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Gudrae
2020-09-19, 07:08 PM
I have been following this Forum for many years now and have not posted. However, there are some topics that the wonderful people here have not quite been able to itch for me.

As a start, I have found that many people have said that wizards are their favorite class to roleplay. While I can certainly understand an interest in the class as far as other worldly powers hidden in notes from time immemorial, I find that when I play a wizard I either find him stuck behind the typical "Is seeking knowledge for knowledge's sake", or as a "and he does magic," story applications. While these are by no means bad I really do wonder what draws you all to it over and over. While this also might just be a me thing, to make the class have the versatility I desire I also tend to find almost all of my interactions locked on "and where is the magic?" when it comes to my turn.

Now having said that, I have managed to make a wizard that is a bit different before. Namely Eric Porter, a man who at the age of ten walked through a lone standing door in the woods behind his house only to get lost in a extradimensional magic library of worldly scale. While the god of magic did not intend for Eric to inherit this piece of ancient history he accepted it due to the shenanigan's of the god of mystery/chaos. Now Eric Porter is a man who has lived some 10 years in the library alone aside from notes of old and magical images of people/landscapes meant to instruct on the ways of magic. He has come to mistrust magic, and yet learns to master it as means of survival. All he wished was to just go home to his family. Due to the magical people/landscapes he does not realize some of the doors he has been through has taken him back to the material plane. He believes himself stuck in the library going through instruction given by it. So he is willing to seek solutions to problems he otherwise would not because he does not believe any of it is real.

TL:DR
When considering roleplay, what is it about wizard that you like so much? Do you have any stories you wouldn't mind sharing?

Crazyfailure13
2020-09-19, 08:07 PM
So my one and only go at a wizard is fairly typical. Myles, a lazy wizard who would cast overland flight on himself constantly so he wouldn't have to walk anywhere, just float along.

The reason he's my favorite magic user though is because his signature spells were stone wall and stone shape. His opus was finding out an army was approaching his home town(giants,goblinoids, elementals). At which point we got a week break where i got to design and create a fort out of said spells, create traps using clerics create water and oil, oil slick walls, stoneshape metal mesh throughout walls, etc.

The DM expected us to parley or escape somehow, instead I used a wizard and a bunch of math to create a dungeon for his army of "adventurers" to assault. Still my favorite moment for that character and it became a god by the end.

While this might seem spell focused the roleplay aspect was the whole commanding and instructing npcs and what not during construction and battle that i really took to the most, since he had to do all that and convince a 50 or so half-orcs (level 3-4) to fight a 1000 strong force of 3-9 cr monsters.

Wish we could have gone epic, the spell Tucker's instant fortress would've been a good one.

aglondier
2020-09-19, 08:33 PM
I have to say, wizards are definitely my favorite. I try out other classes, but always come back...

During a (i think) 5 year long campaign, my Red Wizard became the voice of reason and moderation in his Dalelands party (3 wizards, 1 priest of mystra, and a fighter), built a tower outside the flow of time, and eventually travelled backwards in time to the Creation, taking up to Role of the god Amauntor.

During a long ago 2nd ed campaign my proto-sorceress, Mithryl, a lightning elementalist, became my first army-killer. Metal armour and weapons are no defence...

During a Birthright campaign, my wizard regent crafted a c*ckring of stoneskin...it made him hard...

In a recent campaign my wizard, Stenn, repurposed his deceased master's runic circle, to allow him to move magical properties from one magic item to another. His pointy hat gained the properties of a bag of tricks...so he could pull bunnies out of his hat...along with the occasional rhino...

The Outsider
2020-09-20, 01:44 PM
If we're talking about what makes wizards fun, wizards (and their players) seem to be the most likely to come up with new and inventive ideas. Case in point: When I was running a campaign for some friends, our wizard joined and subsequently pissed off the Zhentarim, to the point where the guild put an incredibly large bounty on his head. I was expecting them to be recurring antagonists, and made it clear they were after said wizard when they sent some thugs to kidnap him. He solved the problem by murdering himself, putting his soul in a jar, having the rest of the party present his body to collect the bounty, then having the party druid reincarnate him into a new body. It was completely unexpected, it derailed many of my plans, and it was one of the coolest things I'd seen in a long time.

On the subject of innovation, I also made a wizard for a different campaign whose primary goal was to take a spell of his own creation and empower it until he could implode people with a thought and leave no remains. Not a nice guy, but upgrading the spell has so far been really enjoyable. Wizards are great for conceiving of and trying new things.

Quertus
2020-09-21, 07:56 AM
Why Wizards? Because I love the idea of the feeble academic, adventuring with demigods of war and master treasure hunters, combing the ruins of lost civilizations for scraps of arcane knowledge.

Sadly, that Wizard all but died in Y2K, when 3e was published.

As for the background for one of my Wizards? Well, how about Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named?


I'm a war gamer at heart. But I never understood how some people could play the same game for years - or even decades - and still not see the elephant, still not get it. How they could possibly be so bad when they have so much experience? This was quite a puzzle to me.

So I built Quertus, my signature character for whom this account is named, to explore that aspect of the human condition. I made Quertus as a head in the clouds academic, who fervently believes* that a) he is not trained for battle; b) he lacks the aptitude for combat; c) it is most unbecoming for someone of his station to attempt to learn such arts; d) he lacks the tools necessary for battle; e) there is some "secret sauce" that proper war mages are taught; f) his successes** can be attributed to him focusing on the "not combat" side of things. I further cemented this mindset from another direction, by having Quertus have lost family in the war when he was young, making him not relish fighting, plus making him a slight coward.

So, by stacking the deck as far as possible towards Quertus being as difficult as possible to train in combat tactics, I created a character who successfully emulated the tactical ineptitude of some of the players I knew. And, as it turned out, I loved the character! As an added bonus, in "mage superiority 3e", he didn't overshadow the Fighter or Monk, even at epic level. Win/win!

* mind you, this is the first time I've ever tried to put all that in writing. It's certainly not something any PC, player, or GM has ever known about Quertus.
** which, to date, include saving over 100 worlds from "end of the world" scenarios.

Nowadays, he explores other worlds / realities through the relative safety of Dream, learning about worlds / cultures / technologies / magic / culinary delights without leaving the safety of his own bed.

Bunny Commando
2020-09-21, 08:41 AM
TL:DR
When considering roleplay, what is it about wizard that you like so much? Do you have any stories you wouldn't mind sharing?

Sure!
Last Pathfinder campaign I played the party met and befriended Blackjack (https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Blackjack). My character was a dropout of the local magic school, the Acadamae (https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Acadamae), disowned by his family, former addict and of top of that he was also a quite monstrous Tiefling; he desperately needed an inspiring figure, someone to look up to and Blackjack was the kind of friend that would encourage and support him.

But Blackjack also needed someone to take up his mantle and chose my character as his successor. He started by building his secret hideout on the river bed, used Simulacrum to create several copies of himself to patrol the city or simply to be somewhere else when he intervened personally to stop a crime or fight an enemy, was constantly casting Divination spells to find threats to the people of the city and had so many protection and anti-divination spells on him he was untouchable - he was the Batman Wizard (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?104002-3-5e-The-Logic-Ninja-s-Guide-to-Wizards-Being-Batman).

Gudrae
2020-09-21, 09:02 AM
Thank you all so much for your responses! I do enjoy coming up with inventive solutions to problems and being silly with magic. I would like to ask a few more things if you wouldn't mind taking the time.

To The Outsider: I've never had something like the idea of crafting my own spell as a reason for adventuring, and I would appreciate if you could expand on it at all. In particular, what it did through stages and how you went about doing so while in a party with its own goals?

To Quertus: I am impressed that you stuck to a character that was a bit of a coward and tactically inept. Would you happen to recall any times when Quertus was called out on being such and how he handled it?

To Crazyfailure13: While I have played for many years I have not had the opportunity to command any non player characters. Aside from providing a fortress, did your wizard do anything else to convince the half-orcs that their cooperation would be worth it? Also, how did the half-orcs take to following the commands of a wizard?

Edit:

To Bunny Commando: Was Blackjack also a wizard? If not, in what way did he inspire your character to continue with magic after becoming a dropout? Was it his addiction that brought him so low originally or something else that led to the dropout?

Crazyfailure13
2020-09-21, 11:40 AM
So the commanding of the npcs was actually fairly easy after providing a fortress and another player providing dwarven (hirelings? Life debt conscripts? Companions?) To help with rebuilding post war. This also being because i had a great dm who worked the backstory of my characters into the story, being that my wizard was a half-orc from the village and his adoptive nieces and nephews were guardians of the village who vouched for him. They took it fairly well because half of the warriors gained about 5 levels by the end and only about 15 died.

It has actually been awhile since i played myles and i actually remember his main motivation was that he was basically an academic pariah. He was convinced of the fact that gods just used the afterlife to collect souls and outsourced part of these departed souls spellslots to mortals to gain favor, that gods did not actually provide any of their own power to mortals and that all spells were basically arcane in nature.

After defending the village he found out that the invading army was hunting down the pcs to get them back for my wizard's adoptive brother killing one of their leaders. Important, because this army worshipped a dead god they were trying to resurrect.

This lead to myles deciding it was too damn tiresome to convince academics anything. Deciding to become a god ,and get proof of his theory of souls being used as magic cloudstorage.

JUST so he could get his paper approved and get back at the high ups at the university he worked at, who refused to publish "a silly piece of fiction".

He was right.

So the reason i loved playing a wizard is because it gave me the excuse to become a god over a schoolpaper out of spite.

sktarq
2020-09-21, 12:46 PM
One of the interesting things about wizards is that they break things. Rules and ideas.

Wall of stone? some quick work and suddenly I can solve problems like creating basically a paved road during downtime...some bridges....with tolls. Became a local political power that way. And yeah built his own castles etc. Only time I played a "good drow" and he basically bought his way into social acceptance by being a magic mason.

one character basically went for salt production, kiln work, and smelting after they could cast a permanent wall of fire....and radically changed the character of his local port town. (the other wizard liked to animate things-and we made a hell of a team)

some scrying, some charm person, and some illusions turned an enemy nation on itself when our nation was far weaker as I just ramped up their internal tensions.

with a big enough spell book one character could be an artillery piece one day and a ninja the next.

and for as my personal favorite damage wizard...a magic missile specialist...he was a basically a machine gun.



all the above were wizards...so it has a VERY wide range of what you can be in the story, the world, and the party.

For me at least, with a wizard any problem can be turned into a puzzle. Sure the simplest answer may be an ol' meteor strike or lightning bolt spell but often you can reshape all sorts of issues by just changing how the world works for a wee bit.

KillianHawkeye
2020-09-21, 03:44 PM
My wizard character was a bit atypical. As an abjuration specialist, he considered it his job to protect people, but as he grew in magical power he also took the role of shutting down the enemies and neutralizing dangerous threats. He had a bit of a paladin complex, and was Lawful Good.

He also got into item crafting, and made defensive items for the whole party. Later on, he studied blacksmithing techniques and began to create magic weapons that could make up for his lack of physical strength in combat.

He favored the use of a longsword, gained a lantern archon as a familiar, and used shield and luminous armor to raise his AC high enough that he was often the party's primary tank.

My favorite part of playing him was the guessing game aspect of trying to predict what dangers we were likely to face and prepare his spells accordingly. Combing through the rulebooks to find spells that worked in multiple circumstances or ones that we would generally always find useful. He was also super intelligent (as you'd expect), so I felt like it gave me permission to metagame more when it came to knowing a monster's strengths and weaknesses.

Darth Credence
2020-09-21, 05:16 PM
One of my favorite times of playing as a wizard was back when I was a teenager, playing AD&D. We had a party of five people, and two of us wanted to be wizards. We ended up creating a back story where we were twin brother/sister and our parents were stage magicians/charlatans, depending on your point of view. We were raised in that tradition, and so showmanship was a big part of our characters.

Before starting as adventurers, we stumbled across a basic spell book, found that we could do actual magic, and set off to learn more so that we could have the biggest, most impressive show the world had ever seen. In the beginning, we had synchronized somatic components to cast our spells, and we worked them out between sessions so that we would be together in doing the hand movements for the table as we cast magic missile together. (The gaming group mostly came from the drama club at the high school, so we were not in any way over the top compared to the rest of them.) As we went up in levels, we became a commando team for the king, using our touring show as cover, although we did run into some problems when our particularly flamboyant method of magic began to be recognized.

Quertus
2020-09-21, 05:31 PM
To Quertus: I am impressed that you stuck to a character that was a bit of a coward and tactically inept. Would you happen to recall any times when Quertus was called out on being such and how he handled it?

Quertus is cognizant of the fact that he is what he is; therefore, he is up front with the fact that he is an Academia Mage, not a War Mage.

Despite the fact that his iconic quote is, "you guys got this? Good. (Goes back to reading his book / sketching interesting dwoemers/creatures in the middle of combat)", I don't really remember anyone explicitly "calling him out" on it per se. Unless you count the time that, after asking, a shadow feel across his page, and Quertus looked up just in time to see the enemy Ogre hammer him into the ground . "Oh, I guess you *don't* 'got this'…" was Quertus' witty quip before summoning enough lightning to kill the Ogre several times over (marking his position on the battlefield more than his bright red robes already did).

Despite Quertus running away from numerous encounters, I can only remember one Dragon ever really "calling him out" on that, either. Said Dragon is now one of many credited for helping him with his most famous book, Principalia Metamagica. I forget what edition said primer is up to.

-----

Had someone attempted to advise Quertus on tactics, his response would depend on the speaker… and the request. "Do I tell you how to swing your sword" is a likely response to something Quertus deems unreasonable from a Muggle; a facepalm and a lecture follows an unreasonable request from a fellow caster. Reasonable requests are accommodated.

That only leaves seemingly unreasonable requests from people whose magical tactics Quertus trusts (that's not many people). In that scenario, the decision between yes / no / "are you sure" will be based on time constraints, and just how bad an idea Quertus believes this spell to be.

Bunny Commando
2020-09-22, 08:01 AM
To Bunny Commando: Was Blackjack also a wizard? If not, in what way did he inspire your character to continue with magic after becoming a dropout? Was it his addiction that brought him so low originally or something else that led to the dropout?

Blackjack is a Vigilante, a PF class that's basically Zorro; in the Golarion canon Blackjack is a folk hero that defends the less fortunate of the city of Korvosa. And he inspired my character just by being a decent human being and encouraging him.

J-H
2020-09-22, 08:51 AM
My abjurer (currently level 4, 5e) is an ex-sailor. He got KO'd and lost a leg during a sahuagin attack. During recovery, he ended up in bed next to a talkative wizard. After four hours of listening to magical theory, he cast Light, and ended up with a recommendation letter for the kingdom's wizard training academy. He's not afraid to mix things up, and very much values the defensive abilities provided by his magic as he thumps around at 25'/rd on his peg leg.

aglondier
2020-09-24, 09:11 PM
I think my favourite aspect of playing wizards has been customising their spell repertoire, creating a theme and creating a handful of signature spells. That was what grabbed me back in 1st edition, the linked spells bearing the name of some legendary archmage.

One of my characters created magical force constructs, shaped like dragons, to replace many regular spells. Picture a tiny dragon hovering by your shoulder spitting out a ray of frost each round (upped to 1st level and lasting level in rounds), replaced Mount and Overland Flight with a dragon shaped flying mount. Most of my attack spells were replaced by "breath attacks" from a swooping "dragon".

Frogreaver
2020-09-25, 01:55 AM
Lodu was my favorite wizard. He started as a fighter 1 and then multiclassed into wizard but he was always a wizard at heart. He kept a journal of everything that happened and all the parties discoveries and the results of all his experiments. Think a scientist before science was discovered. Probably a bit of a mad scientist because nearly no experiment was off limits to him. His school of specialization became necromancy because he mistook some rotting alive people as undead and became fascinated by the concept. The character was designed with the mindset that magic would be saved until the party needed saving. This led to a fairly unconventional spell list. It also made for one of the most fun playstyles I've had. Instead of playing super tactically and "efficiently", I just attacked with my sword or firebolt until the situation looked dire. We were still fairly low level (3 I believe). We ran from a pair of strong creatures into a cave that we knew we weren't in the shape to take. I cast silent image to make it look like a rock fall. One of the creatures left but the other seen through the illusion. I tanked for the party as we didn't have another primarily melee character - there was a rogue and a warlock/bard. I kept dodging and finally got low on hp. Allies kept missing. I probably should have pulled off when I got low on hp but I kept tanking so our rogue could get sneak attack. And they missed some more and I ultimately died (played 0 hp was death) and then they started hitting and killed the thing. I did end up saving them because if i hadn't managed to get the 1 creature to go away then we would have all died. The DM made my characters essence merge with his book and I became a book of knowledge. It was cool.

Stattick
2020-09-25, 07:43 AM
The key to making a cool and compelling wizard character, is the same as it is for any other character: come up with a cool and compelling backstory and/or personality. That's really all there is to it. Let your backstory inform your background, spell selections, and feats.


Example:
Lord Renault Pembroke - A duke's son, Renault was the 5th born son in a country where tradition dictates that the first born son inherits his father's lands and title. Renault had a good upbringing, and everything was very proper. Knowing that he'd almost certainly not inherit a title though, the young man poured himself into his studies. He was eventually discovered to have an aptitude for magic. A good private tutor was hired into the household to see to his his magical apprenticeship.

Esmerelda the Enchantress was his tutor. She was a good ten to fifteen years his senior, but to the teenaged lad was nevertheless smitten with his very attractive tutor. Five years later, she was discharged from her duties after "The Scandal", and Lord Renault was given some funds and sent away to continue to sew his wild oats. He still pines for her, but hasn't been able to find out what happened to her, nor what the sex of their child was, assuming that she carried to term. Lord Renault was chastised vigorously by his parents for proposing to the woman. THEY will arrange a proper marriage for him, to a noble woman of good standing.

Lord Renault has the finest taste, good manners, and doesn't really know how to get by when he has to count his silvers, and has some unkind assumptions about the lower classes. He is a nice guy though, and genuinely charismatic, since he's having to live hand-to-mouth on the charity of other nobles, and what allowance his parents will send him.

Enchantment subclass, Noble background, decent Chr score, vhuman.

Noble: History, Persuasion... Dragonchess... Elven
Wizard: Arcana, Investigation
Human: Perception

FEAT - Prodigy: +1 Int, Insight, Alchemist Tools, Draconic

(Heck, I'd ask the GM if I could swap Draconic or Light Crossbow for a proficiency in Rapier - it's almost a requirement for noblemen to go armed everywhere, usually with a rapier or small sword. A generous GM might give you the proficiency for free, after-all, most wizards aren't going to use it much since their spells are far more potent, especially after they get cantrips with two dice of damage.)

Spells Include:
C: Light (he's a nobleman, you don't expect HIM to be stumbling around in the dark), Prestidigitation (must look presentable), Firebolt. Wants: Mending & Mage Hand
1st: Unseen Servant (butler), Find Familiar (an adorable, fist sized owl that never, EVER, craps on his shoulder), Charm Person (when your natural charm fails), Disguise Self (you wouldn't be caught dead in there, but you must enter anyway),
2nd: Skywrite (there are worse ways to announce yourself)
3rd: Phantom Steed (the upper class ride instead of walk), Sending (when you know you're arriving at a Lord's manner tomorrow to ask for hospitality, you use Sending to alert the Lord's butler the night before)


Character goals:
Self sufficiency
Cut unnecessary strings to family (they're nice enough, but controlling)
Learn to enjoy simple pleasures
Find out what happened to Esmerelda, and possibly rekindle that romance
Marriage and family?
Earn or carve out a land and title for yourself

Jay R
2020-09-25, 01:33 PM
When considering roleplay, what is it about wizard that you like so much?

Neither wizard nor any other class has an advantage for roleplaying. My goal is to invent a person with a unique approach or a unique goal that will play differently than any previous character. Often it will be based on some mechanic of the game -- some feat, or spell, or whatever, but not necessarily. The roleplaying idea will help determine the class as much as the class will help determine the roleplaying idea.


Do you have any stories you wouldn't mind sharing?

Ah, that's a different question. I'm always ready to talk. These three examples may help you see how differently I create characters.

1. Treewalker, the AD&D 2e elven multiclass magic-user/thief, became a wizard because the DM's setting was challenging for a wizard.

We were starting as first levels in a AD&D 2e game. The DM announced that there were very few non-humans, and they weren’t necessarily recognized. He also said that wizards would have no training, and start with only two spells. This sounded like an interesting challenge, so I built an elven multi-class magic-user/thief. [Multi-class characters in AD&D cannot be compared to multi-classing in later versions. A magic-user/thief works very well.]

So he grew up in an orphanage, not knowing he was an elf – without even knowing the word “elf”. He was just that pointy-eared kid who didn’t fit in. Always an outcast, he joined the party because it was going to leave the continent and explore a new one. He was shocked when the party members treated him like an equal. That had never happened before, so he became fiercely loyal to them.

Years later, he has become a high-level character, and the Earl of Devon. He has made his county a haven for outcasts, and is quietly getting rich by ruing a fief where folks who don’t fit in can come and be respected. [His mines are all being worked by dwarves, for instance. And he has started a school for wizards.]

2. Pteppicymon, the ancient Egyptian prince, was forced into wizardry by other players' choices.

The game was in bronze age Egypt, and all PCs would be princes or princesses. The Pharaoh had 100 wives, and over 100 children, so our adventures were to determine who would be his heir.

This character was more-or-less forced to be a wizard. We started with a 3-person party, and the other two were already a Fighter and a Cleric. Each princeling would have two servants – a fighter and a thief.

So the party clearly needed a wizard. The character of Pteppic grew out of trying to be a different kind of princeling than the other two. They were playing haughty nobles, so I started pushing noblesse oblige, and caring about the people we someday hoped to rule. Pteppic now has strongly loyal servants, and good relations with several non-royal people – desert nomads, ship captains, etc., including one working relationship with a smuggler.

3. Gwystyl, the Shadowcraft Mage gnome illusionist, has a character built around his ancestral relic.

I was building a shadowcraft mage gnome illusionist, who would start at third level. I had just read about the Ancestral Relic feat, and it seemed like a good idea to build a character around. [Yes, adding an extra feat is not optimal for a Shadowcraft Mage build. I accept that.]

So I designed a gnome hooked hammer as an Ancestral Relic, which would function as a staff in his hands.

While I was designing it, and deciding if it had some kind of quest attached to it, I heard about the untimely death of Alan Rickman, and suddenly the whole thing came together.

When he first picked it up, he heard a voice in his head intoning a prophecy. The voice – a god, the power of the hammer, a delusion, who knows? – told him that he must seek out the truth of the hammer. That was the first time he could detect magic on the hammer, and the last until he reached level six. He did not feel its power again until he awakened it. Was it magic from the hammer? A prophecy of the gods? A delusion? He does not know, but he wants to believe it.

The prophecy was great and momentous, but he can no longer remember it. All his mind still holds was the final line: “If you do not discover the secrets of this hammer, they will be lost forever.”

So he is on a quest to do something, given him by he knows not whom, requiring him to learn about the hammer, with no idea of where such knowledge could be found. A human, elf, or dwarf might be discouraged by this. To a gnome’s way of thinking, it’s just a great practical joke, and one he’s willing to play out. It’s an excuse to wander and learn, and avoid having to make more cogs and spokes.

There was a time in which he considered turning away from his quest. He eventually realized that it would be impossible to turn away from the quest until he found out where the quest was supposed to take him. This seems to him like the greatest joke of all – a quest he cannot undertake, and cannot avoid.

This led to the following conversation on the second adventure
Gwystyl: I'm on a quest.
PC2: Oh, what are you supposed to do?
Gwystyl: I don't know. I need to find out.
PC2: Well, where are you supposed to go to find out?
Gwystyl: I have no clue.
PC2: Who put you on this quest?
Gwystyl: No idea.
PC2: This is dumb; why don't you abandon the quest?
Gwystyl: How? Until I know where the quest is supposed to take me, how can I turn off that path?

The DM and I know its history, but Gwystyl does not. Gwystyl’s ancestor Grabthar used it to win a great battle, in an alliance with the dwarven king Warvan and his sons.

Someday, when it’s appropriate, after Gwystyl learns the history of his weapon, he is going to swear, “By Grabthar’s hammer, by the sons of Warvan, you shall be avenged!”

Gudrae
2020-09-25, 03:46 PM
To Stattick: Lord Renault Pembroke seems to be a very well tied together character. You have done a very good job at convincing me that for the purposes of roleplaying a wizard's magic can be tangential and not the driving force behind his/her story and desire while still having some influence. Thank you.

To Jay R: It was never my intention to assert that wizards are at an advantage toward roleplaying. If anything, I was expressing frustration that I personally was having difficulty grasping how people kept making them different (not spell/race selection) while still being wizardly. Also, Gwystyl is fun. I like his interests and reason for adventuring.

To Frogreaver: Interesting idea to start so early in the intellectual history. While I am glad you had fun, a part of me is sad that it only got to level three and missed out on potential developing story of learning about necromancy and the worlds take on that endeavor.

Thank you all for your continued interest!

Edit:

To Darth Credence: It sounds like you all had a lot of fun! I'm curious how the characters' parents took to both of you one upping them in such a big way, taking their charade and turning it into a real thing. Also, would you mind expanding on how your brand of magic manifestation's recognition changed things? Did anyone ever try and copy you two?

TeChameleon
2020-09-25, 07:37 PM
For me, the advantage of the Wizard is, in a word, flexibility. When you can bend the laws of reality to your whim, you just have more options to work with than, say, the Fighter does. My most-played character (to the tune of close to 15 years, I think...) was a Wizard; my second-most-played character is a fighter.

With the Fighter, I don't feel like I have much to contribute a lot of the time; in a fight, I am the tank (28 AC at level 7, woo!), but once the weapons are put away, I'm... pretty much set decoration. All of two trained skills, and non-fighty stats are mediocre (except CHA, which is crap).

Playing a Wizard, I was the smartest guy in the room, and got to be the one to figure things out when puzzles presented themselves, while still managing to be relevant when a fight started.

And as far as roleplay goes... well, as others have said, it comes down to solid backstory and interesting personality.

For my one Wizard, Gavin Fireborne, he was the youngest son of a mid-rank noble house in a kingdom where magic-users were third-class citizens at best, courtesy of an unspecified-but-major screwup by a past Wizard-King- one of Gavin's ancestors, in fact (or possibly Gavin himself... friggin' time-travel... :smallconfused:). His father and elder brothers were all proud warriors, and Gavin was the runt of the litter; not exactly mistreated, per se, but not the healthiest environment to grow up in.

Once adventure came a-calling, he leapt into it with both feet, deciding that his life's mission was to personally set everything that annoyed him on fire. Thankfully, one of the things that annoys him most is injustice/evil, so it keeps him pretty firmly on the side of good. He's brilliant, restlessly inquisitive, and has a genuine desire to improve the lives of others. He's also blunt to the point of being staggeringly rude, has about as much respect for authority as he does for the pavement he walks on, and patience about the length of a gnat's blink.

He's also... courtesy, I suspect, of my reactions amusing the DM tremendously... a bit of a plaything for destiny. He accidentally invented the franchise restaurant, for one thing.

Honestly, I probably leaned into the 'grumpy old pyromancer' stereotype pretty hard (minus the 'old' bit, as the character was actually quite young), but I had a lot of fun with it, and I think the character was memorable courtesy of my own tendency to lateral thinking and odd sense of humour.

Darth Credence
2020-09-28, 07:42 AM
Edit:

To Darth Credence: It sounds like you all had a lot of fun! I'm curious how the characters' parents took to both of you one upping them in such a big way, taking their charade and turning it into a real thing. Also, would you mind expanding on how your brand of magic manifestation's recognition changed things? Did anyone ever try and copy you two?

We did have a blast! Our parents were so proud of us, the DM playing them as happy that their children have surpassed them. They retired to their home village, performing local shows and happy every time we came through.

The problem with our magic being recognized was that it started to blow our cover. We'd be somewhere performing a show, while at the same time we were really there on a mission. No big deal when it was a ruin or something and we just performed in nearby towns, but sometimes it would be in a big city where we'd be sleeping most of the day, performing in the evenings, and then completing a mission at night. The synchronized magic was noteworthy, and a few bad guys ended up putting two and two together. Next thing you know, we had people attacking the travelling show in an attempt to eliminate the king's secret commandos.

Porcupinata
2020-09-29, 06:24 AM
The last wizard I played was Bumble "Sparks" Bimpnottin, a female rock gnome transmuter who would have been an artificer if that class had been out at the time I played her. I pictured her very much like the gnome in OotS #969 (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0969.html), and the first mental image I got of her was her sitting at a desk concentrating hard on constructing something while swinging her legs under her chair. She was far from the cliched "wacky trickster gnome" that you sometimes hear horror stories of, and instead she was a sensible and practical (although she did love telling awful jokes).

Her main love was making things, and to her magic was a means to an end rather than something done for its own sake. Her aim in life was to be the best artist/craftsperson in the world, not for the fame or the money but purely for the personal satisfaction of doing so. Her entire wizard career was based on using magic to help make things, so she was all about the Unseen Servants and Mage Hands to hold things for her while she worked on them or and pass her tools and generally make her work easier. She had long-term aspirations to extend her life as long as she could so that she could keep getting better and better at constructing things, and to that end she specialised in transmutation and learned how to make a Transmuter's Stone. Had the campaign reached higher level she'd have learned the Clone spell so that she could clone herself to avoid death through old age - she was already aware of what it did from talking to other wizards, but she didn't ever get powerful enough to learn how to cast it before the campaign finished.

Her signature spell was Tiny Servant, because I realised that since she was so small a Tiny Servant would be strong enough to carry her. So she would animate a stool at the start of the day and ride around on it. This walking stool was nicknamed "spiderbot" because it could walk up walls (seriously, check out the spell description for Tiny Servant - it's not great in a fight, but it's awesome as a utility device that stays with you all day - it's like having a second familiar) but I don't recall whether it was her or another party member who first called it that. If a combat happened she'd get off it and it would act as a bodyguard, protecting her so she was free to cast spells.