Seek After Wizards, to be Defiled by Them (GLoG: Wizard)

art by Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin

Adventurers have a romantic view of magi. They are not the usual targets of arcane predation-- they have no children to steal, and if the head of state is impersonated by a wandering sorcerer, that's only good for business. Some were even raised by those magic-seeking freaks.

The problem is that all the best spells of slander and double-dealing are easy to acquire if you are a total cad. A wizard is a con artist who has demonstrated their willingness to break seals, read aloud from unknown tomes, and release bound evils. They must be kept from artifacts of power as a matter of simple civilization.

This class works to make PCs without having to roll on a spell list. For powerful NPC wizards, you can just pick up a class like this and roll several magic tools of folklore, or allocate them powers as appropriate.

Wizard

Start with: a long beard, a long hat, a long life, one inventory slot's worth of pure muscle, and a magic tool of folklore.

• A: Ripped, Spells
• B: Signs
• C: Curse Reversed
• D: Domain

Ripped: You can fill up to [level] inventory slots with pure muscle. For each slot filled, you get +2 to most tests of strength (but not attack rolls), and your kung fu deals +1 damage. A week of slovenly living degrades a slot of muscle and a week of shadow-boxing adds a slot of muscle.

Spells: Against foes of equal or lesser power, you may disguise yourself and see through their disguises, tell extremely convincing lies and easily discern their lies, conceal your intentions and know their intentions, make objects appear valuable or worthless, and make ordinary random events go your way.

Against foes of greater power, things are more complicated. You can increase the odds of successfully working a spell (from 0%) by 20% for each of the following conditions met:

• You know their true name!
• They have cheated or wronged you!
• You have put a curséd totém in the place where they sleep!
• You have put something from their body (hair, blood, etc.) into a curséd doll!
• The gods themselves cry out for their destruction!

Signs: Spend an hour in communion with the energy of the world to receive a confusing vision of a topic or question of your choice. This grants at least three significant images, tableus, names, or actions.

Curse Reversed: when you encounter ongoing magics, you intuitively understand a method to undo them. It may not be easy but it is always effective.

Domain: you start to attract the service of strange beings. Every time you seek hirelings, you find an equal number of monsters and extraplanar beings to swell your ranks. When in your home (or home complex), you can project a hologram of your head throughout its extent, seeing and speaking through it.

Magic Tool of Folklore: tables by Signs in the Wilderness, generator formatting by Spwack