All Wizards - A Campaign Idea

[Rokes]

I've been toying around the idea of running a campaign where all of the players are playing as specialist wizards, each with a different specialty. The start of the adventure would be something along the lines of:

• They're members of a powerful wizard's university.
• The school is attacked and they "wake up/regain conciousness" with the school mostly burned to the ground.
• They and maybe a few select NPCs are the only survivors (non captured at least).
• I would imagine that their adventure begins by investigating what happened, with all sorts of clues to who did it, why they did it, who was captured, etc. (Of course, you never know, and maybe they'll pick themselves up, dust off, and set out to conquer the world instead. )

I've got ideas on how to highlight (and lowlight) their chosen schools throughout the course of their adventuring. I've been coming up with some minor house rules to further distinguish the differences between specialties, but it will depend on which system I use for the campaign. (likely 3.5e or PFRPG)

So, obviously this idea creates a multitude of problems on both the OOG and in-game side of things. Here's a few starters:

OOG - Not everyone wants to play a wizard!

Since this isn't likely to be an established group, I would attempt to make it very clear to potential players that this is what everyone's starting out as. If you die, they'd be welcome to come back as any class appropriate for the setting. Multiclassing would also not be restricted, so Wiz1/Whatever19 is fine as well. (also assuming I don't start them out at higher than level 1 which may be necessary)

In-game - Low HP and poor melee skills at low levels.

This would likely be addressed by summoning and necro abilities. But maybe more clearly handled by the hiring of mooks. I'm thinking of either starting them off with higher than average wealths, or giving them a "credit line" from the school to hire people. Something like that...


So what are the other unique challenges I would face trying to pull off a campaign like this?

Is this idea even remotely original? (I would assume not..) Where has it been done before?

 

[cmrscorpio]

If you want to provide your characters with alternate class features based on their specialty school, there are plenty of good ideas in Unearthed Arcana. If you don't have Unearthed Arcana, the info is available here:

Variant Classes Index :: d20srd.org

 

[Vorput]

Complete Mage (IIRC) had a section on how to fill every role in the party using arcane spell casters. Granted, it included things like Duskblade and such- but it might be worth looking at for inspiration. Some of the ideas and ways they suggested using various spells to fill roles were rather ingenious.

 

[adwyn]

The Ars Magica game, freed from the default Medieval Europe setting, can be a good alternative system for this sort of thing.

For 3.5 I ran a similar game (4 wizards) I worked on expanding the powers of the PCs so that they'd have options for when they ran out of spells.

I upgraded familiars and added some additional minor powers based upon specialty. They each got an additional hit die and if killed would reappear at dusk or dawn the next day with no other ill effect. This made them effective avatars of the fragile PCs. Additionally as a full round action a wizard could commune (Concentration, DC 15+1/mile) with his familiar and effectively swap minds.

Free Reserve Feats - I gave each PC a free reserve feat focused around their specialty.

Blood Magic Wizards could cast non prepared spells by takling a d4 damage to a random physical stat and 1d4 damage per spell level, provided the spell was one they knew.

 

[fba827]

I did something similar in AD&D - was a mini campaign that lasted about 7 levels.
It took a lot of tailoring. And the premise was their mentor was busy with something so he didn't want to go to some mage guild formal party and sent his apprentices to represent him. Had the apprentices meet a variety of NPCs that could serve as contacts later on and other random plot seeds for side treks. When they returned, the teacher had dissapeared. So it was about investigations etc to get the teacher back and such.

With the premise that you listed, if you _know_ everyone wants to play a wizard (or multiclass wizard) great!. But if you already know that not everyone wants to play a wizard then open it up further and say that people can play other classes if they can justify how they fit in at the place (guards, clerics of an arcanee god, etc).

I'd also not "suggest" that the players get hired guards, etc (now if the players come up with that idea themselves, taht's another story). But I say this because it takes the focus off the PCs and on these hirelings -- especially at early levels when the 'wizards" will be very background characters to any combat-oriented npcs.

But also play up on the wizard school speciality differences otherwise people end up feeling like clones of one another.

as far as starting equipment, maybe each of them can find something in the ruins of the aftermath, so you can give a 'free' higher level magic item (maybe give each -player- a list of 2-3 options and then the player gets to choose which one his player will find in the ruins).