Your wizards are losers!

Everyone, after reading enough D&D, will eventually ask why do wizards (or magic-users) adventure at all? Their magic is derived from their knowledge, from their grimoires… from books! So, if they read and study more, they should be more powerful. I can’t count how many times a player told me that he would like to use downtime to study magic (i.e. level up).

One of my favorite RPGs (and in fact one of the best ones) is Ars Magica. Wizards in Ars Magica follow almost the same flavor as traditional D&D Wizards: they’re bookworms who learn magic from experiment and ancient texts. They are “medieval scientists” if you prefer. Ars Magica’s wizards spent most of their time locked away in their towers and covenants studying and perfecting their Art. You can say that one of the awesome things about Ars Magica is how every wizard trope makes sense in the setting and in the system (there are a lot of other awesome things regarding Ars Magica and you should definitely take a look if you don’t know it yet: the 4th Edition is free!).

Still one the best RPGs out there!

Anyway, as I said, D&D Wizards work (in terms of setting and lore) almost like Ars Magica mages. They should indeed get more powerful by spending less time adventuring and more time researching. Of course, that is a rather boring way of playing D&D if you ask me. So why does it not happen?

Basically: your wizards are losers!

Yes, losers. Wizard PCs are the failures, rejects, heretics, the unorthodox, the mad and those who for same reason couldn’t stay locked in the tower studying. Maybe they disgraced their masters, or betrayed them or discovered the dark about them. I don’t know. That is the funny part and the players (and the table) should figure that out.

Without access to a master and powerful knowledge, your wizard is forced to crawl in the mud with other pariahs, doing lowly things like treasure hunt or (worst) living side by side with sorcerers and warlocks. What a shame! That is literally rock bottom!

Arcane scum! That is who you are!

OK, now you have something to work for your Wizard PC the entire trope of “book mage” makes more sense maybe***. Lets move to the second aspect of this post, what I’m calling at the moment the Tower Wizard.

Illusionist's Tower... don't trust anything you see, hear, touch etc. Also don't trust your party.

Tower Wizards never failed their master (or just killed and took their place). They never lost time with such stupid things such as adventuring and carousing. No sir, they remained locked in their sanctums and demesnes, devling in forbidden and powerful arcane knowledge nonstop. They are the real deal. Most are mad and too much removed from mortal life or reality itself. Practically all of them are dangerous and uncaring (even the rare good ones, actually I would say especially the good ones… they are almost as dangerous as your usual holier-than-thou saint).

Necromancer's Lair and its guardians: lots of dead trees.

Thankfully, Tower Wizards are completely uninterested (most of the time) in the affairs of the world - or if they are interested it is because they need a charmed minion, dominated slave or bound demon to fetch something for them (or those misfits known as adventurers). Or maybe they need to place an entire city sleeping, so they can harvest the perfect 11.111 nightmares provoked by a Far Realm abomination as a component for that one ritual that will prove that the Demiplane of Shadows and the Nightmare Dimension are one and the same. You see, that kind of “academic” stuff.

Yup, that is an Evoker Tower (of course, it is also a volcano).

Tower Wizards are the bogeyman of the arcane world and their domains are filled with treasure, monsters, traps and grimoires. In other words: the perfect place to raid (and die).

Abjurer's Fortress and its scary arcane defenses.

I would treat a Tower Wizard as a boss monster. A thematic one. Forget the spells that Wizard PCs use. That is the “player side” of the game. Create new stuff. After all, Wizard PCs are losers that play with just a shard of true arcane magic. Create a dungeon for each Tower Wizard around the chosen theme. For example: if facing a Necromancer, fill the place not only with undeads, but also with a nexus between the Positive and Negative Places, machines powered by ghosts etc. Instead of a spellbook, the Necromancer keeps his arcane knowledge locked in skulls of dead wizards. Create a Transmuter obsessed with teletransportation and space, his dungeon filled with non-euclidian rooms, gates, creatures that play with space and time etc. You see, Tower Wizards are like “small Saurons” - a great part of their mojo is invested in their domains. That is why they don’t adventure and why they are so powerful. But destroying those places and picking together part of the rubbles, your PC Wizard can discover new spells and stuff.

Transmuter's Tower... hidden behind that gate/trap/monster/thing.

***Actually, older editions of D&D came up with all kinds of interesting stuff to explain why wizards adventure. I remember fondly how D&D BECMI defined the relation between a low level wizard and his master, and how you would always return to your master between adventures to learn more. Other campaign settings, like AD&D Dragonlance, also created good excuses for the Wizards of the High Orders to travel and adventure. I just wanted to create something different.

That is some cool wizardly real estate!