Arcane Magic [Base Class and System Overhaul, WIP, PEACH]

[Eldan]

Feel free. I'd also love to have some feedback from someone who actually uses it in a game.

I have a few other lores and a long list of rituals going that I might put up at some point in the future.

[Iceforge]

It will become modified (to fit E6) and will be a while before I'll be able to give you feedback (as Im still building the world), but will make sure to tell you how it goes, and thanks :)

[Eldan]

Cool. Tell me if you or your players ever wish for any specific material (i.e. themed lores, spells, feats, ACFs, races or anything), and I'll see what I can do.

[Eldan]

New Lore: the Planes*, as well as a few fitting rituals.

*More like the lore of Conjuration or Teleportation, really, the way it ended up. Oh well.

[Eldan]

I added two feats inspired by the multiclass feats from Complete Adventurer and later books. More when I can think of any that make sense.

[Eldan]

Added a few new rituals. I've been working on a few prestige classes as well, though that's not really going anywhere so far.

[Eldan]

A few more. I think I'm through with the letter "A" in the SRD now. Joy.

[Eldan]

Someone* mentioned a while ago that the Wizard has no cool capstone. So all paths now have one. The scholar was especially changed, half of its abilities are slightly different now. Finally, there's a new path, the Trickster.

*Sorry for my laziness. I'm still grateful for such a good PEACHing.

[Iceforge]

{table=head]Effect|Focus reduction
Dazzled| -1
Fatigued| -1
Shaken| -1
Sickened| -1
Has not eaten for 24 hours or more ¹| -1
Has suffered unrestored ability damage from any poison that lowers physical attributes²| -1
Dazed| -2
Exhausted| -2
Frightened| -2
Nauseated| -2
Has not had restful sleep for 24 hours or more ³| -2
Has suffered unrestored ability damage from any poison that lowers physical attributes²| -2
Confused|-3
Cowering|-3
Disabled|-3
Panicked|-3
Staggered|-3
Stunned|-3
[/table]
¹ This does not apply to creature which need not eat to survive.
² Being under the effect of more than one poison does not produce additional focus loss. An arcanist under the effect of both mental and physical poisons only suffers the loss from the mental poison. Poisons which produce any effect other than ability damage either produce the normal focus loss for that condition, if it is on the list (such as a sickening poison producing a focus loss of -1) or have no effect on focus (if their effect is not on this list).
³This does not apply to creatures which need not sleep (or trance, in the case of elves). This does not stack with the reduction from Fatigued or Exhausted.

*From your main post.

Is one of those highlighted not supposed to say "mental attributes"?

[Eldan]

Ah, yes. That one was pointed out before, I think. I'll go change it.

[armatil]

very impressed by this. i'm definitely going to use this in-game. it could be a while, but i will report on how it goes.

keep up the good work.

[Eldan]

It's been a while since I've added anything new here, hasn't it. But I was in a brewing mood. An arcane brewing mood.

There's a few new rituals: Continual Flame, Disjunction, Dream, Gentle Repose and Identify. I have a few more written up that need proper forum formatting that I'll put in at some point this weekend, together with a new lore.

[Scholar23]

Realy good and well made. I would leaveto see this played pbp here

[Eldan]

Always nice to hear. Anything you think is missing?

I did start tinkering around with a bard class based entirely on different spellsongs (one per lore), but that's a giant project and probably not getting made any time soon.

[Gideon Falcon]

Why is Earthquake a ritual now? I thought the original version was perfectly fine. Besides, a ritual version doesn't work all that well, since you have to spend an hour to produce a one-round effect. It was meant to be a combat spell, and making it a ritual completely nulls that. If it was a lasting effect, like control weather, then it might be worth the hour-long casting time, but as is, it's only ever useful for ridiculously well-timed surprise attacks and seiges.

[Eldan]

It involves a quite large-scale destruction of infrastructure. That's the kind of thing rituals should do.

Think of it like this. It has a radius of 120ft. The usual kind of D&D combat involves two squads of people, 3 to 6 people facing 1 to perhaps 20 monsters. This is not the kind of situation where you need that kind of spell.

Earthquake is useful in a siege situation, to destroy an environmental obstacle or to go against an army or enemy camp.

[Epsilon Rose]

Hey, I thought I should let you know, your system looks really interesting and I'm planning on using it for a homebrew heavy game I'll be running on Myth weavers. If you have any tips for it's use I'd be more than happy to hear them.

I have three questions for you:

1. Do you plan on making a divine class for this system?
2. I'm not sure if it'll be relevant but, how do your wizard and sorcerer interact with prestige classes? Particularly those that involve spell slots?
3. Do you have any tips for creating new rituals?

[Eldan]

1. Divine classes: no, not really. In fact, I always wondered why Divine classes used spell slots like this at all. I started working on a divine class, once, but it used a system that was similar to soulbinding: the cleric makes a certain vow or oath and gets a set of fitting abilities in return. Things like vows of chastity, oaths of revenge or vows of silence.

2. Classes that simply advance spellcasting would advance focus and spells known instead. That should be pretty straightforward. In most cases where you spend spell slots to achieve some effect, you could expend focus instead. It would require some discussion with your DM.

3. For new rituals, look at spells that involve any of the following: very large scale, transportation over large distances, foretelling the future, creating or modifying permanently existing structures or resources. Writing them into rituals mostly involves three steps: finding correct DCs, rewriting text, if necessary, and developing failure effects and modifications.
DCs are pretty simple: I use knowledge DCs of spell level*2+2, which comes out to the same level you could normally cast the spell at. Spellcraft DCs are 3*spell level+10. Ritual Time is 10 minutes per spell level.
Failure effects are whatever you want them to be. There's little basis for them in the existing rules, except with very few spells.
Modifications are based on caster-level based effects such as duration and number of targets and on cases where one spell is obviously an improved version of an existing one.

I was thinking about developing some rituals not based directly on existing spells, working from some points in the fluff were people achieve large magical changes that can not be done with existing spells. Specifically, I was thinking of item creation (especially golems) and acquired templates (namely, Lichdom).

Got any links to that game? If you run, I might like to play.

Edit: I'm looking at the spellcasting fix in your signature and I really like the idea of spells having differing effects based on language spoken. I'll have to think about that, it's very interesting.

[Eldan]

Illusory script and the alround healing ritual Restoration. I'm also working on the lore of storms, arcana for the lore of the deep and perhaps a spell list for the lore of death.

[Epsilon Rose]

1. Divine classes: no, not really. In fact, I always wondered why Divine classes used spell slots like this at all. I started working on a divine class, once, but it used a system that was similar to soulbinding: the cleric makes a certain vow or oath and gets a set of fitting abilities in return. Things like vows of chastity, oaths of revenge or vows of silence.

That actually sounds really cool. It would be neat to see a divine class using something different from the arcane classes. It seems like most of the non-standard mages have a more arcane feel.

Got any links to that game? If you run, I might like to play.

Actually, the ad thread just went up. You can find it here. Most of the setting details aren't up yet, but I should be able to rectify that tomorrow. If it looks interesting I'd love to see what you would put together for this sort of game.

Edit: I'm looking at the spellcasting fix in your signature and I really like the idea of spells having differing effects based on language spoken. I'll have to think about that, it's very interesting.

Thank you. You've also reminded me that I need to finish that.
Also, thank you for the tips on the rituals, they should come in handy once things start going wonky.

[dancingfiend]

Im sorry about this but i couldnt find it and its late.

So a spellcaster only gets the focus from the chart of their class?

I'm fine with this due to how you've set up the cantrips I do wonder what you are saying there and trying to clarify. The confusion comes from the part you talk about bonus focus from the class and based upon how they became an arcanist, which might be a holdover from you typing this from your notes perhaps.

So a wizard gets 13 spells per day and a sorcerer gets 23? Varying based upon their use of mantra and feats?

Just looking for clarification because I love it so far.

[Eldan]

Bonus focus is indeed a leftover from an earlier edit. It should no longer exist, you just get the number in the class table.

That said, there's no longer such a thing as spells per day. Focus is not a daily resource.

[Eldan]

Added a spell list for the Lore of Death.

[Eldan]

Right. And the Spell list of the Lore of Storms. Now I guess I'll have to go back and do the cantrips and arcana.

[Scholar23]

Hey there, was thinking that maybe your rituals could do more when affected by leylines and such some a world with lines of raw magic could be a fun thing to add.

Also maybe you could have a ritual that "awakens" the magic in someone. Basically it would give them the Gifted feat in exchange for a sacrifice. For examle that character would recive a flaw for the feat in the casting goes right. If it fails they get the flaw but no gift of magic

[Eldan]

Sounds interesting. Ley lines were on the backburner for an alternate class feature of the sorcerer, Geomancy. In essentia, you lose one spell known in exchange for a randomly chosen spell from a lore appropriate to your current location.

Geomantic rituals I'd have to think about. Probably a feat that gives you a bonus to your spellcraft check if you have an appropriate location. Or more simply, a skill application (Knowledge nature? Survival? Knowledge Planes?) to find ley lines.

[Scholar23]

Well you could do what they do in the Quinnsential Wizard 2 book.

[Just to Browse]

The biggest reason I can't critique your system is because there are so many words. Can you write a 1-post summary of the different kinds of magic, how to use magic, but just strip it of the flavor text and descriptors? Something with bullet points would be nice.

[Eldan]

Sure. There's not really any different kinds of magic.
Let's see.

It is essentially Vancian Magic as known from the PHB, with the following differences:

Learning spells:
Every caster has a limited amount of spells known, including wizards.

Every spell is part of a lore. A lore is a group of thematically related spells. To learn a spell of a higher level in a lore, you have to learn one of a lower level first. Learning more than a certain number gives you a special ability called Arcanum.

Kinds of spells
There are the following kinds of spells:
Cantrips can be cast at will as a standard action. You get one for every lore you have learned spells from and they get more powerful if you have higher level spells of that lore ready. They essentially work like Reserve feats from Complete Mage.

Invocations are standard spells. Wizards prepare them, sorcerers cast them. They take a round to cast, meaning they go off at the beginning of your next turn.

Mantras are buff spells and summons. They take a long time to cast, usually during preparation, but they last as long as you keep them up.

Casting spells
Instead of slots per day, people have Focus. Every point of focus can be used to cast any spell, regardless of level. It is not a daily resource, but regained by any long rest.

Most of the conditions one can suffer from also make a caster lose some focus, which can lead ot the loss of prepared or maintained spells.

Focus can also be used to invest in certain feats or class abilities.

Casting defensively is a lot harder, now. Without the Battlecasting feat, you lose a spell you are currently casting if you are successfully attacked.

Classes
Wizards have a lot of spells known, but little focus. They can choose one of four class paths, essentially for outdoors wizards, scholarly wizards, sneaky wizards and battle wizards. They prepare their spells ahead of time.

Sorcerers have fewer spells known but a lot more focus. They have abilities which make their spells even stronger, temporarily and a slight focus on metamagic.

Rituals:
Rituals can be used with the Arcane system, or separately from it.

They are a system for the casting of spells that have very large scale effects, effects that are permanent or could be otherwise disruptive to a campaign if cast too often and too easily.

Everyone can learn rituals with the investment of a feat, a lot of skill points and some time and money.

Rituals can fail. Sometimes horribly.

[Eldan]

No, don't drop to second page, homebrew! I just finished the Lore of Storms!