So my group and I have been playing for a lil while now.. coming up on 2 years in a few months I believe and I think I'd very much like some input on my situation.
We're 4 players all of whom are first timers and all of whom chose our characters without knowing much about the game. I chose a conjuration wizard, at the time imaging this tiny gnome running around with his large rock elemental or mechanical golem buddy at his side.. thinking i'd be a cool concept. A session or two and a whole lot of critical and obsessive reading later, I realised that my initial idea was entirely impossible in 5e... not only are conjuration wizards really quite unwhelming conjurers compared to fx druids, the notion of having a permanent summon bigger than a familiar is also not a thing... So yea... there goes my character idea.
I spent the next many sessions trying to come up with where I'm going with this guy... I already feel like the wizard is such an open class that I wish I'd somehow narrowed my spellchoices down to a theme.. or somehing.. But I ended up taking rather generic spells like fireball and sending ect... all of which are useful and such, but I don't feel like I have any direction in my character's powers. Ontop of that.. this being my first character, I've kinda made up my character on the fly, not really having any real idea of his personality or background.. only vague notions that constantly shift because I need to be consistent with my past choices.
Our progression has been fairly slow and having just reached lvl 7 I've recently started pestering our GM about some homebrew to somehow correct my lack of theme... stuff like giving up a feat for an improved familiar... or having some kind of permanent summon... most of which he's been fairly open to, but I can't settle on anything and on some level I feel like it's too little too late.. Lately I saw the new unearthed arcane with a bunch of new conjuration spells which was great, and I even got the go ahead to use them from my GM.. but I can't help but feel that with my existing spell choice and character behavior that I can't suddenly start being "the summoner guy" when I havent behaved in that manner previously.
In the background I've been making up all kinds of interesting (in my opinion) character concepts I'd love to try out... characters with a clear personality that mixes well with their abilities... or fun multiclasses and I sometimes sorta wish my character would die so I could try some of em..
Thing is though... I love being a caster, and I love being a tiny gnome...I'm very much a know-it-all and I enjoy choices and theorising so It's not like I don't like being a wizard.. I just don't feel like im any specific "Kind" of wizard.. i'm just "generic wizard"... I want somthing that's "My thing".. something I can mentally point to and say "This is my focus"
I know the obvious answer would be "ask your gm if you can roll a new character"... but 2 of our players have recently rolled new characters and I feel like I owe it to the group to stick to it to keep some kind of consistency to the campaign... and frankly I think I'd prefer a solution that somehow fixed my existing character aswell... specially because I enjoy being a caster, and rerolling from 1 full caster to another would feel somewhat wasteful.
I imagine I'm quite an annoying player tbh, seeing as my slightly obsessive character research has led my to know a lot of the rules better than our GM.. So I feel doubly guilty going to him wanting special homebrew features lately :/.
I know this was a lil ranty but I'd appreciate any input. Thanks :)
My advice would be to try to distinguish your character with their personality and character, not necessarily with their spell list. This is something you can do immediately - no need to pick a new character or a new spell list. After all, it's perfectly reasonable for a wizard to research spells based on their perceived usefulness.
Try to get a Manual of Golems... it will fulfill the desire to have a permanent ally, you just have the problem that RAW it takes 120 days to finish, but you could probably work around that. It might be easier to just find the golem already constructed and find a way to take control of it.
Conjuration wizards can Plane Shift, make friends with extra planar beings, and then bring them back home at higher levels. That’s almost exactly what your vision is, only it’s an ally who you made friends with instead of a servant who is forced to obey you. Tongues will let you talk with them to make friends with them.
You can also use Planar Binding to extend the duration of Conjuration spells which will let you keep a conjured creature for 24 hours, 10 days, 30 days, 180 days, or a full year.
What you want to do with your wizard is very powerful and requires high level spells. But at your current level ask your DM if you can find some magic items that will start to build towards your vision. Bag of Tricks, Figurine of Wondrous Power, and Pipes of the Sewers are 3 possibilities that are permanent and aren’t over powered.
My advice would be to try to distinguish your character with their personality and character, not necessarily with their spell list. This is something you can do immediately - no need to pick a new character or a new spell list. After all, it's perfectly reasonable for a wizard to research spells based on their perceived usefulness.
I don't think a sudden shift into a clear personality would seem entire natural... but yea, you're right that it's more easily adjustable than remakiing a spell list.. The only theme Ive kinda got going in terms of skills is creation, transmutatino and conjuration where I found viable spells.. so perhaps I can shift my personality towards disiring to build some grand and then have my furture spells follow. I should also mention that roleplay at the table is certainly there, but it's not super extensive... I'm guessing it's cause it takes a while to be comfortable with those kind of choices.. I didn't even pick a voice for my char because I was afraid I'd end up forgetting howthe char sounded between sessions :P... But yea, somethnig to think about, thank you !
Try to get a Manual of Golems... it will fulfill the desire to have a permanent ally, you just have the problem that RAW it takes 120 days to finish, but you could probably work around that. It might be easier to just find the golem already constructed and find a way to take control of it.
I see suggestions like "try to find" something sometimes... and I don't know what the means honestly. Do you go to to your GM and ask him to put it somewhere for you? Isn't that kinda meta gaming? Otherwise.. perhaps go to an ingame library and read about it? I haven't done something like this before.. hm... Oh yea this isn't a dig at your suggestion of course ^^
Even if I found a manual I'd never get the money though.. I'm currently sitting at 45 gold and the group has 1,5 magic items collectively.. :(
Conjuration wizards can Plane Shift, make friends with extra planar beings, and then bring them back home at higher levels. That’s almost exactly what your vision is, only it’s an ally who you made friends with instead of a servant who is forced to obey you. Tongues will let you talk with them to make friends with them.
You can also use Planar Binding to extend the duration of Conjuration spells which will let you keep a conjured creature for 24 hours, 10 days, 30 days, 180 days, or a full year.
What you want to do with your wizard is very powerful and requires high level spells. But at your current level ask your DM if you can find some magic items that will start to build towards your vision. Bag of Tricks, Figurine of Wondrous Power, and Pipes of the Sewers are 3 possibilities that are permanent and aren’t over powered.
Yea I've been reading about the different spells people use for these things... it all seems so elaborate and expensive.. not to mentino high level. Planer binding costs a huge sum of gold, for an extension to 24 hour when you get the spell... which is pretty useless to me sadly... Only the very high level upcast goes anywhere near being reasonable, but that's at like 8th or 9th level upcast and I probably wont be seeing those levels for years.
Apparently it's high level and powerful ? I don't know why... Our artificer party member has a mechanical dog with him and variant rules beastmaster has a pretty good pet mechanic.. Honestly I was just hoping for the conjurer to actually be sort of a summoner pet class... which is my fault for not reading the spell/feature selection properly I guess... just feels so weird that I'm the subclass I'd expect to be THE guy to have summons and everyone in my party has equal or better abilities to summon stuff.
Sorry, got off on a rant again there.. As for the items.. hm yea... As I said to transmorpher.. we're not exactly swimming in magical items (aside from a self cleaning rug, we've got 1 item between us) so I don't think those are options, besides they're all kinda minimal flavor things. But thank you for the suggestions :)
What I'm looking for isn't so much to forfull my originak vision.. because I've accepted it's pretty much impossible in 5e. What I'm hoping to get is some perhaps some guidance to find a a new direction or a new vision.. something I can feel that the character "is" so to speak... I want a theme you know.. Not that I expect miracles from anyone, just thought maybe someone had ideas for starting to build towards a theme in the near furture.
Don't get me wrong.. Even though I think conjuration wizard is really underwhelming in I'm not blaming the game for my situation, this is entirely my own fault for not reading things through and not having a proper character direction from the beginning. Speaking of... I actually think most wizard subclasses are really boring... I prefer subclasses that change the way you think about the class overall, where as wizard subclasses are just icing on pre-existing wizard cake.
There's no harm in suggesting a specific item to your DM. It might even inspire them to create a scenario built around it. As long as you don't badger them about it constantly I don't see a problem with it. That said, in-character you could simply have that be a thing your character starts to look for when coming across libraries or book stores whenever the opportunity arises.
"Tiny gnome running around with his large rock elemental or mechanical golem buddy at his side"
Have you looked at the Battlesmith Artificer? Cause that's essentially it. Like literally.
As for your current conundrum...got me. I find wizards boring. Essentially magical bookworms. I think the Lore Master school is awesome, but so OP it should never leave the UA.
What about joining a second campaign? With the world on lockdown I think you may have the time...unless you got kids.
Regarding the shift to suddenly being the "summon guy", one point might be to try to work with your DM on how you *got* those spells; make it a narrative moment instead of just "well I leveled so cool, mine now". How a wizard treats their spells can be a whole interesting thing in and of itself, and if you haven't been doing that - that actually works fine. Your Wizard has been picking spells because he feels they're useful, but he hasn't been overly enthused with any of them; they're tools to solve problems and that's all.
But he finds this summoning spell - a scroll in the back of a dusty shop, or buried in a dungeon, or somewhere else that makes it appropriate for it to be a narrative moment - and he falls in love. It's not uncommon to find a hobby that you fall in love with that you just didn't know existed before, and you can very easily leverage that kind of newfound passion to your character and his cool new spell(s).
might also be worth seeing if your DM would let you do some combining of spells, just referring back to your original idea for the character of having a mechanical buddy...
If you have Find Fmailiar + Unseen Servant ....get a suit of armour (half plate or full plate mail) and combine both ritual spells into binding your familiar intot he suit of armour, you lose the anaimal familiar but gain an animated armour (as per pg19 of the Monster Manual), I'd say a 1 hour ritual with a arcana check or two to see if you get the ritual correct. If the aniamted armour is reduced to zero hp then you cna repeat the ritual to re-animate it as long as the armour is salvagable.
If you then have or gain spells such as Summon Lesser Demon and Summon Greater demon see if you can then use those spells to turn your animated armour into a helmed horror (pg 183 of the monster manual).
You can then start to build the mythos of being the first golem crafter.
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I feel like I owe it to the group to stick to it to keep some kind of consistency to the campaign...
You don't. And I imagine they would prefer that you're having fun over campaign consistency. This is really important - you shouldn't be shackled to the first character you ever made for 2+ years if you're not really satisfied with it.
Besides, it's common for lineups to change in all sorts of team situations... sports teams regularly change, comic book teams like the Avengers change over time, often the cast of long-running TV series will shift over time, it's not unnatural at all. Your old character could even remain on the team as an NPC, chasing down adventure leads or researching info for the party to use. It can actually be really fun to have a group of retired-from-PC-but-not-adventuring characters to provide storyline support or even do little sidequests when the players want to change things up for a couple sessions.
That being said, if you have a DM willing to work with you (and it seems like you do), it's totally possible to have your character undergo some kind of momentous event that totally changes their abilities (or even just their spellbook if that's all you need). I'd try to work out something like that with the DM so you can keep what you want and change the rest.
My advice would be to try to distinguish your character with their personality and character, not necessarily with their spell list. This is something you can do immediately - no need to pick a new character or a new spell list. After all, it's perfectly reasonable for a wizard to research spells based on their perceived usefulness.
Step 2: Speak with your DM. The Manual of Golems has been brought up, but there's also the Shield Guardian you can create, and there's a line of items such as the Stone of Controlling Earth Elementals and the Censer of Controlling Air Elementals that allow you to summon Elementals using just your action and almost give you what you want; The main deviation being that they only last 1 hour and you have to concentrate, but if that's an issue talk to your DM. You could also create a Homunculus and ask your DM if you can make a big one, or ask your DM if you can trap summoned elementals to make Elemental Gems for later use. If you need help achieving your character idea then ask your DM for some cool stuff first and foremost.
I kind of agree that Conjuration Wizard is underwhelming and may require some help depending on the mental picture you have for them. If you're trying to play them as a creature summoner as you are then it can be a little rough with the long cast time of their creature summoning spells. They're very good at moving things around though, and at summoning destructive forces such as fire or deadly fog, which is mainly what they're aimed at I feel. Thankfully, there are a lot of cool magical items that can help give you a real summoner feel.
So my group and I have been playing for a lil while now.. coming up on 2 years in a few months I believe and I think I'd very much like some input on my situation.
We're 4 players all of whom are first timers and all of whom chose our characters without knowing much about the game. I chose a conjuration wizard, at the time imaging this tiny gnome running around with his large rock elemental or mechanical golem buddy at his side.. thinking i'd be a cool concept. A session or two and a whole lot of critical and obsessive reading later, I realised that my initial idea was entirely impossible in 5e... not only are conjuration wizards really quite unwhelming conjurers compared to fx druids, the notion of having a permanent summon bigger than a familiar is also not a thing... So yea... there goes my character idea.
I spent the next many sessions trying to come up with where I'm going with this guy... I already feel like the wizard is such an open class that I wish I'd somehow narrowed my spellchoices down to a theme.. or somehing.. But I ended up taking rather generic spells like fireball and sending ect... all of which are useful and such, but I don't feel like I have any direction in my character's powers. Ontop of that.. this being my first character, I've kinda made up my character on the fly, not really having any real idea of his personality or background.. only vague notions that constantly shift because I need to be consistent with my past choices.
Our progression has been fairly slow and having just reached lvl 7 I've recently started pestering our GM about some homebrew to somehow correct my lack of theme... stuff like giving up a feat for an improved familiar... or having some kind of permanent summon... most of which he's been fairly open to, but I can't settle on anything and on some level I feel like it's too little too late.. Lately I saw the new unearthed arcane with a bunch of new conjuration spells which was great, and I even got the go ahead to use them from my GM.. but I can't help but feel that with my existing spell choice and character behavior that I can't suddenly start being "the summoner guy" when I havent behaved in that manner previously.
In the background I've been making up all kinds of interesting (in my opinion) character concepts I'd love to try out... characters with a clear personality that mixes well with their abilities... or fun multiclasses and I sometimes sorta wish my character would die so I could try some of em..
Thing is though... I love being a caster, and I love being a tiny gnome...I'm very much a know-it-all and I enjoy choices and theorising so It's not like I don't like being a wizard.. I just don't feel like im any specific "Kind" of wizard.. i'm just "generic wizard"... I want somthing that's "My thing".. something I can mentally point to and say "This is my focus"
I know the obvious answer would be "ask your gm if you can roll a new character"... but 2 of our players have recently rolled new characters and I feel like I owe it to the group to stick to it to keep some kind of consistency to the campaign... and frankly I think I'd prefer a solution that somehow fixed my existing character aswell... specially because I enjoy being a caster, and rerolling from 1 full caster to another would feel somewhat wasteful.
I imagine I'm quite an annoying player tbh, seeing as my slightly obsessive character research has led my to know a lot of the rules better than our GM.. So I feel doubly guilty going to him wanting special homebrew features lately :/.
I know this was a lil ranty but I'd appreciate any input. Thanks :)
Hm. Interesting situation.
My advice would be to try to distinguish your character with their personality and character, not necessarily with their spell list. This is something you can do immediately - no need to pick a new character or a new spell list. After all, it's perfectly reasonable for a wizard to research spells based on their perceived usefulness.
Try to get a Manual of Golems... it will fulfill the desire to have a permanent ally, you just have the problem that RAW it takes 120 days to finish, but you could probably work around that. It might be easier to just find the golem already constructed and find a way to take control of it.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Conjuration wizards can Plane Shift, make friends with extra planar beings, and then bring them back home at higher levels. That’s almost exactly what your vision is, only it’s an ally who you made friends with instead of a servant who is forced to obey you. Tongues will let you talk with them to make friends with them.
You can also use Planar Binding to extend the duration of Conjuration spells which will let you keep a conjured creature for 24 hours, 10 days, 30 days, 180 days, or a full year.
What you want to do with your wizard is very powerful and requires high level spells. But at your current level ask your DM if you can find some magic items that will start to build towards your vision. Bag of Tricks, Figurine of Wondrous Power, and Pipes of the Sewers are 3 possibilities that are permanent and aren’t over powered.
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I don't think a sudden shift into a clear personality would seem entire natural... but yea, you're right that it's more easily adjustable than remakiing a spell list.. The only theme Ive kinda got going in terms of skills is creation, transmutatino and conjuration where I found viable spells.. so perhaps I can shift my personality towards disiring to build some grand and then have my furture spells follow.
I should also mention that roleplay at the table is certainly there, but it's not super extensive... I'm guessing it's cause it takes a while to be comfortable with those kind of choices.. I didn't even pick a voice for my char because I was afraid I'd end up forgetting howthe char sounded between sessions :P... But yea, somethnig to think about, thank you !
I see suggestions like "try to find" something sometimes... and I don't know what the means honestly. Do you go to to your GM and ask him to put it somewhere for you? Isn't that kinda meta gaming? Otherwise.. perhaps go to an ingame library and read about it? I haven't done something like this before.. hm... Oh yea this isn't a dig at your suggestion of course ^^
Even if I found a manual I'd never get the money though.. I'm currently sitting at 45 gold and the group has 1,5 magic items collectively.. :(
Yea I've been reading about the different spells people use for these things... it all seems so elaborate and expensive.. not to mentino high level. Planer binding costs a huge sum of gold, for an extension to 24 hour when you get the spell... which is pretty useless to me sadly... Only the very high level upcast goes anywhere near being reasonable, but that's at like 8th or 9th level upcast and I probably wont be seeing those levels for years.
Apparently it's high level and powerful ? I don't know why... Our artificer party member has a mechanical dog with him and variant rules beastmaster has a pretty good pet mechanic.. Honestly I was just hoping for the conjurer to actually be sort of a summoner pet class... which is my fault for not reading the spell/feature selection properly I guess... just feels so weird that I'm the subclass I'd expect to be THE guy to have summons and everyone in my party has equal or better abilities to summon stuff.
Sorry, got off on a rant again there.. As for the items.. hm yea... As I said to transmorpher.. we're not exactly swimming in magical items (aside from a self cleaning rug, we've got 1 item between us) so I don't think those are options, besides they're all kinda minimal flavor things. But thank you for the suggestions :)
What I'm looking for isn't so much to forfull my originak vision.. because I've accepted it's pretty much impossible in 5e. What I'm hoping to get is some perhaps some guidance to find a a new direction or a new vision.. something I can feel that the character "is" so to speak... I want a theme you know.. Not that I expect miracles from anyone, just thought maybe someone had ideas for starting to build towards a theme in the near furture.
Don't get me wrong.. Even though I think conjuration wizard is really underwhelming in I'm not blaming the game for my situation, this is entirely my own fault for not reading things through and not having a proper character direction from the beginning.
Speaking of... I actually think most wizard subclasses are really boring... I prefer subclasses that change the way you think about the class overall, where as wizard subclasses are just icing on pre-existing wizard cake.
But yea, thank you all for the feedback :)
There's no harm in suggesting a specific item to your DM. It might even inspire them to create a scenario built around it. As long as you don't badger them about it constantly I don't see a problem with it. That said, in-character you could simply have that be a thing your character starts to look for when coming across libraries or book stores whenever the opportunity arises.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
"Tiny gnome running around with his large rock elemental or mechanical golem buddy at his side"
Have you looked at the Battlesmith Artificer? Cause that's essentially it. Like literally.
As for your current conundrum...got me. I find wizards boring. Essentially magical bookworms. I think the Lore Master school is awesome, but so OP it should never leave the UA.
What about joining a second campaign? With the world on lockdown I think you may have the time...unless you got kids.
Regarding the shift to suddenly being the "summon guy", one point might be to try to work with your DM on how you *got* those spells; make it a narrative moment instead of just "well I leveled so cool, mine now". How a wizard treats their spells can be a whole interesting thing in and of itself, and if you haven't been doing that - that actually works fine. Your Wizard has been picking spells because he feels they're useful, but he hasn't been overly enthused with any of them; they're tools to solve problems and that's all.
But he finds this summoning spell - a scroll in the back of a dusty shop, or buried in a dungeon, or somewhere else that makes it appropriate for it to be a narrative moment - and he falls in love. It's not uncommon to find a hobby that you fall in love with that you just didn't know existed before, and you can very easily leverage that kind of newfound passion to your character and his cool new spell(s).
might also be worth seeing if your DM would let you do some combining of spells, just referring back to your original idea for the character of having a mechanical buddy...
If you have Find Fmailiar + Unseen Servant ....get a suit of armour (half plate or full plate mail) and combine both ritual spells into binding your familiar intot he suit of armour, you lose the anaimal familiar but gain an animated armour (as per pg19 of the Monster Manual), I'd say a 1 hour ritual with a arcana check or two to see if you get the ritual correct. If the aniamted armour is reduced to zero hp then you cna repeat the ritual to re-animate it as long as the armour is salvagable.
If you then have or gain spells such as Summon Lesser Demon and Summon Greater demon see if you can then use those spells to turn your animated armour into a helmed horror (pg 183 of the monster manual).
You can then start to build the mythos of being the first golem crafter.
That's an interesting idea... I'll have to think that through... I think he might snap if I bring up another half baked idea I end up abandoning ^^
You don't. And I imagine they would prefer that you're having fun over campaign consistency. This is really important - you shouldn't be shackled to the first character you ever made for 2+ years if you're not really satisfied with it.
Besides, it's common for lineups to change in all sorts of team situations... sports teams regularly change, comic book teams like the Avengers change over time, often the cast of long-running TV series will shift over time, it's not unnatural at all. Your old character could even remain on the team as an NPC, chasing down adventure leads or researching info for the party to use. It can actually be really fun to have a group of retired-from-PC-but-not-adventuring characters to provide storyline support or even do little sidequests when the players want to change things up for a couple sessions.
That being said, if you have a DM willing to work with you (and it seems like you do), it's totally possible to have your character undergo some kind of momentous event that totally changes their abilities (or even just their spellbook if that's all you need). I'd try to work out something like that with the DM so you can keep what you want and change the rest.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Step 1:
Step 2: Speak with your DM. The Manual of Golems has been brought up, but there's also the Shield Guardian you can create, and there's a line of items such as the Stone of Controlling Earth Elementals and the Censer of Controlling Air Elementals that allow you to summon Elementals using just your action and almost give you what you want; The main deviation being that they only last 1 hour and you have to concentrate, but if that's an issue talk to your DM. You could also create a Homunculus and ask your DM if you can make a big one, or ask your DM if you can trap summoned elementals to make Elemental Gems for later use. If you need help achieving your character idea then ask your DM for some cool stuff first and foremost.
I kind of agree that Conjuration Wizard is underwhelming and may require some help depending on the mental picture you have for them. If you're trying to play them as a creature summoner as you are then it can be a little rough with the long cast time of their creature summoning spells. They're very good at moving things around though, and at summoning destructive forces such as fire or deadly fog, which is mainly what they're aimed at I feel. Thankfully, there are a lot of cool magical items that can help give you a real summoner feel.