Changing the "Caster beats Mundane" paradigm

[Nargrakhan]

The following stuff is not mine. It comes from a Sword World 2.0 setting I read in a Replay several years ago. I've tried finding it on the Internet just awhile ago, but either my Google-Fu is weak or it's something that didn't get uploaded anywhere I can find. I get the same problem with Tenra Bansho material that wasn't translated by Andy Kitkowski, so I'm going to try remembering what I can from the top of my head. Please bear with me for a bit.

*** BEGIN RAMBLING RECOLLECTION ***

In this setting magic is a force that allows someone to change reality and make what's impossible, possible. The origin of this force is unknown, even to the gods, because it existed before them.

The gods were the world's first inhabitants. At first ordinary mortals, they created their own society, discovered magic, and became mind boggling powerful. At some point they transcended to a higher state of existence, becoming the divine. When doing so they removed all evidence of their civilization from the planet and let the world "restart" evolution again. At this point, the gods felt it would be best to not interfere with anything and let the world progress as if they didn't exist.

In the second age, powerful creatures that would become things like dragons and demons came into existence. Like the gods they started as non-magical creatures, but after discovering magic were able to improve themselves and change reality to their whim. At some point the creatures of the second age somehow discovered the beings of the first age (the gods). There was a huge disagreement about something, and the second age creatures got arrogant and tried to overthrow the gods. Around this time magitek robots were invented (its has a lot of anime elements in the setting, so yea). The second age creatures lost -- very badly -- and were we're imprisoned, suffered genocide, or went into hiding.

At this point the gods were divided into two camps: the "good gods" felt the world should be allowed to have a third age, but this time with their guidance to prevent another war in heaven. The "evil gods" felt this was still too dangerous, the world should be scrubbed of all life, and the creatures of the first age just live out their current utopia in existential solitude without lesser races or potential rivals. Since they abhorred the idea of actually fighting among themselves, the evil gods used the world's creatures as proxies. Basically the evil gods intended to destroy the world indirectly through cultists or tricking third world creatures into freeing dangerous second world creatures to slaughter each other (who greatly reduced or severely injured, were no longer threat to the gods anymore).

The third age is when the game takes place. The "elder races" like elves and dwarves achieved civilization first, learning magic afterwards with guidance from the gods. Other species like humans and lizardmen would follow several centuries afterwards, also getting help from the gods when they figured out fire and language on their own.

Okay... so with that quick background given:

In this setting the physics of the world work a lot like real Earth. Ordinary people can only do what we can our planet. Magic comes into play when something NOT possible in our world happens. For example casting a fireball or turning invisible.

However this also applies to physical feats. For example when a swordsman suddenly dashes across the battlefield and slaughters a dozen solders in the blink of an eye... or when the same swordsman swings his sword and creates a "wind blast" so powerful it cuts down trees in a forest. The martial classes are basically casting spells without words: they are using magic to perform their anime-style attacks. Running up the side of castle walls, dashing across water without sinking, creating small craters every time they block a sword attack from another warrior. This is their brand of magic (and why they took points to use or had limited uses). "Chi" was a subset of this magic that the monk class used. The swordsman class called their own kind "Hiken" (translates to Secret Technique).

Wizards, as cliche tradition demands, did magic via chanting. While it took them longer to finish these spells (because a martial just had to swing his sword or throw her fist), they also had more variety or greater power. Sure a monk could throw fireballs, fly or teleport (again, anime influence)... but a wizard could also do this and make others invisible, or summon a monster, or halt time, or control storms, etc, etc, etc. However they needed time to do these things, whereas the monk would just make his happen with a quick yell of hadoken or a single powerup turn.

Now the way magic functioned in this setting, 99.9% of the third age population could not use magic at all. That's what made the player characters special: they were people who could. Therefore while a PC swordsman could leap dozens of feet into the air and slice giant boulders in half with a kitchen knife (a feat possible by physically enhance magic): everyday townspeople could not. At the same time, everyday townspeople couldn't learn chanting magic that wizards did. Reciting the words didn't make what need to happen, actually happen. Thus heroic wizards or warriors finding an apprentice, was a lot like a Jedi finding an apprentice: they need to be in touch with the Force (or in this case, magic). One could only use one or the other: not both (thus the the system's martial and caster divide).

This had something to do with the "evil gods" doing something in their plan to kill everyone off from the third age. Those individuals who could use magic somehow circumvented this blockage, either because good gods granted magic through themselves (divine spells), a person was born with a heritage from the second age (half-demon/half-dragon kind of stuff), or won the power lottery and bypassed the blockage through sheer luck.

The most dangerous monster races were those from the second age, because they could use both magic simultaneously: both the "instant" kind used for physical enhancement and instant energy blasts, as well as the chanting kind for more diverse and powerful effects. For example the extreme might of a dragon was from permanent physical enhancement, the fire breath was his version of an energy blast, and he could chant spells to cause serious destruction.

Player characters were targeted by minions of the evil gods, because there were a threat to their plans (thus lots of evil cultist plots). Those of half-second age heritage, were often manipulated by a second age survivor in a bid to regain power and try attacking the gods again with third age pawns.

**** END RAMBLING RECOLLECTION ***

tl;dr - Mysterious source of magic that permeates the world has more ways of manifesting itself than chanting words to create fireballs. Reality warping energy source is doing reality warping stuff when the Fighter runs across water, moves so fast it looks like he teleport, or cuts an enemy fireball in half with his sword. He's doing dispel a different way. Wizard version of a "chanted" dispel is just more versatile (like making an anti-magic field or being able to dispel more than a directed magic attack). Ordinary people in the setting are ordinary people, because they CAN'T do this sort of stuff. Only the rare 1% like player characters can do it.

Before anyone cries that's anime only garbage, He-Man was using superhuman strength to block Magic Missile, break out of Force Cage, and cutting down Chromatic Orb since the 80's.