D&D 5E Caster with access to only one school

[TwoSix]

If you had a prepared caster from a full spell list (cleric, druid, etc.) with an alternate class feature that said, roughly "Instead of preparing from your normal class list, you can prepare spells from any class list, but only spells that belong to X school", how big of a power downgrade is that? I'm thinking it depends on the school, right? Evocation and Conjuration would be a minor nerf, but Divination or Abjuration would be a pretty big downgrade.

 

[the Jester]

Not only are the schools not remotely balanced in 5e, many of them don't even have spells at every spell level for wizards, much less for other classes.

 

[Aldarc]

Another way of going about something like this is restricting spell schools. So if you pick School X, then you are prohibited from learning spells from Schools Y and Z. Something that reinforces the fact that traditions of magic have their own traditions about what a wizard learns but also what they don't learn.

 

[TwoSix]

Not only are the schools not remotely balanced in 5e, many of them don't even have spells at every spell level for wizards, much less for other classes.

So it's a fairly steep downgrade in power, right? I'm estimating it's roughly similar to about a half-caster in power for the weaker schools, and about warlock level for the stronger schools.

 

[the Jester]

So it's a fairly steep downgrade in power, right? I'm estimating it's roughly similar to about a half-caster in power for the weaker schools, and about warlock level for the stronger schools.

I think it depends a lot on the school, the base class, and how many (if any) custom or non-PH spells you have in your game, but no matter what, it's a significant downgrade to your versatility, at the very least. I don't think comparing it to a warlock is all that useful; warlocks are a strange beast, and its short rest recovery makes it less of an apples to apples comparison and more of an apples to hot dogs.

EDIT: To be clear, I think it's very difficult to rate this against half-casters or the like, too. I think you'd need to evaluate each school within each class separately to really examine/rate the balance implications.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

If you were going to do this, I'd advise you to make a list of [general] spells that all wizards get access to. if I recall, in 2e, they were broken down into abjuration[general] or universal or whatever.

So, spells with general utility, like detect magic, mage armour and a few other staples are tagged on the Universal list. You used to get 2 extra spells that were part of your specialization so those [universal] spells, if they are also part of your specialty, could be taken as your bonus spells.

Honestly, the balance of schools was never equal. Even the old way of specializing where you had to drop one school to become a specialist in another one wasn't ideal. It was never as good to be an illusionist as it was to be an invoker because so many creatures were immune to illusions.

In any case, I like the idea of dividing wizard-types into their schools and restricting them somewhat based on what school they are. I was going to make a project of dividing the spells into balanced schools. But I'm lazy.

 

[TwoSix]

For transparency, this isn't for a general fix; this is about houseruling something for a player who has a very specific concept in mind. I'm wondering how much extra to give them in exchange for them asking to take a steep penalty (only being able to use one school).

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

For transparency, this isn't for a general fix; this is about houseruling something for a player who has a very specific concept in mind. I'm wondering how much extra to give them in exchange for them asking to take a steep penalty (only being able to use one school).

Depends on school, really.

I would also allow for re-skinning certain spells. Like, an evocation version of Mage armour. Maybe some draw-back since it's not as efficient as an actual abjuration spell. (only lasts 4 hours, causes exhaustion after too much time (heat shield is HOT!) etc...

Also, is the player ever going to multiclass?

 

[TwoSix]

Depends on school, really.

I would also allow for re-skinning certain spells. Like, an evocation version of Mage armour. Maybe some draw-back since it's not as efficient as an actual abjuration spell. (only lasts 4 hours, causes exhaustion after too much time (heat shield is HOT!) etc...

Also, is the player ever going to multiclass?

The school is divination, and the class is cleric. With this concept, we're not allowing multiclassing. (The high concept is an Eberron half-elf with a powerful dragonmark of detection, the casting ability is the character gaining greater proficiency with their dragonmark.) I like the concept a lot, but I know just having access to divination spells is obviously underpowered compared to straight cleric, so I want to give them some bonus features to compensate.

 

[FrozenNorth]

For transparency, this isn't for a general fix; this is about houseruling something for a player who has a very specific concept in mind. I'm wondering how much extra to give them in exchange for them asking to take a steep penalty (only being able to use one school).

If that is the case, you need to specify the class the player wants to play. A wizard or sorcerer with Mage Armor is essentially a sitting duck, but Clerics and Druids have ways of mitigating this. Heck, a Cleric who chooses the Conjuration school probably increases in overall power.

Second, since the power depends on the school the player chooses, you should know ahead of time what school they intend to choose. You can’t balance Divination against Conjuration in a vaccuum, nor should you be asked to do all that work if the player only intends to play an illusionist.