Mostly Replacing Arcane Magic With Psionics

[Greatwyrm]

I've got an idea for a campaign world with very little arcane magic in it. At first, I admint it sounds a bit like Dark Sun.

What I was thinking of was a world where wizards from ages past did something really stupid. Whatever it was, the god of magic decided mortals had blown it and decided from then on, no one could "learn" magic.

If you didn't have it in you, tough. No more wizards. This wouldn't affect divine casters, since their magic is imparted from a higher power and could be easily removed if they stepped out of line. It would also leave psi users, since their powers come from within. However, it would also leave sorcerors and other creatures with inborn arcane abilities. Most of these creatures would be outcasts, or at best distrusted, for fear that they might manage a blunder similar to what the wizards did.

I know there are a bunch of things to consider with this kind of world. Did arcane magic items survive the purge? What happens to the lich in the basement of Castle Spooky?

What questions do you think would need to be answered or dealt with in such a world? What other ramifications can you see?

 

[Mr. Kaze]

I'm considering something similar as having spontaneous force-of-will casters with defined spell slots has never really sat well with me (though I don't know much of anything about Dark Sun, so I can't say whether it's like that or not).

Revisions would be along the following lines:

1) Wizards can exist, it's just that they're doing their best to emulate the divine casters, so nobody really takes them seriously (until they figure out how to emulate a Slay Living or so...). This is also how we justify the Use Magic Device skill.

2) All divine casters use the Wisdom modifier and prepare spells granted by an outside power (either psionic deity or psionic ancestral spirit collective).

3) All other casters are spontaneous and use charisma (that would be the "force of persona" version of charisma) to determine how powerful their abilities are manifested.

There are some side effects as follows:
- Spell resistance pretty much means just that. You can't Acid Arrow golems or drow or rakshasa any more, just like you couldn't Acid Arrow golems or drow or rakshasa in 3e. (But you still can't Heal a drow lich without beating SR. Go figure. This was the item that made me really want to change the magic system.)
- Assassins probably need to either be venerating ancestral spirits or treated as naturally psionic. I don't really see them as posers at all, and doubt that they'd appreciate being looked down upon as such.
- Similarly, other charisma-casters would need to have their spell list shifted over to a psionic power list.
- Classes that require magical abilities to join need to specify the effect of the power required, not simply "arcane" or "divine" (with the exception of the theurge type class). For example, an Arcane Archer becomes a Mystic Archer with a casting prerequisite of something along the lines of Magic Weapon or Magic Fang or so forth.
- Some magical items will need to have their requisite powers altered, much in the same way you alter the class prereqs. Then again, what does "Summon Monster I" have to do with making a bane weapon other than trying it out?

You'll likely also want to nerf the Kineticist (augmenting both DCs and damage dice while overchanneling gets really silly really fast) and merge the metamagic and metapsionic (and spell/power penetration and item creation and such) into a single tree of feats. After that, it's just a matter of rewriting any wizards you want your PCs to take seriously into a psions (or cultists or whatever).

HiH,
::Kaze (the meddlesome tweaky DM)

 

[dream66_]

sorcerors and psions together just kinda don't work as well. It's much better if you just use one or the other. They way they don't feel like they are overlapping each other's usefullness

 

[Greatwyrm]

sorcerors and psions together just kinda don't work as well. It's much better if you just use one or the other. They way they don't feel like they are overlapping each other's usefullness

Given society's general view of arcane magic, I was probably going to limit sorcerors to NPCs anyway. The last thing I need with some of the jokers I play with is a witch hunt inside the party.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well, they can work okay together.

I like to link it to in-game cultures. Psions hail from an Indian-esque culture, with monkeys and demons and snakes and monsoon. Wizards hail from a Western-esque culture with science and universities and the study of ancient secrets. Sorcerers hail from a Tribal-esque culture with barbarians and shamans and seminomadic migrations.

It makes them very different from each other in flavor, if not in mechanics, and that pretty much makes the difference for my players.

 

[blargney the second]

If you have the Green Ronin book called Arcana: Societies of Magic, there is an organization called the Tribunal of Arcane Justice. Their principal role is to police spellcasters who could jeopardize the reputation of everybody else who uses magic. Types of activities they prevent are opening premanent gates to the Abyss, using artifacts to decimate significant chunks of the population or countryside, anything on a really big scale.

They have a fortress where they store artifacts that ought not to be used, as well as soul gems containing the spirits of tried and trapped criminals.
-blarg

 

[Privateer]

I just thought of something truly beautiful.

Before the rending of wizardly magic from the world, a spellcaster (think Elminster-esque) foretold the future. Fearing for his life and his power, he put his mind into a (now-intellegent) weapon. The PCs could stumble across this stymied old sage in a now humbled and inanimate form, or perhaps he could be at the center of a conspiracy to bring back wizardly might, no matter the cost or source... and if the villain of your campaign is an intellegent weapon, well, nobody's going to forget that .

 

[grimslade]

Old Campaign Submission

My submission to the setting search had a similar premise. The elves once dominated the world with an iron fist. Correllon abhorred what his people had become and rallied his remaining faithful and the gods of the other races to fight the decadent elves. The ruling elves, without a divine sponsor, turned to demon lords for aid. Gods and demons warred. The result of this war banished magic, arcane and divine, from the world. The essence of magic was locked away. All magic items became inert relics. There were thin spots where magic seeps through to the material plain. Correllon's faithful elves guard these sacred areas and are rarely seen.
Fast forward a millenia, monastic discipline has discovered psionics. Abbeys and monasteries gain immense power within the splintered kingdoms. There are few magical beasts and monsters roaming the world. Wizards and sorcerors are locked in to the few thin spots that arcane magic will work. Holy shrines are places where clerics can perform miracles and divine magics. They are ferociously guarded for the power they contain. People carry relics of the past in hopes that they will work in a passing thin spot. A wand of Cure Light wounds triggers at odd times in the mountains. A powerful sword of the Celestial Wars turns its wielder invincible defending a holy shrine of Pelor.
Some things you need to look out for:
Use the "without spell" variants of the ranger and paladin
Clerics are bound to sites and places
Rituals are overly complex to prevent another magical cataclysm, lengthen the casting time of all spells.
The majority of the populace would be terrified of magic. Pitchforks and torches.

Grim

 

[Greatwyrm]

I'd like to still keep the bard as a playable class. Would you go with the bard as is and add the stigma that comes with the arcane magic, or rework the spell list for cleric/druid spells? I was thinking about the divine bard variant in UA, but it just doesn't quite feel right.

 

[Zappo]

I'd quite like to try a campaign where the only magic is the PsiHB (well, the new one). Of course, it would be called magic and not psionics. I don't really like psionics in fantasy. The only real difference is a few names anyway.