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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ph0rk" data-source="post: 8631998" data-attributes="member: 16266">I am familiar with the concept, but I also don’t expect many mortals to fully grasp that when they are on the cusp of that particular sort of immortality. “Sure, but that won’t happen to me” is an extremely common way to reason past such things.As for the social contract - that only applies when you need other people, and a Wizard with a well curated spell list doesn’t, hence the trajectory.Not really, (though making BBEGs is fun). It’s more an increasing apathy towards the small affairs that comes with power. That isn’t something that necessarily makes someone go full Thanos (also, just 50%? No changes to fertility? I thought Thanos was supposed to be smart ).The more power my wizards gain the less concerned they are with the affairs of ants. I mean people.I left some of the motivations out deliberately, but I don’t particularly care for family based motivations. To me they come off as about as trite and boring as a coming of age story.As for “no one having power over you again”, that’s exactly the sort of motivation that leads to the sorts of character arc I am talking about, because the surest way to get there is to be the one with all the power.But, again, none of these characters is or has been a sociopath (well, ok one Psion was, but that was decades ago), nor a capital-M murder hobo. At least, of the actively causing chaos and mayhem variety. That’s a murder-bard’s job.Instead, they are so focused on the big picture that statements of the sort “we have to save the village” yield a response like “why?”.Prestidigitation, a Driftglobe, and teleportation spells can cover most of that. The last as a rationale to follow a particular moral code is strange, or would be taken as such by these characters.Well, and again, these characters aren’t starting trouble, at least not until I hand the sheet over to the DM to be the next BBEG. That hasn’t ever been a problem. They keep the zombies in a portable hole and avoid summoning fiends in population centers - but they’ll make a zombie out of any old corpse, and they will summon those demons.I wouldn’t mind a more Faustlike (or Frankenstein like) arc as a result of it all, but it doesn’t come up much. See also the creation of their own named spells, but that’s all asking for a lot from the DM.I also imagine the formal training of most wizards as designed to highlight these particular qualities. This is based on a little bit of Dying Earth, a little bit of Stephenson’s Anathem and a little bit about how modern apprentice training tends to work. The sort of wizard college you spend a decade or two at will, in part, do it’s damnedest to tear down who you are and make you into what they want you to be (because that is what they think will make you the best sort of wizard, which brings the school prestige) and that has lasting effects. I also, if I were to think on it, I assume that solitary wizards that try to train apprentices simply end up with warlocks or sorcerers; it is a huge amount of work to train up a person completely and train them in aspects of a profession you are not yourself a master, and I just don’t see it working out that well (the Jedi sure seemed to botch it pretty badly whenever they went to a master and apprentice model).Or: If my wizards were more attached to the world around them they wouldn’t have become wizards in the first place.Oh, and in the case that a longtime master/apprentice relationship does work out, huge chunks of the inner workings of the apprentices moral compass come from their teacher, and I suspect that person isn't much of a team player - or they'd be a part of a team rather than a solitary wizard.</blockquote>

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