What would you like to see in an Elemental Magic guide?

[Carnifex]

Like it says in the title...

I had some inspiration recently, a little deluge of ideas for elemental magic that I'm currently in the process of writing up into a document. I hope that if all goes well and it turns out good enough I might even see if any d20 publishers would be interested in it. To aid my efforts, I'm interested to know what people might like to see in such a guide. I intend to make it very 'crunchy', and have got plenty of stuff to work with already, but I want to check out the kinds of expectations of what you lot would want as well, to improve it as best I can.

Edit: Note that I intend to cover divine magic and the elements, as well as arcane magic...

 

[Nightfall]

Chris/Car

Well for me, elemental magic SHOULD include life force extraplotation. So perhaps what you should try is having a kind of binder/summoner type that also tries to use elementals to enhance his/her abilities (mostly physical), to aid in daily battle. Perhaps even try to ASCEND to be an elemental type unheard of, like outsider/godlike being.

 

[Carnifex]

Well for me, elemental magic SHOULD include life force extraplotation.

I'm a little bit confused by your post, hinging on the word 'extraplotation', since I'm not sure whether you meant to say extrapolation or exploitation? I think what you're getting at is a character type which has bound elementals from which they can draw power, am I right?

 

[Urklore]

It's all about the ice powers baby! I wanna see a Psionic class or prestige class based on cromancy. Ice Blasts, Icy skin, etc. Being able to turn to ice and alter shape, large icy fists, or covered in icy spikes, or increasing your icy density, etc.

 

[Zappo]

I wanna see a Psionic class or prestige class based on cromancy.

Uhm, isn't cromancy something that has to do with colors?

Anyway, I'd like to see something about the quasi- and para-elements. You know, ooze, dust, magma, steam, radiance, that ones. And ice too, yeah! I'd like to see a new magic system based on shaping your chosen element in any way you can think of, rather than using fixed spells.

An idea I've been toying with for a while is the one of elemental liches. Hey, if you can become immortal with negative energy, positive one should be even better, no? A society of mages IMC actually experimented with it, but most of their subjects ended up insane for one reason or the other (the pyrolich kinda worked, but she was permanently on fire, and she felt all the pain of it, for example).

Oh, and I'd like to see the politics of the Inner Planes. Who are the elemental lords? How did they get there? And so on... though that's probably not your project.

 

[Carnifex]

Well, I guess I could include the cryomancy rules I've come up with as well... you know, I hadn't considered that, I'd been focusing more on the 'classic four' (earth, air, fire, water).

As it is, I already have a full cryomancer prestige class and some spells written up. I wrote it all up while putting together the campaign world for my current game, in which cryomancers are a force to be reckoned with indeed, running an entire nation under a magocracy.

I don't think I'll touch psionics though, that could become too complicated...

 

[RangerWickett]

Be flexible as far as what elements are. Don't stick with just one viewpoint. Sure, the classical Greek elements are the ones most used, but that's because most people aren't familiar with alternatives. If you present Greek, Chinese, and other elemental schema, people will have more tools, and will be better able to create the interesting types of games they want. So I'm saying, be diverse. Present a lot of options, and give gamers a choice of what they want to use.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Make the spell lists distinct from each other.

I hate elemental magic that is set up so that water mages cast "waterballs" or "iceballs" instead of "fireballs". I mean, geeze, why bother?

Figure out what you want the elements to do and have them do it. If you plan it out right, none of them should really be that much more powerful than the others (though one school's power may lie in flexibility rather than strength.)

 

[Ace32]

[Edit]Ignore me

That's what happens when you have 2 windows with 2 different threads.. you reply to the wrong one!!

 

[Nightfall]

Uhm yeah Chris/Carn, that's what I mean was EXPLOITATION. I mean the reason people enjoy things like necromancy, different schools and powers IS being able to switch and use different powers in various ways. Magic is about EXPLOITING the power to manipulate points of reality/matter/energy. Elemental magic should have similiar themes in my view.