GURPS Hekinoe Magic: Alchemy, Enchantment, and Other Stuff.

So like I said, I want to talk about some other stuff related to magic, especially stuff I haven't spoken of before. We'll start with alchemy. And we'll start with alchemy by discussing how it normally works. Actually, we started with alchemy like three or four weeks ago, but then I found more things to talk about and just kept writing and writing and writing. Someone please stop me.

Adjustable Spells

GURPS Thaumatology has an option called adjustable spells that I've decided is very appropriate for the way spells work in Hekinoe. There are two things you can do with this. The first is that you can pay 4 more energy to reduce the spell's casting time by 1 second (but not to 0). The second thing is that you can add enhancements to spells, similar to when you add them to advantages. So you could apply No Signature (+20%) to cast an invisible lightning bolt or fireball or you could choose Increase Range (2x, +10%) to change fireball's range of 25/50 to 50/100. The only issue is that spells modified this way cost 1 more energy and have -1 to effective skill level per +5% of enhancement. The extra energy used to speed up spells or modify them with enhancement does not count as as base energy for the spell, so it will likely lead to addition penalties to effective skill level due to exceeding base energy cost.

Adjusted Colleges

There are a lot of colleges in GURPS. 24 to be specific. Here's a list: air, animal, body control, communication and empathy, earth, enchantment, fire, food, gate, healing, illusion and creation, knowledge, light and darkness, making and breaking, meta, mind control, movement, necromantic, plant, protection and warning, sound, technological, water, and weather. DnD only has like eight or so. To be fair, the collections of spells in GURPS are way more fucking organized and sensible than in DnD. There doesn't seem to be a lot of organization in DnD in terms of what differentiates a conjuration spell from an evocation spell for instance. 

Anyway. 

I feel like there are too many colleges, especially since this newest system of sorcery in GURPS relies on buying the colleges rather than individual spells. In the chapter on sorcery in the campaign book, the in world justification for colleges, because there are no real spells per se, is to create common language between sorcerers to help them understand what they are talking about. So my purpose here is to reduce the amount of colleges that must be bought by characters that want a broad range of magical ability. Also, there's a lot of overlap in the weather college, all of its spells are either air or water spells already, so the weather college is completely gone. Also, metal spells are lumped into technological, and I feel they are more appropriately earth spells. So here are the new colleges and their contents: 

• Air: Air
• Body: Body Control, Healing
• Earth and Metal: Earth, Metal
• Enchantment: Enchantment
• Fire: Fire
• Flora and Fauna: Animal, Plant
• Food: Food
• Illusion and Creation: Illusion and Creation, Light and Darkness, Sound
• Knowledge: Knowledge
• Making and Breaking: Making and Breaking, Technological
• Meta: Meta
• Mind: Communication and Empathy, Mind Control 
• Necromantic: Necromantic
• Protection and Warning: Protection and Warning
• Transportation: Gate, Movement
• Water: Water
• Removed Colleges: Weather
• Removed Subcolleges: Divination, Plastic, Radiation

So that consolidates things just a little bit, making it a little bit more cost effective for generalists. 

Alchemy

Alchemy is an IQ based very hard skill with no defaults. So you need to have the skill to use it. Once you have the skill, you can make alchemy stuff. This typically requires the purchase of raw materials and doing various things to them over the course of several days, finally culminating in a skill check to see if you produced or did not produce a viable elixir of some kind. There's a list of like two or three dozen elixirs in GURPS Magic and an alchemist can produce any of them. The elixirs all modify your effective level with alchemy based on how difficult they are to create/how powerful they are. For instance, beast-speech is made using alchemy-1 and the resurrection elixir is made using alchemy-6. An alchemist can buy a technique for each elixir to offset their penalties to his skill level though. During the crafting process, an alchemist can make multiple doses of an elixir at once (at a penalty to his effective skill level) and there are several physical forms of elixir that can be made (potion, flammable powder, regular powder, or ointment). Some elixirs are restricted to being made in certain forms. The reanimation elixir, which lets you reanimate a corpse long enough to question it, can only be made in ointment form, for instance. Also, ew.

So that's a rough outline of how alchemy works in GURPS, let's talk about how it works in Hekinoe.

The first major thing is that alchemy is a Will based very hard skill with no defaults. As a side note, it also no longer functions as a default of chemistry. The second major thing is that Magery of at least level 0 is required to utilize the alchemy skill to produce elixirs. The reason for these changes is because the assumption in regular GURPS alchemy is that certain materials have magical essence that can be alchemically manipulated to create magical effects. In Hekinoe, an alchemist is using his willpower to guide and shape sorcerous energy into reagents that have symbolic meaning. In effect, the reagents and the cooking processes are the alchemist's equivalent of a sorcerer's mental constructs. Because alchemy involves the use of sorcerous energy, the region's unreliability penalty applies to a character's skill level when using the alchemy skill to craft elixirs. Because the assumption in GURPS Magic is that alchemy requires rare components, reduce the cost of raw materials for elixirs by 10%.

Elixirs will check for misfire when they are used on or by a target, not when the creation process is completed. The misfire level of an elixir is the effective skill level of the creator's alchemy skill when they crafted the elixir. Every week the elixir exists, roll against its misfire level. A failure on this check reduces the elixir's misfire level by one. In GURPS Magic, the various forms of elixirs have specific ways in which they lose their power, in an instance where an elixir would  lose its power normally (such as a potion being left uncapped for a day or mixed with another fluid) it automatically misfires.

Aside from those aspects, Hekinoe alchemy will work the same as it is described in GURPS Magic. As has been mentioned before, magic items explode when they misfire, this holds true for alchemical elixirs. Originally, I was going to dig through all the elixirs and find the relevant spells or effects they duplicate to figure out how much "energy" was in each of the elixirs, but many of them do not copy specific spells. They just do things. I came up with an alternate solution though. In GURPS, the suggested price of an enchanted item you buy in a store is $33. What I did was find the cost in raw materials for each elixir and divide that by 33 to come up with an "energy" amount for each elixir. These energy values will be used to determine how hard an elixir misfires.

Let's move to our next topic.

Blood Magic

This is more of a side note than anything else, as it is totally useless and impractical in The Known World, but it bears mentioning. In normal GURPS magic, casters use FP and have the option to use HP to pay the energy cost of casting spells. Because sorcerers in Hekinoe disperse some of the excess sorcerous energy from their spells by absorbing it into their bodies, this is an option for casters in Hekinoe. However, the amount of lingering energy in a sorcerer's body is very small, and accessing it is painful. It is only possible in areas of normal, high, and very high ambient sorcerous energy. The conversion rates are 3 HP/FP for 1 energy in very high regions, 6 for 1 in high regions, and 12 for 1 in normal regions. So it's very impractical in the first place and incredibly likely to kill you in regions of normal energy. Basically, you're using your ability to sense sorcerous energy, finding it in your body (or someone else's), and tearing it out with your will. Unliving casters, such as Fallen and Soulless, are immune to this. This practice is known of in The Known World, but it's basically useless due to the amount of sorcerous energy present on the continent. I mean, hypothetically speaking, if there were sorcerer prisons deep beneath Serethnem which Kusseth accesses via a super secret underground railroad of pain and suffering overseen by Brasscoats, sorcerers in such a completely hypothetical prison that find themselves cut off from sorcerous energy because they've been entombed in a blackstone pyramid older than time, might find a use for it. Too bad such a place is completely hypothetical.

Ceremonial Magic

Ceremonial magic is used for two things in GURPS, group spells and enchanting. Spellcasters are allowed to use it on their own if they are enchanting. I'm not going to outline how it works normally, because that system is completely pointless in Hekinoe. Normal GURPS forces spellcasters to rely on their own FP to power spells and the level of mana in the area immediately restores a portion of that energy. In Hekinoe, magic is completely external. This means the main benefit of ceremonial magic, increasing the amount of FP a caster has for casting a spell, is irrelevant. But I want to keep ceremonial group castings in Hekinoe. In regular GURPS, non-casters and bystanders can also add their energy to a spell, but that's stupid.

So what's the goal with ceremonial magic in Hekinoe? I want there to be an element of increased power as well as an element of increased stability. I do want to keep the feature of ceremonial magic taking ten times longer than the spell being cast normally does. I am going to remove the whole thing about enchantment using ceremonial magic. With individual sorcerers being able to command butt tons of sorcerous energy in The Known World, the penalties association with using ceremonial magic to enchant items make it super pointless and impractical. It's a thing that could happen, but there's no reason for it to come into practice in The Known World.

The way I see it working is the group of casters sort of attempt to synch up their minds and form a sort of collective. The easiest way to do this is via the telepathy spell, but it can be achieved via a successful meditation check from each participant. Meditation defaults to Will-6 and autohypnosis-4. This method takes longer, one minute per participant.

These collectives are basically a group of casters working together to make a spell, so there's no real leader. There might be a leader in the sense that someone is guiding the process and declaring the goal to be dropping the biggest fireball ever on Kusseth City, but it's more like an assembly line. Because of this, there are several aspects of ceremonial magic that are an average of all the participants. The averaged aspects are the Will of the participants, the Magery level of the participants, and the level at which they purchased the college of the spell they wish to cast. The level at which they purchased the skill refers to attribute+1, attribute-1, etc. Each of these aspects will be rounded up.

Let's look at an example with a fireball spell.

So we have three casters. They have a Will of 14, 12, and 16. They have Magery levels of 2, 3, and 6. They know the fire college at attribute+0, +1, and +3. So the collective has a Will of 14, a Magery level of 4, and a fire college level of attribute+2. So the collective's base effective skill level with fire college spells is 18. With fireball, its base skill level is 13 (due to the three prerequisite spells of fireball and the -2 due to The Known World's unreliability.

I jumped the gun here, there are more modifiers. For every participant that has a Will of 13+, increase the Will of the collective by +1. For every participant with a Magery level of 3+, increase the Magery level of the collective by +1. For every participant that bought the relevant college at attribute+3, increase the base level of the collective's college skill by +1. With all this factored in to the above example, the collective has a Will of 16, a Magery level of 6, and knows the fire college at attribute+3. Which changes things to a base fire college skill level of 22 and a base skill level of 17 with fireball.

One more thing needs to be averages. I spoke of a technique last post, one that neutralizes penalties to skill level due to exceeding the base energy of a spell, extending if for additional durations, etc. If any participant possesses such a technique, average the value that it is possessed by all participants and round up. So one participant doesn't have it, another knows it at default+2, and the third knows it at default+5. This means the collective knows the Sorcerous Stabilization technique at default+3.

Because there are several minds working on different parts of the spell to make it stable and disperse excess energy and that sort of thing, each participant negates one -1 to effective skill level from exceeding minimum energy, extended duration, etc.

Casting times are ten times longer with ceremonial magic. So a normal maxed out fireball spell would take three seconds. Casting it ceremonially would take 30 seconds. However, the effective skill level of the collective does modify casting time. This doesn't affect the casting time of the collective we are currently using as an example, but one with an effective skill with fireball of 20, rather than 17, would only take 15 seconds to cast it ceremonially.

To be fair, that doesn't seem that beneficial. The third set of statistics, 16, 6, and attribute+3, actually has a fire college skill level of 22 and a base skill level of 17 with the fireball spell and has the Sorcerous Stabilization technique at default+5. So he alone is as competent as the collective.

The problem is that I've used fireball as an example. Fireball is really too simple of a spell to be cast using ceremonial magic. We've also used a very small group of casters with wildly different statistics. If we take a more modifiable spell, like rain of fire, which is an area spell and one with a duration that can be extended, and we take a larger group of casters with attributes that are closer together, the benefits of ceremonial casting become much more stark.

That single caster has a base skill level of 18 with rain of fire (-2 from prerequisite spells, -2 from sorcerous energy). If that single caster, we'll call him Kn'otnak Man'der, chose to cast the 2d-2 burning damage per second version of rain of fire, he could cast it on a 5 yard radius area with the -5 from increased energy cost immediately negated by his Sorcerous Stabilization technique. The base duration is one minute (for a total of 120d-120 burning damage in 2d-2 increments) though. If he wanted it to go for two minutes, he'd immediately generate -5 from increased energy (the spell costs the same to maintain as it does to initially cast), and another -1 from extending the duration. His effective skill to extend the duration would be 12 instead of 18. If he and say 12 other casters were holed up in a secure place casting it as a collective, he'd have a little bit more wiggle room to keep it going and make it larger, especially if the other members of the collective were as skilled as he is.

So that's how ceremonial magic works in GURPS The Known World. In other areas of Hekinoe, it will be slightly different, but the fact that sorcerous energy is so plentiful in The Known World makes those differences irrelevant.

Enchantment

There are two types of enchantment, the kind that uses actual enchantment college spells to enchant an item, and the item version of some spells that allow you to create an item that duplicates the spell's effect (such as the wand or staff you can create for 800 energy and a $400 ruby that casts the fireball spell when powered). Some enchanted items have passive effects that are always on, others are activated effects that cost energy and duplicate a spell. Enchanted items that have activated effects must have a powerstone integrated into them or they cannot function. Well, they can, but a sorcerer would need to channel sorcerous energy into them, which is of minimal benefit since they could cast the spell themselves. There is one benefit though, activating an enchanted item has no ritual component like casting a spell might.

All of the rules outlined for enchanted items and their creation and using them outlined in GURPS Magic operate as normal. Enchanted items have a power rating, the GM makes all the creation rolls for the player, they don't become cursed on really bad rolls, but they do become wonky.

Just as with spells, the misfire level of a magic item is the effective level of the creator's spell that creates it. Each enchantment on an item has a separate misfire level. Enchanted items check for misfire when they are used, but no more than once per minute. So a weapon with the accuracy enchantment checks for misfire when you attack with it, but you probably only have to check for misfire once during a battle. . Every week an enchanted item exists, roll against its misfire level, failure on this roll reduces the misfire level of the enchantment by one. Additionally, the misfire level of enchanted items is modified by the material being enchanted. It's a range of -2 to +2, with materials like glass and paper being -2 and materials like wolf-iron being +2. The material also modifies how often the enchantment checks for misfire.

Blah blah blah, misfires, explody, boom. There is more to enchanting but for some reason I wrote the actual mechanics in the campaign book instead of outlining it here. Most of the rules are already in place anyways, so it would kind of just be retyping pre-existing material. I'd like to talk about how enchanted items are made rather than how they break. The only real change I made was that the exploding enchantment must deal enough damage to destroy the object it is on before it can deal damage to anyone else. I don't think I've specified it before, but if an enchanted item is broken, the enchantments on it automatically misfire.

There are two ways objects are enchanted in GURPS, slow and steady enchantment and quick and dirty. These methods both exist in GURPS Hekinoe, but the rules outlined here replace those in GURPS Magic. Regardless of which method you use, enchanting is an exhausting process. The enchanter expends 1 FP per hour spent enchanting.

Enchanting an object is basically investing an object with so much focused sorcerous energy that you carve your mental construct of what you want the spell to do into the object on the atomic level. Or something more magical sounding. Heh.

Quick and dirty enchantment is precisely that, quick and dirty. It's faster, but slightly more unreliable. Basically, you just dump energy into the item and its enchantment. You're focusing on speed here, not super stable casting. This allows an enchanter to dump energy equal to his Magery level into the enchantment process every minute. However, once the item is completed, there is a -2 penalty to the enchantment's misfire level.

The other method, slow and steady, takes significantly longer. You're slowly and steadily feeding energy into the object to give the enchantment permanence and solidity. This method allows the enchanter to dump energy into the spell equal to his Magery level each hour. This makes the process lengthy, but grants a +1 bonus to the enchantment's misfire level after it is completed.

Shadow Magic

Shadow magic/sorcery is a thing. The Shadowlands/Land of Shadows/Nychtemihar/etc are the only true plane that exists in my universe. There are planes, which I call realms or adjacent realms to be difficult, but they are fleeting and not permanent cosmological fixtures like those we think of from DnD. Nel/Immortal holdings fade when the Nel/Immortal dies or is weakened. Sorcerer's can create little realms, but because misfire, those are unlikely to persist forever. The Shadowlands are permanent. They are where shadow sorcery comes from. Shadow magic is the act of using sorcerous energy to pull shadowstuff from The Shadowlands to do stuff with it. Typically this involves various forms of attack and defense, summoning allies made of shadowstuff, etc.

In previous versions of the GURPS Hekinoe magic rules, this was an advantage based system that relied upon having a connection to sorcerous energy to activate it. I may continue to use that system. Or not. I honestly don't know. The other route to do it is to make a shadow college of spells. This college would basically duplicate spells found in other colleges, but modify them in specific ways. This route would be easier on the player, somewhat, but more difficult on my end because I have to dig through all the spells, which there are lots of. Then I'd have to modify them and recalculate their energy costs and such. Which actually isn't that hard.

Sorcerous Constructs

In the Pathfinder version of Hekinoe, it was easy to resolve issues of the summon type spells. In Pathfinder, these spells summon a creature from elsewhere to do your bidding. Since Hekinoe has no planes, the way to resolve this was to simply say these summon spells were creating a creature from the caster's imagination and it was composed of pure magic. This required no real alteration to the way anything worked in Pathfinder and amounted to a cosmetic change. In GURPS Hekinoe, we have to get a little more involved. In GURPS there are a variety of summon spells (elemental, demon, etc). These no longer exist. The summon beast spells are a bit different, and are unchanged because they use magic to call an already existing creature from the environment to the sorcerer's side. 

So after we've removed the inappropriate spells, we need to create a new spell. We'll call it create sorcerous construct. This spell is based on the removed summon spells. Most of them cost 1 energy per 10 character points and have an hour duration, so I've used that as a base for this spell. 

Basically, the spell costs 1 energy per 10 characters points that the sorcerous construct has. The base value of the spell is considered to be the value of the sorcerous construct meta-trait. So exceeding that carries the normal penalty. The base duration of the spell is for an hour, and it costs half of what it cost to cast it to maintain it. The create sorcerous construct is an illusion and creation spell and it has six prerequisite spells from that college, meaning at its base it will have a -6 modifier to your effective skill level when casting it. It will have additional prerequisites, potentially, for enhancing the creature with certain abilities (for instance granting it fire related abilities will add create fire to its list of prerequisite spells). 

The current value of the meta-trait is 15 character points, so it costs 2 energy to create. This assumes a bipedal creature with a value of 10 for all its basic attributes, no personality or empathy, and no real special abilities beyond the innate abilities garnered from being made out of sorcerous energy (mainly resistance to injury and various living weaknesses).

I cannot sorcery anymore. I have been poking and prodding and writing and researching on an almost daily basis since the previous post appeared. There's still more to discuss, but I need to take a break. 

GURPS Hekinoe Magic: Really? We're Doing This Again?

The answer is yes, yes we are definitely doing this again. There's a not completely ridiculous reason for it though, and I'm not changing that much from the previous iteration. Am I? I don't even know at this point.

First point, in previous versions of this system I've bounced between having sorcery and spells be Will based and IQ based and in the last version I did (IQ+Will)/2. Which is dumb. In GURPS Will is a score derived from IQ. However, Will is much cheaper to improve than IQ is. It takes 20 points to increase IQ and 5 to bump Will up by one. I'm going to follow a suggestion in GURPS Thaumatology and say that spells are based on your Magery level and (Will/2)+5. This makes it somewhat less cost effective for a player to jam points into Will, but still ensures you'll be able to have a decent base skill level with spells.

Previous versions of Hekinoe's magic used additional misfire checks when casting spells. I've come to the realization that that is unnecessary and overly clunky. In GURPS you already make a check to see if you cast the spell, and there are such things as critical failures and successes when casting spells. One of the limitations I've grown extremely fond of is Radically Unstable Magery from GURPS Thaumatology. The gist is that when you fail to cast a spell, it is automatically a critical failure. This limitation comes in three flavors. The first is that you can make a stabilization roll to see if you have the skill to turn a botched spell into a harmless failure. The second is that you get no stabilization roll, all failures are automatically critical failures. The third is the same as the second, except that you roll three times on the critical failure chart and the GM picks what he things is the worst option.

I've said before that one of my design guidelines with magic in Hekinoe is that I want it to be clunky and unwieldy. This is partly to simulate how fucking difficult it is to wield in Hekinoe. I've come to a realization though that the Radically Unstable Magery limitation more than satisfies what I need for my misfires and whatnot, and it doesn't require adding an additional check to the game. 

Looking at Radically Unstable Magery, if we change the language from critical failure to misfire, we've got our misfire checks built right into the system of casting spells. We can also, instead of creating charts and tables going over energy usage and the region of Hekinoe having a effective misfire skill, simply apply penalties to effective skill when casting spells. All we need to do now is use my misfire charts instead of the GURPS critical failure charts. 

Let's poke around with ambient sorcery levels and the effects they have on the continents. I have a table.

Yup. That is definitely a cropped screenshot of a spreadsheet. Don't judge me.  

You may be asking yourself what does that mean? And why is it so small? Let's give you some context. The ambient sorcerous energy levels of The Known World are very high (which is synonymous with very fucked). Fresgulen, which is the continent closest to The Known World, has high levels, Orcunraytrel has normal levels, and Inception has very low levels.

So when a hypothetical sorcerer, we'll call him Karl, casts a fireball spell in The Known World and has a skill level of 16 with the fireball spell, it gets an additional -2 penalty to effective skill level due to all the fucking magic trying to scoot through him into the world. Karl has to divert attention and energy to managing that sorcerous energy, so it is harder for him to cast spells. If he fails to cast a spell, it automatically misfires, regardless of what he rolls on his check. Karl also has mutations because he diverts some of that sorcerous energy away from his spells and into his flesh. Magic items he creates will also periodically explode.

If Karl went to Orcunraytrel for instance, he'd only have access to 10 energy for spells each round. He'd also stop developing mutations and could try to stabilize his failed spells. He'd also never have to worry about his enchanted items exploding.

There are two boons to having such fucked up magic in The Known World. Karl basically has unlimited energy to cast spells with. Most spells limit how much energy you can dump into them by your Magery advantage level. So if Karl has Magery 3, he can still only dump three energy per round into his fireball. However, some spells that would normally require multiple casters or a single caster dumping energy into a spell or item over a long period of time, don't in The Known World. FYI, I'm probably going to change infinite to something less insane but still ridiculously high like 100, rather than infinite. This is because I'm suddenly envisioning Karl rapid fire casting great wish all the live long day. This also means that because magic is so fucking prevalent, it makes enchanted items and devices easier to produce, reducing the costs of such things. I also just came up with an additional column about the recharge rate of powerstones. It's somewhat irrelevant to this conversation though, because this conversation is primarily about The Known World and powerstones aren't used for much more than powering enchanted items in The Known World.

So when do you apply more penalties to effective skill level with a spell? My whole concept of sorcery in Hekinoe works under the assumption that the majority of the spells in GURPS Magic exist, and if they were too unreliable due to excessive energy costs, they couldn't exist. So there's no penalty for the base amount of energy spent on a spell, but energy amount does affect misfire. So you apply a -1 to your effective skill level with a spell when you exceed the base amount of energy needed to cast the spell, and an additional -1 for exceeding further multiples of the spell's base energy cost. Base energy means one of two things: the lowest amount of energy necessary to cast the spell, or your Magery level for spells that allow you to put energy into a spell based on your Magery. Whichever is higher is considered the "base" amount needed to cast the spell. Let's return to Karl and his fireball.

As previously stated, Karl is casting fireball and has a base skill level of 16 with that spell. He gets a -2 to effective skill level due to The Known World's sorcerous energy levels, dropping it to 14 (which is still a respectable 90.7% chance of doing it right. Fireball lets you dump energy into it up to your Magery level each second for a maximum of three seconds before you complete casting it and hurl it. Karl's Magery is 3. Fireball deals 1d burning damage per energy spent on it, so Karl could throw a 3d fireball with a skill level of 14. If he dumped 1 - 3 more energy into it on the second turn, that would exceed the base amount needed to cast the spell and would impose an additional -1 penalty to effective skill level. If he decided to go three full turns at max energy input, he'd be casting a 9d burning fireball with an effective skill level of 12, which is only a 74.1% chance of success. Then he'd have to use the Innate Attack skill to throw it.

As another example, lets look at the extinguish fire spell (which Karl has a base skill level of 16 with), which is an area spell. Area spells have a base size of 1 yard, and casting extinguish fire costs 3 energy. Area spells can be customized, but it costs more energy. You simply multiply the base cost by the number of yards the area is going to be. So Karl's base cost for a 1 yard extinguish fire is 3, so basically he'll have an additional -1 penalty to effective skill level with extinguish fire for every yard after the first he wants to extinguish fires in. It looks like all area spells will operate a similar way.

Spells also become more unreliable the longer they exist. This is mostly only relevant to enchanted items and sorcerously created creatures and objects. Many spells have a specific duration that can be extended via more energy. With a spell that can be maintained, you basically roll against your effective skill level as if you were casting it again when you maintain it. Every duration after the first imposes a cumulative -1 to your effective skill level though, and you also have the issue of exceeding the minimum energy needed to cast the spell.

Let's look at Karl and the resist cold spell, which he has a base skill of 16 with. Resist cold has a duration of 1 minute and costs 2 energy to cast and can be maintained for 1 energy. Karl is in The Known World, so his skill level automatically drops to 14. He casts it successfully though. One minute later, he is still cold, so he maintains it, which gives him a second minute and exceeds the base energy to cast it. He rolls as if casting it again, but has a -1 for exceeding the base duration and another -1 for exceeding the base energy cost, so he's at an effective skill level of 12. He succeeds. He finds he needs a third minute, so he rolls as if casting it again and pays to maintain it. He only gets the -1 for the additional duration this time though, as his total additional energy cost is at 2. If he were to try to eke out another minute from it, he'd exceed the multiple of the base cost and get the -1 from energy expenditures plus the -1 from a fourth duration from the spell.

There will be a technique that may be purchased that reduces the penalties to effective skill level from the various conditions described above. Regardless of how high a character purchases it, there will always be a -2 to effective skill level due to the ambient sorcerous energy levels of The Known World. 

Ok, so that's all fairly minor and basically just makes casting spells slightly less clunky than previous versions of magic in Hekinoe. Let's get to the major change. The one I really want to talk about. Are you ready for this? Here goes:

Magic isn't a taught skill.

Breathe with me now. It took me a long time to accept that fact, and it contradicts much of what I've written in previous posts about magic on this blog, but it's true. I've accepted it. You should too. Ok, magic isn't a taught skill. We've accepted it, together, and bonded over the subject. We're moving on, together, into a future of bright suns and magic that is not learned in a book.

That said, I wouldn't call it intuitive, and we're certainly not talking about inborn magical bloodline DnD Sorcerers here. There are definitely aspects of magic that can be, and are, taught. Learning to sense sorcerous energy, learning to identify types of effects and purposes and stuff. There are techniques that can be taught to focus your will and to disperse sorcerous energy from spells. So yeah, there is a bunch of stuff that can be learned, but the actual spells themselves are not taught, because they aren't something that can be taught. Spells are based on the caster's focus and willpower and their ability to have a solid image of what they are trying to achieve with sorcerous energy. The way I see it is the sorcerer constructs a mental construct that symbolically means "I want to achieve X" and when he calls on sorcerous energy, he dumps energy into it and it either does what he wants or shatters the mold because his will was too weak or the goal wasn't visualized and solidified by his willpower enough. When a sorcerer casts a spell, he isn't running complex algorithms of energy expenditure and the square root of fuck off. He's thinking really fucking hard and focusing his will and imagination into a blade to shave off a chunk of infinite energy that he dumps into a template forged by his willpower for the sorcerous energy to follow to create something.

This might present some issues when we talk about identifying the magic of other sorcerers and such. If spells and the casting and crafting of them is symbolic in nature, how can sorcerers identify the spells of others? How can they work together on a big project? Simple. The sorcerous energy acts as a translator. Actually, think of it like different types of currency and the sorcerous energy itself is a currency exchange place. That might sound preposterous, but we're talking about magic here. So what does this mean for buying spells? It means that each college of magic is treated as a wildcard skill. Which means that each college is treated as a very hard skill that costs triple the normal cost. So buying the Earth and Metal College at attribute-3 costs 3 points and buying it at attribute+0 costs 24 points. Attribute in this situation refers to (Will/2) + 5 + Magery level. Using magic as a wildcard skill does impose a frustrating penalty on spellcasters. That penalty is a -1 to effective skill for every prerequisite spell a spell has. In normal GURPS rules, mid and high tier spells often have prerequisite spells or advantages required before you can learn and cast them. The advantages are usually a certain level of Magery, and those will still be required to cast spells. 

So once again, we'll return to Karl and his fireball spell and his base skill level of 16.  GURPS Magic has a handy table in the tail end of it that lists all spells alphabetically and lists their location in the book, what kind of spell they are (melee, missile, area, etc), what college they belong to, their duration, the energy they need to cast, how long they take to cast, any advantage prerequisites they have, and finally how many prerequisite spells they have. So we look at fireball and see that it has 3 prerequisite spells (create fire and shape fire, which both have ignite fire as a prerequisite). So Karl's base skill level of 16 with fireball is modified by -2 for The Known World's onslaught of sorcerous energy, and an additional -3 for how many prerequisite spells it has. This drops his effective skill level with it to 11. This penalty to effective skill level due to prerequisite spells represents the difficulty a sorcerer has when casting complex spells with lots of working parts. When Karl casts fireball, it is more complex than igniting flammable materials (ignite fire), simply creating fire and letting it do what it wants (create fire), and shaping a fire to conform to his wishes (shape fire) each are alone. It combines elements of all three at the same time, so his mental construct is going to be more complex and he's going to have to direct more energy in more ways.

Don't worry. I have more bad news.

Because spells are not a learned thing, there is a cap on how high you can buy each college of magic. Don't get me wrong, you can get better at shaping the energy and that sort of thing and can become more accustomed to the rigors of spellcasting, so there is some wiggle room for improvement. But not enough wiggle room that you can start buying colleges as attribute+5 and whatnot. The cap on how high you can buy each college is attribute+0. 

Now I have good news.

Shaping and casting spells is primarily about mental focus and having a rock solid picture of your goal, half-assed or fuzzy mental constructs are going to get wrecked. Because of this, characters with the Visualization advantage increase the cap on how high they can buy the colleges by +1. So attribute+1. You don't get it for free, it's a permission the advantage grants you. Additionally, each college has a skill tied to it that does the same thing if you have a base skill level of 15 in that spell. These two permissions stack, potentially allowing for the purchase of a college up to attribute+2. For instance, the fire college is tied to the explosives (demolitions or fireworks) skill, the mind control college is tied to either the brainwashing or the hypnotism skill. This all represents practical knowledge related to the college improving your understanding of what that college is about, which improves your ability to create solid mental constructs to fill with sorcerous energy.

So lets return to fire spells and now we'll say that Karl is into demolitions and has a base skill level of 15 in Explosives (Demolitions) and the Visualization advantage and has purchased his fire college all the way up to attribute+2. Let's say Karl has a Will of 14 and he still has Magery 3, so we're looking at Fire College - 17 for Karl's fire spells. If we factor in the fucked up magic of The Known World, we're looking at 15. If we're talking about casting a fireball, we're looking at an effective skill of 12, or a 74.1% chance of successfully fireballing his enemies. With his Magery 3, he'll be able to hit them with 3d of burning damage, with an average of 11 damage. Assuming no magic of fire specific protections, that has a reasonable chance of fucking a bro up. Or at least making them think about life and wish they'd gone to college instead of trying to rob the shit out of this fucking gunslinging sorcerer in a bowler hat.

Unfortunately we run into a slight problem when we talk about spells like flaming armor (you wreathe yourself in flames, with the usual type of effects). With all the information listed above, Karl's skill would be 8 (because flaming armor has 7 prerequisite spells). Even if Karl has Magery 4 (a suggested cap for most game worlds), His skill would only be 9. Which is a 37.5% chance of success. In previous versions of this stuff, I've allowed Magery to go up to 7. Were Karl to somehow be the most powerful sorcerer in Hekinoe and have Magery 7 (only one character has Magery 7 in this previous iteration of the rules), he'd still only have an effective skill level with flaming armor of 14.

Flaming armor and fireball are small fries though. Move terrain, which kind of allows a sorcerer to go Kandor on an area, has 29 prerequisite spells. Enlarge other, which increases the targets size modifier based on the energy spent on the spell, has 17 prerequisite spells. Reflex, which is kind of like the quicken spell metamagic feat, has 16 prerequisites.

So we see here that we have a shit ton of higher tier spells that are going to leverage extremely high penalties for casting them, plus the pre-existing and fairly minor penalty from The Known World's sorcerous energy, plus more penalties for making spells bigger, deadlier, and longer. We also have the issue of radically unstable Magery and all these penalties to effective skill level causing misfires to be excessively likely. This is something I've been gnawing on for days now and I have some options. My goal isn't to make spellcasting impossible, or two create additional options to negate all these difficulties. My goal here is to make it so the GURPS rules accurately represent Hekinoe's magic and how it works. So, onto options for reducing these penalties and making it functional but still accurate to my mental picture of Hekinoe.

The first is to allow Magery to get to excessive levels. As previously stated, it is suggested that campaigns use a Magery cap of 4 or 5 levels. I've gone with 7 for The Known World in previous versions of this discussion. Capping Magery at 15 would make the lives of sorcerers a lot easier. Most high tier spells end up with 10 - 15 prerequisite spells. Spells like move terrain seem to be rarities. So a character with a Will of 14 or higher would have a decent shot at negating prerequisite penalties and casting spells successfully. The problem then becomes Karl shooting off a 15d (average of 53 damage) fireball in one second in a game world where most creatures have 13 - 20  hit points and have to start making HT rolls to remain conscious after 10 - 15 damage.

The second option is to create a technique that lets you buy off the prerequisite penalties for spells, but doesn't increase your effective skill level with them, just neutralizes the penalties. Which is what techniques do. But techniques aren't meant to be used every time you do something. They're meant to buy off penalties for when you try to do something specific under equally specific circumstances with a skill, not be used all the time in place of the skill.

The third option is to remove the restriction on how high you can buy the college skills. I don't want to. It also makes each college of spells into a massive points sink if you're trying to use skill level to neutralize prerequisite penalties. To buy the fire college at attribute+3 to neutralize the prerequisite penalties for fireball would cost 60 character points total. Whoa. Attribute+10 would be 144 character points. It's not practical and isn't what I want to do.

The fourth option, which is really just option three point five, is to create more criteria that allow for colleges to be purchased at higher levels, but that runs into the same excessive cost thing as option the third. This could be ameliorated somewhat by reducing the cost of the colleges to a very hard skills with double the cost, or even just the regular cost. The actual wildcard magic guidelines lump all colleges into one single magic skill, which offers a shit ton of utility even at three times the cost of a normal very hard skill.

The fifth option is to fuck off and play Fallout 4 for six to ten hours.

The sixth option is to drink scotch until my life makes sense again.

The seventh option, which looks promising, is to drink scotch and combine elements of options one and four. So let's talk about that option.

I think I'm ok with saying that Magery caps at 10 levels. Depending on which points total we use for character creation, characters could start with a Magery level of 1 - 3 and have the option of purchasing Magery up to level 6 with character points gain from adventuring or downtime learning. Magery levels of 7 - 9 would need to be gained via character points accrued during downtime learning. Similar to the previous version of this stuff, there would be one character on Hekinoe with Magery 10. To be able to learn Magery 10 you would have to have him teach you. 

There are 24 colleges of magic, so reducing the points cost of each college to that of a normal very hard skill, instead of three times normal like a wildcard skill would be more expensive than lumping them all into one Magic! wildcard skill. I may combine the colleges somewhat, as there is a bit of overlap between them, specifically the air college and the weather college. Regardless of how many colleges there are going to be, we're going to go with each college skill being a very hard skill, rather than a wildcard skill. I'm also going to say that the colleges default to one another at -4. This would allow characters to focus on a few colleges with their character points, but still be able to do whatever with magic. It would just be harder because they're unaccustomed to shaping and guiding sorcerous energy to do those things. So if Karl had a base skill level of 16 with the fire college, but hadn't bought the necromantic college, he could still try and cast some necromancy, he'd just have a -2 from ambient sorcerous energy in The Known World, -4 from inexperience with necromancy bullshit, plus the prerequisite penalty for any spell he tries to cast. It'll be difficult, but he can do it. 

Interlude: I just took a look at the weather college, it's complete bullshit. Every spell in it appears in the air or water college. So the weather college is gone and we're down to 23 colleges. Woo for consolidation! I might decide to lump the body control and healing colleges together. We'll see though.

Back to business. The maximum at which you can buy each college skill is still attribute+0. But there are three advantages that allow you to increase that cap by +1 for each that you possess. Those advantages are Unfazeable (because it kind amounts to you not freaking out about weird things, like an endless sea of magic trying to shove its way through you like bad Mexican food you bought at a gas station of three in the morning), Versatile (because it means you are skilled at using your mind to imagine things differently than they are), and Visualization (because it means you are skilled at seeing things as you want them to be). So if you have all three, you are allowed to purchase each college up to attribute+3. Additionally, each of the 23 colleges will be tied to a regular skill. Characters that have a base level of 15 in that skill increase how high they can buy that college by +1. Characters that have a base level of 16 in that skill increase how high they can buy the college by another +1. So with all that piled together, you could purchase a college at attribute+5. 

Ok, so that's a rough outline of some changes I'm making to Hekinoe sorcery. I'll probably post a bit more on this topic. There won't be any real changes to the way enchanted items operate, but I would like to kind of outline alchemy at some point since I haven't done it before. Wee!

Fendojon Part -1: Reboot

So I'm scrapping the whole Fendojon/Hekinoe in 5th Edition thing I was going to do. There are a few specific reasons for this, so I'll explain.

One of the things I really want to do, eventually, is run a campaign in Hekinoe using GURPS. That's the dream. One delaying factor to this is setting up a complete campaign book. It's not hard per se, it's just time consuming. Which is why it takes so long. 

One of the things I really like to do is tweak rules and systems so they make more sense to me or better fit my concept of what the rules or world should be. I'm kind of good at it and I heartily enjoy coming up with all the rough drafts and slightly more finalized versions of tweaks and whatnot. This is why I considered pushing the Hekinoe octagonal peg into the 5th Edition square hole for a campaign for my other gaming group. Because it was fun to see if I could make if fit by hammering and brute force alterations to the rules. Sort of a challenge to myself of sorts. 

And I did make it fit. To be fair, I had to modify the background material slightly to fit with what I wanted to do with 5th Edition and Hekinoe, but I was confident I was going to make it all work and finalize it all. But it was going to require some work and some time.

The problem with that is that if I'm going to put forth a bunch of effort on gaming, especially modification of rules and whatnot, shouldn't it be towards my final goal of converting Hekinoe to GURPS and completing the campaign book? I feel like it should be. It feels somewhat immoral to be focusing in on Hekinoe and 5th Edition when I am taking so fucking long on GURPS Hekinoe. Feels like I'm cheating on myself or something here. 

The quickest solution to this would be to just say we're all playing GURPS Fendojon, fuck 5th Edition. But I don't really feel right doing that. This group's preferred system appears to be DnD versions, and GURPS books are expensive and I don't really like the idea of giving everyone a bunch of pdfs, because I like GURPS/Steve Jackson Games, and want to continue to support them with my financial contributions. There's also a somewhat significant time investment factor in learning a completely alien system when you've only just familiarized yourself with a DnD system.  Plus, I kinda like 5th Edition. Excluding Pathfinder, it's probably one of my favorite versions of DnD. It's less "every class is a carbon copy of every other class" than 4th Edition, lighter on rules and modifiers in a good way than 3.5, and it is way more streamlined than 2nd Edition. 

So I don't feel right forcing GURPS on this group. I don't feel right spending extensive time and energy on forcing a piece of Hekinoe into 5th Edition. I also don't feel right using a system that needs such heavy modification to accommodate Hekinoe/Fendojon. If you're going to use a system, it should first and foremost be one you like to run and your players enjoy playing, but it should also be able to fit your world into it without mangling the system's rules or changing your world to fit into the confines of the ruleset. It should all fit together. 

So where does that leave me? I need to scrap Fendojon and run something in 5th Edition designed for 5th Edition, or just give up DMing for this group. I would really like to DM for this group, and I do enjoy 5th Edition, so I think it might be something worth doing to create a 5th Edition campaign. But that kind of puts us right back where we started with putting effort and energy into a campaign instead of working on the GURPS Hekinoe campaign book, which is my Gnomish life quest. 

So what we need to do here is come up with a campaign that utilizes 5th Edition rules in their mostly unmodified form, and uses traditional background elements in their mostly unmodified form. So don't create an entirely different mechanic for casting spells, completely change the way armor and AC work, don't create all new races, etc. Keep the tropes of elves living in forests and being generally good, orcs and goblinoids being generally evil, dragons are powerful, etc. If I maintain those guiding principles, it's basically just plugging in new names in every fantasy trope that has come before. Obviously I'll need to play with some ideas to make sure that I find the campaign compelling and enjoy running it. There's no sense creating and running something I am apathetic about. 

I dunno. We'll see. If more develops, I'm sure I'll yammer about it here. Actually, I already have some ideas that I kind of like involving the map of The Outlands from 2nd Edition and elements of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series. Kind of. 

Alternate Rules: Werebear Archetype

So I'm really fond of two classic monster: vampires and werecreatures. I lean more towards werecreatures than the undead. There's something about them I really like. I think it's mostly the whole primal bestial rage kind of thing. I dunno. I've always been a huge fan of werewolves. They're cool. There's something I find noble about wolves. The pack nature of wolves kind of translates to concepts of community and family and whatnot, even though those concepts don't really enter into the why of wolf packs and such. Wolves are predators and stuff, animals. I can't speak to their intelligence and whatnot, but I doubt love of family is what drives them to run in packs and protect their territory. 

Anyway, point: blah blah blah werecreatures are neat. I'd like to add an aspect of them to DnD. They're not really meant to be player options, but there are suggestions in the Monster Manual. But in this instance I'd like to add an aspect of them to the Barbarian class. There are versions of them that exist for that in previous editions. In this edition, I'm going to go with the werebear, rather than werewolf or something else. The reason for this is because Barbarians are berserkers. Berserk is an old word that some believe means bear shirt. Warriors would wade into battle wearing bear hides and stuff believing these bears to be totems that would grant them power. Supposedly. Who knows what the originally origin of the word was and the why and how of it. It's just what I read on Wikipedia. Regardless of it's accuracy, I like it. So I'm going to run with it. 

I'm just going to say right here that I know that both of the existing arcehtypes for the 5th Edition Barbarian cover aspects of the berserker and having a bear as an animal totem. I don't care. They're dumb and don't have what my goal here is. 

So what do werebears have in 5th Edition DnD. Let's look. They can use their action to switch to a Large bear, their original humanoid form, or a Large hybrid bear/humanoid form. They gain immunity to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from non-magical non-silver/silvered weapons. They gain advantage on Wisdom (Perception) ability checks due to their keen sense of smell. They also gain the multiattack ability to attack with two claws when in bear form. In bear or hybrid form, they can bite for 2d10 damage as well as use their claws for 2d8 damage. It seems likely that the werebear's bear form is based on a brown or polar bear, and their bite deals 2d6 damage and their claws do 1d8. There's also a note in the lycanthrope entry in the Monster Manual for player characters as lycanthropes it lists a few things. The character gains a Strength of 19 and a +1 bonus to AC while in bear or hybrid form. The one thing that the lycanthrope entries in the Monster Manual lacks is the regeneration we frequently see in film and literature. 

Since we're adding this to the Barbarian class, we need to look at the open spots for ability gains from archetype choice for the class. These spots are 3rd level, 6th level, and 10th level.  

So at third level, the entrance into the the Werebear Archetype, we add that when the Barbarian rages his size increases by one step and he takes on the burly, hairy, hybrid bear appearance of the werebear. Increases in size, specifically from the enlarge spell, typically gives the character advantage on Strength ability checks and saving throws (which the Barbarian already has while raging) as well as providing a +1d4 bonus to damage. We're just going to give the Barbarian a bite attack for 1d10 piercing damage and two claw attacks for 1d8 damage. We're also going to give the Barbarian advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks involve smell here because it is a fairly minor ability. Finally, Barbarians normally have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage while raging. We change this to be resistance to non-magical, non-silvered bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. 

At 6th level we add two things: Strength 19 while raging, a +1 bonus to armor class. 

We have two abilities left for our 10th level ability, the regeneration and the immunity to non-magical, non-silvered damage. I think the reason this edition lacks regeneration for lycanthropes is because previous editions did. But they had damage resistance. In previous editions of DnD, it was at some point in some place explained that damage resistance was no always immunity to types of damage, it was also instant regeneration. So when dealing 11 non-magical, non-silvered damage to a werecreature in Pathfinder (they had DR 10/silver), you weren't dealing 1 damage, you were dealing 11 and 10 of it was instantly regenerated. 

Werewolves play a big part in a book series I read a few years back. Silver was still a bane to them, as is traditional. But their regeneration was wondered about and explained by the characters in the book. Werecreatures regularly go through a physical change that breaks and reforms every bone in their body and transmutes human biology into that of a hybrid creature. Regenerating simple damage like cuts and stabs and bullet holes is fairly simple to replace if you can do that every month. It was also explained that this regeneration was not infinite, it was fueled not by magic, but by the creature's energy like any other biological process. So if you can do enough damage to force a werecreature to burn through its fat reserves and caloric intake and whatnot, it'll die. I am particularly fond of this concept. 

So to cover the regeneration of werewolves, I think what we'll do is say that at 10th level, the Barbarian gains the ability to spend one hit dice as a free action every round while raging while his hit points are below their maximum.   

So here is what we have:

3rd Level Abilities

• The Barbarian gains advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell. 
• The Barbarian gains physical characteristics of a brown bear/humanoid hybrid while raging.
• The Barbarian's size increases while raging. 
• The Barbarian gains claws that deal 1d8 slashing damage and a bite that deals 1d10 piercing damage while raging. A Barbarian may make a bite attack, two claw attacks, a normal weapon attack, or a weapon and a claw attack with an attack action while raging.  
• The Barbarian's resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage while raging only applies to non-magical, non-silver sources of damage. 

6th Level Abilities

• The Barbarian's Strength becomes 19 while raging, unless it is already higher. 
• The Barbarian gains a +1 bonus to armor class while raging. 

10th Level Abilities

• While raging, the Barbarian may spend one hit dice every round as a free action on his turn to restore 1d12 + his Constitution modifier hit points. 

I'm not sure how balanced it is. I didn't really compare it to the existing archetypes for the Barbarian class. I just kind of slotted stuff in. It might be more appropriate to push the armor bonus to the 3rd level abilities, as it's fairly minor and the werebear's hide wouldn't suddenly be thicker while raging. I dunno. It seems fairly light on oomph, and it all only occurs while raging for the most part, so it does seem kind of lackluster. Not sure. I could perhaps give the non-raging barbarian resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage with penetration by silver and magical weapons, and turn it to immunity while raging, but that seems excessively overpowered at low levels. 

I dunno. I like it, it does exactly what I desired it to do and it doesn't seem to be excessively overpowered. So I think it's a success. Woo!

Fendojon Part 4: Altered Spell List

Given that magic works differently and whatnot, we're going to need to alter the spell list of the game. I say spell list instead of spell lists because as has been previously mentioned, all spells are available to all spellcasters.

Let's do an itty bitty little refresh from last week about what magic cannot do: it can't be used to travel to, contact, or summon creatures from other plane (because there are no other planes), it cannot bring back the dead or create or affect undead (because there is no afterlife and there are no undead) on Fendojon, it cannot contact deities or do anything involving holy power or radiant damage (because radiant damage deals damage to the soul with divine power and their are no deities and thus no divine power), it also cannot create life (because). Additionally, divination type spells don't work very well against Buillon and don't work at all on matters that do not take place on Fendojon. This aspect is something that is hard to precisely define because it depends on what the divination affect does.

Just as a reminder, magic in Fendojon isn't permanent.

So let's get started with the list. I'm fallible, so the list is not written in stone. Something is going to slip through the cracks. If it comes up in play and I shut you down, sorry about your luck, but I don't get paid and don't have a team of proofreaders and fact checkers. Also: fuck you for not using common sense you selfish fucking shit-twit of a player.

Damn. I really like that. Fucktwit is one of my favorite curses (second only to fuckhead), but shit-twit has definite appeal. Shitheadtwit? No that doesn't work quite as well. Moving along. Plenty of time for practicing cursing at work tomorrow.

Removed Spells

• Animate Dead - Creates undead. 
• Animate Objects - Creates thinking and reasoning life (the objects animated have an Intelligence and Wisdom higher than 0), albeit temporarily. 
• Astral Projection - There are no planes, thus there is no Astral Plan to go to with this spell.
• Banishment - There are no other planes to banish creatures to.
• Blinding Smite - Deals radiant damage, which is not a thing that exists. 
• Branding Smite - Deals radiant damage, which is not a thing that exists. 
• Circle of Power - Divine energy is not a thing that exists, therefore it cannot radiate from you.
• Commune - There are no deities to commune with.
• Conjure Animals - Fey spirits are not a thing that exists.
• Conjure Celestial - Celestials are not a thing that exists. 
• Conjure Elemental - Elementals are not a thing that exists. 
• Conjure Fey - Similarly to fey spirits, fey are not a thing that exists. 
• Conjure Minor Elementals - Despite taking up less space, minor elementals, like regular elementals, are not a thing that exists. 
• Conjure Woodland Beings - Fey creatures are not a thing that exists. 
• Contact Other Plane - Other planes are not a thing that exists. 
• Create Undead - Creates undead. 
• Crusader's Mantle - Radiant damage is not a thing that exists. 
• Detect Evil and Good - Aberrations, celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead are not things that exist.
• Dispel Evil and Good - Celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead are not things that exist and thus have no enchantments that need to be broken and no planes to return to, because planes are not a thing that exists. 
• Divination - Gods are not a thing that exists.
• Divine Favor - Radiant damage is not a thing that exists and gods are not a thing that exist. 
• Divine Word - There was one word at creation and it was fuckhead. It is not divine and does not have the ability to harm nonexistent celestials, elementals, fey, and fiends. Because they are not things that exist.
• Dust Devil - Elemental forces are not a thing that exists. 
• False Life - Necromantic facsimiles of life are not a thing that exists. 
• Find Steed - Spirits are not a thing...ok they are, but they're a dead thing so they can't be interacted with via magic. Nevermind. It's complicated. Spirits are not a thing that exists to be called forth for pony play.
• Gate - Other planes are not a thing that exists. 
• Guardian of Faith - Spectral guardians are not a thing that exists. 
• Guiding Bolt - Radiant damage is not a thing that exists. 
• Hallow - Holy and unholy power are not things that exist. 
• Holy Aura - Divine light is not a thing that exists. 
• Magic Circle - Celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead are not things that exist to be affected. 
• Nystul's Magic Aura - This spell is not a thing that exists due to the excessive volume of pointlessness it would possess in Fendojon. What would be the point of masking the aura of something when a caster can easily sense the aura of the masking spell?
• Phantom Steed - Creates life (albeit temporary illusory life). 
• Planar Ally - Other planes are not a thing that exist to get allies from.
• Planar Binding - Celestials, elementals, fey, and fiends are not things that exist to be enslaved.
• Plane Shift - Other planes are not things that exist to be shifted to.
• Reincarnate - The afterlife is not a place that exists that your soul can be dragged back from into another body.
• (Untrue) Resurrection - The afterlife is not a place that exists that your soul can be dragged back from.
• Simulacrum - Creates life (albeit temporary illusory life).
• Speak With Dead - The afterlife is not a place that exists for the dead to be spoken to in.
• Spirit Guardians - Spirits are not a thing that exists to be called forth for guardianship.
• True Resurrection - Similar to the untrue resurrection, the afterlife is not a place that exists that your soul can be dragged back from.
• Unseen Servant - Creates life.
• Wish - Fuck off. 
• Word of Recall - Deities are not a thing that exists, so placed cannot be deemed as sanctuaries to them. 

Spells With Minor Mechanical or Thematic Alterations

• Blink - Blink still exists and functions as normal, you just don't appear in the Ethereal Plane, you effectively become insubstantial and invisible when you would hop over to the Ethereal Plane, but the spell is unchanged mechanically.
• Creation - The Shadowfell is not a place that exists, but this spell still functions as described by using magic to create a semi-real illusory object. 
• Etherealness - Etherealness still exists and functions as normal, you just don't move through the Ethereal Plane, you effectively become insubstantial and invisible, but the spell is unchanged mechanically. 
• Flame Strike - Deals only fire damage because radiant damage is not a thing that exists. 
• Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound - This spell is more like a semi-permanent divination sensor tied to a force effect than it is a creation of sentient life, so it stays and functions as is. 
• Prayer of Healing - Works as described, but it's not a prayer, it's magic. Like cure wounds and healing word. 
• Revivify - This spell functions as normal, but it doesn't pull your soul back from the afterlife. It's like the magical equivalent of high quality CPR and rapid defibrillation. The spell's school changes from conjuration to evocation. 
• Shield of Faith - Works as described, but it's more like a shield of force energy and not one composed of faith in a deity. Which are things that don't exist to have faith in.
• Sacred Flame - Works as described, but deals fire damage. 
• Sunbeam - Works as described, but deals fire damage. 
• Sunburst - Works as described, but deals fire damage. 

Spells With Major Mechanical Alterations

• Find Familiar - The familiar is not a spirit, it is natural animal appropriate to the environment the spell is cast in (rats or dogs in an urban setting, snakes or frogs in a sawmp, etc), and has the appropriate statistics for such a creature. The familiar does not disappear when dropped to 0 hit points, instead it is treated like any other creature that drops to 0 hit points. The familiar cannot be dismissed to a pocket dimension. Whether you are actively using the senses of the familiar or not and while you are able to speak to the familiar telepathically, line of sight for the targets of your spells may use the familiar's position instead of your own, but this does not change line of effect and you remain the origin of the spell. Finally, your familiar may concentrate on one spell for you, allowing you to concentrate on another. This only functions if the familiar is within 100 feet of you and ceases if you or the familiar are rendered unconscious. 

So there is some info on which spells are excluded, which ones are thematically different, and one with some major alterations. Wee. If I add more in the future to the list I'll add the Edit After the Fact label to the post and a note on what I added and when. 

Fendojon Part 3: Magic and Stuff

Magic is going to be the big thing that acts a bit differently in this campaign. It will diverge quite a bit from the magic stuff in the PHB. So we're going to outline a few things about magic and how it works in Fendojon and some of the changes to magic in general and the classes that will use it.

The magic of Fendojon stems from the Numen, their very presence fills the continent with their energies. Over time humans have learned to sense and control this energy with their willpower. Spellcasters learn to sense and detect this energy and latch onto it with their wills and shape it into a specific desired effect. Unlike other areas of Hekinoe, the magic of Fendojon does not cause misfires, physical mutations, or lead to exploding magic items. 

Magic can do many things, but there are several things it cannot do. Period. Regardless of caster level and ability scores. There are no planes, so it cannot be used to travel to other planes or contact creatures from other planes. Since there are no other planes, it cannot summon creatures or objects from other planes. It cannot bring back the dead or create undead. There are no gods on Hekinoe or in my campaign universe (though there are extremely powerful supernatural entities), so it cannot do anything involving holy power or contacting a deity. It also cannot create life. This last part is relevant because in the Pathfinder and GURPS versions of Hekinoe summoning type spells did not actually summon planar creatures, they used sorcerous energy to create living creatures made of magic. The magic of Fendojon cannot do this.

The magic of Fendojon is also impermanent. It doesn't wear out or run out, it just returns to the grand mass of magical energy that suffuses Fendojon. The maximum limit on how long a spell will last in Fendojon is equal to the caster's Wisdom modifier. So mage armor can still last up to eight hours, but imprisonment, even though its normal duration is until dispelled, cannot last longer than a number of days equal to its caster's Wisdom modifier. This obviously limits the usefulness of some spells. This also means that spells that can be made permanent through repeated castings, like guards and wards, cannot be made permanent. 

Because using magic is not a learned skill and relies entirely on a caster's ability to control and shape magic with their willpower, all spellcasting is done via Wisdom, not Intelligence or Charisma. So any time a Wizard would normally use his Intelligence modifier, he instead uses his Wisdom modifier. The same goes for Bards, Eldritch Knights, Arcane Tricksters, feats that grant spellcasting ability, and so on. 

One of the very very major changes to magic is that all spells, except those that do something magic cannot do (animate dead, commune, raise dead, plane shift, etc, etc, etc) are available to all casters. So Wizards can use cure wounds, Bards can use fireball, and Druids can use eldritch blast if they want to. Bards, Druids, and Wizards will all still have a variation of spells known and spellbooks, but this mechanic will represent a focus of theirs, rather than the sum of their abilities. They may actually all end up with a spellbook mechanic like the Wizards for the sake of simplicity on my end. Dunno yet. We'll see.

This spellbook/preparation/known spells mechanic is going to represent a kind of mental muscle memory. You train your body to automatically do something a certain way. This known/preparation mechanic represents magical castings that are so second nature to the caster that they require little to no effort on their part to cast properly. So what happens when a caster goes outside of their known/prepared spells? The first thing is that they lose their proficiency bonus on the DC and attack rolls of the spell (assuming the spell has such mechanics). The second thing is that the spell costs them more spell points. One step higher in cost specifically, so a first level spell a caster is unfamiliar with would cost as much as a second level spell. A first level unfamiliar spell augmented to third level would cost as many spell points as a fourth level spell, and unfamiliar cantrip would cost as much as a 1st level, etc, etc. This is somewhat limiting. Since your level limits the level of spells you cast, the increased level/cost of unknown/unprepared spells will delay your ability to cast certain spells if they are not spells you're familiar with. Don't worry. This will be explained more intuitively in documentation for this campaign. 

The mechanic I'm going to utilize instead of spellbooks and spells known/prepared is going to be Wisdom based. You'll start off "knowing" spells equal to your Wisdom modifier plus your proficiency bonus. So casters won't "know" a lot of spells, but they'll be able to use all of them on the fly, albeit at reduced efficiency. In addition to this, all spellcasters will be able to cast detect and dispel magic at will as if they were one of their "known" spells. I may institute certain specialties allowing spellcasters to add more spells to their "known" list. Like Wizard (Transmuter) adding transmutation spells or a Fighter (Eldritch Knight) adding abjuration spells. We'll see.

Fyi, I'm considering instituting something like mental fatigue for when you spend most or all of your spell points. It's actually extremely likely. Spell points do not represent a spellcaster expending his own internal magical energies to cast spells. It represents his skill in drawing and directing larger amounts of magical energy from the magic suffusing Fendojon. What he's really expending to cast spells is his mental energy and strength of will. When he runs out of spell points, it's too hard for him to focus his will, similar to how workout nuts are exhausted after they go into beast mode on leg day. 

The next relatively major change is that spells do not require verbal, somatic, or material components in Fendojon. This may seem somewhat overpowered, but it's a universal change not limited to just characters. If a spell requires you to interact with the world or your target in some way, like touching them or spitting at them or screaming at them, that is unchanged, so having your hands bound or being mute may still be relevant.

The magic of Fendojon is flavored by the thoughts, emotions, and personality of their wielder. Their spells are flavored with this as well and they develop and aura that can be sensed by other casters. So the spells of a very stoic and reserved caster of earth magic will feel like silence shrouded in wall of stone. A very disciplined, but passionate, caster of earth magic might have an aura that feels like the heat of lava at the heart of a long dormant volcano. Because all spellcasters are able to sense and direct this magical energy, they can sense these auras innately and have advantage on all Wisdom (Insight) and Wisdom (Perception) ability checks against spellcasters, the same goes for magical creatures and plants, but that would fall under Wisdom (Animal Handling) and Intelligence (Nature) instead of Wisdom (Insight). This does have the added effect of adding a signature of sorts to a spellcaster's spells, which makes it potentially easier to identify who did what to whom with magic.

Magic items will also operate a little bit differently as well due to the nature of magic on Fendojon. Due to the sheer amount of magic on Fendojon, they will be cheaper and more common. However, permanent items will be something of a pain in the butt to use. As I said, the magic of Fendojon is not permanent, so eventually the magic of enchanted items leaks back out into the world. Magical items with normally permanent effects purchased in stores will automatically have five days of charge left, those looted from fallen foes or stolen from random passersby will have 1d4+1 days of charge left, while those looted from long derelict tombs and such will be empty. An empty magical item will have an aura left on it as easily detected as that of a normal magical item, so discovering magic items won't be terribly difficult. This aura, an echo of the item's enchantment, just needs to be topped off with a Wisdom + proficiency bonus check with a DC dependent upon the item's rarity: 12 for common magical items, 14 for uncommon, 16 for rare, 18 for very rare, and 20 for legendary. The spellcaster also needs to spend spell points equal to a spell of a certain level to recharge the item: 1st level for common magical items, 3rd level for uncommon, 5th level for rare, 7th for very rare, and 9th for legendary.

Alright, so I think I've covered the majority of the issues regarding magic in Fendojon. It's still all broad strokes and rough ideas at this time, so it's not really juicy mechanics and stuff, but that will appear at a later date. Probably. 

Fendojon Part 2: Character Creation and Classes

So the next step is to talk a little about character creation and such.

I have a strong fondness for everyone starting out the same, so as has been typical for many of my campaigns, this one will use the point buy system for ability scores. Additionally, normally a character's ability scores cap at 20. I don't like that. If a race is innately stronger or faster than humans, which are the baseline, they should have a higher cap on that particular ability. So I'm going to rule that the cap on ability score is 22 if a race has a bonus on that ability score. So a human that puts one of his +1s towards Strength will have a max of 22 in Strength.

Because of my love of equality, everyone will use static hit point gains modified by their Constitution score as they level up.

I like the backgrounds of 5th Edition. It's a really neat way of tying RP and character story into the process of character creation. I think they're a little limited though, so I may expand on some of them a bit. We'll see. Part of me also wants to institute a flaw system similar to what I did in my Pathfinder campaign. Something along the lines of if you take a flaw, you gain proficiency in one weapon, one armor, one skill, or one tool. If you take a two flaws, you may gain a feat at first level. I'm not sure. With the main race being human, giving out extra proficiency options and feats may be overkill. I'm not sure. We'll see. If I do end up instituting a flaw system if will follow the design guidelines of previous editions: flaws impart a penalty that cannot be overcome simply by taking a feat. For instance, in 3.5 there were flaws that gave a -3 to your saving throws, or maybe it was -4. I forget. Regardless, you couldn't just solve the penalty by taking Iron Will or the other two feats to bump saving throws because they only offered a +2.

Leveling will session/story based advancement. The more goals the players have and the more of them that they achieve, the more leveling they do. The caveat to that is that there must be an element to a challenge that they overcome. If there is no element of risk and no expenditure of their resources, they don't advance as quickly. This doesn't mean they don't find loot or gain other rewards for the time they spend doing stuff, it just means they're not really learning enough from their challenges to justify the sometimes sizable power increases that come from leveling up.

Classes will need a bit of modification. Since this is primarily a faux-European setting, Monks have no real place among the classes, so they are unfortunately out unless a player can significantly reflavor them through an explanation of their background. Monks are way too magical and unique and eastern martial artist flavored to be justified by saying your character just likes punching things. If someone really likes the concept of punching dudes into submission, I can happily create a brawler type archetype for Fighters or Barbarians.

Since there are no gods in this campaign, Cleric and Paladin are obviously out. Neither can be reflavored sufficiently to divorce them from the core concept of them being enslaved to deities. Rangers will remain an option, but they'll do so without spells. I have mixed thoughts about Druids, but they are likely to remain with a bit of reflavoring and modified mechanics to make them more Wizard-like. Bards are likely to be removed. Sorcerers will be completely removed, as there are no races that are innately magical due to some magical creature being an ancestor.

The Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster archetypes will need to be reworked a bit to more resemble the Wizard class. Right now they work more like Sorcerers with limited amounts of spells known and no spellbooks and that sort of thing. If I keep the Druid and the Bard, they'll need to have similar changes made to them. If I do keep the Bard and Druid, they'll be more akin to specialty Wizards than anything else. If I could conceive of a way to condense them both down into Wizard archetypes, I would, but I'm not sure that is feasible.

Warlock is a class that at one time existed, the Sorcerer Kings were actually Warlocks. But there are currently no Warlocks on Fendojon. Characters are not banned from taking levels in such a class, but they will need to first find one of the Numen and enter into a pact with them for power before they can do so, so it will be more of a mid to late game class than a starting class. It will also have been modified to be the most powerful magic using class in the game. Hehe.

I also intend on using the spell point system outlined in the DMG for magic using classes, rather than the standard spell slot system found in the DMG.

The class that will be most significantly altered will be the Wizard. But I'll elaborate on that in the near future when I talk about magic a little bit more in depth.