Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Ara Needs Elementalists!

I have wanted an Elementalist NPC class for my Lands of Ara campaign for some time, and have a few ideas brewing along this line, but have hit something of an impasse in the development stage.  The main source of that impasse is mostly my own laziness, but this post is intended as a partial corrective to that entropic tendency -- at least here I will start getting my ideas out in a public forum, and maybe some other folks will be able to help me fill in the gaps and get me inspired to complete this mini-project.

In terms of not totally re-inventing the wheel here, I am aware that EGG (or, more likely, Len Lakofka) developed a Pyrologist class, and I have access to the original publication in which that class appeared, Liaisons Dangereuses #74.  However, this class has two major limitations as far as my own intentions for Elementalists are concerned: (1) it seems to mainly consist of an alternative spell list grafted onto a standard Magic-User mechanic (though a clerical version is cryptically mentioned), and (2) it covers only the element of fire.  I admit that some of those new Pyromage spells are great, and I will surely hork them for my Arandish Fire Elementalists, but I want my Elementalists to be more like a combination spellcaster / summoner, and even more importantly, elementalists in Ara are Clerics, NOT Magic-Users.  So to make the kind of Elementalist class I envision, I will need:

(1)  More Elementalist-specific spells,

(2)  More types of elemental creatures for my Elementalists to summon -- a point that elf23 also makes in his tantalizing post over at The City of Iron on this topic -- and

(3)  The whole thing placed upon a Cleric-like or Druid-like chassis.   

So to begin with, does anyone know of more good resources for element-specific spells?  I have raided the Ancient Vaults and Eldritch Secrets blog for relevant spells many times (and am thankful for this index provided by ChicagoWiz).  Any other resources or ideas that would help me here?

Also, thanks to elf23 for his recent post of a Labyrinth Lord general elementalist spell list.

3 comments:

  1. In the same issue of OD&Dities that Richard Tongue was kind enough to publish an article of mine in, most of the issue he devoted to his new Elementalist class.

    Worth checking out and only $2, I think, available at RPGnow.

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  2. @Jovial: Do you know what issue # that was?

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