Upon familiarizing ourselves with the Realms of Magic supplement, Mrs. Surge and I found that overall, we just didn't like the system. So we set about to making major changes overall to how magic works, and the result is our Shadow War campaign.
First, we added a new power: Magical Aptitude. The source of this power is a mystery, as it is usually not hereditary, unlike mutation in the MSH game. Magical Aptitude (MA for short) determines the level of a spell that a mage can cast, and how fast that mage can advance. Thus, a mage with RM level MA could max out her Eldritch Bolt spell at RM damage, a mage with AZ level MA could do up to AZ damage, range, and so forth. No character could start with lower than GD MA, and no PC would start with a MA lower than RM. In the milieu, potential mages with lower than RM MA are viewed as sensetives, and not generally worth training.
The act of spell casting remains much the same. Each spell can have up to three components for casting; verbal, somatic, and material. Each spell's requirements can change from school to school.
Next, we changed the schools or types of magic. We completely scrapped the personal/universal/dimensional spell theory. In the Shadow War campaign, there are nine schools or types of magic: the classical elements (earth, fire, wind, water), druidic, faerie, wild, high, and voodoo. Some spells would be available to any school, but some had school-specific spells. A mage can only cast the spells from his school, with one exception, to be detailed later.
Elemental magic is pretty straightforward. Elemental mages affect more of the physical world, especially within their own element, able to cast more offensive and defensive spells than the other schools. Elemental mages make up roughly 80% of the mage population in this campaign. Spells like Armor, Damage Absorbtion, and Net are classic Elemental spells. Elemental mages cannot cast spells like Fear or Emotion Control
Druidic mages affect more of nature in general, being able to affect plants, weather, animals, etc, yet can be formidable combatants as well. Growing Self, Healing Others, Mesmerism, and Plant Control are staples of this school; Armor and Teleport are not.
Faerie mages also affect the natural world, and also can cast most mind-altering spells as well. Faerie magic has the largest spell grimoire of any school, for instance, only faerie mages can cast Shapeshifting - unlimited . However, the power of this school is offset by the disadvantages of 1) the mage must have a faerie ancestor, less than 1% are faerie mages, and 2) the faerie mage has an allergy to iron that can range from merely distracting to debilitating.
Voodoo mages have the ability to affect the dead, and have perhaps the most effect over the human body. Only voodoo mages can cast Animate Dead (a new spell we added for this campaign) Voodoo practitioners also require the most material components, and generally the mages are evil in nature, or tend to do things that cause karma loss.
The High and Wild schools of magic were, er, "borrowed" from the Obsidian trilogy by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory. High mages can affect more of the man-made, technological world, computers, electrical fields, etc, but being scientific in nature, requires more verbal and somatic components, done in very precise, orderly ways. Enchanted Eye is the sole property of the High magic school, and the Energy Control spell is not limited to one particular type of energy. Wild magic is more easygoing in its requirements, but their spell list is shorter, sharing a lot of spells with the druidic and faerie schools. However, what sets a wild mage apart is her ability to cast a spell from
any spell school,
if she pays the price for it. I can give more details about this in installments to come.
Coming up: The politics of the Shadow War.
