Tag: Magic-User

Combat Techniques for Spellbook Nerds

Posted on by Vagabundork

Once a magic-user has used her spells for the day, she is no longer a useful member of the adventure, and the player controlling her may be relegated to a mere spectator for the rest of the session, especially during combat. Nevermore! From now on, a magic-user can unlock new combat abilities.

These abilities are magical, but they are not spells. Thy must be acquired or learned. Two suggestions are given for each (almost), but the referee may prefer other ways to grant them that are more appropriate for a specific campaign.

1. Amber Fluid

The magic-user empties her bladder at will (she wets herself, you see), and the liquid travels on its own for one round, snaking its way until it reaches an enemy (chosen by her). When it reaches the enemy in the next round, an electric shock from within runs through the thread of urine, dealing 1d3 damage, plus the target must make a saving throw vs. paralysis or fall to the ground in convulsions for one round.

Risks and limitations: Once per day. The magic-user may not carry a metal object larger than a small weapon, or the discharge will be nullified.

How to acquire: The magic-user must survive an electric shock; or she must wear at least 500 gp worth of amber jewelry in the form of piercings or subdermal implants in all the usual areas of the body, including the erogenous zones.

2. Dagger of Evil Eye

The magic-user inflicts a wound upon herself and sacrifices all but 1 hp. From the next round on, each successful attack will cause her to regain the same amount of hp that she dealt to her enemies.

Risks and limitations: As many times per day as her Constitution modifier. Only with a dagger, which is now considered unholy.

How to acquire: The magic-user must survive a mêlée without using magic and without suffering any damage; or she must perform a blood ritual of fertility and blood during a new moon, alone.

3. Evil Face

The magic-user shows her true face and terrorizes her enemies (and perhaps allies). Enemies up to one level above her have their morale reduced by 1. Enemies below that level also have their morale reduced, but they immediately make a morale check. Allied NPCs will have their loyalty to her or even the party (whichever makes sense) reduced by 1.

Risks and limitations: As many times per day as her Charisma modifier.

How to acquire: She must kill an enemy in combat, and that death must cause a morale check on the opposing party; or she must research it as if it were a new spell.

4. Lightning Strikes Twice

The magic-user makes herself a small wound to the wrist or chest and sacrifices 1 hp. The next round, she can make two attacks, one on her initiative with an extra +1 bonus, and one at the end of the round without that bonus.

Risks and limitations: As many times per day as her Dexterity or Constitution modifier, whichever is higher. Only with a staff.

How to acquire: The magic-user must have been near death in combat (taking maximum damage without dying); or must sacrifice a total of 10 hp in combat (causing wounds to herself).

5. Magic Barrier

The magic-user summons her willpower for a number of rounds equal to her Wisdom modifier. During this time, she takes only half damage (cumulative with other forms of damage reduction).

Risks and limitations: Magic-users without a positive Wisdom modifier can’t use this ability.

How to acquire: The magic-user must bathe in the blood of an enemy killed with a mêlée weapon; or it can be given as a gift when sacrificing a friend or loved one in honor of Lucifer or Mictlantecuhtli or Hades or any other god of the underworld.

6. Parasite

The magic-user releases the parasite in her brain. Her mouth opens unnaturally and a black centipede with a demonic face or alien features emerges. The magic-user can now make 2 attacks per round, a normal attack or spell, and a parasite attack: a bite that deals 1d6 damage and requires the target to make a saving throw vs. poison.

Risks and limitations: Although the magic-user has full control of her body and mind, she can no longer hide the parasite, so it’ll be very difficult to go unnoticed or deal with other people (a benevolent referee may find a way to remove it, but it certainly shouldn’t be easy).

How to acquire: The magic-user must introduce a centipede into her brain through her ear and survive a saving throw vs. poison (the type of venom determines the damage taken if the throw fails, as well as the damage dealt by the parasite); or she can… honestly, I don’t have a good alternate idea, I really like this one.

7. Rejection of Death

The magic-user pays a pending debt: a piece of her soul is torn off and she immediately loses one magic-user level. If the caster dies in combat (now or at any other time, but it must be in combat), she will remain dead for only one round, and then will come back to life with her HP and spells of the day restored.

Risks and limitations: Once in a lifetime.

How to acquire: The magic-user must make a pact with a demon or god of death; or she must commit an act of absolute evil that colors a fragment of her soul to necrosis.

8. Scorpion Sting

The magic-user runs the blade of her dagger across her tongue, causing it to bleed. The dagger is now poisoned, and the victim of an attack with it must make a saving throw vs. poison or die immediately between convulsions and curses.

Risks and limitations: As many times as she wants, but she must use the same dagger, and after the first time, she must also make a saving throw vs. poison or die.

How to obtain: The magic-user must be stung by three scorpions on three consecutive nights, and survive (she can use antidotes); or she must give a newborn baby to a colony of scorpions to be eaten, and they will grant her the gift in return.

9. Shadow Step

The magic-user summons her inner shadow and gains a +2 bonus to her AC for a number of rounds equal to her Dexterity modifier, when dodging attacks as if they were attacking her shadow and not her.

Risks and limitations: Once per day. Magic-users without a positive Dexterity modifier can’t use this ability.

How to acquire: The magic-user must sacrifice her own shadow in a defiled temple of the setting’s major religion; or devour the shadow of a priest of that same religion.

10. Stroke of Grace

Knowing that all is lost if she doesn’t do something, the magic-user channels all her concentration and training into a crushing blow. Her next attack will have one of two effects: either the attack roll will automatically succeed, or the attack will cause the maximum damage possible from her weapon (but she must succeed the attack roll).

Risks and limitations: Once per day.

How to acquire: The magic-user must survive a mêlée without using magic; or she must train with a Fighter at least one lever above her for 6 weeks and pay 100 gp each week.

11. Time Rupture

The magic-user can alter her own perception of time and space for a number of rounds equal to her Dexterity modifier, automatically gaining initiative (the rest of the group makes group initiative rolls normally; she rolls separately for now).

Risks and limitations: Once per day. Magic-users without a positive Dexterity modifier can’t use this ability. She must drop everything she carries except a small weapon (and small shield, if carrying), and she must be wearing light clothing.

How to acquire: She must survive three combat encounters with nothing but a small weapon and underwear or similar clothing; or she must eat the beating heart of a cheetah or other fast creature during a full moon.

12. Transmigration

The magic-user chooses from those present the one who will be her new body. Once chosen, she must cut her own jugular vein and bleed to death (1d3 rounds). Once dead, her soul, spirit, psyche, identity, eternal essence, or whatever, will attempt to enter the new body. The target must make a saving throw vs. magic with a modifier equal to the difference between his HD and the magic-user’s HD (as a bonus if his HD is greater than hers; as a penalty if it is lower). If the saving throw fails, the magic-user has a new body with new stats, retaining only her original intelligence; although she has the same level as the original magic user, her HD is equal to the HD of the creature taken. If the saving throw succeeds, well, oops, right?

Risks and limitations: Once per year. All spells that remained in the magic-user’s memory when the body died, are activated at the same time, with the body as the epicenter.

How to acquire: The magic-user must eat only caterpillars, butterflies, and moths for 33 days; or she must mark an ankh with white-red iron on her head (4 hp damage) and renew the mark on the same date each year (same damage).

Note: If you want your magic-user to have any of these abilities from the moment you create her, send me $10 to give you the official authorization.

This is what happens when the magic-user drinks spirits

Posted on by Vagabundork

This is what happens when the magic-user drinks spirits

1. The magic-user’s spells become more powerful, but harder to control. He can cast spells as if he were one level higher, but there’s a 1-in-12 chance that the spell will fail, miscast, harm the caster or have the opposite effect. Duration: 1 hour.

2. The magic-user gains the ability to see and communicate with spirits. Duration: 2 hours.

3. The magic-user becomes possessed by the spirit of the spirits (the referee must interpret this as she sees fit). Duration: 24 hours.

4. The magic-user gains a special insight into the nature of magic, but also becomes dangerously obsessed with it. He can prepare one additional spell of any level. Whenever there’s anything related to magic (library, laboratory, ancient symbols on a wall, anything the referee can think of), the magic-user must make a saving throw vs. magic or spend all day reading, researching, or meditating on it; he can roll again each subsequent hour. Duration: Until a saving throw is successful, or after 16 hours (modified by the magic-user’s Constitution modifier), when the magic-user collapses to sleep.

5. The magic-user’s body becomes temporarily disembodied, allowing him to pass through solid objects. Duration: 10 minutes.

6. The magic-user’s voice becomes like that of spirits, and he is able to command spirits to do their bidding. Duration: 1 hour or until a command is given and performed to the best of the spirits capacity.

7. The magic-user gains telekinetic powers, but also becomes overwhelmed by a sense of loneliness and despair (the player is free to role-play this as they see fit). He can make small objects float or fall off tables by sheer force of will. Duration: 2 hours.

8. The magic-user can summon spirits to fight for him, but the spirits are uncontrollable and can attack the magic-user as well as his enemies and comrades. Duration: 10 minutes.

9. The magic-user’s body is temporarily possessed by powerful spirits, giving him immense strength and toughness, but also causing him to lose control of his own actions. The magic-user temporarily gains 2d6 HP, but each round must succeed at a saving throw vs. magic or randomly attack any character present. Duration: The entire encounter.

10. The magic-user gains the ability to enter the spirits realm, but has difficulty returning to the physical world and risks being trapped there forever (or become an alcoholic, maybe?). The referee must interpret this according to her own campaign and style. A successful saving throw vs. poison (death) is required to return. Duration: The magic-user can spend as much time as necessary in the spirits realm. Upon return, 2d4 days have passed.

So, how many drinks is the magic-user going to have, and why?

I take one, one, one ’cause you left me
And two, two, two for my family
And three, three, three for my heartache
And four, four, four for my headaches
And five, five, five for my lonely
And six, six, six for my sorrow
And seven, seven for no tomorrow
And eight, eight, I forget was eight was for
But nine, nine, nine for the lost gods
Ten, ten, ten, ten for everything, everything, everything, everything

Second list provided by: Violent Femmes

Art: Darrell K. Sweet

Lost spell book? Get your formulas back!

Posted on by Vagabundork

“Young wizard, I see you have lost your spell book. Yes, a real pity. No doubt you know how you can recover all your spells*. Yes, of course you do. But you need to get that spell back immediately, you say?

Well, all right, I’ll tell you: there is a way. It won’t cost you anything… just your soul. Ha ha, of course I’m joking. To recover your spells, all you have to do is think of the spells you want back and sacrifice something of enormous value.”

Roll 1d6

  1. Your right eye (-1 to -3 on vision-based rolls)
  2. Your left hand (-1 to -3 on rolls requiring the use of both hands or specifically the left hand)
  3. Your tongue (1-in-6 chance of miscast all your spells)
  4. Your memories of youth (-1 to one random ability)
  5. Your good fortune (-1 to all your saving throws)
  6. A loyal or beloved friend or companion
  7. Your identity (no one outside your party remembers you)
  8. Your autonomy (an Outer Being will impose an obligation on you that you must fulfil within a certain time frame; if you fail, you will lose these spells permanently)

After the sacrifice, you recover 1d4 spell levels. For example, if you roll a 4, you can recover four level 1 spells, or two level 2 spells, or one level 4 spell, or any other combination.

This sacrifice is for emergencies only, and doesn’t work for higher level spells.

*1,000 gp and one work week for each level of spell to be recovered.

There are two rats in this room… Let’s make rats interesting!

Posted on by Vagabundork

A trap, a power, an NPC and a Character Class for your rat-flavoured games using B/X stats.

New Trap | Rat Nest

You have fallen into a burrow full of rats, thousands of them.

Each round you suffer 3d4 points of damage, save vs paralyzation for half damage. In one round you can light a torch but that round you cannot save vs paralyzation. The light and fire keep the rats at bay for 1d4 rounds, after that, they get bold and rush at you.

New Power | Command Rats

Depending on the system you use and your preference, Command Rats can be a spell or an innate or acquired ability. The mechanics are less important than the effects.

Vancian Magic: Level-1 Spell. Duration: The Magic-User’s level in turns.

Otherwise: Innate, acquired, purchased, through an item, granted by King Rat, whatever. Duration: 1d10 turns or referee’s choice. User per day: Charisma’s modifier, minumum 1.

Effect: You can control a group of 1d6+9 rats to act in unison. The group has HP equal to the number of individuals, and will disperse when half of its members are lost or when the effect runs out. You can give them an order and they’ll carry it out to the best of their ability, as long as it’s not an order directly harmful to them.

Secondary Effect: When using this power, and for 1d4 days thereafter (cumulative), you’ll be constantly surrounded by friendly rats, they’ll climb on your shoulders, run around you, etcetera, but the intense light and fire will keep them away.

New NPC | King Rat

Leather Armor, HD 3, HP 12, Weapons 2 katara (push dagger) for a total of 1d8 damage (when attacking using only one, damage is 1d6).

King Rat is a man of about 45, handsome but slovenly, who lives in the catacombs, surrounded by rats who obey him and with whom he can talk, mainly about poetry, philosophy, politics and science; whether the rats understand or respond to him is open to debate. An anarchist, he doesn’t believe in authority but believes in fair exchange.

Command Rats: He can use this ability 5 times a day. How did he get it? If questioned and he decides to tell, he will say that it was given to him by God Rat, but will not give further details. King Rat doesn’t have any scarification.

Mark of the Rat: An adventurer can fulfill an assignment in exchange for the Mark of the Rat, which allows him to use Command Rats as described above. The Mark is a rat-shaped scarification on the left temple.

New Class | Rat Catcher

Only the man who cleans the public latrines has a worse job than you. But after all, you are not cut out for a glamorous life, nor are you cut out to rub elbows with the nobility or to know carnal love. But such trifles don’t matter to you, or at least you’ve managed to convince yourself of that. The alternative is very depressing.

A rat-catcher. [Source]
Requirement: DEX 9
Prime Requisite: CHA
HD: d6
Max Level: 14
Armor: Leather
Weapon: Any
Languages: Common, Thieves’ Cant

Combat

Poverty, or as you call it: freedom, is your motto. You are not used to wearing armor heavier than Leather; if for some reason you wear it, you can’t use your Knave, Track Vermin and Rat Senses abilities, and you lose 2 or 4 points of DEX while wearing it (Chainmail and Plate, respectively).

Gallows Humour

You get a +2 bonus to your rolls to resist psychological effects, magical or otherwise, related to fear, sadness or nihilism.

Knave

You know one Thief Skill of your choice (or randomly for more fun), except Find/Remove Trap and Pick Pocket. You can use it as a Thief of the same level.

Rat Senses I

You’re good at finding your way around sewers, catacombs, dark alleys and other artificial or semi-artificial structures. If you are the party’s cartographer, the referee is obliged to make at least one major correction or any number of minor corrections she wishes. When you come to a room or hallway that you have already visited, you always know that you have been there before and notice any relevant changes.

Rat Senses II

When you are in a dilemma between several possible paths, there is a 2-in-6 chance that you will instinctively know if there is any immediate danger (such as traps or an ambush).

Track Vermin

You can automatically detect and track vermin, including kobolds, goblins and the like (referee’s choice), and of course rat-folk. When you fight these creatures, your Thac0 receives a bonus of 1 (19 becomes 18, etc.)

9th Level

You can completely clear and control a major area of the city’s drainage system, subway tunnels or alleys, an area that will serve as your territory. You will be the leader of a gang of 2d6 thieves and 3d4 0-level beggars who will follow you and protect the territory, and will be happy to pay a small voluntary weekly tribute as long as you don’t show yourself to be a despot or start bathing more frequently than them, you fop!

Starting Gear (roll 1d30 three times)

1. Antivenom. 2. Dark clothes. 3. Stolen letter. 4. One-use lockpick. 5. Rope (10 m.) 6. Rusty knife (d4 dmg.) 7. Mud protecting boots. 8. Stinky wheel of cheese. 9. Book of satyrical and anarchist poetry against current authorities and the church. 10. Five rat traps. 11. Wooden plank (d6 dmg.) 12. A blood-stained nobility title. 13. Five flashing bomb flasks. 14. Flask of oil. 15. Five torches, tinder and flint. 16. Bronze key to a missing stash. 17. Valuable-looking book you can’t read full of demonic symbols. 18. Box containing five vials of mysterious sludge. 19. Old backpack. 20. Black hat. 21. Dog. 22. The sword of a nobleman (1d8 dmg), anyone who sees it will know it was stolen. 23. Eye patch. 24. Mantle. 25. Soft, stealth shoes. 26. Garish clothes. 27. Frying pan. 28. Crowbar. 29. Sling and ten stones (1d4 dmg.) 30. Cage of 1d4 live rats.

Level Progression

More rats? More rats!

1d12 Magic-User Garments

Posted on by Vagabundork

All these garments can only be used by Magic-Users, and their powers are only active when worn. Unless otherwise specified, these garments don’t offer physical protection.

  1. Robe of Ice. Ice-blue silk mantle with a gold snowflake pattern that grants AC 14 (or as leather). During the winter, there’s a 1-in-6 chance that every spell casted will remain in the Magic-User’s memory. During summer, there’s a 1-in-6 chance another spell is spent without taking effect, randomly determined.
  2. Robe of Is (plural of I). This cotton robe has the Magic-User’s face stamped multiple times. Once every 24 hours, the magician can create a number of insubstantial duplicates of himself equal to his level. At will, he can choose any number of duplicates to imitate his movements and the rest, a second pattern of movements (for example, two duplicates imitate and three duplicates break-dance). There’s a 1% chance you are replaced by a duplicate.
  3. Unseelie Garments. An elegant fairy linen suit or dress. AC 16 (as mail) but it’s invisible to the human eye, so you seem to go naked, which is considered heresy and punishable by hanging.
  4. Slime Tunic. A tunic made with the most delicate fibers of the infamous green slime. The wizard gains resistance to acid, including that of other slimes, oozes and jellies.
  5. Blood Cape. Elegant crimson cape. All attacks made with regular weapons cause -1 damage. Fire and electricity attacks cause double damage (roll twice and add both results).
  6. Twilight Cloak. Red silk inside, black wool outside, very valuable even for non-Magic-Users. Once a night (between sunset and sunrise), the Magic-User can turn into a flying fox for up to one hour. In this shape, he cannot speak but can cast spells. One of his spells is replaced by the cleric’s spell “Putrefy Food and Water” (inverted Purify Food and Water), which allows him to rot the crops (an area of 100 square meters per level). If the spell is not used in bat form, it reverts to the original spell. There’s a 1% chance that you will never recover your true form.
  7. Shadow Cloak. Blacker than black, unknown fabrics. The Magic-User can make stealth rolls with a success rate of 5-in-6 but there’s a 1% chance you simply disappear.
  8. Pointed Hood of Lies. You can tell a lie and everyone who doesn’t know that it’s a lie, will be convinced that what you say is true; one hour later, they will realize it was a lie.
  9. Madcap Hat. Shaped like an amanita muscaria, blood-red and silver spots (actual silver). You can understand the language of fungi, moss, ooze, slime, jellies and smurfs, but all your charisma-based rolls (except with fungi, moss, and so on) suffer a -2 penalty because you look like an idiot.
  10. Light Mail Armor. Literally made of light, so it doesn’t weight. AC 15 (or leather +1). It illuminates like a continual light spell but you can be seen from the distance.
  11. Gloves of Strangling. These wool gloves don’t look like much, but if a Magic-User tries to strangle someone, his victim must Save vs. Poison or die. If the victim survives, the gloves will try to kill you. If you survive, the gloves will disappear, perhaps in search of the food that keeps them alive: a human life.
  12. Pixie Boots. Pixie leather boots, each toe is decorated with a pixie eye, and on each heel, one of its wings. The pixie is still alive. Initiative +1, an extra spell from the second highest level you know, or lower, but there’s a 2-in-6 chance that a pixie swarm will attack you immediately when you put the boots on, and again every 24 hours you wear them.

Pixie swarm

AC 14, HD 2, 5 hp, MOV flying 240′ (80′), walking 30′ (10′), ML 9, SAVE as Magic-User 2, #ATT 1 sword stings (1d4), Fairy dust, Tooth removal

Sword Stings: Automatically hit an opponent they are surrounding, once per turn. Most pixies are armed with swords appropriate for their size, dealing d4 damage, which represents countless small stings.

Fairy Dust: Once per turn, they can choose not to attack and concentrate on flapping their wings faster so they’ll project enough fairy dust. It works as the spell Sleep.

Cutting/Impaling Resistance: Cutting and impaling weapons do half their damage (rounded down).

Tooth Removal: A pixie swarm can remove 1d4 teeth from an sleeping in one round. Each tooth removed deals 1 hp damage.

(Pixie swarm, based on an original concept by Bruno)

Dungeons & the Undead

Posted on by Vagabundork

Why are there so many zombies and skeletons in the dungeons?

Most dungeons are partly tombs, crypts, mausoleums, hypogaea, and partly ruins of ancient cities or fortifications, and what is a lost city if not a large cemetery?

But the dead don’t come back to life in any cemetery. What do dungeons have that make them prone to this inconsistency of the natural laws of life and death?

Magick-Users, of course

Magick-Users play with “forces” or “energies”, “agencies” or “intelligences” that seem to defy the natural laws of the universe or, at least, human understanding of those laws. We call this discrepancy Chaos, because we can’t see the order or the laws that govern it.

Magick-Users (and Clerics as well) are repositories of such forces (or energies, or agencies, or intelligences… let’s call them “forces”, then, or magick), that is, spells.

(Magick-Users are more or less aware of how they channel magick, manipulating weird forces at will. Clerics are not aware of the same; they believe that their gods grant them their powers, they don’t realize that their prayers are magick formulas, identical [in latent if not in manifest content] to the Magick-Users’ formulas, and that through them, they “steal” their powers from the gods, who are not really gods.)

The frequent observation and praxis of magick transforms the world around it. Over time, the places that were once centres of study or use of magick, such as laboratories, temples, towers of stargazers, fairy rings, necropoleis, akelarres, begin to present anomalies.

This is normal now

One of these anomalies is the disruption of normal, ordered life and death cycles. The dead in the area begin to return to life (or to a parody of life) and roam the place. Probably hungry and angry, and totally baffled.

Another is the appearance of the weird, including monsters and traps. Raw magick sneaks through cracks and recesses accidentally opened by the practice of magick. Unchecked magick has the tendency to produce unexpected effects, such as the opening of gates to parallel, adjacent or perpendicular worlds (or universes?), and these gates are crossed by their inhabitants.

Sometimes, finally, the reality on the other side pollutes ours. That’s why there are rooms with inverted gravity, or full of water, or where magick does not work properly, or of impenetrable darkness, or any other imaginable or unimaginable effect.

But we were talking about the undead.

Another kinds of undead, such as vampires and ghouls, less instinctual and more rational (so to speak) than zombies and calacas, could simply feel more comfortable in an environment with residual magic, for them it’s like going to the beach*. This is why ghosts are so happy in houses where misfortunes and tragedies have occurred.

*I hate going to the beach; if god** wanted us to go to the beach, he would have made us crabs.

**There is no god.

Consequences of using magic

Posted on by Vagabundork

Last time I wrote about how to make spell acquisition more interesting for a Lamentations of the Flame Princess game, and also about the consequences there are when playing with the black arts.

Over on Reddit, Alistair49 mentioned other cosequences to using magic. I compiled his ideas and added several more on this table. Some I came up with and others were stolen.

Whenever a magic-user casts a spell (successfully or not), he rolls 1d100, and in a 1, he reduces his Charisma by one point, representing the gradual loss of his ability to connect to other people.

When magic-users lose a point of Charisma they also suffer a change, and expression of magic’s chaotic nature. The referee rolls 1d3, or chooses one category. 1 = Physical, 2 = Behavior, 3 = Metaphysical. Then rolls 1d10 to know the actual change.

1d10 Physical Behavior Metaphysical
1 warts bad temper casts bestial shadow
2 skin color change alcoholic or addicted shadow moves oddly
3 rash of sores careless crows follow you
4 odd smell bad language, can’t control it an imp suckles you in public
5 magic healing won’t work berserk (save vs magic or attack evident lawfuls) dogs bark at you all the time
6 vestigial fingers sprout from knuckles can’t talk without screaming roll CHA tests twice, choose the worse result
7 hirsute hair on the back of the neck fear of the dark shiny red eyes watch you from dark corners
8 insectile eyes you hate dogs, really hate them wandering monsters appear in 2 in 6*
9 miniature ears all over the body, partial ecolocation develops an antisocial or disturbing obssession faith symbols harm you
10 face scarred with symbols you think everyone are stupid and don’t hide it ¡the voices! ¡the voices!

* If wandering monsters appear in a 1 in 6 chance, now they appear in a 2 in 6 chance; adjust this accordingly.

If you have another takes on how chaos manifests on their servants, give us a comment and I’ll gladly include them in a future entry.

The Strange and Wonderful History of Mother Shipton

Making spell acquisition weird again! (updated)

Posted on by Vagabundork

Magic-users in Lamentations of the Flame Princess get new spells pretty much the same way as in any basic/expert set and OSR.

  • Transcribing it from a scroll, making the scroll useless.
  • Transcribing it from another spell-book, the source remains magical.
  • Research.

Of the three, research is the most demanding but also the most rewarding, the other two are not particularly interesting, much less dark, and I like my LotFP dark, even darker.

So I’ve been toying around with different takes to make the acquisition of spells weird again, and here’s the idea I like the most.

Spell Transcription

Copying a spell from any source—scroll, spell-book, ritual tattoo, scrawls on an asylum wall, magic wand, IOUN stones, or anything—to their own spell-books, deletes the spell from the original source. This simple modification changes the game, because no magic-user is willing to part from their arcane property, although some of them might be interested in exchanging.

To get new spells, a magic-user needs to capture spell-books (or other sources of spells). He can then transcribe the text and mystical scribbles into his book, or he can tear off the page and sew it to it (which is faster but dangerous). Under these guidelines, a magic-user can remove the tattoo from its wearer (including the skin, of course) and add it to his spell-book.

Spells contained in unwritten sources, like magic wands or other magic items, can also be “transcribed”.

For simplicity, the mechanical procedure is the same as regular transcription, following the procedure described in Rules & Magic (pp. 80 and 82). The in-game procedure, though, is different. The magic-user needs to remove the spell from the source (written or otherwise) and “paste it” into his own spell-book. If he has special inks, paper and other materials, the procedure is faster (as described on pp. 82 and 83.)

Casting non-transcribed spells is dangerous

If a magic-user casts a spell from a scroll, or from (a page torn from) another spell-book, or by reading the scribbles on a wall, it is considered risky casting (see the Weird Magic System from Vaginas Are Magic or Eldritch Cock). If you are using regular spells (from Rules & Magic), use the common miscast table, unless you want to create a specific miscast table for each spell your players acquire.

Casting spells from magic wands and similar items, is not considered risky casting; the downside is that the magic-user cannot attach wands to his spell-book.

Other consequences of using magic

Concerning sorcery, James Maliszewski said that “the wages of sin are far worse than mere death (…) the loss of one’s humanity, the ability to connect to other men, is terrible curse.”

All magic-users are of chaotic alignment, meaning their loss of humanity. Also, when a magic-user casts a spell (successfully or not), he rolls 1d100, and in a 1, he reduces his Charisma by one point, representing the gradual loss of his ability to connect to other people.

See this random table of simple corruption effects.

What other diabolists think (update)

Some wizards and devil worshippers have their own ideas, and I will share them with you:

“I’ll add one (idea) from personal experience playing LoTFP as a Magic-User earlier this year. My guy was a bit deranged. He worshiped an evil frog god and liked to gut animals and people in the hopes he could discern spell formulae from their entrails. This almost always did nothing except for a few notable cases where he accidentally unleashed horrible, disfiguring curses upon himself. He was quite mad so he persisted in this suicidal endeavor until the inevitable premature end to his adventuring career occurred.” -CrippleHook, on Reddit

This pushes my notion that spells are kindasorta living things… caged into pages or wands or whatever. Not to be duplicated by mere scribbling.
It also encourages casters to hide/disguise their grimoires. IIRC Earthdawn wizards had grimoires in all sorts of peculiar guises… like a teapot where you brew tea and read the leaves to learn spells stored in the pot.

What about if the original spell is in the form of a baroque sculpture or in the architecture of a room… would the transcription require a three dimensional aspect as well? -Ernesto Plasmo, LotFP group on Facebook

To Ernesto’s question I replied that “in my opinion, the spell is intangible, like a spirit or energy; the sculpture is not the spell, it’s its home, but your spell-book can be its new home if you convince it to move (that would be the “transcription”). The idea of making a 3D repository is cool, though. The magic-user needs to choose carefully which spells to bring with him, he cannot pack all of them.”

You have any ideas you want to share?