No more 6+ level Wizard spell slots

[Knaight]

So, a few things here.

1) The slots are pretty necessary for basic scaling - it's the level 6+ spells which start to bring particularly outsized effects, and even then only some of them. If you drop the spells and keep the slots this should work fine; casters have more than enough of an edge at those levels to stay on par with martials and monsters after the change.

2) The idea being bandied about here that people who don't use content do so because they "can't handle" it is and remains ridiculous. It's basically a way to soft peddle the idea that higher power games are inherently better, but harder to run, and that people naturally gravitate to the maximum power they can run. I'll grant that it's a creative form of spinning a preference to a claim of superiority, but it's no truer than the rest of them.

3) The low magic ship has sailed long before reaching level 6 spells. Even a first level caster can cast an enormous number of cantrips a day, along with being able to throw down a few bigger spells daily. These spells aren't long rituals even, but the actions of mere seconds, and the only cost to using them is not having them later (for at most a day). That's the sort of magic system one builds for a high magic setting - and this comes across in so many other ways. Much has been made of 5e's reduction in magic items, but individual magic items still aren't particularly notable. Every PC is likely to have several even at low levels if you use the treasure tables, which isn't particularly conducive to a setting where, for instance, one general of a decently large nation might be notable because they're the only person in that whole military with a magic sword (which is more typical of a low magic setting). It's fundamentally counter to the design of D&D.

[GreyBlack]

Soooo.... not 5e, but I've always toyed with the idea of running a Pathfinder game that banned all full spellcasters. That said, Pathfinder also has a huge swath of classes to pick from that can pick up the slack of the Wizard.

To make your nerf work, you would essentially have to invent new classes to replace the old ones; instead of the Wizard, call it... I dunno, the Warmage, the Cleric becomes the Inquisitor, etc. To make up for the wizards lack of spells past 5, you'd have to make them more survivable; maybe light armor proficiency?

My point here is that this thought experiment is FAR more involved than just "nerf level 9 spellcasting." It's literally, "Invent 5 new classes that can cover the same basic thematic areas that the old 5 can."

[Tanarii]

Every PC is likely to have several even at low levels if you use the treasure tables,

Depends what you mean by "low" and "several".

A party is lucky to get more than one set of rolls that results in permanent magic Items in T1. And those they do get are somewhat likely to be minor wonderous items from table C. With 7 rolls and a 15% chance to roll on table F/G, that means a 9% chance of two or more sets of rolls against those tables. There's only a 52% chance (including that 9%) they'll even get at least one set of rolls. (Set of rolls meaning most likely 1d4 on Table F. or a small chance of one against table G.)

[Callak_Remier]

You could also just not play Tier 3.

It's strange to me that people want to play tier 3 and 4 without actually playing tier 3 and 4.

For most people dnd is lvls 1-8.

Personally i want to Earn tier 3 on a Wizard

[Anonymouswizard]

I thought of that. I want magic to be harder to gain access to. Creating a low (party) magic world.

There are essentially three ways to do it while keeping the level 20 martial stuff (at which point you can punch Asmodeus in the face, so 'low magic' is questionable).

The first, and by far the easiest, way is to play a system calibrated to be this. For example The Dark Eye mentions that while it has a lot of things that we would consider magical, the inhabitatants of Dere consider stuff like fairies to be 100% natural. But to cast spells you need to be born with the right stuff (all elves are, a lot of half-elves are, and it's in the 'fraction of a percent' range for the other races) and training (and not everybody with the talent is trained), and even then most of the spells don't get past about 2nd level D&D spells without a lot of AP invested. Most mages don't have the Astral Energy to throw a fireball, and even the mightiest only get one a day, and even an experienced adventuring mage is likely walking around with 5-20 spells instead of hundreds. Priests used to have much bigger effects in echange for using them at rates of once a month, although 5e made them more like magicians. Note that this is just one example, a lot of low magic systems exist.

The second method is to remove all full casters and replace with half-casters. This isn't terrible, a lot of literature has wandering (or evil) magicians able to fight with the sword, and is probably the most balanced way to do it in 5e. This means that everybody will be getting Extra Attack at 5th level except for the Rogue and maybe a dedicated Scholar class.

The third method is to use a roll in order stat generation method and set stat minimums on casters, but this is something that'll cause a lot of resentment if Jim wants to play a wizard and doesn't roll the required 15 INT, 12 WIS, 12 CON.

[dmteeter]

To add a little more inside to my madness. The Paladin and Ranger get by with their limited spellcasting capability due to their martial capability. So I thought to myself, is there way to do the same thing for a wizard. Replacing the martial capability with something else.

They already did replace martial skills with something else......... HIGH LEVEL SPELLS!!!!!!

I just don't understand what the point of smacking around the poor caster classes with a nerf bat? That's not a low magic campaign that's just a middle finger to the caster in the party.

[Wildarm]

I run a campaign where the weave is weaker(for all types of magic) and players have a chance to try and fix that(or not). Instead of stunting slot progression I created a magic system that made it more difficult to cast higher level spells. If you make the DC to cast the spell a doubling or exponential effect you can effectively limit high level magic. Players can still upcast low level spells using higher level slots without increasing the DC. Cantrips didn't need a check.

In my world, failing the spell check had a variety of consequences. Advantage on Save, mistargetting, fizzling, wild magic, etc. I provided various mechanisms to players to re-enforce their spells if they failed the check. Paying HP(yourself or others), taking longer to cast, pre-scribing expensive runes.

NPCs and monsters with spell like abilities had the same penalties which made for a interesting world where brute force was often favored over high level magic and many iconic monsters changed their influence and role in the world.

It worked fairly well. An extra roll per spell cast didn't slow down things very much. At low levels it was a minor inconvenience to casters and high levels the players were very incentivized to try and "fix" the world. Also made for some tense moments when a critical spell roll was being made.

If you like the concept of magic being wild or difficult to tame it's a neat concept. Spellcasting usually takes place is specially protected areas and unsactioned public spellcasting is treated akin to someone drawing a gun in public and firing it into the air. There's always stories about so and so's cousin who was turned inside out by magic gone wrong.

[GreyBlack]

I run a campaign where the weave is weaker(for all types of magic) and players have a chance to try and fix that(or not). Instead of stunting slot progression I created a magic system that made it more difficult to cast higher level spells. If you make the DC to cast the spell a doubling or exponential effect you can effectively limit high level magic. Players can still upcast low level spells using higher level slots without increasing the DC. Cantrips didn't need a check.

In my world, failing the spell check had a variety of consequences. Advantage on Save, mistargetting, fizzling, wild magic, etc. I provided various mechanisms to players to re-enforce their spells if they failed the check. Paying HP(yourself or others), taking longer to cast, pre-scribing expensive runes.

NPCs and monsters with spell like abilities had the same penalties which made for a interesting world where brute force was often favored over high level magic and many iconic monsters changed their influence and role in the world.

It worked fairly well. An extra roll per spell cast didn't slow down things very much. At low levels it was a minor inconvenience to casters and high levels the players were very incentivized to try and "fix" the world. Also made for some tense moments when a critical spell roll was being made.

If you like the concept of magic being wild or difficult to tame it's a neat concept. Spellcasting usually takes place is specially protected areas and unsactioned public spellcasting is treated akin to someone drawing a gun in public and firing it into the air. There's always stories about so and so's cousin who was turned inside out by magic gone wrong.

My problem here is Grod's law: you cannot and should not fix bad mechanics just by making them more fiddly. It might not work as well for all tables.

Although.... if you did want to make this a thing, just bring back an old mechanic for spell memorization. It takes you 1 hour per spell level that you're memorizing. So while memorizing a level 1 spell would only take an hour, memorizing a level 9 spell would take longer than an entire work day, which makes it in turn more likely for players to be more sparing with their memorization of higher level spells. Sure, you could just Wish for the location of the evil guys lair, but do you have time for that?

[Willie the Duck]

To add a little more inside to my madness. The Paladin and Ranger get by with their limited spellcasting capability due to their martial capability. So I thought to myself, is there way to do the same thing for a wizard. Replacing the martial capability with something else.

Yes, if your goal is to remove level 6+ spells from the game, but retain the level 1-20 structure, my suggestion is to make (/reskin) some 1/2- or 1/3-caster types and call them cleric, bard, druid, and so forth. There's absolutely room for a druid archetype in the ranger class and a cleric archetype in the paladin class, and probably 1/2-level caster arcane tricksters and eldritch knight types and so on and so forth. What there really isn't is a nice simple, balanced, and easy way to make a (ex.) wizard who is all wizard and nothing else and somehow works at levels 11-20 (like in most situations, you can at best get 2 of 3). You need something else for said wizard, and doubling lower level slots is not it. Decided what you want, and we might even be able to help you design/test some stuff.

[R.Shackleford]

Yes, if your goal is to remove level 6+ spells from the game, but retain the level 1-20 structure, my suggestion is to make (/reskin) some 1/2- or 1/3-caster types and call them cleric, bard, druid, and so forth. There's absolutely room for a druid archetype in the ranger class and a cleric archetype in the paladin class, and probably 1/2-level caster arcane tricksters and eldritch knight types and so on and so forth. What there really isn't is a nice simple, balanced, and easy way to make a (ex.) wizard who is all wizard and nothing else and somehow works at levels 11-20 (like in most situations, you can at best get 2 of 3). You need something else for said wizard, and doubling lower level slots is not it. Decided what you want, and we might even be able to help you design/test some stuff.

Wait... Why would the wizard need to be simple? Or easy to be changed?

I think the biggest design flaw, for the worse designed class, is that they are so bland due to their simplicity.

Starting at level 11, start allowing the wizard to build spells. I would prefer this at level 1, but baby steps I guess.

Start letting them use arcane recovery more often too.

They can't change spells on the fly, but they can build their spells before hand.

[Wildarm]

Although.... if you did want to make this a thing, just bring back an old mechanic for spell memorization. It takes you 1 hour per spell level that you're memorizing. So while memorizing a level 1 spell would only take an hour, memorizing a level 9 spell would take longer than an entire work day, which makes it in turn more likely for players to be more sparing with their memorization of higher level spells. Sure, you could just Wish for the location of the evil guys lair, but do you have time for that?

One of the mechanisms to cast spells reliably in the campaign is indeed old school memorization(and minor GP cost to scribe the runes). Higher level spells get exponentially more time consuming/costly to scribe. One player(Tabaxi) is painting magic runes all over his body which was a pretty cool interpretation of it.

[Willie the Duck]

Wait... Why would the wizard need to be simple? Or easy to be changed?

It isn't, that's the point. My impression is that the OP wants a quick (quick to do, or quick to describe) solution, and my point is the result will not be balanced.

[Anonymouswizard]

My problem here is Grod's law: you cannot and should not fix bad mechanics just by making them more fiddly. It might not work as well for all tables.

Although.... if you did want to make this a thing, just bring back an old mechanic for spell memorization. It takes you 1 hour per spell level that you're memorizing. So while memorizing a level 1 spell would only take an hour, memorizing a level 9 spell would take longer than an entire work day, which makes it in turn more likely for players to be more sparing with their memorization of higher level spells. Sure, you could just Wish for the location of the evil guys lair, but do you have time for that?

Actually Grod's Law is 'you should not balance broken mechanics by making them awkward to use, because once the awkwardness is circumvented it will still be broken'. This is why it applies to sacred geometry, where either it's awkward to use and annoys the table, or you come to the game having already done the maths and just reference your notes on a single sheet of paper.

It doesn't come in here because you're just adding a couple more rolls and some side effects. In fact this system is better (for D&D) than many homebrew versions I've seen, especially if the side effects are balanced between good and bad, because the spell will still go off. But I don't want to get into a magic systems debate, while I significantly prefer skill-based casting to purely resource-based casting it's not something that D&D5e is set up for.

I think the biggest design flaw, for the worse designed class, is that they are so bland due to their simplicity.

Starting at level 11, start allowing the wizard to build spells. I would prefer this at level 1, but baby steps I guess.

Start letting them use arcane recovery more often too.

They can't change spells on the fly, but they can build their spells before hand.

That would be incredibly hard to balance and draw spotlight time to the wizard preparing his custom spells every [hour/day/week/month/whatever].

Really the big problem with the wizard is that the two abilities I'd say are really thematic to an academic caster who's supposed to understand their spells have been taken by other classes. You can be certain that if the Sorcerer didn't have it the Wizard would be rocking metamagic and altering their spells on the fly, and at least one subclass would have had Magical Secrets if it wasn't a Bard thing. Which means that the wizard's unique thing becomes the boringly passive largest spell list, with no special ability to call their own (even Arcane Recovery isn't unique, thanks Druid). The other problem is that they have no real iconic spells, while they have unique spells their old signiature spells are shared with the Sorcerer. The wizard doesn't get any unique abilities outside of it's subclasses until level 18, far after most games have ended, and even that's just infinite use of a couple of low level spells (well, shield and a 2nd level spell in practice). Even their capstone is effectively having two eternally prepared spells and two bonus third level slots.

[GreyBlack]

Actually Grod's Law is 'you should not balance broken mechanics by making them awkward to use, because once the awkwardness is circumvented it will still be broken'. This is why it applies to sacred geometry, where either it's awkward to use and annoys the table, or you come to the game having already done the maths and just reference your notes on a single sheet of paper.

It doesn't come in here because you're just adding a couple more rolls and some side effects. In fact this system is better (for D&D) than many homebrew versions I've seen, especially if the side effects are balanced between good and bad, because the spell will still go off. But I don't want to get into a magic systems debate, while I significantly prefer skill-based casting to purely resource-based casting it's not something that D&D5e is set up for.

I mean, it does and doesn't, but you are correct that it isn't a bad homebrew system. My concern was more with some of the fiddlier bits of the system, like scribing runes to circumvent the system and such.

That said, you're right that it isn't a bad system, simply that it is a bit noodlier than perhaps preferred.

[Garfunion]

I think I may not expressed the intent of the change that I’m trying to make. I want to slow down spell power progression not restrict high-level spell casting. I fully intend to provide the casters the ability to cast high level spells, using a feature like mystical arcanum. I also plan on giving this new wizard the twin metamagic at 5th but, only usable on cantrips. To help provide some additional combat capability.

So putting a level cap or multiclass restriction on full casters will not work for my idea. I also plan on transforming some classes into archetypes. Like the bard could become a Skald for the fighter and Minstrel for the rogue.

I don’t plan on forcing anyone to play what I create. This is just another way for me to dive deeper into 5e mechanics.

[Tanarii]

So putting a level cap or multiclass restriction on full casters will not work for my idea.

It will if you use my idea of a scaling cap, requiring multiclassing to take levels in full caster classes.

[jiriku]

I think I may not expressed the intent of the change that I’m trying to make. I want to slow down spell power progression not restrict high-level spell casting. I fully intend to provide the casters the ability to cast high level spells, using a feature like mystical arcanum. I also plan on giving this new wizard the twin metamagic at 5th but, only usable on cantrips. To help provide some additional combat capability.

So putting a level cap or multiclass restriction on full casters will not work for my idea. I also plan on transforming some classes into archetypes. Like the bard could become a Skald for the fighter and Minstrel for the rogue.

I don’t plan on forcing anyone to play what I create. This is just another way for me to dive deeper into 5e mechanics.

I did something similar to my game in 3rd edition. The easiest way to produce balanced and usable classes is to write new classes or subclasses from the ground up. Hacking off the top half of the wizard progression (for example) an replacing it with something else will produce an ugly chimera.

If you want an easy hack, a wildshape ranger subclass could replace the druid and you could make several Ikea wizards using eldritch knight and arcane trickster variations simply by adjusting which schools of magic they get access to. Or scum through the homebrew section looking for similar ideas that someone else has already worked out, then tweak them to your preferences. You mentioned using warlock features like mystic arcanum -- consider some new warlock patrons with themes based on arcane schools of magic or the elements, and a few custom invocations for each.

If you want a harder hack, walk away from the wizard like a bad habit. Just set it on fire and walk away. Think about a fantasy spellcaster concept that does what you want, and plot out some mechanics that realize that concept within D&D rules. Post it to the Homebrew forum, get some feedback, and refine your idea until you're pleased with it. You're probably looking at 20-40 hours of work per class to do it this way, but homebrew is a labor of love, right? We spend hundreds of hours on this stuff and never count the cost.

[Spiritchaser]

What would you give the wizard if it had the same spell progression as the paladin? The wizard would still get cantrips.

I was thinking of doubling the amount of spell slots that they would have access to.

I wouldn’t double spell slots but I actually think this could be viable.

In compensation, allow single class full casters to use Spell Points and let them spend the points as they need, including making higher level slots. Let sorcerers combine Sp and Er the other Sp into one pool (major buff)

You’d still see more multiclass casters but I don’t think there’s any reason at all why it couldn’t be fun.

Would I do it? Proooobably not, but if you do, let us know how it goes!

[R.Shackleford]

That would be incredibly hard to balance and draw spotlight time to the wizard preparing his custom spells every [hour/day/week/month/whatever].

First, you would be able to pull your spells from the internet. People would be building spells left and right. You could also give example spells in the book. Make your own or

You could balance this the same way spells are balanced now. Shrug and do whatever you think works... Ok, but seriously, set up your rules and make it a point buy system. One of the laziest things about 5e is that the defenses of enemies are rather... Well... Lazy. Put some effort into the game where fire, cold, and poison are all good damage type options.

Different saving throws can be worth different points.

This is pretty much the only way for the wizard to match their fluff and to not just be some generic caster. Even with actual wizard class features (which the class needs), the wizard will remain top of my "worst designed classes" list.

[Honest Tiefling]

Personally, I've felt that some of the spells above 6th level are a little bit much in terms of flavor, but maybe that's just me.

I wouldn't give the spellcasters much more than some armor and the ability to use some weapons. If they want to play an Eldritch Knight or Ranger, they do exist. But in a low magic world having a spell orb or other shiny magical object seems a bit off. Let them use some better weapons and be a little less squish if there is less healing to go around.

Another idea is to allow wizards to have some utility spells for free, in that they both know them and can have them prepared. Your campaign probably won't be broken by feather fall, but it's still something nice to have on hand.

Sorcerers go boom. If you don't take away their spell slots, they can still use Sorcery points to make the boom happen. Of course, this suggestion and the above is assuming you're still letting them have the spell slots, just not the spells. Excluding a number of friendly targets from spells is sorta stealing from the War Wizard, but sorcerers tend to light the party on fire more often than wizards in my experience. It might make spells have a bit more oomph without wrecking anything.

For bards, boost bardic inspiration. It seems thematically appropriate, and can be fluffed as something non-magical in a pinch. Having it last longer or more uses is going to be hard to balance, but it's an idea.

If the division of arcane/divine magic is weaker in the world, you could also have more classes than just bards be able to peruse the spell lists of other casters. Maybe not Eldritch Blast, but other spells can be helpful in a pinch or thematically appropriate.

[Joe dirt]

I would just say full casters have a max of say level 10. after that they must multiclass and they can choose anything else to multiclass into.

Talk to players before though