When building or considering magic and spell casting for your character, the question of ‘Why doesn’t everyone make a spellcaster?’ may come up. Spells can be very powerful, transcend the abilities of sword and shield, or simply seem more exciting in play. The wizard player is invited to consider some aspects of The North Holds when musing on this subject…
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Hatred of Magic: Some remote communities, religious sects, or superstitious governments have no love of the magic-user. You may be hunted, despised, imprisoned, mocked, robbed or plotted against if your use of the arcane arts is revealed. Also, many lower forms of monstrous life such as fish folk, ogres, reptiles and wild beasts can have a violent and sudden aggression when magic is used, targeting the caster before all others.
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Unwanted Attention: Loud noises, pyroclastic displays, bizarre robes, twisted staves and the like are seen, by many, as a portent of bad things. Wizards are strange, far-minded folk. This can make stealth and deception more challenging, or create ill-favored rumors.
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Vulnerability Without Magic: By investing their hero points in spells, magic-users become intrinsically vulnerable if they should enter a magicnullifying or silenced environment, be stripped of magic items, lose the Magic skill to attrition, or have their hands bound. This vulnerability seems unlikely to the greenhorn adventurer, but all veterans know how real these threats are.
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Complexity of Play: On a more ‘meta-game’ level, there is a burden of complexity in efficiently playing a wizard or magic-user. Spells must be clearly tracked; thought must be given BEFORE one’s turn as to actions taken; times, outputs and other specifications must be clear to the whole table, without eating up undue time. All these duties can be overly clerical for some players, or become so cumbersome that other players are groaning and falling asleep during the wizard’s ponderous turns.
If none of these sway you, then may the arcane be with you… always.