Building "Eye of Thoth" (Kult Conversion)

[Black Lotus]

There's a French roleplaying game which you may or may not have heard of called Kult: Beyond the Veil. Kabbalistic spells are a common theme in Kult, and I need help converting the "Eye of Thoth" spell to HERO rules.

Basically, "Eye of Thoth" works like this:

• Casting Time (Extra Time): 24 Hours
• Ritual Items, Gestures, and Words (Foci, Gestures, Incantations)
• Duration: Instantaneous
• Effect: Know the location of any person or thing you know the name of ANYWHERE -- at any distance and in any plane of existence -- in any time period, past, present, or future. (Clairsentience, but....)

How much should infinite range for Clairsentience cost? How should I restrict it to show it can only be used to know the location of aspecific, named person or object (you can't use it just to see a location, only objects and people).

Thanks for any advice you can give.

[Black Lotus]

All righty, here's what I've come up with so far:

(The SFX are extremely long and involved, so I'll spare you. Suffice it to say it's a very long, involved, taxing ritual, at the end of which you know the location of any one object or person no matter where they are (within the solar system), when they are, or which dimension they're in.)

Eye of Thoth__________________________________________

Clairsentience (Sight Group; Precognition; Retrocognition; Dimensional, Any; Extra Range x33 [Solar System]; 235 Character Points); Obvious Accessible Focus (Immobile; Arrangement; -2 1/4), Extra Time (1 Day; Cannot Activate Other Powers When Activating; -4 1/4), Gestures (Both Hands; [x2 Value For Extra Time 1 Day]; -1), Incantations ([x2 Value For Extra Time 1 Day]; -1/2), Instant (-1/2), Increased Endurance (x2; -1/2).

Active Point Cost: 235. Real Point Cost: 23.

Comments? Corrections? Suggestions? Criticisms?

By the way, I figure the fact that this Power cannot be used to scry a location makes up for the fact that you can place the focal point at a creature or object of your choice with which you are passingly familiar. Also, the Instant Lim represents the fact that this Power only gives you an idea of where the thing is once; you can't watch the item for more than a second or so. It's like a snapshot.

EDIT: Hmmm. Perhaps I should add Concentration....

[JTesla]

I’m impressed by the fact you are converting Kult. Great game, as long as you capture the proper feel you can’t go wrong.

No criticism of the power, I do agree with adding Concentration. Although, with having Extra Time, Gestures, and Incantations, adding Concentration may just be overkill for something that is already a given.

[Black Lotus]

I’m impressed by the fact you are converting Kult. Great game, as long as you capture the proper feel you can’t go wrong.

No criticism of the power, I do agree with adding Concentration. Although, with having Extra Time, Gestures, and Incantations, adding Concentration may just be overkill for something that is already a given.

Exactly what I was thinking about Concentration. "Eye of Thoth" is already at a Disad value of -10 (!), Real Point Cost 23 (cheap). And yes, I have to strive to only convert the mechanics... and convert them as faithfully as possible, keeping the setting true to the cosmology of the Illusion.

One major problem I have is how to handle Kult Advantages/ Disadvantages and Mental Balance. Since Disads are part of pure character creation in Hero and there are no such things as "Advantages" really -- everything's an "Advantage" to the character that you buy with points. I'm not sure how to handle this, but I'm thinking of simply taking Ads like "Honest" and "Altruistic" and Disads like "Sexual Neurosis" and the like and handling them with a separate game mechanic.

Main problem with Ads/ Disads and converting to Hero is that they often coincide with a Talent, Perk, Power, or Disadvantage in the Hero rules... and it is difficult to use these as a way to calculate Mental Balance, because a player shouldn't have to feel that they should take lots of Perks and Talents.

We'll see what happens....

[Super Squirrel]

Ah, Kult. The roleplaying game that could be said helped me get my wife. The days of messed up roleplaying games gone past. Wasn't magic limited to certain types of people? You might want to throw that on there. But I haven't touched that game in a good 8 or 9 years now.

[Black Lotus]

Ah, Kult. The roleplaying game that could be said helped me get my wife. The days of messed up roleplaying games gone past. Wasn't magic limited to certain types of people? You might want to throw that on there. But I haven't touched that game in a good 8 or 9 years now.

I love Kult so much, even if the translation from French is a touch iffy. For example, the editing could use some work, and at times you're not sure whether they're talking about America or France (I'm sure in the French version America is hardly mentioned except when it comes up in Kult cosmology).

Also, I'd just like to mention that this conversion is going to be extremely difficult to handle properly -- that is, preserving most of the feel of chargen and background development. In Kult, the way characters are statted has a massive effect on the way they interact with the world, far above and beyond skill checks and ability scores.

I just hope I come up with some decent ideas for handling the conversion before I hit retirement.

[Ganesh]

Rather than starting with Clairsentience, you might go a slightly different route, starting with Mind Scan, probably doubled in cost because you can detect the location of all sorts of things that aren't "minds" per se, and simply state that it gives you a visual bead on the target, not a mental one. Give it the extradimentional and extratemporal advantages, the "instant" disadvangage, and the "spellcasting" disadvantages (which in a Kult convesion, you probably want to specify at the beginning and then simply list "ritual spell (-8)" after all of them.

This has the advantage that some things can have mystical defenses, making themselves harder to scry, and and having some vague idea of where your target is helps.

If you really want an all-or-nothing effect, rather than a skill-roll based search, then modified Mind Scan is definitely not the way to go, but it bears mentioning.

[Black Lotus]

Rather than starting with Clairsentience, you might go a slightly different route, starting with Mind Scan, probably doubled in cost because you can detect the location of all sorts of things that aren't "minds" per se, and simply state that it gives you a visual bead on the target, not a mental one. Give it the extradimentional and extratemporal advantages, the "instant" disadvangage, and the "spellcasting" disadvantages (which in a Kult convesion, you probably want to specify at the beginning and then simply list "ritual spell (-8)" after all of them.

This has the advantage that some things can have mystical defenses, making themselves harder to scry, and and having some vague idea of where your target is helps.

If you really want an all-or-nothing effect, rather than a skill-roll based search, then modified Mind Scan is definitely not the way to go, but it bears mentioning.

I looked at Mind Scan, too, but Eye of Thoth is indeed infallible. The only thing it cannot find -- no matter where it is -- is God Himself (called the Demiurge in the setting), who has vanished, died, or gone away somewhere, and no one in the entire campaign universe knows where He is.

In short, it's quite a powerful, infallible and omnipotent spell, so it has to be Clairsentience.

[Mister E]

[*]Effect: Know the location of any person or thing you know the name of ANYWHERE -- at any distance and in any plane of existence -- in any time period, past, present, or future. (Clairsentience, but....)

So this power allows the caster to know the location of the subject, during the entire span of the subject's existence; past, present, and future; in all dimensions.

[Black Lotus]

So this power allows the caster to know the location of the subject, during the entire span of the subject's existence; past, present, and future; in all dimensions.

Not quite.

The Duration is Instant. You basically ask, "Where is Steve Long?" If he died, you'll know where he's buried. If he's in Atlanta in the Hard Rock Cafe right at this moment, you'll know that. If Steve hasn't been born yet, you will receive some information about where he will be at SOME point in the future, perhaps where and when he is born.

In other words, only the most pertinent time period (i.e., that would allow you to go to the location to meet or retrieve the object or person in question) is given. In Kult, time is in the human mind only, and does not exist in Eternity. Therefore, all objects exist all the time in Eternity... yeah, it's complicated.

Suffice it to say, the caster will be given the location of the person or object RIGHT NOW. If the thing no longer exists, he'll know its final resting place, or perhaps its last location before it was destroyed. If it exists now, he'll know where it is the moment the spell activates. If it doesn't exist yet, he'll know when and where it comes into existence for the first time.

But only a single place and time, like "The Holiday Inn in Dallas, TX at noon on July 24, 2005." It doesn't costantly track the object, just gives you one parcel on information.