Materia and Magicite

Since I'm at work, I'm gonna use the forums to post my chicken scratchings regarding Materia and Magicite.

With Materia, I plan on having a few different categories or types:

One type of Materia will allow you to learn spells. I think I'm going to make this Materia varying shades of red.

These spells can be cast either through MP or through prepared or memorized spells per day. This allows all characters to cast spells, while still making primary spellcasting classes the powerhouses of magic. These learned spells will require xp expenditure to learn, and unless the character prepares them as Divine spells (or casts them as an Oracle with MP), these spells will be cast as Arcane spells and subject to arcane spell failure, as per normal.

One type of Materia will allow you to manifest minor special abilites, ranging from emulated feats to spell-like abilities to more power powers. I think I'm going to make this Materia varying shades of blue.

Some of these abilities won't require any expenditure on the part of the character to activate; in essence, these could either be always on or usable only a certain amount of time each day. Other of these Materia would require MP expenditure, or even AP expenditure. This allows most characters the ability to use these powers, while still making some classes able to potentially benefit more from them than others.

One type of Materia will allow you to modify the properties of your items. I think there'll be three types of this type of Materia, and each type will have a different color range.

One type will be a clear color, ranging from perfectly transparent to a very cloudy white/grey color. These Materia can be used in creation of items, permanently modifying the properties of the item. These Materia would likely be the cheapest, as they can't be reused. They would grant various abilities, but would most would mimic standard D&D magical '+1' (or better) bonuses.

One type would be a greenish color. These Materia can be used in Materia 'slots' on items, namely weapons and armor. These Materia alter basic properties of the item, such as making the weapon deal fire damage as well as slashing, or making an armor's AR apply to cold damage as well as normal damage. These Materia will carry a fairly large price-point, due to their ability to be used over and over again, with varying effects.

One type will be any variety of color, making it difficult to determine exactly what any given Materia does. This type of Materia can be 'attached' to a piece of equipment, such as weapon or armor, but does not require a 'slot' to function. These Materia would be some of the most expensive, because there's not much limit to how many can be attached to any one item. Their abilities could range from the most basic magical '+1' bonus, to additional dice of damage, to changing the item's properties entirely.

Magicite will work a lot like the blue Materia; it'll grant you abilities whenever you use it. However, Magicite is far more powerful, and works more like a 'template' that is applied to whenever your character uses it. Materia requires AP to use, and lasts for a certain number of rounds. Magicite will range greatly in color, and it's unknown if there's any correlation between the color and the properties the Magicite grants.

A whole esper soul would function similar to D&D artifacts and range in size greatly depending on the power of the esper it belonged to. Possible uses for a whole esper sould would be to summon the esper itself for a certain period of time to unleashing large amounts of its power in the form of spells, or even transforming the user into the esper, granting it new life.

I'll follow with some example pieces of Materia, because work is just that slow today.