Wizard spells in DF
 

One of my players went through the spells to determine what is and what is not allowed this is what he came up with.

___Animal___

Protect Animal (in Protection)

Shapeshifting (for Lengthen Limb/Transform Body)
Shapeshift Others (for Transform Other)



___Enchantment___

Lich (in Necromancy)
Soul Stone (in Necromancy)
Wraith (in Necromancy)

Enchant (for Lich/Soul Stone/Wraith/Powerstone)
Powerstone (for Charge Powerstone)



___Healing___

Stop Spasm (in Body Control)
Relieve Madness (in Mind Control)
Final Rest (in Necromancy)
Resurrection (in Necromancy)
Detect Poison (in Protection)
Resist Disease (in Protection)
Resist Poison (in Protection)

Lend Energy (for Recover Energy/Charge Powerstone)
Recover Energy
Lend Vitality (for Vigor/Relieve Madness/Zombie/Minor Healing)
Minor Healing (for Steal Energy)
Major Healing (most direct and least Healing spells to get to
Restoration)
Restoration (for Regeneration)
Regeneration (for Instant Regeneration)
Instant Regeneration (for Resurrection)
Halt Aging (for Youth)
Youth (for Steal Youth)



___Plant___



___Weather___

Resist Lightning (in Air/Protection)
Lightning Armor (in Air)
Lightning (in Air)
Lightning Stare (in Air)
Spark Storm (in Air)
Explosive Lightning (in Air)
Spark Cloud (in Air)
Lightning Whip (in Air)
Body of Lightning (in Air)
Ball of Lightning (in Air)
Lightning Weapon (in Air)
Lightning Missiles (in Air)
Shocking Touch (in Air)
Wall of Lightning (in Air)
Clouds (in Air)
Rain (in Air/Water)
Snow (in Air/Water)
Storm (in Air/Water)
Cool (in Air)
Predict Weather (in Air)
Warm (in Air)
Cloud-Walking (in Movement)
Could-Vaulting (in Movement)
Weather Dome (in Protection)
Current (in Water)
Tide (in Water)
Fog (in Water)
Waves (in Water)
Frost (in Water)
Hail (in Water)

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

That can't be right. The whole point of the Healing College limitation in the book is so that Clerics make better healers than mages. If following prereq chains leads you to getting them anyway, then I think a veto is in order.

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

The simplest solution is to remove Resurrection from the Necromantic college, since most of the Healing spells in this list are prerequisites for it.

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

All Enchantments, whether listed in other colleges or no, are the province of NPC wizards; this rules out Lich (which seems appropriate, since Lichdom is far beyond the scope of Fantasy Heroism), Enchant, etc. The provisos on 'required for a spell from an allowed college' apply to Healing, Animal, Plant, and Weather spells only.

I would leave Resurrection in the hands of clerics only, despite its inclusion in the Necromancy school, in order to avoid Mages gaining access to large and effective Healing spells which form Resurrection's other prerequisites.

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

For a DF game, if I really wanted wizards rezing folks, I might add an alternate prerequisite chain for Resurrection.

I could see requiring each Summon Elemental spell and, say, a chain of 6 spells from Necromancy (just to sketch it out). Magery 5 or even 6 sounds like a likely requisite. Not sure what else.

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

I'd probably leave Resurrection out of the Necromantic college, yeah. Anyway, I don't see it being an issue . . . if a wizard blows his points on all kinds of hard-to-cast Healing spells to get Resurrection, he won't be much of a wizard anyway.

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

Does he need to go all the way to resurrection though or just pick up the highly useful healing spells?

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

Exactly; I wouldn't bother with Resurrection (not as a 250-point Wizard, anyway), but I'd certainly pick up at least Minor Healing and Major Healing. Pulling Resurrection out of the Necromancy college is the better solution.

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

I disagree, Resurrection seems quite appropriate for a Necromancer. How about an Unusual background: Necromancer (permits access to healing spells required for necromancy)?

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

If you do that, your necromancer becomes a master healer, which is what we're trying to avoid.

If you really want the necromancers to be resurectionists without making people into zombies or wraiths or whatever, I still think an alternate prerequisite chain is the best way to go.

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

I was going with the idea that it’s not unreasonable for wizards who’ve quested for forbidden knowledge, in order to gain power over life and death, to be master healers. It seems thematically appropriate for necromancers to be stealing a little bit of godly power, so to speak.

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

He needs to go all the way. It isn't kosher to say, "I might someday learn X, and Y is a prerequisite for X, ergo I can legitimately learn Y." Presumably, the Wizards' Guild only teaches Y to people as part of a body of knowledge that includes X.

To be honest, I somewhat agree. Remember that this is DF and that it's a tradition in dungeon hacks to try to game the system. If somebody really wants to be the Necromancer of Healing, I don't see a problem with it. For one thing, it'll mean he isn't such a great necromancer or indeed wizard when all those other things that require a sorcerer come up. For another, it ends up costing him more points than it does a cleric who just plunks down for Power Investiture and learns the spell sans other spells. I don't see much of a game-balance problem arising from this kind of munchkinism.

Think about it: "I paid 35 points for Magery 3, and then learned Lend Energy, Lend Vitality, Minor Healing, and at last Major Healing on my way to learning Resurrection. Mwahaha!"

"Er, nice . . . I guess. I paid 30 points for Power Investiture 3 and just learned Major Healing."

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

That said, I should add that it would be fun to have an alternate path that only required purely Necromatic prerequisites . . . and that caused the target to be resurrected kind of, well, Evil.

"Who resurrected Gandhi the Cleric?"

"Oh, that was Necros the Foul. Good thing he specialized in the right wizardly spells."

"Yeah, but the cleric has gone by 'Snake Gandhi' ever since. He just tortured our donkey to death and now he's poisoning the rations."

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

Well, the rules for Zombie permit altered templates that are more expensive for a higher fatigue cost. So, just create a high-value Zombie template. In practice, I suspect this would be excessively cheap ;)

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

Before the rest of my reply, any comment on the Weather spells? Did anyone notice that that is the entire list of Weather spells?

Well, being the one who wrote the list, maybe I should point out where the list came from. I read this:

(Is it OK to copy that much? I won't copy the other paragraphs.)

I never intended to take most of the spells on that list I made. I don't even want most of the healing spells. Here's what happened. The character concept had included Shapeshifting, but Shapeshifting is an Animal spell. Reading the above paragraph (and applying it to Animal) I see that wizards are allowed to take Shapeshifting. It's a prerequisite for Transform Body "so a wizard could learn it." Therefore my wizard can learn Shapeshifting. Yay! The concept is still intact.

So why did I make the whole list? Because it was easier to do that than to keep checking back and forth in case I had to deal with another spell elsewhere; after all, there are a lot of prerequisites. I just read once through the spell sheets and wrote everything on one list.

On a related note, the statement of needing to have the last step to have the prerequisites is both literally and conceptually quite confusing to me. Literally: it's a prerequisite, so you have to have it before what follows, but you can't have it before what follows. Huh??? Conceptually: if you have to understand something before you can understand a second thing, then you'll be taught the first thing before the second. It's like saying you need to learn to count to learn addition so if you drop out of class after learning to count but before addition was taught you cannot count because you haven't learned addition. Huh???

Since this didn't come from me trying to "game" the system but from a straight-forward parsing of the quoted paragraph above (though I wasn't sure about what to do with the Enchantment ones so I just included them to prevent having to go back to check them too), and since it's quite reasonable considering what being a prerequisite means, I expect others will make the same correct parsing and incorrect interpretation of intention of that paragraph.

In the end, I'm just going to enjoy playing whatever blacksmith allows. The list was posted here because we were both surprised by the number of permitted spells from prohibited colleges. He and I had already spoken about just moving Resurrection out of Necromancy; it's such a simple way to fix things, as several here have also noticed.

Chris

Re: Wizard spells in DF
 

Alternatively one could allow 'out of college' spells to be learnt if they are necessary prerequisites, but not cast. Thus the cost of learning them effectively becomes an Unusual Background that allows you to cast a spell that normally requires knowledge out of your reach.