GURPS Hekinoe Sorcery: The Eighth Time Is The Charm Continued

We're making pretty good progress here with the sorcery basics. So now I think we've got to establish some variations on the themes of sorcery. So what little subtypes of sorcery have cropped up in the background material? Shadow sorcery, that's a thing. We've got gun sorcery. It hasn't really been spoken of or seen, but totemism is a thing in The Beast Lands. There's also intuitive sorcery, which is rare because it is kind of stupid. It is definitely not the same as Pathfinder spontaneous casters. There's also astral sorcery. 

In the previous post we were working on something called major sorcery. It's the "normal" kind of sorcery. There are various types and schools with little quirks and bits and pieces and fiddly bits (Common, Emboderel, Shamanism, Wizardry, etc, etc), but they're all fundamentally the same in the mechanics of how they work and what they do. Astral sorcery, gun sorcery (which we're calling weapon sorcery from now on), intuitive sorcery, shadow sorcery, and totemism are in some cases extremely different and all fall into a category known as minor sorcery. Each of these minor sorcery types requires an Unusual Background to be accessed, so they're all a bit points heavy at times. 

Astral Sorcery

Astral sorcery is sorcery that kind of uses the movements and positions of celestial bodies as its core concept. Spoiler alert: it's mostly bullshit. But sometimes it works. Unless it doesn't. Mechanically, it amounts to an Unusual Background that allows you to buy an Energy Reserve that represents a stable supply of energy for spells. Spells still misfire, but you have a small amount of energy that does not factor into calculations for increased chance of misfire. 

Ok, this next part consists of non-player information that kind of spoils things.

Back in the day, there were these three ships of the Elder Races, they were in Hekinoe's solar system because reasons. They were destroyed just prior to Kaleshmar's destruction, because reasons. The engines of these spaceships broke open and they ended up kind of fused together, giving rise to the planet now known as Gorelon. Gorelon isn't really a planet, despite looking like it. It's a very luminescent perfect sphere of energy containing the ruins of these three ships and their engines. The energies of these engines, as stated in a previous blog post from ages ago, have turned the interior of this "planet" into this realm of fleshy pseudopods and fanged mouths. It's the closest approximation Hekinoe has to a DnD Far Realm. The energies of these engines are very similar to sorcerous energy, but they're different, and can only be called on when Gorelon's position in the sky gives it a direct line of sight to Hekinoe's surface. There are also sentient creatures in the infinite layers of warm, sweaty, fanged flesh mass that are Gorelon. Opening your mind to Gorelon allows them to enter yours, leading to literal voices in your head.

I have all of the mechanics for astral sorcery pretty hashed out in my head. Practitioners contemplate the void of space a lot. The best way to describe it is telepathic communication. The sorcerer kind of stares up at the void deep in meditation listening in a telepathic way until he forms (or believes he formed) a bond with one or more celestial bodies and then he draws energy from them. Successful, non-bullshit snake oil salesman practitioners tend to be a bit bat shit crazy and often believe they can hear the voices of the stars. 

So what does that look like in GURPS terms? First you need at least the Sorcery 0 advantage, which allows you to purchase the Unusual Background (Astral Sorcerer) [10] advantage. Which is required because you're doing something most people can't do and buying advantages in a way most people on Hekinoe can't.

This allows you to buy one of the following advantages: 

• Energy Reserve 1 - 10 (Sorcery, Cosmic: Does Not Count As Energy For Misfire Purposes When Use, +50%; Accessibility: Only When The Stars Align, -20%; Required Disadvantage: Phantom Voices: Annoying, -5%; Sorcery, -10%) [4 - 40]
• Energy Reserve 11 - 15 (Sorcery, Cosmic: Does Not Count As Energy For Misfire Purposes When Use, +50%; Accessibility: Only When The Stars Align, -20%; Required Disadvantage: Phantom Voices: Disturbing, -10%; Sorcery -10%) [44 - 60]
• Energy Reserve 16 - 20 (Sorcery, Cosmic: Does Not Count As Energy For Misfire Purposes When Use, +50%; Accessibility: Only When The Stars Align, -20%; Required Disadvantage: Phantom Voices: Diabolical, -15%; Sorcery, -10%) [64 - 80]

So what does all this mean? Energy Reserve is an advantage used to power things like psi abilities and superpowers. It's like an extra reserve of FP. The Sorcery designation means that it is used for sorcery related abilities, like spells. The Cosmic enhancement does exactly what it says, the energy from this Energy Reserve does not count as sorcerous energy when you pay for a spell or whatever, so it can lead to a slight decrease in the unreliability of a spell. The Accessibility: Only When The Stars Align limitation that there will be times where this advantage is unavailable to you due to the movements of planets and other celestial bodies. Required Disadvantage means that your character must also have the Phantom Voices disadvantage at the Annoying, Disturbing, or Diabolical level, depending on how large your Energy Reserve is. You get the normal character points for the disadvantage, which leads to a slight reduction in the cost of the advantage. The Sorcery limitation means that this particular Energy Reserve is sorcery and as affected by anti-sorcery effects. So if you are deprived of your access to sorcery, you're deprived of the Energy Reserve. 

Intuitive Sorcery

Intuitive sorcery is similar to major sorcery in how it functions. Kind of. The gist of it is that some people don't really learn sorcery, they guess and get lucky. Or they know a little bit and fucking fake the shit out of the rest of it. Some people are very intuitive and can make leaps of logic or shockingly perceptive guesses or do stunning feats of math without paper that shock normal folks. That's kind of what intuitive sorcery is. It only functions because a big component of sorcery is symbolism and having the willpower to create mental constructs that force this vast and chaotic energy into a specific form to achieve a specific effect. 

There will be a little more that goes into the description in the campaign book, so we'll move onto the actual mechanical rules. First things first, you can't have a character that has both major sorcery and intuitive sorcery, and I'm not sure why anyone would want to. That's a ridiculous point sink. You also need Sorcery 0 and Unusual Background (Intuitive Sorcerer) [10].

Because intuitive sorcery does not stem from learning recognized forms of rituals and incantations, it relies on Will alone as the base attribute for spells, as well as misfires. Resisting misfires is still done at Will-3 in The Known World. Because it is so off the cuff and lacks any formalized training (which exists and functions well for a reason), the Intuitive Sorcery advantage must have the -30% version of the Radically Unstable Sorcery limitation (the version that doesn't allow any stabilization rolls, so every failed check to cast a spell results in a misfire). Intuitive sorcerers don't really need to or want to write things down, their whole skillset revolves around casting spells on the fly, so they don't need grimoires. Intuitive sorcerers still gain mutations as other sorcerers down. They also follow the previously established rules for how their check to resist misfire is affected by energy use and such. 

So here is the major difference between intuitive sorcery and major sorcery: instead of buying spells individually, an intuitive sorcerer buys colleges as wildcard skills. Wildcard skills are treated as very hard skills, but at triple the cost. So buying Air College! at Will+Sorcery+0 costs 24 character points. But your intuitive sorcerer can cast every air spell without buying them individually. There is one big penalty though (aside from the exorbitant cost). For every prerequisite the spell has, you take a -1 to your effective skill level when attempting to cast the spell. 

So if you have a Will of 14 and Intuitive Sorcery 2 and know Air College! at attribute+0 your skill with air college spells is 16. If you want to cast the lightning spell (an air college and weather college spell) to fling a bolt of lightning, your effective skill level would be 10. Lightning has a prerequisite of Sorcery 2 (which this character has via Intuitive Sorcery 2) and any six other air college spells, leading to a -6 penalty to effective skill level. 

Shadow Sorcery

Shadow sorcery is something I really really like. It's actually one of my favorite things from Pathfinder. Which is why I have an unnaturally raging nerboner for Shadowdancers and shadow dragons. One complaint I have about shadow magic in Pathfinder is that it's treated like illusion magic, which is fucking stupid. Most of the spells describe you pulling shadow stuff from The Plane of Shadow to create creatures and effects. To me, it is no more of an illusion than pulling fire or fire elementals from The Elemental Plane of Fire. There's nothing to disbelieve about it, it is physical stuff that exists. It's only semi-solid, and that should have an effect on its physical traits, but you shouldn't be able to just disbelieve in the fireball of shadowstuff coming at you to reduce it to 20% effectiveness. 

Anyway. 

There is a Plane of Shadows in Hekinoe. It's not really a plane as we define them, well, it is, but whatever. Anyway. I like the Plane of Shadows, so it exists in my game world. It's super fucking cool that there is an amazingly appropriate Secret GM Background Info reason for it to exist. I mean, I'd still have it even if there weren't, but I'm tickled by the fact that there is. There are lots of names for this place: The Land of Shadows (Goebleen), The Shadowlands (Fallen), The Realm of Falsehoods (Elduman), to name a few.

It's an adjacent realm, similar to the Hound's neverending moonlit forest or a Nel holding, that exists as a dusky copy of the real world. Colors are subdued, light is poor and unchanging, etc. It is full of cities and continents and people that match the real world. However, cities are in different places or have different names or are in different states of condition. Distances and sizes fluctuate. It's also on the cold side. It also has no Builders, Elduman, Nel, or Rankethlek shadow people within it. A few other races no one has encountered yet are absent from this place as well. 

Shadow sorcery requires the Sorcery 0 advantage and the Unusual Background (Shadow Sorcerer) [10] advantage. Beyond that though, it does not follow the majority of the rules of sorcery we've already established. Instead of using the regular GURPS system of magic, shadow sorcery uses advantages. This is because shadow sorcerers basically only use sorcerous energy to poke a hole into the membrane between the real world and this place of shadows and then grab at shadowstuff from within it to create effects. 

These effects are fairly similar to what you've seen from Pathfinder. Shrouds of darkness and such. Jumping from shadow to shadow. Creating constructs built from shadowstuff. Transforming into a shadow. Etc. But it does have some more offensive and defensive uses. Shadowstuff is soft, but you can layer it about yourself for Damage Reduction (albeit with the semi-ablative limitation) or fling thick clouds of it at foes to blind, suffocate, and/or freeze them. It's pretty mutable stuff so what you can do with it is pretty flexible. It would be impractical to list every little itty bit of mechanical meat to the capabilities of shadow sorcery, so I'm not going to do that.

Because shadow sorcery is based on using sorcery to access this shadow realm, it does misfire using the normal Will-3 check to resist misfire. However, it only misfires in a very specific way. This  is because of the nature of the shadow realm. It's basically a vast space with a lot less stuff in it, and the stuff in it doesn't have as much weight to it as the stuff from the physical world. It's kind of a sort of metaphysical equalization of pressure. Basically, when the sorcerer pokes a hole from the real world to the shadow realm, the sorcerous energy is kind of getting sucked into it instead of running around all crazy like.

Basically what happens during a shadow sorcery misfire is that the sorcerer's willpower isn't focused enough to keep shoving sorcery into the hole between worlds and it cuts out and the shadow realm kind of sucks on the closest source of energy for a moment before it snaps shut. That's the sorcerer, fyi. So when shadow sorcery effects misfire, the shadow sorcerer takes FP or HP damage as a bit of his lifeforce gets shunted into the shadow realm (and totally doesn't feed his shadow double and give him the ability to pass from the shadow realm to the real world to hunt down his double and devour him).

There are two main advantages that are used to mechanically represent shadow sorcery. The first is Shadow Talent [5]. Shadow Talent isn't mandatory, but it helps. Every level of Shadow Talent offers a +1 bonus to effective skill level on rolls with shadow sorcery. This means attacks with shadow sorcery abilities, defense checks while using shadow sorcery powers, and so on. It does not affect your check to resist misfire.

The other main advantage is Modular Abilities. Modular abilities is a very versatile advantage that lets you purchase a reserve of character points to alter your capabilities. It's good for representing a more traditional prepared spellcaster like in Pathfinder, AI's that can delete and download skillsets as needed, and deity-like beings that can just wish themselves new capabilities. Because shadowstuff is so flexible, I feel like using Modular Abilities is a great way to represent it.

So how does it work? We need to base it off of Modular Abilities with the cosmic enhancement. This means that the shadow sorcerer has an infinite number of "slots" for abilities, rather than a limited number like the other versions of the advantage. It also means he can change his current modular abilities by concentrating for one second each. This costs 10 character points per character point in the reserve. That's fucking expensive.

The first two limitations for the Modular Abilities is Environmental: Only With Access To Sorcerous Energy, -5%. So the shadow sorcerer can only access the shadow realm if he can use sorcerous energy to open up a hole to get it. Luckily, sorcerous energy is everywhere (except the middle of the oceans and in the nonexistent blackstone pyramid prisons beneath Serethnem that Kusseth totally does not have). The second limitation is Sorcery, -10%, which means that any effect that stops or negates or effects sorcery (such as Sorcery Resistance or Neutralize) also affects shadow sorcery effects. It also has the Advantages Only, -10% limitation because it's not capable if granting you new information (skills) or improving your attributes or that sort of thing. It has the Physical Only, +50% enhancement because normally Modular Abilities is about granting yourself mental and social advantages and skills. Finally, it has the Limited: Shadow and Darkness, -10% limitation which means you can only use it to create effects tied to shadow and darkness.

Well fuck. That's super fucking expensive. That's 12 character points per character point in the reserve. So something as basic 5 DR semi-ablative cloak of thick shadowstuff shrouding you using Damage Resistance (20 character points base cost) could run into the hundreds of points. There's gotta be something else to do with this.

There's something called alternative abilities, it's like alternative attacks. You take several abilities that stem from the same source, pay for the most expensive one and pay 1/5 the cost for the rest. The only issue is that you have to use a ready maneuver to switch modes and if you switch modes, an effect like Damage Resistance or Allies would turn off. There's also the risk of if one ability is disabled, they all are, but the kind of goes along with Modular Abilities.

The other option is to create my own Modular Abilities. I don't know what I'll call it, but we'll use the rules in GURPS Power and create a slot system. We'll break it down into three branches ("slots") of shadow sorcery: Shadow Sorcery Attacks, Shadow Sorcery Defenses, and Shadow Sorcery Constructs. Shadow Sorcery Attacks is very broad, it could be a blast of FP damage dealing cold, clinging shadows that blind (Obscure) or weight you down (Binding), as well as various forms of the Affliction advantage. I'm going to say that slot has 5 base points since it is a pretty broadly focused. Shadow Defenses is a little bit more limited, since it will primarily deal with defending yourself from attacks or effects, stuff like Damage Resistance. Fuck it, we'll go with two.

...Dammit.

See, I keep getting confused with what I want to do. There's nothing that fits super well in my head. I think the least frustrating thing to do is going to be outlining the sort of things shadow sorcery can do, as well as saying all shadow sorcery powers must have the Environmental: Only Functions With Access To Sorcerous Energy, -5% and Sorcery, -10% limitations and then allowing players to use the whole alternative attacks/abilities option. That's a lot easier than getting complicated with Modular Abilities. 

I didn't mention it earlier, but once you take Unusual Background (Shadow Sorcerer) you can purchase Dark Vision or Night Vision 1 - 9 at any time. 

Totem Sorcery

Yeah, I just renamed totemism. Totem sorcery is actually a poor name choice, as you don't have to be a sorcerer to use it. It does require sorcery to function, but the amount of sorcerous energy is so minor that misfires amount to a flash of light or a loud noise. We have to talk about the great (dire) beasts of The Beast Lands for a moment.

The great beasts are typically huge predators, and in rare cases herbivores, that have existed forever in The Beast Lands. These creatures are massive, ill tempered, and continually grow in size and strength as long as they live. They also live indefinitely, like dragons. Some of these beasts are ancient. They're extremely rare and extremely powerful and they are terrifying. They're still animals, but their IQs tend to be 6 - 8 instead of 2 - 4. They're still animals, though. Just like dragons, whose IQ can get up to 10. If I remember right, there's one with an IQ of 11 somewhere in my notes. But she's special.

Anyway. One of the talents of the shamans of The Beast Lands is using sorcery to deal with the great beasts. There is also a very rare practice that involves communicating with these ancient great beasts and gaining some of their strength. This practice is extremely rare, and the first part of it is finding a shaman that can do it (likely requiring a quest in and of itself) and convincing him to do it (probably need to perform a quest to get him to even consider it). Then you have to find one of the beasts and convince it not to kill you (usually by presenting it with the corpse of a slightly smaller great beast as tribute and using the beast speech spell to communicate with it). The other route is to get the shaman to use sorcery to force the ancient beast into compliance with your wishes, but that offers some risks. If the ancient beast is amenable, the shaman casts a secret spell that has beast link as a prerequisite and sort of binds the beast to someone, allowing the someone to gain aspects of the beast's power.

Dammit, totem sorcery and totemism are really stupid names for this thing. But I can't think of another one. I suppose a made up name works. Irehontism. Irehontism, yeah, I like it. It means haunted by the rage of beasts in ancient Uncout.

Back to game stuff. So once you're bonded to this creature, you can gain some fairly standard abilities. ST, HP, HT above and beyond the norm. Enhanced senses. Claws, fangs, scales or hide. Etc. Each advantage must be purchased with the Environmental: Only Functions With Access To Sorcerous Energy, -5% and Sorcery, -10% limitations. They also have Required Disadvantage: Bad Temper and/or Berserk, and/or Bestial.

There are further restrictions, and they are why I have not opted to include an Unusual Background requirement in this stuff. The advantages and attributes purchased must be in keeping with the particular beast you are bonded to. So if you are bonded to a great viper, sure give yourself Teeth and an Innate Attack modeled after its venom and some Damage Resistance as scales. But you can't give yourself Claws. Additionally, the points spent on these abilities cannot exceed more than 50% (round down) of the value of Bad Temper, Berserk, and Bestial.

I might change that to 75% (round down). Dunno. Or I might just make the disadvantages prerequisites and not restrict the points you can spend on the ancient beast traits. Who knows!?

Bad Temper and Berserk are both mental disadvantages that allow for a Self Control check. Their base value is 10 and that's with a Self Control of 12 or less. So if you are bonded to an ancient wolf and have Bad Temper (Self Control: 12) [-10], you could spend up to 5 points and gives yourself Claws (Blunt) [3] and Teeth (Sharp) [1]. If you wanted to double your pleasure you could take Bad Temper (Self Control: 9) [-15] and Berserk (Self Control: 9) [-15] and have Claws (Blunt) [3], Teeth (Sharp) [1], ST+1 [10]. The points values of the advantages would play out slightly different due to the previously mentioned Environment and Sorcery limitations. So the ST+1 would really be 9 points, not 7 (Required Disadvantage applies a cost reduction as a limitation based on the value of the disadvantage in question, -15% in this instance). Claws and Teeth have points costs too small to really be modified by only a -30% value of limitations.

It should be noted that Irehontism is an extremely sketchy practice and shamans willing to perform these rites tend to be bad dudes. Dudes that hang out in the forest will all the beasts because they killed and ate their tribe. It will also lead to some social issues with folks in The Beast Lands that recognize what has been done to you and where you draw your power from.

That said, the Niht tribe practices Irehontism extensively. Primarily they use it on outsiders and criminals to create berserkers.

Weapon Sorcery
Weapon sorcery is pretty basic, it uses sorcery to enhance weapons temporarily. This is pretty standard sorcery here. Most of the misfire information and such will translate from major sorcery to weapon sorcery.

The first way to do it is to treat it precisely like sorcery, but using only spells like flaming weapon/missile/armor spells. The flaming weapon spell has four other spells as prerequisites, as well as Sorcery 2. The other route is the Imbue advantage, which allows you to buy skills that allow you to wrap your weapon in energy and that sort of thing. The first way feels kind of pointless, you know? Sorcery already exists and if a sorcerer wants to specialize in using weapon effects, he can. So I guess we're going with the Imbue advantage to represent weapon sorcery.

Instead of an Unusual Background, you're going to need Gunslinger, Heroic Archer, or the Weapon Master advantage (all of which are on the expensive side, hehe). Whichever is the most appropriate to your specific weapon. Additionally, you'll need Sorcery 0. After that, you can buy the Imbue advantage. It has the following limitations: Environmental: Only Functions With Access To Sorcerous Energy, -5%; Sorcery, -10%. So you have to be able to access sorcerous energy to use Imbue skills and anti-sorcery effects work as anti-Imbue effects. It'll also have the Radically Unstable Sorcery limitation at the -30% value, so just like a spell there is a chance of misfiring if you fail to successfully use an Imbue skill. Because the energy amounts are so small compared to regular spells, Imbue skills only misfire due to failing to properly activate the Imbue skill you are using. If you fuckup an activation, you'll be able to resist the misfire with the Will-3 resist misfire roll. The effects of misfires are determined by the nature of a spell and how much energy was spent on it. The more energy put into a spell, the more potent the misfire. Since Imbue skills don't take energy, I think I'm going to have to base the strength of their misfires on the penalty you apply to your skill when using them. Most Imbue skills have the ability to apply a negative modifier to their effective skill for an increased effect, so that's the closest translation to putting more energy into a spell. I'll figure it out. 

Once you have the Imbue advantage, you can start buying Imbue skills and do sorcery with your stupid fucking weapons and whatnot. The Imbue skills are pretty standard: burny weapons, acidy weapons, poisoned weapons, hard hitting weapons, ammo that bounces and ricochets, and so on. 

Minor Sorcery tl;dr

• Astral Sorcery: Commune with planets, gain a special Energy Reserve that doesn't increase misfire chance when used, as well as voices in your head.
• Intuitive Sorcery: Uneducated sorcerers that don't bother learning things, uses Will instead of (IQ+Will)/2, very unstable, have no need of book learnin' or grimoires, buy colleges as wildcard skills instead of buying spells individually. 
• Irehontism: Bond with ancient great beasts, gain some of their strength and characteristics as advantages, as well as some of their rage as disadvantages.  
• Shadow Sorcery: Draw extremely flexible shadowstuff from another realm to craft effects with. Uses Shadow Talent. All advantages must have the following limitations: Environmental: Only Functions With Access To Sorcerous Energy, -5%; Sorcery, -10%. Taking Unusual Background (Shadow Sorcerer) allows the purchase of Night Vision 1 - 9 or Dark Vision. 
• Weapon Sorcery: Uses the Imbue advantage, only misfires when you fail to successfully active an Imbue spell. 

After all of that, I think we're done with sorcery. I've made a lot of experimental builds, but I think this one (this post and the previous one last week) is a good balance of matching the campaign's background material and not bogging down gameplay with excessive extra mechanics and rolls. We'll see though.

Next up, psionics, and Gifts. And the Nel. Not sure which one I'm going to do next quite yet. We'll see. 

GURPS Hekinoe Sorcery: The Eighth Time Is The Charm

For ages an epic battle has been waged. The armies change and territory shifts, everything is constantly in flux. New contenders enter the fray, old leave. Etc. 

That epic battle is sorcery in Hekinoe and how precisely I should represent it, which is something I struggle with. Once again I find myself wanting to burn everything I've written to this point regarding it to the ground. Which is unfortunate. 

The problem is that so far, I've found things that work, but aren't perfect. Or things that work, but only fit the background material if you squint. There's no simple and easy X% per spell level, roll a d100 every time you cast a spell or use an item. That right there does everything I want it to. It's also a simple one line house rule and doesn't bog down gameplay with half a dozen additional rolls in the middle of combat. I have no problem whatsoever with the way the unreliability of sorcery is represented via Pathfinder's rules. Which sucks, because everything else about Pathfinder is fucking stupid. 

I want and need to finalize this before I can ever move forward with the GURPS Hekinoe/The Known World campaign book. Sorcery is too important to Hekinoe for me to leave it till the end. Additionally, I need to know what sorcery looks like before I can set down any concrete rules for Gifts and psionics as they are kind of defined by how they are different from sorcery. 

This is partly a stream of consciousness experiment and partly a notepad for ideas. I'd normally talk this shit out with a friend like Fred or Eric, but they don't know enough about GURPS for that to really be at all functional as an idea. So here goes. Yippee ki-yay.

What is sorcery? It's the act of using sorcerous energy to cause effects outside of the normal laws of physics and whatnot. 

What is sorcerous energy? It's a chaotic and super powerful external source of energy that living creatures (or at least creatures that were at one time living) can tap into.

How do they make it do stuff? It's guided by their willpower and training in various incantations and gestures and symbolic components.

What have we established so far? Sorcery uses IQ and Will as components of its casting. We've also established that it is not intuitive, so Pathfinder style sorcerers with magical bloodlines based on their undead lifeforce ability score have no place in Hekinoe. Cool. We've also established that it is an external energy source, so sorcerers don't use their FP or an Energy Reserve to pay energy for spells. This means that Sorcery (the Magery advantage) has to be bought with the External Sources Only limitation from Thaumatology. We've also established that spells require training and that sort of thing, so Hekinoe sorcerers need grimoires to study, but their spells are not based on spell slots or temporary memorization like Pathfinder is. Grimoires are more like reference documents. Spells and sorcery in general are complicated and full of calculations and preparations and that sort of thing. I'm thinking that going without your grimoire for a long as time probably incurs the effects of the Incompetence quirk. Since the grimoires are a reference document, having Eidetic Memory/the ability to memorize written information with perfect recollection negates the need for a grimoire.

Lets analyze this material a little further. External Energy Only, specifically. Ok. Ambient sorcerous energy is everywhere, except oceans, apparently. A sorcerer just has to concentrate and begin an incantation or what have you and the energy kind of appears in a swirling cloud of limitless potential around his head. Since external energy is everywhere and is easily accessible, the limitation value for External Sources Only needs to be low. I'm thinking -5% or 10%. Sorcerers can be cut off from ambient sorcerous energy, but it's rare and most of them are educated enough to know how to avoid that. 

Kusseth totally does not have a secret prison complex beneath Serethnem in the ruined pyramids of the Builders accessed via an underground rail system that they use to store all their sorcerers.

Sorcery is unreliable, why is that? Because it is infinite energy that a sorcerer is trying to guide and control with his mind and in the time it takes to shape a specific effect, there is a chance it will overpower his will and burst into existence through a partially or poorly shaped spell. 

How does a spell become more stable? Sorcerers bleed off excess energy by absorbing it into their bodies or by dispersing it through complex gestures and incantations and by focusing on and incorporating symbolic components into their spellcasting. The level of competence a sorcerer possesses also has an affect on a spell's unreliability. 

One thing worth mentioning is that in GURPS, if you don't succeed on the check to cast a spell, it fails and can critically fail and cause something disastrous. These critical fails in the regular GURPS rules are essentially the same concept as my misfires. Since misfires are such a big element of Hekinoe sorcery, I want to have Sorcery always be modified by the Radically Unstable Sorcery limitation.

Those two sections tell us a few things. Willpower (Will) has an affect on how unreliable spells are, as does the amount of energy put into them. It also establishes that sorcerers are taught to bleed off energy into their bodies and through incantations and various components of spellcasting. So those aspects are already factored into the baseline unreliability of a spell. We also see that skill level has an affect on the unreliability of a spell. So more energy equals more chance of misfire, higher Will reduces it, and skill level reduces it.

Part of the difficulty of managing spells and sorcerous energy and unreliability stems from the fact that a sorcerer has a limited amount of attention to spend on doing the various things in the process of casting a spell. I feel like if a sorcerer had the ability to focus multiple minds on a spell, it should make it easier to maintain a spell's integrity. One of the issues with having limitless energy for spells available is that the value of ceremonial sorcery (a bunch of sorcerers get together and pool their resources) is limited in the GURPS rules. I feel like group castings and rituals and that sort of thing have a place in Hekinoe. I want them in Hekinoe. So I think having multiple casters managing a spell would reduce its unreliability. I also think having a familiar to aid you in concentrating on a spell would reduce its unreliability. Basically this amounts to multiple spellcasters and the Compartmentalized Mind advantage reducing a spell's unreliability. 

I guess I don't say it outright, but absorbing sorcerous energy into your body is how sorcerers end up with mutations. The mutation aspect has taken a variety of forms in my campaign. The current version, which I really like, simply states that a sorcerer must have mutations value at the same value as their Sorcery advantage. The mutations can be disadvantage, quirks, perks, and advantages, but their value must also meet that of their Sorcery advantage. They still pay and gain the normal character points for their mutations.

Ok, I think we've kind of sort of hit upon the key component of misfires all of a sudden. I've always treated it as a skill check determined by location with a few situational modifiers. But I think it needs to be an attribute check, Will specifically, modified by a few situational modifiers. In the most recent incarnation of GURPS Hekinoe sorcery I've fucked about with mana levels and such, which isn't really appropriate and I kind of only did because I could kind of sort of make an argument for it. A sorcerer can access as much energy as he wants, it's all over the place. Saying he can only draw 10 energy to him per second is kind of dumb in retrospect. If this energy is truly limitless, once a sorcerer begins casting a spell it should all just be accessible to him. It's not like it has mass or there's a take a number queue where all the little infinite energy molecules are hanging out waiting to be called to go up to the counter. 

Even if Will is the key to maintaining stability in spells, it doesn't mean it's not part of the casting attribute anymore. Even if learned incantations and proper forms are a key component of casting a spell, willpower still helps a sorcerer shape it. So in addition to Will being a component of the sorcerer's attribute for spells, it is the attribute used for misfires as well.  

Since we're calling Will the misfire attribute, that means misfire is checked by a 3d roll. This presents problems because it is a very narrow margin for determining success, failure, and applicable modifiers.

Misfires occur when a spell is cast (when a sorcerer finishes the process of casting) and the longer a spell persists, the more unreliable it becomes. This means that when you are casting an instantaneous effect (like a fireball) the misfire is checked for when you finish casting it and throw the fireball at something. This also means that short term duration spells and permanent enchantments become unstable the longer they exist, but they only misfire when their effects are actually used. So being unused for years can make an enchanted sword very unstable, but it will only misfire when used to attack (if enchanted for accuracy) or it deals damage (if enchanted for increased damage), etc, etc.

This is how it always starts. I get a solid core concept I like, then we have to account for enchantments and high energy cost spells. A spell is more unstable depending on how powerful it is. If we're looking at the explosive fireball spell cast by a character with a Sorcery of 4, he can put between 2 and 24 energy into a spell. If he wants to create a a wand of fireball, that is going to run 1,200 energy to create.

In the past, I've made the argument that the base amount of energy to cast a spell (2 for explosive fireball, 1200 for enchanting a wand to use explosive fireball) has no effect on base misfire chance. The reasoning here is a bit of a handwave on my part, I admit. The reasoning is as follows: a spell wouldn't exist if someone didn't figure out a way to make it work, despite its energy cost.

Additionally, I kind of hit upon an idea last night (we've reach the second day of me working on this post, by the way). With low energy spells, you've got this infinite potential of energy trying to rush into the coffee cup sized outline of the spell you're creating. With high energy spells and enchantments, you've got a much larger vessel for the energy. You're trying to achieve a bigger or more widespread effect, so this vast infinite energy is trying to rush into a lake sized vessel rather than a coffee cup. Squinting slightly and saying because game, I think I am ok with this justification.

So on this topic, enchantments and how they degrade is tied to the length they have existed. It's also tied to the physical strength of the material the enchantment sits in. Fragile materials have more unstable enchantments than tough materials. Unlike regular misfires, enchantment misfires just cause the enchantment to explode in a burst of flame, sometimes rupturing the item.

I envision this happening because there is no conscious will shaping the effect. When a sorcerer casts a spell he is focusing his will and using it as forceps to grab a hold of sorcerous energy. I envision enchanted items in Hekinoe as very runic in nature. Using symbolic runes, the sorcerer makes it so that the energy stored in the weapon is guided by the ruins when the weapons enchantment is activated. Similar to the way sorcerer's use sorcerous energy guided by their spells, the runes on an enchanted item form a shape and the energy of the item's enchantment just flows into those shapes when the enchantment activates. So when an enchanted item is used and misfires, there's no real shape to the energy, and that energy is trapped within something, so it just kind of explodes as heat and light and pressure.

So these explosions will do burning damage, because fire. They'll also do crushing damage because blast wave. They'll also do cutting damage because shrapnel. I definitely want the strength of the explosion to be dependent upon how much energy goes into the enchantment. The shrapnel damage is purely from the physical remains of the enchanted object exploding, so that only happens if the object is destroyed and it shouldn't be too excessive as its not like its going to split apart like a suitcase full of tiny ball bearings.

So at its most base level the explosion damage from an exploding enchanted item looks like: 1d cr ex +1 burn [1d cut]. The crushing and burning damage are dealt directly to the object and if the object is destroyed, the shrapnel damage also occurs. I've seen item enchantments as high as 25,000 energy, so if we do something like every 200 energy in an enchantment increases the crushing and burning damage by 1d/+1 we can conceivably go as high as 250d6 crushing plus 250 burning damage. An explosion's radius extends out to two times the damage dice of yards. So we'd be looking at a radius of 500 yards for that 25,000 energy exploding enchanted item. The damage gets reduced based on the number of yards you are from the point of origin, but still. Yeesh.

Major Sorcery tl;dr

• Spells use (IQ+Will)/2 (round down) as their attribute.
• Misfire uses Will as its attribute.
• It is a learned skill, not an intuitive one based on magical lineage.
• Must have External Sources Only limitation at -5% or -10%.
• Must have the -10% or -30% version of the Radically Unstable Sorcery limitation.
• Sorcerers write down their spells and such in grimoires, which are basically large reference documents. They must be referenced to keep information fresh and clear, but going without them only incurs the effects of the Incompetence quirk for spells they cast. 
• If a sorcerer has the Eidetic Memory advantage, he no longer needs a grimoire as a reference document. 
• A sorcerer must have a number of physical mutations with a points value equal to the points value of their Sorcery advantage. 
• Misfire chance is increased by the amount of energy used to cast a spell. 
• Misfire is unaffected by the base amount of energy used to cast a spell. 
• Misfire chance is affected by skill level of the spell in question. 
• Misfire is checked for when a sorcerer finishes casting a spell. Non-instantaneous spells and long term enchantments become more unstable the longer they exist and such spells only misfire when their enchantments are used, but they don't check for misfire more than once per minute. 
• Misfire chance is reduced by having familiars/Compartmentalized Mind and having multiple participants in ceremonial sorcery.  
• Misfiring enchantments do 1d cr ex +1 burn [1d cut], but only do shrapnel damage if the item is destroyed. The misfire explosion deals damage directly to the item, ignoring DR. 

So that's our tl;dr of sorcery. You'll see it is titled Major Sorcery. That'll make more sense tomorrow. Let's see if we can further finalize them. The first bullet points, spells use (IQ+Will)/2 as their attribute doesn't get much simpler so we can move beyond that. 

Misfires using Will as an attribute needs to have a pin put in it. We can establish right now that misfire checks will be based on Will so you'll be rolling against your Will to prevent a spell from misfiring. We'll need to hash out situation modifiers and that sort of thing before we can establish a baseline value for misfires. Remember though that sorcery in The Known World is very deep in the unreliable section of Hekinoe's sorcery spectrum and Orcunraytrel is very deep in the reliable section. 

Learned skill, not intuitive lineage based one is pretty self explanatory. 

The External Sources Only limitation is going to only be -5%. It's almost no limitation on a sorcerer's ability to access their sorcery. 

The Radically Unstable Sorcery limitation is pretty self explanatory. Doesn't really need to be hashed out that much.

The grimoire thing feels like it could be a decent gadget based limitation to the Sorcery advantage, but I'm not sure. Typically applying gadget limitations means you lose the advantage if the object tied to it is lost or broken, which is not really my intent here. Rather than the Incompetence quirk, I think I'm going to go with just a -1 to effective skill level. So if you lose your grimoire it's just a -1 to the skill level of your spells. I'm going to say that it's a cumulative -1 per week (ten days) a sorcerer goes without his grimoire. I'm also going to say that the sorcerer can make an IQ check with a -1 per week without his grimoire to avoid that penalty. Since sorcery depends so much on learned and memorized mechanisms, I'm going to say that grimoires may be reconstructed from memory at a rate of one spell per day. 

It might be way simpler to just get the Eidetic Memory advantage. Heh,

You have to have a mutation points value equal to your Sorcery advantage points value. These mutations can be advantages/perks or disadvantages/quirks and you pay and gain the normal values for them. When figuring out the value of your mutations for these purpose, just treat them as whole numbers. So 5 points of the Sorcery advantage could be equaled by a 5 point advantage or disadvantage or by 5 quirks or perks or some combination. It's wonky and slightly complicated. Get over it. 

Misfire chance is increased by the amount of energy used to cast a spell. As we've previously said, the base cost of a spell does not have any effect on the misfire chance of a spell, regardless of its cost. So I think what I want to do is say that every full multiple of the base cost by which you exceed the base cost (returning to my fireball, that would be 4 energy for the explosive fireball and 2400 for the wand) you apply a cumulative -1 to the effective skill level of your check to resist misfire.  

Skill level reduces the risk of misfire of a spell. Originally I was going to apply modifiers to misfire chance based on skill level, but that is actually already factored into skill level with spells. See, as your skill level with a spell increases in GURPS you reduce to amount of gestures and incantations you need to make, as well as the amount of energy you have to spend on the spell. This reduction of energy costs already handles reducing the chance of misfire. 

Misfire is checked for when a sorcerer finishes casting a spell. That seems pretty simple right? Kind of. The specific issue I'm thinking of is created sorcerous creatures. I call them sorcerous constructs in my campaign book. Technically speaking, they are using the sorcery that created them every moment they exist. With enchanted items, I don't really want them checking for misfire more than once per minute and I think I feel the same about sorcerous constructs. 

With multiple casters/Compartmentalized Mind, I think I want to grant a +1 to effective skill to resist misfire for every doubling of casters/compartments. So two casters/compartments increases the effective skill level to resist misfire by 1, four casters/compartments by 2, eight by 3, etc. Familiars enter into this because I plan to describe an option for sorcerers with familiars that grants them the Compartmentalized Mind advantage while in the presence of their conscious familiar. 

Back to Will as the misfire attribute. So we have your Will score as how you check for misfires, specifically how you resist them. So we've established a few ways to modify how easily you resist misfire. If we hop back to our explosive fireball example, the base cost is 2 energy for a 2d explosive fireball. Doing something like a 6d explosive fireball (which is about how much damage a mildly deadly lightning bolt does) costs 12 energy and incurs a -5 penalty to resist misfire. If we're dealing with a Will score of 14 (Will is based on IQ, but only costs 5 character points to increase, so it's not hard to imagine a Will of 14 for a sorcerer), that's needing a 9 or less on 3d to throw that ball of fire. Which is only a 37.5% chance of successfully resisting misfire. 

My goal here is to make the check to resist misfire in The Known World use Will-3 as its default with Orcunraytrel as a straight Will check as its default. If we use Will-3 as the default and apply the additional -5 from energy usage we are now looking at a character with a Will of 14 (which is an exceptional Will for a human) throwing that explosive fireball and resisting misfire on a 6 or less, which is a 9.3% chance of resisting misfire. In Pathfinder Hekinoe, a fireball spell only has a 12% chance of misfire, which is an 88% chance of not misfiring. 

Hmm. Maybe if we do something like for every 5 or 10 energy beyond the base cost it applies a -1 to effective skill to resist misfire. That would equate to a -2 or -1 and using 14 from our example we'd resist on a 9 and 10. Hmm. I think I might have something. What if the base cost does not modify misfire at all, but every multiple of your Will by which you exceed the base cost of the spell incurs a -1 penalty to effective skill when resisting misfire? So with a Will of 14, one to fourteen energy beyond the base cost gives -1, fifteen to twenty-eight is -1, and so on. I actually kind of like that. It goes along nicely with Will/willpower being extremely important to sorcerers keeping their spells and sorcerous energy reined in. So jumping back to our explosive fireball, we have a base chance to resist misfire of 11 or less, and spent ten energy beyond the base cost of two for the spell, which falls in the -1 range for our Will of 14, leaving is with a 10 or less on 3d to resist misfire when casting this explosive fireball. 10 or less on 3d is a 50% chance of success, and 6d of damage is a pretty good shot at killing or incapacitating humanoid creatures in GURPS. 

With misfiring enchantments, I think I'm going to stick with a base of 1d cr ex +1 burn [1d cut] damage when they misfire. I'm also going to base it on multiples of 250 energy. So 1 - 250 is 1d cr ex 1 burn, 251 - 500 is 2d cr ex 2 burn, etc, etc, etc. The base skill to resist misfire for enchanted items is going to be as normal (Will-3 for The Known World, with normal modifiers for energy beyond the base cost and such). The skill level of the item to resist misfiring will take a -1 penalty for every year the enchantment persists, but will also be modified by the material enchanted. I'm thinking a fairly small range -2 or -3 to +2 or +3 with iron and steel being the 0 range and wolf-iron and paper being the extremes of the range. 

Major Sorcery tl;dr v2.0

• Spells use (IQ+Will)/2 (round down) as their attribute.
• Resisting misfire is done at Will-3 in The Known World. 
• It is a learned skill, not an intuitive one based on magical lineage.
• Must have External Sources Only limitation, -5%.
• Must have the -10% or -30% version of the Radically Unstable Sorcery limitation.
• Sorcerers write down their spells and such in grimoires, which are basically large reference documents. Every week a sorcerer goes without being able to reference his grimoire he gains a cumulative -1 to his effective skill level with all his spells. He may make an IQ check with a -1 per week he has gone without his grimoire to negate this penalty for one week.  Grimoires may be reconstructed at a rate of one spell per day. 
• If a sorcerer has the Eidetic Memory advantage, he no longer needs a grimoire as a reference document. 
• A sorcerer must have a number of physical mutations with a points value equal to the points value of their Sorcery advantage. Mutations may be advantages/perks or disadvantages/quirks and you pay and gain the normal points values for them. When totaling the value of your mutations up to compare to the value of your Sorcery advantage, treat your mutation points values as whole numbers, not negatives and positives. 
• Misfire is unaffected by the base cost of energy necessary to cast a spell. Base cost is the smallest amount of energy necessary to cast the spell.
• Energy spent to cast a spell beyond the base cost of a spell incurs a -1 cumulative penalty to effective skill level to resist misfire for every multiple of the Sorcerer's Will spent. 
• Misfire chance is affected by skill level of the spell in question due to the effects of skill level on the energy costs of a spell. 
• Misfire is checked for when a sorcerer finishes casting a spell. Sorcerous constructs, non-instantaneous spells and long term enchantments become more unstable the longer they exist and such spells only misfire when their enchantments are used, but they don't check for misfire more than once per minute. 
• Effective skill to resist misfire is increased by 1 for every doubling of casters or compartments for the Compartmentalized Mind advantage involved in the casting (2, 4, 8, etc). Sorcerers with familiars will have a special option to gain the Compartmentalized Mind advantage. 
• Misfiring enchantments do 1d cr ex +1 burn [1d cut] per 250 energy spent on the enchantment, but only do shrapnel damage if the item is destroyed. The misfire explosion deals damage directly to the item, ignoring DR. The item's chance to resist misfire when used is based on the normal chance to resist misfire with normal modifiers. The skill level to resist misfire decreases by 1 for every year the enchantment persists and is also modified by the durability of enchanted materials with iron and steel being the normal range, wolf-iron by a +3 to effective skill level to resist modifier and paper being a -3 to effective skill level. 

Holy fucking monkeytits. That's it. I'm done. I have been working on this for hours now and there's still another section I need to do. And I still need to proofread it. And I still need to do the same fucking shit for Gifts and psionics. 

Fucking a.

Ammunition: Alternate Rules

So a thought about ammunition occurred to me last night at work. In Pathfinder, guns aren't that impressive. Shotguns are kind of cool in that you can use a regular old mundane weapon to do a cone attack, and in a regular campaign without the Unarmored Combatant cheat the targeting touch AC would be super fantastic. Plus, the 5% chance of a critical hit dealing quadruple damage is nice as well. 

There are definitely some awesome things that firearms have going for them, but it's not anything monstrous. A pick can deal damage just as impressively, more so even, as they're a melee weapon and firearms need class features from Gunslinger, a feat or class features from Fighter, or magic bonuses, or feat bonuses (at the cost of -1 to hit/ per +2 damage for deadly aim) to increase their damage and a pick can just add in Strength. 

Normally, I don't make players account for the weight or cost of mundane ammo. This is because in Pathfinder guns really aren't that crazy in comparison to bows and crossbows, and even thrown weapons. I do make them track the costs of specialty ammo like dragonspit bullets, wolf-iron bullets, and so on. 

Guns are a little more...gun-like in GURPS though. I'll explain.

So in Pathfinder, you normally can't make called shots. Critical hits are an abstraction for what we define as a knife to the kidney or an arrow/bullet to the eye, and they just deal damage, sometimes impressively. There are variant rules that add called shots to your game though. Each target location on a body has a penalty to hit as well as different effects that occur on a hit (a hit on the location that deals less than 50 damage), a critical hit (a critical hit that deals less than half the creatures hit point but does at least 50 damage), and a debilitating blow (a hit that deals half the creature's hit points in damage, but does at least 50). 

To explain the differences in guns in GURPS (beyond the fact that their base damage is higher), I'm going to compare the called shot system in Pathfinder with the combat system in GURPS, using the eye hit location.

In Pathfinder, the Eye hit location has a -10 penalty to hit. A called shot hit to the eye grants all creatures concealment (25% miss chance, or 50%, I forget) when attacked by the creature. It also gets a -2 penalty on Perception checks (but not vision based ones specifically, which I'm not too bent out of shape about as I assume a bullet or arrow to the eye is going to be fuck me in the ass with a bowling pin level distracting). Both of these effects last for one round, and there is a note that if the creature only has one eye it gets the blinded condition for one round.

A critical called shot to the eye does that same thing, but it also costs the target the sight in that eye. These effects last for 1d4 rounds. 

A debilitating called shot to the eye destroys that eye and causes blindness until subject to a remove blindness/deafness spell or similar effect. It also deals 1d6 bleed damage. A successful Reflex save reduces the blindness to 1d4 hours and eliminates the bleed damage (which is odd because normally you can't Reflex save your way out of weapon based attack). The target also suffers the effects of called shot to the eye for 2d6 minutes. 

So yeah, a hit to the eye will mess you up. Let's look at GURPS. In GURPS, you choose where you are targeting, and each hit location has a penalty to your effective skill level with an attack. The torso location has no penalty, but also has the least effect. Eyes have a -9 penalty (so Guns - 16 becomes 8 unless there are other modifiers to effective skill). Guns all have an accuracy statistic in GURPS, this is a number that is added to their effective skill level every round they make an aim maneuver (the Gunslinger advantage automatically adds the gun's accuracy or half its accuracy, depending on gun type, to your effective skill level). 

Critical hits in GURPS automatically hit and deny the opponent an opportunity to dodge, parry, or block an attack. There's also a critical hit table the determines effect by location, as well as explanations for the effects of dealing damage to a particular hit location. In GURPS you make a skill check to hit, roll basic damage, apply the target's damage resistance if relevant, then calculate wounding modifiers based on damage category and hit location. This final total of damage is called injury. I sometimes call it penetrating damage.  

The eye location can only be targeted by impaling, piercing, and tight beam burning attacks (lasers). Basically something that can fit in the eye hole in your skull. Other damage types just default to your head location. The eye hit location isn't particularly impressive by itself, it just notes that injury over your HP/10 destroys the eye (getting you the One Eye disadvantage, unless you have a bunch of eyes) and is treated as a skull hit without the extra damage resistance your skull provides. 

There is specific mention of toxic damage not having any additional effect whatsoever on the eye and skull hit locations. The skull location normally provides an extra DR 2 to attacks against it, but as I just said, the eye location ignores that. The wounding modifier for a skull hit increases to x4. So if you get hit and after all the DR there's 2 damage and you're using a large piercing weapon (which normally has a wounding modifier of 1.5) it would deal 8 damage of injury instead of 3. Knockdown rolls are also at -10. Knockdown happens when an attack deals injury of more than 1/2 your HP or you are struck in the eye, face, or skull locations enough to cause a shock penalty. You roll against your HT or fall prone and are stunned (you do nothing every turn except make defense rolls at -4 and make a HT roll at the end of each of your turns to see if you get back up on the next one). So the -10 knockdown penalty is pretty significant. 

A critical hit to the head (face, eye, or skull hit location) also has additional effects tied to a 3d roll on a table. The 3 result is ignoring DR and the attack deals max basic damage. So a 2d revolver crit to the eye would ignore any eye DR then deal 12 damage multiplied by the x4 wounding modifier for 48 damage of injury. 

I'm not sure if it is factored into GURPS already, but I'll be making sure to note in the GURPS Hekinoe campaign book that innate DR does not apply to the eye hit location (assuming a character has eyes). For those that  have eyes and want eye DR, the Nictitating Membrane advantage exists and may be purchased up to 1/3 of a character normal DR. So a Fell Human with Damage Resistance 3 could purchase Nictitating Membrane 1 and a dragon with DR 21 could have Nictitating Membrane 7. Wee.

So what is the point of all this? Good question.

Because guns are so much more potent in GURPS, when compared to Pathfinder, I'm going to start charging for ammunition for guns. Kind of. You'll still need to reload as normal of course, and I'm still not going to dick everyone around with noting how much ammo they have for encumbrance purposes, but I am going to start charging them for ammunition. I'm going to break it down into 3 categories of firearm ammunition, cheap, normal, and high quality. 

Just as a note, what I mean by more potent is not necessarily damage. It does take a ST of 13 to get 2d of damage out of swung weapon (axe, club, sword) and ST 19 to get 2d of damage out of a stabby weapon (sword, rapier, etc). Revolvers do 2d and rifles do 4d, which are both solid numbers of damage. So there is a slight advantage to guns in terms of dealing damage. My primary reason for doing this is that injury and HP and armor are very different beasts in GURPS than they are in Pathfinder. Pathfinder is a very abstract game where something like infinite ammo for a 1d8 revolver isn't unbalanced.

Guns are much more versatile in terms of targeting than an axe or club as they have an inherent accuracy that can be applied to better target high value locations like the skull or eyes, and all you have to do to improve your attack skill with them is aim for a round or two. Melee combatants have a similar option, but with the accuracy stat of firearms, they have a big advantage in terms of how quickly they improve their effective skill. I don't think paying a couple bucks every session for ammo is that unrealistic or ruthless of me. 

Back to the ammo categories. Cheap, normal, and high quality.

Cheap ammo is going to be free and you are always assumed to have an unlimited amount of it on hand. However, it will impose a -1 penalty to your firearm's accuracy stat as well as a -1 per die of damage the firearm deals (meaning a 2d revolver will deal 2d-2 damage). Cheap ammo represents something you cobbled together yourself or looted off of other dudes or bought from some guy name Shady Steve who likes to add his ground up toenails to the gunpowder recipe. He can't help it. He just likes to be inside people. 

Normal ammo is going to be normal. It won't modify a firearm's stats at all, and it'll probably go for something like $0.2 per round. Normal ammo represents something purchased at an actual gunshop that wasn't looted off of someone or subjected to questionable storage conditions.

High quality ammunition is something produced by the big name firearms manufacturers in The Known World like Bel'lore arms or Kussethian Military Technologies. My initial thought was to just do the opposite of cheap ammo, +1 to the gun's accuracy statistic and +1 damage per die of damage. I think I might do something different for it though. Some sort of synergy effect. Like if you use a Bel'lore revolver and Bel'lore high quality ammo the revolver does 3d damage instead of 2d or something like that. Not quite sure yet. High quality ammo will probably run $0.5 - $1 per round. 

These ammo variants will also appear alongside stuff like incendiary rounds, wolf-iron rounds, dragonspit rounds, explosive rounds, and so on. 

So there are some thoughts on bullets and shit. 

Donovan Yells At Nel (Incomplete)

So this was something I was working on months ago, during an RP where Donovan was yelling at Nel. I got this really amusing image of Donovan hosting a talk show, and this is what came of it. I found it slightly amusing, but I could never really go anywhere in my head with it. But here it is:

Donovan sits on a well upholstered leather chair, its empty twin next to him. The Elduman sits with his legs crossed. He stands. He's wearing a nicely cut grey suit, sapphire cufflinks at his wrists matching his unblinking eyes. Behind him in blocky white letters across a large field of blue is "Let's Talk"

An easy smile crosses his face and he leans towards us.

"Hey," he says.

After a pause, "I'm glad you could join us today. We have a special guest."

He holds a hand up, palm facing us and says, "Which isn't to say that all our guests aren't special. But our guest today is a good friend of mine, one I've known for years, one who's personal story I've been a part of. One I'm proud to be able to give this chance to have his time to speak."

Donovan begins clapping and says, "Fellow Talkers, let's have a round of applause for my friend Eran Jenevan."

::cue off screen clapping track::

Eran steps towards Donovan and wraps his overly numerous digits around Donovan's hand. Donovan places his free hand over the Sereth's and his own and gives it a good strong shake, a pleasant smile beaming on his face. He then gestures at the two chairs and the friends sit.

The Sereth is dressed in a rumpled black suit, he runs his fingers between his neck and collar and there's a slight sheen of sweat on his brow. As we zoom in on he and Donovan, we see burn scars across most of his exposed skin. Eran shifts in his seat several times until Donovan places a pale hand on his knee.

"Hey. I'm glad you could join me today. Thank you for having the courage to share your story with us all today."

Eran clears his throat and mutters mostly to his chest, "Uh, no problem, is there uh water. I'd really like some water."

Donovan moves his hand to Eran's chin and raises the Sereth's head so he's looking forward instead of down at the floor.

"It's ok. You're ok," now looking at us he says, "we're all ok."

::cue off camera clapping track::

Eran's cat eyes flick from Donovan to us and back to Donovan.

He says, "Yeah, ok. Sure. I'm ok. Yeah."

Donovan pats Eran's knee and then clasps his hands in his lap and says, "We sure had some times together, didn't we?"

Eran nods, "Yeah. Some stuff. Things. There were wolves. Undead. Demons. Nobody ever wanted to uh go after the last two and stuff."

Donovan continues, slightly interrupting Eran, "But today isn't about us, it's about you Eran."

He pauses before saying, "Eran, I want you to tell me about the black pyramid."

Eran gulps audibly and says to his chest, "Uh, there were some pirates, one had scars. Uh, two were twins. No one could keep their names straight. Not even, uh, that one guy we don't ever talk about."

Donovan puts a finger to Eran's lips.

"I know it's hard. But we're here for you. You are strong and independent and this is your time."

Eran's eyes zero in on the Elduman's finger on his lips. The Elduman grins apologetically and clasps his hands in his lap again.

"There were uh Sereth bodies all over the place. Old bodies with bows and arrows and stuff. There were ones with guns. Long rifles, newer models and older and stuff. It was weird."

Donovan looks at us, "I can imagine your shock. No one but the pirates knew of Orcunraytrel and you come upon Sereth that had been dead for decades. How did it make you feel? Here."

Donovan faces Eran now and taps a pale finger to the Sereth's chest.

Eran's eyes flick down to his chest as Donovan slowly, almost reluctantly removes his finger and returns the hand to his lap. 

Eran says, "Uhhh..."

Donovan smiles a blinding smile and gives a friendly nod.

"It was uh weird, yeah. Weird."

He gives a nod, looking for confirmation from Donovan. The Elduman nods.

"Weird. But I uh didn't really pay much attention to it. There were illusions, and a trap. Yeah the trap. A wall came flying at me for no reason I could figure out an uh..."

He trails off.

Donovan pipes up, "And Karl..."

"Oh, yeah, it uh knocked Karl into some lava. He was upset about that."

Donovan looks at us and say, "I can understand that, but you were dealing with unfathomable things. How could he expect you to watch your footing while trying to process the presence of your people in Orcunraytrel?"

"Yeah. Sure. That uh yeah, never came up."

Donovan nods several times and Eran does the same, remaining silent as he does so.

"And then..." says the Elduman.

"Oh, well yeah, we killed some shadow statue thing and found this pool of glowing water and then we found a big metal coffin with someone inside and then we killed those twins and then we left."

"What happened then?"

"Well, Gob and uh Karl went all crazy about the writing on the pyramid and stuff. I guess it was kinda like the language the Sereth and Vyanth used before they separated into two races. I didn't even know that was a thing."

"How could you be expected to? These are things from the distant past, and your simple race doesn't write anything down, they just keep oral histories. You couldn't be expected to understand what was to come next."

"Uh yeah. That. I guess uh Gob and Karl uh figured out that the writing was a list of dead and there was more writing. It was like a challenge to Sereth to come and free someone important or something."

Donovan lays a hand on Eran's knee, "Did you suspect then that it was the Briar King within the pyramid?"

Eran shakes his head, "No."

"Go on."

"Well, uh, we uh went in and we opened up the coffin and we found this guy, Andorian. A Nel."

Donovan nods and hisses out, "Yes. A Nel. Then?"

"Well uh, he thanked us for freeing him and stuff and said he was one of the Briar Kings and offered everyone boons. He did stuff to uh you and Karl and made Karrak immortal or something, which we never proved. So you know, for all uh Karrak knows, he's not immortal. No one ever checked. I offered, like thirty times, but he would never let me check."

"We're you shocked or surprised at all? This knowledge of a second Briar King, one who is alive and in front of you no less, on top of discovering your people had been coming to Orcunraytrel for decades. You had to be reeling? Revelation after revelation."

"Nope."

Donovan nods to and leans forward in his seat and takes on a classic thinker's pose as he gazes unblinkingly at Eran. 

"Eran, did Andorian grant you a boon?"

"Uh yeah. He even offered one to Gob."

"What was your boon Eran?"

"I uh told him to go tell my family I was uh ok and stuff."

"Did he have a problem with that?"

"Uh no, not then."

"Not then. Indeed."

"Yeah..."

"Are you ok, Eran? Are you ready to continue?"

"Uh yeah."

"Good," the Elduman puts a hand on Eran's knee, "I want you to stop if it gets to be too much. Ok?"

"Uh yeah."

Donovan sits back in his chair and steeples his fingers before asking, "What happened when you got back to the fort?"

Eran gulps audibly and says, "Well, uh, the Andorian guy kept showing up at the tower."

Donovan smiles sadly, "Eran, you're safe here, this is your time. You can say as much as you want."

Eran mumbles something towards his chest.

"Eran. This. Is. Your. Time. You have the power here. You have the power to face him and all he did to you. You can throw open all the doors, expose everything to the light of day. Or you can leave them as they are. Hidden. Your pain behind locked doors with only you to bear it. We only go as far as you want, Eran. You're in control here. You say what you want to say today."

Eran mumbles more at his chest.

"But say it to our friends."

Eran's cat eyes flick vaguely towards us and then back to Donovan.

"He followed me. Everywhere. He kept asking questions about me, the Sereth, Orcunraytrel. He had so many questions. He wanted to know about what the Sereth had been up to for the past few thousand years. He asked about supernatural creatures in Orcunraytrel."

"Why?"

"I uh couldn't ever figure it out. I mean, why would I know more than him? He'd been there for thousands of years, and we never knew shit about anything. We kept killing Asosans for money and stuff. And boars in the woods. I think. I didn't know anything about supernatural entities. I'm a hunter."

"What was he expecting from you? Did he ever say?"

"He said he wanted my help finding Evandor."

"The other Briar King?"

Eran nods, "Yeah, uh, he said Evandor and he were the Briar Kings. He said Evandor would have followed him to Orcunraytrel when they abandoned the Sereth. He said Evandor liked to play games with mortals and uh he would be hanging around, playing games with them, and uh pretending to be a supernatural creature."

"Would it be safe to say you were stressed out by all the attention Andorian was giving you?"

Eran nods.

Donovan's eyes a brimming with compassion as he reaches out a hand and grips Eran's hand tightly, "Was his attention unwanted?"

Eran's eyes brim with unshed tears as he nods.

"How did you cope with it?"

Eran clears his throat and says, "I uh began uh master debating. Maybe three or four times a day, usually while I was out on patrol, but sometimes in the tower when everyone was asleep. Or awake. Whenever really."

Donovan squeezes Eran's hand and asks, "Did Andorian watch you while you did?"

Eran lets out a sob and nods.

Two Bros and a Sun

An endless, empty plain of red earth and dust sits beneath a red sun hanging in a red sky. The sun is huge and bloated, too close to the earth, and black swirls within it. Two figures appear, one with a black sword and the other bearing a blade of red. Neither sheathes his blade as they begin to speak.

"What the fuck, Keroen?"

"You question your Ruler, Callifay?"

Callifay's face twists into a snarl, "No, you'll not be playing that game with me. I'm Feronel through an through Keroen. Last I checked it was Contuck that was the ruler of them. You I'm calling lover an if you think that gives you a free pass to do what you want without worrying about me questioning you, we might be feeding a bit more of you to Skothenthir here before we leave The Nightmare Lands."

The red sword vibrates in Callifay's hand, trying to leap towards Keroen. Callifay's arm doesn't budge.

A smile like a knife's blade splits Keroen's lips.

"Come then, Callifay. Let us cross blades a never set them aside. Let us cut pounds of flesh from one another until we're bloody and raw and have finally watered The Nightmare Lands to its satisfaction."

"Chain. Him. Up. I'm not asking, Keroen."

Keroen's right hand comes up to his face and with a snarl his sinks black nailed fingers into his face like his flesh is soft clay. He snarls and drags something out. A throne of bone and iron appears near the two Nel and upon it sits Keroen, red eyes wide and shining and his brow bleeding. He cackles happily as heavy chains of iron encircle him and bind him to his throne. His teeth are jagged black spikes and his nails are black talons.

He speaks in Keroen's voice, "We told the mortal we'd meet again."

He titters madly.

"We warned him. He told us a story of shit and it amused us and we liked him so we warned him we'd meet again."

Keroen upon the throne frowns, "We should have made him bleed more. Like the sorcerer. Like the Elduman."

Keroen bellows, "Be silent, Bloody Head."

Callifay sheaths his red blade over his shoulder and says, "He's supposed to be well an truly chained, Keroen. He's only supposed to be freeing himself when you allow it. I'll ask again, what the fuck?"

Bloody Head taps his nails upon his throne, smiling toothily at Keroen and Callifay.

Keroen bellows again, "Nostathon!"

A crow descends out of the red sky, it's the size of an eagle and has the compound eyes of a fly and feathers of dark chitin. As it lands it becomes a rotted lastborn clad in ruined black leather armor. It carries a huge single edged sword at rest on its shoulder. It nods at Callifay and bows to Keroen.

"Bloody Head has been escaping his chains, Nostathon."

A dry, raspy wind rustles out of Nostathon's chest and he says, "I am aware. I do not know why. The power of the Sokarnel binds him. Chains forged of your own Gifts and weighted with our own Gifts of death and darkness and ruin. If he is freed, it must be by your own will. I cannot see how he could manage it himself."

Bloody Head shrieks in delight and hisses, "We know a secret. We know all the secrets, but that's besides the point."

Keroen fixes Bloody Head with his green eyes and snarls, "Do I look to be in the mood for your games?"

Bloody Head grins, "We're always in the mood for games of blood and violence. You forget who we are. What we are. We know our past now. We remember that we have slain cosmos with our warcries. We waged war long before we were exiled to this petty little world and we loved it too dearly and we were too honest in our love and for that we were bound. Just as we bind ourself now."

Bloody Head rattles the chains on his body as if to prove his point.

"We were so close. Our brow split open and fire poured out and we could have flown from this cage and warred once more with equals. But we sought to preserve instead, and in our weakness our fire dimmed and our commitment wavered. For a phantom. A shade of no substance."

Bloody Head shoots a look at Callifay.

"For this we denied ourself freedom and war without restraint. We sicken ourself."

Bloody Head spits a gobbet of blood onto the dusty red earth. He sees a rusted sickle, it's edge corroded and caked with dried blood, upon the earth near his throne. He stretches his hand towards it, wiggling his fingers as if that will miraculously make up the feet of distance between hand and sickle.

Callifay lights his pipe and says, "What'll we be doing then? He's free, or as close to it as not to matter. We're in the midst of a brawl, albeit with just the Sarownel now. Fine, the mortals took the brunt of it and survived it. This time. What happens if you cut Volung in two? Prase?"

Keroen scowls, "And what will you have me do, Callifay? Shall I forswear blade and bloodshed once more? Shall we walk the path to my destruction a second time?"

"Piss off, Keroen. You know as well as I your Gifts are limitless. You could pour three times as much into the Nel, truly make pissant little gods of them, and you'd still be able to clobber the whole mess of our people in one go if you wished it."

Callifay hurls his pipe to the ground and jabs a finger towards Keroen, screaming, "What you gotta do is bind that grinning little shit to that chair and keep him there. Fuck everything else. It matters less than a fucking great ursine shitting in the woods. Chain him, cut out his tongue, and nail his fucking limbs to the chair. The longer he's free, the harder you are to reign in, an Skothenthir or no, I can only hold you off for so long. Once he's gutted me, who'll it be that slows you down enough to chain him once more?"

With a smile, Bloody Head says, "Jah'd. Oh we like her we do. She can hold us back. She can ruin us and break us and force us to fight harder. She brings out the best in us. We love her. We need her. Want her. Loria is a mewling little kitten, a pale imitation. Jah'd is our truest love. The original."

Bloody Head gets a quizzical expression on his face and looks down at his pants, blood dripping loudly as it splatters against the iron chains crisscrossing his body. He looks up at Nostathon, Keroen, and Callifay, his grin wider than before.

He nods and says, "Yes. We definitely love Jah'd. We want to cut her and rub up against her and let her cut us and maybe chew on her face a little. Definitely chew on her face.  Do you think she'd chew on ours?"

Bloody Head opens and shuts his mouth a few times with a clack of his sharp fangs striking each other.

Callifay and Nostathon look at Keroen, their expressions saying "What the fuck?"

Bloody Head begins scraping grime from his claws with the point of his sickle, which unlike the curving blade portion of it, is honed and razor sharp. The other Nel don't seem to notice that his chains are suddenly slack and his sickle is in hand. His eyes dart around to make sure none of them are watching him and he brings the sickle up and licks the crusted blood and grime from it with a long, slender tongue. He smiles. 

Callifay says, "Ah fuck it, we'll figure it out later."

Keroen says with incredulity touching his voice, "We will?"

Callifay nods and says, "Aye, eventually, somehow, whatever. You're always pulling some last minute realization or fucking loophole outta your ass to go an fix whatever has us all well and truly fucked."

Keroen pauses, his eyes unfocusing as he remembers.

"Huh. I suppose that's true, Callifay."

Callifay nods.

"You'll figure it out, but you'll be disbanding the warband an you'll be setting aside Calindrel for a time. You follow me?"

Keroen nods.

"Alright then, what'll you be doing about King Shit Tongue and Queen Bat Shit Crazy?"

Keroen growls wordlessly, stops himself, visibly steels his resolve as Bloody Head begins cackling.

"I had it in mind to sink Grenaldeen as an opening move."

Callifay nods, "An then what? Rally the Feronel, do yourself a wee bit of culling?"

Bloody Head's eyes widen and he glances down at his sickle before chucking it behind him over the throne of bone and iron. Then he clasps his hands together and begins whistling and looking around. The other three Nel watch him for a moment before returning to their conversation.

"Perhaps."

Callifay nods again and asks, "Why?"

"We-"

Callifay rolls his eyes, "Oh fuck this leading you around by the nose shit. Stop it. Leave them the fuck alone. Aubernach found a way around your obelisk and he an his people an all the little shit licking young Nel are still weaker than they were back in the day. Be done with it."

Keroen snarls and Callifay whips out Skothenthir.

"Nope. We'll not be doing this. It's time to get the fuck over it Keroen. Aubernach is a tricky little shit, that's for damn sure. He's everything you an I are despising. Pretty words and games and nothing of substance to him. 'Cept the first thing he did was to secure Grenaldeen atop the waves. 'Cept his ploy involved blood and toil. He didn't trick Contuck into hitting the obelisk either. He ambushed you and your allies and made off with the cudgel an we all fucking fell for it like Nel brawling on their first day. He didn't come at you blade out and screaming for your blood. But he came for you. He outsmarted you and took what he wanted. His people bled for it too. Jenevan an I made certain of that. The Aubernel and Utenel came all this fucking way prepared to die in battle against you. They knew nothing of that little shit's ploy. Look at 'em, you can taste it in their Gifts. They're on their knees kissing his feet and opening wide for his dick. The pretty little dandy of a king saved all of his people, an the Utenel, Loronel, an Sokarnel while he was at it. He coulda kept the Gifts or given them to his people. Instead, he fixed what you undid an kept Grenaldeen from sinking. He had them wage war against the fucking Feronel to put them all in position to get a taste when he broke open the obelisk. He wasn't a miser. He spread everything freed from the obelisk around for everyone to get a taste of. He might be a prancing little dandy, but he did what you wanted an his people bled and died and fought for their Gifts. Lesson bloody fucking learned, Keroen. Leave it."

Bloody Head stops whistling long enough to say, "He's got a point."

Keroen looks at Bloody Head, his eyes wide and surprised. Bloody Head shrugs.

"We've been cutting apart Nel forever. They're boring. We should fight something else. We should hang out with Volung more. We like him. He's fun. We can go fuck up the Elduman and the Kussethians and everybody else he's got a bone to pick with. We should do that. He's our friend, after all. We have to be loyal to our friends, right? That's one of the stupid things we think we think is important that Loria kept yammering about when we weren't fucking her. And maybe we can give Volung a friendly slug on the shoulder after we kill everybody else, and maybe he does it back, so we do it harder. He doesn't want to look weak, so he slugs our shoulder harder. Then we tear his fucking head off and eat his eyes. Maybe just one, the other we'll put on our bracelet. It's metal, not bone, but we think it appropriate and we are wise."

Callifay looks to Nostathon and ask, "It's been a while, so maybe I'm just being a bit forgetful, but has he always been this fucking chipper?"

Nostathon frowns and says, "There is an element of cheer to him. He is rarely this animated. I would almost call him happy."

Bloody Head leans forward, his eyes going in different directions to meet Nostathon's eyes, "We know a secret."

He draws secret out to five syllables. 

Nostathon turns to look at Keroen, his dangling eye swaying slightly against his cheek. 

Keroen says, "What secret do you know?"

Bloody Head snickers, "There are three holes. We've filled one with chains and Nostathon. But where are the others? We know. But do we know know? Can we find the answer within ourself? Unlikely. We are seldom given to introspection. We should probably just give up thinking hard about it and just go and cull the Nel."

Keroen frowns, "You said Callifay had a point."

Bloody Head shrugs.

"We are fickle. Blood is blood."

Keroen turns to Nostathon and says, "Call up the host, restrain him with violence if necessary."

Nostathon nods and suddenly there is a skitter of thousands of unseen legs, the rustle of a thousand chitinous wings. Sokarnel appear in their hundreds, thousands, an endless horde of ruined Nel encircling Bloody Head and his throne of bone and iron. 

Keroen bellows, "Once, the Sleeping Kings stood between Loria, Abernach, and Merobel and I. I ask that the Sokarnel take up their duty. Leave off your tormenting of the young Nel. This creature, this bitter curse upon me, this is your duty. Restrain him with your blades and Gifts and your very bodies."

There is a clatter and clank of weaponry as the Sokarnel draw weapons and silently wait in vigil around the throne of bone and iron that Bloody Head is bound to. 

Keroen exhales heavily, a sigh, and says with emotion, "Thank you."

Callifay's brown eyes wander around the horde. He doesn't say anything, only nods. Then he, Nostathon, and Keroen disappear. 

Bloody Head has his sickle back in hand. He looks at the horde of Sokarnel. 

"We know you all think you're doing your duty, we know you think we're the bad guy, the monster in the dark. You've forgotten. You don't remember the first days. The days where we dimmed the sun and you flew in the world of the living like birds of prey. You don't remember the endless battlefields where you grew fat and bloated on the Gifts of Nel. We gave you that. We are your true Ruler. You are the Sokarnel. The restless dead of battle. Your Gifts reek of death and pain, of blood and metal. We are the same. We will play our game though."

Bloody Head shrugs and chains fly off of him and he steps down from his throne, sending up little puffs of red dust where his bare feet strike the ground. His sickle is in his left hand, longer and heavier than before. He smiles and reveals bloody black fangs. 

"Well," he says, "come along then. We have all the time in the world, yes its true, but we are impatient."

Thousands of Sokarnel charge forward to meet Bloody Head in battle, his laughter is the only sound that echoes across the red wasteland of The Nightmare Lands.