GITP designs a new subystem

[spikeof2010]

Hello one and all, it is I, the great, and not exaggerating his small bits of fame (as if I have any) Spike!

I've been thinking about doing another GITP creates again, and out of all the ones I've seen, I wanted this one to be a little bit different. Maybe GITP as a whole could come up with a brand new type of magic system (not necessarily has to be magic as per spells, but can be just any subsytem, who knows, truenaming but better (which I have seen)). The point is, we throw ideas at a wall and see what sticks. Seeing as we can't really do this on a post by post basis, I'd suggest we'd just all give basic outlines for what we have until we can finalize it. Abilities and Classes included.

I'd like the supposedly new magic system to be based around scooping up the stuff of what makes reality real and molding that or manipulating that to your will. (Not like Incarnum, but eh.) Any other ideas, good friends?

[Razanir]

Vancian Psionics

[Prince Zahn]

A magic rune-based spellcasting that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?
An PF Eidolon-Inspired mechanic that puts more focus on improved Familiar (Think Digimon)
A class that creates single-use magic items (in the form of "charms" or something).

[faustin]

Magic based on bargains with Outsiders (spirits, angels, demons, fey, gods, etc...) in which the "bargaining" part and the price of power is fully explored. Caveat Emptor.

[Stratovarius]

A magic rune-based spellcasting that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?


Might be able to help there. Got two of them. Runecarving (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=13024.0) (it's a WIP) and Arx/Glyph Magic (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=13025.0).

On the topic, something along the lines of a Daylight/Starlight/Moonlight/No-Light system, where depending on what type of light is available, the abilities of the class change completely, with each having its own set of themes and options.

[EdroGrimshell]

A magic rune-based spellcasting that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?

I also have a variation of this system concept (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?426838-Methodology-Compartmentalized-Spellcasting), it's a pet project and has no real meat to it yet, but I'm working on it in my spare time.

[spikeof2010]

Might be able to help there. Got two of them. Runecarving (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=13024.0) (it's a WIP) and Arx/Glyph Magic (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=13025.0).

On the topic, something along the lines of a Daylight/Starlight/Moonlight/No-Light system, where depending on what type of light is available, the abilities of the class change completely, with each having its own set of themes and options.
I like the idea of situational ability changes.

[Network]

I'd like the supposedly new magic system to be based around scooping up the stuff of what makes reality real and molding that or manipulating that to your will. (Not like Incarnum, but eh.) Any other ideas, good friends?
Magic based on sacrificing body parts (eyes, fingers, heart, etc.) to turn reality into an illusion, maybe?

[Grod_The_Giant]

[LIST]
A magic rune-based spellcasting that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?

The Alchemy rework (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?438183-Alchemy-in-3-5-Major-Rework-of-the-Pathfinder-rules-NOW-WITHOUT-DOWNLOADS!) I'm currently working on might serve, at least as inspiration. Basically the idea is to give everything a monetary cost, then give you a daily crafting reserve (like the Artificer, but with gold instead of xp)


Magic based on sacrificing body parts (eyes, fingers, heart, etc.) to turn reality into an illusion, maybe?
Ooh, I like this. Maybe each sacrifice unlocks a set of abilities (like a Binder's vestiges), which scale and expand with level. The more sacrifices you choose to make, the more options you get. You could tie bigger powers to greater sacrifices to higher levels, and/or total number of sacrifices made. The trick would be making sacrifices meaningful without being crippling or circumvent-able.

[Prince Zahn]

I'll look at all these links, thank you!


On the topic, something along the lines of a Daylight/Starlight/Moonlight/No-Light system, where depending on what type of light is available, the abilities of the class change completely, with each having its own set of themes and options. I like this. It's like Wizard of the sun and moon, but cranked up to eleven.:smalltongue:


Magic based on sacrificing body parts (eyes, fingers, heart, etc.) to turn reality into an illusion, maybe? in my mind I have always fiddled with the concept of becoming a living, sentient illusion. There's a lot of power in not being real. :3



Ooh, I like this. Maybe each sacrifice unlocks a set of abilities (like a Binder's vestiges), which scale and expand with level. The more sacrifices you choose to make, the more options you get. You could tie bigger powers to greater sacrifices to higher levels, and/or total number of sacrifices made. The trick would be making sacrifices meaningful without being crippling or circumvent-able.

(like a Binder's vestiges) *ears and head perk up*
Sorry, force of habit.:smallredface::smalltongue:

[Network]

Ooh, I like this. Maybe each sacrifice unlocks a set of abilities (like a Binder's vestiges), which scale and expand with level. The more sacrifices you choose to make, the more options you get. You could tie bigger powers to greater sacrifices to higher levels, and/or total number of sacrifices made. The trick would be making sacrifices meaningful without being crippling or circumvent-able.
I took the concept from Naruto's Izanagi, a jutsu that literally costs an eye but can save the user's life by turning a fatal blow into an illusion.

Besides the cost (crippling vs. irrelevant), the other challenge is to stick to the concept of "reality to illusion". This would help distinguish the subsystem from vancian corrupt/sacrifice spells.

The other issue is to standardize the sacrifices. Non-humanoid races may not have anything close to eyes, ears, teeth, fingers, or other "sacrifiable" body parts, for instance. On the other hand, some of them may have more limbs or organs than an humanoid, and we wouldn't want them to be much better (new subsystem name)'s users.

The following questions should also be answered:
-Can many different powers require the same limbs/organs as sacrifice, or is each limb/organ tied to a single power? If the former, we could envision to give each sacrifiable body part a "theme" of abilities.
-What allows the sacrifice to take place? Mechanical limitations on daily sacrifices and the fluff of the trade (is the sacrifice personal or does it involve another entity, etc.) should be dealt with.
-The ease with which the character can circumvent the sacrifices (does grafting eyes on an arm allow for more sacrifice? What about grafting a new eye? Characters in Naruto have done both).
-Whether the sacrifices have instantaneous or persistent effects, and what happens if you heal the cost of a persistent ability. These ones could vary for each power.
-Whether a single body part can be sacrificed to activate multiple powers, or a single one.
-Whether the sacrifices can be healed magically, by non-magical means only (which I would recommend), or by no means at all.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Besides the cost (crippling vs. irrelevant), the other challenge is to stick to the concept of "reality to illusion". This would help distinguish the subsystem from vancian corrupt/sacrifice spells.
Hmm... seems like most of the magic would revolve around ignoring and dispelling things, then. Not just other magic, but stuff like "gravity"


The other issue is to standardize the sacrifices. Non-humanoid races may not have anything close to eyes, ears, teeth, fingers, or other "sacrifiable" body parts, for instance. On the other hand, some of them may have more limbs or organs than an humanoid, and we wouldn't want them to be much better (new subsystem name)'s users.
My thought: Perhaps, instead of a specific "lose your eye, gain X power" pairing, you have a list of sacrifices and a list of powers? So if you want magic, you pick, oh, a moderate sacrifice and a moderate power off their respective lists. Alternately (or I guess in addition to), you could frame the sacrifices as purely mechanical penalties, and leave the exact description up to the player. "-2 Dexterity and move at half speed" could mean the loss of a leg, some kind of nasty heart condition, a metal rod jammed though your spine, or something like that.

If the effect of the sacrifice is ever negated, you should definitely lose the power, no questions asked. We might even go so far as to say that sacrifices specifically cannot be undone by anything short of epic/godly magic-- can't Regenerate a sacrificed limb, for instance.

(I'm also assuming permanent sacrifices here, not just "cut yourself for 1d4 con damage")

[Network]

If the effect of the sacrifice is ever negated, you should definitely lose the power, no questions asked. We might even go so far as to say that sacrifices specifically cannot be undone by anything short of epic/godly magic-- can't Regenerate a sacrificed limb, for instance.
That wouldn't apply for instantaneous effects, obviously, and definitely shouldn't be true of numeric penalties (would an increase in Dexterity make you lose a power that you permanently paid 2 Dex for? I hope not), including lifespan reduction (since there are ways to increase lifespan).

I would tend to go in the opposite direction for undoing sacrifices. I think only mundane methods and those that require an even greater sacrifice should work. Sacrificed your eye for wisdom? All the forms you shapeshift into have a missing eye until you can get a new one grafted. Sacrificed your hand, then conveniently found the hand of Vecna? It's going to fit just as well as a orc's hand, but even an epic spell won't work.

[spikeof2010]

Assuming were continuing the bodylurgy type of thought.

Assume a power, like vestiges, except they cost you loss of/lack of control of a limb or organ.

Maybe they last a day or until dispelled? Activating a power that gives you ture sight may cost an eye or give you a limp.

But how do we make this much more appealing?

[NichG]

Merging the 'messing with the stuff that makes reality real' and 'reality to illusion' ideas, how about something that lets you negate/modify/defend against things that happened, but such that other people aren't aware that the thing was negated until the change collapses?

Basically I'm thinking of something where your reality and the reality of your attacker/ally/etc diverge, and then the magic system is all about creating, manipulating, collapsing, and otherwise dealing with those divergences.

For example, an ability that lets you reduce damage taken on a hit, but if the hit would have knocked you out/killed you, you get a free Sanctuary-type effect on yourself where until you break it/the duration runs out, the enemies all think that you're dead and act consistently with that. Or an ability that lets you reroll a failed Bluff check to 'not have slipped up', such that the other person forgets that you made the mistake until a minute or so later, at which point they suddenly remember the original chain of events.

So the way the abilities would work is that they have some sort of basic beneficial/useful effect that is free to use as much as you like, but whenever it makes a difference, that triggers a break in reality that comes with a larger beneficial effect. However, each time that happens, you build up Divergence, which represents the inconsistency between your reality and everyone else's. Divergence dissipates over time, but if you push it too far and gain too much Divergence, then your effects start having illusory multipliers applied to them - your damage output is reduced, your save or dies just make the enemy behave as if they were dead for a few rounds before they pop back, Planeshift just makes them think that they went to another plane, etc.

Then, with higher level abilities, the system could turn Divergence from a negative thing back into a positive thing. Maybe you can use your Divergence to treat hostile effects targeted against you as being partially non-real, or you can shunt it onto a hapless foe to debuff them or even banish them completely from reality, or do other things with it.

The idea would be that using a lot of magic in one day doesn't mean you're out of things to do or can't do magic anymore, but it flips you from one type of character to a different type of character, with lots of options to manage where you are in that spectrum to keep yourself at the sweet spot. So maybe in the morning you're a tank or a debuffer and in the afternoon you're a blaster, but you can try to push yourself either way based on the pattern of ability use.

[Grod_The_Giant]

That wouldn't apply for instantaneous effects, obviously, and definitely shouldn't be true of numeric penalties (would an increase in Dexterity make you lose a power that you permanently paid 2 Dex for? I hope not), including lifespan reduction (since there are ways to increase lifespan).
I was thinking more along the lines of sacrifices unlocking instantaneous effects, each with a normal per-day limit. Something like:

Dream of Gravity
Sacrifice: One leg. Your Dexterity is permanently reduced by 2, and land, swim, and climb speeds are halved.
Benefit: You may walk in any direction without regard to whether the terrain is solid or not-- or even exists!-- as though you were under the effects of an Air Walk spell. Three times per day, you may use Reverse Gravity or Air Walk as a supernatural ability, with a caster level equal to your ____ level.

[Network]

Merging the 'messing with the stuff that makes reality real' and 'reality to illusion' ideas, how about something that lets you negate/modify/defend against things that happened, but such that other people aren't aware that the thing was negated until the change collapses?

Basically I'm thinking of something where your reality and the reality of your attacker/ally/etc diverge, and then the magic system is all about creating, manipulating, collapsing, and otherwise dealing with those divergences.

For example, an ability that lets you reduce damage taken on a hit, but if the hit would have knocked you out/killed you, you get a free Sanctuary-type effect on yourself where until you break it/the duration runs out, the enemies all think that you're dead and act consistently with that. Or an ability that lets you reroll a failed Bluff check to 'not have slipped up', such that the other person forgets that you made the mistake until a minute or so later, at which point they suddenly remember the original chain of events.

So the way the abilities would work is that they have some sort of basic beneficial/useful effect that is free to use as much as you like, but whenever it makes a difference, that triggers a break in reality that comes with a larger beneficial effect. However, each time that happens, you build up Divergence, which represents the inconsistency between your reality and everyone else's. Divergence dissipates over time, but if you push it too far and gain too much Divergence, then your effects start having illusory multipliers applied to them - your damage output is reduced, your save or dies just make the enemy behave as if they were dead for a few rounds before they pop back, Planeshift just makes them think that they went to another plane, etc.

Then, with higher level abilities, the system could turn Divergence from a negative thing back into a positive thing. Maybe you can use your Divergence to treat hostile effects targeted against you as being partially non-real, or you can shunt it onto a hapless foe to debuff them or even banish them completely from reality, or do other things with it.

The idea would be that using a lot of magic in one day doesn't mean you're out of things to do or can't do magic anymore, but it flips you from one type of character to a different type of character, with lots of options to manage where you are in that spectrum to keep yourself at the sweet spot. So maybe in the morning you're a tank or a debuffer and in the afternoon you're a blaster, but you can try to push yourself either way based on the pattern of ability use.
Great idea! Were World of Darkness mages an inspiration for this?

I was thinking more along the lines of sacrifices unlocking instantaneous effects, each with a normal per-day limit. Something like:

Dream of Gravity
Sacrifice: One leg. Your Dexterity is permanently reduced by 2, and land, swim, and climb speeds are halved.
Benefit: You may walk in any direction without regard to whether the terrain is solid or not-- or even exists!-- as though you were under the effects of an Air Walk spell. Three times per day, you may use Reverse Gravity or Air Walk as a supernatural ability, with a caster level equal to your ____ level.
Actually, we could do both. There could be a set of abilities that require a permanent sacrifice for a daily or permanent benefit, and another set that requires a one-time sacrifice for a one-time effect.

Other sets of abilities could use some other different but related resources, like Divergence, the total number of sacrifices made, or the Favor of your patron entity (to which you sacrificed stuff).

Basically, pact magic + psionics + incarnum, except your choices for one part of the subsystem influence how the other parts work.

[spikeof2010]

I was thinking more along the lines of sacrifices unlocking instantaneous effects, each with a normal per-day limit. Something like:

Dream of Gravity
Sacrifice: One leg. Your Dexterity is permanently reduced by 2, and land, swim, and climb speeds are halved.
Benefit: You may walk in any direction without regard to whether the terrain is solid or not-- or even exists!-- as though you were under the effects of an Air Walk spell. Three times per day, you may use Reverse Gravity or Air Walk as a supernatural ability, with a caster level equal to your ____ level.

This seems in the sense of if Vile feats weren't vile ane not feats.

[NichG]

Great idea! Were World of Darkness mages an inspiration for this?

Well I was thinking of a system with paradox, but actually it was this old time travel game that I've heard about but never seen the rules for called Continuum, where there's this sort of thing where you can have your future self help you out, but if you don't make it self-consistent then the universe gives you the boot.

[faustin]

Could UA Epideromancy be used as inspiration? Maybe permanent amputations should be reserved for big cool stuff, while disfigurations, wounds and other causes for penalty rolls would do for the most common one.

[GorinichSerpant]

Maybe anyone can make a sacrifice for power, but so everyone is not encouraged to make sacrifices, the drawbacks for characters that don't take the Sacrifice-related class(s?) are more severe.

[spikeof2010]

But who are we sacrificing things to? The universe?

[GorinichSerpant]

Options include, the universe, mystical entities, maybe the lose is metaphysically converted into a benefit.

[Grod_The_Giant]

But who are we sacrificing things to? The universe?
The Dungeon Master?

[spikeof2010]

The way I see it, we got a nice mix match of Vile Feats, Pact Magic and Incarnum.

Here's a minor benefit "power"

Arcane Eyes
[Class] Level: 4th
Cost: -2 Dex, -3 on all Perception Checks
Duration: 1 Day
Can be dispelled?: No

Your eyes become hazy and looked clouded. You have a hard time perceiving the world as it is, instead seeing the connections of magic and all the whimsical stuff that keeps it tied together. You are able to use Read Magic and Detect Magic at will.

Augment Cost: -4 Dex, -6 on all Perception Checks, Nightvision is reduced by half if present, Dazzled in bright light.
You further cloud your eyes in order to truly perceive what it means to keep the universe together. You are able to use Detect Lawful/Good/Chaotic/Evil at will. You have 15ft Blindsight

[faustin]

I like it! but a day going blind seems too much. I would reduce the duration, or at least give the option to terminate the pact.

[Elandris Kajar]

It doesn't actually make you blind, but simply gives spot/Dex penalties.


This is good, but I can see a problem in all of your ability scores going to the pits.

[Eldan]

There are problems with that. Going blind is a massive disadvantage. Why would you go blind for 24 hours see alignment, if you can just cast the spell for the duration you need it and not go blind? Same with the penalties, really, it doesn't seem to be worth it, really.

[faustin]

Couldn't it work with a single eye, leaving the other for a less mystical vision?

[Grod_The_Giant]

There are problems with that. Going blind is a massive disadvantage. Why would you go blind for 24 hours see alignment, if you can just cast the spell for the duration you need it and not go blind? Same with the penalties, really, it doesn't seem to be worth it, really.
True. You should blind yourself for, oh, true sight + blindsight.

[Eldan]

That would make the flaw close to meaningless, though. I mean, you couldn't read, I guess, but you could function in most situations perfectly. It's the Daredevil problem (to me). He's blind to be tragic, but then navigates perfectly.

[Grod_The_Giant]

That would make the flaw close to meaningless, though. I mean, you couldn't read, I guess, but you could function in most situations perfectly. It's the Daredevil problem (to me). He's blind to be tragic, but then navigates perfectly.
Eh, you're pretty useless if something's more than 60ft away. But it was a random thought, to be sure.

[spikeof2010]

That was more of a prototype than anything, I guess we have the Flaw system to worry about. This is starting to sound like "I cast 'Flaw'!"