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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8950120" data-attributes="member: 6790260">The heartbreaker that exists in my head does this, but it goes for something more like...."Red": Martial"Green": Primal"White": Divine"Blue": Arcane"Black": Shadow"Colorless" (or "Purple"): PsionicUnder this structure, there are (at least) three classes per source: Warrior, Sage, and Trickster. As a very general pattern, Warriors take hits and manage enemy attention, Sages enhance allies and manipulate terrain, and Tricksters create/exploit weaknesses and defy limitations. The order would differ from MtG's order though. The cycle would go Martial -> Divine -> Primal -> Arcane -> Shadow -> Martial. Shadow and Martial share an interest in grit and superlative skill (since the Shadow Warrior would be styled "Ninja.") Martial and Divine share heavy armor (or at least high defense) and soldier-like discipline. Divine and Primal share an emphasis on health and healing. Primal and Arcane share the command of elemental forces. Arcane and Shadow share the emphasis on secret/forbidden knowledge. For Martial, the classes would be Fighter (Warrior), Warlord (Sage), Rogue (Trickster); for Divine, they are Paladin (Warrior), Cleric (Sage), Avenger (Trickster.) (Primal would be Werebeast/Druid/Ranger; Arcane, Swordmage/Wizard/Bard; Shadow, Ninja/Warlock/Assassin.)Being a Warrior does not mean you don't deal damage--because everyone can decide to do that. I would, of course, like to offer the option of being very heavily specialized in indirect contributions, but indirect contributions are extremely finicky and massively debatable, so that might not be as fully-supported as the most ardent folks would desire. Instead, being a Warrior means your overall focus in on wading into the fray, taking and holding important enemies' attention, and being Big Scary to induce opponents to deal with you (despite your high defenses) instead of your enemies. Sages strengthen allies, manipulate the terrain, and coordinate the movement of their allies; "strengthening" often means healing, but not always, sometimes it takes the form of buffs, granting saves, that sort of thing. (Though every source has a healer--the exception to the general "Sages have healing" rule would be Wizard, which would have very minimal to nonexistent healing abilities, while the Trickster Bard would have a healing path.) Tricksters would do a lot of different things, but many of them would be of the "set 'em up and knock 'em down" variety, or carving a bloody swathe so someone else can follow behind, etc.Psionic would have just one class: Monk. Instead of having a focused list of options like most classes, it would have the ability to build into whatever you want, but at the price of potentially being garbage because you didn't build wisely. This embraces both the transcendent-enlightenment idea of the Monk in particular and Psionics more generally, and gives Psionics a clear and obvious mechanical difference. I imagine the more "Warrior"-inclined Monks might be flavor-able as doing Green Lantern style hard-light constructs to protect themselves and others, but I wouldn't mandate such flavor, since the whole point is to support the player doing what they want to do.Edit: Note that this means "Elemental" is not a distinct power source, but something shared, mostly between Primal and Arcane. The one power source that would basically never use "Elemental" powers would be Martial, because that's just not really what that source does. Likewise, being "party-friendly" is something centered in Divine, but also found in Martial and Primal--it's mostly or totally absent in Arcane and Shadow because those are the paths to power that have the least care for collateral damage. Etc. Weapon-keyword attacks would be centered on Martial, with Shadow and Divine also getting a lot of them, and Arcane/Primal getting relatively few.We can also see some interesting things in this. Arcane is opposite Divine and Martial, emphasizing the individualist pursuit of power (neither the massed-forces nature of Martial, nor the from-a-higher-power nature of Divine.) Shadow is opposite Divine and Primal, emphasizing its profane nature and generally destructive, consumptive effects. Martial is opposite Primal and Arcane, which are arguably the most overtly "magical" of the power sources--emphasizing that Martial is the product of physical effort and practical, learned skill, rather than mumbo-jumbo. Divine is opposite Shadow and Arcane, the two "phenomenal cosmic power" sources and the ones most likely to fall into "you were so busy asking if you could, you never asked if you should" territory, aka high Int, low Wis. Primal is opposite Shadow and Martial, the two that are the most at home with the purely material, cities and tools and politics etc.</blockquote>

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