Sorry, ladies, gentlemen, and non-binaries: the road to hell is closed for repairs. So what do we do with all of these good intentions? We make a D&D character who has the best of them, but belly-flops at the thought of executing them. And thus we have a level one human mage created in the late 1990’s named McLean Wolf V. His name was so badass that there had to be five generations of those motherfuckers. Unfortunately, McLean was so bad at fighting that it was amazing there was one generation at all. Never mind abortion rights, because killing off the first generation would have been sufficient birth control for a fifth-generation character that turned out to be a drive-by abortion in the end. You see…how do I put this as delicately as McLean’s fragile bones? The man couldn’t fight worth a shit.
And it turns out, that’s how the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules designed mages to begin with. They start out with four hit points. Four! You know what that means? It means there isn’t a constitution modifier in hell that will keep him from dying from a fucking paper cut. Mages can’t wear heavy armor and they can’t use heavy weapons. McLean of course had neither of those things. He had a wizard’s robe, a knife, and a bola sling. That’s. About. It. You’d think with all of my experience playing Final Fantasy games I would have figured out a long time ago that wizard-type characters were going to be piss-poor fighters who couldn’t be self-sufficient if they tried. Tellah from Final Fantasy IV can throw all the lightning bolts he wants, but if an imp so much as pokes him with his short sword, he’s on the ground sucking his thumb like a bitch. In the very first Final Fantasy game, white mages and black mages are the first party members that monsters go after, because they’re more fragile than Lego sets. Ever wonder why bullies pick on smaller kids? Because if they picked on hulking body builders, the police would need the bullies’ dental records to identify them afterwards.
So…I’ve got McLean Wolf V ready to go for a campaign. What he lacks in fighting prowess, he makes up for in magic…provided that he studies his spells every fucking night like he’s cramming for the SAT’s. And once he exhausts his spells, he has to study them again…and again…for hours upon hours…Well, guess what, McLean? Your enemies aren’t going to give you hours and hours to prepare for them. If a barroom brawler wants to pound you into coffee grounds, he’s not going to wait for you to study your fireball spells. He’s going to beat the shit out of you weather you’re ready or not. Schoolyard bullies don’t wait for their victims to complete karate training. Terrorists don’t wait for their victims to learn how to use firearms. Nobody’s going to wait for McLean to get his nose out of his books. In fact, forget the footman’s mace, you could just take his Stephen King-sized doorstop and beat him to death with it. It would only take one hit and he’d go from lying on the ground to lying IN the ground.
And because McLean couldn’t do a damn thing on his own, my brother invited his friends Nathan and Chris to come play with us. They could wield all the battleaxes and long swords they wanted to. I, on the other hand, had to throw fireballs, lightning bolts, and magic missiles like they were substitutes for a gatling gun. And if you ever needed an indication of how forgetful of a memoirist I am (which is a lot like being a mage who can’t fight), I don’t even remember what quest we were doing or why we banded together. All I knew was that midway through the game, I wanted to tear up my character sheet and never see McLean Wolf V ever again. James, my DM brother, wasn’t having any of that nonsense. He said that if I did that, he would make my eighth level paladin Charles Goodhorn die of natural causes…even though he was only twenty-five years old. He’s not even old enough to use his bastard sword as a walking cane and already my brother wants to hold him hostage so that I’ll keep playing as a mage made of glass. I guess he was trying to motivate me to try new things since I was so accustomed to playing warrior characters. Either that or it was the 1990’s and we were constantly at each other’s throats due to the inevitability of problematic brotherhoods.
Well…the campaign continued and Chris, Nathan, and I found ourselves in the middle of a cleared forest getting our shit pushed in by orcs and goblins. Chris and Nathan’s warrior characters slashed and hacked their way through the frontlines while I was in the background preparing for a spell. This was my chance to save their lives and prove myself as a wizard. The orcs and goblins became too much to handle due to their swelling forces. Even with the heaviest equipment, Chris and Nathan couldn’t fight them all without getting swarmed. So…McLean conjured a massive fireball and rolled it onto the battlefield like a bowling ball on a snowy mountain instead of a proper bowling alley. The analogy was appropriate since the fireball indeed got bigger and bigger as it rolled along. The screams of goblins and orcs burning alive was like a Baroque symphony of beautiful music. Then came the magic missiles to take out the stragglers. And the lighting bolts to make the battlefield crispier than a bucket of KFC, though not as tasty, but probably greasy considering the monsters we were dealing with. And just like that, the battle was over and I was the hero of the day. My opinion of fragile mages hasn’t changed, but I had more fun playing them as I got older. Truth is, they’re better in groups than on their own, not unlike D&D itself. Tellah lived as long as he did because the dark knight turned paladin named Cecil protected him. Black mages are always accompanied by hulking fighters turned knights and thieves turned ninjas.
Teamwork is the name of the game. But the D&D party that wins together serves prison sentences together. It wouldn’t be a James Haines-Temons D&D campaign if it didn’t involve incarceration of some kind. At this point, we should change the name of the game from D&D to Shawshank Redemption. While none of our characters had rock hammers to dig us out or posters of Raquel Welch to cover up our schemes, McLean was allowed to keep his books. Prison libraries are a thing, not unlike The Shawshank Redemption. But why in the hell would you allow a wizard capable of throwing avalanche fireballs to have access to books? That’s his source of power! You wouldn’t give Chris and Nathan their weapons and armor, so don’t give McLean Wolf his books! Nothing made sense in the 1990’s, but this should have been glaringly obvious. I guess we’ll never know if McLean torched the whole fucking prison, because that’s where the campaign ended for the day. We never did continue it. Bummer.
I’m not against the idea of wizards in my fantasy settings. They’re aesthetically pleasing, after all, and that’s why I enjoy fantasy so much. I could have a necromancer with skulls everywhere and poison mist surrounding him. I could have a pyromancer with fiery staves and spiky red hair that resembled his flames. I could have a sorceress who wore fancy black dresses into battle and could turn the skirts of them into circular blades while she twirls in a dance. The possibilities are as endless as my imagination. But as far as playing videogames and tabletop RPG’s goes, maybe it’s best if my wizards were accompanied by other characters. Every party has a role that needs to be filled. As much as I love the idea of an all-barbarian squad, who’s going to heal them when there’s no cleric and they get their shit pushed in after being exhausted from rage? What about an all-thief party? Who’s going to protect them without a wizard’s magic spells if they get caught? Like life itself, there’s something for everybody in this world. Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something. A wizard can’t carry the load by himself. Otherwise, he wouldn’t need a chiropractor at this point, but an embalmer.
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