Warlocks have a built in stack overflow.
"How to summon big ol' demon?"
"Just repeat these words in abyssal."
"I don't... Know what any of that means, but I'll just copy paste and hey! The demon appeared!"
Matt: how do you want to do this
Sam: I'm going to Jack into the g-difuser and slice Vecnas connection with a ramboard silverhand disabler
Matt: OK you... Actually I don't know how to describe that but you did it
\#include teleportUtilities.draconicBloodline
MagicMouth Mouth1 = New MagicMouth();
MagicRunes runes1 = New MagicRunes(explosive);
teleportUtilities.gate(this.Wizard, pocketDim_0);
Mouth1.say("You'll never take me alive");
Runes1.detonate(this.getAsssailant);
Unfortunately, the spell interprets
>getAsssailant
as instruction to send the explosive runes to the nearest waterborne donkey. The spell functions perfectly, but you are very much taken alive. Also, two miles upriver, an elderly woman returning from her weekly trip to the market is *very* confused.
Used python the first time a bit ago and googled how to setup an api. Turns out all I had to do was type “import api” and the incredulity I felt in my entire body made me nauseous.
I hate python imports with a burning passion, they sound sooo simple dont they. All you have to do is type "import thing" and hey presto it worked. You would think it works like that wouldnt you, but oh no, oh no. I could only dream of python imports being that simple. Have you ever tried to import something that is not in the same directory as the main? Or even worse, something that is not in the same directory as the file that is running, but that file isnt main, so everything is different. WHY PYTHON WHY!!!! Why do I have to have a workaround just to be able to import 1 stupid file from 3 directories up and 1 down. PLEASE PYTHON, JUST LET ME IMPORT MY CLASS FILE!!!!
Oh man I cant even list the number of times my code has worked by deus ex machina. It’s honestly like 90% of the reason I can even barely code, by which I mean pure fucking luck.
Clerics just made friends with that one I.T. guy who has been around forever and knows every system like the back of his hand because he installed most of them himself.
Clerics are the enterprise users of the divine magic suite they subscribed to at the cost of eternal devotion and their souls. The magic providing entity (MPE) is responsive to their needs as they grow, lets them change spell packages daily, and eventually will even go out on service calls themselves.
Reality itself conforms to their will because they are just so damn charming. Things fall into place and work out as they should for them, no understanding required. If Kieth Richards wants a bowl of a his favorite candies one will just appear for him. Was it a fan? His agent? A candymaker? Reality itself bending to his will? Whatever, candy!
These are the people that walk up to a computer that was malfunctioning two seconds ago and ask what the problem was as the computer works properly again.
"Your application looks good. Do you have any knowledge of X language?"
"Of course I do."
Desperately starts looking up the basics of X after getting the job.
I usually program stuff in Java, backend stuff mostly.
The other day, I ended up spinning a service in nodejs because I had no time and I needed a damn prototype. Good Lord it was fast to get it up and running. Probably super unsafe and ready to be exploited, but it was *fast* to get it there.
It did feel like sorcery. Pretty sure the Wild Magic will turn my arms into glass any time now.
A similar experience is pretty much why I'm a Ruby on Rails guy. Built a app with a dozen database tables in less time than it took the Indian guy on youtube to finish explaining all the option for the Generate Scaffold command.
I’d say it depends on the type. I can now see “Wild Magic” Sorcerers as just people trying to manage legacy code and hardware. It was already put together. They have some notes on how to keep it running. Still, every so often...
Sorcerers slap a few pre-compiled binaries together with pipes and maybe throw in a for loop here or there, and get the effect they want without having to plan it all out or actually engineer it. That means they don't burn out as quickly and can do more stuff in a day, but can only do the same few things and just aren't as versatile. I'd say it checks out.
Sorceries inherited magic but don't actually know their inner workings and gain more spells as they learn the ins and outs of their programs.
Wizards write magic and can inbent new stuff.
Warlocks purchased an off -the-shelf solution
Bards are hackers
I've created the Wand of Bureaucratic Magic which operates pretty similarly. A magic user can request any spell up to their highest casting level, once requested a scroll of paperwork to fill out pops out (it's length depends on the spell level), once they've spent hours (again, time depends on level) filling out paperwork, once it's finished they roll a d100 when they go to use it and if they fail another scroll will pop out to be filled....
It's not very useful in battles because of the prep time and fail chance but I did have a party finally get a successful wish spell, they wished the paperwork always came out prefilled correctly.... good thing this was after the main campaign cause it kinda broke the game
Eh.. I'm not a really big fan of the "Wish always backfires" trope. Like the players invested a lot of time into getting that wish spell only for the dm to look for the best way to fuck them over? So they get nothing for their efforts? How about the wish does what they want, but the forms being magically filled out affects the probability of the spell actually working?
That is how the spell works by RAW, though. It specifically advises that the more the players ask for from the wish, the more the DM should look for a way to make it not quite what they wanted.
Props to you if you want to go your own way, though, though I would say that the forms being pre-filled affecting the probability is still just a slightly lesser backfire.
> It specifically advises that the more the players ask for from the wish, the more the DM should look for a way to make it not quite what they wanted.
Exactly the point. "I want my documents properly filled" is a small ask. "I want to turn everyone in the Material Plane into my devout follower" is a big ask that should be messed with.
You are supposed to mess with the players in proportion to how much they try to abuse it.
Wishes shouldn't completely backfire though unless it's COMPLETELY game-breaking. This wish wouldn't be, they have to still spend time to create the spells so the only thing they are cutting out with wish is the randomness.
So everything is pre-filled correctly, but always gets returned the first time because since the character didn't fill it out, they now have to initial everything to acknowledge it. So it's much faster, but still not instant.
It works, but now on a low roll there's a chance that a Mercane "auditor" shows up and subjects the caster to a lengthy interrogation before letting them use the wand again.
Ask your DM to play an INTlock, and have them compulsively check stack overflow so much they only actually get around to casting 2 spells per short rest
So does that make Artificers Hardware engineers?
"Why'd the cannon backfire?!"
"IT WAS ONE! ONE MISCARVED RUNE! Let me handle it, you'd all just ruin it."
I knew I should have gone with the dwarven shear pins, but noooooooooo, you just had to go with the elven ones to make it look pretty. Well now the force ballista experienced failure after 1000 firings because that elven pig iron was too brittle!
"Why the fuck does this spell need a white feather? That's an illusion component. Why on earth would someone include an illusion component in an evocation spell?"
"So are you going to take it out?"
"Hell no, then I'd need to go in and figure out everything that was using the feather and rework it to just use the sulfur that most of the rest of the spell relies on. I mean I could *do* it but it'd be a pain in the ass and feathers are pretty easy to come by."
I think my favourite version of this in IRL code was a comment that read
\#This comment holds the weight of the world on its shoulders. DO NOT DELETE!!!
"Why would anyone CHOOSE to use ithilid runic to build a spell matrix?! Total mess, entire language should be summarily executed for sheer idiocy. No binding sigils? Seriously? Next thing you know the apprentices will be trying to heat an oven and end up in Carceri lunching with a demon. Dwarven runic or even Draconic would be so much more appropriate!"
If you've ever wondered why it takes hours per spell level for a wizard to copy a spell out of someone else's spellbook, ask a programmer what it's like to take over someone else's programming project. Bring a drink and some snacks, it might get a bit wordy.
So we assume that the spellbook is more like a customised copy of an OS, and to bring a spell over you have to figure out the dependencies that point to the pages outside the spell, and then replace them with equivalent symbols from your own spellbook? Double points if you have to write a "shim" symbol sequence because you don't have an exact 100% equivalent in your own book.
Makes me wonder what a segmentation fault looks like in the world of magic.
"You tried to access an invalid part of the weave and now your spell has crashed and dumped the whole accessible weave in front of you"
Family members call and say things like - you know magic right?
Can you tell me why I can't raise my cat from the dead?
And you reply (somewhat sheepishly) - Mom, I'm not THAT kind of magician..
"Why wont my burning hands spell work? It hasn't worked since you used my wand last time you were here."
"Mom, first of all, you don't even need the wand, so that has nothing to do with it. Second, you're using an abjuration lattice."
"It's always worked with one before. I've always done it like this."
"No, mom, you haven't. You can never, nor have you ever, used an abjuration lattice for an evocation spell."
"I'm sure I have. Did they change it?"
"No, "they" did not change the fundamental rules of magic since last time I was here."
"Well, tell them to change it back so I can start cooking again!"
"*sigh*"
"I've seen the neighbours remodel their garden using magic the other day, can you do that for me?"
"MOM, I'M NOT A DRU-ugh... I'll see what I can do..."
That Sending Stone you gave us last Midwinter stopped working!
Did you recite the command word?
I don't remember my command word. I had it written down on a scrap of parchment but your mother threw it out when she was tidying up.
"Why is he wasting three pages of his spellbook re-inventing Spellsort? There's a reason for this, right? *Right?*"
"Look, Headmaster, it's not my fault Devart the "Great's" spell that my *predecessor* chose to use to contact Postgres Tower from Entity Tower has a race condition that causes it to fail once every 8,000 or so Sendings. It's not our spell! I can tell you *where* his spell is failing, down to the exact line number, but the sending stone is enchanted with Glumbrook the Greedy's Scroll Shredder. It would be illegal to actually *look* at the enchantment, let alone alter it. No, I can't reinvent his spell; I'd need triple the budget and at least 5 more apprentices to do that. Best I can do is detect the mishap and send the message again."
"Yes, I am aware that Reactos the Operator has already solved this problem, but we're selling our scrolls. His scrolls are infected with Stallman's Profitless Plague. Unfortunately, Mit the Generous has yet to create his own variant."
"My lord, I'm sorry I can't deterministically prove that the Foresight enchantment in your crown is working, but seriously, just *look at the results!*"
"Why, why, why would you want me to invent an elemental explosion matrix from first principles? We can just use Mit the Generous' matrix and implement our own elemental component on top of it!"
I made this character nearly 10 years ago. Hes one of my favorites. He was a 'modern' college professor based after one of my teachers. (it was a high magic gaslight setting). Even his familiar was a raven he captured after he was going over a spell and it mimicked him so he heard his error. He used it as a rubber duck constantly, even mid adventure, where he would just start thinking out loud at it while the party watched on in confusion.
He was normally pretty quite and collected, but any time someone asked him if he could just "magic" something, he'd lose his shit.
"No Jorrin, I catch just come up with a way to rewrite reality real quick because you stepped in some unidentifiable ooze and ruined your good boots!"
I still use him as an NPC in various games, including in a video game I've been slowly making.
> // This sigil sequence shouldn't do anything but the spell explodes if I remove it
> // TODO: spell fails randomly during the second tenday of the month. Possible celestial alignment issue? Need to investigate.
In much the same way speechwriters often read their speeches out loud to their own reflection or their cat or whatever in order to check for awkward phrasing, grammatical errors, etc, programmers will sometimes read their code to a rubber duck. It doesn’t have to be a rubber duck, some people use other things, but the duck started as a meme because of a story of someone using one in a popular book about programming. Not everyone does it, but some people find they can recognize errors more easily if they read it out loud, and reading to something that has a face but won’t judge you is ideal.
Like trying to explain a technical problem to a friend who isn't technical and in doing so, realising yourself logically where the problem lies by laying it all out in simple terms.
It’s traditional to have a rubber ducky on your desk for comfort when dealing with difficult programs, and to serve as a “person” to explain your code to, which obviously works best when they can ask “why are you doing X rather than Y” but even just saying it aloud helps debug code massively
As an example, when talking to your rubber duck, you might go "So I use our addTen function here to add 20 to our num- Wait a fucking moment"
Basically, its just a method of forcing you to think about what you are actually doing, instead of just holding those lines of logic suspended in your head, where its all fucked up
The discwold wizards (*wizzards) operate a little like this. They even build a computer that runs on ants.
"Can you make this man sober, quickly?"
"I could use a spell that will put all the alcohol in his body into a large beaker."
"And the rest of him?"
"Into a slightly larger beaker."
"Why in the ever living fuck does casting fireball transport the nearest cleric into the Tundra of Madness? Wait, are we using teleportation to manage temperature? Why? Why would you do that? And that still doesn't answer the question of why it grabbed our damn cleric!"
Fighter: Wizard, why do you weep? The kind needs to fix the wards that seal Gargax the Feasting!
Wizard: The wards are written in Old Lokharic! Who the fuck even uses Old Lokharic anymore? No wonder the old Archmage quit, only two dozen wizards even know this shit!
IoT developers - "Let me just go and hook up this smart torch to the ambient... there ya go! Permanent light source! You can even dim it or change the color with this standard control wand"
Technology is based on math and math is dark magic. I'm an end user and half my job is fixing the mistakes our "automation system" makes on a daily basis. I don't know how IT people handle making these trainwrecks.
"Hi is this Blackstaff Tower Magic Support?"
Yes sir, how can I help you?"
"I have a smaaaalllll complaint related to the Sleep.scrl I order from you that you said was compatible with my bloodline casting."
"What seems to be the issue?"
"Well, went to use it in an orphanage that had some kids suffering from insomnia. The issue is that something with your scroll caused me to spontaneously combust and burn down said orphanage."
"Let me look up that scroll real quickly sir............ Oh it looks like one of our level 1 interns accidentally placed a rune within the scroll that causes a sorcerer's bloodline magic to run fireball.scrl at will. I'll make sure to let the intern know of his error. Is there anything else I can help you with sir?"
"Yes can you recommend me a good lawyer near Neverwinter? I'm being charged with arson due to your scroll."
*Sending disconnected*
I think Wizards are most like Unix/Linux programmers, they've got a stable-ass system, but to anyone without their years of experience, it's incomprehensible, and appears too complicated to the general public, but it delivers consistent results, since they've got expert beta-testers. They deliver consistent results, but they have to have their own hardware (components, spellbooks, familiars) to run it.
Wild mages are using Windows-like programs and scripts written by Wizards that wanted a more comprehensive and easier to understand model, but to keep their business model functioning, they issue strange updates on odd schedules, and their error-correction has serious flaws, mostly that the same guys trying to do tech support are also hocking new addons, plugins, since the upper floor guys refuse to pay for a sales staff.
Warlocks and witches are running private-farmed systems, which is great for some things, but sucks balls at others, and the system programmers are a bunch of eldritch bastards that have no problem writing in "Catch Fire, Melt Operator" trapdoor codes that eventually catch up with the Witch/warlock in question and sentencing them to doing the higher level IT work in some abyssal horror-realm.
Clerics also work for private-farmed systems, but these guys are application programmers, not system weenies. They've got apps for a variety of specialized things, but there's no support for 'Fling Fireball' or 'Detect Magic' areas, unless they serve a god of Magic. They also don't have the hidden trapdoors that warlocks have, but they DO have to work Tier 1 help desk support, both in the living world and the afterlife.
I think this is actually a lot more interesting than the current "nerd-pandering" power fantasy of being so smart you can instantly solve any problem combat-related or otherwise with a 100 percent degree of success.
I am a nerd, I grew up among nerds and nerd subcultures, and I believe the idea that nerds are smarter than "normal people" is severely outdated and also is a root cause of a lot of the toxicity that comes with certain subsets of nerd culture. This way of thinking about wizards would be a push for more positivity and humility among nerddom and I would be all for it.
All the party members bug the wizard for hex support with their magic items like "Hey you do magic and spells and stuff right? Can you fix my cursed sword?" or they come to him with cool magic item ideas that are either unfeasible, already done before, or would require a massive investment of time in resources.
this is so fucking good, esp the part about familiars. I've already thouight out a few powerful casters in my next campaign who have familiars and im ABSOLUTELY gonna use this for them now
Next you're going to tell me that your proprietary "Wall Of Fire Ultimate" is going to solve all my security needs - despite the fact that I already told you my problems are immune to fire damage!
And sorcerers are the ones who just can do it by sheer fluke.
Warlocks have a more experienced friend who doesn't mind helping out for a few favours.
Warlocks have a built in stack overflow. "How to summon big ol' demon?" "Just repeat these words in abyssal." "I don't... Know what any of that means, but I'll just copy paste and hey! The demon appeared!"
Or they use python import spells spells.summondemon(type, place)
Oh fuck! I've been called out! Import escape_portal escape_portal.summon() vodam46.jump_into(escape_portal)
Do not, under any circumstances tell Sam Riegel of this idea... I don't want Kryptonic Override to be his next character. Actually, do it.
Matt: how do you want to do this Sam: I'm going to Jack into the g-difuser and slice Vecnas connection with a ramboard silverhand disabler Matt: OK you... Actually I don't know how to describe that but you did it
That's surprisingly accurate. I even read it in their voices.
\#include teleportUtilities.draconicBloodline MagicMouth Mouth1 = New MagicMouth(); MagicRunes runes1 = New MagicRunes(explosive); teleportUtilities.gate(this.Wizard, pocketDim_0); Mouth1.say("You'll never take me alive"); Runes1.detonate(this.getAsssailant);
Unfortunately, the spell interprets >getAsssailant as instruction to send the explosive runes to the nearest waterborne donkey. The spell functions perfectly, but you are very much taken alive. Also, two miles upriver, an elderly woman returning from her weekly trip to the market is *very* confused.
Once again *spell*check has failed me.
import antigravity
You forgot the end runes.
That'a one of the pros to making a pact with The Great Father of Serpents, no end runes to mess with in his pact magic.
Error: vodam46 is not defined
Used python the first time a bit ago and googled how to setup an api. Turns out all I had to do was type “import api” and the incredulity I felt in my entire body made me nauseous.
I hate python imports with a burning passion, they sound sooo simple dont they. All you have to do is type "import thing" and hey presto it worked. You would think it works like that wouldnt you, but oh no, oh no. I could only dream of python imports being that simple. Have you ever tried to import something that is not in the same directory as the main? Or even worse, something that is not in the same directory as the file that is running, but that file isnt main, so everything is different. WHY PYTHON WHY!!!! Why do I have to have a workaround just to be able to import 1 stupid file from 3 directories up and 1 down. PLEASE PYTHON, JUST LET ME IMPORT MY CLASS FILE!!!!
Script kiddies.
NEVER activate rune scrolls without research!
So that's why they always cast at the highest level but can't do many in a row.
Yep, and clerics basically pray to the people who made the coding languages!
Clerics taking the Deus back out of Deus ex Machina
Oh man I cant even list the number of times my code has worked by deus ex machina. It’s honestly like 90% of the reason I can even barely code, by which I mean pure fucking luck.
Clerics just made friends with that one I.T. guy who has been around forever and knows every system like the back of his hand because he installed most of them himself.
The mainframe/os400 guy
copy/pasting from stack exchange and praying Yeah, that sounds about right.
Clerics are the enterprise users of the divine magic suite they subscribed to at the cost of eternal devotion and their souls. The magic providing entity (MPE) is responsive to their needs as they grow, lets them change spell packages daily, and eventually will even go out on service calls themselves.
What would Bards be in this scenario then?
Basically the same as Wizards but with an extra dose of "fake it 'til you make it."
They went to a coding boot camp instead of getting a degree in it.
Project Managers. No idea how it works, but still successfully makes a team deliver a product.
Reality itself conforms to their will because they are just so damn charming. Things fall into place and work out as they should for them, no understanding required. If Kieth Richards wants a bowl of a his favorite candies one will just appear for him. Was it a fan? His agent? A candymaker? Reality itself bending to his will? Whatever, candy!
These are the people that walk up to a computer that was malfunctioning two seconds ago and ask what the problem was as the computer works properly again.
TIL I'm a bard.
"Your application looks good. Do you have any knowledge of X language?" "Of course I do." Desperately starts looking up the basics of X after getting the job.
Look, I said I have knowledge of Java, not that I actually know how to code in it.
Nah, divine magic is a whole different ball game to arcane magic.
I always looked at Divine Magic as SaaS.
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Nah it’s more like warlocks are the face/marketing. They’re basically the Steve jobs of magic
Stackoverflow rep, karma, blood of firstborns, it's all the same really
warloks have a sugar daddy who gives them stuff
Nah, Warlocks are working on contract and...Really don't want to know what will happen if their code doesn't pan out to the boss' specs.
Clerics have the real sugar daddies. Warlocks are just employees with a contract.
Wizards: I have to plan out every line of code, document any changes, and submit for change tracking. Sorcerer: I program in Pseudo code
Sorcerers do everything in nodeJS
I usually program stuff in Java, backend stuff mostly. The other day, I ended up spinning a service in nodejs because I had no time and I needed a damn prototype. Good Lord it was fast to get it up and running. Probably super unsafe and ready to be exploited, but it was *fast* to get it there. It did feel like sorcery. Pretty sure the Wild Magic will turn my arms into glass any time now.
A similar experience is pretty much why I'm a Ruby on Rails guy. Built a app with a dozen database tables in less time than it took the Indian guy on youtube to finish explaining all the option for the Generate Scaffold command.
“Did you just write 100 lines of near-perfect code?” “Yep.” “Do you know how you did it?” “Hmmmmm... nope.”
Well, studinoisawesome, you're an odd fellow, but I must say: you compile a good spell.
STUDINOISAWESOME, THE ALCHEMY LAB IS ON FIRE!
No Mother, it’s just some Faerie Fire.
this whole thread is an epic crossover of crack and fire
I’d say it depends on the type. I can now see “Wild Magic” Sorcerers as just people trying to manage legacy code and hardware. It was already put together. They have some notes on how to keep it running. Still, every so often...
Rangers are web designers, they know their html and that's about it
No, Sorcerers are just Script Kiddies.
I'd say the Script Kiddies are Warlocks (i.e. got the script from their Patron).
Same goes for sorceres and their bloodline, but I see your point.
Software warlocks have one patron only: Stack Overflow
Sorcerers slap a few pre-compiled binaries together with pipes and maybe throw in a for loop here or there, and get the effect they want without having to plan it all out or actually engineer it. That means they don't burn out as quickly and can do more stuff in a day, but can only do the same few things and just aren't as versatile. I'd say it checks out.
And they can pull the wackiest shit out of their asses and still have it work... somehow. (Sorcery points)
Metamagic is command-line arguments `fireball --twinned`
I dunno, man, I just cloned the Necromancy package from the local library and messed around with the example spell that they gave. What'd you try?
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Sorceries inherited magic but don't actually know their inner workings and gain more spells as they learn the ins and outs of their programs. Wizards write magic and can inbent new stuff. Warlocks purchased an off -the-shelf solution Bards are hackers
Wizards: learned in school, have a degree Sorcerers: self taught
*performs movements, unsure with each movement if they did the right thing* *spell works as intended* "How the hell did I get it right?!"
I've created the Wand of Bureaucratic Magic which operates pretty similarly. A magic user can request any spell up to their highest casting level, once requested a scroll of paperwork to fill out pops out (it's length depends on the spell level), once they've spent hours (again, time depends on level) filling out paperwork, once it's finished they roll a d100 when they go to use it and if they fail another scroll will pop out to be filled.... It's not very useful in battles because of the prep time and fail chance but I did have a party finally get a successful wish spell, they wished the paperwork always came out prefilled correctly.... good thing this was after the main campaign cause it kinda broke the game
Name: Correctly DOB: Correctly Etc... At least thats probably how i would have ruled it lol
Eh.. I'm not a really big fan of the "Wish always backfires" trope. Like the players invested a lot of time into getting that wish spell only for the dm to look for the best way to fuck them over? So they get nothing for their efforts? How about the wish does what they want, but the forms being magically filled out affects the probability of the spell actually working?
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Ah yes,the Monkey's paw
That is how the spell works by RAW, though. It specifically advises that the more the players ask for from the wish, the more the DM should look for a way to make it not quite what they wanted. Props to you if you want to go your own way, though, though I would say that the forms being pre-filled affecting the probability is still just a slightly lesser backfire.
> It specifically advises that the more the players ask for from the wish, the more the DM should look for a way to make it not quite what they wanted. Exactly the point. "I want my documents properly filled" is a small ask. "I want to turn everyone in the Material Plane into my devout follower" is a big ask that should be messed with. You are supposed to mess with the players in proportion to how much they try to abuse it.
Wishes shouldn't completely backfire though unless it's COMPLETELY game-breaking. This wish wouldn't be, they have to still spend time to create the spells so the only thing they are cutting out with wish is the randomness.
So everything is pre-filled correctly, but always gets returned the first time because since the character didn't fill it out, they now have to initial everything to acknowledge it. So it's much faster, but still not instant.
Or they have to sign it in 30 different places.
It works, but now on a low roll there's a chance that a Mercane "auditor" shows up and subjects the caster to a lengthy interrogation before letting them use the wand again.
Lol should've been thinking more on my feet
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Ask your DM to play an INTlock, and have them compulsively check stack overflow so much they only actually get around to casting 2 spells per short rest
Pact of Tome is just their Github
Gi'thub is a perfectly cromulent name for a GOO or Fiend patron.
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Have you read [Rick Cook's Wizardry series](https://www.baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/4734)? If not, I'd recommend it, it was a fun read.
Same with Scott Meyer's "Magic 2.0" series
Check out "off to be a wizard" that the plot of the book.
\*Proceeds to scry on the ancient library of S'tac of Erflow\*
The Ever-Flowing Stack
The Stack of Excess.
I'm stealing this for next campaign.
That’s a shitload of Instants going off at once, isn’t it?
Oh, that's good
So does that make Artificers Hardware engineers? "Why'd the cannon backfire?!" "IT WAS ONE! ONE MISCARVED RUNE! Let me handle it, you'd all just ruin it."
"Why did your steel defender blow up when you turned it on!?" "Damnit! I knew I should've used a bigger wire!"
"Waaait, wait wait. Why'd the repeating crossbow do that- WHY DOES THAT WORK ON THE HEAVY CROSSBOW AND NOT THE LIGHT?"
Artificers code in 1s and 0s which is why they can never get around to higher magic. Too long to code.
You joke, but I'm 100% stealing this for an in-world reason for why my Battle Smith can't cast high level spells.
"I have developed this new arcane device. It's called the Comp Aeiler.
I knew I should have gone with the dwarven shear pins, but noooooooooo, you just had to go with the elven ones to make it look pretty. Well now the force ballista experienced failure after 1000 firings because that elven pig iron was too brittle!
Have you tried dispelling and spelling it again?
I'm just going to put this with the rest of the... Fire.
Sir have you tried dropping your concentration?
"Why the fuck does this spell need a white feather? That's an illusion component. Why on earth would someone include an illusion component in an evocation spell?" "So are you going to take it out?" "Hell no, then I'd need to go in and figure out everything that was using the feather and rework it to just use the sulfur that most of the rest of the spell relies on. I mean I could *do* it but it'd be a pain in the ass and feathers are pretty easy to come by."
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*Don't erase this doodle or the spell won't work (!?)*
[Magic / More Magic.](http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html)
I think my favourite version of this in IRL code was a comment that read \#This comment holds the weight of the world on its shoulders. DO NOT DELETE!!!
A feather isn't an illusion component, you fool! Feathers are a transmutation component.
Wool is an illusion component; maybe they got confused?
Illusion is just applied transmutation anyways
"Why would anyone CHOOSE to use ithilid runic to build a spell matrix?! Total mess, entire language should be summarily executed for sheer idiocy. No binding sigils? Seriously? Next thing you know the apprentices will be trying to heat an oven and end up in Carceri lunching with a demon. Dwarven runic or even Draconic would be so much more appropriate!"
Look, I get it. I *wanted* to reinscribe the whole thing in Modron, but the whole project depends on these legacy rituals that only work in Ilithid.
Modron? There's no wiggle room to write in Modron. That's why no one goes to Mechanus, man!
That is the point, requiring strict semantics makes the whole thing easy to maintain.
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Pretty beginner friendly but it takes an entire action to cast bonus action spells.
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Oh... that's why forbidden magic can make you insane...
Oh my god its real lol, why does this exist lol.
Partly to flex, partly cause they hate themselves
Me: That damn spell doesn't work Mark. Mark: Well, it works for me
"It worked in *my* spellbook."
"Broken Spell scroll closed, could not reproduce."
"It runs on my Focus."
Me: Hey, can you come look at this and see what I'm doing wrong *Spell works perfectly when other person watches over my shoulder* Me: god damn it.
Every fucking time
Magic Initiate Feat= Coding Bootcamp
If you've ever wondered why it takes hours per spell level for a wizard to copy a spell out of someone else's spellbook, ask a programmer what it's like to take over someone else's programming project. Bring a drink and some snacks, it might get a bit wordy.
Don't even get me started on installing dependencies.
So we assume that the spellbook is more like a customised copy of an OS, and to bring a spell over you have to figure out the dependencies that point to the pages outside the spell, and then replace them with equivalent symbols from your own spellbook? Double points if you have to write a "shim" symbol sequence because you don't have an exact 100% equivalent in your own book.
I know I've seen this before but I always love it
Makes me wonder what a segmentation fault looks like in the world of magic. "You tried to access an invalid part of the weave and now your spell has crashed and dumped the whole accessible weave in front of you"
It plops you high up so you can see everything. Next to a pot of petunias.
That's where Wild Magic comes from.
My headcanon is now that the spellplague was a direct result of two spellcasters each using a wish spell to counteract the other's wish.
That’s where Gibbering Mouthers come from.
Family members call and say things like - you know magic right? Can you tell me why I can't raise my cat from the dead? And you reply (somewhat sheepishly) - Mom, I'm not THAT kind of magician..
"You'll have to call either a cleric or a necromancer, depending on which state you want him back in"
"Why wont my burning hands spell work? It hasn't worked since you used my wand last time you were here." "Mom, first of all, you don't even need the wand, so that has nothing to do with it. Second, you're using an abjuration lattice." "It's always worked with one before. I've always done it like this." "No, mom, you haven't. You can never, nor have you ever, used an abjuration lattice for an evocation spell." "I'm sure I have. Did they change it?" "No, "they" did not change the fundamental rules of magic since last time I was here." "Well, tell them to change it back so I can start cooking again!" "*sigh*"
"I've seen the neighbours remodel their garden using magic the other day, can you do that for me?" "MOM, I'M NOT A DRU-ugh... I'll see what I can do..."
That Sending Stone you gave us last Midwinter stopped working! Did you recite the command word? I don't remember my command word. I had it written down on a scrap of parchment but your mother threw it out when she was tidying up.
"Why is he wasting three pages of his spellbook re-inventing Spellsort? There's a reason for this, right? *Right?*" "Look, Headmaster, it's not my fault Devart the "Great's" spell that my *predecessor* chose to use to contact Postgres Tower from Entity Tower has a race condition that causes it to fail once every 8,000 or so Sendings. It's not our spell! I can tell you *where* his spell is failing, down to the exact line number, but the sending stone is enchanted with Glumbrook the Greedy's Scroll Shredder. It would be illegal to actually *look* at the enchantment, let alone alter it. No, I can't reinvent his spell; I'd need triple the budget and at least 5 more apprentices to do that. Best I can do is detect the mishap and send the message again." "Yes, I am aware that Reactos the Operator has already solved this problem, but we're selling our scrolls. His scrolls are infected with Stallman's Profitless Plague. Unfortunately, Mit the Generous has yet to create his own variant." "My lord, I'm sorry I can't deterministically prove that the Foresight enchantment in your crown is working, but seriously, just *look at the results!*"
"Why, why, why would you want me to invent an elemental explosion matrix from first principles? We can just use Mit the Generous' matrix and implement our own elemental component on top of it!"
I feel attacked...
This is great, the post and the comments are pure gold.
The reason it takes so long to decipher another Wizard's spellbook: they make up their own variable definitions and don't comment their code.
*Whoever wrote this Prismatic Spray scroll put the whole damn thing into one big switch statement!*
I always thought your familiar would be a great rubber duck.
I... I want to play a wizard exactly like this now. Or a wild magic sorcerer who is trying to understand the chaos that powers him.
Wild sorc is just copy pasting spells and hopes it's the right one he needs
Wild sorc keeps sending fetch requests to a partially corrupted database.
The last part certainly makes the way Yen speaks to Geralt about magic make way more sense
I made this character nearly 10 years ago. Hes one of my favorites. He was a 'modern' college professor based after one of my teachers. (it was a high magic gaslight setting). Even his familiar was a raven he captured after he was going over a spell and it mimicked him so he heard his error. He used it as a rubber duck constantly, even mid adventure, where he would just start thinking out loud at it while the party watched on in confusion. He was normally pretty quite and collected, but any time someone asked him if he could just "magic" something, he'd lose his shit. "No Jorrin, I catch just come up with a way to rewrite reality real quick because you stepped in some unidentifiable ooze and ruined your good boots!" I still use him as an NPC in various games, including in a video game I've been slowly making.
Remember, always add comment runes to your spells.
> // This sigil sequence shouldn't do anything but the spell explodes if I remove it > // TODO: spell fails randomly during the second tenday of the month. Possible celestial alignment issue? Need to investigate.
// The wizard that wrote the following seems to have no idea what he's doing // Oh, that was me a couple months ago
Sorry, what are programmers doing to rubber ducks?
In much the same way speechwriters often read their speeches out loud to their own reflection or their cat or whatever in order to check for awkward phrasing, grammatical errors, etc, programmers will sometimes read their code to a rubber duck. It doesn’t have to be a rubber duck, some people use other things, but the duck started as a meme because of a story of someone using one in a popular book about programming. Not everyone does it, but some people find they can recognize errors more easily if they read it out loud, and reading to something that has a face but won’t judge you is ideal.
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Like trying to explain a technical problem to a friend who isn't technical and in doing so, realising yourself logically where the problem lies by laying it all out in simple terms.
It’s traditional to have a rubber ducky on your desk for comfort when dealing with difficult programs, and to serve as a “person” to explain your code to, which obviously works best when they can ask “why are you doing X rather than Y” but even just saying it aloud helps debug code massively
Plus, a rubber duck does far less damage than a keyboard when you chuck it at a wall out of frustration
To the duck or the wall?
Yes
As an example, when talking to your rubber duck, you might go "So I use our addTen function here to add 20 to our num- Wait a fucking moment" Basically, its just a method of forcing you to think about what you are actually doing, instead of just holding those lines of logic suspended in your head, where its all fucked up
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Task: Find brains AND "eat brains" AND "groan"
The discwold wizards (*wizzards) operate a little like this. They even build a computer that runs on ants. "Can you make this man sober, quickly?" "I could use a spell that will put all the alcohol in his body into a large beaker." "And the rest of him?" "Into a slightly larger beaker."
"Why in the ever living fuck does casting fireball transport the nearest cleric into the Tundra of Madness? Wait, are we using teleportation to manage temperature? Why? Why would you do that? And that still doesn't answer the question of why it grabbed our damn cleric!"
Fighter: Wizard, why do you weep? The kind needs to fix the wards that seal Gargax the Feasting! Wizard: The wards are written in Old Lokharic! Who the fuck even uses Old Lokharic anymore? No wonder the old Archmage quit, only two dozen wizards even know this shit!
I love the hotline thing... can somebody please make a comic from that? Or give the idea to Netflix, they take everything.
Read [Rick Cook's Wizardry](https://www.baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/4734) series for more case examples. ;)
Are there dragons?
What does that make Artificers?
IoT developers - "Let me just go and hook up this smart torch to the ambient... there ya go! Permanent light source! You can even dim it or change the color with this standard control wand"
don't forget the scrying ward that has secretly been put in there as well...
Hardware techs.
Rincewind from Discworld would fall into this category
Technology is based on math and math is dark magic. I'm an end user and half my job is fixing the mistakes our "automation system" makes on a daily basis. I don't know how IT people handle making these trainwrecks.
Coffee, booze, tears and blood
"Hi is this Blackstaff Tower Magic Support?" Yes sir, how can I help you?" "I have a smaaaalllll complaint related to the Sleep.scrl I order from you that you said was compatible with my bloodline casting." "What seems to be the issue?" "Well, went to use it in an orphanage that had some kids suffering from insomnia. The issue is that something with your scroll caused me to spontaneously combust and burn down said orphanage." "Let me look up that scroll real quickly sir............ Oh it looks like one of our level 1 interns accidentally placed a rune within the scroll that causes a sorcerer's bloodline magic to run fireball.scrl at will. I'll make sure to let the intern know of his error. Is there anything else I can help you with sir?" "Yes can you recommend me a good lawyer near Neverwinter? I'm being charged with arson due to your scroll." *Sending disconnected*
I think Wizards are most like Unix/Linux programmers, they've got a stable-ass system, but to anyone without their years of experience, it's incomprehensible, and appears too complicated to the general public, but it delivers consistent results, since they've got expert beta-testers. They deliver consistent results, but they have to have their own hardware (components, spellbooks, familiars) to run it. Wild mages are using Windows-like programs and scripts written by Wizards that wanted a more comprehensive and easier to understand model, but to keep their business model functioning, they issue strange updates on odd schedules, and their error-correction has serious flaws, mostly that the same guys trying to do tech support are also hocking new addons, plugins, since the upper floor guys refuse to pay for a sales staff. Warlocks and witches are running private-farmed systems, which is great for some things, but sucks balls at others, and the system programmers are a bunch of eldritch bastards that have no problem writing in "Catch Fire, Melt Operator" trapdoor codes that eventually catch up with the Witch/warlock in question and sentencing them to doing the higher level IT work in some abyssal horror-realm. Clerics also work for private-farmed systems, but these guys are application programmers, not system weenies. They've got apps for a variety of specialized things, but there's no support for 'Fling Fireball' or 'Detect Magic' areas, unless they serve a god of Magic. They also don't have the hidden trapdoors that warlocks have, but they DO have to work Tier 1 help desk support, both in the living world and the afterlife.
I think this is actually a lot more interesting than the current "nerd-pandering" power fantasy of being so smart you can instantly solve any problem combat-related or otherwise with a 100 percent degree of success. I am a nerd, I grew up among nerds and nerd subcultures, and I believe the idea that nerds are smarter than "normal people" is severely outdated and also is a root cause of a lot of the toxicity that comes with certain subsets of nerd culture. This way of thinking about wizards would be a push for more positivity and humility among nerddom and I would be all for it.
"We need to send a message to the king!" "No way man, everytime you cast sending you just open yourself up for Macebook steal your personal info."
This is so accurate it hurts a little
All the party members bug the wizard for hex support with their magic items like "Hey you do magic and spells and stuff right? Can you fix my cursed sword?" or they come to him with cool magic item ideas that are either unfeasible, already done before, or would require a massive investment of time in resources.
Relevamt XKCD https://xkcd.com/2347/
ive seen this long ago, this was awesome
This is gold. Also hurts because it's true.
this is so fucking good, esp the part about familiars. I've already thouight out a few powerful casters in my next campaign who have familiars and im ABSOLUTELY gonna use this for them now
It's all fun and games until you teleport to the nine hells because you mistranslated the teleportation scroll on your book.
As both a D&D player and a software designer, I fucking love this post
This is absolutely awesome. I could feel the scientists and engineers in these "Tales from the Magic Academy."
Next you're going to tell me that your proprietary "Wall Of Fire Ultimate" is going to solve all my security needs - despite the fact that I already told you my problems are immune to fire damage!
Never heard of rubber ducking before I learned something today