Quote Originally Posted by Lvl45DM! View Post
Spoiler: The Qualitherate Wizard
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I really like the flavour of this but I think the later abilities move further from the flavour. It goes from the Arrival-esque idea of 'languages can shape perception' to "You speak Mind Flayer so youre more abberant."
What if for the 10th level, they get to keep one spell slot they can cast open, and spontaneously cast something during the day, because when they will have prepared their spells tomorrow, they knew what they needed today? Just to stay on-brand. And having the highest level ability of a language based class remove the need to actually...speak seems off too. Maybe just the Telekinesis Somatic thing.


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Thanks so much for your feedback!

While “The Arrival” is a favorite and partial inspiration for this subclass, I was actually looking at the films “Altered States” and “Life Force” as well. The concept of learning something you aren’t supposed to having a metamorphic effect goes back a long way, but you should also see all those abilities as an outgrowth of burgeoning psionic ability which culminates in the capstone.

The Thoughtcasting ability is counterintuitive if you aren’t nerdishly familiar with the default lore for Illithids. In short, there is no spoken version of Qualith so eliminating the need to speak is a satisfactory outgrowth. Also, their psionics require no components, so modeling that (at a significant cost) seemed a fair way to bring the ability up to par.