I have a few rules, if its in the spellbook its fair game, otherwise I lean into the specs I run with. Sylvare is protection, the lore there is seemingly that the paladin empowers their own body with light to naturally become more tougher and harder to injure so that’s my theme for using it, other then that I still have spells, some abilities have a radiant damage type so Sylvare can wield radiant damage, but other then shiny sword swings all actual spells I cast either come from the spellbook or the talent tree.
My powerlevel decision is very simple, I will put myself on equal ground to my opponent, with no exception. I am not here to be a punching bag and I find battles where I overpower greatly very boring so honestly if someone would disagree with that method I’d just look for someone else to fight because I know I’ll not have a good time fighting someone who has an ooc conviction they should win or be in a situation where I’m basically bullying a weak character in a RP PVP setting
Events and NPC’s are different for (hopefully) more obvious reasons.
Valis is designed to be a very powerful magic user, though it’s got very little to do with his spellcasting ability or knowledge, but rather he can simply hurl massive amounts of mana into his spells to vastly boost their effectiveness. He’s a battering ram, portable artillery, portable bunker, however you want to put it. A nuclear reactor for mana, you could say.
As a spellcaster, he’s average. He’s intelligent enough but most mages will outshine him in that department, and he struggles with complicated spellwork and the theory behind it. He’s a classic D&D sorcerer in that respect, he just does magic and does it very well. Though he can learn when he really focuses and puts his mind to it, usually only when it’s needed or he’s taken a particular interest - for example polymorphing.
He’s definitely more suited for combat and has specialised in that - he is extremely good at offensive magic, shielding and teleporting, including Mass Teleport, the latter mostly through an instinctual connection with the leylines.
What holds him back in combat is usually a wariness of collateral damage. It’s rare that he’ll get to fully unleash because he’s normally defending something he doesn’t want to damage or fighting alongside allies he doesn’t want to harm, his morals and personality are such that it would take an extremely serious situation for him to consider dropping his aversion to collateral.
For teleporting, it’s simply narrative, if the story doesn’t call for him to teleport, then he won’t and I can come up with any number of reasons why teleporting wouldn’t work.
My mage has a wizard brother, who runs the Dancing Broom Inn, who dedicates his magic to conjuring the finest ales and enchanted delicacies. Wayfaren will often opine that the world would be a better place if more mages followed his brother’s example, and yet his own conjurations taste awful. This is usually just played for laughs, after all it would be very useful for a wizard constantly on the road to be able to feed himself, so why can’t he? Food for thought… it’s easily missed, but to me it signals that he does not necessarily practice what he preaches, and if you were to pull at that thread you might reveal even deeper character flaws. Again, why a character cannot use or is not proficient at a given field of magic can reveal just as much about his story as why he favours some other element, maybe even more.
On power levels, I think (hope) I can often get away with some big spectacular displays of magic because Wayfaren is coded as a supporting character, the guide/mentor/Gandalf-Obiwan-Merlin-archetype, he is clearly not the main hero of the stories he’s inserted into, and he’s already at the end of his journey of discovery where magic is concerned, so the thought of him acquiring more power is not something that should be encouraged, but a clear warning sign.
I love how the arcane is described by the glyphs and early mage trainers in classic, a double-edged sword, alluring and dangerous even for the brightest, that’s a very strong throughline with how I treat magic in roleplay. Honestly, I could go on and on…
This has a huge appeal to myself as well. The danger aspect is why I have, even after all these years roleplaying her, kept Acrona struggling with finesse the more energy she harnesses; even if you’ve got power, it doesn’t always make you powerful in terms of success. Sometimes things backfire. My character is acutely conscious of the risks and consequences, which often holds her back.
Some of my fond roleplay memories involve Acrona’s allies scolding her about a bit of friendly fire, or exchanging troubled looks being unsure if she was going to blow them up instead of the enemy.
Sometimes you only arcane-dust a glade when a spell goes awry, and still feel terrible afterwards (please don’t tell the druids)
The two-edged sword plays an important part in my private storylines and the stories in my head. I enjoy the internal struggle it gives Acrona, who grew up in a society that shunned the practice of arcane magic and the Highborne’s reckless use of it. Being addicted to magic after one of her story arcs, but also not wanting to use arcane for mundane things such as lighting a campfire, unless necessary, is a fun balancing act for me.
For Silyse, she’s simultaneously a Mage and a Death Knight. Obviously a good deal of Cryomancy comes with that territory, but that’s rarely ever been her actual focus for her studies and practices. Her skills in Illusion have carried over into undeath, but they’ve become just that. Skills to hone and use, not interests to pursue.
Her main, actual interests in magic now are Enchanting, as since losing her innate connection to magic, she became obsessed with the idea of forcing the arcane into the mundane, and the rather obvious Necromancy (though that’s a bit hush-hush (at least she tries to be)), Domination in specific, since she’s long-since grown tired of being dragged through the mud by fate.
Obviously, if you give a Death Knight mastery of the Arcane, that’s going to be overpowered. DKs are strong, brutal, resilient and often pragmatic, everything a mage isn’t. How I (hopefully) prevent this is through an Achilles’ Heel approach, and by properly meshing together the two class concepts.
Silyse sets herself rules. No Necromancy unless as a last resort. It matters greatly to her that she can resolve a problem with her own skills, and not the raw power of Death, and she detests raising the dead unless she absolutely has to.
Even then, though, she’s pragmatic in most matters. To a fault, however, as she’ll often stick to the bluntest, most brute-force approach possible, which is frequently incredibly unintelligent.
But more importantly, due to the circumstances of her death, Silyse is extremely limited when it comes to the Arcane, and true to most Death Knights, she’s utterly incapable of using it, at all, without her weapon, particularly her staff, that in itself serves as her mana pool and a conduit for casting. Take her staff from her, and she’s still a formidable fighter, but that’s it.
Friendly approach wherever possible, which in case of the spirits of Pandaria means about all the time. She even calls herself a brewmaster since the self-made brews are one of the main ways for her to get along with the spirits (and the empty barrels make for some neat totems, too). Being from Zouchin, she has affinity towards air and water, fit for the daily life at the seashore, while the other kinds of spirits usually take more efforts or time to use effectively.
Some heavy combat and territorial restrictions. It was a shock for her when she left Pandaria for the first time and found that the spirits about anywhere else don’t quite appreciate the friendly approach, often treating such methods as weakness. Hence, away from Pandaria or the Wandering Isle her ability power drops significantly, and being rather bad in close combat without the spirits’ help doesn’t aid it either. Another issue is that she doesn’t summon the elementals in battle unless lives start depending on it. You just don’t put your friends in trouble in your stand, and even if help’s needed to this extent she’d rather take a blow for the elemental than let it happen vice versa.
By trying to be complicated about the spiritual matters. Being extremely dependent from the environment, a shaman can be rendered all but useless if the spirits around are hostile by any reason, tainted, or simply not present by any reason. So, the worse the situtation around, the harder the shaman’s life, and even if she knows how to solve a problem there’s no guarantee it can be done at all, or quickly enough.
This resonates. I was with a group a while back, who had to defend a remote village in Arathi from a host of brigands coming down from the mountains. Wayfaren carefully prepared a spell to repel the bandits, gathered the necessary reagents, drew the circles of power, but the rush of power after a period of arcane abstinence was so great, that in his hubris he not only destroyed the brigand army but the entire village as well.
I live for those moments, when you lean into archetypes as heavily as I do, those moments of “Oh no, Gandalf just nuked the Shire, what do we do?” are immensely satisfying to act out.
Adding to that, I like playing around with what it would actually do to you, to have the power of a god at your fingertips, I imagine it would warp the perspectives of even the wisest and most well-intentioned if they are not very careful.
That sounds like a cool event! How did his companions react to it all?
Absolutely. This is something I particularly think of with the rest of the Winterflows, especially with Acrona’s mother whom I hardly play but who exists for story purposes. I imagine her the strongest of all my characters.
When thinking about the ”arcane is corruptive” line, I like to think it’s partly because, if you feel you possess the power to change things for the better (from your own perspective, for whatever goal), it can be damned tempting to go for it. The human nature is more often than not craving for something more, and we’ve all seen selfish people in power doing things not because they should, but because they can.
Do they focus on a single discipline or dabble in multiple areas?
For Charles I had him focus on: Transmutation, abjuration and conjuration. Dabbling in other schools recently, purely for professional and educational purposes.
What drives their specialization (or lack thereof)?
Recently more detective-based use of magical elements, however previously more educational purposes.
What limitations do you set to avoid making them feel all-powerful?
I don’t think I set any limitations really, just emote/cast stuff that I believe feasible enough for Charles without being OTT. Besides being too powerful I think would be boring, and having a more grounded approach to magical usage seems to have more merit to me at least.
How do you engage in roleplay without always having the perfect solution?
Turn to other people, knowing limitations allows to pull in other people to otherwise perhaps restricted RP situations. Like Charles doesn’t know anything about necromantic based magics, so turns to those would have a clearer understanding of it.
I have a fair mixed selection of magical characters so I think I’ll do it for two that are rather different, my Forsaken and my Vulpera, both being mages.
My Forsaken focused primarily on Frost magic but HAS dabbled in the other areas of Arcane magics like portals and counter-curses. (She’s also delving into Necromancy in her quest to become a Lich)
Her drive is mainly due to her being undead, she found that to better resonate with the colder aspects of magic and always could better conjure that than fire or the raw arcane for attacks.
My Vulpera meanwhile started off with Arcane as his primary means of attacks and skills, but has since started to delve into Fire when the Nerubians resurged and Dalaran fell (while he was on it too, rip).
HIS drive is to just improve, learn and master what he can.
My Forsaken is limited only by her knowledge, she doesn’t exactly have much capacity to cause a fire or turn back time, being undead she doesn’t need to worry about physical stamina but her mana reserves CAN be depleted after extended combat, and someone with fire can always melt through her ice.
With her in RP I don’t immediately offer a fix to a problem if nobody asks her, directly or indirectly, she’ll mind her own business until someone comes for her knowledge.
With my Vulpera it’s more obvious of his limitations, he lost an eye and an arm when Dalaran fell so his sense of sight isn’t so great anymore and the arm currently is managed by a flimsy prosthetic of a mana gem in a leather harness, he needs to actively conjure the arm to use it and the gem can and will overload and break after extended use, and the arm itself can be counterspelled, plus he can be overwhelmed in a fight if it gets too big and too loud, drowns out his focus. He also cannot portal to anywhere he’s not been before and requires a focus to lock onto, things he himself plants wherever he goes.
In RP it’s more the same with my Forsaken, he doesn’t immediately offer a fix to the solution if nobody asks him, he’ll stay in the background unless someone asks him and even then it’s not ALWAYS going to be something he can do and he’ll say it, his knowledge is limited.
I picked this quote specifically, 'cause this right here? This is the sweet marrow juice at the core of mage roleplay for me. There’s been plenty of discourse already in this forum on the meat and potatoes of what schools someone specializes in, how big their mana bar is, and how as an collaborating co-writer to RP-events you ought to read the room, upscale and tone down power when needed, so I won’t add to it much.
For me, the sociopsychological is where the thrill and intrigue of playing these types characters lies. What are the contours of magic as an institution in their society? How much does a Nightborne’s cultural identity hinge upon it; what are the depths of trauma the trolls bear from its resulting atrocities? What historical and personal events inform a character’s stance on liberating the use of magic or encasing it in privileged chambers of study?
This is essentially a preamble so I can link a short story I wrote last year breadcrumbing people to these aspects of Torkazi, specifically: https://www.argentarchives.org/node/272120
Torkazi is an Arcanital and worships my homebrewed version of Ksu’la as the Loa of Ambition and Power; a Wild God whose natural domain is the ley-lines themselves in a pseudo-Jormungandr’esque deal (although the Arcanital debate whether he swims in the ley-lines or is the ley-lines to this day.)
Ksu’la represents the caustic, megalomanic allure of the Arcane - not simply of its energies - but the poison that festers in the heart of every sorcerer; the feeling of being able to do anything without anyone being able to stop you. This drive is double-edged, as Torkazi believes intent is the key to mastering such power; if you are not nakedly honest before the Loa about your latent lust for power, why would you deserve it?
Anything worth doing in life can be done with the skin and muscle of your own hands: raise a family, till a field, wield a sword, build a temple. The Zandalari society is strictly non-magical, it’s spiritual. Manual labour is vaunted and the populace’s Loa-given duty and privilege, and most magic harnessed is a blessing from the very-real-Divines that dwell amongst you.
Accepting your ambition and swallowing the poison, that even still you desire for more, is the first rite of passage to wielding the Arcane in Ksu’la’s name. Afterwards, begins an endless, undulating Snake Way of ever-chasing for greater heights for greater rewards while maintaing a strict doctrine of discipline and austerity - lest you be swallowed by the great serpent for giving in to your hubris.
Briefly, reading the room and finding a niche that Torkazi himself is the most apt for all the while being willing to take L’s gets me far. The paradoxical and ultimately hypocritical austerity Torkazi espouses in frivolous uses of magic both acts a grounding element and as a way for others to shine more, while letting me feel all special and smug by highlighting that he’s not your typical mage, hmh-hmh.
I scale to my opponents. If it’s just some grunt/footman type, you get the axe to the face and a few spells. If it’s hero/adventurer high fantasy type, you get everything and the kitchen sink thrown at you.
Kind of related to this, if you’ll forgive me yapping about something else for a moment. I’ve recently been reading The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Levi, 1854, as inspiration for RP because my main character revolves a lot around both occult and gothic themes. The book describes the history and philosophy of occult practices in real life, and one particular quote stuck with me.
A lazy man will never be a magician. Magic is exercised at all hours and at all moments. The operator of the great works must be the absolute master of himself; he must know how to conquer the attraction of pleasure and the appetite for sleep; he must be as insensitive to success as he is to insults. His life must be a will directed by a thought with all of nature at its service, which he will have submitted to the mind within his own organs and through sympathy with all the universal forces which respond to them.
(…)
It is important that the mage knows the secrets of science, but he can know them through intuition, without ever having learned them. Hermits who live in the continual contemplation of nature often divine its harmonies and are more knowledgeable in their simple good sense than doctors and scholars, whose natural senses are skewered by the sophistries of dogma and schooling.
There also exist certain bodily types better disposed than others to the revelation of the occult world; there are sensitive and sympathetic natures whose intuition of the astral light can be said to be innate; certain troubles and certain maladies can modify the nervous system and can make one, without recourse to the will, a more or less perfect instrument of divination. But these phenomena are exceptions, and generally the power of magic must, and can, be acquired through perseverance and work.
Translating it into inspiration for RP, it’s a damning condemnation of the Kirin Tor types while also acknowledging the existence of the D&D Sorcerer-archetype () but not at the expense of shutting out the Wizard-archetype.
Also that magic is not the tool of the lazy man, but it requires rigorous study and mastery of the self to accomplish. Someone without discipline will never wield it to any effect beyond petty tricks.
It also mirrors the lore established in The Last Guardian interestingly enough, both with the existence of natural born mages, and those who gain it via pure study. Medivh was adamant that willpower is the only thing you truly need to force your design upon the universe, and you will never master the universe if you can’t even master yourself.
He went from being viewed as a benevolent guide to something like a petty greek god whose means and motives were highly questioned; after all, even if the spell went awry, how many other villages might not have been put to the torch without his magic intervention?
The more I read the more I feel Torkazi is the trollish version of Wayfaren, which is doubly funny because a lot of my current roleplay revolves around trolls, elves and themes of original sin passed down from Highborne to human mages.
He presents himself as a wise ascetic wizard, even his robes are humble, and he reveres the supposed ideals of the One Hundred, as a purer era of wizardry out of a mythic past—detached from petty politics à la the Kirin Tor—viewing himself as an heir to their legacy. Ironically, the first of the human magi were not brought up as sages and scholars of magic, they were trained for the singular purpose of being weapons of mass destruction to be wielded against the trolls, and now we’re back to the undercurrent of hypocrisy and why Wayfaren’s mana buns taste like dirt…
Thank you so much for the thread. It is a wonderful topic!
Remethion has become quite powerful over time, so I often had to make sure this power was displayed in a sensible way.
I came with the following distinction: to envision magic not as an instrument for solutions but rather an opportunity for story-telling. I am pulling a Blizzard classic here: “magic is a tool through which the setting can be enhanced or impoverished.”
The thing with magic is that it could do pretty much anything. So I try to keep in mind the atmosphere of the event which I am running, or others are. For example, when it comes to power-levels, my main goal is to make sure magic is interactive and that it enhances role-play, rather than turn it into an universal remedy for every situation.
I talk too much but this is an example in my role-play.
I am going a bit on a tangent here, but one example is an event which I was running. We were facing a very strong air elemental which created a cyclone around itself. It was so strong, that it would deflect all attacks and ragdoll our character’s bodies all around, effectively making conventional attacks impossible. OOCly, I considered an event in which we’d use a McGuffin to blow the elemental up in order to pierce the cyclone, but that solution came across as cheap, as it would be taking away from the players’ characters.
So, instead, I had Remethion devise a spell that would cause adventurers to netherwalk, making them impervious to physical and magical attacks for a short time, and they’d have to use this moment as a window of opportunity to kill the BBEG.
The battle ended up being around creating this window of opportunity for the spellcasting and then executing the assault: players augmented each other with further magic, and one - ironically, it was the"bluntest, most brute-force" character - managed to deal the finishing blow right in-time. I felt it was a very satisfying event on my end, because it gave the spotlight to pretty much everyone: Remethion used advanced magic, another magi got to wield chronomancy to time warp the group, and another went all-out on brute-force, others could heal… and so on.
Much like the example above, another difference between what I called a “solution” and a “tool for opportunities” is the N’Zoth’s encounter. The final beam, with the Engine of Reorigination firing at N’Zoth, is magic used as a solution: magic kills the boss for you. Whereas Wrathion striking at N’Zoth with the shadow priest’s artifact, is magic used to create an opportunity. The latter still does something others could not, but it doesn’t do all the job for you, and only creates a window of opportunity for characters to get to the central stage, rather than the magic itself.
Originally Remethion had a curse that burns his own mana when he uses magic. This has forced him to re-define himself and use arcane at a more moderate-to-low level, relying more on other people in situations where extensive magic is required.
This in turn allowed me to explore a vulnerable side in role-play and gave my character a quest: to undo the curse.
He has gone a long way since I have created him. Now Remethion has achieved substantial progress over his curse. To me, personally, this is one way to re-introduce character “progression” - a fundamental element inside an RPG imho - on a character that would otherwise have kind of mastered the learning curve. As time passes, Remethion is making substantial progresses, and I believe this reflects my role-play too: the more he leads adventures with high fantasy themes and high stakes, the more it makes sense for him to be able to hold his ground too.
In terms of specialization, I role-play Remethion as an ancient elf who has always trained in the arcane, and as such has a vast repertoire of magical abilities and immense magical knowledge, even if I role-play Suramar’s magic as being its own style and tradition, and therefore not always as versatile as other magical traditions who have been out there “getting dirty” in the everyday world, and often he places excessive importance on flair and performance rather than practicality.
His greatest weakness, one I don’t plan to change, is the fact that he is an arcanist that has been living in a city the whole time. This makes him largely unprepared for ambushes and guerilla warfare, or sudden and unexpected attacks, whereas he relishes in areas where quick-thinking and awareness can be applied: controlling the battlefield, keeping warriors at bay, and so forth.
Without his magic, he’d likely go down quickly before a well-prepared warrior.
Remethion's specializations
Remethion was inspired by Suramar’s NPCs, specifically the infamous Duskwatch Weavers that have been the bane of so many raiders (read it as: actually me, dying so many times).
When it comes to specializations, I try to follow Suramar’s magic as it was portrayed in Legion: focusing mostly on pure arcane. In my headcanon Suramar has its own magical style and tradition, and hence Remethion is a great expert in the suramarian arts of warpmancy and arcshaping.
Click here if you want to hear me rambling about what these specializations stand for in character: https://www.argentarchives.org/node/273510
Whilst I don’t actively play or role play a mage character, the basis for Belo’thori is that he’s essentially a scholar of the divine, and approaches the Light like a mage may approach the arcane.
His connection to the Light, in recent times, stems from his people’s already established connection to the Sunwell, and his conviction and belief of his people’s achievements and abilities allows him to tap into this energy source. He was previously a faithful servant of the Light pre-blood knight era, but he now looks at this particular magic in a more academic light.
Because of this, Belo’thori attempts or at least researches applications of the Light in a variety of ways because of how he has seen the Light utilised in recent years. I.E the light forged ships using the Light for propulsion of their ships, teleportation and a variety of other applications including defensive and offensive spellcraft.
An example of this would be his research into Ban’dinoriel and whether or not these defensive systems could be powered by the Light or whether or not arcane golems could be powered by the Light instead of the arcane and so on and so forth.
In terms of his power level however, he’s on par with other established mid-level arcanists/priests, and doesn’t dabble in any other forms of magic, as he truly believes in the Lights capabilities as an alternative form of magic without the side effects of corruption, or at least the temptation of it.
Thought I’d swap to my lizard wizard to reply to this because dracthyr deserve more love frankly.
When making Aedrios I knew he was going to be probably the most powerful character I have on my roster - dracthyr were made with a purpose so I imagine one who was created with the purpose of studying and wielding the arcane would be able to best most mortal magi if he were to ever engage them on equal footing. The problem with this is that I tend to do a lot of hub/social roleplay to build and develop my characters, which leads to the following problems:
Why would a powerful arcanist plonk themselves down in a city and talk with Joe the baker?
and Why would a being designed as a super-soldier forsake frontline duty for conversation?
My answer to both was mirror images - a majority of the time when I’m playing Aedrios, it’s not technically him. It’s mirror images he’s sent out to various locations to learn of the various races of Azeroth that are designed purely for conversation, something which he only does because his kin who were awoken before him insisted that he spends time with the mortal races and learns of them, basically trying to get him to see the world as they currently do. His actual power rarely comes into play because he’s using these incorporeal, easily broken, non-combative forms to communicate with others that he absorbs the information from afterwards, and engaging in any sort of conflict runs the risk of disappating the mirror image before it can return.
Essentially, despite being created with the single purpose of embodying the arcane arts, he can only ever be a passive observer unless he’s present in the flesh - and he’s only ever present in the flesh if one of his mirror images alerts him to a matter that requires his attention. And for that to happen, his mirror image has to teleport to him, communicate the need for him to be there, he has to teleport back to that original location and then try to resolve whatever issue. I like to think that gives enough opportunity to be reacted to, or even to stop it entirely.
Honestly one of the best takes I have ever seen on playing an extremely powerful character who also engages with people ranging from average lowlife joe to the red not-scarlet crusade-crusader.
If all dracthyr roleplayer had that kind of thought about their characters they wouldnt be nearly as disliked as they are.
Thank you to everyone who has been sharing their thoughts! It’s interesting seeing so many different approaches to the topic. Feel free to use this thread to discuss magic more broadly as well, or to ask any related questions.
On that note, for those who may not be aware, there is a Mage-themed Discord server. I checked with the moderators, and they said it’s okay to share here. While the server has been somewhat quiet lately, word has there may be another Mage campaign on the horizon. It’s also a good place to ask fellow spell enthusiasts about all things arcane!
) but not at the expense of shutting out the Wizard-archetype.