Except by druids. The garden is the antithesis of the forest. Gardens are shrines to domesticated plants. A big wheat field is impressive, but a garden is a tiny segment of the wilderness made perfect and smooth. Dogs are tamed wolves. Gardens are tamed forests. We tell stories about how real life ought to be, and we build gardens to make nature the way it ought to be.
Some ideas stolen from here.
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| Even Amudsen |
School: Garden Wizard
Perk: You gain +1 Attack stat and +1 Defense while wielding a quarterstaff. You start with a quarterstaff, a spade, and a good pair of boots.
Drawback: You must meditate each morning within sight of natural beauty. Even some mold growing on a rock counts. You must describe this to other players. Druids hate you.
A "good pair of boots" takes up one inventory slot, but provides bonuses to climbing slippery surfaces and kicking monsters in the goolies. The meditation portion is very entertaining, especially if the Garden Wizard is played by an actual biologist who is just delighted to tell everyone about the mysteries of lichen and the thirty identical varieties of wintergreen.
Cantrips:
1. Permanently change the colour or form of a small plant.
2. Plants grow just a little bit better in a [level] mile radius around you. It takes at least a season to be noticeable.
3. You can sleep anywhere, in any position, with a few moments notice. You can set environmental conditions that will wake you, such as “sunrise” or “rain.”
The garden wizard cantrips aren't very impressive, but changing the form of plants is more useful than you might think. Hand someone a rose, then change it to a brilliant blue (to match their eyes). How many people could resist that? Also, the radius of growth is based on your actual level, not the number of wizard templates, so if you reach level 6 you'll cover over 100 square miles. Garden wizards this potent are very, very rare.
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| Jakub Rebelka |
Garden Wizard Spell List
1. ClarityR: 30’ T: [dice] creatures D: 0
Target makes another Save against a emotion-affecting effect (fear, anger, sadness, pleasure, pain). You can target yourself.
2. Woodbend
R: touch T: staff D: [dice] hours
A bit of wood bends or unbends. Straight doors can be warped and stuck. Warped doors can be straightened and unstuck. Wooden-hafted weapons may become unusable or impose significant penalties. Trees can likewise be molded.
3. Dendrigraphy
R: touch T: tree D: 10 minutes
Allows you to ask a [dice] questions of a plant that you touch. Answer appears in letters on the trunk. Trees are fairly intelligent. They know about weather and have a great sense of time, but they have a hard time differentiating between animals, except by size. They also gossip among themselves, and may have gossip from distant lands. This spell also works on Dryads.
4. Whirling Staff
R: touch T: staff D: [dice] rounds
You can cast this spell as a free action. You get +1 Defense while you whirl your staff around with both hands. The next attack you make with the staff does an additional 1d6+[dice] damage and counts as magical. This spell lasts for [sum] rounds or until you attack. You can also throw a whirling staff 60' with a standard attack, dealing 1d6+[dice] damage. It does not return.
5. Locate Animal
R: [dice] miles T: creature D: [dice] hours
Name a common animal. You now know where the nearest example of the animal is. If the area is infested with manticores, they count as common creatures.
6. Magic Missile
R: 200' T: creature D: 0 Target takes [sum] + [dice] damage, no Save. As Garden Wizard, your spell is an invisible blast of force or a green-white bolt of lightning, cast with appropriate hand gestures.
7. Obedient Stone
R: touch T: stone D: [dice] hours
Cast this spell on a stone small enough to fit in your palm and then give it a command. It will attempt to follow your commands to the best of it's ability. If thrown at a target, it will get +10 to hit (and deals 1d6 damage). It can also be asked to trip targets when they run past, jump off a shelf when a certain person enters the room, etc. Limited to [sum] small hops or actions. Lasts [dice] hours or until the stone runs out of actions.
8. Control Earth
R: 50’ T: a bucket’s worth of earth D: concentration
Control a small amount of earth within 50'. At one [die]: (a) excavate a bucket's worth of dirt, (b) smooth and fill the same amount, (c) causing the earth to quickly swallow a small item, or quickly swallow a non-resisting person, chest, or signpost, (d) exhume something at the same rate, (e) knock over some hobo's shack with a tiny tremor. Each [dice] you invest increases the effects.
9. Light
R: touch T: object or creature D: [dice]x2 hours
Object illuminates as a torch, with a radius of 20’+[dice]x10’. Alternatively, you can make an Attack roll against a sighted creature. If you succeed, the creature is blinded for [sum] rounds. If [sum] is greater than 12, the creature is permanently blinded. You can chose the colour of the light. If you invest 4 [dice] or more this light has all the qualities of natural sunlight. Alternatively, if you invest 4 [dice] or more the light can be purest octarine, although it will only last for 1 round. Octarine light is extremely dangerous.
10. Sleep
R: 50' T: creature D: 10 min
Target falls into a magical slumber, and can't be awoken by anything less vigorous than a slap (a standard action). Non-alert, unaware targets are not allowed a Save. Can affect creatures up to [sum] HD. If [sum] is at least 4 times the creature's HD, the duration becomes permanent (until slapped) and the creature no longer needs to eat or drink while sleeping. If you also invested 3 [dice] or more into this spell, the duration becomes permanent, and you can set the only condition that will cause the creature to awake (the sunrise before the apocalypse, true love’s kiss, etc.)
Emblem Spells
11. Wall of Earth
R: 20’ T: wall D: permanent
You rearrange dirt to form a 10’ by 10’ panel per [dice]. You can mold the wall, similar to cutting holes and notches in a sheet of paper. The wall has Defense 2 and [dice]x2 HD. If it is horizontal, the wall must be anchored on at least 2 sides.
12. Uproot
R: touch T: tree D: [sum] rounds
You touch a tree or [sum] of smaller plants, and they uproot and march to a new location. If you invest 3 or more dice, they march until you tell them to stop. Otherwise, they root themselves when the spell’s duration ends. Trees move 6’/round, smaller plants move 12’/round.
Mechanical Notes on the Garden Wizard Spell List
Garden Wizard spells are a mixed bag of area control, direct damage, and utility spells. This class is a solid all-rounder. The +1 to Attack and Defense while holding a quarterstaff, combined with spells like whirling staff and magic missile, makes the Garden Wizard a decent fighter, but they never reach the flashy levels of ludicrous power available to some of the other classes. Strangely enough, aside from dengrigraphy, they can't speak to plants. Speak with plants is a spell they need to adventure to learn.
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| Summon Blackberries |
1. MD only return to your pool on a 1-2 for 24 hours
2. Take 1d6 damage
3. Random mutation for 1d6 rounds, then Save. Permanent if you fail.
4. Plants wither for 5xd20 feet around you.
5. Save vs Fear against fire for the next 24 hours.
6. Plants erupt from your fingers and toes. Everyone within 50’ must Save vs Dex or be entangled and slowed.
Doom of the Gardener
1. Take sufficient fire damage to reduce you to zero HP.
2. You can no longer read maps or symbolic representations of places, or non-magical languages.
3. Your memory fades. You cannot memorize spells. Save every hour or forget every detail of the previous few hours.
This doom can be averted by planting 10,000 trees by hand, and tending them as they grow to maturity. You may also journey to the Heart of the Forest, and battle the wild spirits within.
Delightful!
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