| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Pasta Fzoul |
Posted - 15 Jan 2007 : 02:02:54
So, having thoroughly enjoyed Jack Vance's Rhialto the Marvellous, I have developed a desire to see further examples of "wizards behaving badly" To that end, I'm thinking about putting together an adventure set in ancient Netheril, in which the PCs are all minor arcanists; powerful enough to be foolishly arrogant, and ambitious for advancement among their peers, but humble enough that they still must bow and scrape to their Archwizard superiors
Anyone played in / DM'd a campaign in old Netheril? Any suggestions for doing so, either from a storytelling or rules standpoint? I have much of the relevant lore at hand (2e "Arcane Age" supplements, 3e "Lost Empires," etc.)
On a related note, has anyone had any experience with using what is essentially an all-mage party? |
| 4 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| WalkerNinja |
Posted - 17 Jan 2007 : 14:42:29
I played in an all-mage party in 2E, and had a blast. Our party was an experiment by our masters (we all started at 1st level). They thought that we would be forced to adapt and press forward magical progress if we had no warriors, clerics, or rogues to depend upon. They were Right! We were constantly developing new spells, experimenting with collaborative casting, and inadvertantly re-discovered Mantles and Baldrics (2E Secrets of the Magister) through our research. We were very successful. By 6th level adventures were referred to as "fund raising expeditions" because we were constantly running out of money for new research. In the end, one of us became The Magister, and I created Arcane/Divine transparency (reasonably simple under 2E rules). Collectively, we discovered "Magic Component Theory," whereby we broke spells down into their basic components, evaluated them, and reconstructed them differently. For example... what's the difference between Light (1st level) and Continual Light (2nd level)? The continual part! Thus, continuance results in a level increase of 1, or, Continuance may become a spell in and of itself as a First level spell from the school of Metamagic. Effectively creating metamagic feats in 2E.
6th-8th level was where we really hit our hey-day. Here was our party:
Maertos Moonshadow (N gold elf male W7/Cl8 of Azuth)
Vincent Victor "the Puppet Master" (NE human male Warlock 9)
Enchantra (NG 1/2 elf female W9/wild psi)
Malcon Nar'le nar(N drow male W9/psi null)
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| Pasta Fzoul |
Posted - 16 Jan 2007 : 23:18:43
Thanks for the input. I had also considered allowing multiclassing, or even just ignoring the "all-mage" idea, though it would somewhat change the flavor of the campaign. If I stuck to it, I'd probably bump up the starting level, as casters become eminently more capable of surviving on their own at higher levels. And, of course, we mustn't forget the Netherese arcanists' aversion to using healing magic  |
| Sian |
Posted - 15 Jan 2007 : 05:40:23
Complete Mage have some pretty good guidelines about how an allmage party could work out |
| KnightErrantJR |
Posted - 15 Jan 2007 : 02:21:49
For the "all mage" party, it should be easier to manage this in 3rd/3.5 than in previous editions. Without knowing what level you plan on starting this, I'm not sure exactly what to tell you, but you can let them have a few levels of various support classes.
I'm not sure how hot you are on 3.5 supplemental material, but Complete Arcane, Complete Adventurer, and Complete Mage all have some interesting multi class PrCs for fighter/mages and rogue/mages (I like the diviner/rogue PrC that they have in Complete Mage especially).
And of course there is the Mystic Theurge from the DMG as well. So you can round out a party but still have everyone with access to arcane magic.
Just some thoughts. |
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