Deadly Leaping Wizards
Have I mentioned the Rumors of War Relaunch Project FUNDED?
See for yourself!
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Sometimes the best ideas come from the oddest places. Like when making a casual threat about what horrible fate awaits the love interest of a good friend.
To elaborate, I was trying to think how best to cover a great distance and dispose of him messily when the idea of the “tele-frag” popped into my mind. “Two birds with one stone,” I thought. “Hang on a minute…”
I’ve been trying to come up with a good Wizard power to accompany Magic Missile. I mean, how do you even begin to improve upon a classic like Magic Missile? 4e made a lot of things accessible to low-level PCs, like short-range teleportation. But what about at-will teleportation?
Here’s my idea:
SPACE INVADER [Implement, Teleport, Force]
Standard * At-will * Ranged 5
Target: One enemy you can see.
Attack: INT vs. Fortitude
Hit: 1d6 + INT force damage. Slide the target 1 square, and teleport to the space vacated by the target.
Level 21: 2d6 + INT force damage.
Miss: Teleport to a square you can see adjacent to the target.
You know what I like about this? It’s simple, it’s elegant, and it follows basic D&D lore regarding teleporting into an illegal space — the teleporter is shunted into a legal position and takes Xd6 damage. Except here it’s weapon-ized.
The Wizard uses his superior grasp of magic fundamentals to protect himself and shunt his target out of the way. Add that to the idea of making this a basic control power (forced movement), and build into it a drawback — the Wizard is now next to his target, within easy striking distance.
In addition to the cool, cool idea of a Wizard hitting with this power twice back-to-back through use of an Action Point (i.e. Teleport Spam), there’s the emergent Chess jokes about taking pieces from the board when Minions are ‘sploded in this fashion. “The Wizard appears in a shower of gibs.”
Like Checkers? Kill a solo monster with this power? “King me.”
I don’t know if the name will stick, but it’s hilarious.
If you want to explore the concept in more depth philosophically, I have this to offer you. Say you have unlimited cosmic power and you’re a brilliant strategist. Even you will have a hard time not spamming an effective power that gets results. You’ve got utility sure, but tele-fragging is a Wizard’s “Charge Attack.”
Move and attack. Attack and move. It’s what you always wanted.
I like the basic concept of it, but I don’t know about using it as an “at-will power”. I’d see it more like a scaling class ability where the number of times it could be used per combat gradually increases. The other problem i see is that a it fundamentally goes against keeping the wizard a ranged character; if you’re not dealing fatal damage, you’re landing right next to something that can. You also mention spamming; I see this playing out like someone who uses Akuma in street fighter and keeps doing teleport throws.
It’s definitely DIFFERENT for a Wizard power. I did design it with the notion that players were likely to spam it, not unlike Fighters with Charge Attack (since 3e anyway). I see it alternatively as a Wizard’s Bull Rush or Charge, which have traditionally been Fighter toys for better or worse.
Being a teleportation effect, it is strictly BETTER than Charge in the fact that the movement itself doesn’t draw Opportunity Attacks (though the “Ranged” part will), and the Wizard can choose to appear in any square adjacent to the target should they miss…
…Except that it isn’t as easily modified by weapons and the Fighter can certainly take punishment better than a Wizard can. I don’t know that I’m concerned about keeping the Wizard a “Ranged” character.
I think this kind of power gives the Wizard a reason to toe the line and encourages the sort of risky tactics that you might expect from a Wizard foolish enough to adventure instead of studying at home. ;)
I definitely think that it takes a different type of wizard character to go this route. And it would make for an interesting combat-themed wizard. I imagine almost a lightning motif. It’s not something I see all or even a lot of wizard types taking advantage of, but it certainly opens the door to a more combat oriented style of play for those who want it.
I also sense some kind of feat tree that allows for either additional teleports, additional moves/actions after teleport, or some other kind of metamagic feat combination. Teleport in, delayed blast fireball, teleport out, Down to forward to back punch, screen turns purple, “12 Hit COMBO!”
Actually, the Fighting Game example isn’t far off from the look and feel of what I’m going for. ;)
I would write about fighting games more on my blog but I suck at them, so I watch Let’s Plays and read strategy/theory articles instead.
I also have to admit I’m not a fan of the classic “frail Wizard,” since A) most players can’t play older characters like they’ve been around, and B) there isn’t a whole lot you can do when your main schtick is “old.”
I remember leafing through the 3.5 Expanded Psionics Handbook, seeing illustrations of the different Psionic disciplines, and wondering “why aren’t Wizards this cool?” At some point I resolved to combine them.
I’m fond of the “spry Wizard” archetype, mixing magic with martial arts. I think there’s a lot more variety to be found there. :)
The one improvement that 3e made to wizards that I really liked was level 0 spells. I’ve harped on about the level 1 wizard conundrum on my blog a lot…
The old race-as-a-class Elf actually suits the dashing wizard trope nicely, giving them fighter’s attack, wizard armor restrictions, and a standard hit die. Personally, I think that the wizard class seems so gimped because the old-school wizard’s sleep spell was pretty much an instant-kill. No saving throw, and if a couple of wizards could manage to cover enough hit dice, it would be an instant TPK.
In my little rules-lite, I give wizards sword skills, because hell, if wizards aren’t making +1 swords for themselves it would hardly seem in their best interest to make them at all.
I have ideas for Sleep. Sleep will be a class of spells unto itself — none of which render targets unconscious. Drowsy, vulnerable, suggestible… yes. Unconscious? No. Also… Not a Wizard spell anymore. Wizards have better things to do.
Yeah, but debuffs can be boring. Maybe allow them to be simulcast with other effects, so you’d get “save w/penalty vs effect” instead of “debuff” then “save vs. effect”
Right now I have Sleep spells lined up to be the primary vehicle for Psychic damage, being coupled with various dream-walking/living-nightmare spells for added effect. Some will resemble charm/domination effects.
“Your friend transforms into a monster and attacks you!”
“Huh-wha!” *swings wildly*
Throw in some psychonauts mind dungeons & I’m sold.
Have I mentioned the principle means of establishing entirely new planes of existence is via ILLUSION magic to create a dream, followed by a blend of other schools to anchor said dream in reality and establish connections to it?
I thought I blogged about it earlier this month. Or maybe that was last month. I’ve been really busy lately. Maybe I only managed a facebook update. I remember something about putting world-building in the hands of PCs.
I got sick for a week or so in there, took a couple days off from work, and that really messed up my sense of time.
Psychonauts is a fave.
Finally coming back to this almost four months later — the at-will teleport charge effect will be super-handy for the “New Wizard,” which will be a leader instead of a controller. The Wizard can use this power to make a “dynamic entry” into melee and drop a healing power.
With “Mage Armor” as a class feature rather than a spell, the Wizard will be one of the harder-to-hit Arcane characters, on par with some of the more “legitimate” front-line characters.
Should be fun. :)
Y’know, there was an ability in Exalted that the Abyssals had which was pretty much like a fighting game teleport; for a modest cost of essence points, the Abyssal could disappear in a puff of shadows and automatically dodge any successful attack. You could do it a handful of times before you ran out of essence, provided you didn’t mind that after the 4th or 5th auto-dodge you wouldn’t have any essence left to do anything.
It might be a cool ability that could be swapped in for a spell slot the way that Clerics can swap out their spells for healing.
Another option would be an “Armor of the Mind” type ability, that adds Intelligence mods to AC.
If you don’t use it, I may have come up with my 3rd OSR class…
The archetypes will be pretty cut-and-dry, and I’m going to be really sparing on 1st-level character options (including swapping spells and whatnot) AND the ability-score-in-to-feature-out kind of stuff that was so prevalent in 3e (and 4e by extension). Lol, so in a way, I’m saying “go for it…”
Once the archetypes are all set, I plan to iterate on them in fun and cool ways. Most of the Arcane classes will teleport to some degree, and “Space Invader” will be a Wizard thing (lol, unless it changes). I’m working on the Sorcerer as a “blaster” with the lightning bolt, and fireball…
I really want to give the Wizard a distinct flavor and FEEL that sets it apart. Even if it’s ultimately “lesser” somehow than other incarnations, I don’t want “yet another Gandalf class” that seems to just attract random spells that people think are cool. “Tele-frag” seems like a place to start. xD
I also see something like this being a Lamentations of the Flame Princess spell. “There is a 30% chance you fuse with the target. You are now a chaotic abomination and will attempt to usher in the end of the universe within the next 6d4 months.”
Which is not to say “in 6d4 months you’ll try this”, but that you’re on a timetable.
Exactly.
I would totally encourage (but not enforce) this. >:D