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In the Mercenary Adventures Sourcebook there is a school of magic called Combat Magic.

On page 8, in the intro, the text states that only Combat Mages, Battle Mages, and some Mystic Knights will obtain these spells, and that a Ley Line Walker might, but will have no more than a half-dozen, no matter his or her level.

It also mentions that these spells were popular during the Dark Ages.

Now I have run into people who take this as rules, and disallow the spells for any but the above, I have run into people who completely dismiss that section as flavour and allow the spells for all.

I personally am not sure either is correct, I tend to lean on the side of more restrictive, but I will allow Techno-Wizards to take them as well.

I just recently starting contemplating the Dark Ages working. As such I have been thinking that Chaos Earth magic users may have access to (or be the inventors of) these spells. I am thinking higher level Chaos Mages.

But I am interested in the thoughts of others on this.

I look at it as more flavor text. Like Blue Flame spells, I treat them as more exotic and hard to get. With the Battle Mages and Mystic Knights having greater familiarity with them. I would also let Smokers from Manhunter have complete access to the spells.

Id say normal casters could, but it as earlier stated, its rare outside the class. Blue flame like combat magic runs on the same workings as incantations/temporal spells.
But id let a shifter or llw learn them if some one teaches them.

The text implies that all Mages and Intuitive magic users "Can" learn/aquire the intuitive ability to cast the "Combat Magic" spells presented in that book.

Whether Granted Magic users can get the use of combat magic spells is not touched and is up to the indevidual GM's.

examples:
Mages: LLW, Wizards, Mystic studies. [i.e.: they learned how to make magic through years of study.]
Intuitive magic users: Mystics (all settings), Mystic Knights, laser mages.
Granted magic users: priests (drak, light, whatever.), witches, warlocks, shifters (when using powers granted by their pacts w/the SN.), Granted powers magic Hero (HU)

Warlock note: they are ether Intuitive or Granted magic users. There placement in Granted magic users here is just where the fingers typed them in tonight.

My interpretation of what is said on page 8 is that Combat Magic spells are invocations, and as such they can be learned by those who can learn invocations. Though, since this "sub-school" of magic is looked down on by most of those mages, they rarely learn any of them. Which is unfortunate (for those mages) since some of them are pretty awesome.

Glistam wrote:My interpretation of what is said on page 8 is that Combat Magic spells are invocations, and as such they can be learned by those who can learn invocations. Though, since this "sub-school" of magic is looked down on by most of those mages, they rarely learn any of them. ...snip.

You just paraphrased what was said. Except that you excluded the part about Mystic Knights (an intuitive magic user) having access to the CM spells from the paraphrasing.