Many of the d20 treatments of herbalism, alchemy, and other techniques often associated with magic are being described as non-magical. Is there some reason that non-spell magics are being denied the title and power of magic? I rather think that things would be made more interesting with the inclusion of non-spell magic. It certainly won`t steal the thunder from the spellcasters, since alchemy, herbalism, numerology, astrology, and such magic don`t lend themselves to immediate results.

Need to know whether its auspicious to declare war on Massenmarch? Hold on while I draw up a celestial chart!

But in the new mode of things, I`m going to just drop the magician class altogether. I`m going to replace it with non-spellcasting classes like alchemist. I`ll just throw in that unblooded characters can study arcane magic up to the 3rd class level. After that they can only proceed with arcane magic through a non-spellcasting class that never the less can produce magical effects. I was never fond of the illusionist, so I`m ditching it for an alchemist and an herbalist class which will be the same class, but use different materials. The diviner will now be some kind of divination specialist who uses astrology, numerology, or some other kind of divination to produce familiar effects as the diviner did, but without spells.

I`m going to double all of their lab costs, double their requirements for materials, but allow them to become specialists in making and gathering materials, so that the costs of materials stays the same, increase the time for their effect (wait here while I brew some tea!), but otherwise retain the magical effects.

Kenneth Gauck
kgauck@mchsi.com

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.