Magic: RPG, Character Attributes and Mana Affinity - 02

Thus far, Characters will have several ability scores (that I have yet to flesh out) as well as scores for how much affinity they have for certain mana colors. Unlike magic creatures (and planeswalkers), everyone has at least some affinity for all five colors. What gives creatures their colors is what aspects they have the most affinity with. Characters are a vessel for mana. While most people will make due with what mana they have access to, mages and other spellcasters instead try to bend mana to do their bidding.

Characters will have many attributes, talents and skills combined with their available mana from their mana affinity which will determine their mana pool along with a few other factors like artifacts and lands.

Mana is both really complicated and simple to understand at the same time. We are all made of mana, and everything we know of is made of mana. Mana is the life force coursing through our veins as well as makes up everything we see. Now, that's really loose so I'll try to get more pesudo-science behind it. Mana is drawn from the Blind Eternities, that space between the planes that we know of. Mana is in a constant state of flux and shifting between the planes. The movement is relatively slow, kind of like the shifting of the continental plates. On the small scale it's almost unnoticeable. Dramatic shifts in the flow of mana can change a plane in drastic ways.

Mana sources otherwise are relatively predictable and those who know where mana streams intersect with points in the plane can find places of power. Over the course of time, these places have become places of worship and power. In card game terms, these are non-basic lands, where basic lands are more 'generic', where mana streams are close to but not a focal point. Players (casters and non-casters alike) can tap into these places and draw power to fuel their abilities and spells.

Players themselves are made of mana, and can tap into their own mana to activate abilities and spells. For most, natural mana is enough for most things but truly powerful abilities require the player to tap into additional locations of power that they have become familiar with or magical foci such as signets or keyrunes or through rituals and sacrifices. Characters will draw different kinds of mana based on their personality. Characters with high faith and honor will draw white mana energy to themselves. It's just how mana naturally acts, like a moth to a flame. It's not that moths intentionally find flames, that's just what they naturally look for. Mana is the same way in that specific personality traits synchronize with different kinds of mana.

I wanted characters to have several attributes outside of their mana affinities. In Legend of the Five Rings, each ring provided two attributes which had to be leveled up to level up the ring. Levelling up the ring granted additional abilities, generally very powerful ones. For those who haven't played the game, you had Fire, Air, Earth, Water, and Void. Each ring had two attributes in it's domain, one physical and one mental. Earth has Stamina and Willpower. It also determines how many HP you have. Your Earth rating is the lower of the two attributes under it's domain so being well balanced was necessary to increase your ring powers.

While the system has some really interesting concepts, I don't like the idea of forcing characters to have balanced abilities. Characters with high skill and natural talent is linked to the magic affinity but they are not directly linked together. Right now, there's 5 'schools' with several domains in each school as well as five manipulations. Part of me is -really- annoyed at the lack of symmetry in the focuses with each color and the schools they have. Right now there's shards and two wedges. Grixis, Jund, Bant, and WBG with WUR. The ones missing are Naya, Esper, WBR, UBG, and URG. For the manipulations, it's divided evenly with all the shards and no wedges. Is splitting up the schools I have set up worth the effort for trying to get symmetry? Can I redistribute how the schools are? I have them divided up very flavorfully but it can be done in other ways I'm sure. Here's a picture of how the schools are divided up right now among the colors.

So of course, every color (just like every person) interacts with all five of the schools, but I tried to keep each color with the three aspects they are most focused on. I'll go in order and try to explain my choices in my next post as this one is getting just a tad long. Things I am considering tweaking:

• Schools have three shards and two wedges. Is there a way to alter it to have 5 shards or 5 wedges instead? Currently, the 'manipulations' is 5 shards perfectly and switching schools around to match that would be amazing.
• This would create a neat pattern.
• 5 shards in schools and 5 shards in manipulations works, as well as 5 wedges with 5 shards.
• Another option is to divide up the schools into 10 schools and fill in the blanks with the remaining schools. Problem is I have these already divided up very tightly and don't see much wiggle room.
• This would give us all 10 three color combinations.
• It would be a very neat pattern. 
• A third option is to reduce each color's affinity to two aspects. This would lend to an interesting dynamic of checking which guilds work well together based on what colors they are as there would always (in the best case scenario) be one overlap and two (one from each color) that do not overlap.
• That is would clearly demonstrate what is the most important to the two colors and what other two are next most important, and the last 2 that neither color has affinity for would be the lowest tier.
• This would clean up the chart to the right a lot as there is a pattern right now, it's not really easy to see it and it's not a very good pattern. I think simplifying the game would be a good option and this is getting my top vote right now.

Of course, there's always far more to talk about but I'm going to leave it here and think about it some more. I haven't even gone over what (if any) attributes there are and how they work together. A quick version is that I do want characters who do have little mana affinity and high physical attributes and be bruisers or high intelligence and be good spies and not rely on tapping into that aspect of their lives. Perhaps I should write a few short stories with these concepts in mind where I don't have to worry about numbers or specificity that much and see how well that reception gets.