[Endoperez]

Magic theory and rules comes from Ars Magica. When you create logs, you'll see the AI pondering about "vis" instead of "gems", because Ars Magica uses vis. Paths of magic, magical skill and knowledge of spells with which to use it being independent of each other, magical resource with which to boost your power, spells causing fatigue instead of burning "spellpoints", etc etc. Ars Magica was penned to make mages the only real power, and non-mages are given minor role as thugs or companions. Thugs are what they sound like, and companions can be anything from bards to knights to clerics. I haven't had the chance to play it, but I understand each magus character has couple of companions and a group of thugs, and each player controls all of these. I.e. all mages have bodyguards, and no one has to be a spy or a military leader, you get couple of those for every mage.

I'm not sure if Ars Magica could be adapted to make non-mages play a bigger role. I guess just giving all the same amount of skills and such to start with would work out okay, since magic takes more skillpoints (or whatever they are called in Ars Magica) than companion characters have... That would make the mages apprentices instead of masters.

There are also few other things that would have to change. Ars Magica had area under different auras: the (Christian God's) dominion, the infenal, fae and wild/magic/neutral. Dominion would be Order/Drain, and I'm a big hazy on these bu I think infernal would be misfortune and fae turmoil. These would be changed so that there would be multiple divine beings with different dominions. Scale effects for Growth/Death, Order/Turmoil, Fortune/Misfortune and perhaps Heat/Cold would have to be done. Magic/Drain or similar was already in: spellcasting was a bit harder on villages, difficult in cities and VERY hard to do in/near big cathedrals, due to dominion being stronger in areas with more people and in churches.



Mages founded covens (personal laboratories, a library, housing for the thugs and craftsmen, storagerooms... almost a small village/fortress) in the areas where magic was easy to use, or where magical resources (vis = gems) are plentiful, i.e. where there are magic sites.


I don't think there are powers that are based on reputation, but instead there should be spesific abilities which increase reputation. Like, if you're really good at torturing people and hurting people, you'll get benefits similar to "legendary cruelty": you can instill fear in your enemies.