Worldseeker (Wizard Archetype)
When you think of a high-level wizard, what do you think of? A mighty archmage channelling energies to destroy entire armies? Necromancers that consort with dark powers and create the most sinister undead? Legendary crafters of the most powerful magical items?
For some, the idea of the planeswalker, legendary extraplanar travelers that seek the most exotic sites, the rarest goods, and more across the multiverse. These are the mages that stride into the unknown with confidence, and interact with planar residents as if they were no more extraordinary than any mere mortal merchant or villager.
While there is indeed a “planes walker” prestige class, which I have featured on the blog in the past, today we’re looking at a wizard that has been training to one day walk between the barriers of dimensions since early on in their careers.
These worldseekers are well-practiced in making extraplanar contacts long before they can even use the magic that lets them travel between planes, and can even call upon long-term extraplanar allies without the stigma associated with conjuration magics normally associated with the arcane, allowing for camaraderie, even true friendship, to bloom between wizard and outsider, depending on the nature of what they call upon.
While the journey to becoming a worldseeker is fraught with peril, those who do manage it can become great enough that even demigods take notice, perhaps even true divinities.
Even before being able to open the way themselves, these wizards are well-versed in planar lore, and have enacted rituals to ward themselves against normal environmental extremes.
Later on, they improve this ward to protect them from extraplanar extremes, which in turn eventually improves to allow them to ward others that stay nearby.
Forging planar connections early on in their training, these mages call an outsider familiar to themselves, even those that would normally be outside their range to bind, though it can only be an outsider of a matching philosophy to their own. What’s more, as they grow in power, they can use their magic to call outsiders to their side to bargain as a cleric or other non-arcane caster might, requiring no magic circle and resulting in generally friendly outsiders. They learn each of these spells at appropriate levels, and can sacrifice other prepared spells to call these allies. What’s more, the first such calling done in a day is given a discount in terms of what the outsider asks for in return for service.
More powerful worldseekers learn how to create their own small pocket dimension, a private planar sanctum that maintains itself and remains a place the wizard can return to.
Interested in a plane-hopping wizard that gains access to the ability to summon long-term allies, this archetype might be for you. A few words of warning though. Because the planar ally spell usually requires a payment (unless the outsider waives payment because the task is something it wants to do), and the outsiders are at risk of true destruction unlike a normal summon, it is probably best to be a bit more conservative with these allies, lest you GM determine that you’ve exhausted the good favor with the aligned planar powers whose good graces the character is implied to be in with this archetype. The spontaneous casting of planar ally should be reserved for those times when you need an ally that has powers you lack. Furthermore, your choice of arcane school will be colored by the fact you don’t gain access to the power granted normally at mid-level.
Since the planar ally spell specifically calls only outsiders that are either associated with your deity or your moral philosophy, the relationship you have with these outsiders can vary considerably. Lawful outsiders might consider you a useful underling at first, but grow to respect your authority as you prove yourself, while chaotic ones may see you more as a kindred spirit. Goodly outsiders may develop true friendship with the wizard, while fiends may hold them under wary contempt, seeing them as hubristic and impertinent, eager to wait for them to die so that the tables may turn in the afterlife, while also being fearful that they grow powerful enough to reincarnate as a suitably powerful outsider upon reaching their final destination.
In a recent planar storm, an entire chunk of the Fey Realm was pulled into the Sea of Chaos, and brought with it many dangerous fey, including a fearsome tunche, a fey predator that the chaotic residents are wholly unprepared for. A plane-hopping mortal party, guided by a powerful wizard, however, might be just the ticket.
In the city of Konkyo, there is a teahouse that an elderly tengu periodically frequents, telling stories of his adventures that are almost certainly exaggerations, though on occasion the old bird will pull out an orrey that matches no known stars or planets that the guests or owners have ever seen.
Quite an upset occurs when a strange woman appeared suddenly in the town square, as if from nowhere, flanked on either side by two mighty angels, which she began leading around town as if showing friends her hometown. Exactly who this mage is nobody yet knows, the guards too intimidated to approach her.
