New Edition: Setting

[Bigode]

Well, "Codes of Order" can make either Wheel, so they're mostly the same except more familiar to SAME/M:tG players.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

Alignment Systems with No Clear Choices
“And this is Bob, he wants to have all cities consumed by a never ending wave of plant material and also for people to eat more red meat and fresh vegetables.”


Codes of Order: Different Strokes
“Like Heroes of Might and Magic”
There are a couple of kingdoms. Each one presents a different moral code. The Orcish kingdom has a moral code in which raiding people is accepted, while the Human kingdom has a moral code in which conquest is fine but raiding is bad. Each has a list of virtues and a list of slurs. You can select your choice of moral code and sticking to it makes your esteem rise even among those who don't agree with it. There are probably monster codes which are not accepted and sticking to them better just makes you more feared.
Banner Bearers: Beholders, Djinn, Fairies, Vampires, Giants, Demons, Dragons

This is closest to what I want. You wrote in one of your tomes that nobody has ever agreed on what is good and what is evil. If that is the case (which I believe to be so) then saying which people are good and which are evil is meaningless.

Alignment, alignment descriptors, and class abilities based off of alignment all have to go.

I want nuanced games where characters have to make decisions based on what their character would do. I don't want games where you detect x, and therefore you do y. There can still be demons and angels in the game, and people can still call them good or evil, and even fight for the causes of good or evil. But people can argue about what is good and what is evil. There should be possible alliances and possible enemies outside of ones alignment prescription.

I enjoy arguing with Npc's in character about what is the most Good choice in a given situation. I detest arguing with the DM about whether or not what I just did was Good or Evil.

At the very least it would get rid of all of those "My DM took away my Paladin Powers! Did I do EVIL?" threads.

[Draco_Argentum]

I think the question should be mechanically irrelevant. Some people like alignments, some don't. Its much easier to add alignment to a system after the fact than take it out. 1+1 = alignments by default have no mechanics at all.

[Bigode]

It isn't to the system, but totally is for the setting (IMO); though some stuff by Frank sometimes suggests he thinks a system is a setting and vice-versa. Either way, it's important to the setting thread, right (although I do think it may be somewhat early to talk much about setting, but, if people wanna do it, "alignment" matters)?

[Username17]

1197986234[/unixtime]]It isn't to the system, but totally is for the setting (IMO); though some stuff by Frank sometimes suggests he thinks a system is a setting and vice-versa. Either way, it's important to the setting thread, right (although I do think it may be somewhat early to talk much about setting, but, if people wanna do it, "alignment" matters)?

Indeed. The only thing you can make without a setting is a resolution engine. And even that won't be functional for every setting (as d20 Future shows so clearly).

So honestly such things as alignment, arbitrary divisions of magic, number of humans in settlements, monster populations, racial integration, and technology availability are things which have to be hashed out first. Minor things like numerical assignments are a simple matter of mathematical regression based upon the resolution engine, the player characters, and the expected results of interactions.

We could write up a dozen monsters a day each if the setting and the resolution engine was solid.

-Username17

[Username17]

Codes of Order

So rather than having a Vampire style hierarchy of sins, different codes should be defined in a more sociologically correct fashion. After all, does anyone even know or care whether canibalism is more or less condoned than necrophilia? I am pretty sure that it varies depending upon the person, and in any case it doesn't really matter.

So each moral code would have four categories:

Taboos
These are things that you don't do. You have a bonus to resist mind control that would try to get you to do it. And if you do it anyway it doesn't really matter how many bridges you built because you're always going to be known as "Johnny, the guy who broke this Taboo."

Sins
These are things that you try to not do. Doing them makes other people think less of you, but you can be forgiven if you otherwise do cool stuff. And you can live it down with time.

Norms
These are things you're supposed to do. Doing them doesn't make you a hero, just normal. It helps you live down sins but has no effect on any taboos you've broken. Not living up to norms is also a sin.

Accolades
These are things that you aren't supposed to do but make you awesome if you do.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

Dungeons and Discourse 4?

[RandomCasualty]

I'm not really sure why a moral system is even needed. I mean you can describe the culture in question with this stuff, but overall, you don't even need a system for it unless you want to have effects that only target people of a certain moral code. So it's kind of pointless unless you want people walking around with stuff like "smite cannibal" and "banish adulterer"

Not to mention it's almost impossible to chart out all your NPCs for every moral code. Nor do I really think you gain much by doing it that way.

I personally like just having good and evil be concepts, and everyone's beliefs differ. Some people may think that sacrificing your soul to a demon to save others is a noble action, others may consider it evil becuase you're consorting with dark powers.

[Cielingcat]

That's why we should use the color wheel, I would say.

[RandomCasualty]

1198194460[/unixtime]]That's why we should use the color wheel, I would say.

I don't really see why the color wheel would help.

In fact, I'm not even sure why we have to have an alignment system at all. What can we do with an alignment system that we can't do without one?

I find all an alignment system does is encourage black and white thinking, or in the case of the color wheel: red, blue, black, white and green thinking. But in any case, it really limits your ability to have spies when people can instantly tell what color you are. So I'd really prefer to avoid the "Don't trust him, he's a member of blue team!" from our game.

Alignment has so many complexities to it for very little gains. Regardless of system, it all ends up being DM arbitrary in the end. So why bother? In fact, the more sides you get the more problems you run into. When people are now asking stuff like, "How many green actions does it take for me to go from blue to green?"

[CatharzGodfoot]

So as for the setting itself, you've got a Magic-like world where major power & populations tend to be centered around 'mana pools' which, through incentive, limit travel?

I'm guessing that the pools themselves tend to occur naturally in appropriate locations (black - fen, green - old-growth forest, white - cultivated plains, etc), but can also be 'worn in' over a period of time through appropriate activity at the location.

Sitting on a mana pool long enough makes you powerful, and sustains you. It also corrupts you to the philosophy of the pool (possible exception: colorless?). A king sitting on a white pool long enough literally becomes a saint, and becomes both more benevolent and controlling. The king also gets all the cool powers that come with being a saint.

This leads to two general philosophies: that of nobility, and that of 'the educated'. Nobility feel that learning is beneath them. They just sit on mana pools and accumulate power. People not fortunate enough to have the safety, time, and pool to do so are forced to gain power through learning. This means that you can learn fireball through long hard practice, or you can just sit on a red mana pool for about 10 years. The most powerful individuals do both, but this is somewhat difficult as remaining in one place can make learning hard for the ultra-powerful.

Most powers are used by expending enough activation energy to create a 'font', which a mana-based power can draw upon long enough to come into being. Really powerful magic requires cascades of rapidly increasingly powered fonts, which tend to collapse (hence making it more difficult to learn to use). The activation energy required can be insignificant to catastrophic.


Ok, so in a highly magical world people get strange views of 'technology'.
Some people just resort to slavery. Sometimes they conjure up demons to do their bidding, sometimes they animate zombies, and sometime it's just less fortunate members of their own race. The basic philosophy of a slave-based technology is 'I'll get someone who knows how to do it'.
Other people do things themselves. They learn mana-based powers like 'explosive decompression', 'clean house', and 'make food'. Their basic philosophy is that if they need to do it, they've honed some talent which allows them to do exactly that.
Finally, some cultures use what we might view as technology. They iteratively build up solutions to solve their problems rather than learning them whole-cloth or getting somebody else. Such solutions tend to lead to more versatility, but are also more likely to glitch.

Most cultures use a combination of the above, but one seems to dominate. Many cultures would be incredulous that you, for example, built something to do a task rather than just learning how.


Anyway, that's an incredibly rough overview. What do you think?

[Cielingcat]

I like it. But being the Magic fan I am (or used to be, as I don't like what they've done since past Odyssey), I'd like to add that if you're willing to completely rape the land, you can crystallize a huge amount of mana and make power stones with it, which can be used to power artifacts and other such things. Actually making these requires you to be either in possession of a factory to make them or be an extremely powerful mage. Also you need to do things like harness a volcano or a gigantic river to make them, and doing so will eventually kill the land as you drain it of mana.

[JonSetanta]

I had the mental image of a planewalker physically turning the land when tapping it for mana.

For all beings living on a tapped land region, the sun, moon, and entire sky would slide quickly along the horizon.

Imagine a low level party witnessing this event for the first time.
And then the next.
And again.
Every day.
.... Every time they moved a few miles.

[Prak]

1197912332[/unixtime]]

1197912084[/unixtime]]I think demiplanes as D&D has them now are dumb. No one just creates a plane, they make houses that are bigger inside than out, snowglobes that have actual people inside them, whatever, but no impenetrable fortress planes.

Well I don't know about that. I mean, having the impenetrable prison plane is pretty cool. And you need that shit, especially once going through walls is no longer a problem. It's far too easy to be super mobile in D&D and random pocket planes is about the only way to slow some of that mobility down.

I always wondered what would happen if you hacked through the wall of a house that was bigger on the inside than the outside. Would it just be like popping a bag of holding or what?

depends what side your on... if you're outside, then yeah, you find yourself in a big empty building, if you're in the house, then you find you can't break the exterior walls.

[Username17]

My thought is that the mana nodes should be bad. That is, they create monsters and make things go all flooby. There's valuable stuff there and everything, but it's dangerous and you can't really have a civilization there.

That way people have to send adventurers to go from the cities (which are far away from mana nodes) to the mana nodes (which are full of monsters and treasure).

If mana nodes also come and go you have abandoned cities and forts all over the place (as mana nodes show up too close to civilization) and you have wandering monsters in the wilderness (as mana nodes collapse and the monsters leave to pursue mana accumulation elsewhere). It also allows you to have the occassional mad wizard's guild where crazy guys are tapping the mana node directly and just accepting that they get continuously attacked by harpies.

Essentially Dune, but with forests. Shai-Hallud shows up and everyone dies or leaves, but there's power and wealth to be had there so hard core guys run off into the newly changed wilderness to grab the riches.

----

As for a color wheel, a bunch of things should be moved around. Blue is all the "rational" things, but it's also everything which is literally colored blue - like water and shit. That's dumb. Green is the nature color, so the ocean serpents and shit should be green. Anyhow, you have a basic:

• Blue is Rational
  
• White is Traditional
  
• Green is Instinctual
  
• Red is Emotional
  
• Black is Cynical

And then you could further divide it up into power critters that you can talk to and power critters which you probably shouldn't talk to. So in that line:

• Blue gets Djinn and Giant Frog
  
• White gets Archons and Sphynxes
  
• Green gets Seelie and Unseelie Fey
  
• Red gets Giants and Dragons
  
• Black gets Wraiths and Demons

And of course, there's a whole bunch of monsters associated with each color.

Now, taking a step back, I think that things should be less European and more Indian. It's really not that different in a lot of ways, but Hinduism is a great model for having a consistent theology everywhere and still having separate cults and religious sects running around worshipping serpent gods and crap. Also, Hindu proselytization is hilarious. Plus the existence of a caste system allows for a very reasonable explanation for why classes exist in the game, while still allowing players to go off and do their own thing.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

Fey in Lorwyn are B/U.

[Username17]

Fey in Lorwyn are every damn color because every single creature in Lorwyn is fey. Also I intend to ignore that stuff. I'll ignore it so hard.

Anyway, each of the "tribes" of speakable or monstrous speakable color banner bearers should be plauasibly showing up about every 3 levels or so. Not every level, because that makes the differences between the types fade into the background (can you recall off the top of your head what the statistical differences are between a Stone Giant and a Frost Giant? How about a Geen Sragon and a Blue Dragon? How about a Green Slaad and a Blue Slaad?)

Now, I take it as given that it is relatively simple to generate 10 demons, 10 angels, 10 giants, and 20 fey. I further submit that ten Giant Frog is merely a matter of perspective and that putting 10 dragons on the table is something which will simply happen to you and more as soon as you throw open the flood gates of allowing draconic age categories. The quandaries then, are in the segregation of Wraiths, Djinn, and Sphynxes into separate entities which may be spoken with and fought at different levels.

Wraiths
D&D takes great delight in using a vast array of words that don't actually mean anything different to describe similar monsters with different color schemes and variable hit dice. The fact that the're a wraith, a spectre, a ghost, and a shadow is kind of stupid. And while we could liberally dive through a thesaurus and pad our list with apparitions, spooks, phantoms, shades, banshees and spirits, that would be lame. Now, to a certain extent we are going to have to do that sort of thing for every tribe, and the Wraiths are not a complete exception.

However, I think what we want here is some sort of rubric in which the land of the dead is an actual place and it has stuff in it that is former people and other stuff which isn't. In this way you can stagger things so that the Wraiths don't all come off as the same monster over and over again with pallette swaps. So we can have WilloWisps (little candle flames which mimic sounds and fly) at the low end and Tempests (huge lattices of crazy magic which flow over the land and steal minds and store memories) at the high end and you get the impression that there's a lot going on in the Land of the Dead and you don't get monotony. Pad that out with some spirits of death (Banshees and Reapers), and you can have actual ghosts of people show up only infrequently.

Sphynxes
Basically, this is a faction of crazy amalgum beasts. We try to make it less furry and more scary. The basic is a lion with a human head that asks tricky questions and strangles people. But the faction is basically looting from across the Med and deep into the Middle East for desert monsters and guardian beasts. So we pretty much get:

• Sphinx Proper (Lion w/ Human Head) - Egypt
  
• Manticore (Lion with Human Head, Wings, and a spined tail) - Persia
  
• Shedu (Bull with Human Head, Wings) - Assyria
  
• Cherub (Cloud of Wings with Lion Head, Human Head, Snake Head, and a gout of Fire) - Israel
  
• Amon (Lion with Ram Head) - Egypt
  
• Naravirala (Large Cats with Human Heads) - India
  
• Lamia (women with optional snake parts) - Italy
  
• Grotesque (humans with monster heads and wings) - Austria
  
• Chimera (lions with snake tails and extra goat heads) - Greece
  
• Manuthiha (Monstrous Lions with Human Heads) - Burma

And that would work. Some get wings, some don't.

Djinns
OK, there is nothing aquatic about Marids. It's not a cognate with "marine" it's just an honorific. The original Marids were beings of smokeless fire who rode steeds made of dust and lived in holes in the ground. But regardless, "Marid" is a title that the strongest Djinn get in the Arabian Nights. "Ifreet" is a title that very powerful (but weaker than Marid) get in the Arabian Nights. We should go with that. Heck, the Djinn faction can just plain be pre-islamic Arabian folklore, there's plenty to work with.

• Marid - Most Powerful Djinn
  
• Ifrit - Very Powerful Djinn
  
• Ghilan - Shapeshifting Djinn made of Darkness
  
• Sila - Lesser Djinn who can't change shape
  
• Juno - Protective Djinn who are specifically female
  
• Name? - Invisible Djinn who steal stuff
  
• Name? - Powerful Djinn who have four wings
  
• Name? - Djinn who appear as beautiful humans and act like vampires or succubi
  
• Name? - Djinn who transform themselves into animals and weather effects.
  
• Name? - Djinn who collect magical secrets

The problem with Djinn is not that there isn't enough source material, it's that there aren't really enough names, because all the words basically sound the same.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

1198233507[/unixtime]]My thought is that the mana nodes should be bad. That is, they create monsters and make things go all flooby. There's valuable stuff there and everything, but it's dangerous and you can't really have a civilization there.

At that point, you might as well go to an 'intersecting planes' cosmology. And when they're ethical planes, you might as well have 5 different afterlives that like to stay thermodynamically sound. Which is probably the strangest wheel of Dharma I can imagine.

[Username17]

So as you know there are an infinite number of ways to hack up the different types of magic available.


Black
So the people who are “cynical” and sometimes talk to the dead or to demons are by far cooler than other people. Sorry, they just are. And what they do or don't do in the game system is far more open ended than what the emotional people do (which is basically “get angry” and “set shit on fire”). And while that sounds great, and it is, it also is the greatest potential source of Bloat. We address it first because Black is often “the villains” and it is very tempting to give them crazy varied powers on those grounds. Defining these guys first pus the limits on the setting we need in order to conceive of what other groups can and should be doing. And more importantly, not doing.

• 
  School of Heresy
  Key Attribute: Charisma
  ”Magic” Techniques: Domination, Demon Pacts
  ”Sword” Techniques: Dirty fighting; combat nudity; throwing sand
  
  School of Blood
  Key Attribute: Constitution
  ”Magic” Techniques: Hellfire; Sacrifice
  ”Sword” Techniques: Heedless combat; bleeding acid; risky maneuvers
  
  School of Untouchability
  Key Attribute: Dexterity
  ”Magic” Techniques: Locusts and rats; Filth
  ”Sword” Techniques: Defensive fighting; daggers from shadows; combat acrobatics
  
  School of Deception
  Key Attribute: Intelligence
  ”Magic” Techniques: Madness; Darkness
  ”Sword” Techniques: Midirection; Poisoning weapons, sneak atacks
  
  School of Death
  Key Attribute: Strength
  ”Magic” Techniques: Animating the dead; Death Magic
  ”Sword” Techniques: Demoralizing attacks; fear; flashy and destructive combat
  
  School of Decay
  Key Attribute: Wisdom
  ”Magic” Techniques: Weakness; Corruption
  ”Sword” Techniques: Attrition; delaying tactics, accumulative wounding
  

So yeah, you could plausible make an intractably large number of classes out of that. And I do mean just out of the Black. Assuming that each character is either themed magically, swordily, or hybrid; and that each character class presents based largely off of two different schools, you have a not inconsiderable 45 classes you could make. Of course, your potential expansion is much more than that because you could grab different abilities off the lists or different orders for the same abilities.

Example: Let's say that you have a Black Knight character class written up who has the School of Death and the School of Decay and he's basically all sword maneuvers. Sure, he glows with dark energy and shit sometimes (especially at high levels), but the class is all about getting up into people's grills and wearing them down. All about the tanking really. You run into battle and start handing out conditions on people that make it harder for them to do damage and move and stuff.
But there's nothing stopping you from making a class called the Necromancer who happens to use the same schools but be focused on shooting debilitating spells at people and raising chaff in the middle of combat (note how this fulfills much the same “role” but has a different “feel”). And of course, you could have a Death Knight who did some of both.
But the really important thing here is that you could actually just shuffle the abilities around some and possibly take some different ones off the list and make a Vampire Count or something. It would be a different class, and it would do different stuff, but it would be very much the same in most of the design choices.

Now, you could actually make a perfectly serviceable (if weirdly dark campaign setting where this was literally everything. But you could also reiterate this to make two, four, six, or twenty separate lists of schools.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

Dealing with demons when there are monster wells is just a little odd. What is a demon at that point, anyway? The only thing I see Black doing which is especially heretical is actually selling their souls, assuming they'll be able to buy them back later.

But I know so little about how the flavor is actually supposed to go that maybe I'm totally off base.

Also, I'm thinking that maybe undead-related stuff should be Constitution based (and in turn hellfire would be strength). If undeath really should be Black. Minor flavor issue.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I'd also recommend switching Blood to Strength and Death to Con, because that sets up Count Dracula's Strength & Charisma build to be a Blood & Heresy build, which fits really well thematically.

Otherwise looks awesome.

[Username17]

Dealing with demons when there are monster wells is just a little odd. What is a demon at that point, anyway?

They are the Sphinxes of Black? This isn't "fallen angels" bullshit, they are just literally called demons. Although perhaps a better word would be Rakshasa.

All the mana wells generate plain old monsters. Green wells create basilisks, White create griffons, and so on and so forth. And they also act as places for the stupidly powerful races of the outer realms to walk in from. Red throws in Giants, Blue throws in Djinn and so on and so forth. And you can go up and talk to those guys. Or have disagreements with them and come to blows.

But there are also a group of monstrous races from the outer realms. Creatures which while intelligent are also really dangerous and the default assumption is that they will eat you. And for Red those are Dragons and for Black they are called "demons." And what they are is crazy looking monsters, some of whom can assume humanoid form and some of whom have humanoid parts. But they spend a lot more time having seven arms and three heads and breathing fire and a lot less time chilling out and having civil discourse than do Giants or Wraiths.

So making it a point to go talk to those things is generally regarded as somewhere between "wicked" and "retarded." Which is why it is part of the Path of Heresy.

Also, I'm thinking that maybe undead-related stuff should be Constitution based (and in turn hellfire would be strength).

My concept classes that I was thinking about were the

• Warlock - gets lots of demon power and stabs herself and maybe other people for even more power. (Heresy/Blood Magic Hero)
  Assassin - Sneaks around, stabs fools right in the back, cloaks self with darkness. (Untouchable/Deception Mixed Hero)
  Black Knight - Slogs around in heavy armor, has an aura of despair, does the Blackguard stuff that doesn't make us cry (Death/Decay Might Hero)

And so I patterned out what the things would have to do based on that.

You could of course make a case for any stat assignments just as you could make any ability lists to choose off of. I definitely think that the Assassins should be an actual caste - like the Thuggee.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

I guess that's the problem with attribute-based systems. My bias is that I have trouble seeing physical attributes governing slavery magic.

Anyway, now that you've 'defined Black first', got a lineup for the other colors? I'm interested in whether it's going to follow the same pattern of fighter/mage/thief, and what the appropriate mana flavor is. Blue 'monks' (that is, meditating warriors)? Red barbarians (It sounds like they would use warcries)? Green animists? I'm guessing you have some plan for varied attribute allocation already, apparently always a physical/mental pair (Cha/Str barbarians, Wis/Dex monks, Con/Wis animists, etc).

I think the next biggest question is what White does, simply because it's so limited. Domination magic? Teamwork tactics?


[Edit]
So I noticed that you need to use all of the attribute combos to get 15 separate options (which fits exactly the 5 colors & 3 classes per color). Which will it be? We could do something contrived like having every color get 1 phys/phys, 1 mental/mental, and 1 physical/mental. How does balance factor into all this?

[Koumei]

1198267209[/unixtime]]
”Sword” Techniques:combat nudity;

Wait, what?

Also, doesn't the Chimera also have a draconic head? Or does it depend on which of the ~83,000 versions you look at?

Anyway, this looks seriously awesome already.

[Username17]

Also, doesn't the Chimera also have a draconic head? Or does it depend on which of the ~83,000 versions you look at?

The D&D Chimera these days is a three headed dragon, where the other two heads are lion and goat. The original writeup is that it is a "lion in front, a goat in the middle, and a serpent behind" - which probably just means that it is a scaled lion with hooves (hippo?). But people have been drawing it with three heads for a long time. And while D&D puts all three heads on the shoulders, the classical depiction puts the goat head in the middle of the back and the snake (not dragon) head at the end of the tail.

So I noticed that you need to use all of the attribute combos to get 15 separate options (which fits exactly the 5 colors & 3 classes per color). Which will it be? We could do something contrived like having every color get 1 phys/phys, 1 mental/mental, and 1 physical/mental.

Pretty much. I was thinking of expading it to 15 sample characters of 3 per color and giving each color a Might, a Magic, and a Mixed (note that without even writing new abilities or rearranging abilities within a school you could release a new set of 15 sample classes 15 times).

The sample characters I am basing this off of are (school names subject to change):

Red
Might: Warlord (War/Destruction)
Magic: Shaman (Fire/Whim)
Mixed: Rogue (Misery/Chance)

Green
Might: Skinshifter (Hunger/Growth)
Magic: Druid (Plant/Animal)
Mixed: Ranger (Hunt/The Way)

White
Might: Paladin (Light/Truth)
Magic: Cleric (Protection/Health)
Mixed: Monk (Order/Purity)

Blue
Might: Gadgeteer (Artifice/Control)
Magic: Psychic (Foresight/Stoicism)
Mixed: Bard (Music/Subtlety)

I think the next biggest question is what White does, simply because it's so limited.

Let's do White.

White
White is generally “the heroes” the sample classes are all typically heroic. However, like in Final Fantasy Tactics, a Paladin is just a job and can show up working for the villains. White is the color of Tradition, and the creatures which show up for it are majestic (Griffons, Sphinxes, and Spenta), but no less dangerous than the creatures which show up for any other mana type. So the key here is to make sure that regardless of how much “we're right and good” jargon the white characters and creatures use, that it actually doesn't make a specific moral judgment within the context of the game system. Yes, Paladins can kill baby kobolds, and No they aren't doing the “right thing” by doing that.

School of Light
Key Attribute: Charisma
”Magic” Techniques: Light; Banishment; Bravery
”Sword” Techniques: Smiting; overwhelming attack; courage

School of Health
Key Attribute: Constitution
”Magic” Techniques: Healing; Castigation
”Sword” Techniques: Overcoming Adversity; tenacious attacks

School of Purity
Key Attribute: Dexterity
”Magic” Techniques: Anti-Magic; Geas
”Sword” Techniques: Mobile combat; moving past opponents; bypassing restraints

School of Protection
Key Attribute: Intelligence
”Magic” Techniques: Forcefields; Abjurant Reuking
”Sword” Techniques: Defensive Stances; parrying; shield fighting

School of Order
Key Attribute: Strength
”Magic” Techniques: Explosive Runes;
”Sword” Techniques: Limiting Opponents; trips; holds; position

School of Truth
Key Attribute: Wisdom
”Magic” Techniques: Blessing; Dispelling Illusion
”Sword” Techniques: Leadership; teamwork; assisting compatriots

So in this example we have the Paladin as our Might class, who operates with Wisdom and Charisma based attacks. He fights with a sword and a shield, but he is focused on mental stats. And that's fine. It means that he notices things and gets the princess, which is where we want our heroic knight to be. On the flip side our Mixed character is a Monk who spends all his time on athletic training, which among other things gives him magical powers. He can make glowing runes that restrict people and fight magic with more magic. And finally, we have our Magic hero who is dumping protection circles and heals. A true White Mage for White.

I guess that's the problem with attribute-based systems. My bias is that I have trouble seeing physical attributes governing slavery magic.

That is among the reasons that we are going More Hindu. You get magical powers by sudying and prayer, but you also gain magical powers by standing on one foot for a long time (Dex), picking up heavy rocks (Str), and stabbing yourself with fish hooks (Con).

-Username17