Already did a monk and a warlock, now for our supposedly book nerds... what is an unusual way for someone to become a wizard? So no studying at an school/academy or under a power wizard or the regular stuff. This sounds hard to pull off so let's see your ideas.
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Born under the watch of something from the furthest corners of the far realms.... It knows all.... it sees all... and it asks: "What is it that you want to see?"... and my answer is... ALL"
This was a character concept for a dark/evil campaign starting with a jailbreak.
Background: Criminal
A man of the occult, Devron is a mage of sorts. However, his experimentation and methods of learning were known as unethical and unnatural. Taking to torture, dissecting his enemies, and harvesting anything with a modicum of magic, Devron began to become obsessed with the deeper knowledge of pain and how magic can cause it. He started to take diluted essence and magical inks, tattooing his body with inscriptions that he would call upon for his dark knowledge to conjure flame and death, laughing as he cast.
However, he was not infallible. He was caught and imprisoned, believed to have lost his mind, he was instituted. However, it was just him biding his time, ready to use the new inmates as experiments to further his mystical art.
Effectively was a torturer and murderer, using his own body to engrave his spells in a sadistic fashion that would glow when he called upon its arcane power. (I prefer the intellect occult person learning through dark means rather than the traditional warlock pact style.)
I have a Kenku wizard who was sold into slavery because of there expertise copying skills making copies of scrolls and wizard spell books along with other kenkus. Slowly learned to speak from the from visitors and one of the people who feed/looked after them.
big break/battle all hell breaks loose. grabbed a few pages of a spell book working on and ran in the confusion. Living in a big city cheating and stealing for a living.
Currently working on a goblin who learned the art of Bladesinging from their moon elf mentor.
The goblin's tribe had attacked a nearby village, but the goblin didn't have the stomach for cruelty or murder, and so tried to protect some of the townsfolk.
The moon elf witnessed the goblin's surprising act of benevolence, and the two together were able to protect the villagers.
The moon elf both educated and trained the goblin as their student, and the goblin became quite intelligent and magically proficient.
Unfortunately, when another town discovered the pair, violence erupted and the moon elf was hanged for protecting the goblin from the mob.
The goblin took his masters spellbook from their hanging corpse, and has been on the run ever since.
I'd wager that if another elf saw this goblin using an ancient elven technique, they'd be incredibly offended or confused.
I'm about to start a campaign as a wizard and my background is:
Criminal
He is a Fire Genasi who was sold to the criminal organisation at a young age. All he had we're his clothes and his families books. When they realised he could detect magic on their stolen goods, and even identify what the items were, he had a place in the organisation.
When scrolls came along, he often took them for himself and added them to his spellbook.
After looking for weird ways to skip over taking mage armor, I came up with a hobgoblin wizard, probably an abjurer or war mage. I guess if I had to pick a background for this character idea, they would be an inheritor or far traveler.
This wizard is the youngest son of a powerful hobgoblin warlord whose tribe resides in the mountains to the east. He's smaller in stature and frame than most of his ilk, which earned derision from many in his tribe, but what he lacked in physical might, he made up for in intellect; he had a remarkable penchant for tactical warfare and problem solving, which earned him some respect, even if he could hardly be considered a competent warrior. He often found himself reading through any books, scrolls, letters and notes gathered from raids, and eventually found a wizard's spellbook and black granite wand among the plunder. With a little practice, he found that he could grasp the concepts in the man's book with relative ease. With his newfound hobby, he occupied his time crafting new magical theorems and testing out their effectiveness on the battlefield. Eventually, however, as all wizards, his hunger for more knowledge drove him to abandon his tribe in search of new ways to expand his horizons.
Other wizard ideas I had include...
A dread pirate war mage that acts as his ship's sole artillery.
A hill dwarf transmutation wizard who learned magic as a byproduct of helping her father craft magic items; Eventually she just got super into the magic part of the process.
A fire genasi conjurer who just has some really bad dad issues and wants to go to the plane of fire to **** him up.
A half-drow illusionist snake-oil salesman who uses his illusions to scam tourists.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
It's ok Ranger, you'll always be cool to me.. Unless druid gets another use for its wild shape charges.
I've got a skeleton of an idea should I need a new character.
A tabaxi illusionist with the charlatan (for the 'false' identity' background.
Essentially, a kindly, aging wizard (with a bit of dementia) found him as a small kitten and assumed him to be a normal cat. He took him in, and as he grew he slowly learnt magic like a child learns a language. As he was reaching adolescents he learnt to project an illusory cat for the kindly man who took him in. And enabling him was free to self educate in peace (eventually learning his true race). Once the old wizard died, the tabaxi spent enough time casting the same illusion spells day after day to hide the tower from others and finally ventured out in his own.
My 11 year old Fire Genasi, Kindra, was just a homeless orphan with strange prophetic dreams. One day the dreams showed her stealing some guys backpack - and inside was a spare spellbook inside and she's never looked back. Turns out she has a knack for Divination.
My 11 year old Fire Genasi, Kindra, was just a homeless orphan with strange prophetic dreams. One day the dreams showed her stealing some guys backpack - and inside was a spare spellbook inside and she's never looked back. Turns out she has a knack for Divination.
11 years old ? Isn't that too young for adventuring ?
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Born under the watch of something from the furthest corners of the far realms.... It knows all.... it sees all... and it asks: "What is it that you want to see?"... and my answer is... ALL"
Mallus McCallen was born into a humble home of a merchant. His father worked primarily on furniture, both restoring and creating. However, occasionally his father would do some wood carvings for clients. One day while a 10 yr old Mallus was helping his father, the two discovered a small book in a hidden compartment of a table. The book was written in elvish, but Mallus was convinced he found something special. So he went to the elven family in their hamlet, and asked for help translating it. Apparently the book was instructions on how to cast the cantrip Prestidigitation. Mallus spent hours and hours trying to learn the spell, until one day he managed to magically extinguish the candle he was studying by. He would light and extinguish the candle repeatedly. Mallus' father immediately took him to the court wizard in the neighboring city to try and get Mallus trained. However, the court wizard did not have the time to train Mallus so he recommended sending Mallus to the wizard school in the capital. After traveling to the school and showing the instructor his mastery of the cantrip, Mallus was accepted immediately. For the next 10 years Mallus studied the ways of magic under some very talented wizards. He wanted to learn as much as he could so he could return to his family and help however he could. That is why he wanted to focus on divination and abjuration spells. Once he left school he pursued adventuring to learn more about the arcane arts, and gain even more experience at his craft.
Human Abjurer Wizard (picks up as much Divination spells as appropriate), Folk Hero background
I had a lot of fun with the Inheritor, though my wizard didn't inherit anything from a person directly.
Thatcher lived in a world where magic was almost unheard of. The clerics could still perform their "miracles", but arcane magic was a thing of the past that the church wanted to eliminate for good.
Then Thatcher found an old book in his University library. He stole it away and slowly taught himself magic by painstakingly deciphering the dense alien words.
After looking for weird ways to skip over taking mage armor, I came up with a hobgoblin wizard, probably an abjurer or war mage. I guess if I had to pick a background for this character idea, they would be an inheritor or far traveler.
This wizard is the youngest son of a powerful hobgoblin warlord whose tribe resides in the mountains to the east. He's smaller in stature and frame than most of his ilk, which earned derision from many in his tribe, but what he lacked in physical might, he made up for in intellect; he had a remarkable penchant for tactical warfare and problem solving, which earned him some respect, even if he could hardly be considered a competent warrior. He often found himself reading through any books, scrolls, letters and notes gathered from raids, and eventually found a wizard's spellbook and black granite wand among the plunder. With a little practice, he found that he could grasp the concepts in the man's book with relative ease. With his newfound hobby, he occupied his time crafting new magical theorems and testing out their effectiveness on the battlefield. Eventually, however, as all wizards, his hunger for more knowledge drove him to abandon his tribe in search of new ways to expand his horizons.
Other wizard ideas I had include...
A dread pirate war mage that acts as his ship's sole artillery.
A hill dwarf transmutation wizard who learned magic as a byproduct of helping her father craft magic items; Eventually she just got super into the magic part of the process.
A fire genasi conjurer who just has some really bad dad issues and wants to go to the plane of fire to **** him up.
A half-drow illusionist snake-oil salesman who uses his illusions to scam tourists.
The best bit of this is this: A fire genasi conjurer who just has some really bad dad issues and wants to go to the plane of fire to **** him up.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
'The Cleverness of mushrooms always surprises me!' - Ivern Bramblefoot.
Maybe a hobgoblin with the soldier background? I have one (in the works) that has the spells inscribed on leather straps wrapped around his forearms. How did he get those, you might ask? In short, an elf he was charged to kill promised him power beyond power on two conditions: learn to speak, read, and write Elvish as well as NOT kill the Bladesinger elf (as if Khavruk even could). Time passed, Ruk learned the lingo in secret, and finally earned the increasingly complex straps he now wears...at the cost of cruel and unusual punishment and ostracization from his warband the moment they discovered his little gift. With crippling wounds and flaming resentment toward his former "family" and false friend, he's set out on his own to make a name for himself and settle some personal matters.
Still a raw idea, still trying to get the meaty metal from the ore, BUT perhaps it's unusual enough for you. Probably not, considering my imagination is as flavorful as flour.
This isn't for a PC per say, but more for an NPC in my newest campaign.
Jelicar the Jubilant is the resident arcane expert in the city of Matador. He is known for is jovial, jowly voice and exuberant demeanor.. Also he's an awakened gelatin dessert in a wizard hat. He speaks by vibrating his body at a frequency that mimics speech, and he learned magic from his "father", a travelling wizard's apprentice whos name was lost to time, even for Jelicar. Anyway yea, he sells a bunch of random magical junk, yea its a little sticky, what the heck do you want him to do about it?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
It's ok Ranger, you'll always be cool to me.. Unless druid gets another use for its wild shape charges.
A Hobgoblin created to be part of the artillery elite squad (as an Evoker) but after some tragic events, ultimately decided to follow a more pacific path as a Diviner who wants to share knowledge and bring culture to his folk and fight against the common racial prejudice related with goblinoids. He was a Folk Hero.
A rebel atheist Dwarf (Mark of Warding) who went against his super religious clan to prove that any Dwarf could build his own path by itself. The crazy devotion to the Gods and traditions were generating a restricted and limited future. He ultimately adhered to the Abjuration school in order to reflect his dwarven heritage on casting spells with runes focused on protection.
An old recently widowed man, father of 3, grandfather of many, who spent 70 years of his simple and happy life as a common farmer devoted to his wife and family. After his wife passed away and his kids went out to live their lives and grown their own families, he saw himself completely alone with no motivation other than just keep his plantation up and waiting his final days to finally encounter his wife in heavens. One day, after he was packing the personal belongs of his lovely wife, he found a strange book that he never saw in 50 years living together. Suddenly everything changed. The book was a diary — and also some sort of recipe book with odd formulas written within. He started to remember why his wife insisted so much for him to learn read and write. Life was not only seeds and earth. She herself thought him and ensured all their children would have some sort of instruction. He discovered his wife was part of a powerful mage order and that she was not even human. She decided to leave the order after some internal struggles and what started as a disguise to run away from their fellow arcanists, actually became a real thing. After years of adventure and studying the mysteries of magic, she realized the beauty of a simple life, and ultimately decided to abandon her previous persona to live as a humble commoner married to a farmer. Was everything an illusion? Was she really dead? What was her origins? The old man got stuck that 50 years of a life together is nothing against the immensity of the universe. Somehow shocked but now full of energy and motivation to discover more about the past of his wife and the aforementioned mage order, he got the book (her wife former spellbook), some rations and jumped into the wild trying to understand what makes the world goes around. He is a level 1 Wizard and I didn’t decide yet his school.
Already did a monk and a warlock, now for our supposedly book nerds... what is an unusual way for someone to become a wizard? So no studying at an school/academy or under a power wizard or the regular stuff. This sounds hard to pull off so let's see your ideas.
Born under the watch of something from the furthest corners of the far realms.... It knows all.... it sees all... and it asks: "What is it that you want to see?"... and my answer is... ALL"
This was a character concept for a dark/evil campaign starting with a jailbreak.
Background: Criminal
A man of the occult, Devron is a mage of sorts. However, his experimentation and methods of learning were known as unethical and unnatural. Taking to torture, dissecting his enemies, and harvesting anything with a modicum of magic, Devron began to become obsessed with the deeper knowledge of pain and how magic can cause it. He started to take diluted essence and magical inks, tattooing his body with inscriptions that he would call upon for his dark knowledge to conjure flame and death, laughing as he cast.
However, he was not infallible. He was caught and imprisoned, believed to have lost his mind, he was instituted. However, it was just him biding his time, ready to use the new inmates as experiments to further his mystical art.
Effectively was a torturer and murderer, using his own body to engrave his spells in a sadistic fashion that would glow when he called upon its arcane power. (I prefer the intellect occult person learning through dark means rather than the traditional warlock pact style.)
I have a Kenku wizard who was sold into slavery because of there expertise copying skills making copies of scrolls and wizard spell books along with other kenkus. Slowly learned to speak from the from visitors and one of the people who feed/looked after them.
big break/battle all hell breaks loose. grabbed a few pages of a spell book working on and ran in the confusion. Living in a big city cheating and stealing for a living.
Currently working on a goblin who learned the art of Bladesinging from their moon elf mentor.
The goblin's tribe had attacked a nearby village, but the goblin didn't have the stomach for cruelty or murder, and so tried to protect some of the townsfolk.
The moon elf witnessed the goblin's surprising act of benevolence, and the two together were able to protect the villagers.
The moon elf both educated and trained the goblin as their student, and the goblin became quite intelligent and magically proficient.
Unfortunately, when another town discovered the pair, violence erupted and the moon elf was hanged for protecting the goblin from the mob.
The goblin took his masters spellbook from their hanging corpse, and has been on the run ever since.
I'd wager that if another elf saw this goblin using an ancient elven technique, they'd be incredibly offended or confused.
I'm about to start a campaign as a wizard and my background is:
Criminal
He is a Fire Genasi who was sold to the criminal organisation at a young age. All he had we're his clothes and his families books. When they realised he could detect magic on their stolen goods, and even identify what the items were, he had a place in the organisation.
When scrolls came along, he often took them for himself and added them to his spellbook.
After looking for weird ways to skip over taking mage armor, I came up with a hobgoblin wizard, probably an abjurer or war mage. I guess if I had to pick a background for this character idea, they would be an inheritor or far traveler.
This wizard is the youngest son of a powerful hobgoblin warlord whose tribe resides in the mountains to the east. He's smaller in stature and frame than most of his ilk, which earned derision from many in his tribe, but what he lacked in physical might, he made up for in intellect; he had a remarkable penchant for tactical warfare and problem solving, which earned him some respect, even if he could hardly be considered a competent warrior. He often found himself reading through any books, scrolls, letters and notes gathered from raids, and eventually found a wizard's spellbook and black granite wand among the plunder. With a little practice, he found that he could grasp the concepts in the man's book with relative ease. With his newfound hobby, he occupied his time crafting new magical theorems and testing out their effectiveness on the battlefield. Eventually, however, as all wizards, his hunger for more knowledge drove him to abandon his tribe in search of new ways to expand his horizons.
Other wizard ideas I had include...
A dread pirate war mage that acts as his ship's sole artillery.
A hill dwarf transmutation wizard who learned magic as a byproduct of helping her father craft magic items; Eventually she just got super into the magic part of the process.
A fire genasi conjurer who just has some really bad dad issues and wants to go to the plane of fire to **** him up.
A half-drow illusionist snake-oil salesman who uses his illusions to scam tourists.
It's ok Ranger, you'll always be cool to me.. Unless druid gets another use for its wild shape charges.
I've got a skeleton of an idea should I need a new character.
A tabaxi illusionist with the charlatan (for the 'false' identity' background.
Essentially, a kindly, aging wizard (with a bit of dementia) found him as a small kitten and assumed him to be a normal cat. He took him in, and as he grew he slowly learnt magic like a child learns a language. As he was reaching adolescents he learnt to project an illusory cat for the kindly man who took him in. And enabling him was free to self educate in peace (eventually learning his true race). Once the old wizard died, the tabaxi spent enough time casting the same illusion spells day after day to hide the tower from others and finally ventured out in his own.
I like that. What I like even more, however, is that you joined on 4/20. You're a good person, I hope you're ok.
It's ok Ranger, you'll always be cool to me.. Unless druid gets another use for its wild shape charges.
My 11 year old Fire Genasi, Kindra, was just a homeless orphan with strange prophetic dreams. One day the dreams showed her stealing some guys backpack - and inside was a spare spellbook inside and she's never looked back. Turns out she has a knack for Divination.
Mega Yahtzee Thread:
Highest 41: brocker2001 (#11,285).
Yahtzee of 2's: Emmber (#36,161).
Lowest 9: JoeltheWalrus (#312), Emmber (#12,505) and Dertinus (#20,953).
11 years old ? Isn't that too young for adventuring ?
Born under the watch of something from the furthest corners of the far realms.... It knows all.... it sees all... and it asks: "What is it that you want to see?"... and my answer is... ALL"
Mallus McCallen was born into a humble home of a merchant. His father worked primarily on furniture, both restoring and creating. However, occasionally his father would do some wood carvings for clients. One day while a 10 yr old Mallus was helping his father, the two discovered a small book in a hidden compartment of a table. The book was written in elvish, but Mallus was convinced he found something special. So he went to the elven family in their hamlet, and asked for help translating it. Apparently the book was instructions on how to cast the cantrip Prestidigitation. Mallus spent hours and hours trying to learn the spell, until one day he managed to magically extinguish the candle he was studying by. He would light and extinguish the candle repeatedly. Mallus' father immediately took him to the court wizard in the neighboring city to try and get Mallus trained. However, the court wizard did not have the time to train Mallus so he recommended sending Mallus to the wizard school in the capital. After traveling to the school and showing the instructor his mastery of the cantrip, Mallus was accepted immediately. For the next 10 years Mallus studied the ways of magic under some very talented wizards. He wanted to learn as much as he could so he could return to his family and help however he could. That is why he wanted to focus on divination and abjuration spells. Once he left school he pursued adventuring to learn more about the arcane arts, and gain even more experience at his craft.
Human Abjurer Wizard (picks up as much Divination spells as appropriate), Folk Hero background
I had a lot of fun with the Inheritor, though my wizard didn't inherit anything from a person directly.
Thatcher lived in a world where magic was almost unheard of. The clerics could still perform their "miracles", but arcane magic was a thing of the past that the church wanted to eliminate for good.
Then Thatcher found an old book in his University library. He stole it away and slowly taught himself magic by painstakingly deciphering the dense alien words.
What if, as a wizard who has been taught to never use Magic, the only thing he could use is his/her bare hands, and be a pub-brawler....
xDDD preety hilarious, huh ???
My Ready-to-rock&roll chars:
Dertinus Tristany // Amilcar Barca // Vicenç Sacrarius // Oriol Deulofeu // Grovtuk
My Warlock/Wizard Tiefling was taught magic from his adopted mother, Mother Shipton a Dusk Hag with the gift of weird insight and divination.
The best bit of this is this: A fire genasi conjurer who just has some really bad dad issues and wants to go to the plane of fire to **** him up.
'The Cleverness of mushrooms always surprises me!' - Ivern Bramblefoot.
I'll worldbuild for your DnD games!
Just a D&D enjoyer, check out my fiverr page if you need any worldbuilding done for ya!
struck by lightning on the way to his mundane job.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
Maybe a hobgoblin with the soldier background? I have one (in the works) that has the spells inscribed on leather straps wrapped around his forearms. How did he get those, you might ask? In short, an elf he was charged to kill promised him power beyond power on two conditions: learn to speak, read, and write Elvish as well as NOT kill the Bladesinger elf (as if Khavruk even could). Time passed, Ruk learned the lingo in secret, and finally earned the increasingly complex straps he now wears...at the cost of cruel and unusual punishment and ostracization from his warband the moment they discovered his little gift. With crippling wounds and flaming resentment toward his former "family" and false friend, he's set out on his own to make a name for himself and settle some personal matters.
Still a raw idea, still trying to get the meaty metal from the ore, BUT perhaps it's unusual enough for you. Probably not, considering my imagination is as flavorful as flour.
Could it be? I'm...a mOroN?!?
Yes. 100% ignoramus, no additives.
Not a bad idea ..........
My Ready-to-rock&roll chars:
Dertinus Tristany // Amilcar Barca // Vicenç Sacrarius // Oriol Deulofeu // Grovtuk
This isn't for a PC per say, but more for an NPC in my newest campaign.
Jelicar the Jubilant is the resident arcane expert in the city of Matador. He is known for is jovial, jowly voice and exuberant demeanor.. Also he's an awakened gelatin dessert in a wizard hat.
He speaks by vibrating his body at a frequency that mimics speech, and he learned magic from his "father", a travelling wizard's apprentice whos name was lost to time, even for Jelicar. Anyway yea, he sells a bunch of random magical junk, yea its a little sticky, what the heck do you want him to do about it?
It's ok Ranger, you'll always be cool to me.. Unless druid gets another use for its wild shape charges.
My last three Wizards had uncommon backgrounds.
A Hobgoblin created to be part of the artillery elite squad (as an Evoker) but after some tragic events, ultimately decided to follow a more pacific path as a Diviner who wants to share knowledge and bring culture to his folk and fight against the common racial prejudice related with goblinoids. He was a Folk Hero.
A rebel atheist Dwarf (Mark of Warding) who went against his super religious clan to prove that any Dwarf could build his own path by itself. The crazy devotion to the Gods and traditions were generating a restricted and limited future. He ultimately adhered to the Abjuration school in order to reflect his dwarven heritage on casting spells with runes focused on protection.
An old recently widowed man, father of 3, grandfather of many, who spent 70 years of his simple and happy life as a common farmer devoted to his wife and family. After his wife passed away and his kids went out to live their lives and grown their own families, he saw himself completely alone with no motivation other than just keep his plantation up and waiting his final days to finally encounter his wife in heavens. One day, after he was packing the personal belongs of his lovely wife, he found a strange book that he never saw in 50 years living together. Suddenly everything changed. The book was a diary — and also some sort of recipe book with odd formulas written within. He started to remember why his wife insisted so much for him to learn read and write. Life was not only seeds and earth. She herself thought him and ensured all their children would have some sort of instruction. He discovered his wife was part of a powerful mage order and that she was not even human. She decided to leave the order after some internal struggles and what started as a disguise to run away from their fellow arcanists, actually became a real thing. After years of adventure and studying the mysteries of magic, she realized the beauty of a simple life, and ultimately decided to abandon her previous persona to live as a humble commoner married to a farmer. Was everything an illusion? Was she really dead? What was her origins? The old man got stuck that 50 years of a life together is nothing against the immensity of the universe. Somehow shocked but now full of energy and motivation to discover more about the past of his wife and the aforementioned mage order, he got the book (her wife former spellbook), some rations and jumped into the wild trying to understand what makes the world goes around. He is a level 1 Wizard and I didn’t decide yet his school.