Every Wizard in Harry Potter is actually a Sorcerer cosplaying as a Wizard, CMV.
(For evidence, I cite the existence of people who literally cannot perform magic despite years of studying, because HP made the mistake of making itself partly about.... that)
They get arbitrary numbers of spells without tiring (so decidedly non-vancian), they learn new spells by learning the magic words (which is pretty wizard-like) but don't have to write them down or memorize them per day (which is really sorcerer-like)
@Carcer The cartoon was a great representative of the game! With the Dungeon Master being the primary source of conflict, and the acrobat constantly outclassing the wizard, and Tiamat just sorta wandering around randomly
And "natural talent" is a pretty important part of being a HP wizard, but isn't correlated to any of the stats that D&D has (Ron, Harry, and Hermione are all relatively comparable wizards, even though they all have different focus and dump stats)
Even then, they don't appear to be limited in the spells they cast whatsoever, outside of some arbitrary idea of "difficult" that only seems to manifest as "can or cannot cast spell" with the exception of Fiendfyre that'll eat you if you aren't "good enough"
But if they can cast a spell they can do it as often as they like, it seems
@Delioth My actual point is that in HP, "Magic" that humans can perform is characterized as coming from within a person, regardless of the person, which is the only way you can explain characters like Finch, whose entire deal is that he cannot perform magic /at all/ which is..... a curious worldbuilding decision...
HP uses D&D mechanics, except most of the characters are spellcasting NPCs instead of player classes. The only PC is Hermione, who has wizard levels. Harry's the DMPC, with unbalanced homebrew magic rules.
Like, if the D&D conception of a Wizard exists in the HP universe, then he would just be one of those: a person who channels the ambient magic in the universe. But in HP, magic seems to only exist within and between sentient (or maybe just sapient) life.
"Yeah, baby with 2 con somehow had Legendary resistance or something to negate the instant-death spell that apparently doesn't allow a save or anything"
[later retcons into "Mother sacrificed for (effects)"]
Like, I think that was the whole point of the "So you broke literally every single rule we have, but you stopped an evil plot so I guess you're actually the big-time hero" speech Dumbledore gave him while he was recovering in the hospital wing.
Malfoy's the third PC, but he bungled the initial social encounter with the DMPC. As punishment he is forever split from the party, off doing his own sidequests.
If Rowling's interviews are to be believed, Ginny is actually the DMPC, and Harry is the character she allowed her boyfriend/husband to bring to the table.
And then years later, she realized how self-indulgent that was, hence why she started saying Harry should have hooked up with Hermione.
Neville was supposed to be PC #4, but the player couldn't attend most of the sessions, and never got around to learning the spellcasting mechanics, and eventually just took fighter levels
I stand by the statement that Harry's the DMPC though - he gets too much special treatment to not be. Either that or he's also a macguffin and what the players do didn't actually matter since the whole main plot is staged (the Hero can manage to overcome everything without the players, really)
@Yuuki I mean, speaking as someone who wrote an author avatar into the novel I've been trying to write, she only shows up for like ten pages in the novel and is just there to break the plot in half, five books later, if the series is successful enough to merit sequels...
Since most of the plot points are "Harry did something heroic", often with minimal actual assistance (and if it is, it's certainly not from the players, it's from Dumbledore, fake mad-eye, hagrid, his dead family, etc)
What I'm hearing is that Harry Potter, if recreated in D&D, is just a glorified and extensive escort mission except when you fail there's several extra layers of backup because the escortee is also the GMPC (Sirius, dead family, special is-a-horcrux power, etc)
With a lot of cutscenes where the escortee is getting help from not-the-party
Any scene without the PCs is just backstory explaining the quest that they must help with. Like that time the DM had to justify a 1-on-1 session where they tried out the vehicle driving mechanics.
If there was a credible chance any of the "Main" characters could die, the series would have ended with Book 4.
But due to the Anthropic Principle, the story has to happen in such a way where the important characters don't die, because if they did die, the story would be over and the series would end.
ASoIaF is arguably the only plausible counter-example, and even then it's really only because the story introduced a bunch of "fake" main characters and pretended they were real until it was convenient to off them.
Think about it: Tom Riddle is born a descendant of ancient and powerful bloodline (Slytherin), his parent dies and he's sent to an orphanage, he has astounding magical power even as a kid, the first DMPC (Dumbledore) personally meets with him to send him to wizarding school, he's a superstar at wizarding school...
He visibly hates the rest of the party, tries to come up with a tragic backstory that seems fine until you take a closer look at it, and ultimately the DM punishes him again by having his former character kill his current one.
Hmm... I dunno. I figured that they wanted to try out a new character. I'm guessing Hermione since they already have a good grasp on the lore and spellcasting rules.
I'm not sure - have you ever heard of a GM punishing a murderhobo, and then the murderhobo reforming because of it? Knowing human nature, I'd expect the murderhobo would dig in further (and try to revive his old PC who had perfect stats)
Nah, I imagine they agreed the original campaign was too adversarial and combat-focused, so the DM created a less murdery sequel campaign, and the player switched over to a more supportish build
I have a box problem. 90% of all my original magic items either are boxes, or are inside boxes. I try to hide it by making them interesting shapes, but ultimately a box is a box.
It has gotten to the point where if I even so much as mention a box, the words "a box, must be important!" can be hea...
I personally love that question, and how the answers are basically split between "don't put interesting stuff in the box", "put angery stuff in the box", and "keep putting interesting stuff in the box"
@Delioth I think there should be a terducken box. An outer box with angery stuff, a middle box with some good stuff, and an inner box with nothing to make them wonder.
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/158082/32223 Its too off topic for me to leave a comment (as much as I want to), but I had to say this reminds me of a book where the (magician) main character is a specialist in "minor mending", but ends up in a state of temporary near god-hood, and so does a bit of "minor mending" to repair the entire world.
You can leave a comment. Just note that comments can get deleted, and comments that aren't corrections or follow-up questions tend to get deleted first.
@Someone_Evil ah yeah, that would be the name. Great books from what I remember. I remember I was impressed Grossman managed to create a satisfying/happy (but not cheesy) ending, given the buildup.
Hmm.. actually thinking back, I'm not sure many of the things I loved about the books would translate well to TV. I might need to read them again though
@NautArch That doesn't go away. The biggest change after s1 is that the plot gets less focused, and often involves the main characters breaking reality
@MikeQ Looks like I'm going to opt not to continue. I also haven't watched the last season of Agents of Shield.Mostly because I set my DVR wrong and I don't have the first 2-3 episodes.
@Rubiksmoose Can you see if a comment has been deleted? I thought I had responded to one, but it's gone. Just want to make sure it was deleted and not that I forgot to add it so I don't add it again.
Effects like Cutting Words (PHB, p. 54) and Spirit Shield (XGtE, p. 10) reduce damage by a roll, irrespective of damage type (PHB 196). However, single damage rolls can have multiple damage types, as confirmed (for wording) by Jeremy Crawford in this tweet.
How do you know which part of the da...
@NautArch Well I think I just cleaned up all the comments and brought back the ones that looked relevant. As that user was the one that put the bounty down I thought the reasons why might be handy, but I didn't notice you were defending your answer.
@NautArch Nah no worries. I'll just leave them both for now. Unless it starts a huge discussion or something. We can clean it up later after the bounty becomes a bit less relevant.
This came up last game and seems very powerful. A 5th level druid gives each animal an extra 10hp. This let our druid summon 8 boars with nearly double hp (21 instead of 11).
Do summoned creatures count as allies? Should there be a limit to the nunber of allies affected?
@JohnP Oooh, love the turducken box. Love it! No, You'll never encounter one in Salt Marsh, really ...
@nitsua60 Yes of course, hence the switch to velcro fastened sneakers a la Kyle Reese in the first Terminator movie.
@V2Blast True enough, though I do recall a "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" episode where there was some kind of gold flake on the ice cream of the very rich and the very famous. I don't know why !
@Eternallord66 No (at least in my case), but I have been a programmer/systems integrator for 20 years. I have a browser open to a SE site most of the day. Compiling, you know.
You generate system map connection randomly with 4dF (negative is "connect to next in line," zero is "like minus AND next unconnected after that," positive is "like zero AND next unconnected after that"). This kind of map automatically creates choke points, dead ends, trade hubs, backwaters, whatever those mean in an interstellar map or a map of a dungeon or a character relationship map. And then you connect these systems to each other by treating each group as a point on a larger map.
@nitsua60 it’s often hard to know if a question has a simple answer or not. Eg I thought things like “how many comments before they get moved/deleted” and “how do I use the faq” are simple and that someone would just know.
@jgn Nah. Most things on this site are very context dependent and rely on things like common sense and experience over hard and fast rules. We don't have very many rules that are hard, and those that we have are only that way for very specific reasons.
Rolemaster: Session Two. We meet the Werewolf! (Our main combat PC couldn't make it!). My Healer spent the entire combat standing just behind the front-line, complaining that no-one was geting hurt!
user15026
11:19 PM
@JohnP I was like OMG WHAT and then I was like picard facepalm
This came up last game and seems very powerful. A 5th level druid gives each animal an extra 10hp. This let our druid summon 8 boars with nearly double hp (21 instead of 11).
Do summoned creatures count as allies? Should there be a limit to the nunber of allies affected?
