note: This is not related to anything else I'm working on, it's just a thought that came to me while tinkering with my computer over the weekend.
For
Practical Wizardry to work you must do away completely with the Wizard or Elf
class. Sorry. This set up probably works
best for a Warrior, Thief, or Cleric, Warrior, Thief game IMO, but throwing
halfings and dwarves (as classes) in the mix changes nothing really.
In this
variant there is no wizardry class and such a thing is not represented in the
setting either. Instead, anyone can
take the patron bond spell if they go through the motions and succeed. And thus
anyone can use invoke magic and, theoretically, the other spells granted by the
patron as they gain levels and so on.
This allows for warriors to be able to call upon a wide variety of
patron specific magic in a very Glorantha/Runequest sort of way.
If one
desired you could certainly then break the patrons available down into a list
available by class; both to keep things manageable and derive some interesting
world building.
I would
think that the characters continue to function otherwise in all ways as their
class normally does in DCC. Where it is
necessary to call upon some magic attribute specific to the wizard class assume
the character has a comparable level in wizardry.
For an even
more Gloranthan take on things, you remove the cleric class, render all the
gods in setting as patrons also, and then hand wave everyone an equal level,
functionally, in the wizard class, but only in so far as if they find some full
actual spell in the wild (which should be a rare but possible event) then one
of them can learn it. No one would ever
likely max out their spell slots, EVER in this variant. Also they don’t get the Wizard’s will saves,
or other things that don’t involve magic (their hd or proficiencies, etc.) This adds an interesting statistical oddity
to the game world as now no one exists that is especially *good* with their
magic. High level spells, even patron ones, would be even rarer simply as most
magic is (as rolled) a bit lower end.
If you want
suggestions for how to break the patrons down by class (and implied race)
that’s up to the Judge and their individual campaign flavor but in a relatively
euro bog standard medieval set up I might suggest that (from the core)
halflings would favor the king of elfland, dwarves would favor Yddgrrl the world
root (poss. As an ancestor) – an equal case could be made in flipping those for
slightly different flavors to the two race as classes.
Men would
favor the Three Fates, Sezrekan, or the prince of wind as their needs dictated.
Bobug, Azi
Dakha, and Obit-que as demons should be available to EVERYONE, likely with the
assumption that culturally, demon magic is bad
