Make YOUR Wizard 

I once made a Bard who thought he was a wizard, remembered his spells through mnemonic devices

My favorite interpretation of a divination wizard is that one guy who is like "sometime soon, this building is going to be burnt to the ground". Their party asks them "How do you know this?" and the wizard just lights a torch and says "No reason, but we should probably leave here, fast"

My Conjuration wizard is the son of a demon with the same name. Whenever cultists try to summon his father, they summoned him instead. He learned Conjuration to figure out how to stop that.

My forever unrun character is an eldritch knight that went to paladin school to piss off his evil noble family, but he flunked out and fakes being a paladin with cleric initiate

this seems like an absolutely great way to fix the "all wizards are the same" stereotype

Getting to the end of this video was really tough. Had to resist the urge to build twelve new wizards every second of the way.

I had a Goliath Wizard that had his spellbook engraved in his tattoos across his body. When he cast a spell they lit up.

Probably one of my favorite videos so far. Not "what can it do" but "what it can be". I like how he broke down the psychology of what someone who focuses on a certain school would be motivated by.

My current wizard character is a mousefolk whose ancestors were the equivalent of Vikings and uses carved runes and bones as a "spellbook" with an awakened spellbook as a backup. He's also our group's chef. He's also 7 years old (which is around a third of the lifespan for his species) and 2 ft tall. It started out as a joke of a character concept and turned into my favorite character to play so far.

i literally just started making a wizard/artificer that uses his own body as a catalyst, test-subject, and over-glorified experiment to become the world greatest living magic item. he has tons of stitches, holes, and soldered on arcane runes to modify his body so he can prove his dedication to invention and innovation

I absolutely love people break molds, like a rogue who took up the thiefing/hitman business to support his aging parents, and he then has to lie to them so they don't become concerned or afraid of him

Your videos have stayed consistently interesting since the start. While being experimental does mean being at the whims of fate a little bit, one of the big draws of your channel is that it’s unpredictability keeps it feeling rounded and new every time. Can’t put a price on that

Hell yeh. I’d love to see a whole ass video for how to break the mould with a necromancer.

I had a food wizard. Human variant with the gourmand feet at level 1. Cloistered scholar and found a cursed spatula that was his spell casting focus. His spell book was a recipe book, his spells smelled of spices, and his magic missiles were forks. The cursed spatula required him to prepare a nice meal everyday. Otherwise he would get 1 level of exhaustion (but only ever 1).

I have an aasimar war mage that is "the champion of Mystra" because her parents were some of the best clerics of Mystra, and now, Mystra rewards them by giving knowledge of the arcane to her daughter. The wizard hates Mystra now and just wants to sleep

I remember you doing something like this sorta when you were talking about warlock patrons. I've actually wanted to do a video like this myself, even. I love character concept spitballing.

I didn’t ask how to make my wizard, I said I cast FIREBALL

My first wizard was a necromancer. How I made him was that he didn't specifically use necromancy, but he saw no problem with it. It was apart of the magical spectrum, and no different than the other kinds. His reason was "If you turn a blind eye to 1 kind of magic, then you're blind to what knowledge lies ahead of you"

I want a capitalist necromancer. He sees the undead as perfect labor. His nemesis is the communist druid. (Edit: please, fewer arguments about the systems mentioned. Not the place.)

I can imagine my Wizard, studying year after year in transmutation only to leave wizard school and the best job he can get is a construction worker

Honestly, Enchantment is just Necromancy that you do on living people.

Hot damn this was a really good video. I keep telling my players that this sort of character creation creates some of the coolest characters, but now that you’ve put it in video I think they’ll understand it better. Thanks for being inspirational as always.

Currently in love with my wizard. I wanted to be a priest or someone of holy stature but narrow minded and poor at foresight, so instead of a cleric I made a wizard. He still fills the role of being knowledgeable of numerous things to be helpful. His efforts are focused on study of ancient texts of his God and the destruction of knowledge from those who would bring forth heretical knowledge. Even down to the detail of casting spells he reads off prayers and acts of bravery in his sacred texts and then evoking a feat similar to the act with the spell being cast, Thunderwave for example is cast by him shouting, "In the Lady's name, all that oppose her disciples words are beaten and bloodied"

"The more you make, the more you learn you can do." That quote can be applied to many things in life, you just have to go out there and keep making things. It doesn't matter if you start out bad, or if you aren't great at learning it. What matters is that you keep going forward and keep at it. At some point your hard work will pay off, and you'll learn to make something beautiful.

My last wizard is a lizardfolk that found a copy of a book from another dimension, went mad while trying to translate it and now just kinda pulls magic out of his ass, saying that the book is teaching him magic, believing that if he finally translate it he will gain absolute knowledge. The book is the french edition of the lord of the ring if you are wondering.

I started playing a Gnome wizard with the Order of the Scribes subclass. His story is that of an expelled student that now hates the arcane academy and its methods. Since he does not have the means to formally study the arcane arts, he just go on to trick people to show/give him scrolls and spellbooks (or just sneak into a library) and copy spells as fast as he can. And my DM keeps giving me "normal sentient items", which are slowly making my character go full schizophrenic while he watches the love triangle between his spellbook, quill and ink...

3:55 Kill Six Billion Demons! So glad to Runesmith knows about it!

Being able to glimpse the future as a divination wizard makes me wonder how high the rate of insanity is among them

Runesmith: “I can make a whole video on breaking the mold for necromantic wizard.” Me: Please do, that would be awesome!

Your character Chebus inspired me to create my own wizard. He was the son of a chef, but he felt something strange. His mom was a wizard, someone who taught him magic. As a way to honor his family, he became a chef wizard. He wrote his spells in a cook book, his recipes for magic reflect his equations of food. Mechanically he is a dwarf scribe who has the chef feat.

"He was the wizard of a thousand kings...and I chanced to meet him one night, wandering...he told me tales, and he drank my wine...me and my magic-man kinda feelin' fine!"

I love this concept. I also really like your takes on Enchantment, Illusion, and Necromancy. I've always though most forms of Enchantment and Illusion were more evil than most necromancy. I even once played a necromancer who just wanted to heal and protect people but realized too late they were going down a dark path so he decided to double-down and start learning how to actually fuck with life force

It's very simple. I see Runesmith, I click.

Honestly the first wizard I made had a sketchbook he'd draw in, and then his drawings would come to life. Only played him for a one-shot scenario, sadly. Don't even remember which tradition he followed.

"The only real constant between all wizards is a general understanding of magic and the need for a repository for spells that they can't remember." My Wizard Of Invention Who Uses Reckless Casting: Ah f***, let's see. Oh, I cast fireball.

Idea for a Necromancer wizard: A taxidermist.

the illusion part went a direction i really wasn't expecting since my first character idea was a gnome stage magician illusionist. great video! i would love this to become a series!!

Thank you so much for this video, it really exemplifies what i mean when i say that classes are mostly just mechanics for you to put a skin on. For wizards speciffically ive made a meteorologist evocator, a naruto esque illusionist with the spy background and whose spells are secret techniques contained in ninja scrolls, and a diviner archeologist who believes the past reveals the future

Some quick ideas for alternative spellbooks: -strings with knots tied in specific places -tattoos on wizard's own body -rocks. Not even necessarily runic ones, just funny rocks they find in streams -extension of above: literally just random junk they pick up when they learn something they want to remember. Broken cups, playing cards, spoons, chicken bones, dead flowers and other otherwise worthless stuff like that -little clay statues -sketchbook with drawings referencing spells. So kind of like typical spellbook, but without words. Maybe the wizard is illiterate?

"Maeby their lack of comunicative skills let them to seek aliens, demons and gods to make friends" I can't be the onlyone who thinked in YunYun trying to invocate a devil to be her friend

5:42 I miss Konosuba

"The more you make, the more you learn you can do." That's some tasty yummy wizardly wisdom.

I used to play a necromancer wizard who wanted to be a cleric, but wasn't very religious and focused more on the physical aspect of healing than the process of healing itself. His spellbook was part anatomy textbook with diagrams of muscles and bone structures and part dictionary with translations of different languages and religious texts he read when he was studying. "Raise Dead" was more "restart certain parts of the brain to make the body move again" than "imbue the body with a fragment of a soul". Of course, he couldn't actually heal, but that was his end goal: devise a healing spell for wizards.

I played a wizard who would cast spells with his war hammer, he was a dwarf so he had medium armor proficiency, but didn't multiclass

In my opinion, Aelwyn Abbernant from Dimension 20: Fantasy High is a very good characterisation for an abjuration wizard. -Spoilers for FH seasons 1 & 2 Context for people who don't know the show: (it's really good by the way) In the story, the Abbernant family is a very toxic family of elven wizards, with Angwyn being a controlling father and an enchantment master, Arianwen being a quiet but somewhat-caring mother, Adaine being the youngest daughter and a skilled divination caster, and my focus-Aelwyn; an abjuration wizard. Adaine is antagonized by Aelwyn and the rest of her family, as Aelwyn is very clearly the favorite child of her mother and father. Aelwyn, however, feels guilty and ashamed of her not doing anything, simply due to her fear of her parents' expectations. To summarize a long comment, Aelwyn is an abjuration wizard, and she makes so many barriers around herself, both magically and mentally, that she isn't who she wants to be at all. Her wards are a survival mechanism to keep her parents' favor, and can only come crashing down in the most dire of circumstances.

I'd love to see one of these videos for every class. Clerics, fighters and Rogues could benefit quite a bit from it I think.

My last wizard was a rock gnome that got obsessed with the Fae, and dived headlong into book after boom on the feywild. Most of these books were written by elves, so along with the more of the fey, he absorbed the Elvis biases of superiority, and truly believed that only the elves could truly understand the Fae. He left home for an elvish city to study the Fae, becoming a conjurer. While in the city, he got into a relationship with a elf who fed in to this elvish superiority mindset, causing him to slowly shed all aspects of gnomish culture in favour of the elvish, eventually growing to reject all things gnome. She crafted him a necklace that enabled him to forgoe sleep, allowing him to engage more fully in all aspects of elvish society. Over the course of the relationship, she’d add other transmutations to the necklace, changing his feature, granting him height, and eventually making him indistinguishable to an elf. However, the relationship was on a decaying path, and she broke it off after a time. The conjurer left the elvish, and now wonders the land, focusing their energies entirely on their studies of the Fae, and living every day trying to be the best elf they can be.

When talking about the focuses and motivations of the different schools, I can’t help but think of how much a love the Lore Master. They study magic for Magic’s sake. Like a Transmuter or Evoker but even deeper, wanting to know how the fundamentals of the force of magic work

Please do more of these! The entirety of this video was amazing to listen to, and I hope you do the same style of video for the other classes!

I just playtested the scribe wizard right before Tasha's dropped and it was fun. As a heavy roleplayer who loves to describe how they do things for flavor I found it super pleasing to swap out damage types and just do stuff that was cool or funny, like collecting spells with all different damage types so you can cast Ice Knife but instead summon a blade of fire, or lightning, or just a knife if you've got a spell with piercing damage! So much flavor for wizards. Love this video, do one for Sorcerers plz!

Really liked this idea/format. Finding new ways to make the common part of a class/character stand out has always been interesting to me. A bard that doesn't sing but uses paintings as his way of express, a wizard that uses his poetic skills to remember his spells. Would love to see more of this for other classes. As always, thanks for the great content.

Best wizard I ever made was divination. He was a homeless, con artist fortune teller who could actually see people's future, but he always just told them what they wanted to hear (People try to not pay fortune tellers if they get answers they don't like). Sometimes actually altering the course of their lives by accident from giving them false confidence. It lead to a variety of comical deaths and heroic triumphs for many NPCs.

Imagine a Divination wizard who saw a great disaster in the future, came to terms with it, and will stop an nothing to make sure it happens, no matter who gets in his way. Astor, the Prophet of Doom from Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity is a cool example, I totally want to play a character like this in the future

Id love a video this for every class.

Semi benevolent necromancer idea: A current or former military officer dug into ancient texts to find a way to protect her troops in battle. What she found was a way to make fallen enemies fight on her side.

I’ve never played dnd but I really want to, I was inspired by the critical role character Caleb widowgast to want to play a tragic wizard. The backstory I’ve though of goes as follows: the character was the first born of the greatest house of magic in his land, and yet he failed to meet his father’s expectations for his talents. When his siblings were born and later found to have the talent their father sought he would basically every shunned by him. (Potential allowing a dm to insert a reason for this weakness, like a different father or a seal). Things would come to a head when the father had efforts to distance himself and the family from the firstborn child, and to declare one of the other sibling the heir of the house. This would cause the first born to be approached by an entity who would offer him the power to prove himself to his family but it would b a trap. Upon accepting the deal he would fall unconscious and wake up in his burning home. When he eventually makes it outside he finds the dead bodies of his family and the figure he’d struck a deal with. The figure would reveal itself to be a demon and infuse the first born with the blood of his family to increase his magic powers but this would also leave him with the demons Mark. Afraid of being caught and accused of practicing dark magic. He would be forced to flee. Thus marking the end of the backstory I’ve described it to my friend as a setup where the party might thing they are looking for an ncp only to learn they were traveling with that person the whole time. Thanks if you read all that

Especially the wizard!

I would like a part 2 of this video where it covers the other subclasses of the wizard: School of Bladesinging, War Magic, Chronurgy, Graviturgy and Order of Scribes. Who agrees?

She wasn't super groundbreaking, but I had a tiefling wizard girl that I was really excited to play until I realized that our party had no healer... she was basically a sorority/valley girl wizard that transcribed all her spells either in glitter gel pen or by embroidering them onto her dress! I can't wait to play her in another campaign

Conjuration wizard, often used as a host for demons and ghosts by their parents as a child, became a demonologist and exorcist as soon as they got free and took up conjuration to understand, banish and control the monsters that hurt them

Funny think is, I'm writing a campaign that centers around a magical circus that travels around Faerun trying to keep some magical stones out of the hands of an old Netharese cult. One of the Lieutenants is a divination wizard that oversees the carnival part of the circus from her tent where she plays the role of a fortune teller. So, the bit about diviners totally seemed like it read my notes on the character. Oh, and the cult they're fighting against is trying to resurrect Karsus... So... um... Fun times ensues?

This is the best kind of D&D content: inspiring ideas for stories and characters. Keep it up!

Love the theory crafting video! It's a great catalyst to start coming up with some ideas of my own! I'm working on creating a character for each paladin multiclass, so and it's a ton of fun to expand on what text presents, play against type, and come up with something totally new!

5:53 My human friend once played a mountain troll with gauntlets of earth control; The D.M. limited the amount of earth to double my carryweight.

I'm gonna make a wizard where instead of a Grimoire with it's spells whritten to prepare, he has a recipe book full of sandwuiches, and in order to prepare a spell he needs to make and eat a sanduich from the recipe book to feel the taste, and remember the spell he wants to prepare and cast. This is gonna be a pain to role-play, but my "spellbok" will certainly be indecipherable, hahahaha

Maybe you could elaborate on things covered in "The Complete Guide to *(insert race, class, or specialty class)*" book series done by TSR in the days of AD&D 2e and how it can be applied/translated into 5e

I just love the thought of an Abjuration Wizard who grew up in a town obsessed with physical prowess, so They learn abjuration magic and claim to be their villages greatest mage, which They are because they’re the only mage in that village.

I have a wizard named Sedgby Carmichael. He's your stereotypical wizard, the frail old man with a stick (only four hit points at level 1). I pretty much just use him and his particular way of doing magic as a way of justifying the spell slot system. Basically, his staff has a large curved bit towards top; this is where he ties strips of paper/leather that has his spells. To use a spell, he removes a slip, and it turns into magical energy that he shoots at his opponents. The strips tied to his staff are prepared spells and arcane foci, and I guess he just memorizes the spells, or maybe he has them written down somewhere.

Bakuretsu bakuretsu la la la~

I made a necromancer recently named Kyra, and I'm trying to focus on the healing aspect of necromancy, it's so fun

I've made two major wizard characters that I've used in games. Both I loved the new angle of approaching it. One was a Human Divination wizard who was the nephew of a count, and while spending hours in the expansive castle library practiced his first spells, he went down the divination route after receiving a few disconnected visions that don't add up, so he wanted to find out the missing info. The other was a Dragonborn Abjuration wizard who was an expert at linguistics, and researched a number of different ancient texts to learn about planer travel and how to close dangerous portals and protect his colleagues with barriers.

I play a Lizardfolk necromancer who ran a mortuary as a means of acquiring food & income. He stole spell books off Corpses & used their magic to animate the dead in the grave yard to do tasks for him & basically run the mortuary for him. Now he’s a level 11 badass who started 4 cults. 2 of them were on purpose one of them just happened naturally & he isn’t aware of the 4ths existence. They’ll be quite useful once I’ve become a litch (hopefully next session)

I just tattoo the spell Fireball to the back of my left hand.

5:43 I appreciate the background “expurosion”. It gives the impression that Megumin is outside your door pestering you

i have a sweet little necromancer who isnt weird or anything, he's very respectful of the dead, and sees the undead he summons as companions

Man, I really hope you do more of these. A fresh new look at the classes is never a bad idea.

I mean yeah thats cool and all but I could just be an old bearded guy in a robe throwing fireballs.

I kinda want this video about breaking the mold about necromancers now.

I just bought your book yesterday and I love it. I love animals and especially of the magical kind! I was hoping to make a character dedicated to the research and study of magical critters in the world so the tracking system included helps out as well!

Now I have the urge to make a Alchemist Transmutation Wizard, whose spell book is actually various forms of alchohol. Absithe for Abjuration, Red Wines for Conjuration, Whites for Illusion, Whiskeys for Evocation, Stout for Necromancy, Ale for Transmutation, Sake for Divination and Fruity Liqueurs for Enchantment

"I could make a whole video on breaking the mold for necromantic wizards" Please do.

Uu. What do you know, this was actually something I needed right now. Thank you :)

Fantastic video. A wizard backstory I recently made for a weekly campaign was a college dropout whose spellbook is hastily etched in the margins of some throwaway class notes.

This was a really good video. I love out of the box takes on the Player's Handbook. I feel like many people (myself definitely included) get caught up on the PHB, and we end up making characters that we lose interest in. Videos like this really inspire me to be creative with characters I make.

I convinced my friends to all be wizards for the next campaign . . Our DM hates wizards.

*So what, ... Your telling me i can do more than just commit mass Genocide through Arsine*

I ADORE this series idea! As someone who's favorite races are aaracokra and bugbear, I love coming up with unique character concepts. Good vid, from one Logan to another.

I play A Dwarven Abjurer who became a mage inorder to teach his clan the powers of the Arcane, his spellbook was a stone slate that worked like a clock in which the pointer hands will point at the body movement and the words that they speak to summon the spell and the other would point at the components. All illusion magic would require the same movement to twine the magic thread into illusion. He was an Abjurer because on his travels, he met a young sorcerer/warlock, human and another player, that accidentally made a deal with a fiend when raiders killed his family. He chose Abjuration inorder to shut down his pupils wild magic surges and to eventually release the pact that the sorcerer made

My friend once suggested a spellcaster who can never remember any of their spells, and from their the idea evolved into a senile old gnome who spouts out nonsense, hoping for something to happen. Any words or phrases that do work are written down on post-it notes which get attached to his staff.

Fireball. That's all your wizard needs and that's all you should use...ever.

This seems like as good a chance as any to spam my own wizard idea: The wizard doesn't use a physical spell repository of any kind, rather a sherlock holmes-type mind palace. He doesn't need fancy inks to copy his spells in, but has to spend a long time in meditative concentration to store and categorize his spells in his mind palace. He doesn't need to worry about his spellbook getting burned up in a fireball but he might forget some spells if he takes high psychic damage or falls unconscious.

3:54 Don't think I didn't see the cheeky Kill Six Billion Demons panel

I've just realized ittachi might be a level 20 illusion caster...

Poggerz

This has given me so many good ideas for wizard character, I would love to see videos like this for the other classes

This all also kinda works for character writing in general. Every character has a "power" that effects the world around them, be it a silver tongue or a lot of money in the bank. As long as you know the basics of what a school of magic does (like Runesmith explained) the psychology behind that power can apply to however it manifests. Great work man.

I’m gonna just say, a Wizard should always have a physical object/s for their spellbook. The reason I say this is because it needs to be possible to destroy it.

Logan I would love love looove a series in which you just explore different character concepts you have, and discuss various ways to re-envision classes and so on. You have a beautiful mind and we the people want to hear what you have to say!

One of my players right now plays is a old elven wizard with dementia and perma blindness, and it creates so much fun with the type of encounters that can ensue, it gives me mad prompts to him taking an old trope and revitalizing it to something completely unique.

My favourite personal wizard is Kaldurag; a man so powerful that protecting the world was becoming boring to him, so he cloned himself (so that the world could still have a protector), made himself younger and conducted a ritual which would create mental barriers that manifested as rune-like tattoos on his arms. These mental barriers stopped him from remembering how to cast spells and gave him a clean slate with no memories. This "young"-Kaldurag doesn't know this and so puts himself intentionally in danger which he learner is the only way that can erode the tattoos that hold up his mental barriers and is on a spiritual journey to find the person who did this to him! Ah, I love dramatic irony