It's been nearly two full months since my last Kirinioth post, so it's time to get back on the wagon. The last brainstorm had me leaning toward a re-write using a noun-verb system (off the top of my head, I think there's a GURPS Thaumatology system using that concept called Syntactic Magic). I think that in addition to Power, I will also be adding color affinity advantages/traits. These would bolster the Power attribute for casting/countering spells of that color, and Power would be expanded to have uses for non-spellcasting characters. I may also reduce the point cost to make it a better purchase. The color traits would be limited to something like three or five levels. Enough to give a valuable boost, but not enough to devalue Power. Certain verbs will have affinities to certain colors. Elves and Dwarves, etc., would get a point of affinity rather than a boost to their Power attribute.
Probably not a popular design choice with so many systems moving in a narrative direction, but I'm considering grounding magic somewhat with mana being converted to kinetic energy. Higher skill levels would improve a caster's efficiency with the conversion. So now instead of saying that 1 point of mana in a ball of fire spell will do potentially the same damage as 1 point in a hurled rock spell, I'll do some research on how much energy is needed to create a fire of X hexes at Y temperature vs. how much energy is needed to throw a baseball sized rock at Z miles per hour. This will unbalance attack spells in some situations, but I consider that a good thing. There may be more people that gravitate toward specific types of magic, making some specialists that much more valuable to employ.
Affinities will also govern Power level of magic. One thing I'm considering is that once damage is calculated, Affinity might add either +1 per level to the damage (with +3 converting to 1d), or it might be added in before kinetic energy conversions. This could get complex quickly, so it'll be important to have a clear method for making those calculations. It would be easy to automate that in Foundry if I end up customizing or building my own system rule set (which I'd have to do, using such a heavily house ruled system).
I'll need to go through the spell lists, and consult the Thaumatology book for all of the nouns and verbs I'll want to include, and then group them into spanning trees.
While I'm thinking about it, I may also simplify the attributes a little, and instead use a whole bunch of talents. That will still add a lot of customization options, and also force more realistic combinations. For instance, instead of just using a Creativity attribute, a bard might have talents that add to general music ability, but also another talent focused on singing or string instruments. Those are some very specific examples, but certainly doable. I think I still want to split DX and IQ though, so there may be some limits to how much simplification I can do.
I should probably add something here.