Magic system help

I need a magic system for a text based roleplay game I intend joining. The game's story would be set on Earth. It works on the assumption magic is kept hidden from people. My justification is both supertition from the non-mages and non-mages getting caught in a conflict between mages centuries ago.

• It's simillar druidism in which it completely depends on nature and the enviroment around the caster: mages are born with the hability to tamper with everything's life energy, but doing so requires sacrificing their own life energy. Extremelly powerful spells can cost the mage's life. Potions are brewed by altering the life energy of it's ingredients.
• While the hability to use magic is genetic but spells have to be taught. There are especialized schools for that, but many clans of mages prefer to have the more experienced teach their youth.
• Life energy, needless to say, is the energy that exists whitin living beings. Some things have more life energy than others. This of course has to do with youth, but it doesn't mean younger mages are stronger than older ones, since it takes a good few years and an enormous amount of training to learn the most powerful spells and more difficult potions.
• Life energy and therefore magic itself is split in elements: fire, water, air, earth and spirit. These elements are present everywhere, but not in equal quantities. As one can guess from what was mentioned above, the type of life energy of a living thing reflects the enviroment they came from.
• While normal humans aren't exceptions to this rule, one can say mages are: in their case, life energy is evenly distributed between elements, which means that in theory, a mage can pick any element to master. Attempting to learn spells from all elements often lead the mage to be mediocre at everything.
• In order to execute spells, mages only need enough concentration so they can manipulate life energy around them. There are wands and cards and other items with large amounts of life energy, which can be used to keep the mage to use too much of their own but these are expensive and also entirely opitional.

edited 14th Nov '13 11:06:25 AM by eital

It looks like you've got everything nailed down, what help do you need?

I'm kind of afraid there are any innacuracies and rough spots. Or if I could do it better. I was considering swapping the life force system for mana, but...

edited 14th Nov '13 10:52:46 AM by eital

When they spend life energy, is this something they can replenish by resting for a while and eating nutritious foods, or is it a case of once it's gone, it's gone? 'Cause mages becoming old a withered by the time they're in their forties could be interesting, though it might be too restrictive.

I think what you have now is mostly fine. I can't see anything glaring, but then personally I prefer magic to have rough spots and ambiguities (obviously for the mechanics of a game you want things to be clear, but the fluff is another matter).

What do you mean by mana, exactly? Are you thinking of replacing the spirit energy of living things with the spirit energy of places? While that is a perfectly valid way of doing things, I think that what you have now works very well with the theme of regular people disliking/distrusting mages. I, for one, don't want anyone fiddling around with my precious bodily fluidslife energy and I would be very wary of anyone who has the power to do so.

You could even delve into sacrificial or even pseudo-vampiric magical areas — manipulating these energies takes human life-force, but perhaps some magicians have figured out how to use other people to pay the price instead, or how to top up their own spiritual energy with that stolen from other people. There you go, instant baddies for your players to fight.

The only thing that doesn't quite seem to fit, for me, is the classical elements stuff. That's kind of played out... this isn't to say that you shouldn't use it, necessarily, but what do you feel it adds to things? Having magicians specialise is one thing, but classical elements+1 seem kind of arbitrary as a way of dividing skills.

Dn D 3.5 has a limit of spl per day. Applying your Mannah rules, a Wizard MAY cast more spl per day at the cost of being fatigued for days or weeks.

Precedent Ex Calibur, after calling the Dragon's Breath, Merlin had to rest for 9 months; Morgana summoned the Dragon's Breath and aged 100 years. (Maybe??? Merlin aged 100 years and needed that time to get better.)

While the hability to use magic is genetic but spells have to be taught. There are especialized schools for that, but many clans of mages prefer to have the more experienced teach their youth.

There are Wizard schools, but Slytherins are home-schooled on the Maester apprentice Padawan system. Mud-bloods apply the Human industrial production line system for educating Wizards. Pure-bloods do one on one teaching. There can only be two Slytherins.

edited 14th Nov '13 1:58:45 PM by Jaqen

@Raven Wilder: They need to rest for a while and eat nutritious food, yes. But I did like the idea. But I don't think a character looking older than 18 would be allowed by the game's rules.

@imadinossaur: Yes, by replacing with mana I mean what you said, but you're right.

I thought of the whole element thing as something to make mages less overpowered, but that still works with especializing, I think. I altered the whole element thing, and I wonder wheter I made it better or worse?

@Jaqen: Sorry, did I screw up too badly?

Is magic the ability to use life energy to fuel effects or is it the ability to manipulate life itself? If it's the latter, then you have a logical limitation in that you can only affect things that are alive, which would logically exclude rocks and clouds.