Update: Magic System Beginnings

As I'm still making my way through classes and character creation, I've spent a little bit of time to lay down the foundations of The Way of the Earth's magic system. Magic is an essential part of The Way of the Earth. The vaishineph player characters are defined by their ability to Whisper, that is, to harness the manna in their veins to produce miraculous effects. I have always appreciated more open ended and free form magic systems in role-playing games, and I wanted to follow suit in the development of The Way of the Earth's magic system. I also wanted to give a nod to people who appreciated skill based role-playing games over class based role-playing games. The magic in The Way of the Earth is designed to provide the a la carte utility and potential for specialization that skill based games offer.

The heart of The Way of the Earth's magic system is a thing called The Naming Wheel, which is featured in the center of the character sheet. Each of the twelve words on The Naming Wheel is an invocation. Invocations form the foundations of every Whisper, or spell-like ability cast in The Way of the Earth (you can see a rough draft of the twelve invocations here). Each is a kind of magical verb, that produces a generic class of effects. Player characters in The Way of the Earth begin with the ability to use three invocations, Foretell, and two others. High level player characters can use up to six or seven. Invocations can be combined with modifying effects called evocations, which act like adverbs in the magical grammar of a Whisper. Evocations alter an invocations effect, either empowering it if its cast under certain conditions, or adding a new effect when it is successful. Lastly, there are convocations, the nouns of the magical grammar, which transform the caster themselves or their surroundings as they cast a Whisper. Each Whisper can be made up of multiple invocations and evocations, and up to one convocation. Mixing and matching these effects, along with the natural diversity within the effects, allows player characters to produce a wide range of "spells" using their creativity.

Different player characters will come to learn different invocations, evocations, and convocations, and so be able to specialize in their own sorts of magic. The kinds of magic a player character specializes in is totally independent of their race, class, attributes, and other skills, and so they have a lot of freedom in how they pursue their own magical agenda.

- ABH