Pseudomages

A couple of house-keeping items:

I'm waning in my interest with The Old Republic at the moment (don't worry; it'll come back in a couple of months or so) but waxing in my interest in Dark Fantasy X, RPG craft projects like adding another level of polish to my dice tray and possibly making a home-made wooden GM screen, etc. 

As part of that, I imagine that I'll also do a thorough re-edit and revision of the game file itself, although more to catch any lingering errors than to make any major changes. I may bring down the hit points of a lot of the monsters, though—and I'd like to add a few fey type creatures, since I've now added a sinister Erlking or Oberon figure to the 4th column of my CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER 5x5. When this is done, I'd actually like to get some copies printed from Lulu or something like that, which will motivate me to not keep messing with it anymore. So it really needs to be in top form.

If I do that, though—actually whether I do it or not—I'll be adding a disclaimer at the front of the monster section that the hit points are a recommendation only, and meant to be an entire group of PCs fighting one or at most two or three of the creatures if they're relatively minor threats. If you add more creatures, you should adjust the hit points down to 75% or even 50% or so of the listed total, depending on how many you add. This is less about adjusting combat lethality, and more about making it not become long and tedious. And frankly, some room-reading is critical here when playing; if the result of a comabt is starting to become obvious or interest in the combat is starting to wane even a little bit, it's best to flex the hit points down and wrap it up rather than let it go on any longer. (I may have some PTSD because of higher level encounters in our Age of Wyrms 3.5 game that took the better part of 4-5 hours to play through.)

Another minor change I'm considering, although I'm not actually sure that any change needs to be put in the rulebook, since it really only affects the setting, is one that I'm borrowing from some of my own past work. I was re-reading some of my EBERRON REMIXED stuff and was reminded that I thought the relatively common low-level magical items that provide daily convenience, like magical street lights and stuff like that, not to mention expensive (but not really for PCs) conveniences like magical telegrams, notarization, train-like travel, etc. were part and parcel of the setting. Even though I'm using a Dark Fantasy X rules-system to model my Eberron Remixed, I needed to find some way to accommodate those things existing. I decided to make dragonmarks and dragonshards the somewhat hand-wavey explanation for why they exist, but suggest that they weren't really magic per se, but rather a more engineering-like thaumaturgical discipline, so it is tolerated by the governments and the church. So while a school of wizardry had to be remixed right out, (because it would be akin to saying a school of witchcraft, cannibalism and human sacrifice in the real world), artificers could still exist, and that might be a way to get magic-like spell effects without actually having to use magic; i.e., you trade most of the risk associated with spell-casting for really expensive items like rings, wands, staves, pendants, and whatnot that were limited in what they could do (i.e., they'd run out and need to be replaced or recharged at great expense) but still give players that wanted it a way to do magic without it being out of synch with the setting assumptions that informed the rules. Few people in the setting know the difference between magic and engineering-thaumaturgy, so if you're blasting off spells out of a ring, you still face getting lynched as a witch, and if you need to spend thousands of gold after blowing around 15-20 "spells" max, then you could almost end up like a strung-out, broke character who's addicted to something that he can't afford like a drug, or who has gambling debts to the mafia, or something like that. Not only does it give "magic-user" characters an out to exist in a Lovecraftian magic system, but it also becomes a great plot device, because these guys will always be a little too hungry for power that is expended too quickly and easily, and their creditors are probably always knocking. 

I'm sure I got the idea from the MYTH Adventures books, specifically the second one Myth Conceptions, when we first meet Massha, who Aahz sneeringly derides as a "mechanic" as opposed to a mage, i.e., she can appear to be a mage to the uninformed by using a few magical rings, pendants and other gear that she bought at great expense and difficulty at the Bazaar on Deva. in Dark Fantasy X, pseudomages can only exist in very limited supply, because the only people who can become pseudomages have to 1) have a source for something that's seriously frowned upon by society; it's equivalent to being strung out on meth or crack, 2) have more money than they know what to do with, and 3) be much more reckless than normal, even by PC standards. But it's still a compelling idea, I think.

It's been rattling around in the back of my mind ever since that time (March 2021 or so—a good year and a half) until I finally think I'm ready to admit that the concept would have merit in the Dark Fantasy X setting too. But if it does, then one of my iconics needs to utilize this pseudomage archetype. Although I've mostly talked about my iconics (so far) on my other fantasy blog, where I do more of that kind of mechanical stuff, I'll eventually get to them as part of the 5x5s, because I need some samples to fit in there after the 5th of the columns is done to show how I'd make some character specific "extra" 5x5 columns to get the characters themselves more grounded into the game rather than merely passing through it as interchangeable widget protagonists. The problem is that my numero uno PC group doesn't really have room for them, which is the one I'm using specifically for CHAOS. This is Stefan Clevenger's group, and he's a pretty typical Shadow Ranger fighter type. Kimnor, his blood-brother and adventuring partner; his Fafhrd to the Gray Mouser, his Bob Hope to Bing Crosby, is a shadow-sword Hyperborean and therefore already has a role, complete with its own supernatural elements. Shule the goblin thief-type and Oisin, the big bruiser woodwose round out the group. I also thought of having Alys as a "GM PC" or on-again off-again character that a player who's attendance isn't super regular could play. She's a darker concept, though—the idea is that while she appears to be a young, attractive sorceress, which is already a problem in this setting if she isn't really discrete, the reality is that she's a lich, and she was placed with the party by an even more powerful entity after they were offered a deal that they couldn't refuse while wrapping up some of the stuff in Waychester that's part of the first column. 

The second group, led by Stefan's brother Ragnar also doesn't have any magic-user types in it, but I thought that's OK given that my whole concept of the magic system is that it is rare, dangerous and dark, and not every PC group should be expected to have one. Plus, they've got their own problems since Ragnar's young wife was attacked by a vampire and has been kinda sorta "half-turned" into a dhampir.

The third iconic group is a group of much more scoundrel-like characters who don't do quite as well with the moral dilemmas as the first two groups do. They've already got a sorceress that they're trying to keep from going off the rails morally, a Jekyll & Hyde afflicted guy, and a freakin' succubus that they've been attached to and can't quite get rid of because she's technically married to Jekyll. Ouch. No room for a pseudomage there, either. And the final group is the anti-PCs, who are actual bad guys. While more con men, thieves, murderers and bandits than mage-types, there is an outright blatant sorceress in the group already. While they could use more magical support, maybe, it's already a 5-member group, and everyone's got a role already that I'm happy with. While I admit that the other girl in the group could potentially go this route without changing her character much, the character that I immediately thought of is actually one who's more of an NPC, but one that I thought could potentially be allied with and occasionally adventure with the first group. This is Revecca von Lechfeld.

She only would make a cameo appearance in CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER, assuming the PCs deal with her father Alpon von Lechfeld here and there and meet her. However, because CULT OF UNDEATH, when I do that one next, started off life loosely based on the Carrion Crown Adventure Path, it starts with Alpon von Lechfeld's funeral, and poor 17 year old orphan Revecca really kind of needing some guidance and looking after still. My thought is that if she isn't already starting to lean this way before the CULT campaign even starts, after being rescued a couple of times from certain death and worse, she falls hard for Stefan, who cuts a mysterious, heroic and handsome figure, and who's still in his twenties after all. But rather than become a full-time adventurer with him, she becomes more of an ally and background support, while she gradually starts acquiring the gear to be a pseudomage who has rings on each finger, several wands and staves on her, enough magical pendants and necklaces to rival Mr. T, and who knows what else. The only way she can afford to do so, even with the inheritance from her father, is because his research gave him access to some of this stuff already, and because since she's not a full time troublemaker, she doesn't need to replace it nearly as quickly as those who are.

Here's an image of her in this mold, which could be her near the end of CULT OF UNDEATH or better yet, in another campaign altogether. 

Although I should point out that this assumes that I have one group of PCs that goes through all three of these 5x5s. While that seems reasonable from an actual play perspective, maybe, it's not my intention to treat these 5x5 projects that way. Each one will have a different party associated with it, so I can show the PC-specific extra 5x5 columns off without them being repetitive.