I have a Wizard in the group I am running, and while he is enjoying the Wizard, he has talked to me a bit after…

I have a Wizard in the group I am running, and while he is enjoying the Wizard, he has talked to me a bit after…

I have a Wizard in the group I am running, and while he is enjoying the Wizard, he has talked to me a bit after sessions on how he misses all of the little utility spells he is used to having in D&D.

So taking some inspiration from one of the Discern Realities podcasts that I binged over the last few months… i don’t recall the which episode, but they did talk about the possibility of using Ritual in at a much smaller scale to help fill in for some of the missing utility. I coupled that idea with one of my own favorite Wizards, Harry Dresden from the Dresden Files, and I have come up with this custom move. This is a first draft, we haven’t even taken this to the table yet, but I thought I’d put it our here for input. Thanks!

Personal Place of Power

Requires Ritual move

When you take a moment to mentally or physically inscribe a circle around you, you have created a personal place of power. This circle concentrates your innate magical power allowing you to perform minor utilitarian feats, for a cost. While in the circle, you may make the Ritual move with the following limitations:

• The effect must be utilitarian in nature and not deal direct damage

• The effect cannot be permanent, it will last moments/minutes/hours (choose one)

• While the effect is in play, take -1 ongoing. When the effect ends, take -1 forward.

In addition, the GM will give you one to four of the following conditions:

• It’s going to take moments/minutes/hours

• First you must __

• You’ll need help from __

• It will draw unwanted attention

• It will require sacrificing something valuable

• The best you can do is a lesser version, unreliable and limited

• You’ll need hair/blood/personal items from you or the target of the effect

13 thoughts on “I have a Wizard in the group I am running, and while he is enjoying the Wizard, he has talked to me a bit after…”

  2. I’ll look into it. I don’t want to supplant the Wizard as it currently plays, which is why I created a move that uses the existing Ritual in a more narrowly focused way, allowing you to use it to ward a door so you can’t be listened to, or setup an alarm outside a room, or to create a feather fall effect or tenser’s floating disk. Or even a simple Mage Hand spell. All of the magic fluff. Maybe that is exactly what Use Magic does. I will definitely check it out. Thanks for the recommendation!

  3. My GM pointed me to a Compendium class called the Demiurge, I’ll probably be levelling up into it the next time. Wizard basically becomes his own place of power and there are some interesting moves.

  4. I think i had the same problem when i played wizard, one one hand i like the spells are undepletable just by casting, you get to decide when it goes away. On the other hand only having a handful of spells is painful. I think this is reason why ritual is there, to get those spells that you would not get otherwise.

    Also you might want to have a look at Freeboteers on the frontier, it has nifty random spells, like Beltains tongue of salt. Can be used for anything the player can reasonably describe it used for.

  6. Arturs Leitans Interesting. I actually have the pdfs for Freebooters, but I haven’t really ever dug deep into them. At least not deep enough to find that move. Sounds like I need to go pull up that pdf again. Thanks for the tip!

  7. I think you might be better off changing the Ritual move itself, exchanging “place of power” with “ritual space”, and mentioning that the potency of what’s possible correlates to the quality of the space.

  10. I was going to suggest something similar to Lester Ward: change the Ritual move itself so that “a place of power” is one of the possible requirements. Here’s what I’ve been using:

    RITUAL

    When you wish to perform a ritual to create a magical effect, tell the GM what you’re after and how you plan to go about it. They’ll say “Of course, but…” and then 1-4 of the following (linked with and or or as appropriate). Meet the requirements and create the effect.

    • You must draw on a place of power (such as __)

    • You must perform it at an auspicious time (such as __)

    • It’s going to take __ hours/day

    • First you must __

    • You’ll need help from __

    • It’ll require the sacrifice of __

    • The best you can do is __

    • You/your allies will risk danger from __

  11. Is there a reason you don’t just give him more cantrips? This could even become a character motivation if he acquires them through play. Like he can loot a scroll of knock (or whatever) and then use a standard ritual to learn the spell as a cantrip. Or maybe he seeks out a famous performance magician known for their parlor tricks to seek tutelage.

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