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Old 01-22-2019, 05:55 PM   #141
Icelander
 
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Default Re: So... First Adventure, the PCs Are Dream Projecting to Stop Ragnarök

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I'm wondering what benefits the druidic drink ought to give?

The ritual to transport them there was cast by Alice, using the energy from the diamonds and the athame as a focuser. But what does 'Nonc' Morel's ritual do?

It was meant to facilitate their immersion in the dream world and allow them to control it, make them more powerful there and protect them from dangers. So... in game terms, what would that mean?

Obviously, they'll all be high as balls. But within the dream reality or whatever apparent reality they visit, what would be cool stat modifications?
I decided that the hallucinogenic mushroom tea gave the PCs Ritual Adept and +5 to Awareness skill, but only within the Dreamlands.

I'm thinking that this does not violate the rule that magic can't make you better at magic, as all it does is allow you to realise that in the dreamscape, everything is metaphorical representations, not plain old reality, and that the rules which make blatant magical effect difficult to impossible in reality do not apply. In other words, there is no spoon.

The Dreamlands are also Normal Mana, instead of the No Mana to Very Low Mana (-10 to -8) that the PCs are used to in the real world. And in Ms. Delvona's Dreamlands, magical effects that rely on frost, ice and draining energy (and possibly Path of Non-Existence) are at +5 and can be attempted even by those who lack Magery (or whose Magery is normally Limited so that they can't cast rituals they don't already know or have in a Grimoire).

A slight drawback with that easy access to certain types of power is that all failures when dealing with such effects are critical failures. Of course, that also holds true with the Nasty Bad Aspected energy contained in the diamonds, but that has stopped precisely zero PCs from making use of them, when they feel the need is dire enough.

For Lucien Lacoste, of course, with his Impulsive, Overconfidence and On the Edge, being momentarily bored was sufficiently dire to dowse up the nearest horribly dangerous spirit, expend a diamond to power a ritual to become a spirit-mauling powerhouse, wrestle the incorporeal Shoggoth into submission, expend a diamond to Bind it and expend the third diamond on a ritual to entrap it in his magical double-headed waraxe, where the shoggoth would give some appropriately awesome bonuses.

Then he mounted his Mi-Go/yeti and rode off again, adjusting the barbaric horns fitted over his cowboy hat.

The verdict of 'Nonc' Morel's player, after effortlessly casting ritual after ritual like a Gandalf who actually does something, was that they ought to stay in the Dreamlands forever, because the real world sucked.

The two other players point out that their theoretically awesome power might not mean much against the true powers of Ms. Delvona's mindscape, which could be as arbitrarily powerful as she could imagine. Or worse, in the case of what had apparently invaded her mind as she botched her ritual and opened herself up to the Lords of the Last Waste.

And while monsters overpowered, critters slain or awesome feats accomplished in the Dreamlands were ultimately of little real significance on Earth, failure while playing around with the energies that Ms. Delvona had been involved with would certainly have repercussions across both worlds. As in, the sort of repercussions prophecies warn against.
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Old 01-31-2019, 04:45 PM   #142
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Default RPM and Air Pirates

So. It's finally happened. You're run away to sail the skies. An Air Pirate. Sky Reaver.

And you're the ship's mage, of course. Responsible for ensuring good weather, avoiding storms and keeping the barky together through shantak collisions and lightning strikes.

Maybe the ship levitates magically, maybe it's made out of something exotic by the Men of Leng and their vile Moon Beasts masters, maybe it's a TL5 or TL5+1 Steampunk airship, maybe it's a nuclear-powered zeppelin made by Antarctic Space Nazis. It's all possible.

But what kind of RPM rituals are you doing as ship's mage?

How have you enchanted the various parts of the vessel?

Can you provide some extremely valuable service with RPM, aside from predicting the weather, that technology just can't match? Or, at least, that is a lot more efficient in terms of energy and difficulty when done with RPM rituals rather than technology?

Does anyone have ideas? Suggestions for rituals all airships mages need to know?

An idea for how to make a mundane vessel into a skyship using RPM?

Or how to enchant a TL6 or TL7 zeppelin to make it much more effective than any non-magical airship could be?
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Old 02-09-2020, 04:12 AM   #143
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Default Tracking Magic

I'm looking for the least energy-intenssive way to track someone who is in your presence now, but looks to be escaping you.

It doesn't have to be perfectly precise, you shouldn't get any more information than necessary to point your companions in the right direction and correct course as you go, but it needs a range of up to 100 miles and a duration of 'until dawn', which means ca 12 hours.

Can I use just Lesser Detect + Range + Duration?

Or do I need to add other modifiers, including, but maybe not limited to, Subject Weight?
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Old 02-09-2020, 04:41 AM   #144
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Default Re: Tracking Magic

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I'm looking for the least energy-intenssive way to track someone who is in your presence now, but looks to be escaping you.

It doesn't have to be perfectly precise, you shouldn't get any more information than necessary to point your companions in the right direction and correct course as you go, but it needs a range of up to 100 miles and a duration of 'until dawn', which means ca 12 hours.

Can I use just Lesser Detect + Range + Duration?
Yes, and the range is with Long-Range Modifiers, which costs you 6 for 100 miles. You don't need subject weight for spells that "have a purely mental effect" (Thaumatology: RPM, p. 18).

This is a fairly easy working with RPM; I'm becoming quite fond of simple-but-effective spells like this. Note that this is entirely detectable by anyone who can detect magic on the subject. My way of dealing with this is the +25% enhancement "No Magical Signature", which is "No Psionic Signature" from Psionic Powers, re-skinned for magic.
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Old 02-09-2020, 05:14 AM   #145
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Default Re: Tracking Magic

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Yes, and the range is with Long-Range Modifiers, which costs you 6 for 100 miles. You don't need subject weight for spells that "have a purely mental effect" (Thaumatology: RPM, p. 18).

This is a fairly easy working with RPM; I'm becoming quite fond of simple-but-effective spells like this. Note that this is entirely detectable by anyone who can detect magic on the subject. My way of dealing with this is the +25% enhancement "No Magical Signature", which is "No Psionic Signature" from Psionic Powers, re-skinned for magic.
Cool.

That means that 'Nonc' Morel can cast, in 36 seconds, this tracking ritual that costs 19 energy. It's Lesser Sense Body + Duration (6) + Range (6).

Morel will get a single Quirk* on his ritual, but successfully cast the spell (because he used Luck). In narrative terms, what he's doing is smelling/tasting the blood oozing from the wounded pishtaco into the ocean. My roll for the Quirk is that he gains 'Unluckiness' for a single misfortune, which... okay, sounds good to me.

Hmm... one of the examples given for 'Unluckiness' is that enemies show up at an unfortunate time. So, whatever kind of shark or other carnivorous piscine type that might be swimming near the waters of Galveston Bay will suddenly find themselves attracted to the smell/taste of that same blood and arrive looking for it.

Of course, most sharks are not much of a threat to humans, but I'm assuming that once they are on scene, He Who Hungers in the Deep will have the requisite abilities to turn them against any PCs 'brave' enough to be in the water and possibly, if he can get some magical energy anywhere, enhance them with his Outsider powers so that they'll be less mundane sharks and more baby luscas.

I can even find news articles talking about the increase in shark sightings around Galveston in 2018, blaming it on a 'vortex' of some kind. Bull sharks, tiger sharks and hammerheads. Yay!

*Player won't be able to make it to the session today, so I rolled for him. Looks like he'll be acting as the quest-giving NPC for today.
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Old 02-09-2020, 02:00 PM   #146
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Default Re: RPM Rituals: Official, Semi-, Quasi- and Un-official

Create Dragon (Lesser Destroy Nonexistence)

You destroy the laws that prevent a gigantic dragon from existing, preferably from far away, allowing it to come into existence. While the dragon is not under your control, it understands that it owes it's existence to you and will avoid irritating you unless it has no choice.

Typical Casting: Lesser Destroy Nonexistence (5) + Duration (1 year; 21) + Range (10 miles; 24) + Subject Mass (50 tons; 8). 58 energy.
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Old 02-09-2020, 03:07 PM   #147
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Default Re: RPM Rituals: Official, Semi-, Quasi- and Un-official

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Create Dragon (Lesser Destroy Nonexistence)

You destroy the laws that prevent a gigantic dragon from existing, preferably from far away, allowing it to come into existence. While the dragon is not under your control, it understands that it owes it's existence to you and will avoid irritating you unless it has no choice.

Typical Casting: Lesser Destroy Nonexistence (5) + Duration (1 year; 21) + Range (10 miles; 24) + Subject Mass (50 tons; 8). 58 energy.
That's Lesser?
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Old 02-09-2020, 03:30 PM   #148
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Default Re: RPM Rituals: Official, Semi-, Quasi- and Un-official

Yes, Greater rituals are retroactive.
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Old 02-09-2020, 08:02 PM   #149
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Default Re: RPM Rituals: Official, Semi-, Quasi- and Un-official

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Yes, Greater rituals are retroactive.
... so, Greater Create Nonexistence could cause a target to never have been?
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Old 02-09-2020, 08:06 PM   #150
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Default Re: RPM Rituals: Official, Semi-, Quasi- and Un-official

Yes, though that can cause major paradoxes.
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