There are several ways to handle magical "specialties". Basically, I think it boils down to emphasizing Nouns, Verbs or both.
Ars Magica and World Tree use both. You get ratings in each and combine them to produce effects. This is probably a little too "mage centric" for my game.
Shadowforce Archer style magic would basically use Feats for Verbs and then specific Nouns would be skills... ie- you could take a feat in Evocation, then specific skills in throwing Fire, Ice or Electricity. It's not exactly cut-and-dried, though, since you could also take a feat in TK and then skills in throwing objects, creating sounds, making force fields, etc..
D&D and Ironclaw organize spells into tiered schools and let you learn individual spells. Each one is a standalone spell and relatively inflexible. I'd rather have a more flexible magic system than that. Mage magic, on the other hand, is far too flexible for a non-mage-centric setting. I need a decent compromise between them.
I'm probably looking at something closer to the Shadowforce Archer system... you'd take a special ability to throw Magic-type X, then buy specific skills for subsets of it. There are generally at least 3 skills for each type of magic and often more.
Now... if the magic system is flexible, then will the PCs ever be interested in finding "ancient spells" or whatnot? I could see ancient spellbooks letting you learn a new spell-skill inside your existing field, of course. So a Fire mage might be very interested in a book about the legendary "Ice Fire". Or allow people to take skills in specific spells, assuming that this (in some fashion) makes them superior to just forming them on the fly.
So I guess the main things that I have to sort out are what sort of divisions I want between different mages.
Posted by Kiz at November 13, 2004 08:10 PMCommentsPost a comment