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View Full Version : Wizards attitude (3.5)



Adamaro
2010-09-02, 08:15 AM
I was thinking a bit on how wizards act and think, considering their weaknesses and powers regarding different lvls. Comments much appreciated.

Overall:
Wizardry is not all that popular. Becoming a powerful wizard takes decades of study, so most people will not undertake this path. (also at low lvls being a fighter is much more profitable)

lvls
1 - 5 - wizards attempt to study in cloistered places, few join adventurers and most of them die due to poor AC, low hp.
6 - 13 - wizards become powerful enough to face most ordeals, live and get XP
14+ - wizards just do not care. Either they create mages magnificent mansion or they cast genesis. After they install their new homes with guardians, they spend their (in most cases immortal) existence in activities like getting the cutest nymph out there or move to Sygil "where all the fun is".
Very few vigorously run around the world, planes and whatever space they can find, sucking XP in order to lvl up.

Agree?

Skorj
2010-09-02, 09:01 AM
Your sig explains the basic flaw in your argument. :smallbiggrin:

Heliomance
2010-09-02, 09:14 AM
Your sig explains the basic flaw in your argument. :smallbiggrin:

Yeah, pretty much this.

Piedmon_Sama
2010-09-02, 04:11 PM
I was thinking a bit on how wizards act and think, considering their weaknesses and powers regarding different lvls. Comments much appreciated.

Overall:
[quote]Wizardry is not all that popular. Becoming a powerful wizard takes decades of study, so most people will not undertake this path. (also at low lvls being a fighter is much more profitable)

Well, becoming a Fighter or Rogue takes an equal amount of dilligence, perserverence and pain, in its own way. I generally go with the idea that PC classes are rare in general; but Fighters and Rogues, while representing the best of the best, are still a part of day-to-day civilization. And there's really no in-game way to tell a Fighter apart from a Warrior. Wizards, of course, are as much a specific class of person in-game as they are a metagame class. For that reason they'll be pretty self-selecting, and hard to come by. The Wizard virtually never lives inside a human city, and if they do it'll be a secret. Finding one is a quest in of itself if someone really has the dream of becoming a Wizard, for the most part the Wizards will offer talented young scholars or clerks the opportunity to join their secretive ranks.


lvls
1 - 5 - wizards attempt to study in cloistered places, few join adventurers and most of them die due to poor AC, low hp.

Pretty much. Although low-levels are much more "free" (that is to say, much less monitored by the Archmagi) than higher-levels, they are able to do much less. They're told by masters that an apprentice wizard will be torn apart in the real world and encouraged to stay sequestered until 6th/7th level.


6 - 13 - wizards become powerful enough to face most ordeals, live and get XP

The bar's a bit lower in my world because Wizards of over 10th level are so ridiculously rare, there's probably less than 100 in the whole setting. Once you get to 6th level, you're considered a Journeyman Wizard and basically free to do whatever you want with your skills, as long as you don't compromise the secrecy of the Wizards as a whole (selling out to a human city, kingdom or other government would count as this).


14+ - wizards just do not care. Either they create mages magnificent mansion or they cast genesis. After they install their new homes with guardians, they spend their (in most cases immortal) existence in activities like getting the cutest nymph out there or move to Sygil "where all the fun is".
Very few vigorously run around the world, planes and whatever space they can find, sucking XP in order to lvl up.

Agree?

This is pretty much why my setting even vaguely resembles our world and not, I dunno, Eberron or whatever. High-level Wizards don't have time or the interest to muck around in politics; they may be gods to mere mortals, but they still have only finite time to do anything. And if you used magic to make one city a paradise, pretty soon the whole human race would be banging on your door to make all their problems going away, or worse, seeking out other Wizards. Wizards, especially the ones who are powerful enough to do anything cool, want to be left alone so they can explore the universe, learn mysteries, gather power and get that immortal nymph babe's interest on their own time. Hence the one and only rule all powerful Wizards agree on is not influencing the outside world or drawing attention to themselves. And if you get an occasional do-gooder who wants to create utopia on earth, you get a dozen other Wizards with vested interests in their secrecy who are going to clean his clock.