blue mage

[zalmatra]

any blue mage homebrews from ff?

[Violet Octopus]

Links to a few on this thread:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=147115

The best-known one got broken by the WotC forum move, but I have an offline copy and could PM the content to you. Unfortunately that one doesn't let you learn monster spell-like abilities that aren't direct copies of spells, e.g. mind blast or warlock invocations. Some of the other ones on the above thread may do so, haven't read through them.

edit: ninja'd by OP

[zalmatra]

well i looked through them but found them lacking in the spirit of the original blue mage from ff5 and even strago

[zalmatra]

blue mage from ff5 had proficency with longsword and wasent a bad attacker could wear light armor and gained monster magic/special attacks

i would think it would cover the following

dragons breath attacks
mind flayer psionic attack but not spells or actual psionics
chimera breath attack
medusa gaze
beholders central eye anti magic effect
demon/devil/angel fear aura
rusting attack from those littler metal eaters

when i think blue mage in dnd thats what im thinking of
all of those had focus on physically changing the blue mage which is not part of blue magic

[zalmatra]

To further reinterate what blue magic is about

blue Magic is about learning the special attacks and abilities of monsters and using them yourself.

this may produce a physical effect or it may do something physical you may buff yourself or others but the effect would be something temporary and not a permanent attribute

example of a self effect would be using your magical power to do a phoenix rebirth effect on yourself sacrificing all of your mp to replicate the Phoenix's special ability

example of a offensive special ability would be using the medusa's gaze against a enemy.

[I_Got_This_Name]

Getting spells from having monsters attack you is unbalanceable. Any system you make for that won't behave consistently from game to game, and is essentially dependent on the DM handing out spells to your spell list; if you get good spells, great, and if you get bad spells or no spells you have no recourse (unless you can get them from party members who are independently good).

It's a lot like an Archivist or a necromancer that way. Archivists depend on getting DM handouts of scrolls and cribbing from other divine casters in the party (unless the DM decides that they can buy scrolls from every spell list ever, automatically, everything they get outside the Cleric list and their partymates' spell lists is something the DM gave them). Necromancers depend directly on the monsters they fight because they need corpses. Blue mages depend on the monsters' special powers.

Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't make a class that does that. Just keep in mind that those are completely impossible to balance.

If you want someone who uses the various weird abilities of monsters and has a blue color scheme, but are willing to give up the unbalanceable part, I hear the Totemist in Magic of Incarnum works well. Not only does it get to wield all sorts of weird monster-themed powers, but its powers are also all blue (or Cerulean, or Azure, or some other synonym).

You can also play a polymorph wizard or come up with a class on that theme, where you turn into monsters to use their powers. That brings in the part where you usually have to at least see the monster, if you like that, but it also makes the build unbalanceable. As an added bonus, most of the work is done for you already as a Wizard, so people who don't like unbalanced homebrew content (but don't mind unbalanced core or WotC content) are sometimes fine with it. The blue color scheme isn't included in this model, though.

[zalmatra]

im so far thinking of a fixed progression that is selected by knowledge skills and uses a point based system

the effects would be some of the iconic abilities of monsters not direct spells and certainly not direct psionics which is what everyone is making the blue mage out to be

a fixed progression that depends on knowledge skills feat choice and previous choices taken is a logical reasonable adaptation.
just replicating spells and psionics is lame and lacks flavor

[Zeta Kai]

There are two Limit Breaks that allow one to learn & use Blue Magic from enemies. The first (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3095540#post3095540) is in the style of Quistis from FF8, while the latter (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3107275#post3107275) uses the style of Kimarhi from FF10. Enjoy.

[Violet Octopus]

By point based system do you mean having mana you need to spend to use your learned supernatural abilities? Because the psionics system would provide the easiest mechanical basis for that, even though it wouldn't learn powers as such.

I haven't played any of the FFs with a Blue Mage, but the fact that they're apparently more martial made me think Swordsage might be another good homebrew starting point.

Instead of learning new maneuvers upon levelup, it learns monster attacks (and maybe martial maneuvers and/or spells as well) with a skill check, assigning level based on the attack's DC. It then initates those attacks as normal for a maneuver.

Of course, since monsters aren't written to the same standards as classes, it'd take a fair bit of DM fiat to determine if special attacks/abilities are boosts, strikes, counters, etc, and what their level is if they don't have a DC, but that's unavoidable for a blue mage that can learn things that aren't spells.

So, two questions:
What do you mean by point-based system?
Does a per-encounter mechanic sound good to you?

[Siosilvar]

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