I tried to make a wizard in OL by putting a lot of points into the Extraordinary attributes and I noticed it makes her a bit of a versatility glass cannon
As for the always fabled self limitation so far i have a few ideas
one is, i use an extraordinary focus (a staff) for the influence 4 attribute, which means it cannot be used without the staff but increases the dice rolled for the attribute (which of course needs to be approved by the gm)
another is to roll a d6 for energy attacks to randomly choose between fire, cold, acid, lightning, force and sonic damage, as the character idea is of a somewhat unorganized nature, with sonic damage having the difference of going for Toughness but being very noticable
the third idea was to have fixed spells (where new ones can be added but that takes in game time and effort) which each can only be used a limited amount of times per combat
What I didn’t mention was that the character needs to be able to speak and gesticulate to cast any spell, D&D style.
So what do you think? Let’s hear some critiques and suggestions.
Extraordinary Focus is a great feat, definitely fits a Wizard.
Also an interesting idea, but make sure your GM is aware of it so they have the opportunity to make it relevant. Be sure to narrate what happens for full effect.
I would strongly advise you to not limit yourself to a certain number of spells per combat. It seems like a very wizardly thing, right? The thing is that it only comes from other RPGs where spellcasters need to be balanced compared to physical-based classes; in OL the “classes” are already balanced. When was the last time you saw a book or film wizard run out of spells? It just doesn’t happen outside of D&D, there’s no reason to include it unless you deliberately want to challenge yourself.
Requiring speech and gestures is more the sort of thing that is meant by the term “self limitation” in this context. This is interesting, but doesn’t prevent you from doing interesting things. It’s a narrative limitation rather than a mechanical one. A good GM might also give you Legend points for roleplaying the downsides that come from this, such as if you need to cast quietly and get caught or find yourself silenced and unable to cast any spells at all.
One option that I’m thinking of using is limiting spells known but not how many times they can be cast. For instance at level 1 you know 6 + Learning number of spells. At every level you learn your learning in spells to add to your list or you can find scrolls/ spellbooks and spend in game time to learn. Spell examples would be mage armor (resistance), fireball (fire
burst), dragons breath (fire cone), Flashfreeze (area immobile) etc.
Size of the srea of effect (15ft cone vs 25 ft cone) or number of targets don’t matter they can be adjusted each attack. Doing this should give you enough flexibility while maintaining that wizard feel.
An interesting idea, but not one I’d personally go with. Have you put much thought into how you’re going to handicap physical-based characters to compensate for Extraordinary characters becoming much weaker? You could maybe take away the weapon bonuses, or prevent them from being able to invoke banes or something along those lines.
Another thing to think of is what happens if a player uses Extraordinary attributes but not in a spellcasting manner. It doesn’t make sense for a fire elemental to be limited to a certain number of spells, for example. Should they also be penalised in some way?
Honestly, I’m not quite sure what your goal is here. Seems a bit like you’re just taking away options just for the sake of it, though I could be missing the point. I’d encourage you to just leave the system as it is. If a player wants to only use effects that they can justify with a set number of spells they came up with, they’re already free to do that within the system; you don’t have to force it on them, and doing so only cuts off options for the other players.
The main idea here is that i indeed want to challenge myself a bit and looking at my extraordinary stats and the boons and banes (spells) i can invoke with them i feel the character is way to versatile.
Also I think I should clarify I’m keeping some things purposefully vague in the concept because there is no specific campaign or GM I’m creating this character for, I just wanted to see if I could reasonably convert Lerra to OL. (A story about her is on discord, should I put that on the community?)
Seeing as the character is quite flawed by design, I wanted to keep the feeling of limited resources/spells/power a bit. I agree that limiting the amount of spells per combat might be too much (especially considering boss fights or the inability to “recast” some banes on the same target if resisted).
That said a limited amount of spells known might still work, so for example only being able to inflict the Demoralized Bane in a cone brings with it much more interesting strategy decisions/limitations.
I enjoy having set limitations and working around them in character, all of this is self-inflicted flavour anyways and not meant to replace or rework the system as a whole or even affect other characters in the same game. If the character is underpowered, so be it, that doesn’t make her uninteresting or useless.
Well it’s my own character not one im giving my players. The starting wizard would have 9 spell at 1st level (learning 3). He would have 13 when reaching 2 level (attribute points used to raise learning to 4) + any from scrolls/spellbooks. Energy would be raised to 5 by 2nd level.
Presence 2
Logic 2
Willpower 3
Learning 3
Energy 4
Protection 3
Movement 2
Prescience 2
Example Spell list 1st level
Ice knife (Direct damage spell)
Fireball (damage area burst)
Dragon breath (damage area cone)
Lightning bolt (damage area line)
Really don’t need any more damage here probably for rest of game. Maybe if you have some elemental resistant enemy’s but hit them with something else.
Mage Armor (Resistance)
Empower (Bolster)
Fling (Force Move or damage if objects are flung at someone)
Shield (Defense Roll)
Flash Freeze (Immobilze)
At 1st level I should be pretry much set for any combat situation. If I feel I’m missing something the GM could toss out a spell scroll or book for me I roll a learning roll. Hey I learned the spell. Now I have more options and stuff the GM can reward my character with.
If the game was super hero flavored and I wanted to be the Human Torch that means I probably have a high energy score so technically i could blast people with lightning, freeze them solid with ice but i dont cause im the Human Torch, i burn things. I believe the point of the post was to be wizard flavored and wizard flavored is knowing spells
Edit: Sam totally agree with you not to do this as a DM to the players this is my own personal limit to my own character. That was probably not clear in my first post.
That makes a lot more sense to me, though I still think you might be a little too mechanically focused.
I have a player in my current campaign (in a superheroes setting) whose power is illusion, they have a lot of points in Influence, but only use banes and boons that could be explained by making people see things. So they can easily use Phantasm or Fear, but Disarmed is hard to justify and Charmed is basically impossible for them.