Names for Wizards based on Magical College

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Also, Technology isn't a College; it's four Colleges: Machines, Energy, Radiation, and Metal & Plastic. Treating them all as a single college would be like treating Air, Earth, Fire, and Water as a single College; or Animals, Plants, and Weather; or Body Control, Food, and Healing.

Going with German names, a Machine College practitioner could be called a Maschinenwerker (which is just the German word for 'machinist'). I would honestly consider combining Energy and Radiation into a single college, but they're conceptually different. Metal & Plastic should really be two separate colleges, though.

For Radiation as a separate college, perhaps Atomwerker would fit. Energy would probably be Energiewerker. Metal in German is just 'Metall,' while Plastic is either 'Plastik' or 'Kunststoff.' The latter seems cooler, IMHO.

[Dalin]

Gastromancer or Gastrourgist might work for the food college. The former, in particular, has a nice ring to my ear (despite failing the etymology test).

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Metal in German is just 'Metall,' while Plastic is either 'Plastik' or 'Kunststoff.' The latter seems cooler, IMHO.

Isn't "Kunststoff" literally "art stuff"? How did plastic get that name?

[Donny Brook]

Water College: Bob
Communication: Roger
Earth: Pietro
Fire: Ignatius

[AlexanderHowl]

The Technology College exists in Magic and is one of the 24 standard colleges of magic. You can add colleges if you want Thaumatology gives the examples of Metal, Void, and Wood, but they are not part of the standard magical system.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by Proteus

Isn't "Kunststoff" literally "art stuff"? How did plastic get that name?

A quick google suggests it means "art" in the sense of "artifice". We would say "synthetics" with more or less the same meaning.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The Technology College exists in Magic and is one of the 24 standard colleges of magic. You can add colleges if you want Thaumatology gives the examples of Metal, Void, and Wood, but they are not part of the standard magical system.

Technology as written is so broad that I have no problem treating it as four or five colleges (although I'd also be fine with Metal being a sub-college of Earth).

[dataweaver]

I can see Metal & Plastic being a Technology College, because you generally don't see these materials in nature; for the most part, both require technological means to extract and/or produce. In fact, I'd be inclined to expand that College to also deal with other materials that tend not to appear in nature, such as paper: make it the College of manufactured materials.

I can also see the metal-specific spells forming a sub-College of Earth, or a separate Elemental College all its own, as some metals actually do appear in nature and don't require nearly as much processing to produce was the likes of paper or plastic do. Though historically, there's a reason why TL1 and TL2 are often referred to as the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, respectively.

And just as there are ways to add more Elemental Colleges, I could also see adding some more Technology Colleges to supplement the four we already have: e.g., Digimancy or Astromancy — though in the latter case, I'd probably go more with a Magical Style than a College.

In the former case, I'd want spells that deal with signals, sensors, data storage, and programs. I could see some overlap with Communication & Empathy (specifically in terms of languages and text).

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Technology as written is so broad that I have no problem treating it as four or five colleges (although I'd also be fine with Metal being a sub-college of Earth).

It is, however, defined as a single college in Magic. Anyway, Enchantment is even broader, with five subcategories and nearly 60 spells while Technology has only four subcategories and less than 50 spells.

[dataweaver]

Enchantment is a College with four sub-Colleges: not only do you get a bunch of spells up front that aren't further categorized, but the sub-College spells have prerequisite trees that extend into the general Enchantment spells. By contrast, there are no general Technology spells and you can learn, say, the Machine spells without having to pick up any Energy Spells, and vice versa. Their prerequisite trees are not entangled. So it's not an apt comparison.

On a more practical note: when using the Ritual Magic rules from Basic Set or the Wildcard Spells from Thaumatology, taking Path of Enchantment or Enchantment! might be okay; but there's no way I'd let a player take the Path of Technology. Path of Radiation, sure; or Path of Materials (i.e., Metal and Plastic). But if he wants to be skilled in Machines, Energy, Radiation, and Materials, he'd better be ready to invest in four separate skills.

I don't care that Magic handles all four of these Colleges in a single chapter; they're still separate Colleges. Magic was one of the first 4e supplements to come out, and it shows.