Class Spotlight: Wizard + Energy Mages [OCS]

[Orion]

Design Principles

The Wizard class is a D&D classic, well-loved, and very rewarding. It's also very challenging to play, and sometimes to DM for. Especially when you have new players or low-level characters, you may well want to steer people toward more "playable" casters like Beguiler, Fire Mage, or Inarnate. So when designing a setting, you need to actually make wizards rare, and design most cultures around other casters. At the same time you need to include an escape clause that allows in wizard PCs of any race for grognard gamers.

But once you've decided to tie wizards to particular cultures, you realize you need to write some damn flavor text. What IS a wizard that's different from every other caster? One answer is going to be that they're general academic theorists. They did the groundwork that allows a class like Warmage to exist. But the other is that we're going to play up other casters as having magic inherent to them. Wizards, on the other hand, steal magic by observation.

Finally, the relationship between wizards and sorcerers needs explaining. Once you add other casters, wizards and sorcerers become conspicuous for their similar list of powers. If Sorcerers are all dragony, what does that make wizards?

History

Magic was around from the beginning of time, but Wizardry wasn't. All kinds of things had magic, but nobody went around *learning* magic from *books*. It took a special kind of mind to decide that the powers aranea and rakshasa could be acquired by imitation. It took an obsessive one to make comprehensive notes on all manner of natural and supernatural phenomena. Wizardry only came about through the confluence of science, obsession, and irreverance.

It took a gnome.

Gnomes watched the dragons work, and they wrote down everything they saw. Eventually, they got some limited spells working. Then they turned to study the natural world. Through decades of experimentation, they devised new tricks. They presented their findings to the dragons beaming with pride.

The dragons were furious. They swore, in fact, to hunt down and eat every last gnome in existence. When that plan failed, they create a slave race, the kobolds, for the explicit purpose of continuing that war. But that's a story for another spotlight.

Wizards Today

The short version is that actual wizardry never got very popular with anyone but gnomes. The fact that dragons hate all wizards is a real problem with their sales pitch. There are currently two bastions of the Gnomish people, and thus two major schools of magic.

One tribe of gnomes went to the halflings for asylum. The halflings hadn't yet begun their campaign of conquest, but they were brave and numerous even then. They had a few angels on their side, of course. But even dragons are afraid of anyone who can put enough arrows in the air. The gnomes paid a high price for their safety.

Every last gnome in halfling lands today is technically a slave. They are educated, comfortable, and respected; but slaves nonetheless. They serve the halflings as scribes, astronomers, and teachers. And they run the White School. It's an enormous, prison-like complex of alabaster where wizarding students suffer through Jedi-like conditioning under the watchful eye of halfling paladins. Some stay on at the school as researchers; some become advisors to noble houses. Most are fed to the halfling war machine. Conjurers and Enchanters are the schools most frequent graduates.

The school's lawful good ideals include a universalistic bent which sometimes conflicts with halfling policy. They willingly share their knowledge with anyone who can endure the discipline (and pass a detect evil). A trickle of human, dwarf, drow, and hobgoblin students constantly flows into the school.

The other gnomes took refuge on the surface of earth, which was at that time already overrun by the undead. Zombies are no threat to dragons, of course, but shadows and ghosts terrify them. These "shadow gnomes" specialized in Illusions, to hide their homes from dragon and undead alike, and Necromancy, for further power and protection over their environment. They are not all evil. But a lot of them are.

Filling your Spellbook

Grab five "mages" at random and you're likely to end up with a wizard, an incarnate, a fire mage, an elementalist, and a rogue. And the sampling isn't random. Your game is probably set in a remote territory where wizards are rare. So how is a wizard supposed to learn any spells? We present two new ways to copy spells down.

Site-Based Learning

Wizards can learn spells by studying the interplay of natural forces. Any time an itneresting landmark comes up, you should assign it 1-3 wizard spells that can be learned by studying there. A volcanic caldera holds fireball and wall of fire; A mountain peak feather fall, levitate, and lightning bolt. Spell-granting sites can even be constructed by people. By spending the creation cost of a scroll, anyone who knows a spell can construct a site which teaches it, such as a hall of mirrors for figment spells.

Item-Based Learning

Remarkable items work too. As a general rule, if it can be used as an enchanting component, you can copy a spell from. Then use it as a component. For instance, each Fire Stone, besides being able to make a Flaming weapon or Fire Resistance item, or give a pokemon Fire template for free, also contains 1-3 random 1st-3rd level [fire] spells.

Conjurations and Evocations can generally be learned from elemental-themed items. Necromancy spells come from the bones of powerful creatures. Enchantments come from rare flowers and perfumes. Divinations turn up in glass and sand, and in exemplars of the things to be detected. Transmutation can't really be generalize about. I'm not sure what to do about illusion and abjuration.

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Energy Mages are different from spellcasters because they have magical energy inside them. They also have better fighting stats and skill access, suggesting that they're not scholars. In OCS, they're ordinary people who got infused by magic at some point in a horrifiyng way.

Every Temple of the Sun has a special altar, exposed to the sun by a complex array of focusing mirrors. If you strap yourself to the altar and wait for high noon, usually you just burn to death. Occasionally you become a Fire Mage. Dwarves sentence their criminals there, Drow shame anyone who can't fight into it, and Hobgoblins use it as an alternate career track for nuns and initiates who don't take to the life of contemplation.

Although most goblins worship the traditional god Two-Face (who priests are either bat riding Paladins or white-masked Jesters), a growing number have joined the cult of a messianic figure I can only call "Santa Jesus," until I come up with a better name. Santa Jesus is a goblin-shape statue of ice who will one day plunge the land into an eternal winter where the unrighteous perish and the saved get presents. Wherever the Halflings go, the Santanists go, preaching their message secretly to the captive peoples. They help servants and slaves escape and run to the north of the island, where they dress like Inuit or ideally run around naked in the snow. They build magic ice pillars that shift the climate and ride around on winter wolves. Those who willingly expose themselves to blizzards become Snowscapers if they survive.

I need a weather-themed writeup for merfolk, preferably with low-level abilities that would let them participate in land adventures. If people like Acid Mage and Puppeteer, I'm open to suggestions on how to implement them.

[RiotGearEpsilon]

Neato!

[JigokuBosatsu]

I really like this idea of locations that allow the learning of wizard spells.

[LR]

I'm sorry, but if dragons hate Wizards, isn't that a more compelling reason for the nonexistence of dragons than it is for oppression of Wizards? I mean, one is a being whose blood pulses with raw arcane power, and the other is a big lizard with really high numbers and Wraithstrike.

[Orion]

Yeah, but there are a lot more dragons than high-level wizards.

[norms29]

Every last gnome in halfling lands today is technically a slave.

this seems... wrong, some how. if you're going with halflings as quasi-romans, it was not remotely uncommon for slaves to be freed. In fact, I'm fairly certain that manumission has been present to some degree in every system of slavery. so if the gnome-halfling alliance has been going on for more then one generation, there should be free gnomes, and even gnomes that were born free, and (if we stick close enough to the roman thing) are considered full citizens of the halfling empire.

[Orion]

Norms: You have a point. My reasoning on this one was that unlike the aftermath of a messy historical conquest, it's the payment in a Faustian bargain the gnomes made. So, the slave status is racialized in a way that it wasn't in historical Rome. Also, if you give players the choice to play a free Gnome, they will.

That said, making it more real is fine with me.

[Grek]

You can play it both ways.

Halfings demand that each gnome serve 300 years as a slave to the Halfing empire, before being granted their freedom to do whatever with the remaining 50.

Dark Dwarves don't make Dark Gnomes be their slaves, but rather adopt them into the clan at birth and basically treat them like another dwarf.

The net result is that, in order to be a Free Gnome, you have to be an Evil Gnome as well.