[DF] Placing areas of different mana in Dungeon Fantasy

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

Drain Mana is available to PI 6 clerics (who don't have Magery to lose), Suspend Mana is at PI 5, and scrolls are available to lich hunters.

This is a good point. Leaving these spells out of DFRPG may have been a pretty major error, at least as far as lich-slaying goes.

Originally Posted by Taneli

Roll 3d6 for each area that comes up and hasn't been resolved yet. High number indicates high mana, low number indicates low mana, 18 means very high mana and 3 means no mana.

Originally Posted by Varyon

I like this idea, although it may make NMZ's a bit too rare for Dependencies to come into play. Most places should probably be normal mana, of course. So, a rough draft might look like this:

Roll (Freq)	Mana Level
3-4 (1.85%)	None
5-7 (14.3%)	Low
8-13 (67.6%)	Normal
14-16 (14.3%)	High
17-18 (1.85%)	Very High

Alternatively, you could roll 1d20, and use the following, which I think I like the distribution of a bit more:

Roll (Freq)	Mana Level
1 (5%)		None
2-4 (15%)	Low
5-16 (60%)	Normal
17-19 (15%)	High
20 (5%)		Very High

I like the idea of doing something along these lines, though if you do it for every patch of wilderness it might actually lead to too many very high and no mana zones. It might work for dungeons, where it's plausible both that (1) the dungeon might have been deliberately constructed somewhere with variant mana levels and (2) weird stuff might have happened in the dungeon's history to change the mana levels. For placing high/low mana levels over a wider area, I might do something like, "okay, for each temple important enough to have high/low sanctity, I'll place 1d random high/low mana areas, most likely in the surrounding countryside but in rare cases in the same settlement as the temple."

Originally Posted by Varyon

Are liches random encounters in DFRPG? Typically, one would expect a lich to have a role as a lasting, serious antagonist - you don't run into and kill a lich on the way to grab some treasure, you have a longterm quest to take him out. And, of course, the way you do so is by either capturing him somehow and dragging him to the plot-device NMZ, or encountering him near the plot-device NMZ (maybe he has some nefarious plan associated with it) and maneuver him into it before killing him. That, or you just move on to a different area and ignore the lich, like a proper murder-hobo (heroism is overrated).

Of course, if one can create temporary NMZ's (with an appropriate spell, power, scroll, artifact, etc), then you just need one of those (although acquiring such may well be a quest unto itself).

Pagoda of Worlds does use liches as random encounters. Even setting that aside, capturing and transporting a powerful spellcaster to a no-mana area seems like ultra-hard mode even by the standards of RPG Big Bads. You can of course just have the lich voluntarily go near the NMZ for whatever reason but unless your story behind that is really good players may roll their eyes at the villain's stupidity.