One hundred and twenty schools.
Fourteen have doors.

How schools work

Levels are the ticket. Gold is the price.

IN GAME 120 schools exist in the game data. Fourteen stand on a square in Mudbury: thirteen base schools and the School of Fire. The rest are shown greyed: visible, not reachable.

The fourteen masters in Mudbury

Level tables

Three schools, level by level

Might, Endurance and Fire, as the game data has them. All three stand in Mudbury, and so do the two schools Fire requires. Every number is a placeholder.

Magic

Four elements that fuse

Built in the engine, and the schools that lead to it now stand in the city: Arcane Theory, Restoration, and the two the School of Fire requires. Nobody has yet walked the whole way to a fire spell as a normal player.

Tier I · 25 base schools

The foundation

All 25 have their levels written; some are still grey, eight of them in School of Leadership. Thirteen stand in Mudbury. The most basic base schools stand in every city, while some exist only in certain cities. That is a reason to choose another starting city.

Tier II · disciplines

There is no single correct sword tree

A sword user chooses between swordsmanship, fencing, dual wielding, shield combat, heavy or light armour and battlefield tactics. Only School of Fire has its levels filled; the rest show grey.

Tier III · academies

Where paths combine

Two schools combine into one academy: blood magic is necromancy with life magic, death magic is necromancy with spirit magic. All academies are greyed data, none placed.

Tier IV · universities

Where rules change

Universities are meant to change how things work, not just add numbers. Greyed data, none placed.

The Charisma branch

A stat for leaders

A whole branch for those who lead: auras that lift the party or weaken the enemy. Charisma also raises the chance to tame a monster. Outside the schools, it already decides which dialogue choices you are offered. DECIDED Names below are working names. DRAFT

Race chains

Each kindred has its own school

Open to its own people directly; other kindreds reach it through a harder condition. DECIDED The form of that condition, tier and content are open. IDEA

Abilities & spells

Built abilities

Abilities come with school levels: on demand, charging the next strike, or passive. One manual action per second; potions run in parallel. Those in the fourteen schools that stand in Mudbury can be bought today; the rest wait for their schools to get a square.

IN GAME Built in data. Every other level in Tiers II to IV is grey. Room is left for whips, firearms, time magic and music magic. IDEA

Still to be written

Room left in the network

• DECIDEDAcademies beyond sword and spell

  A non-magical cluster joins tier III, giving Discipline, Polearm, Throwing, Wilderness and Defense somewhere to lead. Not in the data yet.

• IDEASkirmisher, Pathfinder, Bodyguard …

  Examples of the kind of school meant, alongside Monster Slayer, Mage Hunter and Battle Medic. Names and combinations are open.

• DECIDEDTamer, summoner, druid, necromancer

  All planned. Tamers and summoners fight through creatures of their own; a tamer keeps one or two and is never forced to become a mage. The Academy of Primal Magic is the druid in substance. The companion these creatures need is built (it follows you, fights for you and protects you), but taming, raising the dead and summoning are not.

• IDEARoom for new branches

  New branches can join without redoing old characters: whips, scythes, firearms, mounted combat, psionics, time, void or weather magic, shapechanging.

• DECIDEDSchools of the mythologies

  Schools can stand in the mythological realms, and each mythology gets special schools of its own. Nothing stops you learning the bow from a Nordic god instead of a mainland master.

• DECIDEDSchools of the dispositions

  Each disposition is to get its own places, NPCs and schools, where gold unlocks levels in the disposition. Which schools, and where, is not written.