Magic in Acteos, Land of the Sundered Chronicles

I've been doing a lot of thinking about magic in Acteos, the land of the Sundered Chronicles setting.  I'm largely happy with the standard Vancian spell systems in OSR games, but I feel it needs a few tweaks to fit my vision for the world.

So far, the following are true:

• There is no divine magic.  The original gods are gone, and their replacements don't grant spells to their followers.  Thus, there is no Cleric class.
• The Mage class covers your typical wizard types as well as priests.  All spell casters prepare spells from a spell book.  In fact, the temples and clergies of the ascended gods are the primary body of spell research and training.
• Spells are split into three categories that match alignments: Law, Neutral, and Chaos.  All mages can learn Neutral spells, but must pick Law or Chaos at character creation.
• Outside of the appropriate use of magic by the priesthoods, the practice of magic is illegal.  An agency known as the Emberstorm exists to police the use of magic and is specialized in hunting down rogue mages.
• There isn't anything morally wrong about the use of magic, but it does happen to be illegal regardless of the reason it's used.
• This is also only true in nations that have signed the Emberstorm Treaty and are under such governance.  The Emberstorm does also have agents outside of their jurisdiction that handle powerful mages, which the organization sees as a threat to the safety of all of Acteos.
• I find purely damage dealing spells to be boring, but necessary choices.  Thus, there will be no damage-only spells.  Instead, mages can convert prepared spells into either a healing or damaging effect, as described below.

Healing and Destroying

At first level, all mages must choose to have the ability to Heal or to Destroy.  The mage can convert a prepared spell into either a Healing effect or a Destruction effect depending on their choice.

Heal

The mage can expend a prepared spell to, instead of the spell's normal effect, heal a touched creature for 1d8 points of damage per level of the prepared spell.

Destroy

The mage can expend a prepared spell to, instead of the spell's normal effect, create a destructive blast of arcane energy.  The form of this blast determined by the mage as the spell is cast.

A single target ray or bolt:  Requires a successful attack roll, and deals Xd8 points of damage, where X is equal to the 1 + the prepared spell's level (so, a 2nd level spell converted into a bolt deals 3d8 damage on a hit).  This attack has a range of 60 ft.

An area of effect:  Deals Xd6 damage, where X is equal to the prepared spell's level.  Can take one of the following shapes.

- A 30 ft cone shooting out from the caster's hand.

- A 20 ft radius explosion centered within 60 ft of the caster.

- A 40 ft line shooting out from the caster's hand.

- Other, as approved by the Referee.

This is, of course, a rough idea that has a lot more work to do.  For example, how does the mage determine what type of damage (Fire, Lightning, etc) his destruction effects deal?  Does he have full access to any damage type (which seems too strong), or does he start with a small number of damage types and earn more as he levels (which seems fiddly)?

The Fighter

After reading +James Spahn's blog post about spicing up his fighters for his B/X and Labyrinth Lord games, I've decided to do the same and share my variant Fighter class for Swords and Wizardry Complete.

While I've never had a shortage of fighters in my games over the last 25 years, I do think the fighter needs some extra oomph and a little more variety beyond weapon choice.  The fighting style specializations are my attempt at doing so.

As a side note, "Maximum Weapon Damage" is a rule I use.  Basically, I don't restrict weapon usage by class, but instead have a maximum size on the damage die based on class.  So, a magic-user can wield a longsword, but he's only going to deal 1d6 damage with it.  Fighters and paladins have no such maximum die, and always roll the damage die of the weapon they're using.

The Paladin

It seems rather fitting to me that I start my new blog with a post about my favorite class of all time: the Paladin.  It seriously is the best class.  Whenever I pick up a new RPG core book, the first thing I flip to is the Paladin.  I've been obsessed with this class since childhood.  A big part of it is sourced from how awesome it was to become a Paladin in the Quest for Glory PC game series. It was the ultimate reward for being a good guy, and this is something that's stuck with me since.

Anyway, you're probably wondering who I am and what I'm all about.  I'm half of the team over at Sundered Blade Games.  My wife and I publish RPG adventures and source-books together, which is pretty fantastic.  I also write an irregular guest feature over on my wife's art blog Markers and Meows that I call Maps and Meows.  Basically, I draw maps, post them, and detail my drawing processes.

Now that I've bored you with all this new blog introduction stuff, I'll bring you to the actual topic of this post: The Paladin.  This is a S&W variant class that's in early stages - I'm going to label these kinds of things "half-baked".  It's an idea that I haven't done much testing on.