Okay, the Compel spell restricts the target's actions in some way. Preventing an action is considerably easier than making them do something that they don't want to, so paralysis is much more practical than marionette. It's a psychic compulsion, though, so if you force someone to do something successfully, they'll do it at full skill.
Let's see... in order of difficulty:
Prohibiting ALL actions should be one step harder than stopping a specific sort. Hm.
I could also see it being less specific... you make a control attempt and then we list off how much control you have over them.
Hm. Let's try again...
That makes the caster's Magic Rating pretty unimportant, though... although it does apply to the skill roll and it might penalize the resistance check, too. Another option would be to say that the Compel doesn't vanish the moment that they stop concentrating... a Concentrated Compel could be a one-time zap that lasts for Magic+1 minutes. Or maybe Magic * Magic minutes (Magic 0 means 30 seconds/5 rounds). Should it have a random factor? 1d6 x Magic minutes? That might be better.
Ooo, there's a thought. Killer bugs.
Let's say some talking mice die in a fight near an ant hill. The ants eat all of the bodies... and get a little too smart for comfort. Oh, they can't talk, at least not the common workers and soldiers... the queens might be capable of it, but we're talking ants here... they aren't big on coexistence and diplomacy. You might start seeing cunningly woven traps and soldier ant ambushes.
Perhaps some charming bard type insists that he was captured by such ants while he slept and taken before their queen, whom he charmed with his music into letting him go. Of course, the story has to be hokum, right? I mean, what sort of ant hill would have an entrance big enough for a mouse, anyway? Unless maybe the queen had told them to go bring her more of those sweet, sweet magic mice...
Since mice are so small, decent-sized ants would be about the size of D&D giant ants... like little angry dogs compared to a person. A good minor foe.
Some scavenger beetles might perform similar tactics, just in smaller groups with less organization.
Really huge foes might show up occasionally. Especially stuff like deer and humans.
Here's one thought... for critters above size +5, there are two damage levels. The first is what you get with a level 1 hit, the second is what you get with a level 2+ hit.
So, let's take a snake with Size +10 whose bite does a base 1d6. Then a single hit would do 1d6+10 and instantly kill a typical mouse. If we assume that a glancing blow does 1/2 damage (making it more survivable), then...
Tie: 6 points of damage.
Level 1 hit: 1d6+5 damage.
Level 2+ hit: 1d6+10 damage.
Basically saying that you can't apply more than +5 damage from Size without scoring a really solid blow. Ties would inflict minimum damage hits, which seems like a decent rule to use anyway.
This seems like a good approach. If a mouse ends up in combat with a huge snake, I don't want them to be either missed or automatically slain. There should be a possibility for a glancing blow, which hurts but rarely kills outright. It would probably take some playtesting to see exactly what the best level to use is... it'll depend a lot on whether folks normally have a base of 10 HP (what I currently have), 13 HP (the old CoC typical value), or more (15 might be reasonable, gives 'em some leeway so that only crits kill outright).
Continuous: the tip of the magical tendril generates a continuous stream of energy so long as the mage continues to concentrate. The exact effect depends on the form of energy being produced.
Light: the tendril sparkles like starlight, providing illumination. The higher the caster's Magic rating, the brighter the light. In general, Magic 0-1 produces about as much light as a star, 2-4 about as much as a candle, 5-9 a torch, and 10+ daylight.
Fire: it burns like a candle, providing limited illumination (treat as producing Light, but divide the caster's Magic by 2) and open flame. Since it's a steady flame, this is a good way to start fires, especially since the mage can direct the flame from location to location. Each round that it is applied to a flammable substance, roll 1d10. If the roll is equal to the caster's Magic+1 or less, the target starts to burn. For particularly flammable substances, roll 1d6 or even 1d4.
Electricity: the tip of the tendril throws off sparks. Anyone touching it will receive a mild electric shock and must roll their Magic+Size vs 5+Magic or be stunned for 1 round.
Concentrated: the mage throws all of the energy of the spell into a single burst of energy. It only lasts a single round, but the results can be much more impressive than a continuous spell.
Light: The sudden flash can blind unprepared foes who are looking in its direction. They should roll a Reaction (Agility + Perception) check vs 10+Magic. Those who fail will be blinded for 1d2 rounds.
Fire: A burst of flame erupts from the tip of the tendril, burning whatever it is touching. The damage inflicted is 1d4+Magic-1.
Electricity: A flash of lightning eminates from the tip of the tendril, shocking whatever it touches. The target takes damage equal to the caster's Magic - 1 and must roll their Magic+Size vs 10+Magic or be stunned for 1d3 rounds.
The Manipulate spell lets the mage use a tendril of magic as an invisible limb, grabbing and moving objects with it.
Weak Manipulation: first the mage extends a tendril to contact the object that they wish to manipulate, then casts the Manipulate spell on it. Then, so long as the caster concentrates, they can take an action to use their tendril like a tentacle attached to the object in question, moving it about. Grabbing a new object requires recasting the spell. The strength of this grasp is equal to their Magic rating minus 5. The more skilled they are, the finer the task that can be performed.
Hm. How about Flight/Levitation and enhanced Jumps? Basically, can you use a tendril to tug yourself along? I could see it being possible, although you might need a special Edge to do it.
Search: a tendril of mystic energy is sent out and directed all around the area like an invisible searchlight. If it touches an object which matches the sort of object it's searching for, the caster will sense it. At that point, he can continue searching (seeing if there are any other objects of that sort in range) or turn the Probe spell into a standard connection and cast other spells through it. If you are willing to cast a Search spell that doesn't create a standard connection, but only locates the target and then ends, you can get +1 effect level for your spell.
The caster must focus on what he intends to locate and it has to be something that could be readily and quickly identified. For example, he could search for a particular species, a kind of object, a particular substance, a particular person, any other magic tendrils currently in operation (but not mages), et cetera. It cannot be used to search for things that would require an Analyze (Probe) effect to reveal, so you can't search for "someone who means me harm" or "someone who is injured". It also can't search for subjective things like "something pretty" or "something valuable".
Searching often takes several rounds at least (and can take several minutes if you want to check above and below you as well), since the mage is basically casting out a detection beam and must direct it at all of the areas that he wishes to check.
Remember, your spell will be penalized by what substances it has to pass through, so tell the GM exactly what level of effect you rolled and whether or not you are sacrificing any levels for increased range. If, for example, you were searching for a particular person and they happened to be hiding behind a large boulder, you'd need to roll at least a level 4 effect to detect them. If you also wanted to double your effective range, you'd have to roll a level 5 effect to find them.
Activate/Deactivate: many permanent enchantments are set up so that their magical effects can be switched on and off by the use of the Probe spell. The difficulty is determined entirely by the spell you're trying to access and will generally run from zero (contacting it with a tendril at all will cause it to turn on/off, no roll is required) up to the original casting roll for creating it + 10.
Analyze (Close-range, sometimes Fatiguing): analyzing a target with the Probe spell is a close-range effect as it requires closer attention and more precision than a normal Probe effect. The better you roll, the more information you can acquire. Acquiring each piece of info requires one round of analysis.
Trace Spell: if you know where an ongoing spell is, you can trace it back to its caster. This is a simple Probe (Search) effect, but it follows the same path as the spell being followed and the distance includes the distance from you to the spell as well as the distance from it back to its creator.
Most severed spells cannot be traced but can be identified as such automatically. Severed Probe spells, though, still have an ethereal link back to their creator, no matter how far away they are (effectively, they are treated as being 1 yard away, regardless of where they really are). Casting a spell through such a link requires the sacrifice of 1 level of effect but is otherwise treated normally.
The base range that a tendril can extend is 10+Magic in yards. Every level of effect that you choose to sacrifice for range will double this.
So if you roll a level 4 effect using some spell but only wanted a level 2 effect, you could double your range twice... increasing it to (10+Magic)x4 yards.
A few spells work best when the caster is very close or even touching the target. Close-range spells start with a range of zero yards (arm's reach) and add 10+Magic to the range for every level of effect you choose to sacrifice.
Note: since you can cast multiple spells through the same tendril, you can often get away with only paying for the extended range once. If you use, say, a quadruple range Influence spell on a target, you can then follow it up with further spells without sacrificing levels to extend the range.
It takes effort to get a tendril to pass through solid objects. If you want to cast a spell through a particular substance, you'll have to give up further levels of effect.
The process of creating a permanent enchantment is referred to as severing. This is because the mage first extends a mystic tendril to cast the spell, then severs it from their being. This permanently weakens their magical abilities, but it can keep the spell going indefinitely.
Each spell made permanent in this fashion gives you 1 severance point. If the spell was fatiguing, you get another severance point. If you overextended your magic, you get another.
When the number of severance points that you've acquired exceeds your current Magic rating, your Magic rating is permanently reduced by 1 (then subtract your old Magic+1 from the number of severance points you have, generally reducing it back to zero). Note that this means that some dabbler with a +0 Magic rating can only create a single permanent enchantment before reducing their Magic rating to -1 or less and losing the ability to cast spells at all.
The effects of severing depend on the spell being used.
Spark: the spell will continue to generate light, fire or electric sparks indefinitely. If invested in an object, it will move with the object. In this way, enchanted weapons and light sources can be created. This effect can be turned on and off with a successful Probe spell vs a set difficulty chosen by the person who severed the Spark spell. The difficulty can be anywhere from zero to the skill roll used to create the Spark spell + 10.
Compel: a permanent Compel spell is referred to as a Geas. Basically, it's a Compel that doesn't wear off, although the subject can try to resist it temporarily by making a Magic+Resolve check vs the spell's strength. This only grants a few rounds of free will and can only be attempted about once per hour. It's very draining to do, so most Geas victims just obey the compulsion.
Influence: a permanent Influence spell is rather nasty, in that the spell will continue to inject whatever feelings it was designed to create constantly. The subject soon becomes aware that the feeling is coming from outside of them, but that doesn't make it go away. Generally the target acquires a permanent Flaw based upon the effect (eg- a permanent drowsiness effect would give the target a Lazy flaw).
Probe: the mage can retain the link to something that they were probing permanently. This lets them do things such as always retain a magical link to a particular person (although the person will be magically linked to them permanently, too). If you sever a searching Probe spell, it will continue to expand outwards forever, searching endlessly until it finds something that matches its target. Then you'll acquire a magical connection to that target and the severed spell will be lost. So if you really wanted to locate your long-lost brother, a severed Probe spell might take years to do it but would probably eventually succeed.
Manipulate: the mage can program the tendril with a repetive action, then sever it and the tendril will continue to repeat it endlessly. A successful Probe spell vs a set difficulty will enable a mage to turn the effect on and off. The difficulty is set by whoever severed the Manipulate spell and can range from zero to as high as the original Manipulate roll +10. This could be used to create, say, an axe that floats in midair and makes chopping motions on command, but because modern mages are so much weaker than their ancestors, items of this sort are very rarely made anymore. But the royal palace does have frivolous things like floating glass globes with permanent light-producing Spark spells in them, showing that the ancients were not so frugal with their power.
Shape: a severed Shape spell leaves the object permanently shapeable; you no longer have to spend the requisite time insinuating a tendril into its being because the tendril is already there. You just have to use a Probe vs a set difficulty to gain access to the tendril inside, after which you can use Shape to make further changes. Again, the difficulty can be as low as zero or as high as the original Shape roll. If the mage wants to use this spell to make the object permanently locked into a single shape, they can add a further +10 to the difficulty. This is very rarely done and even the palace has only a couple of examples of severed Shape spells... in particular, the dungeons contain a couple of cells whose walls are enchanted to be unShapeable.
Typical members have these stats, unadjusted. PCs get 5 extra points to distribute, with a max of +3 in any one stat.
Rats and Mice can't interbreed (and even Jumping Mice can't successfully produce offspring with regular mice). According to the ancient texts in the priesthood, the other species were deliberately made intelligent as an experiment in early days of the kingdom. This was passed on to their children, but their magic, never very strong, has been spread very thin.
Hit Points are Size (x2 if greater than zero) + 10.
Dodge rating is Agility + Dodge Skill + 10.
Parry rating is Agility + Weapon Skill + 10.
Missile Avoidance rating is Agility - Size + 10.
The base target number for a Compel spell is the target's Magic + Resolve Skill + 10.
The base target number for an Influence spell is the target's Magic + Perception + 10.
The base target number for a Shape spell (used on a living target) is the target's Magic + Size + 15.
For a mental Probe, it's target's Magic + Knowledge + 15.
Manipulate and Spark aren't resisted because you're actually projecting physical force. Spark inflicts 1d4+Magic in damage if used to burn a target. Manipulate has an effective strength of Magic-4 if used as long as you concentrate and Magic+0 if used for a quick shove or pull.
Sizes greater than +5 penalize all attempts to work magic on them. Add their Size-5 to all target numbers. For smaller Size ratings, there is no effect.
Domesticated animals are very rare. Most critters that small aren't all that trainable. Instead, minor mages use Influence to keep things like sparrows and beetles in line. Since they have a Magic rating of -5, it's often pretty easy, but you do have to have a mage with at least a +1 Magic rating to do it.
So animals are used for stuff like the Emperor's elite sky-cavalry and the occasional carriage pulled by rhinocerous beetles. Mindless rodents are often magically enslaved... interbreeding with them is where the inhabitants of the land came from, anyway.
The upper classes tend to be inbred. Some join the cloistered priesthood, which worship their spirits of their ancestors and attempt to placate a variety of angry gods associated with famine, drought, various monsters, et cetera. Even most priests don't really believe in these gods, though, but use them as one more way to keep the lesser classes in line.
There might well be a "Devout" flaw which means that you really do believe that the gods are watching and must behave accordingly. It's a flaw because the religion is thoroughly corrupt and unenlightened and generally milks the gullible population out of their coppers.
"Copper bits" are the most common coinage, being small lumps of real copper (taken from salvage in the wastes) that have been broken up into reasonable sizes.
Everyone wears at least some clothing and/or ornaments. Otherwise you'd look like one of the mindless hordes. Folks prefer to walk on their hind legs whenever possible... dropping to all fours is faster, but oh-so-undignified.
There are prohibitions against mating with mindless mice and the priesthood does their best to make sure that folks see it as depraved and immoral. The edict was originally issued to keep magic from spreading too thin, after it became obvious that each generation's magic was getting weaker and weaker. Most people aren't aware that all of the mice in the kingdom (including the royals, although they deny it) are at least partially descended from mindless slaves from the early days of the kingdom.
And it is a fairly depraved practice. Without magical compulsions, ordinary mice fear the talking, intelligent kind and avoid them. But this doesn't prevent the occasional outland barbarian from taking slaves. Magically tainted babies tend to get eaten by their mom if she's not intelligent, though... they just won't seem "right" to her.
The Imperial Palace is a wonder to behold, its walls comprised entirely out of shaped metal. It's built on top of a rusting, ruined car, but little of the original shape is still visible. The mages of the palace have used Shaping magic to turn it into their abode. Sharp metal spikes still stick up in many places, in order to discourage attacks by Owls, Ka'ats and other creatures. These are generally kept well polished (the nobles hate visible discolorations) but may have rust in spots that aren't visible normally.
Since that's where the original inspiration comes from, I created a thread about HM on RPG.net.
Okay, I like the 6 Arts. What does it cost you to use them, though? Some possibilities...
I like that enough that I think I'll want some sort of Exhaustion rules, even if it's only for deliberately overextending yourself for the bonuses. Ideally, overextending your magic should be dangerous, so that you don't do it casually, but only in emergencies... maybe all failures become Botches or something.
How about this? If you cast a spell and botch, you acquire a fatigue level in addition to any other effects. If you choose to, you can overextend yourself... this gives you a major bonus (perhaps +5), but means that you'll take a level of fatigue afterwards regardless... if you overextend and botch (and botches should occur more often if you overextend) then you'll suffer 2 levels and probably pass out. A few spell effects (like surgery shaping) could automatically be fatiguing. So the worst you could do is botch on an overextended attempt at a particularly fatiguing spell... then you take 3 fatigue levels and pass out.
Fatigued: you're exhausted and suffer a -2 to all rolls. The error range for all actions is now +1 (to 3 or less usually). This goes away after an hour's rest.
Dead on your Feet: -5 to all rolls. You are constantly dizzy. The error range for all actions increases by +2 (to 4 or less usually). You take 1 point of damage. This goes away after 8 hours of rest.
Unconscious: you freakin' pass out. You probably take 1d4+1 damage, too. This goes away after one full day (24 hours) of unconsciousness. If you manage to take more fatigue levels, add one more day each.
Botches occur when you roll a 2 or less (on the dice) or when you fail a check by 10+.
Here are the important magic skills...
Influence: lets you alter the target's mental state (particularly their emotions) in subtle ways. It's primarily resisted by Magic+Perception. The big thing is, if you realize that you're being manipulated, it's not hard to break free, so a successful resistance roll consists largely of realizing that your feelings are being imposed on you from without. This art can make people sleepy, hungry, lustful, angry, etc., but it takes a really amazingly good success to make them behave irrationally. Influence can be very long-lasting if you roll well. Summoning is a form of Influence combined with Probe to locate the creature to be summoned.
Compel: lets you control the target's actions overtly. Primarily resisted by Magic + Resolve (with Resolve being a skill you can train). The easiest action is "you can't attack me unless I attack you," which can be used to enforce peaceful interactions. The better you overcome the target's rating, the more potent the effect you can produce. At the top level, you could make them kill themselves or their loved ones, but that also takes an amazingly good result.
Probe: lets you use a sensory tendril to probe for something. You can probe a given person for signs of magical effects or probe for injuries/illnesses. You can also use it to search an area for something, but this is time consuming. Another, more difficult, effect is to look out of the end of the tendril to see that location. The tendrils are, of course, invisible and intangible, but passing one through a solid object requires a better roll than probing somewhere that is blocked only by air. A probe which has "locked on" to a target that was searched for can be used to target other spells on them as though you could see them normally. A probe will also notice other tendrils if it contacts them (and after that, locating the caster is easy unless they were also probing and choose to withdraw theirs).
Manipulate: lets you use a thread as a telekinetic arm. It can only perform simple tasks, using your Knowledge rating as its Agility if a check is necessary; skill ratings are halved when used this way. Its strength rating is determined by how well you rolled, but it's generally pretty weak. You can get a higher effective strength by making a single quick, violent motion (which ends the spell) such as a telekinetic shove instead of manipulating an object for as long as you concentrate. I might make the Strength of a shove always be your Magic rating and the strength of a regular manipulation be Magic -3 or something.
Shape: lets you insinuate a thread into a physical object, then alter the object's shape by manipulating the shape of the thread. The harder the substance and the larger the object, the harder this is to pull off. You can shape flesh with this, but it's very difficult and tends to hurt the subject a lot. Shape is generally too slow to use in combat unless you're smart... it can take several rounds to insinuate the controlling thread into the target. After that, making changes is relatively quick. Insinuating a thread into a living being requires overcoming their Magic+5 in addition to the regular difficulties (on the upside, flesh generally isn't as hard as stone, unless you're trying to shape their bones, too). This can be used to heal physical injuries, but that requires extreme care, some medical skill and no other magical interference... otherwise you're liable to inflict more damage than you fix.
Spark: you can produce light and/or heat from the tip of a tendril. It's called "spark" because it takes a really impressive roll to do much more than that. If used to burn a foe, the base damage is very poor but adds your Magic rating to it. Spark can also be used to produce an electrical shock, which does minimal damage but might momentarily disable the target with muscle spasms.
Was thinking about the Hyperborean Mice setting again, and what stats I'd use for that...
Size: combines strength, size and endurance. Subtracts from your defense rating vs ranged attacks, but adds to your melee damage, carrying capacity and hit points.
Agility: pretty much dexterity/speed without the ranged combat effects. It's plenty valuable without them. The major determinant of your defense rating, as well as applying to a bunch of physical skills, including hitting people with weapons.
Perception: determines ranged combat ability and applies to all sensory skills.
Charm: persuasiveness and likeability. Basically the charisma stat.
Knowledge: general smarts and education. Applies to all knowledge/lore skills.
Magic: your ability to work (and resist) magic. Limited by race. You have to have at least a +1 to cast spells easily, although with a +0 you can manage them with a reference book or other assistance. Most mages don't consider you worth training unless you have at least a +0.
Okay, this leaves out willpower, which could be a skill, or a combo of Knowledge and Magic or something. A skill might work... it won't be used much except to resist spells and torture. I could expand Charm into Drive and include willpower there... but then you couldn't easily make a charming but weak-willed rogue... or someone whose force of personality was compelling (a great leader) but who wasn't charming at all. Hm. Probably go with a Magic-based skill. That would also indicate that all it takes is a decent amount of training to resist mind-magic. Since mind-magic is supposed to be fairly weak, that works.
Magic works by "weaving threads". There are several different kinds... emotional, living flesh, kinetic, mana, inanimate material. Any existing spell makes it harder to work other magic on the subject... you might have to undo their current spell first.
There's an easy emotional thread effect, which allows you to prevent the target from attacking you or taking any overt action to harm you (including ordering minions to kill you). This is really hard to resist... your Magic rating must beat theirs by a lot to do it.
There can be an Edge called Strong/Very Strong that gives you +1/+2 to your Size but only for melee damage and carrying capacity. Similarly, there could be a Weakling Flaw that reduces those benefits by 1 or 2.
You get 5 points to distribute and can get more by reducing stats to -1 or -2.
Okay, let's try putting them in order of how much I like them. Then I might quiz other folks, too.
A definite problem with my original setup was sheer indecision about the setting. I bounced from wanting a huge, gigantic world (covering most of the western US) to a smaller one to making the PCs agents of the goddess... yeah, I couldn't settle on what I wanted to run.
So, let's brainstorm what sort of things the primary setting for the game could be and see which (if any) make the best campaign fodder.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can get around that... I can't come up with a single-idea setting without making all of the other ideas harder to run.
Perhaps it would be better to list off setting elements and see which strike me as the "coolest".
Well, of the 7 powers I've listed off... which do I want to implement? The only really iffy one is Phantasms, which would require a lot of thought as to HOW I wanted it to work before I could write up RULES for it.
Let's concentrate on the easy ones and work from there...
Visions: first, you focus your mind on what you're looking for. Then you throw out your senses in the desired time (past, future or present). The more specific the item you're searching for, the easier it is to find it.
Visions: Scrying in the Present
Psychokinesis: Moving Objects with your Mind
Thoughts: Speaking to People with your Mind
Emotions: Detecting Emotions
Health: Healing Wounds by Touching Them
Prowess: Supernatural Speed
It would be nifty if each power also had a bonus die under certain circumstances.
Psychokinesis: +1d10 if you're seriously wounded. Your pain will help power your effects.
Visions: +1d10 if you've gone at least 48 hours without sleep.
Hm. I'm not sure I can come up with a good one for each. I might instead just give a few of them circumstances under which they're easier and matching circumstances under which they're harder. No beneficial circumstance should be common or easily acquired.
Psychic powers are difficult to use casually. You have a pool of energy that can be spent to boost them, but the basic power level depends on how emotionally invested you are in the situation.
How many dice do you get for free?
Modifiers:
Once you figure out how many dice you have to roll, you can also allocate dice from your power pool if you want. When you've decided, roll them all and sum the two highest dice (giving a result from 0 to 20, depending on how many dice you had to roll). While each power varies in its effects, the basic results table is below.
Results of Roll:
Situation:
Prowess: a pool of dice that you can add to physical actions such as attacks, dodges, etc. Refreshes slowly, although there might be some sort of "I tap into my overwhelming emotions to push it temporarily" rules. In fact, they'd probably be essential. No ranged effects.
Thoughts: can talk mentally or spend dice to attack mentally... which can be a psychic shout or subtle mind reading. Basically it's telepathy.
Emotions: telempathy. Much like Thoughts, except that it governs folks emotional states. You can pick up strong emotions within X yards (where X is your rating). You have to spend points / dice to inflict emotions on people.
Health: lets you heal people with your pool. Can also be used to harm. Generally requires a touch, either way. Can identify illnesses and such within X yards.
Visions: lets you cast your awareness in a particular direction, including forward and backward in time, but timelines are tangled, overlapping things and very hard to make sense of. The past is buried quickly but if you can reach it, it's always accurate. The future is a jumble of possibilities where only really likely things can be distinguished.
Psychokinesis: lets you affect physical matter. Poltergeist-like effects, starting random fires, etc.. Nothing with really good control. Or, if you want good control, it's expensive and tends to cause side effects too.
Phantasms: illusions, sendings, etc. Things that look real and interact with the world in a dreamlike manner... fading away afterwards, but sometimes leaving traces of real stuff.
Can ANY psi be spent to resist Echoes? I was thinking of having an Echo-specific power but that might be a bad idea. Better to assume that any psychic is especially vulnerable to them and that any psi pool can be spent to resist them.
Psi probably shouldn't be just regular skills. I see it as more nebulous and unpredictable. It could still use a 2d10 roll, of course... say you roll DRV+Xd10 and see how well you do. X starts at 1 and you can spend points from your psi reserve to add additional dice... but if you roll more than 2d10 you just take the 2 best. A result of 20+ is really, really good. A result below 10 is pretty bad and may mean that nothing happens. That would mean that if you ran out of pool you'd still roll DRV+1d10 (possibly plus other modifier for emotional commitment or taking extra time) and could still get a result of 10... maybe 15 at most.
Another option is letting you spend as many d10 as you want from your pool (plus the 1d10 free one) but if any of them come up 1 then you suffer some side effect. Which might be as simple as attracting Echoes or a temporary reduction to your Drive.
Cyberware gives abilities that are reliable, dependable and predictable. Psi does weird stuff, depends heavily on your amount of emotional involvement, and may fail or overdo it at random intervals.
Since the PCs are exceptional, everyone gets X points worth of cyber-upgrades and/or psi. Cyberware may well interfere with psi, increasing the chance of botching with it. Botches may occur when you roll X or less, where X is your current amount of cyberware.
Geigers might well be zero or one point... they're easy to make and very unintrusive.
Ooo... how about an emotional involvement chart? That determines the base number of dice you get to roll. You can spend more from your pool, up to a reasonable limit. This means that if the situation changes to involve you more (eg- it triggers a drive) you may get extra dice. I'm not sure that any of your stats should really apply. That would make it too much of a skill or trainable thing... whereas, really, it's magic.
Since the Hybris system is coming along decently well, it's made me think about the old Nuclear Beasts setting again. What were the problems that I had with it?
I wonder if it would be worth revisiting it again?
One possibility would be the old Fallout-inspired bit. Start with Eden and have the PCs sent out to explore. That makes for a much simpler, more open setting.
The psi should be something weird and mystical and not completely understood. The AI knows that it exists and wants to harness it, but can't duplicate it. It would stamp it out except that it's such a strong resource.
I'd want the psi powers described very vaguely... rather than pyrokinesis, perhaps it could just be a Harm power that manifests in strange ways. This is the area where I can't think of any other RPGs that have really good rules for this sort of thing, so it's an opportunity to be truly original and innovative... if I can.
Race would be sort of an extra attribute... one that applied a bonus to social checks with your race, using your racial skills and fighting with racial weapons. +1 for high beasts, +3 for middle and +5 for low beasts.
Quick, secretive, vain. They are almost fearless and are extremely perceptive, if not too smart or strong. Their endurance is particularly low.
They regularly engage in ritual combat, posturing and posing and insulting each other and making mock attacks with their weapons. If neither side breaks off, they'll usually agree to settle things with some sort of martial contest. This could be a death duel (usually with spears) but it's usually some sort of test, such as hitting a distant target or spearing a thrown fruit. Wrestling is considered particularly dishonorable and usually ends up scarring both contestants (their skin is particularly vulnerable and tears up easily when they grapple).
They love to hunt and climb and are both stealthy and agile. While they adore enormous trees like the world trees of Auborelle, they're okay on almost any rough surface.
Visible scarring is considered a sign of a poor combatant, so they suffer Charm penalties while wounded or scarred. Their leaders are expected to be competent and experienced warriors who also have no scars (sort of like the Celtic rulers). Royal headdresses and such tend to be very brightly colored, much like the patterns on their backs. Colorful feathers are ideal for this purpose.
Criminals and outcasts are often ritually scarred. This renders them incredibly ugly to rollem eyes, meaning that they'll never find mates except for other outcasts, if then.
Unlike their animal relatives, Rollem carefully guard their eggs and raise the young on small insects and pre-prepared mush (usually fruit, sometimes animal guts). Rollem can often tell a lot about another rollem's heritage by examining the colorful patterns on their backs.
Strength -1, Endurance -2, Agility +2, Perception +2, +5 to Climb skill.
Okay, so we have baseline humans... satyrs... and two magically crafted species (lendehar and feldehar) created to serve a particular purpose by the only god skilled enough to make entirely new species like that.
Other races will exist, but they'll probably be slight modifications of existing races or chimeras like the satyrs. Some possibilities...
Elves: tall, slender humans with a bonus to agility instead of endurance. No reason to call them elves, really, though, since they won't be fae. They might be better as just a subrace of humans. I can't see why they'd get pointy ears or skill with plants. Probably drop 'em. Satyrs/fauns might make a better "nature" race.
Dwarves: short, squat humans with a knack for underground living. Again, why name them after a faerie spirit when they were modified deliberately to serve? Actually, they wouldn't have beards... and they'd probably be doughy, pale and possibly hairless, like real below-ground living humanoids. Probably slaves, too... they don't forge any items themselves, they just handle the mining. Resistant to low oxygen levels.
Centaurs: if you can graft goat hind-quarters to make satyrs, why not make full centaurs? They'd make good cavalry and messengers. I see two kinds... huge, brutish clydesdales with neanderthal-like upper bodies and small, lithe deer-centaurs that are frail but very fast.
Ogres/Giants: big, strong, dumb humans. Created for brute labor and as shock troops. Not necessarily violent or vicious... you want them willing to fight, but not hard to control.
Cat/Gecko people: agile climbers that can scale surfaces that other races quail at. I'd probably want one or the other, really... having both might be a bit much. Gecko people is less cliche'd than cat people.
Okay, that gives us... probably in order of how modified they are...
Humans: high endurance
Squats: dwarf-like humanoids. White, doughy skin, big eyes, little or no hair, great night vision, blinded by bright light, very strong for their size, usually trained as miners. Low Drive. Great miners? Or just used for it? Probably just used for it. They haven't been modified enough to give them any super-mining-powers. Often wear "glare masks" on the surface.
Giants: big, strong, dumb humans. Low Drive. Created as shock troops and brute labor.
Satyrs: great jumpers.
Hinds: deer centaurs. Small, fragile, but very fast. Created as messengers.
Centaurs: enormous primitive horse-men. Not as strong as giants, but faster. Created as cavalry.
Rollem: humanoid gecko-like creatures. Natural gift for climbing (sticky fingers and toes). Keen senses. Created as scouts.
Lendehar: spindly humanoids with improved senses and fabulous memory. Can exchange memories between themselves by touch (but this will also transmit mental compulsions). Natural gift for memorizing stuff like history and learning new languages.
Feldehar: physically similar to lendehar, but much smaller, with four arms and retractable, insect like wings (they can't actually fly very well, but can glide- think female Gelflings). Natural gift for craftsmanship. Usually not happy unless they have a building project. Even if drafted into the military, they'll always be whittling or something.
After working on my pic of a jumping satyr last night, I think the Sandili may become red instead of blue... at least the military arm. Since they've been magically altered already, I could see the goddess color-coding them. Makes things nice and simple for them, but makes it kind of fascist, too.
If so, the scar would probably have to become white. I could try making it blue, but that doesn't seem as bad as white, black or red.
Sandili: roughly human size and attributes, probably Endurance -1 and Strength +2 (legs only). Jumping is an Easy skill for them, so its rating is doubled.
Common humans might be Endurance +1. I'm not sure of any innate Edges that I'd give them. Maybe Endurance +2 then. Assume that most flesh-shaping "tweaks" to create the other races did so at a cost to their constitution.
The sandili are nice and original... as satyrs, they're not too far out there, but their grasshopper-like jumping skills are a nice twist.
The Lendehar are a bit of a problem, if only because I still can't get my head around what they look like. They get a major boost to memory tests (maybe double their Knowledge for them, maybe just +4). Their endurance might be all the way down to 1 or -1 (depending on whether it's base 2 or base 0). Languages might well be an Easy skill for them.
What other races... I could deal with cockroach people (small, winged, 4-arms, skilled with mechanisms) but I'll have to come up with a good pic. Probably like praying mantises, if their eyes are faceted they should still have a central "dot"... that'll make them look more empathetic.
I like the idea of tossing the traditional races... elves, dwarves and such. There could well be some, but they won't necessarily be called that. They'd be minor tweaks on humanity (tall, thin humans vs short, broad ones).
Salamanders, undines and golems are cute, but they're all basically avatara... magically created beings powered by soulstones. So they won't necessarily have much in the way of personal culture.
Hm. The cockroach folks could basically be small, mobile Lendehar... also created by the god of wisdom, just with a different purpose in mind. Perhaps the Lendehar were intended to plan and the smaller folk to build. Then the Lendehar themselves might get 4 arms, not sure. Their name could be similar, either starting with Lende or ending with ehar. The Feldehar? Their Drive rating is deliberately crippled.
Assuming base zero... and that each set of special powers is worth 1 attribute point... and that most races have a total of +2... and that Size is basically free.
Human: Endurance +2.
Sandili: Bonus with jumping. +2 strength with legs only.
Lendehar: Strength -1, Agility -1, Perception +2, Knowledge +2, Drive -1. Bonus with memory and languages.
Feldehar: Strength -2, Agility +1, Perception +1, Drive -1. Size -1. Bonus with Craft. Flight (poor). Extra arms.
A new element for the Lendehar: memory exchange. When two lendehar grasp hands, they have the innate ability to pass on their memories to each other in a blur of sounds and images. Their creator did this so that they could exchange knowledge more easily and spread information around with ease. Since they were also created so that they were incapable of refusing an order from their deity, this meant that if they received a memory of receiving an order, that order would apply to them, too.
In the final days, the clans actually scattered, running from other Lendehar who were bearing terrible, self-destructive orders from their god. A prohibition was built up against using this with lendehar outside of your clan, but over the centuries the prohibition has grown weaker. Some of them still worry that there could still be some surviving lendehar carrying one of those dread commands, though. The modern clans don't even know exactly what the orders were, just that they were horrific and that lendehar who realized what was going on before they actually received the mental command often fled in terror. As a side effect, if you recieve a memory exchange from a lendehar who is under some sort of mental compulsion, you have to make a saving throw or fall under it yourself. As a result, they're kind of paranoid about accepting knowledge from strange lendehar.
As a general guideline, a Lendehar can get a rating of +1 in a new lore/language skill by getting memories from someone who already has a +5 or higher in it. They have to spend XP to build it up from there.
One potential game element I could have is to add a Mastery to each skill and magical ability.
This is just a bonus that you get for reaching a rating of 10 in that skill.
For example, with a melee weapon skill, you can now draw it without taking an action or any penalties. You've used it so much that you can snap it into your hand at once.
With a ranged weapon, you can reduce the reload time by 1 round without taking any to-hit penalties.
With Dodge, you now get 1/2 of your Dodge skill even when off-guard.
It could be hard to come up with decent Mastery effects for them all, of course, but it's a thought.
One option I was thinking about last night is to add more "unexplainable phenomena"... in particular, saying that portals to Hybris occasionally appear next to people in great need of escape, like the city itself was drawing them to it.
This would be considered a "known" fact, but its meaning would be up in the air. Is the city somehow alive and merely lonely? Is it inhabited by some unseen deity who brings people forth out of pity? Or are they being lured there for some darker reason? No one knows except perhaps the Gray Man, and he won't say.
One implication might be that Arthalkus forced his way into the city magically, rather than finding his way there like mortal folk. Thus, he was unwelcome and was eventually destroyed by it.
With the magic system I have in mind, he might well have recreated his Angels after he arrived, modelled after the ones that had been destroyed by the Lords of Light.
The Known Realms are linked together by portals of various sizes, most of which are quite stable (even if overloaded, they merely go dormant and can be reactivated with portal magic). The portals of Hybris are weird, however, and when they go dormant they often vanish entirely or switch to a new destination.
The gods would be more mysterious. Oh, they'd still be fallible, arrogant and often insane, but there'd be less overt discussion of why. Even the metamagic stuff about making yourself into a deity could be listed as merely "theoretical". The gods could also be unrealistically wary of Hybris, as though they know or sense something that their mortal followers can't... that would help explain why they aren't obsessed with learning how the city's portals work, for example.
Although, if Hybris's portals are all like that, even ones made by mages, then it might well be regarded as some sort of weird natural phenomena. Say there's some sort of mana swirl here, that makes portal magic problematic. The gods aren't really aware of any pattern in where Hybris's portals open up, just that it's largely random. They'd assume that the preponderance of "folks on the run" is due to the fact that those are the only people likely to trust a strange, randomly appearing portal.
Nahura's great chamber, carved out of the living heart of the largest and eldest of the world trees, could barely contain the goddess's physical form. She was a blue-skinned giant, garbed in robes of flower and vine, with eyes that glowed like the moon.
"I was wrong to banish you, sweet Hanya. A fit of pique over a tiny misunderstanding. How much you have suffered and so needlessly."
She slowly reached down, her massive hand filling Hanya's view. A single finger, its nail nearly as large as Hanya's head, stretched out towards her face.
"And this vulgar lie, which has brought you such pain, yet you have borne it stoicly."
Hanya closed her eyes, which were welling up with tears, as the goddess's single outstretched finger gently stroked the side of her face. Her head lolled gently to the left, exposing the blood-red rune which marked her shame.
"Let us be rid of it. You have borne it too long already."
Hanya's body shuddered involuntarily as power began to flow through the goddess's touch... she could feel the skin on her face tingle, then begin to burn, just like it had so long ago when the rune was first placed on her. The pain rapidly grew unbearable, until it seemed like a branding iron was being driven into her flesh, just as it had so long ago...
The agony shocked her out of the dream. Hanya awoke, gasping, alone on her crude cot, clutching at the ragged, moth-eaten sheets. Her eyes stared wildly into the darkness for a moment, then she squeezed them shut. The crimson rune emblazoned across the right side of her face still throbbed in phantom pain, now slowly fading as she returned to wakefulness.
Somewhere in the city of Hybris, the woman known as Hanya Dilisi, former honor guard of the goddess Nahura, curled up in the darkness and wept like a child.
Roll Agility + Weapon skill to try and draw a sheathed/stowed weapon without using a full action. Difficulty is 10 for a small weapon, 15 for medium, 20 for large and 25 for 2-handed. On a failure, you take the full action to do it. On a botch, you drop it.
So, unstrapping a two-handed weapon from your back without spending an action is very difficult. Quarterstaves are good for this because you can use them like a walking stick and not need to draw it at all.
| Size Class | Weapon Name | Accuracy | Damage | Critical Hit Effects | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | Dagger | +1 | 1d6 | Slash or Impale | Expensive, Concealable, Throwable |
| Hatchet | +0 | 1d6+1 | Slash | Throwable | |
| Sap | +1 | 1d4+1 | Stun | Concealable | |
| Dart | +1 | 1d6 | Impale | Concealable, Throwable | |
| Main gauche | +0 | 1d6 | Slash or Impale | Expensive, +1 to parry | |
| Buckler | +0 | 1d4 | Stun | +1 to parry | |
| Medium | Short sword | +1 | 1d8 | Slash or Impale | Expensive |
| Handaxe | +0 | 1d8+1 | Slash | Throwable | |
| Club | +1 | 1d6+1 | Stun | ||
| Short spear | +1 | 1d8 | Impale | Throwable | |
| Small shield | -1 | 1d4+1 | Stun | +2 to parry, +1 to block | |
| Small flail | +1 | 1d6+1 | Stun | -2 to parry, -1 to be parried | |
| Large | Longsword | +0 | 1d10 | Slash or Impale | Expensive |
| Axe | -1 | 1d10+1 | Slash | ||
| Mace | +0 | 1d8+1 | Stun | ||
| Long spear | +0 | 1d10 | Impale | Throwable | |
| Large shield | -2 | 1d4+2 | Stun | +3 to parry, +2 to block | |
| Large flail | +0 | 1d8+1 | Stun | -2 to parry, -1 to be parried | |
| Two-handed | Greatsword | +0 | 1d12+1 | Slash or Impale | Expensive |
| Battleaxe | -1 | 1d12+2 | Slash | ||
| Heavy mace | +0 | 1d10+2 | Stun | ||
| Pike | +0 | 1d12+1 | Impale | ||
| Quarterstaff | +1 | 1d6+2 | Stun | +1 to parry |
Critical Hit types:
The 3-corner magic in tSoY uses 6 skills... Create, Destroy, Enhance, Transform, Divine and Enthrall. It's a good list. Do any of my magical effects fall outside of this list?
Hm. With 4 mental stats, I could make Create (KNO), Harm (DRV), Enhance (DRV), Transform (KNO), Divine (INTU), Enthrall (CHA).
This isn't quite as balanced as I'd like, but it's not too bad. Harming and Enhancing both work off of willpower. Countermagic really ought to be lumped in with Divine, though... letting you analyze someone's spell and then take it apart.
Conjure (KNO): you bring something into existence associated with one of your keys. This can be a creature or object. How real it is depends on how well you roll (you can limit it to a lower level if desired). Illusions have no physical form and can be seen through if you make contact with them. Phantasms have 1 hit point and can exert minimal force. Avatara are fully real and get their own stats.
Harm (DRV): you attempt to weaken or break down some physical target. Can do damage or penalize stats.
Enhance (KNO): you attempt to strengthen some physical target. Can boost healing, increase stats.
Divine (INTU): you can detect the presence of something associated with the desired Key. Can also analyze the target and can find the weakpoints of spells, allowing you to countermagic them.
Shape (INTU): you manipulate and reshape your target in some fashion. The degree of change ranges from cosmetic to complete but it's semi-permanent. That means that if the target would normally stay changed if changed by hand, it'll stay changed. eg- shaping stone is permanent. Shaped water collapses back into a puddle when the duration ends. Shaped thoughts and emotions are more like water.
Compel (DRV): you seize control of the target. You can't reshape them but can force them to move. When it ends, the target is free from your control.
Okay, so this is a bit different. One problem I see already is stuff like polymorph that's supposed to be temporary... should that require two different Shape castings? I could see that... Undoing a shaping should be easier than making the original spell.
Let's list some common spells... Invisibility, Magic Missile, Fireball, Teleport, Sleep, Charm, Monster Summoning.
Invis is probably Compel Light. Magic Missile is Harm Life. Fireball might be Conjure Fire (harder than just using Harm). Teleport is Compel Space (Gate would be Shape Space). Sleep is Compel Thoughts. Charm is Shape Emotions. Monster Summoning is Conjure Life.
It's easy to come up with specific rules for Harm and Enhance and Divine. Conjure is iffier. Compel and Shape are kind of hard.
What keys/arts would I want to describe in the "basic set"? Skipping the esoteric stuff for the moment... what's important for the setting?
Most of these could be broken up into 2-4 subskills, like Blue Rose or Shadowforce Archer's psi. The Edge gives you access to these skills (generally at least one of which can be used unskilled).
What's novel about it? Well, I like having Conjuration cover illusions and making real things... it's just a matter of degree as to how "real" the conjuration is. Splitting Thought and Emotion so that they key off of different saving throws is good, too.
Should it be possible to not include a Key with a spell? I could see it if it's antithetical to what you're trying to accomplish, but there's something kind of nifty about saying that learning new Keys makes you vulnerable to more kinds of countermagic, always. Might be weird to have the door protected by an anti-TK field that you can't burn away either, because you have both Fire and TK. Then again, the specialist will have more points to spend on their skills, so they'll probably win countermagic contests, anyway (assuming that skill matters... it might not).
Alternately, countermagic could require spending X MP, where X is equal to the level of the incoming spell and it's always successful... it's just that if the enemy mage is very skilled, it'll often be very expensive to countermagic his spells. Hm. How about you can roll a counterspell but it costs you X MP, where X is how much his spell's level exceeds yours? You could find yourself getting drained of MP really quickly.
I want a relatively generic spell system, so that it's easy to devise new uses for existing magic. No cut-and-dried crap like "this power only works by touch". Make it where it's so difficult to do at range that it'll almost always be used by touch instead. But make it possible, unless there are logical reasons why it wouldn't work.
Sandili as blue-skinned satyr folk. Jumping is a doubled skill for them (buy a rating of +2, counts as +4 when you roll it). Basically, they get the Superjumper Edge.
Jumping charge: leap up and down at a foe. Adds 1/2 of your Jump skill to the damage done if you hit. -2 to defense. Requires running jump. Takes double damage from certain anti-charge attacks, just like a regular charge. Probably can also inflict still more bonus damage with weapons like spears that do extra when you charge.
Jumping as a skill is penalized by your Size. Maybe penalized a lot, like dividing it by size+1 (if negative, add it instead).
Combat specialization... you buy Melee Combat, but can also buy specific weapons at a rating of up to +3... they sum together when you fight. Basically, Melee is like your Base Attack rating, and you can have a weapon skill up to +3 above that.
I could also make Melee into a Combat stat, like Talislanta, but I'm not sure I really like that idea. I'm thinking more Agility/Strength + Melee + Weapon Skill. Or Perception + Ranged + Weapon Skill.
I probably should rewrite the system to use base zero stats. They're more elegant, PCs will rarely have negative numbers anyway, and they let me make a base target of 10 harder to get.
Size adds to Strength and Hit Points. It subtracts from your Defense ratings and various skills like Climb and Jump. It adds to falling damage on a per-die basis (critters with a size of -5 or less wouldn't take damage from falls if falls were in d6s... is that about right? Or should it be more like negative size gets halved, then subtracted from damage?).
Mana is raw and unfocused. Mages can give it guidance by concentrating upon Keys. These are magical concepts that the mage has mastered and they color all magic worked through them. Mana that is passed through a Key acquires a purpose and will thus affect the world, rather than merely pass through it.
Keys color the magic that they are used for in a strong and recognizable way. The Key of Death, for example, can enhance other magics at the cost of making them darker, colder and more death-like.
Combining Fire and Death, for example, could produce a blast of flame which inflicts additional damage... but the flames would tend to shape themselves into skulls and screaming faces as they rush forward.
Each Key can be used to create and control the forces that it is named for... but it cannot destroy them. At best, it can be used to countermagic opposing spells of the same Key.
For example, the key of Frost can lower the temperature and throw bolts of freezing cold... it can trigger a snowfall or forge an icy wall to block a corridor... it can even countermagic other Frost spells... but it can't get rid of ice that already exists. It can protect you against cold (by commanding the cold not to harm you, basically) but it can't warm something up. This is an important distinction.
Keys normally come in opposed pairs.
So, the Key of Fire would grant you the ability to create and control fire. You could also combine it with other Keys to make them more powerful, but this means that your new spell can then by counterspelled by anyone with Fire or Frost magic as well (each Key can counterspell itself and its opposite).
The Key of Mana breaks the usual rule in that magic can't create or destroy mana, only direct it. It can also counterspell any Key and can be combined with other arts to make them harder to counterspell.
The level of a spell is determined by your roll plus the number of additional Keys invoked. The difficulty of the stress check (performed to see if the use of the magic harms or weakens you, ala Blue Rose) is also based on the number of Keys involved.
Does this work? I need a more stylish and interesting take on magic... one that's fairly generic but still has a lot of flavor. I'd need some good rules for the effects of combining Keys (which could be called Keys, Secrets, Arts, Paths, Natures... there are a lot of possible names).
I kind of like the idea of having a saving throw to avoid magical drain. Like Blue Rose, some effects could even be so mild that no roll is needed (although low mana would still penalize your skill check).
Some spells would require other keys... for example, what does Shaping do if you don't have Life or Earth? Is it useless? Does it only work on the caster? That could work, if the caster's own body is always considered covered. So Shaping & Life together could remake someone's body. Or maybe there should be a separate Flesh and Spirit and dump Shaping/Remaking? I'll have to think about it.
In such a harsh environment, I kind of like the idea of folks being able to learn minor magics pretty easily. Hybris would lend itself to being a "most folks know at least some magic" setting. I just have to balance it all out properly. Maybe I should use Blue Rose / D20 as a starting point... I already kind of have for other things.
Ah, Blue Rose... D20 cleaned up to the point where it might actually be worth playing. Fixes or at least reduces a number of problems with the system, such as classes, prestige classes and feat trees. There are still some things left that I don't really like, though.
What sort of things was I putting in Hybris that I saw as improvements over D20?
I'll definitely have to run a playtest, especially to see how I like the magic system. That's one problem with Hybris... I haven't got an overarching view of what magic in the setting should look like, so I can't make good decisions on stuff like grouping effects together and which ones should be expensive and which cheap.
The point of this section is seeing how many sub-powers each art has. Arts that are too broad or too useful should be separated into multiple arts. Ones that are too narrow should be merged or expanded.
Soulstones are small, generally blood-red, spheres that can sustain spells indefinitely like they were a mage concentrating on it. They're rare and expensive and are most often found by destroying an existing magic item or killing an avatar.
The Lords of Light control the secret of making soulstones and guard it carefully. Thus, their forces generally have more magically enhanced equipment than other lands. Actually, Xualia and Benefor probably use them too, being former Lords of Light, but Xualia mostly uses them to make avatara.
It's believed that soulstones are made from the souls of living beings... which may help explain why the Armies of Light are so prone to taking prisoners ("forcibly evacuating" folks to the Upper Realms). This is only whispered, because the Lords of Light really dislike such speculation... it makes the gods sound less than noble and good.
Hm. Well, if I used all 15 magical skills I listed out earlier... I'd have...
Missing destroying objects? Should creating and destroying be joined up? Then aiding and harming would probably be merged, too. I'm not sure if unmaking objects should be an art or not... it might be better to just use reshaping objects and say that you're breaking it apart. It would take dimensional magic to actually whisk something away forever by dropping it into the Void. Magic can't actually destroy or create "real" matter... even magically conjured water tends to dry up as soon as the spell's duration ends, making it problematic for sustaining thirsty people... once the spell ends, they become thirsty again.
Avatara would then become Conjured Creatures that had a soulstone bound into their body to keep the spell going indefinitely. They'd probably get an automatic specialty in some area (+1 level to those spells) but a corresponding penalty to everything else (-1 level elsewhere).
Undines receive Create & Reshape (Water) for free. Salamanders get Create & Reshape (Fire).
Should I drop Destroy Forces? To fit with the whole "magic can't destroy matter" bit... should magic be able to destroy energy? Perhaps that should just be a Control (drain heat away to another location to inflict cold damage). Dunno. I could also put Anti-forces into Create Forces, saying that you can create darkness by making anti-light. But it might be better to say that control forces can banish the light... I dunno.
Or maybe I should just drop the "magic can't destroy matter" bit and allow it to destroy both matter and energy. Then I would want a "destroy objects" power that was more effective at unmaking things than merely using "control objects" to break them apart. Should create and destroy be the same art? That's probably too broad for help/harm, though. I'll try adding Destroy Objects as a 16th art...
Actually, let's merge creating living and inanimate objects. I can't see making a servitor being anything but a more advanced form of making a rock.
When you take a magic skill, you have to pick a specialty. Spells outside your specialty suffer a -1 level penalty. You can buy additional specialties as minor Edges.
Common specialties:
If a spell is reduced to level 0 or less, it was cast but has no real game effects. It's simply too weak to do much. Spells whose effects are normally noticable will still be noticable when reduced below level 1, though... so if someone hits you with a strength boost and gives you +0 to your strength, you'll still feel a slight boost in your muscles, just not enough to merit even a +1 bonus.
Hm. Is it worth being that restrictive? And keeping track for every skill what sort of targets you can use it on? Or perhaps I should just offer target specializations, where you get +1 level against that sort of target, but -1 against all others?
The normal casting time is 1 round.
If you take another round, you can reduce the mana cost by 1.
If you take minutes instead of rounds, you can get a +10 to your roll.
There aren't any "slow" arts as such... instead, some techniques are so difficult that you'll need that +10 to succeed.
Okay, without worrying too much about names for them yet... let's try to assemble a list that seem to me like they should all be grouped together.
Aiding Living Things: by shuffling life energy around, the mage can heal folks, remove fatigue, delay starvation, make plants grow better, etc..
Harming Living Things: make targets weaker, do direct damage. Can't actually cause spreadable diseases, since those are living things themselves.
Reshaping Inanimate Objects: changing the shape of stone, water, etc.
Reshaping Living Things: changing the physical form of a physical creature, whether polymorphing it into a different form or molding them into a completely original form.
Creating Inanimate Objects: creating stone, breathable air, water, etc., out of thin air. Complicated objects would probably require concentration to maintain and would fade away when the mage stops.
Conjuring Forces: making fire, lightning, light or telekinetic force.
Controlling Forces: shaping fire, directing lightning, bending light around someone to make them invisible, opening temporary holds in telekinetic barriers.
Destroying Forces: snuffing out flames, protecting against fire or lightning, generating cold, creating darkness, etc..
Messing with Interdimensional Stuff: linking two locations, fishing in the void for lost things, and otherwise opening or closing temporary or permanent gaps in the dimensional fabric. Can also be used to summon Devourers (controlling them is a special Secret of this art).
Manipulating Thoughts: reading minds, marionetting people, sensing the presence of thinking beings, preventing folks from noticing something, etc..
Manipulating Emotions: sensing emotional states, changing folks' emotions state, sensing any strong emotions in the area.
Manipulating Mana: creating mana concentrations or gaps, countermagicking other arts, absorbing a mana source to become a deity, detecting or scrying magic in general.
Summoning probably doesn't work. There aren't any real heavens or hells in Hybris, only worlds that folks have turned into them. Gating something in from another realm would fall under messing with interdimensional stuff and wouldn't include any actual compulsion to obey you.
On the other hand, conjuring phantasmal creatures out of nothing and then letting them fade away again could work. At the low levels it might even just be illusion magic... at the upper levels you can create Avatara.
Extending the senses: probably doesn't work either. Seeing or hearing into other areas would probably be a very clever use of interdimensional magic. Boosting eyesight would be aiding a living creature.
Object reading: that sort of divination would work. You meditate and discern tiny trace clues from stuff in your immediate environment. It would be broad... you could study a valley to determine the best spots to plant crops or study a dagger to determine who used it last. Could it be used on living beings? Like studying someone to determine the state of their health? Yeah, I'd think so.
I'd probably dump precognition and prophecy. While cute, it doesn't really fit the genre all that well. It might be a very advanced use of object reading.
Shapeshifting might be separate from Reshaping Flesh, if you're actually ignoring stuff like mass and simply transforming your body into other shapes temporarily. Or it might be part of it. Not sure yet. I could see permanent reshaping being very different from assuming the forms of other creatures.
I'm not sure I want to keep the original set of magical arts. There are two basic choices, really...
1) Career-style magical arts, where you take, say, Fire Magic, and get all appropriate skills for it. In fact, with the current version, there would probably only be one skill... the one for fire magic itself.
2) Skill-type magical arts, where you take, say, Control Fire as a skill but you're encouraged to take others, too.
Actually, these two are really similar in some ways... it's more of a philosophical thing. Do I make a Shape Stone art and allow any mage who wants to learn it to do so?
Or do I make an Earth Magic career and make it more limiting?
I'm not sure. There's something to be said for breaking up magic into particular kinds of actions (Healing, Harming, Divination) and allowing mages to take whatever ones they want. That kind of unifies the various systems and implies that a great mage could eventually learn them all.
The alternative kind of says that most mages only get one form of magic, and that's their magic. They can find esoteric and advanced uses for it, but a Fire mage will never be able to make plants grow.
Which fits Hybris better?
Well, currently I only have one kind of mana... it's raw, unfocused energy, open to use for any kind of magic. Saying that one mage could only use it for Fire effects and other for Plant effects is one possible approach...
Here's a better way of looking at it. Do folks buy Verbs or Nouns? Do you buy the ability to Harm, say, anything... or do you buy control over a single kind of thing, like Fire? I was going to have folks buy Nouns, but now I'm not sure.
The desperate circumstances in Hybris kind of require generalist mages... ones who could use their magic to heal plants or people. That might imply that letting folks buy Verbs is better.
Yeah, there's a bit of a cosmological disconnect in letting folks buy Nouns. It implies that there's something fundamentally different between the different Nouns, something that changes the way mana has to be used to affect them in a dramatic fashion. Someone trained in the art of altering light couldn't affect sounds... it would require a totally different type of magic.
Whereas saying that they buy Verbs lets folks find new ways to use their magic while still retaining their specialties. Anyone who can bolster living things could put their magic to use growing crops, for example. That kind of "I wasn't interested in that sort of thing but now I need it", magic might fit Hybris better.
I'll have to think for awhile about what sort of arts I'd want... probably very broad, general categories that each have at least 3 skills. I could have stuff like specialties, like taking Heal (People) and thus being able to cast Heal (Plants) at -5. That would be sort of a decent compromise between the two. You could also buy an additional specialty as an Edge, letting you take Heal (Plants or People).
Hybris is an enormous, sprawling stone city set in the floor of a rocky, barren valley in a fairly desolate, nearly lifeless realm. There are ancient, petrified trees and scattered signs of ancient life, but the realm itself has obviously been barren for many, many years.
As a result, the refugees occupying Hybris have to use magic to survive. Water isn't really a problem... rains occur fairly regularly and the city has vast cisterns which collect it. But food is.
The Green Towers are the center of food production in Hybris. Inside them, mages skilled at plant magic grow fruit-bearing trees and edible plants inside pools of water. It's really a kind of magical hydroponics. The plants are kept atop towers with large, open windows and as much sunlight as possible. As a side effect of all the fertility magic going on, the towers themselves tend to be covered in thick, lush ivy, in stark contrast to the brown and bedraggled plants clinging to the other buildings.
Mages are always in demand here and it's a simple and peaceful way for a mage to pay their keep in Hybris. The "Gardeners" will readily teach mages who don't know any plant magic, provided that they'll stay and contribute to the work. Of course, a mage with the appropriate abilities can also just strike out on their own and support themselves elsewhere in the city. It's not uncommon to see a single ivy-covered shelter in one of the city's many small enclaves.
Folks are expected to compensate the Gardeners for their food, although it's often by barter or by doing work to expand their operation. Since Evander opened the city as a sanctuary to those in need, he doesn't approve of the Gardeners turning anyone away... but they don't have to save the good food for the poor. As a result, if you're willing to eat the leavings of the rest of the city (mostly rotting fruit and wilting greens), you'll never starve in Hybris.
Due to this, there's a constant problem with beggars around the Green Towers and lately the mages have been forcibly moving the beggars to the lower levels. Many of the Gardener mages don't even try to distribute the leavings evenly anymore, but merely dump bushels over the side of a balcony onto the starving crowd below. The levels below the Green Towers stink to high heaven of rotting vegetation and human refuse, but if you can't work, that's often where you end up. All of the better locations are taken by folks who are fit for work and willing to defend what they see as theirs.