Class Feature Friday: Air School (Wizard Elementalist School)
(art by Christina Kritikou on Artstation)
And we’re back with another elemental school, this time focusing on the first of the classic western elements: Air!
In case you missed the entry on Aether, elemental schools are an alternative to traditional arcane schools hailing from lands and locations where the elements take metaphysical precedent over what the spells themselves do. While these wizards are just as capable of all the same feats as more classically trained ones, their specialization is much broader than what you’d expect.
With that in mind, students of aeromancy are by default opposed to the magics of geomancy in the western elemental system… and outright unheard of to followers of the eastern elemental system as air is replaced by wood and metal in that system.
In any case, aeromancers are the masters of everything about the element of air, ranging from wind, weather, and even storms and electricity (shoots a look at Second Edition).
As such, they can be expected to have the solution when problems arise in the open air. Need more speed for your ship on the sea? Aeromancer casting gust of wind or control winds. Enemy in the air? Cast fly and bring them down with wind and lightning. Enemy on the ground with no good ranged weaponry? Take to the air again and rain down hell from above.
With all these offensive applications, one might assume that aeromancers are limited to careers in warfare but that is hardly the case. They can also be engineers of flying vehicles or even entire flying cities, important members of ship crews, long-distance communicators, messengers, and so on.
Unlike certain other elemental schools, the spells of what is “in school” for the element of Air doesn’t really include anything that is outside of normal wizard abilities, but naturally includes the basic spells that work with all elements, as well as those that manipulate wind, weather, electricity, and even sound in some cases, as well as those that grant aerial utility abilities such as flight.
These wizards are true masters of the air, training themselves to be better fliers. What’s more, they devote some of the magic to defying gravity. At first they can use this to slow their fall at will, but later they can use it to ascend vertically, or even properly fly. At their zenith, their mastery of flight is so great that they cannot fall unless they want to.
As an offensive measure, they can discharge a small flash of lightning around themselves to harm foes and dazzle them.
They also learn to create a minature cyclone around themselves, blocking incoming projectiles, making it difficult to approach them, and even knocking flying foes above them out of the air.
The ability to eventually fly at will, as well as ground other fliers can be quite effective, and this school is perfect if you plan to be a flying spellcaster that rains down spells from above. Don’t forget to diversify though, for while you are certainly set up to blast from afar, wizardry is more than just damage-dealing spells.
Air typically represents concepts like freedom, whimsy, and the like, and certainly a fair share of aeromancers share these traits, but they don’t necessarily have to. Indeed, some may have the even temper of still air, or they might be as tulmultuous as the storm.
Though the sun hurts their eyes and their darkvision limits their abilities in the air at night, the orcs of Mount Yakraan have a special love for the sky and flight, wearing smoked goggles as they ride mighty flying steeds. Their shamans, however, need not steed, instead using arcane magic to master the sky all on their own, and strike down their enemies with lightning from above.
Powerful and wary, the legendary emperor stags almost rival the legendary cerynitus in desirability as a hunter’s prize. Most nobles let their hunting hounds mostly do the work, but the most recently discovered bodies have been slain by even less sportsmanlike behavior, sporting burns on the tops of their backs. Someone with mastery of air magic has been ambushing them from above, taking their antlers and leaving the poor beasts to rot.
Those who face an aeromancer expecting only lightning underestimate the versatility of the atmosphere. Indeed, the current mage duel champion, Viksa, is infamous for calling down superheated siroccos and blizzards, or simply blowing them off the arena with a mighty gale.
