Tuesday, July 28, 2020

School of History | An Arcane Tradition, and when homebrew imitates life


My very first original arcane tradition! I have done wizard homebrew before, but as that was part of my Darkest Timeline project, it feels like it doesn't count as an original idea.

This was fun to do, as I've wanted to make a wizard for a long time. It's a silly reason, but it didn't seem right to be making so much homebrew and yet leave out one of the most iconic original Dungeons & Dragons classes. It was also enjoyable because I'm a student of history myself. Getting the chance to talk about this favorite subject of mine in homebrew felt really neat!

Wizard homebrew is interesting. One homebrewer told me that the wizard fantasy is all about mastery: a wizard is the "best" at magic, an evoker is the "best" at evocation, an abjurer is the "best" at abjuration, etc. So I wondered to myself, how could I make this wizard the best at history? What is history in the context of magic?

History implies the passage of time, so I settled on concentration spells as a means of kind of representing the idea. It's not quite perfect, I think, but it works as it is.

History Savant and Lore Mastery are some of my favorite "ribbon" features that I've been able to make. Spell History was tricky to make work, but with some feedback and tips, I feel like it's in a good place now.

Historical Model was fun, as I got to throw around the words I had to learn. One homebrewer expressed to me some mild concern that the words made the subclass a little too heady, and one person even joked that they weren't "educated" enough to read the tradition, haha! But you don't need to completely understand the names to enjoy what the features do, I think.

Wizards are pretty different from other homebrew I make, which usually is for martial classes, but it was a lot of fun. Enjoy!

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