Building a better spellcaster: Combiding priest and wizard spell lists?

[Lizard Lips]

I'm building a setting for a new campaign that doesn't differentiate between wizardly and priestly magic. I'm pulling some of my inspiration from Dark Sun, and making spellcasters draw on elemental forces to cast spells. Additionally, a combination of all four of the basic elements create a "life energy" to handle things like curing, while an absence of this life energy is responsible for undead and necromantic effects.

I'm trying to pick and choose spells for a spell list for these casters that uses bits of both the wizard and priest spell lists. I've always thought that a wizards weak BAB and hit die was offset by their flashy spells, while the priest's better combat abilities were offset by their more team oriented spell list. The problem I'm having now is trying to balance this new elemental spellcaster I'm building. Won't a caster with access to cure spells AND big boom spells like fireball be unbalanced when compared to your run of the mill fighters and rogues?

I'm hoping that someone else has already gone through this process. Are there any d20 spellcasters with new spell lists that favor elemental magic? I'll also have psioniscists with telekenetic, telepathic, and illusion powers, although I don't know if that's important to my question.

 

[the Jester]

Check out the shugenja in OA (and the upcoming CD).

 

[Azazyll]

Check out Monte Cooke's Arcana Unearthed, he combined all magic into one list and just divided the spells into simple, complex, and exotic for each level. most casters can only access the simple spells, except the magisters, who get complex spells as well. greenbonds (the AU druid/priest/shamans) cast complex spells with the plant and healing descriptors. accessing an exotic spell requires a feat. the same system might work outside the setting for what you're looking at, although Monte tested it for working within his won system and not with standard classes, I believe. It's still a good starting point to work with. maybe taking a feat to gain access to different types of spells would work. It depends on how much work you want to do.

On a side note, the fantasy RPG idea of seperate divine and arcance magic is a fundamental flaw in the game, and I've never liked it. One man's prayer is another man's spell, and generally throughout history western civilization has condemned as magic what other people called prayer and religion. Magic begins as prayers to the gods, as witnessed in Egypt and elsewhere. Modern fantacists have, for politically correct reasons, differentiated between the two, to allow wizards to exist without being priests in the traditional christian sense without also being evil satanists. But even looking at tolkien, magic is a prayer to the Valar or to other powers that exist, not exactly a seperate power in and of itself. Magic users who don't use elvish prayers to the Valar are either maiar spirits themselves, like saruman or sauron, or have some connection to them, like orc shamans and the nazgul. But tolkien certainly does confuse the issue, first by not making it explicit and second by not following his own rules. If you could even call them rules. But then in some ways the entire lord of the rings and certainly large parts of the silmarillion are christian metaphors written by a remarkably devout catholic.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Greenbonds (the AU druid/priest/shamans) cast complex spells with the plant and healing descriptors.

They get the exotic ones, too. Just to make that clear. And DEFINATELY pick up AU, sounds like exactly what you're looking for. Actually, you might just want to get the Way of the Staff and Grimoire .PDFs if you don't want to spend all that money.

 

[RangerWickett]

E.N. Publishing will be releasing Elements of Magic in the next week or so, which sounds like it'd be just what you're looking for. EOM is designed to be setting neutral, providing a flexible magic system where the DM and players decide what types of spells are available.

There are 11 types of spells and 4 magical skills -- Abjure, Charm, Compel, Create, Dispel Magic, Divination, Evoke, Heal, Illusion, Infuse, Move, Scry, Spellcraft, Summon, and Transform. For each type of spell, you choose a subtype, so you can have Charm Humanoid, Evoke Lightning, or Move Space. These are called spell lists. The number of spell lists you know, and the number of magic points (MP) you have to cast spells, depends on your caster level.

If you know a spell list, you can use it and other spell lists you know to create spells, costing different amounts of MP. Thus, a 5th level mage who knows Evoke Fire could cast a tiny spell for 1 MP that does just 1d6 damage, or he could cast a 5-MP spell that creates a blast of fire at range, dealing 5d6 damage. You can even combine spell lists, so that an Create Acid/Move Death spell might create a pool of acid and keep the target from moving so he slowly melts to death. (Move Death effectively 'kills' someone's movement rate; it doesn't actually move dead things)

If you want all magic to be available, that's perfectly fair. If you want some groups to have certain types of magic and others to have different ones, you just limit spell lists. Or you can put in an MP buffer so that, say, priests of a healing god trying to cast Evoke spells have to pay an extra 4 MP. It's a lot simpler than going through every spell in the book and finding which ones belong to each group.

I hope you take a look. It'll be announced on the main page when it comes out.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Unearthed Arcana: "Generic Spellcaster."

Pure. Simple. No new system to learn.

Enjoy.

 

[RangerWickett]

Unearthed Arcana: "Generic Spellcaster."

Pure. Simple. No new system to learn.

Enjoy.

Harsh, man. Harsh.

Anyway, EOM is for folks who'd like to have new toys to play with. I've had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope people have a lot of fun playing with it.

 

[Tessarael]

Hey RangerWickett,

That sounds interesting. Have you altered the base classes to support it? Is there a summary or something similar of the material that you can point us to?

Thanks.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I like EOM, I've got the original.

However, I also like not removing core classes. The 'useless sorcerer' problem, y'know?

I definately think it's a quality piece o'work, and I'd have high expectations for the follow-up, too.

 

[RangerWickett]

Hey RangerWickett,

That sounds interesting. Have you altered the base classes to support it? Is there a summary or something similar of the material that you can point us to?

Thanks.

Here's a teaser in .doc format. Find a link to it on the right side of this page: http://www.enworld.org/enpublishing/ One change has been made since then, though. Casting a non-signature spell takes two full rounds instead of one round.

EOM introduces three new classes - the Mage, the Mageknight, and the Taskmage. Rather bland names intended to let you insert the flavor you desire. Basically it's the full magic-user, the warrior magic-user, and the skill-monkey magic-user. We didn't try to change the core classes, and the new classes should be balanced with the normal core classes. The taskmage might be a little better at pure skill-ness than the rogue, but the taskmage doesn't have any sort of good combat abilities like sneak attack or evasion. The mageknight is probably comparable with the cleric, with a little better array of powers available, in exchange for a lower caster level.

For best results, sit down with your group with a nice print-out of the book, which should be out soon, and have people brainstorm nifty types of magic-users. It's really easy to flesh out obscure types of spellcasters by just giving them bizarre spell lists.