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Old 03-27-2021, 01:34 PM   #34
phiwum
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
Default Re: Wizards without Staves

Just got the new Wizards PDF with oodles of useful characters. I've noticed the following:

(1) Lots of wizards with no staff at all.
(2) Those with a staff have more mana than I'd expect a character to have sometimes. The awkwardly named Fivm Gederi is a 33 pt. character with 9 mana in her staff. A while ago, I figgered I was giving too much mana in NPC staves, thinking about how a player would develop a character, and toned it down, but Fivm has spent 1800 experience on mana, which makes her 33 pts. a little misleading. Those 1800 experience points could take her to 37 attribute points with leftovers.
(3) A lot of those without staves have significant powerstones. They are all very experienced, however.

Duisiy is a 40 point character with 40 mana in her staff and a 15 ST powerstone! She has a total of 64 ST/mana for spells. She's an enchantress, so I guess she saves a lot on apprentices. She's spent 8000 XP on mana for her staff!

I'll probably tone down some of the mana reserves for many of these wizards, no doubt. At the least, you shouldn't rely too much on attribute points for assessing how badass these guys are.

On the other hand, Esagodiemol, a wizard miner, has no mana reserves and ST 10. Yes, he can open tunnels, but not and stay conscious.

This resource really shows a great variety of wizards with very different specialties. And it's good to break the habit of building NPCs suited only as foes or combat allies of the PCs. Good stuff. On to the other new books.
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