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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreatLemur" data-source="post: 3511361" data-attributes="member: 28553">It's a weird thing to draw on for D&D, or even to remember at this point, but one of my favorite models of magical theory is from the old TSR Marvel Super Heroes game.  In an expansion product called Realms of Magic (which, because the Internet is awesome, you can download <a href="http://www.classicmarvel.com/download/download.php?file=TSR6870.MHAC9.Realms.Of.Magic.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>, along with <a href="http://www.classicmarvel.com/download/download_basic.htm" target="_blank">all the other MSH stuff</a>), they divided up the basic types of magic by exactly what power sources they drew on: personal energies, universal energies, and dimensional energies.  That is, power that comes from within the individual user, ambient power that is gathered from the surrounding universe, and power that comes from other planes of existence (and possibly sentient supernatural forces).I think this maps pretty well to the idea of psionicists (and monks!) drawing on some kind of inner power, arcanists gathering mana from the world around them, and divine casters being granted power by deities.  But it leads to all kinds of interesting questions about how all three flavors of "magical" energy might be fundamentally different, and how that would be modeled mechanically if you're willing to drop the existing magic systems.  Users of "personal energies" might have ready access to their abilities at all times (or with only a bit of rest), but it's quite reasonable that they have much less raw power than than those who use outside energy sources.  Users of "universal energies" can achieve a large store of raw power and manipulate it in precise and complicated ways, but it would logically take them time to gather the energy they need, and they might have to compete with each other for the resource.  Users of "dimensional energies" would theoretically be working with potentially infinite and readily-available power, but they wouldn't have direct access to it, might not be able to control the way it's expressed, and could even suffer some terrible physical strain from channeling it.</blockquote>

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