Playing a wizard in DCC can be brutal. At first level you're packing darn near a 50% failure rate on your magic. Tack on that you probably aren't wearing armor and you're likely not the strongest or most agile person in your party's lineup and a lot of your early levels are spent ducking for cover or shooting a bow into combat. At these levels you might question why you took this class while the rockstar of a warrior is doling out deeds and the thief is opening a lot of fights with critical hits. Wizards have the mechanic of spellburn to support them at early levels, and this can certainly help, but the trade off is that if you use it too much you become dead weight to the party. meanwhile the warrior, cleric, and thief can slug it out in melee and then have their hp recovered with a few lay on hands. for a lot of people, myself included, it feels like the wizard's thing is that they get one big spell every few sessions. To me, that doesn't feel great. It feels like playing the wizard means you get to do one big spell every now and then and spend the next few sessions being carted around in a wheelbarrow. What I want to offer in this post is a way for wizards to just eek out a little bit more of an edge that stops them from losing spells constantly and turning themselves into a mummy to be allowed to cast in the first place.
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| Art by: Lex Cazimi |
Rituals
The DCCRPG offers one such solution called ritual magic on page 124. This section details a lot of cool things, sacrifice, circles of mages, extended casting times, automatic corruption, and rare ingredients. It feels pretty complete and flavorful. It also feels like a lot of things that aren't relevant to an adventuring wizard. On that list two of those things feel like something that an adventuring wizard could pull off easily: the automatic corruption, a great and flavorful option; the rare components, which an adventuring wizard should be drowning in... in theory. Over the years, at my table, listening to tales of other tables, and listening to live plays I've found that these are often forgotten or overlooked because detailing what you rip off monsters and carry around is kinda a pain.
What if we re-defined how rituals worked? Let us say that you can make the appropriate sacrifices, but the appropriate incense, and spend days fasting while preparing the spell and then not have it immediately go off? What I am suggesting is that wizards should be allowed to do work to gain bonuses to their spells ahead of time and then use that bonus later. A single ritual that cannot be added to or bonus altered until the spell is cast. Performing another ritual doesn't give you a new bonus, it just wastes time and resources.
Ley Lines
Ley lines are energy that supposedly flows through mystically important places or places with dense population. These lines of energy are living, they are made up of the same baseline of magical energy that exists within all living things. By spending 1 turn studying the ley line energy in a place a wizard may roll a d20. on a result other than a 1, they gain +1d3 to all spell checks for the next 24 hours. on the result of a 1, they still roll the d3 but subtract that from checks. These ley lines are alive, maybe not in the way you or I understand life, but they do live and they might not like being used as a source. Each consecutive day a wizard draws on the ley lines as a source their chance of failure increases by +1. If a wizard uses the ley lines for 3 days in a row then they risk angering them on a 1-3 on the d20, instead of 1.
Extended Casting Time
This one just outright disagrees with what the book says but I think that the best thing about DCC is that it's so easily home brewed. Under my rules and at my table, a spellcaster may extend the casting time of a spell by the same increment that it normally follows. for example if a spell has a casting time of one action, a character can use their additional actions, including their movement, to add their level modifier a number of times equal to the number of times they extended the casting. For example, if a level 1wizard casts magic missile, which takes 1 action to cast, and spends the entire round doing nothing but casting that spell, giving up their movement, they would add +2, once for being first level and a second time for spending their other action. Lets say they spend the entire next round building up power, this would be a +4 when they release it at the end of the second round. Once power is built in a spell then the wizard must cast it, they cannot hold onto it forever.
I like this because it makes the extended casting time viable to an adventuring wizard and gives low level wizards a way to mitigate some of the failure chance without dumping their (likely already low) stats into nothing. This certainly has a flaw, a wizard could just declare at any point "I start to build power for this spell" and then send it off. It's certainly a flaw and requires good judgement and trust that it won't be abused. A penalty to avoid this could be introduced, such as building up more than a +10 to a spell causes corruption or hp damage.
Signature Spells
This one feels like the bread and butter of my table to make wizards feel good. What this means is wizards, goblins, elves and other non divine spell casters select one of their spells which they are better at casting that the rest of their spells. The caster adds their level + ability mod x 2. at each level they gain one additional signature spell from the list of spells they could cast before leveling up. this signature spell cannot be selected from a new spell the character just gained on level up.
Alternative Signature spell: I've seen someone do something similar to the Signature spell but it would be cast at +1d, gaining +1d at each level, up to a d30. once they have a spell being cast using a d30, they pick up a second signature spell that starts to increase, granting them a second signature spell.
Arcane Feedback
This one is lifted directly from The Index card RPG but works really well for DCC. It just means that a wizard places a d4 in front of them with the 1 facing up. This is added to their spellcasting checks. Each round that they successfully cast a spell they increase the number on the die. once it reaches 4 and they have cast a spell with this +4 bonus they make a roll under check on their spellcasting ability or lose the ability to cast spells for 1d4 rounds. Alternatively you can make them suffer a corruption on a failure. I really like this one because it really doesn't matter that much to a really high level wizard but bolsters a low level wizard and encourages them to cast early and often with a small boost to their spell checks.
Sacrifice
The book already covers this one and it doesn't feel like something an adventurers have ready access to. It grants +1 per 5 HD of the creature sacrificed. I think this is fun and interesting but what if that sacrifice is willing? In the netflix version of The Witcher we get this cool scene where one of the mages has a person step up, get sacrificed, and turned into a massive fireball which makes all the other mages gasp in horror. To me, this sounds like something that a wizard might be able to do (maybe after researching a specific version of their spell?) to bolster their own spells. A willing sacrifice might even be worth a bigger bonus than an unwilling one?
Familiars
One last thing, every wizard gets a familiar. Familiars are fun, they are interesting, they are sources of potential struggle and danger. I know we have a spell called find familiar and the book isn't 100% clear on if a wizard starts play with one. I've seen people say that they have to take the spell, I've seen people say they just get it. It's one of those things that is interpreted differently by different judges. At my table, every wizard starts with a familiar.
Wizards in DCC are meant to feel like they are brimming with barely contained power they don't fully control. They aren't meant to feel safe and stable. I feel like this is why we have corruption, misfires, and mercurial magic. It makes sense that casting is difficult at low levels, the wizard just started their career, but it doesn't feel good to blow your roll to cast all your spells and then stand around and watch everyone else wreck house. As always, let the dice fall where they may but maybe give the wizard a chance to have fun with everyone else at the table.
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