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.