Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Arcane Traditions by a Factor of Three

Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted explore homebrew feats for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons from D&D Beyond. We have a lot of fun checking out the 5E D&D content folks come up with and sharing their homebrew creations. (There’s lots of these posts whether for homebrew subclasses, magic items, spells, feats and more floating around for the curious.) This time around I’m peering into the subtle weave of magic that permeates the cosmos to check out the most scholarly class in 5E D&D — the wizard — and checking out the Top 10 homebrew Arcane Traditions. There’s currently over 1,500 homebrew of them so let’s get into it.

Arcane Traditions at D&D Beyond

Before getting started it’s important to note you can create homebrew content for private use and share your homebrew content publicly at DDB at no cost — there’s no subscription required to access these services. However if you want to add any of the homebrew Arcane Traditions mentioned below or any other homebrew content you come across to your 5E D&D collection you must subscribe at the Hero Tier or above. There’s a lot you can do at DDB for free. Check out what you can do here.

The DDB homebrew collection uses several statistics to track entries. Views shows how many eyeballs any particular homebrew creation received, Adds shows the number of times a creation was added to someone’s collection and Rating is an upvote/downvote system. Since there are over 1,500 Arcane Traditions in the collection I’m going to share the top 10 highest rated, most viewed and most added selections and to see what’s out there along with any crossover between these three lists.

Top 10 highest rating Arcane Traditions

1. Blood Arcana. The dread secrets of Blood Arcana are as incredible as they are terrifying, allowing a wizard to access overwhelming power—if they’re willing to pay the crimson price. Blood magic isn’t my jam but this does a nice job synergizing the features. I’ve seen a lot of homebrew blood magic options for 5E D&D (including our own!) and I like how this one approaches the concept.
2. Arcane Polymath. Unwilling to focus on any specific school of magic, or even exclusively on the magic of their class, Arcane Polymaths prize knowledge and flexibility above all other things. I really like how this leans into the scholarly side of wizards with features that increase their knowledge and scope rather than “My spells do more damage.” Bravo! I also dig the term Polymath, which we put to good use ourselves.
3. Alchemist. I’m not sure if this is meant to be a discrete class or an Arcane Tradition and also I think it’s a recreation of the alchemist class from Pathfinder. At any rate it’s super long, super noodly and while I like the idea of a potion bomb chucking adventurer this is an tremendous amount of material to process.
4. Chronomancer. Time mages: practitioners of a meta-school of magic of such potential for havoc that its very existence might be one of the most fiercely-guarded secrets even from some of the most learned grandmasters of magic. A lengthy disclaimer does not set me up for confidence heading into this one. Clearly designed for a specific campaign along with 50+ chronomancy spells, which aren’t linked anywhere. Maybe those spells make up for what looks quite lackluster on its own. At 6th level they “gain” immunity to haste and slow but get 5 extra feet of movement is maybe the worst feature I’ve ever seen.
5. School of Necromancy — Pale Master. Contrary to popular belief, necromancers are not necessarily evil-doers, nor do all of them seek to subjugate others. Points for invoking the Pale Master title! The spiritual minion feature is really neat but I would revise it and come up with something sleeker than tweaking the find familiar spell.
6. Academy Philosopher. Academy philosophers are great thinkers who do not specialize in any particular spell school, but rather spend their time analyzing the nature of reality and applying that learning to their magic. An admirable approach to wizardry! My main issue with this is a quibble with the Sophism feature — it should grant proficiency in the Deception skill rather than Persuasion.
7. Necromancer v2. A necromancer is a caster that is able to expel negative energies flowing through their veins. Alert! This is not an Arcane Tradition but rather an entirely distinct class. I believe it’s copied from DNDWiki and very poorly presented here.
8. Gray Necromancer. A Necromancer neither benign nor malevolent simply neutral. At 2nd level this wizard could potentially create a limitless horde of unkillable skeletons so…yeah. Moving on.
9. Alchemist. A wizard subclass focused on crafting damage, utility, and healing potions, as well as crafting magical items. This creator copied someone else’s Roguish Archetype for the wizard, which is a problem for a couple of reasons. First and most important is they didn’t adjust for level for the initial feature and none of the other ones indicate level at all. Second is there’s nothing to do with being a wizard at all. Aside from those it includes a big Chemistry table for concoctions, which suffers the same problem as things like Path of Wild Magic and College of Spirits.
10. School of Chronomancy. The wizards of the School of Chronomancy use the raw arcane power they possess to affect the flow of time around them, ripping portals into the flow of time so that they might briefly glimpse the future, the past, or even alternate realities from their own. The capstone feature is really cool! They gain some useful features along the way too although they have zero interaction with being a wizard or spellcasting.

Top 10 most viewed Arcane Traditions

1. Chronomancer.
2. Alchemist.
3. Blood Arcana.
4. Arcane Polymath.
5. Artificer. An Artificer Wizard sets out in their studies with the goal of becoming a master over the art of creating magical potions, scrolls, arms, and armour. This is a direct life from 2015’s Unearthed Arcana — Eberron playtest document. Nerdarchist Dave wrote about it back when it was new.
6. School of Necromancy — Pale Master.
7. Master Summoner. Most Wizards work best from the back lines. Unfortunately, there might not be enough, or even any, companions to handle all that the world throws at you. I like how they incorporated a restriction on certain kinds of spells (although it’s not much of a drawback considering not many spells apply). Summoning can be problematic in 5E D&D and I think there’s a better way of handling it but overall this is nicely done.
8. School of Chaos (Wild Magic Wizard). While most wizards study for a specific school of magic, others may opt to choose to study how magic reacts when introduced to an element of chaos. Lots of rolling on the Wild Magic Surge table! This is a fun concept and makes sense contextually for a wizard the way it’s presented but it starts to fall apart for me as the features progress.
9. Spellslinger. You have learned through both the study of magic and of advanced weaponry, how to use your gun not as merely an arcane focus, but as a siphon for your magic. At least they had the good sense to include a disclaimer. “This is probably not super balanced.” Nothing probably about it. For starters when you cast an area effect spell instead you can instead choose 2 + the spell’s level creatures as the targets and they automatically fail their saving throws. Oh, and there’s no limitation on this feature. It’s the 2nd level feature.
10. Blood Mage. An oft-forbidden path of the wizard, blood mages harness the power inherent in life-force, most commonly in the form of blood. Fun fact: there’s currently 42 homebrew Arcane Traditions with “blood” in the title. (I thought out of 1,500 there’s be many more!) This essentially transforms a wizard into a sorcerer with their own extra bookkeeping via Blood Points. This pool of Sorcery Point-esque resources fuel a bunch of Sanguine Augmentations similar to Metamagic except there’s more of them and there’s generally more powerful. Not a fan.

Top 10 most added Arcane Traditions

1. Blood Arcana.
2. Arcane Polymath.
3. School of Necromancy — Pale Master.
4. Alchemist.
5. Master Summoner.
6. Artificer.
7. Necromancer v2
8. Academy Philosopher.
9. Gray Necromancer.
10. Witch Doctor. Wizards who study the art of Voodoo commit themselves to ancient rituals and the study of black magic. Our preference for a witch doctor as a lizardfolk warlock/sorcerer/druid aside, “Starting 6th level, you are blessed by a permanent +1 to all ability checks, saving throws, and attack rolls” is a bridge too far. Oh, and the same feature allows the wizard to cast a higher level spell (for free) than they have spell slots for when they reach this level.

Arcane Traditions rising to the top

Blood and undeath rule the roost with 11 out of 30 spots filled with Arcane Traditions focused on one of those two concepts. For my taste I prefer the more contemplative approaches to wizard magic in 5E D&D. To this end the Arcane Polymath and Academy Philosopher receive my top marks. Time is another appealing concept (I love wonky cosmic stuff like that) and while I like the School of Chronomancy it loses a lot by not having any interaction with the core class. The Chronurgy Magic wizard does a much cleaner job. Although it’s not an Arcane Tradition a while back Nerdarchist Dave came up with a Time Domain cleric option too, which is pretty neat.

The issue with a lot of these homebrew Arcane Traditions is they have little to do with being a wizard. The more of these homebrew spotlights, official previews and our own content creation I do the more refined by perspective on subclasses becomes. The main things I look at are:

• Does the subclass interact with the core class?
• Do the features incorporate other creatures or are they all focused exclusively on the individual?
• Are all the features only combat related?
• Does the subclass tack on a complicated subsystem?

5E D&D wizard resources

I mention our own forays into homebrew content creation for 5E D&D several times to plant the seed in your mind. Now you’re wondering, “What kind of homebrew content do you create, Nerdarchy? I’m extremely interested!” In addition to the monthly rewards our Patreon supporters receive we’ve presented tons of material in our videos and right here at Nerdarchy the Website ready to drop right into your games too. Another place we frequently create new content for Dungeon Masters and players to drop right into games is Nerdarchy the Newsletter and you’ll also get several gifts including $9.99 in store credit so you can add whatever you like there to your own collection when you sign up. We’ve explored the wizard class many times already. Here’s some resources to check out if you dig 5E D&D wizard.

• School of Beardomancy
• Order of the Peacock
• Rune Casting — The Teleporting Trap-Maker Wizard Arcane Tradition Wizard for D&D
• D&D Party Composition — Playing an All Wizard Party
• Master the Magical Dance of Bladesinging from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything
• Wizard Like No Other with Order of Scribes from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything
• Weave This Beardomancy Wizard and Her Magnificent Magic Items into Your 5E D&D Game
• Behind the Scenes of Untraditionally Arcane — an All Wizard Campaign for 5E D&D
• Play Your Next 5E D&D Game as a Boom Boom Wizard
• Why D&D Wizards Don’t Wear Pants
• Get Pumped for the 5E D&D Muscle Wizard
• A Group of Wizards is Called a Coven
• Running a Conjuration Wizard Familiar Fight Club Campaign for 5E D&D

*Featured image — The study of wizardry is ancient, stretching back to the earliest mortal discoveries of magic. It is firmly established in the worlds of D&D, with various traditions dedicated to its complex study. The most common arcane traditions in the multiverse revolve around the schools of magic. Wizards through the ages have cataloged thousands of spells.

New videos every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel here