I am trying to figure out how you could create something like the gun mages from Brian McClellan's series "The Powder Mage", and from the Iron Kingdoms RPG. Has anyone put any thought into this, or come up with any ideas?

I am only vaguely familiar Iron Kingdoms and don’t know the novels but how about reskinning a wand to be a pistol and a staff to be a rifle.

I’m not that familiar either, but powder mages sound a lot like a willpower based mage using the Attack Spell with a “rifle” that’s really a magic implement. Better versions of these rifles would add more damage and more increased range effects.

The “powder sniffing” thing could be the Augment spell.

Perhaps the powder horn is a reskin of the Druidic Circlet that allows the Augment Spell to be maintained on themselves without the Concentration manoeuvre, perhaps you also gain the benefit of the Divine Health Upgrade to represent your incredible speed and senses protecting you.

Stopping bullets is the Barrier Spell.

So with some simple reskining of the core mechanics you get to what a powder mage basically is.

55 minutes ago, fjw70 said:

I am only vaguely familiar Iron Kingdoms and don’t know the novels but how about reskinning a wand to be a pistol and a staff to be a rifle.

30 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

I’m not that familiar either, but powder mages sound a lot like a willpower based mage using the Attack Spell with a “rifle” that’s really a magic implement. Better versions of these rifles would add more damage and more increased range effects.

The “powder sniffing” thing could be the Augment spell.

Perhaps the powder horn is a reskin of the Druidic Circlet that allows the Augment Spell to be maintained on themselves without the Concentration manoeuvre, perhaps you also gain the benefit of the Divine Health Upgrade to represent your incredible speed and senses protecting you.

Stopping bullets is the Barrier Spell.

So with some simple reskining of the core mechanics you get to what a powder mage basically is.

Perfect. I hadn't even thought about a simple reskinning. My brain was making everything way more complicated than it needed to be. Thanks

Ok, how about this: Powder Horn (can be used with rifle or pistol). Allows the user to maintain the augment spell with themselves as the target without using a concentration manoeuvre - takes 2 strain per round to maintain.

I wouldn’t even bother with the Strain cost, they will be burning Strain like mad being a magic user anyway.

Actually you could probably start with the strain cost, and if it turns out too excessive then remove it later.

1 hour ago, Richardbuxton said:

Actually you could probably start with the strain cost, and if it turns out too excessive then remove it later.

I also think it's quite high, but it is quite powerful and there are meant to be some drawbacks to snorting gunpowder too much. It definitely requires some fine tuning.

I can’t find any details on what going Powder Blind does with Google. Can you give a quick explanation?

I have had an idea rolling around in my head for a while to create a table of insanities or mental traumas similar to the Critical Injuries table. The idea is that if you exceed your Strain Threshold then you roll on the Mental Trauma table. Failing a Fear Check would also require a roll, but other options could be presented for rolling one of these mental trauma’s too.

Perhaps in your setting any Despair rolled while benefiting from the Augment power could be used to cause a roll on the Power Blind table.

15 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

I can’t find any details on what going Powder Blind does with Google. Can you give a quick explanation?

I have had an idea rolling around in my head for a while to create a table of insanities or mental traumas similar to the Critical Injuries table. The idea is that if you exceed your Strain Threshold then you roll on the Mental Trauma table. Failing a Fear Check would also require a roll, but other options could be presented for rolling one of these mental trauma’s too.

Perhaps in your setting any Despair rolled while benefiting from the Augment power could be used to cause a roll on the Power Blind table.

That could work. Easiest way to make this happen is just to make them suffer a critical injury.