[PnP] Alternative Character/Tonah creation

[Hsingai Altaica]

My only grievance with P&P is that the character creation rules don't allow my make the character concept I have in my head.
Something I liked from AD&D is kits: "A  kit is a role-playing  tool,  a set of cultural  notes  and  minor  abilities and restrictions  used  to further define a character."
ADD you think something from Arcanum, a CRPG, where there is list of abilities you learn in order as you level up.
So I'm thinking of make 'kits' that are a list of abilities that you gain and the order in which you gain them with some fluff text about how you gain them.
So for example have a DnD style wizard. The constant reading his spell book and memorizing his spells and paying attention to the magics he comes across on adventure with a keen eye means a wizard learns X spells from list A at EL0 at MEL. As a wizards understanding of magic grows at MEL Z he can learn a spell from list A or a more complex spell from list B.
Lee Garvin recently died and Skimisher had a sell on a bundle of the books he wrote. I reread Noble Wild:An Animal Player's Handbook for fantasy Role Playing games. 
" In order to aid the fledgling peoples, and to place some limits on them as well, the godsraised one of every species of animal that walked, crawled, swam, or flew to be the king of it’s kind. Each king,in addition to being a paragon of its kind, was given the gifts of reason and speech. Their intelligence wasincreased far above their natural brethren, and the capacity for magic lurked within them that would find a tastefor it. These kings and their bloodlines would become the ruling classes of the animals, leading and protectingtheir species." Sounds lot like the Tonah doesn't it?
IT has rules for how animals are different from humans. Like Animals learn how to speak to different species not languages. 
"The reason for this is that, to noble animals, all members of a single species, no matter where they are originally from, speak the same language. The only differences are in the form of differing accents and idioms. As far as noble animals are concerned, there is only one human language, with thousands of different accents."e 
So for example A Dog might know Human and be able to speak to a human is speaking Marentian but unable to communicate with a elf that is speaking the same language. There is also a note that animals make terrible translators. It doesn't go into detail, just saying,Noble animals have a hard time even understand- ing why humans will often need to have translators while speaking to members of their own species. For this reason, noble animals make terrible translators." but my rationale is that animal languages don't have a rich variety of saying the same thing. So animals don't see the difference between saying the same words with different accent and paraphrasing. 
Most of the book is about magic. Animals don't use items so there is alternatives for the material components of spells, scrolls and potions, magic items.
Fore example Mat. Comps. are replaced with Blood Components that take Hit Points form the caster. or the replacement for potions, Fetishes "For example, a noble wolf wizard decides to grant an invisibility fetish to a noble horse who has done him a favor. The horse now has a shock of white hair just above his right front hoof. Anytime he chooses he can rub the marked leg on the ground and release the spell. The white patch will disappear, and so will the horse. Another animal could, with the horse’s permission, rub that patch of fur and gain the benefit of the fetish, which also uses it up."
The replacement scrolls and wands is imbuing the magic is normal animals that is turned into a unintelligent drone obedient to their owner and are eaten(for one shot items) "The spellthrall will only respond to the simplest of commands: “come,” “stay,” “follow,” “sit,” “stand,” and of course, the command words to activate its special abilities."
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.powersandperils.org/pipermail/pnp/attachments/20190711/794c1a3b/attachment.html>