High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Now, I was asking for these idea for my game, but stuff I make for my game quite often ends up as fodder for my FH based Digital Hero articles. Would anyone mind if I ended using some of these ideas in an article?

[Basil]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

RetCon: Megascaled Transform: memories and records of an event change to a different event.

 

Everyone remembers, and all records show, that something (other than what really happened) happened the way the caster wants. No actual results change (the palace is still ruined); don't let rules-lawyers claim a ruined palace is "a record."

 

A limit on the total number of times each caster can use this spell would be a good idea.

[Blue Jogger]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

World Travel

On the day of the solstice or the equinox, one can extra-dimensional travel to another world. This is a surprisingly cheap spell. If you are careful, you can travel to another world and be home for dinner OR end up being stuck somewhere for three months. (-2 Lim, Can be used anytime on the day of the equinox or solstice)

 

Mana Routes

Someone a few years back suggested that mana flows in directions along lay lines and thus mana surfing would become popular. (need to find that thread, it was fun).

[Markdoc]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Another possibility is a kingdom-wide teleport with a large number of fixed locations (which are of course all in the King's castles), so that he can walk from one end of the kingdom to the other simply by going from room to room. So it's raining in the library in the palace in Cartnia province? Take your book down the hall and walk into the yellow gallery where the windows look out on the sunny seaside of Doorn.

 

The Dymerian emperor in my game actually has this - the Palace of 10,000 Rooms - but it's a closely guarded secret and requires passwords (Trigger) to access the more secure palaces: use the wrong trigger on the wrong door and you end up in prison (if you are lucky) or in low orbit, if unlucky.

 

cheers, Mark

[Doc Democracy]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Nice one - also allows the King to maintain a personal and visible presence in every part of the Kingdom.

 

I like it.

 

More stealing from Glorantha would be to have an umbrella of effectiveness for your people and disability for enemies of the state.

 

This would manifest as a +2 Overall levels for all patriots and 2 Overall Negative levels for enemies (or invading forces) of the state. When your empire takes new territory there has to be a temple/palace/monument installed in a magical ceremony that extends the effects of the umbrella to the new territory.

 

This is the Glowline in Glorantha and it is extended by consecrating new Temples of the Reaching Moon - the borders of the Glowline are visible to those with Spirit Sight and within the Glowline the Red Moon is always full and her priest's magic at full effectiveness (outside their powers wax and wane with the moon).

 

 

Doc

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

And of course there is the holy blessings - used in yearly purification rituals, or when the kingdom is attacked by demon or undead armies. A Change environment to Holy Ground that covers the entire kingdom.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Cool idea for a scenario.

 

There are taxes in the UK that have to be renewed each year or they become invalid.

 

If you had the Blessing that had to be renewed annually for the official church then there could be a scenario raised around the forces of evil looking to disrupt the Blessing and thus make their life easier in the coming year....

 

 

Doc

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Cool idea for a scenario.

 

There are taxes in the UK that have to be renewed each year or they become invalid.

 

If you had the Blessing that had to be renewed annually for the official church then there could be a scenario raised around the forces of evil looking to disrupt the Blessing and thus make their life easier in the coming year....

 

 

Doc

 

NIfty. There was something very similar in the opening book of the Bazil Broketail series.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

I see a crafty necromancer begin to visit realms to break their blessings and suddenly priests find that they can no longer turn undead and that their healing spells etc are less effective - the undead and evil creatures suddenly begin to run riot as the necromancer turns his gaze to the neighbouring realm - all that might stand in his way are an intrepid band of heroes willing to risk their very soul to save their realm.

[Inu]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

sunny seaside of Doorn.

Gotta love fonts.

 

Did anyone else read this as 'Sunny seaside of doom!'

[Stephen Mann]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Actually' date=' if its not inordinately expensive, making the farmers immune to sickness and such is a *good* move. Healthy, happy farmers are more productive, which means the nobles both have more taxes and fewer revolts.[/quote']

 

And the next group to give disease immunity is your soldiers. Give them a campaign season's duration for:

1. no need to sleep
   
2. no need to eat
   
3. fast healing
   
4. no fatigue from exertion
   
5. disease immunity
   
6. poison immunity
   
7. panic prevention
   

 

That'd get grotesque very quickly.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

And the next group to give disease immunity is your soldiers. Give them a campaign season's duration for:

 

That'd get grotesque very quickly.

 

Woo... About 30-40 base, plus the usably by other, megascale and time. That is going to go into my list.

 

And you are right - really really ugly.

 

 

Another one in the combat idea. Rather than huge fireballs to wipe out the opponent's army - A drain/pen KA that only affects foci - so as they come up to fight their weapons and their armor all fall to pieces.

[ghost-angel]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

The Apocalypse:

 

Pestilence: 2D6 Drain CON, Area Of Effect: Megascaled, Delayed Return Rate: 5pts/year, Continuous: 1 Day

 

Famine: Change Environment: Land into Barren & Infertile Land, Area Of Effect: Megascaled, Long Lasting: 1000 years, Continuous: 1 Day.

 

War: 1/2D6 HKA, Area Of Effect: Megascaled, Continuous: 1Day, NND (Divine Protection); Does Body

 

The Megascales shouldn't be planet wide. I'm too lazy to do the math, but it should be big enough that each effect sweeps across the earth over the period of 1 Day catching the total area for an affected period of time. Perhaps each Curse is attached to a moving object with a SPD1 and enough movement to cover the earth. The idea is people are hit by Pestilence and War enough that many die, but not all.

 

It should leave, in it's wake, a broken land with broken people, and many dead but a few surviving.

 

(these aren't the Horsemen of Revelations, but the more traditional idea of what he Horsemen are. I left out death because it's no fun if every

 

Other happy curses:

 

Your Line Ends Here: 20D6 Minor Transform: Fertile Person to Infertile Person, Expanded Class: Everyone related by blood or marriage to seven degrees, Area Of Effect: Megascaled (Planet) [i'll leave the heal back conditions up to the campaign, it shouldn't be the default REC).

 

Curse Of Ages: 20D6 Major Transform: Person into Person with 2D6 Unluck; Sticky (Offspring Only)

 

I think that might do it, Hero doesn't have any guidelines for modeling passing on of traits to ones children beyond GM Caveat. . .

[Blue Jogger]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Servants for Everybody: Summon 1024 servants (use Average Person with 8 REC, Psychological Limitation: Hyperactive, PS: Servant), Slavishly Loyal. (They work well for about a week and then they must be banished as their little minds melt. However, they will try to be "helpful" to the bitter end.)

[The Monster]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Tireless Workhorses - Aid REC, only to horses and oxen (or other draft animals per campaign). Charge could be built to duration of anything from a week to a season. (Could also be adapted to Aid STR for plowing season)

Another version might be to bless the royal roads with Aid REC, to assist travelers and cargo haulers.

 

Night Sentinels - Infravision, usable by others. Bestowed on soldiers of the watch for each night shift.

 

Spells to grant skill levels of various kinds could help the realm with various aspects of prosperity and well-being:

Canny Merchants: + Trading

Fine Cuisine: + PS:Cooking

Master Metalworkers: + Weaponsmith

Superior Mounts: + Animal Handling

Rhetoric Masters: + Oratory

...and so forth

 

Walls of Adamant: provide a castle or other large building with enhanced protection - extra Armor, Force Field, or even Damage Reduction. (Force Field could run off an END Reserve, which can be refilled by a ritual of your choice (sacrifice, prayer, burning magic items, etc.))

 

Army of Heroes: Aid +6 PRE for a large group (i.e., an entire army). Not a huge effect, but enough to nudge many PRE attack effects and skill rolls up or down a notch, which is all you may need to swing a battle.

 

Shadow of Terror: Drain/Suppress 2d6 PRE over a large area (a mile or so, most of a battlefield). Enough to knock most normal troops to 5 or less PRE, making them quite vulnerable to fear and oratory.

 

My Perfect Weather: Change Environment over a single farm, with a charge that lasts for a week, usable by other (the farmer) so that s/he can later the weather for that one farm by enough to improve the crop yield. Each week the local priest/wizard comes by to renew the spell and collect the fee/tithe/favor. Larger version might be usable by a baron.

 

Puissant Arms: add AP to all weapons of a large group/area. A group could include any company of an army; an area would still be useful if cast over the body of archers. To get really nasty, make the advantage AVLD (so that only magic protection/armor/force field is still effective).

As long as we're talking naked advantages, other good ones might include No Range Penalty, Indirect, Penetrating...

 

Lucky for Life: several Life Support effects would be extremely beneficial if applied to the community - disease resistance/immunity has already been mentioned, but consider the ability to eat/drink less often, or to eat/drink stuff normally harmful. Or the ability to ignore hot and cold temperatures. Even someting as minor as immunity to the venom of local snakes would be seen as a great blessing. (Be careful of the aging reduction, though - you'd likely run into population pressures, not to mention someone might object to being stuck in puberty for 30 years!)

[Doc Democracy]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Lots of nice examples of high power magic. Makes you wonder what the opposition wizards are doing to counter all this, dont it?

 

 

Doc

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Lots of nice examples of high power magic. Makes you wonder what the opposition wizards are doing to counter all this, dont it?

 

 

Doc

 

Yeah. I suspect that in the world I am going to have these as the main form of magic will feel a lot like the cold war - everyone on edge politically, because once one mage starts throwing around some of these attack spells, then everyone does - and after that - well, everyone loses.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

 

Army of Heroes: Aid +6 PRE for a large group (i.e., an entire army). Not a huge effect, but enough to nudge many PRE attack effects and skill rolls up or down a notch, which is all you may need to swing a battle.

 

It would be a great help using the FH Mass combat rules. Or buy +3 to moral rolls with the same kind of advantages - a mass courage spell or something.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Mages Retribution:

 

10d6 Killing attack - Trigger (when the person who bought this spell dies) - Area Effect 1 hex, 2 levels megascale. 1 charge ever -4, focus, uses focus up in use (caster's body) can never replace. Not vs the ground (-0) non ranged

Then all the extra time ect stuff to originally cast it.

 

Kill the mage and everything the 5 kilo's in a circle around him takes 10d6 K. But the spells doesn't blow the earth up or open up a hole to the magma.

[atlascott]

good one

 

This is a pretty weird one, so bear with me...

 

What about a spell which causes a ball of fire to issue from the hand of the caster, moving towards a target, and exploding in an area effect?

 

This is a real game imbalancing spell, so use with caution, because it combines a range attack and area of effect with the element of fire.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: good one

 

This is a pretty weird one, so bear with me...

 

What about a spell which causes a ball of fire to issue from the hand of the caster, moving towards a target, and exploding in an area effect?

 

This is a real game imbalancing spell, so use with caution, because it combines a range attack and area of effect with the element of fire.

 

 

 

 

[Teflon Billy]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Mages Retribution:

 

10d6 Killing attack - Trigger (when the person who bought this spell dies) - Area Effect 1 hex, 2 levels megascale. 1 charge ever -4, focus, uses focus up in use (caster's body) can never replace. Not vs the ground (-0) non ranged

Then all the extra time ect stuff to originally cast it.

 

Kill the mage and everything the 5 kilo's in a circle around him takes 10d6 K. But the spells doesn't blow the earth up or open up a hole to the magma.

Would it be possible to add "Team or Your Side Immunity" to that spell (would such an advantage be even legal?)

 

That would make indescriminate ranged attacks much less likely if every mage is a walking tac-nuke upon death.

 

It'd also be a nice insurance policy for battlemages to insure that they are taken alive (who cares about the peasant infantry?) I could see every mage guild in the world teaching their wizards this spell.

 

You could also add "Not in the case of suicide or accidental death" to insure that mages couldn't act as suicide bombers or other such mishaps.

 

TB

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Would it be possible to add "Team or Your Side Immunity" to that spell (would such an advantage be even legal?)

 

That would make indescriminate ranged attacks much less likely if every mage is a walking tac-nuke upon death.

 

It'd also be a nice insurance policy for battlemages to insure that they are taken alive (who cares about the peasant infantry?) I could see every mage guild in the world teaching their wizards this spell.

 

You could also add "Not in the case of suicide or accidental death" to insure that mages couldn't act as suicide bombers or other such mishaps.

 

TB

 

Good points.

 

I was seeing it as the last revenge of the old evil wizard when attacked. Or the putting the Bad mofo beyond much like Raven in Snow Crash.

[The Monster]

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

 

Now for some nasties...

 

Curse of Idiocy: Drain/Suppress INT, large area. As little as 2d6 can reduce normal people to the mental equivalent of cows and sheep. 1d6 is less drastic, costs half as much, but enough to reduce normal people to unusually stupid normal people (No, I won't suggest that another name for this could be "U.S. Public School System." I won't say that.)

 

Curse of Leprosy: Drain COM, Sticky. A single die of "effect" turns into 2d6 of actual COM removed - enough to turn normal people absolutely hideous. The Sticky means you only have to cast it on one person to cause a plague - or even just a panic (especially when medicine and Cure Disease spells fail, since it ain't a disease!). To really get nasty, you cast it on the ground, which makes everything that touches that patch of ground ugly - ugly trees, ugly crops (perfectly edible and nutritious, but disgusting to look at!), ugly animals, ugly people.

 

Curse of Guilt: Drain 6d6 PRE, recovery time years, trigger. When the wizard is killed, the person who killed him suffers this effect, which pretty much reduces the killer to a quivering, crying wreck for the foreseeable future. So much for being the great hero!

 

Curse of Overpowerment: Aid (magical effect). Designed to operate on large-area spells, such as those which enhance crops or attributes, this greatly increases their potency. Carefully chosen, this could result in serious distortion of economies, social structure, and so forth: if everyone is rich, gold has no real value, as it were; if everyone's chickens lay a hundred eggs a day, what you have is a lot of rotten eggs (and a serious kingdom-wide cholesterol problem!).

 

Curse of Extreme Weight: Density Increase area effect, usable against others. Over a large area, this makes everyone in the realm weigh more - not fatter, just heavier. A lot heavier. While it also makes them a little tougher, it makes for difficulties with vehicles and buildings - not to mention riding animals! - as they are not built to carry such increased loads. With Gradual Effect, this might not even be noticed until several floors, wagons, and ships start collapsing.

 

Edgeless Weapons: Transform all sharp metal objects to dull metal objects. All medieval weapons which were Killing Attacks become Normal Attacks. While this isn't necessarily a fatal flaw, it does distort the enemy army's fighting a bit (especially arrows!). It also makes meat a lot harder to cook and eat, without sharp knives and skewers!

[The Monster]

Re: good one

 

This is a pretty weird one, so bear with me...

 

What about a spell which causes a ball of fire to issue from the hand of the caster, moving towards a target, and exploding in an area effect?

 

This is a real game imbalancing spell, so use with caution, because it combines a range attack and area of effect with the element of fire.

 

Naaaah.... that's way too munchkiny. Too overpowered. I'd sure never allow that in MY campaign!