New Edition: Setting

[Crissa]

People will still want to use drowning, freezing, electrocuting, acid, base, blowing, bashing, slashing, poking, piercing, impaling...

We need to define as few types of damage as possible. But we also need temperature based ones and corrosion types as well... If only for dying from exposure and having a reason for magic items being superior.

The slimes and oozes each had a different method of reproduction, and some had division as a defense and others had transmutation.

-Crissa

[Cielingcat]

Temperature based attacks are all "Red." Controlling the raw forces of nature is Red's shtick, just as controlling the natural world is Green's. You can call your attack "fire" but a creature with Protection from Red still resists it just as much as it does a lightning bolt.

[Crissa]

Yes, well, in the Warcraft universe they did that as well...

...But it does mean that if you're immune to 'nature' you shrug off lightning, pure nature magic, disease damage, poison damage, and summoned rocks.

So you have to make sure there's both options to go around it... So that one type doesn't get trapped somehow.

-Crissa

[Username17]

I really don't think you have to be that exclusive in world design.

You can't have a crazy nation of powerful Incarnum users running around, that's true, but a few spread out cult of incarnum guys isn't going to hurt anything really.

1. Yes you really do.

2. Having a few Incarnum users running around doesn't just hurt something, it completely ruins everything. And no, this is not exageration or hyperbole to make a point.

In a novel it is entirely reasonable and even expected to have the protagonist or the antagonist to have magic that doesn't conform to the standard model. It's a cheap device that allows the author to do whatever they want without thinking about it too hard. But that is unacceptable in a cooperative storytelling game.

We have rules so that everyone at the table can anticipate and understand what is going on. So that the people at the table can plan their storytelling endeavors and weave together a common fabric. It is absolutely imperative that the players have a grasp on how "physics" works in the game.

If you introduce "just a few" people with alternate physucs, and "just a few" people with a different alternate physics, and so on and so forth, none of the players has any idea how the world actually works. And then they can't tell stories.

---

Dread Necromancers are different of course, because they don't have a unique physics. While they have unique defined abilities they seriously can't do any specific in character thing that a wizard or cleric could not do.

So yeah, if you introduce Incarnum, or Spellfire, or The Force, or any of that crap you ruin the entire game. If everything is "special" not only is nothing special, but a cooperative story cannot even be told.

-Username17

[Catharz]

Let's talk capabilities. I'm mainly trying to rehash and put stronger limits on what schools can do.

Green is basically growth, evolution, and hunting. Evolution is the shapechanging bit (so all shapechangers are Green), growth includes healing, causing things to grow, and all temporal effects. Hunting gives control of some nonintelligent animals, a bit of sneaky, and most directly violent Green stuff.

Red magic deals with nature's wrath: Earthquakes, thunderstorms, tornados, and fires. It also includes things like 'great shouts'. The 'Inspiration' aspect includes group buffs. Apparently you also include 'chance'. I have no idea what that does.

White magic deals with stopping change and its agents. To this effect they own most abjurations and banishments, as well as contractual ('pact') magic, which includes almost all compulsions and some curses (though no inspiration). It also gets some illusions (light, making things look pretty, whatever) and communication abilities.

Blue magic gives gadgetry. Gadgetry really needs some limits in place. It probably includes making firearms and explosives, automatons (golems, robots, etc), vehicles of all sorts, some 'tools' and protective gear (gas masks, asbetos, SCUBA, drills). It would also include the combination of the above. Everything can be given a fantastic 'mundane' explanation.
The rest of blue is almost all teleportations, and divinations (though other colors all get some divination).

Black magic gets summoning and influence of undead and demons as well as causing terrible personal injury through sacrifices. It also includes deception, concealment, and miasma (fogs).

I've focused on the more 'magical' seeming abilities. Is there anything to this effect that I'm missing?


The above characterization would place yak fok/tatanka firmly in the Green.
A nice Red race would consist of fire and air people, who are basically manic elves with elemental flavor (like Dead Man's Hand Ifrit, some D&D Eladrin) and the ability to run really fast.

Some reasoning as to why undead are the quintessential Black race: To bring a soul back from the dead, you need to send a living soul to keep equilibrium (Clive Barker had some nice stories featuring this). Undead have the option of not coming back from the dead, which means that every one of them has place their soul above another's. This also makes normal resurrection...interesting.


Some sample racial abilities
Natural armor: Tatanka can use their strength (constitution?) to soak damage as if they were wearing armor even when they are not.
Incorporeal evasion: Wraiths treat any successful dodge (Dex-based save) as a successful soak for the purposes of movement (this means that they don't actually move out of the way of the sword/explosion, although an unsuccessful save and soak vs. a fireball could send them flying).

This last ability would allow one to treat wraiths as legitimate high-Dex low-Str (& Con?) player characters, while Zombies are high-Str & Con/low-Dex. Which fits nicely with the sacrifice/deception split in Black magic.

[Crissa]

I really don't mind if each 'type' of magic can do what each other, but in different flavoured ways. Restricting the how only gets you into alignment issues and arguments.

If red has both inspiration and elemental, what does white and blue have? Gadgets? What damage does a flame cannon do?

Don't sort on the 'how this was powered' - that's just trouble. We don't care what color magic was used to create the artifact, it's an artifact.

-Crissa

[Username17]

People will still want to use drowning, freezing, electrocuting, acid, base, blowing, bashing, slashing, poking, piercing, impaling...

Not just no, hell no! There is not any creature which is meaningfull resistant to electricity. Bases are not different from Acids in their overall effect, and nothing is resistant to either of tem anyway. More importantly, there is not and never has been a high pH weapon. The very idea is retarded.

Don't sort on the 'how this was powered' - that's just trouble. We don't care what color magic was used to create the artifact, it's an artifact.

Mostly no, but you have a point. We don't want to end up like D&D Necromancy where basically any magic can do anything but Black Magic has a skull on it. But at the same time, you should be able to tell what kind of magic makes the ring go just by watching its special effects.

Magic should be constrained not only in flavor, but also in mechanics. Not only in mechanics, but also in flavor. You want people to be able to know what some kind of magic could do and also how it would do it. That's a tall order I know, but it's important.

Let's talk capabilities. I'm mainly trying to rehash and put stronger limits on what schools can do.

That's very reasonable. To that extent I think that we shold look at what all the sample classes would look like if they were a Magic Class. I'll start with the ones which are easier. Which is coincidentally alphabetical order.

[size]Black

• Necromancer - this one is pretty self explanatory, although it is very easy to imagine this getting "awesome bloat" as often happens to Necromancy.
  
• Warlock - this one is pretty self contained. You summon demons, you curse people, you shoot hellfire. Done.
  
• Plague Bearer - May need a better name. You send clouds of beetles and swarms of rats at things. Also you make people sick.

Verdict: Black Magic summons things, curses things, and has direct attacks which have sickening side effects. It has flavor text which is creepy, ill-advised, or both.

[size]Blue

• Artificer - Itis very easy to imagine this getting "awesome bloat" as often happens to Artificing. You make stuff ahead of time and then you use it. Your powers are limited, but flexible with access to a lab - the Champions Gadget Pool or the D&D Wizard.
  
• Seer - this one is pretty self contained. You divinate at things and have various "psychic" style magics. Telekinesis, mind blasts, etc.
  
• Siren - You sing songs, charm people, exploit weaknesses.

Verdict: Blue Magic is the planning discipline, for people who like to play Logistics and Dragons. It gives you magic that allows you to formulate plans, magic that allows you to execute plans, and magic that lets you prognosticate which plans will work better. It treads on other toes in exchange for having lower numbers. Dangerous and could easily be the strongest or weakest suit.

[size]Green

• Vamacharan - this one may need a better name. You track people down with your squirrel army and kill them with it. Practically speaking, it's basically some battlefield control and summoning.
  
• Druid - this one is pretty self contained. You summon beasts, you may buff those beasts, and you put up plant barricades for battlefield control. Done.
  
• Transmuter - You turn things into other things. Specifically you turn their creatures into weaker creatures and you turn your creatures into stronger creatures. You can probably also turn random mice and stuff into uncontrolled monsters which is kind of like battlefield control and kind of like summoning.

Verdict: Green Magic is battlefield control, summoning, and some buff/debuff as a sideline. Direct attacks probably don't even exist.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

HAHAHA a high pH or low pH Acid attack... a friend of mine was slapped upside the head in an AD&D session years ago for asking about that when his character was damaged.

[Crissa]

I still don't want artificers to be blue, or artifacts. I want colorless, dang it.

What I was saying was that people will want to kill other people with those methods, so it is important to define them. If you can have a sword of light, you can have a sword of acid, it just won't work on other [acid] items. But hitting another items with an [acid] they [corrode] which for normal weapons means they just get a negative value instead thrown on them... At least, that's how it works in nethack.

If you're doing [drowning] damage, someone needs to take [breath] checks, as if drowning. Then you may define other methods you can get out of it. Like [breath water] or [breath lava]. Fish don't have [breath air] and take [drowning] damage when not in [water].

Starving is a [breath] check that gets worse over the week. Dehydration is a [breath] check that you need to make every day.

Stuff like that needs to be defined now, instead of handwaved. It needs to be defined now, because we're going to be marching across the wastes, and while it may never happen - it most certainly will if the first level character tries it, and we should define why it's a bad idea to attempt something level-inappropriate right from the start.

-Crissa

[SphereOfFeetMan]

People will still want to use drowning, freezing, electrocuting, acid, base, blowing, bashing, slashing, poking, piercing, impaling...

Yes, players should be able to use all those attacks, they just all do the same type (untyped) damage. I would be fine with each damage being restricted to a certain mechanic (electricity in a line or chained, fire burst/explosions, etc.) but having fire/acid/cold/electricity/sonic/holy/unholy/positive energy/negative energy/divine energy/vile damage/physical damage/force damage/whatever I can't remember off the top of my head is stupid.

[Crissa]

I just don't want wind damage being untyped like soul damage because we didn't think of it ahead of time - or sonic damage getting through resistances because we didn't include it. We need to define our types of damage and then what other flavour words we might want to throw at them - as well as remembering not to clump too many types of damage into one damage type or another.

-Crissa

[Username17]

Some reasoning as to why undead are the quintessential Black race

I was thinking about having all the player character races be cursed for one reason or another. It's Kali Yurga and everythin is in a handbasket. So while ideally things are supposed to reincarnate on the wheel, the PCs accumulate in the Land of the Dead instead. The basic original sin being "not being what you're supposed to be" in this case, as it causes you to get lost in the celestial bureaucracy. So the Tieflings transformed themselves, and the Merfolk were transformed by the Dragons. One of the other races could have bargained away reincarnation for extremely long lives. And so on.

-Username17

[Koumei]

I don't see the big deal with needing all these stupid damage types. Starvation, dehydration, suffocation and extrapolation can all be "Con-resisted damage" (untyped or Red) or even "Save or get fucked. Con-based. Failure shifts you down along Normal > Feel Bad > Feel Crappy > KO > Dead"

They don't need separate types. I mean, we could just have:
Physical and Mental
Magical and Non-magical
No types, just the save you use
The colours
Bash, Stab, Slice, Magic, Energy
Bludgeoning, slapping, piercing, drilling, slicing, grinding, copping, suffocation, irritation, exploding, your mum, fire, lightning, acid, base, cold, implosion, water damage, earth damage (not bludgeoning or anything, it's just... earth damage), boiling, melting, twisting, crushing, radiation, poison, bleeding, alignment, fanboy and British damage types.

Let's not use the last example. Although British damage would be kind of cool.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Marmalade totally does [British] damage.

[JonSetanta]

There could be special moves to deal [Crunk] damage.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Some reasoning as to why undead are the quintessential Black race

I've never understood the desire to make undead a 'race.' Everything undead was previously something more normal that was alive. Undead is a template.

[Username17]

1198762207[/unixtime]]

Some reasoning as to why undead are the quintessential Black race

I've never understood the desire to make undead a 'race.' Everything undead was previously something more normal that was alive. Undead is a template.

It depends upon what model of undead you want to use. There's the version where any undead creature is truly a new creature which has been let in to the physical world throught the death of a person. And then there's the model where the undead are the remnants of the fallen brought back with the power of death now that the power of life has abandoned them.

Neither is right or wrong, just different. And reading Libris Mortis is so painful because they keep switching from one concept to the other - sometimes part way through a paragraph and without commentary.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

Huh. I don't think I've ever actually heard of that first version.

So, there's a world of the dead, with native beings, and when a person's immortal self travels to that place, sometimes the native deadians can squeeze past them in transit? To establish a stable population, these deadians then 'send for' their families by making the deaths of further people more hospitable to the squeezing - nice ones will perform ceremonies near normally occurring deaths, nasty ones will become ritual killers - until there are enough deadians to reproduce however they do in their own realm?

That could be kind of cool. It certainly sets up interesting relationships between deadian communities and living communities.

[Catharz]

1198771989[/unixtime]]

1198762207[/unixtime]]

Some reasoning as to why undead are the quintessential Black race

I've never understood the desire to make undead a 'race.' Everything undead was previously something more normal that was alive. Undead is a template.

It depends upon what model of undead you want to use. There's the version where any undead creature is truly a new creature which has been let in to the physical world throught the death of a person. And then there's the model where the undead are the remnants of the fallen brought back with the power of death now that the power of life has abandoned them.

In my example, the exact same creature is returned, but changed. This sounds like a template, but keep in mind that being dead and coming back as undead seriously fucks a person up.

Spooks are incorporeal, so it's pretty easy to imagine them as a race. And being incorporeal is a bad deal for a normal person. You can't interact with the world like you once did.
Spook yak folk can't store time in their humps anymore. Their willpower may have been worn down as well, and they certainly don't have the robustness of a physical body. On the flip side, it's much easier to move quickly when all that meat doesn't slow you down.
So while a ghost may look something like he did in life, he might also look nothing like he did in life.

Zombies come back inhabiting their original bodies. This can suck a lot if your body was thrown into a hole in the ground, or be mostly bearable if it was carefully embalmed and preserved with spices and exotic oils (or a bog). This body, however, is still dead. It may look like it did in life, but the poison spurs aren't poisoned, the heart doesn't beat, and it can't make babies. The muscles are stiff with rigor mortis, and the mind may not be quite as quick. If it's a template, it's a template that changes almost all characteristics except size and general appearance. Claws, bites, and slams would all be the same mechanically.

[JonSetanta]

I thought a zombie was just the body.
So in making a zombie, it's almost like a 2-for-1 deal, when the Necro can steal the soul or make a ghost/specter/(fill in the blank) incorporeal undead as well.

[Catharz]

1198784259[/unixtime]]I thought a zombie was just the body.
So in making a zombie, it's almost like a 2-for-1 deal, when the Necro can steal the soul or make a ghost/specter/(fill in the blank) incorporeal undead as well.

That's exactly the philosophy that causes undead to make no sense.

[virgil]

In regards to the idea of races being all cursed in some fashion, related to reincarnation, how about a race that's cursed to always reincarnate to the same race as before; their cycle forced into stagnation. Or perchance the race is completely united in their karma, such that unless all of them deserve to change in station, none of them will.

How important is it to differentiate for the nonmagical applications for each color? How would we do it; martial art style, martial philosophy, emphasis (or lack) on non-martial activities, preferred tools to make such desires manifest?

[Catharz]

1198788441[/unixtime]]How important is it to differentiate for the nonmagical applications for each color? How would we do it; martial art style, martial philosophy, emphasis (or lack) on non-martial activities, preferred tools to make such desires manifest?

As far as I can tell, the colors would be about as influential as alignment. Martial arts would actually be "magic", so that's a nonissue.

[Username17]

Or perchance the race is completely united in their karma, such that unless all of them deserve to change in station, none of them will.

That seems like it could be pretty cool. Yeah, something like...

The Dryads
Parvati was (and in many ways still is) a very powerful Rudraksha tree situated directly on a powerful nature node. The mana crystals soaked into her roots and she became massive and wise. But the powerful Asura Daruka (who could not be killed by any man) was jealous of the power and chopped Parvati to pieces in order to get at the sweet power that lay below. But while Parvati was destroyed, she was not killed because she was a tree. And from the living roots a dozen, a thousand saprolings shot towards the heavens, and every one of them was a maiden, every one of them was Parvati. And these maidens wander the world, make choices, sing songs, and live their lives as humans would.

But when they are killed one alone they are not reincarnated, for while just one Dryad lives, Parvati lives. And so long as she is alive they are not fully dead. All Dryads once killed go to the land of the dead and await reincarnation. But it is a long wait because it can't proceed until every last Dryad is slain.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

1198789657[/unixtime]]
As far as I can tell, the colors would be about as influential as alignment. Martial arts would actually be "magic", so that's a nonissue.

Right on.
Somatic: weapon swing.
Verbal: shout bloody murder.