@doppelgreener I was thinking that its default applications would be Creating Advantages and Defending as a kind of narrowly focused combination of Will and Lore, and that additional trappings could be added to make it more supernatural, like attacking.
And I think the right thing to do with Magic is exactly what you did before: create a Caster mode for those people who primarily interact with the world through magic -- as opposed to a Paladin, who uses magic to augment what they do already, and might have a few magical feats.
But rather than "You get one Magic skill", it's "This is empty and you should fill it up with Magic skills."
But that does not grant general magical expertise necessarily (worth thinking about), like the Science mode does, so it is not necessarily any different to me just picking any other three modes and then dumping a Magic skill in there.
Aye: in ARRPG, "Science" is a unified concept for which the various Science skills are merely tools for narrowing down contexts of application.
In your fantasy game, it sounds like you want skill-based magics to be non-unified, that one caster can be totally different from another in the kinds of trappings available to their Magic skill.
@BESW Yes. That, and I acknowledge that Magic is a thing that may be approached through skills for some people, and through stunts for other people, and both are totally valid, good, and things I want to acknowledge and support.
So you're right in calling out that there's a big design goal difference between ARRPG's approach to science with the Science mode, and what I want out of Magic.
(In there, Science is about knowing things. Magic is about... lots... of things.)
Science can also be approached exclusively through stunts (as in, "I can use Will instead of Science for brainstorms"). The big difference is that when you have a Science skill, its trappings are always the same trappings, just with a slightly different context for use, while a Magic skill may have totally different trappings and contexts.
Yeah. Premonition is a magic skill with Create Advantage and Overcome, Necromancy is Create Advantage, Overcome and Attack, Protection is Create Advantage, Overcome and Defend.
Two players who want to make Necromancers may both share the same skill with different trappings, or may decide something like: "Let's call your one Odic Necromancy, and mine Abherrant Necromancy" so that one does not necessarily define the other.
I like the term Flesh Walking as a word for Necromancy. "Are you a necromancer?" "No, I'm a Flesh Walker." "Aren't they the same thing?" "PAH! Only if you're an ignoramus!"
Given this, perhaps I should not have a Caster mode or defined Magic skill. But characters will have spare build points they may use to give themselves a Magic skill or two. And some modes will deliberately consume fewer Magic skills, and strongly hint YOU SHOULD PUT SOME KIND OF MAGIC SKILL IN HERE.
@BESW Yes! (And later we have a moment like where Korra finds out Waterbending can involve Blood Bending, when the animator Flesh Walker sees his fellow Flesh Walker body-switch.)
@BESW I'm going to revisit the trappings of the skills we have later tonight or tomorrow morning. I'm noticing all of the skills we have cost 0 or 1, except for melee. This leaves several of them relatively free, and almost all of them pretty cheap.
Ok, thanks. There's also some stuff in the FST I think I should poke at -- not about modes and applications, but page 75 is the beginning of this big chapter called MAGIC.
I'll do some more study of ARRPG and try to understand this applications thing.
