101st MC(A)
The Basic Idea
I love the idea of prestige classes. I think I'll like the actuality an awful lot less. We already have a lot of classes and balance is hard to manage in general - to this day there are argument about whether white's first-move advantage is better or worse than Black's superior castling position in chess - and adding more of those, tuning them against themselves for feel and power, and then rebalancing everything else in the Classes header - I'm exhausted just thinking about it. In light of that, Jason pitched the skeleton of what follows and I'm scribbling it here to see how it looks on paper, linear and organized.
I really like the idea that the 101st Academy can train Mages or Gunslingers into functioning Spellshots. I like the idea of a 200-mana gunmage a lot less. On further reflection, I'm adding Kinetic Energy a fuel source. If you're a Mage that can't track three fuel sources, this is an excellent opportunity to develop that mental muscle.
In order to avoid having to write/balance new classes, we open Gunmage (and similar attunements-that-should-have-been-classes) as an Attunement, but it doesn't pick up attunement powers in the same neat, linear fashion as other attunements. Instead, as your Gunmage rank advances, it opens up skills you can then buy with SP to stack up on cool gunmage abilities. Something like this:
Admission
Summerfall's 101st Academy is elitist about who's accepted for training. Because they're using the weirdness and mystery of Spellshots to hold back the rest of the world, they don't accept non-human candidates at all. The academy teaches gun magic, not the basics of firearm operation, and therefore rejects candidates who can't already operate a firearm safely (maybe not accurately or precisely, but without hurting themselves.) They strongly prefer Soldier backgrounds - the 101st is an Army unit and graduates are expected to serve their terms - but this is a shorter hurdle to jump. There are some former farm kids in current service; some kids are just born with the right set of attributes it takes to succeed in training and the Crown is not so overcome with candidates that they can afford to demand years of military service before letting those kids in the door. People skilled in magic and not dangerously foolish or clumsy are taught firearms as part of initiation.
The human requirement is a hard stop. Summerfall is badly outnumbered and relies on the force-multiplication effect of Spellshots, along with an unconventional military doctrine, to discourage Elves or Rok'Shen or anyone else from finishing what the bugs started. For that same reason, outlanders are also not welcome, but transplants are - if you're one of the people living in Summerfall lands because of their open human immmigration policy, you're both allowed and encouraged to test for admission. Where you were born sort of matters, but the fulcrum here is loyalty to the people of Summerfall; the Crown is happy to train more 101s to defend the people but way less happy to train some offworld rando in the quick way to fame and fortune. There is exactly one potential case of a nonhuman gunmage; Empress Priya is in a very similar position and her Ninja corps is an excellent force multiplier. It'd take a good diplomat with ties to both cultures, but there are conditions under which Summerfall might accept one of Priya's Deep Elves into the academy in exchange for her permitting a human to train as a Ninja. Outside of that, no.
Attunement Powers
As mentioned above, these (mostly) are not attunement powers in the sense of other attunements - there's still a Favor progression but new skills do not simply appear on your sheet as you advance in rank. What does appear are unlocks; once you've achieved a certain rank, you can then purchase the skill(s) opened to you at that rank. That in mind:
| Category | Skill Name | Prerequisites | Skill Point Cost | Use Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basics | xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | |||
| Ballistic Magic | Rank 1 | 5SP | Passive | |
| Fuel | ||||
| Joules (1-50) | Rank 1 | 1/2 SP | Fuel | |
| Joules (51-75) | Rank 5 | 2SP | Fuel | |
| Ballistic Magic | ||||
| 1st level Spellshot spell | Rank 1 | 1 | 1 Joule | |
| 2nd level Spellshot spell | Rank 2 | 1 | 2 Joules | |
| 3rd level Spellshot spell | Rank 4 | 1 | 3 Joules | |
| 4th level Spellshot spell | Rank 7 | 1 | 4 Joules | |
| 5th level Spellshot spell | Rank 9 | 1 | 5 Joules | |
| Gun Combat | ||||
| Accuracy +1 | Rank 1 | 20 | passive | |
| Accuracy +2 | Accuracy +1, Rank 3 | 20 | passive | |
| Accuracy +3 | Accuracy +2, Rank 6 | 20 | passive | |
| Details | ||||
| Conservation | Rank 2 | 2 | ||
| Truesight | Rank 10 | 5 | ||
| Consume | Rank 8 | 5 | passive | |