My favorite interpretation of a divination wizard is that one guy who is like "sometime soon, this building is going to be burnt to the ground". Their party asks them "How do you know this?" and the wizard just lights a torch and says "No reason, but we should probably leave here, fast"
I'm making a circus freak fortune teller who seizes his glimpses of the future to sustain his lies and manipulations, it's really funny to have a peek of the outcomes of your actions the way you desire
my favorite divination wizard that I've played doesn't know how to see into the future but thinks he does, though he's way better at the other aspects of divination like seeing into other planes than most other wizards
My Conjuration wizard is the son of a demon with the same name. Whenever cultists try to summon his father, they summoned him instead. He learned Conjuration to figure out how to stop that.
My forever unrun character is an eldritch knight that went to paladin school to piss off his evil noble family, but he flunked out and fakes being a paladin with cleric initiate
I'm running for a character who is almost exactly this concept, except he's a paladin flunkie who's deluded himself into thinking he's a real paladin. He's one of the best characters I've run for, so I hope you get to play yours!
Reminds me of my beloved Bran, divine soul sorcerer who claimed to be a Baldur cleric, when was in fact a Loki sorcerer.. such a manipulative power playing false prophet lol
I've also taken a stab at fake paladin, mine was a celestial warlock with pact of the blade, took eldritch smite ASAP so that I could keep up with our real paladin, neat character, fun concept. stupidly weak.
It’s the same with most of the classes- so many cliches that many of us grow weary of. I’m currently playing a Druid in Ebberon based on Australian Aboriginal culture which is proving really satisfying.
I like the idea of a wizard who went to prison, and learned spells from the writing scratched into his cell by the previous occupant. Copied the text as tattoos on his skin. Requires a mirror screwed onto the end of his staff to see the harder to reach places.
I'd hate to imagine how expensive it'd have been if your parents ever took you to a Build A Bear store. Thousands of dollars in debt and a court case of people drowning under a pile of stuffed animals.
Probably one of my favorite videos so far. Not "what can it do" but "what it can be". I like how he broke down the psychology of what someone who focuses on a certain school would be motivated by.
i literally just started making a wizard/artificer that uses his own body as a catalyst, test-subject, and over-glorified experiment to become the world greatest living magic item. he has tons of stitches, holes, and soldered on arcane runes to modify his body so he can prove his dedication to invention and innovation
Your videos have stayed consistently interesting since the start. While being experimental does mean being at the whims of fate a little bit, one of the big draws of your channel is that it’s unpredictability keeps it feeling rounded and new every time. Can’t put a price on that
Very much this. Show that necromancers don't have to be moustache twirling villains that do nothing but make skellingtons. Maybe you are a doctor or alchemist trying to pursue the ultimate goal of doing no harm to include curing death itself. Perhaps an anti-cleric archetype, having seen how callously divine beings use and discard mortals, wants to prove that through knowledge and effort mortals can free themselves from being pawns on the board and lead people to go full no gods no masters. Maybe undead are used as a form of automation to do dangerous or demanding work for the betterment of the living.
I have an aasimar war mage that is "the champion of Mystra" because her parents were some of the best clerics of Mystra, and now, Mystra rewards them by giving knowledge of the arcane to her daughter. The wizard hates Mystra now and just wants to sleep
My current wizard character is a mousefolk whose ancestors were the equivalent of Vikings and uses carved runes and bones as a "spellbook" with an awakened spellbook as a backup. He's also our group's chef. He's also 7 years old (which is around a third of the lifespan for his species) and 2 ft tall. It started out as a joke of a character concept and turned into my favorite character to play so far.
I played with a mousefolk divination wizard and a rabbitfolk wolf totem barbarian. They were both like 2 feet. I was a 7 feet tall pandafolk cleric of knowledge. Absolutely insane party.
I absolutely love people break molds, like a rogue who took up the thiefing/hitman business to support his aging parents, and he then has to lie to them so they don't become concerned or afraid of him
I kinda want to play a werewolf Hunter who who chose her profession in order to find a cure for the curse so she can cure her grandmother who she has to tie up every full moon for everyone's protection. (Little red ridinghood motifs everywhere.)
@@nickwilliams8302 Parents being dead is only a bad backstory if that is basically the whole backstory. It's a perfectly viable backstory element if it's not just meant to create "tragic" drama.
My first wizard was a necromancer. How I made him was that he didn't specifically use necromancy, but he saw no problem with it. It was apart of the magical spectrum, and no different than the other kinds. His reason was "If you turn a blind eye to 1 kind of magic, then you're blind to what knowledge lies ahead of you"
I love that mentality, my first wizard (also a necromancer) was just like that, in pursuit of knowledge, he did have a code to follow for raising the dead though, only those who truly acted in an evil way would be resurrected as a zombie, no innocent or confused souls. Also if you're looking for a more interesting necromancer, might I suggest looking up "Astoshan the gray necromancer" Narrated by All things D&D. Stay Strong my fellow wizards!
my first wizard was also a necromancer. however mine was not so nice lol. He was essentially an alcoholic sicence experiement gone wrong that liked eating animals alive as well as rotting things. had an obsession with lichdom due to having been brought up by their creator with such high expectations.
My first wizard was a horribly unlucky but idealistic and naive necromancer who thought that if he got strong enough, he could replace the menial workers of society with zombies, so that humanity could advance to a more civilized age. Then he died horribly in a cave in.
Same. First necromancer I played was essentially an occult researcher and expert, who wanted to challenge the negative stereotypes tied with taboo magics. She was also a goth, so it was pretty fun to play lol.
I remember you doing something like this sorta when you were talking about warlock patrons. I've actually wanted to do a video like this myself, even. I love character concept spitballing.
Idea: A warlock that thinks its a cleric but doesnt know purely because the pact it made was with a cursed mirror that makes the warlock see images of its self made super beautiful which enchants the user and tells it to do things. The kicker is the warlock is a Kuo-Toa
The majority of magic is Transmutation magic. What is transmutation? Turning one thing into another, for example what school is 'Fireball', many of you will say "evocation" but it is in fact Transmutation. When I use it on this bandit it turns him from a 'bandit' into a 'corpse'. With some more fire you can transmute the corpse into ash. Properly processed, that ash can become lye, which is a main ingredient for soap. Transmutation is a wonderful thing. Be sure to wash your hands.
@@isaacgraff8288 I'd argue that's because the schools of magic are a lot like the Various STEM fields or Genre in art. Ultimately the distinction is entirely made up by the cultural in question. Where does mathematics end and physics begin in practical application? Is star Wars a science fiction or a futuristic high fantasy? Well useful for analysis the distinction is often a post-hoc trick of language rather then an objective reality. This also extends to spellcasting traditions for example. In 5e RAW the act of casting clerical spells doesn't vanish with the death of a god (Forgotten realms being setting dependent to this feature of clerics) Nor does the loss of a Patron actually cause the Warlock to lose their magic. So why wouldn't a Wizard look at Divine magic users and think "Okay so what you're doing in effect is magic rooted in faith rather then access or study to arcane forces. Effectively using force of will to substitute for all the above." ? Thus we can see that the distinction between Divine, Arcane and even perhaps Psionic magic is simply a cultural distinction created by the various methods to the same end.
I had a food wizard. Human variant with the gourmand feet at level 1. Cloistered scholar and found a cursed spatula that was his spell casting focus. His spell book was a recipe book, his spells smelled of spices, and his magic missiles were forks. The cursed spatula required him to prepare a nice meal everyday. Otherwise he would get 1 level of exhaustion (but only ever 1).
With Tasha's Cauldron out, you could take the Artificer initiate feat and have Chef's utensils as your spellcasting focus. Reminds me of the Food Wars anime!
I want a capitalist necromancer. He sees the undead as perfect labor. His nemesis is the communist druid. (Edit: please, fewer arguments about the systems mentioned. Not the place.)
alternate theory: Communist necromancer. He uses the dead to provide labor for the state. his nemesis is the capitalist druid, who sees exchange of goods and services as a natural part of human nature
In the world I currently DM, the living have discovered that after death they'll need to eternally work to repay their taxes in a very capitalist hell, so they turned undead and now we have Communist skeletons waging revolution against death
@@patheronaetherson2860 They'll also be able to oush themselves more than living workers and are more likely to create surplus, preventing economic scarcity causing a crash. Only really works for renewable resources though.
Nothing wrong with that, he's basically can negotiate an entire workforce salary only to himself provided he can do the job alone. He's basically that Naruto teacher (Yamato if I'm not mistaken)
This might actually be an important question for DMs who are world building. If a wizard isn't a part of an adventuring party, how else do they make a living? This could come into play in a player's backstory. (What they did before becoming an adventurer)
construction workers are paid really well and their work is a lot more enjoyable than fast food, thats like saying the best job he could get was an engineer.
Hot damn this was a really good video. I keep telling my players that this sort of character creation creates some of the coolest characters, but now that you’ve put it in video I think they’ll understand it better. Thanks for being inspirational as always.
I would go crazier with these ideas if I was giving the examples but I think keeping them more grounded and simple makes it a better explanation for people who don't already go off the wall. It's good.
Currently in love with my wizard. I wanted to be a priest or someone of holy stature but narrow minded and poor at foresight, so instead of a cleric I made a wizard. He still fills the role of being knowledgeable of numerous things to be helpful. His efforts are focused on study of ancient texts of his God and the destruction of knowledge from those who would bring forth heretical knowledge. Even down to the detail of casting spells he reads off prayers and acts of bravery in his sacred texts and then evoking a feat similar to the act with the spell being cast, Thunderwave for example is cast by him shouting, "In the Lady's name, all that oppose her disciples words are beaten and bloodied"
"The more you make, the more you learn you can do." That quote can be applied to many things in life, you just have to go out there and keep making things. It doesn't matter if you start out bad, or if you aren't great at learning it. What matters is that you keep going forward and keep at it. At some point your hard work will pay off, and you'll learn to make something beautiful.
I started playing a Gnome wizard with the Order of the Scribes subclass. His story is that of an expelled student that now hates the arcane academy and its methods. Since he does not have the means to formally study the arcane arts, he just go on to trick people to show/give him scrolls and spellbooks (or just sneak into a library) and copy spells as fast as he can. And my DM keeps giving me "normal sentient items", which are slowly making my character go full schizophrenic while he watches the love triangle between his spellbook, quill and ink...
Well I think it depends how well they internalize that there is no future. what I mean is no ONE future. what they see are possible futures that they can use portent dice to influence and make those futures happen at specific times. I'm playing a Divination wizard in the campaign I'm in right now, and while she may have a vision in her sleep that scares her, she'll comfort herself with that fact, the future is never set in stone, what the divination wizards see are possibilities.
Some quick ideas for alternative spellbooks: -strings with knots tied in specific places -tattoos on wizard's own body -rocks. Not even necessarily runic ones, just funny rocks they find in streams -extension of above: literally just random junk they pick up when they learn something they want to remember. Broken cups, playing cards, spoons, chicken bones, dead flowers and other otherwise worthless stuff like that -little clay statues -sketchbook with drawings referencing spells. So kind of like typical spellbook, but without words. Maybe the wizard is illiterate?
Enchantment, at least to me, is _far_ worse than necromancy. When I'm dead I don't mind what you do with my body much, I'm already dead after all, but leave my living mind alone.
@@sirreginaldfishingtonxvii6149 That's largely because D&D necromancy is a bit weird, and is JUST using magic to make a corpse walk around. In most fiction and mythology undeath involves your soul being bound back into your corpse and forced to remain there in a perpetual state of spiritual and sometimes physical suffering. This is why in so much fiction when an undead is killed people refer to that person as having been "freed" or "put to rest." But yeah, in D&D when it's just some bones animated by a simple spell then enchantment is way worse.
I had an idea for a change in the find familiar spell. If it wasn’t home brewed a bit it would be a bit underpowered, but it’s such a cool idea! I want to make a wizard that is covered in jewelry and they can activate their jewelry with the find familiar spell. Some ideas I had was a spider ring, humming bird earrings, and a snake bicep band. I feel like it would be so cool to use as a tinkering wizard.
I absolutely love the concept of using other modifiers for casting. I feel like Constitution based casting should be used more often, and Strength would be fun if in order to command a particular magic you have to overpower it physically, like say... gravity. To be able to direct the gravity pulses your magic creates, you have to physically move it.
Your character Chebus inspired me to create my own wizard. He was the son of a chef, but he felt something strange. His mom was a wizard, someone who taught him magic. As a way to honor his family, he became a chef wizard. He wrote his spells in a cook book, his recipes for magic reflect his equations of food. Mechanically he is a dwarf scribe who has the chef feat.
My last wizard is a lizardfolk that found a copy of a book from another dimension, went mad while trying to translate it and now just kinda pulls magic out of his ass, saying that the book is teaching him magic, believing that if he finally translate it he will gain absolute knowledge. The book is the french edition of the lord of the ring if you are wondering.
My current character is a lizardfolk wizard that found the spellbook on a body. He was a druid at the time so he asked an archfey to help him understand the arcane. And now he's a bladesinger druwarzard. Druid 1/ warlock 1/ wizard 3 at the moment
I play A Dwarven Abjurer who became a mage inorder to teach his clan the powers of the Arcane, his spellbook was a stone slate that worked like a clock in which the pointer hands will point at the body movement and the words that they speak to summon the spell and the other would point at the components. All illusion magic would require the same movement to twine the magic thread into illusion. He was an Abjurer because on his travels, he met a young sorcerer/warlock, human and another player, that accidentally made a deal with a fiend when raiders killed his family. He chose Abjuration inorder to shut down his pupils wild magic surges and to eventually release the pact that the sorcerer made
I love this concept. I also really like your takes on Enchantment, Illusion, and Necromancy. I've always though most forms of Enchantment and Illusion were more evil than most necromancy. I even once played a necromancer who just wanted to heal and protect people but realized too late they were going down a dark path so he decided to double-down and start learning how to actually fuck with life force
the illusion part went a direction i really wasn't expecting since my first character idea was a gnome stage magician illusionist. great video! i would love this to become a series!!
My last wizard was a rock gnome that got obsessed with the Fae, and dived headlong into book after boom on the feywild. Most of these books were written by elves, so along with the more of the fey, he absorbed the Elvis biases of superiority, and truly believed that only the elves could truly understand the Fae. He left home for an elvish city to study the Fae, becoming a conjurer. While in the city, he got into a relationship with a elf who fed in to this elvish superiority mindset, causing him to slowly shed all aspects of gnomish culture in favour of the elvish, eventually growing to reject all things gnome. She crafted him a necklace that enabled him to forgoe sleep, allowing him to engage more fully in all aspects of elvish society. Over the course of the relationship, she’d add other transmutations to the necklace, changing his feature, granting him height, and eventually making him indistinguishable to an elf. However, the relationship was on a decaying path, and she broke it off after a time. The conjurer left the elvish, and now wonders the land, focusing their energies entirely on their studies of the Fae, and living every day trying to be the best elf they can be.
Thank you so much for this video, it really exemplifies what i mean when i say that classes are mostly just mechanics for you to put a skin on. For wizards speciffically ive made a meteorologist evocator, a naruto esque illusionist with the spy background and whose spells are secret techniques contained in ninja scrolls, and a diviner archeologist who believes the past reveals the future
Best wizard I ever made was divination. He was a homeless, con artist fortune teller who could actually see people's future, but he always just told them what they wanted to hear (People try to not pay fortune tellers if they get answers they don't like). Sometimes actually altering the course of their lives by accident from giving them false confidence. It lead to a variety of comical deaths and heroic triumphs for many NPCs.
Honestly the first wizard I made had a sketchbook he'd draw in, and then his drawings would come to life. Only played him for a one-shot scenario, sadly. Don't even remember which tradition he followed.
The first character I made was a halfling bard. A happy and jolly little guy, He'd go down to the docks and listen to sea-shanties by the sailors talking of the horrors of the deep. The sea-shanties were so different to what his village had ever heard that he dedicated his life to sharing them. But he couldn't quite get it right because he didn't fully understand the dark and gritty world.... thus adventuring.
In my opinion, Aelwyn Abbernant from Dimension 20: Fantasy High is a very good characterisation for an abjuration wizard. -Spoilers for FH seasons 1 & 2 Context for people who don't know the show: (it's really good by the way) In the story, the Abbernant family is a very toxic family of elven wizards, with Angwyn being a controlling father and an enchantment master, Arianwen being a quiet but somewhat-caring mother, Adaine being the youngest daughter and a skilled divination caster, and my focus-Aelwyn; an abjuration wizard. Adaine is antagonized by Aelwyn and the rest of her family, as Aelwyn is very clearly the favorite child of her mother and father. Aelwyn, however, feels guilty and ashamed of her not doing anything, simply due to her fear of her parents' expectations. To summarize a long comment, Aelwyn is an abjuration wizard, and she makes so many barriers around herself, both magically and mentally, that she isn't who she wants to be at all. Her wards are a survival mechanism to keep her parents' favor, and can only come crashing down in the most dire of circumstances.
They could be the mortician taxidermist whos an upstanding citizen and piller of the community who needs to know necromancy as they aren't a cleric and dont have access to divine spells. They use necromancy to manipulate dead bodies to prepare and care for the dead. He can cause decay and reanimation but he can also stop it. He could also be religious and his spellbook could be a holy text with spells written between margins and on the edges of pages.
If nothing else, a taxidermied corpse will look and smell much better, and keep for longer. Not exactly efficient as minions, though, since making and repairing them is labor intensive in a way animating whatever remains are on hand is not.
When talking about the focuses and motivations of the different schools, I can’t help but think of how much a love the Lore Master. They study magic for Magic’s sake. Like a Transmuter or Evoker but even deeper, wanting to know how the fundamentals of the force of magic work
"He was the wizard of a thousand kings...and I chanced to meet him one night, wandering...he told me tales, and he drank my wine...me and my magic-man kinda feelin' fine!"
I have a wizard named Sedgby Carmichael. He's your stereotypical wizard, the frail old man with a stick (only four hit points at level 1). I pretty much just use him and his particular way of doing magic as a way of justifying the spell slot system. Basically, his staff has a large curved bit towards top; this is where he ties strips of paper/leather that has his spells. To use a spell, he removes a slip, and it turns into magical energy that he shoots at his opponents. The strips tied to his staff are prepared spells and arcane foci, and I guess he just memorizes the spells, or maybe he has them written down somewhere.
Now I have the urge to make a Alchemist Transmutation Wizard, whose spell book is actually various forms of alchohol. Absithe for Abjuration, Red Wines for Conjuration, Whites for Illusion, Whiskeys for Evocation, Stout for Necromancy, Ale for Transmutation, Sake for Divination and Fruity Liqueurs for Enchantment
I used to play a necromancer wizard who wanted to be a cleric, but wasn't very religious and focused more on the physical aspect of healing than the process of healing itself. His spellbook was part anatomy textbook with diagrams of muscles and bone structures and part dictionary with translations of different languages and religious texts he read when he was studying. "Raise Dead" was more "restart certain parts of the brain to make the body move again" than "imbue the body with a fragment of a soul". Of course, he couldn't actually heal, but that was his end goal: devise a healing spell for wizards.
I would like a part 2 of this video where it covers the other subclasses of the wizard: School of Bladesinging, War Magic, Chronurgy, Graviturgy and Order of Scribes. Who agrees?
As a necromancer, I'd be like a mad scientist making biotech, like a living gun that is parasitically attached to my arm and shoots acid. Because necromancers have control over life and death.
"The only real constant between all wizards is a general understanding of magic and the need for a repository for spells that they can't remember." My Wizard Of Invention Who Uses Reckless Casting: Ah f***, let's see. Oh, I cast fireball.
I’ve never played dnd but I really want to, I was inspired by the critical role character Caleb widowgast to want to play a tragic wizard. The backstory I’ve though of goes as follows: the character was the first born of the greatest house of magic in his land, and yet he failed to meet his father’s expectations for his talents. When his siblings were born and later found to have the talent their father sought he would basically every shunned by him. (Potential allowing a dm to insert a reason for this weakness, like a different father or a seal). Things would come to a head when the father had efforts to distance himself and the family from the firstborn child, and to declare one of the other sibling the heir of the house. This would cause the first born to be approached by an entity who would offer him the power to prove himself to his family but it would b a trap. Upon accepting the deal he would fall unconscious and wake up in his burning home. When he eventually makes it outside he finds the dead bodies of his family and the figure he’d struck a deal with. The figure would reveal itself to be a demon and infuse the first born with the blood of his family to increase his magic powers but this would also leave him with the demons Mark. Afraid of being caught and accused of practicing dark magic. He would be forced to flee. Thus marking the end of the backstory I’ve described it to my friend as a setup where the party might thing they are looking for an ncp only to learn they were traveling with that person the whole time. Thanks if you read all that
My current wizard is the void wizard pathfinder subclass. She mainly focuses on divination and basically worships space. She considers mortal hierarchies, and even divine ones, as pointless in the face of the vastness of the universe, but she sees undeath and meddling with souls as against the will of the stars. She is a drow and built her underground wizard tower up into the surface so she could commune with the stars. While she has spellbooks as a normal wizard, she studies her spells by staring into the night sky and observing certain constellations while burning incense that relates to different schools of magic.
Imagine a Divination wizard who saw a great disaster in the future, came to terms with it, and will stop an nothing to make sure it happens, no matter who gets in his way. Astor, the Prophet of Doom from Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity is a cool example, I totally want to play a character like this in the future
She wasn't super groundbreaking, but I had a tiefling wizard girl that I was really excited to play until I realized that our party had no healer... she was basically a sorority/valley girl wizard that transcribed all her spells either in glitter gel pen or by embroidering them onto her dress! I can't wait to play her in another campaign
Funny think is, I'm writing a campaign that centers around a magical circus that travels around Faerun trying to keep some magical stones out of the hands of an old Netharese cult. One of the Lieutenants is a divination wizard that oversees the carnival part of the circus from her tent where she plays the role of a fortune teller. So, the bit about diviners totally seemed like it read my notes on the character. Oh, and the cult they're fighting against is trying to resurrect Karsus... So... um... Fun times ensues?
I've made two major wizard characters that I've used in games. Both I loved the new angle of approaching it. One was a Human Divination wizard who was the nephew of a count, and while spending hours in the expansive castle library practiced his first spells, he went down the divination route after receiving a few disconnected visions that don't add up, so he wanted to find out the missing info. The other was a Dragonborn Abjuration wizard who was an expert at linguistics, and researched a number of different ancient texts to learn about planer travel and how to close dangerous portals and protect his colleagues with barriers.
On the necromancy note, and on a personal note, I've always liked the concept of "the friendly neighborhood necromancer." They're very knowledgable in the dark arts of necromancy, but they use them to solve problems and generally study/work on things of their own. For example: Suppose there's a ghost haunting someone, and they called the necromancer to use their powers to bind the spirit and talk to them to figure out what they need done to put them to rest properly before releasing them once the criteria is met? Or else binding a malicious evil spirit (such as a demonic ghost or something) so that they cannot cause any more harm. One of the few examples I've found of this sort of achetype is Falion from Morthal in the game Skyrim. He uses his knowledge to keep the people of Morthal safe and he's the only person in the game who can cure you of vampirism. (I'm talking about an actual cure, not just replacing it like becoming a werewolf does.) It's like an inverse of the concept of a doctor using their medical knowledge to kill people or cause great harm because their understanding of how the human body works and how to fix it can also be used to cause things to go wrong with it. As a person IRL I'm very dark. I've had a very dark life, I like dark things, I like sorrowful music, I like darker edgier stories in general. -But I am not someone who inflicts that darkness on other people. I use my understanding of dealing with stress, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, etc to help others by either helping them to rationalize it or just giving them a starting point to figure out how to help themselves, or else just plain being someone who understands. It's hard to explain and I haven't really explained it all that well but the point is that I very much relate to the concept I gave of "the friendly neighborhood necromancer."
Maybe you could elaborate on things covered in "The Complete Guide to *(insert race, class, or specialty class)*" book series done by TSR in the days of AD&D 2e and how it can be applied/translated into 5e
I have this idea for a necromancer who is a senile old man and after he bought the spell book of an ancient necromancer, he believes he's helping people. Like, someone dies, he raises their body and says that they're all healed and all better. Mostly this is a joke character but still.
"Maeby their lack of comunicative skills let them to seek aliens, demons and gods to make friends" I can't be the onlyone who thinked in YunYun trying to invocate a devil to be her friend
Really liked this idea/format. Finding new ways to make the common part of a class/character stand out has always been interesting to me. A bard that doesn't sing but uses paintings as his way of express, a wizard that uses his poetic skills to remember his spells. Would love to see more of this for other classes. As always, thanks for the great content.
My favorite good aligned necromancer was a pirate captain whose greed led to the deaths of her crew. A lot of those people she knew as friends for years. So in her regret she spends her days walking the land instead, fulfilling their dying wishes. She has an agreement with some of her dead crew that they'll stick around and help her in sticky fights for as long as she's doing this, so she keeps their bones in a small chest, and when she casts animate dead they just jump out and start being spooky. It's also great because since she's a bladesinger she can use performance to do musical numbers with her skeleton crew.
3:28 IS THAT JOCRAP?! Crap guide to D&D!? But I’m all seriousness you should be very afraid of him and his fireballs. A character based entirely around fearing Jocrap’s fireball is not a bad idea. For anyone wondering what the heck I’m talking about, search YT for Jocat’s ‘A crap guide to D&D,’ and the wiggler character is called Jocrap. Seriously it is worth watching the entire series
Anyone want a far too in depth description of my Wizard? You've been warned. So I play a variant human Abjuration Wizard named Geometry Samson Due or Geome for short. The variance is giant blood, well firbolg actually. Geomes family are a bunch of bumpkin half giant bandits and Geome is the runt of the pack. He taught himself magic to augment his subpar strength but this only further alienated him from his family. Never getting the praise he desired he eventually washed his hands of his family to become a Prostlasyzer for Saint Cuthburt. He is Neutral Good to a fault, believing the only soul that is irredeemable is the one that doesn't wish to be saved. That being said free will is extremely important to Geome and he believes that every crime has a punishment and no one is above it if they willingly do evil. That mentality has got the party in trouble more than once it's all good. Well, mostly. It's fun to play a wizard that's religious. To be clear he's purely Wizard and I don't intend to multi class. Geome isn't bound to his Saint but holds to its scriptures tightly. Eventually the Saint took notice of Geome and charged him with the Big Damn Quest. He's currently transforming into an Arch Seraph from the Grim Hollow book currently level 2 by the way. It's really fun to play. I played him like a fighter until level 8 as a fighter only augmenting my abilities physically giving him apparent super strength, great durability and he sprinted at ungodly speeds around the world. Don't worry, I didn't gimp the party for roleplay purposes. I just tried to not use much "magic" that didn't match my flavor until I thought it made sense for the story. His primary spells are Catapult and now Disintegrate and it's literally just my wizard throwing stuff at bad guys at lethal velocities because you know the Giants penchant for rock throwing? Yeah, I did that but better because I'm magic. Suck it Family. Shocking Grasp and Shadow Blade are my magically augmented strikes. Flying an inch off the ground gave him super speed and powerful "jumps. " Shield made him capable of shrugging off blows the paladin broke under. He is a Constitution based wizard and he's ridiculous. At level 13 he's got something like 120 hit points and can create something like 50 temporary hit points plus the Abjuration shield which is another 25ish points, Constitution and Dexterity saving throw proficiency. Oh yeah, and a 20 AC . He's the party tank by the way. And before anyone screams power gaming my DM rolled and approved my characters stats himself. I applied an Abjuration Wizard atop it, that simple. With the exception that he's becoming an Arch Seraph Geome is RAW. I've never played a Wizard before and I made this one up on the spot. I love this Character. I highly recommend Constitution based Wizards. They are fantastic.
A favorite necromancy Wizard of mine that I played was a shy, kindhearted bookworm. After getting possessed by a ghost, she became fascinated by them and the afterlife, and so she studied them in every way possible. She honed her skill as both a caster of magic, and also as a sort of paranormal investigator.
I'm gonna make a wizard where instead of a Grimoire with it's spells whritten to prepare, he has a recipe book full of sandwuiches, and in order to prepare a spell he needs to make and eat a sanduich from the recipe book to feel the taste, and remember the spell he wants to prepare and cast. This is gonna be a pain to role-play, but my "spellbok" will certainly be indecipherable, hahahaha
@@corinnebloom7005 haha, go on! I would love to see this idea. But i sugest to use it in a low level canpaing only where you don't have that many spells, and make every ingredient of the sandwich remember you of a spell, instead of needing to eat one sandwich for every single spell to prepare. This way you make a sandwich with peanut butter, jelly, cheese, mayonese, eggs, meat, tomato, lettuce and there you go. 8 spells in a sandwich to make your life easier
My favorite concept for a necromancer is a young boy/girl who had a friend that loved to draw monsters that didn't exist in their world, but the friend died to sickness so the player character chose to dedicate their life to necromancy and collecting part of monster to recreate the drawn monster their friend made in the hope of their friend seeing the creations and how they would look in the real world.
Semi benevolent necromancer idea: A current or former military officer dug into ancient texts to find a way to protect her troops in battle. What she found was a way to make fallen enemies fight on her side.
I'm not a huge fan of All Things D&D, but that channel has the best atypical necromancer story I've ever heard. Revolved around raising the dead garrison of an otherwise doomed city to defeat the besiegers and free the city. Ended up achieving near-godlike status because of the veneration of the people of that city. Also created The Sleepless Watch, which I think is one of the best names I've ever seen in fantasy. Could be a great origin story for a necromantic kingdom/faction: facing annihilation, attacked from every direction, its people turned towards the only thing they had plenty of to survive: their dead. The risen legion slowly turned back the tide, but they paid the ultimate price for the survival of their identity: the afterlife, and all the perspective and values that come with a mortal life. Their souls were doomed to forever remain on this plane, even as their bodies wasted away, turning them into ghosts, ghouls, and all manner of abomination, earning them the hatred of all their mortal neighbours, who are still powerless to do anything about them due to their mastery over the domain of death. ... I think I should make a note of this.
I created a wizard whose spellbook was actually written into the illustrations on a tarot deck he carried around. Whenever he prepared his spells, he basically just arranged the cards in a way like a tarot reading to decypher them. I liked to think his fortune telling was a sham, disguising his true skill as a wizard.
This video inspired my blind divination wizard, who's spellbook is a collection of little baubles and sensory objects: bells, a musicbox, specific incenses, crystals that resonated at different frequencies.
Fantastic video. A wizard backstory I recently made for a weekly campaign was a college dropout whose spellbook is hastily etched in the margins of some throwaway class notes.
Stogie. A Goblin conjurer who cast spells by lighting a home made cigar wrapped in spell paper. The smoke he blows out becomes his summons. He is always on a quest for finer materials for his creation. Lead. A Goblin conjurer who carries a magic lantern with many different settings that change the world around him. He comes from a line of Fey Goblins whose job was to guide people lost in the Feywilds back home, but now he's lost in our world. Two different characters I never get to play.
One of my favorite wizard concepts that I've come up with is a Dwarven Abjuration wizard. Like House Kundarak from Eberron, this character is from a banking clan in his society. He's learned Abjuration in order to better protect the vaults from would-be thieves, haunted items that have been stored there, and other unknown phenomenon. I think maybe the vaults are near the sacred burial grounds, so undead could possibly try to get in to recover their possessions. He, and other abjurers, would also work with the church to perform exorcisms since their powers coincide. As for a reason to go out on adventure, a trusted member of the banking clan has stolen a powerful artifact, and that happened under this character's watch. As such, it is his responsibility to track down the offender and recover the artifact. Another concept I've had is a Divination wizard whose entire schtick is chronomancy. Obviously, the subclass's kit is already tied to it so that's easy to do. Aside from having the obvious spells like Slow, Haste, and Time Stop, it would be fun to come up with ways as to how other spells can be related to her time abilities. I swear I read somewhere that time is the existence of heat, so I went with that and rolled with it, figuring that I could manipulate time to affect heat. "Fire" spells are her speeding up time to the point of creating enough heat to cause damage (I haven't decided yet if it causes combustion), "cold" spells are her slowing down time to the point where she makes it cold enough to cause damage. I figure that necrotic damage can be explained as her literally ripping out the time from a person. I haven't decided yet whether or not she raises corpses, but that can easily be explained as her bringing them back to a time when their bodies could move, although she can't bring a soul back to them.
My friend once suggested a spellcaster who can never remember any of their spells, and from their the idea evolved into a senile old gnome who spouts out nonsense, hoping for something to happen. Any words or phrases that do work are written down on post-it notes which get attached to his staff.
My first wizard was from the school of transmutation who remembered spells by looking through his mind palace (which, for him, was the city he grew up in). In order to cast spells (minus cantrips), he'd have to run to the place he left the spell in. For example, in order to cast chromatic orb, he had to go to the jeweler's, get the diamond, and the jeweler would tell him the spell he's looking for. Or Tasha's Hideous Laughter would have him go into his favorite inn, where his now dead childhood friend would tell him the one joke that would always get him to laugh.
A concept I'm thinking of is an Aereni High Elf Arcana Cleric/Wizard that's blind. He was taught to rub his hands over magical writings to read the slight divots of the words as those writings were written to memorize his spells. He knows how to read but he reads with his hands. Along with that, his "spellbook" is structured like a book of prayers. Each incantation is a prayer to Mystra structured around what the spell itself does. As he learns new spells, he makes up a prayer for Mystra that he writes in his book.
I’m gonna just say, a Wizard should always have a physical object/s for their spellbook. The reason I say this is because it needs to be possible to destroy it.
I made a wizard lore master in 3.5 who was also an army veteran with 19 strength. The orc chieftain we fought was surprised when I challenged him to a wrestling mach at 3rd level and won.
I once made a Bard who thought he was a wizard, remembered his spells through mnemonic devices
That's awesome!😂 and funny
Genius
I mean that's basically what a lore bard is
Dude that's super clever. Nice.
Lol, that'd be fun
My favorite interpretation of a divination wizard is that one guy who is like "sometime soon, this building is going to be burnt to the ground". Their party asks them "How do you know this?" and the wizard just lights a torch and says "No reason, but we should probably leave here, fast"
If you cant go to the future, just bring the future to you. I like it
I'm making a circus freak fortune teller who seizes his glimpses of the future to sustain his lies and manipulations, it's really funny to have a peek of the outcomes of your actions the way you desire
my favorite divination wizard that I've played doesn't know how to see into the future but thinks he does, though he's way better at the other aspects of divination like seeing into other planes than most other wizards
King from one punch man energy 😂
Every wizard is a divination wizard as long as they tell you what they're about to do.
My Conjuration wizard is the son of a demon with the same name. Whenever cultists try to summon his father, they summoned him instead. He learned Conjuration to figure out how to stop that.
That's a cool idea, and an interesting excuse to explore "true name" magic, a concept that as an Eragon fan I find very appeling
That is fricking awesome.
Thats hilarious lol
@@boitata2617 Reminds me of Naming from Changling: The Dreaming.
Not sure if its sad or awesome that the solution is to make a "new name" for them self.
My forever unrun character is an eldritch knight that went to paladin school to piss off his evil noble family, but he flunked out and fakes being a paladin with cleric initiate
I'm running for a character who is almost exactly this concept, except he's a paladin flunkie who's deluded himself into thinking he's a real paladin. He's one of the best characters I've run for, so I hope you get to play yours!
Reminds me of my beloved Bran, divine soul sorcerer who claimed to be a Baldur cleric, when was in fact a Loki sorcerer.. such a manipulative power playing false prophet lol
I've also taken a stab at fake paladin, mine was a celestial warlock with pact of the blade, took eldritch smite ASAP so that I could keep up with our real paladin, neat character, fun concept. stupidly weak.
this seems like an absolutely great way to fix the "all wizards are the same" stereotype
It’s the same with most of the classes- so many cliches that many of us grow weary of. I’m currently playing a Druid in Ebberon based on Australian Aboriginal culture which is proving really satisfying.
@@joemacleod-iredale2888 nice
If all wizards are the same in your eyes, the only thing that should mean is that your wizard will be unique ;)
I think my last wizard was a riff on Rune Sorcerer Louie. Spent his time drinking and getting into fist fights.
@@shanehudson3995 please tell me he had a dump Str, that would be just hilarious :D
I had a Goliath Wizard that had his spellbook engraved in his tattoos across his body. When he cast a spell they lit up.
I like the idea of a wizard who went to prison, and learned spells from the writing scratched into his cell by the previous occupant. Copied the text as tattoos on his skin. Requires a mirror screwed onto the end of his staff to see the harder to reach places.
@@Bluecho4 his more important spell is tattooed into his scrotum
@@DizzyDisco93 That's a good place to inscribe "Enlarge/Reduce"
@@Zirkalaritz Alter Self would do the trick, just have the wizard do the Ricardo look.
Getting to the end of this video was really tough. Had to resist the urge to build twelve new wizards every second of the way.
I'd hate to imagine how expensive it'd have been if your parents ever took you to a Build A Bear store. Thousands of dollars in debt and a court case of people drowning under a pile of stuffed animals.
That’s the fun I get the most from
Had me scared me in the first half, not gonna lie
Probably one of my favorite videos so far. Not "what can it do" but "what it can be". I like how he broke down the psychology of what someone who focuses on a certain school would be motivated by.
Same.
i literally just started making a wizard/artificer that uses his own body as a catalyst, test-subject, and over-glorified experiment to become the world greatest living magic item. he has tons of stitches, holes, and soldered on arcane runes to modify his body so he can prove his dedication to invention and innovation
Name him bondrewd......and do experiments on kids
The Omnissiah blessed your character!
Sounds truly like a Simic
Sounds perfect for a warforged armour artificer/ wizard
@@jackbelmont4389 This suggestion is truly SUBARASHII!
Your videos have stayed consistently interesting since the start. While being experimental does mean being at the whims of fate a little bit, one of the big draws of your channel is that it’s unpredictability keeps it feeling rounded and new every time. Can’t put a price on that
Hell yeh. I’d love to see a whole ass video for how to break the mould with a necromancer.
Break the "mold". *accidentally creates the last of us*
Alchemist's Supplies along with the Poisoner's and/or Herbalism Kits may be needed for the mo(u)ld. The Catapult spell can help in this pursuit
Yes a whole video of how to break a mouth of a necromancer
Mmmm fireball! 🔥 🔥 🔥
Very much this. Show that necromancers don't have to be moustache twirling villains that do nothing but make skellingtons. Maybe you are a doctor or alchemist trying to pursue the ultimate goal of doing no harm to include curing death itself. Perhaps an anti-cleric archetype, having seen how callously divine beings use and discard mortals, wants to prove that through knowledge and effort mortals can free themselves from being pawns on the board and lead people to go full no gods no masters. Maybe undead are used as a form of automation to do dangerous or demanding work for the betterment of the living.
I have an aasimar war mage that is "the champion of Mystra" because her parents were some of the best clerics of Mystra, and now, Mystra rewards them by giving knowledge of the arcane to her daughter.
The wizard hates Mystra now and just wants to sleep
My current wizard character is a mousefolk whose ancestors were the equivalent of Vikings and uses carved runes and bones as a "spellbook" with an awakened spellbook as a backup. He's also our group's chef.
He's also 7 years old (which is around a third of the lifespan for his species) and 2 ft tall.
It started out as a joke of a character concept and turned into my favorite character to play so far.
in my experience, the short joke characters are the most fun to play
I had a wizard who was really stupid(like 7 int) but she thought that she is a genius and never understood why her spells doesn't work.
@@shinykitsunelive I keep pitching the concept of #teamfunsize to my group where no one is allowed to be over 5' tall.
@@Twitch_Fox a perfect dnd party
I played with a mousefolk divination wizard and a rabbitfolk wolf totem barbarian.
They were both like 2 feet.
I was a 7 feet tall pandafolk cleric of knowledge.
Absolutely insane party.
I absolutely love people break molds, like a rogue who took up the thiefing/hitman business to support his aging parents, and he then has to lie to them so they don't become concerned or afraid of him
I'm confused. Why are you talking about "breaking moulds" in the context of a Rogue PC who is a hitman and a thief?
@@nickwilliams8302 Because what other profession would a guy think his loving parents wouldn't approve of? Besides prostitution
@@ravnemagne9598 Yeah, I get that. And I love it when players come up with a backstory other than, "My parents are DEEAAAAD!"
I kinda want to play a werewolf Hunter who who chose her profession in order to find a cure for the curse so she can cure her grandmother who she has to tie up every full moon for everyone's protection. (Little red ridinghood motifs everywhere.)
@@nickwilliams8302
Parents being dead is only a bad backstory if that is basically the whole backstory. It's a perfectly viable backstory element if it's not just meant to create "tragic" drama.
My first wizard was a necromancer. How I made him was that he didn't specifically use necromancy, but he saw no problem with it. It was apart of the magical spectrum, and no different than the other kinds. His reason was "If you turn a blind eye to 1 kind of magic, then you're blind to what knowledge lies ahead of you"
I love that mentality, my first wizard (also a necromancer) was just like that, in pursuit of knowledge, he did have a code to follow for raising the dead though, only those who truly acted in an evil way would be resurrected as a zombie, no innocent or confused souls. Also if you're looking for a more interesting necromancer, might I suggest looking up "Astoshan the gray necromancer" Narrated by All things D&D. Stay Strong my fellow wizards!
my first wizard was also a necromancer. however mine was not so nice lol. He was essentially an alcoholic sicence experiement gone wrong that liked eating animals alive as well as rotting things. had an obsession with lichdom due to having been brought up by their creator with such high expectations.
My first wizard was a horribly unlucky but idealistic and naive necromancer who thought that if he got strong enough, he could replace the menial workers of society with zombies, so that humanity could advance to a more civilized age. Then he died horribly in a cave in.
Same. First necromancer I played was essentially an occult researcher and expert, who wanted to challenge the negative stereotypes tied with taboo magics.
She was also a goth, so it was pretty fun to play lol.
"you must study all aspects of the force" - emporor palpatine
I remember you doing something like this sorta when you were talking about warlock patrons.
I've actually wanted to do a video like this myself, even. I love character concept spitballing.
Idea: A warlock that thinks its a cleric but doesnt know purely because the pact it made was with a cursed mirror that makes the warlock see images of its self made super beautiful which enchants the user and tells it to do things. The kicker is the warlock is a Kuo-Toa
@@thegenuinepotato8107 I like that character concept
rememer*
The majority of magic is Transmutation magic. What is transmutation? Turning one thing into another, for example what school is 'Fireball', many of you will say "evocation" but it is in fact Transmutation. When I use it on this bandit it turns him from a 'bandit' into a 'corpse'. With some more fire you can transmute the corpse into ash. Properly processed, that ash can become lye, which is a main ingredient for soap. Transmutation is a wonderful thing.
Be sure to wash your hands.
@@isaacgraff8288 I'd argue that's because the schools of magic are a lot like the Various STEM fields or Genre in art.
Ultimately the distinction is entirely made up by the cultural in question. Where does mathematics end and physics begin in practical application? Is star Wars a science fiction or a futuristic high fantasy? Well useful for analysis the distinction is often a post-hoc trick of language rather then an objective reality.
This also extends to spellcasting traditions for example. In 5e RAW the act of casting clerical spells doesn't vanish with the death of a god (Forgotten realms being setting dependent to this feature of clerics) Nor does the loss of a Patron actually cause the Warlock to lose their magic. So why wouldn't a Wizard look at Divine magic users and think "Okay so what you're doing in effect is magic rooted in faith rather then access or study to arcane forces. Effectively using force of will to substitute for all the above." ?
Thus we can see that the distinction between Divine, Arcane and even perhaps Psionic magic is simply a cultural distinction created by the various methods to the same end.
I had a food wizard. Human variant with the gourmand feet at level 1. Cloistered scholar and found a cursed spatula that was his spell casting focus. His spell book was a recipe book, his spells smelled of spices, and his magic missiles were forks. The cursed spatula required him to prepare a nice meal everyday. Otherwise he would get 1 level of exhaustion (but only ever 1).
XD amazing
With Tasha's Cauldron out, you could take the Artificer initiate feat and have Chef's utensils as your spellcasting focus.
Reminds me of the Food Wars anime!
I want a capitalist necromancer. He sees the undead as perfect labor. His nemesis is the communist druid.
(Edit: please, fewer arguments about the systems mentioned. Not the place.)
alternate theory: Communist necromancer. He uses the dead to provide labor for the state. his nemesis is the capitalist druid, who sees exchange of goods and services as a natural part of human nature
In the world I currently DM, the living have discovered that after death they'll need to eternally work to repay their taxes in a very capitalist hell, so they turned undead and now we have Communist skeletons waging revolution against death
@@godzilla660 Undead labor is always best for a commie since they'll not revolt or starve
@@patheronaetherson2860 They'll also be able to oush themselves more than living workers and are more likely to create surplus, preventing economic scarcity causing a crash. Only really works for renewable resources though.
I have an aspiring mafioso Necromancer. The Dead Don't Snitch, The Dead Don't Need a Cut
I didn’t ask how to make my wizard, I said I cast FIREBALL
A fellow monk I see
jocat's alt located
Wall of water
People like you are why abjuration exists in the first place.
(This is a joke, not an insult.)
@@DanteTorn *sad counterspell noises"
I can imagine my Wizard, studying year after year in transmutation only to leave wizard school and the best job he can get is a construction worker
D&D is supposed to be an escape, why do you do this to us.
Nothing wrong with that, he's basically can negotiate an entire workforce salary only to himself provided he can do the job alone. He's basically that Naruto teacher (Yamato if I'm not mistaken)
That or he becomes a billionaire, building damn near everything-proof housing and fortifications in record time.
This might actually be an important question for DMs who are world building.
If a wizard isn't a part of an adventuring party, how else do they make a living? This could come into play in a player's backstory. (What they did before becoming an adventurer)
construction workers are paid really well and their work is a lot more enjoyable than fast food, thats like saying the best job he could get was an engineer.
Hot damn this was a really good video. I keep telling my players that this sort of character creation creates some of the coolest characters, but now that you’ve put it in video I think they’ll understand it better. Thanks for being inspirational as always.
I would go crazier with these ideas if I was giving the examples but I think keeping them more grounded and simple makes it a better explanation for people who don't already go off the wall. It's good.
Currently in love with my wizard. I wanted to be a priest or someone of holy stature but narrow minded and poor at foresight, so instead of a cleric I made a wizard. He still fills the role of being knowledgeable of numerous things to be helpful. His efforts are focused on study of ancient texts of his God and the destruction of knowledge from those who would bring forth heretical knowledge. Even down to the detail of casting spells he reads off prayers and acts of bravery in his sacred texts and then evoking a feat similar to the act with the spell being cast, Thunderwave for example is cast by him shouting, "In the Lady's name, all that oppose her disciples words are beaten and bloodied"
"The more you make, the more you learn you can do." That quote can be applied to many things in life, you just have to go out there and keep making things. It doesn't matter if you start out bad, or if you aren't great at learning it. What matters is that you keep going forward and keep at it. At some point your hard work will pay off, and you'll learn to make something beautiful.
I started playing a Gnome wizard with the Order of the Scribes subclass.
His story is that of an expelled student that now hates the arcane academy and its methods.
Since he does not have the means to formally study the arcane arts, he just go on to trick people to show/give him scrolls and spellbooks (or just sneak into a library) and copy spells as fast as he can.
And my DM keeps giving me "normal sentient items", which are slowly making my character go full schizophrenic while he watches the love triangle between his spellbook, quill and ink...
Being able to glimpse the future as a divination wizard makes me wonder how high the rate of insanity is among them
Yes
Well I think it depends how well they internalize that there is no future. what I mean is no ONE future. what they see are possible futures that they can use portent dice to influence and make those futures happen at specific times.
I'm playing a Divination wizard in the campaign I'm in right now, and while she may have a vision in her sleep that scares her, she'll comfort herself with that fact, the future is never set in stone, what the divination wizards see are possibilities.
Ever met a kuo-toa?
Basically the same rate of insanity those guys have.
Some quick ideas for alternative spellbooks:
-strings with knots tied in specific places
-tattoos on wizard's own body
-rocks. Not even necessarily runic ones, just funny rocks they find in streams
-extension of above: literally just random junk they pick up when they learn something they want to remember. Broken cups, playing cards, spoons, chicken bones, dead flowers and other otherwise worthless stuff like that
-little clay statues
-sketchbook with drawings referencing spells. So kind of like typical spellbook, but without words. Maybe the wizard is illiterate?
Honestly, Enchantment is just Necromancy that you do on living people.
Actually necromancy is just enchantment that you do on dead people.
Enchantment, at least to me, is _far_ worse than necromancy.
When I'm dead I don't mind what you do with my body much, I'm already dead after all, but leave my living mind alone.
@@sirreginaldfishingtonxvii6149 That's largely because D&D necromancy is a bit weird, and is JUST using magic to make a corpse walk around. In most fiction and mythology undeath involves your soul being bound back into your corpse and forced to remain there in a perpetual state of spiritual and sometimes physical suffering. This is why in so much fiction when an undead is killed people refer to that person as having been "freed" or "put to rest."
But yeah, in D&D when it's just some bones animated by a simple spell then enchantment is way worse.
D&D necromancy is quite soft IMO, though I imagine it's for balancing reasons and probably some lore issues.
@@DanteTorn It's because they can't let the player command his own endlessly renewable perfectly obedient army.
I had an idea for a change in the find familiar spell. If it wasn’t home brewed a bit it would be a bit underpowered, but it’s such a cool idea! I want to make a wizard that is covered in jewelry and they can activate their jewelry with the find familiar spell. Some ideas I had was a spider ring, humming bird earrings, and a snake bicep band. I feel like it would be so cool to use as a tinkering wizard.
It's very simple. I see Runesmith, I click.
As am I friend
yes
Indeed. This is the truth
The big cilcc
Si
I absolutely love the concept of using other modifiers for casting. I feel like Constitution based casting should be used more often, and Strength would be fun if in order to command a particular magic you have to overpower it physically, like say... gravity. To be able to direct the gravity pulses your magic creates, you have to physically move it.
Runesmith: “I can make a whole video on breaking the mold for necromantic wizard.”
Me: Please do, that would be awesome!
I agree
Honestly
Your character Chebus inspired me to create my own wizard.
He was the son of a chef, but he felt something strange. His mom was a wizard, someone who taught him magic.
As a way to honor his family, he became a chef wizard. He wrote his spells in a cook book, his recipes for magic reflect his equations of food.
Mechanically he is a dwarf scribe who has the chef feat.
My last wizard is a lizardfolk that found a copy of a book from another dimension, went mad while trying to translate it and now just kinda pulls magic out of his ass, saying that the book is teaching him magic, believing that if he finally translate it he will gain absolute knowledge. The book is the french edition of the lord of the ring if you are wondering.
Sound better for some wild magic sorcerer imo. ^^
My current character is a lizardfolk wizard that found the spellbook on a body. He was a druid at the time so he asked an archfey to help him understand the arcane. And now he's a bladesinger druwarzard. Druid 1/ warlock 1/ wizard 3 at the moment
I'll totally steal the idea of going mad over a mundane book (from another world), thank you very much
I play A Dwarven Abjurer who became a mage inorder to teach his clan the powers of the Arcane, his spellbook was a stone slate that worked like a clock in which the pointer hands will point at the body movement and the words that they speak to summon the spell and the other would point at the components. All illusion magic would require the same movement to twine the magic thread into illusion. He was an Abjurer because on his travels, he met a young sorcerer/warlock, human and another player, that accidentally made a deal with a fiend when raiders killed his family. He chose Abjuration inorder to shut down his pupils wild magic surges and to eventually release the pact that the sorcerer made
I love this concept. I also really like your takes on Enchantment, Illusion, and Necromancy. I've always though most forms of Enchantment and Illusion were more evil than most necromancy. I even once played a necromancer who just wanted to heal and protect people but realized too late they were going down a dark path so he decided to double-down and start learning how to actually fuck with life force
3:55 Kill Six Billion Demons! So glad to Runesmith knows about it!
the illusion part went a direction i really wasn't expecting since my first character idea was a gnome stage magician illusionist.
great video! i would love this to become a series!!
My last wizard was a rock gnome that got obsessed with the Fae, and dived headlong into book after boom on the feywild. Most of these books were written by elves, so along with the more of the fey, he absorbed the Elvis biases of superiority, and truly believed that only the elves could truly understand the Fae.
He left home for an elvish city to study the Fae, becoming a conjurer.
While in the city, he got into a relationship with a elf who fed in to this elvish superiority mindset, causing him to slowly shed all aspects of gnomish culture in favour of the elvish, eventually growing to reject all things gnome. She crafted him a necklace that enabled him to forgoe sleep, allowing him to engage more fully in all aspects of elvish society. Over the course of the relationship, she’d add other transmutations to the necklace, changing his feature, granting him height, and eventually making him indistinguishable to an elf.
However, the relationship was on a decaying path, and she broke it off after a time. The conjurer left the elvish, and now wonders the land, focusing their energies entirely on their studies of the Fae, and living every day trying to be the best elf they can be.
Thank you so much for this video, it really exemplifies what i mean when i say that classes are mostly just mechanics for you to put a skin on.
For wizards speciffically ive made a meteorologist evocator, a naruto esque illusionist with the spy background and whose spells are secret techniques contained in ninja scrolls, and a diviner archeologist who believes the past reveals the future
Best wizard I ever made was divination. He was a homeless, con artist fortune teller who could actually see people's future, but he always just told them what they wanted to hear (People try to not pay fortune tellers if they get answers they don't like). Sometimes actually altering the course of their lives by accident from giving them false confidence. It lead to a variety of comical deaths and heroic triumphs for many NPCs.
Honestly the first wizard I made had a sketchbook he'd draw in, and then his drawings would come to life. Only played him for a one-shot scenario, sadly. Don't even remember which tradition he followed.
The first character I made was a halfling bard.
A happy and jolly little guy, He'd go down to the docks and listen to sea-shanties by the sailors talking of the horrors of the deep.
The sea-shanties were so different to what his village had ever heard that he dedicated his life to sharing them. But he couldn't quite get it right because he didn't fully understand the dark and gritty world.... thus adventuring.
In my opinion, Aelwyn Abbernant from Dimension 20: Fantasy High is a very good characterisation for an abjuration wizard. -Spoilers for FH seasons 1 & 2
Context for people who don't know the show: (it's really good by the way) In the story, the Abbernant family is a very toxic family of elven wizards, with Angwyn being a controlling father and an enchantment master, Arianwen being a quiet but somewhat-caring mother, Adaine being the youngest daughter and a skilled divination caster, and my focus-Aelwyn; an abjuration wizard. Adaine is antagonized by Aelwyn and the rest of her family, as Aelwyn is very clearly the favorite child of her mother and father. Aelwyn, however, feels guilty and ashamed of her not doing anything, simply due to her fear of her parents' expectations.
To summarize a long comment, Aelwyn is an abjuration wizard, and she makes so many barriers around herself, both magically and mentally, that she isn't who she wants to be at all. Her wards are a survival mechanism to keep her parents' favor, and can only come crashing down in the most dire of circumstances.
Idea for a Necromancer wizard: A taxidermist.
To me, a taxidermist sounds more like a necromancer druid.
@@thesexybatman263 Necrobotany
Mine is an apothecary
They could be the mortician taxidermist whos an upstanding citizen and piller of the community who needs to know necromancy as they aren't a cleric and dont have access to divine spells. They use necromancy to manipulate dead bodies to prepare and care for the dead. He can cause decay and reanimation but he can also stop it. He could also be religious and his spellbook could be a holy text with spells written between margins and on the edges of pages.
If nothing else, a taxidermied corpse will look and smell much better, and keep for longer. Not exactly efficient as minions, though, since making and repairing them is labor intensive in a way animating whatever remains are on hand is not.
When talking about the focuses and motivations of the different schools, I can’t help but think of how much a love the Lore Master. They study magic for Magic’s sake. Like a Transmuter or Evoker but even deeper, wanting to know how the fundamentals of the force of magic work
"He was the wizard of a thousand kings...and I chanced to meet him one night, wandering...he told me tales, and he drank my wine...me and my magic-man kinda feelin' fine!"
I have a wizard named Sedgby Carmichael. He's your stereotypical wizard, the frail old man with a stick (only four hit points at level 1). I pretty much just use him and his particular way of doing magic as a way of justifying the spell slot system. Basically, his staff has a large curved bit towards top; this is where he ties strips of paper/leather that has his spells. To use a spell, he removes a slip, and it turns into magical energy that he shoots at his opponents. The strips tied to his staff are prepared spells and arcane foci, and I guess he just memorizes the spells, or maybe he has them written down somewhere.
I'd love to see one of these videos for every class. Clerics, fighters and Rogues could benefit quite a bit from it I think.
Now I have the urge to make a Alchemist Transmutation Wizard, whose spell book is actually various forms of alchohol. Absithe for Abjuration, Red Wines for Conjuration, Whites for Illusion, Whiskeys for Evocation, Stout for Necromancy, Ale for Transmutation, Sake for Divination and Fruity Liqueurs for Enchantment
Please do more of these! The entirety of this video was amazing to listen to, and I hope you do the same style of video for the other classes!
I used to play a necromancer wizard who wanted to be a cleric, but wasn't very religious and focused more on the physical aspect of healing than the process of healing itself. His spellbook was part anatomy textbook with diagrams of muscles and bone structures and part dictionary with translations of different languages and religious texts he read when he was studying. "Raise Dead" was more "restart certain parts of the brain to make the body move again" than "imbue the body with a fragment of a soul". Of course, he couldn't actually heal, but that was his end goal: devise a healing spell for wizards.
I would like a part 2 of this video where it covers the other subclasses of the wizard: School of Bladesinging, War Magic, Chronurgy, Graviturgy and Order of Scribes. Who agrees?
As a necromancer, I'd be like a mad scientist making biotech, like a living gun that is parasitically attached to my arm and shoots acid. Because necromancers have control over life and death.
"The only real constant between all wizards is a general understanding of magic and the need for a repository for spells that they can't remember."
My Wizard Of Invention Who Uses Reckless Casting: Ah f***, let's see. Oh, I cast fireball.
My wizard gnaws on random sticks since he's always chewing the scenery.
I played a wizard who would cast spells with his war hammer, he was a dwarf so he had medium armor proficiency, but didn't multiclass
I’ve never played dnd but I really want to, I was inspired by the critical role character Caleb widowgast to want to play a tragic wizard.
The backstory I’ve though of goes as follows: the character was the first born of the greatest house of magic in his land, and yet he failed to meet his father’s expectations for his talents. When his siblings were born and later found to have the talent their father sought he would basically every shunned by him. (Potential allowing a dm to insert a reason for this weakness, like a different father or a seal). Things would come to a head when the father had efforts to distance himself and the family from the firstborn child, and to declare one of the other sibling the heir of the house. This would cause the first born to be approached by an entity who would offer him the power to prove himself to his family but it would b a trap.
Upon accepting the deal he would fall unconscious and wake up in his burning home. When he eventually makes it outside he finds the dead bodies of his family and the figure he’d struck a deal with. The figure would reveal itself to be a demon and infuse the first born with the blood of his family to increase his magic powers but this would also leave him with the demons Mark. Afraid of being caught and accused of practicing dark magic. He would be forced to flee.
Thus marking the end of the backstory
I’ve described it to my friend as a setup where the party might thing they are looking for an ncp only to learn they were traveling with that person the whole time.
Thanks if you read all that
Id love a video this for every class.
My current wizard is the void wizard pathfinder subclass. She mainly focuses on divination and basically worships space. She considers mortal hierarchies, and even divine ones, as pointless in the face of the vastness of the universe, but she sees undeath and meddling with souls as against the will of the stars. She is a drow and built her underground wizard tower up into the surface so she could commune with the stars. While she has spellbooks as a normal wizard, she studies her spells by staring into the night sky and observing certain constellations while burning incense that relates to different schools of magic.
Imagine a Divination wizard who saw a great disaster in the future, came to terms with it, and will stop an nothing to make sure it happens, no matter who gets in his way. Astor, the Prophet of Doom from Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity is a cool example, I totally want to play a character like this in the future
She wasn't super groundbreaking, but I had a tiefling wizard girl that I was really excited to play until I realized that our party had no healer... she was basically a sorority/valley girl wizard that transcribed all her spells either in glitter gel pen or by embroidering them onto her dress! I can't wait to play her in another campaign
Funny think is, I'm writing a campaign that centers around a magical circus that travels around Faerun trying to keep some magical stones out of the hands of an old Netharese cult. One of the Lieutenants is a divination wizard that oversees the carnival part of the circus from her tent where she plays the role of a fortune teller. So, the bit about diviners totally seemed like it read my notes on the character.
Oh, and the cult they're fighting against is trying to resurrect Karsus... So... um... Fun times ensues?
I've made two major wizard characters that I've used in games. Both I loved the new angle of approaching it.
One was a Human Divination wizard who was the nephew of a count, and while spending hours in the expansive castle library practiced his first spells, he went down the divination route after receiving a few disconnected visions that don't add up, so he wanted to find out the missing info.
The other was a Dragonborn Abjuration wizard who was an expert at linguistics, and researched a number of different ancient texts to learn about planer travel and how to close dangerous portals and protect his colleagues with barriers.
"The more you make, the more you learn you can do." That's some tasty yummy wizardly wisdom.
On the necromancy note, and on a personal note, I've always liked the concept of "the friendly neighborhood necromancer." They're very knowledgable in the dark arts of necromancy, but they use them to solve problems and generally study/work on things of their own.
For example: Suppose there's a ghost haunting someone, and they called the necromancer to use their powers to bind the spirit and talk to them to figure out what they need done to put them to rest properly before releasing them once the criteria is met? Or else binding a malicious evil spirit (such as a demonic ghost or something) so that they cannot cause any more harm.
One of the few examples I've found of this sort of achetype is Falion from Morthal in the game Skyrim. He uses his knowledge to keep the people of Morthal safe and he's the only person in the game who can cure you of vampirism. (I'm talking about an actual cure, not just replacing it like becoming a werewolf does.)
It's like an inverse of the concept of a doctor using their medical knowledge to kill people or cause great harm because their understanding of how the human body works and how to fix it can also be used to cause things to go wrong with it.
As a person IRL I'm very dark. I've had a very dark life, I like dark things, I like sorrowful music, I like darker edgier stories in general. -But I am not someone who inflicts that darkness on other people. I use my understanding of dealing with stress, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, etc to help others by either helping them to rationalize it or just giving them a starting point to figure out how to help themselves, or else just plain being someone who understands. It's hard to explain and I haven't really explained it all that well but the point is that I very much relate to the concept I gave of "the friendly neighborhood necromancer."
Maybe you could elaborate on things covered in "The Complete Guide to *(insert race, class, or specialty class)*" book series done by TSR in the days of AD&D 2e and how it can be applied/translated into 5e
I have this idea for a necromancer who is a senile old man and after he bought the spell book of an ancient necromancer, he believes he's helping people. Like, someone dies, he raises their body and says that they're all healed and all better. Mostly this is a joke character but still.
"Maeby their lack of comunicative skills let them to seek aliens, demons and gods to make friends"
I can't be the onlyone who thinked in YunYun trying to invocate a devil to be her friend
Poor Yunyun. :(
Oh shit, I just realized how fucked was my grammar on this coment
Who is YunYun?
@@jm6456 **shoots a death glare at JM**
@@MasterZebulin what? Who is yunyun?
Really liked this idea/format. Finding new ways to make the common part of a class/character stand out has always been interesting to me. A bard that doesn't sing but uses paintings as his way of express, a wizard that uses his poetic skills to remember his spells.
Would love to see more of this for other classes. As always, thanks for the great content.
This is the best kind of D&D content: inspiring ideas for stories and characters. Keep it up!
My favorite good aligned necromancer was a pirate captain whose greed led to the deaths of her crew. A lot of those people she knew as friends for years. So in her regret she spends her days walking the land instead, fulfilling their dying wishes. She has an agreement with some of her dead crew that they'll stick around and help her in sticky fights for as long as she's doing this, so she keeps their bones in a small chest, and when she casts animate dead they just jump out and start being spooky.
It's also great because since she's a bladesinger she can use performance to do musical numbers with her skeleton crew.
Especially the wizard!
3:54 Don't think I didn't see the cheeky Kill Six Billion Demons panel
I made a necromancer recently named Kyra, and I'm trying to focus on the healing aspect of necromancy, it's so fun
3:28 IS THAT JOCRAP?! Crap guide to D&D!?
But I’m all seriousness you should be very afraid of him and his fireballs. A character based entirely around fearing Jocrap’s fireball is not a bad idea.
For anyone wondering what the heck I’m talking about, search YT for Jocat’s ‘A crap guide to D&D,’ and the wiggler character is called Jocrap. Seriously it is worth watching the entire series
5:43 I appreciate the background “expurosion”. It gives the impression that Megumin is outside your door pestering you
Anyone want a far too in depth description of my Wizard? You've been warned.
So I play a variant human Abjuration Wizard named Geometry Samson Due or Geome for short. The variance is giant blood, well firbolg actually. Geomes family are a bunch of bumpkin half giant bandits and Geome is the runt of the pack. He taught himself magic to augment his subpar strength but this only further alienated him from his family. Never getting the praise he desired he eventually washed his hands of his family to become a Prostlasyzer for Saint Cuthburt. He is Neutral Good to a fault, believing the only soul that is irredeemable is the one that doesn't wish to be saved. That being said free will is extremely important to Geome and he believes that every crime has a punishment and no one is above it if they willingly do evil. That mentality has got the party in trouble more than once it's all good. Well, mostly.
It's fun to play a wizard that's religious. To be clear he's purely Wizard and I don't intend to multi class. Geome isn't bound to his Saint but holds to its scriptures tightly. Eventually the Saint took notice of Geome and charged him with the Big Damn Quest. He's currently transforming into an Arch Seraph from the Grim Hollow book currently level 2 by the way. It's really fun to play.
I played him like a fighter until level 8 as a fighter only augmenting my abilities physically giving him apparent super strength, great durability and he sprinted at ungodly speeds around the world.
Don't worry, I didn't gimp the party for roleplay purposes. I just tried to not use much "magic" that didn't match my flavor until I thought it made sense for the story.
His primary spells are Catapult and now Disintegrate and it's literally just my wizard throwing stuff at bad guys at lethal velocities because you know the Giants penchant for rock throwing? Yeah, I did that but better because I'm magic. Suck it Family. Shocking Grasp and Shadow Blade are my magically augmented strikes. Flying an inch off the ground gave him super speed and powerful "jumps. " Shield made him capable of shrugging off blows the paladin broke under.
He is a Constitution based wizard and he's ridiculous. At level 13 he's got something like 120 hit points and can create something like 50 temporary hit points plus the Abjuration shield which is another 25ish points, Constitution and Dexterity saving throw proficiency. Oh yeah, and a 20 AC . He's the party tank by the way.
And before anyone screams power gaming my DM rolled and approved my characters stats himself. I applied an Abjuration Wizard atop it, that simple. With the exception that he's becoming an Arch Seraph Geome is RAW.
I've never played a Wizard before and I made this one up on the spot. I love this Character. I highly recommend Constitution based Wizards. They are fantastic.
I kinda want this video about breaking the mold about necromancers now.
A favorite necromancy Wizard of mine that I played was a shy, kindhearted bookworm. After getting possessed by a ghost, she became fascinated by them and the afterlife, and so she studied them in every way possible. She honed her skill as both a caster of magic, and also as a sort of paranormal investigator.
I'm gonna make a wizard where instead of a Grimoire with it's spells whritten to prepare, he has a recipe book full of sandwuiches, and in order to prepare a spell he needs to make and eat a sanduich from the recipe book to feel the taste, and remember the spell he wants to prepare and cast. This is gonna be a pain to role-play, but my "spellbok" will certainly be indecipherable, hahahaha
Yes I'm stealing this!
You may be interested in my Gnomes condiment golems.
@@corinnebloom7005 haha, go on! I would love to see this idea. But i sugest to use it in a low level canpaing only where you don't have that many spells, and make every ingredient of the sandwich remember you of a spell, instead of needing to eat one sandwich for every single spell to prepare. This way you make a sandwich with peanut butter, jelly, cheese, mayonese, eggs, meat, tomato, lettuce and there you go. 8 spells in a sandwich to make your life easier
My favorite concept for a necromancer is a young boy/girl who had a friend that loved to draw monsters that didn't exist in their world, but the friend died to sickness so the player character chose to dedicate their life to necromancy and collecting part of monster to recreate the drawn monster their friend made in the hope of their friend seeing the creations and how they would look in the real world.
5:42 I miss Konosuba
Semi benevolent necromancer idea:
A current or former military officer dug into ancient texts to find a way to protect her troops in battle. What she found was a way to make fallen enemies fight on her side.
I'm not a huge fan of All Things D&D, but that channel has the best atypical necromancer story I've ever heard. Revolved around raising the dead garrison of an otherwise doomed city to defeat the besiegers and free the city. Ended up achieving near-godlike status because of the veneration of the people of that city. Also created The Sleepless Watch, which I think is one of the best names I've ever seen in fantasy.
Could be a great origin story for a necromantic kingdom/faction: facing annihilation, attacked from every direction, its people turned towards the only thing they had plenty of to survive: their dead. The risen legion slowly turned back the tide, but they paid the ultimate price for the survival of their identity: the afterlife, and all the perspective and values that come with a mortal life. Their souls were doomed to forever remain on this plane, even as their bodies wasted away, turning them into ghosts, ghouls, and all manner of abomination, earning them the hatred of all their mortal neighbours, who are still powerless to do anything about them due to their mastery over the domain of death.
... I think I should make a note of this.
Bakuretsu bakuretsu la la la~
I created a wizard whose spellbook was actually written into the illustrations on a tarot deck he carried around. Whenever he prepared his spells, he basically just arranged the cards in a way like a tarot reading to decypher them. I liked to think his fortune telling was a sham, disguising his true skill as a wizard.
I mean yeah thats cool and all but I could just be an old bearded guy in a robe throwing fireballs.
This video inspired my blind divination wizard, who's spellbook is a collection of little baubles and sensory objects: bells, a musicbox, specific incenses, crystals that resonated at different frequencies.
"I could make a whole video on breaking the mold for necromantic wizards"
Please do.
Fantastic video. A wizard backstory I recently made for a weekly campaign was a college dropout whose spellbook is hastily etched in the margins of some throwaway class notes.
Uu. What do you know, this was actually something I needed right now. Thank you :)
Stogie. A Goblin conjurer who cast spells by lighting a home made cigar wrapped in spell paper. The smoke he blows out becomes his summons. He is always on a quest for finer materials for his creation.
Lead. A Goblin conjurer who carries a magic lantern with many different settings that change the world around him. He comes from a line of Fey Goblins whose job was to guide people lost in the Feywilds back home, but now he's lost in our world.
Two different characters I never get to play.
*So what, ... Your telling me i can do more than just commit mass Genocide through Arsine*
One of my favorite wizard concepts that I've come up with is a Dwarven Abjuration wizard. Like House Kundarak from Eberron, this character is from a banking clan in his society. He's learned Abjuration in order to better protect the vaults from would-be thieves, haunted items that have been stored there, and other unknown phenomenon. I think maybe the vaults are near the sacred burial grounds, so undead could possibly try to get in to recover their possessions. He, and other abjurers, would also work with the church to perform exorcisms since their powers coincide. As for a reason to go out on adventure, a trusted member of the banking clan has stolen a powerful artifact, and that happened under this character's watch. As such, it is his responsibility to track down the offender and recover the artifact.
Another concept I've had is a Divination wizard whose entire schtick is chronomancy. Obviously, the subclass's kit is already tied to it so that's easy to do. Aside from having the obvious spells like Slow, Haste, and Time Stop, it would be fun to come up with ways as to how other spells can be related to her time abilities. I swear I read somewhere that time is the existence of heat, so I went with that and rolled with it, figuring that I could manipulate time to affect heat. "Fire" spells are her speeding up time to the point of creating enough heat to cause damage (I haven't decided yet if it causes combustion), "cold" spells are her slowing down time to the point where she makes it cold enough to cause damage. I figure that necrotic damage can be explained as her literally ripping out the time from a person. I haven't decided yet whether or not she raises corpses, but that can easily be explained as her bringing them back to a time when their bodies could move, although she can't bring a soul back to them.
My friend once suggested a spellcaster who can never remember any of their spells, and from their the idea evolved into a senile old gnome who spouts out nonsense, hoping for something to happen. Any words or phrases that do work are written down on post-it notes which get attached to his staff.
My first wizard was from the school of transmutation who remembered spells by looking through his mind palace (which, for him, was the city he grew up in). In order to cast spells (minus cantrips), he'd have to run to the place he left the spell in. For example, in order to cast chromatic orb, he had to go to the jeweler's, get the diamond, and the jeweler would tell him the spell he's looking for. Or Tasha's Hideous Laughter would have him go into his favorite inn, where his now dead childhood friend would tell him the one joke that would always get him to laugh.
I convinced my friends to all be wizards for the next campaign
.
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Our DM hates wizards.
Huh you guys are fighting orcus or something?
He's going to start making you guys track spell components lmao
Man, I really hope you do more of these. A fresh new look at the classes is never a bad idea.
I've just realized ittachi might be a level 20 illusion caster...
A concept I'm thinking of is an Aereni High Elf Arcana Cleric/Wizard that's blind. He was taught to rub his hands over magical writings to read the slight divots of the words as those writings were written to memorize his spells. He knows how to read but he reads with his hands.
Along with that, his "spellbook" is structured like a book of prayers. Each incantation is a prayer to Mystra structured around what the spell itself does. As he learns new spells, he makes up a prayer for Mystra that he writes in his book.
I’m gonna just say, a Wizard should always have a physical object/s for their spellbook.
The reason I say this is because it needs to be possible to destroy it.
I made a wizard lore master in 3.5 who was also an army veteran with 19 strength. The orc chieftain we fought was surprised when I challenged him to a wrestling mach at 3rd level and won.