ditching the schools of magic?

[ed.han]

out of curiosity, is anyone familiar w/ a replacement for the 8 schools of magic? links and/or cut & pastes would be appreciated.

ed

 

[Storyteller01]

out of curiosity, is anyone familiar w/ a replacement for the 8 schools of magic? links and/or cut & pastes would be appreciated.

ed

Arcana Unearthed had specialization via spell templates. Made for a very nice system.

 

[robjh]

An option would be to play around with the news spells that Wizards gain at each level. You could build pre-selected lists of spells to be learned that followed some type of themic pattern, and give the Wizard character the equivalent to spell school bonuses with those spells. I.e. a Wizard selects a set of "elemental" spells in advance that she will learn at each level. She then gets a bonus spell slot with just those spells, plus the other spell advantages. Of course she would have to give up something, such as one of the other schools.

 

[ed.han]

storyteller: i'm familiar w/ AU & AE and am a fan of monte's work. :> i wish the unfettered were a core PHB class betimes.

robjh: you seem to be describing an arcane "domain". conceptually, i find that idea very interesting. very interesting indeed.

i ask this question b/c i'm working on a variant magic system and find that i get precisely 0 mileage out of the schools. the subschools, however, are useful to me. so i was considering re-grouping the spells into something more immediately useful, or perhaps just adding enough descriptors as to make schools completely unnecessary.

ed

 

[Tonguez]

I like the 'Domain' idea of themed spells being made a set

In one setting I was working on spells were designated by an Elemental Theme (Earth-Wind-Fire-Water-Life/Death-Soul) called a Tradition. A character casting within their tradition gained bonuses, outside there tradition gained penalties and a few spells were neutral.

A character would start with a particular Tradition and use feats to access more if they wished.

 

[robjh]

robjh: you seem to be describing an arcane "domain". conceptually, i find that idea very interesting. very interesting indeed.

Yes. I tried working out a comparable solution for the Sorcerer class but it was sub-optimal. So I think it would work out better with the Wizard class. Perhaps it could require a Feat???

 

[ed.han]

tonguez: oddly enough, i've decided to take a similar approach. incidentally, do you also frequent webRPG?

robjh: that sounds only half a step removed from the spell template concept in arcana unearthed/evolved.

ed