Tell me about magic in your world.

[RangerWickett]

What sorts of magical traditions are there in your world? Do you use the normal divine and arcane rules as written, not worrying about how they fit into culture? Do you use the existing rules, but give them a specific flavor and possibly restrictions depending on where the spellcaster is from? Or do you have completely new magic systems? If so, what are those magic systems like?

In my game, I have tons of different styles of magic. Once, one of my players (who had a barbarian PC) complained that she wanted to play 'Dungeons & Dragons,' not 'Spellcasters Are Cool.'

• Gresian Psion-Monks. They use psychic powers to tap into the souls of things and gain their powers.
• Inquisitors. Wearing masks to hide their identities and their spirits, inquisitors are masters of intimidation and counterspelling. They were originally developed as a magical police force to find disloyal mages, but today they have their own agendas.
• Spellweaving. A style of Elvish magic that combines multiple spells into one. They focus on life and defensive magic, with some self-transformation. Spellweavers take the long view of life, believing that if it's not worth doing slowly, it's not worth doing at all.
• Yen-Ching Biomancers. Tinkering scientist mages, biomancers are responsible for most of the monsters in the world. They breed, hybridize, and build creatures, and a few of the more crazed ones transform themselves. Biomancy is much more stylish than summoning if you want to have monsters defend you.
• Taranesti Diabolists. Demon summoners who hide in the dark, the Taranesti Elves believe the best way to win a fight is to never take sides. They'll work with anyone who will ally with them, and will betray their allies when they deem it necessary. Demons and devils in particular are some of the best things to ally with, because they provide great power, but don't make you feel guilty when they die.
• Gabal Spellduelists. Like gunslingers of the old west, spellduelists of the Gabal school strive to defeat their foes as fast as possible, but they have an extra layer of cunning that helps them outwit all manner of opponents. They favor evocations above all.
• Elemental Guardians. Each guardian chooses one of the four classical elements, and learns magic of that particular type. This is a necessary tradition, because if the Elemental Conclave did not meet each year and perform their rituals, the world would be torn apart by opposing elemental forces.
• Gatekeepers. They believe books are reflections of other realities. All their magic is based on writing and conjuring.
• High Sorcery. The ancient Elvish style of magic that focused purely on forces and energies, never on the tangible. Masters of enchantment, abjuration, and evocation.
• Wayfarers. Developed from a group of traveling performers, the wayfarers learned the secrets of teleportation, and now control the market for teleportation-based goods and services. They also are skilled like Cirque de Soleil.

What are you magical traditions? Where does magic come from, who uses it, and how?

 

[Psion]

I worry very much about magic traditions and how they fit in. More for the divine than arcane, though. Arcane magic tends to be more insular and isolated to intitutions of learning and power, whereas divine tends to be very much a populist pursuit.

I do tend to make arcane magic an important force in the political landscape as well. Arcane magic concentrates more power in the laps of fewer people, and no government can persist for long without either being run by or having the sympathy or approval of mages.

To this end, the two planar cities I am making for my River or Worlds game both feature arcane magic groups as governing forces. The so-called Jeweled City (which I was thinking about stealing Sharn for) is ruled by a council of hedonistic Jewel Mages who entrap subjects in their gems and the most potent permanently attach their psyches to gems.

The other, the more rough and transitory Dragonwatch Harbor is protected under the watch of the Dragon Mages, who are actually waning in power, and teaching their art to more initiates in order to draw more wealth. This city has a more even balance of power, with the planar Combine of merchants being an important power block. The Dragon-Mages (who emulate dragons in that their magical power is drawn from valuable things, i.e., treasure) have a reputation as marauders, which has led to covert action by the combine to remove the more dangerous members (many of whom are still at large.)

As for divine casters, it seems to me that Clerics represent some common underpinnings that could represent some commonalities in the fluff behind their religion. I use Priests from AEG's Good because Clerics seem too specific too me. What I would like to do is make up some fundamental religious groupings with strong backstory to describe by Priests, Druids, Shamans, and Favored Souls (and possibly others, like healers) are all different, but that is something I am still working on.

When I speak of different underpinnings, I am speaking of more that different deities. It's obvious to me that Clerics of vastly different deities have similar training. Why are they all trained in armor? Yeah, I could vary it, but it would be more satisfying to me if I could make an in game explanation that would, for example, put (my versions of deities like) Kord and Wee Jas and Nerull and Pelor in the same family of deities and explain why all their clergy have similarities in tradition despite their differences in philosophy.

 

[Turanil]

If I once again run my D&D homebrew setting, it simply goes like this:

PHB 3.5 normal spellcasters + Unearthed Arcana variants; Expanded Psionic Handbook 3.5; Green Ronin Psychic's Handbook; and Arcana Unearthed classes and magic. I don't invent anything more.

Then, not all races have access to everything. For instance, only elves can be of the Magister class (AU), while only giants (a mix of Xpsi and AU giants) can be psionic users, the others races having to instead choose Psychic Handbook, etc. Generally all wizards are humans, with UA variants; dwarves mages are Runethanes; elves mages are Magister and Witches; etc.

 

[francisca]

In my homebrew, humans are just now starting to get the grasp of Arcane magic. As such, they are seen as outcasts and much suspicion is cast upon them. Some area strictly forbid arcane spellcasters under penalty of death. So, in general, magic is viewed as "Black Arts", if you will, and PC sorcerors and wizards need to watch their step.

 

[VirgilCaine]

I use the Crystalmancer core class and PrC from Crystalmancy: Powers of the Gems, as well as gobs and gobs of spells from www.realmsofevil.net www.wizards.com (well, and just about everything else free they throw out) and a few other places on the 'Net.

 

[Desdichado]

In my campaign, I use magic rules from d20 Call of Cthulhu. Using magic is highly illegal and heretical in most areas, and is a quick ticket to the Inquisition knocking on your door. The common folk, those who even believe in it at all, tend to react with fear and anger; think pitchforks and torches here.

There aren't schools or traditions per se but those who want to use magic can certainly try to lean towards certain types of effects, depending on their interest. There aren't any that are really good, though -- demonologists, alienists or necromancers are pretty much what most of those "traditions" would resemble.

 

[GlassJaw]

I'm working on a low-magic Grim Tales campaign right now and I'm intentionally keeping the magic rules very vague. I want each spell, incantation, magical effect, etc to be unique as well as how each spell is learned.

There is a line in the GT book that basically says the introduction of magic is completely up the DM. It took me some time to get my head around that concept but I'm really taking it to heart now. The players might not like the fact that there won't be any "guaranteed" magic but I'm willing to take that chance for something very different.

I will have some general guidelines though. There is no divine magic because there are deities. There is nature/shamanistic magic that is similar to druidic magic but it usually involves more material components or some kind of ritual to cast. It will involved more manipulation of the elements (like entangle) rather than creating some kind of magical effect (like magic missile).

The other type of magic is a mix of necromancy and chaos magic but also strange technology and pseudo-"medical" and surgical practices. Nasty stuff.

 

[painandgreed]

I have four styles of magic. When a person chooses to be amagic user, they pick the style of magic they are learning as it can not change.

normal magic - as per normal D&D
elvin magic - same as normal magic but can be cast in armor with concentration check
dragon magic - all components are verbal
true magic - spells can be cast witout any components, just a concentration check, adding the components will add a bonus to the concentration check. Works on spell point system.

The main balance is that the less restrictive the magic style gets, the longer it takes to train and learn spells. Thus, spells tht only take a few days to learn with normal magic may take weeks or months to learn the equivilant spell in another style. Also the harder it becomes to find training as the less restrictive styles may train the more restrictive types but not the other way around. These are mostly for flavor and NPCs and for a PC to learn something besides normal magic, it will probably require a feat just to have access to somebody who could train them: elves, dragons, or one of the few true mages.

 

[Nightfall]

Scarred Lands, the best things are: sorcery and wizardry are different. So are clerics and druids. Other than that, I don't need much else. Well titans sure but you know what I mean!

 

[taichara]

Jya.

Magic is slowly coming together as a few different variants in my campaign.

In the main, arcane magic is gained through "normal" means, mostly intense research of magical phenomena, the interaction of the various arcane energies, and more complicated encoding systems than you can shake a hamster at. Sorcerers are those individuals who have been born with the knowledge of certain rituals and patterns engrained in their minds, as it were.

I'm currently working out a system of exotic energies, and am swapping out the normal types of summonable critters for special templates. No one knows just where these beasts come from or why they answer the "call", but a horde of mages want to find out.

Arcane spellcasters in this campaign like to network (except, of course, for the odd creepy fellow with the zombies down the road that no one likes to visit .. ehehe). Bartering of texts, spells, random bits of arcane trivia, and sometimes even apprentices is commonplace. There aren't "mage-guilds" in the traditional, semi-secretive sense, because it can be more beneficial to keep the avenues of communication open. Of course, that doesn't mean that you can't wrangle a king's ransom for some particularly valuable bit of lore ...

There are also the "small magics", things like tokens and minor sigils and wardings and whatnot that anyone with the knowledge can create, and a geomantic system which is a combination of tapping earth-energy and out-and-out feng shui-like effects. The basic idea here is the kind of wee charms that an expert in the field could concievably create, even if they may only be the local wise-one in a village -- aversions put up to try and scare the beasties away, minor luck charms, and the like.

Divine magics haven't really come up yet; there aren't any notable divine casters atm ...

Psionics, on the other hand, tend to cluster in small fellowships, usually with descriptive names and a certain common theme to their manifestations. They aren't insular, exactly, but they pride themselves on certain specializations and signature effects. Their knowledge comes from creating their own personal version of a "pattern" from whole cloth and from their own energies, and is very individualistic.


... And some day I will have enough time to be able to add real detail to all of this ...



Tai