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<blockquote data-quote="Fieari" data-source="post: 1689826" data-attributes="member: 16221">Dirk Gently, the hero of two novels by Douglas Adams (&quot;Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency&quot;, and &quot;The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul&quot;) once described his method of navigation.&nbsp; If he's lost, he looks for someone who looks like they know where they're going, and follows them.&nbsp; He says that he rarely ends up where he intended this way, but more often than not arrives at where he should have been going in the first place.Playing a freeform chatroom style game once, I designed a mage character based loosly... VERY loosly, on this principle.&nbsp; He was the stereotypical &quot;bumbler&quot; type mage with a catch.&nbsp; Not once did any of his magic work the way he wanted it too: but it always produced the results that were needed at the time.&nbsp; The character was a lot of fun to play, and despite the fact that everything tended to work out in the end, in fact, everything invariably worked out in the end, his companions became downright paranoid about him using magic, and would rather have done anything but let him cast the next spell.&nbsp; The effects were quite often very detrimental to the party in the short-term, though it all came together in the end for the greater good.I was sitting here thinking about this character concept, and trying to consider ways it could be worked out in D&amp;D terms... I'm coming up with mostly blanks, but that's why I'm posting here... I thought maybe someone might have an idea that could help out.Obviously, any build of this sort would either: A) Require a LOT of DM work/support, or B) Require a LOT of trust in the player's ability to roleplay well, or C) A combination of the two.&nbsp; Basically, either the player says his intent and the DM interprets in a new and &quot;exciting&quot; fashion, or the player does it.&nbsp; But how would things be tied down?&nbsp; What limits would be put in place?&nbsp; How to determine bad effects?&nbsp; Perhaps the exact build I'm looking for isn't even practical at all for the game (which would, quite frankly, be a pity... because in the freeform game it was a heck of a lot of fun) but could something similar be brought about?Hmmm... how about a mage who is only able to cast &quot;a spell&quot;, and then rolls to see what actually gets cast from a list?&nbsp; Thoughts?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Fieari, post: 1689826, member: 16221"] Dirk Gently, the hero of two novels by Douglas Adams ("Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency", and "The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul") once described his method of navigation. If he's lost, he looks for someone who looks like they know where they're going, and follows them. He says that he rarely ends up where he intended this way, but more often than not arrives at where he should have been going in the first place. Playing a freeform chatroom style game once, I designed a mage character based loosly... VERY loosly, on this principle. He was the stereotypical "bumbler" type mage with a catch. Not once did any of his magic work the way he wanted it too: but it always produced the results that were needed at the time. The character was a [i]lot[/i] of fun to play, and despite the fact that everything tended to work out in the end, in fact, everything invariably worked out in the end, his companions became downright paranoid about him using magic, and would rather have done anything but let him cast the next spell. The effects were quite often very detrimental to the party in the short-term, though it all came together in the end for the greater good. I was sitting here thinking about this character concept, and trying to consider ways it could be worked out in D&D terms... I'm coming up with mostly blanks, but that's why I'm posting here... I thought maybe someone might have an idea that could help out. Obviously, any build of this sort would either: A) Require a LOT of DM work/support, or B) Require a LOT of trust in the player's ability to roleplay well, or C) A combination of the two. Basically, either the player says his intent and the DM interprets in a new and "exciting" fashion, or the player does it. But how would things be tied down? What limits would be put in place? How to determine bad effects? Perhaps the exact build I'm looking for isn't even practical at all for the game (which would, quite frankly, be a pity... because in the freeform game it was a heck of a lot of fun) but could something similar be brought about? Hmmm... how about a mage who is only able to cast "a spell", and then rolls to see what actually gets cast from a list? Thoughts? [/QUOTE]

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