Ping.

So, I seem to have agreed to run a Nobilis one-shot next week, in addition to playing Shieldhaven's Yearly One-Shot, a Song of Ice and Fire hack set in his homebrew setting of Aurikesh. So I am focusing on that, and on other writing projects, and yeah.

So anyway, go read This very thoughtful look at Vancian Magic which does a really good job of covering what I actually like about playing a Magister in AE. Though I do agree with Shieldhaven's comment that seeking and finding spells would be super awesome-- I've just never played a game where the DM actually cared about running that kind of thing, or offering that kind of treasure.

...And I still think that 4e isn't bad for doing this, I mean, there's actually rules for handing out powers as Training Treasure, and I imagine that there are ways to make rituals cooler, and more of this kind of flavor.

Which kind of gives me an idea for how I'd run a 4e game, the next time I try (my current game notwithstanding, I am hoping to pick that up in Jan.)... but Shieldhaven's been making noises about wanting some heroic adventure, and I've been making noises about wanting to run something he could play in.

Basically, I'd probably do one of those hacks where either bonuses are built in and divorced from gear (so that gear can be just cool abilities/powers, instead of What You Need To Hit/Not be Hit more), create an interesting list of maybe 12 magical components that have to be combined variously to create different effects for crafting/spell creation, and have them be real things that the players are actively seeking in-game. Also, I'd consider severely limiting the either all Arcane Classes, or maybe just Wizards, to just their At-Wills, and maybe 1 Encounter.

Daily Powers would come soley from rituals, which could be created via a recipe (a certain combination of materials related to the kind of effect one wants), or discovered in play. A Ritual would need to be performed at the end of an Extended Rest, and grants the Wizard their daily for the day. You could only prepare one a day, of course, though you could have a pretty hefty spell-book of Rituals. Perhaps at very high levels, one could have more, and I suppose one could do this for Dailies and Encounters and have lesser and greater Rituals, but I dunno.

I also kind of like the idea of Rituals that would allow you to, say, swap out a power for a multi-charge power that's better, but costs you something, materially.

The big problem I always had with Vancian Magic in D&D wasn't that you had a spell book, and had to prepare spells, it's that the components were undefined and were just, "I dunno, components." and later ones seemed to just assign arbitrary, random components without rhyme or reason... incense, or a 500 gp bowl had no contextual connection to anything, you just know you need them. What I would need to make me happy there would be context. Not unlike the Oblivion alchemy system, where you know, for example, that a certain mushroom cap is super useful in invisibility potions, or strength, or whatnot.

Anyway. I'll think about that more when I don't have a story due today, and you know, actual work. Though it's awesome how I only really have ideas when I've got deadlines.

Psychic Power and the Telepath Question.

One of the nice things (there are many) about dating a fellow gamer/GM is that you get to have long, late-night design conversations about various and sundry things. Last night, we wound up discussing what I was looking for in terms of The Truth in Yellow, the psychic horror game I am wanting to run. For this game, I am leaning very heavily towards using the Over The Edge system, although I am planning on using the Dawning Star setting. Yes, I know that DS was written for D20 Future, but the sort of game I'm planning to run isn't particularly a shoot 'em-up, while Red Truth is exactly what I'm looking for in terms of psionics for this game in specific*.

Which leads to to psionics in general, which is a special love of mine. I am a sucker for a good psionic system, though I've never yet found anything that works the way I think psionics should, exactly. Which wants to ask, well, what do I want from my brain-suckers, anyway?

*It is important to note that, although I have been maundering about Red Truth et al above, the list below is not something I intend to use in that game; Red Truth doesn't do the things listed below, as written. That said, Red Truth is effing awesome. But one can like more than one thing.

1) Psionics are different from Magic.

In my ideal system, Psi and Magic are fundamentally different, and while certain of the effects can mimic each other, the sources are not t'all the same. The primary example is Sleep. Traditionally, Sleep is considered an effect that works on the mind, whatever the source. So doesn't that make it psionic?

The answer in my proposed system is no. A mental effect is psionic only if the source of the effect is mental, not the target. Hence the difference between a pyrokinetic blast and a mage's fireball, metabolic healing and magical healing, or a telepath knocking out a target and the sleep spell.

I would not include telepathy or read minds as magic effects at all, except perhaps in a very limited, 'send message' kind of way. In these cases, what is happening is not one mind speaking to another, but an effect which simulates sound that only the intended recipient can hear.

The principal difference is that psionic energy comes from the person innately, while magic is pulled from somewhere else. To answer the question Shieldhaven just put to me, how would mages be limited at all? My thought is that the mage is limited in how much energy they can pull, and how they can pull it. Also, magic is something that has to be learned, and anyone cal generally learn it, while psions are born.

2) A Psion's lot is not a happy one.

Being a psi, using your powers, and learning to control your powers isn't easy, and is likely to take a huge chunk out of your ability to do other things. The penalty will vary based on the kind of psionics you're using. Sound risky? Should be risky. Success as a psi is freaking awesome. How to model this for different stories one wants to tell is something of a question. Not every story should or ought to be, "this is how I learned to control my powers, and these are my scars." For games that take place later in the characters' lives, perhaps a list of disadvantages linked to powers would be good, that could either be selected purposefully or randomly, though the latter runs the risk of becoming a gamble to see whether your character even survives creation.

3) Different sorts of Psi are also different.

This will require a lot more thought to cease being nebulous for me, but I think that different kinds of psi should be different skills. Pretty much as follows:

a) Telepathy -- I go into your mind with mine and affect your thoughts. I can change your mind, implant thoughts, or forbid you from thinking of a thing, though I can't make you like it. At the extreme, I can overwhelm your synapses and fry your brain. It's not particularly subtle though. I can sense thinking beings without necessarily seeing them, by 'hearing' their mental energy, if they are not trying to shield it from me, or else I am not trying to block them out. If I'm not careful, you'll wind up destroying my brain, or I'll go nuts and destroy all of yours.

b) Empathy-- I go into your mind with mine and affect your emotions. I can change the actual function of your brain much as drugs or alcohol do, by making you feel one way or another just at the moment, though I can't make you think anything in particular. I'm much more subtle than the telepath, at base. I can sense any creature which is alive and experiences emotions without necessarily seeing them, if they are not trying to shield from me, or else I am not trying to block them out. If I'm not careful, I'll go insane from everyone else's emotions, or I'll wind up driving other people to unpleasant things.

c) Telekinesis-- I move objects with my mind. With effort, I can actually sense objects that I cannot see; the more subtle, the more effort this requires. This is not easy for me. Aw shit, now I'm bleeding.

c.1) Pyrokinesis-- I generate heat energy with my mind. So... um, I set shit on fire. Go me. As for my problems, see the telekinetics.

c.2) Electrokinesis-- I generate electricity with my mind. I blow out streetlamps and can't ever wear watches. I might wipe hard drives too. But... force lightning!

d) Impression Sensitivity (Psychometry) -- I read the psychic impressions of objects. I can tell you who last touched an object, or at least what they are or were like while they were actually in contact with said object. The more information I can get from something, the more overwhelming objects are in general. (some sort of rules about how particular objects hold energy might be useful here).

Another version of Impression Sensitivity works on people at touch-- I 'read' you when you are touching me, and I can tell what you're thinking & feeling, as well as seeing a little bit of your past when I touch you.

e) Metabolics -- I heal people with my mind. I can make you-- and possibly myself-- better, stronger, and faster, with effort. I probably am also an empath though, otherwise I might fuck this up pretty badly, and wind up hurting you or myself, or healing you at a profound cost to myself.

f) Precognition-- I can see the future! I don't like being around other people who can see the future... we mess each other up. Also, this is extremely stressful, and did you know human brains aren't really built for this kind of thing? They're not.

f.1) Clairvoyance-- I can see the here-and-now at a distance! Problem is, I need something to focus on, or else it kind of hits me at random, and blacks out, you know, what I should be paying attention to. Like walking down stairs, or driving.

These are my starting place, I shall go further from there. But the brain, it storms. Storm brain, storm!

Session Roundup #4

A day late due to patch day again, but nu, better late than never!

So this past week saw some Arcana Evolved, and also rolling up characters with Shieldhaven, Wombat, and (eventually) Stands-In-Fire for Samhaine's Dresden Files one shot. AE was first, while down in the ATL for a LARP BBQ (mmm... acronyms), where Kings' Gate Matters were wrapped up, and Dust to Dust char. creation stuff was discussed at length. That wasn't really a game, that was... well, I shouldn't really call it foreplay, but you know...

*ahem*, anyway.

So AE.

It was a pretty straightforward session... we fought more !*^@&!%^! Winter Wolves, captured one, quizzed him, and had our Faen Akashic do some object loresight on that wolf's collar. This got the attention of something called a Winterspawn, who apparently was the Liege Lord of an Ice Devil that we killed the hell out of some time ago, who scried on us for a while. Then he teleported a thing that looked like a dead corpse frozen in a battle-mech of ice armor at us, and was apparently annoyed that we fucking smashed it into a thousand pieces. I say we, but I really mean Shieldhaven's Warmain and his awesome hammer, enchanted with Ghost Touch. I didn't bother to use any other spell slots than that, because with Ghost Touch and his earlier attack, not to mention the damage the other tanks dealt, there wasn't any reason to do so. The math may or may not work out on whether I did more damage spending the 5th level spell slot on Ghost Touch than on some other blast you to hell spell, like Attack From Within, but eh. It was pretty cool either way.

The Winterspawn wasn't really down with us taking out his minion, and in response to me mouthing off at his scrying-bubble after failing to dispel it, he telepathically contacted me to explain why he and his buddies wanted to cover the world in winter, freezing everyone. We knew this, mostly (there's a Primordial Evil that they can trap forever this way-- btw, sorry about your planet)-- but dislike the methods (Hey! All my stuff's here! And what about meee!?), and so I argued, Honeythorn Gump style (What good is a world locked in a season of death?), and we agreed to disagree (I'm right and going to keep on doing what I'm doing and hope we don't meet again, nyah vs. I'm betting my friends are going to want to come and probably try to kill you and all your friends, nyah. Not that I said that), and I reported the chat to the party. We were all quite perturbed.

Dresden Files Char. creation was... interesting. So, you create concepts, like in say, Spirit of the Century, based on what you think you might want to do. My concept was initially Dexter Morgan as a small half black, half mexican girl, and it eventually sort of became half Dexter, half, well, That Other Serial Killer who targets monsters. This is a character that I would normally consider completely unplayable, but. I'm gonna go ahead and blame Wombat and Samhaine for this one. We play the game on next Tuesday; Samhaine will be writing a review of the system thereafter, and I shall link it whereupon.

In the meantime, the Monkey King and Four Color have been Continuing the Conversation on humans as default race et al in gaming, and on player investment. You should go give a little looksee. Basically, what it's all done is make me want to read Eclipse Phase and play Noumenon.

Fortunately, Shieldhaven is considering what game to start running next, and Noumenon is on the list, though Mage or Westmarches E6 are my top choices.

Over The Edge with some Guest Stars this weekend, and I'll do a new Games I'm Playing post when Shieldhaven chooses our next adventure. And hopefully I'll have gotten to play some more Fallout: New Vegas in the interim.

Btw... does it make me a bad person, wanting to play this so badly? I mean it looks like...

Never mind what it looks like. But I still want to play it.

Session Roundup #1

Partially for my own benefit, and partially to satisfy my own nonsensical desire to order the universe, I am going to try, each Thursday, writing up a brief rundown of the previous week's games. It is possible that All My Gaming will be changing up soon, which makes me very sad. Also there's been some breaks in the schedule of late, but the past two sessions of various games have been worth mentioning.

B's Game, last Tuesday-- We finished up a storyline in which, from the little we could tell, the Raven Queen sent her minions after Hane, my Revenant Assassin. We didn't find out much of what was going on, but she'd taken over the Imperial Palace, and we had the Crown Prince (a 6th level warlord) with us. We had him wait outside the door to the throne room while we tackled a couple of Ebony Guard and two Gawd Awful Hounds with a nasty fear aura, that dropped our attacks by 2 when we were in aura 5. Yeah, bad times.

On top of that, after we'd committed to wiping out the Guard as fast as possible (so we could deal with the hounds, which we'd fought before and which have unholy hit points), a Revenant Lurker showed up, with poison daggers and an eye towards making our lives bloody miserable. Fortunately, (though the player wasn't there, we had a Bard.

And the Bard had Insult to Passivity.

Insult To Passivity basically dazes an enemy until their are attacked. This is important-- they can take damage and stay dazed, so long as they're not attacked. Enter My Assassin's Shroud, and the feat that allows me to deal shroud damage without removing the shrouds when I use my Dark Reaping racial ability.

So this chick was super unhappy, trying to get close enough to hit us with daggers on her next turn, and eventually trying to run off... but we got there first and shut the doors on her. So sad for her, not having phasing. Finally, after we'd (well, mostly I'd) been wrecked by the hounds, and pretty much put them down, Our Mageblade went and started wailing on her, so she could finally use her powers. Which were pretty brutal-- she immediately went invis on us and hid behind some tapistries.

Shame I'd put Hunter's Eye on her, since she was my shroud target, and thus could find her no matter where she went. It also gave me +2 to attack her, but that's neither here nor there. Also, Norman-the-Runepriest-Barbarian-Hybrid-Dwarf (Also my Assassin's descendant) had Earthsense, and could tell where she went.

Oops.

So we wrecked her pretty hard, and that was awesome. I have to say, this was a really cool fight, and everyone got a chance to feel pretty awesome. Our Mageblade has specialized in AC improving stuff, and the things that targeted AC were balanced in such a way that while they could get most of us, they couldn't get him, most of the time. Norman also did some splendid damage, combined with healing like a madman, and our Wizard was... well, our wizard. But enough about Magic Missile in 4e. Because we wrecked her so hard, we didn't find out much more about what was going on, but the Crown Prince and the Emperor were very happy with us, the Raven Queen's shroud went away, and we all were extremely satisfied to leave the encounter with pretty much nothing left but at-wills.

Chessenta, monday-- Chessenta: Book of Serpents is run by He Who Stands in Fire, and is the most brutal game in which I play. This session was no different.

As of last session, we wound up in the town where we'd received our first quest-- we had the Axe that we were supposed to return to the town's church, and had, uh... gotten sidetracked helping out some Brass Dragons before taking it back. Of course, when we get there, the entire town's been swallowed by the Shadowfell.

Oops.

We made our way into the Shadow-Copy of the town last session, via a pretty darn neat gating system which stuck each of us in a black room with a horrible monster. For me, this meant sitting there trying not stay alive while my poor Shaman was wailed upon brutally. The others killed their monsters and teleported to another of the four rooms. Naturally, they got to me last.

But I was just fine.

Anyway, after I was rescued by my buddies, we found ourselves attempting to sneak through a city full of undead and shadow creatures towards a church. It was really just one of those sessions where we could not pass a skill challenge to save our hides. The sheer quantity of 1s rolled on 20 sided die were staggering. Thus, we wound up in two really quite brutal encounters with shadow creatures and horrible undead fleshy-monsters, one of which dropped some interesting papers. The second encounter involved these dudes who not only were able to turn invisible (and threw poisoned daggers), they created huge freaking zones of total darkness. Ultimately, we had to just frigging run away, and then try to lay in wait for them, hoping that they'd go back visible. That worked all right, and once we could, you know, hit them, we did so with much vigor. Also, our combat rolls suddenly got better. We then got to the church, rescued the mayor of the real town, and realised that we were going to have to go into the creepy sewers beneath the shadow town after all. The best part was hanging the axe back up in the church, which got us a happy quest reward: all of our weapons now do Radiant Damage as long as we're in the Shadowfell.

Hurrah super useful quest rewards!

You're gonna hear electric music/Solid Walls of Sound.

Deck of Many Things returns this week to discuss a spell. This spell can be found in Monty Cook's Arcana Evolved game. It is called Wall of Sound, and the fucker is broken as hell.

(*Note* there is apparently errata which makes it less broken, but I'll deal with that at the end of this post.)

So, about the circumstances under which I employed this spell for the first time in the campaign. I was playing my Magister, Basel (11th level at the time), who was frustrated with the limited nature of her 6th level spell options. She had memorised Vitrification, Shaped Strike, and Wall of Sound for the day-- nevemind that we were in a field of crystal and fighting crystal monsters, so Vitrification was fair useless. A little bit about these crystal monsters, by the by:

1) They had spell resistance.
2) They were immune to fire and cold (so much for shaped strike, which is a fire spell).
3) They were resistant to Electric Energy (which is one of my energy templates).
4) They could refract damage spells so that they bounced in a random direction, potentially hitting me or my allies (so much for most of my damage-- considering the changes of hitting either of the Large-Size Giants in the party, or the hit-point shy Faen, or the Human who is pretty much the main tank... yeah).
5) ...They were vulnerable to Sonic Energy.

So, after trapping one of them in stasis for a round with Dreaded Freeze, This Rabbit goes and looks up Wall of Sound. According to the original printing, the spell has the following attributes:

1) Simple (which means almost anyone can cast it)
2) Spell Resistance: No (later fixed in the Errata, but that may not matter, depending on what is being resisted.)
3) covers a number of 5X5 squares up to your spell level. (Mine at the time was 13, having cast a Heightened Greater Enhanced Magical Flow)
4) Is not bound by gravity, and need not be vertical.
5) Can be made in about any shape you want.
6) has hit points equal to 50 X your spell level.
7) deals Sonic damage equal to 1 X spell level at 20 feet away, and I forget how many d4 of damage (1d4 X spell level with a limit?) at 10 feet away. Half damage on a fort save at 10 feet, no damage on a fort save (I think) at 20.
8) has a duration of 10 rounds per level.

Sounded fantastic to me, esp as we were fighting 10 foot tall crystal critters. My first thought was to create a ceiling of sound over the one fighting my companions, but could not do so in a way that would not hit my allies. So Bo, the Winter Witch, came up with another suggestion.

"Hey Basel, why don't you box the one you Froze in the Wall?"

Well, why didn't I? I could put the wall entirely around the dude, and I could place it at such a height that crawling under it or jumping over it were both problematic, and so that, even if it did get out, it was going to take stupid damage first. Beating on the Wall, at 650 Hp, wasn't really going to do it much good either. So that's what I did. The crystal tenatacle thing (did I mention the tentacles? Yeah. Crystal Effing Tentacles. WOULD I MAKE THIS UP?) shook to death in a handful of rounds, by which time we'd murdered the hell out of his friend.

At which point, Bo very sensibly says something like,

"Yeah, just wait till that's used on us."

Hm, a valid point. The general rule of AE is that anything we can do, the NPCs can do better. And this spell, used with a bare minimum of creativity, is pretty much a Win Button.

Now, it is 6th level, and it is apparently subject to spell resistance, but I'm going to have to look up exactly how that works to see if that just means you don't take damage from it, or if you ignore the wall entirely. Because if it's the former, then that still means dude is trapped in what is basically a force wall with 650 hit points.

Still not hot, particularly if you have angry bow-fighters and magisters ringed around you, and you have any exposed bits at all. Otherwise... well, you're stuck in a box that will let the party get away long before it fades off of you. Suck.

The best ways out of this situation, assuming there's no ceiling on it, is to be able to fly, or maybe to dispel magic, so far as I can see. Otherwise, I think I'll be avoiding using this spell overmuch, as believe it or not, I am not a big fan of The Win Button. I like there to be more than one Right Answer possible in the main of situations.

Ask me about 4e Artificers and Magic Weapon sometime, when you've got a few hours.