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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brightshadow" data-source="post: 318193" data-attributes="member: 3584">Looks like you've got some good stuff here. I'm currently doing something similar myself for a home-brew system. Without access to the Star Wars rpg, I've been taking my cues from Spycraft's psionic system.One thing I've found about it (which I like), is that it's not as versitile as D&D magic. You say you'd like to be able to do everything in the PHB, but when you get down to it, there's a number of singular, non-scaling spells (eg. glitterdust, animal growth) that don't fit well into categories except for themselves.One of the things I didn't like about wizards in my campaigns were that they had the solution to every problem. Spells for not just common things, like combat or illusions, but everything from making houses to making popcorn. Trying to make skills for each possible spell, or even allowing new skills for new spells, is possible, but not very practical. Even if they're made, few will take them, since it would take skill points away from more important spells.On the other hand, skill-based magic makes for powerful stuff, depending on how high a scale you make. You could conceivably scale into infinity, simply adding an extra d6 of damage or whatever for every extra five points on the check, making a fire spell stronger than its D&D counterpart. One of the spycraft feats, 'unlocked potential', made my mouth water. That's the one that increases the max possible rank of a skill by three. If you have a wizard who wants to really focus on fire magics, there's alot of possibility there.I guess what I'm saying is that skill-based stuff makes for a better sorcerer-simulator than a wizard-simulator. Most of the piddly, sometimes-used spells will never be touched, or simply don't scale well enough to make spells out of. The spells that are taken, though, can be used often, and can grow rather powerful.If you limit the kinds of spells available, it's possible to get much more creative characters from them than 'another wizard', as players decide 'do I want to have a few ranks in lots of spells, lots of ranks in a few spells, or become extremely powerful with a single task?'.</blockquote>

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