I don't know why I'm walking back into this dumpster fire...but here we go.
There's nothing, anywhere, in any book that RAW's a wizard as ONLY getting the spells listed on the spell progress. According to RAW, a fighter never gets a magical sword or armor, and therefor has a very hard time damaging creatures that can only be damaged by magical means. It's absurd to assume you're going to be in a campaign in which a fighter wouldn't eventually find a magic weapon in basic D&D (based on the expectations presented in the DMG and XgtE on how often magic items should be encountered).
You're human players with a human DM. If you're playing a wizard, and your DM refuses to allow you to find additional scrolls to improve your character, you need to talk to your DM about why he's being a dingus. The same way that a fighter would complain if he's unable to improve his gear to make his character better. The game is designed, based on the loot presented in every single official module, to present players with spell scrolls with some regularity. The OP question was "am I missing something" and the answer is "the expected play in a real world environment vs this weird RAW only theorycraft exercise".
TL;dr- DMs need to give wizards a way to get scrolls, it's a feature of the class.
To give an anecdote to follow CBMoate's excellent point. I often play wizards, it's my favourite class to play. The DM I play with does not follow the normal loot-giving rules or guidelines presented in the books nor does he roll for random loot. However, he does present us options to get what we need. If the story presents an opportunity to give magical weapons he will do so. Mostly he presents us with a lot of gold and a means of purchasing magical equipment that we want - within reasons, we say what we want to get and if he approves of the choice which he often does, he provides an in-game way for us to spend the gold to get it. Likewise, for my wizard he lets me purchase spells - I take the max value for the rarity as given in DMG based on spell rarity given in the Spell Scroll item details and halve it - that's the price I pay to add acquire the spell scroll (the cost is halved because I don't get to use the scroll as a scroll and because it's a consumable and because I have to more for scribing) and then I add the scribing costs and time and voila the spell is added.
Some spells he may restrict for story reasons but the point is because magical items and equipment and scrolls are important to the play and because classes and encounter difficulties are designed with the expectation you will be getting them he presents us the means to do. They're important for progression and he prefers us having a choice in what we get (most non-armoured have bracers of defense for instance despite how rare they're supposed to be) because he, like any good DM, wants us to enjoy the game.
Classes, encounter guidelines, monster CR and so on were specifically designed to factor magical items for characters. If a DM is preventing access to these this means he is specifically going against the game design and being a shit. The Wizard was designed to augment their repertoire of spells by acquiring spell scrolls or wizard tomes. This is because they do not weapons or armour - they cannot use magical weapons or magic armours and this option of spell addition is the way to improve the character with magical loot to keep it balanced with other classes that get to add magical armours or weapons or have the entire class list of spells to preprare from with always-prepared spells. While others spend gold on magic items, wizard spends money on spells and components. If a DM is not allowing the wizard to do this s/he a dick and deliberately unbalancing the wizard to be less than other classes.
You are not meant to stick to "only what's in the class". The game is not designed for that.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Excellent points lately. It seems I'll be DM'ing a group of 75-100% wizards, so I'll absolutely take to heart that a considerable portion of "random" loot should be scrolls and/or spellbooks.
Keep in mind: inscribing a scroll into a spell book doesn't consume the scroll. So don't go overboard giving more scrolls because there's more wizards. If there's 1 wizard or 10 wizards in the party, the rate of scrolls should still be the same (at least one every 2 sessions would be my baseline). Also, with THAT many wizards they can each just be taking different spells when they level, creating their own scrolls and then copying them into each other's spell books. At least that's what I'd be doing.
"Yo Gandolf, show me how you did that explody thing!"
Keep in mind: inscribing a scroll into a spell book doesn't consume the scroll. So don't go overboard giving more scrolls because there's more wizards. If there's 1 wizard or 10 wizards in the party, the rate of scrolls should still be the same (at least one every 2 sessions would be my baseline). Also, with THAT many wizards they can each just be taking different spells when they level, creating their own scrolls and then copying them into each other's spell books. At least that's what I'd be doing.
"Yo Gandolf, show me how you did that explody thing!"
Spell scrolls are destroyed when they are copied. In fact, it might be destroyed even if the Arcana check to copy it fails. Spells copied from other spellbooks, or other sources (which, as far as I know, are not specified in any source book, so it's up to the DM to come up with sources for spells other than spell scrolls and spellbooks), are not destroyed, and there is no Arcana check required.
Good catch, but I don't expect that the group will be very sharing with their spellbooks. One's a secret death cultist who probably has a shameful amount of emo poetry in her notes, and another has his formulas tattooed on his body so good luck getting him to sit still while you ponder the patterns.
The problem in my group has actually been the time and cost associated with it. There are two wizards, but we haven't shared most of our spells, at least not yet, because of lack of funds and free time!
Wizards are broke from no funds for scribing, fighters are broke from buying armor and supplies, clerics are broke from helping the needy.... Barbarians are the only rich class lol
Wizards are broke from no funds for scribing, fighters are broke from buying armor and supplies, clerics are broke from helping the needy.... Barbarians are the only rich class lol
While I'm sure you meant this as a tongue-in-cheek comment, I don't think martial classes' armor/weapons costs are anywhere near wizards' scribing costs. A suit of armor lasts a long time, and it's not something that's replaced very often. In fact, most of the time an armor, or a weapon, is replaced is because a better one was found as treasure. Not all clerics help the needy, and not doing so doesn't affect their combat performance at all, and even if it did (maybe your DM requires it to receive spells from your god?), you're really never going to want for more (unless your DM is particularly cruel and requires your cleric to give literally more than they have). Wizards, on the other hand, can, and I guess often do, spend all their money on acquiring spells, and are still wanting for more money to get more spells. I'm not claiming it's a huge imbalance, or that something must be done about it, but it's certainly a wizard problem that other classes don't suffer from.
Approaching the cost of scribing issue from another angle. How many spells do you covet at each level after your free spells?
A heavy armour wearer is probably after a nice suit of platemail at some point and thats 1500gold. Admittedly thats cheap compared to 450 gold per 9th level spell (after you find a place to copy them from) but even a mighty level 20 character only has one of them a day to cast, so how many do you need before you feel 'covered?' 1, 3, lots?
Wizards are broke from no funds for scribing, fighters are broke from buying armor and supplies, clerics are broke from helping the needy.... Barbarians are the only rich class lol
The only rich class is rogue—if you're enterprising enough.
I played one once who was enterprising. The rest of the party was shocked when they found out how much treasure he had. He had over three times what the rest of the party had combined.
I played one once who was enterprising. The rest of the party was shocked when they found out how much treasure he had. He had over three times what the rest of the party had combined.
Thief subclass with expertise sleight-of-hand. It got so bad that my DM had to bring in special guard police because of all the reported picked pockets with zero witnesses.
Wizards live and die by their spells. Everything else is secondary. They learn new spells as they experiment and grow in experience. They can also learn them from other wizards, from ancient tomes or inscriptions, and from ancient creatures (such as the fey) that are steeped in magic.
Other wizards could be as common as you meet them and might be an opportunity for roleplay or even a story hook to a quest.
Inscriptions does not necessarily mean scrolls, new spells might be inscribed on the base of a statue or monument of some kind or the wall of a secret chamber in a dungeon or cave.
Mysterious beings might help the wizard with new spells for unknown reasons.
Plus, don't forget the DM and/or Player can invent new homebrew spells that no one else has yet.
PS, I once read a trilogy of books from author Richard Baker called the The Last Mythal:
Book 1 Forsaken House
Book 2 Farthest Reach
Book 3 Final Gate
A wizard in that story not only got extra spells from magic gemstones but other forbidden knowledge that had been lost to the ages. (very good reading)
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"Run thy sword across my chains, Silver Lady, that I may join your dance.”
IMHO, wizard spell progression sucks compared to older editions. The wizard has access to many game changing spells, provided you get past legendary resistance and magic resistance, and can deal serious damage with amplified spells (E.g. disintegrate cast at 8th level) but, more spell slots are needed to remain relevant throughout the day. With the right build, a Wizard can eliminate most adversaries in under 10 rounds, provided you can remain in the fight, but they're spent after the encounter because the spell progression chart sucks so bad. We permit (house rule) the wizard to use the advanced second edition spell slot progression chart so they can remain valuable beyond a single encounter. We have not experienced a negative consequence to gameplay and have no idea why 5th edition is so anemic. That anemia may be why the class feels so lame.
IMHO, wizard spell progression sucks compared to older editions. The wizard has access to many game changing spells, provided you get past legendary resistance and magic resistance, and can deal serious damage with amplified spells (E.g. disintegrate cast at 8th level) but, more spell slots are needed to remain relevant throughout the day. With the right build, a Wizard can eliminate most adversaries in under 10 rounds, provided you can remain in the fight, but they're spent after the encounter because the spell progression chart sucks so bad. We permit (house rule) the wizard to use the advanced second edition spell slot progression chart so they can remain valuable beyond a single encounter. We have not experienced a negative consequence to gameplay and have no idea why 5th edition is so anemic. That anemia may be why the class feels so lame.
What progression chart is that? Most damage spells suck, which is hardly a problem specific to the wizard spell list. If you have an 8th level spell slot, Disintegrate upcasted is for losers. If you want to ignore magic resistance and legendary resistances, cast Maze, which ignores both. Presumably you also have Clone, so your enemy can lose this fight but you can only be temporarily set back, and if you want to stop *****footing around, cast Demiplane, hop inside, trigger the glyph of warding instances you have there containing every wizard L3- buff in the game, including Haste and Fly, and win the fight thoroughly.
Every Caster in the Game use the same Spellprogression table. Even half and thrid-caster. Their level is just determined by a third or a half on the same table. WIzards are considered one of the most powerful classes in the game at later levels, so i can not understand how you need to improve the spelltable to make the class even better. But, if all you do with your Wizard is dealing damage, then maybe that's the Problem. I suggest, that you take a look at spells like
Force Cage
Reverse Gravity
Simulacrum
Demiplane
Clone
True Polymorph
Animate Objects
Wish
Polymorph
Glyph of warding
Contingecy
Teleport
Web (Still good on high levels)
hypnotic pattern (Still good on high levels)
and maybe rethink your evaluation of the class. I know, that not all the spells here are exclusive to the wizard, but if your read only the first page of this thread, you will see that the wizardspell list is not only the biggest spell list but also the spell list with the greatest versatility AND the spelllist with combines nearl all of the most pwerful spells in the game. Sure some classes may get access to one or two of the wizards spells, but as a wizard you have acces to all of them.
Dealing damage isn't ALL a character should do. That's boring and usually the role in which we position beginners to learn the game. That said, all of D&D revolves around defeating enemies, again and again and again, and therefore dealing damage. But you missed my point. The total number of spells available to the Wizard is what I claim sucks. In second edition, a 20th level wizard had 37 total spell slots. In fifth edition, a 20th level mage has only 22 total spell slots, and access to fewer spells like the ones listed above by RonKubo.
That's what sucks. That's what we changed for the Wizard class alone and, it's improved the class immensely. Having access to 3 or 4 spells in the 6th - 8th level range is just, "better". Better for the class, better for the team, better game flow for the DM because the group isn't constantly looking for a place to rest... just better all around.
I don't know why I'm walking back into this dumpster fire...but here we go.
There's nothing, anywhere, in any book that RAW's a wizard as ONLY getting the spells listed on the spell progress. According to RAW, a fighter never gets a magical sword or armor, and therefor has a very hard time damaging creatures that can only be damaged by magical means. It's absurd to assume you're going to be in a campaign in which a fighter wouldn't eventually find a magic weapon in basic D&D (based on the expectations presented in the DMG and XgtE on how often magic items should be encountered).
You're human players with a human DM. If you're playing a wizard, and your DM refuses to allow you to find additional scrolls to improve your character, you need to talk to your DM about why he's being a dingus. The same way that a fighter would complain if he's unable to improve his gear to make his character better. The game is designed, based on the loot presented in every single official module, to present players with spell scrolls with some regularity. The OP question was "am I missing something" and the answer is "the expected play in a real world environment vs this weird RAW only theorycraft exercise".
TL;dr- DMs need to give wizards a way to get scrolls, it's a feature of the class.
To give an anecdote to follow CBMoate's excellent point. I often play wizards, it's my favourite class to play. The DM I play with does not follow the normal loot-giving rules or guidelines presented in the books nor does he roll for random loot. However, he does present us options to get what we need. If the story presents an opportunity to give magical weapons he will do so. Mostly he presents us with a lot of gold and a means of purchasing magical equipment that we want - within reasons, we say what we want to get and if he approves of the choice which he often does, he provides an in-game way for us to spend the gold to get it. Likewise, for my wizard he lets me purchase spells - I take the max value for the rarity as given in DMG based on spell rarity given in the Spell Scroll item details and halve it - that's the price I pay to add acquire the spell scroll (the cost is halved because I don't get to use the scroll as a scroll and because it's a consumable and because I have to more for scribing) and then I add the scribing costs and time and voila the spell is added.
Some spells he may restrict for story reasons but the point is because magical items and equipment and scrolls are important to the play and because classes and encounter difficulties are designed with the expectation you will be getting them he presents us the means to do. They're important for progression and he prefers us having a choice in what we get (most non-armoured have bracers of defense for instance despite how rare they're supposed to be) because he, like any good DM, wants us to enjoy the game.
Classes, encounter guidelines, monster CR and so on were specifically designed to factor magical items for characters. If a DM is preventing access to these this means he is specifically going against the game design and being a shit. The Wizard was designed to augment their repertoire of spells by acquiring spell scrolls or wizard tomes. This is because they do not weapons or armour - they cannot use magical weapons or magic armours and this option of spell addition is the way to improve the character with magical loot to keep it balanced with other classes that get to add magical armours or weapons or have the entire class list of spells to preprare from with always-prepared spells. While others spend gold on magic items, wizard spends money on spells and components. If a DM is not allowing the wizard to do this s/he a dick and deliberately unbalancing the wizard to be less than other classes.
You are not meant to stick to "only what's in the class". The game is not designed for that.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Excellent points lately. It seems I'll be DM'ing a group of 75-100% wizards, so I'll absolutely take to heart that a considerable portion of "random" loot should be scrolls and/or spellbooks.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
Keep in mind: inscribing a scroll into a spell book doesn't consume the scroll. So don't go overboard giving more scrolls because there's more wizards. If there's 1 wizard or 10 wizards in the party, the rate of scrolls should still be the same (at least one every 2 sessions would be my baseline). Also, with THAT many wizards they can each just be taking different spells when they level, creating their own scrolls and then copying them into each other's spell books. At least that's what I'd be doing.
"Yo Gandolf, show me how you did that explody thing!"
Spell scrolls are destroyed when they are copied. In fact, it might be destroyed even if the Arcana check to copy it fails. Spells copied from other spellbooks, or other sources (which, as far as I know, are not specified in any source book, so it's up to the DM to come up with sources for spells other than spell scrolls and spellbooks), are not destroyed, and there is no Arcana check required.
You can scribe from another Wizard's spellbook even though the scroll may be destroyed.
Good catch, but I don't expect that the group will be very sharing with their spellbooks. One's a secret death cultist who probably has a shameful amount of emo poetry in her notes, and another has his formulas tattooed on his body so good luck getting him to sit still while you ponder the patterns.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
The problem in my group has actually been the time and cost associated with it. There are two wizards, but we haven't shared most of our spells, at least not yet, because of lack of funds and free time!
Wizards are broke from no funds for scribing, fighters are broke from buying armor and supplies, clerics are broke from helping the needy.... Barbarians are the only rich class lol
While I'm sure you meant this as a tongue-in-cheek comment, I don't think martial classes' armor/weapons costs are anywhere near wizards' scribing costs. A suit of armor lasts a long time, and it's not something that's replaced very often. In fact, most of the time an armor, or a weapon, is replaced is because a better one was found as treasure. Not all clerics help the needy, and not doing so doesn't affect their combat performance at all, and even if it did (maybe your DM requires it to receive spells from your god?), you're really never going to want for more (unless your DM is particularly cruel and requires your cleric to give literally more than they have). Wizards, on the other hand, can, and I guess often do, spend all their money on acquiring spells, and are still wanting for more money to get more spells. I'm not claiming it's a huge imbalance, or that something must be done about it, but it's certainly a wizard problem that other classes don't suffer from.
The costs for copying spells and stocking up on consumed material components really throw a huge wrench in intra-party loot distribution discussions.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
Approaching the cost of scribing issue from another angle. How many spells do you covet at each level after your free spells?
A heavy armour wearer is probably after a nice suit of platemail at some point and thats 1500gold. Admittedly thats cheap compared to 450 gold per 9th level spell (after you find a place to copy them from) but even a mighty level 20 character only has one of them a day to cast, so how many do you need before you feel 'covered?' 1, 3, lots?
The only rich class is rogue—if you're enterprising enough.
"The Epic Level Handbook wasn't that bad, guys.
Guys, pls."
I played one once who was enterprising. The rest of the party was shocked when they found out how much treasure he had. He had over three times what the rest of the party had combined.
Professional computer geek
Thief subclass with expertise sleight-of-hand. It got so bad that my DM had to bring in special guard police because of all the reported picked pockets with zero witnesses.
"The Epic Level Handbook wasn't that bad, guys.
Guys, pls."
On page 112 of the PHB...
Wizards live and die by their spells. Everything else is secondary. They learn new spells as they experiment and grow in experience. They can also learn them from other wizards, from ancient tomes or inscriptions, and from ancient creatures (such as the fey) that are steeped in magic.
Other wizards could be as common as you meet them and might be an opportunity for roleplay or even a story hook to a quest.
Inscriptions does not necessarily mean scrolls, new spells might be inscribed on the base of a statue or monument of some kind or the wall of a secret chamber in a dungeon or cave.
Mysterious beings might help the wizard with new spells for unknown reasons.
Plus, don't forget the DM and/or Player can invent new homebrew spells that no one else has yet.
PS, I once read a trilogy of books from author Richard Baker called the The Last Mythal:
Book 1 Forsaken House
Book 2 Farthest Reach
Book 3 Final Gate
A wizard in that story not only got extra spells from magic gemstones but other forbidden knowledge that had been lost to the ages. (very good reading)
IMHO, wizard spell progression sucks compared to older editions. The wizard has access to many game changing spells, provided you get past legendary resistance and magic resistance, and can deal serious damage with amplified spells (E.g. disintegrate cast at 8th level) but, more spell slots are needed to remain relevant throughout the day. With the right build, a Wizard can eliminate most adversaries in under 10 rounds, provided you can remain in the fight, but they're spent after the encounter because the spell progression chart sucks so bad. We permit (house rule) the wizard to use the advanced second edition spell slot progression chart so they can remain valuable beyond a single encounter. We have not experienced a negative consequence to gameplay and have no idea why 5th edition is so anemic. That anemia may be why the class feels so lame.
Casual part-time D&D adventurer
What progression chart is that? Most damage spells suck, which is hardly a problem specific to the wizard spell list. If you have an 8th level spell slot, Disintegrate upcasted is for losers. If you want to ignore magic resistance and legendary resistances, cast Maze, which ignores both. Presumably you also have Clone, so your enemy can lose this fight but you can only be temporarily set back, and if you want to stop *****footing around, cast Demiplane, hop inside, trigger the glyph of warding instances you have there containing every wizard L3- buff in the game, including Haste and Fly, and win the fight thoroughly.
Every Caster in the Game use the same Spellprogression table. Even half and thrid-caster. Their level is just determined by a third or a half on the same table.
WIzards are considered one of the most powerful classes in the game at later levels, so i can not understand how you need to improve the spelltable to make the class even better. But, if all you do with your Wizard is dealing damage, then maybe that's the Problem. I suggest, that you take a look at spells like
and maybe rethink your evaluation of the class. I know, that not all the spells here are exclusive to the wizard, but if your read only the first page of this thread, you will see that the wizardspell list is not only the biggest spell list but also the spell list with the greatest versatility AND the spelllist with combines nearl all of the most pwerful spells in the game. Sure some classes may get access to one or two of the wizards spells, but as a wizard you have acces to all of them.
Dealing damage isn't ALL a character should do. That's boring and usually the role in which we position beginners to learn the game. That said, all of D&D revolves around defeating enemies, again and again and again, and therefore dealing damage. But you missed my point. The total number of spells available to the Wizard is what I claim sucks. In second edition, a 20th level wizard had 37 total spell slots. In fifth edition, a 20th level mage has only 22 total spell slots, and access to fewer spells like the ones listed above by RonKubo.
That's what sucks. That's what we changed for the Wizard class alone and, it's improved the class immensely. Having access to 3 or 4 spells in the 6th - 8th level range is just, "better". Better for the class, better for the team, better game flow for the DM because the group isn't constantly looking for a place to rest... just better all around.
Casual part-time D&D adventurer