Any idea for a decent name for this system? I'm just using spellcastery for now as a placeholder.
Some ideas for schools of spellcastery:
Eternal Pyre
- Basic charges: flame. Advanced charges: plasma.
- Fire-based spellcastery. Direct damage, area denial (fire walls, burning ground, etc.), retributive damage, and phoenix-themed effects (flame-based recovery, flight, etc.).
Glacial Road
- Basic charges: frost. Advanced charges: ice.
- Cold-based spellcastery. Crowd control, area-based combos (created icy ground, use it to enhance later spells), damage mitigation.
Crashing Tempest
- Basic charges: shock. Advanced charges: lightning.
- Electricity-based spellcastery. Multi-target non-area damage, speed and teleportation, stun and paralysis.
Consuming Presence
- Basic charges: corrosion. Advanced charges: consumption.
- Acid-based spellcastery. Debuffing defenses, anti-construct, anti-object, damage over time.
Clarion Tone
- Basic charges: corrosion. Advanced charges: consumption.
- Sonic-based spellcastery. Sound manipulation, morale-based buffs and debuffs, fear, sound-based detection.
Unyielding Reality
- Basic charges: force. Advanced charges: power.
- Force-based spellcastery. Auto-hit effects, bypassing defenses, unbreakable barriers, anti-incorporeal/ethereal.
Boundless Fury
- Basic charges: rage. Advanced charges: frenzy.
- Offensive combat-based spellcastery. Self-buffs, melee attacks, offense at the cost of defense, protection from mental effects, temporary removal of disabling effects.
Guardian's Edge
- Basic charges: protection. Advanced charges: endurance.
- Defensive combat-based spellcastery. Self-buffs, melee attacks, ally buffs, disrupting enemy attacks, prevention of harm.
Certain Will
- Basic charges: aligned . Advanced charges: chaos, evil, good, law.
- Alignment-based spellcastery. Variable-alignment effects, alignment-specific protection and attacks, anti-outsider, mental protection, area wards.
Bloody Tears
- Basic charges: blood. Advanced charges: siphoning.
- Health-based spellcastery. Sacrifice health for effects, stealing health, poison and disease, debilitation.
Bestial Wrath
- Basic charges: shift. Advanced charges: transformation.
- Transformation-based spellcastery. Natural attacks, polymorph, more stuff when I think of it, although polymorph is pretty versatile as-is.
Preliminary ideas for the more spellcastery of the spellcastery classes.
Magician
- 1/2 BAB, full BAB if only using spellcastery as part of a full attack.
- Access to the more magical schools of spellcastery.
- Specializes in a school of spellcastery. Basic charges from the school (flame, frost, etc.) don't count against your maximum charges limit (still limited to 1/2 level of any given charge type), and at higher levels you get to start each encounter with one or more advanced charges from the school (plasma, ice, etc.).
- Also gets to cast a small selection of Sor/Wiz spells on a per-day basis.
On a side note, this idea was conceptually inspired by
Sypha Belnades's combat casting style in the recently released season 2 of Castlevania. If you haven't watched it yet, do. It's not just a good adaptation of a video game, it's damn good television, period.
The mechanics also draw inspiration from Path Of Exile's charge system and Slay The Spire's Defect class.