Red/Blue Mage idea

[ziegander]

So, this morning around oh... 1AM I got this idea that using enemy powers and other such effects is actually MUCH easier in this addition than it would have been in 3.5. So I got to thinking, how possible is it to do an honest to goodness "Blue Mage" in 4E (If you don't know what a Blue Mage is, in the Final Fantasy series it was a class that could learn enemy spells and attacks after first being damaged by them)? Well, I didn't stop there. Having a class that used the attacks of its enemies seemed so incredibly easy that it would end up being too narrow on its own. So then the idea of using the powers of your own allies popped into my head. Sort of a "Red Mage" concept (In FF, Red Mages were sort of Jacks of all Trades capable of healing, buffing, dealing elemental damage and even wearing moderate armor and equipping strong weapons).

Any ideas to further this concept are appreciated. I'll post up some of my initial ideas on the subject later today.

 

[ziegander]

Enemy Skill
At-Will, Martial
Immediate Reaction
Trigger: An enemy you can see uses an at-will attack.
Effect: Until the end of your next turn you can spend a standard action to use the attack the triggering enemy just
used. If you do, modify the attack roll with your wisdom modifier instead of whatever the enemy modified it with.
Additionally you may mark the triggering enemy.

Allied Power
At-Will, Martial
Immediate Reaction
Trigger: An ally you can see uses an at-will attack.
Effect: Until the end of your next turn you can spend a standard action to use the attack the triggering ally just
used. If you do, modify the attack with your intelligence modifier instead of whatever the ally modified it with.
Additionally you may transfer any marks from that ally to yourself.

I envision the class that would use these powers as a Leader. I'm not sure what power source it would be... likely martial, but I could honestly see arcane as well.

 

[Dog Moon]

If you're only copying physical manuevers of enemies, then I would say Martial would be fine, but if you mean to copy virtually every ability, you'll need to cover the supernatural/magical powers as well, so I would say Arcane would be MUCH more appropriate.

Those don't really seem to cover the Blue Mage well, IMO. The BM didn't just copy the maneuvers, but he actually LEARNED them, meaning once it was used on him [as it went in the games], he knew how to use it back whenever he wanted after that. Essentially, he added that power to his own repetoire.

To duplicate this ability in dnd still seems tricky. Maybe he has a limited number of original powers, basic attacks, a couple of powers designed to duplicate a power temporarily when used by an ally, and perhaps a few utility powers to mutate your body to grant yourself monster-like appearance or appendages [depending on how you want the class to be done]. Going into the class knowing that you would only have a few abilities to choose from would shortly be negated by the fact that eventually, you would learn those from monsters.

To do this, I imagine you would only be able to use 1 daily at 1st level, but you wouldn't choose a single daily power, but would use one when the time came from those you know, sort of similar to that of a Wizard.

In order to appropriately create the class, I think you would nead to go through the MM and create a list of powers and mark down what level they would be [and if they're daily or encounter] for each of them so when you learn them, you can quickly mark down you know it.

A problem I can think of offhand is this: Using all monster abilities, you're going to cover the entire spectrum of the ability scores. Maybe this is a balancing factor of the class cause eventually, you'll know a lot of powers. Perhaps you could add in stances as Utility Powers to mitigate that at least slightly, like Leopard Reflexes stance would increase your Dex so when you use Dex-based Powers, it'll be worth using them even if you previously had like a 10 Dex.

Take from my ramblings what you will, Ziegander, if anything. I'll be thinking about this later in more length, but these are my initial thoughts.

 

[ziegander]

Oh, I'm not thinking of accurately porting the Blue Mage into 4E, just making something like it. Something like it and the Red Mage swirled together as a leader of some sort... lol. You get my meaning of course... <_<

...>_>

 

[ziegander]

Alright, still definitely a work in progress. I'm now working with the concept of a Tome of Exploits (similar to a Wizard's spellbook, but instead of storing rituals it stores monster powers) and thinking of converting Enemy Skill to a class feature. Here's what I mean.

Tome of Exploits: You possess a book similar to the Wizard's spellbook in which you store some of your own most powerful combat secrets, but also the techniques of all those you meet.

Enemy Skill and Tome of Exploits - Whenever you use the Enemy Skill power make a record of the power you used. If you take a short or extended rest the encounter after taking the record you transcribe the power into your Tome of Exploits. Powers transcribed this way have a level equal to the monster that originally used them (At-will powers are the exception and are always 1st level). After each extended rest you may exchange any power transcribed into your Tome of Exploits for a power of your own of the same level until your next extended rest. For example, you've transcribed the Gore at-will attack of a Dire Boar. After an extended rest you may exchange any of your own at-will powers for the Gore at-will attack. If you do, the attack bonus, damage, and effect remains exactly as written in the Monster Manual entry. You can do this with encounter powers, and even daily powers. Recharge powers can be transcribed into your Tome of Exploits, but in order to use them you must exchange a single recharge power for one of your at-wills and an encounter power of equal level of the recharge power.


This obviously requires slight modifying of the Enemy Skill power, but nothing I can't handle:

Enemy Skill
At-Will, Martial
Immediate Reaction
Trigger: An enemy you can see uses a power.
Effect: Until the end of your next turn you can spend the same action the triggering enemy used to activate the power to use the power the triggering enemy just used. If you do, replace any modifiers to the power with your wisdom modifier. If the power used this way was an encounter power you can't use your highest level encounter power of the same type (attack or utility) until you take a short rest. If the power used this way was a daily power you can't use your highest level daily power of the same type until you take an extended rest.

I might actually make Allied Power into a class feature too in order to create the build options of the class. One of the builds stores enemy powers in the Tome of Exploits while the other stores allies powers in it. Thoughts?

 

[ff6shadow]

I would think that give him for example:

Enemy Skill Encounter 1-2
Encounter * Arcane
Immediate Reaction * Range 5
Trigger: An enemy of level 2 or lower that you can see uses an encounter attack without a recharge.
Effect: You may now use that power as an encounter power until you use this power again. If you do, modify the attack roll with your wisdom modifier instead of whatever the enemy modified it with.
Additionally you may mark the triggering enemy.


Then simply create level appropriate versions at each level, add in an option stealing allied powers, then add a few attacks that aren't power thefts to fill out the gaps. This keeps the flavor of learning attacks, but limits how many you can use and keeps the power of the abilities you learn in check. I might work out such an idea later.

 

[Exen Trik]

It is really hard to balance final fantasy style magic in 4e, especially if you stay close to the source material. For a blue mage, you need to be extra creative... you need to decide what kind of blue magic you are basing it off of as well. Every time they show up they have a flavor and system particular to that game, which is almost unrelated to the system every other

For a D&D 4e game? I would treat blue magic as a kind of cross between magic items, rituals, and wizard daily powers. Like magic items they have value, and you win them from monsters. They don't have to be literally stuff, but they easily could be, as per the blue magic related items in FF8.

Like rituals, they can have minimum levels that you can possess them, and you can collect as many as you can find without a set limit. Getting a few automatically with level might also be a good idea to use.

But for actually using them, it would be like selecting wizard daily powers. You would set which ones you wanted to use at the beginning of the day, in the slots you have available for them. But they wouldn't all need to be daily powers, you could use this system for encounter slots as well. Heck you could probably set new ones between encounters, as needed. At-Will and Utility powers would probably be better off done normally, however.

Role wise the blue mages abilities traditionally are all over the board. The 4e version would be the ultimate hybrid and highly versatile, with it's abilities weaker in comparison to other classes to compensate for it.



...Seems like it would be a pain in the butt to design, honestly. But if you want to, have fun with it.

 

[Riposte]

I can't mechanically give you a hand, but...

Bard of 3e DnD basically was equivalent to a Red Mage. While the Bard was still a Bard, every thing else about it fit the Red Mage perfectly. I imagine 4e being no different. It's likely to be a Arcane Leader, which works with the Red Mage fine. You can try editing the more Bard-like features(or just call them spells).


Blue Mage is an interesting concept in 4e. Once I saw the power and monster system I knew it had potential for such a class. I don't see it being as simple as creating an overlaying power template. I think for balance's sake you'll need to convert individual monster powers into "spells". Probably one per popular monster/monster family, or maybe a little more limited.

As for power source and "lore". I believe your best bet would be to borrow from what I would say is the most fleshed out and interesting version of the Blue Mage: Final Fantasy XI's(Yes, the MMO one). I'll post a summery and a link.

The Near East Empire is really into Alchemy and messing with stuff they shouldn't mess with in search of military power. Creating new monsters/chimeras and doing science thats so maddening it opens the gates to hell, and all that jazz. When the monsters they create turn on them, they create Blue Magic in order to combat it. At first it's trial and error(end up creating Soulflayers - Mindflayers with Wizards of the Coast licensing problems), but finally they begin binding the souls of monsters with the one's own soul.

People give up their humanity for this great power. And they die a lot. The strain of mimicking a monster with a human's body and soul causes a lot of injury. And if the primal power of the beasts overtake them, they turn into monsters(like Soulflayers) themselves. The Immortal Lions are the Imperial Guard and pretty make up most of the Blue Mages. They die... a lot. Though, an important character within that group can't die at all because he absorbed too much undead. He's a jerk.

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff11us/detail/424/detail.html

Anyway, if you based it on this, the power source would be a bit tricky. I want to say Primal, but Arcane works too. It really depends on how you look at it. I would say this incarnation of Blue Mage is more shamanic than magical, so that's something to consider.

I hope this helps.

 

[ziegander]

*sigh*

I had a whole write up starting, really professional looking, last night, but then one of my friends - instead of simply leaving the internet up with the multiple tabs I had open - decided to close firefox entirely after he was done with it...

Anyway, the angle I'm working with is a completely reimagined 4E Swordsage. He's an Arcane and Martial Leader. He studies all sorts of fighting techniques and power sources and when he gives advice his allies bow to his great intellect and wisdom (indeed the key abilities are dex, int, wis).

He can learn the attacks of his enemies and even allies and then swap them out for his own abilities each day. He'll have further encounter powers with the Enemy Skill or Combined Assault action type. This means that the power uses the Enemy Skill or Combined Assault power and then adds to it. Example:

Anything You Can Do
Encounter, Arcane, Martial
Enemy Skill - Ranged 5
Effect: You gain a +2 ower bonus to attack and damage using the power the triggering enemy used. If you hit with that power the triggering enemy is dazed until the end of your next turn.

This means that to use Anything You Can Do you have to use Enemy Skill on an enemy within 5 and then you get the effect.

Thoughts? Actually suggestions on how to keep the Tome of Exploits idea balanced would be great!

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Did anyone get anywhere with this? Just curious.