Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop

I've been thinking a bit about the idea of counterspells over the years, probably since reading a brief example of it in Weis and Hickman's Deathgate Cycle years back. And none of the iterations I've seen of it quite sit right. In my mind: There should be some chance of failure. This is something done on the fly, so it doesn't always work. It should have some price. You can't just try it against every spell thrown against you. It should not be just one spell or power that everyone needs to take (taking up a slot). It should be a bit more reflective of the breadth of a magician's understanding. But I hadn't really thought through all the specifics of what that would entail until reading The Robgoblin's post on Beyond Vancian Magic . I still am not fully onboard with his thoughts for this particular talent. But reading it lead me to more thoroughly consider the details of how to write this up for the Ancient Red Wyrm advanced edition. Other notes: The te...

Previously I suggested ideas for how to run a 5th Ed. D&D game with lower availability of spellcasting.  Weirdly however, even though the idea of trying to run low spellcasting games of 5th Edition holds some interest for me, I've sometimes been at a loss what sort of game I'd find that combination a useful fit for, or (if I was a player) attractive to play in. This post is a follow-up, brainstorming various settings which might make use of such a lower magic system.   In these settings humans (and maybe other creatures) might have access to a few spells, but spellcasting classes as such are not available. Spells are mostly cast either through artifacts or rituals except maybe a few cantrips. Hyborian Age The obvious default seems like it would be something Conan-esque. After all, that is part of the inspiration behind D&D. A world build on the crumbling ruins of older things, but now largely a land of decadent city-states and harsh lands in between. Legendary/...

The following are a set of rules (limitations mostly) I came up with which would allow 5th Edition D&D to be used for lower magic settings and types of games.  Maybe something closer to historic-fantasy, though this might work for other kinds of settings as well. Note that each of the elements below is essentially a separate toggle, you can use some and not others, as the setting dictates. Races Players are generally only allowed to play human characters.  However, DMs might allow one of the following options: Option 1:  Quirky Humans  - Certain other races may be allowed, but are reskinned to simply represent slightly unusual humans. Option 2:  Shunned  - Certain other races are allowed, but represent weird beings from outside human civilization, shunned by most decent folk. Some individuals and organizations may view them with sympathy, but there’s every chance of a mob rising up against them. Option 3:  Dying Race  - Alternately, other ...

Nate Treme's In the Light of a Ghost Star  tabletop RPG is about humans of the far future, whose ancestors fled to Mars during the Sun's red giant phase.  Now that the Sun has entered its white dwarf phase, they return to Earth to scavenge ancient items of interest among the weird things inhabiting the now dark planet. Since I've been thinking of running this game at some point, I was reading over it the other day and realized two things which seemed to be lacking, so created a supplement of optional rules to cover them: Social Stat The game grants three character abilities which are couched as professions but treated as attributes or similar stats: Fighter - For combat and most other physical feats. Explorer - Mainly for sneaking and perception. Scientist - Most other forms of analysis, knowledge and technical expertise. These seem a fairly elegant combination for each character to have, but the definition was extremely brief in the original documents, and didn't co...

Armor of Agathys is a D&D 5th Edition spell. One of the few that is not open game licensed (OGL) under the system reference document (SRD).  This image is a rendering of what passes through my mind every time I read the spell name.  Agnathans include lampreys and hagfish. Also now my profile pic.

Interested in a simplified psychic rules for early edition D&D? Based on the Swords & Wizardry rules, and drawing inspiration from Microlite20 magic system, it may not be the Complete Psionics Handbook , but its the: Partial Psionics Pamphlet This has actually been created for awhile, but never got around to posting it up before. For completists, an older and simply more poorly edited version can be found here .

Reading the Blood Sorcerers of Paja , in a roundabout way this mention of using human flesh for magic, got my mind meandering back to an old line of text: "Connall took out the brains of the dead king and mixed them with lime to make a sling-stone - such "brain balls," as they were called being accounted the most deadly of missiles.  This ball was laid up in the king's treasure-house..."  - Celtic Myths and Legends , T. W. Rolleston I've been cludging away at some ritual rules for awhile:  something like spells, but taking more time, consuming more components, etc. but with the advantage of being usable by anyone, and not consuming daily spell reserves.  Anyhoo... Rituals consume components, and specific components can be tricky to obtain.  Stealing the shadow, cast by moonlight, from the third-left-leg of a man-sized spider, can be an annoyingly specific proposition.  Do such things even exist?  And who knows how tough it is to find so...

Telecanter's blog post today about psionics, and especially the  older one  he references, got me thinking about the details of my own ad hoc psionic system. Not sure if this would end up Crude Simulation Engine or not. I'm thinking more of a snap-on attachment to any pre-4E systems. I go back and forth about whether to represent characters as classes or just have a single character path where abilities are chosen a la carte. This leans a little in the class-based direction, but is pretty flexible. Aside from a liberal dose of "middle of the road" attack, save and hit point progression for the psionic class, the class would have the following qualities: Disciplines ≈ Spells Trained "disciplines" and wild "talents" are represented by borrowing or slightly re-skinning divine and arcane spells of similar effect. There are a few caveats to this: Psionic powers never consume material components and rarely require words or gestures to work. ...

Looking at how various old school derived and inspired games treat classes, I go back and forth about how I should structure these things in CSE.  There seem two be two basic philosophies:  Few (2-5) well defined and relatively unmixable classes, or 1 class that fights and maybe casts spells through items or difficult rituals but typically have no "race" distinctions (elves, dwarves, etc.). The issue that I run into is that neither of these easily allows the kind of customization I'm looking to allow.  Even the Warrior vs. Mage dichotomy I'd proposed earlier seems like it complicates some things (why have a separate class for magic except in the name of "balance"?), and oversimplifies others (so your magical ability, based on class level helps you both to draw forth your natural physical strength, and prepare learn rote procedures better?). So after more hemming and hawing, I'm leaning toward a single-class system (tip o' the hat to Bandits &...

The Autocrat is one of the six Powers That Be whose existence widely believed (including, among others the Queen of Ravens and the Machine at the Heart of the World ).  He is known to the well educated magicians of the realms as the individual who created the Secret Regulations of Desire. In ancient times there were magical formulas which could translate any specific whim of a magician into reality at any level.  These formulas are variously known as Entelechies of the Will , Arbitrary Thought Instantiations , or more commonly "Wish spells".  In the heyday of the Wish spell's use, it was employed so freely that it changed reality on both vast and subtle scales.  As a result any attempts to determine the true nature of eras prior to it's use, based on the evidence available, is exceedingly unreliable. At one point the re-writing of reality is thought to have gotten particularly intense as various mages competed to make their vision of the universe dominant. ...

It appears that although Regenerate is a spell in D&D edition 3.5, the corresponding "Wither" spell has been excluded. So although there's a convenient way to attach limbs, there's no specific magical way to remove them. Hence the entry below. Wither Limb Necromancy Level : Clr 7, Drd 7, Sorcerer/Wizard 7 Components : V, S Casting Time : 1 standard action Range : Touch Target : Living creature touched Duration : Instantaneous Saving Throw : Fortitude negates (harmless) Spell Resistance : Yes (harmless) The subject’s bodily extremities (arms, legs, tails, or even extra heads on multi-headed creatures) shrivel and fall off. After the spell is cast, the physical degeneration is complete at the end of 1d4 rounds. Withering also causes 4d8 points of damage +1 point per caster level (maximum +35). It is equally effective on all creatures which have bodily extremities including nonli...