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I've seen a lot of discussion about the Rogue and the Cleric, but not much on the wizard so I thought I'd bring it up. I'm a little nervous about the Traditions as they are currently presented, though they seem more balanced than I first thought.

With the Academic Tradition all four of your prepared Lv 0 spells are at-will and you gain an additional spell slot of your highest level. I'm a little disappointed it receives no ability to use a "signature spell" (which I shall come back to in a moment), but I see they receive 1 more at-will than the other traditions.

The Battlemage tradition can use burning hands, shocking grasp, and mage armor at-will, Thunderwave is their "signature spell" so it is an encounter power and they gain the Spell Tactician ability, which is interesting. It allows for a wizard to choose targets equal to the spells level + 1, deal no damage to those targets but the targets are automatically effected by any of the spells other effects, including additional damage... which is a little awkward but I see what they mean.

The Illusionist receives mage hand, minor illusion, and shocking grasp at-will and color spray as a "signature spell". They also have the arcane ceception ability meaning they use both of minor illusions effects instead of one and the DC of all their illusions receive a +2.

Here are a few of my problems.

1) Signature Spells: First of all, I'm not sure about being told "this is your signature spell, the same signature spell as every other ###### wizard" I feel having a small list of signature spells might be a better option. I know the DM could just rule in a different signature spell if they felt it fit, but no one likes that sort of thing. Also your signature spell does not change from lv 1 to lv 10 which seems odd to me. Yeah a recruit might only learn Thunderwave as teir signature, but a seasoned battlemage shoul be able to upgrade to a more powerful spell, right? I'm not sure if that will cause balance issues, but it just makes sense to me

2) Spell selection: right now a 1st level character can only prepare 3 lv 0 spells and 1 lv 1 spell. This means that choosing 2 of our 3 traditions is also the same as choosing your entire spell list. After all, why would you pick something other than your at-will and encounter power? So really, you get no meanignful options until level 2, where you will pick 1 lv 0 spell and 1 lv 1 spell as dailies. This doesn't sit right with me, I feel a player should have more options. I get that the Academic is the versatile one, but the other wizard traditions should still offer enough wiggle room that you won't see the same exact set-up for every single lv 1 Battlemage. This leads me to my next point

3) Shocking Grasp: Shocking grasp is a good spell, very useful, but do both of our traditions with actual liss use it instead of Ray of Frost. Battlemages are just as squishy as their academic partners so they want to avoid melee if at all possible, but that means their only other at-will attack spell is burning hands which a) was nerfed hard and b) hits a cone area which makes it less than ideal if your allies are between you and your targets. This is beyond simple tactics. A single target ranged spell is preferable for a wizard so they can avoid melee and not risk hurting their allies. Why are academics the only wizard tradition that seem to have figured that out?

Adding to issue 2 is this new spell slot progression. I feel wizards are recieiving far too few slots since they have to prepare their spells ahead of time. Honestly, I feel a wizard does not need to expend all his spells by the end of the day. His utility comes in being able to use spells when they are needed, so limiting him this far means he has almost no choice. You will pick what is guarenteed to be useful, because you only get 2 spells of each level. That means either 2 attack spells or an attack spell and something like shield or invisibility. I think they should return to 3 or 4 spell slots so that the wizard actually has some room for unique tactics.

Side note: I mentioned this a month or so ago, but I do not beleive Detect magic should be a spell, it should be a class feature. I cannot imagine a wizard, master of the arcane forces of the universe, going around blind to these forces simply because he doesn't know a spell. It's be like a Jedi who can't sense the Force but can still do Force lightning and throws. It just doesn't make any sense. Also, considering how Read Magic is worded I wonder if it should be regulated to a Knowledge (aracana) check instead of a spell. After all, why bother writing a spell in a cypher so other wizards can't read it, if there is a spell that breaks all cyphers and allows wizards to read it... the only way it makes sense is to hide it from non-wizards... who probably couldn't understand it anyways since they don't have the neccesary background training. I could stare a molecular chemist's notebook all day, doesn't mean I'll have a clue what the heck he is writing about

I think all minor spells memorized should be At-will (like they did in Pathfinder).

I like the signature spell idea (refreshes after 10 minutes), though I would like to build on that to make it a more powerfull spell (like meta feats)

There needs to be a generic school specialist tradition (Invoker, Necromancer, Conjurer etc.. as well.

+1 Slygamer going back to specalisation schools seems a good thing to me. Also read magic, detect magic should be just wizard skills/feats/features or whatever you want to name it. Mage hand should be a cantrip who could scale as the wizard becomes more powerful. And it seems tome  that some kind of armor spell (shield/mage armor) should be cantrip as well. As for the signature spell, as Chaomancer said, if every wizard has the same signature spell, can it be called signature at all ? Maybe have the wizard choose his signature spell at creation and have it metamagicked in some way.

Nov 1, 2012 -- 1:10PM, NicolBolas wrote:

This was my idea for wizard traditions:

Normal Wizard Progression + 1 extra spell slot per level only for spells in your tradition (or maybe your tradition's spell slots use 1 level lower of a slot) + 1 signature spell from your tradition that can be cast as an encounter instead of a daily. This spell is chosen at level up, and must be a spell you know at that time.

I would also like level 0 spells to go back to being at-wills.

In addition, I prefer that you get fewer spells from level up and there is more emphasis on finding or inventing spells as part of the adventure. Maybe you only gain spells from your tradition at level up and other stuff you have to find/buy/create.

I understand why they might want to limit spell progression. Do you really want to have 30+ spells memorized at high levels? I think maybe they should sit down and consider whether they really need 9 levels of spells or whether they can shrink it down to 4 or 5 (allowing for more spells/level). It must be really hard to manage/balance that progression knowing they have to keep introducing new tiers of spells.

I'm not sure I understand your progression suggested at the top. Could you clarify?

As for spell levels, I have always felt that 9 is a relatively arbritrary number, 10 seems neater, but that doesn't help our situation. I'm also not sure about dropping down as low as 4, though perhaps if the upper limit of spells was lower we would have less of a problem with level 20 wizard = god.

That's a good question, how high do we really need a wizard's spells to go? Maybe somewhere around 7 would be more ideal? I'm more than willing to see truly epic spells such as Wish be regulated to rare rituals that an entire adventure could be built around finding and casting, just so we could still have the highest level spells.