While doing some reading for my latest episode I started to think about how I would handle running a campaign or adventure set during the school years of a bunch of wizards. Back in the 2nd-edition days, me and my brother sometimes played around with the idea of playing level 0 characters as a prequel to a campaign, having to earn our classes, and I thought I would throw together something similar. So the goal would be that at the end of this prologue, we are left with a group of level 1 wizards.
I think the best way to handle it would be to break down the starting features of a level 1 wizard and gradually award them as milestone rewards during the school years. So at the start, we need to determine what a level 0 character would look like. My idea is that they would start out with 4 + con mod hit points, same as a commoner, no class proficiencies or abilities, obviously, except maybe weapon proficiencies in the case of the wizard, as that isn't really a normal thing they learn in school and they are quite limited to begin with. I would let my players start with a background, representing their time before going to wizard school, so they would have any proficiencies they get from that, and ofcourse anything they get from their race. To make things easy, I am going to assume the use of the standard array of starting stats, which is 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. But one could use point buy or roll stats. My idea for using the standard ones however is that I would change them and lower them slightly, giving out 14,13,13,12,10,8. That way we can give some stat increases as part of our milestones. If you use point buy, or roll the stats, you will need to decrease the two highest scores, or just give them less points to buy with, to get the same effect. The Proficiency Bonus would start at +2, just like for a 1st level character.
Now that we have a starting point we can make a progression chart for our milestone rewards over the six school years until the characters reach level 1. Each milestone would be set at the end of the school year, and represent the training and experience awarded over the course of the year.
1st year - 1 spell slot, 1 cantrip, 1 1st level spell, 1 skill from class skills
2nd year - 1st level spell, +1 to a ability score, 1 saving throw from class skills,
3rd year - 1 spell slot, 1 cantrip, 1st level spell, 1 additional Hit Point
4th year - 1st level spell, +1 to a ability score, 1 skill from class list,
5th year - 1 cantrip, 1st level spell, Arcane Recovery. 1 saving throw from class list
6th year - 1st level spell, 1 additional Hit Point,
I'm not sure I would let my players copy spells freely during the school years, It would partially break the system we put in place to show how learning magic is a slow and arduous process. Some spells might be given out by the DM and some years everyone might be learning the same spells, while the players should be able to recast learning some specific spells. I would definitely base my curriculum on the one presented in the Complete Wizards Handbook from 2nd edition, which actually brings up the idea that wizards have some control over the kind of spells they learn.
A point could also be made that a wizard should be level 2 when they graduate from certain schools, after all that is when they choose their arcane tradition. But once the wizard has reached level 1 they can just progress with levelling as normal from that point. Again, in the Complete Wizard's Handbook, they brought up the idea that a wizard wishing to specialise in a school of magic would need to spend up to 2 additional years at school to master it, so one could break down those two years the same way as the first six, or one could simply set an adventure or two that takes place in that time, and level as normal.
Haven’t really touched on any sort of playtime scale here, but that really depends on what sort of a game one is after. One could just set up and play out a couple of important key events and pretty much go through the school years in a session or two. For my part, if I ever did something like this I would probably set out a single short adventure per year that maybe takes a session to play, jumping forward in time a lot and explaining what is taught and how the school is, but you could set a whole campaign up this way and really make your players work for level 1.
It was just an idea I had, I really enjoy low-level adventuring, but it's not for everyone. If anyone has had any similar ideas or has any thoughts on how to handle something like this or if you decide to try it out, let me know. Curious what other peoples thoughts or on something like this.
