[DF] Rejiggering Magic

[Crakkerjakk]

So, I've never really been completely happy with how stock spell magic in GURPS in general and DF in particular works. While it's pretty intuitive and certain aspects make sense, the spell magic system introduces incentives that produce weird builds. And in DF it makes different spellcasting class templates feel too similar, IMO.

I was reading through Pyramid 3_36, in particular Antoni Ten's article "Dungeon Saints" which introduces some lenses that allow one to use Divine Favor for Clerics and Holy Warriors.

I decided to make an attempt to muck around with some of the setting assumptions on how various types of supernatural powers work, and would like to bounce some ideas off the hivemind.

1) Clerics and Holy Warriors are gone, replaced entirely by Saints and Warrior-Saints, respectively. Divine Favor rules the day, meaning that the holy (or unholy) types are now much more focused on pulling off big effects occasionally.

2) Wizards use Threshold Realm Magic. Colleges turn into Realms. This generally forces wizards to specialize more, while at the same time letting them pull off bigger infrequent effects, and with greater flexibility within their specialties than standard spell magic wizards.

3) Summoners can pretty much just use appropriate realms. Necromancers are Necromancy and Magic, Elementalists are Fire, Earth, Air, and Water (plus Wood, Void, and Metal, if you wish), Demonologists are a bit tricky but mostly low-level Magic and maybe the bottom rungs of Gate.

Questions:

a) What about Druids? Realm magic? Divine Favor?

b) If I'm using Divine Favor, how can I distinguish between different flavors of cleric, a la DF 7? I could give them each some level of Realm magic, but the flavor feels off. Thoughts?

Thoughts?

[Kuroshima]

Obviously I've though a lot about Divine Favor. Personally, I see Saints and Warrior Saints being dedicated to the pantheon, and not to a specific deity, for those religions that have multiple deities with non-completelly overlapping portfolios. This means that the variant clerics have less reason to exist.

Now assuming that you want them in, this is what you need to do:
Take the current list of miracles, and tag them with the descriptors for each of the God-types in DF7/Each of the Divine Elements in DF5. I prefer the Emleent approach, personally, as seen in my Auras of Power article, but both work.
Create some new prayers for each pf the variant saints. Try to keep the number of prayers similar.
Druids become just another variant cleric. Make sure to include multiple shapeshifts among their learned prayers. This might need some rules twisting on how Alternate Ablities interract with multiple shapeshifts. You'll need to alter the Druid template to acomodate for this new paradigm, as I did for the cleric and holy warrior.

As for wizards and specialist casters, I have some half baked ideas that I don't want to post in public (too half baked, and I might try to turn them into an article or something), but if you catch me at gtalk, I'll explain them to you.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

a) What about Druids? Realm magic? Divine Favor?

Thinking on this more and with Skyrim coloring my view, I've decided upon this:

TYPES OF MAGIC:

Arcane: Threshold Realm Magic. Effects only, no enchantment.

Alchemy: Higher TL, more powerful, more expensive, slower version of herbalism.

Clerical Magic: Divine Favor.

Herbalism: Low power one-off effects.

Nature Magic: Shamans and Druids go here. Energy Accumulating Path Magic. Also the only tradition that gives bonuses for living (and only living) sacrifices. I'm thinking Elements, Form, and Nature for druids. Spirit, Dreams, and Protection for Shamans?

Rune Magic: One of two ways to permenantly enchant powerful items. FUTHARK verb/noun.

Song Magic: Combination of Musical Influence Skills and Mind Control, Communication/Empathy, and Knowledge Realms. Skald flavor.

Enchantment Through Deeds: In full effect. Old things have power.

So, what does this get us?

You get a variety of ways to toss off smaller cheap one-off effects (potions and charms). You have some in-between duration and power enchantments due to rune magic. You have permanent magic items that either have long histories or glowing norse runes carved into them. And finally you have a variety of ways to toss off powerful effects while limiting common casual magic. Oh, and you have scary nature rituals conducted over blood-drenched altars deep in the woods capable of incredibly powerful effects.

I know the common wisdom is to not mix too many different types of magic systems, but I feel like this gives me a type of world that supports a lot of DF assumptions while giving different magical classes more powerful magical abilities within their specialties.

Thoughts?