Make Wizards Interesting Again

focus on the knowledge they have, their primary function should be that they know more about the world the characters occupy than any other class

Only bodies in peak physical condition can safely channel arcane energies

Huh, first post is best post again.

simple, same as you any character interesting. Just give them something aside from being a wizard that's interesting. Once played an Andergastian Battlemage in the dark eye. Guy was a huge patriot, loyalty to his home country went above all. Was always chanting the national anthem in tavernd. He was also a hobby gardener, had to examine every glade and every second field along the way.

make them deal with the insanity/nihilism resulting from peeling back the warning sticker on reality and having their minds exposed to multiplanar bullshit

Wizards are basically IT staff of the parallel universes. Their job is to fix mundane things that crop up. Things such as multiplanar soulstealers, and reinstalling psychic-horror wards that some middle management god deleted.

But I like Wizard Classic.

Now I've got the mental image of a wizard in some really out of the way place or in the middle of a field grumbling as he knits the fabric of reality back into place after some dickweed tore it and didn't fix it afterwards.
One of the less glamorous sides of a wizard's duties is ensuring his domain around his tower is magically maintained and protected from arcane dangers.
Demonic portals degrade reality and the reality wards, so when a demon cult pops up and an adventuring party clears it out, w couple days later the local wizard turns up and has to smooth out any tangles in the weave and weld the barriers between worlds back up again.

Of course, you could shirk your duties but then you get imps in your tea, extradimensional beings poking their nose in your project and all kinds of annoyances to you and rhe mundane populace. Better to just fix things before they get worse.

fbpb

Try reading Boat Jedi Chronicles, OP.

>Only bodies in peak physical condition can safely channel arcane energies
But to learn how to channel it properly, you have to study and practice your whole life, and that doesn't leave much time for bodybuilding.

So then, the most effective way to use their magic is to share it with companions of extraordinary talent. The wizard could brew a magical charm to grant himself himself three times the strength of a normal man, or he could give that charm to the fighter to make him ten times as strong as a lion. He could call lightning from the heavens and hurl it at his foes, or he could weave a lightning arrow for the archer to snipe a dragon's eye from the base of its mountain stronghold. A wizard could bake a shadowy shround that blends in with the surroundings to make himself near-invisible, but the thief knows exactly when and where to hide so that the guards' eyes pass over them.

Is that a good take on the wizard?

Throw your d&d books out of the window and come up with a spell system that does not consist entirely of brainless instant solutions to every conceivable problem. The rest will come easily as various specializations and their implications for the setting become obvious.

Try playing a wizard that steals cattle.

By making him an actual wizard, and not simply a guy with super powers. The wizard is a scholar of the esoteric, a philosopher, a scientist in the model of Archimedes or Aristotle, a student in the mystery school of the cosmos, his powers are secondary to the ancient and powerful wisdom he has collected.

Read the actual lore of magicians as said. Read up on gnosticism, hermeticism, alchemy, and D&D lore. Roleplay HOW you're doing magic. Your material components, your arcane foci, your spellbook [surely filled with occultic symbolism], the secretive and seldom discussed society of wizards, your magic words [you don't have to actually make up magic words, its enough to say you're doing so]

For example compare

"I cast burning hands at the goblins!" with

"Intoning a low word of power, the magus Ahriman reaches out his hands in front of him, as a solid sheet of fire consumes the goblins!"

Be the erudite scholar, the esoteric occultist, the beloved and feared wise man, the man whose eyes are opened to the heavens. A powerful enough wizard can summon demons, soar through the air, shoot lightning from his fingertips, and cross over into heaven while still in the body, all through his accumulation of the hidden secrets of the gods! He speaks the languages of the Fair Folk, and knows the courtly customs of the foul Aboleth which dwell beneath the seas, his laboratory is filled with the strange scents and exotic perfumes of foreign lands.

Invisible servants tend to him, and let him live like a king, with but a wave of his hand, he has a lantern, or can pull an object from across the room without rising to his feet. Damn it man, there is so much material here just by returning to the archetype as it originally existed. There's no need for a gimmick, like the 'blue collar mage' someone mentioned above. Just return to the original ideal and make it shine again. And above all else-

Seek the mysteries!

Bump

This is the best answer, better than I could have put it.

Make the wizard mysterious. The comparison to superpowers is absolutely correct. I hate the whole notion of channeling energy into spells, it's not magical, magic is weird and nonsensical and works via laws and guidelines that are obscure and underlay the whole world. Wizards are scholars, their powers are a bi-product OF that knowledge, not the end result necessarily.

Next wizard I make is going to use duct tape for magic circles.

Can't get much more interesting than these fuckers

The reason why modern day Wizards are shit is because of a distinct lack of mysticism that is the lynchpin behind all magic from mythology and folklore.

Magic is not a science. Magic is not spell lists or feat trees. These things actively rob players of the magical feeling of their magic.

Magic is, by its nature, mysterious and sometimes unreliable. Magic fires sometimes refuse to be put out, creating fire elementals. Undead rarely rise from their graves for free, and never would a mage not have a piece of hair or clothing from a foe before casting a curse. Magic works under symbolic laws, not physical ones. Magic is not 'deal x damage in x area of x elemental type', that is the opposite of magic and most be crushed at all costs.

>Not just having a premade circle on a rolled up piece of leather
>roll it out, apply candles because ritual circles need them I guess
>done
Who seriously messes about with chalk and string unless you're in some kind of an emergency and need an unusual circle drawn up?

>channeling energy through your body isn't magic
>sitting in tower and reading books is
And that's why nobody likes wizards. You guys are such huge neeeerds, lol
t. sorcerer

uniforms, and operate as a militarized unit.

I channel energy every day by eating and use it to do stuff like move my limbs, that aint magic. Muh energy blast is not magic.

Profound insight and understanding of the hidden layers of reality all around us and beyond us is magic, knowing how to move through those layers, understand and manipulate their laws, to know the secrets of the world and symbolism of nature, to commune and exist on a level of understanding with the spirits and gods, that is magic.

I actually wanted to create a separate class or profession or what have you, who channel 'energy' and turn it into elemental attacks and shields, but that's it, and it's a scientific practice with set laws and rules. It's the type of thing fighters would learn on the side for versatility, being able to produce a burst of fire in a fight or to light torches or camp fires, maybe make ice to freeze a stream to cross it, make gusts of wind to knock enemies down or burst doors open, stuff like that, combustions and reactions, but it's all practical applications and requires mana potions that don't fill up an invisible mana bar but is absorbed into the body so that 'energy' soaks and flows through you naturally. How you actually 'cast' these abilities I'm still trying to work out.

Same as with any other character: think of them as people, not archetypes. Here, a few wizard ideas I thought up on the spot:
> An old dwarven lady who got into wizardry in her youth to develop mining technology that would make her family's work safer and less labor-intensive. Got into adventuring when a rival trade cartel tried to assassinate her.
> A drow orphan who fled to the surface with his younger brother and sister when their hometown was consumed by war. Discovered a natural talent for spellcraft while living on the streets of a major metropolis, which he used to steal food and evade arrest until being discovered — and promptly offered a job — by the city's powerful organized crime syndicate, who offered him training as a proper wizard in exchange for helping disguise their activities.
> A human farm girl who saved the life of a fey, who taught her magic in thanks. She lives a quiet, peaceful life, acting as the village healer and raising a family... until thirty years later, an ambitious warlord conquers her nation and begins demanding exorbitant tax payments, in response to which she organizes a guerilla campaign against the occupying forces.
Could probably make these more interesting and less cliche with a bit more effort, but you get the idea. Person first, profession later.

This. Fluff spells and play up the scholar angle.

Don't turn magic and soecery into a mechanical skill, or something that is done casually. The bending of the laws of reality is never without great cost and the help of dark and powerful forces. From an aesthetic point of veiw, if you wanted to make wizards interesting again(see: not more Gandalf and Dresden clones), suffuse their appearance in occult symbolism and obscure mystical heraldry. Wizards should seem "off" or intimidatingly strange, given what they can do and the kind of work they lose themselves in.

Mordenkainen's arse crack.

I like it

Make look like shamans or something and make it so that to learn any spell they have to tattoo it onto themselves with magical ink.

The same way you make anything interesting: stop looking to mechanics to make a character interesting, look to narrative to make a character interesting.

Wizards are shit in your game because you create a character the way I solve a math problem; by applying cold, meaningless numbers devoid of warmth and personality, existing only to fulfill a specific function before being discarded and forgotten like all math problems are once solved.

Basically?
Don't be shit and making characters.

Your post is stupid and idiotic.

>An old dwarven lady who got into wizardry in her youth to develop mining technology that would make her family's work safer and less labor-intensive. Got into adventuring when a rival trade cartel tried to assassinate her.

A simple book is really expensive, somehow this family got enough money to send their girl to proper training of the magical arts with real tutors? No, not a chance, more likely they are poor as scrub and their daughter gets whored out.

>A drow orphan who fled to the surface with his younger brother and sister when their hometown was consumed by war. Discovered a natural talent for spellcraft while living on the streets of a major metropolis, which he used to steal food and evade arrest until being discovered — and promptly

Woah dA cHoSeN oNe - A really original story

>A human farm girl who saved the life of a fey, who taught her magic in thanks

A VILLAGE woman who was privy to learn simple healing, somehow gain upper hand against all male authorities residing in her village, such as the elders, and the few millitary trained men (if lucky) break their oath of lord to pledge loyalty to healer woman, organizes a badass guerilla gang against opposing forces, while yelling "GIRL POWER", rather than being just another rapevictim whenever the opposing forces feel like it.

Uh yeah, have fun with your lack of everything great, logical and original

Give them some limited control over probability to ever put odds in their favor, with slight insanity and knowledge of strands of time

>I don't like your character ideas
>because reasons
>Now I insult you

/v/ plz leave

For example, these

This does work better than colored sand or something; stuff gets blown away in a stiff breeze and suddenly you're out one ward.

Some entities get peeved if you re-use a circle I'd think, especially if you're nabbing an opposing alignment or element variant next time. I love the notion of having your circles prepped for things like Tome of Magic's Binders. Travel under the guise of a carpet salesman with fancy designs.

>Helping a crime syndicate
>Chosen One
Pick one

A street orphan who probably can't even read, MaGicLY AqUiREs InCRedIBle MagIcalPowER riValinG thE ToP WiZarDs - Will he learn to control his power and be the greatest mage in the world or will he become consumed by greed and power, and doom humanity after his sister tragicly died for uknown reasons that will be disclosed in the future, first as a deciet and he will attack the good guys, then eventually learn the truth and join up against ebil

Epin, it's like you have 15 year old goth girls creativity and originality

>A simple book is really expensive, somehow this family got enough money to send their girl to proper training of the magical arts with real tutors?

Not him, but this STRONGLY depends on the setting, to a degree that you are clearly showing your ignorance by not knowing this.
Some books were certainly valuable and expensive (complex illuminates works), but depending on where and when you were (China and Germany were DROWNING in that shit at different points of history for example) you could actually get books for a fairly reasonable price.

The issue was more that a lot of farmers and craftsman just never saw any value in it; they lived in a subsistence economy lifestyle and what they needed to learn to survive was taught without books, so educations and learning to read wasn't really important to them. If you lived near a major population center though you had plenty of relatively affordable opportunities to learn in many periods of history, especially during the pseudo-Renissance period D&D usually portrays with it's rather high metallurgical and technology base.
It was still mainly viewed as as the purview of the wealthy because education back then wasn't "get a diploma, learn a trade, get a job", but was more about the humanities and developing sciences that had relatively few practical applications yet, learning to enrich oneself more or less.

these are all roughly derivative of OP

It doesn't really matter if the wizard itself has an interesting backstory or if the magic system is different, if the archetype of wizard still fits the bill of wizened master of the arcane. If you just push that archetype farther, that doesn't mean its no longer the same thing.

These would be the closest things to a different version of a Wizard. Something that breaks the archetype completely.

In fact there's an anecdote in the journal of the professional scribe Johan de Sanlis (13th century) about how annoyed he is based on how much work he puts into hand-copying books he's requested to copy and how little he actually makes from the process; sales are done relatively cheap because he can't charge a fortune as nobody WANTS his products as relatively few people want to learn to read.
He has clients that are local clergy but that's about it.

Great post.

As I stated, a farm girl would most likely not have access to teaching books, even if her parents were the owners of an establishment, its simply unfit for RPG unless you are making some kids show. His way of ideas are highly inconsistent and far removed from quality.

Stop building their powers into a single grand, unifying theory of metaphysics.

Also, limit what they can do in terms of actual magic.

Not necessarily true because books and studying provide some practical value in D&D-style settings.
A 13th century peasant who learns to read can turn read books which do absolutely nothing to improve his lot in life and he's still basically stuck learning a trade like everyone else.
A person who reads a book in D&D can in a relatively short while (especially in more recent editions such 3e and beyond) can take a handful of batshit and use it to start a fire that could seriously damage a minor community; the raw power available to spellcasters would mean education of THAT sort clearly has value, especially for the upper class.

If you were intelligent enough and lucky enough to come by a spellbook learning magic actually represents a personal path to wealth by being valuable to the upper classes, the same way learning to fight as a professional soldier could do the same if you were talented and lucky.
Sure there's value in the person being a farmer but let's face it; a peasant family can just knock out another kid if they need another able worker, or call a cousin or something to work on the farm with them.

Arguably one of the reasons magic would be controversial is that it's an atrociously easy way for any intelligent and dedicated person to become obscenely dangerous; books that actually taught magic would probably be tightly controlled by those who put effort into things like that. Though also in most D&D settings Wizards are leery as hell of sharing their spells with randos they meet.

Read "The Thirteenth Child." It shows that a wizardry tradition could be taught as part of a farming family's life, rather than by book teaching.

Personally, I really prefer the warhammer style of wizards over typical fantasy ones. An issue you see a lot is with magic just being an everyday thing, where anyone can learn, and that's it, it's mundane. In Warhammer, it's much more volatile, and has more of an effect, both on your own body, altering it based on which magic you study, and the spells themselves are more powerful.

remove fireball spamming robe-wearing boring old ass wizards.

make wizards martials characters/ any other character.

make magic about what magic really is: a deep mysterious force that does require study but doesn't force you to dump strength down to 8.
rituals are complex and mysterious and flavorful, instead of being reliable combat tricks.
you make magic either great and powerful or subtle and intriguing, but never common, that's why you have to replace the wizard's combat style with a truly mundane one.

>magic just being an everyday thing, where anyone can learn, and that's it, it's mundane

I see what you mean, and it's definitely a problem that got exacerbated in D&D's recent editions where you can just say "I take a level of Wizard" and you immediately bypass shit like studying and it seems effortless.
In 2e you could do this but leveling up was s PAINSTAKING process and actually took longer for Wizards so you basically said "okay, for the next five levels I'm spending ALL of my time on Wizard levels" and your spellcasting stuff was just weak as shit due to the time and investment it took to level up those Wizard levels compared to your Fighter ones.

Magic burns out as you get older, potential mags rip through their studies like the craziest students ever.

It's always a race to make your fortune while you can still actually preform the feats of wonder you sell yourself on. The most dangerous mages are usually in their late twenties with the right balance of experience and power.

By fifty-five all but the most exceptional are running on fumes reduced to simple levitation to move they qwills they write their academic papers with.

It's a game for the young, the brilliant and the angry.

Hey, at least he's better than Harry Dresden.

That building was set on fire in self defence.

This. Honestly we've strayed too far away from the original, and it's much more interesting than the generic dashing spellslinger.

Someone else already mentioned it, but Earthsea already perfected wizards.

"The dead sheep I can live with, but eating a pound of cold pasta with ketchup and claiming it's 'spaghetti' is too far, Dave."

Eh, 5e's class structure is basically 12 different flavors of wizard to begin with. And this is coming from someone who loves 5e.

Harry Dresden is basically a neckbeard who finally achieved his dream of becoming a real wizard - he dresss like some sort of hipster, he has no hobbies beyond magic and his attempts to make money from his one interest barely pay the rent.

Fuck that. If magic is unknowable then it's uninteresting. Who cares when the wizard solves a problem if it was luck instead of a clever plan? "Magic" is just science with alternative rules of physics. Wizards should play the mad scientist archetype.

Isn't So You Want To Be A Wizard like that?

IIRC, he's pretty much described as a 'sperger to anyone at first glance

No idea I've never read it.

Yes, but it's fairly clear he isn't really autistic - his life is just so fucked up that he's become a misanthrope with no social skills. And that's why he's basically a fa/tg/uy - many of the worst people on this board would have been normal if it weren't for the lack of social interaction and even the autists would have been less autistic.

I dont think DnD(where half of classes can cast spells! ) could aim reasonably for _mysterious_ magic. If half of party cast spells (and often more), it really not that rare and fancy. And unless you cast three spells a session, any implied obscured secrets _will_ fade and it will converge to strictly mechanical number descrtiptions.

Unless you have very disciplined players or something.

Easy step forward mystery is to describe spell 1st time they come to play.

Like I said, I came up with those in a few minutes and didn't intend them as anything more than rough ideas of wizards who don't neatly fall into the usual archetypes — I'd put a bit more thought into a character I was actually going to do anything with. No need to be an asshole about it.

>A simple book is really expensive, somehow this family got enough money to send their girl to proper training of the magical arts with real tutors?
Good point, so maybe make her family less poor — reasonably well-off merchants, maybe?

>cHoSeN oNe
How did "somewhat talented kid who the mafia saw as useful and easy to exploit" turn into "the chosen one"? If anything, I'd probably use a character like that as a minor villain or morally ambiguous NPC.

>>A human farm girl who saved the life of a fey, who taught her magic in thanks
>[miscellaneous complaints]
That one was a bit far-fetched, sure... though you seem to care more about the character's gender for some weird reason than the actually far-fetched stuff (which definitely would need a lot of revision if I was going to try to make these into halfway decent character concepts).

Magic doesn't have to be rare to be mysterious. But it absolutely must stop being presented with a a name like "Magic Missile", then followed by a anally retentive statblock straight out of a wargame. D&D's magic is a gear list for the spellcasters.

This is an excellent post, user.

So, Artificers in Eberron then?

When it comes to Wizards,Sorcerers and Warlocks i pretty much do this

Wizards are the Jack of all Trades Masters of None guys they can do a little bit of everything but aren't as powerful as Sorcerers or Warlocks but they would clean house on Magic Jeopardy they also require decades of study to become truly powerful Doctor Strange tier practitioners

Sorcerers are more powerful but more limited usually following a theme like Fire and other Elements or a particular subset of one of the Schools of Magic. Their power is natural and is a part of their very being usually because of a powerful ancestor like a Dragon or Fey Lord or possibly some sort of magical accident in their own lifetime

Warlocks are the most powerful but also the most limited they owe all their power to a Patron and usually have some requirements that must be fulfilled in order to use their power for example a certain Invocation or Item of Power think Captain Marvel/Shazam or The Juggernaut also most are "On Call" and must answer to their Patron of face losing their power

Huh. When I hear "shipping wizard" I usually think of other things.