Mancery: Mercin' 9-to-5
Nov 26, 2015 4:14:12 GMT -6
Post by S☆E on Nov 26, 2015 4:14:12 GMT -6
This is an idea I've been kicking around for adventure involving magic but centered less around boring spell lists and more around creative usage of powers. In this setting people are occasionally born with the gift of mancery, allowing them to affect the world around them through sheer willpower and focus. This ability has its limitations, but within those limits there is not much it cannot accomplish. With the aid of a special item the mancer attunes their will through, they can achieve things that regular folk simply cannot replicate.
The Fast and Dirty: You choose a type of magic (conjuration, abjuration, divination, etc) and you choose some object. The effects you can create must fit the type of magic you picked and also be thematic with the item. Past that, the sky's the limit.
Examples
- Jerrod picks abjuration, which is comprised of buffs, barriers, heals and special zones. His focus is a fan. Using this he can do stuff like make a wall of wind to deflect projectiles, generate a healing breeze to empower his allies or create a field of strong gusts that push his friends forward and his enemies back.
- Marissa wants to pick evocation, the typical blaster magic for people who want to hurl lightning and fireballs, and decides on a pouch of sacred dirt as her focus. Through this she can heave hard clay fists, bury people alive, even pick up a chunk of land underneath her and use it like a battering ram.
- Blargo is a weird person and wants to choose divination, magic for spying on people from far away, listening in on people's thoughts, possibly even telling the future, and they choose a journal for their focus. This journal could pick up people's thoughts and record them, chronicle nearby conversations in an area, maybe even show events that could happen before they transpire.
Hey now, this all sounds pretty rad you say, but with access to power like this there have to be some regulations. Any openly practicing mancer must have a Mancery License or be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. There are mancers paid to reign in "free-range" users who avoid documentation, and these guys do not play nice. If you don't want to make an enemy of magical bounty hunters make sure you always have your mancery license on you if you're to be using your abilities. Using your powers for bad is a nasty crime so try to not be a dick if you don't want to end up dead.
Now having powers like this is all well and good, and sure the community appreciates those who devote their skills to improving their quality of life, but that life is not for you.
No. Yours is the life of freelance magical mercenary work! You take gigs for hire and put in those long hours for all the booze/hookers/novelty hats money can buy! This is where the adventure stuff comes in. Once you've figured out what sort of power you want to use, it's up to you to think of ways to adapt it to the situations you find yourself in. It is important to remember that no one set of skills can accomplish everything. This is why you have friends, donkus! Together you can pull yourselves out of jams that would surely kill just one of you. Be creative and don't be afraid to experiment with combining your abilities. You might come up with some pretty cool/stupid/pointless techniques.
This won't be using any sort of system for stats and stuff barring a few 1-100 rolls to see if some of the more outlandish ideas you guys come up with work out or not. It's for fun, not some sort of challenging murder-puzzle bulljive (unless of course we hit the challenging murder-puzzle adventure arc) so try not to get too serious about it. That said, there will be opposition and there will be conflict. Mancer fights can be nasty things, especially if one or both parties intend to kill the other. I'm warning you now: IF YOU FUCK UP CONTINUOUSLY AND REFUSE TO STOP DESPITE CLEAR INDICATIONS OF YOUR FUCKITUDE THEN THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES!
That about sums this thing up. Character creation starts below for those interested. I'm open to questions about the magic system and to help people figure out what sort of things they can do with it. This is freeform stuff so don't be hesitant to ask about anything.
The Fast and Dirty: You choose a type of magic (conjuration, abjuration, divination, etc) and you choose some object. The effects you can create must fit the type of magic you picked and also be thematic with the item. Past that, the sky's the limit.
Examples
- Jerrod picks abjuration, which is comprised of buffs, barriers, heals and special zones. His focus is a fan. Using this he can do stuff like make a wall of wind to deflect projectiles, generate a healing breeze to empower his allies or create a field of strong gusts that push his friends forward and his enemies back.
- Marissa wants to pick evocation, the typical blaster magic for people who want to hurl lightning and fireballs, and decides on a pouch of sacred dirt as her focus. Through this she can heave hard clay fists, bury people alive, even pick up a chunk of land underneath her and use it like a battering ram.
- Blargo is a weird person and wants to choose divination, magic for spying on people from far away, listening in on people's thoughts, possibly even telling the future, and they choose a journal for their focus. This journal could pick up people's thoughts and record them, chronicle nearby conversations in an area, maybe even show events that could happen before they transpire.
Hey now, this all sounds pretty rad you say, but with access to power like this there have to be some regulations. Any openly practicing mancer must have a Mancery License or be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. There are mancers paid to reign in "free-range" users who avoid documentation, and these guys do not play nice. If you don't want to make an enemy of magical bounty hunters make sure you always have your mancery license on you if you're to be using your abilities. Using your powers for bad is a nasty crime so try to not be a dick if you don't want to end up dead.
Now having powers like this is all well and good, and sure the community appreciates those who devote their skills to improving their quality of life, but that life is not for you.
No. Yours is the life of freelance magical mercenary work! You take gigs for hire and put in those long hours for all the booze/hookers/novelty hats money can buy! This is where the adventure stuff comes in. Once you've figured out what sort of power you want to use, it's up to you to think of ways to adapt it to the situations you find yourself in. It is important to remember that no one set of skills can accomplish everything. This is why you have friends, donkus! Together you can pull yourselves out of jams that would surely kill just one of you. Be creative and don't be afraid to experiment with combining your abilities. You might come up with some pretty cool/stupid/pointless techniques.
This won't be using any sort of system for stats and stuff barring a few 1-100 rolls to see if some of the more outlandish ideas you guys come up with work out or not. It's for fun, not some sort of challenging murder-puzzle bulljive (unless of course we hit the challenging murder-puzzle adventure arc) so try not to get too serious about it. That said, there will be opposition and there will be conflict. Mancer fights can be nasty things, especially if one or both parties intend to kill the other. I'm warning you now: IF YOU FUCK UP CONTINUOUSLY AND REFUSE TO STOP DESPITE CLEAR INDICATIONS OF YOUR FUCKITUDE THEN THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES!
That about sums this thing up. Character creation starts below for those interested. I'm open to questions about the magic system and to help people figure out what sort of things they can do with it. This is freeform stuff so don't be hesitant to ask about anything.