I thought about it for a bit and this is the idea i came up with.

Aura

*Allow amber rods to be requested from a mages guildmaster at level 35, there should be a timer equal to what a mage would currently have to wait before his rod reappears right now.

*Boost aura damage redux ~7-10% for mages only. (Maybe Damredux boost through wand skill and edges)

*Same stats otherwise, 4 charges at 30 game hours.

Shield

*In order to obtain shield you need to give your guildmaster the 'blood of someone worthy'. Basically this means anyone in your PK range starting at level 30 and up. A new command would be needed which everyone will have, something like:
'collect blood'
You collect the blood of DeadPlayer
inv
A small vial of bood

*If a mage gives this vial to their guildmaster, the guildmaster will create a sienna rod, there should be a ~15% chance of this failing.

*If it doesn't fail it should create a rod of 6 charges at 20 hours.

*Collecting blood can be done by anyone. For example if a thief kills someone they can collect their blood and then give/sell/trade to a mage they know. However blood can only be collected by the person that did the killing.

*Vials should rot after a reasonable amount of time, no more then a RL hour give or take.

*shield has same stats otherwise

Barrier

*Barrier rods would still require exploration. Barrier should be hidden somewhere in the world, in any of the old or new locations, maybe even in some of the old shield and aura location. Remove all current no risk locations.

*Barrier dam redux should be reduced by whatever Aura dam redux was increased by. That way should a mage get ABS, they would have no more dam redux then current mages do now.


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I think if we had a system like this it would be fairly interesting. Shield rods would require interaction of some kind and everyone would have basic access to Aura but it still wouldn't be unlimited as if we had the spell. Since having access to shield rod will never be as easy as finding it and picking it up, I think its fair to boosted aura slightly thus limiting the need of having the other rods in more situations.