The Campaign Builder's Guild

Yeah, the general idea is that Zeus is more of a court and civic religion - important to the people at the top and for its big public celebrations and the like. Common folk would spend more of their time on other worship like Demeter or Poseidon, whatever is more directly related to their lifestyle.

The pantheon is not intended to be thought of as a direct translation of historical religion, just inspired by it. So for example, I've decided to collapse the roles of Hera and Hestia, change the profile of Artemis a bit, drop out pieces of mythology that don't fit my modified Hellenic-inspired culture, etc.

For the purposes of this thread, I'm trying to get a handle on what kinds of magic ought to be associated with different kinds of religion, so I chose a couple examples from my own setting. Here, it seems like Zeus is pretty well represented by a dichotomy of fairly standard spirit and essence casters, whose training is all in the context of a particular institution. So they aren't necessarily channeling power from outside themselves.

On the other hand, the Eleuvan Spring cultists may be gaining some kind of knowledge directly from communion with their patron spirit. This spirit need not even be fully conscious in the usual sense, but just the changed perceptions give them the effect of Water and Plant pattern casting. But I've still got to figure out how to deal with ritualistic things like awakening the spirits.

Anyone who has other ideas for religions that are of a different sort is welcome to post them - it is just more food for thought.

Edit: Link to Hellenic Kingdoms

Still working on a bunch of more crunchy stuff, but here's another taste:

Magic Items
In this system, magic items are rare and difficult to create. The basic reason is simple - creating magic requires an exercise of Will, and you can't bottle that. Not easily, anyway. Nevertheless, there are ways to create enchantments that are similar in some ways to magic items. These kinds of objects will normally not be detected as magical, nor are they subject to magical dispelling. Often these items will definitely be identifiable as magically created or magical in effect.

Because of the relative difficulty and limited effectiveness of magic items, they just won't be as common or as important in this system as they commonly are in D&D.

Enhanced artificing
An essence mage can use her magical abilities to enhance or aid the process of creating an object. This can result in an object that is materially superior to a mundane item, but it won't actually be magical in the usual sense. For example, a mage who is also a bladesmith could use his Metal pattern and Control technique while smithing a blade, to reduce or eliminate flaws, create a keener edge, and the like. The result could be a sword that is harder, sharper, and less breakable than a normal blade could hope to be. The downside is that this technique must be applied as the item is being crafted, so that the effects are woven deeply and permanently into the essence of the object. Otherwise, the results will be just as temporary as if a spell had been cast on the item.

A more advanced example might be the use of magic to create an object of a type that might not normally be possible. For example, a mage who is also a jeweler could use Earth pattern and Control technique to merge a diamond and ruby together to create a single gem that is half diamond, half ruby. Or a more elaborate and difficult process using Earth pattern, Fire pattern, and Transform technique could embed a tiny, eternal flame in the heart of a ruby, creating a gem that radiates warmth permanently.

Spirit Binding
An alternative form of magic item can be created by binding a spirit of some kind (imp, demon, genie, severed soul, animal spirit, etc.) to an object. The bound spirit then provides the force of Will required to create magic. The only problem is, how do you control the spirit to make it do what you want? The magic powered by the spirit's Will is naturally under the control of that spirit. Magic items like this are potentially much more powerful, but also much riskier. They are also harder to create and use, since you need at least a fair degree of spirit magic to bind and control a spirit.

One approach to this uses a bound spirit as an empty vessel for spells. This only works with the weakest forms of spirits, whose Will is relatively easily bent and transformed. Often this will be some kind of animal-level spirit, with a spell or two imprinted on its will by the item's creator. Anyone with even a modest amount of Spirit Domination ability can compel the spirit to cast its spell. Or, with the use of higher levels of spirit magic, the spirit can be coerced into loosing the spell under certain pre-determined circumstances. Creating items like this is difficult because of the complex combinations of different types of magic required to bind, coerce, and imprint spells on the spirit. Also, the capacity of such weak spirits to create magic is limited.

That is quite incredible. I have been keeping track of this and I think your magic system is so complex and wonderfully crafted. I like how you have magicians using their magic to enhance their perceptions when crafting mundane items of extremely high quality.

I was thinking about a possible idea. A magician uses their magic to craft a masterwork body of iron armor and then binds a spirit to it with spells that will enable the magician to command it. Tada! one iron golem.

Quote from: NomadicI was thinking about a possible idea. A magician uses their magic to craft a masterwork body of iron armor and then binds a spirit to it with spells that will enable the magician to command it. Tada! one iron golem.

Well, I'm not sure I'd call that an iron golem, maybe just an animated suit of armor. But something like that could work.

First, you'll need to find a spirit that knows how to fight. If you bound a dog spirit to the suit of armor, it wouldn't know what to do with it. The spirit of a recently dead warrior would be a good choice, or some kind of imp or demon.

Second, you'll need some hefty spirit magic to bind a spirit of that strength. That's certainly not attainable, but will require a pretty powerful mage.

Third, you'll need to secure the cooperation of the spirit. Otherwise it might turn on you. Some kind of domination would be a possibility, but you might get voluntary cooperation with some kind of deal or through religious or other loyalties.

Then, you'll have to imprint a Metal Control spell on the spirit, if the spirit does not have this ability naturally. This would allow the spirit to control the actions and movement of the armor.

Once I have a real system in place, I could crunch-a-tize this a bit more, but that would be the general approach.

Here's my more detailed writeup on spirit magic so far:

Spirit Sense: A character with this feat is awakened to the spirit world, and is able to sense the presence of spirits (whether corporeal or incorporeal) in the vicinity. No other spirit magic feats can be acquired until the spirit sense is awakened.
Spirit knowledge: Tyro Spirit, Journeyman Spirit, Master Spirit, Grandmaster Spirit
Tyro Spirit is the basic requirement for any kind of spirit magic effects. Further development provides greater knowledge of spirits, which will sharpen the spirit sense and allow for deeper and more complex effects.
Spirit Magic Paths: Each path provides a set of spirit magic feats allowing various related spirit magic effects.
The Path of Mind: Sensing thoughts and emotions
The Path of Pain: Spirit and will attacks
The Path of Necromancy: Binding and compelling spirits
The Path of Dominance: Controlling thoughts and emotions
The Path of the Aether: Expanding spirit presence across space and time
The Path of the Magi: Counter-magic
The Path of Healing: Mental and spiritual restoration

I'd like to have details of the feats in each path, their prerequisites, etc. I've been a bit stalled on working out details, and I've decided that part of the reason is that I need to start actually making spells to see how the system will work itself out.

So here is a link to the start of my spell list. As of this writing, there's only one spell there (And its an essence spell even), but it will give you a feel for the stat block at least. Feel free to log in (use Guest/password, or create your own user profile) and add comments or suggest spells. Or post ideas here. I can work out details, but it is helpful to have lots of ideas to work from. Or check back occasionally to see what's been added.

I'll be back with more after I've worked out 20-30 good spirit spells.

It has been a while since I posted on this.

Partly, this is because I started to realize that making this magic system work would require essentially a whole new game system, and I've been working on that a lot. Also, real life has its own demands. Hopefully some of that will be easing up a bit. (Starting now, my wife only goes to school two nights a week instead of four, so I'll have more help with the three-year-olds.)

Meantime, I've been making incremental progress on my stuff, but putting it on my own wiki. Here's the latest details on the Path of Mind.

I think this spirit magic stuff is pretty central to my system and my world. The metaphysics is largely based on a gnostic, mind-over-matter view, and the spirit magic really emphasizes this nicely. It really has a lot of impact on how magic tends to manifest in the world and society.

For example, magic items in the standard D&D sense are almost non-existent. (You can't cast a spell without Will, so a magic item that can cast a spell would have to have its own Will, making it that much harder to create and control.)

Another example: Traditional necromantic spells are just harder, and correspondingly rare. You can't animate a corpse without giving it a Will, which requires subduing and binding a spirit of some kind, then imprinting it with the spell abilities to control its new "body". There's just no easy way to do this - it requires substantial skills in two vastly different areas of magic.

So I've been working very slowly in the spirit magic area, trying to make it feel "just right" for the type of world I'm envisioning. Hopefully it will be worth the effort; at least I'm having some fun with it myself.

yay!!!
I'm glad you're back working on this.  I just wanted t say that.