This post briefly mentions HeroQuest. As such, we must begin by viewing
the sacred liturgy.
Once this is done, you may return for the rest of this blogpost.
The structure of the dice:
Several games use six-sided dice with the following properties:
3 of the faces share the same symbol, usually indicating a successful
'attack' result.
2 of the other faces share a second symbol, usually indicating a successful
'defense' result.
The final singular face has its own distinct marking.
In the opening to the Harry Potter series, we see Dumbledore, the most powerful wizard alive, use a a little trinket to do his dark deeds. Instead of just willing the street to be dark, he comes prepared with a nifty little piece of artificery.
The first Harry Potter is full of this kind of device-based magic. The Deluminator, the invisibility cloak, the remembral, the philosopher's stone, everything in the quidditch trunk. Does Harry even use a wand to cast a spell during the film?
As the movie series goes on, magic shifts towards being more about laser gun fights. Pew pew. But in Deathly Hallows, the snitch and deluminator make a suprise comeback, and additional hidden abilities are retconned revealed.
I like this vibe. Let's adapt it to tabletop rpg magical items.
Each item below has two abilities -- a "cantrip" and a "spell".
The cantrip is a magical effect which can be used freely and repeatedly by anyone with even the slightest bit of magical experience, or even by the magically ignorant if they fiddle around with it for a few hours.
The spell is a more powerful effect, maybe taken from your standard wizard spell list, and can be used by anyone magically powerful enough to actually cast spells. Using the item's spell will deplete its charge, preventing either the cantrip or spell effect from being used until the next dawn.
I'm using GLOG-style magic, where spells are levelless and limited by the caster's pool of "Magic Dice". (See here or here for an explanation, and here for the full ruleset I'm using.) Anyone with Magic Dice can spend them to activate the device's spell effect, using the same system as if they had that spell in their head instead of in their hands.
If you adapt this concept to a system with leveled spells, then allow the device's spell-effect to be activated by expending a spell slot of the appropriate level.
It's a bestiary with over 300 skeleton variants. 42 pages long.
Too late for Halloween, and just in time to be late for Day of the Dead. Click here for the download link. I'll be back again next year with even more skeletons.
Each of the following critters is made by some mad wizard to help with domestic tasks. Each exhibits some helpful behavior comparable to a cantrip. And each is capable of casting some sort of spell if a spellcaster touches it and focuses on feeding it some of their magical energy. (For GLOG, this would be Magic Dice; for a typical system, you would expend a spell-slot.) Think of them kinda like scrolls, but more huggable.
Here's a primer to GLOG wizard stuff if you have no idea what I'm babbling on about.
One of the things GLOG magic has going for it is the tension associated with powerful spells. You can always add more juice to a spell, but it drastically increases the risk of [bad thing] or [very bad thing] happening.
The standard way it works is that doubles give you a random 'mishap', while triples give you a predetermined 'doom'. Your mishaps and your dooms are tied to your school of wizardry.
But I want to simplify and generalize that system to make it compatible with classless play ala Knave or Into the Odd. Type1Ninja's excellent ruleset here is what I've been using. It make two changes. Firstly, there is a single class-agnostic mishaps/doom table. Secondly, the trigger mechanism is changed from matching die faces to simply checking for a 6, with a secondary stat which ticks down over time to make dooms more likely. It's good! But it doesn't quite make my soul sing.
Here are a few untested spitball mechanisms along the same lines.
Then recently, I came across Chris Tamm's Xor setting, which has loads of excellent tables for a meat world. (Though it focuses more on the body horror stuff instead of the food stuff.) There's even a list of meat spells!
So here's a horrible meat wizard inspired by that list.
(This is a wizarding school for Arnold K's GLOG system. The base details for the wizard class can be found here, and the spellcasting rules can be found here.)
You are NOT a necromancer, and quite frankly, you are tired of commoners mistaking you for one. You went to a chartered wizard college and are a respected member of the wizarding community. Sure, you wear a skull for a hat and have a bandoleer of bones and you cut people open and one of your mentors was a talking skeleton and ...
Your dear old academic advisor.
This is a wizarding school for Arnold K's GLOG system. The base details for the wizard class can be found here, and the spellcasting rules can be found here. (The short version is that spells are level-less, you spend Magic Dice to cast them. More MD spent means more powerful magic but also a higher risk of something going wrong.)
"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
--Neil Gershenfield
The spirits called spells operate on theoretically analyzable principles. Through careful observation you can replicate their effects.
You don't cast spells, you build gadgets! Instead of Magic Dice, your gadgets each have a Power Level. Instead of magical mishaps, your gadgets suffer mechanical failures.
