Wizard Characters
December 20th, 2011
Hello everyone, and welcome to another exciting Grave Plots, where we bring you new plot hooks and adventure ideas each and every week. This week is Wizard Week here at Necromancers of the Northwest, and we will be devoting this week to the discussion of everyone's favorite base class devoted to the art of arcane casting (unless, of course, you prefer sorcerer or bard). Personally I quite like wizards; after all, when we styled ourselves as necromancers, we weren’t really envisioning clerics, even though they tend to make out far better in the magics dealing with death. The love runs deeper than that, though; some of my all-time favorite characters both on the table and off have been wizards, and I just love the way they bring a sense of magic and wonder to fantasy games.
If you think on it yourself, I'm sure you'll agree that the wizard has an extremely strong impact on fantasy storytelling, putting magic, a force which is literally designed to be alien and fantastic, into the hands of humanity and, as humans do with all things, starting to make sense of this phenomena and sharing its gifts with mortal kind. Or else blasting everything within miles to kingdom come, or misusing its sacred charms to gain power, or whatever else you might fancy. The point is that wizards blend the very ethereal, theoretical wonderment of magic with relatable, reasonable and rational humanity, allowing the audience a chance to really appreciate that grand unattainable wonderment from a more comfortable perspective.
Wizard Characters
As I may have mentioned before, wizards are some of the most important characters in any fantasy game and virtually every game you run can benefit from some cool wizards. When creating wizards for use in your game, it’s important to keep a few things in mind. Firstly, while wizards can fill a wide variety of roles and become a hugely diverse array of different characters, all wizards at least broadly follow in the dead man’s boots of one of two great wizards past: Merlin or Gandalf.
Now I know some versions of Arthurian stories (particularly modern versions, if memory serves) feature Merlin as a sort of adventuring mega-shaman fighting tyranny and all that, but that’s not the Merlin I'm talking about. These kinds of wizards are like their team’s captain, primarily serving as advisers and staying at home far away from the danger. Their magic tends to take a lot of time to do or else focuses on areas which would be less than useful should a horde of Saxons kick down the door looking for blood. Most friendly NPC wizards fall into this camp, as do PCs who want a more hermitic feel to their mages.
Similarly, those of you only remotely familiar with Lord of the Rings might think that Gandalf is just like Merlin; I mean, they both have beards right? Well, yes, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. Gandalf was a very hands-on kind of wizard: he had a sword, and he used it to kill, like, a ton of goblins and orcs; he does some magic and pretty much everything he does has an immediate, visible effect. Most PC wizards are Gandalfs, as are NPC wizards who want to kill the PCs.
Once you've decided on what kind of wizard your NPC will end up as, its time to determine his role. There isn't any fancy terminology here, but this is probably the most important step in creating the wizard NPC. In order to define his role you have to answer two questions: What function does he serve in your game? And what function does he serve in your story? The first question is easy and doesn't usually require a lot of thought, except to consider whether a wizard is really the right character for the job. For quick reference, some things wizards excel at in this area are: providing plot hooks in the form of quests, curses, and threats; serving as an authority figure to preside over disputes which arise; being a magic shop with an interesting face; providing advice on how to complete the tasks ahead of the PCs; illustrating the wonders of magic and the campaign setting’s more fantastic functions; and serving as a boss monster.
Meanwhile, figuring out what role the wizard will serve in your story will more likely be a matter of reconciling the wizard with your campaign than having any hard and fast rules. Some ideas for determining a wizard’s role in your story to help you get started include: being the tutor of one of the PCs, teaching him more about magic and the ways of the world (providing plot hooks and illustrating the wonders of the game world); running a wicked cult dedicated to the worship of unholy powers (boss monster, possibly providing plot hooks, and if you really focus on what you're doing, illustrating the game world); and being a wise man respected by all but living on the fringes of a society which never quite accepted him (give advice, illustrate game world).
Once you've determined the wizard's precise role in your game and story, you need to determine the details and decide exactly who your wizard is. Considering how little wizards tend to mechanically care about their physical power, physical appearance is of paramount importance to creating a memorable wizard. In literature, wizards are often accompanied by exotic and eccentric appearances, and for good reason. Even though wizards are humans (or dwarves or whatever) they aren't just humans: they're humans with magic mixed in, and their appearance needs to inspire that same sense of wonder we get from hearing about the magic they do. Even wizards set in modern settings have powerful appearances; take as an example Harry Dresden from the Dresden Files book series, a wizard who lives in contemporary Chicago. He is described as being unusually tall and wiry and runs around with a pentacle amulet and a big leather duster (until just recently, anyway).
Next you need to determine what kinds of powers you want your wizard to have. These will be represented mechanically in different ways, but need to support his role(s) as much as possible. As tempting as it is to give every wizard the ability to flatten a small town with fire blasts, remember that it needs to make good sense to have the wizard be doing that or you're just wasting potential. Finally, determine the wizards personality traits; these should be even more powerful than there appearances – despite what Tolkien said, wizards are not in fact very subtle individuals; if they were, they just wouldn't be the wizards we know and love. Even quite reserved wizards can have mountains of personality if you look.
The last thing you need to do is create your wizard mechanically. Unfortunately, this article doesn't really talk about mechanics, but as a general rule all or very nearly all of his abilities should relate to the cool powers you decided were appropriate for his role(s) earlier. While its fine to create a wizard which has some outlier abilities for when outlier situations arise, make sure it makes sense that he would. Finally, don't shy away from just making up something your wizard can do, and creating either a spell or some kind of supernatural ability yourself to mimic the effect.
Well, that’s all for this week’s Grave Plots; I hope to see you all next week for the last Grave Plots of the year. Until then, allow me to wish you all the best in your gaming endeavors.