What I want to talk about today is a second thing that I’ve seen in Final Fantasy XV, and is based on the way magic…
What I want to talk about today is a second thing that I’ve seen in Final Fantasy XV, and is based on the way magic works in that game.
The intention is to create a new type of spellcaster that is (hopefully) different enough to be considered a viable option for play. Maybe what I want already exists, and I just haven’t run across it, so this may be more “Can you point me to an existing playbook” rather than “Can you help me build a playbook”.
In FFXV, Noctis “draws” elemental energy from special nodes around the world. It only has three elements: Fire, Ice, and Lighting, but I would use four: Fire, Water, Wind and Earth.
Noctis can then use Elemency to combine the energy he’s drawn in different combinations, and also ad a catalyst, which add different effects to the spell: Some catalysts cause the spell to be case multiple times for one “casting”, some add status effects like slow, poison, stop, etc., some cure the caster at the same time they damage the target.
There are skills in the Acension module that allow Noctis to draw more energy from an elemental node, make the base power of a spell more powerful, add castings to the base number generated and so on.
The drawback to this is that the only spells you can generate are attack spells (with possibly a beneficial effect for yourself thrown in).
For DW I’d want to be able to create non-combat spells as well. Combine Fire and Wind element with a green wood catalyst to make a “Smoke Screen” spell. Combine Earth and a spiral shell of some kind (snail shell, maybe) to craft a “Stair” spell, which has the effect of creating an earthen spiral staircase.
Of course you COULD also craft powerful combat spells as well.
I feel this is more robust and leads to more creativity than the Druids Elemental Mastery, and is quite different from the Awful Good Games version of Wizard.
Playbook thoughts:
Name: Spellcrafter
Starting Moves (These three at least, and possibly a couple more that seem appropriate):
Draw Elemental Power – Does not use a stat and generates hold-like elemental currency (Air, Earth etc.).
Craft a Spell – Uses the Stat (I’m thinking probably WIS), consumes the currency, crafts the spell and generates “castings”
Cast a Spell – Does not use a stat, but consumes “castings”
All of these will be affected my advanced moves (Drawing more Elemental Power at a Node, generating more powerful spells, generating more “castings”, a chance to NOT use a “casting”, etc.)
More moves would be things like “discovering Nodes that weren’t obvious”, gaining benefits when you have at least one of an element “held”: + 1 armor if you have at least one Earth held, + 1 to DD with DEX with Wind, etc.
All of this is very high level thinking, and all criticism and advice is most welcome! If it exists somewhere in a similar form and I can tweak it, AWESOME. If not, I’m going to put a lot of effort into creating my own “Spellcrafter”.
Thanks!
