Help with a Magic System?

[TheNoodleGod]

Im thinking of running a low-magic campaign with a new magic system i've sort of come up with. The plot is that the players are all members of a secretive sort of necromancer cult, who have their cult found out by a group of 'paladins' (not really paladins, think overseers from dishonored but nicer). They trash the necromancer's hive and take the books / artifacts from their archives to be ceremonially burnt.

The idea is, there are these cthulu-style, omnipotent elder gods, who you can communicate with, that grant powers. You can only communicate with them by speaking to them in their own language, a type of runic text, which can only be written by people extremely well practised in it. They can engrave this onto surfaces (walls, paper, wood, people, bones) but it takes quite a while to make.

There are no other gods in this campaign, and no other magic (the paladins are just sort-of-religious fighters that root out necromancy), so in a fight they use regular weapons (swords, bows) and for magic, they usually use magical items (wands, enchanted weaponry ect.), reanimated skeletons and pre-emptive curses. Occasionally, very powerful magic users will be able to be possessed by the elder gods, which causes them to leak inky black spooky stuff from their eyes and gain spooky cthulu style tentacles and other such things.

So, what do you think, and how do you think the actual spells should work gameplay wise :)
I'm also using this for a webcomic im gonna draw at some point

[TheNoodleGod]

this may be a little too far from regular dnd :P

(also, what classes are similar to this)

[Pluto!]

Do you know Ron Edwards's Sorcerer RPG? That might be a little closer to what you're trying to do than D&D.

Edit:
Well, TBH, that's a pretty different style of game. Maybe a stripped-down version of Mutants and Masterminds would be usable and stick to d20 wargameyness?

[Slipperychicken]

They trash the necromancer's hive and take the books / artifacts from their archives to be ceremonially burnt.


You know what could be a cool? The totally-not-paladins could take some important texts and icons, but instead of destroying them, store them deep inside a very well-defended temple (i.e. one which the PCs would not easily be able to murder their way through, at least early on). Of course, these items are important to do some powerful rituals which would be a big boost to the cult's power, as well as a large symbolic victory heralding the cult's return to prominence. So one mission could be to retrieve them from the temple's vault via stealth, trickery, or just being high-level enough to kick their doors down.

[TheNoodleGod]

My idea was that they would be ceremonially burnt, meaning that the not-paladins would spend ages preparing the ceremonial stuff, and they'd do it during a festival type thing (a witch-hunting festival :P) so they would have a while to get into the place of burning to retrieve it. One of the main reasons for retrieving these books is not for the magical knowlege, but for the history. If those books are burnt, the necromancer's long history would be erased, and literally no-one would really remember it. That, AND the magic cthulu wooshy powers :P

so yes, stealthing into a big abbey place to retrieve their historic artifacts.

ALSO, i plan to intentionally **** them over when they are about to retrieve the stuff, which would get them locked in a jail cell to be interrogated. This is when the demonic possession kicks in >:)