All caster parties and magical campaigns

[Thoughtbot360]

How about it, are they workable? And, how do you set up campaigns that focus intensively on magic?

[Morty]

Well, it may be no different from 'normal' campaign, since divine and arcane casters have nothing in common RP-wise. Wizard or Cleric-only campaign would be interesting, though. On the other hand, on low levels all-wizard party may have trouble defeating enemies. But searching for some ancient, powerful spell is good material for adventure.

[Tor the Fallen]

Depends on starting level.

[Roderick_BR]

If you mean only wizards/sorcerers, you'd get something like Slayers (the anime), with the charcters facing beasts with magical powers, evil wizards, and the likes.
Would be good to start the game at 2nd or 3rd level, and allow all characters to start with max HP.
If you allow mixing wizards/sorcerers with clerics, druids, and bards, you could still make a fairly balanced group.
If you allow half-casters, like paladins and rangers, then it would be almost like a normal D&D game.

Hmm... maybe just wizards, clerics and bards wouldn't be a too unbalanced game, I guess.

[Emperor Tippy]

I've run all wizards before. It's quite fun. Even if you start at level 1. You just need good, intelligent players.

[NullAshton]

Or... just bards! You could be a travelling band on tour, jamming out in towns and fighting monsters!

[Krellen]

Or... just bards! You could be a travelling band on tour, jamming out in towns and fighting monsters!

I'd have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you spoony bards!

[NullAshton]

Get an awakened dog to travel with you too. :)

[Saph]

It can work. The main issue is that not all players like the bookkeeping and heavy preparation of D&D's Vancian magic system, which is why most people don't play casters despite their power. But if you were playing a campaign like this, everyone who'd signed up would be a caster fan anyway.

It's also a bit difficult to balance combats for an all-caster party. Either the monster is vulnerable to their spells - in which case it gets annihilated almost instantly in a massive volley of magical attacks - or it isn't, in which case it annihilates them instead.

- Saph

[Orzel]

Or... just bards! You could be a travelling band on tour, jamming out in towns and fighting monsters!

Been there, done that

Did the band of bards thing.
I was the bassist.
I almost never took damage since no one really pays attention to the bassist.

[Roderick_BR]

A group of sorcereres would be easier to use, then. Each member can specialize in a set of spells, for diferent encounters, and needing to learn a smaller set of spells.

[Indon]

My favorite concept for a magic-users campaign is a world in which arcane magic is recently discovered; that way, the budding arcanists get to develop their own spellbooks, and that's what the campaign can center itself around.

[Lemur]

Been there, done that

Did the band of bards thing.
I was the bassist.
I almost never took damage since no one really pays attention to the bassist.

As someone who plays the bass in real life, that's pretty awesome.

Hmm, an all caster campaign. I'd reccommend dividing up magic somehow- like forcing all wizards to be specialists, and possibly creating some sort of specialist concept for the other casters as well (like battle clerics, healing clerics, necromancer clerics- perhaps each god grants a different spell list, or whatever system of division makes sense). It could be something like "you have to choose most of your spells from this list, and then can take a few others" or even "you can't take any spells from this particular list at all".

The purpose of this would be to make sure that the players still have separate niches to fill, giving them something to define their characters identities and role in the party. Otherwise, you might risk each caster of the same class being more or less identical mechanically, or even worse, divided into things like "the cleric who rolled bad ability scores and the cleric who rolled good ones". If the cleric who rolled bad ability scores is the only cleric in the group who can cast cure spells, though, he still has a place in the group without being overshadowed by his other party members.

[Thoughtbot360]

I'd have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you spoony bards!

BUWAHAHAHAHA! Its clever and cliche at the same time! Good one Krellen!

Get an awakened dog to travel with you too. :)

Ruh-Roh!

My favorite concept for a magic-users campaign is a world in which arcane magic is recently discovered; that way, the budding arcanists get to develop their own spellbooks, and that's what the campaign can center itself around.

Funny, that works well with the Elements of Magic system.

You can't do a Lyceum game though (But then, the Lyceum is basically the world's most diverse magic school thats supposed to act as a way for the DM to introduce multiple spellcasting traditions. And a tradition denotes that magic has been around for a while....)

I'd reccommend dividing up magic somehow- like forcing all wizards to be specialists, and possibly creating some sort of specialist concept for the other casters as well (like battle clerics, healing clerics, necromancer clerics- perhaps each god grants a different spell list, or whatever system of division makes sense). It could be something like "you have to choose most of your spells from this list, and then can take a few others" or even "you can't take any spells from this particular list at all".

Thats actually quite doable with the Elements of magic system. In the revised edition, you won't quite see this (The Mage, Mage Knight, Taskmage, and most the classes in the sister book, Lyceum Arcana allowed you to pick whichever types of spells you want, possibly forcing you to learn a few class-related ones before moving on to any other.) , but in the original version, there was an alternative listed in the book that broke up casters into different color mages (instead of a generic mage who could learn whatever he wanted): The Black Mage learned Spells using Force (Magic Missile), the Classical Elements, and the Para-elements (Fire + Earth=Lava, Air + Water =Ice, etc) and had spells that affected constructs, while White Mages controled Undead and had Life (Heal), Death (Harm), and some obscure elements like Metal, Sound, Steam, Light, and Shadow, and again with Green Mages that used Nature element spells with all ability to Charm/Dominate/Polymorph all the living Creatures. The names reek a little of final fantasy but they presented just how flexible the system could be for the player...or the GM crafting his/her own would trying to balance different types of magic.

[Black Hand]

All caster campaigns can be run, and they are quite fun. My most recent one is run here on this site, where all the classes pretty much need to be of the arcane variety, but can take up to 3 levels in another class for the purposes of PRC's (such as a mystic Theurge) So far it's a motley crew, consisting of a Human Wizard, Grey elf Beguiler, Grey elf Clerk/mage, a H-orc warmage, and a Kobold sorcerer rogue.

If you're looking for any ideas the link to the game is here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31319

[Thoughtbot360]

Hey Lemur, I like your idea of having different types of mages and forcing people to pick a specialization. Elements of magic is a system that encourages not only that mages be different, but spells (balanced to the best of E.N. publishing's abilities with Vancian spells) be unique as well. Imagine, in a first level adventure, nobody casts magic missile or shocking grasp! (they probably cast Fire missile or Light grasp, but still.) And thats why I've kept bringing it up on the Giantitp forums from day one.

Anyway, opening the spoiler will revel a set of rules I've made for forcing an EOM mage to choose which types of Spell his unique brand magic revolves around.

Oh, dear, its a complete mess. Darn you notepad-to-interenet conversions! Let me pretty it up...done!

Spoiler

Show

There are: 22 Elements, 15 Creatures, 5 Alignments (if you include Balance),
there are also 7 spell types that use an Element, 5 spell types that use a creature type, and 4 spell lists that use an alignment.

Therefore, a Spell type that uses Elements is worth 22 (exception: Move [Element], which can only use 10 elements, so of course it is worth 10 spell lists.) if you want to use all elements, while a single Element (exception: Only cardinal and unifying elements can be used for the Move [Element] lists, other elements are worth 6) can be used with 7 (or 6!) different
spell lists, so that is worth 7 (or 6).

Your caster must pick bewteen 45-50 spell lists (At level 20, you can only learn up to 45 spell lists, but 50 is for wiggle room) worth of generalizations (That is, Spell types, Elements, Creatures, and/or Alignments the caster Revolves around). Specific spell lists (Like say, a Mage type that has access to Charm animal, but not Charm (Creature) or Animal spells in general) count as 1 spell list (obviously). Ooze counts as
a Creature AND an Element so its worth 10 spell lists! (There is no such thing as the Move Ooze spell list, so Ooze is not worth 11 spell lists).

So, you're guanteed to have some pretty creative characters, for example:

Green mage: He is a druid-like mage that uses all sorts of Spell types, but specializes in the Nature elements and spells that affects non-magical living creatures. Also has control over the primal force of Balance bewteen alignments.

Nature Element +7 (Since Nature has a Move [Element] effect, its 7 not 6.)
Animal Creature +5
Beast Creature +5
Giant Creature +5
Humanoid Creature +5
Monstrous Humanoid Creature +5
Plant Creature +5
Vermin Creature +5
Balance Alignment -Abjure +3 (He decided he didn't need Abjure Balance because he IS True neutral....)
Total: 50

Deciever: A wicked criminal mage who uses Charms, illusions and Shadow magic to confound his enemies. He also has a few Infuse spells to help him lie and slip past Paladins and their pesky Detect Evil.
Illusion [All Elements] +22
Shadow Element +5 (No Move Shadow, minus another point because he already has access to Illusion Shadow. So its, +5 and not +7.)
Charm [All Creatures] +15
Infuse/Drain Evil (so He can drain his evil aura) +1
Infuse/Drain Good (so He can replace it with a good aura) +1
Infuse/Drain Fire (to Boost his Charisma and Charisma-based skills) +1
Total: 45.

Defense Mage: A master of all that is Abjurations. Also learns all spells for the life element so he is an all-purpose support mage. His Evoke Life spells are USELESS against non-undead, however. A very good choice for a nonviolent healer-type character who just wants to help out the party even if he isn't strong enough (or willing!) to actually fight.(although violence against undead is A-OK as per the normal double standard all "good" fantasy
religions hold against undead).

Abjure [All Elements] +22
Abjure [All Creatures] +15
Abjure [All Alignments] +5
Life Element +6 (Already have Abjure Life, so its +6, not +7)
Total: 48

Fire elementalist: Uses Fire and all the elements and creatures that are related to Fire. Fire! Fire!

Lava Element +6
Lightning Element +6 (If lightning hits that tree over there, It'll catch fire! Fire! Fire!)
Shadow Element +6 (Well on the sphere of elements, Shadow is in bewteen Fire and Death so...yeah, I'm just stretching this as far as I can.)
Light Element +6 (The sun is made of fire.... Fire! Fire!)
Mist Element +6 (And its not Mist! Its Smoke! Really! Fire! Fire!)
Elemental Creature +4 (For summoning Fire Elementals and Binding those Heretical ones made of Water! BOO, WATER ELEMENTALS! HISS!)
Dragon Creaute +4 (Do I really need to explain this one?)
Fire Element +7 (Huh. Wonder why I picked this element? I have no idea.)

Time Master: These mages hope to reduce all the mysteries of the universe to a simple, reliable equation. To do this, they employ powers over time and Space. They also combine Illusion time and Illusion space with other illusions to cause enemies to lose track of time and scale.

Time Element +7
Space Element +7
Illusion [All Elements] +20 (You have time and space)
Outsider Creature +5
Law Alignment +4
Create Air (For making created demiplanes livable) +1
Total 45


Total Element lists: 22x7=154
Total Creature lists: 15x4=60
Total Alignment lists: 5x4=20
234 spell lists total. Therefore, if a group of
mages decided to purposefully pick spell lists none of the other mages had, they could be totally original up to 5 mages (45x5=225).

If you choose not to read the spoiler, then lets just say I include examples of how to make a Druid that focuses on Mind-affecting and Transforming spells, an Illusionist that can out-lie your bard power build (eventually, that is. Glibness at level 6 is VERY GOOD) and fight back with Shadow-based attack magic, a Defensive magic user that also know healing and some odd magics, and a Mage that specilizes in Fire and related elements.

Not that I'm receiving paychecks from E.N. Publishing. *shifts eyes*

Edit: I added a time-space manipulator to the mix as well.

[Sardia]

Just to make life interesting, I'd make it a campaign relatively heavy in politics and such. If all they do is compete to throw the biggest spell, you're just playing Dragon Ball Z.
Take a bunch of socially-maladept wizards and throw them into schemes with other wizards...there's plenty of ways for that to turn interesting.

[Thoughtbot360]

You know, I've been wondering, which spells exactly are they that make Pure casters so much more powerful in combat compared to the non-casters? Where was the line that mages crossed that ruined the fighter to the point that magic weapons couldn't save him? Is it just that monsters at later levels where made with some PCs classes in mind over others?

[TheOOB]

You know, I've been wondering, which spells exactly are they that make Pure casters so much more powerful in combat compared to the non-casters? Where was the line that mages crossed that ruined the fighter to the point that magic weapons couldn't save him? Is it just that monsters at later levels where made with some PCs classes in mind over others?

It's not so much any single spell (Though such bombs as polymorph, alter self, gate, shapechange, wish, divine power, ect are extreamly powerful in and of themselves), it's that casters have access to a wide array of abilities while non casters are limited mainly to physical attacks. A spellcaster can do anything, a fighter can only do what his feats allow.

This problum is aggrevated by preparation spellcasters who can even change what spells they "know" every day allowing them to be experts at any situation without having to gain levels and pick new classes/feats.

[Sardia]

You know, I've been wondering, which spells exactly are they that make Pure casters so much more powerful in combat compared to the non-casters? Where was the line that mages crossed that ruined the fighter to the point that magic weapons couldn't save him? Is it just that monsters at later levels where made with some PCs classes in mind over others?

Save or die and its siblings.
This should actually make a caster-heavy campaign interesting-- since standing up against your opponents and starting to cast away might well mean the guy with the best initiative wins, everyone's got a motive to plan, scheme, and manipulate like mad before trying for one perfect shot.
Fighting among wizards probably ought to seem like a chess game for most of the fight, but end like hell on earth.

[Sardia]

This problum is aggrevated by preparation spellcasters who can even change what spells they "know" every day allowing them to be experts at any situation without having to gain levels and pick new classes/feats.

So if spell memorization took several days/weeks rather than just a few minutes...

[TheOOB]

So if spell memorization took several days/weeks rather than just a few minutes...

Or preperation should just be removed and only allow spontaneous casters.

[Bears With Lasers]

You know, I've been wondering, which spells exactly are they that make Pure casters so much more powerful in combat compared to the non-casters? Where was the line that mages crossed that ruined the fighter to the point that magic weapons couldn't save him? Is it just that monsters at later levels where made with some PCs classes in mind over others?

Oh, man, where even to start? First of all, the "ridiculously cheesy and/or broken" spells like the Polymorph line and Shivering Touch. Then there's just "the best of the regular ones", i.e. Time Stop, Teleport, Dominate Monster, Imprisonment, Irresistible Dance, Greater Shadow Evocation, Forcecage, Ethereal Jaunt (ridiculously good defense-wise), Plane Shift, Ray of Enfeeblement, Magnificent Mansion, Contingency, Repulsion, Overland Flight, Telekinesis if used right, Dominate Person, Solid Fog, Greater Invisibility, Glitterdust at lower levels, Confusion and Fear when you get them and for a number of levels after, Enervation...

On top of that, there's your usual array of save-or-lose spells, plus "really good but can't take'em away because you need'em to fight monsters" spells like Dimensional Anchor.

[Nahal]

Save-or-die, Save-or-Suck, and Polymorph effects.

Edit: Wow, that's what I get for not refreshing the page.

[Bears With Lasers]

Eh, that's not entirely true. There are reasonable save-or-suck/lose/die spells, and removing them all would pretty much limit casters to doing damage.

[Sardia]

Or preperation should just be removed and only allow spontaneous casters.

Might have to move a few spells to being feats, then-- Permanency or Identify, maybe.

[Thoughtbot360]

TheOOB:

it's that casters have access to a wide array of abilities while non casters are limited mainly to physical attacks. A spellcaster can do anything, a fighter can only do what his feats allow.

Hmm... so assuming that nerfing mages to ritual magic only is a no-no if you want a world remotely resemebling a convential sword and sorcery D20 world (Let alone one fit for a magic campaign!)-to make Fighter NPCs threatening, one would have to give them more options? Huh. Wonder what would happen if the 4 non-caster classes merged into some horrific hybrid with feats, Rage, Rogue skills, and ...(okay lets leave up the monk class, clashes too much) and that class took on a caster? (This unholy bastardized class is kind of a joke but...)

Bears With Lasers

On top of that, there's your usual array of save-or-lose spells, plus "really good but can't take'em away because you need'em to fight monsters" spells like Dimensional Anchor.

Sigh...banning a lot of monsters (along with the offending spell thats "neccessary" to defeat such monsters) could probably solve this problem, but thats a lot of work for both the GM to weed the core rules like this, and the player to read all the resulting house rules. Sadly, even my precious Elements of Magic has rules allowing for an Anchor type spell...

Conceivably, you could rule that certain spells don't work at all on normal, non-magical creatures, and the creatures those spells DO work on can be beaten by a warrior party, they just are a pain to deal with. But once again, thats getting back to redesigning the system...

Also, the Balor, to use Sir Galcamo's (sp?) example, EXPLODES once you finally DO kill it. So I imagine that some monsters are simply not "Class-appriate" for some parties.

Eh, that's not entirely true. There are reasonable save-or-suck/lose/die spells, and removing them all would pretty much limit casters to doing damage.

Funny, being limited in options is what OOB said fighter's problem was. Hmm.... (actually, I can't complain, since, as you said, BWL, some of those spells are pretty reasonable.)

ALAS! IS THERE NO WAY FOR FIGHTERS TO EXIST IN HARMONY WITH VANCIAN-ESQUE SPELLCASTERS? (Never mind inuitive magic users, those guys get along with no one. Just look at Sardra. Sure he seems nice enough when they meet him but what about later?)

[Morty]

ALAS! IS THERE NO WAY FOR FIGHTERS TO EXIST IN HARMONY WITH VANCIAN-ESQUE SPELLCASTERS?

There is. I have no clue why anyone assumes that there isn't. It's not the problem with Vancian-esque spellcasters(best spellcasting system IMO), but with spells.

[Maroon]

Save or die and its siblings.
This should actually make a caster-heavy campaign interesting-- since standing up against your opponents and starting to cast away might well mean the guy with the best initiative wins, everyone's got a motive to plan, scheme, and manipulate like mad before trying for one perfect shot.
Fighting among wizards probably ought to seem like a chess game for most of the fight, but end like hell on earth.

This reminds me of Discworld, where the wizards outlawed magical duels because it was really hard to determine which patch of grease was the winner.

Inter-wizard combat in magical campaigns could be similar - you make sure you're not in your opponent's line of sight and you'd much rather just poison him. Including innocent bystanders could really spice things up as well. An all-caster campaign should not entail epic duels, but epic assassination.

It's cloak and sorcery. All about planning, diplomacy, stealth, and getting out of the blast radius before your target notices the thermonuclear explosive runes.

[Sardia]

It's cloak and sorcery. All about planning, diplomacy, stealth, and getting out of the blast radius before your target notices the thermonuclear explosive runes.

My campaign has two groups of wizards who aren't entirely sure whether they're fighting one another or not...but better safe than sorry, so they spend time on endless divination and counterdivination, theory, and practice just in case. And in the meantime, they have a profound and paranoid horror of open conflict, just in case a minor incident balloons.