Themed wizards

[Nils_Lindeberg]

Maybe a simple system for schools or themes might be what people want.

The simplest system I can come up with is a tags system. Every spell gets a handfull of tags, or themes.

A fire ball could have a few like these: Martial, Missile, Fire, Dragon, Elemental, Haven, Destruction, Illumination, Passion, Choleric, Fire Godess, Smithing God, Demons, etc.

And in order to encourage people to go for a theme the xp cost of learning a themed spell would be lower. The more spells you already have that share a theme with the new spell, the cheaper it will be.

In turn this would also mean that many schools or mentors will be more or less specialized. And they in turn might research more spells within their specialities to encourage students to come to them.

So learning a new spell when you know no other spells might cost 200% of the normal cost. For each other spell you have that share one or more themes with the new spell you get a rebate on the price by 20%. And when you know 5 spells that all share one or more themes with the new spell, then you can learn it for a normal cost of 100%, if you know 7 you can get it for 60% and then maybe have a lower limit or minimum cost of maybe 20% or so.

And if you want to add a new theme, Blood Magic for instance, you just have to tag all spells that you think fit the new descriptor, and maybe add a couple of special spells for flavour, and voila you have a new themed school. And wizards on average will pay about the same over their career. Specialists will pay less, but can still pay more for a couple of spells that are outside their usual schools/themes for variety.

You could also connect the tags to special abilities, magic items or talents. For ex. 1 Point, You can sacrifice real Health instead of fST when you cast Blood Magic spells. Each wound taken gives 2 fST.
ex. 1 Point, You are a devotee of the Smithing God, and all Smithing God spells can be cast at half fST when you have uphold all the tenants of that religion for the last week.

And the tags could be small Icons, so they don't take up so much space and distract you in the spell descriptions.

A similar rule could be used for talents as well to encourage people to learn similar talents instead of cherry picking wildly. They should have the option to cherry pick, but it will be a little more costly. Here the themes could be based on classes, professions, cultures, organisations, backgrounds, titles, guilds, etc. And even a mix of all of them.

If you already have 4 of the 6 Courtley Graces the 5th should be cheaper. If you already know 3 of the Thieve's Guild Trade Secrets the 4th will be easier to learn. And when you are knighted it is time to look over the Knightly virtues and see which one to pick in order to please your lord. New things are always harder to learn, but lucky for you Pole Arms and Shield you already have from your Mercenary days and those themes overlap, so you won't be starting from scratch at 200% cost.

Is it just too complicated or could it be fun to puzzle around with?
I won't take up much rule space, since it would mostly be the small symbols themselves, a short description of what the symbols represent and the rules for using the rebate system. Extra talents or spells to go with the symbols could be presented later as a supplement.