Classes and Quartus
Unlike some settings, the PC classes as such are not completely aligned with the actual in-universe people and their powers. Instead, they represent packages of features, powers, and traits that are suited for specific adventuring archetypes. Generally, priests you meet are not clerics--even those called clerics are not PC-class clerics. Despite this, the analogies are close enough to be meaningful.
Each class and its analogues is associated with one or more of four power sources (or approaches to power, more specifically):
- Arcane : manipulating the ambient anima to directly create effects. Most associated with wizards, although artificers, bards, and sorcerers also utilize this approach.
- Discipline : Practitioners of this path learn to enhance their own physical abilities and create "supernatural" effects through training, practice, and discipline. Fighters, monks, and rogues are most associated with this approach, although artificers, paladins and rangers train their powers.
- Planar : Practitioners of this path draw power from sources beyond the Mortal plane--from the gods, from elemental creatures, from the basic structure of the universe, or from fiends and other ascendant beings. Clerics and paladins are the obvious followers of this path, but warlocks follow it in their own way (that overlaps with the arcane path in some measure). Planar warriors follow this path but draw from the planes themselves.
- Primal : Followers of this path draw on the kami and other powers of the Mortal plane as well as from the nature of the elemental planes (as opposed to the major sentient beings of those planes). Druids, barbarians, and rangers are most associated with this path.
Barbarians
Primary Approach: Primal
Associating barbarians with tribes and uncivilized groups would miss most of the population with access to primal rage. Drawing from the ambient anima via their emotions, barbarians (often called by names relating to their archetype) unconsciously use that anima to reinforce their physical form, increasing their resilience and strength. Visually, many (especially the more fury-driven ones) literally swell with anger when they call on this primal power. This call on power most commonly first occurs in a state of anger (hence the name Rage), but as barbarians gain in power they may learn to draw on other sources--their ancestors, the kami of beasts, the elements, or even tapping into the inherent power of zealotry (becoming something akin to a paladin).
In the Federated Nations, barbarians are found wherever blood runs hot and emotions get inflamed. Wyrmhold has made a particular point of seeking out those who break the wall of primal power and training them, incorporating them into its army as their own specialized units. Those of the Dawnspire are particularly associated with those barbarians who choose the path of fanaticism.
Archetypes
Bards
Primary Approach: Arcane
The oldest of the spell-casting methods, harmonic magic was taught to the spoken races by agents of Leviathan back in the First Age. To this day, it is found throughout all peoples. Many tribal "shamans" use harmonic magic to heal their tribe members, curse the disobedient (or enemy), and bolster their own morale. But Leviathan's gift was not without strings--embedded in the patterns of this musical magic is a compulsion to learn and explore. Bards tend to be wanderers, driven from place to place by an unconscious wanderlust. As a result, bards also tend to be gifted jacks-of-all-trades.
Unlike most other arcanists, harmonic magic practitioners can heal others--their songs align the anima within the hearer and cause it to draw in ambient anima for healing. Conversely, bards find it comparatively easy to affect the minds of living creatures rather than their bodies directly. They are not as talented with creating energy manifestations (such as fire or lightning) as many others, although those with power can "cheat" and learn patterns that mimic those effects quite closely.
In the Federated Nations, bards are most associated with communities along the water, whether lakes or the sea. Byssia is home to many, as is the Serpent Dominion and Rauviz and Crisial Kingdom. There is a legacy of bardic magic in the Holy Kaelthian Republic, although that legacy has dimmed since the breakup of the Council Lands when most of the bards at the Graniteflame Academy moved to the other successor states to avoid the religious fanaticism growing in Kaelthia.
Archetypes
WIP
Clerics
Primary Approach: Planar (Divine)
Clerical magic is one of the newest forms of magic, tracing back to the Third Wish. Clerics are chosen by one of the Congregation to serve as their agent. This selection process requires more than just faith--many are faithful but remain without power. It requires a nature that resonates with that of the Great Mechanism and the god in question, allowing the god to connect the cleric to the Great Mechanism more directly than most. Clerics have drawing rights directly at that conduit, within limits set by their closeness to their god. As the gods (in the present era) are denied the ability to directly apply power to the Mortal realm, they rely on clerics as their first-run agents.
Most priests are not clerics, and most clerics are not members of official clergies. Priests are trained and some gain power from that training (much like a warlock), while some are born to that power (like a sorcerer). Their powers are restricted in scope, while a cleric has access to a wide range of powers, including those of types that their patron god does not oversee. Clerics can lose their power (unlike priests), but the traits that make one a suitable cleric are fungible enough that often a different god, more suited to the cleric's nature, will pick up the connection instead. Relationships between the clergy and the clerics are often strained--the clerics are the direct agents of divinity and so disregard things like hierarchy and process. They tend to wander about, driven by the will of their god as they understand it.
Setting notes: Casting animate dead is considered a violation of clerical ethics by almost every member of the Congregation. Only those of the Hollow King will do so, and only for limited purposes. The Death domain is not a player option. Clerics must be clerics of specific deities, not of philosophies or ideas.
Archetypes
WIP
Druids
Primary Approach: Primal
Druids are the premier negotiators with the kami big and small. Originating with the Second Wish, druidic magic involves understanding the wishes and desires of these beings and learning to make deals with them. Generally, those deals are transactional--the druid feeds them a small bit of anima from their soul in exchange for the kami using them as a channel to create a magical effect. If one could see the kami as lights, most druids would look like they had a cloud of fireflies surrounding them at all times. This is also why wearing armor made of large sheets of hammered metal is distasteful for druids--the worked metal is "dead" to kami, creating a "typing with boxing gloves" effect on the druid.
Druids are most common in Byssia, where the Dreamgrove is a major influence in government. There are two other major circles (and countless smaller ones): the Lady's Grove in Crisial Kingdom and the Pactum Grove in Dreamshore. However, most of the ihmisi tribes are affiliated with druidic practitioners, as are many of the goblin tribes of the Windwalker Confederacy. Druidism is rarest among the dwarves of the Ulan Confederacy and in the Holy Kaelthian Republic; the first because the people are bound to their metal-smithing and mining ways (which many druids find unnatural and repellant) and the other due to the fanatic religiosity of the people which beats nature into submission to the people's consensus.
Archetypes
Fighters
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Monks
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Paladins
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Planar Warriors
See Planar Warrior.
Rangers
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Rogues
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=Sorcerers
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=Warlocks
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=Wizards
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