How could a wizard lose spell-casting ability?

[lemeres]

Ginsu23 wrote:

It's not really a mcguffin when it's function and purpose are explained.

Is the use as a punishment a true function and purpose though? It is just a circumstantial factor that surrounds the attempts to stop the thing from doing its vague and nefarious function.

I mean...the thing was never meant to be used in such a way while it was being destroyed. Any resistance and counters it has to disjunction is just a simple security devise so the thing can continue to be used for...whatever?

But if we are getting into suggestions for functions (from the 'also used as a punishment' perspective)...maybe an artifact the creates monsters (probably best to go with a single theme; demons, devils, abberrations, spirits, etc.). The thing just does it randomly and spawns them in random places in the kingdom when it is left alone long enough, but it is meant to be used to spawn an army (when the rival mage steals it for his own ends later- obviously).

With the random spawns, it gives a good reason to continue trying to get rid of the thing, without making it desperate enough that they are always making a constant effort- with random monsters, you COULD have soldiers take care of them, but it takes time to track them down, and lives are lost in that timeframe. Thus, you have a reasonable enough set up where it is better to be rid of the thing, but it isn't usually worth the costs.

[M1k31]

Ravingdork wrote:

The only way I can think of to represent this off the top of my head is to have a high level wizard try to disjoin another high level wizard's artifact, lose all of his powers when the artifact explodes, and then start retraining EVERYTHING into some kind of anti-caster martial build.

It has the added effect of creating a really pissed off reoccurring enemy wizard NPC whose artifact you destroyed. Might make for an interesting story.

So.... the wizard from Tsubasa?

[Rycaut]

if you are starting at level one after having destroyed an artifact and lost the ability to cast spells how do you explain losing all of those levels?

a couple of alternatives:

1) not only did you lose the ability to cast spells but you were shifted into a different plane of existence where "you" had never had magical powers so you found yourself at age 50 living a simple life - likely one where friends who had died may still be alive (but different people) and others may be dead who were alive. Perhaps you basically are occupying your own body

2) this suggests an alternative to a purely martial class - there is a new occult archetype of the medium where you are basically a spirit occupying yourself. It isn't exactly your model of a pure non-caster - but perhaps you could multiclass from that class - take a few levels of medium and the rest as a martial class? The flavor there would be that you are literally possessing your own body (or perhaps a body of a clone or other contingency?) Something similar might explain away your lack of levels - but still give you a rich backstory with some mechanical explainations

[Cao Phen]

I believe that the ley lines in the Occult Adventures book has a chance to remove all spellcasting.

[Cevah]

Actually, the wizard never lost the ability. He just thinks he did. All that effort reversing a curse that is not there and the effort to learn other ways are futile, because he BELIEVES he unable to cast spells. He is now a Wizard 1/Fighter X, with lots of skill points, and no magic.

/cevah

[GM Hands of Fate]

he's been hypnotized into thinking he doesn't have the ability to

his father is a real bastard and told him he'd never make it as a wizard, and he believed it

stiletto to the temple....lobotomy...permanant reduction in mental capacity

he used to be a female of a society who truly believed at the core of their being that magical power originates in the female genetalia, and he put on a girdle of femininity/masculinity

[DebugAMP]

Got nailed by feeblemind at a low level. Progressed as a fighter on a leash until he could afford to have it removed, then was so far out of practice that he just assumes that he's lost abilities.

[Tacticslion]

Rycaut wrote:

if you are starting at level one after having destroyed an artifact and lost the ability to cast spells how do you explain losing all of those levels?

Actually, quite easily. It's an artifact with the ability to impose a corrupted time stop-cum-sepia snake sigil like effect, only kind of reversed - the character experiences lots and lots of time, but in a kind of somnolence, even when not much has truly passed.

Take, for example, the official template posted in a PF AP. (Edited for spoilers and genericness.)

Quote:

Atrophied Lich (Ex) A lich that remains immobile and insensible for extended periods of time can grow atrophied. The exact effects of atrophy vary from lich to lich.

In [spoiler]'s case, his effective wizard level has declined from 20th to 9th. Note that these are not negative levels—[spoiler name] must earn back the lost XP normally.

More troubling to the lich is the fact that until he achieves at least 11th level as a lich, his phylactery is unusable—if he is destroyed, he crumbles to dust, forever dead.

If the man went through atrophying-value of enforced semi-somnolence in side a reversed time-bubble, it's possible that he just... lost all his levels. When he was reduced to a first level character, and freed, with no option of having his wizard magic restored, he just... retrained.

It could have been a side-effect, or even a requirement for the artifact's destruction.

[Rynjin]

What AP was that?

It seems to contradict the lore on Demicliches by quite a lot.

[Tacticslion]

Rynjin wrote:

What AP was that?

It seems to contradict the lore on Demicliches by quite a lot.

Actually, though it seems that way, it does not.

Demiliches are creatures that fall into somnolence due to introspection or sending their consciousnesses far afield - in either event, the body is lacking the vitality of the soul, which is why it decays.

In the above, the lich was there and was willing but was just... stuck.

Quote:

Most demiliches achieved their state through apathy, not volition. For each decade that a demilich fails to stir itself to meaningful action, there is a 1% cumulative chance that its corporeal body decays into dust, save for the skull. Any return to activity resets the chance of transformation to 0%. Once the lich's body decays, the lich's intellect returns to its phylactery as normal. However, the skull rejects the return of the lich's consciousness, keeping the lich trapped in its deteriorating phylactery for 1d10 years. If during that time the lich's remains are destroyed or scattered (for example, by wandering adventurers), the lich's phylactery forms a new body and the intellect leaves the phylactery as normal, returning the lich to life. But if the lich's remains survive unperturbed, the phylactery's magic fails catastrophically, releasing the lich's soul and causing 5d10 points of damage to the phylactery. Regardless of whether or not the phylactery physically survives, the energies released by its failure channel into the lifeless skull of the lich, allowing the last remnants of the lich's soul to transform it into a demilich. The lich's soul itself either is utterly destroyed, reaches its final reward or punishment, or is condemned to wander the edges of the multiverse forever.

For wandering liches, the process is similar, but based on the number of decades the lich spends without its intellect returning to its body. While the lich's body still decays, its mind remains at large, only becoming trapped in the phylactery if the lich tries to return during the period in which its body has failed, but it has not yet become a demilich. Should the lich's phylactery fail before the wandering lich returns, the skull becomes a demilich, and the lich's mind is doomed to wander until the end of days.

Neither of those things happened to the lich in question. It was just sealed and forced to endure.

(Of course, in the exact same entry in the MM3, the last line is proven entirely falsified*)

* :

Quote:

Under exceptional conditions, a lich's full consciousness survives its transformation into a demilich, or a lich's wandering intellect manages to return to its jeweled skull. Such creatures are awakened demiliches, and combine the powers and near-invulnerability of a demilich with the mind and spellcasting prowess of a lich. An awakened demilich has the full spellcasting abilities of the lich it was before, and gains Eschew Materials and Still Spell as bonus feats. Awakened liches keep their original lich Hit Dice, and any mental attributes that are higher than the demilich's minimums. They otherwise have all the special abilities and defenses of a demilich, and no abilities of the original lich beyond spellcasting and mental attributes. An awakened demilich has a CR of 16, or the CR of the original lich + 3, whichever is higher.

Ah, fluff-text.

[Tacticslion]

Rynjin wrote:

What AP was that?

AP:

Kingmaker

[Rynjin]

Interesting. And actually fits in well with some other established lore that's been on my mind recently.

It explains why Tar-Baphon is "merely" a Wizard 20/Mythic 10 character when he supposedly fought on equal terms with a full god (BEFORE becoming a Lich). Perhaps he "atrophied" as well due to his long imprisonment.

[Tacticslion]

That... is surprisingly "in synch" - cool observation!

[jimibones83]

Decades of work trying to create a powerful artifact left you without magic abilities when it failed.

[Qaianna]

I think someone else highlighted one issue with using game mechanics ... level 1 wizards aren't really tossing around disjunction spells, and otherwise you're sitting on a pile of wizard levels. And their attendant bonuses -- that level 16 wizard still has a +8 BAB and a huge Will save.

I think this might just have to fall under 'storyline fiat custom curse'. Or say Nethys got hammered while plying a card game and when he woke up he'd lost bad to Gorum, and it was either your wizard's soul or Nethys's most valuable rubber ducky.

[DSXMachina]

Don't think I saw it, but perhaps his rival cast a Geas on him?

" a magical command on a creature to carry out some service or to refrain from some action or course of activity, as desired by you." So no casting of spells higher than first level, or perhaps no casting of spells of the rivals -4. So the nemesis would have always had an edge in future.

There would need to be an end-point associated with the Geas to make it permanent.

[LazarX]

Charon's Little Helper wrote:

LazarX wrote:

The iconic version of this trope is of course Aahz, the mentor for the bumbling wizard apprentice Skeeve. Aahz lost his powers because they were taken away as part of a joke by his best friend who was killed before he could put them back.

I will point out that he didn't lose them permanently... only for a century. (Perverts live a long time. :P)

I did not maintain interest in the series for that long.

[Tacticslion]

Daaaaaggummit! Why has no one mentioned Amnesia, yet?! Why haven't I mentioned it, yet!? You lose all of your class features and special abilities! Sit around as an amnesiac for a couple of decades and even when your memory does come back, it can be fluffably "atrophied" (like the lich) to make you effective a level 1 again.

[LazarX]

Tacticslion wrote:

Daaaaaggummit! Why has no one mentioned Amnesia, yet?! Why haven't I mentioned it, yet!? You lose all of your class features and special abilities! Sit around as an amnesiac for a couple of decades and even when your memory does come back, it can be fluffably "atrophied" (like the lich) to make you effective a level 1 again.

Because we're looking for something other than a blow to the head? :)

or any other condition that's easily cured by a Heal spell.

[Delarrin]

Permanency + Rage? The rival would only have to be 11th level, if you use Anthropomorphic Animal as a precedent.

I mean, you could have it fixed with a quick Dispel Magic, but it would make it so you'd be inclined to hit up the gym and be unable to cast spells.

[Tacticslion]

LazarX wrote:

Tacticslion wrote:

Daaaaaggummit! Why has no one mentioned Amnesia, yet?! Why haven't I mentioned it, yet!? You lose all of your class features and special abilities! Sit around as an amnesiac for a couple of decades and even when your memory does come back, it can be fluffably "atrophied" (like the lich) to make you effective a level 1 again.

Because we're looking for something other than a blow to the head? :)

or any other condition that's easily cured by a Heal spell.

Hah! Sure. But given what other posters have been suggesting (including the feeblemind that the OP specifically did not want)...

Anyhoo, amnesia and madness for references.

As others have pointed out, it leaves you with the problem of your levels, but that atrophying element could handle that.

(I still like the "price of destroying the artifact" when combined with my temporal atrophy/the generic loss of magic thing better, but amnesia is a pretty obvious one for us all to have missed.)

[Rycaut]

I still like the idea of a Samsaran - especially since one bit of their lore is that their children are human (and usually given away to be raised by humans) but when they die they are often reincarnated as Samsarans (but don't retain their class levels etc).

So mechanically you could have been a high level wizard - killed by a rival and then reincarnated as a Samsaran (which will be a bit of a shock as you likely didn't realize your mother was a Samsaran) and though you won't have full memories of your past life you will retain elements of it (including mechanically two skills of your choice as class skills - i.e. you could be a martial type with Spellcraft as s class skill if you wanted). While the Samsaran's racial modifiers are typically best for casters (+2 INT, +2 WIS, -2 CON) you can certainly build a viable martial character with them.

In fact if you were to be 50 years old in this case you would still be a "child" as the Samsarans don't get to adulthood until age 60. So that could fit with the flavor or you might want to be even older.

(an alternative your GM could rule is that something you did in your former life triggered a similar reincarnation but as a human or other race not as a Samsaran - i.e. you reincarnated but in the process lost all of your class levels and abilities.) There may not be a specific rule for this however the Samsaran example indicates a starting point to reskin it. )

[TomG]

Evil wizard researched a variant of anti-magic field with range of touch (instead of personal) and area of "object touched" or 3', instead of 10'. This is then cast, with permanency, on a small disc that is surgically embedded in the target's chest. (Or, cast directly on the heart itself. <shudder>)

Depending on the effects, this might lead to additional abilities of having other external magic fail when in close proximity.

[MeanMutton]

Thank you for this thread. It's inspired me and I'm adding in an NPC in my current campaign who is going to be a 20th level diviner who has lost his ability to cast spells (I'm including cutting off spell-like abilities as well). He's going to be involved tightly in pushing forward the current adventure.

My assumptions were that he'd still have his inherent bonuses to his attributes, the spells he previously made permanent, and his key magical items (headband, belt, ring, bracers, necklace, staff, bow) and have retrained a few of his feats to be more martial. The result is a guy who is going to be an interesting, fun NPC.

[Rynjin]

Tacticslion wrote:

Daaaaaggummit! Why has no one mentioned Amnesia, yet?! Why haven't I mentioned it, yet!? You lose all of your class features and special abilities! Sit around as an amnesiac for a couple of decades and even when your memory does come back, it can be fluffably "atrophied" (like the lich) to make you effective a level 1 again.

Because the OP specifically asked for stuff that wasn't amnesia, since he didn't want to do that trope again.

[Rycaut]

Another possibility that just occurred to me - there is a high level spell that has specifically this effect - Transformation - it boosts your physical stats, your BAB and removes your spell casting ability (including your ability to trigger spell completion / activation items)

It is level 6 but perhaps a GM could rule that a Wish or some form of arcane feedback or curse left it permanently applied to you. (doesn't address the why you are Level 1 however so might need to hand wave that or include it in the effects - but that spell might be a good starting point for the exact effect the OP was asking for.

for MeanMutton - I think if I were running such an NPC I might have someone without spell casting ability but allow them to still use their Divination school abilities - basically mechanically this would mean almost certainly they would always act first in initiative orders (natural 20 +10 + regular initiative modifier for starters) with a few other special abilities depending on which sub school of Divination they were.

There are also some fun things you could do with a Level 20 wizard's familiar (whether a regular familiar or an improved familiar) and with arcane discoveries - some of which may have abilities that aren't related to casting spells (Knowledge is Power for example gives INT to CMB and STR checks)

I would almost certainly also give a Level 20 wizard a variety of permanency effects on their person, on their items/homes/demiplanes and likely have some contingencies running (and/or other long made plans - especially in the case of a Divination wizard whom you would presume might have had some forewarning about whatever was going to cause them to lose spell casting - so may have even set something in motion to restore their casting ability or otherwise get out from the curse.

In any case could be a really fun long running NPC

[Dreaming Psion]

How about a faulty clone or a simulacrum that somehow gained full sentience and the ability to progress but at the cost of most of its XP levels?

[Tacticslion]

Rynjin wrote:

Because the OP specifically asked for stuff that wasn't amnesia, since he didn't want to do that trope again.

Hah! So he did. I'd forgotten by now! :D

[Tacticslion]

There are so many cool ideas in this thread!

Incidentally, in another game...:

Those who know the Blue Rose system (an early True20 Prototype in 2005) know that I'm being a bit glib with the rules and facts. But that's just because most aren't too interested in learning a whole system.

Just prior to this thread starting, in a Blue Rose game I'm running for my wife, I developed a Narrator Character (an NPC). The guy used to be an adept, and was extremely intelligent and knowledgeable about many things - but had zero arcana (the magic used in that setting/rules system). See, when he was a young arcanist in school, there was a sorcerous* accident with a rival schoolmate. He managed to use a powerful wardstone**-cum-sensing stone*** as a weapon, but the thing shattered into both of them (via shrapnel), leaving lots of arcane power flooding the area, and preventing both of them from accessing their arcana ever again.

Mechanically, I specced him as an expert with a "bonus" power of both psychic shield and ward arcana of 20****, and a complete inability to otherwise use or directly interact with arcana. He's effectively immune to arcana, and softly glows (and itches terribly) when arcana is nearby.

(He's sagacious and knowledgeable, but he can't do much other than "slowly wake up" in the morning unless he has coffee - a very rare drink indeed - and his strength, dexterity, constitution, and charisma are all pretty rubbish. He's been fun and useful, though.)

* Eh, I don't know how to spell it. Point is it was "sorcery" or "the bad kind of magic" in the BR setting; it has nothing to do with the sorcerer class as we think of it.
** An item that prohibits arcana use on the person bearing it.
*** This glows when arcana is used nearby.
**** This is very strong, and quite rare.

[LazarX]

I've seen one example of a wizard who hasn't lost his spellcasting ability, but can't cast spells for the following reason.

1. He has just come out of prison, and while there, his memorised spells were stripped from him. He has nothing prepared... not even cantrips.

2. His spellbooks were confiscated and destroyed. (they did a very through (and successful) job of making sure they got every single one.)

3. The local wizards guild and all merchants as well as any wizard's guild member or affiliate have been enjoined under severe penalties against dealing with him.

He is however the highest level of the pre-gen party at level 8. others are ranging 5-6.

[Rycaut]

well per the rules any Wizard can cast Read Magic from memory - so a wizard who has lost all of his spell books and has no spells in his memory currently would still be able to scribe new ones if he can get a written version of a spell (scrolls or spell books) - so he would probably be able to learn some spells even with merchants and the local wizards guild acting against him.

[Dreaming Psion]

Clone blues: Only tissue sample on hand was from when the character was much younger.

Death/Rebirth: The character died and somehow reincarnated into a new form with his old memories but not old skills intact. (Samsaran perhaps? Finding some weird sensory crystal device that game her back her memories from her previous life? Pass-life regression hypnosis?)

An Act of the Gods: the character was thoroughly corrupt as a wizard, and either begged his god to be transformed into something new or the transformation was an affliction created by the gods to punish the character.

Parasitism: The character's brain or soul has been partially eaten away by an unusual form of parasite, thus undoing much of the character's wizardly skills.

Retraining gone wrong: a glitch happened in the system with whatever process you use to explain the retraining mechanic.

[Cerwin]

Ginsu23 wrote:

I'd like some help with a character concept please..

the idea is that he used to be a wizard. his spellcasting ability was somehow taken away by a rival mage (still workin on that). with no magical ability left,, he hit the gym super hard and learned to wield a sword. he's gonna take feats and stuff for fighting casters to better get revenge on the guy that screwed him over. he's gonna be like 50 years old, and buff as hell.

I would appreciate some ideas to justify how he lost the ability to cast spells. I still want decent mental stats, so that leaves out the feeblemind spell. I was thinking of level drain or something maybe, but I'm not sure. Any ideas would be great. I'm also aware of all the modifiers for old age, I don't mind them.

I really don't need optimization advice or anything, just ideas for how someone would lose their magickal abilities.

I haven't read all the replies so this mitt have already been suggested but one way for a wizard to lose spell casting would be for him to become permanently blind. If he can't read his spell book he can't prepare spells. And the only spell he could prepare without his book would do him no good because even if he prepares read magic his us blind and can't. Which could then lead you to taking the blind fighting feat and other similar abilities.

[Dreaming Psion]

the Swamp Thing effect: the character was actually killed, but his body was consumed by plantlife/scavengers, whom somehow created a new consciousness with his old memories.

[LazarX]

Rycaut wrote:

well per the rules any Wizard can cast Read Magic from memory - so a wizard who has lost all of his spell books and has no spells in his memory currently would still be able to scribe new ones if he can get a written version of a spell (scrolls or spell books) - so he would probably be able to learn some spells even with merchants and the local wizards guild acting against him.

That's the thing... he can't ... legally. It's a pregen party and he's the only book caster of the bunch. The local wizards are enjoined by the guild not to share books with him...nor can they sell him scrolls. He'll need to work on it. Nor is Magic Mart available. As I recall it was a 3.5 convention scenario somewhere.