In our most recent adventure, the five of us were summoned by three legendary mages, Tasha, Mordenkainen, and Karsus, who sought our aid in stopping Vecna’s dark ambitions.
Unfortunately, their powerful ritual didn’t quite go as intended. Instead of summoning mighty champions, they got… well, a group of barely competent misfits and me . With no other choice, the three archmages opened a portal and sent us into the Underdark to investigate.
We arrived in a shadowy cavern with little around us. As we spread out, Arthur, our bard, discovered two worshippers outside a hidden shrine to Lolth, the Spider Queen. He attempted to bluff his way through a conversation, but when asked how long he had been a follower of Lolth, he foolishly admitted, “Oh, I don’t follow Lolth.” The cultists exchanged uneasy glances before lunging at him. Arthur panicked, teleporting back towards the group as the fight began.
My character, Nox Tenebrosus, a shadow monk with a touch of rogue training, was first to react. Using my speed and mastery of the shadows, I teleported in and unleashed a flurry of dagger strikes and unarmed blows, quickly felling one cultist. Our wizard, Cal, and second bard, Jacob (our resident Jack Black impersonator), followed up with spells to finish off the second.
We thought we’d dealt with the threat quietly, but Isa, our rogue, decided to sneak ahead. Slipping through a door, he tried to [spider climb] across the wall unseen. Unfortunately for him, the lone cultist inside had [True Sight] and watched Isa’s every move. Isa, realising too late, awkwardly crawled back out, without telling us what had happened. Moments later, the cultist calmly opened the door, spotted our party standing in front of the corpses, muttered “Right then,” and bolted into a massive web-filled chamber.
Isa and Henry, our paladin, gave chase, while Jacob and I freed prisoners bound for sacrifice. But as Isa and Henry burst into the chamber, they came face-to-face with a terrifying spider-dragon. They wisely retreated, too late, because the beast sealed the corridor with a thick wall of web, trapping them in place.
Hearing the commotion, I teleported past the web and into the chamber. I closed in on the fleeing cultist, landing a critical strike before retreating to safety. Meanwhile, the spider-dragon tore into our party, pinning everyone in the hallway. Our wizard, Cal, launched devastating lightning spells, but the battle quickly turned dire.
When our druid, Saac, fell beneath the beast, I teleported in closing the space, picked up the druid, and then, using [Step of the Wind], dragged him to safety, and used a healing scroll to stabilise him. With the fight reaching its climax, our wizard unleashed a final storm of [chain lightning], frying the cultist and bringing down the monstrous spider-dragon.
Exhausted, bloodied, and barely standing, we survived, just.... while my character stood in the webbed chamber without a scratch on him.
We thought we’d dealt with the threat quietly, but Isa, our rogue, decided to sneak ahead. Slipping through a door, he tried to [spider climb] across the wall unseen. Unfortunately for him, the lone cultist inside had [True Sight] and watched Isa’s every move. Isa, realising too late, awkwardly crawled back out, without telling us what had happened.
I wanted to create a Bard/sorcerer-like magic user class.
The idea is that the magic user is not magical him/her/themself, but happened to stumble upon an artifact of incredible magic power, a magically enchanted playing card deck.
This item is so powerful it cannot be removed from their possession, the magician can always reach into their pocket and pull out the deck. It will always be there.
Each day, the spells contained within the deck are randomized and assigned to each card, and the deck starts small, with far fewer cards. The mage will have about the same amount of prepared spells as a wizard does, but must draw them from the deck.
How it works, is the player deals themself a small hand, like a blackjack hand or a stud poker sized hand, and high cards (hands containing 1 specific card) are assigned a specific spell, but poker-like hands such as pairs, two pairs, three of a kind, short straight (4 in a row) long straights, short flushes (3 or more of the same suit) and long flushes (5 or more of the same suit), full houses, straight flushes, 4 of a kind, and so on, will deal out more powerful spells, which build on the original spells' power, element, and effects.
So, if I drew a card, the ace of diamonds, and the effect of that spell was a shield of ice magic around me, that is a spell I can use, but only if I randomly deal myself that particular card in a very small hand on my round of play.
Therefore, the kinds of spells available to me each round of play are very limited, and very random.
And I can draw more cards by discarding the current cards, as a bonus action, but I can't play the new cards on the same turn.
Now, suppose I drew the ace of diamonds and the ace of hearts, and played them as a pair. Now, suddenly, everyone in a 30 foot radius focused on the user is protected by a shield that is immune to fire and ice elements, and acts as a barrier keeping out any living thing which can take damage from either fire or ice. It will take a full turn of movement to push through the barrier.
So you can see, the effects of the spells increases in value and range and strength and utility when a better poker hand is drawn and played.
And at higher levels, this class can draw more cards total from their deck, and has a larger deck and more spells to draw and assign to cards.
You can even decide to not assign certain spells at all, to remove them from the deck entirely, when you have enough spells.
The way the cards work is that they are drawn magically from the deck, and expended when they cast a spell, as if the cards are being burned by arcane magical fire that glows various colors like magenta or neon green or radiant purple, indicating magical fire is burning the card.
The magician draws the cards, points them at the target, shouts the name of the spell, and activates the cards. They burn up and vanish from the deck for that day until a long rest happens.
So, the same spell cannot be spammed and the more powerful the spell cast, the more cards are expended and cannot be used.
The idea here is that the Magician, as I've loosely coined this class, will be able to draw from the spellbooks of many classes, including bard, wizard, sorceror, warlock, and cleric.
They will be able to be creative and combine magical spells together into poker hands that are quite powerful and devastating.
The downside is that the nature of the class is randomness and chaos, you actually have to draw powerful cards or come up with ways of utilizing the bad or suboptimal spells you've drawn, in order to be of use.
You also, are generally not particularly tanky unless you've got a spell protecting you up like shield or stoneskin or whatever.
You cannot spam the same spell over and over, don't have a standard blaster spell like Eldritch blast, and you cannot plan out the perfect spell combinations like a wizard.
And the party also cannot rely on you to be a healer because you have to draw the healing spell to use it.
But, you can be a jack of all magics, and also, master each one, because if you play the right poker hand, your spells are more powerful than the class it borrows that magic from.
Example, if you were to draw 4 of a kind where one of the spells is a revivify or resurrection, it will become a mass revivify or mass resurrection spell, as long as it is drawn to your hand.
And this cannot be abused out of battle. You will have limits to how many cards you can draw or discard and how quickly when not in battle.
The cards themselves are made of epic, legendary magic, and cannot be destroyed by any means, even when they're expended, they just invisibly return to the deck to be drawn again.
The idea behind this class is that you're random, chaotic, powerful sometimes, underpowered sometimes, overpowered sometimes, you generally have utility and can fill in for the other magic users or bolster their efforts
And the class uses intelligence and dexterity as the main stats, because you may be able to do feats involving sleight of hand to draw a specific card at will once per day, stuff like that, but it requires a high DC dexterity check to be successful first.
Like a bard, you can also use your magical skills to perform, and use charisma to charm and fascinate people with certain other spells and cards in your deck. You can distract people with your magic, make friends, and amuse audiences for a steady income of some coin, if you do a good job with your perform check.
Wisdom, strength, and constitution aren't particularly needed for this class, but it's not like they hurt.
Intelligence will affect the power of certain spells requiring an intelligence saving throw or check, and dexterity will affect how well you can perform the sleight of hand feats that require palming a card or doing false shuffles to force the card you want to appear.
Charisma will affect your ability to charm, perform, and make charisma saving throws, of course.
Dexterity also helps with your agility, ability to dodge, and handle yourself in combat, since you're probably not built like a barbarian, and having a fencing sword might be of use, or a bow or crossbow, or throwing knives, in case mundane weapons are needed in a pinch.
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The basis for this class is I like playing around with playing cards and I also like the idea of them holding arcane or other magical powers, and the theatrics of drawing a card, shouting a spell, and watching the card burn with brilliant unnatural light and summon a spell.
It turns us muggles with no inherent magical skill into potentially one of the most powerful mages on the battlefield, or in any situation.
But since power is being gained at the expense of reliability, you're trading more power for more chaos and more odds against your success.
A very "gambler" class.
It should also be noted, the cards will continue to be magically protected from destruction even in an anti-magic field, but they will stop producing spells within the field, unless a particularly powerful spell like
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succeeds and overpowers the anti-magic field.
This class being not particularly reliably tanky, and also, often vulnerable to the whims of poor card draws, means that there is ample power being given up at times in exchange for the greater power randomly given at other times.
Higher level versions of this class will be able to produce more cards at once per hand, palm specific cards more times per day, discard and draw more cards per bonus action of discarding, and so forth.
Also, you gain access to higher level spells from every spellbook.
Note- I've played one whole session of DnD irl ever, and am a huuuuuge fan of Critical Role.
I mainly want access to arcane and divine magic and so forth, but I am aware that having access to every book of magic and not only that, more powerful spells than baseline, requires giving up something for balance.
The thing I would give up is certainty and reliability, and rely on gambling and chaos to prevail or fail.
Note also, I don't think the class is actually overpowered as the DM can just throw more and more waves of monsters at this thing and it will fail due to running out of spells or drawing poorly.
If anything, this class is going to fail to be useful in a significant percentage of battles, thus, making it weaker naturally, instead of the DM having to make the party face off against monsters that are immune to the monk's stunning effect in order to have a fair fight.
No, this class is its own achilles' heel. You draw poorly, you become much less powerful than you could be.
Ergo it's balanced, but in the chaotic sense of being unreliable. Whenever you gamble, sometimes you lose.
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I like to imagine this deck of cards was made purposefully to amuse Loki, by a demigod or very high level mortal arcane magic user that is also one of Loki's followers.
That is why it is both arcane and can use divine magic, and, is this level of powerful. Otherwise it would not be an artifact that would amuse Loki.
It is very fine craftsmanship, for a mortal to create something like this. How it ended up in the hands of a low level mortal like you, is a story of its own.
. With no other choice, the three archmages opened a portal and sent us into the Underdark to investigate.
It is always fun to read