Quote Originally Posted by lightningcat View Post
While I have not played it, and it is outside my budget for now, I feel like I should mention Invisible Sun by Monte Cook. It has been described as a love child between Mage the Ascension and Chronicles of Amber, but it has like 5 different magic systems, including Vancian magic. And since your magic is defined by your worldview, any given character can only have one type.
Having played it, I can speak to it. Kind of unsure why I forgot about it actually.

The trick with Invisible Sun is that there are four Orders, plus Apostates, but there's also other generic magics. Any Vislae (in game term) can potentially learn a spell or ritual that can do a given task, but the Order's focus on a type of magic allows them to achieve something greater or with more ease.

I play a Goetic, which is an order focused on summoning. I have spells that I know and can perform. Others could learn effects that conjure servitors (a willless automaton or elemental manifestation), or could learn rituals to call upon beings from other realms, but only a Goetic (normally) can conjure a being in seconds or minutes. Further, we can choose the general "kind" of being we want to call upon from any of the Suns/worlds, as long as it is a spirit, and have 13 effects we can negotiate for; each type of being will respond better to requests of a certain type. Thus, in a negotiation, a Goetic who is of the rank to know all 13 tasks can potentially ask for anything if they know the being to ask; the section on the task types is extremely short for the amount I can ask for. However, negotiations (and summoning) take time, so I can't call a being in a fight and expect it to turn the tide - I need to call upon one earlier and be prepared for it.

The Weavers are more like MtA mages - they create spells out of thin air and on the go. The systems for them involve having a set of "threads" - a set number of keywords that are associated with effects and concepts. Creating a new spell involves comparing what each word can and cannot do and combining them, then consulting the effects tables to determine the level of power from that combination.

That brings me to the Effects Table. One of the four core books is all about the magic in the game. While the game comes with a few hundred premade spells of all sorts, the Effects Tables are basically a flexibility toolkit, listing the level of magic needed to, say, do a certain amount of damage, teleport a certain distance, etc. The effects listed are fairly general and generalizable - I haven't looked at it in a bit, but from what I recall, the game is fairly agnostic on what shape a given effect takes - damage doesn't have to be from a particular shape, binding a foe could be petrification or freezing or literal binding, freeing from bindings could similarly look to anything. The trick is, unless you're a weaver, a premade spell usually has a specific thing it can do; you have to create new spells to create new effects.

(As for the other orders: the Vances, their advantage isn't in focusing on a special kind of magic - their own spells are very similar in design to the general spells. THEIR unique advantage is in the resource management - they have a grid for their mind's capacity, and the Vancian spells they learn take up space on that grid. When they cast a spell off the grid, they don't spend resources to cast it, but rather spend the resources to HOLD it in their mind. This allows them to cast those spells one final time if they lack the resources, meaning a Vance in a fight with another Vislae will usually have an ace up their sleeve when the other person thinks they're out of resources. Makers are able to make magical objects on their own, so like Goetics, their abilities most often depend on preparation - they can't spontaneously pull out new resources, though they do get tricks to make some lesser ones in rapid time, but if they have time to make the objects they can do so and use them freely as long as the object has power. Apostates don't belong to orders, but get a build-your-own suite of abilities they can pick up, as well as incentive to invent new spells and experiment with effects).