Arcane Tradition: Spell Permutation
The arcane tradition of Spell Permutation is a fan subclass for 5e's wizard class. This tradition builds and improves on one of the wizard's key trait - spell versatility. Practitioners of that tradition are commonly called permuters.
There are two themes: allowing permuters to cast known but not prepared spells, and encouraging them to vary their spell choices, both at preparation time and at casting time. These two themes are designed to complement each other.
Features
Spell Rearrangement
You learn how to more speedily prepare spells.
Starting at 2nd level when you choose this school, when you use your Arcane Recovery feature to regain spell slots, you may also change your prepared spell list as if you have just finished a long rest.
Spontaneous Casting
You know how to manipulate your preparations on-the-fly to satisfy the requirements for other spells.
Starting at 2nd level when you choose this school, you may cast any non-cantrip spell that you have in your spellbook, even if you do not have that spell prepared. The spell uses a spell slot as usual.
Once you cast a spell this way, you cannot do so again until you finish a short or long rest.
School Resonance
You learn how to spot and utilize residual energy from your spellcasting, in order to enhance complementing follow-up spells.
Starting at 6th level, after you cast a spell on your turn using a spell slot, you may use a bonus action to randomly choose a school of magic by rolling a d8 on the table below.
| Result | School |
|---|---|
| 1 | Abjuration |
| 2 | Conjuration |
| 3 | Divination |
| 4 | Enchantment |
| 5 | Evocation |
| 6 | Illusion |
| 7 | Necromancy |
| 8 | Transmutation |
When you do so, for the next minute, the first time you cast a spell of that school using a spell slot between level 1 and 5, it assumes a spell level 1 level higher than the slot used to cast it.
Improved Spontaneous Casting
You master the ability to adapt and mutate your preperations on the spot.
Starting at 10th level, you may now use Spontaneous Casting a number of times equals to your intelligence modifier (a minimum of 1) between short or long rests.
School Reverberation
You learn how to spot more subtle interactions from residual spellcasting energy.
Starting at 14th level, whenever you roll on the School Resonance school table, roll twice. School Resonance's spell-level increase will affect the first spell you cast provided that is from either of the rolled schools of magic, provided all the other School Resonance conditions apply.
Printout
Print to track Spell Permutation ability use during game.
Spell Permutation Bookkeeping
Spontaneous Casting
+2+3+4+5+6+7+8
1 Abjuration
2 Conjuration
3 Divination
4 Enchantment
5 Evocation
6 Illusion
7 Necromancy
8 Transmutation
Design
Overview
This subclass starts out with one significant iconic ability - Spontaneous Casting; the other 2nd level ability, Spell Rearrangement, is more of a ribbon. Spontaneous Casting is the main differentiator, opening up an option no other wizard has, although at first it's only actually usable once per short rest. Its utility explodes at level 10 with Improved Spontaneous Casting.
School Resonance has a powerful effect, but its very sporadic. As the wizard's spell list grows it becomes more and more accessible, and the level 10 and level 14 abilities make it stronger, so that by late game it becomes frequent and makes permuters comparable in strength to other wizard subclasses.
Comparable Subclasses
Casting unprepared spells is a feature of other fan subclasses as well, and has also been covered in some WotC Unearthed Arcana subclasses. I tried to come up with a system that can do that while remaining (1) simple, (2) powerful, but (3) limited in uses.
Feature Details
Spell Rearrangement
Using this is obviously useful for dropping spells that are no longer meaningfully usable (such as Mage Armor, or spells at levels higher than what the wizard can still cast). But it's also useful in the more generic way of adapting to changing situations throughout the day.
Balance
This feature is certainly useful, but not especially powerful. It's stronger than the 2nd-level "savant" feature of other wizard subclasses; but on the other hand war mages and bladesingers also have an extra 2nd-level ability which is stronger than the "savant" features.
Also pay attention this is not triggered by any short rest, but only by using Arcane Recovery; so it's a once-per-day ability.
Spontaneous Casting
The simplest and probably most iconic feature, Spontaneous Casting is the permuter's hallmark trait. It maintains its usefulness from early to late game, and makes permuters distinct from other wizards by the supreme level of their flexibility.
Uses
The most obvious use is to free up spell options by allowing a wizard to skip on preparing highly situational spells such as Feather Fall or Remove Curse. Instead, the wizard can focus on preparing solid staples while relying on this feature for the outlying cases.
As wizards almost always start with more known spells than prepared spells, and then gain 2 known but only 1 prepared spell per wizard level, this features remains useful from early to late game.
Use Frequency
Once / short rest is a pretty low frequency - comparable to diviners' Portent, which is a stronger ability. On the other hand, Spontaneous Casting is arguably useful even on days in which it wasn't used at all, just by the virtue of being able to skip important but highly situational spells during spell preparation.
Complexity
While the feature itself is very simple, there's a hidden complexity it introduces: an unprepared player might slow the game down by poring over rule books to discover appropriate spells, at each of their turns.
Thus, a player playing a permuter should have good familiarity with their entire repertoire of spells, not just their prepared spells; hopefully this can grow organically as known spells are obtained slowly.
Balance
Unlike many other 2nd-level wizard subclass features, this feature does not confer a mechanical advantage beyond improving flexibility. It's certainly powerful; but it's comparable to other 2nd-level abilities, and its once per short rest limit ensures that using it carries a significant opportunity cost of not being able to use it later.
Early Game
At low levels this allows the wizard to skip preparing highly situational spells such as Feather Fall, and still enjoy their benefits. But its usefulness is constrained by the limited number of overall spells that a low-level wizard knows.
Mid-Game
At mid-game this feature starts to significantly improve the number of options it adds to the wizard. On the other hand, at this level the wizard has enough spells slots that relying solely on this feature can be dangerous, as it's limited to once per short rest; so situational spells that probably see more use at this level - such as Shield and Counterspell - might still be important to prepare.
Late Game
Once level 10 is reached, things change; this is discussed in Improved Spontaneous Casting's balance entry.
School Resonance
This feature is designed to encourage permuters to diversify their spell selection, both when preparing spells (to ensure they have spells of many schools available) and during combat (to enjoy the benefit of the currently-enhanced school). It can lead to cool scenes of the wizard alternating between different kinds of spells (control, protection, damage) to enjoy the upcasting benefit, as opposed to just shooting the same boring damage spell on every turn.
Upcasting Effect
The choice of using upcasting as the resonance effect, as opposed to other benefits, was selected for a few reasons:
-
It can apply to spells across all schools of magic, whereas other spell-empowering effect are usually not as flexible, for example a war mage's Power Surge (damaging spells only) or a sorcerer's Heightened Spell (spells with saving throws only).
-
It's something wizards can already do, so it doesn't introduce a spell modifier that would step on sorcerers' toes.
-
I considered a non-spell modifier effect such as providing short-term protection to the wizard. But I can't be sure that's beneficial to the wizard at that point, while an upcast is guaranteed to be beneficial considering casting the spell is the action the wizard chose in the first place.
Bonus Action
The choice of having the feature require a bonus action (as opposed to a reaction or to just always happen on a cast) was done for the following reasons:
- It makes it harder to forget to use this ability.
- It prevents this ability from being triggered during a different creature's turn (e.g. from the wizard casting a spell on reaction), which could be disruptive the game flow.
- It involves this ability in the action economy, introducing a (small but not trivial) price for using it.
Complexity
School Resonance is easily the most complex aspect of this subclass, but it isn't by itself too difficult to track - just list the currently-enhanced school. The tracker provided in the first page can help with that.
Balance
Probably the biggest balance question in this entire subclass is why an upcast. The two immediate questions are how powerful is an upcast and how frequently the effect would trigger.
Upcast impact
Some upcasting examples:
| Spell | Benefit per level |
Average impact of a 1-level upcast |
|---|---|---|
| Scorching Ray | +2d6 damage | +7.5 damage |
| Fireball | +1d6 damage | +3.5 damage |
| Acid Arrow | +2d4 damage | +5 damage |
| Cone of Cold | +1d8 damage | +4.5 damage |
| Hold Person | +1 target | +1 target |
These are roughly comparable to an evoker's 10th-level Empowered Evocation or a war mage's 6th-level Power Surge. Of course Empowered Evocation is a 10th-level ability and not a 6th, and Power Surge recharging is problematic; but School Resonance is also severely limited, see next section.
Early Game School Resonance Trigger Frequency
At low levels, this feature only triggeres sporadically. For it to trigger, you need an auspicious combination of:
- You have a spell of that school prepared.
- That spell is better when upcasted. Many spells are... but many other spells don't have any upcasting benefits.
- You have the spell slot available for that spell, and you are willing to spend it.
- That spell is appropriate in the current situation. Remember that rolling the highly-combat-useful evocation is as likely as the practically-combat-useless divination.
By using Spontaneous Casting it can be easier to find a spell that fulfills conditions (1)-(3) above, but you only have one of these per short rest; and you still need to have the matching spell in your spellbook.
But the real question mark here is (4). In fact, it can be argued that even if all of the above are fulfilled, using an upcasted spell might not be as amazing as expected, unless this additional 5th condition is also satisfied:
- That spell is a good choice in the current situation; for example, if it's the spell that the wizard would have chosen anyway.
In any situation that doesn't satisfy (5), it can be argued that the upcast from School Resonance is not as powerful because it needs to be compared not to a non-upcasted version of the same spell, but to a non-upcasted version of the different optimal spell for the situation. And with 8 different schools to randomly selected from, the chance (5) is satisfied is vanishingly small.
Mid-Game
The usage frequency significantly increases at later levels, both because the wizard's number of spells (prepared and known) increases, and because of Improved Spontaneous Casting.
But keep in mind that to be fair, this feature now needs to be compared to a combination of 6th- and 10th-level subclass abilities from other wizard subclasses; looking around I definitely feel there are powerful options there that are certainly comparable.
Late Game
The trigger frequency of this ability can be further improved by School Reverberation; this is discussed in School Reverberation's entry.
Potential Abuse
Some non-combat spells gain very significant benefits when cast at higher levels, and in theory, it's possible for a permuter to repeatedly cast low-level spells until they roll the school they want, then upcast those spells.
Some examples of this are Major Image and Summon Greater Demon. However, while the advantage is strong, it's not entirely broken, and the potential cost of many spell slots offsets it.
Note that many other non-combat spells that enjoy powerful out-of-combat benefits have a casting time of 1 minute or more, which precludes them from ever receiving a School Resonance benefit. Examples are Planar Binding, Glyph of Warding, and Conjure Elemental.
Improved Spontaneous Casting
At this point, casting a spell using Spontaneous Casting isn't such a costly option any more; a permuter can afford to do so much more frequently, which further helps distinguish them from other wizard subclasses.
Balance
There are two powerful aspects here: the extreme spell flexibility it offers, and the synergy with School Resonance.
Spell Flexibility
With 5+ uses per short rest, this ability allows a significant number of a wizard's daily spells to be unprepared, a true departure from the regular way a wizard works. It means the wizard can now throw out an unprepared spell with little hesitation. But it's still less than the total number of spell slots available, and so picking up good prepared options is still important.
School Resonance Synergy
At this point, the high availability of Spontaneous Casting makes School Resonance effects easier to trigger. But two main limitations still remain the upcasting from being always guaranteed:
-
First and foremost, conditions (4) and (5) from the School Resonance entry still apply! With the school choice as random as before, you still need a spell from that school to be appropriate in the current situation, and even if it is, you might still "pay" the implicit cost of choosing a suboptimal spell.
-
5+ uses per short rest is a lot, but is still not enough to completely cover multiple combat encounters; appropriate choices must also be present in the prepared spell list to prevent exhausting all the School Resonance uses too quickly.
School Reverberation
The permuter capstone feature significantly increases the upcasting frequency from School Resonance, making it likely for it to trigger multiple times per encounter.
Comparison With Other Level 14 Features
It's obvious this is a powerful feature. But many other 14th-level wizard subclass features are incredibly powerful as well - such as the abjurer's saving throw advantage and damage resistance against all spells, or the illusionists ability to create practically any inanimate thing with the cost of a single 1st-level spell - and so this feature is balanced in comparison to those awesome abilities.