One of my favorite warlocks actually leans into this sort of flavoring: pushed into wizardry by her family but stumbling and struggling to learn, she makes a deal for a shortcut and ends up in way over her head
My first ever character was an enchantress, which in 2e was basically just a specialized wizard. I loved her and loved being a magic user, but when 3e came around and it was a choice between wizard and sorcerer, well sorcerer didn't have to prepare spells. I loved the idea of a character being born to their magic over learning it through years of long study. It just made wizards so boring. And I'm too lazy to prepare spells, lol. But 5e brought the subclasses in, and I started to see new flavor and reasons to play the wizard. And Caleb Widogast is part of that reason. I have yet to come up with a wizard character I intend to play, but I am keeping more of an open mind about them. Thinking about why they cast will also help. I'm determined to eventually have long-running PCs of every class and the wizard will have their day yet. I will get there.
Unrelated but kinda topical too. This comment kind of reminds me of an issue people had with Star Wars where they felt making Force powers genetic instead of a skill anyone could learn cheapened the Force a bit. I think that might be a cool perspective to give the Wizards a little respect. Make magic magical again and enjoy the thrill of learning magic from the point of view of just some random person.
Amazing video as always, was really waiting for this since I made my first wizard a few months ago. A human with agoraphobia who had nothing better to do than read books on the vast library of her adopted parents. Loved lore and interesting facts by got bored by magic since it's a lot of ritual and routine. When a magical force blasts throughout the tower sending her flying out she's left panicking to return to the the tower that is suddenly just no longer there. Lost and confused, she turns to the scattered books for comfort, a spell book mostly comprising of divination spells. Gaining knowledge to gain more knowledge to find her home and parents.
Really glad to see this video, as someone who just recently created their first wizard character! I share a lot of your thoughts as to why a wizard just isn't interesting compared to some of the other classes. Until the Tasha's supplement came out, I couldn't see myself playing a wizard at all because they just seemed so flat compared to sorcerer, bard, etc. Order of Scribes was what finally convinced me to give it a try. It's been really interested figuring out my character's motivation and how to roleplay the fact that a low level wizard is squishy and not that powerful. I've flavored it that my character learned spellcraft as a byproduct of wanting to study history and mythology at the magic school; you stay around wizards all day, you start to pick things up. She was effectively a grad student when she checked the wrong book out from the library out of curiosity (her driving motivation), and is now adventuring because 1) she doesn't know what else to do and 2) she's learning more in a few months of traveling than she did in the past through years at school. We're only level 5, so the campaign is just starting to hit its stride now, but I'm pretty excited to see where this character goes. Definitely going to try and implement your advice here to keep her feeling unique as she stops being just a student, and starts becoming a pretty powerful person in the world.
They're absolutely in the 'suffering from success' ares. They're SO famous and popular that they go all the way into seeming boring... at least on the surface! Still, there is a lot of fun to be had with them if you can look passed that
I once had a forest gnome wizard who really should've been a rouge. Explanation time! He grew up in water deep as a street urchin but had the small bit of luck where his turf was right next to the wizardry college so he would hang out below a classroom window and using the teachers instruction he learned a lot of illusionary spells(among other things) and that allowed him to defend himself and survive using his wits and knowledge of magic
Instead of learning to sneak attack he learned misdirection using illusions, instead of picking locks he learned knock, instead of learning diplomacy to calm down enemies he used sleep
The devolution of morality as the pursuit of knowledge consumes the wizard has always fascinated me. What are you seeking? Why? How does that thirst drive you? What are you willing to do for power? The fall of an arch-wizard who’s hundreds, if not thousands, of years old makes for really good D&D.
2 of my previous wizards: Goliath wizard, the runt of his clan who inscribed spells onto stone tablets by carving runes copied from a spellbook he found as a child. Loxodon wizard, a giant of a sage who inscribed his spells into his body by using his trunk.
For some reason my favorite flavor of wizard is one that matches both of those concepts, I call it the 'primal wizard'. One who uses magic similar to the druid, which seems to be incredibly in tune with the raw magic of the world
Finally! My favorite class! It feels weird that your channel grew from less than 10k sub to already close to 21k. I love your content and thank you for making amazing videos
Trust me, it is JUST as weird for me and infinitely humbling. I'm so glad I could finally get this out for you and all other wizard lovers! Thank you for supporting the channel!
Having played two wizards as they are my favourite class I can’t emphasise enough how much spell selection can effect the feel of the character. My first was a merchant transmutation wizard who used his abilities to charm and swindle temporarily turning his wooden trinkets into valuable metals. My second is a cleric1/war wizardX of the flaming fist who has dedicated his life to Mysta and the weave, he focuses on spells like haste and Misty step to be really mobile and get more AC than imaginable for a wizard to remain on the frontline alongside our paladin slashing away with his booming blade.
Also have a backup in mind of the complete mundane village spellmonger/hedge wizard who knows all the mundane spells and rituals that could really help out the villagers, removing curses, identifying objects and casting continual flames for households. Just picking all the spells that typical adventuring wizards skip over to force some creativity.
I decided to play a gnome wizard as my most recent character and I will admit, it was difficult at first to find the character. She spent a lot of time reading (which she enjoyed as a scholar), but seemed a little bit of a drag on role play. And being knocked out in each of the first two battles we fought was definitely discouraging (oh, so squishy!). But as we have continued the campaign I’ve begun to realize that her book smarts are what make her an asset to the team. She sees magic that others can’t, picks up on clues that others miss and (from how I’ve been playing her) genuinely cares about the success of the group. I also noted a couple of comments downplaying the school of evocation, which was interesting to me because I chose it for my wizard in order to help the group during fights. Being able to cast burning hands at baddies while hiding behind the paladin without hurting her and still having cover is an immense asset. And as she is leveling, I’m choosing spells that I know will help the team specifically from the other schools of magic because that is what she would do. Invisibility will be a huge help to the rogue (plans for next level). I am still worried about her being penniless for the whole campaign, but at least we just found a spellbook with a bunch of new spells (thanks DM!).
I'm currently playing a half elf wizard with the soldier background. Long story short was in a battle saved by mages and went from holding a sword to a spellbook instead. Wanted to play like Dr. Strange and instead he become more like Roy Mustang. I've always prefered martial classes but my Wizard is now one of my favorite chracters
@@PlayYourRole I was thinking about the idea of a Svirfneblin necromancer who uses the corpses of slaves bought from Drow to dig mines to ease the hard work of his clan. And he uses these spells very carefully, so as not to become the same evil bastard as the dark elves
Don't forget they can flavor their Spellbook as they like. My wizard harengon uses her Skin as Spellbook and paints every Spell on it. As her Fur regrow, the Spells "Pictograms" are also visible on it. Thanks to the Strixhaven book i was able to flavor it as Prismari-Style: Make Spellcasting into Art. It's really fun to play her
I always thought of wizards as very flavorful. My first one in 5e was an exorcist (abjuration) and the one I'm playing for some time now is an painter (illusion) who went to a magic art school with anatomy classes, etc.
I'm going to play a catfolk wizard school of illusion soon! She is inspired by the story of the Moon in the Well, hence illusion. I can't wait to play her
@@PlayYourRole Same! I've never played wizard (I'm relatively new to the game and I've played a rogue for the last two years) so am quite excited for the change
I have only played one wizard and I absolutely love playing them. With them being a kind of fortune teller who spellbook was reflavored to be a deck of tarot like cards that has diffrent designs on them to depict the spell being used.
As someone who plans to play a necromancer wizard in a campaign soon, and have some ideas to flavor it. Finding your channel recently and watching some of your videos is actually give me some more inspiration.
One of my favorite characters was a gnome wizard. He was a librarian and basically taught himself magic as a hobby. By the time he met the party he was a retired widower with grown children and was actually pretty depressed because he didn't feel like his life had much purpose anymore. He was an Abjuration specialist who focused mostly on buffing and protection spells. The party became like his new family and he found a new sense of meaning in keeping them alive.
OH! Oh this has given me so many new ideas! For some reason the comparison of a wizard to a scientist/physicist never truly hit me before, but the idea of using a combination of mathematics, arcane knowledge and learning to understand the effects of the weave makes perfect sense! And it also explains why learning magic is hard! Cue the idea of an evocation wizard mid-battle approximating the weight of their targets, the distance between themselves and said targets, and figuring out what to push and pull in the weave and how much so that the correct effect will happen without damaging any allies. Missing with a spell doesn't only have to be actually missing, it can be a miscalculation in weight, distance, power, armour, etc! Levelling up might even be just getting better at making those calculations. Over time, wizards get better at guessing the requirements for a spell to work well and start modifying spells to work better in new situations. It makes sense that after a little time in the field, doing mathematics in your head without knowing all the variables, you'd get better at guessing the approximates and getting good enough results. Yet again, this series (and channel in general) has given me insight into something that perhaps should have been obvious, but I'm really excited to realise. Thank you for the video!
I would like to say good job, and congrats on the 20 k subscribers. Your content is really well made and inspiring. I wish you all the luck in the future, though i feel like someone as great as you would still succeed with flying colours without. (:
one of my characters who i’m very excited to play is a tiefling wizard who tattoos her spells onto herself. her backstory is basically that she was under the care of a powerful crime wizard who was defeated and arrested after his spell book was stolen. she decided to stop that from ever happening to her and created a special kind of ink for tattooing that allowed her to use her skin as a spellbook. her “drive” is that she wants to share and/or sell (bc wizarding is expensive) the tattoo ink so that other wizards can keep their spellbook safe from thievery (and save the trees). but no one will take her idea bc they don’t think it will work so she’s being petty and proving them wrong by becoming the most powerful in all the lands. that ended up being way longer than expected but let me know what you think
I have only ever played one wizard, though he has multiple iterations throughout the timelines. Prinkseth Inquis, a gnome wizard who always multiclasses either two or three levels into a different profession and focuses primarily on a particular School of magic. I eventually hope to create an interdimensional Council of Prinks who are always on the lookout for magical anomalies or new monsters to study.
For some reason you keep making why you should play “X” class videos right after I first created that class, why you should play a Druid one was 2 weeks after my first Druid character, why you should play a cleric was 3 days after my first cleric and this one is 5 days after my first wizard. That aside I definitely agree with you about why wizards don’t get played, I certainly wasn’t planning on playing one, I just did because I said to my friend that I will play as what comes out of random class button and for my luck it was a wizard. When you mention that I just realized that none of my friends or me never played a wizard before and I never saw one played in any of my dnd games. For some reason we expect it to be a generic wizard and then no one plays wizard. I will play more wizard in the future and also I hope more people also does because actually it’s really fun to play as one.
Well. Wizards are the telephonbooks in our campaigns. Sending is such a powerful spell if you know the right people. Who needs a fireball if you can tell the king to send an army at the right place.
My first big campaign, I'm playing a kobold wizard/warlock multiclass(warlock 3, wizard rest of the way) His entire tribe got devastated by the deep dragon they served, and he got cast out to sea in the attack, where he was saved by his patron (fathomless warlock). He learned to be a wizard in large part because he was naturally smart as well as drawn to the knowledge based magic, and how much one could do with it. He took up the school of abjuration, so he could protect people, feeling guilty for not being able to protect his tribe. This is also the reason he tends towards a lot of support-type spells. The patron for his warlock powers is (seemingly) an aboleth, which convinced him that it wished to also destroy his former master (deep dragons eat aboleths), and pushed him to pursue knowledge in exchange for the powers it offered. His ultimate goal is to go back, find out if any of his people survived, and kill the dragon he once served.
I think an Illusion Wizard/Inquisitive Rogue multi class could be a fun roleplay idea A spy who could sneak in through the back, or walk in the front door with an illusion, finding all the information anyone could ever need
I have a wizard at the ready but havent had the time to use him due to being a yuan ti but that can easily be changed to a human as his back story is about being the son of a slaver master who's main goal is to find a slave who use to take care of him while he was a growing up. A propee mom who actually showed affection. His "spellbook" was a pocketwatch that played various tunes during battle which would remind him of the spells the slave told him about because she was a former adventurer and would tell him stories how she took down monsters or found ruins which inspired him to be one to the dismay of his mother.
I sometimes play around with two wizard ideas: 1. A kid who found an old spellbook and tried to revive a loved one (pet or family) released a terrible creature instead. Now they try to fix the problem by actually learning magic, while constantly on the run. 2. A student who was forced into a magical academy to uphold and improve the family legacy, but doesn't care at all. If I go back to D&D I'd probably play a sorcerer or warlock though.
One of my favorite character is a wizard who's dressed with a knockoff purple hallowen wizard costume, wears sunglasses and skateboards and he casts spells in meme references
I partially agree. The problem mentioned here is there is very little in the way of characterization-backstory, relationships, personality, etc-that is exclusive to it; almost anything it can do, other spellcasters can do, while _also_ having options that the wizard does not support as well, if at all. However, that is not intrinsic to the concept. The problem lies in that direct mechanics are, if ignoring the social aspect and the like that are particular to each table, the sole way of meaningfully engaging with the game (while this applies to all games to some extent, it is especially the case with D&D). If it is not in the mechanics, it has little to no bearing on play. Consequently, a character concept or class's roleplay power is largely to entirely dependent on its mechanics. Wizards have little to alter how you engage with the game beyond spells-most of which they share with other classes, and between its subclasses. Few to none of the official feats significantly alter how Wizards, _specifically_ , play or interact with the world; neither do _most_ magical items. Whereas picking the right subclasses for a Fighter-Paladin can create basically the only build in the game with MMO-like tanking abilities-redirecting attacks towards oneself, inflicting penalties to attack anyone else, reactions that return damage against an ally back on an attacker-a Wizard gets relatively minor increases to spells and abilities that other Wizard subclasses and other classes entirely can also cover. The wizard concept (or archetype) is intrinsically interesting, having shown up in some form in basically every human culture ever (often being related to or one in the same with priests, shamans, witches, etc). You can specialize into different branches of magic, such as by element, by tactical/strategic use, by method of performance (eg evocation vs transmutation), method of learning, and a myriad of other things, and tie all of that in as either aligned to, in consequence of, or in compensation for their personality, background, and goals, to name but some of the possibilities. However, the rules-as-written facilitate that less for Wizard than it does for almost every other full/true caster in 5e; Fighter has a _more_ severe case of it, partly hence the allocation of being 'basic'. As-written, anything that a Wizard can do, another spellcaster can do _and_ more. Which sucks, since the 'wizard' concept ranges from the saintly-adjacent sage (Eg Saint Germain), to the eldritch tyrant (the ogre of Puss in Boots, Koshei the Deathless), to those obsessed with furthering knowledge and humanity by delving into forbidden knowledge (Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde), to the seer and hero-supporter (Merlin), to the guy who picked up a bit of magic to help him along as a hermit or court aristocrat or librarian, or whatever else. It is, if anything, too _broad_ in its potential (you can be pretty much 'anything, plus magic'), and unlike the subclasses of other classes, the Wizard subs do little to further define it. Some more defining subclass features and/or feats could make it every bit as compelling as the other caster classes.
I have a wizard that I'll be playing in a future game who is not seeking power, but knowledge to help others, and who is a pacifist. They have a few combat spells in case of self defense, but otherwise they do not want to fight at all. This game surrounds a magic school that does encourage learning to fight with magic, so I think it'll be interesting to play a wizard who doesn't like to fight. There's always fun ways to flavor a wizard!
I personally feel like there's so much you can do with Wizards roleplay wise! And that comes from that fact that you are studying for your spells. Everyone learns differently, and that can be reflected on how your Spellbook and how you cast spells. What is your spellbook like? Is it an immaculate tome with decorations? Or is it a slap-dashed binder with scribbles like a college student who pulled an all nighter? Perhaps it's not even a spellbook at all. Perhaps it's a set of runestones that cause different spells when ordered differently. Or maybe it's a skull that whispers back arcane secrets that you told it. Your spellbook could even be a deck of cards! The other thing is how your practice leads into your spellcasting. Wizards can be a little boring... if you have no imagination. But this is where it gets fun! You get to flavor how your spells are cast! This is often reflected on how your character has learned their magic, and is a reflection of their training. Perhaps your Wizard casts spells in a more traditional sense, with specific words and gestures in the right order to cast. Maybe your runestones crack and erupt into the a spell when you order them in the right fasion. Perhaps you do what seems like simple sleight of hand magic tricks at first, but then flourish it into a great illusion spell! The spellbook of a Wizard is like the weapon of a Fighter. They way they cast magic is like the fighting style of a Fighter. It's a way to make your Wizard's abilities feel more personal. There's so much more than just bearded old guys reading from old books that you can do with it. You just need a little imagination to take it a long way!
I think my favorite modern wizard is Futaba from P5. She's considered to be one of the most intelligent characters in the party, while also being quirky and socially inept, and her skills easily write her off as a divination wizard with some levels in warlock due to forming a contract, with her Shadow Self being her otherworldly patron.
I have an evocation wizard/artifice, who is a follower of the God of creativity, bards, and innovation. He casts his long ranged spells (magic missle, fireball, etc.) Using inscriptions on his flintlock, and for stuff like shield, he'd pull out his book. He's a bit socially awkward and always wanting to innovate how he uses his spells.
Currently playing a neutral evil goblin abjurer that is paranoid AF, which is actually a healthy quality considering our BBEG is a mindflayer called "The Enlightened One". The way I flavored him was to have him grow up in a different culture; a gnomish magocracy with strong connections to genies and elementals and an ottoman esthetic. At a very young age his goblin clan was raided and he was sold as a slave to a conjurer. He learned his first spells by copying his master and sneaking peeks at his spellbook, memorizing and reproducing some simple spells: mage hand and prestidigitation. Two spells that made his cleaning duties so much easier (not to mention, less disgusting) which gave him time to study more spells. Upon discovering what the goblin had done, his gnome master first punished him by serving as a test subject for spells he was learning, but afterwards started teaching him more about magic. Never made him an official apprentice (an honor way to high for such a lowly goblin), but had him taught in the art of abjuration, to prevent harm towards his master, and serve as a powerful aid during summoning rituals. His master got caught during the "illegal summoning of a fiend", and to earn his freedom, Oji is sent into the wider world to complete 3 tasks. However, this new-found freedom and wealth (from selling off his master's magical items) has him delaying this objective, because he doesn't want to go back to a life of servitude. So his motivations for learning magic are: 1. he disliked having to clean the mess of his master's arcane experiments and 2. he saw the power the study of magic could bring. Power that could secure his liberty. That could protect him and the people he cares about. As I mentioned I roleplay him as very paranoid: he doesn't trust anyone (but is smart enough to pretend that he trusts his party members), always has an active alarm spell on his backpack, and before entering the new city we are currently at we heard a rumor about people being attacked by their own shadows, so I told my dm that Oji is constantly watching his own shadow, even if it creates awkward situations such as talking to people with his back towards them :P So far, I avoided being surprised in one encounter where our shadows did attack lol, but the rp is hilarious! My advice for playing wizards, is give them a reason why they are specialized in their school. For Oji, he is driven by a need to protect himself and others around him (those that help serve his goals, aka, people who protect him). He is paranoid, which is why he focuses on abjuration magic. Tying it to a flaw really helps define your character. For an illusionist I might write a character who is so uncomfortable with themselves, that they prefer pretending to be other people. Or instead a showman character that loves the attention his illusions can muster and will take any chance to show off. For an enchanter you could have someone who's obsessed with control and very dominating; a master manipulator, or a pacifist who tries to avoid combat as much as possible, whether for ideological reasons or because they are just scared of fights. A conjurer can be someone who's very lonely, and started summoning creatures to fill that social void. Or someone who's obsessed with learning the multiverse's secrets and hellbound on prying it piece by piece from celestials and fiends alike. TL;DR: Find something that feels fun to rp and tie that into the reason your wizard specialized in their school.
1. I understand you finding Physics boring as an ex physics person. 2. I would also say that from my wizard concepts the spells they do choose can also do a lot, same with letting the subclass guide the flavour of spells, an illusion wizard i've made uses magic as an artform where as an evocation wizard has it as diagrams and magic circles.
"The Wizards study and research for the power itself, because they - for one reason or another - NEED the power and are willing to learn." The story of Clan Tremere, themselves the Wizards of vampiric world, from Vampire the Masquerade.
Oh how I missed this series and was bummed you hadn't made Wizard until now. I honestly think the reason that Wizards are not as popular is that (as you said) flavoring them is a lot more difficult. Their schools really don't allow for much flavor (a transmutation wizard and evocation wizard really only differ in the amount of spells you have of your school) compared to something like the monk subclasses where you can be a half-dragon creature or a frail old man with astral arms that pop out like a Jojo Stand. That is really my critique of the Wizard. Their subclasses don't feel as unique as subclasses for other classes, hell, the Sorcerer (the closest thing to the Wizard) is so unique in their subclasses. You can't tell me a Wild Magic and Clockwork Soul Sorcerer are the same. Oh also they only get 1 or so subclass per big book release. 1 in Xanathar's and 1 in Tasha's. I just feel like WoTC don't really want or care to make Wizard subclasses anymore which will always sadden me.
That is a lot of their problem. Very little in the way of class features or feats (and not much in the way of items, either) are defining, either thematically or mechanically, from what a different subclass wizard or another class entirely can do. And with how D&D operates (as all games to some extent), it is meaningful insofar as it affects the consequences or how you go about achieving it. Besides the standard lore flavoring, other classes' subclasses-such as the two sorcerer ones you mentioned-differ beyond a skin on otherwise identical models, to use a video game metaphor. Their abilities significantly alter the gameplay by adding in new, significant variables (eg wild surge) to account for, or change/add additional roles that they can cover. Wizard subclasses (and feats) generally provide relatively minor improvements to spells that they share with other wizards and caster classes entirely, for the most part. It is not the _concept_ of wizards that is one-note, but the mechanics supporting it.
I have a Necromancy Wizard I'm excited to play. They were a human farmer who survived a drought, which caused many others to die from over work keeping the crops alive untill a wizard came along and used control weather to make it rain. While working themselves to death, the thought came to them: "If only these corpses could work instead of us". This thought, combined with the wizards life saving magic, made them decide to become a wizard, with a focus on Necromancy. If the study and practice of Necromancy is legal, it is their college major, with a minor in medicine. If it is illegal, They go to medical school during the day, and part of a Vecna cult during the night (or some other underground necromancy origination). Because of their medical training, they begin with the Healer feat, as a Vuman. Now, they adventure to pay off their student loans, and to further fund their study, so one day, they can return to their home, and have the undead do the dangerous work instead of the living.
This is coming in a little late. but i've played 2 different wizards at this point since 5e came out. they've become 2 out of my top 5 memorable dnd characters of all time imo. An orphaned half-elf who was raised by an ancient brass dragon to learn the Theurgy Tradition(UA subclass). Her brain continued to grow while orphaned she never felt like she suffered any true pain. she saw the world suffer far worse and strove to heal it with a mentality that " i didn't suffer, so i can ease theirs." she strove to keep the party alive, she expressed sorrow when others didn't and became powerful enough to heal the dead. The other was a human. a prince disowned by the king from a kingdom that banned arcane magic believing to be the fall of camelot. he felt this was not the true cause and learned. he was caught and tormented and punished severely for the crime of wizardry. but he fled with the dream to restore camelot. he searched hard for Merlin's tomes and went to a college, challenged other students so they could challenge him and he took up a degree of Arcane and Criminal Investigation. he became a divination wizard hoping to solve the mystery to restore camelot and solve cases. no one ever believed in him and even his own party gave him reasons why they hated him, but they still used his magic to fight their battles and solve their problems. he had photographic memory though. his own strongest weapon was his own biggest weakness. sadly this campaign never finished, but my proudest moment was the dm put Ganon in the campaign sealed up. he promised my wizard all the information he needed to restore camelot and save the one he loved if he would sacrifice the party to break the seal. he laughed and said " i'm a divination wizard, finding information is my specialty!" and used his magic to allow the party to escape. He was level 5 when this happened!
You can go a lot further with how your character casts spells if you ask me. What are the somatic components like? Do they draw sigils and runes in the air, do they perform hand signs, does it look like the practice of a martial art, do they weave their hands through the air as if dancing? What do the verbal components sound like? Is it in common? Elvish? Deep Speech? Why is that? Where did they learn it? Not to mention, the spellbook. Is it a novel you're writing about your travels that contains all the spells you used? Is it a journal, filled with scrawlings of everything you know, barely decipherable to people other than you? Is it your old teacher's textbook that you use to study, and over time you understand more of? Does it NEED to be a book in the first place? What if you're a bladesinger, and your spells are recorded on runic cloth wrappings around your hands? What about a device on your head that puts your mind into different states of being to remember different spells at different times? Another big thing is spell choice. Along with why your wizard casts spells, which spells have they taken the arduous time to learn, and why? A paranoid wizard deathly constantly worried about their impending doom? Contingency and a ton of other emergency spells. A charlatan trying to get rich and start a cult made of undiscovered power? Nystul's Magic Aura, Distort Value, Mass Suggestion and other enchantment spells. A sage that studied the arcane passively, until attacked by enemy spellcasters? Abjuration and Antimagic speciality. A wizard bent on revenge against an army of orcs? Anything and everything that goes kaboom. To me, the stars are the limit in the world of wizardry. It takes a lot more thinking because other subclasses imply flavor for you, while wizards are just old guys in robes with a book of spells unless you actively change that, which you can and should do.
My last character was a 19 year old human female who was going on the adventure essentially as an internship. I played her as essentially a highly intelligent but otherwise fairly normal college student. Hands down one of my favorite characters I've played
My issue with Wizard and most other Classes is you can't start with your Subclass at Lvl 1 (unless you homebrew a rule change), which I find unfortunate and annoying. Otherwise I greatly enjoy Wizard Class.
one of my characters is a wizard who had a class change, and used to be a wild magic sorcerer. and honestly, I don't know why he would have changed other than to do better, not be so much of a hassle for the party (he has some self esteem issues). i don't know if that's *enough*
Wizard! The nerd in its final form! The ONLY creature that can wear pajamas all day and still be completely badass! Someone so smart that even the universe is afraid of calling them out and they proving their point.
Once ran an encounter with 13 counter spells total cast amongst the party and the lich. Crazy times, absolutely hate that spell and yet I can't stop using it.
I'm playing a wizard and she's not a stereotype, she's the daughter of a knight (wanted a son) who ran away from an arranged marriage. I will say she is a lot more violent than I imagined she would be. If you want to give your character flavour then focus on the character
Part of the reason wizards tend to feel samey, is that certain spells are powerful, and players gravitate towards taking them when they play a wizard of their own, or if they've played a wizard, they already know how some of the spells are really powerful, too powerful to pass up, like fireball, counterspell, polymorph, etc. Another part of them being samey is they just have a big spell list they have access to all of the spells in each level. No spells in their class locked behind any subclass or anything. All wizards can have identify, mage armor, stuff like that. Half the schools of magic have a general area of specialization, like divination being great at obtaining information, or abjuration being great at protection. Since wizards always have access to all schools of magic, they can dip into each school of magic's area of expertise. With 6 spells to start out with, a freebie every level, and the ability to add and spells they come across to their spellbook, they can just rack up a swiss army knife collection of spells that make them useful to MVP in most situations. Most wizards and their players tend to take a lot of the same spells, and their diverse set of types of things they can do and dominate in isn't limited by any choice. A cleric choosing their domain shuts out every other domains' spells, but a wizard taking a spell doesn't shut them out of anything. Perhaps if the spells were somehow 'balanced' (not a think that can even be precisely done, due to different styles of running the game and encounters empowers or weakens certain types of spells) but making the most powerful spells less powerful could have helped make them not be treated as auto-takes by most wizard players. If Fireball, which consistently hits more enemies than Lightning Bolt, did less damage, then players might juggle picking one or the other, based on whether they want to hit more enemies with less damage, or a few enemies, with more damage. Actually, I think it would be more interesting if wizards had to choose which schools of magic they learn, and don't get access to half of them. Different players might choose different schools, making some of their spells different then each other. If only one wizard has divination, and the other is the only one with transmution, one will be casting divination spells, doing divination things, that the other doesn't do, and the other will be doing transmutation that the wizard who took divination and not transmutation can't do. And perhaps even the other classes could have some or most of their class spells migrated to subclass spell list as well, making them much more themed then say, a priest of Corellon casting bane on bunch of drow, while the priestess of Lloth casts bane on the priest's allies, and they both heal their allies, and banish undead, or how a sorceror with the blood of a firebreathing dragon in them can turn around and cast ice spells whenever they want, because there's ice spells in the sorceror class' list.
In my most recent campaign I have a wizard character who is the childhood friend of another PCs sorcerer, i think you see where this is going Basically my wizard grew really bitter and annoyed how the sorcerer had all this natural talent while he had to actively learn it, the sorcerer has no idea that the wizard has this burden on him and he is friendly but it leads to an interesting dynamic since the pc himself knows that
@@PlayYourRole YES! I don't know why artificer is my favorite. Originally my favorite was ranger because "cool legoles trickshot survivalist" and then wizard because I like playing super intelligent masterminds and then artificer just stole the show out from under wizard because it's pretty much a utility caster with additional utility and automatically flavors everything as magiteck (one of my favorite setting ideas)
My best Wizard is an Orc Wizard whose liver converts alcohol into magic. So basically, he was a mediocre rent-a-warrior who got drunk one night and trashed the entire town he was in within minutes. He doesn't like alcohol at all which makes it all funnier. He could atomize Karsus in his prime with enough Ethanol...and probably die afterwards, but still.
Just gonna put out there a wizard character idea i had that i haven't had the chance to play yet: a wizard who is convinced magic doesn't exist and it's all silence and tries to explain his spells with chemistry and physics etc. Somone who will explain the wish spell by pure statistics.
I think the real reason anyone should play a wizard is cause the fact you have to study and understand the weave how to manipulate it and control it magic is more intimate with you it is your hard work and dedication showing as you grow stronger in both mind and body. I don't usually play wizard cause while it is a very powerful class and has its uses I prefer sorcerers. But I see the intrigue in Wizard thinking back on Gandolf and other wizards. They are wise experienced and knows how dangerous abusing magic is. While my favorite one Sorcerer is born with magic it is part of who they are they have a degree of understanding of the forces there messing with but little control over it. They understand the weave better cause they feel it can sense it and it fuels them. Sorcerers can be wise as well but a wizard will always know more about it while a sorcerer can really only explain the feeling it gives you.
Never forget that education, at least here in the states, is also ridiculously expensive. It's a luxury. A fantasy setting with a similar view towards education would likely have wizards represent privilege, or perhaps that's why the wizard pc can't get into the school proper and has to become an adventurer. Money would only be one obstacle, but once they had enough to get in they might realize that their experience outside was dangerous, but nobody inside the school actually takes their struggle seriously, despite the fact that the adventurer wizard is now vastly over qualified for the beginner courses they're required to take, because of how hard they had to fight to get in. Too bad, that's still 15k gp a semester.
My new character, start a new campaign, is a female human wizard. She actually more interested in history and archeology than magic, she have magic but is more like a tool for discover artifacts for her. Anyway I play her like a normal person with a normal family and a job, who start the adventure just for dig out more story. The funny part is, she is actually not ready for it! She is dressed like a librarian, with uncomfortable shoes and dresses, she have this romantic vision of adventure and didn't yet realize how travel during an adventure really is. I wanna her evolve and realize how the real word is.
Personally I have been focusing heavily on wizards and artificers in my 5e experiences, and my latest character is an artificer/wizard who’s the worst spell caster in a whole wizard academy until he received some gadgets from his supervisor. Then he became a walking talking fireball - experimental gadgets.
I love playing the archetypical gandalf-merlin style wizard. But when I do, I flavor them just so the other players dont roll their eyes and sigh. For example, my latest PC-wizard-incarnation has a fey connection and a known criminal in the family that adds some flavor. That being said, the PC does smoke a pipe and has a beard. 😂
Honestly, I have to wholeheartedly agree. My favorite character I've ever played is a young Half-Elven girl who was, as a part of her backstory, killed mostly just for being a runt. However, she was resurrected by an old woman who was a "retired" Necromancer. Shortly thereafter, the girl started studying Necromancy on her own, and with the old woman's help, so that one day she might be able to help people in the same way that she was helped. (It's worth noting that we've given Necromancy Wizards Revivify, Resurrection, and True Resurrection in our game, since they all have to do with the manipulation of life, and that's literally what Necromancer says on the tin.)
This doesn't fully apply to the video but after my discovery of how a barbarian doesn't need strength to be an ok barbarian and that they could just go all in on dex and con and perform way better (especially if you're a small race who can't use heavy weapons anyways and are already stuck with d8 weapons) since barbarians ac is based on dex and con you might as well fully invest in them rather than focus on str a stat that even in the class it's meant for only 2 things involve it in the class rage damage which is a small bonus to damage and reckless attack which isn't worth it to use in the first place So to move to why I'm posting this here with the knowledge that you could make a dex barbarian it suddenly opened up the path to make it viable to multiclass it with wizard and so I created a Wild Magic Barbarian War magic forest gnome 2 levels of wizard is all you really need because you're just going to be taking utility spells and probably absorb elements for in case you ever get suprise attacked with elemental damage or if you aren't raging, you can go up to 3 levels of wizard if you want some 2nd level slots my preferred spell for this choice (since most of your spells are going to be 1st level ritual spells) I recommend if you can to grab Vortex Warp so you have some maneuverability options to deploy before a fight, as to why I chose gnome it's because with the combination of 2nd level war wizard's Arcane Deflection feature we'll have a consistent ac and saving throw bonus at no cost towards combat because we won't plan on casting spells in combat anyways and all it costs is a reaction so in total we'll have great ac hp out of combat utility and advantage on all dex and str saves and advantage on int wis and cha saves against magical effects Personally I think the idea of a wizard who channels their unbridled magical potential to boost their endurance is an interesting concept to explore
I feel like you are too stuck in the archetype to give wizards their flavor. You can make so many different types of wizards. The Arcane academy - World of Io is a wizard only campaign but you never feel like they all fall under the same category. A few examples of wizards I have or would like to play would be: An Illusionist that feels the need to make himself look better than he is, A laud extroverted Wizard that mostly uses thunder spells, A necromancer that can't throw things away and feels the need to recycle everything (as well as corpse). The wizards main strength is their flexibility but being flexible doesn't mean they have to do everything. It just means you can do what you want and be useful in other areas.
There where be a wizard no matter what, that wizard will yell "you shall not pass!", you should want to be the one to yell it. wizards are magic Batman, with prep time they can do ANYTHING.
The reason I don't want to play that many wizards is because of this: 1. You are so damn fragile lmao. 2. Wizards are the poster child of the martials vs spellcasters problem. Literally "Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards". So I kind of have a bit of a chip on my shoulder, especially since the other spellcasting classes I play get shunted to the side while WotC just always gives all the new spells to the wizard and just doesn't give them to the other classes. 2.5. It's kind of a, "you're so weak you've had to resort to magic to replace everything you do like a spoiled child. You can't live without guidance, can't do anything unless you cast enhance ability first, can't bare the thought or trouble of holding a torch, you can't live without all your shortcuts." sort of thing. A boy and his sword is just so quintessential in this game/genre, it's the eternal battle. You look at the world and see all these people that can cast fireball, these flying dragons who can breath lightning, the lich kings who turn all their citizens to walking thralls. Then right there you see just some dude who picks up a sword because he likes his chances. That commands respect in a way none of the other things can. That's noble as fuck right there. 3. Spellcasters are kinda stuffy, arrogant pricks. Like "Ooooooo, look! I can do everything you can do but better! Hahahaha!" I means that's just what happens when you're someone with power over the cosmos. I still have a wizard character I wanna play tho, because the class is still fun! I wanna be a necromancer with my own little army so bad ;u;
Flavor of character is based on how creative the person playing is. It has very little to almost nothing to do with class or subclass played. The wizard is just as versatile as any other class for flavor. Be creative, it's DND...
I disagree, any full caster, even wizard, is hundreds of times more flavorful then then the full martials if your doing it right . Yeah martials can have different guards and different fighting styles, but magic is essentially a unbound , ultimate freedom of exspression
All you have to do to make a full martial character interesting is give them weapons that suit the character and their fighting style and make their attacks more vivid rather than just "I attack with my greataxe for 7 damage" and actually describe what youre doing. I had a Triton Ranger about a year ago and by far the most boring aspect of him was his spellcasting (at least compared to his martial ability and how he would fight with tridents and icepicks) and even when the spellcasting was interesting it was because I integrated his weapons with the casting of the spell. As long as you know how to describe martial combat well it is incredibly flavorful and interesting its just that in the books spells have more description dedicated to them and so its easier to modify because you have a foundation where as with weapons you need to come up with everything yourself.
@@zacharycasey150 I mean, martials aren’t necessarily boring but magic is far more expressive. Stuff like spell choice and how the spell forms gives so many option to fit your character. Sure you can express your character by if they take the fools guard or wrath guard, or if they don’t even take a defensive stance at all, but it’s not as exspressive as the vast amount of choices you get with spell casting
@@zacharycasey150 on top of that, full casters can flavor there stances as well, my bard likes to take on fools guard, but her daughter favors wrath guard. Her angelic patron takes plow guard
I would love to see a character inspiration series. Similar to the beginning of these videos and less about the class in general.
Boy are you going to enjoy the 15k special
One of my favorite warlocks actually leans into this sort of flavoring: pushed into wizardry by her family but stumbling and struggling to learn, she makes a deal for a shortcut and ends up in way over her head
Agh that's such a fun and... horrifyingly relatable backstory.
@@PlayYourRole I appreciate it!!
That is a fantastic idea, camazettz
Basically she hires a tutor then?
My first ever character was an enchantress, which in 2e was basically just a specialized wizard. I loved her and loved being a magic user, but when 3e came around and it was a choice between wizard and sorcerer, well sorcerer didn't have to prepare spells. I loved the idea of a character being born to their magic over learning it through years of long study. It just made wizards so boring. And I'm too lazy to prepare spells, lol. But 5e brought the subclasses in, and I started to see new flavor and reasons to play the wizard. And Caleb Widogast is part of that reason. I have yet to come up with a wizard character I intend to play, but I am keeping more of an open mind about them. Thinking about why they cast will also help. I'm determined to eventually have long-running PCs of every class and the wizard will have their day yet. I will get there.
Oooh man Enchantress's can be SO interesting, especially given the moral ambiguity of their power set. Love them so much.
Unrelated but kinda topical too. This comment kind of reminds me of an issue people had with Star Wars where they felt making Force powers genetic instead of a skill anyone could learn cheapened the Force a bit. I think that might be a cool perspective to give the Wizards a little respect. Make magic magical again and enjoy the thrill of learning magic from the point of view of just some random person.
Amazing video as always, was really waiting for this since I made my first wizard a few months ago.
A human with agoraphobia who had nothing better to do than read books on the vast library of her adopted parents. Loved lore and interesting facts by got bored by magic since it's a lot of ritual and routine. When a magical force blasts throughout the tower sending her flying out she's left panicking to return to the the tower that is suddenly just no longer there. Lost and confused, she turns to the scattered books for comfort, a spell book mostly comprising of divination spells. Gaining knowledge to gain more knowledge to find her home and parents.
Aw man, I feel so bad for them! Having agoraphobia and LITERALLY being tossed into the world is so hard!
Really glad to see this video, as someone who just recently created their first wizard character! I share a lot of your thoughts as to why a wizard just isn't interesting compared to some of the other classes. Until the Tasha's supplement came out, I couldn't see myself playing a wizard at all because they just seemed so flat compared to sorcerer, bard, etc. Order of Scribes was what finally convinced me to give it a try. It's been really interested figuring out my character's motivation and how to roleplay the fact that a low level wizard is squishy and not that powerful. I've flavored it that my character learned spellcraft as a byproduct of wanting to study history and mythology at the magic school; you stay around wizards all day, you start to pick things up. She was effectively a grad student when she checked the wrong book out from the library out of curiosity (her driving motivation), and is now adventuring because 1) she doesn't know what else to do and 2) she's learning more in a few months of traveling than she did in the past through years at school.
We're only level 5, so the campaign is just starting to hit its stride now, but I'm pretty excited to see where this character goes. Definitely going to try and implement your advice here to keep her feeling unique as she stops being just a student, and starts becoming a pretty powerful person in the world.
They're absolutely in the 'suffering from success' ares. They're SO famous and popular that they go all the way into seeming boring... at least on the surface! Still, there is a lot of fun to be had with them if you can look passed that
I once had a forest gnome wizard who really should've been a rouge.
Explanation time! He grew up in water deep as a street urchin but had the small bit of luck where his turf was right next to the wizardry college so he would hang out below a classroom window and using the teachers instruction he learned a lot of illusionary spells(among other things) and that allowed him to defend himself and survive using his wits and knowledge of magic
Instead of learning to sneak attack he learned misdirection using illusions, instead of picking locks he learned knock, instead of learning diplomacy to calm down enemies he used sleep
This is an amazing example of how versatile wizards can be!
@@PlayYourRole thank you!
The devolution of morality as the pursuit of knowledge consumes the wizard has always fascinated me. What are you seeking? Why? How does that thirst drive you? What are you willing to do for power? The fall of an arch-wizard who’s hundreds, if not thousands, of years old makes for really good D&D.
2 of my previous wizards: Goliath wizard, the runt of his clan who inscribed spells onto stone tablets by carving runes copied from a spellbook he found as a child.
Loxodon wizard, a giant of a sage who inscribed his spells into his body by using his trunk.
For some reason my favorite flavor of wizard is one that matches both of those concepts, I call it the 'primal wizard'. One who uses magic similar to the druid, which seems to be incredibly in tune with the raw magic of the world
Finally! My favorite class! It feels weird that your channel grew from less than 10k sub to already close to 21k. I love your content and thank you for making amazing videos
Trust me, it is JUST as weird for me and infinitely humbling. I'm so glad I could finally get this out for you and all other wizard lovers! Thank you for supporting the channel!
Having played two wizards as they are my favourite class I can’t emphasise enough how much spell selection can effect the feel of the character. My first was a merchant transmutation wizard who used his abilities to charm and swindle temporarily turning his wooden trinkets into valuable metals. My second is a cleric1/war wizardX of the flaming fist who has dedicated his life to Mysta and the weave, he focuses on spells like haste and Misty step to be really mobile and get more AC than imaginable for a wizard to remain on the frontline alongside our paladin slashing away with his booming blade.
Also have a backup in mind of the complete mundane village spellmonger/hedge wizard who knows all the mundane spells and rituals that could really help out the villagers, removing curses, identifying objects and casting continual flames for households. Just picking all the spells that typical adventuring wizards skip over to force some creativity.
I decided to play a gnome wizard as my most recent character and I will admit, it was difficult at first to find the character. She spent a lot of time reading (which she enjoyed as a scholar), but seemed a little bit of a drag on role play. And being knocked out in each of the first two battles we fought was definitely discouraging (oh, so squishy!). But as we have continued the campaign I’ve begun to realize that her book smarts are what make her an asset to the team. She sees magic that others can’t, picks up on clues that others miss and (from how I’ve been playing her) genuinely cares about the success of the group.
I also noted a couple of comments downplaying the school of evocation, which was interesting to me because I chose it for my wizard in order to help the group during fights. Being able to cast burning hands at baddies while hiding behind the paladin without hurting her and still having cover is an immense asset. And as she is leveling, I’m choosing spells that I know will help the team specifically from the other schools of magic because that is what she would do. Invisibility will be a huge help to the rogue (plans for next level). I am still worried about her being penniless for the whole campaign, but at least we just found a spellbook with a bunch of new spells (thanks DM!).
I'm currently playing a half elf wizard with the soldier background. Long story short was in a battle saved by mages and went from holding a sword to a spellbook instead. Wanted to play like Dr. Strange and instead he become more like Roy Mustang. I've always prefered martial classes but my Wizard is now one of my favorite chracters
Awww thats actually a super fun backstory!
@@PlayYourRole I was thinking about the idea of a Svirfneblin necromancer who uses the corpses of slaves bought from Drow to dig mines to ease the hard work of his clan. And he uses these spells very carefully, so as not to become the same evil bastard as the dark elves
What's their subclass? Scribe? Evocation? Bladesinger?
Made a Civil War mage once. He was kinda like Cornelius Slate from Bioshock.
Wow, that intro was amazing. You've already got me hooked.
Don't forget they can flavor their Spellbook as they like. My wizard harengon uses her Skin as Spellbook and paints every Spell on it. As her Fur regrow, the Spells "Pictograms" are also visible on it.
Thanks to the Strixhaven book i was able to flavor it as Prismari-Style: Make Spellcasting into Art.
It's really fun to play her
I always thought of wizards as very flavorful. My first one in 5e was an exorcist (abjuration) and the one I'm playing for some time now is an painter (illusion) who went to a magic art school with anatomy classes, etc.
I'm going to play a catfolk wizard school of illusion soon!
She is inspired by the story of the Moon in the Well, hence illusion. I can't wait to play her
That's so fun!!! I hope it goes great!
@@PlayYourRole
Same! I've never played wizard (I'm relatively new to the game and I've played a rogue for the last two years) so am quite excited for the change
I have only played one wizard and I absolutely love playing them. With them being a kind of fortune teller who spellbook was reflavored to be a deck of tarot like cards that has diffrent designs on them to depict the spell being used.
As someone who plans to play a necromancer wizard in a campaign soon, and have some ideas to flavor it. Finding your channel recently and watching some of your videos is actually give me some more inspiration.
One of my favorite characters was a gnome wizard. He was a librarian and basically taught himself magic as a hobby. By the time he met the party he was a retired widower with grown children and was actually pretty depressed because he didn't feel like his life had much purpose anymore. He was an Abjuration specialist who focused mostly on buffing and protection spells. The party became like his new family and he found a new sense of meaning in keeping them alive.
Kind of want to see "Why you should play Bloodhunter" now ngl
"They can do almost anything, given preptime"
Wizards = Batman
OH! Oh this has given me so many new ideas!
For some reason the comparison of a wizard to a scientist/physicist never truly hit me before, but the idea of using a combination of mathematics, arcane knowledge and learning to understand the effects of the weave makes perfect sense! And it also explains why learning magic is hard!
Cue the idea of an evocation wizard mid-battle approximating the weight of their targets, the distance between themselves and said targets, and figuring out what to push and pull in the weave and how much so that the correct effect will happen without damaging any allies. Missing with a spell doesn't only have to be actually missing, it can be a miscalculation in weight, distance, power, armour, etc!
Levelling up might even be just getting better at making those calculations. Over time, wizards get better at guessing the requirements for a spell to work well and start modifying spells to work better in new situations. It makes sense that after a little time in the field, doing mathematics in your head without knowing all the variables, you'd get better at guessing the approximates and getting good enough results.
Yet again, this series (and channel in general) has given me insight into something that perhaps should have been obvious, but I'm really excited to realise. Thank you for the video!
I would like to say good job, and congrats on the 20 k subscribers. Your content is really well made and inspiring. I wish you all the luck in the future, though i feel like someone as great as you would still succeed with flying colours without. (:
Oh dear, this is not good for my narcism.
Jk jk, thank you SO much for the kind words. It truly means the absolute world to me.
The content that you make makes me to spice things up. A lot of thanks for that
one of my characters who i’m very excited to play is a tiefling wizard who tattoos her spells onto herself.
her backstory is basically that she was under the care of a powerful crime wizard who was defeated and arrested after his spell book was stolen. she decided to stop that from ever happening to her and created a special kind of ink for tattooing that allowed her to use her skin as a spellbook.
her “drive” is that she wants to share and/or sell (bc wizarding is expensive) the tattoo ink so that other wizards can keep their spellbook safe from thievery (and save the trees). but no one will take her idea bc they don’t think it will work so she’s being petty and proving them wrong by becoming the most powerful in all the lands.
that ended up being way longer than expected but let me know what you think
"You read to gain the power that you need. You have the need, the need to reed""
I have only ever played one wizard, though he has multiple iterations throughout the timelines. Prinkseth Inquis, a gnome wizard who always multiclasses either two or three levels into a different profession and focuses primarily on a particular School of magic. I eventually hope to create an interdimensional Council of Prinks who are always on the lookout for magical anomalies or new monsters to study.
For some reason you keep making why you should play “X” class videos right after I first created that class, why you should play a Druid one was 2 weeks after my first Druid character, why you should play a cleric was 3 days after my first cleric and this one is 5 days after my first wizard.
That aside I definitely agree with you about why wizards don’t get played, I certainly wasn’t planning on playing one, I just did because I said to my friend that I will play as what comes out of random class button and for my luck it was a wizard. When you mention that I just realized that none of my friends or me never played a wizard before and I never saw one played in any of my dnd games. For some reason we expect it to be a generic wizard and then no one plays wizard.
I will play more wizard in the future and also I hope more people also does because actually it’s really fun to play as one.
I'm actually spying on you and releasing them at the single least opportune times.
Well. Wizards are the telephonbooks in our campaigns. Sending is such a powerful spell if you know the right people. Who needs a fireball if you can tell the king to send an army at the right place.
I would love to see a "Why YOU Should Play a Blood Hunter" video from you as the class gets a lot of hate for being weak, but the flavor is amazing.
My first big campaign, I'm playing a kobold wizard/warlock multiclass(warlock 3, wizard rest of the way) His entire tribe got devastated by the deep dragon they served, and he got cast out to sea in the attack, where he was saved by his patron (fathomless warlock). He learned to be a wizard in large part because he was naturally smart as well as drawn to the knowledge based magic, and how much one could do with it. He took up the school of abjuration, so he could protect people, feeling guilty for not being able to protect his tribe. This is also the reason he tends towards a lot of support-type spells. The patron for his warlock powers is (seemingly) an aboleth, which convinced him that it wished to also destroy his former master (deep dragons eat aboleths), and pushed him to pursue knowledge in exchange for the powers it offered. His ultimate goal is to go back, find out if any of his people survived, and kill the dragon he once served.
!!!! I'm so glad I managed to find this!
I think an Illusion Wizard/Inquisitive Rogue multi class could be a fun roleplay idea
A spy who could sneak in through the back, or walk in the front door with an illusion, finding all the information anyone could ever need
I have a wizard at the ready but havent had the time to use him due to being a yuan ti but that can easily be changed to a human as his back story is about being the son of a slaver master who's main goal is to find a slave who use to take care of him while he was a growing up. A propee mom who actually showed affection. His "spellbook" was a pocketwatch that played various tunes during battle which would remind him of the spells the slave told him about because she was a former adventurer and would tell him stories how she took down monsters or found ruins which inspired him to be one to the dismay of his mother.
I now truly understand why wizards resonate with me thank you
I sometimes play around with two wizard ideas:
1. A kid who found an old spellbook and tried to revive a loved one (pet or family) released a terrible creature instead. Now they try to fix the problem by actually learning magic, while constantly on the run.
2. A student who was forced into a magical academy to uphold and improve the family legacy, but doesn't care at all.
If I go back to D&D I'd probably play a sorcerer or warlock though.
Keep up the great work! Now I'm dying to play DND haha
One of my favorite character is a wizard who's dressed with a knockoff purple hallowen wizard costume, wears sunglasses and skateboards and he casts spells in meme references
I partially agree. The problem mentioned here is there is very little in the way of characterization-backstory, relationships, personality, etc-that is exclusive to it; almost anything it can do, other spellcasters can do, while _also_ having options that the wizard does not support as well, if at all. However, that is not intrinsic to the concept.
The problem lies in that direct mechanics are, if ignoring the social aspect and the like that are particular to each table, the sole way of meaningfully engaging with the game (while this applies to all games to some extent, it is especially the case with D&D). If it is not in the mechanics, it has little to no bearing on play. Consequently, a character concept or class's roleplay power is largely to entirely dependent on its mechanics.
Wizards have little to alter how you engage with the game beyond spells-most of which they share with other classes, and between its subclasses. Few to none of the official feats significantly alter how Wizards, _specifically_ , play or interact with the world; neither do _most_ magical items. Whereas picking the right subclasses for a Fighter-Paladin can create basically the only build in the game with MMO-like tanking abilities-redirecting attacks towards oneself, inflicting penalties to attack anyone else, reactions that return damage against an ally back on an attacker-a Wizard gets relatively minor increases to spells and abilities that other Wizard subclasses and other classes entirely can also cover.
The wizard concept (or archetype) is intrinsically interesting, having shown up in some form in basically every human culture ever (often being related to or one in the same with priests, shamans, witches, etc). You can specialize into different branches of magic, such as by element, by tactical/strategic use, by method of performance (eg evocation vs transmutation), method of learning, and a myriad of other things, and tie all of that in as either aligned to, in consequence of, or in compensation for their personality, background, and goals, to name but some of the possibilities.
However, the rules-as-written facilitate that less for Wizard than it does for almost every other full/true caster in 5e; Fighter has a _more_ severe case of it, partly hence the allocation of being 'basic'. As-written, anything that a Wizard can do, another spellcaster can do _and_ more. Which sucks, since the 'wizard' concept ranges from the saintly-adjacent sage (Eg Saint Germain), to the eldritch tyrant (the ogre of Puss in Boots, Koshei the Deathless), to those obsessed with furthering knowledge and humanity by delving into forbidden knowledge (Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde), to the seer and hero-supporter (Merlin), to the guy who picked up a bit of magic to help him along as a hermit or court aristocrat or librarian, or whatever else. It is, if anything, too _broad_ in its potential (you can be pretty much 'anything, plus magic'), and unlike the subclasses of other classes, the Wizard subs do little to further define it. Some more defining subclass features and/or feats could make it every bit as compelling as the other caster classes.
I have a wizard that I'll be playing in a future game who is not seeking power, but knowledge to help others, and who is a pacifist. They have a few combat spells in case of self defense, but otherwise they do not want to fight at all. This game surrounds a magic school that does encourage learning to fight with magic, so I think it'll be interesting to play a wizard who doesn't like to fight. There's always fun ways to flavor a wizard!
I personally feel like there's so much you can do with Wizards roleplay wise! And that comes from that fact that you are studying for your spells. Everyone learns differently, and that can be reflected on how your Spellbook and how you cast spells. What is your spellbook like? Is it an immaculate tome with decorations? Or is it a slap-dashed binder with scribbles like a college student who pulled an all nighter? Perhaps it's not even a spellbook at all. Perhaps it's a set of runestones that cause different spells when ordered differently. Or maybe it's a skull that whispers back arcane secrets that you told it. Your spellbook could even be a deck of cards!
The other thing is how your practice leads into your spellcasting. Wizards can be a little boring... if you have no imagination. But this is where it gets fun! You get to flavor how your spells are cast! This is often reflected on how your character has learned their magic, and is a reflection of their training. Perhaps your Wizard casts spells in a more traditional sense, with specific words and gestures in the right order to cast. Maybe your runestones crack and erupt into the a spell when you order them in the right fasion. Perhaps you do what seems like simple sleight of hand magic tricks at first, but then flourish it into a great illusion spell!
The spellbook of a Wizard is like the weapon of a Fighter. They way they cast magic is like the fighting style of a Fighter. It's a way to make your Wizard's abilities feel more personal. There's so much more than just bearded old guys reading from old books that you can do with it. You just need a little imagination to take it a long way!
My favorite wizards were an evocation gnome who flunked out of school and a bumbling loxodon abjurationist
Ahaha I love it!
I think my favorite modern wizard is Futaba from P5. She's considered to be one of the most intelligent characters in the party, while also being quirky and socially inept, and her skills easily write her off as a divination wizard with some levels in warlock due to forming a contract, with her Shadow Self being her otherworldly patron.
In my 5+ years of playing/running D&D, I'm the only person to have played a wizard in my group of friends.
I've only ever seen a Wizard PC played twice, and one of them was short lived :(
I'd be interested in you covering blood hunters. They seem totally badass but mine's mire of a glass cannon.
I have an evocation wizard/artifice, who is a follower of the God of creativity, bards, and innovation. He casts his long ranged spells (magic missle, fireball, etc.) Using inscriptions on his flintlock, and for stuff like shield, he'd pull out his book. He's a bit socially awkward and always wanting to innovate how he uses his spells.
Currently playing a neutral evil goblin abjurer that is paranoid AF, which is actually a healthy quality considering our BBEG is a mindflayer called "The Enlightened One". The way I flavored him was to have him grow up in a different culture; a gnomish magocracy with strong connections to genies and elementals and an ottoman esthetic. At a very young age his goblin clan was raided and he was sold as a slave to a conjurer. He learned his first spells by copying his master and sneaking peeks at his spellbook, memorizing and reproducing some simple spells: mage hand and prestidigitation. Two spells that made his cleaning duties so much easier (not to mention, less disgusting) which gave him time to study more spells.
Upon discovering what the goblin had done, his gnome master first punished him by serving as a test subject for spells he was learning, but afterwards started teaching him more about magic. Never made him an official apprentice (an honor way to high for such a lowly goblin), but had him taught in the art of abjuration, to prevent harm towards his master, and serve as a powerful aid during summoning rituals.
His master got caught during the "illegal summoning of a fiend", and to earn his freedom, Oji is sent into the wider world to complete 3 tasks. However, this new-found freedom and wealth (from selling off his master's magical items) has him delaying this objective, because he doesn't want to go back to a life of servitude.
So his motivations for learning magic are: 1. he disliked having to clean the mess of his master's arcane experiments and 2. he saw the power the study of magic could bring. Power that could secure his liberty. That could protect him and the people he cares about.
As I mentioned I roleplay him as very paranoid: he doesn't trust anyone (but is smart enough to pretend that he trusts his party members), always has an active alarm spell on his backpack, and before entering the new city we are currently at we heard a rumor about people being attacked by their own shadows, so I told my dm that Oji is constantly watching his own shadow, even if it creates awkward situations such as talking to people with his back towards them :P So far, I avoided being surprised in one encounter where our shadows did attack lol, but the rp is hilarious!
My advice for playing wizards, is give them a reason why they are specialized in their school. For Oji, he is driven by a need to protect himself and others around him (those that help serve his goals, aka, people who protect him). He is paranoid, which is why he focuses on abjuration magic. Tying it to a flaw really helps define your character.
For an illusionist I might write a character who is so uncomfortable with themselves, that they prefer pretending to be other people. Or instead a showman character that loves the attention his illusions can muster and will take any chance to show off.
For an enchanter you could have someone who's obsessed with control and very dominating; a master manipulator, or a pacifist who tries to avoid combat as much as possible, whether for ideological reasons or because they are just scared of fights.
A conjurer can be someone who's very lonely, and started summoning creatures to fill that social void. Or someone who's obsessed with learning the multiverse's secrets and hellbound on prying it piece by piece from celestials and fiends alike.
TL;DR: Find something that feels fun to rp and tie that into the reason your wizard specialized in their school.
1. I understand you finding Physics boring as an ex physics person.
2. I would also say that from my wizard concepts the spells they do choose can also do a lot, same with letting the subclass guide the flavour of spells, an illusion wizard i've made uses magic as an artform where as an evocation wizard has it as diagrams and magic circles.
"The Wizards study and research for the power itself, because they - for one reason or another - NEED the power and are willing to learn."
The story of Clan Tremere, themselves the Wizards of vampiric world, from Vampire the Masquerade.
Oh how I missed this series and was bummed you hadn't made Wizard until now. I honestly think the reason that Wizards are not as popular is that (as you said) flavoring them is a lot more difficult. Their schools really don't allow for much flavor (a transmutation wizard and evocation wizard really only differ in the amount of spells you have of your school) compared to something like the monk subclasses where you can be a half-dragon creature or a frail old man with astral arms that pop out like a Jojo Stand. That is really my critique of the Wizard. Their subclasses don't feel as unique as subclasses for other classes, hell, the Sorcerer (the closest thing to the Wizard) is so unique in their subclasses. You can't tell me a Wild Magic and Clockwork Soul Sorcerer are the same. Oh also they only get 1 or so subclass per big book release. 1 in Xanathar's and 1 in Tasha's. I just feel like WoTC don't really want or care to make Wizard subclasses anymore which will always sadden me.
That is a lot of their problem. Very little in the way of class features or feats (and not much in the way of items, either) are defining, either thematically or mechanically, from what a different subclass wizard or another class entirely can do. And with how D&D operates (as all games to some extent), it is meaningful insofar as it affects the consequences or how you go about achieving it. Besides the standard lore flavoring, other classes' subclasses-such as the two sorcerer ones you mentioned-differ beyond a skin on otherwise identical models, to use a video game metaphor. Their abilities significantly alter the gameplay by adding in new, significant variables (eg wild surge) to account for, or change/add additional roles that they can cover.
Wizard subclasses (and feats) generally provide relatively minor improvements to spells that they share with other wizards and caster classes entirely, for the most part. It is not the _concept_ of wizards that is one-note, but the mechanics supporting it.
I have a Necromancy Wizard I'm excited to play. They were a human farmer who survived a drought, which caused many others to die from over work keeping the crops alive untill a wizard came along and used control weather to make it rain. While working themselves to death, the thought came to them: "If only these corpses could work instead of us". This thought, combined with the wizards life saving magic, made them decide to become a wizard, with a focus on Necromancy.
If the study and practice of Necromancy is legal, it is their college major, with a minor in medicine. If it is illegal, They go to medical school during the day, and part of a Vecna cult during the night (or some other underground necromancy origination).
Because of their medical training, they begin with the Healer feat, as a Vuman. Now, they adventure to pay off their student loans, and to further fund their study, so one day, they can return to their home, and have the undead do the dangerous work instead of the living.
This is coming in a little late. but i've played 2 different wizards at this point since 5e came out. they've become 2 out of my top 5 memorable dnd characters of all time imo. An orphaned half-elf who was raised by an ancient brass dragon to learn the Theurgy Tradition(UA subclass). Her brain continued to grow while orphaned she never felt like she suffered any true pain. she saw the world suffer far worse and strove to heal it with a mentality that " i didn't suffer, so i can ease theirs." she strove to keep the party alive, she expressed sorrow when others didn't and became powerful enough to heal the dead.
The other was a human. a prince disowned by the king from a kingdom that banned arcane magic believing to be the fall of camelot. he felt this was not the true cause and learned. he was caught and tormented and punished severely for the crime of wizardry. but he fled with the dream to restore camelot. he searched hard for Merlin's tomes and went to a college, challenged other students so they could challenge him and he took up a degree of Arcane and Criminal Investigation. he became a divination wizard hoping to solve the mystery to restore camelot and solve cases. no one ever believed in him and even his own party gave him reasons why they hated him, but they still used his magic to fight their battles and solve their problems. he had photographic memory though. his own strongest weapon was his own biggest weakness. sadly this campaign never finished, but my proudest moment was the dm put Ganon in the campaign sealed up. he promised my wizard all the information he needed to restore camelot and save the one he loved if he would sacrifice the party to break the seal. he laughed and said " i'm a divination wizard, finding information is my specialty!" and used his magic to allow the party to escape. He was level 5 when this happened!
You can go a lot further with how your character casts spells if you ask me. What are the somatic components like? Do they draw sigils and runes in the air, do they perform hand signs, does it look like the practice of a martial art, do they weave their hands through the air as if dancing? What do the verbal components sound like? Is it in common? Elvish? Deep Speech? Why is that? Where did they learn it?
Not to mention, the spellbook. Is it a novel you're writing about your travels that contains all the spells you used? Is it a journal, filled with scrawlings of everything you know, barely decipherable to people other than you? Is it your old teacher's textbook that you use to study, and over time you understand more of? Does it NEED to be a book in the first place? What if you're a bladesinger, and your spells are recorded on runic cloth wrappings around your hands? What about a device on your head that puts your mind into different states of being to remember different spells at different times?
Another big thing is spell choice. Along with why your wizard casts spells, which spells have they taken the arduous time to learn, and why? A paranoid wizard deathly constantly worried about their impending doom? Contingency and a ton of other emergency spells. A charlatan trying to get rich and start a cult made of undiscovered power? Nystul's Magic Aura, Distort Value, Mass Suggestion and other enchantment spells. A sage that studied the arcane passively, until attacked by enemy spellcasters? Abjuration and Antimagic speciality. A wizard bent on revenge against an army of orcs? Anything and everything that goes kaboom.
To me, the stars are the limit in the world of wizardry. It takes a lot more thinking because other subclasses imply flavor for you, while wizards are just old guys in robes with a book of spells unless you actively change that, which you can and should do.
My last character was a 19 year old human female who was going on the adventure essentially as an internship. I played her as essentially a highly intelligent but otherwise fairly normal college student. Hands down one of my favorite characters I've played
My issue with Wizard and most other Classes is you can't start with your Subclass at Lvl 1 (unless you homebrew a rule change), which I find unfortunate and annoying.
Otherwise I greatly enjoy Wizard Class.
one of my characters is a wizard who had a class change, and used to be a wild magic sorcerer. and honestly, I don't know why he would have changed other than to do better, not be so much of a hassle for the party (he has some self esteem issues). i don't know if that's *enough*
How to play a necromancer without being evil (maybe on how to challenge taboos or do the wrong thing for a good reason).
Muscle Wizard is the best character type
I just made a strength based War Wizard.
Literally just created a wizard, great timing
Wizard! The nerd in its final form! The ONLY creature that can wear pajamas all day and still be completely badass! Someone so smart that even the universe is afraid of calling them out and they proving their point.
Why you should play wizard: counter spell battles. Spell slots be hexed i shall stop this ray of sickness
Once ran an encounter with 13 counter spells total cast amongst the party and the lich. Crazy times, absolutely hate that spell and yet I can't stop using it.
I'm playing a wizard and she's not a stereotype, she's the daughter of a knight (wanted a son) who ran away from an arranged marriage. I will say she is a lot more violent than I imagined she would be. If you want to give your character flavour then focus on the character
Exactly! The character will be far more interesting if the mechanics are influenced by them, not the other way around.
For the first time in my time playing ttrpg's, I now want to play a wizard
Please do artificer!
It WILL happen... Sometime. Artificer if my 2nd favorite class, I MUST do it justice.
Part of the reason wizards tend to feel samey, is that certain spells are powerful, and players gravitate towards taking them when they play a wizard of their own, or if they've played a wizard, they already know how some of the spells are really powerful, too powerful to pass up, like fireball, counterspell, polymorph, etc.
Another part of them being samey is they just have a big spell list they have access to all of the spells in each level. No spells in their class locked behind any subclass or anything.
All wizards can have identify, mage armor, stuff like that. Half the schools of magic have a general area of specialization, like divination being great at obtaining information, or abjuration being great at protection. Since wizards always have access to all schools of magic, they can dip into each school of magic's area of expertise.
With 6 spells to start out with, a freebie every level, and the ability to add and spells they come across to their spellbook, they can just rack up a swiss army knife collection of spells that make them useful to MVP in most situations.
Most wizards and their players tend to take a lot of the same spells, and their diverse set of types of things they can do and dominate in isn't limited by any choice. A cleric choosing their domain shuts out every other domains' spells, but a wizard taking a spell doesn't shut them out of anything.
Perhaps if the spells were somehow 'balanced' (not a think that can even be precisely done, due to different styles of running the game and encounters empowers or weakens certain types of spells) but making the most powerful spells less powerful could have helped make them not be treated as auto-takes by most wizard players. If Fireball, which consistently hits more enemies than Lightning Bolt, did less damage, then players might juggle picking one or the other, based on whether they want to hit more enemies with less damage, or a few enemies, with more damage.
Actually, I think it would be more interesting if wizards had to choose which schools of magic they learn, and don't get access to half of them. Different players might choose different schools, making some of their spells different then each other. If only one wizard has divination, and the other is the only one with transmution, one will be casting divination spells, doing divination things, that the other doesn't do, and the other will be doing transmutation that the wizard who took divination and not transmutation can't do.
And perhaps even the other classes could have some or most of their class spells migrated to subclass spell list as well, making them much more themed then say, a priest of Corellon casting bane on bunch of drow, while the priestess of Lloth casts bane on the priest's allies, and they both heal their allies, and banish undead, or how a sorceror with the blood of a firebreathing dragon in them can turn around and cast ice spells whenever they want, because there's ice spells in the sorceror class' list.
In my most recent campaign I have a wizard character who is the childhood friend of another PCs sorcerer, i think you see where this is going
Basically my wizard grew really bitter and annoyed how the sorcerer had all this natural talent while he had to actively learn it, the sorcerer has no idea that the wizard has this burden on him and he is friendly but it leads to an interesting dynamic since the pc himself knows that
Please do artificer next.
Agh, I promise I will get to artificer eventually. I kinda HAVE to, given it is my second favorite class of all time.
@@PlayYourRole YES! I don't know why artificer is my favorite.
Originally my favorite was ranger because "cool legoles trickshot survivalist" and then wizard because I like playing super intelligent masterminds and then artificer just stole the show out from under wizard because it's pretty much a utility caster with additional utility and automatically flavors everything as magiteck (one of my favorite setting ideas)
Why you should play a Blood Hunter would be sick.
You could show your channel's growth by making remakes of this in a couple months or so.
My best Wizard is an Orc Wizard whose liver converts alcohol into magic. So basically, he was a mediocre rent-a-warrior who got drunk one night and trashed the entire town he was in within minutes. He doesn't like alcohol at all which makes it all funnier. He could atomize Karsus in his prime with enough Ethanol...and probably die afterwards, but still.
Just gonna put out there a wizard character idea i had that i haven't had the chance to play yet: a wizard who is convinced magic doesn't exist and it's all silence and tries to explain his spells with chemistry and physics etc. Somone who will explain the wish spell by pure statistics.
Listen, I'm playing a Succubus Wizward who cumbends the magic around her combined with her innate magical power as a devil from hell
So are you gong to do Why you should play an artificer?
So…what you’re saying is that being a wizard…is…it’s…It’s about drive, it’s about power
I think the real reason anyone should play a wizard is cause the fact you have to study and understand the weave how to manipulate it and control it magic is more intimate with you it is your hard work and dedication showing as you grow stronger in both mind and body.
I don't usually play wizard cause while it is a very powerful class and has its uses I prefer sorcerers. But I see the intrigue in Wizard thinking back on Gandolf and other wizards. They are wise experienced and knows how dangerous abusing magic is.
While my favorite one Sorcerer is born with magic it is part of who they are they have a degree of understanding of the forces there messing with but little control over it. They understand the weave better cause they feel it can sense it and it fuels them. Sorcerers can be wise as well but a wizard will always know more about it while a sorcerer can really only explain the feeling it gives you.
Season 2: Why YOU Should Play a (Subclass)
I've considered it! I know the Dungeon Cast is currently doing that series so I'm hesitant to avoid it, but we shall see!
@@PlayYourRole personally it sounds like a cool idea
@@PlayYourRole I'd love to hear your narration at the beginning of the video about the Bladesinger and Warmage.
lol. I finally started DMing, and sure enough my first NPC is basically a Wizard. 😅
It's just so flexible!
Never forget that education, at least here in the states, is also ridiculously expensive. It's a luxury. A fantasy setting with a similar view towards education would likely have wizards represent privilege, or perhaps that's why the wizard pc can't get into the school proper and has to become an adventurer.
Money would only be one obstacle, but once they had enough to get in they might realize that their experience outside was dangerous, but nobody inside the school actually takes their struggle seriously, despite the fact that the adventurer wizard is now vastly over qualified for the beginner courses they're required to take, because of how hard they had to fight to get in. Too bad, that's still 15k gp a semester.
My new character, start a new campaign, is a female human wizard. She actually more interested in history and archeology than magic, she have magic but is more like a tool for discover artifacts for her. Anyway I play her like a normal person with a normal family and a job, who start the adventure just for dig out more story. The funny part is, she is actually not ready for it! She is dressed like a librarian, with uncomfortable shoes and dresses, she have this romantic vision of adventure and didn't yet realize how travel during an adventure really is. I wanna her evolve and realize how the real word is.
Personally I have been focusing heavily on wizards and artificers in my 5e experiences, and my latest character is an artificer/wizard who’s the worst spell caster in a whole wizard academy until he received some gadgets from his supervisor. Then he became a walking talking fireball - experimental gadgets.
I love playing the archetypical gandalf-merlin style wizard. But when I do, I flavor them just so the other players dont roll their eyes and sigh.
For example, my latest PC-wizard-incarnation has a fey connection and a known criminal in the family that adds some flavor. That being said, the PC does smoke a pipe and has a beard. 😂
Not going to lie, the backstory adds a ton of flavor and intrigue to the character!
Honestly, I have to wholeheartedly agree. My favorite character I've ever played is a young Half-Elven girl who was, as a part of her backstory, killed mostly just for being a runt. However, she was resurrected by an old woman who was a "retired" Necromancer. Shortly thereafter, the girl started studying Necromancy on her own, and with the old woman's help, so that one day she might be able to help people in the same way that she was helped. (It's worth noting that we've given Necromancy Wizards Revivify, Resurrection, and True Resurrection in our game, since they all have to do with the manipulation of life, and that's literally what Necromancer says on the tin.)
That's why you make a forgetful wizard that looks young but is older that everyone in the party
Last
Damn. I wanted last.
engineers for magic?
Yes! And Artificers are... Well, I mean, kinda the same tbh.
@@PlayYourRole maybe the interdisciplinaries between magic engineering and physics engineering?
This doesn't fully apply to the video but after my discovery of how a barbarian doesn't need strength to be an ok barbarian and that they could just go all in on dex and con and perform way better (especially if you're a small race who can't use heavy weapons anyways and are already stuck with d8 weapons) since barbarians ac is based on dex and con you might as well fully invest in them rather than focus on str a stat that even in the class it's meant for only 2 things involve it in the class rage damage which is a small bonus to damage and reckless attack which isn't worth it to use in the first place
So to move to why I'm posting this here with the knowledge that you could make a dex barbarian it suddenly opened up the path to make it viable to multiclass it with wizard and so I created a Wild Magic Barbarian War magic forest gnome 2 levels of wizard is all you really need because you're just going to be taking utility spells and probably absorb elements for in case you ever get suprise attacked with elemental damage or if you aren't raging, you can go up to 3 levels of wizard if you want some 2nd level slots my preferred spell for this choice (since most of your spells are going to be 1st level ritual spells) I recommend if you can to grab Vortex Warp so you have some maneuverability options to deploy before a fight, as to why I chose gnome it's because with the combination of 2nd level war wizard's Arcane Deflection feature we'll have a consistent ac and saving throw bonus at no cost towards combat because we won't plan on casting spells in combat anyways and all it costs is a reaction so in total we'll have great ac hp out of combat utility and advantage on all dex and str saves and advantage on int wis and cha saves against magical effects
Personally I think the idea of a wizard who channels their unbridled magical potential to boost their endurance is an interesting concept to explore
High constitution warcasters are very different...
I am deeply and unreasonably emotionally biased against wizards so please talk some sense into me
Just finished the vid. Thanks! It broadened my perspective
I tried my best, I am also somewhat biased against wizards sooooooo
@@PlayYourRole 👀 I feel like this would be a productive conversation
I feel like you are too stuck in the archetype to give wizards their flavor. You can make so many different types of wizards. The Arcane academy - World of Io is a wizard only campaign but you never feel like they all fall under the same category. A few examples of wizards I have or would like to play would be: An Illusionist that feels the need to make himself look better than he is, A laud extroverted Wizard that mostly uses thunder spells, A necromancer that can't throw things away and feels the need to recycle everything (as well as corpse). The wizards main strength is their flexibility but being flexible doesn't mean they have to do everything. It just means you can do what you want and be useful in other areas.
There where be a wizard no matter what, that wizard will yell "you shall not pass!", you should want to be the one to yell it.
wizards are magic Batman, with prep time they can do ANYTHING.
My brother hates beans
Im sorry, bard has degree, they are not going through college just to be called entertainer. Lmao
The reason I don't want to play that many wizards is because of this:
1. You are so damn fragile lmao.
2. Wizards are the poster child of the martials vs spellcasters problem. Literally "Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards". So I kind of have a bit of a chip on my shoulder, especially since the other spellcasting classes I play get shunted to the side while WotC just always gives all the new spells to the wizard and just doesn't give them to the other classes.
2.5. It's kind of a, "you're so weak you've had to resort to magic to replace everything you do like a spoiled child. You can't live without guidance, can't do anything unless you cast enhance ability first, can't bare the thought or trouble of holding a torch, you can't live without all your shortcuts." sort of thing. A boy and his sword is just so quintessential in this game/genre, it's the eternal battle. You look at the world and see all these people that can cast fireball, these flying dragons who can breath lightning, the lich kings who turn all their citizens to walking thralls. Then right there you see just some dude who picks up a sword because he likes his chances. That commands respect in a way none of the other things can. That's noble as fuck right there.
3. Spellcasters are kinda stuffy, arrogant pricks. Like "Ooooooo, look! I can do everything you can do but better! Hahahaha!" I means that's just what happens when you're someone with power over the cosmos.
I still have a wizard character I wanna play tho, because the class is still fun! I wanna be a necromancer with my own little army so bad ;u;
Sorry but it only moved a foot? How big is this wizard, a gnome?? I'd get my ass stuck in that opening lol.
I don't play as wizard because you have to have a cart full of items, just to use magic.
Flavor of character is based on how creative the person playing is. It has very little to almost nothing to do with class or subclass played.
The wizard is just as versatile as any other class for flavor. Be creative, it's DND...
I disagree, any full caster, even wizard, is hundreds of times more flavorful then then the full martials if your doing it right . Yeah martials can have different guards and different fighting styles, but magic is essentially a unbound , ultimate freedom of exspression
All you have to do to make a full martial character interesting is give them weapons that suit the character and their fighting style and make their attacks more vivid rather than just "I attack with my greataxe for 7 damage" and actually describe what youre doing. I had a Triton Ranger about a year ago and by far the most boring aspect of him was his spellcasting (at least compared to his martial ability and how he would fight with tridents and icepicks) and even when the spellcasting was interesting it was because I integrated his weapons with the casting of the spell. As long as you know how to describe martial combat well it is incredibly flavorful and interesting its just that in the books spells have more description dedicated to them and so its easier to modify because you have a foundation where as with weapons you need to come up with everything yourself.
@@zacharycasey150 I mean, martials aren’t necessarily boring but magic is far more expressive. Stuff like spell choice and how the spell forms gives so many option to fit your character. Sure you can express your character by if they take the fools guard or wrath guard, or if they don’t even take a defensive stance at all, but it’s not as exspressive as the vast amount of choices you get with spell casting
@@zacharycasey150 on top of that, full casters can flavor there stances as well, my bard likes to take on fools guard, but her daughter favors wrath guard. Her angelic patron takes plow guard
bro im not playing any character that is not a wizard you dont even need to convince me
magic > literally anything else
Ah man, I guess I should have made another video
@@PlayYourRole nah its better to have more mages around
Okay now I gotta go figure out what motivation to give my 13 y/o wizard girl
Until fighters get a limited number of sword swings per day, it makes no sense playing a wizard