tSoY again
Perhaps it would be worthwile to try and write up a Shadows of Yesterday version of Hybris, mostly as an exercise/idea mine. Certainly there are some elements of the system that I could steal pretty easily for my own use if I wanted to.
The various magical arts would be Secrets... you'd always use the same magic skill, but which stat it would pair with would depend on the action taken. There'd be a primary Secret for each art (which represents basic training with it) then sub-Secrets which require the first one.
Secret of Thought (resisted with Willpower): you can use magic to send and receive thoughts with other people. Just sending doesn't normally involve a resistance check unless they try to block you out; reading thoughts always requires one, even if they're willing.
- Secret of Bodily Control: you can use this magic to paralyze foes. Alternately, you can take control of their body, but this requires constant concentration.
- Secret of the Depths: you can attempt to probe the memories of a subject, but this is really slow and generally requires them to already be in a trance state so that their thoughts don't obscure their memories.
- Secret of Higher Thought: you can conceal your real thoughts behind a layer of false thoughts. You can also shut down your emotions temporarily in order to act in a calm, objective manner or to resist emotion-control magic.
Secret of Emotion (resisted with Insight): you can use magic to sense the emotional state of other people.
- Secret of Overwhelming Emotion: you can disable foes by overwhelming them with a single, overpowering emotion of your choice.
- Secret of Insinuation: you can influence someone's emotions in a subtle manner, making them feel happy, angry, lustful, et cetera. This generally seems just like an ordinary change in mood and can last a long time.
- Secret of the Inner Heart: you harness your own emotional drives in order to gain bonuses to actions that you care deeply about. This also blanks out your surface thoughts (as you are operating on pure emotion), enabling you to resist thought-control magic.
Secret of the Inferno (resisted with Reaction): you can use magic to create fire out of nothing.
- Secret of Flame Control: you can extinguish, shape or otherwise control fire.
- Secret of Fire Protection: you can protect things from the damaging effects of fire, heat and smoke.
- Secret of the Salamander: you can transform yourself into a being of living fire temporarily.
Secret of the Many Oceans (resisted with Toughness): you can use magic to control and shape water.
- Secret of Immersion: you can create pure or salt water out of thin air.
- Secret of Gills: you can enable other living creatures to breathe water and protect things from the damaging effects of immersion (like preventing a book from being damaged by getting wet).
- Secret of the Undine: you can transform yourself into a creature of living water temporarily.
Secret of the Black Art (resisted with Willpower): you can summon Devourers, bodiless extradimensional entities that feed on mana and the life-force of living creatures. They will perform a single task, which they must be dedicated to as part of the summoning. Once the task is done, they'll do as they wish. This art is flexible, but rather slow and always takes 1 extra round to use.
- Secret of Reanimation: you can bind a Devourer into a body, turning it into an undead creature.
- Secret of Banishment: you can expel a Devourer from the mortal plane.
- Secret of Coersion: you can give a new command to a Devourer, even if you didn't summon it yourself.
Secret of the Flesh (resisted with Endurance + Drive): you can boost or reduce someone's physical stats and other natural abilities (including their healing rate) temporarily.
- Secret of Changing Flesh: you can make cosmetic changes or shift character points around in the target permanently. For example, you could reduce someone's Endurance to spend the points on Wings or change someone's Size rating. The more points moved around, the more damage doing this does to the target. Changes that can be passed on to their kids are far more difficult. This is also very slow, requiring 5 extra rounds each time it is used.
- Secret of Insight: you can determine someone's health, stats and current condition by studying them with magic. This can also reveal things like hidden tumors.
- Secret of the Inner Flesh: you can wound, paralyze or kill a target by changing their internal organs appropriately. It can also fix problems like blindness or cancer if you also have the Secret of Insight.
Secret of the Storms (resisted with Toughness): you can predict the weather and speed up or delay it in minor ways (e.g.- making fog linger or rain start early).
- Secret of the Storm: you can modify the weather in major ways, producing or dampening out storms. This is very slow, requiring an extra minute to cast.
- Secret of the Lightning Strike: you can control where lightning strikes. This process is slow, requiring 2 extra rounds to cast.
- Secret of the Winds: you can control the direction and strength of the local winds in a precise fashion. This process is slow, requiring 2 extra rounds to cast.
Secret of the Natural Order (resisted with Willpower): you can command animals to obey you or make them feel friendly towards you.
- Secret of the Plants: you can also command plants. Plants which are commanded can be made to uproot themselves and move about, although they often take damage from this.
- Secret of Fertility: you can control the natural cycles of animals and people (and plants, if you have the Secret of the Plants), making them more or less fertile as desired.
- Secret of the Beast Form: you can assume the form of an animal temporarily. It's much easier if you have a scrap of flesh taken from the creature whose form you wish to assume. If the scrap comes from a creature which is still alive right now, it's even easier.
Secret of Portals: you can sense the presence of portals. If they are inactive, you can activate them, although you still won't be able to use them if they require a key.
- Secret of the Opener: you can create a portal between your current location and another realm. It's easiest if you do it in one spot, then go to the other end by other means open the other end there. Opening a portal directly from one spot to the other is very difficult.
- Secret of Teleportation: you can make portals between two locations in the same realm.
- Secret of the Key: you can put restrictions on a portal, such as it requiring you to hold a specific item or make a particular gesture. You can also render it inactive or set it up as a trap so that it will go inactive when the next person tries to travel through it, trapping them until the portal is reactivated.
- Secret of the Diviner: you can use magic to learn what sort of key a portal uses or where it goes.
- Secret of the Closer: you can create magical barriers that prevent certain kinds of portals from working, such as stopping all new portals or all cross-realm portals.
- Secret of the Priest: you can create a mana portal, one that only allows mana to travel between two locations. Mana will flow from the area with the higher mana rating to the lower.
Secret of Metamagic: you can concentrate and store mana within yourself, providing you with extra magical energy to work magic with. You can also detect nearby mana fonts and barriers.
- Secret of Countermagic: you can attempt to drain away mana from an opposing spell, countering it regardless of what sort of magic it is.
- Secret of the Barrier: you can set up mystical barriers which block the flow of mana. A completely sealed area with no mana source inside it will not be able to replenish mana when it is used. You can also pour mana into a sealed area, artificially boosting the area's mana rating temporarily.
- Secret of Divinity: you can attempt to absorb a mana source into yourself, becoming a deity. Warning: failing at this attempt can be fatal.
Posted by Kiz at March 2, 2005 05:02 PM