So... Clerics vs Wizards...
Wizards will probably be more common. Like Planescape, I'm envisioning a city where the gods can't intervene directly even if they want to. The only deity who has true power there is the Sleeper, who doesn't have a real church anyway, since it eats religions.
But priests should be playable... I'm thinking that they'll basically be wizards whose powers depend upon specific rites, rituals and obeying prohibitions. They have the advantage that when play actually takes them back to their home plane, their powers are greatly increased. But usually they'll be reduced a bit and sometimes they'll be greatly reduced or even completely cut off by entering into an area that their deity can't reach.
Hm. Should their deity provide the mana when they cast spells, or beforehand? This is an important distinction. If they provide the mana beforehand, then a priest can go into a blocked zone and cast spells there, he just can't recover mana. A priest could also turn against his deity's wishes in an emergency, spending mana to oppose his master. And, of course, a fallen priest could keep throwing spells until he ran out.
There might not be any real difference between a mage and a priest. A priest has mana funnelled to them by their deity (who might actually disapprove of them knowing how to extract it from the environment themselves). A mage draws it from the environment via lesser spells and rituals. But on the rare occasions that a mage got the magical support of a deity, they'd be able to use that mana the same way as normal.
So then mages would have to have a skill used to recover mana... and priests might not. They just go to a holy place or cast a simple "Commune with Deity" spell and the deity recharges them appropriately. Mage replenishment would be slower and more troublesome, but at least they don't have to kowtow to some extradimensional entity for their power.
Mana might even be transferable in some fashion... making it into a kind of magical currency. You could only hold a set amount, though, and it probably wouldn't recover on its own. At least not for most races; magically potent races might recover a few points per day just for being alive.
Posted by Kiz at November 3, 2004 12:16 PMCommentsPost a comment