This is something I've been thinking about for a long time. We have arcane, divine, and psionic as sources for magic. What could be a new source of power that is unique and different from those 3? I'm not talking stuff like 'shadow magic' or 'elemental magic'. That could be easily described as arcane with a twist. Nor am I talking about drawing power from demons or souls or dragons or anything like that as any of those could be described as arcane or divine. I'm talking about something entirely new. Something to make a 9th level caster who isn't like a wizard, cleric, or psion.
The problem is that I'm coming up blank. Anything I do think up can easily fit under one of the other categories as simply a different spin or flavor. I'm not certain if I'm simply not creative enough or if there really isn't anything that can't be defined by the sources we have now. Maybe the categories are so broadly defined they can act as a catch-all.
I feel like there's something there sometimes. Like a moment of clarity but I fall just short and can't wrap my mind around it.
In the end I decided to post here and see what anyone else has come up with. Honestly I just hope I'm conveying what I'm talking about well enough for everyone to understand.
I kind of like that there's only two (three if you count psionics). It keeps things simple and elegant. Besides, the differences between divine and arcane are already too nebulous for my tastes. I would have liked the type of magic have a greater impact on the spells themselves. At the very least, have a "divine" and an "arcane" spell list that all related classes draw from rather than make a whole new spell list for each class.
But if I had to make a new source, I would say "primal" or "nature." Life itself functions as a source of magic. Instead of drawing power from a god or from the fabric of reality, primal magic uses the collective network of living organisms, following concepts of animism. Yes, one could consider this a subset of divine magic, but there exists a noticeable difference between the druid/ranger and cleric/oracle/paladin.
Another idea is planar magic. Again, one could consider this a subset of arcane. But it's an interesting idea where the plane you draw power from has a major impact on how your magic functions.
Way back years ago, soon after Unearthed Arcana came out, I was fiddling with a "sources of power" thingy after reading the Magic Rating section. Magic rating is a system that replaces your caster level for everything that is determined by caster level (range, targets, effect, area, duration, dispel checks, DCs, etc) for spells and spell-like abilities. But modified into different sources of power: Arcane, Divine, Nature, Psionic, and Chi.
My breakdown was as such:
Arcane - Wizard, Sorcerer, Rogue
Divine - Cleric, Paladin, Fighter
Nature - Druid, Ranger, Barbarian
Psionic - psionic classes
Chi - Bard, Monk
Of course, this was back in 3rd edition, and I didn't bother to include the classes from Complete Divine, Complete Arcane, Complete Adventurer, Complete Warrior and Complete Psionic (did that even have classes?).
And then 4th edition came out and it basically used something similar. I am not sure if I would introduce magic rating in Pathfinder, as not many people truly multiclass to make it an effective system to use.
Reasons for placing Bard in the Chi power source: Their magic power comes from their music, singing, or dancing. To me, that felt more "power of self" than truly arcane magical power like a sorcerer.
It kind of gotten out of hand with 4th Edition.
I kind of like that there's only two (three if you count psionics). It keeps things simple and elegant. Besides, the differences between divine and arcane are already too nebulous for my tastes. I would have liked the type of magic have a greater impact on the spells themselves. At the very least, have a "divine" and an "arcane" spell list that all related classes draw from rather than make a whole new spell list for each class.
But if I had to make a new source, I would say "primal" or "nature." Life itself functions as a source of magic. Instead of drawing power from a god or from the fabric of reality, primal magic uses the collective network of living organisms, following concepts of animism. Yes, one could consider this a subset of divine magic, but there exists a noticeable difference between the druid/ranger and cleric/oracle/paladin.
Another idea is planar magic. Again, one could consider this a subset of arcane. But it's an interesting idea where the plane you draw power from has a major impact on how your magic functions.
This is one of the points I brought up. The basic sources are extremely broad. They cover pretty much anything we could think up. We would have to narrow their definition to open up new ideas. And if we did so how would make the new power sources different?
But the other side of what I'm talking about is kind of high concept. A new power source different from anything we currently know about. Something we just haven't thought of yet. This is where my brain stalls out. What hasn't been touched upon? Is this something that has to be completely made up or is there something that hasn't occurred to me yet?
If nothing else I just wanted to talk about something that isn't "Let's fix the fighter/monk/rogue.", "How can we make casters and martials equal?", or "Look at how broken this feat is if we don't use common sense and take advantage of poor wording!"
Eh. Martial, Arcane, Psionic, and I'm happy.
Eh. Martial, Arcane, Psionic, and I'm happy.
What? No divine?
Science magic, though that's already covered with the Alchemist.
Eh. Martial, Arcane, Psionic, and I'm happy.What? No divine?
Nope.
Pain magic. You call forth effects from the blistering trauma of the universe. Not the poultry tool of demons or devils. Pain spells are evoked from the endless cycles of suffering enduring sense before the invention of such base creatures.
sometimes suffering is so great the universe spasms in somewhat controllable ways to ease the suffering. Some unenlightened people call this magic but those that practice the pain arts know its much deeper and darker.
anyway whatever effects pain magic can do is up to you its just what came to mind.
This is something I've been thinking about for a long time. We have arcane, divine, and psionic as sources for magic.
"Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
A character with access to some technology from an extremely advanced culture, beyond anything their own culture can replicate, would have potential to work as an alternate magic source within a fantasy setting. Channeling from an ancient and/or alien source as if by magic. You could easily design a class around that concept that fits the role of a pure caster, prepared or spontaneous could both work.
There is also the steampunk type technology, such as the Alchemist and Gunslinger, but that's slightly different. In that situation someone is cobbling together gadgetry to fill the role of magic. There is plenty of room to come up with some sort of Tinker type class that works mechanically differently from the Alchemist yet is still drawing from a similar source (steampunk level technology).
Science magic, though that's already covered with the Alchemist.
And with great tech, comes awesome mechs!
More seriously, Alchemy, science/tech, occult, soul, ki/chi, pact, animism, and all sorts of other things could all be used as a source of power and flavored and mechanically different than those that already exist and even have subsystems within them. I suppose how much you want to break it down depends on your own opinions on things. In 3.5 the systems could be broken down(by book) into martial adepts, invocation(warlock/dragon shaman), incarnum, pact/shadow/truename, psionic, vancian caster, and mundane. 4E has primal, shadow, martial, psionic, arcane, and divine. Pathfinder currently uses arcane/divine and mundane, and to be honest because arcane and divine use vancian they aren't actually very mechanically varied so much as they are varied in spell list.
Lots and lots of options.
Pain magic. You call forth effects from the blistering trauma of the universe. Not the poultry tool of demons or devils. Pain spells are evoked from the endless cycles of suffering enduring sense before the invention of such base creatures.
sometimes suffering is so great the universe spasms in somewhat controllable ways to ease the suffering. Some unenlightened people call this magic but those that practice the pain arts know its much deeper and darker.
anyway whatever effects pain magic can do is up to you its just what came to mind.
This is not a terrible idea. Why not take it a step further and just do something along the lines of emotion based magic?
But what would be its area of expertise?
Emotion based magic sounds like what the Bard would use if it was an option over arcane.
"Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
A character with access to some technology from an extremely advanced culture, beyond anything their own culture can replicate, would have potential to work as an alternate magic source within a fantasy setting. Channeling from an ancient and/or alien source as if by magic. You could easily design a class around that concept that fits the role of a pure caster, prepared or spontaneous could both work.
There is also the steampunk type technology, such as the Alchemist and Gunslinger, but that's slightly different. In that situation someone is cobbling together gadgetry to fill the role of magic. There is plenty of room to come up with some sort of Tinker type class that works mechanically differently from the Alchemist yet is still drawing from a similar source (steampunk level technology).
I actually designed a class that uses magic powered tech (found here). But I used the basic assumption it was working off an arcane power source. Indeed that's the hard part to separate. There's a lot of devices that are powered by arcane magic. Why wouldn't steampunk type technology be as well? If not then what's powering them?
Emotion based magic sounds like what the Bard would use if it was an option over arcane.
Indeed it does. It seems like arcane magic covers emotions as well. The bard spell list is full of emotion based spells now that I look at it.
This is not a terrible idea. Why not take it a step further and just do something along the lines of emotion based magic?
But what would be its area of expertise?
I think a close analogue of this is the Psionic Wilder. A passionate combatant who uses outburst of emotions to power himself.
I once made some beings for a setting that were based off four emotional paradigms. They ended up being very gish in nature for the most part.
I'd think whatever you want emotions to represent would first have to ask you what emotions you want to represent. Being passionate and angry are different from sorrow and fear.
I think you'd need to better define what arcane magic is. It's vague enough in Pathfinder that it essentially covers everything that isn't granted by a deity. You'd have to crop out some of the arcane list to make another group of spells that's unique.
I think you'd need to better define what arcane magic is. It's vague enough in Pathfinder that it essentially covers everything that isn't granted by a deity. You'd have to crop out some of the arcane list to make another group of spells that's unique.
I suppose that is the core of the problem. With such a huge scope assigned to arcane, and divine, there's just not a lot of room for anything else.
Take divine magic for instance. I think that there should have been a split between divine and 'nature' magic. It would have really helped separate druids and clerics.
Arcane magic is a different story though. It's hard to define and thus hard to filter out what could be arcane and what isn't.
Eh, I see Emotion and Pain as too close to a blanket Mental source that would include them and Psionics.
I second Primal. Was used to great effect in 4e. I love the concept of a rawer, deeper, older magic. But it still could be both Arcane and Divine or either or none. ;)
A Chthonic, Entropic or Dark/Shadow source might be sufficiently different from Arcane or Divine, but I could see it being any of those as well. Or a reverse of Primal. Pain and Emotion (the darker emotions) could go in here too... ;)
I can see Arcane/Divine as one thing if you draw the source to be causality, or have a more elastic or non-existant truck with gods.
For your Gadgeteer, a Magitech source might work too, though he haziness of why he source isn't still magic eludes me currently. Perhaps the point at whih technology not only harnesses but transmutes raw magic? Or transmutes Primal magic... And no, I haven't read muh of the Magitech thread...
Really what I'm seeing is less of hard boundaries, and more of a color wheel, with serious overlaps...
I used the basic assumption it was working off an arcane power source. Indeed that's the hard part to separate. There's a lot of devices that are powered by arcane magic.
The sufficiently advanced technology source wouldn't be arcane magic powered technology, obviously. It would be powered by technology. Science fiction provides plenty of examples of things that would appear magic-like to a primitive society, but are driven by physics and not arcane magic. Cold fusion, nanotechnology, wormholes, quantum entanglement, whatever. There are other game systems out there that have science fiction "magic" systems rather than arcane magic.
The game mechanics would fit into a spell caster type set of abilities, but they wouldn't actually be magic spells, nor would the technology they draw on be built on the foundation of magic. Spell like effects driven by an impossibly advanced grasp of science and technology. A fundamentally different power source, but usable toward similar purposes as arcane/divine/psionic.
Pathfinder game worlds routinely have gods, superhuman races of beings, people achieving transcendent levels of power, and ancient mysteries spanning huge time scales. There are entities with intelligence scores many times higher than the smartest mundane human to ever live in our world. Why shouldn't some of those superhuman, near immortal minds develop enough of a grasp of the physics of their universe to be able to manipulate it using advanced technology?
The PC character would not have a full understanding of such advanced technology, but would have some connection allowing them to manipulate it as if by magic, despite the fact that it is physics and not magic.
Why wouldn't steampunk type technology be as well? If not then what's powering them?
There's plenty of steampunk fiction written in settings that don't have arcane magic. It could be technology powered by technology, rather than magic driven technology. In general steampunk physics is nothing that would actually work properly with real life physics. But it's fiction, so we handwave that away, just like we accept that there is magic. In such settings we allow technology to be more robust and easily attainable than it is in real life because it's simply more fun to do it that way.
In one setting I'm developing, there's emotion-based supernatural power called rae. It's similar to ki, except drawn from an individual's emotions rather than their spiritual power. Rae enables them to perform explosive supernatural abilities based on the person's personality. Drawing from negative emotions has greater but less controllable raw power. Known only to greatest of masters, rae actually comes from a symbiotic, metaphysical creature that infects the hearts of those native to the setting. The creature is capable of feeding off of emotions and converting it to energy. The creature favoring negative emotions, an individual who relies on negative emotions for their power is unknowingly submitting themselves to the will of this being within.
Pain magic. You call forth effects from the blistering trauma of the universe. Not the poultry tool of demons or devils. Pain spells are evoked from the endless cycles of suffering enduring sense before the invention of such base creatures.
sometimes suffering is so great the universe spasms in somewhat controllable ways to ease the suffering. Some unenlightened people call this magic but those that practice the pain arts know its much deeper and darker.
anyway whatever effects pain magic can do is up to you its just what came to mind.
This is not a terrible idea. Why not take it a step further and just do something along the lines of emotion based magic?
But what would be its area of expertise?
Or even sensation based magic. I imagine none of the spells would look to flashy. it would be buffs and debuffs. healing type stuff. some illusion type things.
But on the idea of emotion based magic. One facet could be if you have some sort of moral bonus or penalty it might make the magic stronger or weaker. You could even perhapse remove a bonus or penalty as a source of fuel for your magic. It could be a mechanic in emotion magic. You could for examble make yourself rage (or something similar) and burn off rounds per day to make your emotion rage spells more potent. rage might cover damaging spells ala "Fiery rage"