Basic Expert: Overusing Magic

Starting out an OP wizard...

Having caught an interesting anime called isekai wa smartphone (journey to another world with my smartphone) I noticed this little scene in the intro sequence and it reminded me of something from the cover of a Dragon Magazine (Issue #264).

I wont discuss the series other than saying his conversation with God over dying could have gone better. Yeah... that gets ugly.

Ending up an undead...

So imagine doing wizard stuff actually puts your spellcaster at risk. In the Anime world they use mana or life force to power magic, so burning through positive life force gets you to the negative plane pretty quickly.

So lets say your Magic-user/Elf spells memorized are simply what you can access-it is your spell catalogue slots rather than the few you select from the overall spellbook. It places you in a predicament at low levels if you find scrolls and must decide which spells to which you will limit your access.

So lets say you can use them multiple times until your life force depletes. A first level spell depletes your life force at 1%. So lets say using a first level spell gives you 1% chance of dying and becoming undead. You can use your first level spell once a round, but each use gives you 1% chance of becoming undead. Likewise a 9th level spell gets you 9% chance of depleting your life force and becoming undead. You wont become a vampire until 9HD so depletion of life force could be simply death for your spell caster at spell caster levels 1-8.

What does this do? It provides you with a limit on choices, not use. And it increases risk with power and over use. You wont want to use "teleport...teleport...teleport...teleport..." in your time as a powerful caster because each comes with a 5% chance of becoming undead. Rather your caster is more likely to use low level magic.

Now imagine no one knows that wizards/elves can go undead because they usually die from depletion of their life force due to excessively using magic before 9th level.