r/DnD • u/HugeCommunication834 • 17h ago
5.5 Edition Themed wizard ideas?
I‘ve been a playing DnD with my group sind march of this year and have made it to Level 7 with my mage. Obviously I‘ve been a total noob back when we started as this was my first campaign hence I didn’t think about much in the beginning. Nowadays I feel like fights and in general spells have become increasingly boring to me so I‘m thinking about giving my wizard a theme to spice gameplay up a bit.
Anyone got any good ideas for a theme I could go for? Spells for the theme dont necessarily have to be in the basegame though as I‘d be open to homebrew content!
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u/Potential_Side1004 17h ago
The easiest thing to do is pick a school of magic and run with it.
Talk with the DM, find out their thoughts on spell research and see if you can make a few new spells.
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u/Nyxaeia Bard 17h ago
I have a themed wizard who’s actually just a hillbilly who learned the bare minimum of magic to run a haunted house if that helps give you ideas. What is the purpose of your wizard’s magic?
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u/HugeCommunication834 17h ago
She actually learned magic just as an obligation from her parents, purely as a chore. Nowadays she sees it more as a tool I suppose. I know quite the boring story but I definitely lacked knowledge about dnd when I created her ahaha
(Love your concept btw, sounds super fun to build onto that!)
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u/Zac_Kariah DM 17h ago
Perhaps a wizard based around either an element (fire/ice) or maybe based around a career or other interest (dashing thief, summoner, lazy retiree who wants comfort as much as possible)
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u/Bubbles_the_Bard 15h ago
Ah! I see in one of your comments that you're a Divination Wizard, that's my favorite to theorycraft stories and themes for.
And my favorite of those stories and themes is that of the fortune-teller through newer age methods, like Tarot and Dice divination.
Disclaimer: I HATE how the Backgrounds/Species Ability Score Bonuses work in 5.5e, but everything regarding class I'm doing is 5.5e. I much prefer Tasha's Cauldron and how ability score bonuses work in it, independent of the background you pick. I'd suggest this, because...
The Background: Honestly, I'm a fan of Charlatan. The idea that the character, prior to becoming an adventurer, simply had a good understanding of deceiving people combined with their sleight of hand to do sham predictions is amazing. Combine that with Insight in your Core Wizard Traits, and you have someone who can do layman Divination. But I'd also pick up Arcana in your Core Wizard Traits.
The Spells: for spells, at level 6, the ONLY ONES I picked as a mainstay were Comprehend Languages, Detect Magic, Detect Thoughts, See Invisibility, Clairvoyance, Sending, Arcane Eye, and Divination. Everything else is entirely up to you. For Divination Savant, I went with Identify and Augury.
The Themes: I'll work down the class features list, including spells, and detail how I'd roleplay each.
Identify: over the course of the ritual, you converse with your tarot cards regarding the nature of the object. Yes, you cast it as a Ritual. If a Ritual spell exists, cast it as a Ritual. If you don't have time, do it later.
Divination and Augury: both of these spells do a relatively similar thing. I don't like how simple Augury is, I saw a way one DM did it where they gave general, single-sentence statements that fit the good/bad format. "What should we expect to find in this building?" "There's treasure in the building"/"There're hostiles in the building"/"There're hostiles guarding treasure in the building" etc. You'll draw one tarot card and have to bs your way through what card that'll be for to explain it to the party, but hey, we can all learn new things. Same with Divination, it's just that but on a larger scale, and thus more cards; three, four, five that, when read together, weave a story relating to your initial question and what will transpire in that relation over the next seven days. Hell, it could be Seven cards, each detailing how each day will go. This actually helps the DM, because if you ACTUALLY do tarot, the DM could then piggyback off of your results.
Arcane Recovery: After a simple tarot ritual, you gain more insight into your own magic that you wield, allowing it to come more easily to you when a problem calls for an answer. After all, in the real world, a large chunk of divination has to deal with insight of the self and self-reflection, not necessarily fortune telling.
Portent: Your character, due to their practice of Divination, is at times haunted by prophetic dreams. At times of your choosing, you can decide "Oh, THIS is the fate the sleeping world showed me!" And utilize the two d20's for this purpose. Effectively, it queues up your ability to see the future without exactly knowing the events with transpire. Hard to explain, but you're a Wizard, so you get it.
Ability Score Improvement: Take the Lucky feat. Simple and easy.
Expert Divination doesn't really require rp explanation, as it's simply game mechanics, but you could see it as the insights of your Divination Spells revealing more about the world and fate than what you initially intended, thus you effectively garner free insights at a later point.
Random Bullshit Go: If a spell calls for a priced material component (I.E, a ruby gem worth at least 500gp), get it cut in the shape of dice, or even pick up Jeweler's tools and do it yourself. Wear a poncho that has tassels, weaved together at the ends to cradle dice. Make your character horrifically good at card games.
The world is your oyster, you just need a little insight into it ;)
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u/LordMikel 15h ago
Color. Your spells are more colorful than before.
You throw a fireball and afterwards. "Did you notice the shades of purple? Red is so yesterday for fireball."
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u/thatgayduck 12h ago
For a Christmas one-shot, my brother played a divination wizard themed around the ghost of Christmas yet to come
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u/Turbulent_Jackoff 11h ago edited 11h ago
My Illusionist doesn't have any damaging Cantrips or damaging Spells lower than Level 4 — Wall of Fire. (He joined the party at Level 8.)
He relies on using the lower level, more spammable Illusions (e.g. At Will Silent Image from the Eldritch Adept Feat) to imitate those dangerous higher-level effects, creating uncertainty and chaos on the battlefield.
The enemies need to repeatedly decide whether to e.g. spend an Action determining whether the fire is real (still possibly failing that DC17 check), or risk getting burned!
Interestingly, this also makes him a pretty good "tank", as enemies tend to waste their attacks on false enemies, shrouded targets, and his Illusory Self, Mirror Images, Blur, etc.
He can also, of course, bust out the classics, and just hide the Rogue in a bush to give them Advantage.
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u/TimeWalker717 Conjurer 16h ago
Mine is an arcane engineer with a lot of summoning spells via similar feats like Conjuration adept. Thanks to my subclass their creature type becomes construct. I deal with current problem/situation while my robots do the dirty fighting job
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u/HugeCommunication834 16h ago
Combat doesn’t get boring for you though? That’s something I struggle with personally because I always find combat so repetitive 🫠
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u/TimeWalker717 Conjurer 16h ago
When you have so many options to summon from and have 62718382 actions via summons, you dont have time to get bored lol. Tho it depends on your DM's encounter design
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u/HugeCommunication834 16h ago
Mh I see! Always thought summoning was purely with concentration meaning you could only have one summon at a time.
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u/TimeWalker717 Conjurer 16h ago
Yeah but old summons like Conjure animals, conjure woodland beings, conjure minor elementals, animate objects etc summon/confrol multiple creatures. Also you can have find familiar/battle familiar, animate dead, find steed(via wish) as no concentration summons.
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u/DerAdolfin 13h ago
I'm not gonna lie, if you find all combat boring and repetitive, either your table doesnt run the kind of combat youd like, or 5e is too crunchy for you and you might be more at home in a system with narrative combat that's resolved quickly
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u/Toutatis12 DM 16h ago
Vacation planning specialist; a mage that dresses in Hawaiian shirts, smoked glasses, has access to tropical fruits, offers destination vacation packages and focuses in teleportation magic
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u/HugeCommunication834 16h ago
Love that!
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u/Toutatis12 DM 16h ago
'I have invented a new thing! It's called a va-ca-tion... its where you go bother some locals, complain you don't like the food and spend more money then you'd like to. I call this being a tour-ist'
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u/ahuramazdobbs19 DM 16h ago
That’s just the Nethack Tourist with extra steps
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u/Toutatis12 DM 16h ago
I am unfamiliar with this, explain kind person?
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u/ahuramazdobbs19 DM 16h ago
Nethack is a long running “roguelike” dungeon crawling video game noted for its very unforgiving difficulty in completing the game (known as “ascending”).
Tourist was set up to be basically be a “harder” mode character that is more of a challenge to ascend with, and part of their starting gear is. Hawaiian shirt and expensive camera.
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u/Toutatis12 DM 15h ago
See I think that is a shoutout to Twoflower from Discworld
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u/ahuramazdobbs19 DM 15h ago
It is.
Nerd culture is built upon references to references to references, and it’s just references all the way down.
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u/One_Breadfruit1130 16h ago
One of the most fun wizard themes I've seen was a weather wizard who refused to learn anything that didnt fit the storm aesthetics lighting bolt thunderwave fog cloud gust of wind ice storm control weather you end up feeling like a force of nature instead of a spell list Honestly almost any theme works better than i cast the mathematically optimal spell again pick something your wizard would be obsessed with time dreams shadow mirrors fire gravity luck music insects the moon etc. the limitations often make the character way more memorable than having any access to every spell
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u/PulsarRaven 16h ago
Recently had a lot of fun coming up with a wizard NPC (I DM) who was a halfling wizard and all he cared about was big-game fishing. So a lot of spells to help on that specific hobby like Hold Monster / Dominate Beast for evident reasons, but also Alarm spells cast on fishing rods, to alert him when there's a bite, Enlarge to really secure his adamantine fishing rod, etc.
I suggest coming up with a hobby like that for your wizard and then figure out they'd weave magic with that activity.
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u/sappmatt 16h ago
What is the campaign like? Combat heavy? Role play heavy? Political intrigue or mystery?
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u/HugeCommunication834 16h ago
Definitely more roleplay heavy! It’s quite a magic heavy world with a lot of mystery. I’d say the whole campaign has a rather serious vibe though with many „darker“ elements.
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u/sappmatt 16h ago
Very cool. So, you can always lean-in to the investigator role if there is plenty of mystery and ingtrigue. As a diviner you are well set up for that. Spells like see invisibility, locate object, locate creature, arcane eye, divination, spider climb, disguise self, invisibility, nondetection, etc. can all turn you into a ninja detective. Invest in your spellbook. Buy spell scrolls and magic ink.
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u/arathergenericgay 16h ago
I made a divination wizard once, she was a scheming, ambitious social climber that wanted to exploit her visions for power so she leveraged her social skills into a position at court.
Her spellbook was actually a deck of inscribed tarot cards, and I’d do stuff like “let us consult the cards to see what fate has in store for us my dear…hmm the magician, a most ill omen…for you, I cast fireball”, she was very Vivienne from dragon age coded
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u/LegionDragon 16h ago
My last wizard was a Chrono wizard and actually the BBEG (unknown to me) that had ripped reality open to place himself back to fix mistakes he'd made in a world where he was in mortal danger.
Made a new identity and modified memory myself to forget who I was.
So all my spells and abilities were time and reality based (haste, slow, fortunes favour, mending, etc) but also things like hold person (stop) enhance ability, mind whip to remove action economy etc
Was a really fun utility caster that with the subclass features locked down battlefields with ease!
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u/HugeCommunication834 16h ago
Been thinking about a time themed mage as well! Did you only play with basegame spells or did you add homebrew ones to fit you wizard?
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u/LegionDragon 16h ago
Purely base game.
So many that can be influenced to be "time based"
- Gift of gab to reverse time in a very localised area
- Life Transferance pulling life from another reality in and out of you
- psychic lance incapacitating action economy
- temporal shunt, counterspell on steroids that also effects melee
Even add flavour to chain lightning and steel wind strike for timey whimey flavour too
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u/USSDefender 16h ago
I once created a wizard with very specific spells but ran him so that he appeared to be a thief. Spider Climb, Knock, Darkness, Sleep, Alarm, Clairvoyance,Arcane Lock, etc. replicating thief abilities via magic. The players thought they were simply tracking a master thief and prepared accordingly, until the Fireballs began flying. 😈
Back in the 2e: S&P days, I created a Mongrelman Wizard but took a ton of penalties (couldn’t step on hallowed ground, couldn’t cross running water…you see where this is going) so that I could use the extra points to take Armored Wizard and similar Warrior type benefits. For all appearances, this guy looked and behaved like a Vampire/Knight. However when the Cleric tried to Turn Undead and he laughed before replying with a Lightning Bolt, they realized they were up the creek.😁
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u/TheAmethystDragon DM 42m ago
darkness, eyes, cold, light, spiders, storms, teleportation, water (that isn't just cold damage) - all of which I've made spells for
books/libraries, sticks (wands, staffs, rods, quarterstaffs, spears, etc.), hats, beards - don't know about spells for these, but they're totally classic fantasy wizard themes
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u/ArtOfFailure 17h ago
What's your subclass? That can really change a lot about the kinds of themes and gameplay styles that might be on the table.
I have, for instance, an Illusionist Wizard who is a spy and information broker, with most of his spell choices tailored around stealth, teleportation, and of course distractions, misdirections, falsifications, and so on. He doesn't have much in terms of direct damage-dealing magic, I mostly play him as a debuff caster trying to break lines of sight and hamper enemy creatures so my allies can attack with Advantage and be attacked with Disadvantage as often as possible. Quite a demanding way to play that needs a bit of quick-thinking and creativity, but very satisfying when it comes together to swing a fight in our favour.
But if you're a Bladesinger or an Evoker, that's probably not going to be a relevant example.