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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4625841" data-attributes="member: 54707">I looked into Ars Magica and got a copy. It's not what I'm doing with how magic works but it is quite fascinating. Now I guess I'm going to have to look into Mage and see how that works.I guess that depends upon how one defines powerful. A lot of people will be more powerful politically or in authority, or in other respects to power, especially when a character is just starting out. That is the characters can start from any social or political or background position in my setting. So in that respect they will start form wherever they start. (Though maybe I should devise a way in which people can develop backgrounds based on social potion that may or may not give them other types of advantages. Or disadvantages for that matter.) And how much influence they have over others will also be another matter altogether.As for how the average character stands in relation to the average person (at the beginning of their professional career) I reckon I should address that in some way as to how they stand in relation to magic. Maybe though I should make magic influence access to social, political, and economic status rather than the other way around.One thing I have decided for certain, magicians will not be "special" in regards to other types of characters, fighters, agents, etc. like in Ars Magica. Though I like the idea of them being secretive and covert. At least the human ones. Very much so.I've also decided that I'm going to make the Wizard a proto-scientist and natural scientist, an illusionist, cartographer, and an inventor and engineer. And I'm going to make the Mage an alchemist and chemist, an astrologer, a sort of psychic and a doctor. They will both be sages and experts, of a kind. Those won't be limits to those classes, just major capabilities. Wizards and Mages will be human character "classes."Humanoid characters will have "classes" that correspond to the more traditional D&D Wizard. (I always thought humans and humanoids should have very different ways of looking at and approaching the world, and since they would also have different innate abilities and skills, would naturally develop very different professions [or classes]. Just as Medieval Europe developed the idea of the Paladin and Templar and Knight Errant and the Japanese the Samurai and Ronin, and that's a wide range of difference based upon nothing more than variances of geography and within dissimilar human culture, you would naturally expect Humans and Elves to also develop radically different approaches to culture, society, duty, obligation, and profession. The idea that radically different races [species really] and cultures would develop the exact same expressions of adventuring profession, or outlook, always seemed a real weakness of the D&D model to me, as it developed later anyways, with wholesale "be anything and everything you like no matter your background." I suspect they'd also have very, very, very different ways of looking at both "magic" and "divine magic," and religion. For instance a human cleric would be nothing like an dwarven one anymore than a Christian cleric would be the same as a Muslim one. And a human Wizard would likely be very little like an elven Wizard. Why would they be similar? Though over time they might become slightly more compatible and transform over time as each begins to influence the other more directly. Eventually creating a sort of hybrid profession, maybe even a hybrid culture if they interacted often enough. More likely though they would create a sort of racial and cultural sympathy, where one side or the other comes to admire certain aspects of the other and how they operate. An elf might convert and desire to become a Paladin, though he would be next to unique, or a human might want to become "elf-like" and strive to become an elven-type Wizard, rather than a human type Wizard. But that would be mainly the function of setting, how cultures and magic and religion and professions and other things "transform" over time.)Otherwise, I have decided that Sorcerers and Warlocks will be enemies of the Wizard and Magi.And clerics and paladins and others will also have their own natural enemies or nemeses.So the character "classes" or professions will have built in character/NPC game opposition.</blockquote>

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