Attributes, skills, magical items, cake

Attributes and skills are a tricky bunch, of which I've waffled before.

Nontheless, I need some kind of framework to start thinking about these things, so here's the seed. I'm trying for the usual balance between flavour, mechanical clarity and balance, and separation between the attributes tied closely to the host body and those inherant to the servitor.

I think it's quite important that the mind of the host has some influence on the final attributes. After all, the inhabiting spirit is not good at thinking in meatspace. Any actions with a physical component, even casting spells, need to be processed by the physical brain and body. Any accrued memories - less those burned out by the process of possession - will also be vitally useful to the emissary.

Physical attributes

• Brawn - strength, endurance, explosive muscular power and general burliness. Contributes to melee damage, especially with heavy weapons, damage reduction (natural and from armour/shields), health and fatigue pool size.

• Grace - agility, dexterity, speed and accuracy of movement, stamina. Contributes to hit checks with melee and ranged weapons, dodge and block/parry checks, stealth skills, attack speed, fatigue regeneration rate.

Mental attributes

• Wit - Speed of thought, depth of perception. Contributes to reaction speed, ranged hit checks, casting speed, damage with ranged and light melee weapons, resistance to mental attack.


• Lore - Accrued memories, ability to apply knowledge. Contributes to all crafting-type checks, casting checks, all identification checks (including things like combat styles, spells being cast, and all the usual stuff).

Spiritual attributes

• Empathy - how well the spirit meshes with the host flesh. Affects how much magic can be safely channeled through the body, resistance to mental attacks, health regeneration rate, speed of recovery from debilitating effects on the body (poison, nausea etc.).


• Comprehension - sensitivity to the flows of the spiritual/arcane. Affects perception and identification of magic, and creatures of spirit (whether possessing a mortal body or not), as well as casting checks and speed of recovery from debilitating effects on the mind and spirit (curses, magical debuffs).

Creatures without attendent emissary spirit will have zero in the last two scores, which should make generating them somewhat easier. These are only rough ideas of course, things will be moved around, renamed and generally made to work. The split of abilities and bonuses, assuming everything else is balanced and, erm, implemented, looks like a reasonable start.

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On the subject of magic items

Was pondering magic items whilst walking home from work. I think I'm going to rip off Talislanta because it is awesome and win.

You can have seven active magic items on your person at a once, any more than that and they all stop working. Most items will be considered active if you're wearing or using them, so having stuff in your backpack doesn't count. Likewise consumable or items only used briefly don't affect the total (in most RLs, these would be potions, scrolls, wands etc). The reason for this is simply that active magic flows through the mortal plane, and interacts... oddly. Having too many active items would have nasty side effects in addition to rendering them all useless, but those wouldn't be exposed immediately.

To make things more interesting, certain items will be active all the time, even if you're just lugging them about. Diable II (and possibly the original) had these, although I can't remember what they're called. In said game(s) they took up lots of inventory space, but were otherwise just passive, stacking bonuses exactly as if you'd found an extra inventory slot somewhere. Artifacts or items of similar crazy power will act like this, although depending on the nature of the item you may get no benefit from not using it, it'll still count towards your total, and possibly count as multiple lesser items. This should make 'retrieve the all-powerful maguffin!' quests a lot more... interesting. Anyone up for a naked Amulet of Yendor run?

There may be certain ways to get around these restrictions, with side-effects. For example, items with identical effects might be worn and count less towards the total, although any bonuses do not stack perfectly and there will be nasty things happening if this is done for any length of time. Sure, you can wear three rings or regeneration for a few weeks, but how are you going to go to parties with that atrophied spare arm dangling from the small of your back?

Themed magic

That was a very pleasant week away from work, largely spent indulging in gaming.

Unfortunately this included quite a bit of WoW. Sigh. I thought I'd kicked that habit for good.

Regardless of my recurring bad taste in MMOs, one particular design topic has been nipping at my hind-brain all week. As the title subtly hints at, it's magic.

So magic in many (computer) games is very dull and... non-magical. It's functional, reliable, and generally quite boring. People have written very nice stuff on how to make magic more magical, and I'm letting some of those ideas ferment too, but one seemingly simple concept I'd like to see more games explore is the idea of themed magical skills/schools/whatever.

Of course, almost every game has this to some degree. Fire and ice seem to be incredibly popular (thanks, Blizzard), and just generally elemental themes are rampant. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't exactly offer much in the way of flavour any more. A far better example of what I'd like to see would be Dungeon Crawl's concept of magic. Despite my apalling inability to play them, I just love Transmuters. They get really weird spells, and use odd resources in addition to the generic mana pool - sticks and corpses, at low levels, are a staple.

Mesmers from Guild Wars are similarly fun in some ways. Although the relentless balancing act required for the PvP aspect of the game exerts a subtle homogenising force on all classes, there's still some flavour to be had. Mesmers work largely through indirect action, an underexplored area of fun in most CRPGs.

Anyway, here are some ideas.

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Somatomancy

Somatomancers (I'm not at all sure this word is a valid construction, but what the hell) are the warrior-philosopher archetypes. Their magic is all involved with their bodies, and the perfection thereof. They also branch into meditation and similar ways to encourage perfection of mind/soul and unification with their flesh, etc. etc. fluffwaffle. Almost all somatomancy spells are buffs, and the main resources for casting would be 'focus' (a measure of how well the caster can direct magical energy within his/her body) and some analog of chakra points. Somatomancy spells are intimately tied to certain parts of the body, and there's some kind of experience dependant limit on how many can be maintained in a given location, focus constraints aside.

Somatomancers would have abilities such as self healing and cleansing the body of toxins and disease. Their spells would cover areas ranging from making themselves faster and stronger, to hardening their skin, channeling magic through their unarmed attacks, warding their minds from attack by magic/spirits and protecting themselves from the elements. Eventually of course, the search for perfection must lead to far more interesting abilities, such as growing bone spikes, claws, additional appendages, chintinous plates, toxic spit or a venemous bite, and so on.

The way of the tentacle

Yes, the name is very silly. I can't think of a better one right now. This random bundle of 'whu?' all cascaded from an extended thunk on Black Tentacles (full name omitted for WotC reasons), a wonderfully useful spell from D&D. This school of magic is based around the idea that a metaphor for the magical realm is an ocean, with deities as vast floating islands trailing toxic awareness. But the sunlit zone is an insignificant fraction of the sea, and the primitive life of the abyssal ooze is where the Way finds power. The Way revolves around bringing this base vitality to the material world in a Lovecraftian squirm-fest. Tentacles burst from the ground, rock squirms and pulsates underfoot, the walls grow articulated claws. Wood collapses into primordial muck, and cilia writhe in dark places. The Way is basically themed around summoning, but of non-sentient entities thoroughly grounded in non-living matter.