Raineh Daze

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

Back in the box, Nezuko.

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

@Lunarlord34 Anno is that person above me. It's an old handle.

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

I advise you to adjust your font colour/typeface for one. Also... spelling Reon and Mayon correctly is a kind of important detail. Hmm... backstory-wise, it's worth noting that in becoming a paladin you are still becoming a member of the clergy, although different from your average priest or priestess, so it's more a change of specialisation than something totally different. And there is really no need to know how to use so many types of weapons.

Anno's the one who'd know if there's any particularly holy magic beyond their habit of giving out blessed equipment.

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

Since in general mages are not institutionally interested in being assassins or conducting extreme ambush scenarios with super-paranoid magically enhanced guards, it's not going to be a thing that occurs on more than a case-by-case basis. :p

Besides, if the guards have magical hearing that can catch a whispered incantation they probably heard you for a dozen other reasons so moot point.

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

You're probably more likely to get distracted running through the chant in your head so it would lose some of its potency? Still, for any practical spell you're going to need at least one word; trying to entirely mentally disambiguate it is a bad idea. If you were mute or absolutely needed silence you could learn to associate spells with gestures instead but... most of the time, you could just whisper.

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

A slightly more rigid definition: "A spell is a mnemonic device to link the patterns and alterations of mana and a caster's understanding of the end result."

A comparison could be drawn towards performing arithmetic--with practice and experience some questions become rote, others are trivially broken down, and some still need actual methodology. Albeit magic is even less of a science than that due to the human element giving everyone a different mind and mana not being identical between people. Unique incantations can help with this, which is definitely a thing for experienced mages wanting to use full power for less cost.

Inefficient casting is basically not fitting exactly right so you use more mana to bridge the power gap (or the result you're aiming for is so stupid). Catalysts, depending on preparation, can help by "filling in" part of the pattern, or just concentrating what they've got--so you can skip components or use less and get the same result.

As for a comparison with alchemy or enchanting: if all the power is derived from materials, the world, and procedure, then you're unlikely to need to vary things as much on a case-by-case basis (besides differences in what you're working with). If it's the sort of ritual which uses casters or directly changes human targets then it encounters the same variability as full spellcasting.

Divine blessings are pretty much in the same boat IIRC because the gods are doing the complicated part there and the results are typically unreplicable or a pain to emulate.

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

If it has any resemblance to D&D it would be more in the matter of subtyping than the schools. It's much rarer for someone to focus on spells just to protect themselves (e.g. an Abjuration specialist) over learning everything they can about the manipulation of rocks. Since a component of spellcasting is understanding what you're trying to do, it's much easier to e.g. learn a bunch of fire spells and transfer that into learning more about fire etc. etc. But since that's not the entirety of it you can also go the hermetic route and just learn a lot of spells in detail--though unless you're a master of manipulating mana itself you'd be one of those types either using lots of weak spells or constantly going through the full chant. Corinne is a fun example, because she's technically the first type (specialised on fire and lightning) but hasn't got the wealth of experience with it to cut down the spellcasting to quick times yet (working like the latter).

Though there are some processes so enormously complicated that once you start pulling in prepared ingredients and enchantments to actually do something more complicated than your average transient effect (e.g. becoming a lich) then you're right into full ritual preparation.

And someone with a ridiculous amount of mana and enough willpower can more or less learn magic by making it happen. But that's an edge case and anyone that wanted to keep that up for any length of time would need some way to regenerate mana very quickly on top of raw reserves, so that's more a thing that tends to be well... monsters and the like.

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

Healing magic isn't exclusive to the religious at all; it's just a particular branch of things to learn. Its closest related other branch is necromancy (which is amusingly similar to I think AD&D), particularly the more benign side of things.

As for schools, do you mean as in "here is where you would learn magic" or breaking it down into e.g. evocation/abjuration etc? In the latter case it's more a matter of most mages (and certainly most mages both young enough and willing to adventure or fight and not be reclusive academics) predominantly mastering one area, much like how most warriors do not master every weapon and martial art that they come across.

Working on a map of Estival specifically now.

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

It should be noted this world map is more a general view of climate and the largest geographical features (it's more of a political view), so the specifics for a given country will need to wait for a relevant map (of which only Estival and Thaln are likely for now).

Thaln for one is probably pretty river heavy and definitely has a lot more woodland than noted. Just not quite like... "here's a few hundred miles of thick forest".

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

I used this site. Still took a while though since it's still a specialised painting tool more or less. xD