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## Bad Juju (Ebon Grove) Design Flowsheet

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TavishArtair
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Post by TavishArtair » Wed Mar 11, 2009 2:43 am

> Boolean wrote:Do spirits want worship? This is a rough one; I like the idea that spirits want *monuments* and to be *glorified*, so building shrines out in the woods pleases the forest gods; but do they expect the villagers to come and pray/sacrifice there? I like the idea of each village having a patron god who protects them and encourages their main industry, but there's a potential problem: if commanding large numbers of mundane humans gets you magic powers, then the best wizards will be kings. That's potentially cool, but it limits the types of stories that can be told; I like the idea of the PCs as itinerants perpetually alone against a larger world, and would like to be able to tell that story as well.

If you want a paradigm that allows for worship while not overemphasizing its place, then why not go and say... the important parts are real-estate. Good real-estate keeps good mojo flowing. Occasional prayers and incense-burning are necessary to maintain the proper atmosphere for the mojo. Accordingly, as an independent wizard, you can do this, if you want to devote most all of your time. However, the full setup usually has a more complicated arrangement, with a monastery or temple being set up which has numerous wizards accessing the spirits there, as well as lay servants of those wizard-priests helping them do more maintenance work than they individually could do, and a surrounding community which comes and occasionally burns incense and such as part of praying but mostly is offering up other services for the temple that keep it functional like farm labor and so on in exchange for protection under the temple's aegis.
The worship that peasants conduct is mostly so that the wizards and spirits at hand can contemplate how best to answer the needs of those around them, while still keeping the mojo flowing. The wizards function chiefly as intermediaries between humans and the spirit world. If all the peasants stopped worshipping, making offerings, and generally contributing to the temple, it would only have an affect on the spirits because of the dominos falling... the temple's maintenance goes hungry, less work is done on the temple and more on satisfying their own needs, in addition to straight-up loss of numbers due to the lack of a free lunch anymore, the wizards are left with doing mostly their own work, so they can't spend as much time doing interesting things, which means the temple might persist but will have much reduced influence and the spirits will have less mojo. It will probably still be just as challenging to attack the temple since the reduction in mojo and overall influence will not stop them from laying down all the cards in hand in order to save themselves, but the wizards of the temple will have less opportunity to go beat people up. The fact that how nice the real-estate is is the important part also limits the general effect of having a large population nearby, in some cases it can even be detrimental, but they can't do entirely without humanity, so you tend to have wizard's towers glowering nearby, in a liminal location, off to the side of proper "civilization." This, I think, satisfies a lot of appropriate fantastic paradigms.
Last edited by TavishArtair on Wed Mar 11, 2009 2:44 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Orion
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Post by Orion » Wed Mar 11, 2009 4:32 pm

Ice Spirits:
Ice Fairest:
Ice Magic looks like this:
Last edited by Orion on Wed Mar 11, 2009 4:41 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Orion
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Post by Orion » Wed Mar 11, 2009 4:56 pm

Adventure Locations:
Last edited by Orion on Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:33 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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norms29
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Post by norms29 » Sat Jun 04, 2011 1:55 am

so was this just abandoned? because I really liked the idea here
After all, when you climb Mt. Kon Foo Sing to fight Grand Master Hung Lo and prove that your "Squirrel Chases the Jam-Coated Tiger" style is better than his "Dead Cockroach Flails Legs" style, you unleash a bunch of your SCtJCT moves, not wait for him to launch DCFL attacks and then just sit there and parry all day. And you certainly don't, having been kicked about, then say "Well you served me shitty tea before our battle" and go home.
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Grek
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Post by Grek » Wed Feb 05, 2014 11:11 am

Totally necromancing this.
Setting Conceit: The Truce at the Ebon Grove
Way back at the start of history, there was a great war between spirits during which the God of Iron was slain, the God of Fire was beheaded, lands were sunk into the sea and the sky was torn asunder. In order to avoid the world being completely destroyed, all the spirits agreed to meet at the sacred Ebon Grove and swear to a Truce forbidding any spirit from harming another. Although certain exceptions were permitted, (most notably provisions for dueling and the rights of the Fairest to punish lesser spirits within their domain) the Truce was effective in maintaining an uneasy peace in the spirit world. As a result, the world is in no danger of being destroyed, spirits compete with through human proxies and anyone who swears to the Truce (even a human) can demand that local spirits protect them against any dangers that fall within their sphere of influence.
Setting Conceit: The Rites of Wizardry
Most people would eagerly swear to the Truce if they could - being protected from bad weather, fire, wooden weapons, maulings, imprisonment, poison and starvation in exchange for being a law-abiding citizen is a deal as old as civilization itself. Unfortunately, swearing to the Truce is something of a catch twenty-two: You can't make with oath without a spirit to notarize it, but few spirits are willing to be anywhere near you unless you've already sworn. Enter the Rites of Wizardry, which are the major schools of thought when it comes to initially beseeching the spirits. They are:
The Rite of Earth: A path of asceticism. Swear vows of pacifism, honesty, secrecy and purity, then get some magical tattoos that reveal if you break your vows. If your vows are visibly intact, the spirits will trust you enough to let you approach them in person and beseech them for magic.
The Rite of Winds: A path of ritualism. By learning certain mystic chants, ritual dances, spells and true names for distant spirits, you can project your voice so that distant spirits can hear your oaths, answer your prayers and grant miracles without ever putting themselves in any danger.
The Rite of Water: A path of vassalage. Becoming a Vassal to one of the Fairest involves swearing an oath of loyalty on a chalice of poison hemlock. Doing so not only saves you from the poison, but makes you their worldly vassal with the right to collect tithes and boss around lesser spirits.
Setting Conceit: The Paths of Sorcery
For whatever reason, not everyone is willing to swear to the Truce. Maybe they value their personal autonomy, maybe they hate spirits, or maybe they like the idea of being allowed to cut as much lumber as they like without praying to the Spirit of the Wood for permission first. Regardless of their reasoning, these individuals gathered together at the Ivory Tower of old in order to form a system of magic that existed outside the agreements of the Ebon Grove, based instead on the three principle exceptions to the protections of the Truce. They are:
The Path of Irons: Because the God of Iron was slain long ago, no spirits govern the use of iron instruments. The Truce cannot be enforced against such tools. Anyone who knows how to work metal without wizardry can learn to wound the gods, coerce the heavens and shackle unwilling spirits to their service.
The Path of Glass: During the war, flames in heaven were divided from flames on earth. If a charm of terrestrial fire is taken far enough from the volcano where it was made, no volcano spirits will know how the charm is being used and no appeal can be made to stop a sorcerer from breaking the Truce.
The Path of Bones: Only a human spirit may control a human body, but that spirit need not be the original owner. Certain spells can allow a sorcerer to speak with the dead, pull the soul from the body with their bare hands, or even pass from one body to another, possessing victims and animating corpses.
Game Mechanic: Magic Traditions
Each character chooses one Magical Tradition when making their character. This gives them some benefits (being able to remotely make pacts with spirits or being able to work and wield iron) but comes at some drawback (needing to perform elaborate rituals to get miracles or needing to be violent to a spirit to produce charms) and generally defines how your character interacts with magic. Your tradition is 100% orthogonal to how your character lives their life - you can be a soldier on the Path of Glass just as easily as you could be an artisan or a diplomat, and participating in the Rite of Earth has no bearing on your ability to go on to become a cooper or a village elder.
Game Mechanic: Spirit Types:
Earth: Found everywhere. Governs stone, soil, sand, clay, etc. and also all insects. Mostly protection and construction, but also destroying earthworks. Material is Stone.
Wood: Found in forests and fields. Governs both plants and furry animals. Handles growth, sleep powder, medicine, construction and protections from ghosts. Material is Wood.
Water: Found in rivers lakes and oceans. Does both healing and poisoning people, as well as water breathing, scaled animals and rain calling. Materials is Water.
Wind: Found everywhere. Covers actual wind, clouds, frost, lightning and feathered animals. Most popular for carrying messages, flying and zapping fools. Material is Ice.
Sky: Found in the Sun, Moon and Stars. Celestial Fire, governing warmth, light and their opposites, cold and darkness, as well as the seasons. Material is non-Iron Metals.
Glass: Found in Volcanoes. Terrestrial Fire that cuts, chokes and burns things in a way that cannot be passively protected against. Material is Glass.
Ghost: Found wherever necromancers are. Most are victims of sorcery, but some are sorcerers who got stuck as a ghost by dying in their real body. Material is Bone.
Game Mechanic: Truce Pacts
Each type of spirit except for Ghost has a Truce of X Pact that you can make in the presence of an appropriate spirit. Doing so gives you immunity to miracles/charms granted by that spirit type, lets you ignore select environmental hazards, negates the bonuses from weapons and armour of certain materials and lets you free yourself from restraints of that type of material. Ends if you attack anyone else who has made the same Pact. Truce of Glass only applies within a certain distance of a volcano, and Truce of Sky only applies in places where the sky is visible. There's also Four Winds Challenge, a spell which, if two people cast it together, allows them to waive the benefits of their Truce of X pacts against the other until come condition is met. It lets you have mage duels without screwing yourself over against everyone else. Note that Sorcerers are fully capable of making a Truce of X pact, but usually gain less of a benefit with it given that their preferred method for refreshing charms and gaining miracles often involves attacking and/or imprisoning spirits. Also note that the Truce doesn't break if you attack them indirectly by, say, setting their tower on fire or sending spirits to steal their food, and it doesn't stop attacks that use your own strength, like punching them in the nose or singing lewd songs about their mother in town square.
Last edited by Grek on Wed Feb 05, 2014 11:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

> FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.

> Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.

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Dr_Noface
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Post by Dr_Noface » Wed Feb 05, 2014 2:49 pm

Thubs up
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Orion
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Post by Orion » Tue Sep 02, 2014 5:48 pm

This is a pretty great restructuring of my fairly incoherent ideas.
NEW STUFF
Social Actions
Context
OLD STUFF
A Broken Sky Identity Crisis
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zeruslord
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Post by zeruslord » Wed Sep 03, 2014 1:38 am

So, I like the Paths of Sorcery. However, the Rites don't make as much sense to me - I'm not 100% sure what should be done instead, but you should probably have different vassalage rites for each of the Fairest on top of having earth, wind, and water rites that interact with lesser spirits.
Mechanically, I like the idea (that I think Orion started in on once) of doing this as an AW hack, but an AW hack needs to be either pretty total or be a simple reskin into a slightly different frontier/post-apoc environment, and this leans heavily towards the total rework side.
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zeruslord
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Post by zeruslord » Wed Sep 03, 2014 1:59 am

The Rite of Water: a rite of hermitage. By putting to sea alone with nothing but water, you weaken yourself to the point where the spirits no longer see you as a potential danger.
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Grek
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Post by Grek » Wed Sep 03, 2014 5:16 am

Any specific issues with the Rites? I'm all for spinning off the vassalage rite into a different thing that anyone can take, and then replacing the Rite of Water with your hermitage idea. But what's wrong with the other two?

> FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.

> Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.

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zeruslord
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Post by zeruslord » Wed Sep 03, 2014 1:00 pm

The other two are fine, really. My objection was mostly to the structure where one element requires involvement with the fairest and the other two didn't have an option to be Invovlef with them. For vassalage, are you thinking of it as an additional Rite that can be your initial spirit contact and truce swearing, or as a route to extra power at a price?
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Grek
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Post by Grek » Thu Sep 04, 2014 7:11 am

If I were to make a rite system for the Fairest under this system, I would work it in as an extension of the Truce line of spells. You'd have:
Truce of X: You swear to neither directly attack nor detain a certain class of spirit and, in exchange, things made of that element can no longer be used to directly attack or detain you. Requires a formal statement and notarization by a medium or bigger spirit of that kind. Indirect attacks and privation (ie a water spirit refusing to give you water, a fire spirit letting you freeze to death or, more dangerously, a greater air spirit denying you air) are still OK. Ends if a spirit of the proper type sees you breaking the rules and calls you out on it.
Guest of the Y: A more hardcore version of the Truce, wherein you invoke a guest-host relationship with some specific spirit. You are forbidden from deceiving, disrespecting or disobeying the spirit you make the pact with and in exchange that spirit is required to provide you shelter, sustenance and protection. Attacks (indirect or otherwise) on one demand the intervention of the other party. Requires that you immerse yourself entirely in the element in question, which ranges in difficulty from hanging from a tree branch for Wood to getting a personal invitation to the Palace of Sun and Moon for Sky. Ends if you fail to live up to your duties or leave the domain of the spirit you've sworn to.
Vassal of Z: You swear fealty to one of the Fairest. Requires the direct assent of that Fairest and is pretty much a life-long commitment: the Fairest gains the ability to make you drop dead on the spot if you break your oath. Most also have some other weird requirements like never shedding blood on snow or taking care of a specific tree in their sacred grove. The benefit that makes all this worth while? You now count as a medium-sized spirit of whatever element that Fairest represents, and may notarize spells of that element, including Truce of X, Guest of the Y and whatever medium-or-smaller miracles you personally want to cast.

> FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.

> Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.

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zeruslord
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Post by zeruslord » Fri Sep 05, 2014 2:17 am

Alright. I don't see any need for a consistent benefit for vassalage, if it's not a way for PCs to swear an initial Truce. Leave the precise costs and powers of vassalage up to the DM and/or the individual Fairest writeups. Guest sounds mostly good - the one thing I'm not totally sure about is the obedience bit, which seems overly invasive and isn't part of any guest tradition I'm aware of.
Do either of you have strong feelings about the mechanics here? I feel like we probably want something on the storygame side of things, probably with thematic attributes of some sort.
Edit: fully classless ala shadowrun, creation splats ala After Sundown, or heavyweight playbooks ala Apocalypse World? I'm leaning towards creation looking AW-ish with the option to pick up additional playsheets if you acquire new magic somehow.
Last edited by zeruslord on Fri Sep 05, 2014 2:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Grek
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Post by Grek » Fri Sep 05, 2014 4:34 am

The obedience thing is less invasive than it sounds like, because A] any excessively onerous request will be met with the guest going home instead of obeying and B] the host still has to provide shelter, sustenance and protection, even (and especially) if they tell their guests to do something dangerous during the visit. It's more of a "My house, my rules." sort of arrangement rather than a "And now you must all obey me forever!" thing.
So a priest can tell someone to take their shoes off before entering the shrine, a Fairest can inform human guests that their lives are forfeit if they spill blood on the snow, and a lake spirit can command guests not to take pearls from the lake bottom.
Mechanically, you want something point buy, like Shadowrun. Except, you know, with an actual melee combat system. And less hacking. And more of a focus on the talky bits.

> FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.

> Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.

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zeruslord
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Post by zeruslord » Sun Sep 14, 2014 2:07 am

So, spitballing some combat ideas, then throwing down some design questions

- 3e Grid/Turn Combat
  Everything lives and dies by the five-foot square, attacks of opportunity and reach are a big thing. Reactions don't typically involve movement - people move on their turn and then stand around during everyone else's. On the one hand, traditional and easy to explain. On the other hand, we're talking about a game with flying superwizards, so I'm not sure that your exact location is going to matter once you start burning real abilities. Melee probably loses out here, given a non-dungeon setting - plenty of room to kite them around. In order to actually protect squishies, you need to occupy significant amounts of space, have real taunts, or stick to them and have some rules for defending adjacent allies.
- Abstract zone-based positioning, turns and reactions
  Ala fate core. It takes a move action to cross from one zone to another, but you can intervene easily in movement across your zone. Ranges basically boil down to a melee, same zone, N zones away. You can only really stick to one guy at a time, though, so the traditional D&D frontline isn't really going to work if there's lots of enemies. Does a reasonable job of scaling up or down as needed - zones can be pretty small in low-magic fights, but broaden out in anime mode.
- Theater of the Mind
  Drop all pretense of a rigid combat system and go to indie-style "what do you do?" combat. Die rolls still matter, but positioning gets left to player consensus. The advantage here is that handling flying combat becomes easy and the distance covered by a fight get to be as long as necessary. The big disadvantage is that player consensus can break down, and things aren't as strictly adjudicated. The difference between melee and ranged starts to break down, which I'm of two minds about. You lose detail for low-magic combats against bandits or whatever, but big magic throwdowns don't want that level of detail - everybody's flying around constantly, most attacks are ranged, and positioning isn't nearly as important.

We've had a few different ideas about the magic system floating around, but there's some things about ability categories within wizardry that never got nailed down.

- Is there some kind of drain mechanic for spells? Orion was against them, but if some of them are going to be effective combat-time abilities, I'd like to see some sort of limitation.
- How about for spirits? Do they have a power cap for Miracles but arbitrary repeatability below that?
- What about humans that have acquired a type? If you've made a pact with the Ice Maiden and are now a Water being, can you throw down water effects at will?
- Do we want separate categorizations for pact-like things that grant active vs. passive abilities? How about type acquisition?

I'd also like to figure out what refresh schedules look like for certain key abilities.

- Attack charms. Do they only get replenished during major downtime, or can they be refreshed overnight in most areas?
- Flight. Is it a charm/miracle exclusive, or are we going to have Oathsworn and Wizards of the Ebon Grove flying around in every combat?

Finally, sorcery. I'm fine with putting the full writeup towards the end of the project, but I'd still like to get a sense of what a sorcerer actually looks like. Is working in different elements going to require different skills, or is it just a matter of picking up spells? I'm leaning towards different skills, but I don't have a strong preference.
Necromancy has no spirit dependency at all, but what investment does it actually take, and what can it do? There's a need for a separation between combat-time and ritual necromancy - necromantic charms can deal damage and necromantic spells can puppet corpses, but you can't possess someone or create permanent undead in combat time. Performing necromantic magic on a living person is like fighting a spirit in its domain, and a large part of necromantic knowledge is focused on creating an environment where you have an edge.
Vulcanism has had a couple different ideas thrown around, and I don't think a real decision ever got made one way or the other. In Grek's model, you go grab a charm of fire from a volcano somewhere, leave, and can use it however you want. Is it basically wizardry but then you leave the spirit's domain, or are you beating up on them? If you are beating up on them, how do you do it, and what separates it from the Path of Irons? In Orion's original writeup, the Sorcerers, or a faction of sorcerers, have captured the God of fire and can force it to... do what, exactly? Do they have to go home and get charms made, or will it "grant" them pact abilities and the Fire type? Neither of these seem super-appealing -
Ironmongery is a neat idea, but what does it actually look like in play? If iron is, in and of itself, a danger to spirits, is the setting bronze-based because of mutually assured destruction? Is blacksmithing secret knowledge the spirits try to suppress?
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Grek
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Post by Grek » Sun Sep 14, 2014 8:17 am

I think you probably want something necromundaesque for the basic positioning system:
-Everyone declares their intended movement for the round all at once, in no particular order.
-Everyone then rolls initiative and acts in order of highest to lowest, with randomized ties.
-You get a movement speed in cm and your character can move that far in one combat round.
-People with multiple actions roll multiple initiatives and use them in the order they occur.
-You can (usually) pick anywhere along your movement for your action to occur. See sprint below.
-One of the available actions is to change where the rest of your movement is going to take you.
-Sprinting lets you keep going beyond the end of your normal movement in exchange for an action.
Magical movement powers (including flight) should have speeds bigger than the expected battle map size. If used for combat movement, you pick a destination and a route and don't bother to measure out how far that route is because however long it ends up being, your magical movement is still big enough to get you there. If you elect to sprint with your magical movement, you can seriously just leave the combat and noone who doesn't have comparable magic will simply not catch you.
RE magic: They way I'm envisioning it, cashing in a spirit Charm is less like using a potion or casting a prepared spell D&D style and more like spending Edge in Shadowrun. You have somewhere on the order of five charms per adventure (chosen at the adventure's start) and if a skilled person uses one to do something they're skilled at even better, they can be nearly certain of success. If an unskilled person uses one, it will put them on even footing against a skilled opponent.
Miracles simply require that you track down a spirit of the right strength and type, bring an appropriate offering and make your request. This takes time and various goods, but can reasonably done within a single game session. Unlike a charm, the spirit granting it does all of the magic and picks both which miracle to use and the specific effects of the miracle. If it can accomplish the task with using less (or even no) magic than the player thought they'd need, they can and will.
Picking the appropriate offering is both a bit of a challenge and a chance for the players who took non-combat skills to pull their weight. Lesser spirits like food, while more powerful spirits like tools and works of art. All spirits like things that come in threes and especially trios of threes. Lesser spirit can universally be appealed to with a ritualized food offering: a dish of rice, a loaf of bread and a cup of milk. More powerful spirits would want to be invited to share your camp for a day, be given such an offering at breakfast, lunch and dinner and to be given a type-appropriate trinket at the end of each meal before they consider your miracle request. Entertaining a direct representative of the Fairest involves nine days of feasting with 27 courses at each meal, elaborate gifts, performances, tournaments and so forth, but can give you some serious magic plot-twisting if you do it right.
Pact magic is less bribing the spirits and asking for a favour and more treaties and legal theory. As long as you can rattle off the appropriate oath in the presence of a spirit authorized to notarize the oath, it counts regardless of how poetically (or poorly) you say it. Pacts usually just grant passive abilities, but also give you legal standing to demand that certain spirits do certain acts covered by their end of the oath. Type acquisition can be one of the few exceptions to this.
Necromancy does have spirits! They're just called ghosts. Ghosts lack much of the political complexity of other spirit types, as there's only two real rankings of ghost: the restless dead, and spirit-walking necromancers. The only difference between the two is that the necromancer knows how to inhabit a body while the restless dead usually don't. Necromancers have three spells to base their magic on, and you typically learn them in the following order:
-Incantation of Death: Exempts you from the usual rules of death, allowing you to sense and speak with ghosts. You become a ghost when you die.
-Spirit Walking: Allows you to depart from your body and go do things as a ghost. In ghost form, (only) other ghosts are solid.
-Inhabitation: This allows you to take put a ghost (including yourself) in control of a human body (including your own).
If a necromancer wants to reanimate a corpse, they can either do it themselves by going spirit walking and inhabiting it, or by putting a ghost (controlled however they like) into the corpse to do it for them. They can also do the whole ghost scouting thing, physically wrest ghosts out of bodies or (including living souls out of living bodies they want to take over) or even violate the usual rule of one ghost per corpse by having various dead people who are skilled in things the necromancer isn't share their body with them. The necromantic version of a charm is a ghost who has promised to aid the necromancer a certain number of times and lives in a skull or a fingerbone or something.
Vulcanism is the wildcat banking of the spirit world as run by abandoned soldiers who have refused to surrender even now that the war is over. How it works is you go deep underground, to a place where the sky is no longer visible, then you track down a spirit of Glass (who also governs Terrestrial Fire) to make deals with in a traditional wizarding fashion. Because the element of Fire is split between the spirits of Sky (who govern the sun, moon and stars) and the spirits of Glass (who live deep in the earth), anyone (be they human or spirit) who wants to complain about your use of magic has to figure out which hole in the ground you went down into, track down a spirit of Glass themselves and complain to that spirit. Merely making an appeal to the Gods of Fire in general or even to a Glass spirit from some other volcano won't do - Glass spirits can't talk with each other to get the message to the right place, like normal spirits can. They won't listen to Earth, Water or Air either, as Glass is still convinced the primordial war rages on.
The net result is that you have a "wizard" who can call down fire, summon up volcanic rock, fly on sulphurous fumes, scry through glass surfaces and shoot geysers of heated water, but who can ignore the protection of Truce pacts with relative impunity. They do have a weakness, though: Any sorcerer of glass who wants access to miracles has to get them from a Glass spirit - nobody spirit is willing to go anywhere near them as long as the sorcerer is packing a Magma Staff. Fortunately for the sorcerer, any shard of glass taken from the right volcano will let them commune with their patron. Unfortunately for the sorcerer, it will let anyone else who gets ahold of it commune with their patron just as easily, usually to complain about how badly the sorcerer is abusing the powers that he's been granted.
Ironmongery is a learned skill. Blacksmithing harder to learn than most skills, as there aren't any spirits of iron surviving who can bless your efforts or instruct you in the secrets of steel, but it doesn't require any special mystical knowledge either. You pretty much have to figure it out yourself through lots of practice or be taught by a master. But once you learn it, you have a very useful substance that isn't subject to any magical rules governing its use. To the spirits, someone wielding Iron is just as dangerous and nearly as invulnerable as the Fairest that commands them. They can't call in a favour to turn an iron sword aside, they can't use a miracle to bypass steel plate and they can't pull the bars on a steel cage open. It doesn't burn them, or sicken them or even cut any deeper than it would a mortal or a wizard - iron effects every being, human or spirit, with equal indifference.
The spirits fear iron, but don't know how to make it themselves, and don't know what to look for in a human to tell if one knows ironmongery or not. Unless the spirits see an ironmonger with the metal in their hand or at their home, there's no way for one to tell. People who are caught knowingly working iron in any capacity (even those who just hammer iron nails into wood) are barred from all of the Rites of Wizardry, and the second that a wizard attempts to work iron, the spirits abandon revoke all charms and renounce all pacts. The sole exception are spirits of Glass, who don't know the God of Iron is dead, and assume that he is merely refusing their requests out of anger at their defiance. Working Iron isn't an offense under the Truce of Glass, but using it on a Glass spirit is. Likewise, most humans have no issue with iron, with the exception of wizards and priests, who refuse to have anything to do with ironworkers for fear of being thought guilty by association. Many cities will pass laws forbidding it within sight of the temple, and it is a foolish peasant indeed who ill use an iron hoe within a stone's throw of the forest.

> FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.

> Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.

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zeruslord
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Post by zeruslord » Mon Sep 15, 2014 2:26 am

I think I'd rather go with a lighter-weight combat system than that - this doesn't feel like the sort of setting that wants measurement to be a big deal. Personally I'm leaning towards something like Spirit of the Century's zone mechanic.
I've been picturing charms as somewhat more common, with a range of power levels. At the high end, a Major Charm is like one of your wizard's highest level spells in D&D, with major battlefield effects like animating trees, calling a storm, rending the earth, or summoning a poison cloud. These are the kind of thing that gets acquired on-screen and used against other magicians at the climax of an adventure. On the lower end, a charm that can be acquired offscreen in an hour might make an arrow fly true, heal about half HP, strike with lightning, or reshape an amount of material you can hold. System-wise, I'm thinking most basic charms will roll the relevant skill+attribute+charm rating, while higher-end stuff will have more thematic rolls ala sorceries in After Sundown - you want the soldier-types using your basic combat charms, while the more castery types drop the big control spells.
Looks to me like you're incentivizing necromancers to go punch ghosts. It's not terrible for there to be brawny necromancers, but it doesn't strike me as what you'd want the default necromancer to be like.
Vulcanism I'm pretty much down with
Ironmongery... hm. I think I'd like iron to be a thing people are superstitious about in general, given that it pisses off the spirits. Also, it probably shouldn't insta-void all pacts automatically - there's probably some ancient ones from before the war, and I think an ironmonger could force a spirit into a non-voidable pact.
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zeruslord
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Post by zeruslord » Tue Sep 16, 2014 6:47 am

Here's a writeup for some Oathsworn pacts and their limitations. I'm figuring these should be fairly substantial character-shaping things, with an always-on benefit, an activated major ability that costs edge or something similar, and a big limitation. I'm also thinking about having them grant an edge refresh mechanic - gain a point of edge whenever... something.
The Northern Nomads
The nomadic tribes of the northern steppes are the remnants of the Old Kingdom's nobility. Their leaders can, and do, still call upon the treaties at the foundation of the Old Kingdom, and shape their culture accordingly.
The Oath of Swords
The Wardens of the Old Kingdom were the king's personal agents, traveling the land on his business alone. Although forbidden to own property beyond what they could carry, they were some of the most politically powerful individuals in the Kingdom, behind only the great barons. In battle, they were known for their uncanny speed and reaction time. Their prowess was founded on the Oath of Swords, which forbid the use of all bladed instruments, and in more extreme readings, any tool with an edge, however dull. Northern cuisine to this day is eaten without utensils, relying instead on scraps of flatbread to keep hands clean. Each Warden had, rather than the Squire of the knightly orders, a knifeman, who was responsible for preparing and cooking food, sewing and repairing clothing, and all other things that might require touching a sharp object. In nomad culture, this is reflected by the twin heads of a band: the Hetman is the chief of the warriors, and his Knifeman is responsible for keeping the band fed, clothed and healthy.
Those who have taken the Oath of Swords are granted the speed of the wind. They gain a bonus to movement at all times, and by spending a point of Edge, they can take a second initiative pass in a round.
The Oath of Stars
Where the Wardens were the king's hands, the Seers were his eyes and the voices in his ears. By taking the Oath of Stars, which required that they never sleep out of sight of the stars, the Seers entered into a relationship with the spirits of the sky. In the north of the Old Kingdom, glass-roofed stellaria were a necessary feature of any grand estate, while the stormy southlands developed a wide range of potent stimulants to enable Seers to keep vigil through the storms. Today, shamanic initiates among the nomad tribes sleep in the open, while their masters sleep in glass lodges.
Those who have taken the Oath of Stars have the right to ask one question, truthfully answered, of any spirit of the sky once per day. The spirit is required to tell only that which the stars have seen - if weather, roofs, trees, or caves block their sight, they may repeat hearsay if they so choose. In addition, by spending a point of Edge, the Seer may bend light to see events beyond the horizon as they occur, as though in a mirage.
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Grek
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Post by Grek » Tue Sep 16, 2014 6:54 am

In order for the magical movement system to be at all impressive, there has to be limits on non-magical movement which do not exist for magical movement. If you can go anywhere with regular movement that you can go with magical movement, then what you're really getting out of magical movement is a special effects reskin and possibly a small buff. That's lame.
There are options besides using measured distances, of course. You could have a grid. Or you could do a Tides of Battle setup, where your (combat-effective) movement choices are limited by random selection. Or you could do any number of other things. But what you shouldn't do is have abstract zones that are moved through according to DM fiat.

> FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.

> Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.

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virgil
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Post by virgil » Tue Sep 16, 2014 1:48 pm

> zeruslord wrote:By taking the Oath of Stars, which required that they never sleep out of sight of the stars, the Seers entered into a relationship with the spirits of the sky. In the north of the Old Kingdom, glass-roofed stellaria were a necessary feature of any grand estate, while the stormy southlands developed a wide range of potent stimulants to enable Seers to keep vigil through the storms. Today, shamanic initiates among the nomad tribes sleep in the open, while their masters sleep in glass lodges.

Does the Sun count as a star to sleep under?
Come see Sprockets & Serials
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Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
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zeruslord
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Post by zeruslord » Thu Sep 18, 2014 2:21 am

The stars can totally see you during the daytime, bro
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