Does anybody else think that Magic has too many skill divisions?

[Khaalis]

So this could be a good 3rdParty OGL product idea?

 

[Morrus]

So this could be a good 3rdParty OGL product idea?

It would be easy to do. Whether it would be good or not, I can't say!

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I recently did a "generalist" magic system, for a campaign I am working on - this is how I broke it down:

Affliction, Divination, Healing, Infusion, Movement, Transform were all one skill- these all involved adding or removing abilities, senses, health etc.
Abjuration, Creation, Hexes, Illusions, Summon are all one skill - they involved creation of some sort (effects, items, illusions, creatures).
Compulsion, Enchantment are one skill - they involve mind affects / mind control.
Displacement, Evocation - energy or space manipulation.

Haven't played it yet to see if the balance is correct; was looking for thematic connections more than balance ones.

 

[Starbrat]

I must admit, I also was a bit surprised by the split between create and evoke since they mean essentially the same thing: to bring into being. It seemed slightly game-ish to me, but that's just one reason why WOIN has won a place in my heart. For such a crunchy system, it is very receptive to tinkering, which is a deeply endearing feature.

 

[Morrus]

See my natural inclination is to split them even more! I like the thought of a very granular system; the current list seemed a happy medium.

But technically, the rules already do what you want. Skills are just keywords, and they can be broad or narrow. You can define a skill how you want. So you can have a skill called "Creation/Evocation", or whatever new name you wanted to call it. That doesn't even need a houserule - just for the GM to agree that it's appropriate. Heck, you could just have one big skill called "magic" if you really wanted to.

Hmm. That gives me an idea. Dunno if it's enough material to make an article out of, but basically it would be different traditions which define the magical skills differently. Not sure it's worth an article, as it's really just a logical application of existing rules.

 

[Konrad Zielinski]

Hmm. That gives me an idea. Dunno if it's enough material to make an article out of, but basically it would be different traditions which define the magical skills differently. Not sure it's worth an article, as it's really just a logical application of existing rules.

Technically posting articles full of ship designs was just a logical application of the existing rules too. An article like that would be judged on its content. So if it contains some interesting and flavourful magical traditions, then it would be every bit as useful as books of additional races or other character options are. The other challenge is balance, coming up with magical systems is easy, ensuring that they are balanced such that none of them is better then the rest is harder.