CRGreathouse said:
Interesting, this certainly shows the high-magic nature of the world. How does that work with prerequisites?
In the case of the Fighter, a specific house rule waives the prerequisites (or perhaps just adds a "or Fighter level 12th" to them) and states that a Fighter counts as caster level {Fighter level} - 9 for the purposes of using the feat- so at 12th the character would be limited to creating +1 items by himself. Obviously, without actual spells available, the selection of abilities a Fighter could add to a weapon or armor is quite limited, unless said Fighter gets a spellcaster friend who has the spells available and is willing to help. This takes advantage of the 3.5 rule that allows item crafters to collaborate on item creation, or even to get help from non-crafters who happen to have certain things the crafter lacks.
I love that rule, it really helped out this aspect of my world.
CRGreathouse said:
Do the greater gods benefit from the use of magic by mortals (and thus encourage it), or is its frequency just a side effect of so many powerful magical beings?
Combination of both, I'd say. In fact, I've postulated a semi-scientific basis for magic in my world, which seemed a logical step to take given that I had written in the Golden Age which was advanced quite far in both technological prowess and magical accomplishment. They would have treated magic as just another science, really, so I had to be ready if the players ever decided to do the same thing. Thus, I came up with the idea that magic is a fifth fundamental force of the cosmos, like gravity and electromagnetism- the difference being that magic is one manifestation of a
living force, in fact the force that causes the split between life and anything that isn't truly alive. This life-force, like many forces in our reality, has several "flavors" and "spectra" which can be differentiated by the "weight" or "energy level" of the particles carrying it (dubbed "vitons" in my scheme), and I postulated that it is this division which leads to the difference between magic, "ki" energy of Monks and others, psionics, and basic soul energy- as well as actual "primal" energy which is that used by the gods. In any form, the force is largely capable of performing the same tricks; it's just a matter of how much you need to do and how quickly you need to do it.
So under this paradigm, every living entity of any sort- and yes, there exist sentient robots and AIs that actually have real souls and are thus technically "alive-" has access to some of this life energy, which allows "supernatural" effects to occur. The key is in whether and how the entity learns to control the force. I decided, back in 2nd Edition, that the way to explain level-ups was that the character acquires another "spark" of life-force, or another instance of whatever-amount-of-vitons-was-necessary to explain the new powers gained. What this meant was, eventually the force of vitons in a character gaining many levels would build up until it manifested supernatural effects whether or not the character actually knew how to use the energy, or even where it was coming from. So every single class, bar none, would get magical powers and psionic powers. When 3E came along I basically just re-tweaked my list of 2nd Edition power-ups and added them to the 3E classes.
In the game world, the existence of this phenomenon is unremarkable; it's just how the universe works and people don't even think about it for the most part. The three deities of Magic, of course, have some say in what powers go to whom on the magical side of the magic/psionic equation, so in that sense you could say that these powers are a side effect of the deities' presence. On the flip side of the coin, my explanation for how deities gather power from mortals always involved the mortal unconsciously "giving up" a small portion of vitons now and then to the deity or deities most closely associated with his or her activities at the time, and thus the more mortals performed certain activities the more powerful the gods would become. This is less powerful than worship, but with enough mortals around it becomes significant. So in other words, the three Magic gods do indeed get a small measure of power from the use of magic by mortals, and if more mortals use magic then they'll get still more power. But it's not as good as worship in terms of "power generation" for them, which explains why the gods rely so heavily on their churches instead of doing everything for themselves.
In UK's scheme, the Worship Points System and the whole idea of Quintessence adapts quite well to my "viton" idea, so all I'd really need to do is figure out exactly how a sphere of inffluence generates power for a deity and I'd be able to explain that last facet of godhood. I figure the Worship Points System itself could be adapted to allow for "events" on an individual scale that just create trickles of power now and then to funnel to deities, easily enough, though I admittedly haven't tried it. I'd obviously really like to see the Resonance rules, since I suspect the comparison and contrast with the Worship Points System could be very helpful to figuring out this aspect of divine energy in my setting.
CRGreathouse said:
Very, very interesting. Is there anything of that you'd be willing to share? I understand the need to keep things secret from the PCs, of course, so I'll understand if you prefer not to show your hand.
As far as I know, none of my payers read this site, often or otherwise, so I'm probably safe. My reluctance to detail more wasn't because I was afraid of players reading, but because I didn't want to take up too much bandwidth.
In brief, and tying this back to my mentioned-in-the-other-thread idea that Cenob is a representation of divine Raistlin, Cenob used to experiment with undead as a means of creating life. He's always been frsutrated with his inability to create life, because he knows that life is where he gets his own energy from and he wants to be able to have independent sources of it for himself so he never has to rely on anybody else. His attempts all ended in failure, and in the case of Atropal(s) disaster. The atropals and their ravenous hunger for life finally made him give up the experiments in disgust, and now sentient undead only serve to remind him of his failure- it galls him to a depth and in a way impossible to explain in human terms. So in fact, of the three gods of Magic, it could be argued that Cenob (the god of Death) hates them most of all, though of course he never shows that to others. Also, the only explanation he's ever given his church is that undead attempt to take from him that which is rightfully his- namely their souls (even though, by being undead, the souls are properly constructed of
anti-vitons rather than vitons).
I haven't decided exactly how many atropals exist in my setting yet, but I know where one of them is- near the top of one of the ancient towers which are the remnants of a space elevator system that used to link the surface of the world with the orbital Ring Station thousands of miles above. That particular atropal, I also decided, is also a cyborg, though the full consequences of that are yet to be determined. I have a cyborg template, which I've used many times to spectacular effect in various games run in this setting, but it's a non-Epic template and it feels like the atropal should have more. Also, I'd have to decide who or what gave the atropal the implants, and why, and what the atropal itself thinks of them. But that's all for the future- right now nobody's even come close to deciding to make a trip to that particular tower yet (except in dreams, which I'm not counting- two dream trips have been taken into that tower by characters in the now-Epic game).
CRGreathouse said:
Is Cenob weakened by the creation of unintelligent undead, or only by the sentient ones?
He isn't directly weakened by any of them actually- his hatred for them stems more from personal problems than anything else, as you can see from the above.
But he would say, if a mortal actually asked him the question and caught him in a good enough mood not to blast the wretch out of existence for daring to turn his mind to the topic, that sentient undead steal power from him by their existence, and must therefore be destroyed to put that power back where it belongs (i.e. with him).
CRGreathouse said:
To be blunt, do you think that any such world (in particular, mine) should be largely free of undead? So far I've used significantly fewer undead than a 'normal' campaign might, but still more than in your campaign.
I don't know about making a general case, but it's what I did for my own world. That said, there have been a few times in my DMming "career" with this setting that I've regretted not having them around to use, and I do relish the chance of using them when I can work it in. As I said, even the Triad do occasionally use it as a really nasty curse, or authorize such use by others. One example used in my 2nd Edition game was a former Paladin who was transformed- by the God of Paladins himself- into a Death Knight for abandoning his troops to the enemy at a critical moment during one particularly important battle. The PCs in that game actually encountered this Death Knight and his undead army, deep in the Underdark, and barely got away alive though they did manage to take down several vampire and lich lieutenants and almost got the General himelf.
I also broke my own rule when Fantasy Flight Games published Mythic Races, and I fell in love with the concept of the Eleti- sentient, PC-worthy undead that aren't necessarily inimical to the living. I wanted them in my world, and after a couple of months of wrangling I came up with an explanation for their existence- that one of the continents of the Hollow World, a place I'd already known was desolate and uninhabited due to some ancient curse, essentially created them by accident. Basically, I decided exactly
what the Curse of Kharz was, and linked it up to the Eleti. Briefly, the Curse causes any living creature that dies on that continent to be transformed into undead, and be un-raisable in the usual sense. What I haven't fully worked out yet, in my mind, is how the various deities who dislike or hate undead feel about these new benign examples of the type, but I'm determined to keep the Eleti in the setting because they're just too cool not to.
CRGreathouse said:
Are there any imbalances in your pantheon that fail to significantly affect your world? Why?
Offhand, I'm hard pressed to think of a way in which the Law-Chaos imbalance has affected the world, except perhaps that there's such an enormous variety of options available for characters there (really, that's a result of my own personality, but then again- I'm certainly Chaotic myself). I suppose you could also say that the existence of Wild Magic in the world is a sign of Chaos, though not a very obvious one. As for why, I've never really considered it, though I'm sure part of the reason (unconsciously) is that the primary focus on alignment conflicts was always intended to be Good and Evil. The whole pantheon structure, in fact, is obviously designed to promote said conflict, while Law-Chaos is virtually ignored.
I'll leave further discussion of these two, or other imbalances which exist in my pantheon, for another time.
