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, which grants  Warding Bond when the matching  True Love's Caress ring is used by an ally.
  •  Protection from Missiles, a 2nd-level Abjuration spell only accessible 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 expending any spell slot. It is necessary to equip and unequip armour each time though, a slow process.

Bugs

• The maximum damage reduction from Arcane Ward is always 20, even for a level 11 or 12 Abjuration Wizard with 21-24 charges of Arcane Ward.
• Despite being an Abjuration spell and consuming a spell slot,  Shield does not grant Arcane Ward charges.
•  Counterspell always restores 3 charges, even if upcast.
• 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 is also 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 ends up with 20 charges if Extended Spell is used.
  • However, when Arcane Ward is overcharged in this way, casting any Abjuration spell that would normally charge it without using Extended Spell forces 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).
• There is a second bug with  Metamagic: Extended Spell, which can be used to acquire infinite Arcane Ward charges, as explained in this Reddit post. To do this, a wizard must have at least 3 charges of Arcane Ward, then if a sorcerer casts a spell which creates a damaging surface or cloud (e.g.,  Chromatic Orb: Fire,  Spike Growth, or  Cloudkill) and then toggles Extended Spell, if the wizard takes damage from the spell, each time they take damage, the number of charges decreases by 1 as usual, but then doubles. This is because each time damage is taken, the Arcane Ward condition is reapplied with one fewer charge and the source of the condition is considered the source of the damage taken. This means that Arcane Ward becomes a condition with a duration (because its charges are represented as "turns remaining") applied by a spell cast by a sorcerer currently using Extended Spell, which causes the duration to double.
  • This bug works whether the spells are cast by the wizard themselves, multiclassed with sorcerer, or by a sorcerer party member.
  • Surfaces which cause damage immediately, such as Spike Growth, charge Arcane Ward much faster than surfaces which cause damage at the end of each turn, like a  Fire surface.
  • This doubling effect allows a wizard to amass Arcane Ward charges up to 2,147,483,647, the maximum possible value of a ⁠32-bit signed integer, at which point it is sometimes possible to cause an ⁠integer overflow by exceeding 2,147,483,647 charges of Arcane Ward and end up with a negative amount of charges.
    • With negative Arcane Ward charges, the amount of charges no longer changes from taking damage, and the ward acts as though it has 1 charge, negating only 1 damage.
  • Casting an Abjuration spell resets the ward back to its standard limit.
  • This bug does not require using surfaces or clouds. Any sorcerer who uses a damaging spell (which can be affected by Extended Spell) on an Abjuration Wizard while Extended Spell is toggled triggers the bug, but anything other than surface or cloud spells is highly inefficient, as it quickly uses up  Sorcery Points.
• When a wizard has zero Arcane Ward charges, many actions restore as many charges as the character's wizard level, as seen on this Reddit post. Some examples:
  • Casting certain spells, e.g.,  Booming Blade,  True Strike,  Fire Shield, or  Hex.
  • Equipping certain items that apply a condition, e.g.,  Shar's Spear of Evening or  Nyrulna. This includes automatically re-equipping these weapons after throwing them.
  • Receiving certain conditions, e.g.,  Lightning Charges,  Force Conduit,  Heat, or  Arcane Acuity.
  • Certain class actions, e.g., barbarian's  Rage, Eldritch Knight's  War Magic, or War Cleric's  War Priest.
• When a wizard using Arcane Ward attacks a target, and that target reacts by casting the wizard version of the  Shield spell, the attacker immediately loses all of their Arcane Ward charges.