As part of an exercise in boredom I’m converting Karrak Seaborne, my character from the Orcanraytrel campaign, into a Fate PC. This requires me to know some things about the setting in the context of how they affect game mechanics and character creation before I attempt this. Part of this is knowing how Nel Gifts work in a narrative sense so that a system can be built around them that will represent them for what they truly are rather than the bastardization that a D20 system forces them into. Along the way to developing the Gifts I realized that it makes sense to also just go ahead and do Sorcery and Psionics as well since they share some major similarities from a mechanical standpoint. So here’s my collection of thoughts on the subject.
Psionics:
Psionics are a more measured and practiced form of magic in Hekinoe. The power of psionics comes from within the body of the manifester and is built up through training and discipline. It is also an extremely stable and reliable form of magic. Psionics is a skill that people train themselves in, it takes effort, but is really in the end and exercise of the will. The stronger the will, the stronger the effect.
I’ve already come up with a system for dealing with psionics before on my blog so I’ll basically just transcribe that and give it a bit of Hekinoe flavor.
So first off, Psionics in Hekinoe are currently based off of Pathfinder’s rules. So you have a ton of things that are very codified and laid out into classes and spell lists and all that. I hate that crap. It’s too rigid and it doesn’t feel right for Clint’s setting. I can break the basics of Psionics down into two effects.
One type of effect is the physical manifestations of psionics. Physical effects are things like throwing bolts of energy, telekinesis, creating force shields, creating giant crystal swords, teleportation, and so on and so forth. This is kept general to allow the player to have complete creative control over his character’s manifestations. It allows him to get creative with what he needs and not just rely on a spell list. This will be governed by a skill I’ll call Psionics: Physical for now.
The other type of psionics that you’ll see in Pathfinder are the mental based effects. These are your mind reading, mind control, telepathy, future reading, scrying, and such. Again, I’m just going to keep it general and lump them all together just for simplicity’s sake. The skill governing it will be called Psionics: Mental.
Both of these are based off their governing skills. These skills and powers can be enhanced with the use of stunts and possibly the Dresden Files RPG style “spells” where you basically just have a numbered amount of pre-written effects ready to go that gain a free boost. (I think it is governed by your skill rating in Dresden and I’d probably do the same here.
So mechanically speaking here’s how all of this works. You can use one of the Psionic skills to perform one of the four actions that you can use a skill for in Fate; Attack, Defend, Overcome, and Create an Advantage. Psionics is a tool like any other skill, and being magic it is a tool with a lot more uses. Basically you can use it in place of another skill by describing what you’re doing with it. Need to move a boulder but your Athletics skill sucks? Use Psionics: Physical instead with an Overcome action to telekinetically move the boulder out of the way. Fighting enemies at range and you don’t have a crossbow? Use it as an Attack to fling objects at people, or slam them into objects, or just hit them directly with something Pathfinder would describe as a Force Effect. Need to get past a guard? Psionics: Mental can allow you to have a bonus to convince them you’re not a bad dude, or you could just overpower their brain and take control of them for a bit. Fighting a big group of enemies? Why not force them to feel fear and panic at the sight of you? Or you could totally make them think you’re a dragon in disguise! The possibilities are endless.
I’m also a big fan of casters having the inherent ability to supercharge their spell casting by sacrificing something. Typically this is done via exertion or sacrifice of some type. For Hekinoe Psionics in Fate; what makes sense for me is inflicting Mental Stress in order to gain a boosted number of shifts. So similar to what I designed for Makass, a Psionic Manifester can take 1-shift of Mental Stress to gain a number of Shifts to their next spell up to their casting skill score. So say the character has a Psionics: Mental skill of 6; if the character takes 1 shift of Mental Stress he gains up to +6 Shifts to his next Psionics roll, which would really be a 12-shift baseline for the roll. (That sounds impressive, but we don’t know what the spell specifically is or what his opponent may have to counter such an action so it isn’t as broken as you might think initially)
Psionics is meant to be stable so there isn’t really a failure associated with it and I’m going to keep it that way as best as possible. It will also be limited to those races that have some type of psionic affinity… however I figure the races out…
Sorcery:
Oh Sorcery, you are a harsh mistress. I’m a fan of there being consequences for magic being used. It’s one of the best aspects of Hekinoe. I love reading about the spell backfires from some of the other campaigns that changed the course of the campaign world. Unfortunately D20 systems don’t like unreliable magic, it makes it necessary to have tables and a bunch of extra dice get rolled as you’re trying to cast and it has the potential to slow down gameplay along the way. Don’t get me wrong, I love the extra tables and dice. I’ve got an addiction like that. But it can appear intimidating to people unfamiliar with that type of thing.
Fortunately Fate is far more forgiving to an unreliable system.
So my vision for Hekinoe’s unreliable Sorcery starts off simply enough. Sorcery is more of an instinctual and “natural” form of magic. It can be used instinctively by certain races because it flows in their blood. In Pathfinder you have Spontaneous Spellcasters like Sorcerers and Bards who can cast their spells without any real training. Therefore there isn’t really a need for a split casting stat. So a single Skill of Sorcery to control the power and scope of spells seems appropriate to me.
Sorcery is a physically corrupting and unstable source of power. It is available to those who wish to learn about it and those whom are born with it. Being from a more instinctual and natural source and being physically corrupting tells me that in order to enhance the spells a person wielding sorcery would take Physical Stress in the same way a Psionic Character would take Mental Stress. These physical issues would manifest themselves in the typical ways, usually bodily corruption of some type.
“But what about the failure system?” you ask. Well, in order to cast a spell without some type of backlash affecting your character you probably need to roll some type of skill check to prevent the magic from getting out of control. A Control Skill would be the most obvious route to start with. This Skill would be useless for everything but allowing you to cast spells without destroying all of the oxygen in the room. The way I envision it working is that whenever you use the Sorcery Skill to cast a spell you have to roll a second time using your Control Skill. You need to get an equal number of Shifts with your Control Skill as you did on your Sorcery Skill otherwise “something bad” happens depending upon how badly you failed.
Basically you think of it as something like a reverse of the way that Fate’s successes work. If you get a higher Control roll than your Sorcery roll, nothing bad happens. If you Tie the roll I’m going to go with nothing bad happens but the spell may be lessened in effectiveness (for now). If you miss by only one or two shifts something bad happens, but it isn’t big, maybe the spell goes off but fails in a spectacular, but undamaging way. If you miss it by 3 or more shifts, then your spell fails and/or backfires in some way that’s nasty to everyone around you and is a perversion of what you were trying to accomplish.
How would these backlashes be determined? I don’t know, I’m going with GM caveat and whim right now. Maybe the tables could still be used, but that seems like a cop-out to me. My White Wolf background says that each backlash should be unique and cater to the nature of the spell and the person casting it similar to the way that Mage the Ascension dealt with Paradox.
I think I’d allow for Control Skill Checks to be enhanced in the same way that Sorcery Skill Checks are with similar effects.
I may want to enhance the core of Sorcery more using the Dresden Files RPG as a baseline to give it an advantage over the other two forms of magic to make up for it having a failure rate. Maybe I can add focus items and magic item slots to it. I’m also thinking of giving some type of extra boost, maybe when you boost it by sacrificing a stress level you gain an automatic +2 shifts and then add in your score, so that it is always just a little bit overpowered, but is also always a bit unstable as you pump more power into it.
Gifts:
Gifts are the ones I’m most concerned about since Karrak is kind of infused with these now. From the descriptions I’ve received about them, Gifts are essentially potential. They are will and desire given form and pour directly from the life energies of the Nel. The form they take is directly related to the Nel that is using the Gifts. Each has its own flavor and it will always take shape in a way that the Nel is connected to. (E.G. Andorian is all about Cold and Lightning and Storms and such therefore his Gifts manifest like that because it satisfies him at a level we can’t fathom.) There’s a lot more to it than that but I’m not comfortable going into the details without permission.
Gifts are a part of the being of those with them. They are truly instinctual and don’t fail the way Sorcery does. Gifts will have to use a single Skill in order to represent their use and there is no counter stat because they don’t fail like the other types of magic. There are catches though.
Gifts are tied directly to the Nel, first you must have sponsorship of one or be one yourself. It must be an essential part of your nature, so it seems like your High Concept would have to reflect this. Secondly, they are tied to the very essence of the one using the Gifts. They must take the form of things directly related to who the caster is. For example, Andorian is an Utenel Lastborn. His mind, according to descriptions his mind is a storm. It is a wild, swirling vortex of lightning, cold, wind, and such. Therefore his Gifts take the forms of lightning, cold, wind, and other such things. Potentially he has the ability to use any elements or styles of magic that he wishes, but that takes real effort and goes against his nature (which would probably be represented by forcing the use of a Fate Point to even make the attempt).
Gifts manifest themselves to those that can sense them as a general “feeling” of some type. Whenever they are used near another Nel, or those infused with the Gifts of one and they can sense each other. Each one has a unique description that shows the true essence of whom they are. The gifts within Karrak began themed around Andorian’s flavor of gifts. The cold and windy mountain peaks of Andorian were there, but something different was brought by Karrak. The mountains turned to gold and there were hints of other things coming as Karrak gained more power. Keroen remade his Gifts with a blank set that changed the flavor of his Gifts to Karrak’s own nature.
(This is just the description of what his Gifts currently feel like. They evolve as he gains more strength and absorbs more power:
There is a ship upon the sea. The smell of the open ocean, a hint of powder recently spent, and a light, brine filled mist. The ship is filled with life. A crew of indeterminate races, all of them looking brutal, animalistic, and savage; drunkenly sing and sway as they cheer their recent victory. Monkeys chatter and screech from the rigging, providing much entertainment to the crew. The ship plows through detritus floating on the surface. The remains of the enemies the ship has crushed, all the valuables stripped from them and now filling the hold. A lone figure wearing a Captain’s tricorn hat stands at the bow staring ahead, determined. Before the ship lay the Waterfall at the Edge of the World. There is no fear, only passion and determination as the winds suddenly pick up and carry the ship forward to its destiny.)
Looking at Karrak’s nature determines that his Gifts will be Pirate-like and based around what would be a sailor’s desires or essential being would be. Each of those lines in the description is based off of an essential piece of who he is. Each piece can be tapped to give him something to use against his foes.
Anyways, back to the mechanics. Gifts will end up working exactly like the other two categories. They just have more restrictions on how the effects take place. They must follow your character’s themes. If the GM determines that the effect you desire isn’t consistent with your character’s nature it will require a Fate point to attempt it. The caster can shape any thematically appropriate effect though by using said gifts. Stunts may enhance the specifics of the casting as well.
Because of the nature of Nel and their ties to their Gifts I think allowing them to use both Physical and Mental Stress tracks for boosting their casting ability seems appropriate to me.
Casting Restrictions and Stunts:
Now this could just be the game balance guy in me talking, but each of these sets of rules really seems to be very open to interpretation and potential abuse, especially Sorcery and Gifts. Maybe they need some type of restriction built into them, or maybe they don’t. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. For the time being I think I’m just going to keep it simple and freeform. Restrictions of some type could come later as required.
As for ways to enhance the casting of each of these types of magic I look towards Stunts to be the best way to do it. Generally speaking, a Stunt is used to enhance something that already exists, let you use a skill in a different way, or a whole variety of crazy things. I’m thinking we start with simple things, like Fire Magic Specialty: +2 to Sorcery Checks when casting fire based magic. Stabilized Sorcery: +2 to Control checks. Mind Control Expert: +2 to Psionic: Mental checks. Simple things like that are easy as hell. It’s when these turn into Stunt Trees that we’re going to have to put in the effort.
Maybe a character like Karl, the gunslinging mage who can cast spells through his gun, could have something like “Spellslinger: May use Sorcery instead of shoot skill for an Attack action when using his specially crafted revolvers. Normal Control rolls still apply, but with a +2 bonus.” Maybe one called “The guns give me a focus: +2 to control checks for spells/attacks cast through his gun”. A good one to start with as the basis for the Stunt tree might be “Gunslinginging Sorcerer: Karl may spend a Fate point once per scene to allow him to cast spells through a gun, giving him +2 to all sorcery checks with spells cast through said weapon for the remainder of the scene.”
So Karl’s Stunt tree would look like this: 1. Gunslinging Sorcerer => 2. Spellslinger => 3. The guns give me focus.
The first one on the tree, Gunslinging Sorcerer, basically an invoking of his High Concept combined with his magic and weapon. Mechanically it’s just a scene length bonus to his spellcasting abilities, but flavored to be through any gun. In my mind I am picturing that he’s investing whatever gun he has with some Sorcery, granting him temporary extra power due to the gun becoming an easier channel for him. Plus this can only work if he’s got a gun of some type in his hand.
The second one, Spellslinger, acknowledges that Karl is a craftsman and likes to cast spells through his gun. This lets him use any gun that he or someone like him has crafted specifically for casting spells through as a spell focus. This gives him the ability to work his attack magic through his gun, making it more stable in the process. Mechanically this is just giving him a specific item that boost his control skill for Attack actions using Sorcery, but thematically it adds flavor.
The third one is a thematically appropriate stacking effect on top of the previous two abilities. It implies that he is able to focus and maintain his magic because of the guns though.
Let’s say that he goes into combat and does what he’s supposed to do, which is shoot things with magic pistols. He spends a Fate point on his first turn to charge his father’s revolver with Sorcery and then shoots someone with it. He gets to take the shot using his Sorcery skill (let’s just call it a baseline of +5 for now, as opposed to his Shoot skill which is only a +2 or a +3), which is boosted by +2 now because of the first Stunt. He rolls his Fudge Dice and gets a +1, for a total of an 8 shift attack. Because he used his Sorcery skill he has to roll a Control check (we’ll say his control is a +4 baseline), so he starts off with his +4, adds in +2 for Spellslinger, and then an additional +2 for The guns give me focus for a baseline total of +8 prior to rolling the dice for the Control check. He has to not roll a -1 or below which gives him a 62% probability of success. Not bad at all.
And this isn’t even scratching the surface of the possibilities.
