Wizard Subclass Tier Ranking (Part 3) in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

this week's episode of our show has been sponsored by the grim hollow monster grimoire which is just launch on kickstarter our friends at ghostfire games are releasing this book packed with over 400 new monsters for 5th edition kelly and i love dark fantasy and this book is offering an amazing bestiary of horrific creatures abominations and undead monstrosities inspired by your favorite tales of grim dark dreary monster tales not only that but this book is going to contain rules for how to harvest monster parts and the crazy items that you can make with those parts also the book is going to be packed with tons of great advice for dungeon masters on how to make the most of these monsters in your adventures and encounters you can follow the links below to join in on the kickstarter now and now onto this week's episode greetings my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything dungeons and dragons including advice for players and guys for dungeon masters we upload new videos on tuesdays and thursdays so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode welcome to part three of our subclass tier rankings for the wizard in dungeons and dragons fifth edition what a long road it has been we have done the eight wizard sub classes found in the players handbook in part one and part two of this video series today we are going to be looking at the war wizard found in xanathar's guide to everything as well as the new subclasses for chronography and gravaturgy that were introduced in the explorer's guide to will wildemont which though it is a critical role based source it is still an official wizard of the coast publication we are saving the blade singer because it was revised in tasha's cauldron of everything so when we look at the blade singer and the order of the scribes in our next part when we look at patch's stuff we'll cover the blade singer then if you look on the screen right now you're going to see the criteria that we use to rank the subclasses we are pitting the subclasses against each other and not those of other classes keep in mind that we are not taking into account the role play and flavor that you might bring to the table when playing these subclasses as everybody might have a different interpretation of that we are maybe going to look at a little bit of multi-classing but it is not a primary or core mechanic that we are looking at for judging these subclasses as always we look at far more than just combat when we are assessing the subclasses although the ones that we are looking at today pretty much have combat exclusive or related features although there's a few non-combat things that you can do with some of them but we do consider how the subclasses augment the class in non-combat situations as well such as exploration and interaction scenes too so with that being said let's continue on the path of looking at these wizard subclasses there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling so kicking things off we're going to look at the school of war magic from xanathar's guide to everything this subclass kind of is a interesting hybrid between the abjurer and the evoker evoking both attack and defense to kind of be that battlefield wizard does it live up to that idea though let's see what it gets starting at second level you gain two core abilities of this subclass the first one being arcane deflection when you are hit or fail a save you can use your reaction to use this ability this immediately adds plus two to your ac or plus four to your saving throw if you do use this ability on your next turn you cannot cast a spell you can only cast a cantrip just note that unlike other spells like shield arcane deflection only applies to that specific attack rule it doesn't give you a buff that lasts beyond the triggering attack or failed saving throw also at second level you gain tactical width and now you can add your intelligence modifier to your initiative at sixth level you gain the ability power surge a number of times per day equal to your intelligence modifier when you deal damage with a spell you can add one half your wizard level to the damage that you cause to one of the creatures hit by that spell you regain uses of this ability only on a long rest but you get one charge of this power back if you end a spell with dispel magic or counter spell a tense level you gain durable magic as long as you are concentrating on a spell you now gain plus two to your ac and saving throws finally at level 14 you gain the deflecting shroud power when you activate your arcane deflection you choose three creatures within range and those creatures take force damage equal to one half your wizard level when this ability is now triggered so again because there's no limit to the number of times you can use arcane deflection you can keep triggering this power over and over and over again but if you do you're going to be restricted to only casting cantrips i think the introduction of war magic was something that a lot of people were very excited about myself included i think that the war mage is a really cool subclass to have and i don't necessarily think it is a bad subclass i do think however that it is outshined by a lot of the other options presented already to the wizard it doesn't feel like as good of an evoker as the evocation wizard or as good of a defender as the abduration wizard however the mix of these two things is something that is moderately appealing the ability to use the arcane deflection as a reaction almost every turn does open up a lot of cool options the downside being that it now limits you to what you can do on your turn but if you're already concentrating on a spell or if you just had a cantrip that you wanted to throw out anyway this becomes a really important ability to have i will say though that some of the abilities here that add damage actually don't add as much as it might appear on paper they don't really add up to an adequate amount especially at higher levels of play when these abilities come online and although this wizard does present an option that is more defendable and slightly better at damaging it doesn't really do anything that other wizards can't do in my opinion using the right spell choices or picking another subclass to really feed in to the play styles presented here the war wizard is a nice mixed bag but i think i want to give it a b ranking because it has its uses but you could easily be overshined by some of the better choices out there i think a b is exceptionally generous for this class i think this is a c in my opinion as you mentioned it's a blend right of defense and offense and this is like someone tried to make a delicious chocolate and vanilla swirl ice cream but messed up the mixer and now we've just got a melted blob yeah so the tastes are kind of there but the execution really fails arcane deflection competes with both shield and counterspell as a way of saving yourself shield will save you in far more circumstances because the plus 5 bonus to ac is a wider opportunity than just plus two plus two basically will only help you against an attack that either hit your ac exactly if it hit you by higher than two it doesn't raise your ac high enough to actually turn that into a miss so it's very narrow the saving throw thing is unique which could save your life a plus four is also a significant bonus for a saving throw but you know you're you're still going to be thinking ah should i be counterspelling this if you can right and you want to counter spell because you want to get charges back for your power surge right right and then the other problem though is that power surge is just a miserable amount of bonus damage right and think of it like this you get it at level six which is a plus three bonus to your to a damage roll which is pathetic frankly uh because it's half your wizard level at level 10 it's plus five to a damage roll which you're getting a number of times per day equal to your intelligence modifier well that is probably plus five so that's it's an extra 25 points of damage for the entire day for this entire ability now compare that to an evoker who got plus five from their int mod to every evocation spell they cast they're going to rack up a way more damage than you are with your power surge even if you're regaining charges of it so it's a miserable amount of bonus damage the durable magic of the bonus when you're concentrating on a spell is cool fine it's a nice little bonus and the deflecting shroud thing is again it's not a lot of extra damage but it is kind of like getting your change back for having to cast to use it and being restricted to casting tan trips so overall for me i think this is a sea i don't think that anything about this is bad i just think it's it's kind of it's a melted ice cream cone i i'm glad that it's ice cream i'm happy to eat a melted ice cream cone but i'm really disappointed with how melted it is i i can see where you're coming from and like as a big fan of ice cream cones when it turns into a mushy blob it's it's only partially as satisfying yeah you're still happy to be eating ice cream but you just wish it had hung together a little bit better so i mean when i look at this list of abilities i do want to say that there's there's some great options here and useful options you will use the options presented here but when you add them all together and look at what they compete against in terms of your spell casting and other wizard abilities and you compare it directly to the other subclasses that you could have chosen that might have either been able to double down on your damage or double down on your defense i still think there's value like if i go to the store and i just can't decide between vanilla or chocolate i'll take the gooey mess of mixing them both because i get both and there is value in that there is value in having both elements here we've talked about this before actually that um dungeons and dragons especially fifth edition is a game of playing into your speciality diversity in what a class can do if it tries to fill multiple roles can actually be a hindrance where it doesn't excel at any of those roles unless you're a bard who can do whatever but when we look at the wizard kind of diverging into two separate roles means you are half as good as the other classes that go full steam in those roles again maybe you want both but i can see i can see why we're giving it a c and i can actually um i think i can agree to that i do want to say that i don't think it's a bad subclass i don't think it's as good i i saw their options i just think that you could if you played an evoker and took some really good defensive spells or played and a juror and took some really good offensive spells you would be doing better than the war wizard would be flat out and evoker with shield and mage armor is going to be better at both defense and offense than the war wizard mind you a war wizard with shield but that yeah shield competes yeah yeah but but also i think that we're also existing in a universe here where the blade singer exists and while we're not talking about the blade singer today the blade singer also like blows the doors off the war wizard in in those capacities as well yeah i i really think that that you should consider either the ab juror the evoker or the blade singer before you even touch the war wizard it's it's not i'm not going to give it a d because it's not detrimentally awful it's just that it is not as good by a very significant margin as the other options available to this class i can agree with that well i think it's about time that we talked about the chronergy wizard which is a pretty new addition it came in the explorer's guide to wild mount and uh is the wizard that messes with time yeah like the uh war wizard as well right away at second level you also get to add your intelligence modifier to your initiative roles but you also gain the ability twice per day with your criminal shift power to force someone to re-roll an attack roll saving throw or ability check using your reaction and they now have to accept the re-world result you can use this to turn a success into a failure or a failure into a success at six level you gain momentary stasis as an action on your turn you can force a creature to make a constitution saving throw and if they fail that saving throw they are incapacitated and enclosed in a little force field they their speed also becomes zero and this is essentially like being able to cast hold monster on a creature without having to use a spell slot it lasts until the end of your next turn or until the creature takes damage you can only use this a number of times per day equal to your intelligence modifier however um but it doesn't require any concentration from you at all so you can have another concentration spell in effect and use this instead of a cantrip so at 10th level you gain the arcane abandons power this allows you to cast one of your spells of fourth level or lower into a bead instead the bead lasts for one hour or until it's destroyed or takes damage and you can use the speed to release the spell what's cool about this though is that you can give the bead to someone else and they can cast the spell instead the spell still uses your attack bonus and spell saving throw dc but in all other respects it's treated as if that creature casts the spell so you can cast one of your favorite spells like polymorph or haste that normally requires your concentration give this to your fighter and have them cast it it's kind of like being able to concentrate on two spells at once this ability feels like a limited ring of spell storing but the fact that you don't need to acquire a magic item to use it and you can just turn that spell into a bead there's a lot of versatility offered here yeah it's not really giving you an extra spell slot the point of this this ability really is so that you can take one of your spells and let someone else cast it which is the hidden strength of the ring of spell story as well at 14th level you gain convergent future any time a target within 60 feet of you makes an attack roll saving throw or ability check you can decide whether or not that role meets the bare minimum to succeed or one less than the bare minimum to succeed basically meaning that you get to choose whether or not the role succeeds or fails you use this ability as a reaction and there's no limit to the amount of times you can use it but do keep in mind that when you do use this ability you gain a level of exhaustion that cannot be removed except by taking a long rest the wording of this ability is a little bit strange it says you can decide whether the number rolled or is the minimum needed to succeed or one lower than that number and kelly and i had a little bit of a back and forth of a debate trying to figure out whether this was meant to modify the raw dye and then mods were added afterwards or whether mods are fact the dice roll mods are factored into that and my response to that was pretty simple that you know if you need to make a dc15 ability check and you have a plus three bonus then the die roll that you need to succeed is 12 so not 15 so this this ability should modify that inclusive of your modifiers in which case yes you're basically deciding does the role succeed or fail uh someone might rule differently and then that alternate ruling basically means you now have to metagame the whole thing and that just gets really ugly in my opinion yeah and that was that was the hard part is there is a way to interpret the wording here that basically says that if you select one minus the minimum role needed if they have any modifiers whatsoever it means they still succeed so then you need to know exactly what they have a negative modifier on so you can target that and the ability becomes much clunkier there were several sources that we looked at online that actually said that this was not the case and that it takes the modifiers into account and you basically do get to decide is it a success or failure it is poorly worded though but it we think that it it's kind of non-functional if it's worded in that way that mods aren't factored in at first it feels really clunky and metagamey if that's not the case in any case this is a stupidly powerful ability that is in many cases better than important from the divination wizard uh and that combined with the other features of this class this might be the number one wizard subclass i think this beats the pants off the divination wizard wow i never thought i'd hear monty say that it's way more reliable than important that's true and i do think that like the divination wizard who is playing with fate this one's playing with time but you're in a game where dice rolls and outcomes are determined by timing in a theoretical sense within the game so controlling time is a similar thing to controlling fate and you are taking control of the outcome of the randomness of dungeons and dragons yeah and the chronal shift is is kind of important light because you can cause someone to re-roll a succeed a successful save and in that respect you know thinking back about what my kind of personal issues with how difficult it can be to use portent it's way easier to be like the dm's like oh the monster succeeded their savings throw roll again right that's way easier to use than having to like figure out should i use portent in this case i do want to say with the last ability it does cause exhaustion and we have talked about abilities that cause exhaustion in the past in a bit of a negative light and i will say that there is a distinct difference between an early ability that you get that you want to use every single turn that causes exhaustion whereas at 14th level having an ability that you're probably not going to use every turn but that in the right situation can actually be game changing it can end an encounter if you have a spell that you need to land and you can just choose how the outcome of that's going to go at the cost of a level of exhaustion it is worth it it it totally is like to just be able to poke someone with plane shift and say bye bye you're off to the elemental plane of fire you just ended the combat encounter right there right and the fact that you can use this on things that aren't combat uh as well for your own saving throws for whatever you need is just gravy on top you're going to use it to plain shift someone to the elemental plane of fire though so i think without a doubt we're giving this an s chair yeah yep yeah and we we we just waxed rapsodically about the fact that it has portent but we totally understated the ring of spell storing sort of feature and being able to give a call one of your juicy concentration spells to the fighter or another party member or if you really want to get cheesy give it to your familiar this is the thing that everybody was looking for to concentrate on two spells at once you're divvying it up but if you're the only spellcaster in the party you can hand a concentration spell to any other member yeah it's great it's great it's worth mentioning as well that both the chronergy and gravitatory wizards have all these dunamancy spells which we haven't really factored these into the ranking of the classes because first of all these spells are gangbusters like the spells that were introduced with these subclasses are stupid good and i would actually say that if you are playing with those spells and the chronergy wizard it's like s tier plus and i gotta say the gravaturgy spells are really sweet as well having played them having used a bunch of them recently on a sorcerer they were stupid good but separating those spells from the subclass i think is really important to see what the subclass actually offers particularly as we get into the gravaturgy wizard which is about manipulating space and not time um and the first element of space that this class is going to adjust is density so a second level you're gaining adjust density you can select an object or creature within 30 feet of you and that object or creature either increases or decreases in density if you increase its density it is now twice the weight that it was before it moves slower but it has advantage on strength checks and abilities if you decrease the density it is now lighter and can move faster but it now has disadvantage on strength-based attack rules and ability checks the target of this ability does not need to be willing there's no saving throw to avoid it and it is super unclear how this power works when you use it on an object that someone is wearing or carrying uh it requires your concentration though uh well well it's an effect but visibility obviously the first thing i think of is what happens if i make someone's armor away twice as one much what happens if i wait make someone's weapon weigh twice as much does that affect their ability to make attack rolls can i just make my enemy light and give them disadvantage on strength attacks with no saving thrower or any way of stopping that because that's pretty cool it is cool and what's really hard here is this ability doesn't account for what it suggests the idea of changing the density of something has a lot of creative implications that are not detailed in the description of this ability if there is a character swimming after me and i increase their density my theory is that they would then sink but it actually increases their strength ability checks and saving throws so by increasing their density i've made them better swimmers if i have a armor-clad enemy and i make them weaker can they still function in that heavy armor carrying that two-handed weapon these are the sorts of things that aren't accounted for and also it's a second level ability so generally speaking second level abilities when there's an option that makes them much much more powerful chances are you actually want to limit them to exactly what it says on the page which means that this ability doesn't really do what it what i want it to do and it's kind of not worded in a way that that identifies it as all the things that i imagine it should do yeah the conservative dungeon master in me says that even if you use this in a creative way on an object that is being worn and carried the parameters of the ability because it has no limits to the number of times you can use it mean that you can reduce the creatures speed or increase their speed by 10 feet and give them disadvantage or advantage on strength ability checks and attack rolls so it's just weird because if you use it on someone's armor like what what is it is are you going to reduce their speed and give them disadvantage as as a dm i want to let that happen but also there's the other side of that that you're now kind of giving that player an ability that's way too powerful and endlessly useful it is really powerful it is really useful but it does require your concentration and disadvantage on strength-based attack roles is good it's not always worth concentrating on especially past second level at sixth level you gain gravity well if you hit a creature with a spell you can now move them five feet to an unoccupied space as long as they either fail the saving throw or the spell hits this also works if you cast a spell on a willing target so basically you can kind of bounce the targets of your fireballs around in interesting ways or your cantrips i've had a lot of fun with the telekinetic feat on my spellcasters and this kind of adds even more to that this is a cool ability it's unique too i wish it would i wish it occurred in more places because i like the idea of spells moving people around i have been surprised at how useful a five-foot movement can be but it can be so useful at level 10 you gain the power of violent attraction as a reaction when a creature within 60 feet of you hits with a weapon attack you can spend your reaction and one use of this ability which can be used a number of times per day equal to your intelligence modifier to add an extra d10 damage to that hit also if a creature is falling you can use it as a reaction on them to increase the fall damage by 2d10 so keep in mind this is the d10 extra damage and it's used a number of times per day equal to your intelligence modifier the average of a d10 roll is 5.5 so if you use this ability the the full time number of times you can use it you're getting an extra 25 points of damage out of it over the course of a single adventuring day either that or you better really be hoping a lot of people are falling and even then you're doubling that 50 extra damage which is a slight improvement at 14th level you gain event horizon as an action on your turn you can create a localized field of gravity that pulls creatures down towards the ground when hostile creatures start their turn within this area they make a strength saving throw and if they fail their speed is reduced to zero it's sort of like a localized evards black tentacles that you can spring up out of the ground except in this case it's pulling them down to the ground yeah and they also take 2d 10 force damage on a failed save and even if they succeed the save the area of the spell is difficult ground for them it's not technically difficult around it just cost them extra movement to move around it so it gives you this kind of force bubble around you that slows everybody down in your area it is as kelly said functionally speaking the effect is not dissimilar to a spell like ivard's black tentacles which would grab creatures and hold them and deal bludgeoning damage to them uh and you do have to concentrate on this ability too so this is a ability that you get at level 14 that is about as powerful as a fourth level spell or you can expend a third level spell slot or higher to use it again so when we think about the gravaturgy wizard again there's some really cool options here but my main beef with the gravaturgy wizard is that more than one ability requires concentration and this immediately means that these abilities need to be better than the concentration spells that you have at your disposal otherwise they become niche or borderline not necessary concentration is something that you can only have one thing that you're concentrating on so if there's an ability that takes up your concentration you're now limited you can't bust out any of those amazing spells that's a really big hindrance for me and when we compare this to the other subclasses a lot of these abilities are neat they feel on theme on brand for the gravaturgy wizard this whole thing radiates with with the gravaturgy energy but i also just don't think it delivers anything extremely valuable here that i would look at over another subclass option it's not my least favorite i still think there's one or two others that i would put lower than this one which makes me want to give this a c ranking um i just i feel like everything in the b a and s tier are definitely the wizard subclasses i would pick first i think it's cool and if somebody wanted to play one i wouldn't say they're making a bad choice if it feels on the theme that they want to play but i wouldn't pick it i was going to give this a b but i agree with you now um i really like the level six feature of pushing people around five feet yes and i do think the second level feature has some potentially game breaking interpretations but that's that's the hard part is we need to decide what the interpretation is and if we lean on the you can only do what is written on the page we can't take into account dm's rulings on on various interpretations of situations unfortunately the second level ability is open to an extremely wide range of interpretation but if we limit it to what's on the page and what it says it can do it's a pretty good ability yeah like there's a lot of ways that we could imagine using this to interact with the environment to do crazy things but but functionally speaking all those are going to require a generous ruling from a dungeon master who has to then interpret the rules like any any sort of thing where it's like i'm going to make this object that's over a creature's head weigh twice as much and drop it on them cool situational not necessarily reproducible in every combat encounter and i think that that one other argument says well these cool these are cool powers that don't cost spell slots that you can use instead of casting a spell and thus conserve your spell slots the thing is is that concentrating on a spell is the best thing your wizard can do and when you're not concentrating on a really good spell you are not playing your wizard optimally really like you you got to lay down in in combat situations you got to lay down one of the really good concentration spells and sometimes with many wizards and many times that i played a wizard putting down a high level concentration spell is the only spell i need to cast because they're so good so if you're thinking oh well i'm going to cast one of these abilities and now throw some fireballs and cast some cat trips and conserve my spell slots no it doesn't really work out that way and and overall saving a spell slot is not as good as taking a better sub class to begin with that augmented your spells i love the level 6 feature though with this i still love the level 6 feature and i want to like it the level 10 feature is garbage it's a pitiful amount of extra damage over the course of the day it uses your reaction to do it and the level 14 feature is a kind of localized evards black tentacles as we said which it's just it just doesn't feel good enough to be a level 14 feature i would rather cast of arts black yeah i would too yeah um so it's like one of those subclasses that like starts out interesting it's like it's like oh this is cool this level set the level two feature it's cool i don't know how to interpret this the level three the level six feature is like wow i really like that and then it just kind of yeah it takes a nose dive as you get into higher levels i think it'd be a lot of fun to play this character level six yeah yeah but beyond that i think it's definitely a c so up on the screen right now uh you're going to see our rankings for all of the wizard subclasses so far let's take a look at what our community thought of these three so our community gave the war magic wizard 12.6 for s tier 32.7 for eight tier 33.9 for beat here and 15.5 for c tier with a pretty sizable slice five percent or so giving it a d ranking so people like the school of war magic um there's a very strong positive response here but also just as much of a tilt towards the b and the side of it so i think it kind of solidly rests as a b yeah the the b is the winning number here and there is a large amount of c but there is definitely a large amount of a uh i originally gave the war magic uh a b tier and i think the community agrees with me on this but i there are both arguments for c or a tier here that are valid for chronergy we're looking at a 30.7 for s tier with 27.8 for a tier 31.3 for b tier 8.1 for c and just a very small sliver for d what's really interesting here is it actually gets more b tier than it does s tier but it's also one of the highest s-tier rankings surprisingly it gets more s and b than it does a i don't know what to do with this ranking because technically the b wins out but it's very clearly weighted towards the s a is there a wizard subclass that gets more s to your rankings uh only the divination wizard [Laughter] so i think in light of that fact i'm gonna make the executive decision and put this at the at the a ranking from the community but with a notable slant that there was a b response those of you that rated this a b should take a second look at the subclass i think gravaturgy on the other hand uh also under similar circumstances gets a 7.7 for s tier 29 for a 42.1 for b and 17.7 for c with a good sliver for the d tier rankings so here it's very solidly in the b tier ranking with a pretty sizable a response i i think as well you know the the the size of the b ranking here perhaps just might be a lot of people were unsure about this and looking through the comments in our poll i see a lot of people actually saying i didn't know how to rank these ones because they had just come out when we did the poll looking at that though it is also a valid argument to say that your initial gut instinct to give it a b might have had some weight so we we thought that it was a little bit lower on the scale but it is good to see that a lot of people are pushing these to slightly higher rankings than maybe we we thought so finally up on screen right now you're going to see the rankings we have given to all the wizard subclasses and next to that you're going to see all of the community rankings there's a little bit of a mixed bag here but it is interesting that i think a lot of the wizard subclasses are just generally good and as we've said before wizards are made more by their spell selection than they are by their subclass so at the end of the day playing the wizard subclass that speaks the most to you is not really a problem there are some that have some stronger options than others yeah there's several wizard subclasses pair beautifully with some of the best spells available to wizards and so the combination of those two things kind of kicks the power of the class up into overdrive but even if you're choosing really strong spells but one of the less strong subclasses or vice versa one of the stronger subclasses with a less good spell selection you might hit more of the middle of the road it's really welding those two things together where you really get into the full power of what a wizard is capable of so this has been part three of our tier rankings for the wizard subclasses in dungeons and dragons 5th edition tell us about which subclasses you love the most in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our absolutely amazing patreon supporters from the bottom of our hearts a big thank you to all of you on patreon for your ongoing support of this channel if you enjoy the work that we do here on youtube please consider joining our community by following the links in the description below and don't forget that dungeons of drachenheim is coming to kickstarter we've partnered with ghostfire games to bring this campaign to life as a 5th edition module you can go to drakenheim.com or check the links below to join our mailing list and be up to date on all new information regarding the kickstarter also don't forget to check out our live play in the worlds of drakenheim which is tuesday nights at 6 pm eastern on twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we've got plenty more videos where we rank the subclasses in dnd 5e right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

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Length: 36min 43sec (2203 seconds)

Published: Tue May 11 2021