[Thaumaturgy] Diabolist's Wards & Summoner's Circles

[Refplace]

How many colors and numbers? And do they do much as a Noun?
No Summon or Dismiss?

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Refplace

I am not familiar with them. Played some Pallidum back in the early 90s but not the magic one. This was before they came out with Rifts.

So outline what you have and I can work from there.

... and I just realized that I didn't actually answer this question. Um. I'm not sure how much of Palladium's stuff I can post, given their position on conversions and fan-content.

Diabolists (in Palladium Fantasy) have nothing to do with Diabolism (in reality). A diabolist is a ward-mage, casting magic by empowering ward tokens, the occasional magic circle and the (very few) bits of rune magic they've been able to rebuild/recover. They aren't spellcasters; they combine shapes and words from a (very small) known library.

Summoners (in Palladium Fantasy) have a bit more to do with Summoning (in reality), but only vaguely. They are circle-mages, casting magic by empowering magic circles that do "protection from" magic, "summon" magic and an assortment of "powers" ranging from resurrection to planar travel to enslavement.

I know (mostly) how to model the stuff in the Palladium books. It is just that its' a very small selection (especially compared to spell-magic) and I wanted to expand the selection so that my son's mageling can gain greater power in these things by discovering new wards, new circles and new uses for the runes. (The runes themselves don't do much of anything; rune magic being a(n intentionally!) lost art in all of Palladium's games.)

I'm more asking for "ideas for new wards, new circles and new uses for the runes" than I am anything else. I'm finding myself lacking ideas and am hoping that y'all can either come up with stuff or help me come up with stuff.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Refplace

How many colors and numbers?

The book gives 7 color wards (black, blue, brown, green, red, white, yellow) and 13 number wards (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 50, 100, 1000).

And do they do much as a Noun?

The color wards turn things they affect into their color. The number wards are descriptive wards or are used in a ward series or sequence.

So:
[1] + [Magic Alarm]
[2] + [Inflict] + [Area Effect] + [Black Color]
[3] + [Inflict] + [Area Effect] + [Power] + [Power] + [Power] + [Power] + [Agony]

1st sequence sends a mental alarm to the diabolist when disturbs. As wards are one-shot, it is consumed but because a number ward was used it goes to the next number for the next time the object is disturbed. 2nd sequence changes everything in the area effect to a black color for the ward's duration. 3rd sequence inflicts agony at (x2^4) the normal strength on everything in the area.

No Summon or Dismiss?

Not as part of the ward magic, no. Think of wards as "I glue these tokens to the door, say the magic words, spend the magic energy and then anything that disturbs the door gets whacked with the ward's magic". Circle Magic has a lot of summoning circles (angels, animals, lesser demons/devils, greater demons/devils, elementals, elemental forces, faerie folk, gargoyles, ghosts, jinn, insects, pawn, serpents, spirits, undead).

None of them have anything like banish or dismissal.

[Refplace]

OK, so Ward magic is about guarding and trapping and Circle magic is about Summoning.
Circle sounds versatile and plenty to do.
Ward well you could add new Wards to do different kind of things on the traps, like transform, scare, forget, etc.
The colors really change somethings color?
The trap thing is kinda limited but kind of cool in that you have to plan ahead.

The numbers are just to set up layered Wards? Seems a bit much making them a separate skill each.

The numbers thing reminds me of the Magic Square system I tried to build once. An old Abrahamic concept and used in Master of The Five Magics.
Never could make it a reasonably useful system.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Refplace

OK, so Ward magic is about guarding and trapping and Circle magic is about Summoning.

Essentially.

Circles of Protection are (Simple, Superior, from Angels, from Devils, from Demons, from Elementals, from Elemental Forces, from Evil, from Faerie Folk, from Good, from Ghosts/Spirits, from Jinn, from Magic (Simple), from Magic (Superior), from Old Ones, from Undead, from Witches, from Were-Beasts), so it includes the ability to protect against the stuff you can summon and some stuff you can't.

... though I'm thinking of making "of Protection" and "of Summoning" for the things that don't already overlap; except the Old Ones. Summoning Greater Elder Things is a bad idea as summoning involves a contest of Will.

Well, maybe I'll make those too. Just for kicks and giggles.

Circle sounds versatile and plenty to do.
Ward well you could add new Wards to do different kind of things on the traps, like transform, scare, forget, etc.

Transform would be a verb, and so would require a number of new nouns to determine what it can Transform the victim into. Hmm.

Scare, rather Fear, is already a condition ward.

Forget sounds neat.

Condition Wards are (Agony, Blind, Burning Pain, Charm, Cold, Confusion, Dark, Death, Despair, Evil, Energy, Fear, Fire, Good, Hate, Invisibility, Knowledge, Light, Magic, Mystic Energy Drain, Sleep, Undead).

[quote]The colors really change somethings color?[quote]Yep.

The trap thing is kinda limited but kind of cool in that you have to plan ahead.

I think thats why he wants it. It lets him plot and plan and prepare; he likes doing stuff like that in games.

The numbers are just to set up layered Wards? Seems a bit much making them a separate skill each.

I could roll them into an IQ/A called Numbers. I was thinking of doing that with the Color Wards.

The numbers thing reminds me of the Magic Square system I tried to build once. An old Abrahamic concept and used in Master of The Five Magics.
Never could make it a reasonably useful system.

Heh. I've been noodling about with a Telesmatic Spirit Magic system including elements from some of the modern pagan shaman-paths and from the GD practices. The ability to custom create spirit/god/angel/demon/elemental allies, purpose them and whatnot as you need them is tempting ... getting it to work in a playable manner is the issue.

[Bruno]

There's some circle/summoning stuff in Heroes Unlimited, but it seems to be a pale shadow of what you're talking about.

The colours - are we talking literal pigmentation here, or are they symbolic of what GURPS would call colleges of magic? IE does Black actually just paint things, or is it "black magic" dumdum DUM? I'm guessing the latter and I'm also guessing you can't get into a lot of detail due to Palladium's strict online policy.

That said, folks chatter about converting/redoing various things from Palladium games to GURPS here and I don't think Kevin's popped up. But on the other hand, it's really less a "conversion" and more a "heavy re-imagining" to get anything out of Palladium and into GURPS - often with a chorus of "oh god, ignore that part it just doesn't work in GURPS"; I could see it being a LOT more touchy if we were talking about porting that spell-point based system to another class/level system.

Not that I have ever understood how levels work in Palladium games. Have I mentioned that the game mechanics make my head spin? They really do.

[Kuroshima]

It must be quite a party trick, Bruno. You ought to show us your The Exorcist girl impersonations!

Now seriously, here in Spain, Palladium is almost unknown. In fact I know just one guy who owns the books (but he owns most of them, his Palladium collection exceeds my GURPS collection). He's a wonderful GM, but if he weren't that good of a game master, I would certainly not touch the Palladium system with a 10' pole. The settings are excellent in a quirky way. If only they were written for GURPS, or they weren't that married to the system...

[samd6]

Personally I'd do Summoner Magic as threshold Verb-Noun with Cerimonial Only and Solo Cerimonial (net-30%), treat most parameters as skill penalties, and let them claim as many bonuses from Mandatory and significant modifiers

The Diabolist is a caster using very powerful fragments that they barely understand. The colors in Palladium fluff are just colors, but I could see them as verbs of a sort, to be used in a condition-verb-noun.

Bruno, if you think levels were bad, try the rules for dual-switch classing.

I also think that the palladium megaverse has some of the most intersting and imaginative fluff and characters ever(and one of the worst rule systems. What is balance, indexing, or continuity?)

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by samd6

Bruno, if you think levels were bad, try the rules for dual-switch classing.

Eesh, I almost forgot about those! Kludgy!

Then again, KS has stated several times that his intention was "pick a class and STICK WITH IT!" There's some problems that arise, however, with Juicers who detox and Crazies that have the cylinders removed (and spell-casters that get borged against their will, so they can't cast)....

Originally Posted by samd6

I also think that the palladium megaverse has some of the most intersting and imaginative fluff and characters ever(and one of the worst rule systems. What is balance, indexing, or continuity?)

As one of the crazy folks that has done a GURPS Rifts conversion, I agree. KS and company are great world-builders; the system, however, needs a total overhaul.

And yet there are still people out there who claim the system is the best thing since sliced bread. Weird.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

... and I just realized that I didn't actually answer this question. Um. I'm not sure how much of Palladium's stuff I can post, given their position on conversions and fan-content.

Diabolists (in Palladium Fantasy) have nothing to do with Diabolism (in reality). A diabolist is a ward-mage, casting magic by empowering ward tokens, the occasional magic circle and the (very few) bits of rune magic they've been able to rebuild/recover. They aren't spellcasters; they combine shapes and words from a (very small) known library.

Sounds very similar to a type of spell casting I've worked on recently, but I included the ability to enchant, and temporarily enchant, items through carving runes on them. Those enchants worked like Imbuements. My suggestion: steal the Imbuements and use them for your spells.