I love weird wizards. The W is for Weirdo.
While I first encountered "normal" wizards like Gandalf, I eventually stumbled across really odd wizards.
Fritz Leiber's duo of patron wizards, Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, plus a few unsavory wizards in his books. Then I ran into Glen Cook's Black Company series, full of wizards like The Hanged Man, The Limper, many-voiced Soulcatcher, big smelly Shapeshifter. And then his Dread Empire books, with the Egg of God and Varthlokkur. (Is it any surprise when you find out Glen Cook and Fritz Leiber were close friends?) The Dying Earth books of Jack Vance came next, with equally strange wizards. Or utterly normal-seeming types who take wizarding like a hobby, but otherwise are very non-wizardly, like wine-swilling Pelias in Robert E. Howard's Conan books.
Therefore when I make wizards in my games, I make weirdos or guys who'd hang out in bars with Oliver Reed.
Wouldn't it be nice if you had to be one or the other? Maybe both?
TSR's Lankhmar City of Adventure supplement points the way. In that game, if you were a Black Wizard (you took Magic-User and Illusionist spells), after a few levels you rolled on a table of deformities.
Why not do the same in GURPS?
This could be a fun campaign switch.
For every 10 points in spells or spell-related advantages (you know the ones), you must have at least -2 points in disadvantages that reflect a weird, bizarro type. These can be any of:
Bad Smell
Delusions
Disturbing Voice
Dread (holy objects is an easy one; how about beauty?
Excommunicated
Frightens Animals
Ham-Fisted (stubby fingers)
Lifebane
Megalomania
No Sense of Smell/Taste
Obsession
Phantom Voices
Unnatural Features
Unattractive, Ugly, or Very Ugly
Weakness
or from a pool of social waste:
Compulsive Behavior (you know the ones - gambling, carousing, spending)
Gluttony
Jealousy
Lecherousness
Overweight
Selfish
Skinny
So DF wizards with Magery 6 (65 points), Energy Reserve 5 (15), Improved Magic Resistance 3 (15), and 75 points in spells (75)? That's 65+15+15+75=170 points in magical advantages, so that's -34 points of his -55 in disadvantages and quirks must be oddball ones. As you progress in power, you'll need to start to swap out your healthier disadvantages (Sense of Duty, Charitable, Duty, etc.) for these less savory ones.
I'd have to throw in more details, but I think this a pretty good list to start. You'd start out nice, sure . . . but as you earned points, you'd either totally let loose of your morals or your connection to other people and your humanity, one or the other. But you do get more powerful, and you probably already took Obsession (Become the most powerful wizard in the world) so you'd not going to argue with the tradeoff.
Hmmm. Instead of "must have" implying the Wizard get points for them, I'd go with "gains". Treat is similar to the way AtE treats Mutations and Freakishness.
ReplyDeleteThis also helps offset my age old gripe that Magery is waaaay to cheap for what it does and the general 'overpowering' nature Wizards can get up to once they really getting swinging into the higher exp brackets.
The wording is deliberate, though - you do get points for them. They replace your more normal advantages. These aren't extra badness you get for being a wizard; they're badness that replaces your more wholesome or mundane negative traits.
DeleteI'd forgotten about Freakishness, but that's not really what I want to go for, here. This is a way to ensure the disadvantage pool you're picking from is getting nastier, weirder, and less "mundane" the more powerful you get. Plus it allows for design, not random rolls like Freakishness does. Nothing against that approach, really, it's just not what I'm going for here.
I personally don't find high-point wizards over-powered, just over-versatile. 100 points in magical traits isn't nearly as overpowering in a fight as 100 points in combat traits, but it does allow you to do so, so many things that I spent most of my time dealing with that.
"The wording is deliberate, though - you do get points for them."
DeleteRight. I get your direction. You're hewing to a "have Wizards end up more like Weird Wizards of Fiction" because they want to. So dabblers can remain normies while the truly obsessive about magic power get stranger and stranger.
But how does this affect their evolution during the game once they have a full -55 starting points in Disads that are "Weird"? Is that it? No more weirdness increase for Dryst or Gerry once they've switched over all their starter Disads (and any picked up from mishaps)?
My way is admittedly more "trade off for Magic's power" than yours, but I'd likely start the same as you, just then continue laying in new Oddities/Weirdness as the magical caster continued to power up as the campaign progressed.
A longer pick at "I personally don't find high-point wizards over-powered, just over-versatile. 100 points in magical traits isn't nearly as overpowering in a fight as 100 points in combat traits, but it does allow you to do so, so many things that I spent most of my time dealing with that."
This is a "complicated, each has their own opinion" sort of sideline conversation. I respect your take, but my feelings can be summed up in a mangling of a Joe Stalin[1] quote: "Versatility has a Power all it's own".
As you note, you spend a lot more time dealing with the Wizard's versatility (and if you ever had another caster hit their stride, presumably Cleric, Bard, or Holy Warrior versatility as well) than a Knight's overwhelming combat prowess or a Scout's inimical eye destruction capacity. To me, Time Is Money, or more aptly in a rpg sense, "My time at the table needs to spent in the best fashion possible (entertaining everyone), any Character abilities monopolizing that time are probably too powerful and need to be nerfed... unless all Players are equally monopolizing my time, then it's all balancing".
If you're finding your Wizards aren't taking up time during combat (taking less time to deal with than non-Wizards), then great. That means combat is being spotlit by the Combat Types and non-combat time by the Wizards. Clerics are probably evenly spreading their spotlight in both areas as Clerics do.
In my case, I find Wizards glory-hogging all over the place, the phrase "I have a spell for that" is verboten at my table (which has humorously caused them to come up with other ways to say it). Also I've long disliked how... //cheap// Magery feels. I get that individual spells aren't always useful, but a good spread of spells means the Wizard can almost always have some way to affect the scene regardless of what is going on, and a cheap magery really makes that so easily possible.
Oh, and I forgot to upend my [1].
DeleteThe quote is misattributed to Joseph Stalin, it was originated by a US defense contractor in the late 70's.
Wizards do far better buffing fighter-types in DF than in hogging the show. You can't cast enough spells to out-do a Great Haste spell on a Swashbuckler with Two-Weapon Fighting and Extra Attack 2 or 3. It's out of combat as people sit around with GURPS Magic trying to find the one spell that will solve this whole problem, that's where magic get annoying to me. I'd rather have them be more useful artillery and less able to cast-and-maintain for free on a bunch of spells that only encourages a magical solution instead of actually thinking and planning a mundane one.
DeleteThe disadvantages in such a system would be required, so it's not "want to," but the choice of how they change would be up to the player. Yes, it would cap at the usual -50 worth of disadvantages. It's not extra punishment for being a wizard, it's just a way of making wizards get stranger the more they mess around, and providing a rigid mechanic for it gives the players a very specific path to doing so.
"It's out of combat as people sit around with GURPS Magic trying to find the one spell that will solve this whole problem, that's where magic get annoying to me."
DeleteAh, I put time limits on "sitting around planning". Sometimes it's via the Wandering Damage Chart, sometimes by me reminding them there is a time limit on how long we're playing for. Sometimes by having a time limit in game.
But yeah, I can see that being an issue. If that's your issue with the versatility of Wizards, time constraints on planning sessions is probably your only solution.
"You can't cast enough spells to out-do a Great Haste spell on a Swashbuckler with Two-Weapon Fighting and Extra Attack 2 or 3."
Sure you can. If you're lucky you can do it in one (any Save or Suck if the Swashbuckler fails their save [1]). I mean you showed the efficacy of Mind Control on melee types just recently. If you're not lucky, I find 3-4 spells tend to be all a Wizard needs... and yes, they do need to get Steelwraith off before the melee master gets into stab the Wizard range. Follow that with any synergistic combination of your choosing. For skirmishers (low ST types) Glue+Fire Cloud can be deadly. For melee types... really? That's a doozy. Good HT, good DX, great ST, so there are no "easy' ways to trap them in a Smoke cloud (which they might just laugh off anyway [3]). Expensive or more time consuming? Yes, plenty [2] of ways to deal with a Knight coming at you, if you have the time or energy.
1 - I mean Levitation is sweet if you're facing only one Swashbuckler. Cost 3 (how many Swashies weigh more than 240?), 1 turn to cast, hits his two weak Saves, and locks his butt dow-, err, up for a minute? It's nice. And what's he going to do? Hurl invectives at you as he chokes to death in own personal Fire Cloud?
2 - The simplest (but really expensive) one is Earth to Air them into a wide (3r should suffice), deep (18' is recommended) shaft then Shape Earth the top over.
3 - Which I also just discovered I've been running wrong... for like 30 years. Sigh. I've been treating it like it causes Choking after a certain amount of time (any failed HT roll after HT seconds). I took this from the Basic smoke rules pg 439, "Dense smoke can cause actual damage" and just extrapolated. I have to have a think on whether or not I'm going to keep running it this way
Wizards rarely face Swashbucklers. They work with them session after session . . . and buff the hell out of them to help them fight. It's not "Wizard vs. Swashbuckler," it's "Do I cast an offensive spell, or buff my Swashbuckler buddy"? The latter is more effective. So much so that wizards are mostly useful, in my experience, as buffers rather than doers.
Delete"Wizards rarely face Swashbucklers."
DeleteOh yeah, you're attacking this from a purely DF standpoint. Still...
You don't run enemies with full templates? Ever? I know you use the Henchmen templates occasionally with Orcs and such, but no full power enemies? Or have the Felltower crew not delved deep enough to hit 250 point template enemies?
Look at my summaries - the vast majority of foes are monsters. There are "full template" foes but they're rare compared to monsters.
DeleteIt's not a game of Wizards vs. Swashbucklers and Barbarians and Knights. Even if it was, the point still stands - are you better off spending X energy buffing up your friend so he definitely fights significantly better, or trying to spend that X energy possible - but not definitely - taking out an opponent? I've seen it done both ways . . . and buffing is a better bet, especially against powerful foes.
This is not to say that attacking your enemies with magic isn't useful. Or that it can't work. It's just not as certain and it's aside from my original point - that buffing your friends is extremely effective, and time spent worrying about fighting other templates isn't really adventuring time well-spent in a game about fighting monsters in tunnels.
Definitely our games differ in two striking ways: I throw more humanoids with professions at my Players (at least 1/4th to 1/3rd of the foes are humanoids, so versatile PCs focus on honing the edges that would work best against them)) and my Players (when Wizards) prefer being "direct damage/suck" dealers.
DeleteThey'll engage in //some// "buff the idiot who can't do for themselves" (an actual in games comment from a Wizard to his "meatshield' companions), but that usually tends towards the utility side, Invisibility on the MA or Scout, Hide Thoughts on the Knight or Barb so they don't get turned on the party, Resistance to X to keep the meatshields standing... but it's been a rare Wizard who went +combat buffing (Ie Might, Vigor, Great Haste, Hawk Flight, etc). When it's been a combat buff it was on the defensive side (if they even had those, I've had a lot of 'elementalist blaster' and 'mind control' types).
What an odd attitude. Expecting fighter-types to buff themselves is like expecting Wizards to melee people to death on their own.
DeleteThe buffs we see are mostly "defensive" but in my experience spells like Shield, Armor, Missile Shield, and See Invisible greatly enhance the offensive capabilities of the fighters so buffed. Give a guy +3 to +5 to DB, say, or make him immune to missile attack so he can use missiles or melee with impunity and you've dramatically increased his offensive ability.
"What an odd attitude."
DeleteI know right? I think it comes from the two who like to play Wizard being long time D&D Players, one even opined once that "buffing is a Cleric's job".
The only guy who's played a Cleric turned to him and said "You do realize Wizard's have four times as many buff spells as Clerics, right?"
It also comes down to the like I said, the Wizards 'solve' the dilemma of "Do I buff or blast?" by taking almost no buff spells. Like I said, they prefer blasting and Save or Suck.
Granted, my house rule on trading Attacks for Concentrates probably had a hand in making blasting and the longer to cast SoS spells more attractive.
On principle, I agree with you. DFRPG (and Basic and Magic) magic system heavily favors buffing allies. In fact I'd rate it like so:
Buffing > Blasting/Utility > Save or Suck
80% of the SoS spells are DX or HT reisted and DFRPG is //big// on good DX and HT scores (even on monsters). Will saves can be a mixed bag, most melee types are weak on Will, but it's also cheap to buy up, and the complaint I've heard is "It's not 'cool' enough".
I'm considered "corrupting magic" before where every crit fail on a spell gave you -1 point in something skeevy, and every level of magery another -5. I was planning to combine this with fairly generous "UMana" (now threhold magery, IIRC) rules to balance out the downsides, but the game never actually started.
ReplyDeleteI'm always leery of making Critical Failures automatically make permanent changes to characters. They're bad enough as it is, and it's likely discourage people from using magic in the first place and then as little as possible once they have it. Except for That Guy, who'll use it for everything and revel in how miserable his character becomes for everyone else.
DeleteAt least that's how I see it playing out. Maybe I played with careful players + That Guy too often?
I'm doing something like this in the game that's starting up now, except we're using a modified corruption system based on the one from Horror. And any disadvantage points go toward weirdo-type disads. That way most wizards end up weirdos eventually, but they can be casual wizards and not really gain much weirdness.
ReplyDeleteAre Gerry and Dryst weird? What of them and their weirdness do we know?
ReplyDeleteThey're weird as can be. Gerry brings his skeletons to church with him and talks to them like people, for a start, and Dryst is a tiny halfling with a big helmet who floats around calling everyone "servants" and telling ridiculous lies about monsters that he makes up on the spot. That's for starters.
DeleteI really like this idea.
ReplyDelete