thompur
2011-12-06, 07:36 PM
Hi Playgrounders. This is a house rule I have been contemplating for my new campaign world, and I wanted to get your feedback.
First, a little background. About 1100 years ago, the Sarkrith invaded and set off, for lack of a better term, Anti-Magic ‘nukes’. Even they underestimated how effective they would be. It took over 700 years for supernatural abilities to re-emerge. Another 100+ years for SLA’s. Innate spell casters started appearing a little over 200 years ago, and Wizards just a century or so.
Now Sorcerers and Wizards have different spell lists: some spells, like Fog Cloud, or Fireball, are currently excusive to Sorcerers, and others, like Glitterdust and Fire Trap are only known to Wizards. There are spells that both lists share, but they may have subtle differences. There are also a lot of spells that either haven’t been re-discovered, or have yet to be created. For instance, since there has been no contact with the Outer Planes in over 1100 years, spells like Gate, Banishment and COP either don’t exist or, more likely, just don’t work. Invokers, popularly known as Warlocks, are the only ones who can teleport any distance at all, and the furthest any of them have gone is about 80 feet.
With all that being said, I want to give each school of magic a secondary attribute. As follows:
• Abjuration – Strength
• Conjuration – Charisma
• Divination – Wisdom
• Enchantment - Charisma
• Evocation – Constitution
• Illusion – Wisdom
• Necromancy – Strength
• Transmutation – Constitution
The Idea being, if you have a negative modifier in the secondary stat, you can’t cast spells from that school. If you have no modifier, the spells work as normal. If you have a positive modifier, the spell will work better in some way. The easiest example is something like Burning Hands, where a + will add half your mod rounded down (min. +1) to each die of damage.
Also, since wizards are the only ones who can create new spells, they would get a bonus on their chance to succeed in their endeavor to research a new spell in that school.
So…What do you think?
First, a little background. About 1100 years ago, the Sarkrith invaded and set off, for lack of a better term, Anti-Magic ‘nukes’. Even they underestimated how effective they would be. It took over 700 years for supernatural abilities to re-emerge. Another 100+ years for SLA’s. Innate spell casters started appearing a little over 200 years ago, and Wizards just a century or so.
Now Sorcerers and Wizards have different spell lists: some spells, like Fog Cloud, or Fireball, are currently excusive to Sorcerers, and others, like Glitterdust and Fire Trap are only known to Wizards. There are spells that both lists share, but they may have subtle differences. There are also a lot of spells that either haven’t been re-discovered, or have yet to be created. For instance, since there has been no contact with the Outer Planes in over 1100 years, spells like Gate, Banishment and COP either don’t exist or, more likely, just don’t work. Invokers, popularly known as Warlocks, are the only ones who can teleport any distance at all, and the furthest any of them have gone is about 80 feet.
With all that being said, I want to give each school of magic a secondary attribute. As follows:
• Abjuration – Strength
• Conjuration – Charisma
• Divination – Wisdom
• Enchantment - Charisma
• Evocation – Constitution
• Illusion – Wisdom
• Necromancy – Strength
• Transmutation – Constitution
The Idea being, if you have a negative modifier in the secondary stat, you can’t cast spells from that school. If you have no modifier, the spells work as normal. If you have a positive modifier, the spell will work better in some way. The easiest example is something like Burning Hands, where a + will add half your mod rounded down (min. +1) to each die of damage.
Also, since wizards are the only ones who can create new spells, they would get a bonus on their chance to succeed in their endeavor to research a new spell in that school.
So…What do you think?