The Campaign Builder's Guild

So as a few of you know, I've been making a setting after my own heart. rather than using Tolkien influences for this world, I've decided to use Redwall as a jumping off point. The world is inhabited by sentient Mice, Badgers, Otters, Frogs, Hares, Squirrels, Weasels, Rats, Lizards, Foxes, Ferrets, and so on. I've decided to name the world itself Panorah, and so far there are three known continents. Urthlind, the basic medieval fantasy land named in honor of Urthstripe from Salamandastron, the greatest of all Badger Lords. the Easterly, an Asian-esque land that I have yet to fully flesh out in it's fullness, and Icetohr (another Salamandastron reference) is a frozen land from the north, and easily the most savage of all places in Panorah save the Ice caps that neighbor Icetohr.

So that's the world so far, but there are a few things I'm still stuck on. First of all monsters. I've been giving my ecology a lot of thought, cause I don't want to include monsters I don't really care about. But the thing I really wanted to focus on was magic.

I've been giving a lot of thought to spiritual based magic in this setting. In Redwall, the Abbey that the series is based around is guarded by the spirit of Martin the Warrior who guides heroes to protect the Abbey from outside evil, and I thought that would be a cool source of power for paladins.

Rather than gaining powers from gods, the Paladins in this setting channel the power of good spirits, and this could be an interesting way of magical weapons being in this world. For instance the sword of a knight so valiant and so heroic that it became imbued with positive energy could be an unstoppable force for good in the right hands, just as a sword from a vile tyrant could become a scourge in the wrong hands.

So there are my ideas for divine magic, but arcane magic is more troublesome. I have an idea for a basic cosmology with elemental planes and a dark world, and a light world, so basically everyone's first cosmology they ever make. And as i pressed on, I thought it would be cool to implement something similar to the divine magic system from Dark Sun, where the clerics worship elementals and they can make fire, water, and earth. Something like channeling elemental spirits from the planes. And yes I'm well aware of the Shugenja, and they're cool, but I really thought about it, and reallized I was just making Avatar.

But then as I was playing my favorite game of all time, Majora's Mask, on the 3DS, I had a spark of brilliance. What about a magic system that relied on masks? You have to wear a mask to cast spells, or use magical abilities.

Wizards basically are individuals who have mastered the art of making and using masks that imbue spiritual power, and when worn by a wizard who knows how to use these masks, they can unleash the full potential of the power of their masks.

I really like this idea. It comes from a place I love, and it makes magic a more physical tangential thing. Has something like this ever been done before?

So here's an example:
The Face of Frost
A somewhat eery mask that is carved in for the face of Mice. All non Mice of small size must take a -2 penalty when wearing this mask, and all medium sized non mice must take a -4 when using this mask.
When this mask is worn by a first level wizard he may use the following spells:
Ray of Frost, Breeze, Scoop, Icicle Dagger

When He gains 2nd level he will unlock new potentials of mask.

How does this sound on it's face?

The idea behind the masks seems to me to be grounded in the same place as arcane schools, bloodlines, cleric domains, and other sorts of "spell groups" that are grouped together for thematic reasons. I think, in general, these can work quite well and promote quite a lot of synergy, but they can also lead to frustration if no defined "spell group" particularly reflects your character concept very well. It can also create balance issues if one group is dramatically better than another.

Anyway, you mention a wizard, so I wonder how you intend this system to interact with spell preparation. If it's designed to replace spell preparation, what it seems like is that essentially everyone is a spontaneous caster and contained within each mask is a list of spells known, and by changing masks, you can swap out your list of spells known. This is quite an upgrade to a standard sorcerer, generally speaking. It also puts the spellcaster whose entire shtick can be contained within a single mask at an advantage over the one who needs two or more masks to contain all the spells that she wants to cast.

Now that I think about it, a more conservative version that might work better with the standard rules would be a mask that would grant a couple of additional spells known to a spontaneous caster as long as it is worn, perhaps also with some thematic opportunity cost to wearing the mask.

QuoteNow that I think about it, a more conservative version that might work better with the standard rules would be a mask that would grant a couple of additional spells known to a spontaneous caster as long as it is worn, perhaps also with some thematic opportunity cost to wearing the mask.

If we want to hook it further into the arcane/divine divide, here...

Perhaps if divine magic represents being aided by spirits, then mask-based (arcane) magic represents deceiving spirits. Wearing a frost mask like the one detailed above would be like tricking weather spirits into aiding you, or disguising yourself as someone with authority over them. Or perhaps there's no real deception involved, and you're just assuming some kind of mystical spirit-commanding persona when you wear the mask.

Maybe this makes these characters feel less like wizards and more like some kind of shaman (which may or may not please you), but it opens up a lot of potential for drawbacks or other built-in complications: when you wear the frost mask, do spirits of warmth and heat oppose you? do powerful spirits of icy weather occasionally command you? do you take on some of the innate restrictions or weaknesses of spirits as a part of the assumption of that role?

That's a cool concept, Lmns Crn.

Sorry for not responding. Yeah, I realized this is more of a "Flavor" thing than a crunch thing. What's the difference between my masks and a spell book? The point of this idea was so that there was a tangential difference between Divine magic, and Arcane magic. I want magic to be a force driven by spirits. Paladins (or Unholy Knights on flip) are beings who channel the power of good spirits (or evil spirits) and gain extroardinary abilities from this, and I want spellcasters to have a unique "something" to distinguish them from channeling. Maybe masks are used to bind spirits and so if you want to cast fire magic, you have to have a mask that hosts a fire spirit, or nature based magic is based on a mask that hosts a tree spirit.

I like the dualism between priests working with the spirits and wizards binding them. If the spirits are immortal and largely nonsentient, the difference between them could be mostly fluff that doesn't result in all out war between priests and mages, while still creating some story to the classes.

So, when a wizard prepares their spells, they're modifying their mask, binding new spirits to it and freeing others? But what if their mask is taken?

Quote from: Lmns Crn

QuoteNow that I think about it, a more conservative version that might work better with the standard rules would be a mask that would grant a couple of additional spells known to a spontaneous caster as long as it is worn, perhaps also with some thematic opportunity cost to wearing the mask.

If we want to hook it further into the arcane/divine divide, here...

Perhaps if divine magic represents being aided by spirits, then mask-based (arcane) magic represents deceiving spirits. Wearing a frost mask like the one detailed above would be like tricking weather spirits into aiding you, or disguising yourself as someone with authority over them. Or perhaps there's no real deception involved, and you're just assuming some kind of mystical spirit-commanding persona when you wear the mask.

Maybe this makes these characters feel less like wizards and more like some kind of shaman (which may or may not please you), but it opens up a lot of potential for drawbacks or other built-in complications: when you wear the frost mask, do spirits of warmth and heat oppose you? do powerful spirits of icy weather occasionally command you? do you take on some of the innate restrictions or weaknesses of spirits as a part of the assumption of that role?

I had a thought similar to this right before I read it. My main quibble with the base idea was that I can't tell how it works from an in-world perspective. What part of building the mask is magical? How do specific types of magic, manifesting as spells, get weaved into the mask if the wizard has to wear a mask to know the magic?

Tying it into the spiritual weapons is a really cool idea, in my opinion.

Using Martin's sword means having Martin's permission to use the sword. But whittling a mask which tricks a good or bad spirit into lending some of their power definitely seems wizardly. Instead of a spell book, perhaps they'd have a book where they write down all of their knowledge of spirits in an effort to catalogue and study so that they can build better masks in future.

Mostly, I just suggest that last bit because I'll always be a fan of making wizards more studious.

It's a really cool idea, and I wish you luck with it.