Wizard as a Strategic Resource

In another installation of ramblings about unplaytested magic systems cribbed from books I read so long ago I only half-remember a few bits, what if spells were a long-term, strategic resource?

In Markus Heitz's The Dwarves series, magi are very powerful. High level D&D wizard powerful, even, which most writers tend to avoid for the understandable reason that it breaks many stories apart. The magi can fly, blow up a building with a single gesture, spam teleportation spells, or heal from anything not instantly lethal. However, all that comes with one big caveat: They have limited reserves of magical energy that can only be refilled at a magical wellspring, of which there are like six in all the kingdoms where the books take place.

What if instead of the tactical refill-on-sleep magic, wizards had a strategic refill-in-town magic?

This approach assumes that resource management is a part of your intended gameplay. It only works well if the dungeon is not easily/quickly accessible from the town, so the party needs to spend another resource (time, food) to refill their magic, otherwise you are only buffing the wizard. But when it works as intended, the five minute adventuring day is gone. The party can no longer start every fight with all spells refreshed by sleeping in a rope-tricked pocket dimension all the time.

Many systems can easily be converted to strategic magic by giving the magic-users more spell slots / mana / MD. Caster level still limits the highest spell slot / the amount of mana a wizard can use in a single spell. This makes wizards more powerful as long as they can regain magic, so make sure that ley lines are not ubiquitous - which brings us to the interesting domain-level considerations that all magic-users must now deal with: Ley lines are a limited, extremely precious resource that everyone wants to control.

Generated with Bing Image Creator:
"sorcerer drawing power from a ley line,
clean old-school lineart for swords and sorcery"

 

All wizard towers are built atop a ley line, capping it and concentrating the energy flow into a specific room, a sanctum, thus limiting who has access to the mana. A wizard's tower is his most prized possession and will be filled to the brim with wards, traps and protective enchantments. A wizard's tower is a fortress to make other wizards flinch. A wizard in his tower is basically unassailable, and not only because he will never run out of spells.

A rare and difficult ritual exists that allows one to link a wizard tower to a ring of power. Who wears such a ring can draw mana through it as if they were always within reach of a ley line. Battling an archmage who has such a ring would thus entail damaging their tower first to disrupt their supply of magic. Stealing such a ring is a big deal and will see the thief hunted down tirelessly, as breaking the bond between the ring and the tower to re-link a new ring would require destroying the tower completely, foundations included.

An easier way to gain some extra mana exists - store it in a gemstone. That's not even a spell - all mages can push mana from themselves into a gem, or draw it back. Thus it is often the job of apprentices to prepare spell gems for their master.

While larger gems can contain more magic power, only flawless gemstones should be made into a spell gem at all. While you definitely can imbue an imperfect gemstone with power, this will sooner or later result in a blast of wild magic.

Spell gems are very expensive and very much sought after. Every wizard wants one, but just as with towers, there are never enough. Even some nobles with no magical talent will hoard them, as the magic held within gives spell gems a strange, unearthly twinkle unseen in any other jewel, plus they can be used to bribe a wizard in a pinch.

Spell gems are usually worn set into a ring (only the most pretentious of wizardling upstarts would call that a "ring of power", everyone knows what a real ring of power is), a circlet or at the tip of one's staff. A master granting such jewelry to an apprentice is seen as one of the highest of praises one can receive.

Most ley lines in the civilized lands have been taken over, either by powerful mages or by the Mage Guild. A solitary sorceress will allow friends and apprentices into her sanctum, but strangers will nigh-definitely be met with refusal (and it's not a good idea to oppose a sorceress in her tower). The Mage Guild offers their ley lines to all members - for a fee. Becoming and staying a member incurs other fees. Therefore a PC wizard with no mentor will have a nice money sink in simply restoring mana.

There are still some free ley lines in places where seizing them would be too much of a hassle - underwater, deep in wilderness or underground, in sacred groves and other holy places of yore. There might also be very weak ley lines that escaped the notice of the Mage Guild either by pure chance, or thanks to some secret sect or cult veiling it from detection. The Mage Guild would pay rather nicely for information about even the weakest ley lines. They have a monopoly to maintain, after all.

Illegal mages have a hard time. Either they are very good at pretending to be law-abiding magic-users, or they belong to a secret sect with their own ley line, or they need an alternative source of mana. Thus there is a blooming black market in spell gems and power smuggling (legal mage selling their mana to illegal mages), while even possessing power-draining spells is a felony.

Königstein, the King's Stone

I've been to many castles, but during these Christmas holidays, I visited one that really stands out. It would fit right amongst the exaggerated fortresses of many fantasy worlds.

Königstein, the King's Stone.

 

To give you an idea of how imposing the fortress is, the river beneath the fortress lies at about 100 metres above the sea level. From the river banks rises a hill that reaches to around 300 metres above the sea level, which alone gives us some 200 vertical metres (650 ft) of steep, forested slopes, then there are 42 metres (130 ft) of sheer rock and bulwarks, and only then do the multi-storey buildings start. Standing down below, "towering" doesn't even begin to describe it.

The fortress just keeps going on being excessive. It stands atop cliffs of solid rock, but because the builders were anticipating a siege, they needed a secure source of water. Thus they dug a 152 meter (500 ft) deep well through the rock to the acquifer below. The wine cellar used to hold a single barrel with a capacity of nearly 250 000 litres (66 000 gallons) of wine, though it had to be eventually removed due to disrepair. Also half of the fortress is a literal forest, because they could. Well, and because it can provide a massive amount of firewood and building material during a siege.

The only one to ever scale its walls was a chimney sweep who cheated, because he was cheered on rather than shot down.

Notice the many trees atop the bulwark? That's still the fortress proper.

Now imagine standing beneath the cliffs.

 

You can read as much as you like about Königstein on Wikipedia, but here is my re-imagined fantasy version.

 

1. Paved main road which ends beneath the cliffs and bulwarks.
2. Soldiers' market. Soldiers have needs too and the small village of shops and businesses along the road provides.
3. Knitted tower. Holds the controls for dropping the hanging road. Named after a well-liked soldier who kept bringing his knitting to guard duty.
4. Hanging road. Snaking along the side of the cliff towards the entrance, it is suspended on support beams that can be remotely demolished as a last resort to prevent assault on the gates.
5. Twin gates. The small yard between the gates is facing several shooting galleries and can be flooded with alchemical gases or liquid flames.
6. Lookout tower. Holds several looking glasses enchanted to pierce invisibility and illusions.
7. Old castle. Standing atop the highest peak of the cliffs, it might not boast the modern defensive architecture of the new palace and the bulwarks, but the garrisoned wizards have been layering protective enchantments into its walls for centuries. Currently it houses the treasury and archives.
8. Prison tower.
9. New palace. Houses the commander, his secretariat and servants, multiple officers, alchemists and wizards, plus when the occasion arises either members of the royal family, or enemy nobles held for ransom.
   The main entryway goes from the twin gates through a heavily sloped tunnel through solid rock beneath the palace. It includes murderholes, detection enchantments of all kinds, seven prismatic portculli and pipes connected to the cistern, which can suddenly turn the whole tunnel into very deadly rapids.
10. Church of Light and hospital. One cleric and several acolytes have a permanent residence here, ensuring religious well-being of soldiers as well as serving as healers.
11. Offices, workshops and an alchemical lab. The open area beyond them has been split into numerous little gardens that let the soldiers enhance their diet with fresh vegetables.
12. Barracks.
13. Monster pens. Hippogriffs are used for air support and xorns are used to secure the underground of the fortress from burrowing incursions.
14. Warehouses and granaries. The fortress should survive more than a year of siege at full effectiveness.
15. War machine platforms. Ballistas and catapults can be aimed at both the ground and the sky. In addition to standard rocks and bolts, alchemical ammunition such as liquid flames and anti-aerial flak is available.
16. King's Hooter. A small tavern near a vantage point at the end of the plateau lets the officers unwind. Festivities are often held in the open area by the tavern, too.
17. Dryad's oak. A massive, ancient tree housing a friendly nature spirit. She tends the fortress grove (green area) and blesses the soldiers' gardens for bountiful harvest if asked nicely.
18. Well house and cistern. The water is regularly blessed by the priest to prevent poisonings, plagues and infiltration by creatures of darkness.
19. Observatory. Several commissioned wizards are working here, both maintaining all wards in the fortress and manning the scrying room.
    

The fortress is warded against teleportation, dimensional travel (which includes pocket dimensions, such as bags of holding) and external scrying. The scrying room is the centre of a surveillance network that has the whole fortress covered with remote vision spells, tripwire alarm wards and other divinations. The bulwarks themselves are warded against siege rituals such as disintegration barrages, earthquakes or phasing.

d4 Hooks

1. One of the alchemists serving in the fortress was a war criminal back home, granted asylum by the king in exchange for her services. Kidnap her and bring her back home for justice. Quest-giver will not pay for a dead alchemist.
   
2. The archives in the old castle hold information that you need for whatever plot reasons. It is also top secret, so good luck getting it the legal way.
3. There are rumours of a vault somewhere within the King's Stone, a storage for dangerous artifacts and superweapons that the king wants to keep in reserve - biomantic plagues, mind-controlling alchemies, mass summoning contracts. If any weapon is capable of stopping the big bad, it will be locked in here.
   
4. There are other rumours, who claim that the vault is actually a maximum security prison for an ancient evil, the crown prince of a neighbouring nation and the good twin brother of the king.

GLOG: Class Quests and Campaign Metaprogression

One common way of dealing with the endless classes of GLOG is to have only a limited few available in each campaign, and then maybe add more as players go through characters and find new things. I like this, but I want to make the process of unlocking new classes as player-facing as possible.

One common way of dealing with multiclassing - and GLOG is basically tailor-made for easy multiclassing - is to require an in-world justification for suddenly taking a wizard template with your barbarian. I like this as well, because while multiclassing is more than fine, I would like to see some buildup before a character switches classes. Once again, though, this should be as player-facing as possible.

Therefore, I will be adding a "class quest" for each class, which will have a dual purpose: One, any character who wishes to multiclass into a class will have to carry out the corresponding quest before they can take its template A. Two, anyone in the party fulfilling a class quest (in-game, not in a backstory, you munchkins), whether they multiclass into that class or not, will unlock the class for future new characters. Exploits that do not fit a certain class' quest but would make sense still count for both purposes, at the GM's discretion - the class quests are here as a guideline for the players rather than the GM.

Ideally, common classes will have easy quests while weirder and rarer classes will have quests that are harder to accomplish, maybe even limited to a specific location/event/faction. This will hopefully have the side benefit of encouraging exploration of every nook and cranny of the world. Some players are sadly risk-averse and will avoid places such as the Swamp of Mutilation or the Screaming Tower of Slow and Painful Death unless there is a tangible benefit in going to such places. Knowing that you will get a new class out of dying in there might be just the push they need.

I am thinking of starting the next campaign with a funnel - everyone will be a 0th level human and all classes will be locked. They will also get a list of all the classes they can unlock and their quests. This should provide a nice set of goals the party can work towards before they find personal goals or unearth other plots and problems.

By Varguy

 

d20 Class Quests

1. Warrior: Triumph over a powerful foe, or watch your friends get slaughtered.
2. Soldier: Enlist in a military.
3. Knight: Be knighted.
   
4. Duelist: Win a duel, or lose a duel but win the crowd.
5. Thief: Steal something valuable, or escape certain doom.
6. Assassin: Get away with murder, or take money for killing someone.
7. Mountebank: Frame someone else for your crimes.
8. Ranger: Survive several days in the wilderness, or save an animal at personal risk.
9. Wizard, Orthodox: Enroll in a Wizard University, or impersonate a mage and make at least a village believe you.
10. Wizard, Illusionist: Take glamour from a Fae, or fake your death.
11. Wizard, Biomancer: Mutate through incaution, or have a body part replaced or grafted.
12. Wizard, Necromancer: Murder a family member, or visit the Land of the Dead.
13. Alchemist: Consume a magical substance without knowing its effects, or cause a huge explosion.
    
14. Barrow Sword: Steal an ancient cursed blade from a barrow.
15. Noble House:  Play as a child of a previous character.
16. Paladin of the Word: Keep a secret to your detriment, or learn a True Name of God.
    
17. Paladin of the Wild: Hunt, kill and eat a bear.
    
18. Sand-Cursed: Visit haunted desert ruins.
19. Songstress of Many Tongues: Lose your tongue.
20. Sword Exorcist: Die to save innocents.

d12 Race-as-Class Quests

1. Centaur: Receive hospitality from a centaur tribe.
2. Dragonborn: Work for a dragon, or consume dragon flesh.
3. Dwarf: Carouse away 1000 gp, or cause trouble for yourself by being greedy.
   
4. Elf: Eat or marry a Fae.
5. Goblin: Have a contraption you built explode.
6. Kobold: Worship a dragon, or die in a dungeon trap.
7. Orc: Ride a giant wolf to battle.
   
8. Really Evil Goat: Sacrifice a goat to the Dark Powers.
   
9. Really Good Dog: Save a dog.
10. Tiefling: Have sex in Hell.
11. Troll: Visit the city of Trollamor, or consume troll flesh.
12. Vampire: Drink vampire blood after being bitten by one, or commit murder-suicide.

Any ideas for good class quests?

GLOG: Everything is a Template

Race-as-class is the only true way and everyone doing it differently is doing it wrong.

Beastfolk Party by WarpZoneTrigger

 

Okay, now that I've started a flame war, an explanation is in order. I have been struggling with races in my GLOG, or how to implement them in a way that supports character-making consistent with the world as I envision it. Here are my personal design goals:

1. I like largely human worlds surrounded by weirdness you can venture out into. While the standard super-simplified races of GLOG work fine mechanically, having that many easily used races encourages players to be something strange rather than the plain old human, so you end up with a menagerie of a party. Which is not a problem, except that a thousand lings force a different vibe on the game than what I prefer.
2. I want humans to be plain and basic. That means you can play up both the weirdness around them and how their adventuring life is changing them. Every mutation, every new ability is making them stranger and more interesting, which is much harder to properly emphasize when you already start pretty weird. On the other hand, just giving them a free skill/feat/attribute point to make them desirable is pure gameist trash.
3. I do want other races to be available, but I think they work better in juxtaposition to the mostly human civilization around them. They should have interesting abilities that set them apart, and here the design space of only one perk and one flaw, as is custom for GLOG races, is actually quite limiting. Some races could do with more abilities, even more power, so there needs to be a way of scaling different races rather than fitting them all in the same mould.
4. I also don't want to limit race/class combinations, as standard race-as-class often does by locking you into the abilities of only your race. Let there be halfling barbarians and half-ogre courtesans.

So I want humans to be boring and desirable at the same time, and without giving them any numeric bonuses. You can see my dilemma, now.

I may have figured it out. It's in the first sentence. It's a wheel re-invented, really, but I'm still excited to try it out.

Every non-human race is a class now, whose template A you can only take at character creation. Some races will only consist of template A, some may have more templates with more powers and abilities. Multiclassing is the heart of GLOG anyway, so every character can now take up to five templates and starts with two. If you want to be a dwarf cleric, take the templates Dwarf A and Cleric A.

And humans? They are the assumed race for anyone with no racial templates. They literally have no abilities at all, yet they could (hopefully) be quite desirable with their "ability" to start with two class templates, and to finish a whole class and then take one more template from another one.

We shall see if this actually works as intended.