Reasoning for the skill cost.
Basically, I switched the cost of the primary weapon, martial arts and directed spell, and lowered the armour costs. Looking at the original costs, one could see that the authors apparently wanted to base the Moon Mage on the Dervish. However, while they give it a low cost for martial arts, and high costs for armours, they give it a huge cost for adrenal defence! Which is the very reason why Monks or Dervish have so high armour costs: because they rely on unarmoured combat! Also, they forgot the Dervish doesn't have elemental attack spells (thus directed spell skills to develop) in their base lists! As a result, the Moon Mage was a semi-user, oriented in combat (it has prof. bonus in weapon skills), yet unable to wear armours, but without a high adrenal defence, and with expensive directed spell skills to boot!
Anyone who played a martial artist knows that, while it has some advantages, it's a DP expensive-choice, since a martial artist has to develop at least 4 martial art skills and adrenal defence, hardly compatible with developing at the same time directed spell skills, weapon skills and armour skills. Since the Moon Mage has elemental attack spells in his base list, I chose not to give him a focus in martial arts. As such, I switched his primary weapon, martial arts and directed spell costs to give the directed spell skills the lowest cost, and martial arts the highest cost.
Comparing then the resulting Moon Mage to all the other semi-spell users, I noticed his
huge armour costs, resulting from his previous Dervish base. Since I removed him such a link, I consequently altered these costs as well. My original idea was to give him the Ranger's costs (see reasoning later) but I eventually gave him a slightly higher costs (the Bard's) because the Ranger should logically be a bit more melee-combat oriented since the Moon Mage has elemental attack spells.
Now, as for the secondary skill costs, basing the Moon Mage on the Dervish just doesn't make IMO sense. I mean, so the Dervish is a profession focused on physical expression (dance!) and one urban-focused since it makes sense for such a profession to go wherever a lot of people gather. OTOH, the Moon Mage is a profession focused on the observation of the moon, therefore one more susceptible to live in desert places in the middle of nature, where he would be able to calmly and alone watch the moon (and the stars), without the interference of city lights or buildings. So, why base the latter on the former?
The way I imagine him, a Moon Mage would be closer to the Ranger, with his love of nature and the wild. Except as far as the star-gazing stuff was concerned, which is why I based him on the Astrologer as far as academic skills are concerned, since observation and academic knowledge of nature would fit IMO the Moon Mage.
Reasoning for the skill bonuses.
The original Moon Mage is good at everything, meaning at nothing. Once again, it felt as if the original authors didn't have a clear idea of what they wanted. I gave the Moon Mage a +1 in combat and body dev. since he was still combat-oriented IMO (he's a semi, after all), +1 to base spell casting as usual for semi-spell users, and +1 to social because, despite his lonely nature, the Moon Mage has a people-manipulating focus (i.e. his
Moon Madness spell list). As for the +2 in academic, it's obviously because of the "observation and academic knowledge of nature" aspect while the +2 to magic and directed spell skills because I wanted his main focus to be in magic.
Reasoning for the spell lists.
Metamorphose is useless. No, really. Or, rather, it doesn't fit the semi-spell user aspect of the Moon Mage, being more suitable to an Alchemist, or Sorcerer type of profession.
Moon Madness has potential, but suffers from being in the end just different versions of
three same spells. As for
Moon Mastery, while being the best list, it suffers from its prerequisites: it only works when the caster is outside at night and the moon is "up" (so, mayhap about 40% of a day) AND they're at 100% power only at the caster's "moon of power" (about 20% of nights). In a nutshell, the caster may use a list, whose spells are in equal power level to most other spell lists (i.e. they're not so awfully powerful you can understand the limitation), at full power only about 8% of time! So, I removed
Metamorphose and doubled the power of
Moon Mastery (so that at least the moon phases' influences balance each other; it's still quite limited in scope but good enough IMO).
The
Moon Blade spell came from an idea and an observation. The observation was how useless the level 25 spell,
Moon Child, was since it was so impractical and implied so much (e.g. existence of a Moon Mage society in which the caster was born, requirement for the spell to be cast in order to become a Moon Mage, ceremony spell fitting more a cleric-like pure magic user than a semi-caster such as the Moon Mage, etc.). The idea was how fascinating it'd be to have a Moon Mage plunge his hand into the reflection of the Moon and draw out his weapon from it. So, there. As a note, I kept the
Moon Child spell, but changed its range to self, so that the Moon Mage could cast it on himself once he's able to cast the spell (it's still a level 25, so I feel it alright).
Now, the additional lists.
Looking at the list suggestions, one can but raise a brow at how the light-based and dark-based Moon Mages only have 6 suggested lists whereas the grey-based version has
14! Looking at the list more carefully makes it even worse since
five of the suggested lists for the light-based Moon Mage are merely variants of each other! So I gave him 5 more. With 11 possible choices, it may seem a lot but in fact it's not, because so many lists are similar that they pretty much exclude each other from being chosen altogether.
Mirroring is a list I got somewhere, from someone who didn't "sign" his list (so, it's not mine); while more illusion-based, it's about
visual illusion, so fit with the light aspect of the light-based Moon Mage (heh, he does have
Light Molding suggested
). Of course, all the spells are in fact just the same one but, let's say that it fit
Moon Madness.
Light Creations,
Aura Magic and
Light Forms were obvious 'light' lists, that would probably have been suggested if they weren't published after the RoCoIII was (the additional spells in
Light Forms were to fill in the blanks). As for
Darkslayer, it fits the channeling aspect of the Moon Mage, its combat focus and some other spells I gave him (such as the Moon Blade or the Sword of Darkness) while being light-based, so I felt it was very appropriate.
To be honest, while having 14 choices, the grey-based Moon Mage has also a lot of variants of the same list, so in truth he's now pretty much equal to the light-based version with his 11 choices.
Though he also only has 6 choices, the dark-based Moon Mage gets more
different variants than his light-based counterpart, so giving him the three lists I gave him makes him pretty equivalent to the others. As in the light-based Moon Mage's case, the
Dark Forms and
Lightslayer spell list felt as appropriate. As for
Dark Ways, the list I created for the Water Mage, it's a mix between
Dark Law and
Dark Forms, now both choices for the dark-based Moon Mage, so it felt like a good alternative as well. As for
Light Forms, I created the additional spells in
Dark Forms to fill in the blanks; the
Sword of Darkness may feel a bit more powerful (than equivalent spells) but remember they're respectively level 17 and level 19 spells!
Anyway, there. I hope you'll enjoy my version of the Moon Mage.
