School of the Apprentice

Most wizards work on a specialty from early on, sometimes this is because their teacher had specialized in a particular school and taught it to them or they found an aptitude for a school of magic early on and as they grew as a wizard their abilities with that specialty grew as well. You however did not have an experience like that you learned magic in a way that meant you never got to specialize. Sometimes this could be because your magical education was interrupted and you had to switch teachers or even piece the rest of it together on your own. For whatever reason you didn’t specialize like most wizards and had to just learn to try and keep up with everyone else. While many from this school don’t make it very far in the realms of academic magic and sometimes give up the craft altogether you have persevered and using your ability to improvise have managed to cobble together these abilities which are essential to you.

If you choose this school of magic consider why your wizard has taken it. Was their magical education interrupted by a teacher’s death, did your family run out of gold to pay for your education or perhaps did you struggle with your magical education and did you find yourself not keeping up with other students as they progressed in the realms of magic. Whatever the reason consider how this might have affected your character and what this means for their backstory.

Can I copy your homework?

You have experience in forgetting to do work you should have done and have the ability to work very fast and learn about things that you previously had no clue about. Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the time it takes to copy any spell into your spell book is halved. However, you must still spend the full amount of gold.
Whenever you make a scroll the time it takes to make is halved. However, you must still spend the full amount of gold.

That test is today?

You have such experience solving your problems in the last minute that you gain the ability to adapt to new situations as they arise. Starting at 2nd level you gain the ability to use a bonus action to change one of your prepared spells per short rest. The spell you change it to must be one that is in your spell book and your spell book must be on your person.
Once per long rest you have the ability to role an intelligence check with advantage, you can choose to make this choice after you have seen the role but before you know if the role passes or fails.

Jack of all Trades but Master of None

You have learned to be ok at most things after having learned that you’re not amazing at any one thing. Starting at 6th level you can add half of your proficiency bonus rounded down to any skills that you are not proficient in.
Once per long rest when you fail a saving throw you are able to role it again, however if you fail the saving throw again you feel so stupid you take half your level in psychic damage in addition to suffering the effect that you are trying to save from.

Sacrifice mental health

You have done a lot of work and you have found out that your mental health can be sacrificed to further your intelligence and study. Beginning at 10th level you gain the ability to sacrifice your mental health to further your intelligence. A number of times per long rest equal to your intelligence modifier you can use a bonus action to give yourself advantage on intelligence checks and spell attack roles until the start of your next turn. However, when you use this ability you have disadvantage on all wisdom ability checks and saving throws until the start of your next turn as well. Additionally, when you activate this ability you are able to cast any wizard cantrip, regardless of if you have it prepared or not, until the beginning of your next turn. However, when you have run out of uses of this ability you can use it again but for each time you use it after you have run out of normal uses you gain one level of exhaustion.

Blatant Plagiarism

You have been learning for a while now, but there always seems to be more to learn. You have learned how to extrapolate from incomplete data and to learn on the fly, you’re not sure if you learn stuff, are really good at faking it or if you just get lucky but it’s what gets you through the day. Starting at 14th level you have learned the ability to improvise and learn more or do things you didn’t think that you could do. Once per long rest you can use a bonus action to add an additional spell to your list of prepared spells until your next long rest. This spell must be from the wizard spell list and be of a level that you can cast, it does not need to be in your wizard spell book. However, you are unable to write this spell into your spell book when you have it prepared in this way and you are unable to make a scroll of it.
However, there is an alternate way to use this ability, if you see someone else cast a spell that isn’t on the wizard spell list and you have not used this ability yet you can use your reaction to make an Intelligence (Arcana) check the DC Is equal to 10 + the spell level. If you pass this check it is added to your list of prepared spells and counts as a wizard spell for you until your next long rest. If you fail the check, due to the mentally taxing nature of what you’re doing, you take a temporary reduction to your intelligence score by 2. This reduction lasts until the end of your next short rest (in which you don’t used your arcane recovery feature), long rest or until you are targeted by a greater restoration spell or similar magic. Also when you fail your check to add a spell to your list of prepared spells you are unable to attempt to again until you finish your next short or long rest. Once you have prepared a spell in this way you are unable to use this ability in any way until your next long rest. When you have a spell prepared in this way you are unable to write this spell into your spell book or make a scroll of it.