Subject post: Character generation.
I'm trying to handle character generation a bit differently than normal. For one thing, at the moment gender and race are handled automatically - that is, when you make a new character your race and gender are decided for you. This works in accordance with one of the 'meta' feature concepts I have planned - inheritance. Your character grows in accordance with choices you make throughout his or her first twenty years of life, divided up into a 5-stage branching choice tree. You can start as a skilled magician, a craftsman, a warrior, a ranger, a priest, a monk, or someone with a family. This choice tree also determines your starting equipment.
Inheritance:
Basically, you have a place in the world's history. You can marry and have a family, and - here's the big thing - when you die, you can choose to continue play as your spouse, one of your siblings, or one of your children. Children's stats are decided as randomized between the parents' low and high end stats - that is, if the mother has a STR of 12 and the father has a STR of 18, the child may have an STR of anywhere from 12 to 18. How well the child starts the game will also depend on your progress in the previous game - if you gather 10000 gold and return alive to your family of 4, each child will start with 1250 bonus GP. (the keyword, of course, being 'return alive.') A character with no progeny will deadend that lineage, and you'll have to start an entire new family. This aspect of gameplay should also increase the usefulness of Charisma dramatically.
Races:
I'm currently working with a starting set of four races. Humans are sort of the middle ground - able to do anything well. Fae are magically inclined, reasonably charming and graceful, but not particularly strong physically. Dwarrow are physically strong, but not very pretty or dextrous. Synd are lithe and charismatic, but aren't the smartest knives in the drawer.
Magic:
All physical objects have essences. This is a scientific representation of their very being, and can be manipulated by the skilled. A piece of flint, for instance, may have 1 Earth Essence and 1 Fire Essence.
Essences are as follows: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Light, Darkness. Most objects have between 1 and 3 points of essence, and pure objects are rare and valuable.
All living beings can draw upon and store essence to some extent, as determined by their skill and Wisdom. They can convert an object to its essential elements, then store that essence for use in spellcasting.
If a being has too much essence within them, it will become unstable and prone to accidents. This is one reason why most mages start out with fragile constitutions. The same goes for spells cast beyond a user's ability.
A being's ability to store essence increases with use. Even the least apt of users may eventually learn to use magic. However, it is impossible to store more than ten essence points (the cost of the highest-level spells), so choosing which spells to be able to cast is an important part of being a wizard.
Spells are cast by drawing upon one's essence pool and transforming it to a particular purpose. They are fuelled by one's mana or, at last resort, by the essence pool itself. The cost of a spell in mana is equal to the square of the spell's cost in essence. A 5-essence Moderate Fire Ward spell would cost 25 mana to cast.
Gemstones have negative essence. This means that they can store within themselves foreign essence, and put it to use, in similar manner to how living beings can. Gems inserted into wands, rings, weapons, amulets, and armor can imbue those items with magical attributes. Special inks may be assembled, containing similar properties, and may be used for the writing of single-use scrolls.
Death is a tenth-level spell, consisting of 10 darkness essence. Very few mages have 100u of mana at their disposal, making Death a costly spell to use.
A wand of death would require a 2-socket wand implanted with two extremely valuable -5 essence Nightstones. as well as 10 points of pure Darkness essence gathered from pure-Dark objects. This makes for a very difficult crafting process. Plus, the mana pool in a wand is limited to 100u per stone (although you can force a third shot by eliminating all darkness essence from the wand) and recharges have a chance of shattering one of the stones.
Rings can only hold one stone. This limits their spell set substantially.
Amulets can also only hold one stone.
Weapons can hold up to two stones, with similar restrictions to wands.
Armor can hold up to one stone.
If a given weapon, wand, or ring can cast more than one spell, it will choose between them randomly unless blessed, in which case it will ask which one to fire.
