evocation affect only one damage roll, as per description , so magic missile only benefit once the int modifier; total dmg being then 3d4 + 3 + int mod
This got clarified by Crawford. The reason it works in Magic Missile, but not on Scorching Ray, is because the damage on Magic Missile happens simultaneously. It's weird, but that was the semi-official ruling.
@@redactedlemons6817the reason why it works is rules as intended you roll one D4 and all darts do that damage
@@redactedlemons6817 "clarified by Crawford", lol, this guy said so much bullshit, he is just a joke. Empowered evocation application is not a point subject to interpretation, it is writen black on white.
@@davankrueger1725 And that happens only because they deal damage simultaneously. I'm not arguing with you, just saying it a different way.
@@redactedlemons6817 Eldritch blast shoot multiple bolts at the same time scorching Ray shoot multiple belts at the same time
Scribe wizard is great when it comes to flavour and rp. You can cast fireball flavoured as a giant magic sword swirling in an area dealing slashing damage, magic missile daggers, cloud of daggers that’s actually a ball hovering somewhere spitting acid… or you can make it completely psychic, attacking minds of your foes.
Stumbled back into this months later but something I'm now aware of that you missed: Mirage Arcane, when combined with the 6th level Illusionist feature and an iota of creativity (tiny amounts of mist or thin veils of spider webs all over the ground across the entire region, for example), lets you mold an entire mile square as an action every turn for 10 days, and you and your allies (as well as anything that makes the check) can choose whether to interact with the quasireal illusion (interaction does not instantly pierce it) or the actual terrain (and since this includes buildings, this means you can erect structures at will). Pretty dope, even if technically a DM can be a joykill with high Investigation bonuses/fudged rolls.
Glyph of Warding breaks everything but conjuration wizard most of all. You can conjure the material components so you don’t have to spend money on it and cast the spell. The glyph auto targets whatever triggers the glyph and the conditions can be whatever you want. So if you were to set up a sickening radiance, wall of force, and a counterspell, set the condition to be “when a creature you want to die breathes swims flies or touches a surface when no allies or innocents are within 20ft of them” the glyphs will auto target the enemy simply by wishing death upon them and most likely kill them. No concentration, no magic items, possible before level 10.
Up to GM I guess but the wording of Minor Conjuration is "Conjure up AN inanimate object" so 1 object. Meanwhile the Glyph of Warding are "Incense and powdered diamond worth at least 200 gp, which the spell consumes" which is not 1 object. But the minor conjuration ability already has so many holes in it so who knows.
War magic arcane deflection is epic if you consider saving throws out of combat. Cast dancing lights for the +2 to saving throws and use your reaction for a +6 to most saving throws out of combat.
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Missed the Abjurer + Armour of Agathys combo, available with certain feats/races/multiclasses. It works especially well with ritual spells to recharge your ward, or with Warlock to get Abjuration spells as at-will abilities.
Yo putting scribe in B tier is CRIMINAL 😦
That last line about the Bladesinger is throwing serious shade at the Hexblade Warlock.
That was, without a doubt, the best Segway into a sponsor I’ve ever seen
Just wanna say, Love the F-zero music in the background!!
When I played a Graviturgy Wizard I liked taking spells that could make the most of pushing enemies around. Spell that can hit multiple times (like Magic Missile and Scorching Ray), or use with repeated actions or bonus actions (like Melt’s Minute Meteors and Storm Sphere) were my favorites to use. Remember that if you can hit one target twice or more you can move them up vertically in the air to potentially cause them Falling Damage will automatically knocking them Prone. If you’re at least level 10 you can even use your reaction too to increase the Falling Damage that an enemy takes. I was playing an evil character at the time so I utilized these tactics often. “Rocks fall, everybody dies” basically described what I did to the enemies.
What I LOVE about D&D is the orderly categorization and cohesivnes of say the Draconic species, races and sub races ( Dragons, Drakes, Wyverns, Wyrms, Half- Dragon, Dragonborn, Dragonkin, Draconian, Kobolds etc )and the distinction of different spellcasters and their origins/ sub-classes and schools.
The latter being:
Spellcaster/ Mage:
- Sorcerer
- Warlock
- Wizard
- Bard
- Druid
- Cleric
And while in other fantady, Necromancer is its own thing. Here in D&D, PF etc, they are a school of magic. But theres room for at least 1 more. Fiendology ( Demonology + Devilology ). Heck something Fey could fit aswell!
Point is STRUCTURE and make sense of it all and easy to get what is the umbrella term/ class group and whats the differences between classes, sub classes and so on.
Minor note on Abjuration Wizard: the Arcane Ward isn’t temp hp. Per the wording of the feature, the Arcane Ward is it’s own thing with it’s own health pool, therefore if you are concentrating on a spell and get hit by an attack and the Ward absorbs all the damage from the attack, then you don’t even need to make a concentration check. And even if you don’t block all of the damage, blocking 6 damage from a high damage hit will lower your concentration DC by 3. Keep in mind that all of this applies to your allied spellcasters as well because you can share the Ward at 6th level.
This has some minor drawbacks and IMO doesn’t change the placement much if at all, but I like Abjuration Wizard so I figured that I’d mention it.
"DoNt PlAy A TrAnSMuTaTiOn WiZaRd." Im going to play one just because you told me not to
I think you misread the evocation ability. It applies to ONE damage roll. Each magic missile is a damage roll meaning the bonus would be applied only once.
That post was made back when the text was 'add your Intelligence modifier to the damage roll of any wizard evocation spell you cast'
but now the text is 'add your Intelligence modifier to ONE damage roll of any wizard evocation spell you cast
Another note about Abjuration wizard is that because your ward takes damage instead of you, it gives a buffer of free hitpoints before you have to worry about concentration on spells
Could you explain how "add your intelligence modifier to ONE damage roll" would give you an extra 15 points of damage on Magic Missile? The spell has 3 separate damage rolls, but you only get to add your modifier to one of them.
Perfect timing. Gonna play wizard in my first Baldurs Gate 3 playthrough. ^_^
Currently playing a Transmutation wizard as a Dwarf because it thematically fits with a backstory. the Minor Alchemy has come in use as has the transmuter stone. It's really all down to how you utilise and combine the abilities.
Back in my day, the Transmutation Wizard was one of the most powerful builds in the 3.5 game.
Autognome(self heals with mending, built for success, cooks tools), Earthspur Miner background(Miners and Stonemasons tools, can keep 6 people fed while underground), straight Divination Wizard. "Was constructed to be an aide de campe for exploratory mineral prospecting. Tireless worker in the mines, divination magics to help us find places to dig, and actually a good cook. Turns out he is a major help to any adventuring team too."