Basically, the control of different aspects of the world around the caster are seperated into what the game calls pillars, and which are levelled from 0-5 to represent that character's mastery over that particular aspect. The game has several different types of mage (classes, essentially) who each have access to different pillars. For the purposes of this example I'll focus on the Order of Hermes, as they most closely resemble the classic pointy-hat mages of D&D (there are other classes which specialise in nature magic, divine & healing magic, necromancy, etc, who will get access to different pillars than the ones I list)

So the pillars accessible to this class are:

Anima - Command of Life
Corona - Command of the Mind
Primus - Command of Quintessence (basically the stuff magic is made of in the WW universe, magic power itself)
Vires - Command of Elemental Forces

Each rank in a pillar opens up more that you can do with it (for example, corona 1 might let you read surface thoughts, 2 for deeper secrets, 3 would allow you to start influencing someone, etc) - the scope can be fairly large, to allow the players to choose their own effect. Simple spells are easy, they use only a single pillar and you can pretty much choose what they do by reading the power's description at that rank. A sample basic spells from the book would be Aegis Magicus (Primus 3) - Magical shield that stops spells. Pretty straightforward.

It gets interesting when you combine two or more pillars to make what the game calls a complex spell, letting you make some really crazy and specific effects. Some example complex spells are:

Hermes' Brand (Anima 3, Primus 3, Vires 3) - turns the blood in your body into a weapon against vampires, which will burst into flames in their throat if they drink from you

The Incorruptible Water (Anima 5, Corona 4, Primus 4) - creates an elixir of eternal life, basically. Drink it & live forever, gets slightly more dangerous every time you use it, having an increasing chance of backfiring and causing you to age 1000 years at once.

Wrath of Apollo (Primus 5, Vires 5) Calls down a 100ft wide pillar of flame, that utterly nukes everything. Seriously, nothing in any of the White Wolf games could survive this. I haven't ever seen anybody get close to powerful enough to cast it

I'll spare the exact details of how these are rolled, as the system is quite different - basically instead of rolling a single dice, you roll a heap of them and count your number of successes, with more successes giving better results (longer duration, more damage, etc). In D&D the best way I could think of to replicate that would be by granting better results if they beat the DC on the nose, by 2, 5, 10, etc.

tl;dr set a few broad-covering magical influences that can be leveled up, combine different broad categories to make specific spells.

See if you can grab a copy of either Mage book and check out the pillars. I don't think you need to look any further into the system than that though, it's probably too different from D&D to be of much use.

Nope, I'm wrong, base ruleset is in the Vampire books - however I don't think you'll need them to understand the magic system. Gimme 15 mins and I'll type up a brief rundown of how it works and a few example spells out of the book.

The base game(s) in the White Wolf franchise are the Vampire games (Vampire: The Masquerade for modern day, Dark Ages: Vampire for medieval). However, I'm 99% sure that the Mage books do have the base White Wolf ruleset included in them, so you shouldn't need the base games to work it out - I'll check my copy of Mage when I get home from work.

That being said (and so I give you something a little more constructive than "this is a bad idea"), have a look at the magic system from White Wolf's Mage games (either Mage: The Awakening, or Dark Ages: Mage). The magic system in Mage is very versatile, with many different spheres of influence that can be combined and overlapped to create a variety of different spells on the fly.

As a fairly major caveat, however, the White Wolf game system is TOTALLY different from D&D, and I haven't the slightest clue how you'd even BEGIN to migrate it to D&D. Might give you some insight into how a free-form magic system can work, though.

Basically, the control of different aspects of the world around the caster are seperated into what the game calls pillars, and which are levelled from 0-5 to represent that character's mastery over that particular aspect. The game has several different types of mage (classes, essentially) who each have access to different pillars. For the purposes of this example I'll focus on the Order of Hermes, as they most closely resemble the classic pointy-hat mages of D&D (there are other classes which specialise in nature magic, divine & healing magic, necromancy, etc, who will get access to different pillars than the ones I list)

So the pillars accessible to this class are:

Anima - Command of Life
Corona - Command of the Mind
Primus - Command of Quintessence (basically the stuff magic is made of in the WW universe, magic power itself)
Vires - Command of Elemental Forces

Each rank in a pillar opens up more that you can do with it (for example, corona 1 might let you read surface thoughts, 2 for deeper secrets, 3 would allow you to start influencing someone, etc) - the scope can be fairly large, to allow the players to choose their own effect. Simple spells are easy, they use only a single pillar and you can pretty much choose what they do by reading the power's description at that rank. A sample basic spells from the book would be Aegis Magicus (Primus 3) - Magical shield that stops spells. Pretty straightforward.

It gets interesting when you combine two or more pillars to make what the game calls a complex spell, letting you make some really crazy and specific effects. Some example complex spells are:

Hermes' Brand (Anima 3, Primus 3, Vires 3) - turns the blood in your body into a weapon against vampires, which will burst into flames in their throat if they drink from you

The Incorruptible Water (Anima 5, Corona 4, Primus 4) - creates an elixir of eternal life, basically. Drink it & live forever, gets slightly more dangerous every time you use it, having an increasing chance of backfiring and causing you to age 1000 years at once.

Wrath of Apollo (Primus 5, Vires 5) Calls down a 100ft wide pillar of flame, that utterly nukes everything. Seriously, nothing in any of the White Wolf games could survive this. I haven't ever seen anybody get close to powerful enough to cast it

I'll spare the exact details of how these are rolled, as the system is quite different - basically instead of rolling a single dice, you roll a heap of them and count your number of successes, with more successes giving better results (longer duration, more damage, etc). In D&D the best way I could think of to replicate that would be by granting better results if they beat the DC on the nose, by 2, 5, 10, etc.

tl;dr set a few broad-covering magical influences that can be leveled up, combine different broad categories to make specific spells.

See if you can grab a copy of either Mage book and check out the pillars. I don't think you need to look any further into the system than that though, it's probably too different from D&D to be of much use.

Nope, I'm wrong, base ruleset is in the Vampire books - however I don't think you'll need them to understand the magic system. Gimme 15 mins and I'll type up a brief rundown of how it works and a few example spells out of the book.

The base game(s) in the White Wolf franchise are the Vampire games (Vampire: The Masquerade for modern day, Dark Ages: Vampire for medieval). However, I'm 99% sure that the Mage books do have the base White Wolf ruleset included in them, so you shouldn't need the base games to work it out - I'll check my copy of Mage when I get home from work.

Exactly fucking this. Every time.

good to know

lol

Soi soi soi soi soi soi

XDDDD

theres also one inside the armory itself.

Not to forget theres one in the satalite array across the field from it.
I didn't think power armor would be all that "common" until I literally started finding them in lockers, in trains, in lakes underwater...

National Guard Training Yard

fallout.wikia.com/wiki/National_Guard_training_yard

can we make this a meme?

**reinbowxdash used "*roll 1, Magic 8-Ball*"**
**reinbowxdash rolls My sources say no** can we make it a meme?

well yea they did have deer in England before america.

Also, bamboo probably didn't grow in Scotland...