Veils are popular amongst royals. They block out that nasty sunlight and protect your eyes from dust as well. They're generally made from spider-silk, which is farmed in some areas at a small amount of risk. It's probably done on the edge of Rookswood, perhaps in Grennendell.
Priests of Zakarvus wear heavy, canvas veils that are almost impossible to see through. This makes them look spooky... some use magic to sense their surroundings while others just rely on other senses and the vague outlines that they can still perceive through the hood.
They might even use blind priests. Ones that aren't blind fake it by wearing the hoods, but many are actually blind. Blindness is associated with Zakarvus, much like swords are associated with Lumierre. Zakarvus might be a blind deity himself, although naturally he "sees all" anyway. He gave up his eyes for insight into the universe.
Hm. I could see adding a new Extra like "Unusual Magic: you can take 4 spell skills of choice from Wizardry or Sorcery." I couldn't throw in Kenshar, though, because it only has 3 skills... you'd be able to take all 3 and still have room for more, and I couldn't really justify having Kenshar skills take up two slots.
If the full Kenshar writeup turns into 6 skills, then it could work.
For a more general thingie, you could get rid of the "themed" groupings and just say that mages get to pick 3 spell skills per Extra and here are the common ones.
Okay, some basics for implementing Sorcery. I'd like for Magic to be important, about like it is for Wizards, so that most sorcerers have a high Magic rating. Magic could be less important for things that deal with Spirits, since there the spirits Magic rating might be more important.
1. Banish: seems simple enough. Roll a contest between your skill and the target spirit. Partial Success holds it at bay, but only as long as you devote full concentration to it. High successes let you do other things in the meantime. Advanced lets you force it out of this plane on a crit and also covers stuff like only protecting people you like but letting it chomp on anyone else.
Concentrated and Severed are a bit iffy... hm. Severed should ward an area against all sorts of spirits (and possibly all sorcery in general, with the advanced form). Concentrated seems like it should be more powerful, but I'm not sure how... maybe it should just force the creature away for a day or something, instead of "duration of concentration". Partial hours, Success a day, Crits banish it for weeks. If it's not banished to the spirit plane, though (which requires Advanced), it may just prey on other folks.
Not sure what your Magic rating would do... maybe determine how long the spirit stays banished/held at bay after your spell ends.
2. Enthrall: sort of like a combo of Influence and Compel. The target resists with Magic Resistance, but if they fall prey to it they won't realize that there's a magical effect going on until they break free. Advanced allows for post-hypnotic suggestions, basic just fascinates them so that they can't pay attention to other things.
Concentrated attempts to paralyze them completely or (with Advanced)... it does something spiffier than normal. Not sure what. Maybe it just leaves them vulnerable to post-hypnotic suggestion again.
Severed would create an item that casts Enthrall on folks who touch it. The advanced could do more than just fascinate them... it could include suggestions.
Enthrall is harder (+4 to resist) if you can't target the victim's eyes. That's the easiest way in. Again, Magic probably influences duration more than anything else.
3. Glimpse: a difficult one. Basically, you view things from the spirit world. The basic level lets you see magic (including the auras of intelligent creatures) and invisible spirits. Probably like Banish, the better you roll the more you can do in the meantime. Advanced lets you target the future, past or distant objects via sympathetic connections (which burns the connection out)... it grants more "divination" type effects so that you get more info the better you roll.
Concentrated... hm. Well, I could say that basic Glimpse always takes 15 minutes or so and concentrated can give you a brief vision in a single round.
Severed... hm. I guess you could create a ward where you can always scry that area (or object) remotely and will sense when magical things enter it.
Glimpse is dangerous, though, and visions of stuff like screaming mouse souls or prying into the works of magic demons can be hazardous to your sanity. I may just put the Risk as being rather high, like 3-5. The Risk could even be variable, so that things like the works of Dark Gods are Risk 5... but you won't know until you roll.
Can't think of any good effects for your Magic rating. Maybe Magic really will be less important than skill in Sorcery. That would actually make Sorcery better for barbarian-types, anyway.
4. Lure:
5. Whisper:
6. Tether:
Okay, if I wanted to support something like Mouse Guard, I'd need a political force that wasn't totally corrupt.
How about something like...
Prince Yulen doesn't get along well with the rest of the Imperial Court. He's reserved, believes in moderation and actually worries about the state of the Empire. To keep him out of trouble, Emperor Luciel XXIV has given him control of the Imperial Messengers, the "rangers" of the Empire who deliver messages throughout the Empire's holdings.
Yulen has reformed the formerly understaffed and little utilized organization to act as his personal spies and agents. Small groups of Messengers are commonly dispatched to trouble spots to survey the situation and report back. When they can stop problems, they're supposed to do so.
Yulen is publicly devoted to the ancient ideals of the Empire and its goal of ending war and providing a better life for all its people. His agents are always encouraged to find solutions that benefit both the Empire and whatever community they are acting in; it has yet to be seen whether or not Yulen's true loyalty is to the Empire or to mouse-kind in general, however. There are those who believe that the Messengers are really just a way for him to build up loyalties and contacts in the various kingdoms ruled by the Empire in preparation for seizing the throne.
They carry identifying badges that bear the Imperial Seal... but sometimes they have to hide them before going undercover. The Seals basically mark this person as someone whom you interfere with at your peril because they are on Imperial business.
It would be up to the GM whether most of Yulen's agents are good, upstanding folk... ruthless patriots... or just another corrupt organization determined to steal power for themselves. They're bound to be a mix of each, but which culture dominates may vary.
I could see you sometimes wanting to "aid" someone's rolls in order to hinder them. Like using Psychology to heckle someone else's performance.
If they were going against a foe, we can just treat this as aiding the foe's roll, but what about when they're going against a set difficulty? Adding Penalty Dice can be pretty damaging... perhaps...
It'll be hard to get resisted spells to work the way that I want. Mental effects in particular.
Manipulate: effective Brawn is Magic or Magic - 5. Treat the roll as a grappling attempt if you try to attack someone... hm. The problem is when they try to get free. I'm not all that comfortable with someone whose effective Brawn is +0 being able to pin a Ka'at because they rolled really well. But if the spell just establishes your Brawn rating... hm.
Uses: telekinetically restraining someone, possibly even levitating them. Shoving someone mentally. Strangling someone with an Advanced effect.
I'm okay with your spell-casting roll being your "grapple" roll, but not with it determining the damage done on a follow-up or such.
Perhaps it should just be a straight Brawn contest... after all, there's nobody there to use your l33t wrestling skills on, just an invisible, intangible force. So, for resistance roll the caster's effective Brawn vs the target's Brawn+Size. Should Brawn be doubled if positive, then, like a regular stat check?
Influence:
For attempts to hamper someone else's actions, just assume that a Partial Success instills no penalty, Success instills a -1 penalty, Crits instill -2.
The Rizuli are a clan of wandering common rat minstrels and performers. They travel by wagon from town to town, putting on shows, passing messages from other towns and settling in for a few days... then they head out again before wearing out their welcome.
According to ancient tales, the original Rizuli so impressed the First Ones with their musical talents that they were freed and given the right to travel wherever they wished. The Empire still honors this agreement, allowing the Rizuli to move freely throughout their territory, but other kingdoms are not always so tolerant.
The Rizuli prize cleverness, charm and musical talent above all else. They are not always above a bit of con-artistry or petty theft during hard years, but for the most part entertaining is in their blood. They have been known to adopt orphaned mice and raise them as Rizuli but they are still a small minority in the clan. White mice, white rats and royal mice are rarely adopted simply because their presence causes too many questions... their white fur sticks out too blatantly compared to the brown shades of the others.
Typical Rizuli: Agility +0, Brawn +2, Cleverness +1, Drive +0, Perception +0, Magic -3, Status 0, Size 1. Many have the Musical Talent Extra.
So, Sorcery... it needs to be dark, spooky and dangerous.
Some bits...
Bargains: when you want to bargain with a dark god, you roll your skill vs a difficulty based on what you want. The more specific you are, the harder it is. Asking for "Power" is easy... specifying that you want to be enormously strong and tough but have the exact same appearance and no downside to it is very hard.
Dark gods tend to grant things like:
Glimpse lets you perform scrying effects, staring through a maddening field of bizarre images to pick out events in the "real" world. It's often best to enchant a scrying crystal or pool of water with a Glimpse spell so that you can use it more safely from then on. Madness effects include:
So, the basic idea now is to break away from the idea of a single monolithic empire and make a bunch of kingdoms under the thumb of a tribute-demanding empire, but which are largely self-governing.
So... historically, the First Ones settled their own kingdoms. The Empire of Muscala was ruled by Luciel and Lumierre, the only ones of the First Ones to wed their own kind. This gave the Empire a leg up on the whole "power through inbreeding" thing.
Other major kingdoms:
Two failed sorcerous bargains....
A mouse who ended up being turned into a "lamia" of sorts... his entire body is actually the disguised head of a serpent... his belly tears asunder when he wants to bite someone.
A witch who tried to bargain for youth and beauty and found her visage transformed into something so horrid that merely looking upon her skeletal face could turn other rodents into stone. It's said that she now lives underground in an ancient ruin, filled with "statues" of her visitors.
Maybe just give each one a "weight" category. If you hit them and fall short, the best you can do is give a momentary penalty. If you are several points higher, you could break the other item.
Should a Critical Failure occur at "miss by 5+" instead of "miss by 10+"? Let's look at the odds...
If my total is 11 short of the difficulty (an even match, in other words), we get... let's go with I have a +4, the difficulty is 15.
Some other options... Use steps of 4 instead of 5... Consider "even" to be skill+10 instead of skill+11...
Let's see how that one looks...
Cassandra: white mouse mage/priest
Agility +0, Brawn -1, Cleverness +2, Drive +1, Perception -1, Magic +4
Size +0. Status +1.
Hero Points 3
Extras: Wizardry, Spell Mastery (Influence), Spell Mastery (Delve)
Ties: Wants to avenge William, Protective of the Empire, Fond of Roko
Movement Rate: 5
Initiative 0 (Reaction skill +1)
Hit Points: 12 (Endurance skill +3)
Stun Threshold: 7 (Resolve +2)
Innate Armor: 0
Skills:
Or maybe I should trim the skill list again... put it more at the White Wolf level, where there's one Melee skill (based on Agi/Brawn) but you specialize appropriately.]
Roko: jumping mouse swordsman (that's Agi+1, Magic -1, Jump+10 right?)
Agility +3, Brawn +3, Cleverness -1, Drive +1, Perception +1, Magic -2.
Size +0. Status +0.
Hero Points: 4
Extras: Whirlwind Attack, Weapon Mastery (swords), Heroic
Ties: Devoted to Cassandra, Protective of Children
Movement Rate: 8
Initiative: +1 (no Reaction skill)
Hit Points: 18 (10 + 3 Brawn + 5 Endurance)
Stun Threshold: 9 (5 + Resolve 4)
Innate Armor: 0
Skills:
Okay, let's go with the basic ideas I had...
Roll weapon skill to attack. Target number is based on target's skills.
Target sitting still: 5
Target moving: 5 + Agility + Evasion Skill
Target evading and can see you: 10+EvasionTotal
Alternately, target rolls defense...
Active Dodge: roll Evasion
Passive Dodge: roll Evasion with a Penalty Die.
No defense at all: difficulty 5.
Okay, a passive or even active dodge could conceivably roll less than 5... I'm not sure whether to set a minimum of 5 or just go with they probably won't. Actually, with a negative Agility and a Penalty Die, they often would.
Let's try again...
Active: 10+Agility+Evasion
Passive: 10+Agility
None: 5
So your Evasion skill only applies when actively avoiding a hit. If you're moving about but aren't actively trying to dodge, you just don't apply the Skill Rating, which can never make you worse. One problem... someone with no Evasion skill is automatically just as hard to hit when they try to actively dodge as when they don't.
Hm. And Jenn generally preferred an "active" defense roll... I think she liked that better than the D20 system of hitting a set number.
I may just set a minimum defense of 5... that way, when people fight under heavy penalties (like darkness giving both sides a -5), folks will whiff left and right, just like you'd expect.
So...
Active: roll Evasion (min 5). Passive: roll Evasion with a Penalty Die (min 5). None: Automatic 5. Note that since a tie is a Partial Success, the attacker can be assumed to win ties. Since Partial Succeses tend to suck, this hopefully won't be too much of an advantage.
When parrying, it works the same way except that you roll your weapon skill instead of Evasion.
On a Partial Success you hit for half damage, on a Success you hit for full. Crits tend to add bonus damage or qualify you for alternate effects such as disarming a foe or setting them up for a follow-up attack.
Light Weapons: 1d6+Brawn/2. Crit adds +1d8. 2 free parries per round.
Medium Weapons: 1d8+Brawn. Crit adds +1d6. 1 free parry per round.
Heavy Weapons: 1d10+Brawn*1.5. Crit adds +1d4. No free parries.
You can do 2 things per round... pick from Move, Attack, Defend and Other.
If you don't pick Defend, you only get passive defense, unless you have a free parry to blow... that lets you make an active parry defense vs that attack.
Some things take your whole turn... like spellcasting, perhaps? I don't know, at most I see a penalty for casting a spell as a single action instead of two. Concentrated spells take 2 actions, BUT you can split it between two turns if you need to, so that you aren't left helpless.
Ranged attacks hit a difficulty based on the distance. 10 for close range, 15 for long, 20 for very long, etc. You can only actively defend with Evasion by doing a "dive for cover" move action.
The basic numbers look good. I need to write up Roko and Cassandra as starting characters... spec out the basic combat system (to hit rolls and damage).
And probably a mini-adventure. Probably not "Prisoners of Skzentic", because that one's kind of long. Maybe just a "shrew rescue"... a handful of shrews have seized a big house and imprisoned the survivors in the basement. Can the PCs get in and rescue them?
Oh, and I could see adding a "Stun Threshold" where if you take X or more points of damage, you're thrown Off-balance automatically. It might be something like 5+Drive or just your Resolve total+5 (only the weakest of Drive characters should not be able to take any harm without being stunned). Resolve+5 should mean that even a -4 Drive PC with no skill will still have a Threshold of 1.
Should your HP include the flat +3 bonus for having Hero Points? Not sure. I need to playtest some combat and see whether or not folks have enough HP. That means writing up the 2 example PCs, and soon!
Okay, let's say that Cassandra has Spark +7 and Magic +3 and just bought mastery of the Spark spell. (I kind of like "Spell Mastery" better than "Advanced Magical Techniques"... perhaps I should change the name.)
She decides to see how many spheres of mage-light she can create simultaneously. Each is just difficulty 10. I'll assume she rolls an 11 each time.
Her first one, then, is 10+11 = 21. A 10 would be a partial success, a 15 a success and a 20+ a crit. She crafts a really bright one with an effective Magic rating of 3+2 = 5.
For her second one, she has an effective Magic rating of +2 (because 1 point is tied up in the first spell). Now she rolls a 20 and makes an almost equally bright one (total +2+2 = 4).
The third time she rolls a 19 and makes one with a brightness of +1. It's rather feeble in comparison.
The fourth is at 18 and brightness +0.
The fifth is at 17 and brightness -1.
The sixth is at 16 and brightness -2.
The seventh is at 15 and brightness -3.
The eighth is at 14... and that's only a partial success so her effective Magic rating is reduced from 3-7=-4 to -5... at this point, that's not good enough since at Magic -5 the spell is off the bottom of the scale and automatically fails.
If she retried until she rolled a 15 (not hard, she's got a +10 base and is at -7 so she only has to roll a 12+) she'd be at an effective magic rating of 3-7 = -4.
At this point, she's at -8 to all casting checks and -8 to her effective Magic rating, so only a critical success (which bumps the Magic rating up by +2) could squeeze out another mage-light sphere. At a total adjustment of +2 and needing a 20 to succeed, she could pull it off, but it's not likely.
The absolute best she could ever roll would be a 25+10 = 25 which is a crit*2. That gives her a Magic rating of +7, which means the most she could ever maintain at once would be 11 lights. Only the first four or so would be decently bright. Everything after that would be little wisps of light.