Harry Potter-Style Wizards

[Kisanji Arael]

Well, if one is confined to D20, I would say that an adaptation of the Truenamer might be the way to go. Just add somatic and focus components, and make them... not suck. I would suggest raising the number of lower level incantations that they know and giving them only a few upper level words.

If one's going to venture outside of d20, I think that Mage is actually as close as one is going to get. But then again, Mages in Mage are sort of inherently unbalanced for anyone that doesn't cast magic.

 

[mmadsen]

Gandalf never complained about getting tired or running out of magical energy either...

Gandalf explicitly states that he is tired and the party will have to do without his magical light after he tries to (magically) hold the door against the powerful unseen force on the other side, the Balrog.

 

[javcs]

Gandalf explicitly states that he is tired and the party will have to do without his magical light after he tries to (magically) hold the door against the powerful unseen force on the other side, the Balrog.

As I recall, he had just gotten blown down the stairwell - he's shaken, and probably has some other effects affecting him due to the overwhelming power of the Balrog.

Animagi can do their thing at will ... and gain a speak with animals effect, or some sort of wild empathy.

 

[Meloncov]

I think Harry Potter would work best with a skill based magic system, especially if the game took place at Hogwarts. Charecters put ranks in a skill relating to a a small group of spells, and they make a check to cast the spell. The DC's would have to be low enough that high level charecters could cast low level spells even with a one.

 

[Spatzimaus]

I've actually used the Harry Potter wand system as one of the inspirations for the hybrid Wizard/Cleric class in my homebrew.

Wandless Magic: in rare instances of the book, magic is done without the benefit of a wand (when Harry makes the glass disappear in the snake terrarium, or when Professor Quirrell surrounds the room with fire). And according to J.K. Rowling herself, "You can do unfocused and uncontrolled magic without a wand (for instance when Harry blows up Aunt Marge) but to do really good spells, yes, you need a wand."

Alternate Interpretation #1:
Cantrips don't require a wand at all. This is one I used for our system, although with a Feat we allowed the Wizard to do the same for his "Domain" spells. Most of the things Harry did without a wand could be explained through use of Mage Hand, Light, etc. A "disarmed" wizard wouldn't be completely helpless, but close to it.

Alternate Interpretation #2:
Wands are a substitute for Material Components, and vice versa. We also use this one.
After all, the books contain quite a few examples of non-wand magic: Potions, the Centaurs' prophecies, etc. Effectively, Wands and Component Pouches could fill the same niche; it's much easier to have to keep track of a single focus item, but it's not a necessity.
This also explains all the material components seen in the books. If you're working in a medical ward, it's much easier to keep the three or four common materials used for healing spells on hand than to keep pulling out your wand. Also remember that they're at a school; at home, few wizards would have materials for anything other than the most commonly-used spells (floo powder?), and so would rely on their wands for everything, but at a place like Hogwart's, they'd have all sorts of rare materials on hand.

Alternate Interpretation #3:
Without a Wand, a Wizard must make a Spellcraft roll to see if he gets the effect he wanted out of the spell, with the DC scaling with spell level. In the books, we don't normally see the high-level wizards trying to cast "low-level" spells, so we don't know if wands are strictly necessary for those.

Alternate Interpretation #4:
A Wizard can expend something to cast spells without a Wand. You could have it cost HP, which'd explain why it doesn't get done often. Or, you could take a page from the Psionics rules and have it expend the equivalent of "Psionic Focus", which is why it only happened when Harry got angry, and why he didn't do it repeatedly.

But as others have said, we've seen a single type of magic, from a single school, whose students come from a small geographical area. It could just be an affectation among one small sample of wizards.

 

[Apeiron]

This is a fun thread. If any of you have a GMail account you can set up a document and allow others to edit it. Or, you could use a hosted free wiki to write out the game.

 

[Quartz]

Here's another idea: the school is a Mythal which much enhances spellcasting. Ditto the Ministry of Magic. St Mungo's may be a mythal that enhances healing-related magic.

 

[erf_beto]

As a potter fanatic, I've been tempted to say something in this thread... I'm from Brazil and we had a magazine couple of years ago that presented a "Potter D&D". It was mostly spells expanding the Wizard/Sorcerer spell list, but it had preety much every spell from the books. I can't recall exactly what they said about wands and wandless casting (book six wasnt out yet), and the Animagi were handled with 4th level spell (I think), but you must have a license to practice it... the flavor was good (i have to locate the magazine... might take a while), but I never saw potter world wizards as dnd wizards. They really are more like sorcerers who can learn more spells... anyway, it all depends on what exactly you want to run: a game in Hogwarts (Hogwarts d20?), or bring potter elements into dungeon crawling D&D.

The first should probably have a spellcasting system based on skills, with individual spells being something like those spell tricks (i like the idea of having to cast them a number of times with a higher DC just to learn a new trick/spell). Goes much better with the theme.

The later option should scale like the sorcerer/wizard - and because of that, a lot of compromising should be done... you just can't cast spells all day long! Though one way to force its way in would be the Vitalizing Spell Point Variant ( http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/spellPoints.htm#spellPointVariantVitalizing ). Also, getting bonus sp from a high CON stat might flesh out different characters on the table if everyone is a wizard (though on regular D&D we should probably avoid MAD).

On the subject of undead (ghosts aside), without spoiler'ing much, book six presents another form of undead, the inferi (not sure how the english version calls them). But these are very rare abominations, most people dont really seem to know what they are...

As for potions and magic itens, let's just assume some spells are described as only working if cast on items (like teleport on kettle pot, turning it into a Portus Key) or brewed in the form of a potion (healing, buffs, some polimorphs...). Wizards could be able to cast spells without those items with Spellcraft checks and at increased spell levels - but not everything: potions and artifacts are a great deal in the potter universe.

anyway, just some of my copper pieces...

 

[smootrk]

All this speculation and design work is fun, but has anyone collected the ideas and produced a coherent and complete design for the basic classes involved in a HP World?

Personally, I think it requires a new/hybrid type of 'Wizard' class, and actually when I think about it, having everyone Gesalted with other classes (in addition to a new Wizard Class) would probably be ideal. This is where Artificer/Wizards, or Fighter/Wizards (Hagrid), or the like would work in a 'world' where just about everyone is a 'wizard' or at least can do some magic.

 

[Ilium]

Treatments I've see (and worked on briefly) used d20 Modern as the base, and made all the magic skill and feat driven. That way you can have Strong hero wizards (Hagrid) Smart Hero wizards (Hermione) and Dedicated Hero wizards (Harry?)

The way I intend to do it, if I ever get around to it, is to make "Wizard/Witch" a feat you have to take at 1st level. You either are one or you're not. Then you could have Occupations like "Muggle-born" and "Pureblood" in addition to using some of the regular ones.

I'd be up for a collaborative project on this if you start one, smootrk.