Mike Mearls Games

Mage Character Class

Added 2025-07-03 14:45:43 +0000 UTC

Here's the mage character class, a revised version of the magic-user. A few notes:

I've shifted the class to focus heavily on schools of magic. The schools I use are more flavorful than D&D's. This document includes illusion, fire, and battle magic. I anticipate adding things like life magic for healing and summoning magic for conjuring creatures.
The schools are thin right now. I anticipate offer 2 spells per tier, instead of the 1 each has right now (and even then with a few holes).
Crafting is thin, but the idea is to make the mage the class that can create stuff, and the game offering recipes for sale as the default.
Implements are the biggest shift. They replace cantrips. I always loved the idea of a caster operating like Dr. Strange, with lots of tools they can use. Only mages (and other characters with the correct class feature) can use these.

There's still holes here in the spell lists, but that will be taken care of when I do the next pass on spells.