Sometimes I am struck by ideas that seem to be floating in the currents of my little corner of the gaming community. Today I was reading an interesting blog post from the always thought provoking +Wayne Rossi and his notion of spellcasters with powers rather than traditional D&D spell use crashed into a post from +Rachel Ghoul on a Sorceror class design for ACKS.
One of the things I really like about Rachel's sorceror class is the addition of powers granted by the sorceror's bloodline. The single approach to arcane spell casting of vancian spells seems to work against the intent of the sorceror as an instinctive caster of magic inherited through fantastic descent. Wayne's post really brought home to me that what I wanted from a sorceror was a class with more frequent use of a limited number of inherent powers.
Don't get me wrong, I like the traditional vancian caster. I think it models a caster of a hermetic tradition really well. It's tropes of material components as manifestations of the laws of sympathy and contagion (I'm a big fan of the deCamp and Pratt Harold Shea stories) feel satisfying to me. I also want other flavors of spellcasters in my games; ones that represent other mythic and literary traditions.
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