wizard college is going to kill me I swear to god. I just saw someone without a component satchel reach into their pocket and pull out a handful of LOOSE tapioca to use as a substitute for blood in their fell ritual. and it worked. I've never been so fucking mad.
I'm a big fan of wizards-as-programmers, but I think it's so much better when you lean into programming tropes.
- A spell the wizard uses to light the group's campfire has an error somewhere in its depths, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. The wizard spends a lot of his time trying to track down the exact conditions that cause the failure.
- The wizard is attempting to create a new spell that marries two older spells together, but while they were both written within the context of Zephyrus the Starweaver's foundational work, they each used a slightly different version, and untangling the collisions make a short project take months of work.
- The wizard has grown too comfortable reusing old spells, and in particular, his teleportation spell keeps finding its components rearranged and remixed, its parts copied into a dozen different places in the spellbook. This is overall not actually a problem per se, but the party's rogue grows a bit concerned when the wizard's "drying spell" seems to just be a special case of teleportation where you teleport five feet to the left and leave the wetness behind.
- A wizard is constantly fiddling with his spells, making minor tweaks and changes, getting them easier to cast, with better effects, adding bells and whistles. The "shelter for the night" spell includes a tea kettle that brings itself to a boil at dawn, which the wizard is inordinately pleased with. He reports on efficiency improvements to the indifference of anyone listening.
- A different wizard immediately forgets all details of his spells after he's written them. He could not begin to tell you how any of it works, at least not without sitting down for a few hours or days to figure out how he set things up. The point is that it works, and once it does, the wizard can safely stop thinking about it.
- Wizards enjoy each other's company, but you must be circumspect about spellwork. Having another wizard look through your spellbook makes you aware of every minor flaw, and you might not be able to answer questions about why a spell was written in a certain way, if you remember at all.
- Wizards all have their own preferences as far as which scripts they write in, the formatting of their spellbook, its dimensions and material quality, and of course which famous wizards they've taken the most foundational knowledge from. The enlightened view is that all approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, but this has never stopped anyone from getting into a protracted argument.
- Sometimes a wizard will sit down with an ancient tome attempting to find answers to a complicated problem, and finally find someone from across time who was trying to do the same thing, only for the final note to be "nevermind, fixed it".
- "This spell causes the hair to fall off cats." "It works with my tome"
- "This spell causes the hair to fall off cats." "That's fixed in Xaranthius' latest publication, you just have to rewrite your entire spellbook for compatibility."
- "This spell causes the hair to fall of cats." "Magister Olaus of Writhington uses it to help with his allergies. WORKING AS INTENDED."
I want to see wizards snarking at each other over different magical languages/scripts, the same way programmers do it over different languages.
- Sure, "High Tower is a powerful language, but it's such a pain to write. I just use Unity* as it's simple to write and can do nearly everything I need" "cranky because you can't memorize all the conjugations and declensions, aren't you?" "LOOK MAN, I CAN MEMORIZE ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE FACE OF YOUR MOTHER IN ECSTASY. IN FACT, BEHOLD!" *a little time window appears between them, demonstrating exactly that. The first wizard (seen through the window) turns around and winks at the "camera".
- "you kids today with your lizardman. How can you get anything done in a language without gendered pronouns? It's like fingerpainting. Sure you can learn on it but once you've got the basics you should switch over to a REAL language"
- "the Kalic have been here already. We better get out before the rest of their army marches in." "how can you be sure?" "you see that teleport?" "no" "well, if you COULD see it, you'd see it's written in Adevic Yevi. That's the Kalic magic language." "couldn't it be someone else? We saw those Monon traders, maybe one of them..." "no. No one writes Adevic Yevi unless they're being paid to. It's a language written by committee."
- Wizards going on a quest to get the spellbooks for a lost spell, only to find out that it was written in skydove cant. No one can read that shit! The creator must have been one of those weird "functional wizards". (They're obsessed with making sure their spells have no side effects)
- There's a small library on the outskirts of Freeport which tries to collect versions of basic spells in every language. The Adevic Yevi version of "fireball" takes up 7 pages, mostly boilerplate setting up the interfaces with fire and explosions and ExplodingMagicalBallFactorySingletons. The Lizardman version is basically "AHAHAHA, YOU GO BOOM!"
- There's a bunch of wizard apprentices working on porting an old "Summon Bread and Fishes" spell from the absolutely archaic language it was written in. Once it's in Unity, it'll be easy to modify and teach to more wizards, which'll obviously be good for disaster areas. It's just too expensive to keep paying the ancient guys who can still do magic in TRAN-FOR.
- Eccentric wizards keep inventing new languages for spells. You look at them and they're neat, but it'll never catch on. And either you're right, or the next time you're applying to be a court wizard, the advisors want to know if you have at least 5 years experience in Tilted Runic and you're like "it only came out 2 years ago!" "aren't you a chronomancer?" "oh good point. Yeah I've been using it for 20-30 years."
- There's wizards who will spend incredible amounts of time doing silly things with spells in strange ways. There's this guy (Vorth) who made his own language where there's only one basic spell: fireball. Everything else is basic magic glue tying multiple fireballs together. So like, he's got a breakfast spell. Stand back (good advice for all his spells), and you'll see a fish get knocked out of the local pond, flung through the air by successive explosions, and eventually it lands on his plate, nicely cooked and deboned, if slightly charred (the glass of milk is harder to explain). His magical door locks involve a quicksilver sphere and molten lead changing shape when heated... It's tricky but it seems to work. He's working on a teleport spell, but so far it's mainly just killed test subjects (primarily sheep from a nearby farm).
* so the funny thing here is that this isn't a reference to the unity game engine. The main country in my One Hundred and One Magical Pistols setting is called "the union" and their language is called "unity".
It's wands vs staves vs bare hands.
Wanders are like "they're available everywhere and once you learn how to do it it's so powerful!"
Staffguys always talk about how you can do ANYTHING with a staff. Wanders claim it's a pain to carry around an overpowered device that can do ANYTHING when you just need to cast fireball or a simple one man teleport.
Meanwhile the bare wizards are showing off how they don't need any magical tools and can just do hand motions.
Wanders and staffguys retort that when a spell goes wrong, THEY need to go to store for a new magical tool. YOU need new hands.
(flight intercom) this is the pilot speaking. yeah we expect todays flight to be normal. um if you look out your window you shouldnt see the skull
(wizard intercom) good evening passengers. this is the wizard speaking. boy do i have a treat for you
Posts that make you drop everything you're doing and open Audacity
finally landed on wizard tiktok
Spending years toiling at wizard school in the notoriously elitist necromancy department, barely scraping by for several years before they begrudgingly give me my necromancer degree, all so that I can go sit on the beach and revive ediacaran fossils on the beach and look at the creatures.
Spending years infuriated at wizard school in the notoriously lax druidry department, getting no grant money and having to practically teach myself for my dissertation before they remember to give me my druid degree, all so that I can go sit on the beach with you and ensure that the ediacaran fossils on the beach you revive are able to fulfill their dietary needs and won't destabilize the supernatural ecosystem.
Once you get to a certain level of advanced maths, you basically become a wizard.
this is what a page of my wizards spellbook looks like
Sounds like something a wizard mocking another wizard for their poorly written spellbook would say
- how to remove sinister guy from castle
- shadowy figure lurking around wizard tower
- guy lurking in shadows smoking a cigarette and sharpening knives
- rogue infestation
- rogue exterminator
- rogue exterminator prices
- how to remove rogues from wizard tower yourself “DIY” reddit
- how to remove rogues from wizard tower yourself “DIY” reddit -“bad idea”
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- healing potions for sale
hey ever wonder what kind of wizard you are? now with my magic uquiz you can find out (and get a fun theme song) (nothing to do with jk r*wling or harold) 🔮
A little gift for a friend of their Yuan-ti divination wizard!! Her arcane focus is a polished bronze mirror and I went for a more gorgon-inspired approach to Yuan-Ti 🐍⚜️🪞 Didn’t expect to take that long a break but finally back to making some character designs!! I felt really out of practice going into this and struggled quite a bit but I was able to get her done finally so that’s a win! (also I’ll be opening commissions at the end of this week so keep an eye out if your interested!)
Due to the Overwhelming feedback I have decided to make a new addition to the poll-regrettably i can't edit the original post or add a new poll here trust me I tried but I was able to edit the result key, so with that out of the way here it is, your Final Option:
lil 16 page zine that i made at the coffee shop this weekend! a sort of pick your path style mini game, because i love wizards + interactive fiction. hope you get out of the wizard dungeon!!
Orbtober Day 3: Starry
I will take EVERY opportunity to cover a wizard's design in stars.
high level urban decay wizard spell #1: Highway, My Way
The wizard tower owners association are giving me a fine for not utilising a suitable level progression in the minions of my tower and saying its a risk to would be adventurers