RE: The opposition of Schools of Magic laid out in the History of Thassilon in RotRL #1 sidebar.
Do you take this to be an immutable fact of nature in Golarion – sort of a magical law of physics, or is this based on deep seated tradition unique to ancient Thassilon? I’m trying to decide how I want to set this up for my campaign and if I want to limit specialist wizards to the specific opposition schools laid out in the article.
Part of me loves the flavor and feeling of balance and symmetry, but I’m not one to say “no” to my players without good reason. Has anyone else followed this line of thought for their Golarion Campaigns? What did your players think?
RE: The opposition of Schools of Magic laid out in the History of Thassilon in RotRL #1 sidebar.
Do you take this to be an immutable fact of nature in Golarion – sort of a magical law of physics, or is this based on deep seated tradition unique to ancient Thassilon? I’m trying to decide how I want to set this up for my campaign and if I want to limit specialist wizards to the specific opposition schools laid out in the article.
Part of me loves the flavor and feeling of balance and symmetry, but I’m not one to say “no” to my players without good reason. Has anyone else followed this line of thought for their Golarion Campaigns? What did your players think?
This always struck me as something unique to the practice of the rune-based Thassilonian brand of magic. I don't think there's anything that would require you to select certain opposition schools if you want to specialize inherent to the world of Golarion.
Creative Director
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The official line is that the Thassilonian schools of magic are Thassilonian traditions, not anything intrinsic to the way magic works. Since the base rules allow a specialist wizard to pick his opposition schools as he wishes, I would say that there's nothing intrinsically "opposition" in the schools of magic anyway.
Oh, shoot. Given the title and the fact that I'm getting ready to start a campaign in the Academae, I had really hoped that something had been raised that would be chewed over at length. Anybody care to wax an elephant?
I will try and give it a shot.
After the fall of Thasilon most arcane practitioners in the north followed their traditions for arcane school specialization. It was a system that had shown itself to be effective, so why fix it?
One man, a scholar who has had at a least a dozen different names in various annals of recorded history, dared to buck this system of specialization. He first did this by proving that Divination magic was a viable school of specialization, becoming the first recorded diviner.
Not satisfied with just this coup against traditional Thasilonian arcane theory, he realized that the addition of an eighth school of magic also upset the traditional symmetry that was found in opposition schools under Thasilonian arcane theory. His postulates allowed his many students to specialize in any school of magic with any two other schools as opposition schools, breaking Thasilonian Arcane Symmetry theory once and for all.
His continued work was in the elimination of opposition schools all together, but unfortunately he was not able to meet this goal prior to his untimely death (guess a diviner should have seen it coming). He did make some great strides though and through his work specialists in the school of divination, and divination alone, only need to sacrifice a single school as opposition for their specialization.
Other works of his have included special feats that allow access to spells from opposition schools or the use of spell trigger items utilizing those schools.
Most arcane colleges in the north claim they are descended from his teachings, though it is doubtful that any still standing can legitimize this claim.
Anyway... not canon, but I figure it makes for some interesting flavor still.
Sean Mahoney
I always envisioned the nature of Thassilonian magic to be closely tied to the role magic played in their civilization. Magic and rulership were closely tied, and Thassilonian rulership appears to have bordered on the divine. There was clearly a moral - perhaps even religious! - aspect to the virtue-based magic system. This, of course, later fell into sin magic, but I have to imagine that if this was the case, the opposite qualities of these magical schools had nothing to do with the magic itself, but rather were rooted in the quasi-religious traditions and tenets of opposition and alignment that the Thassilonian empire observed.
Thanks for all the input guys - now I am able to keep the flavor logical, but still not stymie my players. Good stuff guys. :-)