Well, the cultural ramifications, I realized after coming up with as much as I did, aren't all that huge. Everybody has their part to play, so it's not like there's any dishonor involved in not being magical. Consider that Combatants scale upward from 'utterly mundane' to 'Exalted-lite', depending on how much kit they get; they get to be physically more capable than anybody else, and I want their abilities to reflect that. Faster movement, significantly higher strength, the ability to tank hits that'd reduce an unaugmented mortal to jelly... a top-end Combatant is very much a force to be reckoned with, and not just in the sense that they have 'bigger numbers' than anybody else, like the D&D Fighter tries to.
Speaking of 'not being magical', one cultural tidbit I did come up with is that magic only weakly follows family lines. The child of two people with Caster-talent has only a somewhat higher chance of having the talent than the child of a Caster and a mundane, and their chances are only slightly higher than two mundanes. Since only about one in ten has the potential, this means that every village- and almost every family of sufficient size- has a potential Caster somewhere in it. The only way you're getting a thaumocracy out of that is if Casters go around stealing babies, and that's likely to lead to a whole tide of irritated everybody else coming down on you.
The way Clerics work isn't that they have a spell list to level off of. They have a list of pacts, each of which is essentially a multi-level spell list of its own. So if you pacted with, say, a god of healing, you'd get three casts of a basic healing spell, two casts of a basic 'cure status ailment' spell, and one shot of a more powerful healing spell per day. Raise the level of the pact- basically, increasing your closeness with the spirit in question- and you get more of its trust and more of its attention. This translates into more casts per day, and access to more spells.
This is in contrast with Casters, whose limiting factor is internal. Basically, their brand of magic is incredibly taxing- I'm currently tossing around the idea that they technically could keep casting forever, but have to make progressively harder skill checks each time they do so- to simulate the exhaustion and pounding headache that casting too much/too fast generates.
Character creation, at the moment, is basically 'roll your stats, pick your race, take this XP and gold, buy character features and items, and go'. You can technically start the game with no abilities at all... but I wouldn't recommend it. Also, the system is set up to encourage everybody to take a bit of Combatant at the very least- the class lists are fairly focused, so if a Caster or Cleric wants sword skills, they need to grab them out-of-class.
Caster magic isn't strictly improvisational. It can't be- the patterns involved are too complex for that. What it is is scalable, adjustable, and potentially collaborative. A Cleric's spells will always do the same thing, every time... but a Caster can make theirs stronger or weaker as necessary. Or area-effect. Or maybe combine two patterns to make a hybrid spell. I haven't decided too much about how they work, per se, but I'm currently leaning towards 'spell list, but with really flexible metamagic baked in'. Also, out-of-battle ritual magic actually has a place, unlike in 4e- it lets a Caster achieve more complex (not quite Cleric-level) effects easier, and even allows multiple Casters to work together. Clerics can't do that.
To give you an idea, healing moderate wounds is a ritual Caster working, requiring either one very skilled Caster or as many as three apprentice Casters to work. Clerics can do it in battle.
Oh, and Manytales? Spirits are repeated patterns plus belief. A weapon enchantment, for example, wouldn't be a spirit unless enough people believed it was- and even then, it wouldn't be sapient unless enough people believed it to be. A sapient enchantment, as opposed to a spirit of a whole category of enchantments, is really freaking rare. In fact, that's what distinguishes a legendary weapon from the rest- enough people know of it, tell stories about it, and imitate it that it gains its own spirit from all the belief.
Even then, you're not binding a spirit into a weapon. The pattern you bound into it is becoming a spirit after the fact. With mass-produced enchantments, you're more likely to get a primal spirit- basically a mass of mystical energy with a few basic instincts- than an actual conscious being, anyway.
That said, binding preexisting spirits into things would be potentially possible, and I could see it being its own line of abilities. It just isn't quite what I was already doing. Congratulations- you've added a new skill tree!
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.
Speaking of 'not being magical', one cultural tidbit I did come up with is that magic only weakly follows family lines. The child of two people with Caster-talent has only a somewhat higher chance of having the talent than the child of a Caster and a mundane, and their chances are only slightly higher than two mundanes. Since only about one in ten has the potential, this means that every village- and almost every family of sufficient size- has a potential Caster somewhere in it. The only way you're getting a thaumocracy out of that is if Casters go around stealing babies, and that's likely to lead to a whole tide of irritated everybody else coming down on you.
The way Clerics work isn't that they have a spell list to level off of. They have a list of pacts, each of which is essentially a multi-level spell list of its own. So if you pacted with, say, a god of healing, you'd get three casts of a basic healing spell, two casts of a basic 'cure status ailment' spell, and one shot of a more powerful healing spell per day. Raise the level of the pact- basically, increasing your closeness with the spirit in question- and you get more of its trust and more of its attention. This translates into more casts per day, and access to more spells.
This is in contrast with Casters, whose limiting factor is internal. Basically, their brand of magic is incredibly taxing- I'm currently tossing around the idea that they technically could keep casting forever, but have to make progressively harder skill checks each time they do so- to simulate the exhaustion and pounding headache that casting too much/too fast generates.
Character creation, at the moment, is basically 'roll your stats, pick your race, take this XP and gold, buy character features and items, and go'. You can technically start the game with no abilities at all... but I wouldn't recommend it. Also, the system is set up to encourage everybody to take a bit of Combatant at the very least- the class lists are fairly focused, so if a Caster or Cleric wants sword skills, they need to grab them out-of-class.
Caster magic isn't strictly improvisational. It can't be- the patterns involved are too complex for that. What it is is scalable, adjustable, and potentially collaborative. A Cleric's spells will always do the same thing, every time... but a Caster can make theirs stronger or weaker as necessary. Or area-effect. Or maybe combine two patterns to make a hybrid spell. I haven't decided too much about how they work, per se, but I'm currently leaning towards 'spell list, but with really flexible metamagic baked in'. Also, out-of-battle ritual magic actually has a place, unlike in 4e- it lets a Caster achieve more complex (not quite Cleric-level) effects easier, and even allows multiple Casters to work together. Clerics can't do that.
To give you an idea, healing moderate wounds is a ritual Caster working, requiring either one very skilled Caster or as many as three apprentice Casters to work. Clerics can do it in battle.
Oh, and Manytales? Spirits are repeated patterns plus belief. A weapon enchantment, for example, wouldn't be a spirit unless enough people believed it was- and even then, it wouldn't be sapient unless enough people believed it to be. A sapient enchantment, as opposed to a spirit of a whole category of enchantments, is really freaking rare. In fact, that's what distinguishes a legendary weapon from the rest- enough people know of it, tell stories about it, and imitate it that it gains its own spirit from all the belief.
Even then, you're not binding a spirit into a weapon. The pattern you bound into it is becoming a spirit after the fact. With mass-produced enchantments, you're more likely to get a primal spirit- basically a mass of mystical energy with a few basic instincts- than an actual conscious being, anyway.
That said, binding preexisting spirits into things would be potentially possible, and I could see it being its own line of abilities. It just isn't quite what I was already doing. Congratulations- you've added a new skill tree!
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.