Focused Arcane Schools for the Elemental Arcane Schools of magic

[Courrain]

Has anyone out there tried to create focused versions of the Elemental Arcane Schools of magic from the Advanced Player's Guide? *curious*

[I'm Hiding In Your Closet]

No, but it sounds like a good idea!

They've got a new book about elemental power scheduled for publication down the line. Assuming they haven't already, I wonder if it wouldn't be too late for them to try including something like this....

[avr]

It sounds like a good enough idea that I started on it. There's a thread for discussion here.

[Courrain]

I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:

No, but it sounds like a good idea!

They've got a new book about elemental power scheduled for publication down the line. Assuming they haven't already, I wonder if it wouldn't be too late for them to try including something like this....

Thanks. ;) I had been thinking that there should be Focused variants of the Elemental Arcane Schools where you would have one mage focusing on the element specifically, and another mage focusing on the energy that is connected with that element.

Air School- Wind and Lightning

Earth School- Earth and Acid

Water School- Water and Ice(Cold)

The Fire School is a bit trickier than the other three because it's already an element AND an energy. So maybe there could be some focus on the heat and light aspects of it?

There probably are other areas within these four elements that can be focused upon that I don't know about. But Avr's work using the quasi-elements as Focused Elemental Schools is an interesting take on this particular topic. :)

[avr]

Had you thought about the mechanics you intend to use? I adjusted the school spell lists (because the elemental schools are small enough that you can meaningfully do that), but most of the existing focused schools just change a power or two. How would your lightning subschool differ from the air school?

[Gisher]

For reference, here are the Elemental School spell lists (up to level 6) which include the updates from Planes of Power.

[avr]

Thanks, that's useful Gisher.

Does PoP mention the quasi-elements as per D&D at all?

[Courrain]

avr wrote:

Had you thought about the mechanics you intend to use? I adjusted the school spell lists (because the elemental schools are small enough that you can meaningfully do that), but most of the existing focused schools just change a power or two. How would your lightning subschool differ from the air school?

I was thinking of doing two things with regards to my focused elemental schools idea. The first was to do what you just mentioned in your reply. I was going to replace the school powers in order to create the Wind subschool and Lightning subschool. With the Wind subschool, I was going to replace the Lightning Flash ability with a wind-related power. With the latter, I was going to replace Air Supremacy and Cyclone with a lightning-related power.

The second thing I would like to do is to create two separate bonus spell lists- one for spells with the Air descriptor and one for spells with Electricity descriptor.

I haven't figured out the replacement powers yet. But as for the bonus spells, I know of a search engine that can list every spell with the air and lightning descriptors.

Anyway, the lightning subschool would differ from the air school in that it would two lightning related powers and provide bonus spells with the electrical descriptor.

[Gisher]

avr wrote:

Thanks, that's useful Gisher.

Does PoP mention the quasi-elements as per D&D at all?

Unfortunately, no. They did include new spells for Metal and Wood, but since I was compiling the list for the Sha'ir Occultist I didn't include them.