It's common, but Baker describes the setting more as "wide magic" than "high magic." It takes the premise that if lower level magic is indeed more common than higher level magic that societies would use that low level magic in ways expected of actual people, to advance themselves. They would use, for example, the Mending cantrip to fix things for money or city guilds of Lamp Lighters would make use of the Continual Flame spell.
Edit: You don't really have über-mages like Elminster, Simbul, Szass Tam, or Khelben running around in Eberron. Eberron flattens the curve of high magic considerably.
It's common, but Baker describes the setting more as "wide magic" than "high magic." It takes the premise that if lower level magic is indeed more common than higher level magic that societies would use that low level magic in ways expected of actual people, to advance themselves. They would use, for example, the Mending cantrip to fix things for money or city guilds of Lamp Lighters would make use of the Continual Flame spell.
Yeah. It's the magic use in cities that got to me. Glantri was like that, too. It makes sense if magic is common enough to do that, but it's more magic than I want.
I like magic to feel rare and special, and having it literally on every street corner doesn't say that to me.
Yeah. It's the magic use in cities that got to me. Glantri was like that, too. It makes sense if magic is common enough to do that, but it's more magic than I want.
I like magic to feel rare and special, and having it literally on every street corner doesn't say that to me.
You're also missing the point of kitchen sink systems. The point isn't that you have to have all of what is made. The point is that you get to look at everything and decide what you want to include. I can't remember ever playing in a 3e game that allowed everything. The one I ran certainly didn't.
Well one difference I just now spotted is that the 17th level ability of the Arcane Trickster allows them to steal any spell being cast. But mainly raised the possibility of the psion stealing spells that require Concentration, so that would limit the effective range of spells that a psion could steal.
It's a solid list. Not sure about some, mainly Mold Earth and Shape Water. To start with my own proposal for now, maybe the below for Cantrips:
Cantrips:
Encode Thoughts (Enchantment) - Ravnica - almost a no brainer
Friends (Enchantment)
Guidance (Divination)
Light (Evocation) or Dancing Lights (Evocation) - psions had a form of Light that shone out of their eyes
Mage Hand (Conjuration) - basically lesser telekinesis
Message (Transmutation)
Minor Illusion (Illusion)
True Strike (Divination) - basically a lesser precognition
Vicious Mockery (Enchantment)
Mind Sliver (Enchantment) - UA
Psionic Prestidigitation/Theurgy/Druidcraft?
I had Mold Earth and Shape Water because "move things with your mind" but both could easily be dropped.
I was not aware of Encode Thoughts from Ravinica, might need to go look at that spell. Light... hmmm, this might be a personal thing, but making light with your mind just seems like the hardest thing to do. But, if light were a by-product of psionics, I could see an easy mastery of controlling that.
I thought of giving them True Strike, but I don't like it, so I don't give it to anybody.
To the sci-fi vs fantasy debate. It gets weird, especially if you start adding in horror. (All of this is just my opinion and not given with an overabundance of planning and defining, just thinking out loud)
The big thing that usually makes the difference for sci-fi is the aspect of time. If it is in the future it is generally sci-fi. There is sci-fi set in the past, but generally those were written in the past, and at the time of their writing, were focusing on the near future or present day. You could have hunter's in tribal clothes using wooden spears to fight back monsters from the forest, and if the backdrop is New York after a nuclear holocaust, and the Monsters can be thought of as mutants, then it is sci-fi. Because it happens in the future.
This is actually where a lot of fantasy and sci-fi end up mixing, when we see things that are generally fantasy tropes, but set in the far future after the apocalypse. You get help from a pixie in the caverns, summoned by a glowing crystal with wires. We, as the audience, see clues that the "pixie" is just an AI hologram, but the imagery is decidedly fantasy.
With Fantasy, you are generally talking about Magic. You can have fantasy set in the modern day, on a space colony, ect. The timeline doesn't matter as much, Fantasy has magic.
And this is where it gets tricky, because "magic" is a hard thing to define.
Take for instance, The Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy Krueger is a killer who attacks from your dreams, he lives inside the dream realm. That is fantastical, that is "magic" to a strong extent, but presented as a Horror story. Jason and Meyers are similar. They just don't die. And there is no real explanation for it, they just can't seem to be killed. that is again, a type of "magic" in the loosest sense of the word.
But, look at "psychics". This method of explanation takes "magic" and turns it into "science". It couches the fantastical into terms of science language. So, maybe Freddy isn't using Magic, maybe he is a Psychic projection. Maybe you could gain psychic powers from a machine, or from a robotic enhancement to your brain.
Psionics is frustrating to a degree because it takes the same things that were magical and tries to make them scientific, which bridges it away from Fantasy. Not because Fantasy and Sci-fi can't mix. One is measured more in time and the other in terms of magic, but because Psychics are a way to make things less magical, which makes them less of Fantasy.
