Base Class: Wizard
As a street mage, you are most comfortable on the streets of a city. You walk in the shadows and alleys, trading favors with other street mages for magical secrets or struggling on your own to unlock your arcane potential. Street mage spellbooks are often loosely bound collections of mismatched sheets that used to scrolls. Street mages survive by their wits, charm, and occasionally flexible view of property ownership.
Scroll Savant
Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy a spell from a scroll into your spellbook is halved. Furthermore, you have advantage on the Intelligence (Arcana) check to do so.
Make a Deal
Starting at 2nd level when you select this school, all lifestyle expenses are one step cheaper (e.g. a Modest lifestyle only costs as much as a Poor one). Furthermore, if carousing as a downtime activity, you can roll twice on the results table and choose which one to happen.
Wit and Guile
When you select this school at 2nd level, you gain proficiency with one of the following: Deception, Sleight of Hand, Persuasion, or Thieves' Tools.
Deception
You gain proficiency in Deception.
Persuasion
You gain proficiency in Persuasion.
Sleight of Hand
You gain proficiency in Sleight of Hand.
Thieves' Tools
You gain proficiency in Thieves' Tools.
Arcane Knack
As part of making a skill check or tool use based on Dexterity, Intelligence, or Charisma, you can expend a spell slot to gain a bonus to that skill check equal to the level of spell slot expended.
Just the Thing
Starting at 6th level, you can shop or carouse in a town or city for 8 hours and spend up to 5 gp per class level. During this time you purchase or "acquire" a collection of undetermined random goods. Most are useless junk, but there is always one thing of value in there. Any time after that, you can take 1 minute rummaging through your pockets or bags and produce any item of your choice up to that monetary value including consumable magic items.
You cannot produce unique items (such as a key for a particular lock or a specific noble family seal) or items that would not ordinarily be available for purchase. Add the item to your inventory and deduct its value from your collection of random goods. You can continue to use this ability until you use up the full value of the random goods. Replenishing the used up portion takes 8 hours of shopping or carousing and spending the amount used up.
You and you DM are encouraged to have fun with this ability and not abuse it or overly restrict it. If all else fails and you want an item that is pushing the bounds of belief, maybe do your DM a favor and offer up an NPC with an interesting backstory whom you purchased the item from.
Smooth Talker
At 10th level, you add the charm person spell to your spellbook, if it is not there already. You can cast charm person without expending a spell slot.
Once you cast charm person in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest, though you can still cast it normally using an available spell slot.
Slippery as an Eel
Starting at 14th level, when you successfully save versus a spell that targets you, as a reaction, you can redirect that spell to another creature within 30 feet of you that was not already targeted by that spell. That creature is then targeted by the spell and attempts a save as usual.
Once you use this ability, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.
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Posted Nov 28, 2018Sorry, I don’t know. It could be because it’s older from before some of their big homebrew changes? I also have a new version that is currently private only that incorporates the feedback from these comments. I’m still not 100% happy with it, but I do think it is improved. Rather than waiting until I’m fully happy, I’ll try to get it posted and see if that fixes your problem.
Just let me double check a couple things to make sure it’s at least presentable. Plus this will be my first try at pushing out a new version of a homebrew.
But also thank you giving it a try! I hope you like it!
EDIT: Just saw that since I’m using Charm Monster from Xanathar’s, I can’t make it public. So I will need to at least replace that. I’ll try to get it fixed up and posted in the morning (aka within 12 hours from now). Sorry for the delay! I hope it’s not a hassle.
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Posted Nov 28, 2018Hey, I just had a quick question. Do you know why it won't allow me to select this in the character creator? It keeps giving me an error every time I try. Anyone else have this problem?
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Posted Sep 6, 2018This is a great class roleplaying wise, It feels like a more magic focused arcane trickster.
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Posted May 15, 2018I really love the concept behind this class, but I agree that the overall balance feels a little... off. It seems to me like you could maybe tweak Smooth Talker and combine it with Make a Deal for a reasonable 2nd-level ability, while Arcane Knack could perhaps be ratched up a notch or two and made into a 6th-level ability. And though I love the concept of Just The Thing, I agree with @Vaegrim that the actual mechanics of it seem convoluted & difficult to arbitrate (although I will admit I don't have any suggestions for its improvement lol).
All that said, I absolutely adore the concepts (have I used that word enough yet?) you have at play here; there's definitely a gap between Arcane Trickster and Wizard that's just waiting to be filled!
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Posted May 5, 2018Thanks for the feedback! For my first subclass, I guess going for a bit under powered and then kicking it up a notch or three might be better than starting with something overpowered and wondering what to cut back.
I wondered if having the lack of an upper limit would make it more useful. But this is definitely one of the abilities I was least happy with. The main thing is finding a nice wizardly way to boost skills (that's also preferably a bit more unique than just Guidance or Enhance Ability).
Just off the top of my head - what about a floating proficiency??? With either a minute or short rest or some such, you can gain proficiency in a skill or tool of your choice. You can reassign it by spending the time again. Just a random thought. Mainly I'm looking for a way to get a little bit of skill monkey into the class without stepping on the toe's of bards or rogues (and some bard class abilities are spot on for this concept, but much of the rest seemed like a very poor conceptual fit for what I was looking for). Or maybe grant expertise?
This was definitely inspired by Minor Conjuration and the Pathfinder feat Brilliant Planner. My main problem with Minor Conjuration was thematic than mechanical. I was aiming for the idea of a PC with lots of random actual items (rather than temporary obviously magical constructions) being able to pull out just the right item when needed. The Pathfinder feat was a heavy inspiration, but (like many things given Pathfinder's design goals) is too complicated for 5e.
This is an ability that I really love the flavor of it, but I'm not sure about the mechanics either. I'll keep pondering.
Yep, it's directly based on that. Figured with Charm Person being scalable, it balanced similar. But in hindsight, going with Charm Monster probably works better.
I might up it to work before saving and/or change it to the spell's range. I just worry that taking away too many limitations will overpower it pretty fast. But if others think it could use a little boost, there's still several levers to tweak to get it at the proper power level.
I did focus a lot on the other main Wizard schools for balance comparison, but I will spend more time with those two.
Thanks again for the very detailed feedback!
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Posted May 5, 2018This archetype seems to really overvalue a lot of it's features. Guidance is a cantrip, spending a 2nd level spell slot to get the same effect with Arcane Knack is just not a good choice, let alone worth a class feature. You could cast Enhance Ability for the same cost as +2 to a single ability check.
The limitations (or lack thereof) on Just the Thing seem to just make the feature harder to DM than Minor Conjuration. The only conditions where it's any better (since it's a higher level feature) is if the item would "take damage" or if it's a consumable magic item. That's a pain to adjudicate and the text of the feature seems to recognize it. Something more closely resembling Minor Conjuration solves a lot of these problems.
Smooth Talker seems pretty similar to the Transmutation Wizard's Shapechanger feature only.. it's a 1st level spell instead of 4th. Even with the self-target and CR1 restrictions on polymorph, that's still better than a 1st level spell.
Slippery as an Eel is the only feature that feels like a 14th level Wizard feature. It's got the potential to work like a broader Evasion, if only once per rest. It's still really narrow compared to Spell Resistance (the abjuration 14), the worst limitation being the redirection range. Area effect spells that include you aren't likely to have another valid target in 30 ft. I'd suggest removing at least one of the limitations on this feature (increase the range, unlimited uses, or redirect before/without rolling your save).
If the Bladesinger and Eldritch Knight are approaching the same concept from different directions, this school seems positioned to be the wizard answer to the arcane trickster. That's not a bad idea, and I'd start with those three archetypes as your foundation to finding the right way to execute this school.
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Posted May 3, 2018No problem!
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Posted May 3, 2018-
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Posted May 2, 2018I really like this! The only thing that could be improved is maybe modifying Make a Deal a little bit. Carousing is an optional thing, and I feel most DMs don't really use it. Then again, there are two other 2nd level abilities, so it could be fine as it is.
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Posted May 2, 2018Feedback is definitely welcome on this subclass! I am certainly trying some rather non-standard class abilities here. Hopefully they aren't too far astray from 5e conventions, but let me know what you think. My intention with this was to provide the flipside of the arcane trickster. Rather than a rogue with a little bit of wizard-ishness, I wanted to create a wizard with a little bit of rogue-ishness beyond just picking certain backgrounds. Speaking of which, I tried to make this compatible with but not reliant on backgrounds like charlatan, criminal, and street urchin (hence Wit and Guile being a choice of proficiency).
Hope you like it!