5e Campaign Design Discussion #1: Mages as Enemies-The Curse of the Paperwork Problem

Over the past several years I have been adapting a campaign by the Thursday Knights (dnd twitch streaming/podcasting group) that I have called the Mad Mage (I am honestly not sure what the creator called it. I should probably just ask... ... ... and done). I am going to avoid story spoilers here but a huge part of it is the main villain starts to amass this army of mages and the party encounter them as they go on in their adventures.

I can still remember their first big battle with them. Fighting atop a mountain in the midst of a snowstorm and something like 15 mages come charging down into the valley and... oh no. What is this? SPELL SLOTS. For 15 mages. Having to keep track of each and every mage on the battlefield in regards to their expendable resources was overwhelming and I basically stopped paying attention. I had them all cast magic missile and started recording for basically one mage because they all did the same thing. It was lazy and that poor dwarven ranger in the front was not expecting that many silvery bolts of energy.

This led me to start searching for examples of how others have handled this and, being that I did not have a twitter account yet, I decided to turn towards the one group I knew about that should know what they are doing. Wizards of the Coast; because it is literally their jobs. Since then,  I have run the entirety of Storm King's Thunder and have begun Curse of Strahd. Furthermore, I have taken time to examine many of the other modules that Wizards of the Coast have released and while it is never said explicitly, at least from my searching insofar, there seems to be this unspoken rule where there is never more than a few mages in a singular encounter. The number seems to be somewhere between one and three; the exception is with enemies that have limited spellcasting (like Slaadi) as exceptions.

Before I go into why mages tend to be limited in number let me first explain why creatures such as Slaads are exceptions. Creatures with natural spellcasting have different mechanics than a wizard or a sorcerer in that they have a much smaller pool of spells to utilize, usually up to 5 at most. Their spells work on a sort of charge system like magic items. X creature can cast Y spell 2 times per day. They can also cast Z spell 3 times per day. This is easier as you only need to have a little checklist with the name of each spell and you go roman numerals on its ass. By that I mean you just put an “I” once per times cast during your encounter notes and once it reaches 3 times you can't cast it anymore. Simple, easy. You have these three or so spells you need to know about and in less than five minutes time you can get an idea of exactly what you can do with those spells. You might not be proficient like a player who has been using that spell since four levels ago but you know it enough to use it relatively effectively.

In summary, natural casters tend to work in larger groups because the spell pool is limited and recording casts is much easier (assuming you take five or so minutes to prepare a little sheet for each of your creatures). So then why are groups of full on wizards and sorcerers so much harder?

The Answer can be found here on roll20

The 5e Mage in all its... slightly jumbled glory

To give a rundown of this and emphasize my point here is a picture of the stat sheet roll20 uses

And to head off the possible comments, yes I realize that the spell section of the stats is a mess but that is part of why I chose it (and because it is official content authorized by Wizards and, as such, I won’t need to worry about the link expiring or my blog being sent some sort of cease and desist order). To summarize, there are seventeen total spells for this creature. Four of them are cantrips, four of them are 1st level, two are 2nd level, three are 3rd level, two are 4th level, and one is 5th level. The DM most know all of these spells, their effects, and have at least a moderate idea of what this creature would do with them. That is complicated but the DM also has the equivalent of five different mana bars. Cantrips are simple as you can cast them as much as you want and they tend to be simple in terms of complexity, minus prestidigitation. However the rest… you have 4 casts of 1st level spells, 3 casts of 2nd level spells, 3 casts of 3rd level spells, 3 casts of 4th level spells, and 1 cast of your 5th level spell. All this information is for one singular opponent. Every additional mage gives another five resources to manage and, if they have different spells, an entirely new list of spells to understand; to say nothing of achieving competency utilizing said spells. This multiplies the sheer complexity of running these creatures by a lot.

All those words to basically say what the title says, mages result in a paperwork problem and an organization problem. Is it possible to competently run 15 different mages each with unique spell lists and, as such, specific battlefield purposes? The answer is yes but it would either require a lot of prep time and studying to get anything resembling their potential out of them. So yeah, now that I have given my obligatory long-winded explanation as to why there is a problem, here are some solutions for you

Simplify and Specialize: The 4e treatment

For many the whole concept of fourth edition was this giant departure from the game they knew and loved so they fled into the hills of pathfinder and forums to declare their dissatisfaction. And that’s fine. Fourth edition was a very particular flavor of tea and it might not be yours. That said, it had some interesting strengths to it. First, enemies were oftentimes designed to run in concert with each other. Enemies of a similar type had complementary abilities that easily and obviously meshed together. Furthermore, their ability list is WAY shorter than a fifth edition mage. So what can we use from this?

If one wishes to utilize this approach, I would boil down each enemy mage into a specific purpose and then give them abilities to fit that purpose. Maybe this person is a frost mage and, rather than trying to kill enemies, are instead trying to trip them up. Literally in some cases. Maybe he has a water mage partner who casts a sort of localized rainstorm or something similar to a fire hose meant to push/bludgeon enemies into walls and then this guy steps in and freezes the now wet ground. Give him like 3 or four spells and done. Two of them can be like cantrips/at will.

Let's have a little design fun. The first cantrip can be called Ice Burst (we are here to make cool mechanics. We will handle cool names in a later blog). Ice burst acts like a sort of mini fireball but, obviously, does cold damage everything within a 15 foot by 15 cube. In addition, it freezes standing water created by his water friend. So let’s say these are some low level adventures and it requires a DC 12 dexterity saving throw if the character moves more than five feat on the ice. It has a lot of control potential and hits a group so let’s say it gives a d6 cold damage to everyone who fails their con saving throw. Final result?

Ice burst

A burst of blistering cold wind erupts from the point you choose within 60 feet affecting all creatures in a 15 by 15 cube. Creatures in that area must make a DC 12 constitution saving throw or be dealt 1d6 cold damage. All standing water in the area is frozen and turned to slippery ice. Any creature who attempts to move more than five feet on their turn atop the ice must make a dc 12 dexterity saving throw or fall prone suffering 1 bludgeoning damage as they do.

And there we go, about ten minutes of work and we got an interesting ability that the mage can cast a bunch that does very little damage but has that sort of frost mage feel to it. Plus, ice tiles! If it were me I would have his next cantrip be shooting a chunk of ice that sends enemies backwards ten feet as long as they are standing on ice (or 5 feet if they are not)

If I wanted to flesh them out, I would give it a once per short rest ability that hits a twenty foot by twenty foot area that creates ice, no water needed, in the casting area and does maybe 2d6 damage. With that we have a nuisance of a mage for our encounter and we only need to keep track of one ability in regards to whether it has been used or not.

So,

Strengths of this approach

1. The players cannot predict the sorts of spells and challenges they will encounter because, until you create them, they do not exist
2. Minimal paperwork
3. You know the abilities because you handcrafted them

Weaknesses of this approach

1. Not everyone likes designing creatures
2. Not everyone feels confident in their creature designs
3. Can be time consuming depending on one’s proclivities, how much one has practiced, and other variables.
4. Balancing can be troublesome
5. Some players prefer things to be by the book and might be annoyed at the fact that enemies are employing spells they cannot choose for themselves

1. Subpoint: your players might want the spells you gave their enemies. Be ready for that.

And that is that approach. Onto the next one!

Keep it simple, keep it safe: Monster Manuals are your friend

Here you just do as most modules tend to do and you stick to only a mage or two in an encounter and don’t change anything. Ok got that option out of the way! Now onto!...

The specialists: Taking a note from Slaads everywhere! Minus their reproduction because ewwwww

In this case, you adopt the format of spellcasting creatures where each mage is given a very limited spell list with a certain amount of casts per day.

A simple design would be

Wizardling Bully

Cantrips: Firebolt, minor illusion

Catapult: 3 casts

Disguise self: 1 cast

Arcane Lock: 1 cast

Hold Person: 2 cast

Misty Step: 2 casts

Hypnotic Pattern: 1 cast

And there we go. We got a dick of a wizard ready to torment some poor wizard student in numerous ways and then escape consequence free.  They would probably have stinking cloud in there too but oh well. Here’s one last idea (after the pro/con rundown)

Strengths of this approach

1. Easy to design
2. Uses the basic rules and requires no new mechanics to be created
3. Relatively fast to create for those who know their spell lists

Weaknesses of this approach

1. CR level/balancing is more nebulous and hard to determine
2. Still requires a decent knowledge of the spell lists to create something quickly

Dissecting mages: Your archmage in bite size pieces

Here we take the spell list of one mage and split it up between various characters. This doesn’t make sense from 5e mechanics but it works. Give each of them cantrips and then divide the spells by spell level between them. So you have your first level mage with first level mage spells. Again with second level, so on and so forth. Maybe give them all mage armor so they don’t fall over from a stiff wind.

Strengths of this approach

1. Requires little to no planning to create the individual opponents
2. Naturally organizes enemies by threat which makes for a clear tactical situation for one's party to consider. 
3. Takes next to no foreknowledge of spells or how monster creation works to accomplish

Weaknesses of this approach

1. They (your wizards/sorcerers) run out of spells slots very fast which removed their importance to the encounter. Cantrip casters jut don't do much.
2. The results are actually stronger than the original caster since they can get out spells at a much faster rate. Also, they likely have more health combined than the monster/creature they were created from

And that is all I got! Those are my ideas. If any one of you tries one of these feel free to say how it went!

Your Cross DM, Maia