Show Posts
31
DFRPG / dfrpg elements in standard fantasy rpg format
« on: November 04, 2012, 06:12:54 PM »
I like the element system, admittedly, some of the thaumaturgy options feel a bit out of place as anything other than specializations. Some of my players have had trouble grasping the conceptual nature of the elements goes beyond refluffed magic missile/scorching ray/fireball/etc & I decided to put together something explaining the elements in a way that fits standard fantasy rpg tropes a little better (i.e. d&d). In the process, Spirit gets refluffed into divine casting with most of the laws of magic being more strict towards it to simulate the fact that divine casters need to behave themselves more than arcane ones to appease their god. I figured others might like it, find it useful, or be interested in shooting holes/support at it 
. on those last two, please do as it's intended for newbies who need help acclimating to non-vancian casting. =)
Keeping with the traditional fantasy trope of arcane magic being different from divine magic with both overlapping & different capabilities, there will be some immediately obvious changes like “force” from both Spirit, fire, and possibly others at times. The arcane elements of fire, earth, water, and air definitely expand quite a bit once expanded into their conceptual nature beyond the pure element itself to the point where there is quite a bit of overlap & is now no longer a reason to have out of place thaumaturgy trappings like necromancy & summoning as something other than specializations . Each of the arcane elements has the ability to draw on aspects of necromancy & mind magic through various means with various degrees of law violation risks. Spirit by comparison has access to all of them (with guaranteed violations) in addition to a proper method of resurrection. Because of the consequence nono involved with mind magic (see the third law below) it’s always a dangerous road to tread more than simply stepping up to the very edge with “ally of X” temp aspect type charm & weak minor “detect thoughts” type spells I feel that Spirit’s tight fusing with the laws of magic and the extra leeway it gets in other areas like healing, raise dead, the creation of fire/water, etc things fit well with the typical schism between arcane & divine casters where they heavily overlap, but divine casters can do a few extra things denied to arcane casters with the string of needing to appease their god.
Just about (if not every) element has some way of doing some healing of certain types of consequences (or at least starting that process), but Spirit has the typical divine caster-like ability to directly heal mental/physical injuries. The “healing” does as good job of further differentiating Spirit/divineoff in its own little niche while avoiding “aww crap, I didn’t wanna have to play the cleric/healer” even though there are plenty of other ways to start the healing process in FATE making it a silly thing already. Players who want to play a healer still have something special over arcane casters able to start healing sometimes.
With regards to scrying , I’ve made a few minor assumptions regarding the planar cosmology of the fantasy setting in general since it would be I,possible to do otherwise given all the possibilities. Those assumptions are that each arcane element has a plane of existence of its own & spirit is able to reach any plane inhabited by beings with spirits of their own (even if that spirit is their form like many outsiders frequently in fantasy settings.) Nasty things can be out there if you dig too deeply with extraplanar sources, but minor scrying through them is relatively safe. This again gives everyone a little something to everyone that fits with their element. Elementals embody both the element and the conceptual aspects of an element to varying degrees & are mostly rather “neutral” in nature. In exchange for spirit’s ability to reach any plane, it has the side effect of making the caster directly reachable by more things while digging. The combination of narrow & broad contact with the planes gives arcane casters an edge in their specific types of scrying & makes divine casters hesitant to abuse their options.
Laws of Magic: While the Laws of magic are great for balancing magic to an extent, the permanence that goes with them outright destroys many traditional spells like polymorph & the like. I’ve chosen to reshuffle the laws of magic into traditional fantasy style in a way that includes both the “undead are abominations” as well as the “Divine casters can fall out of favor with their god & must take care with their spell casting.” themes. This is done by saying most arcane spells are temporary unless the element & method used would be permanent due to properties of the element. For example,using earth’s control over stability & grounding to break down & reshape a mind with earth’s stability keeping it that way permanently is bad; but using water’s control over change to accomplish the same thing is fine because water is loath to take on a stable form & will revert to normal soon after the caster quits applying shifts to persistence.
• First Law: Never take a life… Let’s face it, killing people & things is pretty common in fantasy settings. This is very important for Divine casters of “spirit” spells because they risk tainting their soul & angering their god. For the other arcane elements?... not so much unless it’s being done in an “Evil” way or just for cruelty/fun. I think keeping this vague & semi-ambiguous results in both divine casters being nervous about keeping their god happy with their actions & wanting to act as a moral compass to the group rather than risk it. That ambiguity also neatly divides arcane & divine casting while allowing for grey areas that divide “magic is a tool” & “that mage has gone dark!”
• Second Law: This is usually the purview of arcane casters. Water governs change & is anything but stable. Use water to change another & it goes away on its own, no harm done. Use earth to break down the stable form & mold a new one…, or fire to burn the current one away & encourage new growth in a different form like some kind of supernatural cancerous uber stem cell treatment though… bad arcane caster! Now Spirit deals with the soul itself & quite easily stomps all over this law. The desire to keep spirit/divine casters concerned about being “good” makes this even more important for them
.
• Third Law: Never invade the thoughts of another. Spirit is pretty boned here as well, but Arcane casting is usually going to be safe as long as they do not need to inflict mental consequences on an unwilling victims part of the activity. Reading thoughts actively skimming across someone’s mind is fine, as would something like using earth to permanently destabilize traumatic memories & form them into something stable in a patient wanting help from the caster is just peachy. Using Air to give you the freedom needed to carefully climb inside the thoughts of a sick refugee in order to figure out what they are fleeing from & offer help (likewise with spirit on those last two). The ambiguity & ability for the gm to just say “he tries to fight you & takes a minor consequence” even if it was just a 1 shift spell makes mind magic something that arcane casters will be wary of using with gamebreaking consequences lest they go capital E “Evil” & be forced to take lawbreaker stunts.
• Fourth Law: Never Enthrall Another. This is another one where Divine casters get bones when using Spirit & arcane casters get a mere warning. Arcane spells like the traditional staple “Charm Person” that makes someone think you are an ally are fine if it’s just doing things like adding a temporary aspect kept active with shifts of persistence along the lines of “allies with X” & leaves them to muddle through the confusion of why their allies are suddenly fighting each other to the death. Arcane spells like “Dominate” where you force an opponent to obey your will however are a nono if they require a consequence, which it probably will… using dominate on the waitress to place your order when she would doso anyways seems kindda silly, I’m sure there would be a circumstance where it’s ok with the GM though.
• Fifth Law: Never reach beyond the borders of life. Finally we reach a law where arcane folks get bones outright & divine spirit casters get a pass! Raise/resurrect dead type spells are pretty normal for divine casters in fantasy settings, the arcane equivalent typically involves things like creating undead & arcane raise dead type spells are bad because the undead abominations draw life from others or come back pet cemetery type wrong depending on your GM. Animate dead type spells where you use a temporarily animated zombie or somethingis probably fine provided the spell is structured in a way that it only lasts about as long as shifts are pumped into persistence.
• Sixth Law: Never swim against the currents of time. This one is a nobrainer as it has horrible universe breaking consequences. Spells like haste where you perceive/experience time faster are fine. Much more however is almost certain to result in an angry GM & a player with a lawbreaker stunt
• Seventh Law: Never seek knowledge from beyond the Outer Gates. Summoning up/questioning things from the plane of insanity/chaos is probably a bad idea for anyone. Casters should be extra careful with this kinda thing, the planar cosmology in your game is important to this one being relevant or not.
. on those last two, please do as it's intended for newbies who need help acclimating to non-vancian casting. =)Keeping with the traditional fantasy trope of arcane magic being different from divine magic with both overlapping & different capabilities, there will be some immediately obvious changes like “force” from both Spirit, fire, and possibly others at times. The arcane elements of fire, earth, water, and air definitely expand quite a bit once expanded into their conceptual nature beyond the pure element itself to the point where there is quite a bit of overlap & is now no longer a reason to have out of place thaumaturgy trappings like necromancy & summoning as something other than specializations . Each of the arcane elements has the ability to draw on aspects of necromancy & mind magic through various means with various degrees of law violation risks. Spirit by comparison has access to all of them (with guaranteed violations) in addition to a proper method of resurrection. Because of the consequence nono involved with mind magic (see the third law below) it’s always a dangerous road to tread more than simply stepping up to the very edge with “ally of X” temp aspect type charm & weak minor “detect thoughts” type spells I feel that Spirit’s tight fusing with the laws of magic and the extra leeway it gets in other areas like healing, raise dead, the creation of fire/water, etc things fit well with the typical schism between arcane & divine casters where they heavily overlap, but divine casters can do a few extra things denied to arcane casters with the string of needing to appease their god.
Just about (if not every) element has some way of doing some healing of certain types of consequences (or at least starting that process), but Spirit has the typical divine caster-like ability to directly heal mental/physical injuries. The “healing” does as good job of further differentiating Spirit/divineoff in its own little niche while avoiding “aww crap, I didn’t wanna have to play the cleric/healer” even though there are plenty of other ways to start the healing process in FATE making it a silly thing already. Players who want to play a healer still have something special over arcane casters able to start healing sometimes.
With regards to scrying , I’ve made a few minor assumptions regarding the planar cosmology of the fantasy setting in general since it would be I,possible to do otherwise given all the possibilities. Those assumptions are that each arcane element has a plane of existence of its own & spirit is able to reach any plane inhabited by beings with spirits of their own (even if that spirit is their form like many outsiders frequently in fantasy settings.) Nasty things can be out there if you dig too deeply with extraplanar sources, but minor scrying through them is relatively safe. This again gives everyone a little something to everyone that fits with their element. Elementals embody both the element and the conceptual aspects of an element to varying degrees & are mostly rather “neutral” in nature. In exchange for spirit’s ability to reach any plane, it has the side effect of making the caster directly reachable by more things while digging. The combination of narrow & broad contact with the planes gives arcane casters an edge in their specific types of scrying & makes divine casters hesitant to abuse their options.
Laws of Magic: While the Laws of magic are great for balancing magic to an extent, the permanence that goes with them outright destroys many traditional spells like polymorph & the like. I’ve chosen to reshuffle the laws of magic into traditional fantasy style in a way that includes both the “undead are abominations” as well as the “Divine casters can fall out of favor with their god & must take care with their spell casting.” themes. This is done by saying most arcane spells are temporary unless the element & method used would be permanent due to properties of the element. For example,using earth’s control over stability & grounding to break down & reshape a mind with earth’s stability keeping it that way permanently is bad; but using water’s control over change to accomplish the same thing is fine because water is loath to take on a stable form & will revert to normal soon after the caster quits applying shifts to persistence.
• First Law: Never take a life… Let’s face it, killing people & things is pretty common in fantasy settings. This is very important for Divine casters of “spirit” spells because they risk tainting their soul & angering their god. For the other arcane elements?... not so much unless it’s being done in an “Evil” way or just for cruelty/fun. I think keeping this vague & semi-ambiguous results in both divine casters being nervous about keeping their god happy with their actions & wanting to act as a moral compass to the group rather than risk it. That ambiguity also neatly divides arcane & divine casting while allowing for grey areas that divide “magic is a tool” & “that mage has gone dark!”
• Second Law: This is usually the purview of arcane casters. Water governs change & is anything but stable. Use water to change another & it goes away on its own, no harm done. Use earth to break down the stable form & mold a new one…, or fire to burn the current one away & encourage new growth in a different form like some kind of supernatural cancerous uber stem cell treatment though… bad arcane caster! Now Spirit deals with the soul itself & quite easily stomps all over this law. The desire to keep spirit/divine casters concerned about being “good” makes this even more important for them
.• Third Law: Never invade the thoughts of another. Spirit is pretty boned here as well, but Arcane casting is usually going to be safe as long as they do not need to inflict mental consequences on an unwilling victims part of the activity. Reading thoughts actively skimming across someone’s mind is fine, as would something like using earth to permanently destabilize traumatic memories & form them into something stable in a patient wanting help from the caster is just peachy. Using Air to give you the freedom needed to carefully climb inside the thoughts of a sick refugee in order to figure out what they are fleeing from & offer help (likewise with spirit on those last two). The ambiguity & ability for the gm to just say “he tries to fight you & takes a minor consequence” even if it was just a 1 shift spell makes mind magic something that arcane casters will be wary of using with gamebreaking consequences lest they go capital E “Evil” & be forced to take lawbreaker stunts.
• Fourth Law: Never Enthrall Another. This is another one where Divine casters get bones when using Spirit & arcane casters get a mere warning. Arcane spells like the traditional staple “Charm Person” that makes someone think you are an ally are fine if it’s just doing things like adding a temporary aspect kept active with shifts of persistence along the lines of “allies with X” & leaves them to muddle through the confusion of why their allies are suddenly fighting each other to the death. Arcane spells like “Dominate” where you force an opponent to obey your will however are a nono if they require a consequence, which it probably will… using dominate on the waitress to place your order when she would doso anyways seems kindda silly, I’m sure there would be a circumstance where it’s ok with the GM though.
• Fifth Law: Never reach beyond the borders of life. Finally we reach a law where arcane folks get bones outright & divine spirit casters get a pass! Raise/resurrect dead type spells are pretty normal for divine casters in fantasy settings, the arcane equivalent typically involves things like creating undead & arcane raise dead type spells are bad because the undead abominations draw life from others or come back pet cemetery type wrong depending on your GM. Animate dead type spells where you use a temporarily animated zombie or somethingis probably fine provided the spell is structured in a way that it only lasts about as long as shifts are pumped into persistence.
• Sixth Law: Never swim against the currents of time. This one is a nobrainer as it has horrible universe breaking consequences. Spells like haste where you perceive/experience time faster are fine. Much more however is almost certain to result in an angry GM & a player with a lawbreaker stunt
• Seventh Law: Never seek knowledge from beyond the Outer Gates. Summoning up/questioning things from the plane of insanity/chaos is probably a bad idea for anyone. Casters should be extra careful with this kinda thing, the planar cosmology in your game is important to this one being relevant or not.
Out of curiosity, I opened it up in notepad to see if I saw anything really funky, but nothing seemed odd