Mixster said:
alex_greene said:
In all cases, look at spells other than that blighted cliche Bladesharp. Goodness' sakes, who but chefs and woodsmen would want to learn that spell outside of adventuring?
Gladiators and soldiers.
Possibly blacksmiths who want to fool their customers
Men who need a sharp razor?
But not everybody on the surface of the planet, surely?
Spells Seeing Common Use
Abacus (just about everybody)
Armoursmith's Boon (craftsmen working metal, blacksmiths)
Beast Call (animal herders of all kinds)
Becalm (Mothers with kids - perhaps disguised as lullabies)
Cauterise (medics)
Chill (people preparing food for storage)
Clear Path (woodsmen, people who work outdoors in the countryside)
Co-Ordination (steeplejacks, roofers, people who have to scale heights to do their work)
Endurance (Nightwatchmen, soldiers on duty, law enforcers on stakeout, students, journalists, medics, farmers, parents)
Entertainer's Smile (street entertainers, courtiers, people putting on some sort of show)
Extinguish (fire fighters - they'd learn this at as high a Magnitude as possible)
Fate (gamblers, mothers putting the blessing on kids on their way to school)
Glamour (entertainers, courtiers, courtesans, prostitutes)
Golden Tongue (if you've got past the prostitutes above, anyone in any kind of commercial venture whatsoever, such as markets, shops or buying or selling goods)
Heal (physicians, some parents)
Ignite (just about anyone who has firelighting as one of their regular duties - servants, the help)
Lucky (gamblers, mothers putting the blessing on kids on their way to school)
Mason's Boon (labourers, ditch diggers, gravediggers, actual masons)
Mobility (people drafted in to keep the peace; criminals who disturb the peace)
Repair (all manner of craftsmen)
Strength (labourers, people who have to handle large animals)
Understanding (merchants in frequent contact with customers of different cultures; wanderers in frequent contact with stay-at-homes on their long route)
Vigour (the same people who use Endurance, above)
Warmth (night watchmen, indigents with a bit of initiative, officers of the law, people who have to work in a place where they cannot have naked flames, such as in and around barrels of spirits, volatile perfumes or oil)
These probably give the lives of ordinary people a bit of an edge, but they do not go overboard as, say, Mindspeech or Multimissile would.
Like i said, characters should learn ordinary and mundane Common Magic spells, like those from the above list. They don't have the pull of Bladesharp, but they would reflect the adventurer's origins - a former firefighter who knows Extinguish 4, an older sibling whose mother taught Becalm and Lucky to in order to delegate the task of casting those spells on his younger siblings, a canny merchant with a keen eye for the value of everything, a gilded entertainer with a winning smile and a way with girls and boys, an erstwhile shepherd who
really knows his sheep and his dogs and so on.
Some Common Magic spells are pretty exotic - Bandit's Cloak, Bearing Witness, Bestial Enhancement, Befuddle, Boon of Lasting Night, Countermagic, Countermagic Shield, Darkwall, Demoralise, Detect X, Dullblade, Fanaticism, Light, Mindspeech, Push/Pull, Second Sight, Slow, Spirit Bane, Water Breath - they would not find much use in common life. However, they could appear as the defining, signature spells of the strange kids.
That kid who can make things brighter or darker, who can gather shadows about him and is always lurking somewhere; the kid who can see spirits and spot a wizard by his POW; the telekinetic firestarter; the kid who seemingly lives in the local river and who has no trouble locating a dropped dagger at the bottom of the river by the taste of the iron of the blade in the back of his mouth as he heads for the bottom with seemingly infinite endurance for the cold ...
Thinking that way brings Common Magic to life. It gives character to the people who possess these spells, and lets the magic shape their natures.
Note: I have avoided all of the distinctly destructive combat Common Magic, specifically Bladesharp. Perhaps, as adventurers, the characters can get to learn those kinds of spells as basic training - but there is no general common use in ordinary life for Disruption or Skybolt or Fireblade unless the people wielding them belong to a travelling circus or some sort of street show, or they are criminals of some sort. Frostbite, Hand of Death and Disruption would probably be learned only by the most sick, twisted people - and they would be leaving their handiwork all over town, frozen and mutilated bodies of animals and people.