<font face="Century, serif">A Small Preamble <font face="Century, serif">Ether Mage <p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><font face="Century, serif">Ether mages can bestow great power upon others, but very little upon themselves. They can rarely kill anything with their magic, but they can allow others to kill things with many times their normal skill. There are 3 major types of ether enchantment.
<font face="Century, serif"> Ether mages will start with 1 element (out of whatever elements your game has) of their choice. This one element will be the starting focus of their enchanting, and will always be the main power of said enchanting. Say at level 1 they will have “Buff Ice” and “Enchant Ice”, but once they get to level 5, they will gain “Buff Fire” and “Enchant Fire”. This sounds all good, but really their ice magic will be stronger than fire, mainly because they have been working on it. Fire will then be useful when fighting ice, and vice versa. (Elemental forces in role-playing games typically have opposites, like the colors on a color wheel -- each has a special weakness to its exact opposite.) A buff of Ice would cause Ice damage to be added to the attack, and a resistance to water-based attacks. <font face="Century, serif"> Use of an Ether Mage in a group is great! All an Ether Mage's active spell effects will expire as soon as the Ether Mage dies or leaves the party. This prevents a level 60 Ether Mage from enchanting and buffing a level 2 to allow him to kill a level 10 creature, and it helps make the game emphasize party-based play (Ether Mages are MADE for party fighting, and much weaker than the average class in solo efforts). <font face="Century, serif">Ether Enchantable Weapons <font face="Century, serif"> A lone warrior’s nightmare, a party’s best friend. An uncharged enchanted weapon is about as weak as you can get such a thing, but a charged is much more powerful than any comparable non-enchanted weapon. They come in many shapes and sizes, but mostly power weapons such as swords and axes are best for ether enchanting. Things like staffs and wands, weapons mostly used by mages, don't need ether enchanting because they are rarely used and are a waste of the ether mage's MP. A ether weapon should normally have two ether slots, an upside and a downside. An upside would be say... +3 ice damage. A downside would be -2 fire resistance. These values could change depending on the skill of the Ether Mage. Also, on the rare occasion you find a ether wand, it would most likely offer +3 ice magic instead of melee damage. <font face="Century, serif">Ether Potions <font face="Century, serif"> One man's empty beer bottle is another mage's bomb. Ether Mages should be able to store spells inside of bottles. Perhaps using twice as much mana, and some rather costly bottles, you could keep your Fireball spell inside of a nice portable unit. These ether potions wouldn't want to stick around; they would retain their potency for no more than a few in-game days. The power of the potion would depend on the mage. A level 1 Ether Mage with his +2 skill in wind might be able to store a nice breeze, but a level 50 with +200 in wind could bottle up a Hurricane Hugo. These potions could be sold, or just kept for when needed. A bottling skill would also come in handy. So someone who has been Ether Maging his whole 50 levels, but never touched a bottle, might end up blowing the roof off trying to get his hurricane in there. <font face="Century, serif">Ether Mages though the levels <font face="Century, serif"> Starting out, when enchanting a weapon, a Ether Mage would do very little to it, but as his level rose, he would do more. A beginner might enchant a level 50 weapon with +50 fire and -30 water, but he would only enhance it to +5 fire and -40 water. Why? Because it is way past his ability. If he where to do a level 5 weapon with +3 fire and -6 water, he might make it more like +4 fire and -4 water. Now, if he were level 50, he would do something like +10 fire and +1 water. Why? Because it is way under his level; he can work with it like it was nothing, because he is used to enchanting things with much, much higher room for enchanting. Also, his ability in that particular magic type will change the outcome a bit. A Ether Mage high in fire magic might add a bit more to the fire bonus, but unless he has high skill with water as well, he will also increase the water penalty. <font face="Century, serif"> I hope you found this interesting, if nothing else. This system would allow for some real strategy and would allow one weapon, person, arrow, to go much further in battle. This was not a set of rules, rather food for thought. This could be expanded much further, or simplified, however would best fit your game. Thanks and good night! |
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