So, is it just me or does the Evocation wizard feel a bit like the red-headed stepchild of the wizard subclasses? On its face the abilities it has don't feel terrible but I feel like they are out of order if that makes sense... So what I'm considering doing is moving Sculpt Spell to level 6 and either making empowered evocation or potent cantrip the level 2 ability and the other the level 10. As always balance for the game as a whole and against other subclasses is important to me. What are you guy's thought? Or am I trying to fix something that really doesn't need to be fixed? 

A decent chunk of the subclasses in the Basic Rules SRD are like that: Evoker Wiz, Da Champ, Life Domain, Berserker…. IMO, they’re all the runts of their respective litters. That’s ⅓ of the 12 basic subclasses right there. Then Bard, Druid, Monk, Ranger, Rogue, and Warlock all have ringers in as their free subclasses. (I honestly don’t know the Paladin subs well enough to comment on theirs, and the only other choice for Sorcerer was Wild Magic and that 💩 just ain’t right. 🤨 Wild Magic scarred me for life way back in 2e and I’ve never recovered.)

I feel like they put Sculpt Spell at 2nd to try to protect other new players with their squishy low-level PCs from the equally new Evoker player so they don’t inadvertently TPK by suicide. Then they put Potent Cantrip at 6th to help those new Wiz players keep up more easily with the monsters and other PCs so they don’t get ganked while they’re still figuring out their resource management.

IMO, the real problems with the Evoker are as follows:

• Too many Evocation spells require Attack rolls which do nothing when they miss except waste spell slots. Too many of their spells that force saves force Con saves, which is one of the most common save proficiencies in the game.
• Between the PHB, EEPC, & Xanathar’s Guide, they have 6 combat cantrips, and half of them don’t benefit at all from Potent Cantrip. Out of the three that force saves, two of them are Con saves which means they would eventually soon be useless without Potent Cantrip, and one of those is thunderclap which means it can’t help but suck.
       Potent Cantrip would barely be a feature at all if it didn’t also apply to non-evocation spells, but too many players don’t realize that because it’s sandwiched between two features that only interact with evocations. When they do, and they realize how many non-evocation spells they end up using, it kinda feels “weak like week fish,” and they wonder why they aren’t playing a different subclass. 
• Most of their damage spells do fire, cold, lightning, thunder, or acid damage, all of the most commonly resisted damage types in the game. They don’t really start getting access to the “good” damage types (radiant, force) until 9th level.

Now, if Empowered Evocation got moved up to 6th level and got replaced with something just as solid at 10th, and it Overchannel did 1d12 less damage for Evocation spells than it does for everything else…. 

Here is some of my logic and thoughts on things:

Arguments for potent cantrip at level 2:

Cantrips are mainstays for Wizard combat Until about level 7 or 8 and their effectiveness and even use in combat after this is more utility than damage. So having 10 trips be more useful at lower levels really allows them to be the glue between your major blast spells.

The downside is that without homebrew, Toll the dead is the only viable spell to be used with this ability. And it is not thematic for evokers at all. So baring a good evocation save cantrip this ability isn’t really too “evokery”

Also for years the question has been asked why isn’t magic missile a cantrip? The general consensus is that something that can deal damage every turn no matter what, that requires no resources is too powerful, Because it’s forces concentration checks and allows the caster to force an enemy to perform a concentration check every turn. Potent cantrip does this very same thing…

Ultimately I’d be ok with dripping potent cantrip of it wasn’t a second level ability.

Arguments for empowered evocation at level 2:

Being able to add your intelligence modifier to your evocation wizard spells at level two would feel very powerful, and blastery. It would make the evoker actually feel like a first rate blaster, which right now it doesn’t fell like it is because it isn’t. It plays third fiddle to sorcerers and warlocks as blasters. To me this allows a blaster to be what it’s meant to be. This is when warlocks get agonizing blast which is star starts to set them apart as a good blaster.

Arguments at moves sculpt spell to level 6:

There are only 3 AoE spells to note that are below level 3 spells, Burning hands, thunder wave, and shatter. The first to have an extremely short range and very small areas so being able to catch one of your team in the area is easy to avoid. Plus thematically the finesse to sculpt your spells around targets feels like it would require more experience than the ability to force more sheer power into them. For most of the wizard sub classes the level six ability fells like the big one to reinforce the overall theme. Sculpt spell for evokers feels like that to me.

Possible 10th level changes if things are moved around to compensate for potent cantrip being dropped:

This is where I would deal with the elemental issue, either basically granting free elemental affinity for 1 or maybe all elements in that the evokers wizard evocation spells ignore resistance to acid, fire, lightning and cold. OR maybe allowing them to bypass one creatures immunity to 1 of those damage types the number of times per day equal to the the casters wizard level decided by 2 or equal to their proficiency or INT mod.

I think Overchannel shouldn’t do damage at all, I think it should just me limited to being able to be used 1 or 2 times per day.

Ummm… I think maybe you might be overlooking some things:

First and Foremost:

The Evoker is designed to be “newbees’ first arcane caster.” That’s why it’s the one in the Basic Rules. Here on DDB, they got permission to roll the Basic Rules and SRD together into a single document, but the actual Basic Rules only has 4 classes: Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard; and only 1 subclass each (Da Champ, Thief, Life Domain, and Evoker. Those are “newbees’ first martial,” “newbees’ first specialist/skill monkey,” “newbees’ first divine caster,” and “newbees’ first arcane caster.” Forget “training wheels,” those are the “learn your colors and shapes” subclasses. It is designed for people who have absolutely no clue WTF they’re doing so they can learn the ropes, without accidentally blowing up the other 3 newbees at the table. Please keep that in mind.

Re: Potent Cantrips

These are all highly popular Wiz cantrips that can benefit from Potent Cantrip:

1. Acid splash— Acid splash is the only cantrip that can hit two more than one creature at a range greater than a 5-foot nova.
2. Create bonfire— This one is actually a really handy multitasker. It does damage, can be used for battlefield control, and it can even light a campfire to boot if someone feels prestidigitation is a waste because it doesn’t do damage.
3. Poison spray— A bizarrely high number of people love Poison Spray because of the big455 damage die, and the fact that it won’t be at disadvantage if they get run-up on.
4. Sword burst— This spell is legitimately fantastic if you get surrounded. IMO, the only one better is word of radiance, but Wizards can’t take that one.
5. Toll the dead— And as you noted, this spell is great.

The reasons they put Potent Cantrip at 6th are:

• They don’t really need it sooner since, in tier-1 everyone is in the same boat regardless, when everyone at the table, including the monsters/NPCs are relying so heavily on cantrips, they don’t need that “glue” you mentioned yet because nothing is falling apart yet. They won’t start to fall apart until after they get their second cantrip damage dice and still don’t know how to budget their resource yet so they blew all their spells on less efficient stufff and got nothing left in the tank by lunch.
• If it came in at 2nd level, hey would not have an opportunity to first play cantrips normally, and then with the buff so they realize how much of a skin-saver it is for them. If those newbees, got potent cantrip at 2nd level, they would not actually have the chance to learn how cantrips work normally, would forget that and then get frustrated with their next character.
• Newbees have absolutely no ability to assess spells on paper and see the strengths & weaknesss. So newbees will inevitably make less than optimized choices. Hodgepodge collections of spells that they can’t cast because they blow through their slots too quickly anyway, and they will also inevitably need those cantrips more in tier 2 than more experienced players. (Heck, when I’m playing my current tier-2 PC, she is still using cantrips half the time. But I also knew how to plan for that, newbees don’t yet.
• Newbees are notorious for not knowing all the rules yet, and trying to figure all of that out and plan tactically for your positioning the following turn… not so much. That means there are four PCs literally bumbling around the battlefield every round. That segues into….

Re: Sculpt Spell

remember a few second’s ago when I mentioned the facts that they have no idea which spells are better or worse, which are redundant, etc. So they will have absolutely no idea which of the following available options are better to take, and which are not:

1. Burning hands
2. Frost fingers
3. Tasha’s caustic brew
4. Thunderwave
5. Aganazzar’s scorcher
6. Rime’s Binding Ice
7. Shatter
8. Snilloc’s Snowball Swarm

They don’t know that Snilloc’s Snowball Swarm is terrible but shatter is amazeballs. They just know it sounds cool. Nor will they know how to not accidentally blow each other up. The relative complexity between “subtly sculpting AoEs” Vs “MOAH POWAH!!1!1” is not the point. Putting safety wheels on the Evoker so they don’t blow up the Thief and Da Champ who are running around chasing each other’s tails is the point. They wrote the Evoker to prevent 10 year olds from ruining their own fun.

(Side note, Burning Hands is good, but by Frost Fingers is technically better if one expects to upcast it. With a 2nd-level slot they make par with one another, and with a 3rd-level spot Frost Fingers is pulling ahead, not only in damage, but since Cold is less resisted than fire too.)

Re: Empowered Evocation

Again, there are no Sorcerers or Warlocks in the actual Basic Rules, so that comparison is irrelevant for what they designed Evokers to be.

In addition, the vast majority of campaigns end around 11th or 12th level, and most of the rest end before 15th level. So WotC put this at 10th because then it feels like an awesome capstone feature since it would be for many Evoker Players.

Re: Possible new feature

No comment.

Re: Overchannel

Is he way it is now is technically more advantageous than your proposition since there is no hard-limit currently. If they really need to fire it up, they can. Personally, I’d rather have that option than not. I just think it should in some way favor Evocation spells a little because … well, Evoker. Ne?