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The limits of Glamour


Steve

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I've been making characters for my Aquarian Age campaign that I've posted about off and on before and one of the interesting things I've been exploring in each design is getting a feel for how magic works in it.

 

Magic returned to Earth in this world because the gates to Faerie re-opened, so what kind of magic would that be? Since the Fair Folk made up the refugees, I've been studying about their powers and Glamour.

 

Ars Magica and White Wolf's two Changeling RPGs have been pretty helpful in giving me a game friendly look at how glamour could work, but it seems like there are really few limits. Other than the creatures in Tuala Morn and the Asian Bestiaries, my main Hero System character to study has been Vilsimbra of the Devils Advocates team in the CU. She has one interesting limitation on some of her powers, that they don't work against traditional means of seeing faeries (for her Invisibility, for example).

 

So what can Glamour do? What can't it do? Perhaps throwing fireballs is outside what Glamour can do (I'm still deciding if more traditional wizardry exists), but illusions, mind control, changing shape and transformation attacks still allows for quite a wide-ranging list of powers.

 

I'm currently considering using a form of Alternate Combat Value as a required advantage on a lot of attack powers (OMCV versus DCV). Abilities are mainly things like Shape Shift and Tranformation attacks, as well as Images and Invisibility, but they can be broken by traditional means of breaking glamours (the touch of cold iron for one). While I'm not using Incantations on many powers, Gestures and Concentration seem appropriate. Giving all abilities a Unified Power (Fae Glamour) also seemed appropriate.

 

So, how far should I have Glamour go in changing the modern world and how it works?

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Just some tidbits from my tired brain:

 

A pair of characters in one of my campaigns threw Glamoury Fireballs in Lightning Bolts, they used ED or Mental Defense (whichever was greater), and didn't affect the environment or undead.

 

I once designed a prestige class for 3.5 DnD that could bluff anything, They could tell you that you had been kicked and you would feel pain, or ensorcelled and you would gain the spell's benefits/penalties (except the damage was always non-lethal, and spell bonuses/penalties were always "morale" bonuses and penalties. At their apex, they could even occasionall bluff the universe itself (producing the effects of the Wish​ spell) for a time.

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I'm currently considering the use of a Side Effect on glamour abilities, that using them gives a temporary character Complication (Susceptibility to cold iron). Since it seems Side Effects may be taken multiple times on a power build, I could have the Susceptibility occur every time a Glamour is cast and a different Side Effect happen if the skill roll to use it fails.

 

There are some concepts that are interesting about Ars Magica faeries:

 

1) That many are not cognizant of why they act the way they do, following rules of behavior kind of like a computer program instead.

2) When interacting with humans, they often alter their own behavior instead of altering the human. Like when telling a lie, they make it more believable by instinctively adjusting their words and phrasing, adapting themselves to the human rather than mind controlling the human and making them believe the lie.

3) If killed, the faerie isn't actually destroyed, and they come back in a similar form to the prior version, maybe thinking of themself as a different faerie. 

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I think you should think about what you think Glamour can do.

I am currently reading a series where powerful enough Glamours can actually change reality. That Fae aren't quite as susceptible to iron as they were in time past. They gained SOME resistance to it (otherwise they would have a hard time living in the modern era with all of the steel and iron we commonly use).

Usually Glamours are cast by Fae and Sorcery is what Mortals (Humans) cast. With some Powerful fae being to use both.

I like fae that cannot tell a lie. It's fun as a player how to talk around something you don't want to tell the truth about. Also, many Fae are bound by a rule of three. ie asking one something 3 times compels them to tell the person the information. Also saying the Fae's name three times will make powerful fae notice you(which isn't usually a good thing). 

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A long time ago now, when I did a version of Sidhe Magic I never actually used much, I created a Limitation I called "Afflicted by Iron."

 

Basically, 1 kg of iron acted as a 1d6 Suppress in a 1 hex area, and greater quantities of iron scaled up both the area and the dice of Suppress.

 

Of course, you probably wouldn't want to do this. Bad enough when a knight in plate armor standing 5 hexes away is interfering with your glamour, this rule would make casting in a modern city probably impossible.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Englamoured palindromedary

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One of the aspects of the world I am exploring is the malleability of reality, and that it becomes more pronounced the nearer one gets to the gates to Faerie. The power of Glamour is like an invisible ocean now covering the Earth, but is has its shallow points and deeper areas. In the deepest places, Glamour is effectively reality rewritten.

 

Taking the notion of Glamour abilities with a Side Effect giving a Susceptibility to cold iron makes me wonder about the Fae as I am making them, that perhaps the more humanlike ones were actually once human but now altered by Glamour into cousins of mankind. There's a strong relationship between faeries and humans.

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Another Limitation I used combined "subject to disbelief" and "dispellable by will."

 

If I recall correctly, I used a kind of Skill vs Skill roll, with the glamor using a roll based on the Skill of its creator plus 1/5 Active Points, and the active disbeliever rolled based on INT plus EGO.

 

If the disbeliever succeeds, the glamor doesn't effect them - they can walk through a Barrier of glamor, a glamor attack does no damage, their own attacks ignore a glamor defense, etc.

 

Once one has succeeded in disbelieving, it's possible to will the glamor away...I think maybe it was an EGO plus PRE roll, against a similar Skill for the glamor but the glamour gets a bonus?

 

The "rewrite reality" part comes in when someone fails to disbelieve or to dispel. Either will give the glamour a cumulative bonus each and every time it happens. So if a glamour has stood for years, it's effectively permanent, barring a powerful counterspell.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Where do you think the palindromedary came from?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I ran an urban fantasy/monster hunter game several years ago based on a roughly-similar concept. Most of the "magic" was various types of mental powers. But since I'd established that EDM portals were a thing, I had some very-high-end mages that were able to open small portals as energy conduits to throw power around - straight-up fireballs & lightning bolts. Was quite a surprise to the PCs when they first ran into it! I didn't use that very often myself, but you could just as easily make that a central plank of the campaign if that's the game you want to play.

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As you already approach the topic using Ars Magica and World of Darkness:
To me the most important aspect about this setting is the paradigm conflict. Faerie World and Modern World BOTH are created by rewriting reality. There are no more fairies today because we wrote them out of possibility. So when they come back the whole story as much as every single spell is a fight between two dimensions and their reality.

The traditional weakness of Fairy Magic is iron and salt. That is because those old stories come from the stone age. And even in celtic times people felt that they slowly where killing "them" with their technology.
Magic can be terribly convincing. But so can be a blade between your ribs. Or a bullet. Or towers built from iron bars and molten stone.

So the most important question is: What gives Glamour the power to start rewriting reality again after all these years?
That IMHO should be your question - and the question the players will have answered in their story.

 

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