Pathfinder Hogwarts
Nov. 2nd, 2020 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI was thinking about Hogwarts houses as Pathfinder character classes, because someone said Slytherin was all about bloodlines.
... I thought the pureblood thing was more widespread than that, but...
Pathfinder magic that's born in the blood means Sorcerer. You have different bloodlines tracing the source of their magic back to different Powers, usually Arcane but possibly Aberrant or Infernal or Fey or many more. Draconic. And you get a sorcerer turning up after many generations without known contact with such an influence, sure, but you also get bloodlines that can trace a family tree back to the particular and specific.
Their magic is based on Charisma, and Charisma is the stat social skills are based on, but it also has to do with force of personality and appearance. Intelligence is not precisely required. But their spell list is identical to Wizards. So they can do all the same things, just by different means.
Ravenclaw are book learners, which means Wizards. Wizards study pure theory of magic from first principles and memorise things out of books. Intelligence is their base stat and very much required if they want to cast at higher levels. Charisma... isn't entirely necessary. And bloodline is irrelevant. They just need to be able to learn.
Dividing a magic school into Houses is arbitrary, but dividing students by what exact kind of arcane caster they are is necessary. Sorcerers need to learn to control themselves, but wizards need to learn how to access power by understanding it. Different courses in many ways, even though the spells end up the same.
If the school is just for arcane casters there are still a bunch of possibilities left: Bards, Witches, Summoners, and more from the fiddlier rulebooks.
Being allowed to bring your familiar to school is one thing, learning magic from your familiar is rather another. Witches dont need human teachers, they gain power from pacts with unknown forces, shared via familiars. Familiars can learn spells from each other, so a class of witches would involve animal friends studying each other while their humans did... something else useful, and then the human studying from the familiar. Familiars can also learn a spell from a scroll, by ingesting its ashes. So. Magic books not much use to them, but people who can write scrolls ie wizards are plenty useful.
You'd set up a House of witches and hope it somehow all works out and the pacts arent too terrible.
... maybe what the humans study from each other is mostly ethics...
I don't know as Hogwarts houses match though. None of them are animal focused enough. Neither Witch nor Summoner really fit in there.
Bards though... Charisma based, good at getting along with other people? Maybe a bit Hufflepuff? Bard spells are their own list that tops out at level 6, compared to 9 for Sorcerer and Wizard, so they'd get a reputation for being... less. But they're not even playing the same game.
That leaves Gryffindor. And the Magus. Not a class I know well. But a Magus blends magic with martial arts. They fight. Possibly bravely? And you'd certainly want to put them in lessons well away from the bookish ones.
It's another list that stops at 6th level though. Going to get looked down on by the 9th level people.
Of course if the school is only Witchcraft and Wizardry then it only divides up between people learning from their teachers and those letting their familiars learn from a teachers pet.
But I took this thought for a walk because every class that uses magic has it come from a different place and has different reasons for using it. They'd learn by different methods and be strongest in different stats. They'd make sense in different lessons, so if not a different school, then different houses.
I read a thing which reckoned Slytherin is obviously the public school system, Ravenclaw is Grammar school, Hufflepuff are the ones who didnt get in to Grammar school which I think is secondary modern, and Gryffindor is the new and exciting Comprehensive school which just puts all the kids together and hopes it works out. School systems with a different ethos optimised for different sets of expectations more than different sorts of students. Kind of odd to put all in one building but a snapshot of British education.
Still unfair on the kids to Sort at 11 like that.
... see also Grammar school.
But character classes being split up makes actual practical sense.
Of course Pathfinder has rules for child characters, and the rule is that they only have NPC levels, to represent how much less training they've had time to have.
The only NPC class that casts spells at all is the Adept, and they draw them from the divine list, so that dont fit a school for arcanists. But a bunch of NPC kids would look all similar until they reached maturity for their species and got the hang of PC classes.
Pathfinder adulthood for humans starts at 15.
Pathfinder has an interesting definition of adult.
Starting characters usually add a minimum of one or two years for training, so wizard school would represent those years of training.
Basically if arcane magic users needed dividing up by class to learn things, it would happen in sixth form. Or the bit of high school Buffy was doing when we saw her.
... the older I get, the younger Buffy gets, and they were pretty young to start with...
The published wizard school module I have only does school for wizards in specific and particular, I think. Wizards further subdivide by what they specialise in and there's different buildings for each speciality. But other arcane users dont seem to go study at the same places. They study in their own ways and in different structures or none.
They'd all have different ideas of what was important, so whoever ended up thinking they were boss would disagree a lot with the other sorts.
Seems like a seam of story.
Not sure it clicks well with Hogwarts though.
Ah well, though walked, it can wander off again now.
... I thought the pureblood thing was more widespread than that, but...
Pathfinder magic that's born in the blood means Sorcerer. You have different bloodlines tracing the source of their magic back to different Powers, usually Arcane but possibly Aberrant or Infernal or Fey or many more. Draconic. And you get a sorcerer turning up after many generations without known contact with such an influence, sure, but you also get bloodlines that can trace a family tree back to the particular and specific.
Their magic is based on Charisma, and Charisma is the stat social skills are based on, but it also has to do with force of personality and appearance. Intelligence is not precisely required. But their spell list is identical to Wizards. So they can do all the same things, just by different means.
Ravenclaw are book learners, which means Wizards. Wizards study pure theory of magic from first principles and memorise things out of books. Intelligence is their base stat and very much required if they want to cast at higher levels. Charisma... isn't entirely necessary. And bloodline is irrelevant. They just need to be able to learn.
Dividing a magic school into Houses is arbitrary, but dividing students by what exact kind of arcane caster they are is necessary. Sorcerers need to learn to control themselves, but wizards need to learn how to access power by understanding it. Different courses in many ways, even though the spells end up the same.
If the school is just for arcane casters there are still a bunch of possibilities left: Bards, Witches, Summoners, and more from the fiddlier rulebooks.
Being allowed to bring your familiar to school is one thing, learning magic from your familiar is rather another. Witches dont need human teachers, they gain power from pacts with unknown forces, shared via familiars. Familiars can learn spells from each other, so a class of witches would involve animal friends studying each other while their humans did... something else useful, and then the human studying from the familiar. Familiars can also learn a spell from a scroll, by ingesting its ashes. So. Magic books not much use to them, but people who can write scrolls ie wizards are plenty useful.
You'd set up a House of witches and hope it somehow all works out and the pacts arent too terrible.
... maybe what the humans study from each other is mostly ethics...
I don't know as Hogwarts houses match though. None of them are animal focused enough. Neither Witch nor Summoner really fit in there.
Bards though... Charisma based, good at getting along with other people? Maybe a bit Hufflepuff? Bard spells are their own list that tops out at level 6, compared to 9 for Sorcerer and Wizard, so they'd get a reputation for being... less. But they're not even playing the same game.
That leaves Gryffindor. And the Magus. Not a class I know well. But a Magus blends magic with martial arts. They fight. Possibly bravely? And you'd certainly want to put them in lessons well away from the bookish ones.
It's another list that stops at 6th level though. Going to get looked down on by the 9th level people.
Of course if the school is only Witchcraft and Wizardry then it only divides up between people learning from their teachers and those letting their familiars learn from a teachers pet.
But I took this thought for a walk because every class that uses magic has it come from a different place and has different reasons for using it. They'd learn by different methods and be strongest in different stats. They'd make sense in different lessons, so if not a different school, then different houses.
I read a thing which reckoned Slytherin is obviously the public school system, Ravenclaw is Grammar school, Hufflepuff are the ones who didnt get in to Grammar school which I think is secondary modern, and Gryffindor is the new and exciting Comprehensive school which just puts all the kids together and hopes it works out. School systems with a different ethos optimised for different sets of expectations more than different sorts of students. Kind of odd to put all in one building but a snapshot of British education.
Still unfair on the kids to Sort at 11 like that.
... see also Grammar school.
But character classes being split up makes actual practical sense.
Of course Pathfinder has rules for child characters, and the rule is that they only have NPC levels, to represent how much less training they've had time to have.
The only NPC class that casts spells at all is the Adept, and they draw them from the divine list, so that dont fit a school for arcanists. But a bunch of NPC kids would look all similar until they reached maturity for their species and got the hang of PC classes.
Pathfinder adulthood for humans starts at 15.
Pathfinder has an interesting definition of adult.
Starting characters usually add a minimum of one or two years for training, so wizard school would represent those years of training.
Basically if arcane magic users needed dividing up by class to learn things, it would happen in sixth form. Or the bit of high school Buffy was doing when we saw her.
... the older I get, the younger Buffy gets, and they were pretty young to start with...
The published wizard school module I have only does school for wizards in specific and particular, I think. Wizards further subdivide by what they specialise in and there's different buildings for each speciality. But other arcane users dont seem to go study at the same places. They study in their own ways and in different structures or none.
They'd all have different ideas of what was important, so whoever ended up thinking they were boss would disagree a lot with the other sorts.
Seems like a seam of story.
Not sure it clicks well with Hogwarts though.
Ah well, though walked, it can wander off again now.