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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DanMcS" data-source="post: 1433572" data-attributes="member: 6530">A similar system:Spellcasting is based on a single skill, call it spellcraft for historical reasons.  Runs off of intelligence, see below."School", "domain", "sphere", whatever access is granted through feats.  Each feat represents access to/usage of a given source of magical energy.From memory, the sources of magic are roughly, good, evil, law, chaos, earth, air, fire, water, illusion, transmutation, nature, summoning, magic, a few others, you can customize to taste pretty easily.You can select each feat as an internal feat or an external feat.Internal spheres are used by the equivalent of arcane casters.  They use Cha to set their save DCs.  External feats are used by the equivalent of divine casters; they use Wisdom to set their save DCs.  The external feat is the same as the internal feat, plus you get a domain power and a taboo.Spells are cast through a skill check, rather like epic spellcasting.  Mitigating factors like xp burn, backlash, increased casting time, cooperative casting, and so on add to your spellcraft check (they don't reduce the DC).  Duration, save DCs, bonuses, damage dice, etc are all scalable, and add to the DC.  The skill point you add every level is definitely useful, because it can be added directly to these things.Each sphere grants access to certain seeds, basically; the elemental spheres include direct damage type things, resistance to elemental damage, and generally one or two stat-buffs per type (earth lets you buff con and wisdom, fire gives dex and int, and so on).  They also grant skill-boosting; air might let you boost jump, water -> tumble.  This is customizable depending on what you want each sphere to represent.Such a system can be broken pretty easily (I'll cast this spell to raise my spellcraft skill, use that increased skill to cast spell2 to increase it further, and so on), so you end up having to put arbitrary limits on some things.  For instance, no spellcraft-skill boosting, or skill boosts are limited to the caster level of the spellcaster.When an internalist casts a spell, he's drawing on his own reservoir of energy.  He'll end up making fort saves for each spell to ward off exhaustion.When an externalist casts a spell, he's calling on another power to cast it for him.  Maybe a genie, or a nature spirit, or an outsider on one of the aligned planes.  He makes will saves for each spell; if he fails he'll have problems dealing with that spirit later on.It doesn't end up being as flashy as normal D&D magic; fireballs are harder to pull off, but skill-boosting, stat-boosting, and self-affecting spells are useful and available.</blockquote>

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