What powers would a Life-specialist have?

[SangoProduction]

By life-specialist, I mean like healing/life mage.

Obviously, they'd have access to healing and regeneration.
Increasing size definitely fits.
Perhaps some sort of disease that reduces Con or Dex, for excessive, and irregular growths where they did not belong.
Plant manipulation (specifically having them grow rapidly in a given direction) works perfectly.
"Starvation damage" probably makes sense, by greatly amplifying the target's metabolism.

Physical enhancements, such as speed, strength, hearing and so on, do obviously work.
Mental enhancements, would require some explanation, but it's not difficult.

If "life magic" was to include the shaping of life/biological material, then all sorts of alterations are obviously possible.
Similarly "splitting off" items made of bone or flesh would be similarly easy to justify.

A life mage might be able to siphon off life as easily as it grants the life. So any sort of "decay damage" would work.

After that. I'm kind of running out of ideas.

[Quertus]

Well, what a “Life” mage can do depends on their “core”. As you posted this in a D&D forum, we’re probably stuck with the most boring core imaginable: positive ****ing energy.

You can heal, and you can heal, and you can… make light, and turn the undead / command the un-undead, and maybe summon (or create!) some creatures whose names are really hard to pronounce.

For your capstone ability, you make people feel better until they explode. Whee! Actually, worded right, that capstone is probably an amazingly powerful ability.

Sigh.

Give me a bit to get the sarcasm / disappointment / whatever out of my system, and I’ll post what a real Life mage could do if ported to D&D.

[SangoProduction]

I'm trying to think more along the concept rather than just the mechanics, honestly.

[Palanan]

Bioaccumulation, perhaps?

Not in the sense of concentrating environmental toxins, but rather of rare nutrients or metals drawn through living things. The roots of trees in a forest are joined together in a network by endomycorrhizal fungi; so perhaps a life-mage could access that network both for information and for drawing rare elements from throughout the soils supporting the forest.

[Jervis]

Well, what a “Life” mage can do depends on their “core”. As you posted this in a D&D forum, we’re probably stuck with the most boring core imaginable: positive ****ing energy.

You can heal, and you can heal, and you can… make light, and turn the undead / command the un-undead, and maybe summon (or create!) some creatures whose names are really hard to pronounce.

For your capstone ability, you make people feel better until they explode. Whee! Actually, worded right, that capstone is probably an amazingly powerful ability.

Sigh.

Give me a bit to get the sarcasm / disappointment / whatever out of my system, and I’ll post what a real Life mage could do if ported to D&D.

I feel your pain. Dnd and it’s consequences have been a disaster for dnd. I really do hate how dnd has ruined dnd with too many dndisms.

That’s not sarcasm, I could write a entire essay on how DnD’s magic system is a ramshackled mess of ideas and mechanics stapled onto each other. I have mixed opinions of spheres but that can do a dedicated life mage better

[Quertus]

So, let’s take a brief look at some new “cores”, to see if any feel worth exploring in more detail.

DNA

With the anachronistic “DNA” as their core, the Life Mage has some interesting options. Healing is limited to what the body can do (leaves scars, can’t regrow lost limbs, etc), but at an accelerated rate. Until the Life Mage changes the underlying DNA - then limb loss needn’t be permanent, and new limbs and abilities (photo luminescence, anyone? Just me?) can be added / removed at will.

Reproductive magics / cloning are well within reach, as are lesser magics like (biological) gender detection / transformation (and most any other (biological) transformative magic), DNA identification, even “monster detection”.

The planet

Think “Avatar”. The one with the blue aliens, not the one with the cool elemental bending powers. Actually… no reason not to take those, too, if “the planet” is your core. :smallbiggrin:

So, lots of Illithid-approved tentacled mind control type stuff, some “mind and perception transference” stuff, some almost Borg-approved “part of a bigger whole” stuff. Probably some “sense the mood / pain / whatever” of wildlife / plants / whatever. On top of maybe some really cool “nature” / elemental / whatever powers.

Totem

Kinda like the little brother of DNA and Planet, Totem can kinda do anything DNA can… but only wrt the beings it is “attuned” to. (Needless to say, one’s own species is usually first priority to get!) But done with more of a “planet” feel.

So, a Totem Life Mage with Human(oids), Cats, and Bacteria could give someone (but only a humanoid, cat, or bacteria) cat-like reflexes, cat-sized brains, bacteria mindlessness, bacteria reproduction, etc. They could transform bacteria into cats, give a valid target a cat tail or the pilli of a bacteria, or (Heaven forbid) opposable thumbs.

Yeah, forget Wightpocalypse or Shadowgeddon, cats with thumbs would end humanity.

Of course, “Totem” should also be able to call upon spirits / the spirit of any of its attuned slots, which we all know is great if you’re a Barbarian. :smallbiggrin:

Life force

This is the big one, IMO. Now, it’ll sound a lot like Positive Energy, in its ability to… heal. But the Life mage with this core can also transfer Life force, or store it, or take it away, or use it to bring back the dead.

They could also move it to inanimate objects, like Full Metal Alchemist or Beauty and the Beast.

Or use it to power their own continued existence, long beyond their natural lifespan, even coming back from the dead. Kinda like a Lich.

Blood

For Life Force light, we have Blood. Blood is much more limited in its targeting (you can’t get blood from a rock) and abilities, although it could maybe pull off Edward Elric. But it borrows from DNA the ability to sense bloodlines, and other “kindred” spirits.

There’s something inside me!

Something I haven’t really mentioned is that none of the other cores actually require physical contact to do their dirty work - all should be conceptually capable of healing at a range. Not so with “there’s something inside me!”. Here, what can be affected is only the self, and what is “touched” (think “infected”).

Whatever is inside the Life mage, it can rewrite them and anything they touch. Have wounds or diseases or toxins you need healed? Want to be a pickle? No problem!

Matter Transformation

The big brother to “There’s something inside me!”, Matter Transformation can handle healing and polymorph effects by literally transforming the corresponding Matter. Note that this makes size (or, well, mass) change nearly verboten. However, it comes with a whole host of other cool powers, and “Medusa gaze” and “the floor is lava” only just scratches the surface of them.

Never give me this power in an RPG, btw, unless you don’t mind me trivializing every challenge.

[Drelua]

Might be worth taking a look at the Life Oracle (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/oracle/mysteries/paizo-oracle-mysteries/life/) if you haven't already, a friend played one in PFS and it was a great healer. Not just with healing damage, but with lifelink siphoning HP from the melee characters to her, though that ability can be deadly since you can't turn it off if you get knocked out. They can also get lifesense, (blindsight for living creatures) excess healing persisting for a round as temp HP, or just turn into a positive energy elemental.

[zlefin]

I can't really think of anything beyond what you've already thought of.

I tried thinking of how 'life' was handled in some games with different magic systems; I don't know too many RPG's magic systems, and I don't remember my GURPS stuff well enough, so I was left with other things; I thought of several systems, and thought about the spells they used, but they pretty much all just fit the things you already described.

MtG truly life-themed stuff is mostly green.

Kars ultimate form in JoJo is life themed; and could all be justified as things to do with life magic.

Age of wonders 2 had a life sphere; iirc aow3 does as well. Both are closer to 'holy' than 'life' though. Being much like MtGs white.

Dominions; I guess would mostly be in the Nature tree.

Fallen enchantress: legendary heroes.

No matter the systems I think of, they just don't add anything to a life specialty beyond what's already been said.

[Ramza00]

Timed Theme "mage" but really it is also a great healer. Warning mixing 3rd party in a way that was not intended. Becomes useful at 5th level, peaks at 9th level.

3 levels of Radiant with the Collectivist archetype and the Lifebinder Archetype. This gives you 2 Magic Talents from Casting Tradition, Life Talent, Divine Talent, 2 More, and any "drawbacks to get more magic talents"
1 level of Conscript for Squadron Commander, and 3 Combat Talents.
5 levels of regular Rajah and Sword of the Moon Queen.

One of the vivisections allow you to have fast healing X where X is the amount of essence you invest in it. Radiant allows you to redirect the healing to any ally (collective healing on top of the collective), thus after every combat you are at max hit points. Likewise the Collectivist gives you a Collective with Medium Range of 130-ft prior to any other feat like Enlarged Collective making this 620-ft.

Rajah allows you to give your standard action up to give your ally another save against an ongoing effect, but add your Cha modifier as a moral bonus to that effect. You can do this multiple times.
Sword of the Moon Queen allows your allies to use your counters on themselves as long as they are in Close Range and have a veil on them. The level of counter is 1 below your max level of maneuvers, thus 2nd level counters at 5th level, and 4th level counters at 9th level (you did do practiced initiator right)
Thus at level 9 you can Temporal Body Adjustment your allies and they were never injured in the first place, just losing their immediate action. At level 7, 2 levels earlier one can do this to oneself.
Collective works in a wonky way with the Mass Command Squadron Commander Feat. Now your ally maneuvers always have medium range when previously it was "touch" and with Mass Command you can grant a sphere spell to multiple allies, including Time Sphere's Retry Talent.

Flavor wise you are a a Rajah who does maneuvers, but also plays with time, life, telepathy, and a special visual sight on the side. Your allies are protected by your rajah veils. Including The Resolute veil for more rerolls, or The Telepath veil and now your second ally has their own collective and telepathy, allowing more defensive buffs and healing.

Etc, etc, I did not list all the tricks one can do for this is barebones enough to then pick the other half to compliment ones theme.

[Quertus]

So, now that we’ve looked a bit at “cores”, let’s revisit that list of effects.
Healing
Harming
“Transfer” (Vampiric Touch, for example)
Regeneration
New limbs
New capabilities
Limb removal
Remove capabilities (blindness, for example)
Stat boost
Stat drain
Stat transfer
Stat redistribution
Polymorph / shape change effects
Size change?
accelerated growth
Decelerated growth
Reverse growth
Disease / cancer / poison / blight / mutation
Create organics
Sense Life
Analyze life (know current / max HP, for example)
Create Life
Merge Life
Resurrection
Life to the lifeless (animate objects ++)
Immortality
summon Life
Summon spirits
Spirit Totem powers
forge connection (think “Warder”)
Life transfer
Mood control
Genocide
Retroactive Life? (“Speak with plants”)
Boost Object by granting / awakening its life
overcharge Life


Hopefully that gives you a bit more to work with.

[SangoProduction]

Now that's a list.

[ShurikVch]

One more possible application is "manipulations with the unborn"
In-game examples:
Daelkyr Half-Blood "race" (Magic of Eberron): "Daelkyr half-bloods are born of pregnant mothers who were either influenced by close proximity to a daelkyr confinement cylinder or infected by a breed leech"
Searing Seed spell (Dragon #300): cause birth of evil half-fiendish "twin" (thus, it's kinda "manipulations with the unborn"+"Create Life")
Sherem Transformation spell (Ghostwalk): "You enhance the abilities of an unborn human child, giving the child exceptional sorcerous ability (if female) or exceptional clarity of mind (if male). Upon reaching adulthood, the child may select the Kihu-Sherem Guardian or Sherem-Lar Sorcery feats."
Transmigration spell (Jakandor, Island of Destiny): dead character would be literally born again (withing 1 week of the casting); reborn character have no memories, levels, or skills, but still have their ability scores (and the spell description don't even specify "mental ability scores" :smallamused:)
Unholy Scion template (Heroes of Horror)

[Kitsuneymg]

From a SoP perspective, you’ve got life, the non-undead part of death, alteration, nature plant, nature spirit, conjuration (not the advanced talents), and maybe a few individual talents from mind (emotion stuff,) destruction (temp hp/anti undead talents,) and time (age stuff.)

Were I to play a “life mage” like I played a “time mage,” this is how I’d approach it. What’s missing is a non-freebie talent for temp HP that is approximately equivalent to the BS a doctor scholar can do, which is roughly equivalent to doubling the party’s HP. But that might get yeeted from the game (like doctor scholar is from my group) for obviating HP as a resource.

I supposed a major positive energy plane type effect is also missing, where you make someone explode with too much life. I’ve always thought that was stupid to begin with. But it’s part of 3.X.


If “giving life to unliving things” counts, then animate object and related TK talents, and the undead part of death might be added too.

[Quertus]

From a SoP perspective, you’ve got life, the non-undead part of death, alteration, nature plant, nature spirit, conjuration (not the advanced talents), and maybe a few individual talents from mind (emotion stuff,) destruction (temp hp/anti undead talents,) and time (age stuff.)

Were I to play a “life mage” like I played a “time mage,” this is how I’d approach it. What’s missing is a non-freebie talent for temp HP that is approximately equivalent to the BS a doctor scholar can do, which is roughly equivalent to doubling the party’s HP. But that might get yeeted from the game (like doctor scholar is from my group) for obviating HP as a resource.

I supposed a major positive energy plane type effect is also missing, where you make someone explode with too much life. I’ve always thought that was stupid to begin with. But it’s part of 3.X.


If “giving life to unliving things” counts, then animate object and related TK talents, and the undead part of death might be added too.

Wow. Is SoP always this terrible at allowing a concept-based caster to exist? (EDIT: I’m assuming it’s hard to get life, death, alteration, nature plant, nature spirit, conjuration, mind, destruction, and time (and doctor scholar (?)… and animate objects?) all on the same character, especially from level 1.)

[DrMartin]

a life magician in Warhammer fantasy get:

- any living target of their spells is healed of any fatigued or bleeding condition
- a Barkskin-analogue
- Regeneration as long as you are in contact with the earth
- Meld into earth and stone
- provide life-sustaining nourishment
- have thorns and brambles and plantlife erupt from the earth
- get the lay of the land, as in, a divination that provides a detailed map with all the natural features within a large area
- restore an area or a creature affected by disease, blights , famine, drought, which is barren, etc back to its healthy and "productive" status. A dry river starts to flow again, a barren orchard bears fruits again, etc.

I think it's a spot-on selection for a life mage.

Note that this is a specialization on top of the generic arcane spell every magician gets a chance to pick (and flavour according to which school of magic they specialize in), which covers all your bases like single target and area magic blasts, mage armor, flight, telekinesis, teleport, sense and dispel magic, basic fear and charms, etc.

So a life magician teleport could be a transport via plants-alike while a heaven magician teleport could look like a Thor-like Ragnarok teleport, but under the hood they have the same gears.

i am quite a fan of the system, really like the way magic is handled, flavor wise

[Kitsuneymg]

Wow. Is SoP always this terrible at allowing a concept-based caster to exist? (EDIT: I’m assuming it’s hard to get life, death, alteration, nature plant, nature spirit, conjuration, mind, destruction, and time (and doctor scholar (?)… and animate objects?) all on the same character, especially from level 1.)

Not particularly?

You can easily have 6 talents at level 1 (casting feature grants 2 when you gain it. Incanter gets 2. Character 1 feat and incanter 1 bonus feat (or specialization) for two talents.)

As an example. An incanter can take life sphere with a drawback that forces them to use Fast Healing 1 for minute/cl instead of 1d8+CL healing. They get a free 1 temp HP (can’t take you over max hp) that lasts an hour all day long, and an equivalent ability to lease restoration. As a second sphere they can death, giving them 1 HD of undead minions/CL and a free medium range OR melee touch attack that is fort or fatigued. For a spell point, that is exhausted instead. A third talent could be time, using drawback to trade out the haste/slow like stuff for a touch fort or age one category. That scales up at 1/5 cl. It’s kinda garage but it’s there. A forth talent could be nature(plant) that grants plant growth and entangle. And some other ability I’m forgetting. A fifth talent (feat) can grab speak with plants. A sixth talent allows you animate objects. Crappy at level 1 pretty obviously, but you *can* do all of this at level 1.

Leveling up grants 1 talent and a feat at even levels and two talents at odd levels. You can pick talents to be better at any of those things, or get the moral boosting bits of mind. Or get a conjuration companion. Or dive deep into healing. Or necromancy. Or whatever.

Life has healing, condition removal, stealing conditions to give to others, and buffs as passive riders to getting healed. Death has more undead buffs, and all the negative energy stuff, including negative levels. Time really only has the whole aging thing for this concept. Nature can end up creating treants, animating trees to attack for you, talking to animals, sending messages with them, tree stride, fast healing up to half hp at a rapid rate, etc. if you branch out into the other 4 packages you get to summon elementals. Conjuration is build-a-bear the spell.

So no. It’s not bad at concepts. Your idea of what a level 1 character should be able to wrt the nebulous concept of “life” is just kinda warped, imo. And the concept of a “life mage” as presented by this thread requires a cross selection of several spheres.

If you were asking “who has access to all of these spheres?” The answer is “anyone with casting.” Spheres has no class list analogue. Some classes get bonuses to specific spheres, but those buffs are largely unneeded for this concept I feel.

———

Doctor scholars are non casters. They basically take the whole HP resource management thing and toss it in the garbage with the amount of temp HP they can toss out. They are primarily alchemist healers, from the way most play them. Their temp HP scales with heal checks, it’s trivial to optimize. Sadly, it’s not a caster, so it’ll be one or the other.

They initially get heal check dc 15 to heal 1 hp, +1/over DC. A “rogue talent” analogue ability can let any over healing become temp HP (up to normal max hp temp HP.) as you level up, you multiple the resulting healing by 2, then 3. You can do this int-mod/day to each character. You get a separate pool of remove conditions and remove state damage and redirections as you level up. It’s all non magical. You can also get the ability to just grant fast healing t the party an arbitrary number of times per day, and use improved alchemical items w/o risking hurting your party. A set of rangers touch attacks that either have save or suck effects on them or do sneak-attack like damage round out the base abilities the class gets.

I was mostly grousing that their healing ability is better than most magical healing, and the whole class is slightly broken since it’s primary ability is based on skill checks, which are trivial to optimize.