Have run and/or played in a 3e/3.5 game with no wizard? List thoughts/experiences

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Ok this subject has really piqued my interest today so:

As the thread title asks. How did this go? Were there any siginificant problems. If you were the DM did you modify things significantly (rules and or scenarios)? If a player was it just fine, frustrating, something else?

I recall at least one session, 8th-level, with no wizard.

Our party consisted of me (shifter rogue), an elven Dex-paladin (so, more like a dual-wielding ranger), a human cleric of Dol Dorn (war domain) and a warforged artificer. Our opponent was a hydra, attacking us on a ship.

We got pwned. A fighter could have sundered the thing's heads off, and a wizard could have seriously taken advantage of its low Will save with a spell like Fear. However, we instead had a Dexadin trying desperately to do damage faster than the thing could heal, and he couldn't stand up long enough to give me flanking for long.

The next session we rejigged the party. I for one was happy to dump the shifter rogue, as there was no way he would get enough shifter feats (rogues weren't exactly blessed with feats in 3.x).

It's doable, of course, but the DM needs to take that into account, and that can reduce the range of encounters the DM can use.

 

[knightofround]

I've never had a problem running a wizardless campaign. In fact, the most pleasant high-level 3.X campaigns I had were the ones with 0 wizards. You have to do much more mental gymnastics as a DM to protect your BBEG from stuff like scry+teleport+disintigrate+teleport, refresh next day.

Combat is always faster without a wizard too. Its just the nature of having large spellbooks and massive amounts of scrolls/wands. One of my PCs had a quiver of wands for his wizard. It was a very cool concept, and don't get me wrong I love wizards, its just that out of all the classes in 3.X I'd say the mage is the least needed. The only class needed is a druid/cleric for healing unless you homebrew your world/monsters to compensate for the group not having a healer. Meat shields are sorta needed, but I've seen stealthy groups do well without a tank. Rogues/Bards aren't needed at all as long as you don't use traps/social skills. Rangers kinda suck in high magic campaigns, but they can still be a decent ghetto mage.

 

[BronzeDragon]

I DM Conan D20, and there's no magic whatsoever in the party.

A magician, wizard or what-have-you is almost always a deadly enemy and very, very evil (or so self-absorbed as not to care about other people) and/or in league with demons or other icky-poof things.

Combat is more meaningful, there are always challenges to be overcome and power creep is basically a non-issue. Attrition is much more important (lack of healing is great in helping this happen) and leads to very dramatic situations.

My players still have nightmares about the area beyond the Thunder river (Pict lands)...

 

[vazanar]

Of the last 4 campaigns, only one had a mage (and only two a cleric). To be fair one was in the Iron Kingdoms (so gun mage, ogrun, theif and heavy pirate theme) and another had an Artificer. Heavy potion buying (Ptolus)and use magic device, but worked fine.

 

[Hussar]

My World's Largest Dungeon campaign featured no wizard. It just meant that all the shortcuts are not available to the party, so they have to slog through EVERYTHING. Otherwise, I don't think it was a major issue.

The last campaign I played in was Eberron, and we had no wizard, just an artificer. Again, it just meant that we slogged a lot. At higher levels, my Binder became the Swiss Army Character for problem solving.

So, yes, it's certainly do able.

 

[Phlebas]

in the eberron campaign i play in we have an artificer instead of a wizard
(rest of party is Bard/investigator, Cleric, Shifter Ranger / weretouched master, Warforged Fighter)

the artificer player is quite inventive and happily uses wands or bane weapons for blam-blams, though we are a little cashstrapped to make the maximum use of his skills.

not a major issue though at lower levels we probably should have invested more in missile weapon skills to compensate for the lack of ranged attacks. instead our combat style consists of the shifter jumping onto the BBEG and hoping to stay upright long enough for the warforged to hack through to him....

the bard is bufftastic though so we tend to make do the unsubtle way

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

One of my favorite campaigns ever, done in Eberron, had no arcanist in the party at all, unless an assassin counts. I was a Changeling Rogue who focused on charisma skills, including UMD, and ended up serving as the party arcanist. We DID have a psion, but he really shouldn't count, due to sledom being helpful. The character was a chicken, and the player RPed it well, blowing almost all his PP every day on AC and defense boosters. We did have a cleric and druid, so there was other caster support. Party worked fine, aside from our RP disfunctions (cowardly psion; druid on numerous occasions effectively walking off the battlefield cause he didn't think we should be fighting who we were; me and the assassin hated each other's guts, with him constantly trying to bully me and my fondest memory being when I got dominated and told to kill him, so I could finally beat the crap out of him w/o getting in trouble with the party...)

Soon as my next campaign starts, it will be gestalt, with no sorc/wiz at all. I'm doing cloistered cleric on one side, heading for Shadowcraft Mage, so later on I'll be able to pretend I'm an Evoker or Summoner pretty darn well. Also will have a Favored Soul, another palying a Bard (going into Warchanter, so he'll stop progressing as a caster), and a 4th person entering into assassin. So, fairly good divine casting, very little arcane. I think it'll work out just fine.

Finally, it really shouldn't count, but the way the OP asked it... I was in a Final Fantasy styled game once, where there were no Wizards. At all. Party had two Black Mages (Sorc), one Red Mage (modified Bard), one White Mage (bastardized hybrid of favored soul and healer), and one Fighter (guess what class?). So, the party had arcana overload, but per the OP's question, had no "wizards." That party did just fine.

 

[Fenes]

I never saw a wizard character in 8 years of 3E games. None at all. Two sorcerers, one bard, that's it for 3 campaigns and two groups.

 

[hanasays]

I ran a 3.5e game which didn't have a Wizard for a while.

The player who had originally rolled a Wizard decided that he hated being a Wizard. He instead rolled a Fighter-Cleric multi-classed character.

That party actually did fine for a while, even though there was a Fighter, a Fighter-Cleric, and a Rogue. I believe the Cleric went with the Evil domain, though. They still had some close calls where a Wizard or Sorcerer would have been very useful. Once the Fighter was able to take a henchman, he got a Warlock to fill in that gap.

Since I was using the campaign to train my brother on how to DM, we switched roles halfway through - his Fighter-Cleric became a main villain in the campaign, and I stepped in as a Wiz-Bard.


I've never played a campaign with no spell-caster at ALL, though. That sounds terrifying.

 

[Noir le Lotus]

I once played a game with an unusual group :

Elven Female Bard
Elven Male Rogue/Fighter
Dwarf Male Fighter/Cleric
Human Female Ranger (NPC hired for guiding the party)

And that game was excellent because every one had a double role => the bard used her knowledge and healed the party, the dwarf was a solid fighter and could heal if necessary and as the rogue/fighter, I used my skills to the maximum and shined in combat.

Despite a not so well designed adventure, everyone had a lot of fun and I would really like to play more games like this ...