I have learned much! And you guys are a great help! Thanks very much and sorry for the thread necromancy.

PS Game of Thrones Spoilers: (Renly wore a crown and was willing to kill his nephew and brother to continue wearing it. Hardly good actions. I suspect these actions were done solely because he liked the feel of the crown on his brow. Don't get me wrong, he was young, diligent, intelligent, sane, and well-loved; the best choice for King of the five who claimed crowns, but his motivations were hardly pure. )

Heh. We ran into an "Evil Doppelganger" mirror once; one of the characters was Lawful Evil. The Chaotic Good doppelganger was awesome; he proceeded to embarrass and torment the PC for years, and eventually married another PC's sister.

I got that card from the Deck of Many Things when I was playing a neutral-aligned cleric of neutrality. I had a clone.

My "evil clone" and I ended up in a discussion where we both decided that the other might be the original, then we ended up working together. To drive the other characters crazy.

quote:

Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
I got that card from the Deck of Many Things when I was playing a neutral-aligned cleric of neutrality. I had a clone.

Or perhaps his "evil" clone would be extremely opinionated, but completely arbitrary and fickle. Play it like the host of a radio talk show.


I love the idea of WoD being a world of good-vs-evil and how your changelings would be neutral in the face of all that.

quote:

"It was a demon from an unspeakable Hell that wants to devour mortal souls."
"Yeah, and...?"
"What do you mean 'and?' it killed fifty schoolchildren."
"Yeah. That was cool. They were all like 'pkkkkksh' and then 'aaaaah!' I mean, I've never seen a bus fly up and tear completely in half like that."
"What? Then why did you stop it?"
"Did you see the look on its face right before it got hit by the pie? Priceless! Where's its lair? I've been collecting dog crap for three weeks and I want to set all on fire outside their door and see what happens."

Also, love your inclusion of angels as perhaps something one might pray for but not really want. Horrible, horrible forces of "good." (I might steal this for my webcomic it's so good.)

Demons in WoD revel in deceiving mortals more than rending them to bits, but they do rend when the moment strikes.

I've always been more than a little scared by angels. The first story I heard about an angel was the mass slaughter of Amalekites. The Sunday School teacher talked about how the verb in Hebrew means that the angel didn't just wave its hand and they all died, it actually went through the camp and killed them, personally.

The next week, we talked about the women being greeted at Jesus' tomb by two angels and I thought, "Holy crap, two of them?"

I played in a D&D game once that incorporated Angels. The story was that a group of angels had "discovered" the Prime Material Plane of Toril (or whatever it's designated as) and discovered that God was not in control there (though one could argue that Ao is just another version of God) and thus decided to try to wreak whatever havoc they felt Toril deserved. We stopped them, with the help of some other angels and some awesome swords.

The Angel of Death is still a recurring character in our campaign (though he shows up rarely) because my husband managed to have one of his characters become an Angel's Champion. What that means we don't know yet, but knowing our DM it's going to be excruciatingly painful yet totally awesome at the same time.

I just read this story and thought, "Man, that thing must have so much Glamour it would be visible to a faerie from space.

One of the problems with the oWoD Changeling was the difficulty in describing and representing Glamour. This is an object lesson in How It's Done.

Wow, yeah. Totally stealing that idea for the Walking Man in my WoD game.

That is indeed a great example of Glamour...

Should I get off my butt and run something I will definitely use something similar.

Okay, so tell us, Priest, how your role-playing experience went? Or did it at all?

I almost bumped this thread a couple days ago.

So it only took 20 years, but I've finally figured out my Grand Unifying Theory of magic in the D&D universe. I found my notes from years ago in the move and started fooling around with them

Having a G.U.T. in something like WoD is easier because it was built from scratch. Mage has such an awesome system because it was built with its magical philosophy first and only afterwards did they invent magical effects. D&D is a systematic clusterf*** because no attempt to incorporate how magic really works was made.

I ran into a problem with my model when one result was that Abjuration had to be evil and necromancy had to be good. That kindof threw me and I put it away for years. I solved it Monday and I'll write it up and share it with you guys when I get a chance.

I've always gone with the universal theory that treats the names of the schools of magic as simple effects, with the forces behind them as something far more complex entirely.

You're so right about the crappiness of the D & D magic system relative to the modern practice of magic. It's one of the main pedestals in my defense of D & D against fundamentalist attack.

So I started with the assumption that the eight schools were essential.

I grouped the schools into similar clusters. Three had to do with the material universe (transmutation, conjuration, evocation) and three had to do with the mental universe (Illusion, enchantment, divination). Necromancy and Abjuration were the odd men out. I decided they were opposing forces somehow, but I had no idea why.

Chapter 2.

So here's the thing: Magic is the fundamental stuff of the universe. Magic is energy, atoms, quarks, mathematical Truth, etc.

This sounds good, but it put me in a bind. This makes Abjuration (which works by antimagic) nihilistic and evil, although it is meant to be the protective and benevolent school. And its opposite, Necromancy, is therefore good.

How is that possible without really changing things around?

Okay, Abjuration is antimagic. The cessation of change. It holds back destructive forces and entropy, but it stunts progress, too.

Its opposite isn't necessarily Necromancy, but any force that allows magic, facilitates it, causes it to increase. I've renamed this school Accordation. Its practitioners are Accorders. Necromancy is a subspecialty of this school.

Also
I've grouped schools from the mental and physical worlds with their respective counterparts.

Evocation affects the physical world, but it is not tangible. It is like an illusion in that way.

Transmutation changes matter and energy. Enchantment changes minds.

Conjuration creates physical matter. Divination creates knowledge, which is mental matter.

I switched some names around, but the schools are essentially the same as the D&D authors created.

I ended up with this:

No one ever chooses Abjuration and Necromancy as their primary school, so I've made them metaschools. Each wizard chooses one of the six other schools as a specialty and decides whether they are an Accorder or an Abjurer.

Spells in the book are known formulas, but at an appropriate level, wizards may make up their own spells based on the skills that they have in their schools.

I haven't decided how this translates into rules, but it should enable improvisational spellcasting like is available in Mage and Ars Magica.

Here's another picture of the model:

For some ideas on how to work out the improvised spellcasting without having to reinvent the wheel, check out the spellcasting system in Monte Cook's Worlds of Darkness. They have "rote spells," which are like the spells in the player's handbook, but breaks down spells into their components (handily enough called "Components") that can be used to assemble spells on the fly.

I'd also think you'll need to reconsider the use of metamagic with this structure. Someone who's skilled in evocation might find it easier to extend the range of a fireball spell than a charm person spell.

quote:

Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
For some ideas on how to work out the improvised spellcasting without having to reinvent the wheel, check out the spellcasting system in Monte Cook's Worlds of Darkness. They have "rote spells," which are like the spells in the player's handbook, but breaks down spells into their components (handily enough called "Components") that can be used to assemble spells on the fly.

I'd also think you'll need to reconsider the use of metamagic with this structure. Someone who's skilled in evocation might find it easier to extend the range of a fireball spell than a charm person spell.

I think Accordation's main trick is to redirect magic. Shoot a fireball at a master Enchanter/Accorder and you are likely to eat it yourself.

The MCWoD rules do a great job of covering those contingencies.

What you're talking about, a spell reflection effect, something I've yet to see done well in 3rd edition. It tends to either be so underpowered as to be useless or so overpowered that magic combat turns into a massive game of pinball, with wizards.

I just got the funniest picture in my mind:

Gandalf and Merlin on opposide sides of a huge, two-player pinball machine where Elminster and Fistandantilus are the 'balls'.