Arcane Tradition
Red Wizard of Thay
The Red Wizards are the masters of Thay, the would-be magical overlords of the land of Faerûn. They focus on a school of magic more intently than any specialist, achieving incredible mastery of magic within a very narrow focus. Seen as cruel and evil tyrants by people across the world of Toril, a few choose to leave their region, assume secret identities, and practice magic without having to worry about political alliances and possible slave uprisings.
Tradition Features
Favored School
When you choose this arcane tradition at your 2nd level, you must choose one of the primary schools of magic; abjuration, conjuration, divination, enchantment, evocation, illusion, necromancy, or transmutation. This school becomes your favored school.
When you learn new wizard spells as a result of gaining a level in the wizard class, at least one of the spells you choose to learn must be from your favored school, unless there are no remaining spells yet to learn from your favored school that are of a spell level you can cast. When copying a favored school spell into your spell book, the gold and time you must spend is halved. You also gain advantage on all saving throws you make against spells that are cast using your favored school.
You must also choose 2 primary schools of magic, other than your favored school, which becomes your forbidden schools, having lost the appropriate mindset for casting spells of that school, or perhaps simply having your rote skills in that area become rusty and inelegant because of lapsed practice.
You cannot learn any spells from your forbidden schools once you gain this feature, even with features from other classes, and if you attempt to cast a spell from your forbidden schools that is not a wizard spell for you, such as a spell from another class, or cast from a spell scroll or magical item, you must succeed on an Intelligence (Arcana) ability check with a DC equal to 10 + the spell level of the cast spell. You make the ability check at disadvantage, and if you fail the check then you fail to cast the spell, expending any spell slot, spell scroll or consumed material components used in the attempt.
Arcane Tattoo
At your 2nd level, you have learned the mystic craft of arcane tattooing, imbuing your skin with secret knowledge. Your facial tattoos publicly mark you as a Red Wizard, granting you proficiency in Intimidation, or proficiency in another skill offered as a Wizard starting skill, if you are already proficient in Intimidation. You can use your arcane tattoos as an arcane focus for any spell you cast from your favored school.
Additionally, choose one 1st-level spell and up to two cantrips that belong to your favored school, which may all come from any spell list, and do not require material components with a gp cost. Those spells become inscribed into your tattoos. Once you choose these spells, you can't change them later without the aid of a greater restoration spell or other comparable magic.
Spells that you have inscribed as arcane tattoos are treated as wizard spells that you always have prepared, and that you can cast without verbal, somatic or material components.
You can tattoo an additional spell of your favored school, from any spell list, at 7th, 11th, and 15th level. These additional spells cannot be of a level higher than your highest-level spell slot at the time you choose them.
Circle Magic
Starting from 6th level, you’ve learned Thayan secrets of joint spellcasting, empowering you when other spellcasters are nearby.
As a bonus action, you can attempt to drain the arcane energy from other spellcasters within 20 feet of you. Target a number of creatures up to half of your wizard level, and they must make an Intelligence saving throw against your spell save DC. Targeted creatures can choose to willingly fail the save. If a creature fails their saving throw, and has spell slots (or equivalent prepared leveled spells), they must expend one spell slot (or expend one prepared spell for no effect) of their choice, and then you gain a temporary spell slot with a spell level equal to the number of creatures that expended a spell slot as a result of failing this saving throw. A temporary spell slot created using this feature is lost at the end of a short or long rest.
Additionally, whenever you cast a spell as a ritual, you can have other spellcasters assist you, to speed up the casting process. Reduce the total casting time by 10 minutes for each spellcaster within the radius of this feature that assists you by concentrating, as if concentrating on a spell. The casting time of a spell cast as a ritual can never be reduced to less than 1 minute with this feature.
You can use this feature a number of times per long rest equal to your Intelligence modifier. At 11th level the radius of this feature becomes 60 feet, and at 17th level it becomes 120 feet.
Favored Focus
At your 10th level, you’ve become an expert in your favored school. Spells that you cast from your favored school have advantage on their spell attack rolls, and creatures that make saving throws against a spell you cast from your favored school make those saving throws at disadvantage.
Also, when you cast a leveled spell inscribed in your arcane tattoos, you can treat that spell as if it were cast at one spell level higher than it was actually cast at. You can enhance each spell in your arcane tattoos this way once per long rest.
School Zulkir
Upon reaching 14th level in this tradition, you have become
a zulkir, a leader among red wizards who practise your favored school of magic. When you use your Circle Magic feature, creatures that fail their saving throws must expend
a 5th-level or higher spell slot, or their highest spell slot if they do not have 5th-level or higher spells.
Also, whenever you cast spells you learned with your Arcane Tattoo feature, or using a spell slot gained by your Circle Magic feature, you can manipulate them by choosing one of the following benefits to apply to that spell:
- Increase the number of targets of that spell by one.
- You can reroll any number of dice that must be rolled
for that spell’s damage or healing effects. - You can change the damage type of that spell to acid,
cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant or thunder. - That spell is treated as one level higher than the spell
level it was actually cast at. This benefit can stack
with Favored Focus. - If that spell was cast using a spell slot created using
your Circle Magic feature, it does not require concentration. Only one spell can have this benefit
applied at any time.
Art Credits
Books - Default GMBinder art
Red Wizard - DnDtools SRD: Red WizardText Credits
Changelog
Ver. 1.0: First draft