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Fantasy The Color Of Royalty

• What needs to be done in order to use one's magic? An utterance of ancient words? Drawing or writing something down using something sacred? Does it differ between the common, rare and arcane magic?


• Are people only able to preform one type(common, rare, arcane) of magic naturally? With practice, can they learn other types or is that impossible?


• If you know common magic, are you only compatible with one of the elements or all of them? The same for the users of Rare and Arcane magic. Can Rare users use light, dark and energy magic or just one of those?


I hope I made any sense.
 
@Pandacorn


I'll hopefully explain this in the Lore tab but the difference between common, rare, and classified magic is a) how many people know about it and b) how hard it is to initially begin performing. Classified magic is limited to certain royals and therefore the Red Knights and Yellow Crows know nothing about it. Classified magic is also significantly harder to get a grasp on as they deal with more abstract concepts like the arcane or are more dangerous like blood magic.


My thought was that people with the markings are born with the ability to master all these different types of magic. As time goes on, they may specialize and grow stronger in certain types. However, as they grow older, it gets harder to learn and access magics they have not learned from a young age. Think of it like learning a language; it's a lot easier when you're younger and your first language will probably be the one you're most fluent in. That's not to say it's impossible to master more magics as you get older, there's just a lot more rituals and practice involved.


I'm ironing out how the magics are performed as we speak so I'll get back to you on that.


Hope that clears some stuff up!
 
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I agree with the roles idea. Though I preferably like the whole idea of the arcane magic. Though if it is only for the royal family, how would other people be able to use arcane??


Well I can think of sand magic, metal magic, magma, destruction, blast,


Telekinesis – ability to move objects with your mind.


Projection – ability to transmit images and feelings to the minds of other.


Therionology – ability to command animals. Practitioners are usually known as animal mages. Rare.


Harmonizing – ability to arrange one’s environment to invoke a specific feeling or mood.


Elenchus – ability to distinguish lie from truth, also known as truthseeking. Extremely rare.


I hope this helps
 
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@AnarchyReins


Everyone that is born with the patterns is able to do arcane magic. However, if it is not nurtured, it will gradually be harder for them to tap into that reserve and do elaborate spells/actions. Like I was reading in psychology, a person is born with the ability to recognize all basic sounds from all languages (around 100, I believe) but over time we grow used to the ones we hear commonly and soon fail to pick up on the other sounds when exposed to them later in life.
 
If you're still looking for different types of magic, I usually find the schools of arcane magic in D&D are a good place to look for inspiration. I'll leave it to you whether these sound common, rare, or classified (provided you like them at all, that is). I've also tried to work out how these would all fit in with the magics you already listed and the suggestions from others. (I get a little crazy about designing magic systems... I apologize. It's just super fun. (Feel free to like... completely ignore me.)) ALSO ALSO, schools marked with a * are the ones which I thought have good spells but can easily be split between other disciplines and therefore have no reason to exist in this world as a school themselves.

  • Abjuration - Warding, banishing, countermagic, and protection spells. (Sounds very useful in a world where our main enemies will also have access to magic.)
  • Conjuration - Calling (weak summoning), creation (minor objects), healing (I would make this its own school, personally, which I listed below), and teleportation (not actually sure teleportation fits thematically here, but it doesn't seem to fit elsewhere and is a bit too limited to be its own school, I'd say).
  • Divination - Any spells to do with seeing what can't be seen. The past, future, detecting the traces of other magics, seeing things a great distance away, mind reading, etc. (This could/should include the "Elenchus"/truthseeking discipline mentioned by @AnarchyReins, because that absolutely sounds like the sort of thing our not-so-benevolent overlords would be interested in doing.)
  • Enchantment - Controlling or manipulating the actions and/or perceptions of others. Does not include enchanting magical objects.
  • *Evocation - Most of these are the big damage spells, which likely don't make sense as a single school in this setting. These are the elemental attacks, so having elemental schools breaks up the need for Evocation as a whole. It does also have the acid and sonic "elements" which you don't have here (though I never liked them, personally...). Evocation also deals with creating magical light or magical darkness, but given you have specific light and darkness disciplines, this also seems unneeded.
  • Illusion - Magical disguises ("glamors") including invisibility, and false sensations. Easier illusions can create sound, vision, or smell, but at highest level even touch can be replicated -- meaning you could make a phantom bridge and actually cross it, etc. (Otherwise illusion quickly becomes the weakest school.) This seems like an important school for your Feathers, who specialize in escape routes.
  • Necromancy - Normal fantasy stock corpse-manipulation. This also steps on the toes of "blood magic" which doesn't otherwise exist in D&D, but that could easily be separated out. Deals in both using your own life force to empower your magic, or stealing the life force of others to empower yourself. A forbidden magic in almost every fiction where it exists -- this sounds like a prime candidate for a "classified" discipline if I ever heard one.
  • Transmutation - This is where object enchantment (or cursing) falls under -- improving both objects and people/creatures. Also warping objects and polymorphing creatures -- though polymorph spells are temporary and fragile, and in this way are separate from true shapeshifting.


Other noteworthy magics which aren't part of the arcane schools:

  • Alchemy - I know "potion magic" and alchemy specifically were already suggested by both @QuestingBeast and @Bunny, but I think this one goes really well as a potential for the Red Knights since it allows them to make better use of their non-magical soldiers. While you could still require the marking to infuse an alchemical concoction with the magic required to make it work, you wouldn't need to be so marked to... y'know... just throw a vial and have it explode. Conversely, if you specifically don't want the Red Knights making use of their unmarked soldiers in this way, then you can cross this one right off! :)
  • *Nature - The hallmark of druids across most fiction. Most of this, I assume, could be lumped under your earth element, or under the animal magic suggested by @AnarchyReins (though I would call it theriomancy instead of therionology) -- however it also includes things like withstanding extreme hot or cold temperatures (fire/ice element respectively?), passing through the wilderness without a trace (...transmutation magic?), and always knowing your way in the wild (could be divination, easily). So this definitely doesn't need to be a school on its own, it just has some nice spell ideas.
  • Shapeshifting - What it says on the tin. Turning yourself into some other creature -- the other hallmark of druids, I guess.
  • Summoning - True summoning differs from conjuration in that the creatures you summon persist once they are unsummoned, opening the possibility to resummon the same creature. You can build relationships with them in this way, and even treat one as a familiar. This only works as a discipline if you want such creatures to exist. They can either be live their own lives in another plane/dimension/whatever when their summoner doesn't have need of them, or be non-existent without him, maybe even created out of a fragment of his own soul. It all just depends on your narrative of the world. I think this could be cool as something available only to the royal family -- each member could have their own personal "Eidolon" to protect them, shaped by their individual wants.


Other suggestions, un-D&D related:

  • Healing - Given the weird way healing spells are tucked under conjuration in the D&D examples above, I absolutely think this could be justified as its own school. Especially considering you have the Feathers who specialize, in part, in healing. You could also strip the "people/creature enhancement" out of transmutation and make this into a sort of... "buffing" discipline.
  • Mental - Mental magics could cover things like telepathy (could otherwise be given to divination if you like the idea of the ability but not the school), and the telekinesis magic @AnarchyReins mentioned. You could also add in psychic damage, which would have the advantage of being undetectable through non-magical means. This seems to be well suited to our creepy Red Knight jailkeepers who release prisoners who have been mentally broken through means normal citizens find incomprehensible. Surely if they came out with their flesh burned or melted, or covered from head to toe in scars from the lash, people would understand why they'd lost their minds. But if they came out looking completely untouched...


@QuestingBeast mentioned both ceremony and rune magic, but I think these work best as methods used by other disciplines rather than being disciplines on their own. Ceremony/ritual magic could be reserved for incredibly difficult/powerful spells which may even take multiple mages to cast (resurrection by healing mages, hiding an entire building from view of anyone who looks at it by illusion mages, etc.). Similarly, runes can be reserved for spells which are supposed to be triggered long after being cast, without needing the mage present (a fire trap set in a doorway by a pyromancer, the image of an intruder suddenly transmitted to a divination mage, etc.). The weather magic @Bunny suggested could also be ritual magic (when it's on a large scale) produced by the appropriate elemental mages (hurricanes from air, earthquakes from earth, etc...) or even just normal spells by the same elements for small, incredibly localized effects.


All that said, I'm left with a couple questions about the use of the magics you've already said we definitely have. Fire/Water/Air/Earth are fairly self explanatory as far as just creating damaging effects go, or otherwise directly controlling the elements. Will more elaborate effects (perhaps air mages can learn to fly, or earth mages can turn their skin to stone to ward off damage) fall under these disciplines as well or is there a reason these ones are common? Are they actually just weaker? "Baby's first magic"?


Other than actually just creating magical light/darkness, what will the Light/Dark disciplines be able to do? And, similarly, what does Energy do that makes it distinct from the elements?


And then, finally, the one I'm most unclear on -- what sort of effects fall under Arcane? In my mind everything else that's been listed by anyone is all arcane, but I've been heavily conditioned by other fictions so I'm trying to shake that >_< I'd just like a clearer picture, if possible.


Oh my god post so long it needs a divider, I really am sorry, I just can't control myself.

My advice, if you don't mind me giving it, is to take a hard look at what a school/discipline/whatever you want to call it actually means. Is it the range of effects that can be produced, or is it the type of energy tapped into in order to produce them? If it's the latter, then I think you were done before you even asked for suggestions. Protection and warding could be done through Earth, healing is perhaps Water (or Light?), distant conversations can be carried to you through Air, Fire can produce unchecked destruction. The dead could perhaps be animated with Darkness, or with Energy, the truth could be illuminated with Light, and the dimensional veil could be torn open through Arcane, allowing the passage of all sorts of extraplanar abominations. The upside of this is that it's much simpler, and the list is shorter, but the downside is that it suggests a different grouping of skills than you've suggested in your overview. To use the Feathers as an example again, they are escape artists (that sounds incredibly Air-themed, or maybe Darkness to move unseen) but also healers (Water or Light, surely), splitting this single group between two to four very large disciplines. It also begs the question of why there is a separation between Feathers and Talons, for example, since they have a large overlap in the broad theme of getting in and out of places without being seen.


If, however, it's the former, then the vast majority of suggestions you got from other people (and all the ones you got from me) become options. The different energies can still exist as flavor within the other schools (most visibly within the destructive spells where you actually pelt somebody with an element) or as subschools in their own right, but the focus shifts to what it's doing instead of how it's done. The biggest downside to this is simply that it's more complicated, the list of disciplines gets much longer. However, the upside is that it allows for significantly more customization in what each group has access to. The Feathers can now be healers and illusionists. They're still split between two disciplines, but the disciplines are much smaller, meaning they don't have access to half the available magics just from needing to perform two different functions. The Talons may be illusionists as well, but perhaps they also excel at enchantment magic (convincing children to walk to them, or convincing their parents to walk away). They might make use of telekinesis while they're stealing their supplies and are maybe even weaker practitioners of divination (when compared to the Eyes) in order to steal information. It now all becomes very separate, and I think that's cool.


If you do go the second path, Earth, Water, Fire, and Air can still remain as more limited sub-schools of a sort of... Elemental school. Instead of the more elaborate, general effects, this would let you limit each one to spells very obviously tied to its element. Water magic could let you breathe underwater, but couldn't heal your wounds. As for Light/Dark/Energy/Arcane, there's a good chance they still make sense too, but... like I said, I can't really paint a super clear picture in my head of what they do, so I can't give you any examples.


I hope this has been helpful rather than irritating. And again... I'm sorry I'm so damned wordy >_<
 
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I think I might be confusing people by using the word "magic". I intend for it to be more like manipulating the elements of the world, like Avatar the Last Airbender rather than traditional witches and the like. I'll clear it up more in the actual thread.
 
This is how I would have explained it. The way you explain has themes of Naruto, Pjo, Shadow Hunters, Akame ga kill in it. I applaud thee.
 
Irianne said:
If you're still looking for different types of magic, I usually find the schools of arcane magic in D&D are a good place to look for inspiration. I'll leave it to you whether these sound common, rare, or classified (provided you like them at all, that is). I've also tried to work out how these would all fit in with the magics you already listed and the suggestions from others. (I get a little crazy about designing magic systems... I apologize. It's just super fun. (Feel free to like... completely ignore me.)) ALSO ALSO, schools marked with a * are the ones which I thought have good spells but can easily be split between other disciplines and therefore have no reason to exist in this world as a school themselves.
  • Abjuration - Warding, banishing, countermagic, and protection spells. (Sounds very useful in a world where our main enemies will also have access to magic.)
  • Conjuration - Calling (weak summoning), creation (minor objects), healing (I would make this its own school, personally, which I listed below), and teleportation (not actually sure teleportation fits thematically here, but it doesn't seem to fit elsewhere and is a bit too limited to be its own school, I'd say).
  • Divination - Any spells to do with seeing what can't be seen. The past, future, detecting the traces of other magics, seeing things a great distance away, mind reading, etc. (This could/should include the "Elenchus"/truthseeking discipline mentioned by @AnarchyReins, because that absolutely sounds like the sort of thing our not-so-benevolent overlords would be interested in doing.)
  • Enchantment - Controlling or manipulating the actions and/or perceptions of others. Does not include enchanting magical objects.
  • *Evocation - Most of these are the big damage spells, which likely don't make sense as a single school in this setting. These are the elemental attacks, so having elemental schools breaks up the need for Evocation as a whole. It does also have the acid and sonic "elements" which you don't have here (though I never liked them, personally...). Evocation also deals with creating magical light or magical darkness, but given you have specific light and darkness disciplines, this also seems unneeded.
  • Illusion - Magical disguises ("glamors") including invisibility, and false sensations. Easier illusions can create sound, vision, or smell, but at highest level even touch can be replicated -- meaning you could make a phantom bridge and actually cross it, etc. (Otherwise illusion quickly becomes the weakest school.) This seems like an important school for your Feathers, who specialize in escape routes.
  • Necromancy - Normal fantasy stock corpse-manipulation. This also steps on the toes of "blood magic" which doesn't otherwise exist in D&D, but that could easily be separated out. Deals in both using your own life force to empower your magic, or stealing the life force of others to empower yourself. A forbidden magic in almost every fiction where it exists -- this sounds like a prime candidate for a "classified" discipline if I ever heard one.
  • Transmutation - This is where object enchantment (or cursing) falls under -- improving both objects and people/creatures. Also warping objects and polymorphing creatures -- though polymorph spells are temporary and fragile, and in this way are separate from true shapeshifting.


Other noteworthy magics which aren't part of the arcane schools:

  • Alchemy - I know "potion magic" and alchemy specifically were already suggested by both @QuestingBeast and @Bunny, but I think this one goes really well as a potential for the Red Knights since it allows them to make better use of their non-magical soldiers. While you could still require the marking to infuse an alchemical concoction with the magic required to make it work, you wouldn't need to be so marked to... y'know... just throw a vial and have it explode. Conversely, if you specifically don't want the Red Knights making use of their unmarked soldiers in this way, then you can cross this one right off! :)
  • *Nature - The hallmark of druids across most fiction. Most of this, I assume, could be lumped under your earth element, or under the animal magic suggested by @AnarchyReins (though I would call it theriomancy instead of therionology) -- however it also includes things like withstanding extreme hot or cold temperatures (fire/ice element respectively?), passing through the wilderness without a trace (...transmutation magic?), and always knowing your way in the wild (could be divination, easily). So this definitely doesn't need to be a school on its own, it just has some nice spell ideas.
  • Shapeshifting - What it says on the tin. Turning yourself into some other creature -- the other hallmark of druids, I guess.
  • Summoning - True summoning differs from conjuration in that the creatures you summon persist once they are unsummoned, opening the possibility to resummon the same creature. You can build relationships with them in this way, and even treat one as a familiar. This only works as a discipline if you want such creatures to exist. They can either be live their own lives in another plane/dimension/whatever when their summoner doesn't have need of them, or be non-existent without him, maybe even created out of a fragment of his own soul. It all just depends on your narrative of the world. I think this could be cool as something available only to the royal family -- each member could have their own personal "Eidolon" to protect them, shaped by their individual wants.


Other suggestions, un-D&D related:

  • Healing - Given the weird way healing spells are tucked under conjuration in the D&D examples above, I absolutely think this could be justified as its own school. Especially considering you have the Feathers who specialize, in part, in healing. You could also strip the "people/creature enhancement" out of transmutation and make this into a sort of... "buffing" discipline.
  • Mental - Mental magics could cover things like telepathy (could otherwise be given to divination if you like the idea of the ability but not the school), and the telekinesis magic @AnarchyReins mentioned. You could also add in psychic damage, which would have the advantage of being undetectable through non-magical means. This seems to be well suited to our creepy Red Knight jailkeepers who release prisoners who have been mentally broken through means normal citizens find incomprehensible. Surely if they came out with their flesh burned or melted, or covered from head to toe in scars from the lash, people would understand why they'd lost their minds. But if they came out looking completely untouched...


@QuestingBeast mentioned both ceremony and rune magic, but I think these work best as methods used by other disciplines rather than being disciplines on their own. Ceremony/ritual magic could be reserved for incredibly difficult/powerful spells which may even take multiple mages to cast (resurrection by healing mages, hiding an entire building from view of anyone who looks at it by illusion mages, etc.). Similarly, runes can be reserved for spells which are supposed to be triggered long after being cast, without needing the mage present (a fire trap set in a doorway by a pyromancer, the image of an intruder suddenly transmitted to a divination mage, etc.). The weather magic @Bunny suggested could also be ritual magic (when it's on a large scale) produced by the appropriate elemental mages (hurricanes from air, earthquakes from earth, etc...) or even just normal spells by the same elements for small, incredibly localized effects.


All that said, I'm left with a couple questions about the use of the magics you've already said we definitely have. Fire/Water/Air/Earth are fairly self explanatory as far as just creating damaging effects go, or otherwise directly controlling the elements. Will more elaborate effects (perhaps air mages can learn to fly, or earth mages can turn their skin to stone to ward off damage) fall under these disciplines as well or is there a reason these ones are common? Are they actually just weaker? "Baby's first magic"?


Other than actually just creating magical light/darkness, what will the Light/Dark disciplines be able to do? And, similarly, what does Energy do that makes it distinct from the elements?


And then, finally, the one I'm most unclear on -- what sort of effects fall under Arcane? In my mind everything else that's been listed by anyone is all arcane, but I've been heavily conditioned by other fictions so I'm trying to shake that >_< I'd just like a clearer picture, if possible.


Oh my god post so long it needs a divider, I really am sorry, I just can't control myself.

My advice, if you don't mind me giving it, is to take a hard look at what a school/discipline/whatever you want to call it actually means. Is it the range of effects that can be produced, or is it the type of energy tapped into in order to produce them? If it's the latter, then I think you were done before you even asked for suggestions. Protection and warding could be done through Earth, healing is perhaps Water (or Light?), distant conversations can be carried to you through Air, Fire can produce unchecked destruction. The dead could perhaps be animated with Darkness, or with Energy, the truth could be illuminated with Light, and the dimensional veil could be torn open through Arcane, allowing the passage of all sorts of extraplanar abominations. The upside of this is that it's much simpler, and the list is shorter, but the downside is that it suggests a different grouping of skills than you've suggested in your overview. To use the Feathers as an example again, they are escape artists (that sounds incredibly Air-themed, or maybe Darkness to move unseen) but also healers (Water or Light, surely), splitting this single group between two to four very large disciplines. It also begs the question of why there is a separation between Feathers and Talons, for example, since they have a large overlap in the broad theme of getting in and out of places without being seen.


If, however, it's the former, then the vast majority of suggestions you got from other people (and all the ones you got from me) become options. The different energies can still exist as flavor within the other schools (most visibly within the destructive spells where you actually pelt somebody with an element) or as subschools in their own right, but the focus shifts to what it's doing instead of how it's done. The biggest downside to this is simply that it's more complicated, the list of disciplines gets much longer. However, the upside is that it allows for significantly more customization in what each group has access to. The Feathers can now be healers and illusionists. They're still split between two disciplines, but the disciplines are much smaller, meaning they don't have access to half the available magics just from needing to perform two different functions. The Talons may be illusionists as well, but perhaps they also excel at enchantment magic (convincing children to walk to them, or convincing their parents to walk away). They might make use of telekinesis while they're stealing their supplies and are maybe even weaker practitioners of divination (when compared to the Eyes) in order to steal information. It now all becomes very separate, and I think that's cool.


If you do go the second path, Earth, Water, Fire, and Air can still remain as more limited sub-schools of a sort of... Elemental school. Instead of the more elaborate, general effects, this would let you limit each one to spells very obviously tied to its element. Water magic could let you breathe underwater, but couldn't heal your wounds. As for Light/Dark/Energy/Arcane, there's a good chance they still make sense too, but... like I said, I can't really paint a super clear picture in my head of what they do, so I can't give you any examples.


I hope this has been helpful rather than irritating. And again... I'm sorry I'm so damned wordy >_<
Click to expand...
that is too awesome not be directly recognized.
 
Irianne said:
If you're still looking for different types of magic, I usually find the schools of arcane magic in D&D are a good place to look for inspiration. I'll leave it to you whether these sound common, rare, or classified (provided you like them at all, that is). I've also tried to work out how these would all fit in with the magics you already listed and the suggestions from others. (I get a little crazy about designing magic systems... I apologize. It's just super fun. (Feel free to like... completely ignore me.)) ALSO ALSO, schools marked with a * are the ones which I thought have good spells but can easily be split between other disciplines and therefore have no reason to exist in this world as a school themselves.
  • Abjuration - Warding, banishing, countermagic, and protection spells. (Sounds very useful in a world where our main enemies will also have access to magic.)
  • Conjuration - Calling (weak summoning), creation (minor objects), healing (I would make this its own school, personally, which I listed below), and teleportation (not actually sure teleportation fits thematically here, but it doesn't seem to fit elsewhere and is a bit too limited to be its own school, I'd say).
  • Divination - Any spells to do with seeing what can't be seen. The past, future, detecting the traces of other magics, seeing things a great distance away, mind reading, etc. (This could/should include the "Elenchus"/truthseeking discipline mentioned by @AnarchyReins, because that absolutely sounds like the sort of thing our not-so-benevolent overlords would be interested in doing.)
  • Enchantment - Controlling or manipulating the actions and/or perceptions of others. Does not include enchanting magical objects.
  • *Evocation - Most of these are the big damage spells, which likely don't make sense as a single school in this setting. These are the elemental attacks, so having elemental schools breaks up the need for Evocation as a whole. It does also have the acid and sonic "elements" which you don't have here (though I never liked them, personally...). Evocation also deals with creating magical light or magical darkness, but given you have specific light and darkness disciplines, this also seems unneeded.
  • Illusion - Magical disguises ("glamors") including invisibility, and false sensations. Easier illusions can create sound, vision, or smell, but at highest level even touch can be replicated -- meaning you could make a phantom bridge and actually cross it, etc. (Otherwise illusion quickly becomes the weakest school.) This seems like an important school for your Feathers, who specialize in escape routes.
  • Necromancy - Normal fantasy stock corpse-manipulation. This also steps on the toes of "blood magic" which doesn't otherwise exist in D&D, but that could easily be separated out. Deals in both using your own life force to empower your magic, or stealing the life force of others to empower yourself. A forbidden magic in almost every fiction where it exists -- this sounds like a prime candidate for a "classified" discipline if I ever heard one.
  • Transmutation - This is where object enchantment (or cursing) falls under -- improving both objects and people/creatures. Also warping objects and polymorphing creatures -- though polymorph spells are temporary and fragile, and in this way are separate from true shapeshifting.


Other noteworthy magics which aren't part of the arcane schools:

  • Alchemy - I know "potion magic" and alchemy specifically were already suggested by both @QuestingBeast and @Bunny, but I think this one goes really well as a potential for the Red Knights since it allows them to make better use of their non-magical soldiers. While you could still require the marking to infuse an alchemical concoction with the magic required to make it work, you wouldn't need to be so marked to... y'know... just throw a vial and have it explode. Conversely, if you specifically don't want the Red Knights making use of their unmarked soldiers in this way, then you can cross this one right off! :)
  • *Nature - The hallmark of druids across most fiction. Most of this, I assume, could be lumped under your earth element, or under the animal magic suggested by @AnarchyReins (though I would call it theriomancy instead of therionology) -- however it also includes things like withstanding extreme hot or cold temperatures (fire/ice element respectively?), passing through the wilderness without a trace (...transmutation magic?), and always knowing your way in the wild (could be divination, easily). So this definitely doesn't need to be a school on its own, it just has some nice spell ideas.
  • Shapeshifting - What it says on the tin. Turning yourself into some other creature -- the other hallmark of druids, I guess.
  • Summoning - True summoning differs from conjuration in that the creatures you summon persist once they are unsummoned, opening the possibility to resummon the same creature. You can build relationships with them in this way, and even treat one as a familiar. This only works as a discipline if you want such creatures to exist. They can either be live their own lives in another plane/dimension/whatever when their summoner doesn't have need of them, or be non-existent without him, maybe even created out of a fragment of his own soul. It all just depends on your narrative of the world. I think this could be cool as something available only to the royal family -- each member could have their own personal "Eidolon" to protect them, shaped by their individual wants.


Other suggestions, un-D&D related:

  • Healing - Given the weird way healing spells are tucked under conjuration in the D&D examples above, I absolutely think this could be justified as its own school. Especially considering you have the Feathers who specialize, in part, in healing. You could also strip the "people/creature enhancement" out of transmutation and make this into a sort of... "buffing" discipline.
  • Mental - Mental magics could cover things like telepathy (could otherwise be given to divination if you like the idea of the ability but not the school), and the telekinesis magic @AnarchyReins mentioned. You could also add in psychic damage, which would have the advantage of being undetectable through non-magical means. This seems to be well suited to our creepy Red Knight jailkeepers who release prisoners who have been mentally broken through means normal citizens find incomprehensible. Surely if they came out with their flesh burned or melted, or covered from head to toe in scars from the lash, people would understand why they'd lost their minds. But if they came out looking completely untouched...


@QuestingBeast mentioned both ceremony and rune magic, but I think these work best as methods used by other disciplines rather than being disciplines on their own. Ceremony/ritual magic could be reserved for incredibly difficult/powerful spells which may even take multiple mages to cast (resurrection by healing mages, hiding an entire building from view of anyone who looks at it by illusion mages, etc.). Similarly, runes can be reserved for spells which are supposed to be triggered long after being cast, without needing the mage present (a fire trap set in a doorway by a pyromancer, the image of an intruder suddenly transmitted to a divination mage, etc.). The weather magic @Bunny suggested could also be ritual magic (when it's on a large scale) produced by the appropriate elemental mages (hurricanes from air, earthquakes from earth, etc...) or even just normal spells by the same elements for small, incredibly localized effects.


All that said, I'm left with a couple questions about the use of the magics you've already said we definitely have. Fire/Water/Air/Earth are fairly self explanatory as far as just creating damaging effects go, or otherwise directly controlling the elements. Will more elaborate effects (perhaps air mages can learn to fly, or earth mages can turn their skin to stone to ward off damage) fall under these disciplines as well or is there a reason these ones are common? Are they actually just weaker? "Baby's first magic"?


Other than actually just creating magical light/darkness, what will the Light/Dark disciplines be able to do? And, similarly, what does Energy do that makes it distinct from the elements?


And then, finally, the one I'm most unclear on -- what sort of effects fall under Arcane? In my mind everything else that's been listed by anyone is all arcane, but I've been heavily conditioned by other fictions so I'm trying to shake that >_< I'd just like a clearer picture, if possible.


Oh my god post so long it needs a divider, I really am sorry, I just can't control myself.

My advice, if you don't mind me giving it, is to take a hard look at what a school/discipline/whatever you want to call it actually means. Is it the range of effects that can be produced, or is it the type of energy tapped into in order to produce them? If it's the latter, then I think you were done before you even asked for suggestions. Protection and warding could be done through Earth, healing is perhaps Water (or Light?), distant conversations can be carried to you through Air, Fire can produce unchecked destruction. The dead could perhaps be animated with Darkness, or with Energy, the truth could be illuminated with Light, and the dimensional veil could be torn open through Arcane, allowing the passage of all sorts of extraplanar abominations. The upside of this is that it's much simpler, and the list is shorter, but the downside is that it suggests a different grouping of skills than you've suggested in your overview. To use the Feathers as an example again, they are escape artists (that sounds incredibly Air-themed, or maybe Darkness to move unseen) but also healers (Water or Light, surely), splitting this single group between two to four very large disciplines. It also begs the question of why there is a separation between Feathers and Talons, for example, since they have a large overlap in the broad theme of getting in and out of places without being seen.


If, however, it's the former, then the vast majority of suggestions you got from other people (and all the ones you got from me) become options. The different energies can still exist as flavor within the other schools (most visibly within the destructive spells where you actually pelt somebody with an element) or as subschools in their own right, but the focus shifts to what it's doing instead of how it's done. The biggest downside to this is simply that it's more complicated, the list of disciplines gets much longer. However, the upside is that it allows for significantly more customization in what each group has access to. The Feathers can now be healers and illusionists. They're still split between two disciplines, but the disciplines are much smaller, meaning they don't have access to half the available magics just from needing to perform two different functions. The Talons may be illusionists as well, but perhaps they also excel at enchantment magic (convincing children to walk to them, or convincing their parents to walk away). They might make use of telekinesis while they're stealing their supplies and are maybe even weaker practitioners of divination (when compared to the Eyes) in order to steal information. It now all becomes very separate, and I think that's cool.


If you do go the second path, Earth, Water, Fire, and Air can still remain as more limited sub-schools of a sort of... Elemental school. Instead of the more elaborate, general effects, this would let you limit each one to spells very obviously tied to its element. Water magic could let you breathe underwater, but couldn't heal your wounds. As for Light/Dark/Energy/Arcane, there's a good chance they still make sense too, but... like I said, I can't really paint a super clear picture in my head of what they do, so I can't give you any examples.


I hope this has been helpful rather than irritating. And again... I'm sorry I'm so damned wordy >_<
Click to expand...
+1
 
FloatingAroundSpace said:
I'm working on it right now. Probably won't be finished until tomorrow or the day after, then I'll start opening for apps and once we get the key roles filled from each part we'll start RPing.
Click to expand...
Awesome take your time!
 
Irianne said:
If you're still looking for different types of magic, I usually find the schools of arcane magic in D&D are a good place to look for inspiration. I'll leave it to you whether these sound common, rare, or classified (provided you like them at all, that is). I've also tried to work out how these would all fit in with the magics you already listed and the suggestions from others. (I get a little crazy about designing magic systems... I apologize. It's just super fun. (Feel free to like... completely ignore me.)) ALSO ALSO, schools marked with a * are the ones which I thought have good spells but can easily be split between other disciplines and therefore have no reason to exist in this world as a school themselves.
  • Abjuration - Warding, banishing, countermagic, and protection spells. (Sounds very useful in a world where our main enemies will also have access to magic.)
  • Conjuration - Calling (weak summoning), creation (minor objects), healing (I would make this its own school, personally, which I listed below), and teleportation (not actually sure teleportation fits thematically here, but it doesn't seem to fit elsewhere and is a bit too limited to be its own school, I'd say).
  • Divination - Any spells to do with seeing what can't be seen. The past, future, detecting the traces of other magics, seeing things a great distance away, mind reading, etc. (This could/should include the "Elenchus"/truthseeking discipline mentioned by @AnarchyReins, because that absolutely sounds like the sort of thing our not-so-benevolent overlords would be interested in doing.)
  • Enchantment - Controlling or manipulating the actions and/or perceptions of others. Does not include enchanting magical objects.
  • *Evocation - Most of these are the big damage spells, which likely don't make sense as a single school in this setting. These are the elemental attacks, so having elemental schools breaks up the need for Evocation as a whole. It does also have the acid and sonic "elements" which you don't have here (though I never liked them, personally...). Evocation also deals with creating magical light or magical darkness, but given you have specific light and darkness disciplines, this also seems unneeded.
  • Illusion - Magical disguises ("glamors") including invisibility, and false sensations. Easier illusions can create sound, vision, or smell, but at highest level even touch can be replicated -- meaning you could make a phantom bridge and actually cross it, etc. (Otherwise illusion quickly becomes the weakest school.) This seems like an important school for your Feathers, who specialize in escape routes.
  • Necromancy - Normal fantasy stock corpse-manipulation. This also steps on the toes of "blood magic" which doesn't otherwise exist in D&D, but that could easily be separated out. Deals in both using your own life force to empower your magic, or stealing the life force of others to empower yourself. A forbidden magic in almost every fiction where it exists -- this sounds like a prime candidate for a "classified" discipline if I ever heard one.
  • Transmutation - This is where object enchantment (or cursing) falls under -- improving both objects and people/creatures. Also warping objects and polymorphing creatures -- though polymorph spells are temporary and fragile, and in this way are separate from true shapeshifting.


Other noteworthy magics which aren't part of the arcane schools:

  • Alchemy - I know "potion magic" and alchemy specifically were already suggested by both @QuestingBeast and @Bunny, but I think this one goes really well as a potential for the Red Knights since it allows them to make better use of their non-magical soldiers. While you could still require the marking to infuse an alchemical concoction with the magic required to make it work, you wouldn't need to be so marked to... y'know... just throw a vial and have it explode. Conversely, if you specifically don't want the Red Knights making use of their unmarked soldiers in this way, then you can cross this one right off! :)
  • *Nature - The hallmark of druids across most fiction. Most of this, I assume, could be lumped under your earth element, or under the animal magic suggested by @AnarchyReins (though I would call it theriomancy instead of therionology) -- however it also includes things like withstanding extreme hot or cold temperatures (fire/ice element respectively?), passing through the wilderness without a trace (...transmutation magic?), and always knowing your way in the wild (could be divination, easily). So this definitely doesn't need to be a school on its own, it just has some nice spell ideas.
  • Shapeshifting - What it says on the tin. Turning yourself into some other creature -- the other hallmark of druids, I guess.
  • Summoning - True summoning differs from conjuration in that the creatures you summon persist once they are unsummoned, opening the possibility to resummon the same creature. You can build relationships with them in this way, and even treat one as a familiar. This only works as a discipline if you want such creatures to exist. They can either be live their own lives in another plane/dimension/whatever when their summoner doesn't have need of them, or be non-existent without him, maybe even created out of a fragment of his own soul. It all just depends on your narrative of the world. I think this could be cool as something available only to the royal family -- each member could have their own personal "Eidolon" to protect them, shaped by their individual wants.


Other suggestions, un-D&D related:

  • Healing - Given the weird way healing spells are tucked under conjuration in the D&D examples above, I absolutely think this could be justified as its own school. Especially considering you have the Feathers who specialize, in part, in healing. You could also strip the "people/creature enhancement" out of transmutation and make this into a sort of... "buffing" discipline.
  • Mental - Mental magics could cover things like telepathy (could otherwise be given to divination if you like the idea of the ability but not the school), and the telekinesis magic @AnarchyReins mentioned. You could also add in psychic damage, which would have the advantage of being undetectable through non-magical means. This seems to be well suited to our creepy Red Knight jailkeepers who release prisoners who have been mentally broken through means normal citizens find incomprehensible. Surely if they came out with their flesh burned or melted, or covered from head to toe in scars from the lash, people would understand why they'd lost their minds. But if they came out looking completely untouched...


@QuestingBeast mentioned both ceremony and rune magic, but I think these work best as methods used by other disciplines rather than being disciplines on their own. Ceremony/ritual magic could be reserved for incredibly difficult/powerful spells which may even take multiple mages to cast (resurrection by healing mages, hiding an entire building from view of anyone who looks at it by illusion mages, etc.). Similarly, runes can be reserved for spells which are supposed to be triggered long after being cast, without needing the mage present (a fire trap set in a doorway by a pyromancer, the image of an intruder suddenly transmitted to a divination mage, etc.). The weather magic @Bunny suggested could also be ritual magic (when it's on a large scale) produced by the appropriate elemental mages (hurricanes from air, earthquakes from earth, etc...) or even just normal spells by the same elements for small, incredibly localized effects.


All that said, I'm left with a couple questions about the use of the magics you've already said we definitely have. Fire/Water/Air/Earth are fairly self explanatory as far as just creating damaging effects go, or otherwise directly controlling the elements. Will more elaborate effects (perhaps air mages can learn to fly, or earth mages can turn their skin to stone to ward off damage) fall under these disciplines as well or is there a reason these ones are common? Are they actually just weaker? "Baby's first magic"?


Other than actually just creating magical light/darkness, what will the Light/Dark disciplines be able to do? And, similarly, what does Energy do that makes it distinct from the elements?


And then, finally, the one I'm most unclear on -- what sort of effects fall under Arcane? In my mind everything else that's been listed by anyone is all arcane, but I've been heavily conditioned by other fictions so I'm trying to shake that >_< I'd just like a clearer picture, if possible.


Oh my god post so long it needs a divider, I really am sorry, I just can't control myself.

My advice, if you don't mind me giving it, is to take a hard look at what a school/discipline/whatever you want to call it actually means. Is it the range of effects that can be produced, or is it the type of energy tapped into in order to produce them? If it's the latter, then I think you were done before you even asked for suggestions. Protection and warding could be done through Earth, healing is perhaps Water (or Light?), distant conversations can be carried to you through Air, Fire can produce unchecked destruction. The dead could perhaps be animated with Darkness, or with Energy, the truth could be illuminated with Light, and the dimensional veil could be torn open through Arcane, allowing the passage of all sorts of extraplanar abominations. The upside of this is that it's much simpler, and the list is shorter, but the downside is that it suggests a different grouping of skills than you've suggested in your overview. To use the Feathers as an example again, they are escape artists (that sounds incredibly Air-themed, or maybe Darkness to move unseen) but also healers (Water or Light, surely), splitting this single group between two to four very large disciplines. It also begs the question of why there is a separation between Feathers and Talons, for example, since they have a large overlap in the broad theme of getting in and out of places without being seen.


If, however, it's the former, then the vast majority of suggestions you got from other people (and all the ones you got from me) become options. The different energies can still exist as flavor within the other schools (most visibly within the destructive spells where you actually pelt somebody with an element) or as subschools in their own right, but the focus shifts to what it's doing instead of how it's done. The biggest downside to this is simply that it's more complicated, the list of disciplines gets much longer. However, the upside is that it allows for significantly more customization in what each group has access to. The Feathers can now be healers and illusionists. They're still split between two disciplines, but the disciplines are much smaller, meaning they don't have access to half the available magics just from needing to perform two different functions. The Talons may be illusionists as well, but perhaps they also excel at enchantment magic (convincing children to walk to them, or convincing their parents to walk away). They might make use of telekinesis while they're stealing their supplies and are maybe even weaker practitioners of divination (when compared to the Eyes) in order to steal information. It now all becomes very separate, and I think that's cool.


If you do go the second path, Earth, Water, Fire, and Air can still remain as more limited sub-schools of a sort of... Elemental school. Instead of the more elaborate, general effects, this would let you limit each one to spells very obviously tied to its element. Water magic could let you breathe underwater, but couldn't heal your wounds. As for Light/Dark/Energy/Arcane, there's a good chance they still make sense too, but... like I said, I can't really paint a super clear picture in my head of what they do, so I can't give you any examples.


I hope this has been helpful rather than irritating. And again... I'm sorry I'm so damned wordy >_<
Click to expand...
Beast mode engaged haha


Also runic magic and ceremonial magic are more technique driven and could be an interesting sorta-science that nonmagical beings specialize in and magical beings make use of for convenience's sake.


Anyway, here's hoping this RP doesn't facilitate a squad of OP giants, and instead has a low power capacity overall, but we'll see. We shall see.
 
Well I hope you guys don't have high hopes for this magic because it's not nearly as elaborate as @Irianne has offered. Not bashing the suggestions, they're just not what I was going for in terms of magic. This was supposed to be more based on power struggles and working with what you have (which I was planning on limiting to an extreme measure for the Yellow Crows and because of the elaborate reasoning of how human beings came upon these magics) so I never considered making magic so elaborate.


Sorry for shooting down any dreams but don't expect much from it. Magic building has never been my strong-suit.
 
FloatingAroundSpace said:
Well I hope you guys don't have high hopes for this magic because it's not nearly as elaborate as @Irianne has offered. Not bashing the suggestions, they're just not what I was going for in terms of magic. This was supposed to be more based on power struggles and working with what you have (which I was planning on limiting to an extreme measure for the Yellow Crows and because of the elaborate reasoning of how human beings came upon these magics) so I never considered making magic so elaborate.
Sorry for shooting down any dreams but don't expect much from it. Magic building has never been my strong-suit.
Click to expand...
Actually, this just makes me even more optimistic. I'm totally on board with what @QuestingBeast said about hoping the power capacity is fairly low, so hearing that the Yellow Crows at least will be severely limited fills me with nothing but excitement!


Definitely gonna be a Yellow Crow.
 
@TheWretchedEgg @Lovable Dark-side @Monstar @Clock


The Color Of Royalty Overview


It's still technically the 28th as I post this so I didn't lie when I said I would have this up the next day. Please read through the overview as some things have changed. I didn't incorporate as many magic ideas as were offered. They were all very neat (special compliments to @Irianne that was some quality magic-building. You should do an RP around that and totally tag me in it), but if you read through the Lore tab you'll hopefully understand what I was going for when I said "magic". I did try my best to incorporate elements of them and use some of the ideas for the magics I did use as broad classes.


Also tag your friends. We're gonna need so many characters like holy cow.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I cannot even express how much I love that you plan to limit powers and encourage resourcefulness. Thank you. An enjoyable RP awaits, ahhh. Joy.


Already I'm entirely devoted to the Red Knights, since I've always loved playing someone who serves a cruel or rule-abiding order, and while being corrupted himself, the why and how is easily understood. Crushing rebel scum is also a favorite past-time of mine in general. (Sometimes I babysit.)


That's called a sympathetic villain you say? Pah, I've never sympathized with them. But they are interesting. I do find them interesting.
 
Animesailor8 said:
Hey this sounds extremely interesting!
The Royals should be played by people you know if that makes sense...


So when is this starting I might not be able to roleplay all the time but I'd love to join!
Click to expand...
I want to be a part of The Talons, its sounds like a blast!
 
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