Post:Umm... Shadow Web? - 2/21/2011 - 18:27:12

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Re: Umm... Shadow Web? · on 2/21/2011 6:27:12 PM 9497
>>Wouldn't the worst sort of penalty for a Bard come from going from Elemental <--> Holy, being two "steps" away? Or rather, since my thinking is clearly wrong, what sort of reasoning stands behind the penalties in place?

The actual reasoning:

1) We wanted Holy / Life incompatibility to stay.
2) It was not actually fair to have that stay in isolation.
3) Therefore, we mirrored the incompatibility and also designated an equal number of mixtures that were unusually safe.

The Lores reasoning:

The mana spectrum can be drawn in different ways, based on what you consider important at the time. The classic way of doing so is to start in the middle ground between Life and Elmental and split it. Life and "above" are the realms of life in the broadest applicable sense, Elemental and "below" are the realms of the physical.

An equally valid was of looking at it is to think of it as a curve. Life and Elemental are grouped together as the realms tied concretely into the state of Elanthia, Holy and Lunar split off away as the realms of the abstract and otherwordly magic.

The worst compatibility occurs in the clusters of the first chart, trying to juggle two conceptually similar but metaphysically conflicting realms. Both Elementalists and Moon Mages deal with "the physical," but a Warrior Mage wants to change something's material structure and a Moon Mage wants to underwrite the meaning of its three-dimensional space and everything goes to pot.

The best compatability occurs in the cluster of the second chart, playing with an entirely new concept that is still grounded in the same cosmological "level" the caster is used to. A Moon Mage's background is better suited to dealing with the notions of ephemeral souls and extraplanar gods than he is furry critters and visceral magic.

-Armifer

This message was originally posted in The Moon Mages (24) \ The Lunar Magic Spell Books (10), by DR-ARMIFER on the play.net forums.