A Wizard's Background

[KingVic]

I'm making a wizard for an upcoming campaign and I'm having trouble thinking of a interesting background. For some reason, all I can think of for wizard backgrounds is "I was trained in arcane arts and I want more power".

What kind of background/goal in life can a Wizard have besides wanting more power? What other background is "wizardly" and not about wanting more arcane knowledge? I'd appreciate any help

Thanks in advance

[sonofzeal]

- A poor peasant farmboy shows intelligence and talent for arcane arts; his whole community has to scrape together enough money to get him even the barest Wizardly education, and he's always felt more comfortable in cowstalls than in courts.

- A scholarly Wizard is obsessed with some particular stream of knowledge: the Far Realms, the afterlife, the creation of new species, etc.

- A courtly Wizard cares more about political advancement than about arcane power, and sees the latter as merely a tool of the former.

- A good-aligned Wizard is interested in the medival equivalent of Social Justice causes, and is always trying to work to make his society a better place, through magical and mundane means.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

-A young girl shows talent and forces herself to study so that she may protect her mountain homestead from the usual threats of orc, goblin, and dragon someday.

-A trickster toys with the fabric of reality, playing the grandest joke on the forces of evil by setting them against each other.

[Lord_Kimboat]

No reason a wizard can't have the same background as any other PC. The only real requirement is that said wizard for some reason put in the requisite amounts of training. However, here are a few examples of non-standard wizard concepts.

"Your family was never accepted, never liked but was feared by the local villagers. Both your parents had used their magic, a power the lowly peasants here could only regard with superstition. But their magic had never done any of them any harm but still they feared it. They taught you to use it and you could see no evil in it yourself. Then came the worst night of your life, the peasants, incensed somehow and forming a mob, stormed your wonderful house. Your father was the first to die as he tried to reason with the mob. Your mother, seeing him fall, used her magic, killing all but a few of them in her anger and allowing you to escape. Her cries haunt you still."

"However, the villagers didn't come up with the idea of attack on their own. You have found that it was a strange man who came to the village and stirred up feelings against your family. Now that you know, you would very much like to find this man."

Background shows why you started a life of adventure and gives you the motivation (as well as the DM a good plot hook) to find out why someone wanted (and maybe still wants) you and your family dead.

"War raged through the land and it is always the commoners who suffer. You were made a refugee and finally, with thousands others, made it to the grand city of Generica. Most didn't make it inside and were forced to camp and beg for alms. However, a mage accompanying his friend who was a priest providing the alms saw something in you. He was a senior member of the guild and immediately granted you access to the guild system. They gave you everything you needed from that time on; clothing, shelter, food and training. Now you have become a journeyman and they wish you to start repaying their kindness by doing the guilds work."

In this background again we give you a reason to go out and adventure but you might have some of the guilds resources and to appease the DM, you might have to donate sums of money, magic items, etc. to pay off your debt. They may even provide you with missions you must accomplish.

"As a young noble you had little demands on your time. Your mother, a well respected and high ranking priestess to the Goddess of DM's Determination, always wanted you to follow her into the church. And you are certain that you felt the hand of the Goddess guide you into certain sections of the library. You chose books you felt you should read, felt compelled to, and the mysteries of the arcane were unlocked to you after a very few years of study. Through dreams the Goddess told you what she wanted. You to work magic on her behalf, freeing the world of evil."

There is no reason why wizards shouldn't be religious as well. This background can lead you to a childhood link with a divine character and allows for a good opportunity to multiclass if you wish.

[Werekat]

I generally tend to think that there's no such thing as power itself, really. Power translates itself as "ability to reach particular goals". What does your wizard want to do?

Is power "being stronger than other wizards in combat"? What kind of combat? Dungeon-crawling is one thing, while straight arena-dueling, if such a thing is possible in your setting, is utterly different.

Is power "never dying"? Then you take a look into either necromancy or clerical magics, or maybe both.

Is power "seeing all that you can see"? Is power "always able to protect my friends"? Or maybe "just leave me alone, cruel world"? Different tasks require different judicious applications of arcane might. :)

And, most importantly, what happens when you reach your goal? These are all things to consider when thinking up motivation.

[Lord Vukodlak]

From the Journal of Morten Shadow Rock Gnome Illusionist.

"I came from the town of Underhill we wanted to call it undermountain but it was a hundred feet to short to qualify as a mountain. It was a quite gnomish village except for the occasional odd invention exploding.

I was a simple illusionist and inventor, I played by trade of magic and invention and lived a good simple life. Then they came in the night, The scourge, the terror and the madness of the horde known as the legion of Maglubiyet.

My magic failed to save my home, it served to only help me flee in cowardice. I learned that day I must become more, I turn to researching shadow magic. The power to make illusion reality. I will use this power to have my revenge and after the legion of Maglubiyet is annihilated I shall build a new home my shadow kingdom.

I am Morten Shadowrock and I am the King of Shadow."

And in true gnome fashion he is quirky and switches between King of Shadow personality and traditional gnomish annoying we know from the Neverwinter Nights games.

[TheThan]

here's a few ideas to get your background fleshed out.

Your wizardry mentor has gone missing.
Your family member has gone missing.
Your hometown was destroyed, you’re the only survivor and you want revenge.
You’re on a quest to find book of infinite spells/philosophers stone/staff of the magi/orbs of dragon kind.
You’re a task mage; you get paid to solve other people’s problems.

[Doc Roc]

A knight who gave up arms to pursue a more direct mechanism for avenging his fallen liege lord. Great for a gish build.

A stranded traveler in Sigil, looking for magic that will help him figure out which portal is homeward, and maybe survive long enough to find the key.

A strongheart halfling dedicated to the arcane arts.... of brewing.

[dr.cello]

-An enchantress decides to compensate for a lack of social abilities by learning the arts of enchantment--perhaps she was alone as a child despite many attempts to the contrary.

-A necromancer's beloved dies, and in his grief he becomes obsessed with learning all there is to know about magic in order to bring her back.

-An illusionist decides to take up the life of a traveling performer, and puts his formidable intellect to use crafting cunning stories.

-A nobleman's younger daughter feels ignored by her father in favor of her older brother's martial prowess. She sets about learning the arcane arts in hopes of winning her father's approval.

Etc. Most compelling stories (if not all of them) are about a character who wants something she can't have, and how she goes about getting that thing. Just because she is a wizard doesn't mean she's not still human. People fight for love, for revenge, for their idea of justice, for the approval of their loved ones, for freedom, for self-advancement, and so on.

Pick something your character wants, figure out how your character thinks magic can solve those ends (even if it probably can't). Build a story around that.

[Amphetryon]

-A poor kitchen boy is the last one chosen during the Festival of Apprenticeship. The great magician, for the first time in memory, selects an apprentice in choosing him. Grateful for being chosen, the boy vows to do his new master proud. Gosh, where have I read something like that?

[Serpentine]

^ Willow! =D

My cheat sheet, always growing (repeated who knows how many times on here, sorry to bore any previous readers):
- Fear: Full-blown phobia, a constant dread, a general dislike, or an "that's icky".
- Fetish: Full-blown philia, something you have a "thing" for, a general like, or generally attracted to.
- Virtue: The character's major strength, and/or something they will always respond to.
- Vice: The character's major weakness, and/or something they have trouble resisting.
- Alignment priority: What part of your character's alignment is most important to them? e.g. is a Lawful Good character more concerned with good deeds or upholding the law? What does their alignment mean to them?
- Short-term goal: What are they striving for currently?
- Long-term goal: What do they want to do before they die?

Once you've got those (think I've come up with more, too...) you can start adding "why?" to each of them. For example, one character I've been in a game with was deathly afraid of undead in general and zombies in particular. He was a Rogue, and the fact he couldn't Sneak Attack them skeeved him out, but probably more significantly he was, in his backstory, once caught by surprise by a bunch of zombies with no way out. It is also how he met his best friend, a staid Cleric who showed up in the nick of time to rescue him. He came up with the fear first, decided he wanted to be friends with this other character, and combined them in his story.

[Totally Guy]

We've got a wizard called Bob Sporrington who was born in a small village with the gift of wizardry to an idiot father of but 17 years.

After weird things transpired about the Sporrington household his father gave him to a local wizard called Mordak to get rid of him.

Mordak started off ok but as time went by he became more and more evil. Bob left with a Compass of Destiny that would lead him towards Destiny!

It led him to another small village where he did tricks to amuse the locals. Until Mordak came back for him...

Fleeing his life as a know nothing hedge wizard and following the compass he made it to the city of Art Cackles. His idiot father was there and the compass had led him straight to him. Daddy Sporrington was a pretty terrible con artist but he had a workshop. There Bob tinkered with broken items and scavenged for materials. He kept his magic to a minimum so as to not attract Mordak again.

Then, one day, the compass of destiny was gone. "Criminals must have taken my compass!" And that was the start of the campaign.

This guy in play is Comedy Gold!

He's unlucky, he just has to fiddle with things, when people shout at him he drops to the ground, he cannot explain magic, the nobility hate him for being so common, he cannot get rid of the street urchins that follow him around and he wears a big silly wizard hat (in spite of him trying to keep his magic secret).

[Tinydwarfman]

For wizards, I like to take a leaf out of exalted and give them some EPIC goals and ambitions.

- Kill X God

- Become ruler of a kingdom

- Eradicate an entire species

- Prove to the world that you are the most powerful caster

- Free your county from the enslavement of another

Cos' you know, wizard can do that kind of stuff, so why don't they?

[valadil]

I'm making a wizard for an upcoming campaign and I'm having trouble thinking of a interesting background. For some reason, all I can think of for wizard backgrounds is "I was trained in arcane arts and I want more power".

That's a fine background. It just needs details.

Who trained you? How'd you meet them? Why did they agree to train you? What were their methods? Did the training work or was it overly difficult? Now that you've graduated, how do you feel about your training? When you say you want power, what does that mean exactly?

In short, I'm asking you to tell me about Yoda. If Luke's background was that he went to Degobah and came back a Jedi, nobody would care. Meeting and interacting with Yoda made for an interesting story though. I'm not saying that your D&D character should interact with Yoda per se, but you need to create a character who fills that role in order to define your own character.

[Totally Guy]

Or - Why do you want power? What is it for? Will it make you happy?

[Daremonai]

A character that I hope to play the next time I get a chance:

An otherwise average guy, who due to a birth defect cannot withstand the "magic" his body generates. He learned wizardry/sorcery as a means of discharging the magic within him, and adventures to follow rumours of a cure for his condition.

[Umael]

Look at the news. Pick someone from it. Make that person into your wizard.

("...and that's how we ended up with Johnny Depp as our cleric, Lady Gaga as our barbarian, Oprah as our rogue, and Beckham as our sorcerer.")

((Okay, BASE your wizard on that person...))

[Doc Roc]

Look at the news. Pick someone from it. Make that person into your wizard.

("...and that's how we ended up with Johnny Depp as our cleric, Lady Gaga as our barbarian, Oprah as our rogue, and Beckham as our sorcerer.")

((Okay, BASE your wizard on that person...))

I'd play in that campaign.

[Ormur]

For an evil campaign you could play an accountant, an evil bureaucrat that can measure and quantify everything but has no regard for unquantifiable things like (insert sentimental cliché here). I'm playing with one and he's the scariest, wickedest but also the most interesting person in the group. The party pooled together to buy his "apprentice" from debt bondage.

[Serpentine]

Awesome. Though I'd switch Beckham and Oprah.

edit: Okay, serious question: What sort of Wizard are you going for? What sort of spells are you choosing? If you haven't decided yet, just picking out spells that you think he'd favour could help.
I'll chuck you my idea: a Wizard spy who makes good use of Amanuensis and Secret Page.

[Safety Sword]

-A poor kitchen boy is the last one chosen during the Festival of Apprenticeship. The great magician, for the first time in memory, selects an apprentice in choosing him. Grateful for being chosen, the boy vows to do his new master proud. Gosh, where have I read something like that?

I think it's been done! Twisted ankles, princesses and mighty inter dimensional gates!

Edit: *Mumbles something about stealthy sneak attack text*

[Hague]

A young apprentice is chosen as one of the retainer for a likewise young prince to the throne of Angalond, an island monarchy. The world, Elencea, a place of grand arcane prowess features mass-manufactured psionic and arcane achievements, is in the middle of a global 'cold war' with a magical and psionic arms race hurtling civilizations to the brink of destruction. A misstep sends the first wave of an attack, epic-level disjunction bombs unbind all the magic and psionics in most cities. Bound elementals, demons, and other creatures run amok as quality-of-life rapidly plummets.

In a bid of desperation, the emperor orders his son and his retainers to take refuge in his uncle's research facility hidden within the mountains. The uncle, a powerful Shaper, with the aid of gnomish engineers has constructed a stasis chamber. As the bombs continue to drop, the prince's uncle forces the prince and his retainers into crystalline vats of quintessence in a fateful bid to protect the only heir to a secret legacy. Driven deep into the earth, the vats are primed to open at a later date. The time slipping properties of the quintessence preserve the prince, apprentice, and his retainers from the efforts of dark and mysterious forces and the ravages of the world war. The timing mechanism fails, however, and the prince is trapped. An fortunate geological shift disturbs the vats, releasing the prince and his compatriots in an unknown time in the future, a world torn asunder scraping by on the remnants of lost magical knowledge and the artifacts of an age long past. The world is dying as magic dead zones and inter-planar rifts tear apart the landscape, an unthought-of side-effect of the world disjunction.

The apprentice must now cope with his new situation, does he continue to serve the prince? Will he use his knowledge of the now dead ancient world to scheme and control the desperate masses? How will he survive this brave new world? Will it consume him or will he rise above it, rebuilding the world or building it anew or will he destroy what remains?

[herrhauptmann]

A wizard repeatedly mindraped a 9 year old elven child into having the arcane abilities of an archmage. He also cast embrace/shun the dark chaos several times to make her even more powerful.
Cindy