An all-mage party

[STARP_Social_Officer]

Is the theme for my new campaign. Five players, all of whom must have at least half their levels in an arcane spellcasting class. I'm curious if anybody has tried this before - I'm sure they have; it's just what we say. If you have tried this before, can you give me some tips on what I can expect, and some of the problems I'm going to encounter. I'm thinking along a game dynamic line and not a role-playing, clash-of-the-mages line.

 

[Balgus]

All mage- not yet./

but i thought it would be cool to have a game of all clerics.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I haven't done it, but I'd bet Col. Playdough (aka G. Gygax) has...most of those old PCs who made it into the legend, lore & spell names of the game were mages.

There's even a 2Ed adventure in which each of the players gets the option of starting off playing one of the old archmages on an adventure to take down Vecna, so the opening parts of the module is an all-wizard party.

My guess is that the 2 biggest problems would be the lack of healing magic and the lack of a warrior to dish out and absorb melee damage.

 

[Iku Rex]

One thing you should expect is heavy emphasis on hit-and-run tactics. When everyone has a limited supply of spells and/or is buffed to the teeth with limited duration buffs the temptation to fall back and start fresh after a few battles will be strong.

They will most likely be able to cut through one high EL encounter with ease if allowed to prepare in advance and unload their spells fresh.


(My experience: Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. A dragon way out of our league. Stubborn players. PC replacement by natural selection. Ended up with 4 mid/high level mages. Improved invisibility. Ghostform. Energy immunity. 3.0 haste. Ambushed it in its lair. Dead dragon, although by then most of us were down to magic missile as the best offensive spell...)

 

[Terwox]

Ran a game for a psion and a mage, both single classed, in 3.0. It was fun, although obviously very odd.

Healing potions and fast little mage legs to run away with are necessary!

 

[Baroness]

I was thinking about that today, but it seems to me that having a whole party of characters that can each cast lightning bolt in a round makes it quite hard to balance encounters.

 

[drothgery]

Hmm... the simple approach is beguiler (PHB2), duskblade (PHB2), bard, warmage (CArc), and wizard. The beguiler or the warmage takes Arcane Disciple [Healing domain] (CDiv).

The "take the DM literally approach" is beguiler/rogue, duskblade/fighter, bard, warmage, and wizard/archivist (Heroes of Horror)/mystic theurge.

 

[Enkhidu]

The lack of in effective and powerful in-combat healing will be telling for a group likely to have few hit points. If the players end up with a wide selection of specialities, I can also see you having issues challenging them in traditional ways (in effect they'll have a spell for everything).

Expect movement (both longterm and short term) to be the big obstacle.

 

[painandgreed]

In 1E, I ran an elven game where everybody was a magic-user/something else. They started about 8th level and we ran through the GDQ series. Lots of blasting. It was also mage specific in that there was much magical research and development of spells. They all had their own tailor made spells that did exactly what they wanted and some near non-standard magic items. That the campaign was so heavy into magical research really gave it flavor IMHO and made it feel like a gorup of magic-users rather than just a normal party who happened to have levels in magic-user.

I was working on an all mage campaign due to a thread on "party all of once class" that was here. I was opting for a wizard's school approach like a D&D Harry Potter. The players would start out as 0-level and work their way up. Early adventures would be based on puzzle solving and role playing rather than combat. Later they would be sent out from the school on various tasks and might include a fighter or two as henchmen while collecting power components and such. They might have to act as messengers and deal with bandits and such. Wizard's doing things that matter to wizards rather than venturing out to kill tribes of orcs.

 

[Grymar]

Expect to see a heavy emphasis on summoning also. Who needs a fighter when you can summon a dire bear four times a day?