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Category: Electrum Pieces (Page 60 of 156)

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The Quaternary Acolyte

November 25, 2013 /

I've always wanted to have a recurring villain for the party. Being loathe to force a circumstance where the bad guy always gets away, I think I've found a way to do it that provides me some options if the party can actually take out the bad guy before they reach some epic level of power.

The background involves the emphases system for spell research that I can't seem to stop talking about.  In this case, the bad guy has an emphasis based on a number, specifically the number four. The Quaternary Acolyte receives a bonus to research (or possibly cast) any spell with that somehow involves the number four. One obvious spells would include a Fireball variation with four smaller blasts. However, there are more options available such as Hold Four Monsters as opposed to Mass Hold Monsters. Squares and rectangles have four sides and four corners; since this is an NPC, I'm taking any connection to number four.

So let's say the party is from the same town. Cattle and livestock are being found mutilated. Outside of town, odd-shaped burn marks appear in fields: one is a pentagon, another is a triangle, etc. Rumors spread of an evil cult. Odd things begin to happen in town that aren't a major threat, but can be a bit unnerving. A few poorly counterfeited coins begin to circulate. Trees on the edge of town sway to a wind that no one feels. A very localized rain storm suddenly appears over a merchant's storefront and soaks everything he is selling.

The merchant believes that an asectic that lives outside of town is responsible. What passes for law and order has gathered a group of locals together to confront him at his hovel.

Feel free to modify, but for me, the ascetic is not the villain, but a neutral character. He will know about a few events that he has seen. Another unnatural event would happen while the mob is "questioning" the ascetic, thereby clearing him and providing clues to the real culprits.

The villains are a strange group of wizards that are experimenting with what they consider a new form of magic. They focus on numbers and their peculiar numerology in magic research. Our villain, the quaternary acolyte is studying the number four. This includes the literal number four as well as any meanings associated with four. Pythagoras considered the number four to be the number of justice or retribution. This could make it problematic for the party as this spellcaster's emphasis will pretty much always apply to them.

What if the party dispatches this one in the first adventure? Introduce the Senary Acolyte. Hexagons aplenty, right? More than that, Pythagoras considered the number six to be the number of creation. With a specialty in creating things, he or she would be quite a formidable opponent. For what it is worth, six is also a perfect number and a triangular number.

This group has the Primary as the leader. Since he or she focuses on the number one, I imagine all kinds of möbius strip inspired spells, including a bridge based on this idea. Then, of course, is a creature based on beign 1-sided and/or a möbius strip...\

There the germ of an idea. Hope to come up with spells and stats here in the next couple of days.

Something to Chew On

November 21, 2013 /

Fantastic Heroes & Witchery has been released. You can find it here.

A lot of folks see interesting ideas in it. As always, I'm going through the magic classes and the psionics rules.

What I find most interesting so far is the section on priests. There are domain spells, but also all kinds of ideas for pantheons. It looks like stuff I always wanted to do, but wasn't talented or driven enough to commit to paper. I'll have more detail in a future post - I'm still working through all this gaming goodness.

Since it is OGL, I plan on taking a look at converting some of the classes to S&W to see how it goes. Looking at all the choices in spell-slinging classes, I want to experiment to see if my emphasis system can do something similar.

Anyway, what are you waiting for? Go get it.

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.

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