Hey, uh, Paizo and 2e pathfinder community. I think your forgot about the undead sorcerer bloodline with the remaster of 2nd edition. Everyone keeps saying its fine but its not???
Cantrips dont proc blood magic. See the unseen lets you see invisible things/ghosts and lasts for 10 minutes. Bind undead lets you borrow an already animated undead and make it your minion for 1 day. Talking corpse lets you speak with the dead.
^ None of those do damage/need a damage modifier. Maybe you can heal the undead thing you just got with a little void magic after using bind undead. Yippie /sarcasm. Having temp hp until your next round does nothing for you with those spells because you probably wouldn't use them in a fight so the hp would be long gone before you needed it.
So between level 1 and 9, only 3 out of 6 spells between your sorc gifts and bloodline spells can meaningfully proc your blood magic (a core class feature) and im being generous in counting undeaths blessing as a spell that procs your blood magic.
You could make an argument that slapping undeaths blessing on someone/yourself and getting 1/2 your level rounded up in temp hp until your next turn could be useful, I guess??
Their temp hp in their blood magic might as well be useless for how little hp it grants and for such a short amount of time and only on yourself. The extra void damage is okay as far as the cool synergy that this bloodline has with the harm spell and making it a healing spell for one person that turns void damage into healing instead. But thats pretty much all they have until level 9.
I've been working on my own ttrpg game system for a while now and ive been pondering magic systems and what I don't like about the general trends of most magic systems that I've seen. Namely that most every game has every type of magic user abide by the exact same rules with different classes getting slightly different rule tweaks. The best example I can point to for this is 5e dnd. Everyone uses spell slots. Some classes restore spell slots on a short or long rest. Sorcerers get class features that let them alter the way they cast spells. Clerics get access to 'divine' magic. Warlocks get one kind of upgrading spell slot. Wizards get to know a ton of spells if the pay for them. Fundamentally, they all use the exact same system for casting spells as everyone else.
I don't understand why though, and narritively I don't really like it either.
The easy answer for why most systems work this way is simplicity. Magic isn't exactly a thing we have Irl, so keeping it simple makes it easier for people to pick up and use and even swap between classes. Thats cool and all, but it robs the game of the capacity to really tie the narritive to the mechanics of the game. It flattens every magic user class into "wizard but instead they do ____" and that sucks. Additionally, all games seem to be married to the concept of magic coming in a predetermined spell format that gets sorted based on the magic type or magic is this vague thing that you do with no real in-between. That also sucks. The spell format is very clear and concise, but its so constraining and honestly it makes the game feel like it was written by a wizard and fully centered around wizard based magic. And fully free magic with no rules are a bit too vague to be used for anything more than one off powers.
My idea for my own game system is to create different kinds of magic casting and then granting access to these types of magic casting based on the narrative of the class. I ask myself "Would it make sense for this type of magic use to use magic in this way?" If so, they get it, if not, they don't. No more "you get access to this spell list and these magic modification feats", no more "yes im a cleric/warlock but I don't have to actually interact with the thing ive dedicated my life to". In my system I want classes to have access to different types of magic and magic casting and then players can choose to invest into the kind of magic they feel best fits them.
This post is already getting long, so the details for my ideas are under the cut, but I'd love to hear what anyone who's read them thinks 💜
Rituals
A type of magic based on material sacrifice and impersonal/vague connection to an outsider or well of magic of some kind. Ritual magic takes a lot of time to prepare but once it is prepared you will get consistent results with room for upwards improvement based on ritual use situations and the materials sacrificed in the ritual. Ritual magic doesn't impose an energy cost on the user.
Examples: reviving someone who died, raising the dead, lasting shielding magic of an area
Used By: Clerics, Warlocks, and Druids. Learnable by Rangers, Wizards, and those with the wisdom to understand the ritualistic nature of magic.
Mechanics: players learn rituals that they can use at any time so long as they meet the conditions of the ritual and have the time to set up and perform the ritual. Rituals come with optional higher degrees of power that have a higher success dc and a greater situational requirement threshold. Players first determine how strong they want the ritual to be. Stronger rituals have a situational requirement threshold represented by a number. Players get points for meeting situational requirements; ritual performed at night +1 a full moon +2, performing on top of a mountain +3, target has natural white hair +5, caster has moon shaped scar +8 etc. When players have enough points to meet the situational requirement threshold they can then begin the ritual at that level. Players then decide on their material sacrifices and gain bonuses for them. Each ritual has a different bonus list but there are commonly accepted ritual components. After sacrifices are made the player then rolls against the difficulty of the ritual to determine if it succeeds or not. Players get bonuses to this roll based on materials sacrificed, the number of casters, time spent, and caster wisdom. Higher rolls over the dc don't grant additional effects, however, failure to meet or surpass the DC results in a failure and the destruction of sacrificed materials so its always better to over prepare.
Invocations
Magic requiring a sound, a gesture, or both. The caster channels their will into a type of physical movement or spoken word causing a magical effect to manifest. The results are quick and simple but cannot be altered. Invoked magic doesn't last more than a few seconds. Invoked magic is raw and chaotic with harmful but predictable effects. Invocation magic uses stamina and passion and so long as you have a will to fight you can keep using invocation magic.
Examples: a pladins divine smite, a damaging cantrip like fire bolt, bardic inspiration
Used By: Paladins and Bards. Learnable by Clerics, Sorcerers, and those with a strong will.
Mechanics: invocations are limited primarily by the characters ability to perform/speak to invoke their magic and secondly by their will to invoke it. Meaning that characters who are silenced, bound, demoralized, or feared cannot perform an invocation. Rallied, frenzying, or inspired characters double their invocation dice. Invocations are usually an additional die that is added to a following action. In the case of damaging magic your invocation die is your damage rolled for the attack.
Spells
A formulaic type of magic based on written or carved symbols that cause consistent and stable effects. Spells can be altered but require great expertise to do so properly. Casting time varies based on spell complexity. This type of magic requires set amounts of energy to properly function, this energy cost is written into the spell at the time it is inscribed. Spells must be kept in a physical format to be used and may only be used at a predetermined rank established in the spells creation. Spells can create long last magic.
Examples: a wizards spell book, a scroll of fireball, a warding sigil etched into armor, a spell caster covered in runic spell scars
Used By: Wizards and Bards. Learnable by those with a high intelligence and formal magical training.
Mechanics: plain and simple these guys use a spell slot system with spells that have ser spell slot costs. With downtime players can create modified versions of spells that use higher slots for more damage or different effects. Casters must keep their spells in a physical format on their person at all times or they lose access to their spells.
Attunements
Your character has mystically merged with a well of magic or type of magical energy that grants them highly flexible control over their attuned domain. Your degrees of attunement grant you ways of manipulating this energy that can be combined into various effects that are shaped by the casters emotions and feelings. Attunement requires the use of mana to propel this shaping of this magic energy. Mana can be drawn from similar sources of energy to your attunement source or in more dire straits it can be taken from the blood and body of the caster to the point of death. Attunement magic effects are often quick to act but generally aren't long lasting. Attunement magic works best when the caster channels their mana through a conduit tied to their attunement. Their magic is also generally stronger in situations favorable to the exsistance of their attunement, as well as just being around non-magical forms of their attunements domain/type.
Examples: sorcerers using their draconic blood ties to manipulate fire and harden their skin into protective scales, a mountain dwelling monk granting their cold immunity to their allies.
Used by: Sorcerers and Monks. Learnable by anyone who can forge a physical, mystical, and emotional connection to a non sentient well of magic.
Mechanics: Casters determine the source of their attunement on picking up this magic and recieve words describing actions based on their attunements domain. When a character wants to use an attunement they select a word they have access to, a feeling/emotion to further define the magic's behavior, and then they give a sentence about what they want the magic to do. The dm assigns a difficulty to this based on the power required to shift energy into this effect and gives the player a situational modifier to their roll. -4 for ice magic being cast in a volcano, +3 to wind magic cast on top of a mountain. The player rolls 1d10 plus their situational bonuses, casting conduit bonus, and +1 for each mana spent. Treat the result of the roll as a % of success. A 10 = 100% success and the effect happens exactly as imagined or as close to imagined as fairly possible. Over 10 grants additional benefits, under 10 means varying degrees of failure. Damaging effects deal a number of damage dice equal to the success %. Rolling under 10 does that number in damage. Over 10 means players roll a number of d4's for the damage dealt. At higher levels of magic master casters can use multiple words in a casting for additional damage/utility.
Bonds
Your character is contractually or metaphysically bound to a sentient extraplanar entity that grants them magic in exchange for fulfilling their contractual obligations. By performing certain deeds or daily actions pledged to your bond you gain varying types of magic based on your bond and your relationship to them. Bond magic is subject to the details of the contract but when used by a caster it will always occur as written without failure.
Examples: a warlock with a deep sea bond expends some favor on a benefit of their contract causing all their present enemies to drop to their hands and knees as they feel their lungs filling with sea water. A servant of a fey trickster exchanges four childrens teeth for some luck for the next four days.
Used By: Warlocks and some Paladins and Clerics. Learnable by those who have enough charisma to convince an extra planar entity to grant you their magic.
Mechanics: Characters pick an entity to be bonded to and recieve a list of contractual obligations, benefits, and anathemas. By performing obligations characters recieve favor that accumulates as points in a pool. When your favor pool hits a certain number your favor rating with your patron increases. Favor points can be spent on benefits and spending favor usually won't lower your favor rating with a few exceptions. Spending half your available pool and spending your entire favor pool in a set amount of time incurs a whim check that if failled will drop your favor by 1 degree. Favor lowered in this way will never cause your relationship to drop out of the positive threshold. When spending favor on benefits player roll a whim check adding bonuses for their overall favor rating and charisma. A high whim roll reflects your bonds interest in your well being and you get more from your benefit than usual. Low whim means you get the bare minimum with potential petty side effects. Partaking in an anathema lowers your favor rating potentially into the negatives given the severity. At higher levels players can get clauses that add new obligations and benefits or players can get addendums with more strict anathemas and obligations and stronger benefits.
I am very excited, my wife is going to run a 2e Pathfinder Abominations Vault campaign. In the past ive been hesitant to look at Pathfinder after having a really rough time with it at the hands of a bad gm, but lately ive been a little more open to retrying it. The wife is excited and all of us players and gm are gonna be learning it together. I will say that the wod player in me sees the rules and the dice systems and is booing and hissing but im trying to squelch that for now. Also having played Rifts the one time has forever ruined me for any turn based combat in any ttrpg ever. I'm not sorry Rifts has done it the best and I'll die on that hill.
Rules aside, ive been workshoping a new blorbo with the wife and I love him. His name is Belisarius Felreign-Shroud and hes a half-elf half tiefling undead bloodline sorcerer. He like if a necromancer never studied the dark arts and instead learned how to make music and was raised by the church of Pharasma. His past upbringing and new powers leave him with a lot of internal conflict that he is pointedly drowning out by playing music and having a very good time. He's like a necromancer but in an excited theater kid kind of way. He'll deal with the trauma of his upbringing after he figures out how to make a skeleton that can play the flute and perhaps makes his undead some little outfits. When people ask him what hes capable of he says, "I'm a healer of sorts."
^ not an incorrect statement btw, the undead sorcerer has access to divine healing spells and one of their class features lets you temporarily turn someone undead, and the undead heal from the harm spell which undead sorcs always have. I was trying not to play a tiefling cleric for this new game and I have accidentally spec'd into one between his background, that gets him a very nice medicine feat, and his class. Oops.
Ill post more about him when details get ironed out.
I played a ttrpg game this week called Rifts: Chaos Earth and I found a combat system that I lowkey maybe love???? Details on how it works under the cut!
From my understanding this is how it works:
Every character has a "melee hand to hand combat skill", either bought at character creation or later on down the line. If you don't use a skill point to get an improved hand to hand fighting style you get the basic one. Your fighting style skill levels up with your character granting you additional combat bonuses like more attacks, more flat damage added per hit etc.
What I really like about this system is it lets your character do things like parry, dodge and block enemy attacks to lessen or negate damage at varying costs.
Parries are free for your character to do for most basic attacks (knives and fists) but if an enemy is using a gun or an energy blast you take a heavy penalty to trying to parry the attack with some stuff being unparryable (usually magic and energy rifle blasts). A parried shot deals half damage to potentially 0 damage but its a free thing you can almost always attempt to do.
Dodges and Blocks use up one of your actions for the round but for this cost your character has a pretty good shot at fully negating the damage from a hit.
Additionally theres rules for rolling with a punch/hit to take less damage but compromising your positioning, and entanglement of an opponents weapon so they cant use it freely in their next action.
Theres also things in this system called automatic kicks, automatic punches, and automatic blasts that trigger if your character is spec'd into a certain fighting style. Essentially this is a special retaliation damage that an enemy takes for attacking your character and has no chance to parry or dodge out of. Its usually pretty low damage. but its free and great for dealing with enemy hordes.
The flow of combat is a bit like dnd, everyone rolls initiative and the highest number takes their turn first. On your turn you can use one action to do stuff like attacking, casting a spell, or positioning yourself and then rotates to the next initiative roll.
Now, where it gets interesting is that everyone, even with basic fighting skills, starts with 3 actions, but you can only use one per turn. So after everyone, enemies included, uses one action on their turn in initiative order you go back to the top of initiative and everyone with an action is allowed to act again. Anyone without an action due to expending them for dodges/blocks or just not having as many as other characters doesnt act until the start of a new round. After everyone has run out of actions the round ends and a new initiative is rolled.
On paper this sounds like a slog but in practice it was really fun and snappy with everyone in our group getting through their turn (even with magic!!) In about 2 minutes max. Since your turn allows for only one thing it cuts down on needless complexity while allowing for more strategic teamwork. Also, at most we had an action disparity of like 3 between our highest and lowest count wich ultimately resulted in two players rolling a few extra attacks after everyone else ran out.
It felt really good to have our actions interlaced in this way, so that instead of having to wait full rounds to do stuff, we could try to block and parry and we could freely talk a little on our turns to coordinate our next actions together and then immediately be able to act on them.
The rest of the palladium rifts system is kinda meh, and honeslty the combat rules I just shared are probably wrong to some degree due to this being our groups first time with the system and several of us were varying stages of drunk/high during play. That being said, idk, ive never really seen a combat system that flowed so well and felt so good to play in and I felt it would be worth sharing on that merit alone.
WACK: Body parts being a requirement for accessing a particular type of magic but if a caster loses said body part they can never access that magic again.
SICK: Magic users getting prosthetic body parts, monster organs, and other strange arcane objects grafted into their body because magic doesn't care if the part was initially attached to you. For the sake of channeling magic an eye is an eye and it matters not where you put it, only that it is integrated with your flesh. Additionally, if you work with them you can learn the powers of the monsters you've taken bits from and can cast magic with influence from them.
Why do you think magic casters always wear big robes? Its to hide their bodies because they can potentially give away too much information by showing off their full physical form. Its best for any magic user to hide the full extent of their potential in loose flowy robes so other magic casters, who could become enemies, can only ever guess how powerful you are until you use magic in front of them.
After much indecision I've finally decided to update my pfp and I could not be more pleased with how she turned out so I thought I'd take a sec to give an origin story for my name on this account, talk about my little lizard herself and maybe ramble about some fantasy setting idea stuff that rattles around in my head.
Ramble under the cut :>
Usually I use the name VioletDragon as my username for most things. Its my favorite color and my favorite mythological creature, unfortunately the base name VioletDragon is usually taken so I have a variant of VioletDragon to get around this so I can have one consistent username for most platforms and games. Well, I got into streaming for a bit and my old streaming name was kinda close to VioletDragon and I wanted to maintain my internet privacy so I needed a new name for my tumblr blog. I thought it would be kinda funny to have any and all future alt accounts of mine just be different dragon/lizard monsters and different colors so I grabbed IndigoBasilisk and its been my blog name ever since.
At some point I decided to flesh out my little violet dragon avatar a bit into more of a character, though not by much really and its about time I did the same for my little basilisk.
So, heres Indigo, my little wizard basilisk! She uses she/they pronouns. She likes gold, statues, stargazing, and gardening. Indigo specializes in metal transmutation and someday they would like to go to space.
The extra eyes she picked up are a thing that I've added to basilisks in my fantasy setting after I made my first pfp. The second smaller set of eyes are used by basilisks to channel their innate draconic magic.
The most common and easy form for this magic to take is the classic petrifying gaze, but some basilisks have found that with time and training they can channel powerful transmutation beyond flesh to stone, as well as being able to look into a persons future and divine their fate.
Ancient basilisks are said to be capable of inflicting a curse that spreads like a virus. Instead of quickly turning their enemies to stone, it happens much more slowly and as it turns someones flesh to stone it slowly petrifies their fate as well, destroying any positive potential futures. There are stories of knights returning from a successful ancient basilisk hunt unknowingly afflicted with the curse, who then spread the curse to their entire city.
These stories usually keep most humans from settling too close to a known basilisk nest, but it unfortunately also makes young basilisks a huge target. They are easiest to slay when they are young as they are unable to effectively use their magic. Additionally, their eyes are a known alchemical component that is needed in order to cure a basilisks curse.
As a means of survival, basilisks tend to live with or around medusa settlements. Basilisks are a holy symbol to medusas, and in medusa mythology serve as guardians of the home. Most medusa families have at least one pet basilisk per person that serves as a house pet when young and later as a hunting companion as the basilisk grows in size and strength. There are a couple medusa traditions where basilisk eggs are given with the most common being the naming of a young medusa (usually around 5 years old) and if medusa ever leaves the family home.
Considering that basilisks can live to be thousands of years old while medusas only get to 250, some medusa families have an inherited basilisk that acts as a guardian of the family name. This is a point of contention in medusa society as some believe that if a basilisk has served its owner faithfully, then upon the owners death it should be set free. The largest known medusa city is centered around a mountain that serves as a nest for an ancient basilisk and while there are no written records of this ancient basilisk outside of the city, the city has yet to fall to any of the many attempts at its destruction and the walls around the city are said to be made of piles of statues instead of bricks.
