First time building a Wizard

[GCMorris]

I'm building an old school, page turning wizard with a spellbook. I've never made a magic using character for myself so I'm giving it the old college try. I'm putting the majority of his spells in a spellbook except for a few minor tricks. I want him to have a large repertoire but not be able to memorize them all at once. I'm guessing making the spellbook a Focus and a Magic Power Pool or Multipower only able to change between adventures or is that too crippling? Perhaps needing a day to change the powers. Thoughts and advice is always welcome as are presents

[Christopher]

I'm building an old school, page turning wizard with a spellbook. I've never made a magic using character for myself so I'm giving it the old college try. I'm putting the majority of his spells in a spellbook except for a few minor tricks. I want him to have a large repertoire but not be able to memorize them all at once. I'm guessing making the spellbook a Focus and a Magic Power Pool or Multipower only able to change between adventures or is that too crippling? Perhaps needing a day to change the powers. Thoughts and advice is always welcome as are presents

You are asking on the Champions forum so I asume this is for a Superheroic style/level game:

VPP, no modified rules for change (maybe remove or reduce the skill roll).

I think there were precedences for "change of slots needs focus".

 

Only between adventures is next to useless. While even on a day would be way to steep a limitation.

It is more important to clearly limit wich powers that VPP can make, then making the change unfeasible.

[Crusher Bob]

The basic limitation for your VPP would be '-1/2 can only change powers in given circumstances'

 

Your spellbook probably isn't a focus, because it sounds like you don't need your spellbook in your hands to use your powers, just to change them.  So no focus limitation on your control pool.

 

Things to think about:

 

How much of your total 'ability' is going to be bound up in your spells?

For example, the 'standard' superhero needs most, if not all of the following:

Ability to take hits from opposing capes

Ability to hit opposing capes hard enough

ability to move around in a fight (how do you get over there to hit that guy shooting at you?)

ability to move around in the city (how do you get to the bank robbery before it's over?)

ability to find out where to move around to (how do you even know the bank robbery is happening?)

 

So, for example, we'll consider the a flying blaster:

He's got a force field

he shoots lasers out of his hands

he can fly

he can, in fact, fly really fast

He's got, like, super vision and hearing, so he can just hover over the city and look and listen for interesting stuff.

 

Now, we think about how blaster guy would actually be built:

Sure blaster guy could just buy all his powers separately, but that's terribly expensive.  So he'll use a point economy style multipower.  He's got, say a 120 point pool multipower with 60 point variable slots of flying, blasting, force fielding, and super sensing.  So sometimes he's just flying around and super-sensing, and sometimes he's shielding and blasting.  His multipower costs a total of around 120 + 12 (blasting)+ 12 (shielding)+ 12 (flying) + 12 (sensing) = 168 points.

 

So, if your VPP is going to cover most of your 'required' powers, expect it to have a very large point pool, with your control pool cap mostly limited by your campaign document.

 

 

 

 

[Cantriped]

For a Spellbook Referencing Magi you want a large-ish VPP with OAF (Personal; Spellbook; -1) Only To Change Slots on the control. You might also include Incantations (-1/4), Gestures (-1/4), and Restrainable (-1/2) on All Slots (which therefore also applies to the control).

You'll want many of your "defensive" and "movement" spells to have Time Limit as an advantage, so that you can do your magic dance/finger wriggling and then fly around taking energy blasts like any other superhero.

 

For reference the "Standard Superhero" build has at least one Movement Power (like flight or swinging), one defensive power/suite (usually Resistant Protection or various Damage Reductions/Negations), and a Multipower with 3 to 5 attack powers and maybe some utility powers you won't use while attacking (like Desolidification or Invisibility).

[Heroic Halfwit]

1.  Variable limitation (either the focus of the OAF spell book or a spell roll) representing the character can either read the spell perfectly or has to try and remember it.  That way the character isn't completely useless without the book, because it will get taken away.

 

2. Where does the energy for the spell come from personal Endurance or some kind of external End Reserve, Charges or what?

 

3.  There are lot of different kinds of "old school wizard" out there from godlike beings that toss comets down on their foes, to necromancers, to generalists who always seem to have the right spell for the job at hand.  What does the character do?

 

4.  Develop a spell list of all the things you can think of you'd like the character to do and then divide it into a list of things that can happen episodically (usually attacks) and things which you want to occur simultaneously (like movement and defense).

 

As to whether a VPP only changeable between adventures is too crippling, a lot of that depends on how good you are at anticipating your needs and what you use it for.  If you're using your VPP as your primary source of attack, defense and/or movement, changing in between adventurers or even everyday is going to be rough going.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its going to depend on the setting a lot.  Do you mean for a high fantasy setting, a pulp setting, a medieval low fantasy setting, an urban fantasy setting, a Champions game?  Each one will have different sorts of approaches.

 

The high fantasy game will generally have tons of spells from a huge list, that they are only able to access some at a time, especially if you want to go the D&D/Vancian route.  Low fantasy will have fewer spells but all tend to be available at any time, of low power.  Champions wizards usually have a power pool because they can do basically anything.  

 

For Champions, I find a multipower with basic effects along with a few outside the multipower for constant use (defenses, for example) is usually fine.  

 

You'll find that you don't actually use most of those weird special powers very often like tunneling and sending a message to someone 100 miles away in a whisper.  You can limit your character to pretty specific stuff like an energy projector, then add some strange things in like teleport and telekinesis to make it feel more magical.

 

Throw in some foci that influence but don't determine your power -- lower END cost, make the spell roll easier, eliminate limitations such as gestures etc.  That way the character can still function without their goodies, but is weaker or more limited.  

 

For example, Bob the Wizard has a bunch of useful effects, but all of them require a magic skill roll (modified by the active cost), gestures, incantation, and concentration.  But he has a ring that makes the Requires Skill Roll no longer adjusted by active cost, an amulet that makes his spells not require concentration, and a wand that eliminates incantation.  All of this is built with naked advantages.

 

The key to making a wizard, though, is to focus not on what they can do, but what they can't do, and what makes it seem and feel magical.  Putting some apparently arbitrary restrictions on magic (say, you can't heal, or you can't fly, or you cannot summon, or even something like spells won't work on people wearing x amount of metal or with religious devices) makes a big difference to making it seem magical instead of just Silver Surfer cosmic power.  

 

Also, making the spells seem like spells rather than powers helps.  Standard magic limitations like gestures, etc help.  But so do fancy names.  Dr Strange does the same basic flame blast as the Human Torch, but its the Crimson Flames of Dormammu, not "Flame on!"

 

And giving the special effects more magical seeming designs makes a big difference as well.  Don't make it a bolt of lightning from your fingertips, Dr Thunder does that.  Make it a bird that flies overhead and breathes lightning on them.  Don't teleport with a "bamf", open up a circle in the air ringed with glowing runes and step through.