Wizard needs some updates in antag status, space law, or something

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Nearly every single Wizard round I have witnessed goes one of four ways. Prepare for a wall of text on why I think this antag is being wasted during most rounds.

  1. The wizard plays like a proper antagonist and does antagonist things. Kills people, acts silly but still antagonistic, etc. This is the intended way I think, but also the least common.
  2. The wizard acts like a free agent, trying to be friendly with the crew. They roleplay like a clown on super space magic steroids, doing all their magic for “teh funni”. This inevitably leads to them killing someone or getting killed themselves.
  3. The wizard does not make their intentions known, but the crew treats them like a free agent anyway. Cap/HoS issue statements of “Don’t AOS the Wizard, they can perhaps be reasoned with!” This inevitably leads to them killing someone or getting killed themselves.
  4. The wizard turns everyone into a Free Agent and the station devolves into chaos.

Scenario 1 I have no issues with, its scenarios 2 and 3 (or a combination of both) that always lead to feelsbad moments regardless.

Say its scenario 2, and the wizard announces “Hey guys just here to make people slippery!” Well, nothing is stopping Sec from shooting them on sight. They arrive at the station, and are promptly gunned down by a cadet. Feelsbad for the wizard. Lets say its scenario 2 still, and the crew actually obliges them instead. Well, there’s always the potential the wizard is packing the instagibber9000 in their spellbook, so its always tense. Sec is armed, and ready for a confrontation. They can never be truly at peace. Unlike the Rat King, whose power can be gauged from a quick visual, its impossible to tell what the wizard might be capable of until you witness it, leading to being forced to treat them as teetering on the edge of valid at all times. If the cadet does shoot and kill the “friendly” wizard, the entire station (and probably the lobby too in LOOC or OOC) bitches at them for being a spoilsport. Feelsbad for the cadet.

Lets cover scenario 3, the wizard is spotted sneaking onto the station! The HoS is a big of an idealist however, and he tells Sec NOT to arrest or attack the wizard, but to reason with them. This is followed by an announcement that the wizard “has yet to show hostility” so we should treat them the same. Lo and behold, the cadet finds the wizard in maints. They stop to say “Hey, the HoS wanted to se-” and they’re gibbed. Feelsbad for the cadet. Ok, what if instead the cadet goes in guns blazing, manages to kill the wizard, what then? They get bitched at by HoS, maybe demoted even, for objectively making the correct choice given the wizard’s potential. Feelsbad for the cadet again.

Scenario 4 seems very wizard like, but in my experience, the RP for the round dies as a consequence.

Unless the wizard’s antag status is updated to Free Agent or its explicitly outlined that the wizard needs to be antagonistic (and enforced via the rules, or mechanically through wizard objectives becoming more antagonist aligned), these situations will continue to happen. I have asked for admin response on how to deal with the wizard, and been told “they’re especially valid to kill” and that "the wizard is arguably an existential threat " on par with nukies. It also been said that “you can ignore unreasonable orders to allow a wizard to stay on station” but that is not gonna stop people from bitching at you for it.

Overall I see the wizard being wasted most rounds. It’s silly for all of 3 to 5 minutes of “Free Agent” before something lights the powderkeg. Actual antagonistic wizards are rarer than they should be, but they’re far more fun to play around.

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I actually recently read the paradise station wizard and their event spells are FAR superior. instead of making EVERYONE a free agent. it only gives the free agent to ~10% with the objective of “collect guns” which honestly has MUCH better RP since a good ammount would be willing to give up their gun non lethally and you can always… deal… with those unwilling at the risk of being shot by everyone else in the room.

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(If this isn’t the place for this, please let me know and I’ll delete it.)

I was actually just thinking about this. I have seen so many “friendly wizards”, especially on Salamander. I was going to make my own post but I think I’ll just share my thoughts here.

First off, friendly wizards are a problem. Not just because they leave sec in a constant state of “what if they suddenly kill someone”, but also because, if the wizard doesn’t antagonize, the round doesn’t have a story. If the squad of nukies showed up and said, “You know, we were thinking and we decided we want to join the salvage team and be part of the crew.” Nobody would be okay with that, because it takes away the point of the round and half the departments wouldn’t have a reason to do any work. Wizards who decide they want to be an extra special clown/mime should be looked at the same way.

However, I don’t blame players for this, I think the wizard’s objectives are too vague and don’t give them any real reason to antagonize. Every other antag has clear goals to achieve, and the crew has good reason to try and stop them. Even a ninja that doesn’t kill people still steals research and messes with the criminal records. Meanwhile the wizard is just told to show off and survive. While it does give a lot of freedom for creativity, this doesn’t really give the wizard any reason to be hostile, and if they are not hostile, why would the crew even care to fight them? The wizard’s description makes it pretty clear that they are supposed to be an agent of chaos, enacting their arcane will on the hapless crew.

So a rework to the wizards objectives would need to achieve two things:

  1. Give the wizard an actual goal that they can achieve in various different ways.
  2. Give the crew, (or at least, sec and command) a reason to want to stop the wizard from completing their objectives.

(I don’t have any coding experience, so all of this is just going to be my imagination of what I would hope could be done.)

First, the “show off” objective should require the wizard to go all over the station. The objective should be for the wizard to cast spells at a certain number of locations on the ship. Either at specific locations or just a percentage of the surface area. This is essentially the same objective as before, but it actually encourages the wizard to interact with the whole station and not just blow up one department. This would also be reasonably achievable by all types of wizard strategies. The fireball wizard can just fight their way through the station, the blink/jaunt type will turn the round into a wild goose chase. The stealth type will do their magic when no one is looking. the the “event” type wizard could use the chaos as cover to reach each location.

Regarding the second problem, how do we make the crew care? Since the wizard is all about sowing chaos, and since none of the other antags interact with it, I thought they should cause natural disaster events to happen. Like, as they make more progress on their objective, and use their spells in more parts of the station, events like meteor showers, solar flares, vent critters, and power outages would start to happen more and more often. At max power it should make the station basically unlivable. This, to me, is a unique way for the wizard to destroy the station that no other antag can do, and it seems thematically appropriate that this would be the way to display your ultimate arcane power. It also gives the crew a very good reason to want to stop the wizard. (If people really want to befriend the wizard, maybe he could lose his objective after being killed and revived, I don’t know.)

So that’s my wall of text ideaguys post. Let me know what you think.

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Are we mad about the wizard roleplaying in our roleplaying game after their character objective tells them “do some roleplay and then try to survive” ?

Scenario 2 and 3 from OP’s post have been some of the funniest experiences i’ve had as reporter or barman, or even sec. Like… Just roleplay more ? The wizard is the only antag where you don’t know what’s going to happen. Will they kill everyone ? No idea. Will they just be nice and give interviews to the reporter and slip and clownify tiders ? Who knows ! Will they give guns and spells to everyone ? It could happen !

That’s the fun of this antag, with the nukies, the dragon, or the ninja, you know what’s going to happen, and you know what you have to do. The wizard opens a ton of fun RP. Like, i genuinely don’t get why you could dislike command having arguments about what to do with a potential threat to the station that has done no harm so far in a RP game.

I truly don’t see any issues with how the wizard is right now, besides maybe like tiny balances about some spell costs or cooldowns.

I respect your opinion tho, wizard rounds aren’t always fun, but for me, the majority of them have been, and the few times they weren’t , i didn’t get the impression it was because of the mechanics or objectives of the wizard

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wizards are an antagonist, their goal is to be an antagonist, go murder people and show off
wizards are also, 1, carrying lots of highly illegal magical contraband, and 2, A FOREIGN INVADER, you can just kill them like a nukie, anyone who is trying to reason with a wizard is stupid rp since the wizard can just go lol no and fireball you instantly
or carp
or welded locker

also i’m pretty sure in… normal space station lore wizards are usually directly against NT… so them being friendly doesn’t make sense

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I disagree with you here Callmore and let me share my opinon on this matter generally

As you join as a wizard your told your role is antag - this doesn’t mean much without context but gives you free permisson to go wild kill whoever do whatever. free agents are meant to be limited in the sense of dont go too crazy, murderboning the entire station as skele or RK isn’t good RP and isn’t that enjoyable for others.

Your part of the Wizard federation, NT and Wiz Fed have tense relationships - this doesn’t mean they are at war or anything and your objective as wizard isn’t to cause as much damage to NT as possible but simply show them magic~ weather you choose to use it for ill or benafit is upto you

Your Objectives are

  1. To Show off magic
  2. Not Die

Now from my Intertraption, Show off magic would mean do percisely that, do magic where folks can see you. Try to impress them show them; hey magic is super awesome and cool. If you blow up or kill folks who witness you, thats not gonna impress anyone and will only harm the Wiz Feds relations with NT more. To truely show off, you need to be convincing crew that magic is awesome.

As for your second objective, if you’ve made yourself openly hostile to the crew, they are going to arm and try to kill you back, so being alive is way less likely.

That being said as you apporch the station SEC will be ready to murder you as wizard, and its entirely upto you as a wizard to have to roleplay around that. When doing a Visting wizard showing benafits of magic type roleplay you still have T3 contriband and Sec is ready and willing to blast you into chunks from the moment you arrive.

This makes RP way more intresting if you choose not to murder folks as the wizard, your playing a dangerous game, if HoS or Sec generally doesn’t play along your going to have a hard time and that presents unquine challenges and opertunies for both sides.

So sec is hunting this wizard for contri, command is deciding what to do about the wizard and mean while you can be running around showing off your magic trying to convince crew that magic is awesome!

If you leave crew with a posative Wiz experiance they are way more likely to feel like supporting Wiz-Fed NT relations helping your faction overall. Blowing up the station is likely to have NT see Wiz-Fed as a greater and greater threat harming relations.

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So going over the 4 types of wizard play you presented.

  1. your RPing a wizard nukie, not much roleplay for the station, they know your here to kill everyone and will return the favour. its bad for your Wiz Fed relation to NT but can be fun for those who like war ops, but most folks dont like there deparments blowing up so…

  2. Your doing shinangans killing is only accidental and its rather funny, I remeber a wizard on Mander who hid in the maints and if they saw you lockered you and ran away funny shit. mostly harmless I believe sec was hunting them as a pest with non-leathals

  3. Sec is following rules of escalation as is command set out in Roleplay Rule 11 If the wizard hasn’t show open hostility or a danger to the crew this is a good approch, but of course being the first victim will suck for that player and then it becomes situation 1 again, or if they are harmless situation 2 or 5

  4. This one is the only one that I see persistantly miss understood by the player base. Folks see “Free Agent” and go “I can go around murdering folks! and I have a gun or wand or spell book to do it with!”

However the wizards spells that make folks free agents gives them the role: survivors. Surivor says your role is now survivor and its your job to make it to CC alive. If your a crew member with a book of fireball and chooe to blow up evac or attack crew with it not only are you going to bring sec down on yourself like an antag wizard but your also GREATLY reducing your odds of living harming your own Win con as a free agent.

I feel I also added a 5th RP type

  1. Crew-wiz where the Wizard wants to show off magic in a way that doesn’t harm crew to show them that magic is freaken awesome and NT needs to stop being so frightened of the arcane powers they do not understand.
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Ok I get it, people like when the wizard RPs. I do too if that very tenous balance can be struck. But here’s the issue guys, the admins and developers intended for wizard to be a existence level threat to the station, the same as nukies. Do any of you expect RP from a nukie? No. There is a mismatch to its intended role and the way most rounds actually play out.

So, all of you really agree with me here fundamentally. If people enjoy the silly wizard RP, then make the wizard a Free Agent instead of an antagonist. Now sadly I don’t think this will change anything if it is changed to Free Agent. That’s because unlike a Skeleton or Rat King, the wizard has the potential to be incredibly dangerous and that information is unknown to the crew.

So how is this fixed? There needs to be mechanical barriers in place particularly to avoid feelsbad moments because there is not enough clarity. Either there needs to be a way for the crew to tell “This is a silly wizard and not a dangerous one.” or, there needs to be some addition to Space Law that forces Sec to treat them like a visitor until given a reason otherwise.

But in my personal opinion, the wizard should become a true, objective driven antagonist. If you choose to play it as silly, that’s on you, but it should be treated as valid as a nukie. I just want the admins and devs to take a stance on this and fully clarify so that there are less feelsbad moments. Particularly I want there to be some mechanical changes to really make it clear.

EDIT: If anyone actually cares, here is the development doc for antagonists. In a lot of the scenarios listed here, the wizard is fundamentally going against intended design for antagonists, which is part of the major issue.

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It is. They are solo antags, and friendly antags are not allowed per server rules (Roleplay rule 8)

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Note all the discussion, not everyone is playing/treating it like an antag. People tend to treat the wizard as a Free Agent even when they’re not.

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Yeah, i’m just pointing out that it is already specified in the rules, seems to be a culture thing moreso, possibly also due to lack of objectives and sec not wanting to be seen as full 1984/fun police

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it seems to me that the community and maintainers might have different views on the wizard, The rules are pushing one way and but many folks espically in the MRP server are pushing the other.

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Exactly why I started this discussion. The feelsbads will continue until unification improves. I particularly want admins and devs/maintainers to chime in.

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I think the admin/mainters that have chimed in have a clear view they are a destructive force that sec should be removing and players not doing so are breaking the rules.

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I think part of the problem is that the objective “Show off your magic” is pretty vague - there’s plenty of non-destructive ways to show off magic.

If the intention is that Wizards are supposed to be causing such disruption, I think renaming the objective to something like “Cause chaos around the station with your magic” would better communicate that.

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Name it “Raise Hell”

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I think one thing that could potentially solve this, is a custom event scheduler for the wizard that dynamically ramps up spawns of dangerous events (like solo op, dragon, ninja, ect) based on how much of a threat the wizard is being to the station. IE the wizard is being friendly and not trying to murder everyone? well now a bunch of dragons have spawned and the station now has to deal with it. The wizard is straight up robust and is giving sec and the crew hell? less threats, maybe a ratking, would spawn. This could be objectively measured by the amount of crew the wizard has killed, the number of spells weighted by how dangerous or disruptive it is (fireball would have a heavier weight than say a door spell), amount of default tiles the wizard has destroyed or altered, and possibly other metrics. By implementing this this would mechanically enforce threats to the station if the wizard is being friendly or not enough of a disruption,

This being said I agree with several people here that friendly wizards make for a boring round. I don’t think command staff should be able to permit the wizard aboard or condone their presence. Magical contraband is a bit of a gray area right now on where it falls under space law. Whether it is minor, major, or on the level of Syndicate contraband is unclear and has a pending rule clarification. I personally believe it should be on the level of Syndicate contraband as it is labeled as “highly illegal”. But since such clarification has not been answered, I am forced to treat it as minor contraband as that is the “least restrictive option” that I must follow under the rules when something is in question. By making it concrete that it is on the same level as syndicate contraband, it will become a rule issue for captain or anyone else to authorize the wizard as crew with all their items as only CC can authorize use or possession of Syndicate level contraband. But as @Lyroth001 said, it’s already against RP rule 6 and should be a rule violation but due to the culture it is still happening and, I assume, not currently being enforced. This change could fall along those same lines too.

Well, there are 2 options I see for helping mitigate the wizard issue. Let me know what y’all think about these ideas.

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From a theming, balance and overall wording perspective. The wizard is meant to be just random fun.
Nothing on them even hints at having to go ham on the station, and in fact, it is VERY unfun when they do (just go and use unmovable rod on engi and the round is over regardless)

Wizards are by far the most overtuned antag, and them showing restraint is pretty much welcomed imo.

From what i can seen, this was literally just devs assuming that the common space asshole :tm: mind would just fulfill their vision of the wizard by treating the show off as just mess with the crew.
And after the first week that was just wizard being worse than a singularity, i am honestly glad people are trying to have more fun with an antag designed for that.

I am not saying the rules should suddenly let wizard be allying with the crew. But small doses of fun and dumb spells are magnitudes more entertaining than gib everyone on sight and hide behind an indestructible wall while your stuff recharges.

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I think this could be coded a bit more elegently and could make magic more intresting…

Rather than have it be a automatic thing that detects the wizards activies (which sounds hard to impliment) have it based off of Wizard specialisation (choosen at spawn like how borgs choose there baseform) Each specialisation comes with a free spell (some of which you cant buy baseline) and a goal and based on your specilisation more or less threats spawn. here are some examples;

Destruction specialisation:
Free spell: Fireball
Your goal is to deal as much damage to the station as possible, kill at least 50% of the crew. Die a glorious death
Extra threat: None
Notes: Basicaly Wizard war ops spec.

Clown Specialisation:
Free spell: Bread Wand (Normally non-obtainable)
Your goal is to prank as many people as possible and be a general nuisense for as long as possible. You should try to avoid killing unless in self defence. green text if you successfully cast magic on half of the crew without killing targeted crew and dont get killed.
Extra threat: Sleeper agents activate as converting the round to Traitors
Notes: Wizard clown ops premoting spells that are mostly a laugh like magical locker, bread wand, slippery.

Chaos Specialization
Free spell: Create magic
Your goal is the create as much chaos as possible! start cargonia!, rearrange the station the more chaos you make the better.
Extra threat: None
Notes: this wizard would likely need more spells to match the archatype things like mass relocate where everyone swaps position randomly with other enitites, spells that reflect madness like summon Cheadder gun (a gun that is automatic and shoots cheese wheels at enemys for 5 blunt) or the ability to give the AI legs like in the apirl fools event. Shape shift into a crew member and pretend to be them to sow more chaos.

Magical Promoter
Free spell: Create Wand of healing (Normally non-obtainable), additionally unlocks additional wands for purchase with normal points and the ability to crate guns.
Goal: Your goal is to try and premote magic to NT. This will be a challenging objective as NT reguards wizards as an extreme threat. Sec and command may try to prevent your misson or kill you it’ll be upto you to convince them your not a threat. If you cast spells witnessed by at least 50% of the crew and make it to Cetcom alive and unrestrained you succeed.
Extra threats: Random selection between Rival wizard ghost role opening at 45 minutes with the objective to stop you at any cost, A Nukie squad spawning about 45 minutes into the shift. or Surival mode starting 45m into the shift (with adjusted to be the spawn rate of 45 minutes). Should the wizard be killed and remain dead for 10 minutes the events will triggure early and the rival wizard will be changed to avenging wizard with the goal “One of our Wizard Federation Diplomats was killed while interacting with this station. Leave none alive and revive the diplomat if possible.”
Notes: This one offers alot of roleplay challenges for the wizard and the crew alike, the delay on events is to reflect and allow the wizard to etablish themselves and allow the roleplay between command on how to interact with the ‘guest’ as it can be assumed Sec and Command will initally expect hostility and it may take some time and interactions with crew to convince them to disarm. The events starting early if the wizard stays dead for 10 minutes reflects that a Magical Premotor is likely to be less offensively specialized and much easier for sec to take down and if they have been taken down and the crew doesn’t plan to revive them a real round threat is needed.

Wizard Federation Hostile Take over
Free spell: None
Goal: Anoounce the station is now undercontrol of the wizard federation, Kill all of Command an Sec, defeat NT reiforcements and gain control of the station. allow crew to leave if they wish, want the station personel are just a bonus.
Extra Threats: Once all of Command and sec is crit, dead or gibbed the station will automatically be set to alert level Gamma and a death squad will be called an NT announcement made saying something along the lines of “A Wizard from the Wizard federation has taken control of your station, stay in your departments we are sending heavy enforcement to retake the station.”
Should the wizard or death squad be defeated an evac ship will be sent with the message either “our long range sensors detect the arcane threat has been exterminated” from NT alert level going green same as if a nukie threat was removed.
If the wizard wins you get: “Your command, security and assult squad are no more, the Wizard federation has full control of the station. we have no intrest in hostages we have opened a portal to your precious Central command at evac. Stay and join us or leave portal will close in 5 minutes tick-tock” In purple from The High Council of the Wizard Federation. upon the portal closing those on the station will get a Epsilon alert level NT assuming they joined the wizard federation while those in CC will get a green alert level notice.
Notes: This would be rather neat to see, gamma and Epsilon are so very rarely used and its normally when someone is rule breaking. having a non-admin Gamma and Esp based on the wizard fed player esentually taking over the station would be really fun and I think the death squad would also give players some fun trying to retake the station from the wizard fed and allow it to see more use (ive only seen Esp once in the 4 and a half months ive played and ive been in alot of manders shifts). Wizard evac being a one way portal also helps them stand out from NT

Necromancer
Free spell: Raise dead
Goal: Kill as many crew and make them zombies as you can. Force the crew to evac. Survive on station.
Extra threats: None
Notes: necromancy isn’t in the game yet but I like the idea of it so added it in encase this was picked up.

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for reference it is enforced when we see it, but its just a case of not having full admin coverage sadly

eta - it is helpful when people ahelp friendly wizard as well, so if someones free they can jump on and handle it.