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ciarannihill
2018-08-09, 09:48 AM
Wizard Archetype: School of Medicine:
Those who wish to aid those who are sick and suffering come in many forms, but those who are unable to leverage a connection with the divine or nature study their magical craft and hone it, becoming adept healers in spite of their lack of spiritual connection. Through study of medicine, magic, and alchemy wizards of the school of medicine are able to reconstruct common healing magics and are capable of more potent use of common healing items.


Physiology Expert: Starting at 2nd level, you gain proficiency in Medicine. In addition you are able use a Healer’s Kit to as a bonus action.

Medical Knowledge: Also starting at level 2, you gain access to additional spells related to medicine and illness as you gain wizard levels, these spells are considered Wizard spells for you:

Expanded Spell List
Spell Level -- Spells
1st -- Cure Wounds, Purify Food and Drink
2nd -- Lesser Restoration, Gentle Repose
3rd -- Revivify
4th -- Death Ward
5th -- Greater Restoration

Arcane Triage: Starting at 2nd level when you select this school, you can perform emergency medical treatment on a creature. Whenever you restore hit points to a stable creature you can touch -- including the use of items such as a healer’s kit or healing potion -- that creature can spend a number of hit dice up to your Intelligence modifier. A creature who has received this benefit cannot receive it again until the end of a long rest.

Potent Treatment: Starting at 6th level, whenever you restore hit points to a creature -- including the use of items such as a healer’s kit or healing potion -- the creature regains additional hit points equal to your Intelligence modifier.
In addition, whenever you make a Medicine skill check, you may use your Intelligence modifier instead of your Wisdom modifier.

Bedside Manner: Starting at 10th level, your medical knowledge allows you and your allies more restorative rest. If you or any creatures within your vision regain hit points by spending hit dice they can replace any die result with your Intelligence modifier.
In addition, other creatures who expend hit dice within sight of you can reduce their exhaustion level by 1.

Preventative Medicine: Starting at 14th level, your healing becomes more efficient, causing any hit points you restore above a creature’s maximum to be gained as temporary hit points by the creature for up to 1 hour. While the creature has these temporary hit points they are immune to being poisoned and afflicted with diseases.



So this is something I've felt was missing for a long time from the game, an Intelligence based healer aka a doctor. Almost all healing in 5E comes form divine casters (Druids, Clerics, Paladins), with the exception of Bards, who heal through Arcane magic -- the same type of magic Wizards do! So why can't Wizards get in on that with an archetype? Thematically and lore-wise it seems to fit, so I went and made it. I went with the thematic image of a battlefield medic, stitching up wounds with arcane threads and magical items. Also I wanted to make use of an underutilized (IMO) mechanic of 5e, Hit Dice.

Not sure if how well balanced it is, the abilities are generally potent, but I intentionally prevented it from getting magic to bring back the dead any better than Revivify (which I justify via magical CPR, effectively) and tried to tie it's healing to touch distance, so regardless of the healing potency you end up in a potentially dangerous place.

Might cause issues with multiclassing into another healer to grant that extra range with things like Healing Word or Healing Spirit, though...


Thoughts, opinions and suggestions very welcome!


Change-Log:

8/9/18: Removed higher level spells (6th-9th level) from extra spell list due to feedback.
Altered the wording of [Potent Treatment] based on advice from @KorvinStarmast
Re-examined expanded spell list -- removed automatically being added to the spellbook and added a few non-combat thematic options at lower levels.
8/10/18: Changed [Physiology Expert] to grant proficiency instead of Advantage for Medicine
Altered [Potent Treatment] to grant a bonus to healing based on raw Int mod instead of Medicine skill mod, but to also allow for Int mod bonus to Medicine
Renamed [Extreme Wellness] to [Preventative Medicine]
8/13/18: Changed wording/function on [Potent Treatment] based on advice from @Crisis21

Crisis21
2018-08-09, 10:01 AM
In all honesty, I think this archetype undermines the balance of the Wizard class. A balance which has very specifically kept healing spells off the Wizard spell list since forever.

Edit: If you're determined to make a healing Wizard though, here's my suggestion: Pick one spell each from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th level spells for this archetype to have access to (once they get appropriate spell slots of course). Giving them access to anything more powerful that isn't already on the Wizard spell list isn't something you should be doing.

JeenLeen
2018-08-09, 10:03 AM
Extreme Wellness *might* be abusable by casting things like Heal on someone with max health, right before a fight. Boost their HP by +70 above its normal.

Under Potent Treatment, does "Medicine bonus" mean your modifier to the d20 for making Medicine checks. I think it does. But something about the wording seemed unclear. I could just not be used to mechanical nomenclature of 5e yet.

---

Fluff-wise, I think it's pretty cool. I wouldn't worry too much about the Touch-range restriction. It is fine and probably good that you have it, to not take the cleric's niche too strongly, but the default 'setting fluff' (insofar as a D&D game has it) as outlined in the PHB has all magic be manipulation of the Weave (by whatever name it goes by on a given plane/setting/region). So it doesn't seem like there's a strong divide between arcane and divine magic, and it's reasonable an arcane method for deriving these spells could be developed.

If you're really worried about multiclassing issues, think about how this class would feel with a level 1 tip into Life Cleric or other healing classes. Or a healer class taking a 2-level dip into this.
Any further dipping, and it might be okay in that the multiclassing itself has issues for casters (unlocking higher level spells).

ciarannihill
2018-08-09, 10:33 AM
In all honesty, I think this archetype undermines the balance of the Wizard class. A balance which has very specifically kept healing spells off the Wizard spell list since forever.

Edit: If you're determined to make a healing Wizard though, here's my suggestion: Pick one spell each from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th level spells for this archetype to have access to (once they get appropriate spell slots of course). Giving them access to anything more powerful that isn't already on the Wizard spell list isn't something you should be doing.

I understand the balance concern, but short of making a new class (which I don't think had the design space for), I didn't know how else to create a character with this thematic and narrative angle. I did keep try it to one spell per spell level (doubled up on 5th level because I couldn't find an appropriate 8th level), and was hesitant about the higher level spells, but I went for giving it to them because I didn't want the archetype to feel like it fell off in usefulness past the capstone, but you echoing my initial concerns makes me rethink it -- I'll drop the higher level spells for the moment. Thanks for the advice!


Extreme Wellness *might* be abusable by casting things like Heal on someone with max health, right before a fight. Boost their HP by +70 above its normal.

Under Potent Treatment, does "Medicine bonus" mean your modifier to the d20 for making Medicine checks. I think it does. But something about the wording seemed unclear. I could just not be used to mechanical nomenclature of 5e yet.

---

Fluff-wise, I think it's pretty cool. I wouldn't worry too much about the Touch-range restriction. It is fine and probably good that you have it, to not take the cleric's niche too strongly, but the default 'setting fluff' (insofar as a D&D game has it) as outlined in the PHB has all magic be manipulation of the Weave (by whatever name it goes by on a given plane/setting/region). So it doesn't seem like there's a strong divide between arcane and divine magic, and it's reasonable an arcane method for deriving these spells could be developed.

If you're really worried about multiclassing issues, think about how this class would feel with a level 1 tip into Life Cleric or other healing classes. Or a healer class taking a 2-level dip into this.
Any further dipping, and it might be okay in that the multiclassing itself has issues for casters (unlocking higher level spells).

Yeah, I'm going to be dropping the higher level spells for the time being, though, which should make that less of a concern.

Your instinct is correct, that was the intended reading, although I would gladly take recommendations for better rules wording regarding any ability, but most specifically that one.

I think the main concern is dipping for specific spells like Healing Spirit (which has plenty of problems anyway), which is quite potent with extra bonus per tick of healing...I could limit the healing benefits of Potent Treatment to Wizard spells, Arcane Triage and items to prevent this, however. It seems a bit wordy if my concern is unwarranted however, especially because it hurts other functionality of multiclassing that is more appropriately balanced.

Probably a problem with playtesting as the solution.

Thanks for the feedback!

ciarannihill
2018-08-09, 12:19 PM
*Updated original post:

•Removed higher level spells (6th-9th level) from extra spell list due to feedback.
•Altered the wording of "Potent Treatment" based on advice from @KorvinStarmast
•Re-examined expanded spell list -- removed automatically being added to the spellbook and added a few non-combat thematic options at lower levels.

Crisis21
2018-08-09, 08:16 PM
*Updated original post:

•Removed higher level spells (6th-9th level) from extra spell list due to feedback.
•Altered the wording of "Potent Treatment" based on advice from @KorvinStarmast
•Re-examined expanded spell list -- removed automatically being added to the spellbook and added a few non-combat thematic options at lower levels.

Just for thematic purposes, Potent Treatment should restore Intelligence modifier hit points, not Wisdom. Don't reference the Medicine skill either, just the straight ability score modifier. Yeah, it maxes out at +5 hp as opposed to +11, but no decent adventurer should be complaining about that.


Edit: Just re-looked as Physiology Expert, and in all honesty I think that instead of granting advantage for Medicine checks, it should grant straight-up proficiency. After all, you're basically playing a medical doctor, so you really should be proficient in the Medicine skill. Maybe give this a free bump to Expertise at 10th level?

ciarannihill
2018-08-10, 08:00 AM
Just for thematic purposes, Potent Treatment should restore Intelligence modifier hit points, not Wisdom. Don't reference the Medicine skill either, just the straight ability score modifier. Yeah, it maxes out at +5 hp as opposed to +11, but no decent adventurer should be complaining about that.


Edit: Just re-looked as Physiology Expert, and in all honesty I think that instead of granting advantage for Medicine checks, it should grant straight-up proficiency. After all, you're basically playing a medical doctor, so you really should be proficient in the Medicine skill. Maybe give this a free bump to Expertise at 10th level?

Before I make any changes based on this, which I'm considering -- it all seems sound on the surface -- let me propose another change that you made me think of:

Change [Physiology Expert] to grant Medicine proficiency, but also allow the use of Intelligence instead of Wisdom for Medicine checks (Medicine being Wisdom based always kind of confused me anyways -- Wisdom always seemed like instinct, logic and ability to understand people rolled into one more than a form of scholarship, but Medicine is a clear form of scholarship...But I digress). This would make the idea of a Wizard who studies to become a medicine expert feel more consistent with the mechanics of Medicine for that character.

Plus, I quite like [Potent Treatment] being linked to Medicine as a score, so the former change makes this feature feel more in line with the theme as well. Having said that, it's not a perfect change and involves that bit of housekeeping on the part of the player to remember that his Medicine is linked to Int instead of Wis.

Having said that this is a bit of a spitball inspired by your proposed change, so it might not be perfect but I think it's an interesting potential avenue to explore in terms of the design.

Vogie
2018-08-10, 08:03 AM
Just for thematic purposes, Potent Treatment should restore Intelligence modifier hit points, not Wisdom. Don't reference the Medicine skill either, just the straight ability score modifier. Yeah, it maxes out at +5 hp as opposed to +11, but no decent adventurer should be complaining about that.

Edit: Just re-looked as Physiology Expert, and in all honesty I think that instead of granting advantage for Medicine checks, it should grant straight-up proficiency. After all, you're basically playing a medical doctor, so you really should be proficient in the Medicine skill. Maybe give this a free bump to Expertise at 10th level?

You can either use a class feature to make Medicine an Intelligence check, or use a feature that increases your medicine check by your intelligence modifier.

Maybe the 14th level feature could be called Preventative Medicine, or nod to that concept in some way?

ciarannihill
2018-08-10, 08:45 AM
You can either use a class feature to make Medicine an Intelligence check, or use a feature that increases your medicine check by your intelligence modifier.

Maybe the 14th level feature could be called Preventative Medicine, or nod to that concept in some way?

This seems more elegant and less confusing as solution than replacing Wis with Int for Medicine.

I love the capstone rename a lot, seems far more in line with the effect and it sounds much more interesting and, dare I say, professional than what I had.

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm still unsure of Potent Treatment using just Int, but it does seem less clunky that way -- if less interesting to me personally -- so I'm deeply considering it.

EDIT: I went ahead and made the change, it's in theory less powerful, but I added the Int bonus to MEdicine as an additional benefit to that ability to even it out a bit.

*Updated original post:
8/10/18:

•Changed [Physiology Expert] to grant proficiency instead of Advantage for Medicine
•Altered [Potent Treatment] to grant a bonus to healing based on raw Int mod instead of Medicine skill mod, but to also allow for Int mod bonus to Medicine
•Renamed [Extreme Wellness] to [Preventative Medicine]

Crisis21
2018-08-10, 01:20 PM
Suggested alteration:

In addition, whenever you make a Medicine (Wisdom) skill check, you may use gain a bonus to the roll equal to your Intelligence modifier instead of your Wisdom modifier.


Reason: This way the archetype doesn't need the Wizard to invest heavily into Wisdom, but it also doesn't grant a boost to Medicine checks if they have. The way it was worded before, they could add both Wisdom and Intelligence modifiers which would be potentially overpowered, especially if they gained Expertise on top of that.

ciarannihill
2018-08-11, 09:00 AM
Suggested alteration:

In addition, whenever you make a Medicine (Wisdom) skill check, you may use gain a bonus to the roll equal to your Intelligence modifier instead of your Wisdom modifier.


Reason: This way the archetype doesn't need the Wizard to invest heavily into Wisdom, but it also doesn't grant a boost to Medicine checks if they have. The way it was worded before, they could add both Wisdom and Intelligence modifiers which would be potentially overpowered, especially if they gained Expertise on top of that.

It was worded that way intentionally to make it feel like more of a benefit rather than a tradeoff, but I can certainly understand the concern about it. I'll take your re-work under consideration!

Thanks for all the feedback! I truly appreciate the engagement with my silly little homebrew!

Crisis21
2018-08-11, 12:47 PM
It was worded that way intentionally to make it feel like more of a benefit rather than a tradeoff, but I can certainly understand the concern about it. I'll take your re-work under consideration!

Thanks for all the feedback! I truly appreciate the engagement with my silly little homebrew!

The tradeoff is still a benefit if your Intelligence is higher than your Wisdom, which will be most Wizards in the first place.

ciarannihill
2018-08-13, 08:17 AM
The tradeoff is still a benefit if your Intelligence is higher than your Wisdom, which will be most Wizards in the first place.

Oh, I understand that! I meant that as a player "replacing one thing with another" feels like far less of a benefit than "increasing one thing by another".

It's totally a play feel consideration, which makes it weirdly abstract and hard to justify, but I feel like the potential power-tradeoff is less impactful than the feeling that the feature has higher impact, even if in honesty the difference is minor. I'm still considering making the change you've suggested, but at the moment I'm leaning towards leaving it as is for the moment (pending playtesting).


Thanks for the feedback!

Ixidor92
2018-08-13, 09:03 AM
So first off, I want to say I love this concept. The idea of making a Scholarly Doctor archetype has been somewhat difficult in D&D. I was reading through, and the concern at the top (regarding giving healing spells to the wizard) I wondered if this might be a better way to have the wizard be a doctor both thematically and to ease that concern:

Arcane Medicine: Whenever you use a healing kit to restore hit points, add your intelligence modifier to any HP healed. In addition, as part of using a healing kit, you can choose to expend a spell slot. For every level of the spell slot, heal an additional 1d8 hit points.

If you're tied to giving the wizard healing spells, feel free to ignore this, it was just an idea that hit me.

ciarannihill
2018-08-13, 09:22 AM
So first off, I want to say I love this concept. The idea of making a Scholarly Doctor archetype has been somewhat difficult in D&D. I was reading through, and the concern at the top (regarding giving healing spells to the wizard) I wondered if this might be a better way to have the wizard be a doctor both thematically and to ease that concern:

Arcane Medicine: Whenever you use a healing kit to restore hit points, add your intelligence modifier to any HP healed. In addition, as part of using a healing kit, you can choose to expend a spell slot. For every level of the spell slot, heal an additional 1d8 hit points.

If you're tied to giving the wizard healing spells, feel free to ignore this, it was just an idea that hit me.

Thank you!

I added the spells mainly out of concern that having a Wizard archetype that didn't have spell associated features would make it feel like an afterthought tacked onto the class. Having said that, "healing smites" was something I had considered, but every iteration I did felt clunky -- I quite like the way you've suggested it and I'm considering the change. My only concern is that without the Healer feat a healer's kit doesn't inherently restore HP (part of why I added healing potions to the examples in other features) which would limit this potential feature severely for early game or featless play.

Having said that, it might be possible to use the other wording to describe it as well.

Thanks for the feedback!

Crisis21
2018-08-13, 12:27 PM
Oh, I understand that! I meant that as a player "replacing one thing with another" feels like far less of a benefit than "increasing one thing by another".

It's totally a play feel consideration, which makes it weirdly abstract and hard to justify, but I feel like the potential power-tradeoff is less impactful than the feeling that the feature has higher impact, even if in honesty the difference is minor. I'm still considering making the change you've suggested, but at the moment I'm leaning towards leaving it as is for the moment (pending playtesting).


Thanks for the feedback!

No, I get it, and from a player perspective the way you have it does sound better.

From a DM perspective on the other hand, it sounds like something I'd want to possibly disallow as being potentially too good.


Consider: Skill checks in 5e let you add your ability score modifier (Wisdom for Medicine) and your Proficiency bonus if you are proficient. At level 20 with an ability score of 20, that translates to +11 on the check, allowing an average/passive roll of 21 and a max roll of 30 (barring a nat 20). (Remember that 5e considers a DC 20 check to be 'hard', DC 25 to be 'very hard', and DC 30 to be 'nearly impossible'). If a character has Expertise in the skill, they get to add their proficiency bonus twice, giving up to +17 on the check (average/passive roll of 27, max roll of 36). By allowing them to add a second ability score modifier, you allow them to add up to another +5 for the possibility of a whopping +22 on the check for an average/passive roll of 32 and a max of 41.

So, yeah, anything that potentially allows a character's average/passive score to be over 30 is something I'd definitely think twice about allowing. Remember that in 5e, every +1 is a precious thing for players to get.

Also consider the possibility of a Medical Wizard playing with a negative Wisdom modifier. By the way you word it currently, even though they can add their Intelligence modifier they're still getting hit with the Wisdom penalty. The other way would allow them to ignore their Wisdom penalty.

Gotta consider all angles when making these things.

ciarannihill
2018-08-13, 12:37 PM
No, I get it, and from a player perspective the way you have it does sound better.

From a DM perspective on the other hand, it sounds like something I'd want to possibly disallow as being potentially too good.


Consider: Skill checks in 5e let you add your ability score modifier (Wisdom for Medicine) and your Proficiency bonus if you are proficient. At level 20 with an ability score of 20, that translates to +11 on the check, allowing an average/passive roll of 21 and a max roll of 30 (barring a nat 20). (Remember that 5e considers a DC 20 check to be 'hard', DC 25 to be 'very hard', and DC 30 to be 'nearly impossible'). If a character has Expertise in the skill, they get to add their proficiency bonus twice, giving up to +17 on the check (average/passive roll of 27, max roll of 36). By allowing them to add a second ability score modifier, you allow them to add up to another +5 for the possibility of a whopping +22 on the check for an average/passive roll of 32 and a max of 41.

So, yeah, anything that potentially allows a character's average/passive score to be over 30 is something I'd definitely think twice about allowing. Remember that in 5e, every +1 is a precious thing for players to get.

Also consider the possibility of a Medical Wizard playing with a negative Wisdom modifier. By the way you word it currently, even though they can add their Intelligence modifier they're still getting hit with the Wisdom penalty. The other way would allow them to ignore their Wisdom penalty.

Gotta consider all angles when making these things.

You know what? This post convinced me, thanks for the thorough explanation! I'll make the change.

Hadn't considered negative modifiers and hadn't done the math on how absurd it could get numerically -- Medicine doesn't come up a ton, but even so having such a massive bonus would result in either never being able to use it, because it would never be in question whether you could succeed or just auto-success. Neither is all that engaging for a feature you've invested in.


EDIT:
*Updated original post:
8/13/18:
•Changed wording/function on [Potent Treatment] based on advice from @Crisis21

Ixidor92
2018-08-13, 06:34 PM
Thank you!

I added the spells mainly out of concern that having a Wizard archetype that didn't have spell associated features would make it feel like an afterthought tacked onto the class. Having said that, "healing smites" was something I had considered, but every iteration I did felt clunky -- I quite like the way you've suggested it and I'm considering the change. My only concern is that without the Healer feat a healer's kit doesn't inherently restore HP (part of why I added healing potions to the examples in other features) which would limit this potential feature severely for early game or featless play.

Having said that, it might be possible to use the other wording to describe it as well.

Thanks for the feedback!

You could easily give the class an ability that lets them heal at a base level with the skill. Maybe separate them into the following:

Field medicine: As an action, you may spend one use of a healing kit to heal someone within 5 feet. They heal an amount of damage equal to 1d6+ your intelligence modifier.

Arcane medicine: When you apply medicine to an ally (such as via a healing kit or a potion) you may charge it with magical energy. As part of applying the medicine, you expend a spell slot. For every level of the spell slot, an additional 1d8 hit points are restored.

Calen
2018-08-13, 07:50 PM
Overall seems fairly solid.

One comment I would make is that Bedside Manner should have some wording to reduce the cheese potential.


Bedside Manner: Starting at 10th level, your medical knowledge allows you and your allies more restorative rest. By spending time during a short rest tending to a creatures injuries you can enable them to heal more fully. You must be able to touch and talk with the creatures you are tending. You or any creatures you tend to can replace any die result with your Intelligence modifier.
In addition, other creatures who expend hit dice within sight of you you tend to can reduce their exhaustion level by 1.

Something like this would help. Possibly adding a cap to the exhaustion you can reduce per day might be a good idea as well.