Envisioner
Explorer
This is the first step in a process of retrofitting D&D rules to work better with the Magic: the Gathering setting. First I will do the easiest but most fundamental step, which is making the concept of Color mechanically relevant for D&D characters. After that, I hope to work up a revised magic system which can replace the existing Vancian magic, and then if I really feel ambitious, I will put together a suite of rules that fully represent the abilities of MTG "Planeswalkers" as they are depicted in the card game. But for now, both of those latter projects are utterly unattainable in their vastness, and so I will simply concentrate on the first and simplest step.
In the MTG setting, literally everything that exists has a Color Identity, composed of the five colors of magic, and "colorless" for anything that doesn't fit. I will briefly describe these colors, using loosely appropriate Smileys from this board's code to substitute for the traditional mana symbols.
- White mana, symbolized by the sun. Associated with light, life, harmony, order, justice, law, dogma and tradition. Summons angels, spirits, knights and soldiers; heals wounds, removes curses, purifies corrupted matter, imprisons hostile beings, generates morale bonuses for large armies, and imposes global "equality" statuses. Slogan: "We are all a part of something greater and nobler than ourselves, and must each perform our duty as appointed by a higher authority".
- Blue mana, symbolized by a water drop. Associated with air, water, thought, magic, transformation, illusion, space and time. Summons phantasms, leviathans, birds and wizards; counters spells, temporarily banishes hostile beings, predicts the future, weaves disguises or produces real metamorphoses, and designs new artifacts.
Slogan: "You can become whatever you want to be, as long as you are smart enough, work hard enough, and seize your opportunities at the right moment."
- Black mana, symbolized by a skull. Associated with death, darkness, ambition, corruption, sacrifice, finality, futility, and pragmatism. Summons demons, undead, nightmares and vermin; kills hostile beings, promotes or retards decay, controls shadows, consumes innocent lives, and bargains with dreadful outer forces for power. Slogan: "By any means necessary, whatever the price; for now, nothing else matters, because someday, nothing will matter at all".
- Red mana, symbolized by a fireball. Associated with fire, lightning, anger, passion, speed, forcefulness, urgency and creativity. Summons dragons, goblins, berserkers and elementals; blasts targets with energy, intimidates hostile beings, sacrifices resources for short-term power surges, and shatters rock or metal. Slogan: "Get outta my way, pipsqueak; I'm gonna get what I want and I'm gonna get it NOW! Or else!"
- Green Mana, symbolized by a tree. Associated with nature, spirituality, growth, evolution, reality, efficiency, serenity, and predation. Summons animals, treefolk, behemoths and Fair Folk; strengthens living creatures, overpowers hostile beings, furthers the cycle of life, and harnesses weather and other natural processes. Slogan: "Patience, young grasshopper; look for wisdom in the ancient patterns of the world around you. All the answers you seek are already found within."
- This symbol denotes colorless mana, and is used as a placeholder in most cases; with the exceptions of most artifacts, few things in the Magic universe are inherently colorless.
Obviously that's a very hasty summary of a much more complicated body of lore, but it should suffice for the moment; I may amend it later as time allows. For now, let's move on to the actual Color Identity system. In this system, each person, place, thing, energy pattern, or even abstract concept is represented by 6 symbols, each of which may be any one of the above six icons. That which is strongly associated with a single color should have all six of its symbols as that color; something which is also tied only to that color, but much more weakly, should instead have one or two such symbols, along with enough colorless symbols to total six. If the thing is aligned with two or three colors, it may have equal or unequal numbers of symbols tying it to each of them; if it is tied to five colors, then it has one of each symbol, unless it is distinctly more associated with one color as well as with the full spectrum, in which case it can have a duplicate of that one color's symbol in place of the colorless one.
To generate the six symbols representing a given D&D character's color identity, perform the following steps to generate a six-symbol code.
Step 1 - Alignment
While the D&D alignment system is not particularly analogous to the full philosophical complexity of the MTG Color Wheel, it will do as a starting point. (If you are uncertain of your character's exact alignment, since 5th edition barely uses alignment at all, the 3rd edition Players Handbook has a relatively detailed writeup of exactly what each alignment is supposed to represent; as with my color summaries above, it's a very brief writeup which doesn't capture the full complexities, but it may help.)
If your character is Good, give yourself a symbol.
If your character is Lawful, give yourself a symbol.
If your character is Evil, give yourself a symbol.
If your character is Chaotic, give yourself a symbol.
If your character is True Neutral, give yourself two symbols if you have an active preference for balance among the Good and Evil, Lawful and Neutral aspects of yourself and the world around you, one symbol if you are more loosely aligned toward such neutrality, and two symbols if you are effectively Unaligned (ie not having the capcity to make a moral or ethical choice) or have simply never designated an Alignment for yourself.
If your character is Neutral along with exactly one of the first four alignment components, give yourself a symbol unless you feel that your character has a fairly strong inclination toward nature, new-age spirituality, or a general "hippie" ethos, in which case give yourself a .
At the end of step 1, you should have exactly two symbols.
Step 2 - Character Class
This step mostly exists because Druids are a thing; it attempts to equate each of the twelve character classes in the 5E PHB with a pair of color symbols. This is an even looser association than the previous step; feel free to change this outcome if you believe that you have a strong enough understanding of the Color Wheel to know how your character defies the stereotype of his class in this regard. If your character is multi-class, use whichever of his classes has the most levels, or the class he started with at first level, or the class he is planning to have the most levels in by the time he reaches level 20 (for instance, a character might put his first six levels into Rogue, then intend to take nothing but levels of Bard thereafter; thusly, pick Bard for this character even if he's currently only level 6.)
I meant to be more linear than that, sorry. A lot of the individual variation of a character should come out when the three stages are all combined, so the ambiguity I've baked into this step may do more harm than good. Once again, feel free to diverge from the results of the overall test, but most especially this stage. (Also I kinda completely forgot was a thing while I was writing all this, so for any character who doesn't conform to the stereotype of the class - yes, even a Druid - feel free to replace one or both of the suggested symbols with .)
Step 3: Personality
This is obviously the stage where the most interpretation comes in; in an attempt to get the wild openness under control, I am structuring this step very tightly, and as a result it will likely produce the least appropriate results. This questionnaire will likely not capture the full range of a personality, and I'm not really even trying to; I just want to try and get a set of very concrete outputs for now. I am very likely to revise this step in future iterations of this test.
To get your final two color symbols, answer the following four questions from an in-character perspective. Then combine the result with your Alignment and Character Class outputs to get your final Color Identity. If the result seems inappropriate, try taking the test again while interpreting the ambiguous steps a bit differently; if the result still seems wrong, then either you don't fully understand the subtleties of the Color Wheel, or I've written this test wrong (the latter of course being extremely likely).
Question 1 - (work in progress)
In the MTG setting, literally everything that exists has a Color Identity, composed of the five colors of magic, and "colorless" for anything that doesn't fit. I will briefly describe these colors, using loosely appropriate Smileys from this board's code to substitute for the traditional mana symbols.
- White mana, symbolized by the sun. Associated with light, life, harmony, order, justice, law, dogma and tradition. Summons angels, spirits, knights and soldiers; heals wounds, removes curses, purifies corrupted matter, imprisons hostile beings, generates morale bonuses for large armies, and imposes global "equality" statuses. Slogan: "We are all a part of something greater and nobler than ourselves, and must each perform our duty as appointed by a higher authority". - Blue mana, symbolized by a water drop. Associated with air, water, thought, magic, transformation, illusion, space and time. Summons phantasms, leviathans, birds and wizards; counters spells, temporarily banishes hostile beings, predicts the future, weaves disguises or produces real metamorphoses, and designs new artifacts.Slogan: "You can become whatever you want to be, as long as you are smart enough, work hard enough, and seize your opportunities at the right moment."
- Black mana, symbolized by a skull. Associated with death, darkness, ambition, corruption, sacrifice, finality, futility, and pragmatism. Summons demons, undead, nightmares and vermin; kills hostile beings, promotes or retards decay, controls shadows, consumes innocent lives, and bargains with dreadful outer forces for power. Slogan: "By any means necessary, whatever the price; for now, nothing else matters, because someday, nothing will matter at all". - Red mana, symbolized by a fireball. Associated with fire, lightning, anger, passion, speed, forcefulness, urgency and creativity. Summons dragons, goblins, berserkers and elementals; blasts targets with energy, intimidates hostile beings, sacrifices resources for short-term power surges, and shatters rock or metal. Slogan: "Get outta my way, pipsqueak; I'm gonna get what I want and I'm gonna get it NOW! Or else!" - Green Mana, symbolized by a tree. Associated with nature, spirituality, growth, evolution, reality, efficiency, serenity, and predation. Summons animals, treefolk, behemoths and Fair Folk; strengthens living creatures, overpowers hostile beings, furthers the cycle of life, and harnesses weather and other natural processes. Slogan: "Patience, young grasshopper; look for wisdom in the ancient patterns of the world around you. All the answers you seek are already found within." - This symbol denotes colorless mana, and is used as a placeholder in most cases; with the exceptions of most artifacts, few things in the Magic universe are inherently colorless.Obviously that's a very hasty summary of a much more complicated body of lore, but it should suffice for the moment; I may amend it later as time allows. For now, let's move on to the actual Color Identity system. In this system, each person, place, thing, energy pattern, or even abstract concept is represented by 6 symbols, each of which may be any one of the above six icons. That which is strongly associated with a single color should have all six of its symbols as that color; something which is also tied only to that color, but much more weakly, should instead have one or two such symbols, along with enough colorless symbols to total six. If the thing is aligned with two or three colors, it may have equal or unequal numbers of symbols tying it to each of them; if it is tied to five colors, then it has one of each symbol, unless it is distinctly more associated with one color as well as with the full spectrum, in which case it can have a duplicate of that one color's symbol in place of the colorless one.
To generate the six symbols representing a given D&D character's color identity, perform the following steps to generate a six-symbol code.
Step 1 - Alignment
While the D&D alignment system is not particularly analogous to the full philosophical complexity of the MTG Color Wheel, it will do as a starting point. (If you are uncertain of your character's exact alignment, since 5th edition barely uses alignment at all, the 3rd edition Players Handbook has a relatively detailed writeup of exactly what each alignment is supposed to represent; as with my color summaries above, it's a very brief writeup which doesn't capture the full complexities, but it may help.)
If your character is Good, give yourself a
symbol.If your character is Lawful, give yourself a
symbol.If your character is Evil, give yourself a
symbol.If your character is Chaotic, give yourself a
symbol.If your character is True Neutral, give yourself two
symbols if you have an active preference for balance among the Good and Evil, Lawful and Neutral aspects of yourself and the world around you, one symbol if you are more loosely aligned toward such neutrality, and two symbols if you are effectively Unaligned (ie not having the capcity to make a moral or ethical choice) or have simply never designated an Alignment for yourself.If your character is Neutral along with exactly one of the first four alignment components, give yourself a
symbol unless you feel that your character has a fairly strong inclination toward nature, new-age spirituality, or a general "hippie" ethos, in which case give yourself a .At the end of step 1, you should have exactly two symbols.
Step 2 - Character Class
This step mostly exists because Druids are a thing; it attempts to equate each of the twelve character classes in the 5E PHB with a pair of color symbols. This is an even looser association than the previous step; feel free to change this outcome if you believe that you have a strong enough understanding of the Color Wheel to know how your character defies the stereotype of his class in this regard. If your character is multi-class, use whichever of his classes has the most levels, or the class he started with at first level, or the class he is planning to have the most levels in by the time he reaches level 20 (for instance, a character might put his first six levels into Rogue, then intend to take nothing but levels of Bard thereafter; thusly, pick Bard for this character even if he's currently only level 6.)
- Barbarian - in most cases, possibly or
- Bard - (may replace either with if a heavy Illusion-user or the like)
- Cleric - any two of and/or (other symbols may be appropriate, depending heavily on god)
- Druid - without exception.
- Fighter - exactly, unless you have a better idea (for instance, a higly emotional Fighter may well have ).
- Monk - in many cases ( for a Way of Four Elements "bender" monk, perhaps for Way of Shadow, even for a nature-loving "guru" type)
- Paladin - one and another symbol determined by your oath; Defender is , Ancients is , and Avenger may be or depending on how gritty or rage-filled he is (if neither applies, make him ). Paladins are almost never and very rarely , since these colors represent flexibility and are thus largely incompatible with having a sworn Oath which guides your entire life path.
- Ranger - one symbol and one other symbol of your choice, depending on what you hunt and how and where you hunt it (eg a Mountain ranger who hates Goblins is likely )
- Rogue - by default, is the most appropriate, but Rogues are probably the least stereotype-able of all classes.
- Sorcerer - assuming either Draconic or Wild Mage is used, or is most likely to apply.
- Warlock - for virtually every character, then another or a if your pact is with a Fiend, another or a for the Old One, and a or a if you serve the Fey.
- Wizard - unless something else fits (eg many Abjurers are , most Necromancers are , and a Transmuter may be or .
I meant to be more linear than that, sorry. A lot of the individual variation of a character should come out when the three stages are all combined, so the ambiguity I've baked into this step may do more harm than good. Once again, feel free to diverge from the results of the overall test, but most especially this stage. (Also I kinda completely forgot
was a thing while I was writing all this, so for any character who doesn't conform to the stereotype of the class - yes, even a Druid - feel free to replace one or both of the suggested symbols with .)Step 3: Personality
This is obviously the stage where the most interpretation comes in; in an attempt to get the wild openness under control, I am structuring this step very tightly, and as a result it will likely produce the least appropriate results. This questionnaire will likely not capture the full range of a personality, and I'm not really even trying to; I just want to try and get a set of very concrete outputs for now. I am very likely to revise this step in future iterations of this test.
To get your final two color symbols, answer the following four questions from an in-character perspective. Then combine the result with your Alignment and Character Class outputs to get your final Color Identity. If the result seems inappropriate, try taking the test again while interpreting the ambiguous steps a bit differently; if the result still seems wrong, then either you don't fully understand the subtleties of the Color Wheel, or I've written this test wrong (the latter of course being extremely likely).
Question 1 - (work in progress)
