- There was an Artificer subclass
that didn't make it into a book.
It was The Archivist which I adored.
I loved it.
I think you loved it, as well.
It was --
- I not only loved it;
I wrote it!
(chuckles)
- You wrote it!
(chuckles)
You brought it into this world
and you wrote it.
This has seen significant changes.
It is no longer an artificer;
it is now a wizard the scribe, correct?
- Yes, so when we released
the archivist originally
for the artificer
satisfaction for it was okay,
but there was a fair amount of static
in the feedback that we got about,
just what is this subclass?
Like even people who liked it
were often wondering,
"Why is this an artificer?
It's really bizarre,"
and what a number of them pointed out
is this feels more like a wizard
because it's all about words and scrolls.
Help, you know, that was
sort of the tone that we got,
like, it's basically,
we kept reading feedback
on the archivist of like,
"I really like this but I can't
make heads or tails of it."
And so that's why I say help.
Basically they were looking to us
of like, "Can you please
take these cool parts
and frame them in a different way?"
And so that's exactly what we did
with the Order of Scribes
because I think the feedback was right,
that it really was a wizard subclass
and that became clearer and clearer
as we revised it,
especially given the fact
that scrolls throughout the history of D&D
have been associated
with the wizard class.
Of course a number of
classes can use scrolls,
but as the supreme academics among
the character classes of D&D,
writing stuff down has typically
been associated with wizards.
I mean they are the only class
where their main class
feature, their spell casting,
is in a literal book.
No one else has to lug a book around
and study it to change
what spells they can cast.
So the word, text, books, scrolls,
that is the domain of the wizard
and so we took the archivist,
took the pieces of it
that people liked best
and reframed all of it
through this lens of wizards who focus
on being scribes
and not only making scrolls
but also making an uber spell book.
In the original archivist, the archivist
could awaken a consciousness
within an object
of almost any sort.
People thought that was cool
but it was a bit abstract
of just being able to walk
around and basically like,
"This rock now has consciousness,"
and as we were working
on the Order of Scribes
we thought, "What if we kept this idea
of the awakened object
but it's your spell book
that awakens?"
This book that is everything to a wizard;
this book that a wizard
carries everywhere,
that has all of the most
important words to a wizard
within it.
You know, wizards care about many words
but a typical wizard
cares most about the words
inside their spell book,
and so what if that object that is
the wizard's constant companion
is the object that awakens,
and so our answer to that question was,
"Let's do it,"
and that's how we ended up
with the awakened spell book
where your spell book almost becomes
like a familiar for you
and you can even then eventually cause
your spell book's mind to manifest
and you can now imagine this wizard
having a conversation
with their spell book,
which I love the image of that
because I love batty scholars in stories
so I find it very charming,
this notion of,
"Oh, there's Thadius over there again
having a long conversation with his book."
(laughs)
And, "Oh there's Martha
over there talking to hers."
- I imagine I would
have a very sassy book.
(chuckles)
I imagine the book, it's quite judgmental
by the time you hit 20th level
and has very hard opinions
about how you've lived
your adventuring life (chuckles)
and the spells that you choose.
(chuckles)
It's got like a lot role-play flavor,
like it's pretty ripe
for some interesting character moments.
That's what excites me the most
and it kind of, it doesn't
give you immortality
but it makes you a tougher
wizard at higher levels.
It's almost like a Horcrux or The Ring
from "Lord of the Rings" in some sense.
So that also has retained itself.
- Yes so we thought,
"What if your spell book
not only basically became your buddy,
but what if your very life essence
became attached to it?"
Inspired a bit by the fact
that wizards are the ones
who can become litches
but we thought, "What if right in
one of our subclasses for the wizard
there was a litch-like
option that was not sinister
because litchdom relies on you walking
the deathly path of un-death,
which, you know, that is always
a dangerous bargain when
it comes to person's,
sort of, the state of their soul
in the D&D multiverse,
and so we thought, "What if instead
the spell book itself
could power your life?"
and so what we came up with
is if you die and you are willing
to essentially sacrifice
spells in your book
you can come back and you start using
the spells themselves as life force.
Now the trade off is if you do this,
you lose the ability to cast those spells
and the only way to get that ability back
is through the Wish spell,
and Wish, that spell, has the potential
to become uncastable for a wizard
if they use it too many times
to do anything other
than replicate a spell,
and that's a very intentional,
that interaction with this design,
because really we wanted it to be that
this sacrifice is meaningful.
You have the chance of getting maybe a few
of these spells back,
but the Wish spell itself
even will eventually conk out on you
and so a wizard needs to
be very, very careful,
and hope they have maybe a cleric friend
who can actually bring them back
so they don't have to burn
their spells this time.
But they have that option.
- Yeah it's very fun
and it's kind of the same
(mumbles) of the genie.
The genie has this extra (mumbles)
entrenched in D&D lore
and that's why I already was on board
for the archivist regardless.
I didn't mind it was an artificer at all
because I just, I have a little
glowy friend I can talk to.
How could I not want that?
But now I,
I know love a lot of subclasses
but this is my favorite wizard.
This is the most wizardy wizard
and I adore it.
It is, whether you, whatever
type of story you like
whether it's like gothic horror or Disney,
this is like the wizard wizard.
(chuckles)
So I'm very excited to
give this one a spin.
- That also was one of our
goals for this subclass
was to create, essentially,
Wizard McWizardson.
(laughs)
And we were inspired to go that direction
also by work we did a few years ago
on the Lore Mastery Wizard.
That was a subclass that ultimately
got abandoned
and even though we abandoned it
because the satisfaction scores
just were not high enough,
the thing that was very clear
in the feedback on the Lore Mastery Wizard
is people loved the flavor.
So we brought some of the flavor
of that to the Order of Scribes
and there is even
actually a little feature
in the Order of Scribes
that is a nod to the Lore Mastery Wizard
and that is the Order of Scribe's ability
to change the damage type of your spells
basically by having your
book swap the damage types
of certain spells in your spell book
and if we end up publishing this
we're gonna end up putting
some limitations on that
(laughs)
but I love the --
- No!
- [Jeremy] just the general theme of it.
(laughs)
- [Todd] No limitations!
- It will still be, no,
it will still be cool and versatile
but almost always when we go
through the play test process
the final version of
something will end up having
a few more limitations in place
than the play test version had.
- I can understand that.
I like the idea of this particular wizard
interacting with the Rune Knight,
the Rune Knight being like
just not as good (laughs)
you only get, "I know these letters!"
(laughs)
And a very judgmental scribe wizard
looking at the rune knight (laughs)
and just like, "Eh, you never studied."
