Making a Planeswalker

[Bupp]

Here's the stuff that I've worked on, though I'm not really happy with the Personal Mana article.
https://jonbupp.wordpress.com/category/world-building/plane-shifted/

Some of them are D&D versions on of magic cards. I've kept colors on some things as a placeholder. Not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I thought I should make some use of it.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

There is some homebred version.

My suggestion is points of mana shouldn't be Vacian daily powers but gathering more like finding single-use magic item in the threasure rewards. Maybe some powers should need a external source to be reloaded to get a better balance of power. And with a epic fail in the dice throw for planar travel the planerwalker would go to Innistrad the equivalent to the demiplane of dread.

 

[cbwjm]

Thanks! I’ll check it out! If I did go with boons, I’d not make them wait till epic play for them, for sure. IMO, no one wants to play a full dnd campaign and then a planeswalkint campaign, and for many people, only the first 2/3 of the game are really any fun.

I’d probably junk the idea of calling the class a Planeswalker before I’d try to emulate specific card abilities with any devotion. I want the feel of an MtG style of magic and fighting, above and before any other goal.



Those are all solid starts, thanks! I’d love to see some of what you started working on, btw. It sounds like fun!

What work I've done is pretty bare bones (seriously, don't get excited), mostly the basic class structure and a few notes on ideas for subclasses based around the colours of magic. It also ties into my organisation of the spells into specific colours (of which blue gains the most, almost twice as much as white the second runner up). If you want to see what I've done, here is the google doc, it may give you a few ideas:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10nPgp9QguK9AXrYHOHedFd23uM6986CopstBbQmt9KE/edit?usp=sharing.

Something I was using was the idea of colour specialisations which would have eventually have brought in the keywords from cards and translated them into abilities. Each class starts off with a single colour which would have had subclasses specific to that colour (currently mostly notes like, White Magic: see life domain; Green: see land druid; etc). As you gain levels you can either choose to expand your knowledge by adding an additional colour or by choosing a specialisation for your primary colour.

Looking at the half-caster, it looks like I had both specialisations and colour invocations. If I went back and picked this back up, I would probably fold the specialisations into invocations that they gain upon level up. Less working parts that way.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

What work I've done is pretty bare bones (seriously, don't get excited), mostly the basic class structure and a few notes on ideas for subclasses based around the colours of magic. It also ties into my organisation of the spells into specific colours (of which blue gains the most, almost twice as much as white the second runner up). If you want to see what I've done, here is the google doc, it may give you a few ideas:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10nPgp9QguK9AXrYHOHedFd23uM6986CopstBbQmt9KE/edit?usp=sharing.

Something I was using was the idea of colour specialisations which would have eventually have brought in the keywords from cards and translated them into abilities. Each class starts off with a single colour which would have had subclasses specific to that colour (currently mostly notes like, White Magic: see life domain; Green: see land druid; etc). As you gain levels you can either choose to expand your knowledge by adding an additional colour or by choosing a specialisation for your primary colour.

Looking at the half-caster, it looks like I had both specialisations and colour invocations. If I went back and picked this back up, I would probably fold the specialisations into invocations that they gain upon level up. Less working parts that way.

Thanks! I'll check it out!

I don't know if I like mixing color specialisations after the first few levels. To me, the fun of such a project would be to do magic in a way that feels like using a MtG deck, without getting bogged down in the MtG mechanics, and one central theme is that you have a deck. You might evolve that deck, but you probably aren't changing the color makeup of a deck. Of course, people switch decks and rebuild them, but getting into an ability to completely switch specializations into a whole different subclass with a long rest or a week of downtime or something is just...a lot.

Although, if I ever want to make a Final Fantasy for DnD writeup, job-switching mechanics might be worth looking into anyway....

 

[cbwjm]

Thanks! I'll check it out!

I don't know if I like mixing color specialisations after the first few levels. To me, the fun of such a project would be to do magic in a way that feels like using a MtG deck, without getting bogged down in the MtG mechanics, and one central theme is that you have a deck. You might evolve that deck, but you probably aren't changing the color makeup of a deck. Of course, people switch decks and rebuild them, but getting into an ability to completely switch specializations into a whole different subclass with a long rest or a week of downtime or something is just...a lot.

Although, if I ever want to make a Final Fantasy for DnD writeup, job-switching mechanics might be worth looking into anyway....

Yeah, normally, with a deck you go in with an idea or theme choosing 1 or 2 colours, maybe 3 or more for really awkward combo decks, and then refine it . That's kind of what the specialisations would do. If you start out as a blue wizard you can learn all blue coloured spells. If you later reach a level that lets you choose a specialisation you might pick up the ability to learn black magic or you might instead choose a specialisation for blue magic. You might never learn to cast red, green, or white magic and instead focus on boosting your abilities in blue and black.

Secondary colours are also limited in the level of spell you can cast. I think in my current document, that blue wizard who adds black to his repertoire is only able to learn up to 5th level spells, he won't be able to learn up to 9th unless he spends a second specialisation on black magic. I don't know if this would actually be fun in play, but I thought that a planeswalker could either focus on a single colour, gain another 1 or 2 colours and be able to cast up to 9th level spells, or gain the ability to cast all colours but with 4 of them would be limited to 5th (think of it as having plenty of blue mana sources, but only 1 or 2 mana sources of the other colours). I did have a decent green deck that also splashed in white and red a few years back. If I was making that in this system, I'd be a full caster with green as my primary colour and a single pick of red and white as secondary colours.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done on this, I'd actually forgotten that I'd started until I saw your thread. I'm seriously bad at starting but never finishing ideas. I'm always amazed when I manage to complete an entire subclass, that's how bad I can be.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah, normally, with a deck you go in with an idea or theme choosing 1 or 2 colours, maybe 3 or more for really awkward combo decks, and then refine it . That's kind of what the specialisations would do. If you start out as a blue wizard you can learn all blue coloured spells. If you later reach a level that lets you choose a specialisation you might pick up the ability to learn black magic or you might instead choose a specialisation for blue magic. You might never learn to cast red, green, or white magic and instead focus on boosting your abilities in blue and black.

Secondary colours are also limited in the level of spell you can cast. I think in my current document, that blue wizard who adds black to his repertoire is only able to learn up to 5th level spells, he won't be able to learn up to 9th unless he spends a second specialisation on black magic. I don't know if this would actually be fun in play, but I thought that a planeswalker could either focus on a single colour, gain another 1 or 2 colours and be able to cast up to 9th level spells, or gain the ability to cast all colours but with 4 of them would be limited to 5th (think of it as having plenty of blue mana sources, but only 1 or 2 mana sources of the other colours). I did have a decent green deck that also splashed in white and red a few years back. If I was making that in this system, I'd be a full caster with green as my primary colour and a single pick of red and white as secondary colours.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done on this, I'd actually forgotten that I'd started until I saw your thread. I'm seriously bad at starting but never finishing ideas. I'm always amazed when I manage to complete an entire subclass, that's how bad I can be.

Interesting points! I still think that the option for specific mixed sets as a full caster makes sense as well, but those spalsh color decks definitely make sense as limited spell level combos.

I do wish I could think of a way to model the struggle and reward of needing blue and green mana to get that counter summon or whatever out.

And I definitely grok not finishing things. Been working on a full game for 8 years, and I’ve still never completed the gear section, in about 3 1/2 full revisions of the system!