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More About Spell Research

October 27, 2013 /

I've written before about my home-brewed Emphasis System that aims to make spells more diverse and less cookie-cutter. In a nutshell, the system provides classes that use spells a small bonus to research new spells. To get the bonus(es) to the successful spell research roll, the character needs to incorporate one or more emphases. An emphasis is a noun, chosen by the player, used to represent a specialty or specific area of magic a character enjoys. So if a character has the emphases of Fire, Entanglement, and Plants, the character would get the largest bonus to spell research by incorporating all three. Using the Web spell as a template, the character names his or her spell the Flaming Tendrils of the Macava. This spells entraps characters for 3 turns in fiery tendrils that emerge from the ground. The GM rules that if the flaming tendrils do damage, the spell will need to be a higher level. If the flames are simply and illusory effect, it can remain a 2nd level spell.

The thing I enjoy about the Emphasis System is that the nouns chosen can cut across classes. Fire works for a Priest, Magic-User, Psionicist, and any other sub-class of these three. Here's a compiled list from posts and other sources so far:

Air, Acid, Alchemy, Alteration, Animal, Artifice, Astral, Blades, Chaos, Charm, Combat, Creation, Conjuration/Summoning, Dimension, Divination, Earth, Enchantment,  Entanglement, Evocation, Fire, Force, Geometry, Guardian, Healing, Ice, Illusion, Law, Metal, Mind, Moon, Necromancy, Numbers, Plant, Protection, Shadow, Song, Sun, Thought, Time, Travelers, Void, Walls, Water, War, Wards, Woods, and Weather.

I had wanted to include emphases for psionicists, but outside of Clairsentience, there isn't much not covered by the list. Thinking in 3.5 terms for types of abilities, an emphasis called Telepathy and ones I've already listed called Mind and Thought  would function about the same. Meta creativity is the same as Creation. Psychometabolism is the same as Alteration. Even Psychoportation would work better as the Travellers emphasis I have listed above.

In one sense, I had hoped that Psionicists would contribute more to the list of emphases. However, seeing the list and realizing that items on the list could apply just as much to psionicists as they could to priests or wizards, I am happy to see the possibilities for all classes.

Sure, the Wards emphasis makes sense with my version of the psionicist. In my version, psionicists fight against incorporeal foes like ghosts and shadows. Having wards against shadows or vampires in gaseous form are quite handy and fit the concept well. What is interesting, though, is applying a War emphasis (think Psychic Warrior) or a Song emphasis (think Bard). For something really different, start a psionicist with either Artifice or Creation emphases. Having a psionicist that builds things is a really interesting concept.

This will be it for the emphasis system for now. I hope to put all this in a PDF for everyone to use or deride in their own game.

Rumors and Job Postings

October 14, 2013 /

For the OSR, what's not to love about Tenkar's Tavern? One of his latest posts demonstrated a way that players can determine their own adventure. This is something I want to do, but I find that I insert myself like the Dungeon Master from the cartoon series.

The grey furry giant man shouts as he lay dying to go EAST OR SOUTH!

One of the things I struggle with is feeling like I give players options to go to far away places. I mention the Floating Island of Ravendra, The Golden Kingdoms, The Jade Emperor, The City of Odd Paths, The Mountains at the Top of the World and more. Sometimes there is interest, but I can't seem to get them to someplace far away without having them just magically teleported there or taking a long sea voyage.

You walk off a boat at Jakalla. Without clothes or pedigree, you seek to build a life is this overcrowded sea of humanity.

At least it's not like Swords of the Daimyo where you risk mutiny only to have your character executed upon arrival and are forced to roll up new local characters. Since I reward exploration with XP, I want those fish-out-of-water moments where the world seems to have some sort of order, but it is totally different than home. I don't mean this in a horrific way where all choices are hideously awful. Hey, I ran a game of  Paranoid in college, too. I mean that the players can eventually make a name for themselves in an area of my world called Tanah-Con-Ranh. In Tanah-Con-Ranh, a handful of ultra-rich persons control the fate of thousands within their "family". This includes various levels of bureaucrats responsible for law and order. The state also grants trade monopolies to certain merchants every five years. Foreigners have never been appointed for any monopoly yet, even for goods only available in foreign lands. Maybe one of the players would be the first (if they enjoy political intrigue type sessions). Maybe one of the players manages to own a library in one of the major cities and amass a great cache of magic scrolls.

More simply than that, maybe a non-human PC makes it to the Golden Kingdoms. There are no elves or dwarves in the Golden Kingdoms. Civilization is 99 percent human and everyone seems to be at least part-cleric. Maybe they happen to become faculty in one of their many universities. More importantly, maybe they find a way off the planet.

I am at a real loss at how to setup these opportunities without railroading the party. I consider that a lack of imagination on my part.

So, when I see Erik's post on three seeds for adventure, I realize that he provides two places to get mercenary work and various random rumors that "everyone" just know. Since I start everyone out in quasi-Europe, taverns and the town center make sense. Without further ado:

Postings at the Town Center (paying a crier costs extra):

  • Guards for a caravan, ask for Aziz.
  • Heroes Wanted! Barthwait Township! Local centaurs have unleashed magic making our town and surrounding valley supernaturally cold. All payment in gold, not silver. See Elear in the Northeast Market.
  • Eris bless you! Need to recover stolen relic from our temple. Free Indulgence or Divine Favor. Scrawled under the words  Divine Favor is a message asking for money as a form of divine favor. An additional message in the same hand that wrote "Eris bless you!", says money is an acceptable Divine Favor.
  • JOIN THE BRIGADES! Help our fair city eliminate the Ork infestation. (Everyone knows how to sign up with them. Pay is lousy.)
  • Need heroes, haunted island destroying fishing boats. Find Akari. You will know.

The caravan gig takes characters to Bazhatun. The caravan features very strange, to the characters, creatures that atack the caravan. If the party stays or is somehow stranded, the cleric will get into trouble for starting a temple to a foreign god. Plate mail will become very expensive to maintain and chain will be a inexpensive as leather armor. Since thieves in my house rules have a chance of understanding or reading languages at 1st level, it may occur that the thief leads the party for a while.

In Barthwait, the party deals with a supernatural issue that may or may not be the fault of the local centaurs.

The Temple of Eris just wants a relic. They will offer healing and "services" first, but will pay eventually.

The Brigades are a common way for Fighters to get started. Pay is lousy as it is a government job. Still, it is good for experience. One thing to know is that in my world, Orcs, Bugbears, Ogres and similar creatures are "hatched" as fully-grown creatures. Exterminating them is not against the code of a Lawful character.

If you find Akari, you will find yourself in a modified form of the OA3 module.

Rumors

In the Golden Kingdoms, gold is so common that streets are plated with gold. (Mostly Not True)

In the Golden Kingdoms, you can find exotic items unavailable anywhere else in the world (True)

The crumbling temple of Set is haunted. (True)

A Lost Continent houses a race of nightmare men bent on destroying the human race. (True in a way, but not in the way the folks spreading the rumor intend.)

In the Southwest region of the continent, you can find magic stones that can grant the wizard a feast of knowledge. (Pretty much true.)

Seen or Heard at a Tavern

The man in the corner can changed cursed items into food. (True)

Dragons burned and ate McGregor's sheep last week. (Not really true.)

The new mayor wants to ban the sale of alcohol. (Not true at all, he is sitting next to you.)

Anyway, that's just some ideas. We'll see where this goes.

Using the Emphasis System for Priests

October 8, 2013 /

There can be all sorts of fun with Clerics and emphases as well. Going back to 2e, the PHB mentions priests of different mythoi. The idea was that priests could be good/okay/poor at combat, have other major and minor powers different from Turn Undead, and have access to spells broken up into spheres of influence. The idea of spheres survived into 3.x and Pathfinder as Domains. I mention this because I'm going to use Domains later as a source of building interesting clerics.

Back to the 2e world for a minute, let's generate a list of spheres. Most of them are from the Priest's Handbook. I broke up Elemental into six different elements because I don't have elemental planes in my house rules. I also added the Moon as a counter to the Sun. Here's the final list:

Air, Animal, Astral, Charm, Combat, Creation, Divination, Earth, Fire, Guardian, Healing, Metal, Moon, Necromancy, Plant, Protection, Summoning, Sun, and Void, War, Water, Wood, Weather.

With this list, we can generate some pretty interesting priests. Whereas the handbook talked about major and minor access to spells, we are going to use +3 and +1 bonuses. Each priesthood would have four high emphases with a +3 bonus and four low emphases with a bonus of +1. Using an example from the Priest's Handbook again, let's have a Cleric that is a protector of animals. They're emphases would be:

Animal +3, Charm +3, Divination +3, Protection +3, Creation +1, Healing +1, Plant +1, War +1

In Swords and Wizardry, some spells are quite obvious for this priest;

  • Cure Light Wounds
  • Light
  • Protection from Evil
  • Snake Charm
  • Speak with Animals
  • Cure Disease
  • Locate Object
  • Prayer
  • Cure Serious Wounds
  • Neutralize Poison
  • Protection from Evil 10' radius
  • Speak with Plants
  • Sticks to Snakes
  • Insect Plague
  • Quest
  • Conjure Animals
  • Find the Path
  • Speak with Monsters
  • Restoration
  • Resurrection
  • Symbol

Going deeper, though, some new spells make sense for this priest. Charm Animals, for instance, a lesser Charm Monster spell. Protection from Plants (for wild vines, jungle crawls and/or plant-based creatures. There's also spells for learning about an animal through divination. This translates to spells that reveal weaknesses in an opponent. The War aspect could be used for Summoning War Dogs, or possibly an ability of the priest to call Divine Hounds to his aid.

For busy people like me, I can also build on other OGL work to come up with some really cool spells options. Here are some links to the Grand OGL Wiki:

Animal Domain, Nine spells are listed because it is based on 3.x games, but it's easy to use these as a source to build seven S&W type spells. My favorite is beastshape.

Charm Domain, Again nine spells that can be easily modified. There's quite a bit here including insanity, suggestion and calm emotions.

Protection Domain, Well looky here, Spell Immunity and Protection from Energy. Very handy spells that also fit the War aspect as well. With choices like these, this could because a popular priest already.

There was an Oracle Domain at some point that functioned like a Divination Domain. The spells for it were: 1st level - identify; 2nd level - augury; 3rd level - divination; 4th level - scrying; 5th level - commune; 6th level - legend lore; 7th level - greater scrying; 8th level - discern location; 9th level - foresight.

Greater Scrying is out just because I don't do Greater Spells. Identify is interesting as well as legend lore and discern location. Foresight can be used for all sorts of things, but I imagine most character would use it for, shall we say, war-like purposes. For this priest that fits just fine. It will take a bit more work, but considering how easy the first three were, it will be worth it.

So here in about 15 minutes, I've sketched out an interesting priest using a random reference to one of my books and the Grand OGL wiki.

It's true, this takes a bit of work, but like the mages under the emphasis system, it creates something unique about each character in a meaningful way.

Now, add in the ability to make Cleric scrolls, and now we have the interesting variations that the mages have. This example priest has a +1 for Healing, which helps, but if he incorporates Animal somehow, it can be interesting. Yes, you could say that humans are animals, so Cure Light Wounds wouldn't be much different. Let's just say, though, that the emblem of the deity is a fox. A scroll could be something like The Healing Fox or The Vulpine Cure. You could describe the spell as forming a mist in the shape of a fox that is inhaled and exhaled. The effect is that the target is healed 2-7 points of damage. Like the mages, the effect is the same, but the description makes in more fun.

Hopefully there will be more tomorrow. This time using the psionic guys.

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