Design Notes - Order of Mastery & Order of Spellshapers (Patreon)

The most obvious thing to dig into this month is another two-parter: our two wizard subclasses for the month, the Order of Mastery and the Order of Adaptation. These originated from a single idea, but followed two pretty different approaches — so I decided to go ahead and write them both!

The Concept

The idea here was metamagic - in the old-school sense, back when it was first invented in the AD&D Tome of Magic. Back then, metamagic was spells; not quite its own school, but basically a subschool of transmutation magic. You'd cast a metamagic spell, and it would modify all your subsequent spells, usually for a set number of rounds. So if you cast augmentation, for example, your next spell would deal 1 extra damage per die. Augmentation II (yeah, they weren't good at names) would affect your next five spells.

If this solution sounds unwieldy, that's because yeah, it absolutely was. AD&D's designers didn't really have a concept of "action economy", and metamagic spells only really worked with the old-school paradigm of "spend a minute casting all your buff spells in advance, then go nova on the enemies for two rounds". The idea of metamagic got reworked in every edition, but I grew up on AD&D, so I still have some fondness for that old (awful) design.

The Order of Spellshapers

I've actually been chewing on the idea of a metamagic wizard for awhile (and how to make it distinct from 5E's sorcerer-exclusive metamagic). The version that most resembles the AD&D implementation is what I used for the Order of Spellshapers. Their key gimmick is Spellshaping techniques. Using a technique is always a bonus action (reflecting some of the AD&D action economy pain, though hopefully in a manageable way). Some of them are even named after the old 2E metamagic spells.

The bonus action cramp is key to our concept, here. It is mitigated a bit by the Celerity technique, which gives you a free disengage; misty step is one of our key bonus action spells, after all. I think I'm more excited to see Spellshapers at a table; I think there's a lot of room for creativity in how you customize your spells.

The Order of Mastery

I actually wrote the Order of Mastery first; I had forgotten my original idea about bonus-action techniques, and didn't remember it until I finished this sub. This has a different emphasis and a different approach. Instead of the Order of Spellshapers and its idea of changing any and all of your spellcasting, Mastery focuses on just a few key spells. It selects 1 spell per level as a Specialized Spell, and can only change the way those spells cast. (There's no action economy penalty, though). Its nod to old-school sensibilities is in its 6th-level feature, Deliberate Preparation, which lets it prepare a single spell in a more powerful way. In general, Mastery's more powerful but less flexible than Spellshapers.

My big reservation about this is that I worry it will encourage the worst kind of wizard playstyle. Everybody knows it — fireball is their hammer and every encounter is a nail. They probably use all their 1st- (and maybe their 2nd-)level slots on shield. At 5th level, wall of force is the only spell that exists anymore. Prominent youtubers have made videos on how every wizard should be played in this same boring-but-powerful way. If it turns out that the Order of Mastery only gets used for that kind of wizard, then I'd probably just delete the subclass.

Which is Better?

I dunno man, I love all my ugly children equally. I think Mastery's probably a cleaner and more-standard sort of design, but I really do worry about that ugly play path. Spellshapers feels more likely to get play at my own table, and I think has a stronger future; you could talk me into deleting Mastery, but I don't think you could talk me into deleting Spellshapers.