Magic's Diversity

With us having limitations on our racial differences I would like to suggest that we keep the realms of magic very wide and open with many areas that have not yet been explored. This way we could have our people who explore the physical world and those who delve into the myserious realms of magic discovering new forms, spells and sources of power.

I would also like to suggest that there is a small autonomous council that is viewed as the general ruling body of magic users. And that these rulers are more a loose consortium of the more powerful magic users that in times of magical distress can band together to do things such as reign a rogue mage that is sullying the name of magic users in general.

Something along those lines would suit what I am interested in doing perfectly. So let me know what you guys think I would love to see if this concept of magic in our new world would work for what you all want.

I am nearly finished with the magic system now. It just needs a bit of fine-tuning before I post it up. There will be three different wide categories of magic, and multiple tiers of experience and ability. But even within those tiers there will be a wide range of possibilities. There won't be any specific spell lists, just general guidelines about what can be done at each level. One of the categories of magic is strictly forbidden, but of course you know how it goes. Someone somewhere will be practicing it anyway.

As to your suggestion about a group of high-level magicians, I think it's an excellent idea. Someone would need to watch over the magicians who might be likely to go rogue, as well as take over training of some of the newer apprentices. I like your idea that they should be politically neutral as well, so they aren't directly involved in any conflict between the kingdoms. How do you like Council of Sages for the name?

Maybe there is a guild of Magic-users (Mages, Magicians, Warlocks, Wizards, Witches and Necromancers), who have a headquaters in the capital city of each nation. They are in a sense, the underground ruling body of magic. And as you said, they govern the use of magic everywhere, based out of one of their "offices".

This is an idea I personally enjoy and love.

So maybe a possibility as the hierarchy of mages. We have are small autonomous council of arch magi called for example the council of sages. And then drawing from a book series I read we take ambrivian suggestion with the guilds in the major cities, but there is between 1-3 mages that are designated respresentatives of the council of sages which are the mages ruling body regardless of national allegiance.

Also I was hoping that the realms of magic could be expanded if for example characters put significant in game work into the exploration of these new realms. For example if a brand of magic has the same or similar effect as what you are looking to do without your character you can spend in game time trying to figure out how to access a different power source.

Ex: so you want to be able to throw a fireball, but you want to access through the path of a shaman instead of your typical wizard of the arcane. By putting the in game time over many posts you are able to either create the path of the shaman or learn from an ancient familiar with the old ways. By creating this new path you not only gain the ability to cast your fireball but you access the ability to call on the spirits of wild and this is something that your arcane wizard is incapable of.

I understand we can't just go about creating new types of magic willy nilly to suit our fancies, but I think it would add a fun direction that we can expand characters and make them more unique. Let me know what you guys are thinking.

Oh, by categories I didn't mean methods. There could be any number of methods, and it would be fine for characters to go off in search of new methods.

The categories are physical magic, spirit magic and soul magic. Soul magic is the most difficult of all to master and though it is very powerful it also has the potential to be be extremely dangerous, which is why the council has forbidden study or practice of it.

There are five tiers of accomplishment and understanding - novice, apprentice, adept, sage, and master sage. Physical magic uses physical energy, spirit magic takes spiritual energy, and so on. But there could be more than one method of each category.

I'll have the more in-depth list of magic rules up soon.

Another question I had was whether we should have a spell book added onto the character sheet for our magi class. We could list our spells with brief explanation of each one or something along those lines.

That sounds like a good idea to me. But it doesn't have to have it's own section. You can put it in with strengths, because it implies abilities as well.

Just an update. The magic system and rules are finished. You can find them in the Quill's End section.