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DirtyPacifist
2008-05-03, 10:25 AM
So, a player suggested me to DM a solo campaign to go through academy as a wizard initiate of a sort. I don't know if I'll get to DMing that or not but I became kinda curious as I have never ran that and am not quite certain how would one go doing it. I am certain it must have been done before...

My gosh, that boy is a fast learner!
Well, the first thing is quick advance in levels. While it often stretches realism/immersion when players go through a campaign, advancing from very low levels to mid or high in a matter of months or even weeks, the problem is significantly larger in academy type campaign. While naturally there could be adventures in it too, a lot of the traditional "Yeah, but player characters spend their time doing risky adventuring and thus advance much faster than all those wizards spending their lives in academies and such." excuse gets taken away. Also the contrast is much more obvious if players begin as the very lowest and most unexperienced characters in the academy and in a few weeks go past those who have been there a year, in a few months past those who have been there a few years...

I could just claim "Well, it isn't that fast." and then say there is a lot of downtime between adventures and those highlighted parts of the academy that are actually played but still, the players becoming better than their teachers in a few years seems pretty much inevitable... I think?

This school sure takes long...
Another problem is that campaign getting through academy doesn't really seem feasible as such. I mean, when players get to mid levels, by my standards, they shouldn't be being taught the basics in some academy anymore. I mean, I think that by third level you should be a senior student, really.

So... what? I guess you could advance to something more special? Become an apprentice to some higher ranked member of local mages' guild, be recruited by the military for that kind of training, become a teacher...?

So, I'm imagining it would go something like this. At first level, you are still a beginner there. (though not all beginners are 1st level wizards as some can't cast their first level spells yet. So I guess there would be some initiates before that...) At second, you are advanced student and at third, a senior student. From this group the military picks the most interesting ones to become battle mages and such, some masters pick some promising students to become their personal apprentices and... The rest are ready, then? I don't think it seems like a good idea that the students would just after graduation be taught a bit more to make them teachers when just recruiting a bit older wizards with more experience and authority should do the trick just fine.




How would you solve these as a DM?

bosssmiley
2008-05-03, 10:57 AM
Did I hear someone mention the words Sigil Prep (http://www.sigilprep.com/)? No? Oh, shame. :smallwink:

Serious head. I tend to use the WFRP model for low level adventurers. At (D&D) levels 1-3 you're basically glorified WFRP-style sewerjacks and pest controllers. You might not be checking for Filth Fever every morning, but you're still crawling through dank tunnels stabbing ROUS, spearing goblins and fleeing from ghouls. Heck! Even boggo humanoids with NPC classes can give you a run for your money at those levels.

Until you reach the level 5 or 6 'jump off point' into PrCs you don't yet have an advanced career (WFRP)/PrC (D&D) that lets you stand out from the crowd. With that in mind you can still reasonably have characters as part of a chain of command or hierarchical collegiate structure without the "I'm a wizard. I can blow up his house with my mind. Why should I do what some poxy Aristocrat 4 says?" problem rearing its' head too badly.

Levels 1-3? Despite the high fantasy trapping of D&D, you really can just be a bunch of apprentices, rookie soldiers, sneak thieves, etc. out on a jolly gone wrong. :smallamused:

loopy
2008-05-03, 11:05 AM
Have you ever played Neverwinter Nights? Your character starts at the final stages of his/her academy training, just before graduation. You have been trained to help solve a plague that is ravaging the city, and everyone speaks highly of your characters skills.You learn about how to control the character before doing a basic melee/ranged combat trial.

After that you head to various advanced classes (Picking pockets for thieves, turning undead for clerics, casting spells for wizards) and finally you move to graduation where...

The academy is attacked, forcing the newly graduated character to fight their way out!

Thus solving the problem of your players lingering in the home town for too long.

Anyway, playing NWN may give you some ideas...

Mewtarthio
2008-05-03, 12:14 PM
Why not just throw in lots of high-level (~level 15) professors and a good number of time skips between adventures?

DirtyPacifist
2008-05-03, 01:03 PM
Why not just throw in lots of high-level (~level 15) professors and a good number of time skips between adventures?

Because I think that level 15 or so wizards wouldn't be teaching at the academy, really. I mean, that level wizards have pretty good chance (I would bet my money on them) in fighting old white dragons and mummy lords by themselvels and have no problem with Cloud giants, Ice devils and Krakens if they choose to lead that kind of life. They could kill thousands of men or save lives of that many and barely break a sweat. If they just want to lead a nice, quiet life they have more than well enough money for that, they could move to any small city and be the most powerful individual there.

Why would they spend their lives teaching beginning wizards how to cast faerie fire? Class after class... I mean, I could imagine one or perhaps even two doing it just "because", for the ego boost of being so damn powerful or just because they want to stay away from everything and can just as well do something simple... But a lot of them? It just kinda doesn't seem appropriate...

I could naturally make the whole power scheme of the world be based on the academy. That way, there would be level 20ish archmage as headmaster, some level 15 professors who then teach a few dozen mid-level wizards to do everything awesome, taking them through several planes... And huge amounts of low level wizards. That would kinda work but taking that kind of approach (mid level people being still students taught in groups), all the interaction to the world outside the academy would be kinda messed up unless the world as a whole is full of 15 level people still teaching classes and frankly, that kind of world doesn't interest me much.

By the time characters get to high or even mid levels, I think that with their powers, they should already be something...

loopy
2008-05-03, 01:46 PM
Some people just get to the stage in their life where they want to teach the next generation. Of course, they would only want to choose the best of the best, as befits their high level stature.

Storm Bringer
2008-05-03, 02:09 PM
if you really want to keep him, tell him he gradutates, then stays to do some post-grad work and study some more advanced stuff. depending on what you postgrad task is, that could take him to level 10. Make the adventures the more exciting elements of a several year stay, with a month or two game time being skipped. That also allows you to have a very long term goal for him ("report on the effects of psionic-magic interactions" or something), which you can build up as time goes on, so that his first post grad adventures have him learning about the basics of his task, the next few have him doing specific tasks to garner more knowledge, and the last few bring it all together.

Good sideplots involve a persistant wizardly rival that acts, underhandedly and openly, to interfere with the players objectives.

beyound that, he's really either going to move out of the acadamy or join it's staff, both of which alter the game somewhat.

NecroRebel
2008-05-03, 02:16 PM
I once saw Emperor Tippy suggest a campaign setting where level 20 was "fully trained" and anything below that was a mere student. In that type of scenario, the instructors would probably range from between level 30 and level 60, so your character(s) wouldn't be surpassing them any time soon, and it also means that your Fireballs and Stoneskins and Phantasmal Killers really are basic spells that you're gonna be learning to do within a few months of starting your training.

Of course, from what I gather Tippy plays ludicrously high-power campaigns, so if you don't want a world where societies are basically modern, except replace all our scientific technologies with magical equivalents, that option probably isn't for you.

In the alternative, you could just enforce a rule that says you need some period of time of actual training (read: downtime) in order to level. This would artificially reduce the apparent speed at which your power is increasing, particularly if that training time per level is 4-12 months. 4 months would mean an absolute minimum of 3 years to get from level 1 to 10, which if your professors are level 12-16 that puts you at nearly their level of competence, which is reasonably similar to what happens in a real-world university setting.

In any case, though, you'd almost have to base the entire setting's power level on the academy's. Otherwise, there's the problem of random wizards who never had formal training (or who had inferior training) being inexplicably more powerful and learned than the Headmaster of the best school in the world. It'd be like some nut with a high-school education who dabbles in physics being more knowledgable than Stephen Hawking, which is... Unreasonable. At best.

Solo
2008-05-03, 02:36 PM
In any case, though, you'd almost have to base the entire setting's power level on the academy's. Otherwise, there's the problem of random wizards who never had formal training (or who had inferior training) being inexplicably more powerful and learned than the Headmaster of the best school in the world. It'd be like some nut with a high-school education who dabbles in physics being more knowledgable than Stephen Hawking, which is... Unreasonable. At best.
Or, you know, some high school dropout working as a patent clerk being better at physics than Maxwell Clarke.

NecroRebel
2008-05-03, 05:16 PM
Or, you know, some high school dropout working as a patent clerk being better at physics than Maxwell Clarke.

...Touche.

Still, the point stands. That sort of thing is a once in several generations occurance, and if it occurs, people will know about it simply because it is so terribly remarkable. No having several layers of BBEGs who never attended the Academy but are inexplicably overleveled.

Aquillion
2008-05-03, 05:42 PM
So, I'm imagining it would go something like this. At first level, you are still a beginner there. (though not all beginners are 1st level wizards as some can't cast their first level spells yet. So I guess there would be some initiates before that...) At second, you are advanced student and at third, a senior student. From this group the military picks the most interesting ones to become battle mages and such, some masters pick some promising students to become their personal apprentices and... The rest are ready, then? I don't think it seems like a good idea that the students would just after graduation be taught a bit more to make them teachers when just recruiting a bit older wizards with more experience and authority should do the trick just fine.
I think you have it very wrong. (I'm using wizard advancement here because, I think, that has the clearest breakpoints... one level isn't going to make a huge difference to most non-caster classes unless they have a specific build along those lines.)

First of all, why would gaining second level advance you that much? You're not even gaining any wizard spells.

I would say that a wizard could be seen as a 'beginner' all the way up until they get fifth-level spells... that's normally seen as the big breakpoint. Until then they have some clever tricks and can do neat things, but it's easy to describe them as less than a full wizard; they lack many of the key abilities associated with wizardry (they can't fly, they can't throw around fireballs, etc.)

At higher levels, the wizard becomes capable of working with the faculty -- think of them as graduate students or PHD candidates working on research projects or some such things. They're sort of peers to the faculty now -- junior peers, and not as experienced, certainly, but the faculty works with them as equals on joint projects. Only instead of research projects, they work out how to kill evil wizards or whatever.

You'll need an excuse for the faculty to not follow them around and do everything for them, but that shouldn't be hard. After all, the faculty is busy, and this is the PC's big project -- the faculty can give them advice, but the PCs basically need to do it alone to prove themselves.

The faculty is old and mostly no longer interested in adventuring personally, though they love to get involved in the adventures of their star students. It could help if you could give them excuses to not adventure themselves, too... maybe one or two of them are outsiders bound by the headmaster to work at the school. Maybe they're hiding from their enemies (this works very well for a school based in Sigil, of course, but you can do all sorts of things like that.) Maybe they're just overloaded with work at the school and can't be bothered to go off slaying dragons every time something comes up... maybe they want to give the next generation a chance.

You seem to think that every high-level character wants to adventure. Why would they? It's risky, bothersome, time-consuming, and can make you a lot of unnecessary enemies. Holding down a tenured position at the school and telling other people how to go risk their lives adventuring is much more reliable.

At higher levels, the party is 'star students'. They talk to their professors occasionally, getting advice and maybe plot hooks, but a lot of their time is spent away from school working on their, um, dissertation. This gives you an excuse to avoid having the high-level faculty help them, too; the players need to do this themselves, since it's how they prove themselves worthy of an adventuring PHD or whatever.

EvilElitest
2008-05-03, 05:57 PM
Have you ever played Neverwinter Nights? Your character starts at the final stages of his/her academy training, just before graduation. You have been trained to help solve a plague that is ravaging the city, and everyone speaks highly of your characters skills.You learn about how to control the character before doing a basic melee/ranged combat trial.

After that you head to various advanced classes (Picking pockets for thieves, turning undead for clerics, casting spells for wizards) and finally you move to graduation where...

The academy is attacked, forcing the newly graduated character to fight their way out!

Thus solving the problem of your players lingering in the home town for too long.

Anyway, playing NWN may give you some ideas...

I just started playing for the first time and just finished that level. Weird
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EE