alexandraerin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexandraerin) wrote2013-09-10 12:45 pm
alexandraerin) wrote2013-09-10 12:45 pm
Entry tags:
AWW: Gear Alternatives, Mystic Patrons, and Invokers.
One of the things that's been creeping into AWW as I work to fill out the options in the Basic Character Guide is things that cost Gear Points but aren't actual items. Companions were the first whole category of these, but they crop up in other areas. One of the possible forms for spell focuses (in addition to scrolls, runes, gemstones, and the like) is words of power. I moved "techniques" from the details section to the gear section after realizing that they work more like gear and that multiple character qualities already offer them as an alternative to gear to begin with.
With the addition of another category of "not quite gear"--mystic patrons--I've decided to organize them all into their own sub-chapter called Gear Alternatives. This helps players who want a character who travels light find what they're looking for and also makes a handy way of delineating exactly what's covered and what's not when it comes to the ways you have of scrounging up an item in play... the well-stocked character might find a battleaxe they forgot they had, but they don't have a horse in their back pocket, much less a forgotten word of power or a secret martial arts technique.
(Stuff that belongs to a category of gear, like words of power, will be mentioned in both places, so you don't have to look in two different places for the rules regarding spell focuses and all the types of spell focuses.)
You're probably wondering what a mystic patron is. Basically, I realized that one of the more complex parts of the Theurge CQ (the "divine spellcaster") would end up being duplicated across multiple future character qualities in a "reinvent the wheel" sort of way, and since it ate up a lot of real estate in the one page limit for ability rules, this would make all those characters rather limited in terms of individual scope. Worse, there would be some odd/bad side effects if a character had two or more of these CQs.
So I genericized the concept and off-loaded it into gear system. As attached to the Theurge, a mystic patron was a (usually) higher being that agreed to let you call upon a portion of their power for the equivalent of spellcasting. For a warlock (lowercase because there's not a CQ for it yet, though the concept is supported in the game), the mystic patron is a (usually) lower being who does the same thing. As long as you don't double-dip on certain dramatic advantages of a mystic patron more than once per scene, and don't ever use the most dramatic/attractive abilities, the nature of the patron and the pact is just background stuff, lightly flavored roleplaying fluff... the idea being that such patrons have far too many "clients" for any individual one to be of much/any importance.
But when you draw too deeply on the power, you also draw their attention and have to repay your use of the power with a favor that will range in magnitude depending on how much they approve of the ways you use their power, with small tithes or even the equivalent of a prayer of thanksgiving sufficient if you're a good and faithful servant. The player defines the patron's nature, but the Storyteller interprets it.
The suggestion is to be generous but within limits, and mostly look at the character of specific acts that benefit from drawing on the patron's power. Just as players are assumed to be playing characters who want to have heroic adventurers, it can be assumed that any cosmic power that chose to hitch their wagon to the character's star is going in the same direction as they are. An infernal might approve of the general mission because the rewards will tempt the hero, a celestial being might approve of it because it serves the greater good. If the Storyteller can't figure out an agenda for the patron that would cause them to support the player character being in the adventure/plotline the Storyteller set, then it's to wave their hands and say something about "mysterious ways".
A mystic patron is most useful to a user of magic. If you have a Magic score or the equivalent, the most common "power draw" is the ability to boost magic you'd be attempting anyway. If you don't, then basically once per scene you can try a spell with someone else's moderately good Magic score. (The "Power" attribute of mystic patrons ranges from 3 to 5, which is not as great as the best wizards of the mortal world, but again, many clients. It's not a measure of how powerful your patron is, it's a measure of how little attention they can spare you.) Which is a useful thing to be able to do for 1 GP, but less useful than being able to potentially rescue a failed magic attempt when you're going to be magicking all over the place anyway. Other uses for a mystic patron can be bought as a trait for them, or provided by CQ special abilities. Some of them count as a power draw, some of them don't.
Any benefit a patron provides can be withheld once you've incurred a favor and haven't paid it, whether it counts as drawing power or not, but this is neither automatic nor a total binary shut off. Your patron can refuse to aid your personal endeavors if you're clearly shirking your duties, but loosen the cosmic purse strings when you're actively working towards their agenda or towards repaying the favor.
It's often (thought not compulsorily so, except for Theurges) attached to a detail called "invoker" that changes the nature of a character's magic. An invoker uses their Magic score for spellcasting (or any attribute they can substitute, for themed spells) as normal, but it doesn't represent the same force that wizards and vanilla magical beings manipulate. So a wizard can't detect a divine (or infernal) invoker and is at a penalty to negate or counter their spells, and the reverse is true. The divine and infernal invokers can detect and negate each other freely, because their "magic" operates on the same continuum. The other definitely defined categories of invokers are elemental (whether you're a general elementalist or a specialist, because again same contnuum), natural (witches and druids), spirits of the dead and undead (which are different things, but again, treated as the same category for detection and other interactions).
All invokers have a mystic patron (a 1 GP base patron is the tangible benefit of taking the detail, since the "polarity shift" is kind of a toss-up), but not all characters with a mystic patron are an invoker. You can be a wizard who is also a warlock, whose Magic is vanilla magic that sometimes receives an infernal push. An invoker's personal ability to use magic is not something the patron can/will turn off, in accordance with the idea that a character's base abilities belong to the character. For whatever reason, they were able to or allowed to establish an open line to a power source. If as the character grows they ever break ties with their patron, then either they'll establish a new one or discover that the time they've spent channeling raw power from the cosmos has enabled them to do the same with magic-magic.
Even with the Storyteller Generosity Clause, taking a mystic patron and drawing on their power adds a layer of complexity to a character that not everyone will want to deal with. It's not *necessary* to take a mystic patron to say that your character has been blessed by a god or has made a deal with a devil... not every gift comes with the same strings attached to it. All of the "Touched" abilities (Storm-Touched, Life-Touched, etc.) explicitly represent this kind of supernatural gift without a tie to a patron. The mystic patron system exists for characters where this kind of bargain/pact/servitude is such a central part of the character concept that it would feel like something is missing if it didn't have any impact on gameplay.
As I mentioned above, only one Character Quality right now makes direct use of the mystic patron, and that's Theurge.
Other ones I have plans for (some loose, some quite spelled out)
Warlock and/or Thaumaturge will almost certainly be in the Basic Character Guide when it goes on sale, but the others are kind of more specific than I want to get in the basic set.
The note that the last one allows you to break a rule that says you can't have more than one patron might be making you think that AWW has finally expanded to include forbidden combinations, because what about a Warlock/Theurge? The answer is: you can do that. You just have one patron for both CQs. A Theurge is usually tied to a god and a Warlock is usually tied to a devil, but the abilities of each CQ just define the relationship to the patron in terms of how their powers are used. A Warlock/Theurge might be an infernal priest who has been given the ability to perform wonders freely with the borrowed power in order to better oppose the celestials and tempt mortals over to the infernal side, or might be the servant of a god who is pulling out all the stops to keep this one mortal on their side for whatever reason.
Even without such crosses, you can define the nature of the patron in any way you like. You can take the Warlock CQ to mean a witch who channels the powers of the natural world but understands that a balance must be struck. The character in the game world would not be a warlock in social terms, in the same way that not everyone with the Assassin CQ is a hired killer (or even necessarily a killer). You would just be using this set of mechanics to bring about a character concept that revolves around power that's attractive but dangerous/costly to use.
With the addition of another category of "not quite gear"--mystic patrons--I've decided to organize them all into their own sub-chapter called Gear Alternatives. This helps players who want a character who travels light find what they're looking for and also makes a handy way of delineating exactly what's covered and what's not when it comes to the ways you have of scrounging up an item in play... the well-stocked character might find a battleaxe they forgot they had, but they don't have a horse in their back pocket, much less a forgotten word of power or a secret martial arts technique.
(Stuff that belongs to a category of gear, like words of power, will be mentioned in both places, so you don't have to look in two different places for the rules regarding spell focuses and all the types of spell focuses.)
You're probably wondering what a mystic patron is. Basically, I realized that one of the more complex parts of the Theurge CQ (the "divine spellcaster") would end up being duplicated across multiple future character qualities in a "reinvent the wheel" sort of way, and since it ate up a lot of real estate in the one page limit for ability rules, this would make all those characters rather limited in terms of individual scope. Worse, there would be some odd/bad side effects if a character had two or more of these CQs.
So I genericized the concept and off-loaded it into gear system. As attached to the Theurge, a mystic patron was a (usually) higher being that agreed to let you call upon a portion of their power for the equivalent of spellcasting. For a warlock (lowercase because there's not a CQ for it yet, though the concept is supported in the game), the mystic patron is a (usually) lower being who does the same thing. As long as you don't double-dip on certain dramatic advantages of a mystic patron more than once per scene, and don't ever use the most dramatic/attractive abilities, the nature of the patron and the pact is just background stuff, lightly flavored roleplaying fluff... the idea being that such patrons have far too many "clients" for any individual one to be of much/any importance.
But when you draw too deeply on the power, you also draw their attention and have to repay your use of the power with a favor that will range in magnitude depending on how much they approve of the ways you use their power, with small tithes or even the equivalent of a prayer of thanksgiving sufficient if you're a good and faithful servant. The player defines the patron's nature, but the Storyteller interprets it.
The suggestion is to be generous but within limits, and mostly look at the character of specific acts that benefit from drawing on the patron's power. Just as players are assumed to be playing characters who want to have heroic adventurers, it can be assumed that any cosmic power that chose to hitch their wagon to the character's star is going in the same direction as they are. An infernal might approve of the general mission because the rewards will tempt the hero, a celestial being might approve of it because it serves the greater good. If the Storyteller can't figure out an agenda for the patron that would cause them to support the player character being in the adventure/plotline the Storyteller set, then it's to wave their hands and say something about "mysterious ways".
A mystic patron is most useful to a user of magic. If you have a Magic score or the equivalent, the most common "power draw" is the ability to boost magic you'd be attempting anyway. If you don't, then basically once per scene you can try a spell with someone else's moderately good Magic score. (The "Power" attribute of mystic patrons ranges from 3 to 5, which is not as great as the best wizards of the mortal world, but again, many clients. It's not a measure of how powerful your patron is, it's a measure of how little attention they can spare you.) Which is a useful thing to be able to do for 1 GP, but less useful than being able to potentially rescue a failed magic attempt when you're going to be magicking all over the place anyway. Other uses for a mystic patron can be bought as a trait for them, or provided by CQ special abilities. Some of them count as a power draw, some of them don't.
Any benefit a patron provides can be withheld once you've incurred a favor and haven't paid it, whether it counts as drawing power or not, but this is neither automatic nor a total binary shut off. Your patron can refuse to aid your personal endeavors if you're clearly shirking your duties, but loosen the cosmic purse strings when you're actively working towards their agenda or towards repaying the favor.
It's often (thought not compulsorily so, except for Theurges) attached to a detail called "invoker" that changes the nature of a character's magic. An invoker uses their Magic score for spellcasting (or any attribute they can substitute, for themed spells) as normal, but it doesn't represent the same force that wizards and vanilla magical beings manipulate. So a wizard can't detect a divine (or infernal) invoker and is at a penalty to negate or counter their spells, and the reverse is true. The divine and infernal invokers can detect and negate each other freely, because their "magic" operates on the same continuum. The other definitely defined categories of invokers are elemental (whether you're a general elementalist or a specialist, because again same contnuum), natural (witches and druids), spirits of the dead and undead (which are different things, but again, treated as the same category for detection and other interactions).
All invokers have a mystic patron (a 1 GP base patron is the tangible benefit of taking the detail, since the "polarity shift" is kind of a toss-up), but not all characters with a mystic patron are an invoker. You can be a wizard who is also a warlock, whose Magic is vanilla magic that sometimes receives an infernal push. An invoker's personal ability to use magic is not something the patron can/will turn off, in accordance with the idea that a character's base abilities belong to the character. For whatever reason, they were able to or allowed to establish an open line to a power source. If as the character grows they ever break ties with their patron, then either they'll establish a new one or discover that the time they've spent channeling raw power from the cosmos has enabled them to do the same with magic-magic.
Even with the Storyteller Generosity Clause, taking a mystic patron and drawing on their power adds a layer of complexity to a character that not everyone will want to deal with. It's not *necessary* to take a mystic patron to say that your character has been blessed by a god or has made a deal with a devil... not every gift comes with the same strings attached to it. All of the "Touched" abilities (Storm-Touched, Life-Touched, etc.) explicitly represent this kind of supernatural gift without a tie to a patron. The mystic patron system exists for characters where this kind of bargain/pact/servitude is such a central part of the character concept that it would feel like something is missing if it didn't have any impact on gameplay.
As I mentioned above, only one Character Quality right now makes direct use of the mystic patron, and that's Theurge.
Other ones I have plans for (some loose, some quite spelled out)
- Warlock is explicitly flavored for being shackled to an infernal power. While the Theurge has a lot of abilities revolving around prayer (either requiring uninterrupted periods of relative peace, or being tied to words of power), the Warlock's theme is temptation... they have a greater and more attractive range of things that count as power draws to ensure that the character is indebted to the patron more often.
- Thaumaturge is the generic wizard-with-a-patron.
- Imp Bound is a warlock variant that has a representative of their patron traveling with them, a familiar (can switch between an imp form and a tiny animal form) who unlike most companions is not under the player's direct control. I might genericize it and scrub the infernal implications from the name, so you could have a guiding genius or guardian angel or whatever.
- An unnamed one (with the internal working title of "Constantine" in my head... it works as shorthand for my purposes but doesn't describe the character concept at all except as a pop culture reference) that allows you to break one of the inherent rules of the system and have two mystic patrons, who must be opposed to each other.
Warlock and/or Thaumaturge will almost certainly be in the Basic Character Guide when it goes on sale, but the others are kind of more specific than I want to get in the basic set.
The note that the last one allows you to break a rule that says you can't have more than one patron might be making you think that AWW has finally expanded to include forbidden combinations, because what about a Warlock/Theurge? The answer is: you can do that. You just have one patron for both CQs. A Theurge is usually tied to a god and a Warlock is usually tied to a devil, but the abilities of each CQ just define the relationship to the patron in terms of how their powers are used. A Warlock/Theurge might be an infernal priest who has been given the ability to perform wonders freely with the borrowed power in order to better oppose the celestials and tempt mortals over to the infernal side, or might be the servant of a god who is pulling out all the stops to keep this one mortal on their side for whatever reason.
Even without such crosses, you can define the nature of the patron in any way you like. You can take the Warlock CQ to mean a witch who channels the powers of the natural world but understands that a balance must be struck. The character in the game world would not be a warlock in social terms, in the same way that not everyone with the Assassin CQ is a hired killer (or even necessarily a killer). You would just be using this set of mechanics to bring about a character concept that revolves around power that's attractive but dangerous/costly to use.