The Glass Jawed Wizard

[eiredrake]

There was a game I got to play once called Torg, a GM ran it it was the best RPG evening I ever had (I shot an m16 down the barrel of a tank and blew it up) and then I never saw the GM again.

One of the problems they had in that game was the fact that Ninjas were vastly overpowered and poorly balanced to the point where anything that was sufficient to challenge the Ninja would kill the rest of the party. Additionally, anything sufficiently challenging to challenge the Ninja would probably be able to kill him outright.

This phenomena was referred to as the Glass Jawed Ninja

I think there might be a similar problem with Wizards, at least in my group and I thought I'd write in here to ask for help. I'm going to be taking over the world for the current GM for a bit, so she gets to play in her own universe. The problem with this is that we have a very varied party with a single Wizard in it. But the sort of things the Wizard has been able to do are nothing short of crazy.

In the books, Harry is always concerned that some rogue 12 year old who found a pistol is going to accidentally kill him with an errant shot. This gives him more depth as a character but it also causes him to think before he acts. This is part of the reason he likes going out with Michael or Murphy or even his brother. Because at the very least it's another body to absorb bullets and another pair of eyes watching his back.

The Wizard in our party tends to solve every problem by blasting stuff. Yes I know Harry does that too, but he does occasionally come up with another idea. At one point, a group of nasties summoned a Titan... as in 'Zeus sprang out of my head' kind of Titan...

And the Wizard in the party proceeded to use earth magic, ripe open a giant hole in a Philadelphia neighborhood so that the Titan would fall in and then closed the hole up behind them. What was probably supposed to be an epic level ass kickery scene was resolved in two minutes with the Wizard being the only person to do anything.

So my question is, how do I make things challenging enough to keep the Wizard from being Michael Jordan while the rest of us are all in pee wee basketball?

Are Wizards as vastly overpowered as they seem? Or is it just that I'm not playing a Wizard so that is coloring my perception?

This brings me to my second question... I have an idea for a 'bad guy' that I wanted to run past the forums. No specifics but instead I'll give vagueries for some input. Be nice, even if you think it is crap.

So my idea was this: Shadow People.

Those vaguely human-like shapes that occasionally turn up in photographs or on Ghost hunting TV shows that usually turn out to be tricks of the light and so forth.... They're real. Not only are they real, they're intelligent, they're malevolent and they've always been able to trickle into our world. Only now they've got a way to come into our world en mass.

Trick is that, they basically 'eat' magic. Much like that troll (or was it an Ogre) in one of the Dresden files that had magic run off him like a duck these things are essentially unaffected by direct magical assault. Hitting a Shadow Person with magic, actually makes them stronger as they feed off the magic (magic is representative of the living essence of the world right?).

I figure this should make it so that Mr. Wizard isn't just going to fart and blow away the whole plot. The problem is that naturally I'll need to give them enough of a weakness so they don't just summarily eat the whole party either.

Anyone have any tips on how to handle the situation? Especially on weaknesses. I'd rather not have it be something stupid like "true love wins out" some such nonsense. True love never stopped anyone from being eaten by a hungry crocodile. And using 'light' is a little too obvious and generic. Maybe a special kind/frequency of light?

Any advise would be appreciated.
Eire

[Gatts]

And the Wizard in the party proceeded to use earth magic, ripe open a giant hole in a Philadelphia neighborhood so that the Titan would fall in and then closed the hole up behind them. What was probably supposed to be an epic level ass kickery scene was resolved in two minutes with the Wizard being the only person to do anything.

I'm sorry, could you clarify exactly what happened here? The wizard had enough time to cast incredible thaumaturgy, and the Titan could do nothing about it?

[Mr. Death]

How in the hell did a wizard whip up in two minutes a spell that ripped up that much of the ground as to kill a Titan? That seems way, way beyond what he should be able to call up with an evocation.

That said, there's a dozen ways you can keep a wizard from doing that sort of things, and compels are at the top of the heap. Even if tearing up enough earth to trap something Kratos would have to climb for 20 minutes to kill was possible, well, it's a neighborhood. Compel the wizard to say big spells are going to hurt people.

Compel the wizard to keep his big defensive items away from the fight, or to leave his staff at home.

Compel, compel, compel.

[eiredrake]

I'm sorry, could you clarify exactly what happened here? The wizard had enough time to cast incredible thaumaturgy, and the Titan could do nothing about it?

Well the Titan was in the process of being summoned and was inside a big honking circle. The Wizard's recommendation was to wait until the thing was already here and broke through the circle and then basically knock it in the hole then close the hole up after it. I suspect the GM was also tired as it was about 1am when this was going on.

[eiredrake]

How in the hell did a wizard whip up in two minutes a spell that ripped up that much of the ground as to kill a Titan? That seems way, way beyond what he should be able to call up with an evocation.

That said, there's a dozen ways you can keep a wizard from doing that sort of things, and compels are at the top of the heap. Even if tearing up enough earth to trap something Kratos would have to climb for 20 minutes to kill was possible, well, it's a neighborhood. Compel the wizard to say big spells are going to hurt people.

Compel the wizard to keep his big defensive items away from the fight, or to leave his staff at home.

Compel, compel, compel.

He didn't actually kill it. He just sorta removed it from the area. If anything I would have though it would have A. drawn an enormous amount of attention. B. Did a massive amount of property damage and C. Had blood and other viscera shooting out of every hole in the wizard's body. But none of that happened. I don't even think he got any stress.

[Mr. Death]

He didn't actually kill it. He just sorta removed it from the area. If anything I would have though it would have A. drawn an enormous amount of attention. B. Did a massive amount of property damage and C. Had blood and other viscera shooting out of every hole in the wizard's body. But none of that happened. I don't even think he got any stress.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it sounds like the GM was entirely asleep at the wheel. That's not at all the way the system is supposed to work.

I mean, seriously, what were the mechanics involved? What kind of spell did he cast?

[eiredrake]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it sounds like the GM was entirely asleep at the wheel. That's not at all the way the system is supposed to work.

I mean, seriously, what were the mechanics involved? What kind of spell did he cast?

Well we're all kinda new to the system over all. It's possible the GM wasn't quite up to speed yet. As far as what spell he cast, I don't really know. I record every session, so I can go back and review the recording and see if I can find out. I know he made a dice roll and he got something obnoxiously high. Beyond that I don't remember except that it happened and I remember thinking 'A Titan goes down with one punch wtf?'

[Mr. Death]

New to the system or not, that's ridiculous. As you said, that kind of thing can't happen without people noticing, property damage, and massive backlash.

[EdgeOfDreams]

Plus, any Titan worth the name likely has Epic Might score, Mythic Strength power, and Hulking Size. It should dig itself out in no time.

[JDK002]

Sounds like the GM dropped the ball on an epic scale on that one.  Even as thaumaturgy that would take an insane amount of power to call up.  If done in that way, the fight could of been interesting with the rest of the group trying to keep the Titan busy while the wizard called up power for the spell.

As evocation, I'm not even sure a senior council member could pull that off out of nowhere.  Something like that is death curse territory.

I have a wizard, a pyromancer, a bastard child of denarian, a spell slinger/brawler hybrid, and a pure mortal in my group.  Thy haven't fought anything tougher than a pack of ghouls with machine guns.  Everyone has had their time to shine.  The wizard haven't overshadowed anyone.

[Becq]

I tend to believe that a large part of what causes the perception that spellflingers are OP is that GMs let them get away with too much.  There's a key step in adjudicating how many shifts of power a given effect requires, and if the GM says "Sure, digging a 50-ft crater in the street behind the titan counts as a 3-shift evocation maneuver to place There's a hole in the ground behind you on the Titan", then you're liable to get a people claiming magic is too buff.  (Note that I don't know how you statted the spell, so consider this an arbitrary example.)  This issue can be fixed by recalibrating the shift adjudication to something that makes more sense to the party.

The second issue with wizards has to to with the lax rules for Thaumaturgy which makes it too easy to perform massive rituals.  This has been discussed at length elsewhere, so I'll leave it at that.

Beyond that, I think that the best way to balance wizards vs everything else is by limits on preparation time.  Wizards can do amazing things given time to prepare and rest up between fights.  I think you'll find that encounters that the wizards is unable to prepare for or that are longer (ie, that force the wizard to fill up his mental track) will tend to shift the tactical focus to the non-spellflingers.

[UmbraLux]

So my question is, how do I make things challenging enough to keep the Wizard from being Michael Jordan while the rest of us are all in pee wee basketball?

Are Wizards as vastly overpowered as they seem? Or is it just that I'm not playing a Wizard so that is coloring my perception?

Wizards are powerful, spellcasters in general are more powerful than other archetypes.  But I suspect they've been given more of a free reign to do 'great things' in your game than the system strictly supports.

Evocation is limited by mental stress.  Extend scenes on occasion and your wizard will be (figuratively) gasping for breath while the others are still going strong.  Thaumaturgy requires symbolic links.  Never allow that requirement to be bypassed or even to become too easy.  Beyond those items, wizardry requires heavy investment in skills.  Social scenes, investigation, research, hacking, breaking and entering, and other challenges which aren't easily solved by a spell will help shine the spotlight on others in the group.

Anyone have any tips on how to handle the situation? Especially on weaknesses. I'd rather not have it be something stupid like "true love wins out" some such nonsense. True love never stopped anyone from being eaten by a hungry crocodile. And using 'light' is a little too obvious and generic. Maybe a special kind/frequency of light?

I'd be curious to see how you've written up your shadow people.  Are you using toughness or immunity?  That's when you really need a weakness / catch.  If all it does is 'eat magic' the weakness / catch is easy - everything else. 

[Sanctaphrax]

I'll add my voice to the chorus saying you're playing the game wrong. Wizards can't just drop titans like that.

Now, Wizards are very powerful. And there are legitimate arguments to be made claiming that they're overpowered.

But your example is just way out there. Especially the bit about not taking stress...even weak evocations involve taking stress.

Going by the actual rules, here's how you keep wizards in line:

-Limit thaumaturgy somehow. Either use a homebrew fix or just exercise the GM's right to dictate how long a ritual takes. By the RAW a 200 shift ritual doesn't have to take longer than a 10 shift one, but you can and should change that. You don't even have to change the rules, you just have to use GM discretion the way Evil Hat seems to have assumed people would.

-Don't allow social/mental attacks with evocation, which is sort of a houserule and sort of RAW.

-Pretend Orbius does not exist. Just trust me on this one.

-Keep the weaknesses of wizards in mind. They can only cast a limited number of times per scene, they lack Speed and
Toughness, their skills are tied up in magical stuff. So they tend to have trouble in social scenes, very long fight scenes, and very short fight scenes.

-Encourage other players to optimize a bit. Wizards are sort of optimized by default, as long as they stick to one element and keep their casting skills high. Everything in the template is useful and it all fits well together. So to compete, other PCs should also have decent builds.

As for the Shadow People, they sound like a good idea to me. UmbraLux is right about the Catch, and if you're interested then there's plenty of anti-magic stuff on the Custom Power list.

[Richard_Chilton]

There are many, many things that a wizard can't do - and shouldn't think of doing.  A good example is when Harry found a string of numbers.  When I read that passage, my first thought was a GPS location - but Harry's wasn't.  Harry doesn't know GPS or much about the technological world.

When he needs to know something, he doesn't hit Wikipedia.  He doesn't do google searches.  He doesn't have a smart phone (or any cell device).  He doesn't run spreadsheets to analyses... well, anything.  He doesn't even have a bank card or credit card (because his field blanks the magnetic strip) so if he needs something and doesn't have the cash in his pocket, then he's screwed.

Think about how technology impacts us everyday - and imagine how it must be to be cut off from that.

Which is why Harry calls Murphy when he needs something looked up, or Billy, or Butters - he's not a completely self reliant character.  Sure, he's great in a fight, but he can't do it all by himself.

Plot points for non-wizards?
The clue in on a cell phone (or jump drive).

They need information on a non-magical subject - and most of the ways of getting information are online.  Even libraries are ditching their card catalogs in favour of computerised listing.

The plot a skill that isn't Discipline, Lore, or Conviction.  Few wizards will have anything except those at the top of the pyramid.  Contacts, Resources, Burglary, Investigation, Scholarship - all are useful and usually mastered by non-wizards.

The Bad Guy is surrounded by innocent bystanders - maybe invoking them as cover.  One missed spell and innocents get hit - and that can lead to lawbreaker.
(Note: regardless of who picks the taken out effects, the PC shouldn't be positive that his "I use this to kill Red Court Vampires" rote won't kill a bystander.)

Richard

[KOFFEYKID]

Wizards will excel at any sort of combat with "one big bad dude". They get to unleash their awesome all at one target, repeatedly.

They will fall behind in multicombatant scenarios. When there are say, seven, eight or nine targets pinging at the group he wont necessarily have the resources to take them all down by himself. It becomes very dangerous since he will be exposed to multiple attacks per attack he does. This means he'll have to expend resources on keeping himself alive and fighting the enemies.

This is where non-wizards can really shine. They aren't necessarily limited by a resource mechanic in the same way that a wizard is, so they can rather carelessly attack while the wizard will have to pick and choose his targets. This gives everybody nice spotlight time. (IE: A Bunch of 3 refresh nasties, if you have four players at refresh 10, thats 40 refresh for a nice challenge. 13 Opponents is a nice sized bout.)

When you do have to introduce a "Big Hulking Bad Brute Thing" into the mix, try to give it some "Pee Wee" support. You will want to organize the playing field in such a way that they aren't all in the same zone. (IE: The Ick and some Red Court Infected/Vamps as support.)

Do not be shy about limiting downtime. A wizard will recoup his resources between every scene, so sometimes an extended scene should be called for, a protracted fight makes wizards very very nervous. (IE: Chase scenes, where the group is fleeing something bad.)

You can "pre-challenge" the wizard before a knock down drag out fight as well, and this is a nice way to give the wizard a "moment" while also limiting his impact in the combat encounter. A mystical roadblock that only he can nullify means he will come into the fight a little tired to begin with. (IE: Opening a way into the nevernever before getting to the battlefield.)

Arranging things so that the wizard will have to deal with a threat while the other players deal with the combatants is another great way to make sure that everybody gets to shine. Perhaps the wizard has to perform a ritual "under fire" while the rest of the group defends him. (IE: He has to dismantle a spell in progress while the caster's mooks are opening fire on him and his companions)

Creatures which have an effect on the mental stress track are *absolutely terrifying* opponents for wizards. Suddenly the wizard is Defending himself from physical attack, attacking, and getting mentally attack all at the same time. That's three types of resource drain at once. This can be dangerous though since other character types are usually less robust in the mental defense area.

Environmental Hazards can play a big part in limiting a wizard's effectiveness as well. If your wizard is constantly throwing about fireballs then peppering the scene with highly flammable materials is a great way to discourage him from being brash. It is completely fair that if the wizard Nukes something so hard core that there are 3 or more shifts of excess that that remaining energy does *something* bad to the scene (like setting the aforementioned flammable objects ablaze).

Purely mundane human opponents can also give a wizard pause. Lawbreaking is a big deal and that will limit his options dramatically. Give those same humans otherworldly support and they can easily become a viable threat even without the lawbreaking limitations. (IE: A Fae sorcerer gave them very effective glamour armor and weapons, or someone like Cowl is doing a Regeneration spell on them like the Ghouls in the Deeps in White Knight).