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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenjib" data-source="post: 89080" data-attributes="member: 530">If you just require spells to be discovered and/or researched all esoteric traditions still follow the same rules and fall under the same body of knowledge.  Take some real world historical examples of mystical traditions:  Kabballah, Wicca, medieval alchemy, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Order of Simon Magus, Judaic Prophets, the Rites of Osiris, the Cult of Dyonisis, Masonry, the Rosicrucians, palmistry, tarot, Chinese turtle shell/fire divination, druidism, Christian concepts of witchcraft and possession, etc.  Knowledge in one tradition does not translate to knowledge in another.  They are all distinct and separate bodies of knowledge that all serve distinct and different purposes.  In addition, they are all tied to certain cultures and ways of thought.I like magic that can be splintered into many differents ways of using it, and having an entry requirement to gain access to different ways.  Each different way has a distinctive flavor and set of powers (i.e. spells) that comes with it.  A particular person may know more than one method and may have different levels of power in them.  He may be a master of alchemy and also have some familiarity with Kaballah, of which he is quickly learning more.  Under my system it translates to a character like this:Occult Mage - level 8feats:  Occult Tradition (Alchemy), Occult Tradition (Kaballah), others...skills:  Occult Lore (Alchemy) 14 (11 ranks), Occult Lore (Kaballah) 9 (6 ranks), others...This grants him access to 4th level and lower spells from the alchemy list and 2nd level and lower from the Kaballah list.  I think that this idea makes magic more obscure, esoteric, and mysterious by giving it more rich cultural overtones and also by introducing more setting specific plot hooks for power hungry magi.  Instead of "must find more spells," we suddenly have "must find a copy of the ancient book:  Principis du Materia, which holds the secrets of alchemy," or "must seek admittance to the Temple of Tsa to learn the secrets of the Tsa Shapers - they say I must pass three tests to gain admittance to the order and be taught it's secrets:  The test of purity of mind, the test of purity of body, and the test of purity of soul."  Sure, you could fudge something like this with the current rules but the rules don't really provide a mechanism for these kinds of ideas to have any concrete impact on a character.  In mine, access to groups of spells is limited by feats, which serves to require that a person learn a given tradition in order to gain access to the corresponding spell list, and skills, which provides a mechanism by which a person may have differing levels of ability in multiple traditions and thus differing levels of access to higher level spells within a given spell list.It's nice to have the game mechanics in alignment with the game, rather than handling these things vaguely and without any rules to guide them.  Without a set of rules and expectations it becomes arbitrary and perhaps frustrating to players.Does anyone else find this concept useful?  So far I'm alone on it so I suppose it's just another reflection of the point made many times that we're all looking for something different and that the goal of this thread is perhaps too vague</blockquote>

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