Everynone
2013-06-07, 06:02 PM
So my friend and I are homebrewing two classes based off of Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle. One is a normal class that we are attempting to balance called the Ancient Linguist (basically just an Alagaesian version of a magician) and the deliberately OP PrC of Dragon Rider (don't worry, the DM has complete control over whether or not you actually find a specially-enchanted dragon egg, besides all the prerequisites we gave it :-P).
In order to do this, we had to design an entirely different system of magic, which ended up being something of a cross between psionics, blood magic, and something like the Thu'um system from Bethesda's Skyrim. We called this magic 'ancient magic' (as opposed to arcane or divine magic). The premise is that you learn words (nouns which act as a target, verbs which act as a mechanism, and adjectives which act as metamagic) and each time you use the word in a spell, you have to expend a certain amount of energy points (similar to psionic's power points). Each spell can have up to three words used in it. Spells like this are augmentable. If you run out of energy points, you can use hit points to power your spells (like a blood mage). A caster can be killed by using his hit points in this manner.
Obviously, we took a lot of inspiration from the psionics system for in-game mechanics, and rules from Inheritance for what you can do with this magic. In familiarizing ourselves even further with psionics, my friend decided that psions were terribly written and are OP, mostly because of their ability to augment powers. He used the Vigor power as an example in his position, which went something like this: the psion in question has 350pp. He uses 100pp to gain 500hp (in addition to his normal allotment) and still has 250pp left over to kill all day long. It only takes 20pp to match the delayed blast fireball of a wizard 20, and you still have 230pp left. My counterposition was simply that expending almost a third of your daily pp is almost never wise, and leaves you power-starved for the rest of the day (and as a primary caster with a d4 hit die and 1/2 bab, thats a very dangerous thing).
So my question is threefold. 1) 'Do mana systems (or point systems or whatever) that are based off of psionics need to be nerfed?' or simply 'Does psionics need to be nerfed?' 2) 'How do I explain to my friend whether he is right or wrong?' and 3) 'How do I make this system of magic?' (this is more of an open question; my friend and I want this to be a relatively unique and fun system, but balanced and playable. However, we'd love suggestions, especially from magic-system designers, fans of psionics, and fans of the Inheritance Cycle).
In order to do this, we had to design an entirely different system of magic, which ended up being something of a cross between psionics, blood magic, and something like the Thu'um system from Bethesda's Skyrim. We called this magic 'ancient magic' (as opposed to arcane or divine magic). The premise is that you learn words (nouns which act as a target, verbs which act as a mechanism, and adjectives which act as metamagic) and each time you use the word in a spell, you have to expend a certain amount of energy points (similar to psionic's power points). Each spell can have up to three words used in it. Spells like this are augmentable. If you run out of energy points, you can use hit points to power your spells (like a blood mage). A caster can be killed by using his hit points in this manner.
Obviously, we took a lot of inspiration from the psionics system for in-game mechanics, and rules from Inheritance for what you can do with this magic. In familiarizing ourselves even further with psionics, my friend decided that psions were terribly written and are OP, mostly because of their ability to augment powers. He used the Vigor power as an example in his position, which went something like this: the psion in question has 350pp. He uses 100pp to gain 500hp (in addition to his normal allotment) and still has 250pp left over to kill all day long. It only takes 20pp to match the delayed blast fireball of a wizard 20, and you still have 230pp left. My counterposition was simply that expending almost a third of your daily pp is almost never wise, and leaves you power-starved for the rest of the day (and as a primary caster with a d4 hit die and 1/2 bab, thats a very dangerous thing).
So my question is threefold. 1) 'Do mana systems (or point systems or whatever) that are based off of psionics need to be nerfed?' or simply 'Does psionics need to be nerfed?' 2) 'How do I explain to my friend whether he is right or wrong?' and 3) 'How do I make this system of magic?' (this is more of an open question; my friend and I want this to be a relatively unique and fun system, but balanced and playable. However, we'd love suggestions, especially from magic-system designers, fans of psionics, and fans of the Inheritance Cycle).