Magic: Power vs. Conveniance (A though experiment)

[Talakeal]

Imagine you are playing an RPG set in a fairly generic fantasy setting.

In this setting magicians are capable of performing great feats. They can kill dozens of people with a thought from across the world, create enough food to feed an army for a year, alter global weather patterns, commune with the gods to learn the secrets of the universe, release enough energy to destroy entire cities, conjure enough gold to buy a small kingdom, bring back the dead, utterly rewrite someone's personality and memories, create new life, restore lost youth, raise cities from the earth, travel through time, etc..

Virtually anything, save for altering the way magic works.

Now then, spell casting has the following limitations:

1: Only a very few people can become magicians, a very precise set of environmental or genetic factors all need to line up.
2: Learning magic takes years, leaving said magicians sorely lacking in non magical knowledge and physically rather feeble.
3: Magic can only be practiced by children, once they hit puberty the gift will disappear.
4: Casting a spell requires a ritual that takes several days. If this ritual is interrupted for any reason the wizard's soul is shattered and with it their ability to do magic.
5: Casting a spell drains all of the wizard's energy. After casting a spell they must spend a full year recovering, during which time they can barely get out of bed let alone attempt another spell.


So, if you are playing in this setting, would you ever play a wizard? Would you ever not play a wizard? Do you think other people would play wizards? Would you think that wizards are mandatory for any party? Do you think all wizard parties would be the norm or the exception?

[JNAProductions]

Would I play a wizard, or expect one to be in the party? Hell no. It takes days to cast a spell, and has a cooldown of over a year.

More than that, it takes years of training, but only kids can do it. So let's assume training starts at 3, somehow, and they're wizards by 5. If childhood lasts through 13, you get 8 spells.

8. Spells.

That's, uh... That's not a very functioning magic system. And it gets even worse when you realize you can't actually train 3 year olds to do complex rituals.

[Tohron]

The only reason you'd play a "wizard" is if they used their ~8 spells to enchant some kind of exo-suit with various offensive and defensive abilities. And they wouldn't really be a wizard by the time you play them, they'd be someone who was a wizard, and has a super-powered exo-suit to show for it.

[JNAProductions]

I would totally play a "Former Wizard". Magical Exo-Suit in D&D? Sign me up.

Do I have to roll to survive character generation?

[Kid Jake]

It's an interesting concept, but wizards wouldn't really be characters anymore; they'd be plot devices. It'd be bad news to have one turned against you, but unless the entire campaign revolved around the five times they get to feel cool in their life I couldn't see anybody playing one.

Which actually reminds me of a game that I stumbled on like fifteen years ago that completely escapes me, where there was no real resolution mechanic for your special power; you just got to say "Now this happens." and it did, but after using your power a handful of times you were dragged to hell (or somewhere similar) and the character retired. Most of the game was about the unintended repercussions of your power abuse and discovering what situation was dire enough to risk your soul to escape.

For the life f me I can't remember what it was called...

[Gritmonger]

If there are no limits on the actual spell effect, and they are all up-front costs on the part of the spellcaster, I would play a spellbroker, and have a stable of children with pension plans.

Talk about rich.

Talk about power.

Yeah, spell one is the one to protect the building and the stable from all physical, magical, mundane, social, ecological, economic, political or astrophysical disaster.

Spell two is the one that makes it so the isolation room is perfectly impregnable to anything once sealed until a ritual is complete, or it is opened by agreed codes by the persons inside and outside.

After that... how much money do you have, country-in-question?

[JNAProductions]

Spell 3-infinite money bag. It's full of every kind of coin and never runs out.

Why are you bartering with nations?

[Gritmonger]

Spell 3-infinite money bag. It's full of every kind of coin and never runs out.

Why are you bartering with nations?

Remember the spell about protection from economic disaster? I suspect that one would come into play in that case...
Edited to add: Besides, I think having the Creche as an investment opportunity would get me a lot more protection as well, as people don't like to see their interests raided by other groups.

[goto124]

How do you play a PC wizard when you can't even cast 1 spell per day? You'll be more like a fighter with a bit of magic.

[JNAProductions]

A weak, frail, takes a year to recover from magic fighter.

Edit: Who's a kid.

[Arbane]

How do you play a PC wizard when you can't even cast 1 spell per day? You'll be more like a fighter with a bit of magic.

Exalted did reasonably well with a sorcery system where spellcasting was exhausting and near-suicidal to use in combat (it's obvious when you're casting a spell, it takes a while, you can't use defensive powers, and if you lose concentration there is a non-zero risk of exploding), but it's still horrendously powerful and useful - you just cast your spells _before_ the fight starts, so you've got invulnerable skin of bronze, dragon's claws for hands, or a pet war-demon.

Mind you, any reasonable Exalted character is expected to have combat abilities on top of being the World's Greatest Swordsman/Sneak/Blacksmith/Doctor/Bureaucrat/Whatever, even if they used a few Charms to become a sorcerer.

[Erik Vale]

2: Learning magic takes years, leaving said magicians sorely lacking in non magical knowledge and physically rather feeble.
3: Magic can only be practiced by children, once they hit puberty the gift will disappear.

I said no here.

So what, starting at 5, they then spend a nebulous time of years [Which I presume is more teaching them to follow the rituals], before ending somewhere between 11-14 [I think], or later if you are a girl and manipulate your body so you don't go through puberty. [At least, I think certain types of female athlete don't go through puberty, I know some things don't happen developmentally at least].

I'm not interested in playing a adventuring kid, I don't want to play a frail woman who kinda looked like a really tall 13 year old.

Having then looked up at the other factors, no, I wouldn't. Those make you a NPC, not a PC. These wizards are the tools of nations that [hopefully] receive recompense later while being put into a breeding program to make more wizards, not individuals.

[Lord Raziere]

No way. I'd rather play a guy who can only spontaneously cast fire spells all day. give me convenient but narrow magic any day over this, especially for playing a PC.

[oxybe]

Well, the big issue is that you're talking about small children who don't have the experience, knowledge or foresight of an older experienced adult.

Assuming someing akin to Mushoku Tensei where an adult dies and gets reincarned as a kid who can use magic, but still keeping his adult mind intact...

Step 1 - Create a spell that slows down time around you so that 25 months pass in slow time = 1 second, or something similar.

This means that in the span of a second, you will have a little over years to do whatever you want. like rest and plan. It's like time stop, only better.

Step 2 - Cast a spell that makes it so my body stays in it's prepubescent state until I will it otherwise. This way I can use magic effectively forever, unless it becomes clear that it's inconvenient. Always give yourself an out.

Since you're always in prepubescent state, you'll likely never have to worry about aging and as such, dying of old age.

This leads us to... Infinicasting.

Step 1 - cast Time Slow. Time slows down for 2.some years. you rest up for the first year.
Step 2 - cast whatever other spell you want, research or do whatever. if you cast a spell you still have another year to rest up.
Step 3 - Then, as you have some time left over, if you want to you recast time slow and go back to step 1.

Technically not breaking the rules.

1: Only a very few people can become magicians, a very precise set of environmental or genetic factors all need to line up.
-This is assumed true by default if I'm playing a wizard, so hooray!
2: Learning magic takes years, leaving said magicians sorely lacking in non magical knowledge and physically rather feeble.
-Hey, I have time stopping powers. I can take a year off every now and then to get buff. buffest preteen ever.
3: Magic can only be practiced by children, once they hit puberty the gift will disappear.
-Spell 2 causes me to stay preteen forever unless I will it otherwise, so loophole, ho!
4: Casting a spell requires a ritual that takes several days. If this ritual is interrupted for any reason the wizard's soul is shattered and with it their ability to do magic.
-It shouldn't be too hard to get the first Time Slow off. Once that's done everything is off the table, from the impregnable wizard rest room to making magic items that allow me to get to my room whenever I want
5: Casting a spell drains all of the wizard's energy. After casting a spell they must spend a full year recovering, during which time they can barely get out of bed let alone attempt another spell.
-Time slow gives a year and more, so this basically becomes a non-factor. By the time it wears off and returns to normal, I'm recuperated.

[Talakeal]

No way. I'd rather play a guy who can only spontaneously cast fire spells all day. give me convenient but narrow magic any day over this, especially for playing a PC.

Oh, so would I. I don't think this scenario is anyone's idea of a first choice.

[Deophaun]

Step 1 - Create a spell that slows down time around you so that 25 months pass in slow time = 1 second, or something similar.

This means that in the span of a second, you will have a little over years to do whatever you want. like rest and plan. It's like time stop, only better.

Except that you're a kid with minimal physical skills and no magic trapped in a world that will. not. change. for two years. With no one else to help you set that broken leg, make sure it doesn't turn gangrenous, and cut it off when it does, for example.

It's a very gamest approach, but in actual roleplay it would be very unpleasant, even at just the psychological level, and not something a person would willingly subject themselves to all that often. And depending on where you are, the time period, and the current weather conditions, it could be fatal.

[Darth Ultron]

Well, is this a Game of Thrones like setting? Or like RISK? If so then playing a wizard would be fine.

But if the game is more an adventure game, like D&D, with a group of PC's then it would be a big no to ever being a wizard.

After all, the wizard you described could not even go on a typical adventure.

What is the point of being a wizard if you can't cast any spells?

Though I'll say it's a bit odd to have ''takes years to learn magic'' and can only cast magic till puberty. So that is like what 10-13? So a wizard can only cast magic for three years? And that is three spells?

[oxybe]

What broken leg? Since You need several days to cast the spell, if you're in a state that your leg hasn't been set for darn near a week's time (yet this injury is still not harmful enough to interrupt the creation of the ritual), yet still have more then enough time to prepare and cast the ritual for casting these spells you've probably got other issues you should be attending to.

It's also made pretty clear if the spell is interrupted that you lose the ability to cast spells, so if some guy just randomly kicks down the door and stomps your leg out the spell wouldn't have gone off.

This sounds like a rather tenuous argument to make.

Weather and whatnot would be non-issues unless they occur in the middle of casting the spell, at which point we need to think of what constitutes interruption. And if the weather does interrupt, well it immediately becomes a non-issue.

So one can reasonably think that
A) you would be casting spells in an area where you can safely assume people won't barge in and break your legs
B) the weather/season is somewhat more manageable then "raining fire and knife tornadoes".

I would also like you to note the second line i started with:
"Assuming something akin to Mushoku Tensei where an adult dies and gets reincarned as a kid who can use magic, but still keeping his adult mind intact..."

In that, if i could have an adult's mind, sure, why not. We're talking theoreticals here where magical kids can warp reality after a week of making finger paints on the floor.

Otherwise, the first line i opened my post with applies, which is:
"Well, the big issue is that you're talking about small children who don't have the experience, knowledge or foresight of an older experienced adult."

Because being a dumb kid who has no idea how to use reality warping powers (and as such will either follow and adult's orders or throw the worst tantrum ever), then losing them as my voice deepens is hardly fun.

As an adult, two years in isolation is hell, but in all honesty, if I am left so exhausted that "during which time they can barely get out of bed" I'm likely casting the spell for very VERY important reasons because it leaves me so drained that i barely have the energy to do basic day-to-day functions.

As such any caster worth their weight in salt will have prepared for this horrible downtime, either by making sure they're cared for, in a safe area, etc...

All in all, it's not "gamist". It's knowing the rules of the universe and applying them or working around them. People do that all the time in real life. People work to understand the underlining principals of the universe.

As such, with the 8 rules I was given I gave my answer.

[Satinavian]

Let's assume, the magic does not allow to change the limitations of magic for the caster (because, if it did, people would have abused the loophole long ago)

Yes, i would play a spellcaster even then. The concept and my whole life would revolve around the 5 big spells i have to change the whole setting.

I certainly would not use any magic in regular adentures. I would be just a pretty useless child in them. Why would i go on adventures anyway ?

[Gavran]

Putting aside wizard power suits (albeit remorsefully :P), nobody would play a wizard adventurer by those rules because those rules explicitly prohibit adventuring. No normal game has a scale where everyone can take a year off so one player can rest, and a party full of wizards would just be "abusing loopholes" (really more like problem solving in this case) in between massive time skips. "You spend six days casting a spell" isn't a game, and "you spend a year in bed" sure as hell isn't. Could the basic idea work as a setting feature? Sure, though to my own personal tastes I'd probably make some tweaks to it. Not really fond of the "magic of childhood imagination!" implications, nor the grimmer reality of brainwashed wizard child slaves that would be the likely outcome (assuming they weren't all just executed because they have way too much power.)

Also oxybe, you forgot to create infallible constructs that take care of your every need in your downtime and a spell that let's you have mental timeskips to bypass the isolation thing. Though I suppose you've got to choose just one of those (and the time altering spell) as your first which is a bit inconvenient. Probably best to just go with the Time Slow and tough out the first two years alone with stockpiled resources, and the second two alone with the constructs.

[oxybe]

@ Gavran

Either or, really. Using the first spell to create a robobutler/robomaid to take care of you is hardly a bad choice for your first spell, especially if he's a great conversationalist. Probably the most "practical one" in all honesty if we're going for the Time Slow method (which if we want to we can create it so it affect selected people/area), since you'll then be fully ready when it slows down.

It'll give you something to at least converse with and bounce ideas off of until the cooldown period ends. Hell, since we technically have as much time as we want, we can go full Professor Layton and create our own St. Mystere darn near overnight.

-Create robobutler/maid that is also a child
-Invent Time Slow
-Become Immortal.
-Make village of robots to amuse you and converse with. Have some robots to spare in an underground village.
-Every decade or so, rotate the robots around so it looks like families are being created/growing up.
-Put yourself, as you're a child, in a different family every so often. For a few years you're the doctor's son, then the fisherman's son, then the drunken lout's son, then...
-Have attendant be your best friend/sibling.
-Success?

[NichG]

Lets not pretend that what a player of this sort of character would be doing would be providing spellcasting services for the party. Instead, they'd be using the at-will superpowers they spent their childhood accumulating with magic. "Former Wizard" is certainly a viable adventuring character in this system, and is probably broken.

The thing is, in the psychology of players, a set of rules like this is just asking to be twisted. The way they're phrased is very actively designed to suppress players' desire to play such a character, so it makes it a challenge to figure out how to get around that. Whatever a GM creating these rules thought he was going to get, what he's actually going to get is a huge upswing in people trying to pull off TO stuff.

[Karl Aegis]

It works better if magic stops working when you are no longer a naive child playing games with the laws of reality and realize you have consequences for your actions beyond "That's pretty cool."

Also: There is an RPG out there where you can play a small child piloting a 25 foot tall mech. Adults can pilot slightly smaller mechs, but adults are rejected by the "sealed evil in a can" power source.

[Seto]

Hmm, elves (if they exist) and other long-lived races would rule the world, with their super-long childhoods and whatnot.

(And I wouldn't play a PC Wizard with such conditions).

[Talakeal]

Hmm, elves (if they exist) and other long-lived races would rule the world, with their super-long childhoods and whatnot.

(And I wouldn't play a PC Wizard with such conditions).

As with most things, I would imagine it is a quantity over quality issue and a humans faster breeding rate would more than make up for the elves' longer lifespans.

Also, I explicitly listed restoring youth as something magic is capable of, so it probably wouldn't be that big of an issue.

[Raimun]

Well sure, perhaps. I might be interested to try playing one. If only your imagination limits your magical powers, there's a lot of loopholes to make such a character practical.

Then again, what are the other "classes" capable of? Could I roll a mundane dude who could strong arm and/or persuade these mages to do my bidding? Because they are basically like Batman and have insane physical, mental and social capabilities. Or at least one or some of those? Because when the amazing superpowers have been turned off, for whatever reason, Badass Normal characters are the real power players.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

It's a totally abusable system:


1) Caster makes large amount of clone bodies in sequential activation.

2) Caster makes himself a fast-time demiplane sanctum.

3) Caster makes contingent effects that are precast.

4) Caster kills himself each time he wants to move to fresh, rested body.



Effectively, the caster is immortal and can cast spells as often as he wants.

[Talakeal]

It's a totally abusable system:


1) Caster makes large amount of clone bodies in sequential activation.

2) Caster makes himself a fast-time demiplane sanctum.

3) Caster makes contingent effects that are precast.

4) Caster kills himself each time he wants to move to fresh, rested body.



Effectively, the caster is immortal and can cast spells as often as he wants.

I never said anything about the source or the nature of the enrgy depletion. You assume that time travel or killing yourself bypasses the year long restriction but that is just an assumption. It might be, say, a divine curse enforced by a being who is smart enough to see through such shenanigans.

Again, it is just a thought experiment rather than an actual campaign setting, and the intent is that magic cannot bypass its own limits. How that is enforced is more or less irrelevant.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Because when the amazing superpowers have been turned off, for whatever reason, Badass Normal characters are the real power players.

There's no difference between "badass normality" and "superpowers" when it comes to turning them off. All it takes to depower Batman is anything that could take him out long enough for someone to give him a spinal injury and then bye bye "badass normal".


Which begs the question why it has only been done once in all of Batman's history, given that he's been captured a bazillion times.

[JNAProductions]

He's still a genius. Oracle, anyone?

So here's how you get rid of Batman-when you capture him, chop his damn head off. No more Batman. (God, the amount of times I've wanted to slap a supervillain and just yell "SHOOT HIM! IN THE FACE! RIGHT NOW!" is astronomical.)