The Magic-User class was inspired by the spell-casting magicians common in folklore and modern fantasy literature, particularly as portrayed in Jack Vance's The Dying Earth short stories, and John Bellairs's novel The Face in the Frost.
Gandalf and Saruman from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Merlin of King Arthur fame also influenced this class.
[2] Wizards memorize their spells, then forget them when cast in the fashion of magicians from Jack Vance's Dying Earth series of novels.
"Magic-user" was one of the five core character classes available in the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) Player's Handbook.
The second edition Player's Handbook gives a few examples of mages from legend and myth: Merlin, Circe and Medea.
[6]: 110 The book also introduced wizard "kits": character packages with role-playing hooks linked to game benefits and limitations.
Players must choose an Arcane Tradition for their wizard character at second level, each of which represents one of the eight schools of magic: abjuration, conjuration, divination, enchantment, evocation, illusion, necromancy and transmutation.
Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (2015) added the Bladesinging tradition which was originally exclusive to elves and half-elves.
Explorer's Guide to Wildemount (2020) added 15 new Dunamancy spells and two additional arcane traditions: Chronurgy and Graviturgy.
Then, in the process of bringing them over, we decided to make a few tweaks to those spells so that the wording would better align with our original design intent".
Many wizards see themselves not only as spell casters but also as philosophers, inventors, and scientists, studying a system of natural laws that are for the most part unknown and undiscovered.
There is the "Master Specialist" that allows a wizard even greater power in one school, but it also further reduces their range of spells to choose from.
Owing to the scarcity of natural resources, few wizards have access to books made of paper pages and hard covers; instead, they record their spells with string patterns and complex knots.
[24][25] Dunamancy was originally created by Matthew Mercer for Critical Role, a Dungeons & Dragons web series, and then was added to the canon in the 5th edition sourcebook Explorer's Guide to Wildemount (2020).
[22] Explorer's Guide to Wildemount added two dunamancer subclasses for wizards (Chronurgy and Graviturgy) and dunamancy themed spells.
If you want to play a character with a mysterious nature and a selection of powerful spells at the ready, then the wizard is the class for you".
[...] But while it’s true that a gentle breeze could knock over a wizard, with the number of spells they have, their ability to strike back more than makes up for it.
[29] James Hanna, for CBR, highlighted that the 5E Bladesinger subclass from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (2015) had weaker action economy compared to other melee-spellcasters such as the Paladin or the Eldritch Knight Fighter since the "Bladesinger essentially had to choose whether to use two attacks or cast one cantrip for slightly higher damage".
[30] Christian Hoffer, for ComicBook, highlighted that changes to the cantrips originally released with the Bladesinger subclass essentially nerf the Booming Blade cantrip in multiple ways by preventing synergy with features such as the spell sniper feat, the shadow blade spell and sorcerer Twinned or Distant metamagic options.