Goodman Games

webcatcher wrote:Also, as part of the spellburn negotiation process, in order to emphasize that the replacement hand the wizard would get wouldn't be fully his own, I told him that the new hand wouldn't be a mortal hand. Consequently, the wizard player is planning experiments to test his new hand's susceptibility to poisons and damage and is convinced that he is solution to cryptic prophecies of the "no mortal hand can X" type (the man no mortal hand can slay, the weapon no mortal hand can wield, etc).

Wahh, this is so excellent

One thought: perhaps the hand that was given to him, is actually the hand of a powerful demon stolen by a rival (the wizard's patron). It has to come from somewhere after all! And this other demon might be looking for his hand. And perhaps is has powers and drawbacks in addition to those he knows about. Perhaps cultists will start hunting the wizard.

Oh the possibilities

Did you talk to the caster about ritual magic? has a lot of advantages over spell burn and goes neatly hand in hand with it.

Casting in a circle of mages has the best results, but hard if there isn't another caster in the party, otherwise always a good quest in finding another practitioner of the magical arts.

Sacrificing creatures and gold is nice and fun for a quest if you come up with specific creatures and treasure that aid in the casting.

Tieing into that would be rare and powerful ingredients that I would encourage you to come up with if your player is keen on this kind of activity. Maybe the Ink of a giant squid or the blood of a daemon, the litigious type of course.

+1 for every day spent in casting is really great if they have some downtime.

My personal favourite is taking corruption for a bonus, letting your body become a conduit for the arcane at the expense of its reality-distorting influence.

The last one is obviously great quest material, places of power. The lost forge of a dwarven runesmith, a hidden grove of the ents, a fissure in space that seeps corruptive magical energy. I like the idea of places of power possessing their own inherent risks, aside from possible encounters and the problem of finding them, like a magical radiation that requires a Will save to resists a minor corruption or a maddening malevolence that lurks there, waiting for a fresh meal of sanity dine upon.