Mage
The following changes apply to Mages from 2nd edition rules.
A) Mana & Proficiencies
B) Schools of Magic
C) Familiars
D) Barred Schools and attribute requirements
For Mage Characters, Table 22 of the players handbook shows 2 important pieces of Data that must be modified to fit this game. They are as follows:
A) Mana & Proficiencies
- Mages will use a mana pool to cast spells. see section V in house rules for details.
- Mages gain the Read/Writing non weapon proficiency as a free slot.
- mages gain the spellcraft (arcane) non weapon proficiency as a free slot.
B) Schools of Magic
- All wizard characters will start their career with 1 single wizard specialist school. This will be a school in which their master had major or minor access.
- Wizards can cast any spell from any school of up to and including 3rd level spells, excluding barred schools. Barred schools are considered the cross school from the wizard’s chosen major or minor school of magic. It is important to note that spells that appear on multiple school lists are learnable. However, the wizard would consider them to be “cumbersome to deal with”.
- In an effort to not be too limiting, only the direct cross school will be considered barred. Adjacent schools of magic to the direct cross school will not be considered barred.
- A wizard can potentially learn every spell from his or her major school of magic, so long as they have the intelligence, training, and access to components.
- Every 5 levels, the wizard will unlock a minor school slot. This slot can be used to select any school that is not a direct cross school from the wizard’s known schools.
- A minor school slot will increase a wizard’s learning capacity in that school from 3rd level to 4th level spells. Thereafter, each new minor slot devoted to a minor school will unlock 1 additional spell level.
- A minor school slot can be stacked into an already known minor school, or unlock a new school’s 4th level capacity.
- It should be noted that each time a minor school is opened the cross school is also closed.
- For example: A 15th level wizard will have access to 7th level spells from his or her major school of magic. At 15th level, the wizard will have also unlocked 3 minor school slots. These slots can be used in any combination to learn up to 4th level spells in 3 new schools, or they can be devoted into a minor school, to increase capacity up to 6th level spells.
C) Familiars
- Mages have expanded abilities for familiars. A mage can imbue his or her familiar with a spellability from his or her specialization or a minor school of knowledge. For every 5 levels of the mage, a familiar can be imbued with one spell that the mage knows. Spells that the familiar can learn are limited to 4th level. Familiars can only know one spell per spell level up to 4th in the following order: a) The 1st spell a familiar learns must be first level. B) the 2nd is second level. c) the 3rd is third level. d) the 4th is fourth level.
- Spells beyond the 4th spell that a familiar learn can be from any of the first 4 spell levels. NOTE: if a mage achieves a critical success on their find familiar spell check, the familiar can be imbued with double the number of spells per level.
- Familiars cast their spells as if they had an intelligence equal to 9 + 1/2 of the mage's level. Note that this is not the familiar's actual intelligence, it is just how they cast spells. Normal spell casting rules otherwise apply.
- Familiars have hit points equal to 1d4 plus the mage's level.
- Note that if a familiar dies while on a task for the mage, the mage will permanently lose hit points equal to the original 1d4 roll, until a new familiar can be secured. Note also that find familiar can only be cast once per year, as per the player's handbook. This hit point loss does not apply if the familiar was killed while not on a task for the mage, or of natural causes.
D) Barred Schools and attribute requirements
For Mage Characters, Table 22 of the players handbook shows 2 important pieces of Data that must be modified to fit this game. They are as follows:
- the column with score requirements must be modified. any score requirement that shows 16, will be changed to 14. any score requirement of 15 or less will be changed to 13. This is necessary because in a world of score ratios, keeping high score requirements like that will produce a far less population of mages.
- the column that shows barred schools for mage specialists will also be modified. Instead of having 2 barred schools (the opposing and the opposing adjacent), the new barred school will only be the opposing. This is necessary to encourage players to play mage characters. in a world where the class is significantly modified to be more in line with modern day mages, instead of a class system that is ~30 years old.