Worldbuilding Help!

[GreyBlack]

I have been working on a game world and have run into something of a stumbling block for how to incorporate something, so I figured I'd come here and ask for some help.

Basic premise of the world: 800 years ago, a proxy for the Roman Empire fell after a massive and cataclysmic war which left the world severely divided, mostly along the lines of 9 races: Dwarves, Dromites, Kobolds, Gnomes, Humans, Goblins, Elves (due to a schism of Elven society, I only allow High and Grey), Halflings, and Orcs, with Half-Orcs being very valued among one nation especially. The aftermath also saw the death of the major god of the world, the god of death, magic, time, and knowledge, and the ascension of a mortal who killed him being severely ill-suited to maintain such a position of power.

During this time, I also rule that the ability to harness powerful magicks was essentially killed off with the death of Noach Ihk Vivex (the aforementioned death-god) due to a completely unrelated event involving the destruction of a proxy for the Library of Alexandria (Yes, I am still bitter about that!), sending the world back into the Dark Ages. Due to this, I've ruled that the classes of Wizard, Cleric, Artificer, Druid, Psion, Favored Soul, Sorcerer, and Archivist don't exist anymore.

However, this flavoring leaves me in something of a pickle, because it basically eliminates the ability for a player to play as a mage of the forest. I know the Spirit Shaman exists, but am worried about how allowing the Spirit Shaman would affect the general power level I'm allowing to work. Can anyone think of a workaround? I feel like that idea of forest mages are extremely important to the world, but can't figure out a workaround, and really can't decide whether Spirit Shamans exist in the world or not.

So, thoughts?

[torrasque666]

I don't see why Druid wouldn't work fine. Maybe scrap Wild Shape and limit them to Ranger progression, as well as enforcing the Ranger Without Spellcasting variant. So they wouldn't become too powerful, but would still be able to function in a Mage of the Forest type capacity as well as working off of the idea that the current God of Magic isn't quite powerful enough to grant these absurdly powerful spells. Hell, maybe even just modify it a bit more and rename the class, or make it more of a prestige class built as an expansion on the Rangers. You could possibly even do something similar with other caster like the Sorcerer(who has an innate gift, maybe 3-5 levels available) and/or Psion(which I believe is a similar concept). Wizard I understand their lack, they have no ways to gain knowledge of new spells, at least not easily, as well as Clerics(though they could also possibly be a similar situation as the Druid, seeing as how it similar in relation to the Paladin).

In short, the ones that require existing knowledge, like the Wizard, the Artificer, and the Archivist(I know nothing of Favored Soul) are easily explained away, though the innate ones might just be severely weakened.

Scrap all that. If you're worried about power levels, possibly regulate it to a half-caster progression. I believe that means it follows a path similar to that of a Paladin or Ranger.

[Kuulvheysoon]

You could also have a Fey Variant Bard (from the d20 SRD) - lose most of your bardic abilities to get a good handful of druid class features. Maybe rework their spell list a little bit and boom, you have a Disney PrincessForest Mage class.

[GreyBlack]

I don't see why Druid wouldn't work fine. Maybe scrap Wild Shape and limit them to Ranger progression, as well as enforcing the Ranger Without Spellcasting variant. So they wouldn't become too powerful, but would still be able to function in a Mage of the Forest type capacity as well as working off of the idea that the current God of Magic isn't quite powerful enough to grant these absurdly powerful spells. Hell, maybe even just modify it a bit more and rename the class, or make it more of a prestige class built as an expansion on the Rangers. You could possibly even do something similar with other caster like the Sorcerer(who has an innate gift, maybe 3-5 levels available) and/or Psion(which I believe is a similar concept). Wizard I understand their lack, they have no ways to gain knowledge of new spells, at least not easily, as well as Clerics(though they could also possibly be a similar situation as the Druid, seeing as how it similar in relation to the Paladin).

In short, the ones that require existing knowledge, like the Wizard, the Artificer, and the Archivist(I know nothing of Favored Soul) are easily explained away, though the innate ones might just be severely weakened.

Scrap all that. If you're worried about power levels, possibly regulate it to a half-caster progression. I believe that means it follows a path similar to that of a Paladin or Ranger.

It's not so much that I'm worried about power levels inherently so much as it doesn't make sense to me that, with all of this absurdly powerful magic disappeared from the world, that Druids are literally the only ones unaffected, especially seeing as the god of magic died. See, with Druids, I sort of envision happening to them what happened to (say) the masters of Tai Chi during the Cultural Revolution in China. All of the great masters were killed off before they were able to completely transmit all they knew to their disciples, forcing them to fend for themselves. To my mind, this would almost turn the Rangers into the new Druids (I'd allow access to Wild Shape variant), but some of the disciples who focused more on the spellcasting side might have still existed.

I guess the question I'm asking is, "Does it make sense to just allow Wild Shape Variant Rangers as a replacement for wild mages, or would there still be people who have magic?"

[Larkas]

Let's put it this way: what is the source of their power? I usually view magic like this: arcane comes from the planes, divine comes from faith, primal (natural divine) comes from the natural world and psionics come from the self. If you also view it like that, arcane and divine might filter through the deceased god, while primal, being tied directly to the world the characters are standing, might not. If that's the case in your world, there's your explanation for why primal magic isn't restricted. You'd still have to resolve why psionics, on the other hand, is.

[GreyBlack]

Let's put it this way: what is the source of their power? I usually view magic like this: arcane comes from the planes, divine comes from faith, primal (natural divine) comes from the natural world and psionics come from the self. If you also view it like that, arcane and divine might filter through the deceased god, while primal, being tied directly to the world the characters are standing, might not. If that's the case in your world, there's your explanation for why primal magic isn't restricted. You'd still have to resolve why psionics, on the other hand, is.

In this world, all magical power is the same, just different expressions of it; Psionics = arcane = divine = nature, and it all flows from the same deity, just depends on how it's learned. If you learned to express your power through nature, you express it that way, whereas if you express it as arcane, you express it arcane. That's where my problem is; if all of the Master Druids are dead, can you still have that primal mage in that way? Again, Wild Shape Ranger is allowed, but is there anything else I can pull out to get that niche filled?

[Larkas]

In this world, all magical power is the same, just different expressions of it; Psionics = arcane = divine = nature, and it all flows from the same deity, just depends on how it's learned. If you learned to express your power through nature, you express it that way, whereas if you express it as arcane, you express it arcane. That's where my problem is; if all of the Master Druids are dead, can you still have that primal mage in that way? Again, Wild Shape Ranger is allowed, but is there anything else I can pull out to get that niche filled?

Hmmm, if all magic is the same and it can't be accessed, then I don't see that as possible, unless the druid masters found an alternative source or some kind of loophole. It's just my view on the subject, though.

[GreyBlack]

Hmmm, if all magic is the same and it can't be accessed, then I don't see that as possible, unless the druid masters found an alternative source or some kind of loophole. It's just my view on the subject, though.

Again, I'm more just asking for how to beat fill the hole if a player wants to play a nature oriented caster. What sorts of options can I offer them? I liked the bard idea, so maybe even looking at Savage Bard too. Hmm...

[Azoth]

You could always tweak the Mystic Ranger from Dragon Mag. It pushes back Ranger combat styles by 1 level and loses 1FE in exchange for casting lvl0-5 spells. They start casting at lvl1 instead of lvl4 and have full caster level.

Another question, since all high magic is gone, how do you handle healers, warmages, dread necromancers, and beguilers? They are all full casters, granted not of the power that T1-T2 are, but they get 9th level spells.

[dantiesilva]

In truth I think bards fit this roll best for the simple fact that a bard in and of itself is a seeker of lost knowledge. A record keeper, and it is threw all this that they gain magic. So if you wanted to, you could make each player if they want a said spell have to do certain things to get it. Or each level you look at what they actually did, and you give them a hand picked selection of spells from all sources and say pick any of these with the number of spells you now know. Also fun to just have each corespond to a number and throw a bunch of numbers in a bag and they randomly stick hand in. Whichever number they picked is a spell they know. Makes it random and much more difficult, though I believe more fun as you have no cookie cut characters.

[torrasque666]

Again, I'm more just asking for how to beat fill the hole if a player wants to play a nature oriented caster. What sorts of options can I offer them? I liked the bard idea, so maybe even looking at Savage Bard too. Hmm...

I think that Larkas hit the nail on the head. Express that arcane and divine magic come from outside the material plane and thus are filtered through the god, while primal magic comes from the material plane itself and thus isn't and just ban psionics to cover that gap.

[GreyBlack]

You could always tweak the Mystic Ranger from Dragon Mag. It pushes back Ranger combat styles by 1 level and loses 1FE in exchange for casting lvl0-5 spells. They start casting at lvl1 instead of lvl4 and have full caster level.

Another question, since all high magic is gone, how do you handle healers, warmages, dread necromancers, and beguilers? They are all full casters, granted not of the power that T1-T2 are, but they get 9th level spells.

Think of how limited the spell list is on those casters. In my view, it's not a question of whether that level of power can exist so much as forced specialization. You can't rend reality or stop time anymore because that knowledge is gone, but you can still do immense damage with a meteor swarm because it hasn't been lost.