Arcane Ward

Arcane Ward is a passive feature of the Abjuration School Wizard. Upon casting an Abjuration spell^{[See: Bugs]}, gain a charge in Arcane Ward which blocks incoming damage. Each time damage is taken, it is reduced by the charge count and the charge count decreases by one.

Description

The residual magic of your spells forms a ward around you that protects you from harm.

Each time you cast an Abjuration spell, the intensity of the ward increases by the amount of the spell's Level, up to a maximum of 2x your Wizard level.
Each time you take damage, the ward blocks an amount of damage equal to its intensity, and its intensity decreases by 1.
After each Long Rest, the ward's intensity resets, and becomes the same as your Wizard level.

Condition: Arcane Ward

 Arcane Ward

• Your Arcane Ward blocks damage equal to its charges and then loses 1 charge. Casting Abjuration spells will add charges equal to the level of the spell.

How to learn

Classes:

• Class level 2: Abjuration School

Notes

• Casting an Abjuration spell restores Arcane Ward charges even if the spell fails, which is possible with spells like  Counterspell or  Banishment.
• Upcasting Abjuration spells results in more Arcane Ward charges being added, with the exception of  Counterspell^{[See: Bugs]}.
• Arcane Ward gains charges from any Abjuration spell (except  Shield^{[See: Bugs]}), including spells cast via scrolls and items. This includes:
  • Non-Wizard Abjuration spells (e.g.  Sanctuary or  Armour of Agathys).
  • Special items like  True Love's Embrace, granting  Warding Bond when the matching  True Love's Caress ring is used by an ally.
  •  Protection from Missiles, a 2nd level Abjuration spell only acessible via  Abdel's Trusted Shield and  Cindersnap Gloves items.
  • Warlock's  Armour of Shadows Eldritch Invocation, allowing them to cast  Mage Armour on themselves, recharging 1 Arcane Ward. This can even be done repeatedly to charge the ward up to its maximum level without expeding any spell slot. It is necessary to equip and unequip armour each time though, a slow process.

Bugs

• Despite being an Abjuration spell and consuming a spell slot,  Shield does not grant Arcane Ward charges.
•  Counterspell will always restore 3 charges, even if upcasted.
• Because Arcane Ward is implemented as a condition with a duration, it counts as a condition being applied by the spell cast to charge it. This means that if  Metamagic: Extended Spell — which doubles the duration of any condition applied by the spell — is used when casting an Abjuration spell, Arcane Ward's charge count will also be doubled. This doubling occurs after the cap equal to twice the Wizard's class level is applied, meaning that this can be exploited to gain charges up to four times the class level.
  • For example, a Sorcerer 2 / Wizard 5 with 7 charges of Arcane Ward casting  Banishment should be capped at 10 charges, but will end up with 20 charges if Extended Spell is used.
  • However, when Arcane Ward has been overcharged in this way, casting any Abjuration spell that would normally charge it without using Extended Spell will force it to be capped again at twice the Wizard's class level.
  • This can be used with most limited-duration Abjuration spells, such as  Banishment,  Sanctuary, or  Arcane Lock. However,  Glyph of Warding: Sleep cannot be used for this purpose, as the warding trap has no duration limit (despite the tooltip describing it as a 4-turn duration).
• When an Abjuration Wizard has zero Arcane Ward charges, many actions/abilities will restore as many charges as character's Wizard level, as seen on this Reddit post. Some examples:
  • Casting some spells, e.g.  Booming Blade,  True Strike,  Fire Shield, or  Hex.
  • Equipping some equipment that applies conditions, e.g.  Shar's Spear of Evening or  Nyrulna. This includes automatically re-equipping these weapons after throwing them.
  • Receiving some conditions, e.g.  Lightning Charges,  Force Conduit,  Heat, or  Arcane Acuity.
  • Some class abilities, e.g. Barbarian's  Rage, Eldritch Knight's  War Magic, or War Cleric's  War Priest.
• If an Abjuration Wizard rolls an attack that is blocked by a target casting the Wizard version of  Shield, the Abjuration Wizard attacker will lose all their Arcane Ward charges.