The Wizard Archtype

[Stormonu]

The archtypes that we grew up with and know often define what we expect from our role-playing games. In the case of D&D, what are the character archtypes (by name) that you associate with The Wizard? If you can, give a short (one-paragraph) description of the way in which this character displays his wizardly abilities. Please also note the source (movie, novel, comic, etc.)

Why am I doing this? I'm curious to see how people envision how the wizard should be, and from where they are pulling "what a wizard should be able to do".

 

[pemerton]

When I think of wizards in fiction, I think of sorcerers from Conan like Xaltotun and Thugra Khotan; legendary figures like Math, Gwydion or Circe; the "NPC" mentors of romantic fantasy like Merlin, Gandalf or Obi Wan Kenobi; plus any number of comics charactrers, from Dr Fate and Dr Strange to weird entities like The Inbetweener.

These wizards do things like enchant people and objects (hypnosis and/or illusion, levitation, TK etc); receive oracular visions; and occasionally use magic to ensare their foes (eg with the Rings of Raggadorr). Many are also summoners, though summoning creatures from beyond is often taxing and/or dangerous.

D&D wizards have never precisely matched any of these archetypes, are very poor for some of them (eg the weapon-using ones), and have to share terrain with conceptually overlapping classes like druids, clerics and sorcerers. The D&D wizard who regularly consults mystic tomes to refill his/her brain with magic isn't an archetype I associate with any fiction other than Jack Vance (of which I've read only a very little).

A wizard should be able to do stuff using magic, but what exactly that "stuff" is I'm not too fussed about. I would add, though, that highly reliable creation, clairvoyance or teleportation - all things that are notorious for causing headaches in fantasy RPGs - are not abilities that I particularly associate with the wizard as a fictional archetype.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Well my real intro to the Wizard archetype was DnD and, especially, Raistlin Majere. So to me a Wizard is as given in DnD, until 4E. Weak and puny throughout, not very powerful until higher levels/experience age, tho still a terror to those who know nothing about magic. A great Wizard is more dangerous than any other thing on the planet. Not ideal for a balanced party!

The first Wizard I read about was Gandalf, however he was never a Wizard to me as I quickly discovered he was a demi god type character.

 

[Aenghus]

I have the feeling that in mythology, wizard archetypes tend to be NPC plot devices, while the protagonists tend to be the fighter archetype. Mythological wizards tend to be capricious, elusive, frustrating and unreliable - the archetype includes supernatural creatures, the feebler wisdom deities, and some of the trickster entities. Of course mythology consists of stories which don't prioritise consistency or logic.

When D&D translates the wizard archetype from a NPC plot device to a PC class, there are multiple hurdles. A weak and feeble PC whose only strengths are magical power and knowledge needs to have significant magical power to be viable. If they are going to lose any physical confrontation in any case, trading even more physical potential for extra magical power may be a no-brainer choice. Powers which are fine in the hands of a NPC as a plot device, may be disastrous or useless in the hands of a PC. PC magic needs to be systematic and predictable in a way that it often isn't in mythology.

My idea of the wizard archetype is informed by the various D&D classes and the mythological examples. I think the archetype is just too big to allow a single member of the class to be allowed to call on the whole archetype. For PC wizards, I prefer the idea of specialisation, as allowing wizards to do literally anything better than anyone else marginalises every other class concept. Illusionists, Enchanters, Necromancers, Shapechangers, Invokers etc can be valid concepts with some work. I think generalist wizards need to pay a price for their versatility in raw power compared to specialists.
One benefit of this approach IMO is that it's easier to include a physical wizard concept with less flashy magical power and more magical enhancement. Another is that a less vulnerable wizard archetype doesn't need automatic win buttons for spells.

I realise I've mixed archetype ideas and mechanics here, but couldn't figure out a way not to.

 

[Li Shenron]

Staff, robes and pointy hat.

 

[delericho]

D&D wizards should aspire to be Gandalf or Merlin, but should actually be rather more like Rincewind.

 

[Bluenose]

The first I remember reading where someone with clearly magical abilities was also a/the protagonist was The Incompleat Enchanter, with Harold Shea. He preferred to solve problems without magic, given that it wasn't the most reliable ability he had, but could improvise something in an emergency. What form that would take varied depending on how imaginative he was, what he needed to do, and what was available. So animating brooms to fly himself and Heimdall out of Hel, filling Aeneas' ships sails with wind to escape the fall of Troy, and a variety of other tricks. Since magic wasn't usually repeatable by a single caster, he had to come up with something new each time. Some of de Camp's other books also featured wizards who were part of a group of protagonists.

Ged, the wizard of Earthsea. He's less physically capable and uses magic when he thinks it's safe to, which isn't all the time. Using his intelligence often serves him better than displays of magical power.

I assume Pug from the Midkemia stories also counts, though since he's supposedly derived from a D&D campaign his abilities (which aren't that similar to a D&D Mages) are fairly predictable.

Merlin in TH White's Arthur tales is another I grew up with. He probably comes closest to the "wise adviser" archetype, though he does occasionally take action himself rather than showing Arthur what to do.

And if we go outside books, Mickey Mouse in the Sorceror's Apprentice is an interesting example of what happens when you try to use magic you can't control.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

From reading lots of RPG game novels, I've come to the conclusion that, after D&D came out, no one knew how to write a wizard.

For instance, I recently read the D&D comic (the one from 2011 with Fell's Five). One of the main characters is a warlock (note, no wizard and no cleric!) and all of the main characters had their character sheets (PC-style, not monsters) given in the comics.

While the plotting and art were great, I couldn't tell the warlock was a star warlock until I read her character sheet. I never saw her use any ability but Eldritch Blast.

In various other D&D-based works, I've seen the same thing. Parties rarely have a wizard, and clerics are even rarer. Spellcasters are underrepresented (if you have 7 main characters, maybe one will be a wizard), and "full" casters are rare (more likely you'll have a bard or monk/artificer than a wizard or cleric). Spellcasters are often weakened in some way (the wizard character in Threats from the Deep is flat-out stated to be a weaker wizard who seemed good only for making ships move faster), they run out of spells very fast (often a 400 page book will take place over only one or two days, so mages can't recover spells), clerics never cast healing spells in battle and out of battle, healing is slow and never complete, etc.

Although on occasion an RPG book will swing the other way. You have casters who never run out of magic, are all smarter than Stephen Hawking with a time machine, and use a wide variety of never-been-seen before spells to solve each and every problem. You'll have the Chosen of X whose priest spells don't work like anything in the books.

The War of the Spider Queen series was one of the few exceptions I've seen to this. There were six main characters. One was a wizard, and all the female characters were clerics (at least one was a full cleric), although Lolth was asleep at the time, so all the healing had to come from a wand.

The characters were quite high-level. The wizard, Pharaun, was stated to be 19th-level in Dragon Magazine. He was written as if the author were familiar with D&D, a complex task as the series was six books written by six different authors. The spells were virtually never named, but the descriptions made it clear when he was casting things like Power Word Stun, Wail of the Banshee, Passwall or Sending. (Unusually for a FR novel, when Archmage Gromph receives a Sending, he wasn't able to reply properly. Wording a response of 25 words or less with virtually no warning is difficult, even with brains and experience. Glad to see someone writing realistic wizards.)

Pharaun could run out of spells, but that took a while (19th-level wizards don't tap out that fast). There were a few utility spells he tried to avoid using. He didn't want to Teleport to the destination because he wasn't familiar with it, and he avoided using Shadow Walk at first until things on the Prime Material became so bad he thought the risk was worth it. (It wasn't!)

A few other good examples, although they don't involve parties (being pre-D&D, mostly) were The People of the Black Circle (a Conan story, there was a bunch of wizards, but the one who killed the barbarians with Cloudkill is the one I'm thinking of) and Hristomilo from the Grey Mouser series (he could cast Web, and apparently also Cloudkill... what is with that spell?).

 

[Neonchameleon]

Being slightly flippant, what I associate with a wizard is someone who can use magic ... but doesn't. That statement isn't as flippant as it sounds. When I read my mythology, magic always has a price - and very commonly works monkey-paw style. Even when this isn't the case there are things like Ringwraiths waiting to hunt wizards, and the question a wizard needs to ask before casting any but the most trivial spell is "Willl this be worth the cost"? And where they do use magic it's normally subtly to the point you can barely tell the difference between magic and skill - or enchantment or illusion.

Now sorcerors are a whole different kettle of fish. Sorcerors fundamentally don't care about the cost and have opted either for a short life or have found some way to pass the cost onto other people. Magic never comes without cost.

D&D wizards have never precisely matched any of these archetypes, are very poor for some of them (eg the weapon-using ones), and have to share terrain with conceptually overlapping classes like druids, clerics and sorcerers. The D&D wizard who regularly consults mystic tomes to refill his/her brain with magic isn't an archetype I associate with any fiction other than Jack Vance (of which I've read only a very little).

Honestly, I find the best match between mythological wizards and D&D wizards to exist in the body of the 3.5 Bard. Sword wielding? Check. Skill beyond the mundane, especially with respect to persuasion? Perform (Oratory), fascinate. Avoids flashy magic and most of their magic is coincidental? Check. Or backs up their skill? Check. Loremasters with some divination? Check.

(Oh, and Cloudkill is Mustard Gas, which terrorised a lot of people).

 

[MDK]

I can't seem to post the image here, but this link to me is the archetypal wizard (not surprsising as it's directly based on D&D )
http://www.geneticanomaly.com/RPG-Motivational/slides/wizard.html