NPC Wizards - Powers versus Spells

The whole Internet Drama over Isle of the Unknown (the source of the gorgeous picture to the right) reminded me of something Geoffrey McKinney did in that book that I've given serious thought to at times. Namely, instead of giving the magic-users a repertoire of spells from the list in Lamentations of the Flame Princess, he chose to give each one a unique and non-repeatable power, frequently tied to some piece of equipment or to animal companions (part of a Zodiac theme that is shot through that work).

Another LotFP product, The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions (which I feel that I should like in principle but find myself tepid on in execution) assumes that proper wizards aren't limited to spell lists and straight-up have powers and "often they are other things entirely, and have other origins, natures, and lifecycles."

I've considered using a similar for NPC wizards, giving them powers that don't neatly slot into the standard D&D spell system. Partly I think this is really juicy and mythic; it isn't like Circe or Merlin runs around casting Fireball or Detect Magic. They have powers, properly, and those aren't constrained by the limits of a spell list. I find the idea that NPC wizards and witches might have straight-up powers that aren't on the spell list to be an easy way to inject a bit of mythic wonder into a game.

A second reason I've considered it is the relative power of certain spells. It's long been noted in old school circles that an enemy magic-user can TPK a low level party pretty trivially by casting a single Sleep spell. There are ways to "go easy" on a party once Sleep is cast, but a lot of them are sort of lame. Giving the enemy wizards some totally unrelated powers seems to be an easier way to resolve this.

There are further benefits to this approach. One is cross-compatibility. Probably the biggest fiddly issue with modules and supplements is when a magic-user's spell list is enumerated and it contains a spell that's not in the specific game you're using. This is an annoying problem with clones. A unique powers cuts this out, since the power is listed directly. The other is simplifying high-level magic-user encounters for the referee. Instead of juggling a dozen or more spell options, the referee just has to pick from, say, one to three powers.

Of course there is a downside. Specifically, it's something of a tease to give enemy wizards a power that PC magic-users can basically never get. That's not to say that PCs normally get other magic powers, like a dragon's breath or a basilisk's gaze, but using the same spell list for PCs and NPCs does give PCs the aspiration of being able to turn the tables on foes. This can be remedied by making a way to get these powers, but making it very difficult to do so. If you run a game where finding spellbooks is difficult, not having NPC casters use spells is an obvious issue. And it does cross a certain "feel" boundary, since NPC magic-users casting spells is a pretty ingrained part of the game from its earliest days.

Still, I think it's an idea worth doing some experimentation with. An NPC wizard able, say, to shape and control certain plants might be a really interesting wilderness encounter, or a witch whose hexes go outside the "normal" boundaries of the spell system. I'm going to give this one a bit more thought on ways to go forward, but I like the basic concept.

Vancian Wizards and Creating Life

Preface part 1: Resquiescat in pacem Jack Vance. A grand master has passed.

Preface part 2: Sorry I haven't updated regularly this week. Life's been hectic, work's been busy, it's a short week, and my kid is sick. May has been a really successful month for this blog and I appreciate the people who've been reading and giving feedback on the articles here.

So this post is occasioned by the passing of Jack Vance, one of the true grand masters of science fiction and fantasy. Despite the title, it has nothing at all to do with the subject of wizards memorizing spells. It's about what those wizards actually aspire to, and in a few cases, succeed at.

The first time I read The Dying Earth it was in the paperback pictured to the right. I remember very vividly the story "Turjan of Miir" and Turjan's vain attempts to create intelligent living creatures in his vats. This kind of drive is alluded to in some of D&D's stranger moments, such as the idea that an owlbear was created by some long-ago wizard, but on the whole there isn't much present for magic-users actually creating monsters.

Of course, Turjan promptly turns to creating women, but he isn't as odd of a wizard as is Pandelume. (Pandelume's concept of equal exchange is a good basis for NPC magic users, as a side note.) I can't help but think that wizards who create odd creatures in nutrient vats are more interesting, perhaps ones resembling Turjan's earlier attempts:

It was a thing to arouse pity—a great head on a small spindly body, with weak rheumy eyes and a flabby button of a nose. The mouth hung slackly wet, the skin glistened waxy pink. In spite of its manifest imperfection, it was to date the most successful product of Turjan's vats.

...

He considered its many precursors: the thing all eyes, the boneless creature with the pulsing surface of its brain exposed, the beautiful female body whose intestines trailed out into the nutrient solution like seeking fibrils, the inverted inside-out creatures ...

In terms of how to interpret this, I tend to think that a set of rules for magic-users to learn life-crafting as a separate art would be in order. Creating creatures of given hit dice, size, and special abilities would take more time, more resources and a higher character level. This is analogous to the rules in OD&D about creating magic items, but obviously could use firmer description.

One factor that I hadn't thought of much until I went to the original story to check the pull quotes was that Turjan's specimens were basically human. The one at the start of the story is more human than I had thought of it; the details more of an imperfect man. I think that this could really be expanded - the specific designs dreamed up by the individual wizard, more monstrous, some perhaps doing the unlikely and combining something like say an owl and a bear, or a man, a bear and a pig.

But to get the feel right, I think this needs to have a set of rules for deformities and accidents due to imperfections in the design or in the solution that the creation grows from. My personal penchant is for a big chart, which would double as a set of monster variations in a pinch.

Indeed, the whole thing would be simultaneously a set of rules for designing your own creation in-play - if PCs want to play Dr. Frankenstein or Turjan of Miir - and for coming up with the kind of monster where "a wizard did it" is the only logical answer.

And with that I've figured out the monster feature for Dungeon Crawl #3.

Ritual magic

One of the things I've been thinking about is the "Utility Spells" in D&D. Basically, until a M-U has more than 3 spell slots available, why would he or she memorize Read Magic instead of Sleep or Magic Missile?

The house rule I have been thinking about is allowing certain spells to be cast as rituals. Fantasy literature has no lack of ritual, and it makes sense to me to allow this to happen in D&D. The rules I'm thinking of include:

- Magic-Users may cast any eligible spell in their spellbook that they could memorize, as a ritual, without memorizing the spell.
- Clerics may cast any eligible spell that they could normally memorize, as a ritual, without memorizing the spell. First-level Clerics may cast Protection from Evil as a ritual but no other spells.
- Rituals take 1 turn to cast plus 1 turn per level of the spell being cast. Any interruption in the casting disturbs the spell and it cannot be cast again in the same day.
- Casting a ritual spell requires material components on the following scale. 1st level: 10 GP; 2nd level: 100 GP; 3rd level: 1,000 GP; 4th level: 10,000 GP; 5th level: 100,000 GP; 6th level: 1,000,000 GP. These should be appropriate to the spell being cast and must be purchased in advance.
- Any spell may only be cast as a ritual once per day, and characters may not in any case cast more than 3 ritual spells in one day.

Eligible spells
Magic-User
1st level: Detect Magic, Read Magic, Protection from Evil
2nd level: Locate Object, Detect Evil, Continual Light
3rd level: Dispel Magic, Protection from Evil 10', Protection from Normal Missiles
4th level: Remove Curse, Polymorph Self
5th level: Conjure Elemental, Contact Higher Plane
6th level: Reincarnation, Anti-Magic Shell

Cleric
1st level: Detect Evil, Protection from Evil, Purify Food & Water
2nd level: Bless, Find Traps
3rd level: Remove Curse, Cure Disease, Locate Object
4th level: Neutralize Poison, Protection from Evil 10', Create Water
5th level: Dispel Evil, Raise Dead, Create Food

Thoughts?

Spellcraft & Swordplay and its Big Cool Idea

Like 29 other souls in the old-school gaming community, I recently received my "white box" of Jason Vey's Spellcraft & Swordplay. S&S is a reimagining of OD&D if, instead of fleshing out the "Alternate Combat Matrix," the creators had stuck through with a unified Chainmail-style combat system. Now, being a guy who worked out a matrix for weapon classes, I think that's pretty nifty, although I don't think I'd go with its specific interpretation.

The idea in S&S that I think is really remarkable is rolling for spells. Here's how it works: when a wizard tries to cast his spell, he rolls 2d6. It has three possible results: "Immediate," "Delayed," and failure. A failure indicates that the spell fizzles, except on a "2," when it's forgotten but still useable. Immediate means the spell goes off that round, Delayed means that it goes off the next round. The neat thing is that Immediate and Delayed results don't involve forgetting the spell until the next day. It's a very cool way to run wizards, especially so that first-level ones aren't necessarily one-shot ponies and high-level characters aren't indominable. It's a cool enough idea that I think it's worth adapting.

Of course, the S&S spell failure rates are a little high at low level, and I think it may need a broader "works but you forget it" option, as well as the possibility of an actual failure (and attendant "spell failure chart," natch). But when I finally get a miscellany written (see Jeff Rients's excellent Miscellanium of Cinder for an example of awesome in a can, will write more about this once I get it read) something inspired by Vey's spellcasting rules will probably work their way into it.

On Vancian Magic

With this post, I realize I'm going into territory that some OD&D fans would consider heresy, but it's something that I feel needs to be explored. I want to examine the whys and wherefores of Vancian magic, and how it appeared in OD&D and how it came to be used.

To be clear: the magic system was not necessarily "intuitively" Vancian in the 1974 rules. The Magic-User and Cleric classes had a number of spells per day determined by level, and that was about it. With subsequent clarifications, it was made clearly and determinedly based on the ideas in Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories, where spells were "memorized" and stored for later use. Elements of other fantasy were also added, with verbal, somatic and material components making spells slightly different from a strict Vancian take. For purposes of paperwork and record keeping, it's a very workable solution with a sound basis in the source literature, and was used in every edition of AD&D and D&D up until the 4th edition, when it was done away with.

That is, in the published rules. Unofficially, the Vancian magic system was never all that popular. Early issues of Alarums & Excursions reveal that the magic system was considered seriously flawed and referees were reworking it from the very early days. Entire game systems developed around alterations, mainly, to the combat and magic rules from OD&D. But Gygax soldiered on with Vancian magic and it became a staple of the game from that point onward. I would think that an AD&D campaign without Vancian magic would be sort of like a Call of Cthulhu campaign without SAN — it's possible, but would be missing the point a bit.

However, one of the things I intend to emphasize in this blog is the idea that OD&D isn't AD&D, and that what is right for one is not necessarily right for the other. The magic rules in OD&D are simply a sketch of the fleshed-out system in AD&D, and I think they ought to prove vital and legitimate ground for tinkering. One of the things I will be looking at in coming posts is old-school approaches to magic, which actually are quite plentiful in print — there is a mana point system sketched in Arduin, discussion in A&E, and the systems of Chivalry & Sorcery and Tunnels & Trolls that I intend to look at for ideas, and adaptation into something of a cohesive alternate system.

The reason for this is not that I'm not happy with Vancian magic as such. As I said, I think it's a quintessential part of AD&D. The reason I'm interested in exploring alternative magic systems is tied into a particular vision of OD&D that I think is perfectly valid, one that looks outside of the AD&D / Gygaxian tradition for solutions to rules questions. I do believe, strongly, that OD&D is not AD&D lite, or with fewer of the specific rules and a trim; what attracts me is the idea that it's possible to build a D&D as one sees fit. The reality is that, when OD&D was at its newest, magic was not bound to any single interpretation but open to wild interpretation and creation. I think the old school renaissance needs to embrace this spirit if it is going to thrive.