To be completely honest, I HATE how Wizards of the Coast only used half the PHB '14 subclasses in PHB '24, all for an arbitrary "4 subclasses for every class" rule
Honestly I like these four, more than the Evoker Abjurer Illusionist and Diviner. My fave would be necromancer
Comments (4)
I'm not one to defend wotc, but I will say there is a legitimate reason behind equally distributing subclasses and cutting some old ones - page count and page distribution. In the old books, spellcasters got way more subclass options, on top of having a lot of pages dedicated solely to spells. Giving every class closer to equal attention means there's more page space to flesh out martials, which has been a big complaint about DnD in general.
There's also the classic TTRPG business decision, you can't fit everything in one book, so you split the player handbook into 2-3 additions to sell more copies. 5e did this too btw, just more sneakily and more focused on giving classes other than wizard more subclasses. That's what Xanathars and Volos were.
If I HAD to choose necromancer, but tbh I never liked most PHB wizard subclasses.
School of War Magic
War Magic was never in a PHB