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Don’t try to make wiz rounds something they aren’t. It’s a war round, treat it as such. I don’t think it can be a mid round due to how chaotic and strong wizards are. I also don’t think continuing the round is the play either, as you’ll be often left with a station and crew in tatters, and any future antags will be dealing with a fully war-escalated crew. And yes I know de-escalation is a thing, but it usually doesn’t happen and you can’t un-order WTs. Furthermore, when a wiz round is confirmed everyone swaps into LRP murderbone mindset anyways, so I don’t think continuing the round has legs. Hard to have continuity after something like a wiz round. My issue with wizard is this; it gaslights you into thinking it’s a normal round type and then rugpulls you into a war round. Nukie rounds solve this problem with the declare war button which everyone presses because stealth ops are lame. When war is declared everyone knows what’s up, and if you don’t want to participate you at least know not to invest in your job, and you can cryo if you don’t want to play a war round. My proposal is this: Wizards get a time limit in their prep room before an automatic wizard federation announcement of declaration of war is declared. This would apply to both regular wiz rounds and ragin rounds. I think 5 minutes is fair, but obviously the amount of time is up for debate. This announcement would give people the heads up that this is not a normal round similar to nukies, and prevent people from being disappointed in investing into their jobs in a war round. I am aware that this would remove stealth wizardry from the equation, but in my opinion that is totally ok. I have never once enjoyed a stealth wizard gimmick, and I don’t know anyone who has. The worst round I ever played was an hour long wizard round where a stealth wizard just hid in maints and Ei Nathed people in secret before eventually being found 30 minutes in. The resulting 30 minute long chase against an instakilling disguised wizard with a full evasion loadout was mind numbing. Wizard is a disruptive and violent round. Stealth has no place in it, as it’s a war round type. It is essentially a Nukie round with Harry Potter instead of chainsaws and rifles. I say just make it what it is, and have a declaration of war. Hell if you declare war, this could even give you the excuse to change wizard to always be ragin to include more players, and give the crew an actual chance to start escalating. Now that could be fun, and give more people the chance to experience being a wiz.

One possible way to do this , while still preserving the big-deal that is the wizard's death, would be to keep these spells and effects permanent until the wizard is killed. Rather than having the round just end at this point (which is something I've never heard anyone actually like) we could have a blip moment where all their spells are broken and the station has to pick up after itself. This would preserve the climatic moment of the wizard's death that we currently have, while doing a lot to unfuck the station from their magical machinations. I also think Sirryan's idea of having the brains remain from the wiz's more gibby spells would solve the issue of permadeath (even though personally I think more permadeath is more gooder).

I have expressed my issues with Wizard in the past, especially during my office hours where I've talked about the design of the game mode extensively. The biggest key issues with Wizard are as follows: The game is currently designed for players to begin investing heavily in their roundstart job from the get go to start working towards mid-game to end-game tier progression, almost all wizards don't show up for the first 10 minutes and some even take 20-35 minutes before going to the station. This leads to frustration as it completely round-ends any progression people have with non-antag related mechanics basically. Any wizard that is not immediately killed will remove people from the round permanently either directly or indirectly through polymorph or transformation spells which means a meaningful portion of active players now have to observe for the rest of the round or play in a role that is something which they do not want to play whatsoever (think polymorphed into a slime or a difference species) (as to choice 1) Wizard is not balanced to be a major round and the only way to balance it would be to significantly nerf wizard and completely rework most spells Wizards can be incredibly anti-climatic especially if they're not great at wizarding, rounds should not end anti-climatically Wizard is still great content for the game, it should not just be removed So how to solve these issues when you cannot just remove the gamemode? Wizard will need to undergo significant changes pending dynamic gamemodes if we successfully integrate that system into our codebase. Here is what I propose as the "other" option: Wizard can no longer permanently remove any player from the round instantly, brains must be preserved upon death; Furthermore, the wizards spells should aim to injure and disable as opposed to kill (atleast with ease) Polymorph spells are purely temporary Entire round altering spells are completely removed (ghosts, guns, etc) The end goal of the wizard is not just to sow chaos but to complete a few select objectives and then finish their run by completing a "ritual" which will in someway permanently alter the rules of the round. I.e. if the wizard succeeds with the ritual, for the rest of the round portals will randomly appear occasionally which spawn random simple mobs (almost like netherworld portal but slightly less lethal). This not only prevents rounds by being completely derailed by a wizard but also punishes players for failing to contain the wizard in an interesting way that could actually be fun.

While I like option four the most, it does have some issues. Wizard can permakill nerds easily, with stuff like ei'nath (Yes, you can transplant their brain. No, nobody likes being bald human named monkey(726)), cluwne transformation or wand of polymorph. While yes, captain can call the shutttle if situation gets too bad, what if it's bearable? Someone's afternoon, during which they wanted to play spess, just got denied. Another thing that came to my mind - other transformation spells. Mime one and clown one. They are just annoying after wizard dies. While I believe they could be fun to RP, I am also sure at least some players would reach for russian revolver. This one could MAYBE be fixed, if deemed bad enough, with possibly reverting the curse upon wizard's death? I still LIKE that option however - it adds concequences to wizard rounds and creates some work for crew, who could focus on fixing the wizard's masterpiece.