PbP All Wizard Party

[NotScaryBats]

I am kicking around the idea of running a 3.5 game pbp on these forums with an all-wizard party. (Or, an all archivist party)

The immediate thing that springs to my mind is, everyone will copy everyone else's spellbooks, sending their spells known into the stratosphere. But, they will still have the same spells / day, so I don't see that being a huge problem.

The second thing I see is people feeling their characters are the same as everyone else's (especially with the above). I intend to mitigate that with a few rp incentives, but is there anything else that can or should be done about this?

"rp incentives" spoilered if you don't care about this part
1:) I plan to use an alternate flaw system of "give me a useful backstory element that will effect your character and come up during the course of the game. This will earn you an extra feat"
2:) I plan to require a backstory and snapshot of 'who your character is and what her reputation is'


The third thing that springs to my mind is balance issues, that is the main reason I started the thread.

1:) should an all wizard party start at level 1, or would that be boring?
a:) what pb?
b:) what monsters are more or less frightening to wizard party? 8 tiny rats? 2 goblins? undead?

2:) should it be all wizard, or all archivist?

3:) e6 or no e6?

Any other thoughts?

[Dark.Revenant]

1. Starting at level 1 will only cause a bunch of them to die needlessly. Give them some leeway with their hit dice and start at level 2 minimum.
1a. Doesn't matter. No, really.
1b. If they coordinate their builds and specializations, nothing will be especially dangerous except for stuff with spell resistance or really excellent saves.

2. Wizards, though I suspect this is more subjective than objective.

3. No e6; let them have their fun with ruining the world with high-powered magic. It's not like there are any martial classes to feel bad about.

[ArcturusV]

Sounds fun and interesting. Of course the Spell book question might be negated due to the selection of Banned Schools.

I'd start at level 1. Third edition wizarding is nowhere near as painful as it used to be. First level wizards will typically have 8 or so spells a day. 2 per battle.

So presume 4 wizards, each of which will have probably 2-3 level 1 spells, any of which is capable of ending an encounter outright. Typical 4 encounters a day should be easy for them to handle.

Unless the wizard players are kinda messing around and all choose spells like Magic Missile and True Strike.

[Silvanoshei]

Agree with ArcturusV here. Level 1 all the way. (Heck, it's the only time you will probably get close to killing them.)

All of them should have a wizard specialization (if you're optimizing you should always do that). That will make their characters feel different from one another. A necromancer next to a conjuror will look and act way different lol.

[Xervous]

If the wizards set about covering every base, the only things that would throw them off would be disproportionately represented fringe events that demand very specialized solutions.

SR would probably fit that bill if the wizards aren't running around with enough orbs in their back pockets... however, there is a point where it would be unreasonable to expect a wizard to prepare so many NO SR spells to deal with combat that boasts an unusually large amount of monsters with SR.


Of course, I'm just rambling as I usually do... got my mind sunk in a favorite NPC, well, favorite NPCs... what would you call it when its two minds in one body?... part of the campaign setting I'm working on .....



also, @ wiz or archivist. some things to consider should be...

If archivist, how lenient will the selection of spells be? I recall some funny examples where a level 7 archivist was summoning CR 15 monsters or something like that...
On PRCs and persistomancy: wizards love incantatrix, archivists wouldn't have too much trouble picking up turning... also, what level of optimization is expected here?

[Zman]

Make sure you enforce the 100gp for spell transcriptions. Will keep your Wizards spellbooks somewhat different for a couple of levels.

[Seer_of_Heart]

Make sure you enforce the 100gp for spell transcriptions. Will keep your Wizards spellbooks somewhat different for a couple of levels.

Wait, is this not commonly enforced?

[Story]

Make sure you enforce the 100gp for spell transcriptions. Will keep your Wizards spellbooks somewhat different for a couple of levels.

You can get around that with the Mastering A Foreign Spellbook rules from Complete Arcane, though it will be difficult to make the required Spellcraft checks at level 1, even with the bonus from help of the owner.

The bigger question is why they would bother. Unless there's a situation where they all need to prepare the spell, or it's a personal only spell or something, there's not much point.

[NotScaryBats]

lol I had to look up the 100gp a page rule -- clearly I did not enforce said rule properly...

So, if the majority consensus is to start at 1, should it be an e6 world or no?

[Hua]

As an aside, one of the things I've wanted to try is an all cleric party. Different gods, different domains and abilities. Some martial oriented and some pure casters. Any can heal in a pinch.

[Aquillion]

The bigger question is why they would bother. Unless there's a situation where they all need to prepare the spell, or it's a personal only spell or something, there's not much point.I was going to say this, but, on the other hand, there are pretty huge advantages to being able to divy up spells. If one guy learns all the divinations, you don't need to get divinations; if one guy has teleport, you don't need teleport. This means the party as a whole is going to have access to just about every spell.

(In fact, depending on the group's size they might actually get every spell, certainly every spell worth getting -- if they all have an Int of 16 or more, four wizards are sufficient to learn every core 1st level spell. Later levels are harder because you only get your Int mod as a bonus for your first level, but they're definitely going to get any spell worth getting.)

[Archmage1]

Well, level 1 can be entertaining as a wizard.
Readied actions are rather... nasty.

Point buy...
Well, a wizard is ok with 24, happy with 32, so...
Monsters: Low levels, undead will be a problem, as I suspect the party will go more or less sleep, color spray, grease, that sort of thing. Undead are immune to the low level killers.

Well, my preference would be all wizards, but then, I like arcane better than divine magic, so...

e6... is sort of sad for wizards. They would rather e5, or e7, but really, why not just play and see?

As for individualizing the characters: All focused specialists. Specializing in conjuration or transmutation is banned. Should make them different enough to be interesting, and they would not be the standard wizards.(especially since you require them to drop either conjuration or transmutation, just to be interesting)

Still, I would be interested in such a game. Just saying.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

E6 is actually quite good for wizard. In the origional E6 thread it was agreed that wizard didn't need a capstone, because it gets Arcane Thesis.

[8wGremlin]

Can I play...

Actually having an all wizard party would let them all take different school specialisation. This would also limit some choices for spells for swapping.

Also racial specialisation would be interesting as well

[Rubik]

Encourage them to buy mules. Lots and lots of mules. And all of them trained to attack on command.

Who says you can't have an all-wizard party at level 1?

Also, I'd play a changeling dual specialization focused specialist/war weaver/abjurant champion. All I'd have would be divination, abjuration, conjuration, and transmutation, but boy howdy, would I have a ton of spells.

[Douglas]

There was an attempt to get an all arcanist Red Hand of Doom game going a while back that failed for lack of a DM. The party would have ended up with:
1) A pure wizard, probably generalist, with a full caster PrC
2) A wizard/archivist/mystic theurge, with early entry
3) A wizard/crusader/jade phoenix mage
4) A wizard/rogue/unseen seer

There were no concerns at all about characters being too similar.:smallbiggrin:

[NotScaryBats]

In case anyone is interested, I have opened up recruitment (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=14808985#post14808985) for my all wizard game.

[Eldariel]

Well, if it interests you, we did something very similar couple of years ago (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125074). It was a bit laxer (we had a Binder 1/Sorcerer going into Anima Mage and I was Rogue 1/Wizard 3 going into Unseen Seer), but still the same general idea. Was a lot of fun; too bad the game died out so fast (rare updates lead to people losing interest and it kinda just got dropped).

[NotScaryBats]

Huh that's pretty cool. Did it start at 1, and reach 4 or start at 4? I see 15 pages, so that's not unimpressive in itself!

[Eldariel]

Huh that's pretty cool. Did it start at 1, and reach 4 or start at 4? I see 15 pages, so that's not unimpressive in itself!

I don't believe we level-upped yet at that point. It was intended down the line but then the game kinda died away; we were level 4 on character creation (which certainly played an important part in some character builds; Anima Mage & co. are much better off at level 4, than level 1, even if not "mature" builds yet).

Though if you ever want to play a level 1 game, 4 Wizards is one of the safest in the "staying alive"-perspective (at least combat-wise) since they're quite good at ending encounters in a hurry.

[Story]

At level 1, I'd favor 4 Druids since they get free Fighters to tank.

[Eldariel]

At level 1, I'd favor 4 Druids since they get free Fighters to tank.

I'd rather have a combination since Wizard spells are much more potent for especially difficult encounters. Best results I've gotten purely for combat encounters on level 1 were with 2 Barbarian/2 Wizard combo. Though this was Core with relatively low optimization level; no tricks were employed so Wizards simply had 4 encounter ender spells and Barbarians were simple reach weapon trippers with auxillary ranged weapons to use their 40' move speed to kite slower encounters should terrain enable it - with Whirling Frenzy and Pounce the considerations might change, and if we use tricks to get like level 3 spells on level 1, everything changes of course.

But yeah, high strength reach trippers are very useful against any martial monsters, even Huge ones with 10' range since Wizards have Enlarge Person on level 1 and it's relatively easy to prepare one for each or have it scrolled (25gp).

[Story]

Obviously if combinations are allowed, something like Wizard/Cleric/Druid/Artificer would be best. But I assumed you were talking about single class parties.

[Rubik]

For one of those truly lethal campaigns like what was described above, I'd probably go ghost for the first few levels, then abuse all the bodies I could possess with my Malevolence ability. As for class? Not entirely sure. Probably shaper, because even though I'd be way underleveled (sans LA buyoff), I could still create ludicrous amounts of high DC poison to use with my ludicrous number of natural attacks.

After all, psions are just spontaneous wizards with a different spell list and better skills and feats, and without the need to sing and dance and throw bat poo at enemies, right?

[jedipilot24]

Focused Conjurer/Master Specialist/Malconvoker: Tank
Focused Conjurer/Master Specialist/Archmage: Battlefield Control
Focused Transmuter/Mage of the Arcane Order: Buffer and Debuffer.
Focused Evoker/Beguiler/Ultimate Magus: Blaster
Elven Generalist Wizard/Swiftblade/Abjurant Champion:Gish
Elven Generalist Wizard/Druid/Arcane Heirophant: Utility and Healing

[Rubik]

Focused Transmuter/Mage of the Arcane Order: Buffer and Debuffer.What, no changeling double focused specialist/war weaver/abjurant champion?

[Archmage1]

Also no incantatrix/itosv...