New Class: Item Mage (WIP)

Item Mage

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The wise men and women who enpeople the Realm learn the ancient traditions of Item Magic.  They can prepare potions, lotions, balms and troches to grant supernatural healing, second sight, great sibilance with the creatures of the realm and other unheard-of powers.  The recipes for these items of magical power are discovered through trial and error and this process happens in the alchemist’s laboratory and herbalist’s apothecary.

Herbalists are the witches and wise men who live nearby the village.

Alchemists are natural philosophers who seek to understand the “why” of Nature.

Doctors are sanctioned by the Church to perform supernatural thaumaturgy.

And Druids are the uncivilized men who follow the old ways.

Together these disciplines are called Item Magic and their practitioners are called Item Mages.

The Prime Requisite for the Item Mage is Wisdom.  See Vol. I p. 9 for XP adjustments due to high or low Wisdom.  He uses the same Attack Matrix advancement as the Magic User and same Save progression as the Cleric.

Arms and Armor: Item Mages may wear Leather armor and use the following weapons: Backsword, Light Crossbow, Dagger, Flail, Mace or Hammer (not the Pick), Sling, Staff, Spear.

The Item Mage’s Class Abilities

Consumable Magic Item Recipes:

Item Mages have the powerful ability to create consumable magic items. They discover and create recipes from which they and other Item Mages can create potions, balms, and other such item containing a strong magical ability.

Recipe is the word for the formula for a particular concoction. Each recipe has ingredients, a spell-like effect, and possibly a side effect.  An Item Mage starts knowing four recipes, and learns a new one of his choice upon attaining each new experience level.

Each recipe has a Complexity Level or CL, which is a direct analog to a spell's Spell Level.  Recipes based on spells will have the same or similar levels.

Each recipe has several kinds of ingredients.  Each uses a specially-prepared metal figurine called a scarab that is carved like a beetle.  Each uses a talisman cut from the heartwood of several kinds of trees and marked with arcane sigils.  Each uses a medicinal herb, root or flower.  And then each of the disciplines uses its own unique reagent: tapers, liquids, powdered gemstones, or entrails.

Item Mages may learn recipes from experimentation in the lab and from examining consumable magic items they find.

The Item Mage may keep potent only a few magic consumables at a time.  As he rises in experience level, he can keep more items and more complex items potent simultaneously.  The total number of items is based on his Recipe Number or Rx Number.  Each magic consumable he carries has an Rx cost equal to its CL. CL 1 items have an Rx cost of 1. CL 2 items have an Rx cost of 2.  And so on.  At each experience level gained, the Item Mage sees an increase in his Rx number, and so therefore can carry more and more items with him (and hand them out to his friends.)

Item Mages may write a recipe he knows down upon a scroll.  When another Item Mage uses such a scroll, the scroll is used up and the Item Mage then knows the recipe.  He may put that recipe in his book for later use.  Unlike with Magic-User spell casting, the Item Mage does not forget how to make a consumable once he makes it, and then have to re-learn the recipe from the book.  He must use the book to concoct his recipes each time, except for those recipes he knows of Complexity Level 1.

Dowsing:

Dowsing is the art of using the magic energies in a crystal or pendant to listen to the Earth for guidance toward a desired person, place, or thing.  The Item Mage uses his holy symbol or a crystal affixed to a length of chain.  The chain swings in sympathetic vibration, directing the Mage toward the object so named.  Dowsing might instead be done with crossed sticks of Rowanwood or any branch in the shape of the letter “Y.”

At first level and then at every even level, the Item Mage may name one object for which he wishes to be able to douse. These things must come from the following list: Specific Person, Specific Item, Specific Animal, Water, Kind of Mineral, Disease, Magic, Traps, Shelter, Evil. Some of these are generic terms and will lead the dowser to the nearest instance of that item.  Some are specific and will attempt to point the dowser in the direction of that specific person or thing.  No dowsing attempt will work at a range of over 12 miles.

To attempt to dowse, the Mage makes a Save vs. Magic Spell modified by his WIS modifier. If successful, the dowsing is accurate for six Turns (one Hour.)

Surgery:

These wise men and women know enough about the human body to perform rudimentary surgery. It can cut out a diseased body part or infection, remove a foreign object, amputate a gangrened limb, and so forth.  Surgery takes 1d12 hours and deals 1d6+1 Hit Points of damage. 

At the end of the surgery, the patient must Save vs. Death or die.  He must Save vs. Death at the end of each subsequent week or die from infections and complications due to surgery.  If under the supervision of the surgeon, he gains a +2 to each of these subsequent Saves.

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Designer Notes:

This class with four flavors is designed for a realm with no proper Clerics or their subclasses nor any Magic-Users in their several varieties.  The differences between the classes as presented here are flavor only; however each should have its own recipe list.

Spells

My initial conception is to look over the spell lists for Magic-Users, Clerics and Druids, potion and other magic item effects that don’t map to a specific spell, as well as some favorite weird home brewed spells. Find a few spells from each list which are subtle and of general utility and compile a list of nine such spell effects for each spell level, one through six.  Then choose three spells per level which are specific, powerful, and flavorful for each of the subclasses: Herbalist, Alchemist, Doctor and Druid.  Then create effects from these (12 x 6 =) 72 spells that could conceivably come out of a physical delivery system like a potion or lotion.

So each class has a list of 12 recipes per CL; and from each of these lists, each class has three recipes nobody else has.

Additionally, I want there to be an emphasis on self-directed players experimenting and creating or perfecting their own recipes and sharing them with or selling them to the people in the Realm.